Amazon EC2 Pricing Changes Effective April 1, 2014 - <AUTHOR> http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/pricing/effective-april-2014/ <comment><USER3> Something we should always remember when considering the implications and hermeneutics of AWS pricing (from Brad Stone's book):

Bill Miller, the chief investment officer at Legg Mason Capital Management and a major Amazon shareholder, asked Bezos at the time about the profitability prospects for AWS. Bezos predicted they would be good over the long term but said that he didn't want to repeat "Steve Jobs's mistake" of pricing the iPhone in a way that was so fantastically profitable that the smartphone market became a magnet for competition.

</comment><comment><USER4> This is huge. Startups everywhere are huge beneficiaries of this price war between Amazon and Google over the future of cloud computing.

<comment><USER5> Let's just hope they all stay in business so we don't end up with only one player in the market...who can then jack up prices at will.

<comment><USER6> Welcome to Amazon's long-term business model.

<comment><USER7> In some respects it's Google's model too. They gave away Google Apps free to small businesses for years as they pursued Microsoft's Exchange Server market. At first Google Apps was free for up to 100 users, then 50, then 10. Now they charge $5 per user per month for new plans. Legacy pricing is grandfathered so they didn't really piss anybody off in the process, but it seems pretty clear the strategy was to subsidize the product and accumulate market share.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I just reserved a series of heavy-utilization m3.xlarge instances for roughly $30k. Apparently, if I had waited a month, I could have saved about $13k because of these price reductions.

I can't help but feel that I got really fucked by poor timing that I couldn't control. It would hurt so much less if these price changes were more gradual and somewhat consistent (perhaps monthly).

<comment><USER9> It's worth calling and talking to your sales rep about this. I've found AWS to be surprisingly accommodating with pricing.

<comment><USER10> I accidentally ran a spot instance for $70 an hour for two hours due to my less-then-smart configuration. They refunded me.

:)

<comment><USER11> That says a lot for their customer service. I know a lot of companies that would have had more of a "you break it, you buy it" style attitude. Good on them!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Wow the c3.8x large drops by almost a dollar/hr.

Cheers to Google.

</comment><comment><USER13> I would be so happy if Heroku passed along these price cuts to their customers, but based on past AWS price cuts, I'm not holding my breath.

<comment><USER14> Heroku hasn't changed pricing since they launched, actually. The only historical price reference I quickly found was that the EC2 was $0.085/hr for (what is now called) an m1.small[1].

Heroku launched with $0.05/hr pricing.

Amazon's new m1.small pricing is $0.044/hr, nearly a 50% price drop over four years.

Heroku still is $0.05/hr, the same price as when it launched. Heroku runs on EC2.

[1] [http://www.sunsetlakesoftware.com/2010/09/15/how-run- drupal-...](http://www.sunsetlakesoftware.com/2010/09/15/how-run-drupal- amazon-ec2-using-new-micro-instance)

<comment><USER15> Uh, did I miss something here? Sounds like Heroku was actually cheaper than the raw EC2 rate when it launched, and is now just over half a cent per hour more.

<comment><USER16> Heroku prices are per "dyno" which are significantly less powerful than an EC2 small.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I see that the prices on the M3 instances dropped a bit more than the prices on the M1 instances did, so they are encouraging us customers even more to move from the older HHD based instances to the newer, faster SSD based instances.

<comment><USER18> M1 is older hard drives and M3 is SSD? Didn't know that

<comment><USER19> Yeah, but keep in mind it's only applicable if you use instance-based storage (which you declare when you spin up the instance). If you use an EBS mount it's a moot point.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> This is crazy. The savings we'll see from this alone are enough for another full-time dev or two.

<comment><USER21> How many instances do you run? At $17.52 saved per year for m1.small that means you must be running over 10k instances to save enough for another full- time dev or two... if your devs are located in SF area.

<comment><USER20> We're currently spending about $20k/month on EC2 and are about to migrate a bunch of our colos over. Between what we are spending and what we're budgeting to spend with our new architecture, we're looking at a couple devs/year savings (Victoria, BC)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Competition is amazing. Cheers to free markets :)

</comment><comment><USER23> Let us hope that RDS prices also drop as a result of this. It's enough of a value for us at the current price rates to be happy with it, but there will need to be some decrease to make sure that it makes financial sense over straight self-managed EC2.

<comment><USER24> RDS prices dropping too.

[http://aws.amazon.com/rds/pricing/effective- april-2014/](http://aws.amazon.com/rds/pricing/effective-april-2014/)

<comment><USER23> Thanks, good sir! This is exciting!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Any time something is announced for April 1, I always have to take a minute to figure out if it's a joke or not. If I wanted to make a change for my company beginning in April, I think I would announce the planned date as April 2nd just to avoid any confusion.

<comment><USER26> Yeah, I have the exact same thing. I actually hate April 1st for this exact reason. I try to stay off all forums even, just to avoid confusion.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> The most striking thing to me is that they seem to be aggressively motivating people to longer reservations. For RDS they only dropped prices for on-demand (which is still expensive) and 3 year, heavy utilization instances.

<comment><USER28> Where do you see the new pricing for RDS?

<comment><USER29> Here [http://aws.amazon.com/rds/pricing/effective- april-2014/](http://aws.amazon.com/rds/pricing/effective-april-2014/)

<comment><USER28> Thanks - This is fantastic news for us. A quick calculation says we'll save about 30% on our next bill. RDS makes up a big chunk of that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> j-rom Just out of curiosity, why would one choose AWS over Digital Ocean? Isn't DO considerably cheaper?

<comment><USER30> DO's "internal" networking/security group support is still immature. I use DO for personal stuff, but at work we use AWS.

Just never EBS. Ever.

<comment><USER31> What's wrong with EBS? And for what usage?

<comment><USER32> Most of AWS's major outages have been related to EBS. Although outages can happen to any hosting provider, and I am sure they have fixed the previous issues. So EBS should get more stable over time and it is already quite stable.

The performance of EBS is pretty bad, and getting decent performance is expensive. Having said that, if your application runs in memory and disk usage is infrequent then it is probably fine to use EBS. EBS is also much more expensive than the instance storage, but it is also durable unlike instance storage.

On the whole, "never ever EBS" is too strong language making it incorrect. As usual, it depends.

<comment><USER33> From what I've seen/heard/experienced, Provisioned IOPS largely addressed the issues with inconsistent performance.

<comment><USER32> Yes but it is very expensive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Just to make sure I'm reading this right, the upfront reservation fees are higher, but the reserved hourly rates dropped a good bit. It's cheaper over the duration of the reservation, but you owe more of the term upfront.

Given this tidbit, might you reserve an instance now, pay the lower fee, but still take advantage of the new hourly rates on April 1? Or are you locked in at whatever rate your reservation is for?

<comment><USER34> You're locked into whatever rate your reservation is for. This is why you see rate fluctuations on the marketplace for the same instance type. It's also why a 3 year reservation may not make sense.

<comment><USER23> That makes sense, thanks for the clarification.

Bummer, though. We _just_ reserved a multi-AZ m3.large RDS instance last week. I wish AWS would take up Google's system of graduated price reductions over steady run duration.

<comment><USER34> The other fun tidbit is on heavy reservations you pay per-hour even if you're not using the machine. That's not the case for the light or medium. So keep that in mind when planning out your reservations.

When we switched off EC2 it was financially advantageous to basically give away our heavy instances on the marketplace just to shed the liability.

<comment><USER23> After this latest round of price cuts, I'm starting to question whether I even want to reserve instances on the lower end. An m3.medium is about $52/month on demand vs $35/month (amortized over 12 months with a 1-year heavy usage reservation).

In this example, it becomes a question of whether it's worth saving $130'ish a year for the liability that a 1-year m3.medium heavy util reservation represents. At the lower end, that's not a huge amount of liability, but it may be a case where I just don't bother reserving m3.mediums anymore because it's a wash.

<comment><USER35> Maybe my math is off, but I calculated $35/mo for medium utilization m3.medium vs $32/mo for heavy utilization. In that case, I don't think a heavy utilization reservation makes sense but a medium utilization reservation still might (as you're saving ~$20/mo over on-demand).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Dear AWS, could we also get a price drop on Cloudfront bandwidth ?

</comment><comment><USER37> That only took one day! This competition looks good for the future.

<comment><USER38> I wouldn't be surprised if this was Google-motivated, but since there was an AWS summit today, it could have also been very coincident timing.

<comment><USER39> Amazon must've known the Google Cloud price reduction was coming.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Whoops, sounds like bitter (but still good) news for companies like ours that have million-dollar contracts of reserved instances. If we were to grab our reserved instances right now instead of a few months ago, we'd have saved more than half a million over the next year. Bleh.

<comment><USER41> There are a bunch of calculators to compare reserved vs. on demand pricing, but it just occurred to me that they should really be comparing reserved vs. _predicted_ on demand pricing, taking into account inevitable future price drops. Instead of locking in savings, reserved instances are really locking in today's high prices.

<comment><USER42> The trouble I'm in is that I have to buy RIs for a particular workload to ensure that the instances are there when I need them (and so I don't get "Sorry, we're full" error).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> DO still seems way cheaper for my usage though, but it's good to see Amazon dropped prices.

</comment><comment><USER44> Anyone have a sense of how long this price war could feasibly go on? What's happening at the cost side for GOOG / AMZN? How much do you reckon its costs the on the margin for extra cores, memory etc?

</comment><comment><USER45> Hmm, the micro instances don't seem to have changed ($0.020/hr).

<comment><USER46> I was just thinking that, the micro EC2 is now becoming more and more devalued as the higher ones get closer to it's price per performance. I was hoping for us to be able to spin up Beanstalk apps a little cheaper though and it is the cheapest server option and $50/app vs Heroku is a bit expensive since it requires the ELB. I wouldn't mind it all if they had a way to deploy multiple apps using the EC2 servers and ELB you setup though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> I'm very impressed with Amazon's scale and their ability to produce such low prices. Whilst many SaaS vendors (and even traditional brick and mortar business) seemingly keep on increasing prices because of "inflationary" pressures and whatnot... Amazon just keeps on showing - the consumers are being taken for a ride by the rest of the businesses out there.

<comment><USER48> There's no relationship between Amazon's AWS pricing and pricing for goods and services in other markets.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> It's interesting how all of the focus of this discussion is Google, Amazon, and Heroku. Why hasn't RedHat's OpenShift gained more mindshare? It's not a bad platform, although I've found their support leaves something to be desired. It's also priced very competitively for small apps (you get 3 nodes free).

</comment><comment><USER50> Does anyone know if these pricing changes are retroactive for customers that have already purchased the reserved instances?

<comment><USER51> Not usually.

It's pretty much Caveat emptor with them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> I'm hoping the storage price drops will in return let Dropbox lower its prices to compete with Google Drive.

</comment><comment><USER53> Thank you, Google.

</comment><comment><USER54> Will there be any change to minimum spot instance pricing?

As far as I know this minimum is set by Amazon, but I don't see that pricing listed in the announcement here.

</comment><comment><USER55> ec2 pricing is just a small piece of the whole bill. but it is great to see the price drops, thanks google!

wonder if there would be price battle on bandwidth.

<comment><USER56> There seems to be price reductions everywhere (RDS, S3, etc.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> We are in the middle of deracking and throwing out (no kidding) some 3+ year old machines at my work. Care to take a guess at what a 3+ year old machine's specs are? Cause I know you don't have a chance at getting it right.

Dell C1100 1U (almost 4 years old) 2x 6core with HT, 24 active threads 144 GB RAM 10x 300 15k SAS

I think there are very few use cases where Amazon makes sense. Their VMs are very expensive, and under powered for what you pay.

<comment><USER58> And yet, very rational people, with full understanding of the costs of both environments, and pretty detailed spreadsheets (I've spoken with them) continue to buy into PaaS/IaaS offerings aggressively.

For the most part, it's because the cost of hardware isn't the only factor, but the flexibility, ability to rapidly scale (and descale), and, most importantly, the fact that Amazon takes care of all the dirty network engineering/system administration work required to keep the plumbing working.

But, hey, that's the great thing about the free market - <USER2> company/individual gets to make the choices that are most advantageous for themselves. I wouldn't be surprised that in regions where network engineers/sysadmins make less than $125-$150K/year, and there isn't a need to turn up a dozen servers overnight, (and, turn them off the night after that) - that AWS/Azure/GCS isn't attractive. But, clearly, for others, it is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> GPU instances for $0.65 an hour. Wow!

<comment><USER60> It's the old price - no discount for g2 instances ;(

<comment><USER59> It's been a while since I looked, but I recall GPU prices being around $2 and hour (and thus writing them off).

<comment><USER60> $2 per hour are cluster compute instances with 2 NVIDIA Tesla M2050 GPUs ("Fermi" GF100) GPUs. g2 instances are smaller with NVIDIA GRID GPUs ("Kepler" GK104).

\- G2 popular use cases: Game streaming, 3D application streaming, and other server-side graphics workloads.

\- CG1 popular use cases: Computational chemistry, rendering, financial modeling, and engineering design.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> My reaction is Heroku should drop their price too.

</comment><comment><USER62> Last time I priced this out for a personal project it was half the price just to build something at home... if I didn't already own the setup this would be pretty great.

</comment><comment><USER63> I love market competition. :)

</comment><comment><USER64> Your move, Microsoft Azure.

</comment><comment><USER65> There went most of the rabbits out of Bezo's hat for re:Invent 2015.

</comment><comment><USER66> how are they still making profits ?

<comment><USER67> They're _not_ making profits. Most quarters they are only slightly profitable. Current P/E is 582, which is astronomically high. E.g. for comparison Apple's P/E is 13.

But that's been Amazon's strategy for almost two decades. Their goal is to instead grow their business. Currently they are at $74 Billion / year in revenue, and still increasing. Once they stop their massive spending on growth, they will (presumably) be able to increase their profits.

</comment></comment><comment><USER68> "Effective April 1 2014, Google should go fuck itself" \-- Bezos

</comment><comment><USER69> Remember, you get what (the reliability, service) you pay for.

And what happens when AWS is no longer a revenue source?

Shareholder (owner)'s decision: cut it.

<comment><USER70> In my experience, unless you are paying for EC2 service in the form of a support plan then there is no service to speak of.

Not a big deal if you are running a business but pretty significant ($588/year) if you are doing personal dev work.</comment></comment>


How Some Men Fake an 80-Hour Workweek, and Why It Matters - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/05/upshot/how-some-men-fake-an-80-hour-workweek-and-why-it-matters.html

<comment><USER2> Preferential treatment of seemingly busy employees is not limited to high- octane firms. I worked for an electric utility for a few years as an analyst, and it didn't matter that I finished my job in two hours per day. I can't leave early or work remotely because my peers might _feel badly_. I can't do the work of three people for a a modest pay increase of 50% because every manager wants their team to grow! How else will they show that they can manage just as many people as a VP? I can't use my extra time to automate tedious processes because "then what will everyone do?"

Every manager up the chain wants to look busy, important, and essential. The easiest way to do that is force everyone below them to run around like chickens with their heads cut off, lamenting how far behind they are on email. "If only we could hire more people," they cry. Even the investor interests don't align with efficiency, because the company is regulated and earns a fixed ROI.

It's an incredibly self-sustaining culture. If everyone believes you have to act like a maniac to demonstrate your import - and you have the gall not to spend all your energy pretending - it's reflected in both your reviews and particularly your upward mobility. Everyone in management has a vested interest in keeping up the charade, and you certainly don't want your peers and their department's laid-back productivity call that into question.</comment>


Andy Weir's Best Seller 'The Martian' Gets a Classroom-Friendly Makeover - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/24/business/andy-weirs-best-seller-the-martian-gets-a-classroom-friendly-makeover.html?_r=0 <comment><USER2> Having read the book something like five times now[0] I'm actually okay with this.

The swearing and cursing does make it a better book, but removing that doesn't remove the beauty of it. The film adaptation was okay without it (though it lost some scenes I'd have loved it to have included, and I'm only somewhat okay with Matt Damon in the lead role).

Kids with cool parents will buy them the better version, and they'll get to show it off to their friends. Now it's not about who is reading the book, but who's reading the cool version of it.

[0] I bought it as a KDP novel for $0.99, somewhere between it being a free book online and it being picked up by a mainstream publisher. Every now and then I want to re-read some small part of it, and accidentally re-read it all. One of my favourite books, honestly.

<comment><USER3> PG-13 movies are allowed two uses of the word "fuck." _The Martian_ had Matt Damon use them fairly early on, first, when Watney yanks the piece of the antenna out of himself ("FUCK!"), and second, when he makes up his mind to survive ("Fuck you, Mars"). They allude to its use in many other places, though, such as the memorable shot from _outside_ the Rover where you can clearly see his lips saying "What the fuck? What the fuck?" Then there was some "censored" text in the chat logs, a reference to Watney telling the botanists to "have sex with themselves," and so forth.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Wow I think we all need to step back and chill when it comes to swears. It's actually a _really_ brilliant book in its current form, why would you change it for kids for the sake of a few minor swear words that the kids probably know better than you anyways.

<comment><USER5> It's hard playing moral arbiter. On the one hand, you want to make it accessible to as many students as possible as well as teach them the core of what you want. You could probably replace much of the cursing without changing the underlying narrative.

But I also totally understand your point. Why is every marvel movie jam packed with gratuitous violence. To the point where fighting is the entire point of the narrative. Characters will die in fantastic ways but is still equally traumatizing. But portraying love or swearing is too adult for children. Makes no sense to me.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, I see what you mean. But while the profanity probably could be removed, I think it would really _take_ something from the character. The swears give the story a real, raw feel somehow -- they really make you feel as if it's actually happening.

He talks like the rest of us, not like a robot.

<comment><USER6> There are plenty of people who don't really swear though. If Weir was cool with the changes, he must've felt like the profanity wasn't crucial to the story.

<comment><USER4> Well it could be argued that the author's intention is no more correct than the audience's interpretation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> What's up with kids and swearing?

I remember from being a kid that the etiquette I quickly figured out was that kids don't swear around adults and adults don't swear around kids. Where does this come from? Are there any anthropological studies about this?

Kids around kids can swear as much as they like, same with adults around adults, and they use exactly same swears, maybe adults with more awareness where did the swearwords came from, since they have better understanding of sex.

I swore much worse and much more as a kid than I do as an adult (I curbed my swearing around high-school). I haven't met an adult that swore as much as we did as kids.

<comment><USER8> Swearing is artificially powerful language, and kids are especially prone to abusing any shred of power they can get (because of fully justified insecurity about how much power they have). So if you allow swearing it they'd just ruin the artificial language power hierarchy for everybody.

Devil's advocate: maybe they should!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's good that kids will get to read this as part of their class, but America as a country needs to relax when it comes to swearing. How much damage can reading the word fuck do to someone who is 13-18 years old?

<comment><USER10> I believe that constant swearing is inappropriate. As a matter of fact, in that book it decreased believability for me. An educated astronaut, faced with a possible extinction, would want to leave a worthy testament/diary, and not an expletive-riddled notes.

<comment><USER11> I felt the opposite actually. To me, the swearing made it more believable -- sure, the guy is leaving a diary, but for all he knows, nobody will ever find it. Being stranded on Mars and facing one's own death seems like the _perfect_ occasion for swearing.

I thought the swearing in that book was very tastefully done. For me it added a bit of lightness and humor to the whole thing. I'm actually pretty disappointed that they cut so many of the swears from the movie.

<comment><USER4> This. The profanity, in my opinion, is really well used in the book. It gives it a raw and authentic feel that you wouldn't otherwise get. You can really see yourself there because he's talking like a human, not some politically correct ideal of a person.

<comment><USER12> I think your point is fair, but there are also some humans (who are not just politically correct ideals) who don't lace their speech or writing with swears, even under duress or stressful conditions - they're still talking like humans, too. It would be no less raw or authentic if the character was one of these people.

To be clear, the character is a foul-mouthed variety of person. But if he weren't, and the book were absent of swearing, it would not seem any less authentic to me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> To be honest, I was actually distracted by the the swearing because it really was unnecessary writing. Like there are places where as an editor I would have told him to cut it too. --E.g., when he finds out what re-runs his crew member has and immediately follows the sentence with some cursing. It just would have been better with a lot of other literary devices.

Although some books will lose something if you subtract the harsher language, this is not one of them.

<comment><USER14> It's not necessary in any real sense, but a foul-mouthed astronaut who doesn't swear isn't a foul-mouthed astronaut. It's a trait that works well with the character's irreverent attitude.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> It's simple. The teacher/school would have to get permission from parents. Many parents would refuse to give permission. This would force the teacher/school to provide alternative material. That becomes a pain when part of the class is reading one thing and part is reading a different thing. Its just easier to avoid the situation all together by either "sanitizing" the book or using a different book.

By the way, thanks for the link. I just ordered a classroom version of the book for my kids to read (yes, I would be one of those parents who wouldn't give permission for their kids to read the original version.)

</comment><comment><USER16> Picking battles and all that. I don't think it's worth keeping this book out of the hands of more kids for the sake of a few swear words. It's not exactly Catcher in the Rye.

</comment><comment><USER17> The important part of the book isn't the swearing, it's the science and engineering. This isn't William S. Burroughs.

</comment><comment><USER18> Do other English-speaking countries deal with this absurd demonization of commonly-heard curse words?

<comment><USER19> Yeah this wouldn't be allowed in UK schools because of the swearing. "Crap" would be allowed, and "shit" might be in the context of a piece of literature being reviewed in an English class, but in a science class there's no need for it and it is considered inappropriate for children. For context, saying 'the f-word' or equivalent in earshot of a teacher would usually result in punishment.

<comment><USER4> That's not true. I just went through secondary education in the UK and we've studied pieces of literature with quite raw swears in them. It's not a massive issue.

<comment><USER19> As I said in my answer, literature study is the place where it would be acceptable, but it wouldn't be appropriate in a science class where the point is not analysing the language.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Why? The inner monologue with all its swearing is what made the book what it is. It's hilarious, witty AND you get to learn actual engineering.

</comment><comment><USER21> This makes me think of Peter Watts' experiences regarding making one of _his_ books 'classroom-friendly' [1]. Briefly, a high-school teacher wanted to use his _Blindsight_ in her English class, and got his reluctant permission to produce a censored version. It never got off the ground, because there was parental protest at teaching from a book that at one point had profanity in it.

[1] [http://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=6879](http://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=6879)

</comment><comment><USER22> There have been several businesses that filter or skip over swearing and other content in movies.

Somewhat interesting, all 3 started in Utah.

[https://www.vidangel.com/news/mission/](https://www.vidangel.com/news/mission/)

[https://try.clearplay.com/what-is-clearplay/](https://try.clearplay.com/what- is-clearplay/)

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

</comment><comment><USER23> Yeah. Let's water down the shit out of this. It's a fantastic book even without the profanity and if this is required to get it into the classroom, well, then so be it. The original language makes it even more attractive to some younger readers though. "I'm pretty much fucked." as the very first sentence? Cool, I'll keep on reading.

</comment><comment><USER24> Try going to any social media outlets like Instagram or Twitter or Snapchat and suddenly swear words like "fuck" and "crap" will seem normal. These kids have access to social media these days. Innocence was long gone with the advent of open social media. Good luck modern parents.

</comment><comment><USER25> Honestly, all the swearing is pretty good training for future jobs. In my experience, engineers swear almost as much as financial analysts and sailors. "It behaves fucky" is probably our most used technical term.

</comment><comment><USER26> My son read it in 3rd grade, after I helped him read the first chapter. It was the first adult book he'd ever read. He was so excited to then be able to see the movie.

I'm wildly supportive of the PG version of the book. There are a lot of prudish parents out there, and public schools naturally have to be inclined toward folks who complain the most.

It would be tragic to allow a few bad words to keep such an inspiring book from millions of children who wouldn't see it otherwise.

</comment><comment><USER27> If I buy The Martian in a year will I get the normal version of the safe for our precious children version? If I buy it on Kindle will it magically update in the future to protect my brain from the badness?

Or will there be an adult version and a child version?

IDK, I find this kind of thing really stupid and pointless[1], but then again I don't have kids so I doubt my opinion matters on the subject to those that do.

[1] Kids swear like trains when they're 10, or these days probably younger.

</comment><comment><USER28> All the people here saying "I don't get what the big deal with the swear words is" are far more stupid than the teachers who went and got the changes made so they could actually use the damn book in their classrooms.

When millions of people have some harmless feeling you think is irrational, the thing to do is work around it, not whine about it on Hacker News.

<comment><USER29> No, the teachers are idiots who would censor literature "for the greater good".

The people who have a problem with a kid (I'm guessing this would be 8th grade plus?, so teenagers) reading a few swear words in a book need to get over it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> So somebody just locked in a made-for-school monopoly on the 'safe' text, and schools will now likely pay a premium. All to protect middle/high schools students from swear words they can hear in the halls everyday.

</comment><comment><USER31> I hope we get a sanitized version of Django Unchained for my high school U.S. history students. It really is a good story, but the constant use of the N-word is a problem.

<comment><USER32> Yeah, just like Huckleberry Finn. Obviously those kinds of works need to go through the censors before we can let children near them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Kind of a travesty. It's nothing these kids wouldn't hear on the school bus every day.

<comment><USER34> Kids need models of appropriate behavior. They don't need models of inappropriate behavior -- they've already got it.

<comment><USER35> I think it is important for people to occasionally remember that the concept of what is "appropriate" is completely made up.

<comment><USER36> Well lets all walk around class naked and defecate in the trash cans then.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: HNTrends – Google Trends, but for Hacker News - <AUTHOR> http://hntrends.com/

<comment><USER2> Nice!

Do you use one of the HN APIs or do you have all HN posts stored locally?

I am a bit confused about the interface. Sometimes I get charts and sometimes I don't. The "Yearly" and "Monthly" links don't work for me. I am using Firefox.

It would also be nice to have a percentage view that gives relative numbers.

The results are somewhat fuzzy. For example "coder" and "coders" give the exact same graph. Looks like "coders" also finds posts that don't contain "coders" at all but only "coder".

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi Xbys.

Yeah, I used [http://blog.ycombinator.com/hacker-news- api](http://blog.ycombinator.com/hacker-news-api) to download the data into a postgres database, which I then uploaded to cloudsearch to power the trend analyzer. Cloudsearch maps words that are close to each other (ex :coder and coders) and searches the text of both.

Thanks for the suggestion RE: relative numbers. Since HN is growing, it's hard to tell which topics are growing on a relative basis to HN's population.

Looking into your firefox bug right now, hopefully Ill be able to reproduce it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Hey, Ron Paul isn't cited in your selection of presidential candidates (Republicans 2012), but he is the winner: [http://hntrends.com/search/john+mccain,mitt+romney,ron+paul/...](http://hntrends.com/search/john+mccain,mitt+romney,ron+paul/yearly/1000)

Also, this is great and awesome. Very nice work.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks Jaf for pointing that out, I'll update the suggested list.</comment></comment>


Show HN: I created a tool to expand Gmail into a full featured task manager - <AUTHOR> https://www.centask.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hey HN

I suggest a new way to organize & schedule your inbox, tasks and ideas. Recently imported Centask into google app script.

Thanks in advance, Moti

</comment><comment><USER2> Looks really well thought through! I'll give it a go and feedback.

What did you use to record your GIFs, by the way?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, unused an online video to gif converter ezgif.com</comment></comment>


Why I bet £900k on the Scottish referendum - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-29314400 <comment><USER2> The author focuses on why "No" would probably win but the determining factor should have been whether his assessment of the actual odds were better than the bookmaker's implied odds.

<comment><USER3> The bet was close to even odds. Also since this was a one time bet, with the downside of (probably) him never betting again, even if it payed out 10x the money he bet, you would still want to be pretty sure you were right -- and not just "making the right bet" since the downsides far outweigh the upsides. This isn't "on a long enough timeline" bet, it is a "I need to be correct this time" bet.

<comment><USER2> It wasn't even odds but I agree about "picking up nickels in front of steamrollers".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> To all the UK HN readers here. I grew up in Australia and live in the US. When I visit the UK I'm staggered by just how much you can bet on _everything_ As I go home I've noticed it is more prevalent there now too then when I grew up there. Do people in the UK discuss how mad the UK are about betting? Or do they not think they are particularly? Is there any sort of active discussion in terms of how healthy it is? I'm not for outlawing gambling or drinking or prostitution but to think that there aren't a meaningful % of addicts for whom this easy access destroys their life is also naive. Does that come into play at all?

<comment><USER5> As someone who has family in the UK and Australia, I'd say the gambling system is worse in Australia (New South Wales). Pubs with wall to wall one armed bandits (pokies). The most you'd see in a pub in the UK is one.

<comment><USER6> But casino gambling--including slot machines--has almost nothing to do with chance. You are as certain as can be to lose if you play long enough.

With betting on things like the Scottish referendum there is a chance for an informed bettor to best the game, and people actually do this. There have been cases in Canada of people making a living on sports betting, to the extent that they got in trouble with Canada Revenue over whether their winnings were due to "chance" or "skill" (which are taxed differently.)

Bookies cannot be experts on everything, so particularly for a one-off like Scottish independence the odds of an informed bettor making money are not bad.

So the comparison of gambling behaviour depends very much on the kind of gambling being done. If it is conventional casino gambling it is simply losers paying to lose--the converse outcome is simply too low probability to be worth mentioning (for comparison: sure... it's possible to jump out of an aircraft without a parachute and survive, but it isn't an eventually anyone ever takes into account when faced with the practical choice, so it isn't clear why anyone takes into account the possibility of being a winner when faced with the choice of casino gambling.)

In sports betting and betting on odd-ball events, on the other hand, it is at least theoretically possible for a well-informed bettor to win (but realistically: you are probably not that bettor, so it pays to be very cautious and never, ever bet more than you can afford to lose, because you will sometimes lose.)

<comment><USER7> > But casino gambling--including slot machines--has almost nothing to do with > chance.

Yes, it does.

> You are as certain as can be to lose if you play long enough.

That doesn't mean that the individual instances of gambling have nothing to do with chance -- its a product of the aggregation of the effects of chance. Given an infinite number of iterations of any random gambling scenario, you are eventually going to hit a losing streak sufficient to consume your entire bankroll (the size of the bankroll relative to the stake in any given iteration affects how many iterations it takes before you are more likely than not to have hit this point, but that's about it.)

But the existence of this effect (Gambler's Ruin) doesn't mean that the type of gambling has nothing to do with chance -- indeed, it only applies _because_ gambling is about chance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Do any businesses regularly use betting markets such as this for hedging? If so, that could have certainly moved the odds to give great odds to a "no" bet.

Some businesses could have been severely negatively impacted by a yes vote, so they can hedge against that risk by betting on 'yes'. Is that sort of thing done? Is it legal? Or do they just use different markets for this sort of thing? Buying or selling futures contracts on the pound could be highly correlated with the vote outcome.

<comment><USER9> As he alluded to in the article, the bookies were not prepared for the large sum of money that he wanted to wager - in total. These sort of prop bets typically don't allow for such a larger amount to be wagered.

<comment> at-fates-hands Not sure if he knew or not, but with so much juice on a "no" vote, he would've single handily moved the numbers too much in his favor.

The art of being a good bookie is making sure you have action on both sides of a bet - that way you never lose. By taking that much heat on an obscure bet would cause a lot of people to either move all of their money to one side, or everybody would be spooked and cancel all their bets.

If the bookie were to take that bet like he wanted to, it would have put him out of business either way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> So just to be clear, if he wins he makes 22.22~% profit (200K), if he loses then he's out 900K (100% loss). While that is a great ROV (relative to both interest and or the stock market), it does seem like the stake was too high relative to the reward.

Could they not have taken that money, purchased a couple of homes (e.g. 2x 275k), renovated them up to modern standards (e.g. 2x 60-85K), and then resold them? A lot of people do that and it has a very high ROV also (as people get into bidding wars more easily on "ready to move into" property Vs. ones in need of renovation).

Plus with the property thing you always ultimately have the property/land which can be sold. So the risk isn't really 100% of the properties' value, it is at most the difference between purchase price and raw land value. Even in the 2008 recession a lot of people in the property game did "alright."

<comment><USER11> You could definitively answer how much he should have bet using what's known as the 'Kelly criterion.' Basically you need to consider the total wealth of the individual and the edge they believe they have (ie. bookies offer odds at 4/1 while the gambler reckons it's longer).

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

Whether this was a rational bet depends on how good he thought is edge was (perhaps allowing for some margin of error) and how rich he already is.

<comment><USER12> The Kelly criterion applies for repeated bets. It optimizes the logarithmic expected winnings. I am not sure how it applies for a single bet. I guess it depends on one's like or dislike of risk.

<comment><USER11> I was wondering about that but I don't see how it wouldn't apply. In a series of bets it guarantees you wont go bust and will maximise your long term winnings (I'm probably missing some subtleties here so corrections welcome). But the whole concept can be traced back to a letter/essay by one of the Bernoulli family, in which the example was a one off bet.

One other thing: it has always bothered me that people should have a 'like or dislike of risk.' Something about the concept doesn't sit right with me, unless we're talking about having an adrenaline rush. That's why I liked the Kelly criterion - it takes all notion of personal preference out of the picture and gives you a universal formula.

<comment><USER13> It's not that there's a like or dislike of risk.

Preference orderings are either (locally) convex or concave. Risk aversion is just that, a preference ordering over mean/variance bundles.

There was an econ textbook that gave a memorable example of a (qualified) exception to convexity: ice-cream and olives. Usually I'll want to have ice cream and olives in my fridge, but I don't want them at once! - so pure ice- cream would be prefered to a mix of them at my plate, right now.

Risk aversion does not imply, on its own, that you don't want risk at all. It implies that you want some mix of risky and non-risky assets; while concavity towards risk would imply you want either one or the other.

The problem with making risk aversion/convexity work with lotteries and such is that the price you're supposed to pay for lotteries is off your utility surface. But: since lottery tickets and small bets are relatively small in the context of your budget, one can figure that the mispricing in your overall mean/variance bundle is small, and that the emotion of betting may be the case of not wanting to optimize for a grey wall, an optimal mixture.

Finally, re: universal formulae, I think you'd profit from reading Elie Ayache's _The Blank Swan_.

<comment><USER11> But... why should anyone have a different 'preference' from another person?

Thanks for the book recommendation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I would like to know how much Deutsche Bank had bet on the referendum, or rather on Sterling. They released a research report saying the case for No was overwhelming, a week before the vote. Sterling had just been rocked by the one poll that put Yes ahead (after a series of tightening polls). Implied volatility jumped up. Had they neglected to hedge their currency exposure?

<comment><USER14> NOTE: the difference was ~5% which means that once again financial crooks don't know nothing about the subject at hand.

Why should they? In case they lose the bet, German taxpayer will pay. Business as usual.

<comment><USER15> Uh, no, the difference was actually higher than 10%.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_independence_referendu...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_independence_referendum,_2014#Totals)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Where would one even go to place such a bet?

Also, how can you assess the counter-party risk here? You're letting someone hold the equivalent of $1.4MM for some number of weeks/months; there has to be some risk that they will default on what is effectively a loan. Can you purchase an insurance policy on something like this?

<comment><USER17> In this case they went to William Hill, an 80 year-old publicly listed and regulated company that made >£200M in profit off £1.5bn revenue last year.

The counterparty risk was negligible, especially compared with the rather high risk the pollsters all made systematic errors in their surveys (it's not particularly difficult to imagine a scenario in which people with a stated intention to vote _for_ independence turned out to be _much_ more likely to actually bother to vote; actually the main reason why I didn't try the lower risk, lower return version of this bet and place all my liquid funds in a FTSE100 index fund or ETF the day before)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Well, I certainly don't have that much money to bet, but I wasn't surprised by the results. Just because a couple of late polls suggested that "Yes" was ahead doesn't mean much when the bulk of the polls still showed "No" in the lead. You have to understand that the polls only sample a (relatively) small number of people and therefore, when taken individually, have large margins of error that are sadly rarely reported. You have to consider all of the polls together as a set.

<comment><USER19> If I were the UK government, I would have paid for a last minute "YES" poll : Just to jolt the NO voters into going to vote (because otherwise, they may have not bothered, seeing that the polls were all pointing their way anyway).

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Some math on this assuming the article is correct. He was offered 5:4 odds so the juice was 2.8% given what he should've won vs what he got. The 5:4 odds mean he had to be at least 44% (+2.8%) confident just to break even, moreso to make a profit.

</comment><comment><USER21> Make sure to listen to the audio clip, the button kinda blends in. They discusses some things which aren't in the text.

</comment><comment><USER22> Weird, William Hill's corporate cheques are drawn from the very same bank branch where I have my account.

</comment><comment><USER23> I don't mean to be pedantic, but it should be the "Scottish" referendum, and not "Scotish". If an admin could add the second "t" it would be greatly appreciated, at least to match the BBC article's title.

<comment><USER24> Ack! How did we miss that? Thanks!</comment></comment>


Google and Facebook under scrutiny over UK ad market dominance - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/jul/03/google-facebook-investigated-over-dominance-of-uk-digital-advertising-market <comment><AUTHOR> Key quote:

"The UK competition watchdog has launched an investigation into the way Google and Facebook collect and exploit personal data and have used their power to dominate the £13bn UK digital advertising market."</comment>


Ask HN: My 12 year old nephew wants to make a game, how do I help him? - <AUTHOR> My 12 year old nephew has shown real interest in learning how to create computer games.
How do I help him the best, is there any drag and drop free tools or games about building games?
I am a web programme and is willing to help him, but we do not live nearby so I have to be able to help him mostly by email/skype.
Any ideas and pointers will be appriciated!
PS. English is a second language to both of us, he is ok at understanding but not too complex. <comment><USER2> Definitely Scratch ([https://scratch.mit.edu/](https://scratch.mit.edu/)), I would say.

It's a drag-and-drop, graphical programming environment designed specifically for kids of that age group. It teaches them about conditionals, iteration, a bit of object-orientation, and makes it very easy to build relatively sophisticated games/animations within a pretty short amount of time.

I've had good experiences with it with kids of that age group, many really enjoy it.

<comment><USER3> I think that this is the best choice. A lot of people are recommending "real" (albeit simpler) game making tools, but I think that those would be a mistake. At 12 his biggest obstacle is going to be becoming bored, not the skill ceiling of the tool. Scratch provides that instant visual output, skips the frustration of learning syntax, and has a large online library of other's creations for inspiration and learning.

Side though: scratch style programming inside minecraft has the potential to be awesome educationally. Somebody steal this idea (unless it already exists).

<comment><USER4> [http://learntomod.com](http://learntomod.com)

My kids and I have tried it and we like it a lot. Lots of tutorials and ideas. Easily worth more than $30/year.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I recommend you try Phaser - [https://phaser.io/](https://phaser.io/) \- a JS library for EASILY creating HTML5 games. Which is gratifying. And encouraging.

I had never heard of Phaser until seven days ago. Since then, I have created a full "short-game" (avg. game time is 1-3 minutes) with all of the basic elements: a loader, start menu, object collisions and overlaps, animations, sounds, timers, scoring, etc. Nothing to sneeze at, and Phaser made it super simple.

To go along with Phaser there is the MightyEditor - [http://mightyfingers.com/](http://mightyfingers.com/) \- which is a web based open source HTML5 game editor, based on Phaser.io game engine. Essentially, it's a WYSIWYG drag-n-drop editor that generates the Phaser code in the background. I haven't used MightyEditor as I'm more of a coder, but it exists for you try.

Now, you can certainly produce more powerful games with other approaches/languages, but I doubt any will let you start developing a game right out of the box. Likely, you'll spend all of your time trying to learn the language ... that you never get around to actually making a game. With Phaser, you just start making your game.

</comment><comment><USER6> Game Maker is the best way to go at that age. I used it when I was younger and the drag and drop functionality was great. As I grew older and started learning to code, the editor let me easily start writing scripts and such to give me more control over the gameplay

</comment><comment><USER7> Speaking from my own experience, give him not a programming language, but either a game that includes a programming language, or a tool for making games that includes programming.

Game Maker is the biggest player in that market and used for tons of tiny one- off indie games, as well as lots of commercially successful and great games:

[http://www.yoyogames.com/studio](http://www.yoyogames.com/studio)

Have a look at the showcase to see what kind of games have been made with it: [http://www.yoyogames.com/showcase](http://www.yoyogames.com/showcase)

<comment><AUTHOR> Looks interesting and more challenging than scratch- I remember a drag and drop game tool on the c64 that never really caught me, but I think my nephew needs something that quickly gives him results- then he can learn to tame the instant gratification monkey later:)

<comment><USER8> I also recommend Game Maker, it's an excellent tool for what you need, you can make fully functional games quickly with only drag and drop, and when you learn enough you can dive into the code and do much more (if needed).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> What about Unity? There are plenty of example projects and easy to follow tutorials that will allow him to make something up and running that's impressive really quickly. Wouldn't expect him to make something from scratch at that age, but he could certainly amend from an existing concept. It won't necessarily help with teaching programming but it's a great start. It's what we do for work experience students and they love it.

<comment><USER10> I agree Unity is probably the best tool. It's high-level and entertaining. Plus there are hundreds of tutorials.

[http://anwell.me/articles/unity3d-flappy- bird/](http://anwell.me/articles/unity3d-flappy-bird/)

Once the passion is developed, someone will have a lot of room to grow.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> _is there any drag and drop free tools or games about building games?_

The first order help a young person needs is being taken seriously and encouragement in their process of discovery. The important conversation isn't "Use this" in it's strong or weak forms. It's the default StackOverflow comment: "What code have you tried? What error are you getting?" (perhaps in a weaker form, perhaps not, depending on the child).

Let the child own the process and understand that the most likely outcome statistically is that the actual process of creating a computer game will turn out to be unattractive as it is to a first approximation for everyone. Making games is hard for highly intelligent adults - much harder than writing a Rails app.

The mistake that I find easy to make with my own child is an unwillingness to let their interest unfold in its own time as part of the growing process. Adult interests and behaviors and skills take years to develop. The twelve year old boy will be radically different intellectually in two years...or even one. It takes patience and a long-term view and an understanding that many of a child's interests are passing. Some come back, most don't, and what tends to come back are interests that they find themselves sharing with friends. To put it another way, your nephew's English comprehension could be orders of magnitude better in five years. His understanding of mathematics most certainly will.

For concrete advice:

Provide high quality resources - the sort of durable tools and books and websites that one would give to an adult. The interest that wanes in a month at twelve may be rekindled for a year at thirteen and arise from hibernation to become a career choice at twenty four...and there sitting on the bookshelf is a weaker form of _The Art of Computer Programming_ for games.

Good luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback.

It is not the first time he has shown interest in doing something with his computer more than playing.

I understand the importance of him being motivated and doing something he can share with his friend, I will only act as a helping hand when he asks for help, it is not my project (I got my own kid who is my project;)

But thanks for the reminder!

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Close the computer.

Pick a piece of paper and a pencil and design a game with him. Create an history, define likable characters, drawn a map, set the rules, create ways to gain/loose points, add a subplot that is interesting, improve all with some plot twists and traps and maybe a small love story. Give him a book about Cornelis Escher. Ask him to draw you a city with some perspective, a forest, a yak in an ice fortress, a cliff where some parts of the game occur.

Bassically learn with him the rules to the good history tellers, and make the route enjoyable and funny for both.

Then, and only then, open the computer.

When I was young and feel bored I created perfectly playable videogames in a graph paper with space ships burning, crashing, hidding, and smashing each other. You only need a pencil and a set of rules to win/loose and it was easy to hide from the teacher if necessary.

<comment><USER13> This is such an idealised answer and just not right, don't go and sing a song about the true joy of a story well-told, effective gameplay mechanics, rules systems that work and solid plan-first software engineering principles and then finish with a lecture about how "in my we didn't need those new fangled computers, we had a world of fantasy with a pencil and paper, just as portable as your new-fangled iPad!".

Children should be listened to. Help him program a computer game, that's what he asked.

<comment><USER12> > Help him program a computer game, that's what he asked.

And this is what i'm doing, although of course different people can have different methods to achieve something. Nothing wrong with this.

If this boy just can't learn how to use a simple pencil, the problem is that he is sold about the graphic design of their game. Missing most of the fun that a game provides, like exploration or inmersion. He will be tempted to take shortcuts (falling in common pitfalls like using limited software or ending with a game that is not going to nowhere and is not fun to play). An example: Why bother to design a stupid column when you can just use the gif from another game?. The flappy bird's creator would tell us and interesting answer to this question probably.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is really cool. I'd say drop the drag and drop; he's 12, not 4.

I started programming in BASIC around 9 and C at 14, didn't speak a word of English, and didn't have internet or access to books.

How I worked was: Suppose I wanted to print something, I'd look up the verb in a dictionary for "imprimer" and would find "print", then would look that up in the help. Then would copy the example code given and run it, and then I'd change stuff and see how it'd affect the functionning of code (errors? go back to dictionary, etc). And based on the consequences of my actions, I'd deduce the role of what I changed.

I wrote a program that gave you information on a country you'd enter (population, area, capital city).. You had to type the country in capital letters because I didn't know how to do it otherwise.

He's 12 years old and he's got the internet and you! It's also a great time to improve his English.

The biggest favor you'd do for him, whether you choose a graphical or another approach, is to encourage him and make him _stick_ and never drop the ball. For me, the biggest mistake was going on and off. If I had kept at it, I'd be at least moderately good instead of sucking. You can also show him the work you are doing and make him understand that it's really not _that_ hard to get started and hopefully, at some point, he'll understand the power of this: I can make this computer do mostly anything I want! And he'll be hooked.

TL;DR: Whatever you do, make the priority for him to stick and understand the power at his fingertips.

</comment><comment><USER15> I am working with a 14 y/o who took some simple python class beforehand (so knew basic stuff functions, conditionals, loops, but no OOP).

But -- he really wanted to make "real games" with a "real programming language".

So, after asking some game dev friends, I went with FlatRedBall (it's a little bit of a GUI builder with C# code-gen).

Look at this pong tutorial to get the basics: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmHmxlljA5c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmHmxlljA5c)

It's open-source and a bit janky at times, but he's doing amazing things with it.

My process was: 1\. Do a tutorial we find on the net 2\. Think of a feature to add, add it 3\. Keep going until we get bored with the game 4\. Find another tutorial, goto 1

We did pong, flappy-bird, RockBlaster (like asteroids), and now he is doing an original -- it's a 2-D dungeon, rogue-like. We meet an hour a week, and then he does an hour or two a night on his own.

If he needs to know something about C#, we take a break and learn that in a console app.

</comment><comment><USER16> If you've an iPad, look into [http://codea.io](http://codea.io)

It's maintained by an indie game studio called Two Lives Left ([http://twolivesleft.com](http://twolivesleft.com)), which produced the excellent Cargo-Bot game -- and for that matter, let him get a feel of programming with the latter.

<comment><AUTHOR> He has an ipad so this might be better than something requiring him to boot his pc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> We built an iPad app called Toy Engine ([http://www.toyengineapp.com](http://www.toyengineapp.com)) just for this! It's free and it uses visual scripting.

You make your games using a drag-and-drop level editor (2d only) and then double tap an item to add a script to it. You can also share your levels and download levels made by other users.

</comment><comment><USER18> I got my start in programming around the same age using tools from Clickteam [1]: Klik & Play, The Games Factory, and eventually progressing to Multimedia Fusion (now Clickteam Fusion). These are all drag-and-drop tools, with graphical level editors, event loop editors, etc.

If he doesn't mind using a Windows machine for development (the actual outputs are cross-platform), I think it's a great place to start before moving on to programming languages.

[1] [http://www.clickteam.com/](http://www.clickteam.com/)

<comment><USER19> Another vote for Clickteam Fusion from me. I started writing games when I was eleven, with the predecessor The Games Factory (1.2) and that's what got me started down the road of software engineering.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> A lot of people are recommending Scratch, but I am going to recommend Construct 2. It is an awesome engine for making HTML5 games. It is visual coding so your nephew will have no problem with it. [https://www.scirra.com/](https://www.scirra.com/)

Of course, listen to what pvaldes said also. Designing a game first will be better.

Also, I would recommend Teamviewer for you guys to use so he can share his screen and you can interact with it.

</comment><comment><USER21> One of my kids started with Codea on an iPad 1 (and it still runs on that ancient hardware today!) and is quite pleased to be able to tell people she can code in Lua. Overall, it's extremely well done. However, I think it gets hard to work through high-level logic -- you start off writing code in the draw() function, doing things once per frame draw... getting to a more abstracted level has been difficult in Codea.

However, her school does some Scratch every so often, and she's taken to that too. Scratch exposes lots of levels of abstraction, and the visual editor approach makes it easy to experiment with different ways of doing things. She's done several school projects as Scratch games. (Which, to me, is way better than gluing crap to pasteboard.)

I've tried to get her started in Unity -- I teach a Unity class to new hires at work -- but it's been uphill. Too abstract, too conceptual, too much surface area. And C# has too much syntax that gets in her way.

Lua is a better language for her. But Scratch is even better: no syntax, just ideas. Also, Scratch has a lot of localizations. So, give Scratch a try!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, lot of good advice and takeaways - I think the low abstraction and drag/drop is a good teaser, also some of it is in Danish, that will help the initial learning curve being small.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Since the other commenters have mentioned a ton of great tools, programming languages, SDKs, and the like, I'll make some suggestions of a different type.

You said you'll be helping your nephew, but consider this as well: find a local group geared towards helping kids learn to program. For example, Coder Dojo([https://coderdojo.com/](https://coderdojo.com/)) has hundreds of locations all over the world. Your nephew doesn't need to be accompanied by a tech-savvy guardian or even bring a computer, usually such groups supply coaches and computers.

They are a ton of fun for all involved, and it's much, MUCH easier to learn something challenging like programming with a coach or even other students.

</comment><comment><USER23> You can try following software from MIT

Create stories, games, and animations Share with others around the world

[https://scratch.mit.edu/](https://scratch.mit.edu/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Scratch looks interesting, although it requires flash.

Will take a look when I have access to a winbox.

<comment><USER2> There is a desktop version you can download (as concerns the flash).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Wow lucky you your nephew is interested in learning. Go for pacman, but before make sure he plays a bit so he gets kind of addicted to it. Then to spark his curiosity ask him questions about how he thinks it works, something like this: [http://www.exploringbinary.com/how-i-taught-third-graders- bi...](http://www.exploringbinary.com/how-i-taught-third-graders-binary- numbers/)

Have fun! :)

</comment><comment><USER25> On second thought, I'd suggest that you teach (that is, mentor) some very simple number games and have him program them in Python or BASIC. If you can find it, a copy of _What to do after you hit return: PCC 's first book of computer games_ or _101 Basic Games_ would do for a start. These games are simple, fun, and don't get cluttered up with issues of presentation versus computation logic.

</comment><comment><USER26> Stencyl ([http://www.stencyl.com/](http://www.stencyl.com/)) could be a great tool : it's easy at first to do simple games without knowing anything about code, and you can progressively learn code, starting with basic logic.

Plus, it compiles natively to many platforms: iOS (iPhone/iPad), Android, Flash, Windows, Mac, Linux

</comment><comment><USER27> How about code.org? [http://studio.code.org](http://studio.code.org)

</comment><comment><USER28> Microsoft TouchDevelop was posted here on HN recently:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9545019](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9545019)

I tried out one of the examples to make a Flappy Bird clone in 5 minutes - pretty neat.

</comment><comment><USER29> I like the _Invent With Python_ series by Al Sweigart, they are CC licensed and they are a nice friendly introduction to programming with Python (one of the books deals with text games, another with Pygame). I'm not aware of translations into other languages, but they are written at a level for children to understand so they may be worth a look.

There are also languages like Scratch and various "no programming required" game development environments like Construct2. They might be good places to start, but they can also be crutches that prevent progress into more powerful tools.

edit: Is there some sort of downvote brigading going on here? I see a ton of helpful posts in gray.

</comment><comment><USER30> Game Maker Studio is popular.

</comment><comment><USER31> If you're a web programmer, then the easiest way is to do an HTML5/Javascript games. That's the closest to what you already know.

Get him some books on html5 and javascript, or good web-based resources.

Make a simple game with him, like minesweeper or Tetris.

Also, if you make an HTML5/Javascript game, you can use something like PhoneGap/Cordova to compile it to a mobile app.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thank you all for great pointers on what and how I best can help my nephew.

I have offered him my assistance and I hope he will take it, I will try to limit what i do and maximize the learning of how it is ok to fail and that it takes a lot of time to learn new stuff.

Hopefully he will be able to build something that will make him proud.

</comment><comment><USER32> You can check out MIT App Inventor. It uses scratch. Here's an example of a game: [http://appinventor.mit.edu/explore/ai2/space- invaders.html](http://appinventor.mit.edu/explore/ai2/space-invaders.html)

</comment><comment><USER33> I know non-technical people that have used GameSalad to create games that were even published on the AppStore.

[http://gamesalad.com](http://gamesalad.com)

Might want to start with a general intro to computer programming though like Scratch, which has been mentioned here.

</comment><comment><USER34> Take a look at Roblox. It's aimed specifically at kids. It takes care of most of the hard stuff like physics, networking and rendering so you can focus on gameplay. It uses lua for the programming language so it's pretty easy to find learning resources online.

</comment><comment><USER35> What about looking at Corona, if he has a mobile device or tablet to test on. It is simple to make simple things quickly, the physics libraries aren't complex.

[https://coronalabs.com](https://coronalabs.com)

</comment><comment><USER36> [http://www.sortingh.at/](http://www.sortingh.at/) [http://www.gamesareforeveryone.com/](http://www.gamesareforeveryone.com/)

</comment><comment><USER37> I was immediately reminded of this old classic

[http://thedailywtf.com/articles/Could-You-Explain- Programmin...](http://thedailywtf.com/articles/Could-You-Explain-Programming- Please)

</comment><comment><USER38> I'd recommend starting at code.org to learn the basics of programming (loops, etc.) and learn how to make basic games like flappy bird:

[http://studio.code.org/](http://studio.code.org/)

Then depending on his interests and abilities, there are various beginner- friendly tools for making games below, from easier to harder and free to commercial.

I would talk with him first about what kind of game is he interested in doing. Something like flappy bird or an arcade game, or modding minecraft, etc. If you make it about learning to program for programming's sake, he may get tired of it quickly and not be interested in programming again for a long time, if ever.

free:

[https://www.tynker.com/](https://www.tynker.com/)

[https://scratch.mit.edu/](https://scratch.mit.edu/)

[https://www.gethopscotch.com/](https://www.gethopscotch.com/) (ipad)

[http://www.toyengineapp.com/](http://www.toyengineapp.com/) (ipad)

[http://twolivesleft.com/Codea/](http://twolivesleft.com/Codea/) (ipad)

[http://www.stencyl.com/](http://www.stencyl.com/)

a little more advanced (text instead of graphical programming), works in browser to make HTML5 games:

[http://www.playmycode.com/](http://www.playmycode.com/)

windows only:

[http://research.microsoft.com/en- us/projects/kodu/](http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/kodu/)

commercial:

[http://www.learntomod.com/](http://www.learntomod.com/) (mod minecraft with visual programming)

[http://gamesalad.com/](http://gamesalad.com/)

[http://www.yoyogames.com/studio](http://www.yoyogames.com/studio)

[https://www.scirra.com/construct2](https://www.scirra.com/construct2)

</comment><comment><USER39> Teach him about SOA and MVC, I hear 12year olds go nuts for that stuff.

</comment><comment><USER40> give him udk, that's a free tool where you can learn what an engine is, and do a whole lot of the work flow of develping a game in one environment / tool set. The documentation and community is also very helpful. love it! :) I would reccomend this before programming their own engine, to learn what kind of things are involved in making a game. You can make simple 2d games, or full on 3d games.

</comment><comment><USER41> Shameless plug: [http://flowlab.io](http://flowlab.io)

</comment><comment><USER42> I think Java is a nice teaching tool. It has a good OO design and you can't break anything with it. No worrying about memory, etc. The only real drawback is the verbosity and having to "just do" things at the beginning (such as ignoring just what public static void... means).

<comment><USER43> Why do you prefer a compiled language over a scripting language? I learned Java in high school and struggled with all of those

> "just do" things

e.g. `String in = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(System.in)))` in Java vs `in = input()` in Python.

I think it's important for beginners to understand why they're writing the code they are, and how the different parts of their code fit together. In Java your "main" function is part of a class; I have no idea how to explain that to a younger student.

I am really interested in teaching programming, so I'd like to hear your thoughts.

<comment><USER42> If I am honest it is just that I prefer compiled languages. I like Java because it is hard to do stupid things in it but still compiles down to something I can hand over to other people without them being able to break it by opening it in notepad accidentally.

Obviously I see the benefit of simplifying things like we see in Python, Ruby, etc.

A lot of people don't like Java because of how strictly OO it is.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> I started learning in QBASIC at around that age (my highschool also taught BASIC on Apple IIe machines). There are modern (i.e. 64 bit) versions of it but I can't vouch for them. If you can get the original version up and running, it is a great intro to programming.

</comment><comment><USER45> Many of the games he might already be familiar with have sandbox, modding or programming-like environments that require no documentation to get started.

If he plays Minecraft, he should definitely study Redstone ([http://www.minecraft101.net/redstone/redstone- basics.html](http://www.minecraft101.net/redstone/redstone-basics.html)). You can make whole computers with it ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQqWorbrAaY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQqWorbrAaY)). It's what I recommend to my friends who are looking to get their children into programming or making games. Don't underestimate how much more compelling Minecraft is than literally everything else out there.

Starcraft II is free, and its map editor is excellent for nearly every kind of top-down game. It's a very drag-and-drop sort of interface that doesn't require any programming. You can probably build the widest variety of games with it.

Team Fortress 2, which is also free, comes with the Hammer Editor. It's a little more idiosyncratic than Starcraft II's map editor, but also a great way to just drop things in and play. It's ideal for first person shooters.

A bunch of games have really fascinating programming-like experiences. DOTA 2 (free) has its Workshop Tools; Cities: Skylines (paid) has an Asset Builder and programmed mods. A lot of these games are a bit above 12 years old though, so it might be a little intimidating.

I think for most kids, they're more interested in Garry's Mod ([http://www.garrysmod.com](http://www.garrysmod.com)) and Little Big Planet—sandbox environments. You just do stuff and things happen, and it's all very pseudo-physical.

I've seen some other recommendations on here. Generally most kids aren't equipped with the amount of patience these actual programming environments require. If you insist on programming, then Scratch is the best of the options. Check out the first assignment in Harvard's CS50 class here ([http://cdn.cs50.net/2015/spring/psets/0/pset0/pset0.html#itc...](http://cdn.cs50.net/2015/spring/psets/0/pset0/pset0.html#itching_to_program)). To put in perspective, this is regarded as one of the easiest to learn and most polished programming environments, and students at University level (almost twice your son's age!) are given 2 weeks to make something. So as an introduction, this is still extremely hard.

Conversely, things like Unity3D are going to be super crazy complicated, to be completely honest. It's disheartening to read any documentation. Just orbiting the camera in the viewport is a skill. Plus, lots of kids like to build multiplayer experiences, which are all possible with the map-making and modding tools above, but not possible with any of the actual coding frameworks written below.

</comment><comment><USER46> I'll plug my friend's book here: [http://www.gamkedo.com/kit/](http://www.gamkedo.com/kit/)

It's in JS/canvas, so tools that you should be familiar with.

</comment><comment><USER47> This might be a little too simple but check out Blockly

[https://blockly-games.appspot.com/](https://blockly-games.appspot.com/)

</comment><comment><USER48> Is he a Minecraft fan?? If so, Minecraft has a very active modding community and that might be a great place to start.

<comment><AUTHOR> He has played a lot of minecraft but has not shown interest in modding.

<comment> joppe-a There is a MOD for minecraft called 'ComputerCraft' it has a LUA based programming environment with a basic OS (filesystem, console) and various API (including a HTTP API). You can use it in game to control and interact with various things.

To see it in action: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wrUHUhfCY5A&list=PLah_Dh8PIq...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wrUHUhfCY5A&list=PLah_Dh8PIqiP41PtfGyeWsiS8u6l0F8JI) (the video's author, Direwolf20, had a good MOD pack including ComputerCraft).

Of course it's not directly creating a game, but perhaps a fun way to get introduced to programming.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> He could try darkBasic Pro for a start. That's how I got into programming.

</comment><comment><USER50> load81 by the author or Redis. It does not get any more elegant than this!

[https://github.com/antirez/load81](https://github.com/antirez/load81)</comment>


Hacker News OnePage for Google Chrome - <AUTHOR> https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/plldnnbdlbgbiknjebohmlggcbicghlj

<comment><AUTHOR> I figured there may be some of you who use the Firefox greasemonkey version of this, and would appreciate a chrome version as well. I have found myself using Chrome a lot for my normal browsing and breaking out Firefox for web dev.</comment>


US Government Releases Massive Trove of Data on Doctors' Prescribing Patterns - <AUTHOR> http://www.propublica.org/article/government-releases-massive-trove-of-data-on-doctors-prescribing-patterns

<comment><USER2> The data is available from here: [http://www.cms.gov/Research-Statistics-Data- and-Systems/Stat...](http://www.cms.gov/Research-Statistics-Data-and- Systems/Statistics-Trends-and-Reports/Medicare-Provider-Charge-Data/Part-D- Prescriber.html)

The zip is in two parts, one SAS file for reading in the file :( and one 2.8Gb uncompressed TSV. At current writing, I'm reading it into R, which hasn't barfed yet, suggesting that the data may already be in usable form.</comment>


Modeling Life Outcomes with Stochastic Methods - <AUTHOR> https://tmarkovich.github.io//articles/2018-12/stochastic-life-model <comment><USER2> Hate to be a let-down to what seems to be a very well-researched post, but I ctrl+D-ed for "divorce" on that page and didn't find any match. Imho "divorce" is the single most important "black swan" event which can negatively influence the life of two persons younger than 40 or 45 (after that age threshold disease seems to be a more worrying black swan-like concern). I've made this argument before on related topics and I was told that "if we'd think about divorce just before getting married then people will never form families", which is probably true, but is also true that the divorce rate sits anywhere between 20% and 50% in the Western world.

The naked truth is that every big family-related decision (buying a house, making kids) is a big shot in the dark, with no "assured" positive outcomes.

<comment><USER3> What is your source for divorce rate? Are you meaning "Divorces (as % of marriages)"? That is not the same as a divorce rate.

<comment><USER2> > Are you meaning "Divorces (as % of marriages)"? That is not the same as a > divorce rate.

That's the one that counts, really, because you'd want to know (as a married person, that is) how many other marriages are generally failing around or not. When you're married and you feel that your marriage is in a rough spot you're not really interested about any statistics involving people that haven't reached the legal age to marriage yet or about 70-year-old widows, you're interested about people around your age who are in the same legal situation as your are, i.e. are married.

And yeah, I've seen the wikipedia explanation that says that "this measurement compares two unlike populations, those who can marry and those who can divorce" but afaik you kind of know if you're going to divorce a person in the first 10-15 maximum 20 years of your marriage, and 10-15 even 20 years is not that big of a timeframe for a major imbalance to form between the number of "people who can marry and and those who can divorce". In other words populations in Western countries kind of remain "stable" for a given period of 10-15-20 years, so it's not like suddenly we've got a lot more old people compared to young people so that the divorce/marriage ratio would become skewed. The old vs young imbalance takes a lot of time to build up (I'd say 30 to 50 years) or a catastrophic event like an world war.

<comment><USER3> TY

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Nice write up, really enjoyed it! Technical question, which approach did you use to create the formulas/equations?</comment>


MyDunkTank.com Makes a Cowboy out of Philly Tech Scene - <AUTHOR> http://technicallyphilly.com/2010/07/23/mydunktank-com-make-a-cowboy-out-of-blake-jennelle

<comment><USER2> Excellent Idea to have friends actually contribute to a cause; who wont pay 25 bucks to see his friend jog in underwear, lol.</comment>


Why We Mostly Stopped Messing with Shakespeare's Language - <AUTHOR> http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/why-we-mostly-stopped-messing-with-shakespeares-language <comment><USER2> I thought the 8.2% IPA to Bud Light analogy was apt, although perhaps not for the same reasons as the guy who made it. A lot of people drink Bud Light because it's cheap and accessible and gets the job done. Saying "just drink the best beer" is sort of a "let them eat cake line". In the context of Shakespeare the reality is you need a more readable modern translation for most of his plays or lots and lots of people simply won't read them (except when they have to for school and even there it's straight for the tl;dr cliff notes).

I consider myself fairly well schooled and read and don't dislike Shakespeare. However, despite going through the high school forced march of one Shakespeare a semester/year and having read some plays solely out of interest ... I've read (and reread) significantly more Ibsen plays than those of Shakespeare. It's true they're shorter and prose and Ibsen's best work is spectacular (well with a good translation) but still if Shakespeare is this shining light on a hill why aren't more people reading him in English?

<comment><USER3> Well, Shakespeare wrote _plays_ , so it's generally a good idea to see them in the theater, or watch cinema versions, rather than to read them. Once you have a good idea of he action and the character interactions, it's easier to read the language.

I once saw a performance of the "bad quarto" of Hamlet and it was a terrific play, even though the language was all over the place.

Kurosawa's Throne of Blood is a great version of MacBeth even if it's in Japanese. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Throne_of_Blood](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Throne_of_Blood)

<comment><USER4> With plays it is often difficult to understand the words that are being spoken. At least with a written version you can see what words and sentences are being used instead of hearing mostly barely distinguishable utterances or words that don't seem to fit together.

I have always thought it ridiculous that anyone would actually behave (assuming the play-worlds take place in our own or a similar world) in the manner that I have seen many Shakespearean plays acted out. I guess it is all for dramatic effect?

<comment><USER3> All true, sadly. However, good actors speak in ways that can be heard and understood, and good directors make the action understandable. (Understandable in context: you might be in a fairyland where the world is different.)

It helps that when I studied Shakespeare I saw most of the productions in Stratford on Avon, but lots of plays are available on DVD now. In the old days, eg to take in Grigori Kozintsev's Hamlet, I had to go to the cinema three nights in a row....

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Good history, glad Bowdlerization was brought up. Of particular note, from the final paragraph:

>What is genuinely radical in the commission is not the process but the people involved... more than half of the selected playwrights will be women, and more than half will be writers of color. Shakespeare's scripts have always resulted from collaborations among playwrights, actors, and editors... those collaborators were white men.

I'm a very big Shakespeare fan, and think his words are among if not the greatest words written in English, but this whole debate is absurd. It's art. Let artists create art. People who will enjoy it will enjoy it, those who won't won't. I don't expect every Jane Austen fan to enjoy "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies" or Doris Kearns Goodwin to appreciate "Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter" (actually, I bet she loves it), but so what? The source material is public domain, so let's enjoy the beauty of the commons.

<comment><USER6> It's not clear what debate you're referring to.

Was not the point of the quoted paragraph that, in the past, collaborators on Shakespeare's works were restricted to white men but that's no longer the case? Is there a debate there or is that uncontroversial?

<comment><USER5> Separate thoughts. Quoting it as particularly of note/value, then giving a thought on the article's issue as a whole.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Listen to this: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPlpphT7n9s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPlpphT7n9s)

The modern pronunciation we're familiar with kills much of the rhyme and meaning.

<comment><USER8> I read Crystal's book, "Pronouncing Shakespeare", a few years ago and found it fascinating. I hope to hear one of these "OP" (Original Pronunciation) performances some day.

<comment><USER9> I've seen a couple of them and I can thoroughly recommend it if you get the chance. It's not just pronunciation; the OP is noticeably brisker and more natural-sounding, and extremely accessible.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> You know who didn't stop messing with Shakespeare's language?

Translators.

Thankfully, we don't need to read Shakespeare in the original Klingon but even then, the first English translation is already 400 years old. And it shows.

As a non-native speaker of English, the standard English version that is written adds another difficulty for enjoying his works. You not only need to look up all those obscure mythological references but also you need to understand the small but important differences in language. English has changed since the days of Shakespeare and as even native speakers struggle with that, it is even harder for non natives.

German has a long tradition of translations of Shakespeare (the first one dates from 1604!). The German "standard" translation is the Schlegel-Tieck joint translation from 1826 although it has been updated in parts ever since. But there are other translations as well. Wikipedia claims that the sonnets have been translated into German almost 50 times since 1967.

I think some native speakers have a problem with "translating" Shakespeare into modern English as the English of Shakespeare is still quite understandable. Just let English develop some 200 or 300 years longer and such translation will become a non-issue.

Unless the English speakers do something similar like the Greeks did and let old classics influence how they develop their language. But given the laissez- faire attitude of the English native speakers in the past and the influence of L2 speakers on the English language, I don't expect this to happen.

</comment><comment><USER11> As somebody who studied Shakespeare, it's worth noting that the language would have been foreign to his audience at the time as well. The obscurity of the language amplifies its purpose in many places, and it is kind of a fool's errand to try to iron out its various kinks.

</comment><comment><USER12> > What is genuinely radical in the commission is not the process but the > people involved...more than half of the selected playwrights will be women, > and more than half will be writers of color. Shakespeare's scripts have > always resulted from collaborations among playwrights, actors, and editors. > For most of the history I have traced, those collaborators were white men.

To what degree is it really true that there isn't a history of women or black men re-interpreting Shakespeare? I would be pretty surprised to learn that was the case. Now, it would certainly be interesting if this work was being approached by folks with a strong background in the artistic and poetic traditions that originate from various colored communities. But that wasn't what the article said and you cannot presume it. It is certainly not the case that any given black lit-nerd can rap.

""" I sit with Shakespeare and he winces not. Across the color line I move arm in arm with Balzac and Dumas, where smiling men and welcoming women glide in gilded halls. From out the caves of evening that swing between the strong- limbed earth and the tracery of the stars, I summon Aristotle and Aurelius and what soul I will, and they come all graciously with no scorn nor condescension. So, wed with Truth, I dwell above the Veil. Is this the life you grudge us, O knightly America? Is this the life you long to change into the dull red hideousness of Georgia? Are you so afraid lest peering from this high Pisgah, between Philistine and Amalekite, we sight the Promised Land? """ \-- WEB DuBois, whom you should all totally read if you like a certain delicious if ornate style of prose.

<comment><USER13> > To what degree is it really true that there isn't a history of women or > black men re-interpreting Shakespeare? I would be pretty surprised to learn > that was the case.

I'm not sure why you would be surprised, but through most of history most of scholarship in the West has been done by white men. Even now, in some departments (math, for example), women are rare and in most departments minorities are rare.

DuBois was notable as an exception. Look at all the other scholars of his time; do you notice something odd about the demographics?

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> For the most part this was good; the ending ruined it.

I am a man of color and an immigrant. I am sick of the trend of people praising a work simply because its author happened to be of a different skin color or gender.

Judge us on our merits. Not on our fulfillment of your agenda.

<comment><USER15> Meritocracy is a great idea if the playing field is level. It isn't, and for hundreds of years the voices of women and people of color have been systematically oppressed — but I don't need to tell you that.

The deliberate inclusion of more women and POC is a conscious choice to combat this. Their works will be judged on their merits - but first they must have the opportunity to be judged, and that's something to which they do not have equal access compared to white men.

<comment><USER14> I hear this often enough at Uni.

What bugs me about this is that the people who would have benefit from these policies, such as my ancestors, are long dead and gone. The people who oppressed them are also dead.

While I can buy your argument for poor people in general, I can't understand applying a non-meritocratic basis on the basis of gender or race. A rich minority boy or white girl has access to a great deal of resources more than a poor backwoods white boy.

And the sort of symbolic victory style stuff that goes on in both academic circles and in magazines just doesn't help us at all.

I would have given anything for there to be resources about how to dress well in western clothing, find and eat healthy religiously-acceptable food, and understand the intricacies of western culture. But instead I got a self- congratulatory lecture on embracing our native culture. What good is that at all?

<comment><USER16> > What bugs me about this is that the people who would have benefit from these > policies, such as my ancestors, are long dead and gone.

The people who _directly_ benefited (or suffered) from _de jure_ discrimination by race in the US aren't even dead and gone -- there are people alive today that were _adults_ when those policies existed -- much less the people that indirectly benefited by way of, e.g., having an advantage (resp., disadvantage) in opportunity because their _parents_ wealth/education/etc. was directly influenced by those policies.

<comment><USER17> Compare [http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/05/26/compound-interest-is- th...](http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/05/26/compound-interest-is-the-least- powerful-force-in-the-universe/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> As I started reading this I was thinking: "Don't compare it to craft beer, don't compare it to...damn, they went there."

I think Shakespeare is wonderful, but like many things in life (craft beer included) we sometimes mistake obscurity for artistry. It's not good art _because_ it's an acquired taste, it's good _in spite of this_.

</comment><comment><USER19> No mention of how the new work will be licensed. If it's not going into the public domain then that'll automatically make it worth less than the original.</comment>


Writing a Simple Operating System From Scratch (2010) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/~exr/lectures/opsys/10_11/lectures/os-dev.pdf <comment><USER2> A lot of this is not really relevant these days, and dates back to the 90s.

All the "fun" problems start later - kernel architecture, USB support, modern disks, multicore CPUs, network stack, all sorts of drivers, all sorts of filesystems, and by then you're barely getting started on having something more than just a hello world printed out to a screen using legacy BIOS that is starting to get phased out by now.

Then, there is the 64bit mode of the x86-64 architecture, which is a whole new can of worms.

You'll end up rewriting the whole mess a dozen of times from scratch as you learn new things and encounter new problems.

And in the end, only the knowledge gained would be of any value, since there is exactly zero use or market for a custom OS these days, even in the niches.

Source: Wrote my own OS over the last 15 years - [http://orbides.org/aprom.php](http://orbides.org/aprom.php)

</comment><comment><USER3> The PINTOS project is another classic operating systems course. Definitely takes a fair amount of time but it is rewarding. All the material is accessible online:

[https://web.stanford.edu/class/cs140/projects/pintos/pintos....](https://web.stanford.edu/class/cs140/projects/pintos/pintos.html#SEC_Top)

</comment><comment><USER4> Annectodical (a phonecall)

"If I shout my graphis-card WLAN and fiddle around connecting a keyboard too..."

"I need INTEL for what ?"

"What ? Heck, why you can't install an OS on computer-Hardware ?"

(later)

"Yes, ports to connect are still there..."

"Hey, when I short-circuit this - it does an reset!"

"To add a fuse ? _um_ why not!"

(-;

</comment><comment><USER5> :( the slides don't look finished and i can't find updated sections in later years?

<comment><USER6> You might want to have a look at the OSDev wiki [1], which is definitely more comprehensive than those notes.

[1] [http://wiki.osdev.org/Main_Page](http://wiki.osdev.org/Main_Page)

<comment><USER7> This would be a great format to tackle the more advanced stuff that I have problems learning.

A wiki isn't the best format, at least for me.

<comment><USER8> Honestly the only good wiki I've ever seen is Wikipedia, and that's only because Google exists. Wikis suffer from the most ridiculous discoverability problems. Unless you can successfully guess a page's title, find it on Google, or the wiki has good searching (many don't), I find myself clicking around random pages to see where to start.

Especially when I am dumped into a random wiki for the first time. Starting off in Minecraft years ago, people said "read the wiki first!" with no link to the first page I should read, or any successive pages. Completely useless.

Maybe I'm missing a nice table of contents that every wiki secretly has hidden away, but tables of content exist for a reason. Discoverability.

<comment><USER7> I feel the same way.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


6 lessons to forget before you start learning to code - <AUTHOR> http://www.gadgette.com/2016/02/01/6-lessons-to-forget-before-you-start-learning-to-code/ <comment><USER2> Arent 5 & 6 exactly how one would learn.

<comment><USER3> Also re: #4: "Building something perfect means you've spent too long on it."

It depends on what kind of product you're building. If you're building a consumer web site, it probably doesn't need to be perfect. However, if you're building a system that handles billion-dollar bond trades, it has to be perfect. One bug could cost you a thousand times the entire development cost of the system. Similarly for software that controls a car, a spacecraft or a medical device. No user is going to want to try out a car with an anti-lock braking system that doesn't function perfectly, no matter how nice the car looks.</comment></comment>


Memories of the Melissa virus - <AUTHOR> http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2009/03/26/memories-melissa-virus/

<comment><USER2> My fondest memory of the Melissa virus was coming home and my wife asking me why an email looked all messed up. I told her that that was why I run Linux. She looked _really_ confused, and said she wanted to see the actual email since it was from a friend. I explained that she was staring at the source code to a virus, and told her what would have happened had we been using Windows.</comment>