The US says Chinese spies are targeting Boston for its tech secrets - <AUTHOR> https://www.inkstonenews.com/politics/federal-officials-say-boston-companies-universities-are-potential-targets-chinese-espionage/article/3005150 <comment><USER2> The problem with these efforts is that the FBI often does not consult with technical experts before indicting Chinese nationals and have resulted in a number of false cases that have damaged the reputation of regular Chinese Americans. The rate at which Asians are falsely accused are twice those of other races[1]

[1][https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/study-suggests- as...](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/study-suggests-asians-most- likely-be-charged-espionage-n771836)

[https://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/12/us/politics/us-drops- char...](https://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/12/us/politics/us-drops-charges-that- professor-shared-technology-with-china.html)

[https://qz.com/1116990/the-aclu-says-the-fbi-is-accusing- chi...](https://qz.com/1116990/the-aclu-says-the-fbi-is-accusing-chinese- american-scientists-of-espionage-because-of-their-race/)

[http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp- srv/national/daily/aug99/sp...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp- srv/national/daily/aug99/spying26.htm)

[https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long- reads/arti...](https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long- reads/article/2144652/spying-charges-against-chinese-american)

<comment><USER3> Surely the FBI should be held to account when they make mistakes or behave unfairly, but it seems absurd that they shouldn't consider connections to China when looking for Chinese espionage.

<comment><USER4> If you're wondering why you're being downvoted, read up on Soviet espionage during the cold war. Money talks.

<comment><USER3> I wasn't downvoted, and surely Chinese tactics will evolve over time to match those of the Soviets, but the majority of the Chinese espionage cases that I've seen so far have involved ethnic Chinese.

For example, Walter Liew stealing the titanium dioxide formula (with help from paid off non-Chinese), or the engineering student in Chicago sending off recruiting profiles...all Chinese or Taiwanese.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> of course they're targeting the Boston area; our city is the country's nexus of research and development in a plethora of fields, our culture is welcoming to foreigners at a time when most areas of the US are positively hateful, and we're large enough that expats can find at least a few others from their home country if they so choose. it's the perfect place to learn and network whether you're a spy or a jobseeker.

my main question is what can we realistically do about the problem of chinese spying while preserving the integrity of our institutions here. we have chinese expats sprinkled heavily into all of our research groups, tech groups, you name it -- and it is my assumption that the overwhelming majority of these people are innocent of any crime, so it wouldn't be acceptable to subject them to additional scrutiny. these people are valuable members of our teams and we're lucky to have them in the quantity that we do.

i'm not sure what the right move is here -- it's just my nightmare that the federal government / FBI implements some hamfisted policy that damages Boston's primary economic activities.

</comment><comment><USER6> This is nothing new. The defense contractors working with the university have clear rules on how and what they can share with which people.

<comment><AUTHOR> What's new is perhaps the China Initiative, something that the US Department of Justice announced late last year to focus on curbing Chinese economic espionage. Now the leader of this initiative has named Boston as a "target- rich environment."

Here's an official factsheet (PDF): [https://www.justice.gov/opa/speech/file/1107256/download](https://www.justice.gov/opa/speech/file/1107256/download)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> China has some areas where they innovate, but they primarily excel at _copying_.

<comment><USER8> All innovation starts with copying what came before. This is why liberal IP laws are so important to innovation. HN readers seem to understand this basic point quite well unless China is involved.

<comment><USER9> Except China as a state isn't our ally or friend. Their interests lie primarily in furthering their own political and military power, and secondarily benefiting their own population. They're more than eager to steal technology, then use that new-found knowledge and ability combined with massive government subsidies to drown out foreign competitors locally and abroad.

<comment><USER10> >Their interests lie primarily in furthering their own political and military power, and secondarily benefiting their own population.

How exactly is that different from the US? I don't see US politicians in power trying to do things to benefit their own population, such as by providing universal healthcare.

<comment><USER11> You're not wrong, it's a common criticism of democracy. Except China is not a democracy, they act only to protect their own grip on power (and keep their stolen party wealth).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Kind of puts getting recruiting emails from Huawei about their imminent Boston office opening in a new light.

Just seeing their executives get charged with international crimes is enough to avoid replying.

<comment><USER13> I wouldn't want to work for a corp that doesn't have the right political muscle to avoid the charges. Halliburton, Exxon, Boeing, HSBC, etc, won't be charged.

<comment><USER10> Yep. Huawei didn't do anything except probably insert spyware on their devices, and they're being charged with crimes. Boeing _killed_ hundreds of people through criminal negligence, but I'm sure we won't see any executives there charged with crimes in the US.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> All my fears of knife wielding robot snake dogs chasing me down hallways are becoming realized.

</comment><comment><USER15> Inkstone News, owned by the South China Morning Post, which is owned by Alibaba Group writes an article about what a US official says.

Hmmm...

<comment><USER16> Yup. An article is only on part of any media campaign. I think it also safe to assume this HN discussion is being cataloged, if not actively manipulated, by those who created this article.

<comment><AUTHOR> I created the article! Trust me when I say I'm not cataloging this discussion or actively manipulating it.

(EDIT: deleted "with my colleagues" because another commenter says it sounds like something other than reporters working with editors to put out an article.)

<comment><USER16> >> I created the article! Trust me when I say I'm not cataloging this discussion or actively manipulating it.

I don't see any version of "alanwong" on the article. We have a political piece written by a journal/website/news source that is apparently owned by a Chinese company and authored by a woman named "Viola Zhou". Now we have someone calling themselves "alanwong" claiming to have created the article but whose name appears nowhere on said article. This looks like team effort to me, a badly executed one.

(Alanwong claims to be the editor, not author, but I don't see the editor listed on the website)

<comment><AUTHOR> Few sites list editors of an individual article these days. Here's my author page. [https://www.inkstonenews.com/author/alan- wong-0](https://www.inkstonenews.com/author/alan-wong-0) My role is also listed in my hackernews profile. Try searching my name and Inkstone. You'll find me and my relations with Inkstone. It's all one search away.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm a bit uncomfortable with ideas like this being promoted in the popular press so much recently.

Spy-vs-spy is something that, for better or worse, nations do. It seems a complicated and delicate matter, and outside the experience of most of us.

In the Boston area, we have a wealth of colleagues, neighbors, and friends who arrived here from around the world. We welcome and appreciate them.

Ordinary people suspecting others, because of something they heard in the news (or amplified in some right-wing outlet), seems unfair and toxic. We've even seen recently that it can be deadly, when a violent mentally ill person is inspired.

I think the international spy business can best be left to the professionals (diplomats, intel agencies, law enforcement, corporate security), to handle discreetly, and the rest of us can just get along.

<comment><USER18> I agree that general "All Chinese are spying on you!" is not a helpful message, but nation-state espionage, generally, is not a bad thing to be aware of overall. The article also doesn't seem to fear-monger so much as call out recent espionage attempts while also citing the difficulty of detection because most folks are here for the right reasons.

As for "leave it to the professionals", you left out a key component from your list - the people doing the work - doing the research, building the devices. Engineers, professors. The people doing the work are the first line for any social engineering or simple vector attacks. Anyone that works with this information reads and signs things but if they haven't really been tested or understand the consequences, maybe they forget.

Having a reminder that it's OK to be impolite when somebody you don't know asks you overly specific questions you're not supposed to share is not always a bad thing.

<comment><USER17> When I said "leave it to the professionals", I meant to cover the workers indirectly when I said "corporate security". Corporate security personnel shouldn't be getting operational info from popular press.

<comment><USER18> Agreed, but corporate security is also not out at the bar on a Friday. One would hope that facilities security folks would at a minimum be briefing people, but that stuff costs money, and probably doesn't happen as much as it should.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> As part of the discussion, the following article may be interesting too:

[https://foreignpolicy.com/2012/12/06/we-were-pirates- too/](https://foreignpolicy.com/2012/12/06/we-were-pirates-too/)</comment>


How to camouflage yourself from facial recognition technology - <AUTHOR> http://social.venturebeat.com/2010/07/02/facial-recognition-camouflage/

<comment><USER2> One interesting thing I've read is that eyebrows may be more important for face recognition (by humans) than the appearance of the eyes themselves. (I suspect this has more to do with the shape of the brow bone than the eyebrow hair.)

See this example: <http://i.imgur.com/ADXtF.png>

The research was done by Pawan Sinha at MIT.

<comment><USER3> Interesting, because shaving you eyebrows is easy and is not as conspicuous as painting your face.

<comment><USER2> Sure, or wearing a headband over the eyebrows. But computers probably detect faces differently, so I don't know if this would fool a computer.

<comment><USER4> The one system I read about in passing, which was surprisingly accurate, just looked for off-color blots to the bottom, left and right of a supposed face. If you're not blonde, eyebrows probably contribute more to the blot than the pupils.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Or, to avoid detection by cameras entirely, lemon juice: [http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/20/the- anosogno...](http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/20/the-anosognosics- dilemma-1/)

"But I wore the juice!"

<comment><USER6> Cameras can't see the difference between visible light and infrared, so one thing you could do would be to put a bunch of lnfrared leds on your face - humans can't see it, but to the cameras your head looks like a light bulb.

<comment><USER7> I always wanted to do this for my license plate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Face paint, seriously? You might fool the software but every person that sees you will remember you forever.

<comment><USER9> "Putting paint on your face isn't always practical," he said. "This is just the way that I wanted to test this. But if you wanted to be covert, you could try wearing different styles of make-up or accessories. You could position a Band-aid on the right spot on your face. The power of this idea is that people can interpret it in their own way."

<comment><USER8> He almost had me with the band-aid, but you could only do that once, maybe twice, per social circle before it became a gimmick.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Reminds me of Pris from Blade Runner: <http://bit.ly/aiM8xZ>

Maybe she was just trying to avoid being recognized :)

<comment><USER11> You don't need to use URL shorteners here, friend: [http://starsmedia.ign.com/stars/image/article/864/864678/top...](http://starsmedia.ign.com/stars/image/article/864/864678/top-50-chicks- behaving-badly-the-final-10-20080404021633187-000.jpg)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This would explain David Bowie.

[http://dailymaily.files.wordpress.com/2010/01/davidbowie001....](http://dailymaily.files.wordpress.com/2010/01/davidbowie001.jpg)

[http://cdn.venturebeat.com/wp- content/uploads/2010/07/face-r...](http://cdn.venturebeat.com/wp- content/uploads/2010/07/face-recognition-makeup.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER13> This technique is somewhat reminiscent of Dazzle Camo:

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

What's interesting is that Dazzle camo is typically used to confuse the visual systems of human beings, not computer vision, but some of the principles and tricks seem to be the same.

<comment><USER9> From the article:

"Harvey said he got his idea from studying camouflage methods use during World War I and World War II. His project, CV Dazzle, is based on the original dazzle camouflage used by the military to hide ships in the 1940s."

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> liquid sky

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> There's never been a better time to be a creepy stalker.

Back in the beginning when Facebook wasn't stalker friendly I remember wanting to have auto tagging based on facial recognition. Now... now I'm afraid that I'll get tagged by other people in facebook (even though I'm not part of it anymore) and facebook will of course make money by selling all the facial patterns to third parties.

The applications of facial recognition make my mind fly, they remind me of Minority Report and marketers recognizing you wherever you go, it makes me think of even more divorces based on far more evidence that will be automatically available on social networks.

I think I'll start wearing some make-up a few months from now, or turn my face away every time I see a camera. The end of anonymity is near.

<comment><USER15> If you're really concerned, the solution is simple. Don't tell your friends the same name that you tell the government. If a bunch of people tag you as "John Smith" on Facebook, and "Bill Smitthers" is the person that is behind on his back taxes, face recognition with data bought from Facebook is not going to find you.

<comment><USER16> Why'd you assume that the government was his (only) concern?

<comment><USER15> s/government/whatever/g;</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Technology Billionaires Trying to Remake America's Schools - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/06/technology/tech-billionaires-education-zuckerberg-facebook-hastings.html <comment><USER2> My father was a fine art printmaker by training. In the 1980's he was working in advertising doing (what was then called) desktop publishing. Physical photographs, knives, glue - old school image-making. Making art on the side, he became a _very_ early adopter of digital image making tools and rode the wave as his entire industry was transformed. The tools available to the (what is now called) graphics designer changed completely - but the goals and underlying skills of the job did not. Designers became better designers.

To extend the analogy, I have this feeling that we're putting a great deal of effort into "taking the designer out of the design" rather than making tools to augment the designer's abilities/speed/workflow. Yes - we can probably create a system that can spit out company logos just as "good" as a mediocre designer, but if our best designers are still making do with knives, glue and paint then the entire field is being held back.

There are purpose-build tools for all kinds of professions, but teachers are largely making do with the same processes and tools that they did fifty years ago.

They don't need a LogosmartAI to replace them; they just need Photoshop.

</comment><comment><USER3> The main thing we can learn from history, is that we do not in fact learn from history. That's what I have taken from B.H. Liddell Hart's great little book "Why Don't We Learn From History?" and it is exactly what is happening here in education, again.

Today on the HN homepage there was an article about how NJ was the innovation hub of American before the Valley, which generated a nice discussion. Akarnani recounted the story of Fred Terman's failed effort to make NJ more like the Valley. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14497136](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14497136)

This historical anecdotes illustrates how even when many essential pieces are present (money, smart people, etc) it is a nearly Sisyphean task to change a system and a culture. The great management thinker W. Edwards Deming once said "a bad system will beat a good person every time" and that is the history of the past 60 years in education reform. I wrote about that in more detail here. [https://medium.com/@m_pettyjohn/on-humans-hard-problems- and-...](https://medium.com/@m_pettyjohn/on-humans-hard-problems-and-complex- systems-8c2aa2d176a2)

This NYTimes article reaches out and touches nearly every broken aspect of education that makes improvement seem intractable. Zuckerberg wasted $100 million in Newark and seemingly came away learning the wrong lessons. Benioff, big hearted and charitable, has his heart in the right place, but long-term will have little impact.

With that in mind it is almost inconsequential what the Silicon Valley billionaires do in education.

There is massive potential in our teachers and students, but to unleash it we need to understand our history, take a systems view and approach, and genuinely understand the discipline of management, which even to the big successes in the Valley seems like an afterthought.

If you're outside (or even inside!) education, reading The Case of Mrs. Oublier, a study of one California teacher during the state's massive 80's reform effort, can be enlightening to the challenges faced.

[https://393methods1.wikispaces.com/file/view/Cohen,+D.+K.+(1...](https://393methods1.wikispaces.com/file/view/Cohen,+D.+K.+\(1990\).pdf)

<comment><USER4> Well said. And it's important to carefully investigate the limits of the system that is to be improved, as it almost certainly is larger and more complex than anyone thinks. More money is good, better tech is good, better pay for teachers is good, but these are hot spots on a huge network of systems and circumstances. "Holistic approach" is an overworked phrase but it's the thing we need here because education overlaps in so many ways with other aspects of society.

<comment><USER5> Interestingly, the best available research suggests that adding better tech to schools doesn't seem to improve education outcomes.

[http://www.bbc.com/news/business-34174796](http://www.bbc.com/news/business-34174796)

<comment><USER3> We can also look at tech from the student side of things:

There is some nice software out there. Desmos comes to mind. [https://teacher.desmos.com](https://teacher.desmos.com)

But most software that makes its way into schools is not Desmos. It's usually something that merely replicates the content delivery method of teaching. Think Khan Academy. Other software is often just a digital way to practice facts or algorithms (my mind is in the math world for these examples).

I noticed an older comment of yours about expectations your first CS class had including how to navigate a nix system, at least one programming language, and Matlab. Let's pretend this class was instead algebra I where a student is expected to know the fundamentals of arithmetic including properties of operations (so you can use them to manipulate equations), that the equals sign indicates balance, exponentiation, strong proportional reasoning with a solid understanding of multiplication/division, and an understanding of integers. Combine this with a course where the teacher delivers a lesson each day, you do homework, and then have a test each week, never stopping to go back to things that may not have sunk in, let alone pausing to work on any holes in the things mentioned above that are critical to understanding algebra. I can introduce Desmos to help you model linear equations in a wonderful interface, but it isn't going to do a damn thing to increase outcomes if a) you are lacking in any of the requisite starting knowledge and b) don't go to extraordinary lengths to keep up with the pace of the course.

I like tech, but I don't think it's any sort of panacea for what ails our schools because it doesn't (and maybe can't) address the root causes.

<comment><USER5> My daughter's school uses i-Ready. It does give differential lessons to each student based on how they've done on the tests. It even occasionally circles back in areas you were maybe just "ok" in. The problem I've seen (based only on her reports so not even remotely scientific) is that if you fail a section, it gives you the exact.same.lesson again. It doesn't try to show you the same material in a different way. It just cycles you back through the same exact thing. Additionally, she reports that "all" of her fellow classmates hate the time they spend doing i-ready. I suspect it's not very engaging, there's no group/social interaction, etc.

<comment><USER3> Ugh, that kind of teaching, whether from tech or a teacher just kills me as I suspect it kills students' dispositions towards those subjects. I truly hope that your daughter has many other opportunities to engage in meaningful mathematics throughout her education.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Mark my words: In 15 years time, the Salesforce.org meddling in Education will be a "Poster Child" study in Hubris outside of one's field of expertise. It will not work. Education is inherently time wasted by way of learning, and as a species, Humans are far too diverse for the grand dreams of utopian schooling. I mean, sure Utopian Schooling is possible but it's incredibly intrusive, Homogenized, and reductive - all of which projects like this try to pretend aren't fundamentally necessary.

Do I have a better plan? I do. Research backed.

Want a hint? Every child should have Music Instruction two times per week for at least one hour per session. That would do more than any stupid spreadsheet or Board Room review. I know, because Research backs it up. Not this..."venture" of sorts.

<comment><USER7> Wealthy individuals commit time, money, and effort to important problem. Screw those guys... am I right?

I hate this attitude. Their overall vector is in the right direction; even if it's off slightly, at least they care and are doing something about it. You'll catch a lot more flies with honey than with vinegar... so perhaps you should try reaching out and volunteering your own resources (time & money) rather than just sounding off -- and not even linking to the research!

<comment><USER8> > Wealthy individuals commit time, money, and effort to important problem. > Screw those guys... am I right?

No, this is not right and the attitude dripping off your post isn't very constructive either.

These individuals have disproportionate leverage as a result of their wealth and available time. The likelihood is that they are going to make a bit of a mess with this leverage (you even say it yourself - "overall vector...off slightly"). So they can have a seriously deleterious effect on really very large numbers of children as a result of the power they wield.

A group of misguided parents in a PTA might might end up getting, say, Intelligent Design onto the science curriculum in their district; an opinionated billionaire could do rather more harm than that to very much larger numbers of students.

As for volunteering, many people do exactly that (and how do you know 6stringmerc doesn't?) by standing for school board elections, chairing the PTA, campaigning locally, giving talks in schools, and so on. The key point is that these are _local_ actions with local fallout. Conducting experiments at scale based on the idiosyncratic preferences of individuals who happen to have got lucky in business is a terrible, terrible thing to do to a city full of children.

I mean look at the proposals! They're classic examples of turning problems into nails when you're holding a hammer. Neflix recommendation algorithms to select lessons! Why? What the hell happened to pedagogy? Frankly, where's the humility? If Reed Hastings had got himself a masters in education and spent a few years teaching, even part time, there'd at least be some practical experience in the problem domain to guide his transformative efforts; otherwise it looks like dilettantism.

<comment><USER9> > So they can have a seriously deleterious effect on really very large numbers > of children as a result of the power they wield.

I have a hard time seeing how anything they decide to do to change schooling is going to make it worse than it is.

Our current education system is largely still in a factory style, where students are all taught the same material, run on the same idiotic schedule, are taught aimed at tests, and generally have any genuine interest in learn crushed out of them by the second grade.

Classes teach generic material and completely fail to demonstrate useful applications. Useful things like critical thought, philosophy, personal finance, cooking, computing systems/programming - not taught. Students learn to focus on rote memorization and local application of principles - see the articles the problems of getting students to solve conceptual physics problems vs. mathematical ones - and then proceed to forget most of the material as soon as there's no test on the horizon.

And we've known how to do better for a long time. Montessori's analysis of children and how they learn, her experimentation with the classroom and materials - this sort of thing is a hundred years old at this point, but we don't apply it widely. Instead we largely have the same old ineffective crap that we pass for "teaching". There's a reason Khan Academy became a thing.

We already know that schools do a bad job of preparing students for the current economic landscape. There's no reason to look at this and say "but some of these things might not work! Think of the children!" The children will be fine (or at a minimum, no worse off). We've already seen this where school districts have blown millions of dollars on new tech, to no useful effect. Zuckerberg threw a hundred million at some school district on the east coast, to zero benefit. But stuff like that isn't going to make things any worse. And on the flip side, they won't get better without action like this and without experimentation.

Better education is, imo, the best way to put this country on a strong footing for the coming decades. The government isn't going to do it. The private market isn't going to do it at scale. The average PTA isn't going to do it, and really, what the hell do most parents know about education, other than what they experienced? Committees and groups are the kind of thing that get bogged down in details, have no clear direction, and take forever to decide anything. At least a random billionaire can have the money and direction to get things done, even if not all of their ideas pan out.

One last thing - I feel these days schools are much less important than in the past, in so far as learning. The internet provides tremendous access to information; sites like Khan and other education material has improved over traditional textbooks by leaps and bounds; Stack Overflow and similar provide places to ask questions and find answers/explanations to specific problems or concepts; and so on. Fifty years ago, if a billionaire decided to bulldoze some schools and leave a bunch of children with no place to learn, that would have been a dire problem. Today, it's much less of an issue.

<comment><USER8> I agree with your broad point about the fairly poor state of education and its central role in the country's future. I don't agree with some other things: one of which being "at least a random billionaire can have the money and direction to get things done, even if not all their ideas pan out." I argued that above so I won't rehash it, but to summarize, I hold the precautionary principle in high regard, and you - I think - prefer iteration and experimentation; we can agree to disagree.

Otherwise I found your comment a bit contradictory. You don't like recent investments in classroom technology and say that technology isn't a solution, but you seem to think that technology is an at least partially adequate replacement for the classroom itself. Mark Zuckerberg wasted $100m in New Jersey (was it a waste? How do we know?) but seem happy for that pattern to continue.

To pick on a specific theme you touched on a few times: learning isn't even mostly about information. Ask anyone who bought a textbook in college then slept through lectures and never spoke to their professor. Kahn Academy doesn't represent a visionary, Montessori-compatible approach to learning math; instead it's a scaled up, gamified, alternative to an already stale math education pattern of rote memorization, depersonalized instruction, and practice problems. That's a part of math education - you have to learn how to apply techniques after all - but hardly represents the paradigm shift in math teaching that gets talked about here frequently. Don't get me wrong: Khan is a very good thing, especially for students struggling with bad teachers, but it's not the next step. And that's just talking about math education.

I don't agree at all that schools are less important. Schools are the only place where kids have mandatory exposure to specialists who's only job is to teach them things. To my point above, information is not education. 'Education' is the thing that happens when decent teachers with adequate materials and reasonable tools spend focused time with children. So you need time - which means smaller class sizes; you need tools, which really is a solved problem requiring only situational application of cash; you need materials, same; and you need decent teachers, which is a matter of training and status and autonomy and job satisfaction and vocation, and that is a really thorny mess. It's a generational political problem, not a thing a billionaire can meaningfully affect with a recommendation algorithm for syllabus modules.

So I guess my conclusion is - a really just absolutely epically well-funded lobbying foundation with a world-class policy board would do far more good than a series of expensive experiments playing with the margins of the existing borked system.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I've worked in K-12 schools all my life and the answer is so incredibly clear, yet there is so much incentive riding in never saying it: Students and learning are secondary in the business of education.

True, meaningful educational impact happens when you can deliver authentic instruction -- instruction that creates a really tight feedback loop between the learner, the instructor, and the subject. We have tried with technology to mimick that at scale. Khan Academy and online quizzes is not a new idea; B.F. Skinner had a device doing this since at least the 60s. It works to stuff CEOs' pockets with money, feed the ever-larger administrative behemoth that schools are becoming, etc. Results, not so much.

There is no greater evidence than the fact that schools are probably the only sector which has literally gotten less efficient over the past decades; we literally spend more money per pupil for worse outcomes. The incentives in public education are absolutely abysmal, and we've seemingly done everything in the book to strip the voice of students and families in this sector.

As schools, our feedback loop between our own quality is practically nonexistent. No wonder we don't do right by these kids. Lots of money to be made selling software, though.

<comment><USER11> Recently I read comments about "the art of learning" by child chess prodigy and expert in martial arts Josh Waitzkin about coaching and how to conquest excellence. My take on that is that if your family or society inspire on you the value of hard work and incremental improvement, you will obtain a strong motivation to get better in whatever you do and that will give you an enormous opportunity to succeed. Speaking from my own experience, in my high school our math teacher had a voice problem and on top of that he used to speak very quickly, hence it was really difficult to understand what he was saying, but that was not a problem for me, I learned all the math in a book and became the right hand of that teacher, my duty was to try to teach to other people in class. Another nice anecdote was how I discovered the multiplication table, I was a dumb body in my childhood, I repeated several years until I was nine or ten years. I didn't know what was 2 x 2, then someone told me that the multiplication table was written in our pencil and that to answer that you have to memorize that table, that was my start on math. It seems that all the ways to a solution are written somewhere. Anyway I wouldn't change any bit my wild education, I have really loving memories from my chilhood and school. I would never change that for a formal education, let nature teach you, something in the spirit of Mark Twain novels.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Meanwhile, the same tech billionaires influencing the public school system will follow a completely different curriculum—usually private, low tech, with limited screen and device time—for their own children.

Do as I say, not as I do.

<comment><USER13> That low tech limited screen time curriculum requires well trained (aka expensive) staff. Yes, it might have better outcomes, but it can't scale without an absurd investment that, so far, society has been unwilling to make. If you can raise the _general_ standard of education at the same cost by going digital, that's still positive sum, no?

<comment><USER14> Classic blinkered-technocrat perspective, why does "scale" matter in education? What is the endgame when education is scaled as much as possible, plugging kids into VR headsets and calling it a day?

<comment><USER15> Because that's literally how civilization improves. You're able to code for a living because people before you figured out how to make agriculture scale.

All humans have finite amount of time during the day, finite resources and finite lifespans. All of which is allocated pretty tightly. If you want to add value to the lives of people, your best bet is something that _doesn 't_ come at a great cost to them. Hence scale.

A secondary benefit is that big things which don't scale are only attempted by few players with lots of resources; making things more scalable means more smaller players can compete on the market.

<comment><USER14> How about we spend more effort creating more fairly-paid teachers than making more dormfart-website CEOs?

<comment><USER15> 1\. "Dormfart-website CEOs" are not necessarily what's required to scale education.

2\. How about we reduce the number of teachers (and have the remaining be paid fairly) by making education scale? See also my agriculture example.

<comment><USER14> _" Dormfart-website CEOs" are not necessarily what's required to scale education._

But they're consuming money and attention that could be redirected to solving real problems. I know, this is a perpetual complaint with someone in any crowd.

 _How about we reduce the number of teachers (and have the remaining be paid fairly) by making education scale?_

Unless you have an innovation in mind that I haven't seen, I fall back to the copiously documented truism that you can't use technology to solve a people problem.

 _See also my agriculture example._

I don't concede that children can be educated within the same concepts that are used to harvest cows and cotton.

<comment><USER15> > _I fall back to the copiously documented truism that you can 't use > technology to solve a people problem._

Thing is, I don't buy that truism. IMO technology is sometimes the best way to solve a people problem, because it sidesteps all the issues of politics and ego.

> _I don 't concede that children can be educated within the same concepts > that are used to harvest cows and cotton._

Why not? Just like modern agriculture makes a farmer more productive per unit of land, we should strive to make teachers be able to teach more children and teach them better.

<comment><USER14> _because it sidesteps all the issues of politics and ego_

AKA the reasons why it's a people problem.

 _we should strive to make teachers be able to teach more children and teach them better_

You're comparing apples to oranges. Agriculture does not "strive."

All in all this sounds like pie-in-the-sky thinking. The science I've seen says larger class sizes do not result in better outcomes, do you have anything that contradicts that? Anything demonstrating even a clear benefit from technology in the classroom? Anything about scaling? That is, is what you're proposing anything more than imaginary?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Unlike how other instructional materials are adopted by schools, educational software operates in secrecy - it remains essentially a black box to educators, parents, and students. There is no mechanism for independent reviews/audits of content or code, no insight into the instructional approach, checks for factual accuracy, or evaluations of potential bias.

The money quote (for me): "That sounds like a low bar [that their apps did not harm students' educational results]," Ms. Woolley-Wilson said. "But with the history of education technology, it is not."

</comment><comment><USER17> If I'd been allowed to work at my own pace; there's been some understanding for my environmental needs (I can do classroom/group, just fine, but I need peace and quiet when I'm working by myself); and I'd been provided some actual social oversight and guidance, instead of the "Lord of the Flies" dominance of the student peer group (staff were largely divorced from all but pedagogy, and my parents -- plopped down in front of the TV every night -- were no help at all). Well, I think I would have done a lot better.

That is to say, you can throw all the money and toys and methods you want at it. What you need, is people actually paying attention.

And paid to pay attention. So that they are not overwhelmed with workload nor how they are going to pay their own bills and take care of their own families.

In other words, invest in the people providing the education. Choose them wisely, and empower them. The rest is just various forms of b.s.

</comment><comment><USER18> Why is it that billionaires from _many industries_ subvert democratic process constantly, yet when they do it openly and for education, it's criticized? If anything, the biggest problem with education is that _nobody_ has had any power at all to make a substantial difference at scale. For once, I applaud billionaires for subverting the democratic process.

This is literally the first time I've read an article with a line similar to:

"They have the power to change policy, but no corresponding check on that power," said Megan Tompkins-Stange,

"We should be asking a lot more questions about who is behind the curtain," Ms. Davis said.

</comment><comment><USER19> Entirely altruistic?

<comment><USER20> Whenever someone rich gets in the news for being nice, people seem to love digging for some way that their motives are not "entirely altruistic". I understand that sometimes these deals are BS and don't actually benefit anyone but the rich person. But, I don't understand why people get so upset over the rich person benefiting _in any way shape or form._

I've seen such outrage as "He only gave away a $1,000,000 so that he could cut $350,000 off of his taxes!" :/ "The deal eventually, indirectly feeds some money back into the project in the long term making it self-sustaining!" :/ "It not anonymous, so he's only helping thousands of people to be famous for helping thousands of people!" :/ "He's rich, so giving away huge amounts of money is easy for him. Helping thousands of people should not be recognized unless it was hard!" :/ Then there's the classic "So, he's helping this part of the problem. But, why doesn't he help the rest of the overwhelmingly huge collection of tangentially-related problems?" :/

Sometimes it seems that the standard we hold people to is "Helping people must be anonymously self-immolating to avoid disparagement." Then we disparage the same people because, as far as we can tell, they are not helping enough.

<comment><USER19> Who is disparaging anyone? Or are you speaking from your own observations in your social circle?

<comment><USER20> Not you. Though I wonder what you were specifically wanting to find out with your question.

I'm speaking from observations made sometimes on Hacker News and frequently on Reddit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I mean let them do some R&D, then get public support and eventually maybe make a business out of it, not the other way around.

This is the opposite of corporate social responsibility, yall. Do your freakin job, Benioff!

</comment><comment><USER22> I am not sure experimenting on someone else children is a good idea, what will happened with the kids attending the "failed experiment" schools?

<comment><USER23> We've been doing that experiment for decades... you are currently experiencing the results.

<comment><USER22> my schooling was done in Europe and I do see a difference indeed :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> While I appreciate the effort of the billionaires, I largely think that this type of "redesign" is more of a bandage than a cure. I think that there are some much greater fundamental systemic problems the go far beyond not "thinking bigger".

My beliefs are somewhat extreme in this topic, but I will share anyway. In broad strokes:

1\. One of the biggest problems is that education has come to be ruled by the administrators. They are not servant leaders, rather they are aristocrats. Their pawns are students, faculty, parents, and taxpayers. These stakeholders need more influence in the decision-making process.

2\. Mandatory schooling (both explicit and implicit) could easily stop at 8th grade with the goal of basic numeracy and literacy as well as fundamental learning skills. These skills will provide enough education for the graduates to function in society as well as move forward in the education system if/when they choose to do so. Currently, most of high school (and middle school, frankly) is just very expensive and inefficient baby sitting.

3\. That said, secondary, tertiary, and trade-based education should be widely available, of high quality, and low price -- probably subsidized heavily by the state -- throughout a person's life. Many people do not realize the value of education and learning until they are older, and our current system does a relatively poor job accommodating these people.

4\. Overall curriculum design needs to focus on autonomous learning (touched on in the article). Note that this means that the learner takes responsibility for their learning, not someone else (e.g., teachers). Also note that this does not obviate teachers, rather it just makes them one of many sources of knowledge/learning. Anecdotally, I have seen this type of system pull off what many would consider to be miracles.

5\. Learning in general should be much more contextualized and (when practicable) experiential. Many/most students do not see how the current curriculum content applies to them. The current content seems to be related to, and largely is a product of, the type of education upper middle class people want. Folks from other walks of life actually have a lot of curiosity and a high capacity to learn, but taking part in the current curriculum would turn them into an alien within their community (e.g., non-native English speaker being beaten/abused for speaking English well). Few people are willing to do this.

6\. Assessment should lean much more heavily on portfolios than on standardized tests. Don't get me wrong, standardized tests have their place, but currently they are overused and are often times misused.

This is an issue I very passionate about. Please let me know via a response here if you would like to discuss this more.</comment>


Passwordless login with phoenix - <AUTHOR> http://inaka.net/blog/2016/07/27/passwordless-login-with-phoenix/ <comment><USER2> While the example explains the approach, this is susceptible to a brute force attack where you just try different tokens until they work.

To further improve the security, the author shold include the `userId` in the magic URL and make sure it matches with the `token`. Some sort of rate limiting could work as well.</comment>


Secure your data in layers of tar. - <AUTHOR> https://www.gettarpit.com/

<comment><USER2> _"Secure your data in layers of tar."_ What does that even mean? They're obviously not talking about tar(1).

 _"Use the most advanced access control to stop digital thieves."_ What does that have to do with tar?

If this has been posted because of the whole Snowdon thing: they appear to be subject to US law, so I'd be very sceptical that data stored here could not be obtained by the NSA/FBI.</comment>


Continued Fraction - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continued_fraction <comment><AUTHOR> Excerpt:

e = [2;1,2,1,1,4,1,1,6,1,1,8,...] (sequence A003417 in the OEIS). The pattern repeats indefinitely with a period of 3 except that 2 is added to one of the terms in each cycle.

π = [3;7,15,1,292,1,1,1,2,1,3,1,...] (sequence A001203 in the OEIS). No pattern has ever been found in this representation.

ϕ = [1;1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,...] (sequence A000012 in the OEIS). The golden ratio, the irrational number that is the "most difficult" to approximate rationally. See: A property of the golden ratio φ.</comment>


Tilt - <AUTHOR> http://www.google.com/m/search?q=tilt

<comment><USER2> Worked on Chrome / WinXP

</comment><comment><USER3> Only works on iOS/Android (i think).

<comment><USER4> On Mac OS X it actually works with Chrome but not with Firefox, Safari or Opera.

<comment><USER5> FWIW, it works on OS X Safari if you set the UA to 'Safari iOS - iPhone' via the Develop menu.</comment></comment></comment>


Thinking Differently about Thinking: The Mind-Expanding Ideas of Andy Clark - <AUTHOR> https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/04/02/the-mind-expanding-ideas-of-andy-clark <comment><USER2> No mention of Wittgenstein, and the argument for the impossibility of a private language. All that material in Philosophical Investigations on how natural language is game like, and an essentially social practice, is highly relevant.

<comment><USER3> Or Heidegger, 'being-in-the-world-with-others' & all that.

<comment><USER3> Heidegger doesn't seem too far from the mark, judging by Andy Clark's 1997 "Being There":

[http://www2.econ.iastate.edu/tesfatsi/BeingThere.AClark1998....](http://www2.econ.iastate.edu/tesfatsi/BeingThere.AClark1998.EntireBook.pdf)

The title even seems to be a nod to Heidegger's "dasein" (as well as to Woody Allen).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This article reminds me of a sci-fi series I read a million years ago, The Golden Queen by Dave Wolverton. In the series, some characters had a "mantle," an external mind worn on the head that could either passively impart knowledge to the wearer or actively help them develop a skill.

After I read the series I started thinking about notes and books and references as being a sort of external brain that I shouldn't be ashamed of utilizing if I needed to. Or maybe more like the secondary storage to my brain's RAM (long-term memory) and CPU cache (short-term memory.)

That isn't to say that I would actually recommend reading the Golden Queen. It was cheesy and campy, but it had a couple of neat ideas and a talking bear.

<comment><USER5> A few other SF books with the idea of an external co-brain:

\- Psychohistorical Crisis by Donald Kingsbury (plays a major role)

\- Accelerando by Charlie Stross (minor role)

\- The Peace War, Marooned in Realtime by Vernor Vinge (relatively major roles)

edited for formatting

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The important distinction drawn is between the brain, a physical organ that exists within each human, to the mind, which is at this point an interdisciplinary concept which is defined and explored by psychologists, neuroscientists, and philosophers alike.

In general, I find the intermixing of science and philosophy an increasingly common situation for those interested in "the mind." For me, it is hard to reconcile the falsifiable and evidence-based nature of science with the inherently linguistic nature of philosophy. Philosophers have come to this question not due to their knowledge of neurology or psychology, but rather to heap on more theory to the word "mind" itself.

My question is: What is the practical use of this theory of mind? How does it "expand" my mind to be reminded that I use tools and props? Since it is clearly not news that all of us use tools and props, is the author's primary insight to claim that these are part of the mind? How does that claim aid society?

<comment><USER7> Thing is, you don't just _use_ tools and props. From the perspective of your mind, they become a part of you, of your concept of self, even if only temporarily.

And the tools don't just exist without, your mind is built from tools _within_ as well. There is a part of your mind that rationalizes things, for instance. Rationalization is a tool that other parts of your mind can draw on. I think this is quite clear if you've spent a good amount of time having to argue with your own thoughts, maybe that isn't a very common experience though.

Similarly there's a part of your mind that simulates experiences. It can be used by the part of your mind that makes predictions, and it can be used by the part of your mind that recollects.

Some people's minds use visual or auditory processing components to aid in arithmetic. It's sort of the human equivalent of doing computation on the GPU.

The biggest myth we tell ourselves, on which so much flawed philosophy is based in my opinion, is that we're a single thing. We like to think that what we are is something that is a whole unto itself, that can be isolated, and not, like everything else in the universe, a collection of interactions viewed from a particular perspective.

<comment><USER8> Indeed. As Clark always points out, the brain is three pounds of meat trapped in a black box made out of bone, given a few wires to the outside. A logically necessary part of its job is figuring out how to extend its reach outside the skull and entangle itself usefully with the inward-facing and outward-facing faculties of the body, and thence, via those outward-facing faculties (ie: motor systems in your arms or whatnot), with other stuff in the external world (not so different, since it's all outside the black box of bone, is it?) that can be organismically valuable, like a bicycle.

<comment><USER9> I notice that when I hit a bump on my bicycle I don't feel a force in my hands and conciously deduce that this must have been caused by the bicycle's tire hitting something. It seems more like I just feel it in my wheel.

<comment><USER8> I go "ouch" when my wife runs over a pothole while driving. It's a very neat trick, even after I've read things like _Surfing Uncertainty_ and have an idea how it's done.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> If the mind extends beyond our heads and into the devices we carry around and therefore into the cloud what about privacy?

It seems the distinction still remains between Inga and Otto in other words between the mind in our heads and the mind in our devices because for what's in our heads we can always choose whether we want to tell others or not but for our devices even if we set our privacy settings we lose control of choice over who to share that information with as soon as we tell the cloud about it

<comment><USER11> It's not true that you can always choose whether to tell others or not. There are certain drugs that make you more talkative and even consuming too much alcohol makes you unable to control what you tell others. And it likely won't be long until a device is discovered that allows you to see others thoughts.

<comment><USER10> It is true some can always choose but maybe not everybody can, because people react differently to drugs and alcohol. Psychics can already read minds better than existing primitive devices. But AFAICT the gov does not employ them, at least not at scale, so don't worry. I don't believe actual mind reading device will ever exist, the closest will be like a synthetic / robotic AI brain with the same abilities as human psychic. Meaning it's a synthetic AI not "device" that you completely control. So if you want to read minds without people's consent you better use psychics or torture.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is a good article for educating people that we need machines and implants to be complete beings. Classic illuminati thinking that people will most likely embrace once cute implants are available in white, rounded plastic with names such as memory pod :)

<comment><USER13> Please tell me more about these illuminati thinkers and their strain of thought

<comment><USER14> That would be 'illusory'.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The "extended mind" seems to me to be an extension of Richard Dawkins' idea of the "extended phenotype".

</comment><comment><USER16> Does Andy Clark's hypothesis assert that self driving cars' neural networks must necessarily contain the minds of pedestrians ?

<comment><USER17> Perhaps instead the minds of drivers diffuse into their cars. That's already true for maps.

Pedestrians' minds rely on things like _Walk_ signs and sidewalk texturing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I learnt that modal adverts are terrible. Thanks.

</comment><comment><USER19> Mind = software.

Pen & Pencil are just environment variables.</comment>


Requests to new Dynos failing - <AUTHOR> https://status.heroku.com/incidents/1367 <comment><USER2> Looks like there are [a few different issues]([https://status.heroku.com/](https://status.heroku.com/)) they're experiencing all at once. Has to be a rough day for their support staff.

</comment><comment><USER3> I wonder if Heroku's woes are related to Meltdown/Spectre.

</comment><comment><USER4> This happened to me earlier, `heroku restart` fixed it but of course I was assuming some change we deployed was monkeying things up.</comment>


Why giving poor kids laptops doesn't improve their scholastic performance - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/id/2192798/pagenum/all/#page_start

<comment><USER2> I can only talk from my own personal experience. When i was a kid my parents noticed that i was interested in computers. We couldn't afford a computer(that was 98 i think) So they sent me to computer courses once a week. I had a lot of fun. I played games, i played with paint and made cool word documents with weird fonts and colors and stuff like that. I also played a lot of duke nukem. There was a cheap internet club near my home and me and my friends went there to play. It was all really fun. We didn't learn allot, but it was fun. 2004 we could afford a decent machine and i spent my days just mesing around with XP. Exploring C:/windows/win32 exploring all the cool programs my friends gave me like winamp. It was so exiting. A year later i got internet and that was like a super charger. I learned to type really fast so i can chat and i learned to google effectively. Then i found this game Lock On: Modern Air Combat(its a flight sim). I was interested in jet plains and i started playing all day long. I used my computer only for games, or at least thats what my parents thought. The game stored allot of it's settings in configuration files and Lua scripts and xml files and you could modify those and change the gameplay drastically(the most weird thing i have seen was a flying aircraft carrier). Many of the textures were in files, so you could photoshop templates and have custom skins and i learned how to use photoshop that way, i learned how to search for other mods for the game and study them, there were allot of tools to mess around with the game and yet everybody around me thought i was wasting time. To play the game i learned allot about planes, physics and combat tactics(the game is a hardcore sim so you have to know these stuff) I started moding my hardware too. I made myself a throttle out of an old joystick and a control panel. So the moral of my story is you can give 1000 people a computer and even if only 4 people start doing great stuff with it, its better than no people. I think PG wrote in one of his essays about that. Something about stick gatherers and the difference in productivity if you give people a tool like a computer.

<comment><USER3> You've been roped into a constructivist education! In plain English, the people who make the OLPC are trying to nudge kids into doing something similar: specifically, while you just think you're playing with a cool toy, you're being encouraged to actually _create_ things, and hence to think, and therefore to learn.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think the constructivist opportunity only works on a particular kind of person with a particular kind of computer.

Alan Kay's vision is that everything should have a sort of "view source" so you can see how it was done. I had an Apple //e, back in the days when it came with a built-in BASIC interpreter and the manual, and computer mags were often filled with BASIC source listings. Which was not great, but not bad either. I assume the Romanian kids got Windows XP and there is no obvious path to hacking with that OS. You're just a consumer.

But I don't think it was the machine that mattered. Plenty of my friends had the exact same computer and all they did was trade games and play them. Given a computer, I immediately decided to write programs with it. I'm just that kind of person. When I learned to play piano, I immediately tried my hand at composing. It greatly surprised me that my musical training courses were all about learning to play rather than learning to write music.

I suspect the same is true of any hacker; for us, the point of learning _anything_ is to synthesize.

My point is, I think Alan Kay et al. may be crafting educational programs for ideal students, who do exist, but only as tiny fractions of the population.

<comment><USER5> This is a very good point I haven't seen expressed elsewhere before. It's hard to know, but the OLPC program hopefully has a few circling social scientists who will be happy to test this hypothesis.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Although my family was very poor, I was lucky to grow up in a school district where there were a few computers here and there. I spent countless hours neglecting boring schoolwork in order to get access to any kind of computer I could and I graduated from high school with poor grades in everything except math and physics. However I taught myself basic, pascal, fortran, cobol, ibm jcl, Z80 and 6502 assembler without ever owning a computer of my own. It doesn't surprise me at all that computers had the effect of distracting kids from academic goals because that's exactly what happened to me.

I can't imagine the school teachers and administrators took into account the possibility of the computer voucher program when they designed their curriculums. However my nascent computer skills got me the jobs I needed to earn the money to be the first in my family to graduate from college.

</comment><comment><USER7> Of course, giving kids unsupervised access to computers they don't know how to utilise is going to provide little educational value. But the article distracts from the fact that with the slightest bit of guidance, computer access can be a tremendous asset.

I remember being taught Qbasic as a kid - before then, computers were mysterious gaming devices to me. But with just a few weeks of of guidance by an interested teacher, a whole new world was opened up.

It sickens me that even now, many kids here in Sydney don't have computer access in schools until they're in their teens, and even then it's at atrocious student-to-computer ratios and with little guidance.

Part of the problem is that Luddites in the community misrepresent articles like these, thereby diminishing the public interest towards computers in education.

<comment><USER8> In initial stages there will be a slow down until they learn to use the tech.

Grades etc. may fall as there are only so many hours in a day and if you spend time away from books/study to spend it learning to use a computer by yourself or with little tutition, then you should expect to see a grade drop.

However, in a few cyles we should see the opposite occurring i.e. grades improving with the aid of tech and people with proficiency teaching each other to the benefit of all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> 1) This article ONLY makes claims about scholastic performance, it makes no claims about intelligence, quality of life or the (personal and societal) benefits of a more robust technical aptitude.

2) These probably were not laptops that were brought to school and used together as a class. They were probably windows machines sitting at home.

</comment><comment><USER9> It might be a good idea to have them do some of the final assembly; ship the computers as kits, and have someone instruct them on what each part does. That way,they are forced to learn some functional aspects of what the thing is comprised of and how it works. This might spark a deeper interest and understanding than just handing it to them would.

</comment><comment><USER10> Reports from the field of the effects of OLPC in poor villages are extremely encouraging. See <http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_Peru/Arahuay> <http://www.technologyreview.com/video/laptop> for more.

</comment><comment><USER11> "'Vouchered' kids also spent less time doing homework, got lower grades, and reported lower educational aspirations than the 'unvouchered' kids."

Hyperlinks subvert hierarchies.

</comment><comment><USER8> Laptops provide them more opportunities for them (via understanind/access to tech), but being poor, I dare to say they will find more innovative uses.

<comment><USER8> I have seen first hand how being poor forces you to innovate in such countries. Hence, I agree with pg and the like that startups should be poor at the begining stages too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Just try to get the right change whenever the cash register is down.

 _That's_ what happens when you have technology replace fundamentals too soon.

Honestly, this is what happens when rich people try to decide what's best for poor children. Problem is they just don't get it. They're stuck at Maslow's Level 6 when the rest of the world is still stuggling at Levels 1 and 2. How can someone who has never missed a meal (or a tennis lesson) understand what those born without really need?

These children need 3 healthy meals per day. (Even one or two would do.) They need sunshine, fresh air, and clean water. They need good teachers and doctors. They need books and medical supplies and a world where they don't have to work full time before they reach puberty. They need a mother who won't beat them and a father who won't rape them. Computers? They don't even make the Top 25.

These are just "feel good" programs for people who have never wanted for anything. If they really wanted to help, let them pitch in and solve the _real_ problems of the world. Hopefully, that won't interrupt their tee times.

<comment><USER13> The real problem is not what children need, but what societies need. Tragically, these two are are in opposition. If you give Africans (for example) their Levels 1 and 2, in 20 years you'll have a tripled population that's just as destitute and dysfunctional as before, if not more.

It's the food and medicine programs that are "feel good". Without reducing African birthrates (which are the highest in the world), they probably only make things worse in the long run.

<comment><USER3> There is actually a consistent inverse correlation between development level and fertility rate. Economically affluent countries have lower fertility.

This suggests that improving the standard of living is the most, perhaps the only, humane way of dealing with the population problem. Other measures, even measures like China's "One Child Policy", tend to have unanticipated repercussions. (Example: everybody in China wants a boy, to such a degree that some families end up abandoning newborn girls out on a street somewhere, if not resorting to downright infanticide.)

So the argument that raising Africa's standard of living will worsen the population explosion doesn't really hold water; the exact opposite argument can also be made.

<comment><USER13> Food and medicine programs are making the standard of living higher in the short term and lower in the long term. That was exactly my point: if you want to feel good, then short term is important. If you want to solve real problems, like unsustainable birthrates, then long term is important. We don't actually disagree.

If we had enough money to bootstrap the whole (or part) of Africa into a decent way of life, it would be one thing. But we don't. And half-measures are worse than nothing. If you don't have enough strength to lift an injured person over a fence, picking him up and dropping him back down won't do any good. But, it'll look like you're trying if you squint hard enough.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Social project – Tinder? not quite, it has a different angle - <AUTHOR> http://tinderofreconciliation.tk/ <comment><USER2> Want my bank account information?</comment>


Ask HN: How do you keep track of your personal finances? - <AUTHOR> I'm currently working on improving the way I keep track on my personal finances. So far, I export data from my bank account as a CSV and run it through a simple Python script which then crunches some number. This works pretty well and gives me a rough overview, but I tend to postpone the whole process and end up doing it way less than I'd like to.
I've have yet to try different tools, such as http://www.youneedabudget.com/ or https://www.mint.com/ (although, I might not be able to use the full potential. I'm from Europe and most tools/services I've found so far are based in and focused on the US) but I was wondering how you deal with keeping track on your finances? What tools, apps, systems, strategies do you use?
Thanks for your time in advance, have a great day! <comment><USER2> I haven't used it for personal finance, but ledger would probably cover your needs, and works from the CLI. You can keep your plain-text ledger file in version control etc. also.

\- [http://ledger-cli.org/](http://ledger-cli.org/)

(There's also hledger that has a few extra features, but is largely compatible with ledger).

</comment><comment><USER3> Im using YNAB - You Need A Budget. I can honestly say its changed my life. I would definitely recommend signing up for their 9 day email course. Ive been using it for about 5 months now and its made a huge difference to my life.

<comment><USER4> So do I. Currently, I use YNAB [1] - You Need A Budget 4 (desktop version). If you are a student you can propose free copy of YNAB and you can renew it as long as you're a student. Please, check this announcement [http://www.youneedabudget.com/blog/post/ynab-is-now-free- for...](http://www.youneedabudget.com/blog/post/ynab-is-now-free-for-college- students)

[1]: [http://youneedabudget.com/](http://youneedabudget.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> An alternative to Mint is [http://www.hellowallet.com](http://www.hellowallet.com) which I like more.

But analyzing transactions in your accounts is all about looking at the past. You might consider focusing on the future instead. For example:

1\. Plan how much you want to save for retirement, vacation, etc. and how much you'll need to pay bills

2\. Set up some automatic transfers to save the money for #1

3\. Have fun with the rest / invest

#1 is easier said than done. Financial advisors can charge US$2000 to create a good plan. We're building a tool now to automate what they do.

</comment><comment><USER6> My primary bank account have some Internet/mobile banking features where you can see your current spending, some prediction till end of month.

It's just simple overview because I have more bank accounts (due to security reasons). Personally the best way how you can track your spending is to create own customized reporting system. It will require tune up at the beginning but it worth. At least you will learn how to think about entire process and your spendings, which information is valuable and which not. You will be able create some additional features (like spending categorization).

I have more personal "tracking tools" (spending, time tracking, writing, idea etc.) written in excel, some in power-shell, some of them in HTML and PHP.

Other point of view is your psychological attitude to money. If you are responsible with spending your head might be enough. From my experience, money invested to food, bills and mortgage are "sunk costs".

Detail mortgage tracking is different story. It is always good to know how much you can save with different payment attitude.

</comment><comment><USER7> I do budgeting in Google Sheets and use Mint for historical reviews. I recently helped my gf go from minimal money management to proper budgeting, forecasting and tracking, so I learned from experience what steps can be helpful to take and in what order to help understand things.

I think if you earn less than or equal to what you spend, the most important information is where your money is going so you can be aware of what is happening. If you earn more than what you spend, you want the same thing plus an ability to save and invest in something and track that.

I would suggest starting with something manual (ie. Google Sheets) and then automating once you see how everything comes together. Do things that don't scale (ie. enter every transaction) until you feel more in control, and then automate with Mint or similar tool for European market.

</comment><comment><USER8> I highly recommend manually tracking in spreadsheet in addition to whatever automated tool you use. You can start with a simple, date, merchant, thing, and amount columns.

I used to use a spreadsheet. Then came Mint, and I thought my days of manual work were over. But then I realized that now I was less careful with my money. I would check Mint daily, I would look at each transaction but by removing manual step of inputting amount spend, I sort of got immune to big or a lot of spendings.

Now in addition to Mint & Personal Capital, I also record each transaction almost daily. This way it is very hard to ignore multiple transactions in a row for dining out or buying junk etc.

Also if Mint goes away or they start charging you will still have your spreadsheet.

</comment><comment><USER9> I'm using [https://www.simple.com/](https://www.simple.com/), which is a debit card but really a PFM (personal finance manager). I have a ton of goals set up with automatic daily "savings" that move a small amount of money into my goals (ranging from "haircut next month" to "Portland trip"), and Simple calculates how much to move each day based on the amount I need and target date the money's needed. Pretty granular, and I feel pretty in control without any spreadsheets or charts.

</comment><comment><USER10> In Brazil, there is a very cool app for that named as "Guia Bolso". You do not need to input data, it gets all the data from your bank account, generating reports and graphs about how you are spending/saving your money. The founders are former Mckinsey's consultants.

</comment><comment><USER11> Unfortunately, one requires money to be able to keep track of it.

Someday. :(

<comment><USER12> What? I'm not being dickish, but can't you not see how your answer is a direct reflection of your reality?

Even more so, if you have less money you need to track it a lot more than those that do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> In my mind mostly. I keep track of the big pieces - the university debt, the stock portfolio, the bank account balance. On the day I get paid, I take out a chunk to repay debt, and take out a chunk to move to the portfolio, and whatever I have a left, it's a game of making it last. I keep a lookout every week on my expenses and make sure I have enough to last to payday.

</comment><comment><USER14> For debts I use ReadyForZero.org and for the longest I did use Mint Bills aka Check aka Pageonce but Inuit has turned it into shit.

I still have a Mint account but rarely login to it.

#BugetFail

</comment><comment><USER15> I used to use Xero's personal finances tool before they shut it down. I've started using Money Dashboard which seems pretty decent too.

</comment><comment><USER16> I'm eating my own dog food and using the budgeting portion of the financial planning software I'm creating.

I do really like YNAB though.

</comment><comment><USER17> Printed monthly calendar. My wife and I sit down on Thursday nights, eat Chinese and do the bills.

</comment><comment><USER18> In my mind, but I would not mind a reminder to tell me I have to pay something today.

</comment><comment><USER19> using an excel spreadsheet! google drive mostly

<comment><USER20> Yup, nothing like a good old fashion Spreadsheet. I've had one going since I was 17 (almost a decade!) and it's helped me pay for university.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I use moneylover, works well.

</comment><comment><USER22> Tried many alternatives, from GNUCash to MS Money to various iOS apps to heavily smart/complex spreadsheets to solutions in the local Brazilian market (GuiaBolso and Organizze).

GuiaBolso is most of what I use today, beucase it works like Mint, auto sync with banks. In Brazil, Mint does not work and getting statements automatically is a major PITA, so much that GuiaBolso is a major, funded startup, relying mostly on the auto sync feature.

Even then it's a bit ugly, they likely use web scraping, you have to share your internet banking password with the app, and some banks go the extra mile to prevent scraping, such as requiring a one-time access token (time generated) each time you want even to check your balance.

Good thing is, in most major banks, your "internet banking" password is a read-only one, since you need a second auth step to move money in any kind of fashion (either by entering the plastic card PIN, or by authorizing with a QR code from a previously-authenticated smartphone)

Side note: Brazilian banks, if you're somehow reading this, please add some dead simple, read-only, API-like mechanism to let me (or apps) automatically download statements.

It also attempts to autocategorize your transactions using black box magic (likely by your own historical categorizations + heuristics or some degree of machine learning as a catch-all net), and it gets most things right (especially credit/debt card spending, where it gets like 90% right), so that's a good start.

While it has nice features, it still doesn't do all I want. In pretty much every solution I tried, there was always something that was not quite how I'd like it to be.

So I decided to roll my own - I scrape data from GuiaBolso to an sqlite database, mix it with manually entered data (which I grab from sources where GuiaBolso does not reach), and built some Python scripts to fit things into my own category structure (GuiaBolso does not allow subcategories), and crunch numbers for more sophisticated analysis.

I did this because while GB's graphs cover some basic needs, there were still things left unanswered - how much do I spend per day of the week? Per day of the month? Only in a certain category, to avoid odd transactions interfering with the analysis? Am I spending more in large purchases from time to time, or consistently?

There's no way GuiaBolso will offer all of this, and it also does not offer any kind of data export (I would guess that their current business model depends a lot on data lock-in).

I also ordered a NuBank credit card, a smart-ish credit card, where everything is done via app or otherwise digitally - spending tracking, payments, order details lookup, etc, which I plan to try over the next few weeks and maybe integrate into my workflow somehow.</comment>


Ask HN: Experiencing delays and timeouts on HN responses? - <AUTHOR>

For the past couple of months, I've been experiencing a lot of delays and timeouts with HN responses.  Either altogether, or no page contents returned.  I wonder whether others are, as well.  I like to look at a post's comments first, for some context, so I may be triggering/observing more of this behavior than some others.
This is not by way of complaint.  I'm grateful for the site, and I know I receive it "free".  I'm just asking whether others are having a similar experience.  (I guess a bit of desire for an improvement might be implied, but again I'm not writing from the frame of mind of "expecting" anything.)
EDIT:  I wanted to sound neutral, but my wording seems a bit off.  Of course, I'd like faster responses, if the problem is not just mine.  But I'm sitting at an empty table drinking my gratis glass of water, and I'm not exactly complaining if it doesn't get refilled immediately.  Just glad for the seat at the table. <comment><USER2> Yes, I think this has been a semi-frequent issue. I see it sporadically, other users claim to see it rather frequently.

I think the table might need to be upgraded, or possibly the water glass needs to be optimized... It might also be related to the napkin holder ;)

</comment><comment><USER3> It's nice to know that it isn't solely my crappy internet service. I always assume they are at fault any time I run into these issues. So thanks for bringing this up.</comment>


Hertz, Accenture, and the Inevitable Blame Game - <AUTHOR> https://hackernoon.com/hertz-accenture-and-the-inevitable-blame-game-94066ba63a7c <comment><USER2> Interesting point about client ownership of the project. I wonder what the project spec was for this project (if it was along the "seven perpendicular lines" theme) and how many times change requests were made or the project effectively scrapped and restarted. If Accenture was giving Hertz exactly what they were asking for but Hertz kept changing the ask then they could be looking at a counter-claim along the lines of defamation. This is getting interesting!</comment>


ASKHN:Why don't device makers make phone/tablet with users allowed to choose OS? - <AUTHOR>

Would that be so difficult? Think a Nokia 1020 with Android loaded on it. Or a Nokia N8 (Old gen) with Windows OS. Life would have been so much better. <comment><USER2> Making life easier for you is not (and has never been) any device maker's goal (despite the ubiquitous propaganda); _making money_ is. I see no practical way for MS (or Google, or Apple, or anyone else) to make money __by providing an alternative to their cash cow__. That's not to mention that support cost would jump to more than double the size of supporting a single OS.

Edit: oh wait, I do see a realistic (i.e. evil) way of "providing an alternative": 1\. make a deliberately crippled version of Alternative OS 2\. provide alongside Our OS 3\. wait for the negative backlash about the crippled version 4\. gloat about the superiority of Our OS 5\. Profit!!!

<comment><AUTHOR> I see your point but also believe this is more about some sales/marketing guy in one of samsungs/nokias of the world will sell this idea someday to their higher ups. Well by number of devices, Samsung anyways launches around 15 models in an year (actually more) a mix of both android and Windows. Why not just launch a Samsung Galaxy S4 with versions in Windows and Andorid. What is difficult here? #SavingOnDeviceDesign

<comment><USER2> Support cost, memory requirements (you now need to fit TWO OSes on one ROM), etc etc.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why is this "Ask HN: " not in the Ask HN section? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> Uh, it is.

<comment><AUTHOR> not for me - when I view "ask" - its not there. It only shows up under "new"</comment></comment>


Tree rings show the Americas are prone to catastrophic, simultaneous droughts - <AUTHOR> https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/12/warning-ancient-tree-rings-americas-are-prone-catastrophic-simultaneous-droughts <comment><USER2> It makes sense, a lot of native Americans cultures have either very specific rain rituals (including sacrifices) or stories of drought.

<comment><USER3> Reminds me of those stones found in some European rivers, with inscriptions about droughts from hundreds years ago.

Sometimes some climate change is just a climate "better observation".

<comment><USER4> > Reminds me of those stones found in some European rivers

Hunger stones. Carved in one was the phrase, "If you see me, weep". [1]

Similar to the tsunami stones in Japan, where humans left carved stones that say things like, "High dwellings are the peace and harmony of our descendants. Remember the calamity of the great tsunamis. Do not build any homes below this point." [2]

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

[2][https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/tsunami- stones](https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/tsunami-stones)

<comment><USER5> There's also the story of Joseph and the Famine in the bible - 7 years of bountiful harvests followed by 7 years of famine brought on by a severe drought.

<comment><USER6> Don't talk about fairy tales with us intellectuals

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classic_Maya_collapse#Drought_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classic_Maya_collapse#Drought_theory)

</comment><comment><USER8> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dust_Bowl](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dust_Bowl)</comment>


How to hack a turned-off computer, or running unsigned code in Intel ME [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://www.blackhat.com/docs/eu-17/materials/eu-17-Goryachy-How-To-Hack-A-Turned-Off-Computer-Or-Running-Unsigned-Code-In-Intel-Management-Engine-wp.pdf <comment><USER2> Money quote, though this may be slightly old news and this is just a summary of known information:

      One of the most common questions regards
      the possibility of remote exploitation.
      We think that remote exploitation is possible
      if the following conditions are true:
        1. The target platform has AMT activated.
        2. The attacker knows the AMT administrator
           password or can use a vulnerability to
           bypass authorization.
        3. The BIOS is not password-protected (or
           the attacker knows the password).
        4. The BIOS can be configured to open up
           write access to the ME region.
      If all these conditions are met, there is no
      reason why an attacker would not be able to
      obtain access to the ME region remotely.

      Also note that during startup, the ROM does
      not check the version of firmware, leaving the
      possibility that an attacker targeting an
      up-to-date system could maliciously downgrade
      ME to a vulnerable version.

That list of conditions does not seem incredibly unusual to me. Consumer hardware should have AMT disabled and be safe, but on business machines the highest bar is an AMT vuln, and given the huge size and apparently terrible code quality of the AMT I expect to be seeing auth bypasses for it on a regular basis.

<comment><USER3> Could you elaborate on why you think its apparent that AMT has 'terrible code quality'? Specifically, versus other high profile products that continue to have multiple security bugs being introduced every release cycle - Windows, iOS, Android, Linux, etc.

<comment><USER4> I can give you an example of why I think the code quality is questionable:

At my work we use AMT for legitimate purposes: remote administration and support (we have offices in different cities). A big problem for us is that the AMT crashes by itself and the computer needs to be power-cycled for the AMT to work again. Sometimes the web-interface don't answer, sometimes the passwords doesn't match anymore. I think there is a process that is writing where it shouldn't, because it works again after the computer is power-cycled by removing the power-cord.

I now have a script that checks every registered computer twice a day , to see if it is still possible to login to the AMT, and if not, it sends an email to a person at the local office requesting them to restart the computers that fails.

When it works it is a great tool, allowing us to fix computers and give support without the need to travel to each city.

<comment><USER5> It's sad hearing that it hasn't changed much in over a decade — back when I was primarily doing sysadmin work, of the various manufacturers, only Sun's ILOM (on the V20z/V40z Opteron servers) seemed to reflect the existence of a QA department.

IBM, Dell, HP, etc. all had problems like you described where the management processor would hang after receiving unexpected traffic (e.g. nmap scans), too many simultaneous logins, etc. and, naturally, nobody had thought to implement a watchdog timer to reboot if it became unresponsive even if they had the same functionality available for the actual server.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> In the meantime, a high level of technical proficiency is needed to defend against monolithic personal computing environments that are hostile by design.

* Assume personal computing environment is hostile

* Use an external firewall and have a whitelist-only policy

* Use an external NIDS

* Physically disable all hard-connected non-wired interconnectivity

Monitors and keyboards ("I leave message here on service but you do not call") still leak, of course, but this is a good start, and most people need to be concerned with practical attacks that could be carried out over the internet.

New Year's 2018 resolutions: 1) Review backup policy including backup testing procedures 2) Implement personal digital security measures

I've often thought that the current mentality of a "convenient" monolithic personal computing environment (whether an iPhone, laptop, or PC) doesn't properly assess threats.

When broadband internet first became popular in my area growing up, it was acceptable practice (and recommended by ISP's) to simply plug your non- firewall'ed DSL modem ethernet directly into your computer. It truly was unprotected sex in the worst possible way. Perhaps the next evolution will fundamentally reconsider personal computing design from a security-first perspective.

<comment><USER7> > Use an external firewall and have a whitelist-only policy

How much do you trust that firewall?

> ...it was acceptable practice (and recommended by ISP's) to simply plug your > non-firewall'ed DSL modem ethernet directly into your computer

You have to plug that modem into some non-firewalled computer. Honestly I trust a well kept PC much more than a firewall appliance.

<comment><USER8> The only firewall I trust is a hardened openbsd running pf.

<comment><USER9> Hopefully on a non ME plagued platform.

<comment><USER10> You can just disable ME in the BIOS to mitigate this right?

<comment><USER11> How?

<comment><USER10> Hmm, looks like I conflated the AMT and ME. This does make it significantly worse.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Note that this document is dated 2017-12-05, so it's not anything new to those who have seen the previous items about ME on HN.

According to page 12, one of the conditions for remotely exploiting this is that AMT has to be activated, something which probably isn't going to be true for PCs used at home and not part of a corporate network.

 _Such a vulnerability has the potential to jeopardize a number of technologies, including Intel Protected Audio Video Path (PAVP),_

Good. Fuck DRM.

</comment><comment><USER13> Why aren't companies pressuring Intel to remove or disable the ME? It seems like a huge security risk for entire organizations. It's especially difficult to fix when running Linux, and many organizations/servers use Linux.

<comment><USER14> \- Purism petitioned Intel to open source it, or make it optional, and sell machines with it as disabled as possible

\- Dell sell machines with it disabled

\- System76 sell machine with it disbaled

\- Google have been working to try and neuter it

<comment><USER15> > Dell sell machines with it disabled

Which ones?

<comment><USER16> It's no longer available.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Intel ME is frequently featured here on HN, but the general population is completely clueless.

This is quite possibly the worst and most widespread computing vulnerability that has ever existed, and it's likely that Intel will just maintain the status quo until there's some sort of black swan event.

<comment><USER18> > Intel will just maintain the status quo until there's some sort of black > swan event.

I absolutely hate Intel and AMD for sabotaging their customers like that. Please people, get to that black swan event ASAP.

<comment><USER19> If we're unlucky, the 'black swan event' will be something along the likes of Pluto's Kiss. Imagine a Morris worm equivalent, but which bricks the computers it infects after destroying the filesystem.

Even if everyone has backups of everything, offline, it'll be years before all the destroyed computers can actually be replaced. This isn't a scenario I want to happen for real.

<comment><USER20> On the plus side, you can probably guarantee it would only ever happen once.

<comment><USER21> Haha, no, you can't. Since when do humans learn from their mistakes?

<comment><USER22> Not infrequently, but it's in vogue to hold the belief that they don't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> [https://www.reddit.com/r/IntelME/](https://www.reddit.com/r/IntelME/)

</comment><comment><USER24> How does this affect SGX?

</comment><comment><USER25> What can an ordinary person do? Plugging out the network cable? What about laptops? Can this vulnerability hack into Wi-Fi and allow itself to the internet? But then again the moment you plug internet back in you're done.

<comment><USER26> _> What can an ordinary person do?_

Use non-x86 platforms such as an ARM based Chromebook, or _potentially_ an x86 with the ME partially disabled (coreboot or similar, but it's not a 100% guarantee).

 _> Plugging out the network cable?_

It depends on the vulnerability scope. If it's over HECI (virtual PCI device between host OS and ME) then removing the network cable won't save you from local malware owning the ME via HECI.

 _> But then again the moment you plug internet back in you're done._

Well considering how few people ever update the firmware of their devices, it's unlikely a majority of computers would ever be patched against an ME vulnerability anyway.

Starting with ME12 Intel is going to start checking the ME firmware version number in the ME's silicon (read-only) boot ROM to prevent firmware downgrade attacks. [1] This version number is stored in single use eFuses which can only be incremented, and are during an ME update.

But it depends on your threat model. As stated in the PDF, there are only 3 known exploits against the ME, and only one results in unsigned code execution. Until someone weaponizes such an exploit, which at the moment it seems physical access is needed, then Intel x86 owners are safe.

If your adversary is a three letter agency or nation state attacker, then you've got bigger concerns than someone hacking your ME (starting with, say, your OS).

[1] [https://github.com/corna/me_cleaner/issues/111#issuecomment-...](https://github.com/corna/me_cleaner/issues/111#issuecomment-350480591)

<comment><USER27> > Use non-x86 platforms such as an ARM based Chromebook

Careful there. Microsoft has been slipping PC bits into their Windows Arm systems because Windows is so hopelessly tied to the PC platform that they had to PCify their Arm with EFI, ACPI and other PC legacy junk. Just be sure your Arm does not have any of this anti-consumer crap and you should be good to go.

<comment><USER28> How is ACPI anti-consumer?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Now a days, a computer not really off if it has power connected to it.

</comment><comment><USER30> The talk was kind of disappointing honestly

SORRY</comment>


Schelling's Model of Segregation - <AUTHOR> http://nifty.stanford.edu/2014/mccown-schelling-model-segregation/ <comment><USER2> Vihart and Nicky Case created an interactive way to play with this model that I believe appeared on HN a month or so back: [http://ncase.me/polygons/](http://ncase.me/polygons/)</comment>


Big rise in IPv6-enabled .nl domain names - <AUTHOR> https://www.sidn.nl/a/nl-domain-name/big-rise-in-ipv6-enabled-domain-names <comment><USER2> The real question being when we will be able to switch off IPv4? As long as we don't, the pain associated with the IP shortage will have to continue to preserve backward compatibility. So really IPv6 will not actually solve the problem for a very long time.

<comment><USER3> There are a few different goals here:

* When can consumer ISPs turn off v4? This can and does happen right now - the ISP just needs to have a carrier-grade NAT gateway to handle connections to IPv4 servers. This is a performance problem if most services are only available on IPv6, but we're already at that point.

* When can service providers and hosting companies shut off IPv4? This is the problem you address, and that's gonna take a looooong time.

* When can ISPs shut off their IPv4 gateways? When all services (within reason) are available on IPv6. This one is of less interest than the other two, though.

<comment><USER4> I would have thought it would work the other way? Surely ISPs will have difficulty switching off v4 access to consumers, because of all the old v4 devices out there. But at some point soon the vast majority of servers will support v6, a which point some big ISP will say 'we will no longer support v4-only servers after date X, we will NAT to v6 for comsumer devices if you want to talk to our customers you need v6'. Some time after that IPv4 will effectively no longer be a global protocol.

<comment><USER5> You have the technical answer, but I think the more useful answer is human based.

Content providers will stay dual stack basically indefinitely - abslutely no website operator wants to lose even 1% of their traffic due to a technical limitation, so I do not expect demand for v4-enabled websites to die off any time soon. I would expect 95%+ v6 usage before you even see this being a thing commercially, and even at those numbers only very small marginal operations will go v6 only.

The consumers and consumer ISPs have both a better technical solution, as well as no consumer ISP gives a shit if their customers can't access 2% of the internet. Therefore the change due to both technical reasons and simple game theory must come from the "eyeballs" side of the equation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > For the last six months, we've additionally been rewarding registrars that > have a lot of IPv6-enabled domain names in their portfolios. And the policy > is working!

Ok, so there is an incentive...that explains it. Who knows what the "reward" is, but the increase is pretty impressive. Kudos to the Dutch for their increased IPv6 adoption!

</comment><comment><USER7> > the number of IPv6-enabled .nl domain names has more than doubled in the > last six months.

Clickbait headline?</comment>


T-Mobile, Comcast Big Winners in FCC Airwave Auction - <AUTHOR> http://fortune.com/2017/04/13/winners-fcc-airwave-auction/ <comment><USER2> The article has one inaccuracy that I saw - it lists WTTO as the high-dollar item, but it's actuallly WWTO, "Trinity Christian Center of Santa Ana" it appears. I was suprised it wasn't WPWR-TV on RF channel 51 (adjacent to 700MHz block A/LTE band 12), but that one was only 160 million.

Also of possible interest to Chicagoans, WYCC ("Your City Colleges") is also going to go off the air with its spectrum going for ~$16m.

The list of stations and amounts is available from the FCC [1][2]

[1] FCC Auctions page: [http://wireless.fcc.gov/auctions/default.htm?job=auctions_ho...](http://wireless.fcc.gov/auctions/default.htm?job=auctions_home) (Appendix A is the blocks for sale, B is winning bidders showing # of channels but not which ones, C is bidder payments/refunds due by May) [2] FCC Broadcast Television Spectrum Incentive Auction 1001 Winning Bids: [http://transition.fcc.gov/Daily_Releases/Daily_Business/2017...](http://transition.fcc.gov/Daily_Releases/Daily_Business/2017/db0413/DA-17-314A2.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER3> Ars also had a nice info-graphic [0] for the distribution of the T-mobile 600Mhz spectrum gradient.

[0] [https://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2017/04/t-mob...](https://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2017/04/t-mobile-dominates-spectrum-auction-will-boost-lte-network- across-us/)</comment>