My Son Won't Do His Homework (2007) - <AUTHOR> http://www.talentism.com/business_talent/2007/06/my_son_wont_do_.html <comment><USER2> My son finds homework painfully aversive, as I did before him. But I cut him much less slack than I was given as a kid.

School is often arbitrary, pointless, and tedious. It's part of a large system that needs to serve many different interests, several of them legitimate. That's modern life. We're not so much beset by wolves and bears; instead, we have to deal with systems and social/cultural obligations. And while I don't so much care if the boy emerges from high school remembering all the Latin declensions or the details of the Treaty of Ghent, he's at least going to be familiar with what it takes to play the system.

For whatever it's worth: when I pay attention to his homework, I rarely find it pointless. And in the classes most imperiled by pointlessness, there homework usually takes the form of essays. And there is nothing in the world more valuable than being able to express ideas in writing. So he writes the essays, and I make him do drafts and drafts and drafts.

<comment><USER3> > he's at least going to be familiar with what it takes to play the system.

That comment makes your perspective the complete opposite of the author's. The author kid moves his chess pieces randomly and the author writes a blog post about how the rules are not fair. You likely teach that sometimes you have to follow the rules to play the game.

This blog post reads like like a fool arguing that the rules of chess are stupid.

<comment><USER4> If the world actually followed school-like rules, your analogy would be useful. But it doesn't.

The recipe for "winning" the game of school is:

\- follow directions very carefully \- be good at memorizing things \- never challenge authority

The market value of being able to carefully follow directions is nearly zero, and falling fast. That was a useful skill back when there were lots of good- paying factory jobs. Now it just makes you an excellent candidate for being replaced by software.

The market value of being able to memorize easily searchable facts is nearly zero, and falling even faster. Any test that can be "cheated" by using Wikipedia is testing a totally useless skill. (Useful tests are still hard when you have access to all the internet.)

As for obedience to authority, I'll stick with Thoreau: "Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves."

The evidence around us is overwhelming. Look at all the unemployed college graduates: those are the people who learned how to play the game, when they could have been learning something useful instead.

<comment><USER2> First, that's not actually the only recipe for "winning" the game of school; it's just the one that occurs most vividly to people who dislike school. I disliked school too, and did poorly at it, approaching it as a system only solvable by the approach you outlined.

Now that I'm a couple decades removed from attending school, it's obvious --- _painfully_ obvious, like so much that I often see opportunities that my son won't give a chance that make me want to shake him --- that if you pay attention to the directions and give even a little thought to how you might push on the apparent constraints the school provides, school is _eminently_ playable.

Second, the point of learning how to play the school system isn't to be good at school. It's to be good at handling systems in general. Different systems, different constraints, but there are meta-lessons to be learned in dealing with any of them.

Disobedience is valuable when it's valuable.

<comment><USER5> And if your son is able to understand your reasons (which seem compelling), it needn't be traumatic or rebellion-provoking that he's made play well.

<comment><USER2> He is biologically prevented from understanding some of these reasons as his prefrontal cortext is still not fully developed. At least, that's how I understand it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> After hiring committee one day, we digressed into a discussion of the value of a high GPA from university. One of my colleagues made the point that the value of an individual with a high GPA from a four year degree is that you know the person will get done what needs to get done.

To have a high GPA, a student needs to finish term papers on subjects they have no interest in, they need to study for exams in language for which they have no intention of using again, he will read books by authors he disagrees with and toil into the night on problem sets that have little perceivable utility.

But in the end they will get it done, and if they maintained a high GPA they have shown that he will get it done year over year and always with high quality.

So a high GPA often means that they are not lazy and self centered. It often means a candidate will not sit idle because a task is beneath her, and she will not pigeonhole on a perfecting an ancillary module when there are better things to do.

A student who does not do what is required, who would fritter away on self entertainment via music or finger painting is not someone who can be relied on.

<comment><USER7> Do you really want to hire somebody whose most notable talent is their ability to bullshit their superiors and tell them what they want to hear?

<comment><USER8> The unfortunate reality is in a lot of (big) organisation people who can bullshit progress the furthest.

I've worked with plenty of managers that would rather not know the truth if it meant having to deal with a problem.

To them denial is bliss.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > "My teacher didn't like the project, because I put it on the wrong size > paper."

> It is boring and condescending and even my son, at the age of twelve, can > figure out that the rules are arbitrary, that they are enforced in a > haphazard fashion

Unfortunately, and it should not be like this, life is full of situations where rules are arbitrary, and applied in a haphazard fashion, often by people who are idiots.

Your son is right. But it is important for him to learn how to deal with these people, otherwise he is himself up for a life of frustration and pain and disappointment.

When attempting homework there are 3 things he needs to do.

i) Work out what dull arbitrary rules are being enforced, and obey these.

ii) Do the homework.

iii) If possible find interest in the homework. Expand it to other subjects, understand why it's useful, where it comes from, who uses it in their day to day life, or what it's been replaced by.

You can try the Phil Beadle books - his style might be too annoying for you. ([http://www.amazon.com/Phil- Beadle/e/B0034NOMOU/ref=ntt_athr_...](http://www.amazon.com/Phil- Beadle/e/B0034NOMOU/ref=ntt_athr_dp_pel_1))

School does really suck for some people. There are lots of things that education based startups could address. It'll be tricky to get any change in education because it is so heavily political.

</comment><comment><USER10> School is only interested into that the kid submits to authority and will be scared of authority the rest of his life, because the people that make up school all are what they want the kid to be, they are more afraid even of the kid than authority.

The parent describes a fantastic kid and should trust the kid and make sure to soften the impact of that school and prepare the kid for better times after school.

In my country in Europe there are schools that care about natural curiosity and will not try to kill it, I don't know about the situation in the US where this takes place.

</comment><comment><USER11> There's a story from Gene Woolsey that I had to read my senior year in college (I was an Ops Research major, and Gene Woolsey is a pretty big deal in that field). The story went something like this:

A group of students had just finished a big research project and were told to present a one page executive summary that outlined their work, results, and conclusions. They couldn't quite get it to fit on one page, so their executive summary was two pages, but the second page was only 1/8th full. No big deal, right? They showed up to meet with the head of the company that was sponsoring their research, and handed him the paper. He rips off the second page and throws it in the trash (losing a good portion of their conclusions). The head of the company reads the first page, then stops and says, "This summary is incomplete. Where are your conclusions?" The team was dumbfounded, and lost a few points on their grade because they didn't follow the rules.

The moral of the story is: FOLLOW THE G __D __* RULES. If you want to use a different kind of paper, ask your teacher first. If you need an extension on the due date, ask your teacher first. If the guidance says to write a one page summary, do not write a two page summary. It's fine to be creative, but don't change the rules on your own because you don't have the authority to change the rules. In most things it is easier to ask permission than it is to ask forgiveness.

It's not unusual to not want to do homework, but a lot of people in this modern generation think that it's okay to get bad grades and just blame it on the fact that they are not "book smart." Just about every movie marketed towards young people is a variation of the theme where a kid is secretly a prodigy but the "system" didn't realize it somehow. That is not how it works in real life. For every kid who skips all his homework and gets bad grades but is secretly Will Hunting there are a thousand kids or more who are getting bad grades and are going to end up flipping burgers as a career. It's time to start spanking your kids so they'll get better grades and won't suck at life.

Btw, here's a link to the book if you want to read some stories from an actual genius: <http://www.lionhrtpub.com/books/wp1.html>

<comment><USER12>
      | If you want to use a different kind of paper, ask
      | your teacher first

To be fair, it's a math class. The size of paper used is the stupidest thing to grade someone on. It would be like the physics world throwing out Einstein's conclusions because he used blue ink instead of black.

I understand the value of 'gaming the system,' but the size the paper used for a math assignment is probably something that didn't get a lot of emphasis when the teacher was assigning it. That said, do you really want to sit back and 'game the system' rather than trying to improve it? Such arbitrary decision- making on the part of the teacher really detracts from their effectiveness. Not only that, it just sounds like something that is teacher-specific. I doubt that the school as a whole is trying to reach for some overriding goal that is served by punishing children for using the wrong sized paper on homework assignments.

<comment><USER13> To be fair, the teacher has a stack of assignments which is probably put in and transported around in a pile. Something on the wrong paper size will be a major PITA. (I prefer this theory over the teacher feeding them into a scanner so that someone in India can do the grading, but that theory would also make paper size important.)

Life is full of incredibly arbitrary criteria that actually make sense in terms of someone else's workflow. You don't know that workflow, you're just given rules to follow. It is best to follow those rules, no matter how stupid they are.

<comment><USER12> I could see the teacher giving a warning that the next time it should be the correct size, rather than a zero-tolerance paper size policy, especially when the child put forth so much effort on the homework. Teachers are supposed to encourage learning and interest in the material.

I realize that sometimes we just have to follow arbitrary rules, but the attitude of, "keeping one's head down," is not how change happens.

<comment><USER13> Do you know that said warning had not been already given and this wasn't "next time"?

Do you know that the teacher had not clearly stated to the class what the penalties would be for the wrong paper size?

In either case I can see the teacher acting as described. And wouldn't fault the teacher for doing so. If, indeed, the teacher was enforcing an arbitrary rule which had not been clearly communicated, then I would fault the teacher. But I suspect this was not the case. The rule was present and the kid was supposed to know it, but forgot.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Paying bills is stupid. Cleaning house is boring. Going to work EVERY day is stupid. Following rules is stupid. Doing what you're told is stupid. etc etc etc.

Bwahahaha - your kid is screwed. The world is full of arbitrary and down right stupid rules (assuming he ever gets a job, he'll love the tax codes that apply to him, but not to rich people or corporations).

You need to straighten out his young punk ass - and do it now.

Before you say "but what about his mad art/music skillz", I'm afraid I'd need an outside expert to qualify those before I believe they exist. I put my 8 year old daughter's artwork on my office wall and tell her it's beautiful - lucky (for her and me) shes a whiz at science and will get a real job later in life.

No one succeeds in life that can't even manage to get a measly high school degree from a "see spot run" public school.

You are the parent - NOT the twelve year old - what part of that escapes you?

Maybe it's time for private school, where the whole "leave no moron behind" concept doesn't exist. Obviously you and the kids present school system have already failed. Maybe it's not too late for the kid.

<comment><USER15> art is not a real job?

<comment><USER16> For a lot of artists, unfortunately it's not. They need to have a job to support their art habit/hobby.

<comment><USER15> Perhaps that is because they focused too much on so-called "real" work and never developed their art enough to make a living. Perhaps they need so much money because they went to a university to learn what is free at any library.

<comment><USER16> Or no one is willing to pay enough for their skills.

<comment><USER15> There's the problem. You're focused on selling skills, rather than works. Selling your labor is going to ensure you stay a wage slave.

<comment><USER17> Yet your user name contains the words 'for hire'. ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> A few years ago, I read _The End of Homework: How Homework Disrupts Families, Overburdens Children, and Limits Learning_ by Kralovec and Buell. The authors build a well-presented case against homework for children younger than high- school age based upon their claims that there is little evidence that homework for younger children has any long or short term benefit.

The authors observe that homework is disruptive to family dynamics because it is an ongoing source of conflict between parents and their children. They also observe that the primary reason schools assign homework to younger children is because parents demand it. Both of these observations are consistent with my experience both within my own family and my observations of the families of my child's peers.

On the other hand, I have no way of verifying or denying the author's claims about homework studies failing to demonstrate long term benefits from homework.

Overall, I am glad I read it because it gave me some perspective on the issue. My son still is responsible for doing his homework, and we as parents clearly communicate this to him. Anyway, if you're parenting, I'd say it's perhaps worth checking out.

As an aside, I strongly recommend Juliet Schor's _Born to Buy: The Commercialized Child and the New Consumer Culture_ about the way corporations have come to market to children - and it's probably only gotten worse with them having online lives.

End of Homework: [http://www.amazon.com/The-End-Homework-Disrupts- Overburdens/...](http://www.amazon.com/The-End-Homework-Disrupts- Overburdens/dp/0807042196/ref=sr_sp- atf_image_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1370231905&sr=8-3&keywords=book+end+homework)

Born to Buy: [http://www.amazon.com/Born-Buy-Commercialized-Consumer- Cultu...](http://www.amazon.com/Born-Buy-Commercialized-Consumer- Culture/dp/0684870568/ref=sr_sp- atf_title_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1370232915&sr=8-1&keywords=born+to+buy)

</comment><comment><USER19> Unfortunately, you need to deal with chickenshit sometimes. I was a history nut in high school -- I received perfect scores on all of the Regents exams (state tests in NY), and got 5's on two history AP exams, one of which I didn't take the class for. It was my passion.

But I did receive a "C" in Global studies class my junior year -- because my binder didn't have the tabs organized correctly. (Wrong colors, wrong order) My classmates even complained, because I could have taught the class!

End of the day, it didn't affect my life much, gives me a funny story to tell, and prepared me for the bureaucratic hazing that was to come from the State University of New York. As long as your son understands that less than perfect grades will keep him out of Stanford, Harvard, etc, relax.

</comment><comment><USER20> Schools are still centered on producing industrial revolution outcome - factory workers. See Seth Godin and others for much more on this topic.

</comment><comment><USER21> This article is horrible.

Of course parents think their kids drawings are cute, and their music is wonderous. But unless he is truly virtuoso, or actually has a photographic memory as suggested, he should probably learn some maths as well, and you as a parent should work as hard as you can to get him excited about things that will get him a job instead of rubbing off your callous despisery of "academics and investment bankers" on him. (Seriously... "homogenized and brainwashed", "almost completely without originality of thought or perspective", "good little cog in a habitual big wheel"... what makes you hate academics so deeply?) The entire world is in recession right now, you really think cartoonery is going to get him hired faster than a strong math and science background?

But let's pretend that parabolas actually are worthless and boring (God forbid I ever learn your opinion of Gaussians, Betas, Erfs, Einastos, Hernquists, Exponentials, etc.). Sounds like the real issue is the educational system, not the content. Don't for an instant try to say that Music and Maths are not intimately related. Look for gifted or accelerated programs, try to get him enrolled in a Millenium / Magnet school, just try to get him excited.

Seriously though, you should hold your tongue when talking about academics. You really think Bohr was homogenized? Was Tesla brainwashed? Was Von Braun a cogwheel? I guarantee people find my "art" just as amusing as your kids little shark doodle.

</comment><comment><USER22> Really can't help much but here's my story. I've gone through the majority of high school and college (I'm a junior next semester) without doing much of my homework. I'll do the occasional essay that's worth 20% of your grade or whatever and I won't miss exams, but I won't read (or even buy) the assigned books and responses. I do this because I have much more interesting stuff I like to work on instead of wasting time on homework, but I got along fine. I maintain a steady 3.4 GPA without doing any readings/more than half my homeworks/missing a lot of days of school simply because I feel like it. I value certain things above school.

I say this because I truly believe your son will be fine. People like him are creative and genius way beyond comprehension. They simply refuse to do things the way they are supposed to be done, and that's the sign of someone who's going to be successful one day or another, just not when the definition of success is doing what everyone else is doing how everyone else is doing it.

</comment><comment><USER23> First of all... June 2007 article.

Secondly, school is a system, government is a system, large corporations are systems, learning to survive and advance within systems is valuable. Outright revolt as an individual is generally purposeless, use that creativity to find way to minimize effort while maximizing gain.

I learned this trick far too late in my school career!

</comment><comment><USER24> I have no understanding of why schools are allowed to assign homework in the first place. The kid is at school 7 hours and then most schools try to assign a couple of hours of homework on top of that. I seem to remember a work / life balance thread about working over 40 hours a week is bad. So, why is it ok for our children?

</comment><comment><USER25> If I can impart one thing I've learned in my life to my child, it will be this: no one cares how smart or talented you are. They care about what you do. What you accomplish.

Some of the things you accomplish are great things that only you could do-- your life's work. Accomplishing these will among the greatest experiences of your life.

But a lot of the things you accomplish will seem pointless and boring. Doesn't matter--you still need to do them. In school it's homework; in real life it's time sheets, contracts, taxes, auto registration, insurance, memos, etc. Accomplishing these will suck... _but you still need to do them_. In fact failing to do so is a good way to keep yourself from having the opportunity to accomplish great things.

</comment><comment><USER3> "My teacher didn't like the project, because I put it on the wrong size paper."

Either you are bullshitting, or you better learn what size paper to do your homework on. Winning is easier than being right, and winning is much more fun.

I don't have a teenage kid, but there I think there are two thing that are important.

1) Acquiring new knowledge should be self-rewarding. 2) Winning is fun.

This parent seems to have a kid that hasn't experienced the joy of the #2. He seems to actively prevent his kid from winning because he thinks winning is wrong. This is a common theme where parents constrain their children to do no better than themselves.

Children of immigrants tend to be incredibly successful because their parents have no such inhibitions.

<comment><USER26> > Winning is easier than being right, and winning is much more fun.

Hence why we have a society full of puppets with new cars in the garage.

What an awful way to think, I'm disgusted by your reasoning. For whatever meaning of "winning" you have, life only matters if you do what you believe in, otherwise it's not worth living.

<comment><USER3> I am sorry. I wrote that from the wrong perspective. I was raised in a tiny town in the southern US, where being "right" has something to do with "praising jesus". Thanks to my parents, I was encouraged to "win" and now I live in NYC, and have a great job, a wife I love and respect, and an awesome daughter.

My point is not about right vs. winning, it is more about giving your children the tools to do well in any environment.

<comment><USER26> Well, that I agree with.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> This story reminds me of my experience growing up and going to public school in Ohio (in the United States). When I did classwork, I did it very well. When I took tests, I was always in the top of my class (which led to me being in the highest-level classes offered at my schools). And when it came to class participation, the teachers always had praise for me. I spent most of my time outside of school learning new things from books, the internet, and everyone around me.

But I almost never did my homework.

This was almost the sole source of strife between my mother and I, and between both of us and school administrators. Going from 8th to 9th grade required a special exception, and recommendations from almost every one of my teachers, as my GPA was below the point normally required to progress to the next grade. I am lucky in that the teachers I had were sympathetic enough to stand up for me, and confident in my abilities using other methods of evaluation.

We (my mother and I) considered other schools, other formats of school, but in the end we settled on something modeled after Unschooling. When I was 13-going-on-14, halfway through my 9th grade year (freshman year of high school in the United States), my mother took me out of school using the legal provision for homeschooling. As she was a single working mother, I spent the rest of the years that my peers were in high school learning things on my own and seeking out my own learning opportunities. (A year or so later, I learned C, Objective-C, and the Cocoa frameworks and started a Mac applications business a year or so later with friends I met on the internet.)

Granted, I had the following things going for me: a supportive mother, generally being "well-behaved", living in a small town where it was safe to leave me to my own devices, living in a college town which gave me access to more learning resources, and an in-built self-motivated learning style. I also think it helped that I went through the public school system for many years before I left, as it meant I had friends and a social life that stuck with me even after leaving the school itself. So, I'm sure it's not for everyone, but for some, and maybe OP's son, it's worth considering.

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unschooling>

</comment><comment><USER28> The core problem in the blog post is the (perceived) arbitrary judgement of the value of the work.

Let's suppose the parent evaluation is right, which is not self evident given how the emotional attachments impairs judgement.

The article says the work was poorly graded because the paper was not of the "right size".

We can suppose that the grader either a) didn't have the time to properly grade b) had to follow strict and pointless rules even if they were evidently stupid c) had a poor judgement.

The c case is the biggest problem - when an evaluation fonction returns wrong results. b and a could be special cases of c (not having a schedule or following stupid rules could be having a poor judgement)

Now let's think for a minute than N% of the graders are giving results that are no better than random assessment of the pupils.

Given how, in a schoolchildren life, a number of educators will be met, N% of the results will be meaningless (apply statistics, SD, etc.)

Now think of those randomly declared having "good grades" become graders (teachers) themselves.

I wonder how the equilibrium works out in a society - at which value of N will society turn education from acquiring knowledge to jumping through hoods and having a certificate in witchcraft (replace witchcraft by anything you think is wrong and pointless)

[Even worse- think, if for example the school district is poor and recruts graders of a lesser quality, that this raises to (N+X)%]

</comment><comment><USER29> I've been there, as a kid, and I get his frustration (well, both the parent's and kid's). As much as homework sucks, and following the rules sucks, it's something everyone has to do at some point. Learning how to do it, and acknowledge it for what it is, is important.

I can remember all of about 15 days between 1st and 11th grades where I actually did _homework_ , as in, did school work at home. The rest of the time, I did whatever exercises/sheets/etc that needed to be handed in on the bus or during class before we went home. The 15 days - I remember having to go to the library to read up on some topics to write papers, and I remember having a few essays which took a bit of time to write longhand (and eventually word processed on a computer later).

It wasn't until 12th grade that the assignments got hard enough that I ever struggled. By then it was somewhat too late - I didn't have any really strong innate ability to _study_ something for more than a few minutes. Now today, that might not even matter at some level, with all answers a google away, but I think it still takes time to really study and learn a subject/problem/etc.

The ability to focus yourself on something - anything - and get through the hard stuff you don't care about before getting to the stuff you might enjoy - that's a discipline I didn't have, and it took me many more years to get it back, even for things I _wanted_ to get more involved in. Developing this habit/skill at a younger age _will_ pay dividends, but it's hard for kids to appreciate that. The OP's kid may be mature enough in some ways to at least consider this angle - logically - when homework comes up. Do the stupid exercises on the size paper they want with the stupid number 2 pencil.

Learn to adapt to whatever requirements are put before you _quickly_ and _with little fuss_ \- focusing on the intellectual aspects first. As someone else mentioned, those are eventually mandatory in just about all walks of life, so learning to roll with that will help.

It's possibly similar to healthy eating and exercise. Especially for kids - they can 'eat anything' and not get fat, stay thin, etc. Eventually, that goes away, and learning to eat healthy and exercise is something you have to adapt to to remain in good health. If you have a better grounding in healthy eating and physical fitness from a young age, it's not a big deal.

</comment><comment><USER30> Even though this is from 5 years ago I hear this argument from many people with kids. I think it's a bit of a cop out, and feels like they want recognition that their child is special and deserves attention.

No one ever looks at this from a teachers perspective. They are caught in the middle of trying to help children with wide variety of learning styles and the political machine of a school district learning mandate. They can only do so much to help. If a parent feels their child doesn't fit the mold and thinks the system is rigged, they should help their child understand how the school system work and how that relates to the rest of the working world. Where nearly everything else is based on metrics.

If they feel their child understand the material but the tests and homework are causing problems, find the path that accomplishes the goals of a passing grades. You'd be surprised if you just ask, that a teacher will tell you what they are going to be grading on. Is it just test or is it an overall judgement of how the child is doing?

As a kid I figured out that the key to "doing well" was to impress by showing off in areas where you really do excel. Is the child more creative? Then answer the homework or tests with creative answers and get the answer they are looking for but done in a fashion that may be different than what was expected. Do they have to do a book report? Make that look better than every other kid in class.

In short I pretty much skated through middle school and high school by doing the bare minimum to achieve an C but impressed in other creative areas that demonstrated effort and ability to comprehend the material.

Anyway that's my rant.

</comment><comment><USER31> So, if we take the author at his word, then either the teacher had an unwritten rule for the size of the paper, or the student and the author both somehow managed to not read or to forget this rule. If it's a, then rules lawyer the hell out of the idiot teacher. If it's b, then looks like both of them are bad at details and instructions, which is a skill that certainly deserves some attention. So why was that the end of the story?

<comment><USER32> Probably because it doesn't matter if it was one of the instructions or not, because it's entirely irrelevant to anything other than an arbitrary "follow instructions" assignment. Coincidentally that sort of assignment is precisely what the author complains about.

<comment><USER31> And reading and writing are irrelevant to whether the kid could do the equations, but if he doesn't have either skill then he needs help, not just for dad to say the teacher is mean. I consider understanding arbitrary rules to be similarly as basic a skill.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I completely agree on most things in school being useless, especially homework. However, I don't know of a single career path one can take where they never have to do boring, monotonous, or simply annoying things to succeed. CEOs have to handle investors and bullshit politics, professional athletes have to practice and work out, and even rich retired people had to do plenty of stupid pointless things to get to that point. Shit, even the Queen of England has to make appearances I'm sure she'd rather skip.

Don't frame the homework as something he has to do to learn what he already knows, frame it as a stepping stone. If he doesn't do his homework, he will fail out of school. If he fails out of school, his chances of doing what he loves severely diminish (and having to work at Taco Bell is a lot worse than homework). Doing to homework now is the gateway to never having to do homework again.

</comment><comment><USER34> The primary goal of the education system should be to prepare students to reach their full potential in the real world. It is not achieving this goal optimally. The best and brightest are often stuck being taught the same material, at the same rate as the median student. We had to spend a year learning Algebra I, for some ungodly reason. How many of us could have learned it in literally one month? How many of us could have finished our entire high school's math curriculum in a year? Why should the A we could have gotten in one month be equated to the A of a person who needed a full school year to learn it?

Food for thought.

</comment><comment><USER35> My theory is that some people have a threshold of 'pointlessness aversion' inadequate to the western school system. The son of the author is like that: he finds his homework useless so he won't do it. Perhaps we should admit that our society is too harsh with certain groups of people who happen to lack some abilities, I know it's been this way throughout the whole human history but since we reached an advanced level of material development we should at least reconsider this social dynamic.

</comment><comment><USER36> Sugata Mitra believes that our education model, including the emphasis on rule-following, isn't broken but works to address the Victorian needs of the "bureaucratic administrative machine" of the British empire.

[http://www.ted.com/talks/sugata_mitra_build_a_school_in_the_...](http://www.ted.com/talks/sugata_mitra_build_a_school_in_the_cloud.html)

His Self Organized Learning Environments (SOLE) provides an alternative approach.

</comment><comment><USER37> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudbury_model>

From personal experience with a similar situation. It's a major leap of faith, but you'd be surprised what a kid can do in an environment that permits them to.

</comment><comment><USER38> not leaving high school for a GED and college my sophomore year was the biggest mistake I ever made. I'm never getting those two years back. I'm also not getting the 10 years of college back either. I taught myself what I do for a living and very little of my education led to where I am today. Intellectual curiosity is what created the text books we spoon feed our kids and is the most important trait that can be fostered in them. It will put food on their tables and advance the human race beyond where it is today. I just try to keep this in perspective while raising my two daughters.

</comment><comment><USER39> guy I hate to say it - but is is either school or other talents. you can't half ass both and get away with it. it is either C student and entrepreneur- facilitating, marketable outside talents or A student and no-little outside talents. B student and mediocre outside talents will lead to mediocracy and failure. so decide which you want to encourage. i would go for outside talents but you better make damn sure your son has the right tutor, influences, and environment to hone his natural inclinations outside the traditional academic system.

</comment><comment><USER40> I don't have kids, and am self taught in my choice of profession. If he doesn't want to do certain things then he won't, I'm sure he will be successful without specific qualifications.

</comment><comment><USER41> So the author doesn't believe in homework or at least admits he thinks its pointless, and so does his son. My my my I wonder where a smart little boy learned that from?

</comment><comment><USER42> I stopped doing my homework when I was twelve, too. Or maybe eleven. I started again when I went to technical colleague. Worked out well.

</comment><comment><USER43> We learn math & science because it gives us electricity, airliners, and computers. Enough said.

<comment><USER44> If that were the reason, they would never have existed in the first place.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> mm, This may be minutae to some, but I think it's important: Learning math is not tedium. By that I mean gaining the problem solving skills and the mindset required for mathematics is invaluable. Jeopardy facts however I can't defend.

</comment><comment><USER46> It would be interesting to learn how his son is doing today, six years later.

</comment><comment><USER15> How do you win a rigged game? Stop playing the game and make everyone else play your game.

According to my parents, I was exactly like your son in the mid 80s. They homeschooled me to make sure I wasn't held back from my potential.

It wasn't without its challenges, but nothing is. I'm doing pretty well now. I had a brief foray into "doing what I was told" in college, and figured out it was not going to get me to graduate with the grades I wanted, so I found an adviser who understood me, who would trust I could take care of myself and just sign off on my self-directed path through my degree. I had a longer foray after college (it seems I learn certain lessons slowly) and eventually grew so sick of getting up early every morning and driving an hour to work in shitty traffic that I just quit.

I quit everything for almost a year. For a year, I worked the hardest I've ever worked on whatever I wanted. And it got me nowhere.

Except...

Except it taught me that the world can't destroy me. It taught me that I'm capable of so much and it is only myself to blame for submitting to bosses or procrastination for not getting it done (and really, doing what your boss tells you to do is a form of procrastination). Everyone told me I was going to be ruined, that I'd not find work again because I'd been off so long "in this economy!" Dire consequences were in store for me, to not grovel at the feet of the recruiters, to not beg for my old job back. Bunch of lily-livered cowards. No such thing happened, and the idea is patently absurd. No, the only thing that can destroy me is myself.

I see all these people saying "You gotta pay your dues" and "sometimes you just have to suck it up and do what you're told".

And it is such complete and utter fucking bullshit. You don't have to do a single god damn thing you don't want to in this world. The world won't destroy you. You gotta buy this car to drive to work, drive to work to pay for this car. Yeah, screw that. What the hell do you need a degree for when the only people who are getting anywhere in this world are doing it by starting companies and getting out of the rat race? What the hell do you need a recruiter for when the only jobs they have to give you are going to make you a miserable son of a bitch?

What the hell do you need anything for? All you really need is a pencil and some paper, and the only reason you need that is because it's the only way to communicate with enough people. Write. Write. Write. Draw. Compose. Program. Mathematicate. A robot can dig a ditch for you, so why are you digging ditches? Do the one thing that humans can do that computers cannot: create. Don't let anyone tell you what to create. Create whatever you want. People fail not because they fail to create the right things, they fail because they fail to create _anything_.

And to all you people in here, talking about "you have to play the game," "that's the system," "deal with it": you're certainly free to ruin your own life, but leave the poor, damn kids alone.

<comment><USER4> > And to all you people in here, talking about "you have to > play the game," > "that's the system," "deal with it": you're > certainly free to ruin your > own life, but leave the poor, > damn kids alone.

It's a defense mechanism. Some people _need_ to believe that being a good little cog was their only option. Because the alternative is to admit that they find real freedom terrifying.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> Sounds like the kid values his time.</comment>


Ask HN: How do you test your app? - <AUTHOR>

Hey guys, how much time you all spend in writing unit test cases?
In early stage startups, since application design under goes changes with each iteration, unit test cases needs changes. And it gets harder to keep unit test cases consistent with the code with iterations. Suggestions?
Do you think is it OK to burn few initial customers? (if some use cases have not been tested, few customers will face problems)
Thoughts? <comment><USER2> Typemock is discussing that in today's webinar (10:00 AM ET and 15:00 in the UK) about tools and practices to help with unit testing - <http://bitly.com/z3uPOi>

The best thing is to make sure you're using tools that are flexible and scalable. Also, decide what to test. You don't test basic logic like 1+1=2.

Unit tests are intended to catch a specific type of bugs but not all errors. It's not usability testing. If you're not doing TDD (ideally) at least you can test legacy code and strive for high code coverage

</comment><comment><USER3> I test my app with people.

Scripting out unit tests, integration tests, feature tests, regression tests is good, but there's always going to be stuff you miss. I'm not saying you have to hire a full-time tester, but get your friends, family, or other people good at breaking stuff to test your app. You'll be amazed how some people will use (i.e. break) your app in a way you never considered.

<comment><USER4> Agree with this. Unit tests and other tests will catch errors in your code, but testing with people will show how your app really handles your audience. I try to use my apps as much as I can, and ask friends, family, fellow developers, etc. to test as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> We've recently started do a lot more acceptance testing in browser, writing unit/integration tests in response to bugs. The acceptance tests are slower, for sure, but the do cut "deploy and wait for bug reports" out of the dev cycle a lot more often.

</comment><comment><USER6> You might find this Bob Martin post interesting: [http://blog.8thlight.com/uncle-bob/2012/01/11/Flipping- the-B...](http://blog.8thlight.com/uncle-bob/2012/01/11/Flipping-the-Bit.html)</comment>


Re-Enact the Panama Papers Leak: How Mossack Fonseca Was Hacked - <AUTHOR> https://blog.adversary.io/panama-papers-leak-mossack-fonseca-hack <comment><USER2> Not to be a dick, but this just feels like an ad for their training product. There's no re-enaction, 'Re-Enact' is referring to their training course that they want you to buy. The meat of the article takes up 2 out of the 13 paragraphs.

Am I just being overly critical?

<comment><USER3> No, you're being cynical, which more people need to be when reading headlines and believing them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Ours is better [https://application.security](https://application.security) ;)

<comment><USER5> Yours is better.

<comment><USER4> thank you !

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> My favorite part of the Panama Papers leak was how only one registered agent got leaked and how this low bar was masquaraded as a big win.

Just be cheaper faster and more secure and you get many customers.</comment>


The ACLU wants to know why Facebook beat a 2018 wiretap case - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-28/facebook-beat-a-2018-wiretap-case-the-aclu-wants-to-know-why <comment><USER2> Why can't these news articles link to the briefs or provide a case number or anything? They didn't even say what freakin' court they were in directly! I know it's the 9th circuit based on the description, but where was the original case heard? Arg!

Edit: Fortunatly the 9th circuit is actually pretty good with youtube, which made this easy to find:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C6SeGJQjqyA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C6SeGJQjqyA)

19-15472 ACLU Foundation v. USDOJ

<comment><USER3> It doesnt seize to amaze me why news orgs dont provide sources in addition to claiming another org claimed it first. In the hype about trying to be real news maybe you should take it much more seriously. I can prolly find independent researchers who arent part of huge news orgs who do link to sources.

<comment><USER4> It's surprising that partisan tabloids (Breitbart, Daily Beast, etc) provide clickable hyperlinks to the original reporting and source documents more often than major media outlets do.

Maybe it's due to their reblog origins, they're less afraid of losing traffic to competitors? Or because of their reputation they have more to prove? Regardless, it should be done by everyone.

<comment><USER5> > partisan tabloids ... major media outlets

Don't buy into the propaganda. Most major media outlets are partisan as well.

Sometimes the party is simply the 'increase state authority and support war' party, they simply color it red or blue for your personal preferences.

<comment><USER3> Not sure why people are downvoting you as if you're attacking their news source, at least here in America I can name two news orgs for which people would easily agree lean on opposite ends: Fox and CNN. The difference in their focus is night and day when you think of how they report on the President. It is astounding. Then there's the lack of following up on sources like the MAGA high schoolers media fiasco.

<comment><USER4> Regardless of how right or wrong he is, it's a digression into partisan-ness unrelated to the topic of hyperlinking practices. HN tends to downvote when that happens.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I don't understand how it's possible that the _public_ government can make precedent-setting judgements like this and classify the rationale from the public. Like, I'm not asking for Facebook's trade secrets or classified info. Redact that, and then share the entire case that we funded with our tax dollars.

<comment><USER7> We do not know who asked for this to be sealed yet. It is possible FB asked because it had to make presentations that included IP.

<comment><USER8> > I'm not asking for Facebook's trade secrets or classified info. Redact > that...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> My conspiracy theory hat comes out every time a large US company seems to stand up against the government for the privacy of their users and wins. I always assume the company secretly gave the government what they asked for, and the government agreed to play along for marketing purposes.

I suppose that the boring truth is that Facebook just used it's vast financial resources to protect itself in a way that lavabit never could

<comment> seph-reed The former seems so much more likely to me. Probably because my German teacher had us watch ["The Lives of Others"]([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lives_of_Others](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lives_of_Others)) and at this point it would be absolutely insane to imagine that the obsession with power that exists in the government would fail to find a way to read data that's literally stored on someone else's computer where you could never tell if it's been read. Seems like a no brainer, but without proof most people would rather just call it a grey area. Which is a fine enough narrative. Doesn't change much either way.

<comment><USER10> Except that we have proof, at least as far as the US Government is concerned. Snowden provided us with proof _in abundance_ that they will "find a way". How anyone can consider this a gray area in 2020 is beyond me.

<comment><USER11> This comment thread really is nonsense. So Facebook and the government are secretly working together in a conspiracy to falsify court records while secretly they cooporate the whole time and the case was never actually tried? What planet are you on?

And the proof is Snowden, because... ???

Or are you all just agreeing you have your own conspiracy theories, and aren't directly commenting on what each other are saying?

<comment><USER12> _> secretly working together in a conspiracy to falsify court records_

A simple & plausible scenario: a governmental agency requests Facebook conducts a broad surveillance sweep. Facebook resists for obvious reasons, goes to court. Somebody at the middle level of one talks to somebody at the middle level of the other, figure out what the agency really wants - a small, well specified chunk of data - which gets requested separately & promptly delivered. Having gotten enough data now, the agency lets the original, big case falter simply by limiting the efforts and expenditures.

That's not even conspiracy, that's just a bunch of people figuring out how to quickly get done with their mundane responsibilities. #BanalityOfEvil

<comment><USER13> And this is how it's done unfortunately.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Conjectures: The method required to MitM the MS-13 gang Messenger would require writing a special set of code (a la Apple iPhone incident), which fails the burden test. Some legal justification why Facebook is not a carrier, in case of voice com.

</comment><comment><USER14> It's possible the answer is more prosaic than conspiracy, and technical in nature. If FB Messenger uses a central server for discovery only and communication is strictly Peer to Peer, as is the case in a number of messenging apps, then there is nothing to wiretap without altering the FB Messenger client to copy received texts and phone them home. And that would add a backdoor that would make it less secure for everyone. I found a link from 2019 that indicated FB Messenger uses the Signal protocol ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal_Protocol](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal_Protocol)) for their encrypted chats using the mobile client, so that makes the P2P theory more plausible.

An interesting experiment: set up daily FB messenger chat with a buddy and discuss in depth some product of narrow class of products you don't usually search or discuss (Nike shoes for example). Do this for a couple a weeks and keep track of the ads online that you and your buddy see. Did the number of adds for shoes or Nike shoes go up?

</comment><comment><USER15> Do Facebook and others use pre-quantum encryption? Is it reasonable to say that if and when the NSA (presumably doing full take of these comms) has a quantum computer capable of performing Shor's algorithm, that they will be able to decrypt all of these comms?

When would FB and others move to quantum-resistant encryption if they aren't already?

What is the possibility that radically advanced tech including quantum computers well beyond what's currently available already exists in secret?

Anyone a fan of Dave Brubeck/take five?

<comment><USER16> Addressing your second to last question, I don't think it's out of the realm of possibility, though the more likely solution for the government is throwing money at compute power to break encryption which is reasonably secure if millions of dollars isn't thrown at it.

I love Dave Brubeck/Take Five, check this out: [https://soundcloud.com/juanchov182/radiohead- fivestep](https://soundcloud.com/juanchov182/radiohead-fivestep)

<comment><USER15> The Dave Brubeck comment was tongue in cheek, referencing recent quantum computing developments (not classified)

<comment><USER16> You're losing me - what developments?

<comment><USER15> [https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/03/chance-discovery- bri...](https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/03/chance-discovery-brings- quantum-computing-using-standard-microchips-step-closer)

Andrea Morello was on the team. Joe Morello was the t5 drummer. Just a play on last names.

What if the NSA has not only known about this phenomenon but has already built a large scale qubit quantum computer? Could be.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> [https://archive.md/eT2bg](https://archive.md/eT2bg)

</comment><comment><USER18> [https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.latimes.com/california/stor...](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.latimes.com/california/story/2019-07-17/ms-13-used- gruesome-tactics-fake-facebook-profile-in-reign-of-terror-prosecutors- say%3f_amp=true)

FBI/DOJ wiretapped the Facebook comms of 19 illegal aliens who were MS-13 gangsters in North Hollywood. the wiretaps spanned 2017-2019. the gang murdered 6 people. the last murder was a random killing of a homeless guy as an initiation ritual to get into the gang.

i happened to be 50 yards away from that murder when it happened. i didnt hear a thing because i was sleeping and it was rarely raining in LA that night. those gangsters could have randomly picked me to kill instead of the other homeless guy. i was woken up by a cop politely asking me to move. i looked over and there was a tarp tent over the body of the victim with a dozen cops standing guard.

i may have even helped to open the case because 1 year prior, i emailed the Chief of the NoHo LAPD to tell him i was seeing MS-13 graffiti all over that park where the murder occured. he replied back within an hour thanking me for the tip and the graffito was removed the next day. so MS-13 activity in that area was certainly on LE's radar.

i am an obsessive reader of Snowden leaks and am pretty anti-NSA, but i thank god the FBI was able to order Facebook to hand over the comms of that MS-13 gang. those gang bangers were so stupid that they were literally coordinating murders over Facebook Messenger and boasting about their 100's of crimes spanning years on Facebook.

ACLU is in the wrong here and i support not unsealing the wiretap documents. because think of how many other idiot MS-13 gangsters across America will also broadcast their murders and crimes on Facebook? if they all know for a fact that yes, the FBI is using Facebook to track them, then they will all go dark. that means the next time MS-13 attempts to ramdomly murder a guy like me, then FBI won't be able to so easily convict them.

i have read every page of every Snowden leak. my views on mass surveillance have evolved since 2013. at first i was horrified because of the shock that it was happening. but over time i have come to realize there is no closing Pandora's box. every year the CPUs get faster, storage doubles, bandwidth triples and the software gets smarter. there is no way to freeze computing progress in time. which means every year, mass surveillance gets cheaper like Moore's Law. i now see it is entirely naive and unrealistic to stop mass surveillance. there is no technical solution to a political problem. you can't un-invent the machine gun.

all we can do is demand our Intel Overlords only apply mass surveillance to legit protection of our society, like for busting murderers and rapists and MS-13 and cartels. and we must force FBI/DOJ to stay the fuck out of abusing mass surveillance for corrupt political purposes, like spying on Presidents, or wiretapping 37 Congressmen, or bugging SCOTUS for 12 years, or blackmailing Presidents and Congress with sex tapes, or harassing antiwar activists, or persecuting whistleblowers and legitimate joirnalists who publish leaked top secrets.

this FBI operation to crush a murderous MS-13 cell hit pretty close to home for me--it was terrifying to realize i only got lucky that night being in the right place and right time to avoid being the sacrificial victim. this experience definitely changed my perspective on FBI surveilling Facebook. everyone is opposed to FBI surveillance until they almost get murdered. then it's "great job FBI, do more gumshoe police work and less political meddling!"

<comment><USER19> > thank god the FBI was able to order Facebook to hand over the comms of that > MS-13 gang.

I think you may have misunderstood the article? It says Facebook _won_ the case, and _did not_ have to wiretap the app.

I don't see what is to be gained by the public not knowing why.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Because you live in a lawless oligarchy that has been rubber stamping the rich's laws for 2 straight centuries. See the endless extension of copyright.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act#/...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act#/media/File:Tom_Bell's_graph_showing_extension_of_U.S._copyright_term_over_time.svg)

<comment><USER21> Interesting choice since the extension of copyright ended in 2019 and works have started entering the public domain again.

<comment><USER22> I'll believe that if mickey mouse becomes public domain. Currently slated for 2024, apparently.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I hope in time people who think the government can be used for Good will see how it's merely a tool for the rich.

Although maybe you need a government to take 30% of everyone's income to fund a military or someone else will.

</comment><comment><USER24> Rant time: Is it really impossible to write a literate, coherent headline? _No_ , the ACLU does _not_ want to know _why_. They want to know _how_. It's _literally_ the second sentence of the article. FFS.

> Now the American Civil Liberties Union is seeking to find out how.</comment>


Show HN: I compiled career advice from Paul Graham, Sam Altman, Naval and others - <AUTHOR> https://resumeworded.com/curated-career-advice/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hi HN! I've compiled a list of actionable career advice from the world's most successful people. Each piece of advice is accompanied with a few 'Key ideas' so people can quickly get an actionable insight without having to watch a full video or read a full essay.

I'd also really love your feedback on what this could evolve into (if anything!). This is just an initial version. Right now I curated links and distilled the core ideas on this page. But going forward, I'd love to have some more original content (e.g. interviewing people and sharing their advice in small nuggets).

</comment><comment><USER2> So far, so good! I'm glad I read those, thanks. There's only like 10 so far, right? Maybe they're your absolute favourite quotes, might be hard to keep up the quality...unless you have people sending you candidates.

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome, glad it was useful! Yes, great point there's only like 15ish in there so far. I do have a backlog of ~25ish more still to add that I'll be adding over the next few weeks. Hopefully I should be able to find enough content after that!</comment></comment>


Larry Page is quietly amassing a 'flying car' empire - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2018/7/19/17586878/larry-page-flying-car-opener-kitty-hawk-cora <comment><USER2> I think Musk's quip that most people would want their own personal flying taxi, but no one wants their neighbor to have one, is pretty insightful. As building density increases and our structures continue to scale in the third dimension, our transit system needs to as well and going down instead of up appears much less disruptive/dangerous. Of course, only time will tell what wins out - it won't necessarily be the most efficient option, as history of transit systems has demonstrated.

<comment><USER3> We will go up not down. The only limitation is legal, not technical nor economic. Working through the regulations will take a bit of time but is already underway with the FAA's pilot programs. The problem people are missing in the industry is that it took years for the FAA to lay out the infrastructure and rules for the national airspace. It will take time to work this out for autonomous drones, which will operate on a much larger scale. Cities and states will play a key role. It's not going to be a VFR free-for- all with collision avoidance, but very much mimic class-A airspace but between 200-400' and will be fully autonomous. As an F-18 pilot, I use to hate drones, but I've been converted. We are at the palm pilot point for UAS. Musk's comment about noise is correct, but that is solvable and no reason to go back in time and try to dig our way out of our transportation and infrastructure problems. Imagine a world with bridges on demand. Drones enable that future not tunneling machines.

<comment><USER4> Who wants to look up to the sky and rather than a beautiful sunset see a thousand drones? There's a word for that: pollution.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> All of these concepts have the same problems:

* loud * short range * no auto-rotation * no passive stability * almost no unpowered glide

Accidents waiting to happen. Never something that you will want to have zipping around your residential neighborhood.

<comment> at-fates-hands This doesn't even touch the idea of training people to fly.

I've been studying for my Remote Pilot license just to use my drone professionally and the amount of information you need to know is at times overwhelming. I seriously can't imagine how you would administer a test like that to license people to fly their cars.

<comment><USER6> That doesn't seem to be an issue: _You have got enough happening in your life without having to learn how to fly. But what if flying across town was as easy as hopping in a rideshare? What if Cora could fly for you?

Cora will combine self-flying software with expert human supervision, so you can enjoy the ride._ [0]

[https://cora.aero/](https://cora.aero/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Flying cars seems like a horrible idea.

Pros: Alleviate ground congestion, potentially go faster

Cons: Landing, air congestion, higher risk than driving

I know this is still super fresh, but honestly moving our already horribly unsafe daily communte up several thousand feet in the sky doesn't make much sense to me. I seen people survive horrible car crashes, I haven't heard of anyone walking off a 1-on-1 plane crash

<comment><USER8> Flying cars seem great for rare occasions (including actual emergencies - ie, flying ambulances that could safely land on a residential street), not for daily commuting.

<comment><USER7> like a helicopter?

<comment><USER8> Hard to fit an helicopter here, but cars enter well: [https://praqualquerlugar.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/alfama-...](https://praqualquerlugar.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/alfama-4a.jpg?w=800)

<comment><USER7> hard to imagine landing a car there

<comment><USER8> The BlackFly doesn't seem wider than two regular cars, so I don't see why not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I dread the future that includes traffic above our heads on anything like the scale of the traffic currently on the roads.

<comment><USER10> The traffic over your head is actually many times bigger than road traffic.

<comment><USER11> Is this a joke on the physical size of aircraft/spacecraft?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I just imagine all the traffic on the ground, but now in the air. Because with flying cars you don't get to just fly where you want, as people fantasize. There needs to be aerial lanes, and they will be packed. Sounds like a shitty world.

Also, whenever you see an accident or a car pulled over with mechanical issues imagine that happened in the air - where do you think flying cars will end up in that situation? Cars are dripping and leaking stuff all the time, where do you think it will end up with flying cars?

</comment><comment><USER13> I still can't think of flying cars as anything other than a terrible compromised aircraft married to a terribly compromised car. There are 15K airports in the US. Drive a few miles over to one and get in a proper airplane seems like a better plan for most use cases I can think of.

When I see the average driver competence on the roads, I don't see most of those people successfully commuting in a flying anything over the course of their lifetime.

<comment><USER14> > When I see the average driver competence on the roads, I don't see most of > those people successfully commuting in a flying anything over the course of > their lifetime.

Ah! But AI, you see! They'll fly themselves!

<comment><USER15> Fully automated flying is much different from fully automated driving and arguably easier to pull off. Barrier is lower, so we will probably see it implemented in near future.

<comment><USER16> It's already been implemented for a few years now. Planes can even easily take off and land on their own now.

<comment><USER17> Automated landing systems are only in very limited use, and require active monitoring by qualified human pilots who can immediately take over if something goes wrong. In general autopilots don't cope well with mechanical failures.

<comment><USER16> They can land by themselves, but the safety envelope demanded by the FAA and industry just means that they don't. The ability is there if needed in a pinch.

<comment><USER17> Sure they can land by themselves as long as nothing important breaks on the airplane during the landing sequence. If something does break then the pilot may have to intervene at a moment's notice. The pilots aren't just kicking back, they're actively flying the aircraft even though they aren't directly manipulating the control surfaces and throttles. That's why aircraft carrying paying civilian passengers will continue to need a rated pilot onboard for many years to come.

<comment><USER16> Yes. And if they aren't monitoring locally they are monitoring remotely.

But the level of automation right now in aircraft is dangerous: enough that the pilot's job is really boring, not enough that the pilot isn't occasionally needed. We all know how that works out in practice.

<comment><USER17> Remote monitoring is insufficient for passenger carrying flights due to communications latency and reliability problems. It might be tolerable for cargo flights though where risk tolerance is higher.

The excellent safety record of scheduled commercial flights contradicts your claim that the current level of automation is dangerous. We have proof that it works well in practice.

<comment><USER16> This isn't my claim, it ia well known problem in the industry. See

[https://www.mprnews.org/story/2009/10/28/bhana](https://www.mprnews.org/story/2009/10/28/bhana)

[https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=114262...](https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=114262744)

[https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/airline-pilots- depend-t...](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/airline-pilots-depend-too- much-automation-says-panel-commissioned-faa-flna2D11625301)

[https://jdasolutions.aero/blog/airbus-announces-a- response-t...](https://jdasolutions.aero/blog/airbus-announces-a-response-to- the-pilot-automation-interface-problems-it-is-a-reactive-solution-maybe- theres-a-proactive-one/)

Etc....

<comment><USER17> If it's such a problem then where are the incidents? This is much ado about (almost) nothing.

<comment><USER16> The automated systems have made flying safer at the same time creating a new danger that needs to be managed. It isn't rocket science, like how self driving cars rarely get into accidents and when they do it's news because the human driver wasn't paying attention.

The bored pilot problem is only going to get worse as technology marches forward, even if the fatality rate keeps going down.

<comment><USER17> Bored pilots aren't a problem if passengers are safe. There are many thousands of commercial flights every year so we know the current safety levels aren't a fluke.

On the other hand we don't know yet whether self driving cars will actually be safer. They're only used in very limited times and places so there's no way to do a fair analysis.

<comment><USER16> Bored pilots are a problem if you are a pilot, or if you want to keep pilots alert and happy. Bored pilots also have already led to more than a few accidents, so the FAA definitely cares.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Larry Page is not an idiot. Flying cars have giant unsurmountable flaws that should be apparant to anyone who is not an idiot. What gives?

<comment><USER19> New tech = not insurmountable

<comment><USER12> The tech is the easy part, it's the logistics and ramifications for failures. Blow a gasket on the road, and you come to a gradual stop. Do it in the air, and you have a minor disaster if anyone is underneath you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Is a Flying Car just essentially a big drone with more noise? Do we need the Car part? Also why are we building big drones, can't we just have mini electric helicopters?

<comment><USER21> the "car part" is the human error part. also less accountability for the manufacturer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Saw this the other day [0]:

As battery technology gets better and with a similar vehicle as the one in the video is paired with AI to do the flying. I think it will be a viable technology in the future.

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

</comment><comment><USER23> Wouldn't it be better if they had a driving component as well?

I can't imagine everyone could take off from their own homes? That would just be so chaotic and dangerous.

I would think it would be better to drive to a designated spot and take off from there.

Still, I love these things and would absolutely love to see them work.

</comment><comment><USER24> average consumer has proved to be a very irresponsible car owner and shitty operator of the vehicle. and given the fact that people got more distractions behind the wheel compared to 20 years ago such as checking emails, checking into flights, disputing a credit card charges or whatever little things that you need to get done often and can be done over the phone. it would be better for everybody if these flying vehicles were not sold to everyone and only well paid professionals were allowed to operate them as taxis.

<comment><USER25> my assumption is that they would be autonomous...

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> In Munich politicians asked to plan in airtaxi spots to be build/considered for the rebuild of our main train station, while I have to throw away liquids above 100ml in the airport!

</comment><comment><USER27> Hopefully his flying cars are not like all the other Google hardware products (released in "beta" for hundreds of dollars with a ton of issues).</comment>


84% of a single-threaded 1KB write in Redis is spent in the kernel - <AUTHOR> http://blog.nullspace.io/kernel-latency.html <comment><USER2> This is why high-performance commercial databases do most or all of their I/O management and scheduling in userspace. It is not a new idea; it is much more efficient. However, that means you need to reimplement most of what the kernel does in an optimal way.

This is relatively common for closed source software but you almost never see these types of userspace I/O designs in open source, which means OSS designs are often leaving integer factors worth of efficiency and performance on the table. For some use cases, companies are very successful selling into this efficiency and performance gap with closed source.

Part of the lack of open source is that these designs are not portable, due to OS dependencies and sometimes hardware dependencies if a design is hardcore. I think this is a partial copout; a Linux-only database engine would address the vast majority of real-world deployments. A bigger reason is that the design and implementation of these kinds of userspace kernels is a very high skill and low level art that, frankly, is way outside the expertise of most open source software contributors. For databases in particular, more often than not even the basic design elements of the software are naively done (e.g. MongoDB) and that is lower hanging fruit.

<comment><USER3> Indeed. Oracle basically uses the OS just to bootstrap itself and hand over the initial chunk of memory, then it manages everything internally. It even talks to NFS itself rather than going through VFS. Opens a socket from userland code to the NetApp and reads and writes the raw protocol.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Totally... this is why pipelining makes Redis 10x faster, less syscalls.

Basically to make Redis much faster we need to work to three different related things:

1) Less kernel friction.

2) Threaded I/O, this is the part worth threading, with a global lock to execute queries so you don't get crazy with concurrency and complex data structures. Memcached did it right.

3) Pipelining: better client support for pipelining so that it's easy to tell the client in what order I need my replies, and unrelated replies can be glued together easily.

<comment><USER5> Point (2) makes me think of LMDB. Have you looked into it much? I wonder if it would be an interesting storage substrate for a threaded Redis.

<comment><USER4> Point "2" better applies when the storage substrate is memory and operations are O(1) or logarithmic, because in that case, the time to serve the query is comparable small compared to the time needed to process the reply and send back the response. With an on-disk storage, I would go for a classic on-disk database setup where different queries are served by different threads.

<comment><USER6> LMDB beats all other "classic" on-disk databases for read performance. It also happens to beat all other in-memory systems for read performance too, since its reads require no locks.

[http://symas.com/mdb/memcache/](http://symas.com/mdb/memcache/) [http://symas.com/mdb/inmem/](http://symas.com/mdb/inmem/) [http://symas.com/mdb/ondisk/](http://symas.com/mdb/ondisk/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The concept of redis has always baffled me. A hash table is a very fast data structure. As soon as you put that in a dedicated server, the cost of the actual lookup is instantly eclipsed by the need to parse a text protocol and do network I/O to communicate with the client.

So I'd be willing to say that the problem here isn't that the kernel stack is slow per-se, but that workload is too small as to make the overhead look ridiculous, when it'd be very much acceptable if your server did more actual work.

<comment><USER8> The value of Redis is never going to be found with a single server. It's going to be found when you use Redis to synchronize the state of multiple servers.

<comment><USER9> Redis can actually be very useful on a single server, too, as a fast, robust, convenient, potentially shared datastore.

Performance is usually a secondary concern in these use-cases.

<comment><USER10> Yep, for data stores (caches, etc), Redis is awesome and super fast, though not as time-tested as memcached.

And all of the Redis set/list operations are super valuable. You just need to be careful once you start relying on Redis at scale for things you take for granted when you start playing around with it... For example: zunionstores on lots of large sorted sets. "O(N)+O(M log(M)) with N being the sum of the sizes of the input sorted sets, and M being the number of elements in the resulting sorted set." When you start off using it, it's awesome and super fast, but before you know it, the blocking, single-threaded architecture will crash and burn if your data scales up. Luckily we have clustering now :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is why techniques like kernel bypass are used in high throughout or low latency systems like finance. Things like [http://www.openonload.org/](http://www.openonload.org/)

This does tie you in to a specific network vendor but I can see the argument for moving more commodity networking hardware in this direction too.

<comment><USER8> Personally, I see a lot of value in Kernel modules which let you bypass the kernel entirely for simple IO. It requires more work on the applications end, and more libraries to support the disparate hardware, but it would help with many such activities.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This article from last month is relevant:

 _Improving Linux networking performance_

[https://lwn.net/Articles/629155/](https://lwn.net/Articles/629155/)

HN discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8931431](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8931431)

</comment><comment><USER13> InfiniBand was conceived around this issue. Additional overhead using kernel I/o includes the user/kernel space switch, copying between user/kernel buffers, and waiting/polling for interrupts. That stuff doesn't get any smaller as networks get faster, so today we're at the point that they dominate the actual hardware I/o time for many network devices.

There's been periodic interest in 'virtual hardware' where the hardware presents multiple interfaces to different users. This way the driver can run in user mode, since there's no need to control/share the hardware registers in the kernel.

</comment><comment><USER14> Rian Hunter, Dropbox's third engineer, talks about the latency incurred by OpenSSL when they were designing and implementing their extremely high- performance Dropbox notification servers in the talk below. Also, the pitch he gives at the end for joining Dropbox is one of the most genuine and heartfelt I've ever seen.

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBRIeoEr8GU](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBRIeoEr8GU)

</comment><comment><USER15> To be clear, 80% of kernel-time in that 1KB write is spent in fsync(), _not_ in the network stack. Network overhead is roughly similar between read & write requests. What Arrakis seems to be able to do is avoid the overhead of write & sync, presumably because it doesn't go through the VFS + filesystem + block IO code paths.

<comment><USER16> >To be clear, 80% of kernel-time in that 1KB write is spent in fsync(), _not_ in the network stack

Are you sure?

 _Of the total 3.36 μs (see Table 1) spent processing each packet in Linux, nearly 70% is spent in the network stack_

<comment><USER15> Table 1 is looking specifically at getting a chunk of data off the wire and into the users code. Look at Table 2 for a comparison of redis read/write. Average time for a write is 163 μs - of which 137 μs is spent in fsync(2)

<comment><USER16> Right but you can't compare table 2 data to the _network stack_ , table 2 data is only timing the redis operations. Which as stated take up significantly less time than the time spent in the _network stack_.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> noir-york Where exactly in the networking stack is the time being spent?

If it is in the IP/TCP layers then moving that to user-space does not, by itself, necessarily reduce latency, it merely shifts it elsewhere. If the latency is due to kernel user land memory copies then that is a different matter.

<comment><AUTHOR> The point of moving it to user-space is that you can source a lot of the jobs of the TCP/IP stack to hardware directly. In some cases this dramatically speeds up your I/O.

Consider, for example that the dominant costs are things like demultiplexing and security checks. If you choose to implement multiplexing with virtual network cards then you get true 0-copy multiplexing, which is much faster than the software equivalent. And many of the security checks can be eliminated by using some combination of packet filters and logical disks. (The security BTW seems to be one big difference from RDMA, which might be an alternative, but I'm not really an expert.)

Some things _can 't_ be sourced to the hardware, like naming and access control. But that's fine.

(NB, I'm not arguing _for_ this paper's position necessarily, I just thought it was interesting, and the motivation was good enough to start me thinking about how I might get around the kernel.)

<comment><USER17> The life of a data frame has become pretty complicated. Along the way it may pass through one or more layers of virtualization, one or more layers of network-specific mangling like iptables doing filtering and NAT, and a combo of the two in OS-based virtualized networks connecting VMs and containers both intra- and inter-host.

Pushing more of the stack into hardware is probably a good idea for single- tenant datacenters that can deploy a lot of e.g. Redis appliances, but those of us just renting capacity in the cloud are going to suffer from Amdahl's Law if you can only accelerate the part of the system adjacent to real hardware NICs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> While we're looking at OSDI proceedings, check out the IX paper: [https://www.usenix.org/conference/osdi14/technical- sessions/...](https://www.usenix.org/conference/osdi14/technical- sessions/presentation/belay) It shows how the kernel can provide high throughput and low latency without giving up sharing and protection.

</comment><comment><USER19> When testing [https://github.com/wyager/Neks](https://github.com/wyager/Neks) , pipelining made the server something like 30x faster for the exact same reason. Syscalls are tremendously expensive compared to the work of processing a request.

</comment><comment><USER20> Solutions that pull the TCP stack out of the kernel perform so much better because they're bypassing all the internal bureaucracy that the kernel otherwise performs to make it as easy as possible for userspace applications to use the network without stepping on other applications' toes.

The kernel socket API is designed so that programs have to do as little thinking as possible to get their own personal slice of the shared and noisy network. It provides an easy abstraction, and that requires the kernel do a lot of messy stuff for you:

\- When you're using TCP sockets, the kernel makes copies of everything your application writes and holds it in a buffer until its receipt is acknowledged, just in case it needs to resend it when the other side doesn't acknowledge it. If the socket's buffer fills up, your application blocks on I/O until some space is freed.

\- It holds ports open in a lingering state long after they're closed just in case it needs to re-transmit the last bytes. This can be disabled, but it's on by default.

\- It takes care of all the congestion control for you, but it's tuned for the general case, and as a result there are a lot of edge cases which perform very badly for the problem they're trying to solve. Redis is probably one such edge case.

Of course, all of this is fine and desirable for general applications, but it ends up being problematic if you're trying to solve a problem where performance is the chief concern.

It's tempting to say the problem is that kernel has to do way too much to provide that easy abstraction, but really the problem is that the kernel provides no way around it. You pretty much have the option of using their cushy stream abstraction at the cost of performance, or you use a userspace TCP stack on raw sockets, which requires running as root and disabling TCP in the kernel (otherwise the kernel stomps all over your TCP negotiations[1]).

There are some other transport layer protocols (SCTP, DCCP, etc.), as well as application layer protocols built on UDP, that remove some of the abstractions TCP provides and as a result require less in-kernel bureaucracy, but those solutions don't seem to be very popular or well-supported.

It would be nice if the kernel would provide some lower level system calls that could be selectively used to move parts of TCP into the application (e.g., retaining copies of data in case of re-transmission). Alas, I don't think there's much push for that, because a) it's hard, and b) the current situation is fine for 99% of network applications.

[1] [http://jvns.ca/blog/2014/08/12/what-happens-if-you-write- a-t...](http://jvns.ca/blog/2014/08/12/what-happens-if-you-write-a-tcp-stack- in-python/)

</comment><comment><USER21> maybe relevant: [http://info.iet.unipi.it/~luigi/netmap/](http://info.iet.unipi.it/~luigi/netmap/) a "framework for high speed packet I/O implemented as a kernel module for FreeBSD and Linux"

</comment><comment><USER22> I am not very familiar with OSes and things at the kernel level, can anyone answer the question in the comments of the post?

"How did you measure the time spent in each section (HW, kernel, app)? how did you get such granularity?"

<comment><USER18> From the Arrakis paper: "To analyze the sources of overhead, we record timestamps at various stages of kernel and user-space processing." You can probably implement this with something like perf dynamic tracing: [http://www.brendangregg.com/perf.html#DynamicTracing](http://www.brendangregg.com/perf.html#DynamicTracing)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I wonder if anyone has tried it with Solarflare?

<comment><USER24> Solarflare has a whitepaper on accelerating memcached: [http://10gbe.blogspot.com/2014/12/memcached-3x-faster- than-i...](http://10gbe.blogspot.com/2014/12/memcached-3x-faster-than- intel.html)

I just whipped this up in 5 minutes and didn't do much of the tuning there (e.g. no isolcpus or interrupt changes), but here's a single-client 1024-byte SET redis-benchmark running against localhost with and without TCP Loopback Acceleration... redis 2.8.4 on a dual E5-2630 @ 2.30GHz, card is SFN5122F but this is all loopback. I'm not claiming anything and just doing it because somebody pondered...

       * plain jane
      /usr/bin/redis-server
      redis-benchmark -t set -q -n 1000000 -d 1024 -c 1
      SET: 21258.96 requests per second

       * unaccelerated server, unaccelerated client
       numactl --physcpubind 1,3,5 --preferred 1 /usr/bin/redis-server
       numactl --physcpubind=7,9 --preferred 1  redis-benchmark -t set -q -n 100000 -d 1024 -c 1
      SET: 14293.88 requests per second

       * TCP loopback accelerated server, unaccelerated client
      EF_NAME=hn EF_TCP_SERVER_LOOPBACK=2 EF_TCP_CLIENT_LOOPBACK=2 onload -p latency numactl --physcpubind 1,3,5   --preferred 1 /usr/bin/redis-server
      numactl --physcpubind=7,9 --preferred 1  redis-benchmark -t set -q -n   100000 -d 1024 -c 1
      SET: 25967.28 reque  sts per second

       * TCP loopback accelerated server, accelerated client
      EF_NAME=hn EF_TCP_SERVER_LOOPBACK=2 EF_TCP_CLIENT_LOOPBACK=2 onload -p latency numactl --physcpubind 1,3,5   --preferred 1 /usr/bin/redis-server
      EF_NAME=hn onload -p latency numactl --physcpubind=7 --preferred 1  redis-benchmark -t set -q -n 1000000 -  d 1024 -c 1
      oo:redis-benchmark[13454]: Sharing OpenOnload 201405-u1 Copyright 2006-2012 Solarflare Communications,   2002-2005 Level 5 Networks [4,hn]
      SET: 96098.41 requests per second

Edit: formatting fixes

<comment><USER23> Not bad considering its "for free". Thanks a lot for the post</comment></comment></comment>


Are There Over 9M Java Developers in the World? - <AUTHOR> http://java.dzone.com/articles/how-many-java-developers-are <comment><USER2> No. You can't take the percentage of developers in the richest, most developed and well-educated countries in the world and apply it to a population where the majority of people live in poverty.

You can't use stats from job boards because job boards have 90% of their posts from recruiters, so the same job can often appear dozens of times (not to mention dead, fake, etc. posting that plague the job industry).

The rest of the numbers are similarly flawed.</comment>


Ask HN: What is an email address worth? - <AUTHOR>

During the summer of 2009, there was a lot of buzz about the estimated value of a confirmed email address. IBM even went so far as to say an email contact is worth $948 (http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/how_much_is_that_email_contact_worth_948_say_resea.php). Since then, the topic has gone relatively quiet.<p>Given all the hacks lately seem to involve grabbing databases with large numbers of likely legit-and-used email addresses, is there potential for these hackers to be making a lot of money in the spam game? Or have those techniques and ideas gone the way of the dinosaur? And is there value to an updated approximation to the worth of a user's email address, so companies can give proper respect to the data they've been entrusted to protect? <comment><USER2> A confirmed email address is not worth $948 to IBM. What's worth $948 is an email address voluntarily submitted, saying "I am interested in IBM products. Please tell me more."

</comment><comment><USER3> Spam in the modern era is relatively easy to control. However, there are numerous other ways to make a fortune off 300k+ credible emails...

<comment><USER4> My thoughts exactly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Depends on who owns it

</comment><comment><USER6> Dollar per email</comment>


(open source) Put your alerts in version control with DogPush - <AUTHOR> http://eng.trueaccord.com/2016/07/07/put-your-alerts-in-version-control-with-dogpush/ <comment><USER2> I'm always a fan of version control...especially with something that can wake me up at 3am.</comment>


Google Pixelbook - <AUTHOR> https://store.google.com/us/product/google_pixelbook <comment><USER2> Specs: [https://store.google.com/us/product/google_pixelbook_specs](https://store.google.com/us/product/google_pixelbook_specs)

Operating System

        Chrome OS

Display

        12.3" 2400x1600 (235 ppi) Quad HD LCD display for sharper images
        Touchscreen display with Google Pixelbook Pen support1
        400 nits for using in bright areas
        72% NTSC color

1Pixelbook Pen sold separately. Audio Dual speakers • 4 mics

        Dual speakers for better surround sound
        4 mics for improved noise cancellation during video calls

Processor 7th Gen Intel® Core™ processor

Memory & Storage RAM: 8GB or 16GB

        Memory
        8GB or 16GB RAM for seamless multitasking

        Storage
        128GB, 256GB, or 512GB (which also supports NVME) Solid State Drive

Dimensions & Weight 11.4 in x 8.7 in x 0.4 in

        Dimensions
        Length: 11.4 in (290.4 mm)
        Width: 8.7 in (220.8 mm)
        Height: 0.4 in (10.3 mm)

        Weight
        1.1 kg (2.4 lbs)

Materials & Color Aluminum unibody

        Materials
        Aluminum unibody
        Glass detail with Corning® Gorilla® Glass

        Color
        Silver

Battery Use time of up to 10 hours

        41 Whr battery
        45W charger (5V/3A, 9V/3A, 15V/3A, 20V/2.25A)
        Use time of up to 10 hours1
        Fast charging: up to 2 Hrs in 15 min., or 7.5 Hrs in 60 min2
        USB-C™ 45W adaptor that also works with Pixel phones

        Wi-Fi: 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac, 2x2 (MIMO), dual-band (2.4 GHz, 5.0 GHz)
        Bluetooth® 4.2

Keyboard & Trackpad Backlit keyboard • Edge-to-edge trackpad

        Keyboard
        Backlit keys for easier typing in low light
        Full size with 19 mm pitch
        0.8 mm travel
        Google Assistant key

        Trackpad
        Edge-to-edge trackpad
        Etched glass surface

Camera

        720p @ 60FPS

Security TPM Chip

Sensors 3-axis Gyroscope • Magnetometer

        3-axis Gyroscope/Accelerometer
        Magnetometer
        Ambient Light Sensor
        Hall Effect Sensor

Ports USB-C™ • 3.5 mm headphone jack

edit: formatting!

<comment><USER3> ...what is the processsor? i7 doesn't tell you very much.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> How does that compare to Dell XPS 13 2-in-1? - Little thinner and lighter, but with worse overall specs. Plus it requires Google Account to work...

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm trying really hard to understand the market for this device.

<comment><USER6> Think of it as iPad on steroids. You get integrated keyboard, fold it 4 different ways, run all android apps.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> But does it run Linux?

Jokes aside; what's the bootloader like on these things? Can you install anything you like, or are they kinda locked down to ChromeOS? The specs look nice, and are good competition to anyone in the market for a plain ol' notebook PC.

</comment><comment><USER8> Is anyone doing web development on the chromebooks? What is your setup like, do you have any limitations?

<comment><USER9> I tried to build a site just to test how it would work on ChromeOS.. I didn't like it

But I guess that's cause I really prefer Sublime, Photoshop and a standard-ish file system structure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> $999 for a chromebook?

<comment><USER11> It can run Android apps

<comment><USER9> Until it can run windows apps in emulation - I can't see spending $1k. It does have a great looking form though.

<comment><USER11> I currently use a Pixel C for removing back to my home server(s) when travelling. It's fanless, compact and it just works. I don't think the Pixelbook is worth another $600 over this but for me it ticks all those same boxes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> As a paid up member of the Apple ecosystem I really want Apple to release something like this. I am sure it would do very well. They could call it the "MacBookPad Pro" or maybe just a "MacPad"...</comment>