The Rise and Rise of JSON (2017) - <AUTHOR> https://twobithistory.org/2017/09/21/the-rise-and-rise-of-json.html <comment><USER2> I wish JSON had 1) trailing commas 2) comments (I'm not sure if this is a good idea or not but every once in a while I impulsively write comments)

<comment><USER3> 3) set types, 4) optional schemas 5) multiline strings 6) consistent support for numeric types 7) streaming data

The litany is not short and I'm sure I've overlooked a couple.

<comment><USER4> You should try XML. You may like it.

<comment><USER5> That reminds me of my favourite XML quote: "XML is a lot like violence. If it isn't solving your problem, then you aren't using enough of it"

<comment><USER6> JAXB is at the same time awesome, and completely terrifying.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> JSON won, IMO, because it's human readable and writable. It came at a time when its main competitor in this space - XML - had gotten too complex.

However, JSON is hitting the same limitations and problems that XML faced, and is following in their shoes (namespaces, schemas, x/jpath, implementation drift across libraries, etc).

<comment><USER8> Ehhhh, is it hitting those limitations? I've yet to run into a problem in which would be solved by adding Enterprise™ silliness.

And is it following in XML's shoes? I've not had to work on or integrate with any systems that did this Enterprise™ silliness either.

Now granted, I'm fairly separated from the world of IBM and SAP type companies, and I'm sure there's all sorts of unholy abuse of JSON going on in a dark server room somewhere, but the answer in most cases is just to choose technology stacks that don't do that to you. These problems are generally self-imposed rather than imposed by the technology.

<comment><USER9> > Ehhhh, is it hitting those limitations? I've yet to run into a problem in > which would be solved by adding Enterprise™ silliness.

I think that's _why_ JSON won: it was first and foremost and engineer-driven standard as opposed to one that incubated inside a bunch of enterprises before being dropped on an unsuspecting world.

<comment><USER7> SGML, XML's predecessor, was definitely engineer built (the wiki page is interesting). It just paved the same path that JSON is now traversing. Given that XML is roughly 34 years old (or GML, which was SGML's predecessor and is about 60 years old), give JSON just a bit more time to get to the same level of 'blech'.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's a real shame that both XML and JSON eclipsed the _real_ data format for the ages: S-expressions. I hope it's only temporary, though: there really is no good reason the prefer JSON other than everyone else using it, and if one gets into a novel enough domain then there isn't an everyone else doing anything to worry about yet.

S-expressions have the advantage of not containing the redundant object type (there's no need for an object, map or dictionary when one has alists or plists), and the even greater advantage of elegantly representing code.

Also they are easier to write parsers for.

<comment><USER11> There was this: [http://people.csail.mit.edu/rivest/Sexp.txt](http://people.csail.mit.edu/rivest/Sexp.txt) but it was never even accepted as an RFC, it seems.

<comment><USER12> Very interesting. Did anyone else look at this, and think it was super complicated, at first glance? You'd have to be an expert in the data exchange format itself.

I can see why Lisp style syntax is bad for human comprehension. It's because of the lack of an explicit delimiter, like a comma. I don't think human eyes are very good at using a single space character, as a delimiter.

And with this format, you'd have to agree upon the data exchange structure. There would have to be a master key somewhere, maybe as the header. Albeit, this format is far more efficient than XML.

But, XML probably won out because it was explicit, and allowed multiple levels of nesting, but at the expense of overly wordy delimiter tags.

And JSON made it simpler, by forcing it to be a lightweight key-value pair.

It's too bad something like this didn't take root and become more popular. This might be a very useful advanced data exchange format for some scenarios. Although the headaches and problems associated with trying to understand, and work with it, might far outweigh its efficiency benefits.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> My only problem with json files is that you can't add comments to them in a persistent way (especially if changes in the data are written by a program).

Unless of course you'd put the comments in the data itself, but that's kind of ugly.

<comment> crooked-v You might like JSON5 ([https://json5.org](https://json5.org)), which allows comments and has direct support in various tooling.

<comment><USER14> There are many json alts, but at the end of the day unless it's supported everywhere, it kinda defeats the point, because what makes JSON great is that it's supported almost everywhere.

<comment><USER15> 90% of when I use JSON is when I control both sides of the interaction. E.g. a web app where I have no expectation of third party clients, or a config file that will only reasonably be read by one program.

JSON is normally "good enough" as a general wire interchange format, and it's human-readable and whoever comes after me will already be familiar with it. But if there's a time when it's not good enough and its failures are in expressiveness, I'd totally consider JSON5 or some other alternative instead.

<comment><USER16> Even for end-to-end internal projects, as soon as you stop using a built-in format and need to use thirdPartyEncode and thirdPartyDecode on both ends, you might as well just choose the absolute best third party library rather than choose something that slightly enhances the built-in.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> It'd be nice to know what the graph would like like now, three plus years later. I imagine it kept along the same lines. JSON is everywhere.

I suspect that a lot of the popularity is piggy-backing on the popularity of JavaScript.

But what the heck is .CSV doing on an incline?!

<comment><USER18> > what the heck is .CSV doing on an incline?!

It is still the most common interchange format for tabular data. Tabular data is too verbose/unreadable when represented in standard JSON. Databases and Data Science are also on the rise; .csv continues to ride this wave.

<comment><USER19> Also, "Why use something else when we can use data.join(',') -- that should be enough!" must also be a contributing factor to why CSV will never die.

<comment> globular-toast Except that doesn't work. CSV requires quite complicated quoting rules. Plus the records are separated by CRLF, not a "newline" as many seem to think.

<comment><USER19> That was the point of my failed joke.

In other words, people thinking they can just join(",") keeps them from reaching for an actual serializer (JSON, XML, etc), and if they realized they already have to bring in a CSV library anyways, they might consider using another format. Comedy gold, huh? Though I'm only half-joking, I've done it before and we've all consumed "CSV" from people who had the some presumption. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > _no new version of the JSON specification is ever expected to be written._

T̵h̵e̵ ̵l̵a̵t̵e̵s̵t̵ ̵v̵e̵r̵s̵i̵o̵n̵ ̵o̵f̵ ̵J̵S̵O̵N̵ ̵w̵a̵s̵ ̵a̵p̵p̵a̵r̵e̵n̵t̵l̵y̵ ̵r̵e̵l̵e̵a̵s̵e̵d̵ ̵l̵e̵s̵s̵ ̵t̵h̵a̵n̵ ̵a̵ ̵y̵e̵a̵r̵ ̵a̵g̵o̵.̵ [EDIT: I was mistaken: the latest standard was RFC 8259. However, this was still published on 2017-12-13, _after_ the article was written.] There have been three different RFCs alone, all defining JSON. (And let's not even get into the thing called JSON5.)

<comment><USER20> I've tried to find out what was the change less than a year ago, and I couldn't find this information. So, what was the change?

<comment><USER11> I seem to have misread my reference: the change a year ago was to _Javascript_ , to make _it_ conform to JSON, not the other way around, which was how I originally interpreted it. The latest version of JSON itself seems instead to be the latest RFC from 2017-12-13. Note: this was still _after_ the article was written.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> One reason in favor of using JSON over XML for web services I don't see mentioned often is that many XML schema based deserializers will by default fail if they get an unexpected element whereas JSON deserializers will ignore it, making it easier to remain backwards-compatible. Example: If you have the following defined in your .xsd

      <complexType name="MyMethodResponse">
       <sequence>
        <element name="A" type="string" />
        <element name="B" type="string" />
       </sequence>
      </complexType>

and you later add a "C", existing clients will fail, so you will have to create a new method along side the old one to remain compatible.

<comment><USER22> Following proper XML spec always led to more problems than what they were meant to solve. Sometimes I use XML, but just the syntax with a more html5 style to it.

Similar to defaulting to error-ing on extra tags, I never got the point of making everything an element and adding extra redundant attributes. That's really just the result of XML that's automatically generated.

Like the `<element... type="string">` in your example of classic XML, why not just use `<a>3</a>` or `<a int="3"/>`. XML proper styles still suggest the classic long/autogenerated form. Writing XML in html5 style like `<my-a data- value="3" />` makes it much friendlier. Or as I tend to use it for various internal protocols to wrap multiple CSV data in a file:

        <some-data type"csv" columns="A, B, C">
          1.3, 3.4, 5.6
          1.3, 3.4, 5.6
        </some-data>

Technically That's really just html5 in a file I guess. :-) But html parsers also don't tend to complain about extra tags too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I remember working with SOAP and WSDL. One advantage I kind of miss from that era was the static generators that would create your service classes and the strongly typed DTOs based on the WSDL. I understand some effort has been made to replicate this (e.g. json-schema) but it isn't nearly as widely used as WSDL seemed to be. To be honest, I only kind of miss it since XML was such a major pain to deal with (any one ever had to deal with XPath or XSLT? What a nightmare those were).

I recently used GraphQL on a project and it had some nice advantages. I love the idea of protocol buffers but have never had the chance to use them in anger. But if I'm honest, the boring option is JSON and it is what I would use for just about any API I had to expose nowadays.

</comment><comment><USER24> (2017)

Previous discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17832936](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17832936)

</comment><comment><USER25> I remember 2010, when I build my first API. People laughed at me for using JSON.

I had to add XML and CSV, because "nobody would integrate with a JSON API"

<comment><USER26> I think whatever company you were working at was a few years behind the curve, because JSON was already pretty much the standard for SPAs by 2010. For example, that's the year AngularJS came out, with JSON/JSONP as the only built-in serialization format for communicating with backend APIs.

<comment><USER25> Pretty much, yes.

In 2011 we moved from an PHP app to an SPA where JSON came in handy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> For small, heterogenous structs like messages and config it makes sense -- for repeated/homogenous collections (array of similar struct - a common case) both JSON and XML are wasteful -- a reflective/inline schema combined with a table would be more readable and space efficient. Also, meta-data needs to be either embedded or provided by special keys, so general meta-data tagging support would be great, where a non-meta-data-aware reader would only get the target data, but any JSON datum could be tagged with another JSON datum as meta-data. (The meta-data tags could be implement the inline-schema for the table as well.)

</comment><comment><USER28> JSON is one of the best things to ever happen to software development.

<comment><USER3> It really isn't. I'm almost tempted to say it's the opposite though that would be overstating the case.

It's a format that still bears excessive decoration (what's the purpose of quotes around field names? what are all those commas for?) yet it's limited in the types of data structures that it's able to express (natively). I'm not particularly fond of Clojure specifically but a format like EDN would have been superior in just about every way.

<comment><USER29> I'd hardly call a few bytes per key and field excessive. Especially compared to something like XML.

The datastructure complexity being limited is also a pretty significant key to its success. More complex datatypes means greater chances for JSON handling libraries to lack compatibility.

The only substantial shortcomings of JSON I see are shortcomings associated with any textual serialization format. Optimizing for human readability in a use case that's 99.99% of the time not read by a human.

<comment><USER30> JSON looks good when compared to XML.

That's literally how low you have to go.

"The only substantial shortcomings of JSON I see are shortcomings associated with any textual serialization format. Optimizing for human readability in a use case that's not 99.99% of the time not read by a human."

There are a few other shortcomings that are reasonably substantial/significant, but yeah, that's the gist of the problem.

<comment><USER31> > JSON looks good when compared to XML.

JSON looks good compared to what we'd be using instead of JSON, which is nothing so nice and structured as XML. The competition to JSON is something infinitely more ad-hoc, probably without a distinct parser, such that a generic library to generate or consume it is impossible, and getting usable error messages is equally impossible.

> "The only substantial shortcomings of JSON I see are shortcomings associated > with any textual serialization format. Optimizing for human readability in a > use case that's not 99.99% of the time not read by a human."

I agree with this and disagree at the same time: Optimizing for human readability means optimizing for the weird case, the 0.01% (but it seems to be more often than that) of the time you need to go beyond the tools you have to fix something. Saying that's rare is true but inapt: Seatbelts are only used in rare cases, too.

<comment><USER32> If we didn't have JSON we'd have settled on something like MsgPack.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I still think it's a shame that Amazon's Ion format never got widespread adoption.

[https://amzn.github.io/ion-docs/](https://amzn.github.io/ion-docs/)

Superset of JSON with many extra features that people in the comments here desire from their data-language, such as support for comments, timestamps and s-expressions.

</comment><comment><USER34> Great article. It's strange for me to be old enough to have experienced JSON's entire history as a website maker - I didn't learn anything new in the article I didn't know before and never gave it much thought - but to read it all compiled in one place makes me want to appreciate that we are experiencing tomorrow's history right now.

</comment><comment><USER35> A annoying problem with json is the lack of full floating point number support. Transferring NaN, +Inf/-Inf is a pain.

<comment><USER36> Crockford believes the One True Number should be decimal instead of floating point. He also believes that comments will be abused and turned into ad-hoc parser directives.

So everyone gets to suffer for his beliefs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> In 10 years we will see JSON with the same mix of mockery and regret as we see XML today.

<comment><USER38> I remember using XML-RPC back in the day to communicate between a desktop client and a web service. It was fantastic. And then designer went off with a committee somewhere and produced SOAP. The regret with XML is that it continued to evolve into a monstrosity.

Thankfully JSON came along and got back to the simplicity of early XML and XML-RPC and stayed there.

<comment><USER39> I remember killing some old XML-RPC applications.

Deserialization and remote code execution vulnerabilities all over the place. That was brutal.

Who thought this was a good idea to pass arbitrary function names and arguments for the remote servers to resolve and execute blindly? The regular vulnerabilities in the XML parsing libraries themselves was the nice cherry on top.

<comment><USER38> > for the remote servers to resolve and execute blindly

I'm not sure who would would to that but I certainly didn't. Ultimately XML- RPC is no different from REST/JSON except it's in a different format. What you did with that format is a totally different issue.

<comment><USER39> Just take the first example from wikipedia:

        <?xml version="1.0"?>
        <methodCall>
          <methodName>examples.getStateName</methodName>
          <params>
            <param>
              <value><i4>40</i4></value>
            </param>
          </params>
        </methodCall>

The thing is meant to call arbitrary functions with arbitrary arguments. It doesn't take long until there is a straight up exec functions exposed or some accidental command injection.

It's strange to look at it 20 years later. The adoption of JSON really got developers to stop shipping RCE vulnerabilities every other week. Yet nobody must have thought of that when deciding what to use.

<comment><USER38> What do you think happens with REST and JSON? Or SOAP? This is exactly identical to:

        {
            "methodName": example.getStateName
            "params": [14]
        }

Although you'd probably instead have an REST endpoint contain the method name and the entire JSON body is the parameters. But the difference is minor. There's no reason this allows arbitrary execution than anything else.

Methods directly exposed to the web is how 99% of all MVC frameworks work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Although it is easier to see the benefits of using JSON as an interchange format because it is lightweight, I still believe that XML is more elegant and verbose than JSON. One of the complains for JSON has been the lack of schemas, although there are some ways around that in projects such as Apache Avro [https://avro.apache.org/](https://avro.apache.org/), registry schemas and all that Jazz

</comment><comment><USER41> This is a great bit of internet history, if for nothing else than this Douglas Crockford quote in response to a flamebait-y argument about XML being superior to JSON:

"The good thing about reinventing the wheel is that you can get a round one."

</comment><comment><USER42> I'm quite a big fan of json.org it outlines the JSON specification in a handful of diagrams and a small amount of text, it's so simple and elegant.

</comment><comment><USER43> This is such a painful contingent historical accident that we have json as the standard instead of hson

</comment><comment><USER44> Amen

XML is a mess and a chore to work with (at least in any language that isn't Java I guess, but even then).

Yes, it has some rough edges. Yes it could be better.

But overall it's good. Not too complicated and not too hard. Works fine for most stuff.</comment>


900 social insurance numbers stolen from Revenue Canada via Heartbleed - <AUTHOR> http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/900-sins-stolen-from-revenue-canada-via-heartbleed-1.2609192

<comment><USER2> How would they know this? Presumably they would have to log the entirety of IP communications with their services.

<comment><USER3> The CRA is the most competent organization in all of Canada, public or private. They probably log every packet.

Worst case scenario they are looking into streams of suspicious behavior, like Russian IPs attempting to validate the SINs somewhere else, like at a bank.

<comment><USER4> General question: the leaked data in the heartbeat packets is encrypted, correct? If the service _doesn 't_ use perfect forward secrecy they would definitely be able to decrypt those packets to see what was leaked. What if they did use PFS?

<comment><USER3> That is a really good question! I would only be guessing at whether or not they have PFS or not. On the one hand, it leaves the past vulnerable in case a breach happened, but on the other it makes diagnosing what _much_ harder in cases like this.

<comment><USER4> Actually now I'm not sure if heartbeats are encrypted:

"It is irrelevant whether your system can even support some of the cipher suites in the list, because the Heartbeat request that triggers the vulnerability is sent _before any encryption takes place._ "

[http://www.hut3.net/blog/cns---networks- security/2014/04/14/...](http://www.hut3.net/blog/cns---networks- security/2014/04/14/bugs-in-heartbleed-detection-scripts-)

<comment><USER3> Interesting. So this leads me to believe that they do record every packet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Oops, I submitted a duplicate of this. (Upvoted yours)

Vulnerability was disclosed on Monday, April 7th. CRA website was shutdown on Wednesday, April 9th. Didn't take long for the baddies to take PoCs and point them at vulnerable sites.

Any other high-value sites that took more than a day to patch should take this as a warning.

</comment><comment><USER6> I wonder if the data was stolen after or before the vulnerability was disclosed.

On the other side of it, I think it's really great that they've been able to determine exactly what was stolen from this so that they can attempt to repair any damages.

</comment><comment><USER7> For those who don't know, SIN = social insurance number. Similar to US SSN.

<comment><USER8> Or the UK NIN / National Insurance Number.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Considering the significance of the vulnerability, the only thing I can say is the government is extremely lucky that the number is only 900. For Canadians, SIN numbers are about as critical as it gets.

</comment><comment><USER10> tl;dr: "We are currently going through the painstaking process of analyzing other fragments of data, some that may relate to businesses, that were also removed." The agency says those affected will be contacted via registered letters, and that any attempts to contact a taxpayer via email or telephone are fraudulent.

</comment><comment><USER11> Is this the only reported case of malicious use of Heartbleed so far? (Besides US government agencies allegedly)

If so, is it safe to say that this crisis was dealt with rather well? Or is it just too early to know how many sites were actually attacked?

<comment><USER12> It seems that a typical website doesn't have the capability to know if the exploit was used against them, unless they are logging and able to analyze all IP communications to and from their servers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Wonderful timing that this vulnerability popped up smack in the middle of tax time, eh?

</comment><comment><USER14> Presumably the numbers were stolen along with associated identity information. The numbers can be easily guessed; they are created with a simple algorithm.

</comment><comment><USER15> How can you steal a number?

Here's a number: 147334572. Have I stolen it?

This is yet another alarming signal that the whole idea that your SSN/SIN or credit card number is somehow secret and can be used for authentication is flawed. We need to work on fixing this. At the very least, we should stop talking about "stolen numbers". And even if the breach in question resulted in attackers gaining access to names + numbers (unclear from the article), it should not cause any serious consequences.

<comment><USER16> In Canada you can refuse to give someone your SIN for non-government purposes ... in theory. I was once refused an apartment sublet once when I did this. I had to come back with evidence that the landlord had no legal right to collect the SIN. That and the strong implication I was capable and willing to file a complaint.

People use all sorts of zany things to try to prove identity. I think public education is the first line of defence against the misuse of things like SSN/SIN.

<comment><USER17> More specifically - you can't refuse to give your SIN to a financial institution or to your employer (as for 99% of Canadians those are their main sources of income, and because those entities need to submit information to the government regarding your income for tax purposes).

For most other things though you can refuse to disclose it (i.e. telecom providers, debt-only financial institutions like credit card providers)</comment></comment></comment>


Giants of IT. The giants on whose shoulders we stand. One each day - <AUTHOR> http://www.giantsofit.org/1/charles-babbage <comment><USER2> Im kind of unsure as to how to interpret this, but there appears to be no particular ordering just an influential cs person posted for each day of the month.

Theres definitely pleanty of influencers missing from the current set, McCarthy, Hoare, Dijkstra, to name few. If this were my list, I wouldnt have Lovelace or Gates on it, but most of the others seem warrented enough (in my opinion of course) :)

<comment><AUTHOR> hi. indeed it is just a list of persons in no particular ordering.

The persons you name are of course on the list. Lovelace already visible the others will appear in the future. So every day one person is added.

If you have other persons you want to see on the list you can submit person with a link in the footer of the page.

<comment><USER2> gotcha. nice job btw :)

<comment><AUTHOR> thx!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> To me, Bill Gates will always be what Steve Jobs is to so many.

<comment> vezzy-fnord That being?

<comment><USER3> _The_ being

<comment><USER4> Isn't he more like Zuckerberg?

I mean, he DID develop stuff, which Jobs didn't. He just didn't develop groundbreaking stuff, he just sold it better than his competitors.

<comment><USER5> Hate windows, but windows 3.1 was ground breaking for the tiime and was primarily the reason why computers took off.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Nice, bookmarked.

But please don't redirect giantsofit.org to your current feature, it makes it tedious to correctly bookmark, and share, the site. Minor but unnecessary annoyance.

</comment><comment><USER7> Here's another list, probably very similar: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_pioneers_in_computer_s...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_pioneers_in_computer_science)

<comment><USER8> Oddly missing Haskell Curry and Robert Feys (type inference), Peter Landin (more or less all modern functional programming[0]), Robin Milner (type inference, ML, CCS), ...

[0] [http://okmij.org/ftp/Computation/IO-monad- history.html](http://okmij.org/ftp/Computation/IO-monad-history.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> "classified"? Why not just use the wikipedia pictures for these people?

<comment><AUTHOR> The license of some of the Wikipedia pictures are preventing me to use them, sorry.

<comment><USER10> Kudos to you for paying attention to the licensing instead of just ripping them off.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This should probably be a Show HN.

</comment><comment><USER12> It would be interesting if degrees of separation could be shown between all of these giants.

<comment><AUTHOR> What do you mean with "degree of separation". Could you elaborate?

<comment><USER12> For example, it would be interesting to see if or how Linus Torvalds connected to Charles Babbage via the various relationships through the IT giants. If there are 4(as an example) people between them, their degree of separation is 4.

It is similar to the Erdös number.

<comment><USER13> You need an activity to connect them, though. Erdos numbers are based on collaborative math publications. The problem here is that some are researches (you could do cs publications), some are software developers (torvalds, gates), and some are just really influential.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Good page! But Bill Gates did not develop BASIC or DOS.

<comment><USER15> Gates (along with Allen) did however _implement_ BASIC on quite a few machines. BASIC is a very simple interpreted language, but it was technically impressive to get it running on certain machines of the day as well as it opening the doors to countless other people to begin their journey programming.

<comment> vezzy-fnord Which is irrelevant because the claim being made is that he _created_ the language.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> How many more times am I going to have to read that Ada Lovelace was the first programmer? It is getting to be annoying.

<comment><USER17> I remembered reading an article regarding this over-hype - [https://web.archive.org/web/20060813072159/http://archive.sa...](https://web.archive.org/web/20060813072159/http://archive.salon.com/21st/feature/1999/03/16feature.html)

Also this video - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7K5p_tBcrd0&feature=youtu.be...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7K5p_tBcrd0&feature=youtu.be&t=36m29s) jumping to minute 36 where Ada is discussed by the speaker.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Tim Berners Lee should be on your list on the first place!

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi!

It's not a best of or top 100 list or something, it is in random order. But Tim Berners Lee is of course on my list, so he will show up in the future.

<comment><USER19> i first thought it is by birth/or death date. _some_ relation to "now" might make this more interesting, like the astronomy picture of the day. if there are two on the same day they could simply be shifted.

<comment><AUTHOR> on the start page ([http://www.giantsofit.org/](http://www.giantsofit.org/)) you will be redirected to the person of today. i just posted here the first person because the person of today (jack kilby) has no image.

or do you mean more something like to have the person show on on her/his birthday or day of death?

<comment><USER20> I think he means the date is of special interest to that person. ie, birthday, deathday, day they released the first version of programming language x, day they founded company y, day product z sold it's first million copies, etc. Or even keeping it topical such as with a new release of OS X you could have one of the core designers / developers of the first version of MacOS.

It would make the list much more interesting, but would be significantly harder to curate and would require you add some additional blurb to explain why that individual was chosen for that day of the year. So I can't blame you for going down the lower maintenance route of just compiling a random order list of influential figures.

<comment> m-i-l There's something about "random" order that doesn't sit comfortably with someone like myself. I'd agree that some kind of connection to today's date, e.g. birthday, release date, etc. would be good. Or even something simple like making the entire list alphabetical or chronological (that would of course entail preparing the entire list in advance, but if you still want to take suggestions then those suggestions could be for next year's list).</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Amazon is about to pull an Apple - <AUTHOR> http://www.bradlanders.com/2011/09/03/amazon-is-about-to-pull-an-apple/ <comment><USER2> I don't think Amazon is likely to succeed in "pulling an Apple"; what I do see is a way to "pull an iTunes". Amazon is already a trusted retailer with financial resources. This will allow them to better curate an app store. Adding a hardware component is fine and will probably be profitable, but the real strength here will be trading Amazon's brand power (and, hopefully, follow-through) to create an app store that competes with Apple.

</comment><comment><USER3> I like how he selectively chose the benefits for Amazon, even though "not having their own OS" applies to them, too. You basically made everyone else look bad and Amazon look good with your selective benefits.

<comment><AUTHOR> If they really did fork Android, they effectively have their own OS. I'd love to hear counterpoints though. Why is Google or Samsung poised to come out on top?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Many people will avoid a platform that doesn't provide Android compatibility for the same reason they'd avoid Apple ... single vendor lock-in.

<comment><USER2> I think that subset can be profitably ignored; evidence: Apple.</comment></comment>


ISO updates C standard - <AUTHOR> http://h-online.com/-1400814

<comment><USER2> The committee seems to be taking one step backwards and one step forwards with this publication. On the one hand, I'm glad they're adding support for features such as static assertions that previously required ugly workarounds. On the other, I think their idea of a threading library is somewhat laughable. Also, I'm not fully sold on the idea of having 10 or so optional implementation requirements.

The most important question, to me, is how many implementations will support the full standard? Are we going to have another C99 wherein most vendors maintain partial support?

</comment><comment><USER3> Is there any indication from major C-using projects what their opinions on the standard are? For example, will anyone be moving from pthreads to C1X threads for multithreading? I don't have a good read on how anticipated these features are and what the uptake is likely to be.

<comment><USER4> There was an article posted and discussed just a few days ago, in case you've missed it: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3374953>

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> If only they had waited another few weeks it could have been C12. I hope people don't confuse C11 with C++11 or think that they are related in any way.</comment>


How I got into YC as a non-technical single founder - <AUTHOR> http://alexkrupp.typepad.com/sensemaking/2011/04/how-i-got-into-yc-as-a-non-technical-single-founder.html

<comment><USER2> I'm sorry, this is completely irrelevant, but Einstein _did_ design refrigerators and they were commercially unsuccessful: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein_refrigerator> ( _edited for clarity_ )

<comment><USER3> _That's the essence of a startup: having brilliant people do work that's beneath them. Big companies try to hire the right person for the job. Startups win because they don't-- because they take people so smart that they would in a big company be doing "research," and set them to work instead on problems of the most immediate and mundane sort. Think Einstein designing refrigerators._

<http://www.paulgraham.com/bronze.html>

I wonder if that was deliberate. I also wonder if references to YC lore raise or lower your odds of getting in.

Hopefully this doesn't sound snarky--PG's essays have lots of allusions that I end up referencing without remembering the source. I'd expect to do that much more in a startup-related context.

<comment><USER2> I think pg was just creating a vivid image, so its factual truth is irrelevant.

I'm nonplussed at how often pg sums up my own views. One cause is that the books I read about startups are based on SV stories - while pg talks to the people who actually did them, batches of startups who are currently doing them, and he's in the story himself. Also, I've likely read some of what he's read (e.g. The Innovator's Dilemma).

So, I find YC lore very helpful, because of the truths it contains. But citing it purely _as_ lore (without understanding it) would probably count as a severe negative. I'm not sure about the case of providing an alternative expression of the same idea, especially if pg's is more succinct/appropriate - but it's always helpful to speak the same dialect as your audience, if only for communication.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> "Have a mindmap with the answers to all the questions they might ask."

Really loved this piece of advice and highly recommend. It's something I always do before an interview/presentation/important talk.

1) As Alex mentions, this is FAR more useful in the moment than a list of bullet points or the like.

2) Like a lot of note-taking, I find that the act of thinking about and creating the mindmap has advantages in and of itself. Often the act of carefully creating it means that I don't actually need to refer to it later. I personally find this with a lot of note taking. I spend a lot of time carefully taking notes - generally a bunch of notes, comments and citations connected by a bunch of lines in different colored inks, kind of a mix of "traditional" note taking and a bit of a mindmap. The time I spend really thinking about how to best present and relate all the ideas on a single page often leads to internalizing the content so well that I never really need the notes unless I'm coming back months later.

</comment><comment><USER5> This is really helpful. I'm a non-technical founder, and I'm glad to hear that there is hope.

Do you think having applied previously was a positive or a negative for you? Do you think it matters that these applications were for different ideas? I'm just trying to figure out when I should apply--if it is better to wait and develop something fully functional before applying or applying now with the caveat that I need the funding to help develop the idea.

I am planning to apply with a technical co-founder, but I have concerns about how we could effectively develop our product without some substantial financial backing. I don't want to put something out there half-assed and have it fail because we didn't have the right tools, only to then have someone with the resources to execute steal the idea.

<comment><USER6> If you don't put something out there half-assed, you'll wait too long to ship.

Nothing is ever truly finished. You just ship it.

<comment><USER7> Corollary: fail early, fail often. Failure is often the best learning experience you can receive (if you're ready to receive it).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I love this quote from the article: 'The coach of the Yale rowing team has a saying about high school recruiting: "7:20 2,000m time, 720 SATs. 6:20 2,000m time, 620 SATs."'

In other words, it pays to be a winner.

<comment><USER9> Hmmmm, I read it as it _costs_ to be a winner, as in the faster rowers have a lower SAT score (presumably from training more than studying).

<comment><USER10> wrong. the idea is that if you have a good time, yale will look the other way when it comes to your academics. the better your time, the less the school cares about your SATs. the idea is extremely applicable to everything in the real world, where excellence in one dimension compensates for mediocrity in another in the eyes of others. think attractive girls or star football players. a valuable life lesson.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is correct.

"a valuable life lesson."

It makes sense though. I never understood why classes you fail are averaged into your GPA as a 0.0 instead of just ignored. After all, the amount of stuff you don't know or can't do is always going to be effectively infinite. So how is getting an A in one class and failing 99 others any different from getting an A in one class and not taking 99 others? The current system is just an attempt to punish people for wasting university resources, it has zero to do with actually assessing the abilities of a person.

<comment><USER3> That's what dropping classes is for.

If you try to do something and fail--especially something that the median undergrad in your school can do successfully--it says something about you.

<comment><USER11> That sounds backwards though. If you try to do something and fail, it should be _more_ positive than if you don't try to do it at all.

<comment><USER3> For some pursuits, yes. For a corporate job, which is the default next step from a university education, no: a company would rather hire someone who knows their limits than someone who tests them, especially since the former has a more established market price.

<comment><USER12> How does one know his or her limits without testing them? I'd much rather hire the kid that attempted 99 failed classes.

<comment><USER10> the way you're thinking of classes is very romantic and idealistic. another way to think of them that may better model the way employers think about your GPA is to think of your GPA as a signaling game in game theory. your GPA is less of a reflection of what you know and more a reflection of your ability. if you have a high GPA you've demonstrated yourself to be a high ability intellectual, whereas if you have a low GPA you've demonstrated yourself to be a low ability intellectual. in this model the content of the class is completely irrelevant, but some employers may just be trying to employ based on potential ability, rather than on specific knowledge base or content exposure. for this reason, a kid that failed 99 classes has "signaled" that he is a low ability type. while this kid has great resolve and has probably been exposed to some interesting things, it is unlikely that his ability is very high, and therefore employers would not be psyched about hiring him.

obviously this kind of model gives a very bleak valuation of education, but i think its a thoughtful one that probably is truer than we'd all like to think.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Thanks for writing this post.

>When it came time to reapply, I did so with someone who was widely recognized as one of the smartest technical folks on HN

Who was it?

\---

I'm a bit surprised that YC hasn't funded another non-technical, single founder yet.

Even though there's only one Steve Jobs, I'd bet several non-technical people will go on to build great tech companies in the future.

Perhaps these people have just found quality technical talent to partner with, so they're co-founders.

<comment><AUTHOR> "Who was it?"

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=639976>

<comment><USER6> How long had you known dfranke prior to applying?

<comment><AUTHOR> I had known him for a couple years, but we'd only started working together recently. That was probably the biggest reason, although when we got to the interview we discovered that rtm had apparently done his dissertation on something similar, so he had some technical objections also.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> All the references to rowing reminded me of these guys: <http://www.rowrenegade.org/> . I used to go out regularly for their recreational rows (<http://www.rowrenegade.org/rec_rows.html>) on the weekend and would recommend it to anyone who happens to live in the SFBay area, or is just visiting, as a fun and interesting experience and a cheap way to get out on the bay.

</comment><comment><USER14> Oooh, I think Alex has just designed my next business card -- just my name, and underneath it: Google me.

<comment><USER15> Taking it one step further, Matt Mullenweg's old card: <http://www.flickr.com/photos/glsims99/506973719/>

<comment><USER16> A bit pompous and egotistical. Just give the person your contact info and stop trying to be cutesy.

<comment><USER14> Well, business cards are by definition pompous and egotistical... <http://youtu.be/qoIvd3zzu4Y> ;)

<comment><USER16> or this <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YBxeDN4tbk>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Getting in is really a step number 1. Your real goal should be making your "core" idea for the business a success. Being a single, non technical founder in an environment that is very, very technical will present you with a massive challenge ahead... So, good luck...

</comment><comment><USER18> what was the problem here? was it because he was single (against pg's 5th guideline <http://www.paulgraham.com/founders.html> ) or because he was non- technical?

</comment><comment><USER19> I'm also a non-technical founder and have also proven that "if there's a will, there's a way", the path might be longer but by no means should stop anyone. Congrats.

</comment><comment><USER20> I still don't really get what Swagapolooza does...so you're a product launch platform in front of influencers?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's like a book tour for physical consumer products. That is, if you write a book then your publisher sets you up to speak in 16 or 18 major US cities, but if you've created a product like Bacon Hot Sauce there is no such thing. That's what we're creating with our events, specifically with an audience of the most-followed bloggers and twitter users in each city. The idea is that in recent years new tech startups have been blessed with a ton of amazing opportunities, and we're trying to bring these same opportunities to everyone else.

From the bloggers' point of view, one of the ways they create value is by writing about interesting new products, and what we're offering is an ethical and transparent way for them to discover these products while at the same time getting to meet and interact with the entrepreneurs behind them.

Here is a good writeup that explains it better than I can:

[http://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/mt/archives/2010/03/swag...](http://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/mt/archives/2010/03/swagapalooza_an.php)

<comment><USER21> "It's like a book tour for physical consumer products."

And just like that, I understand your plan. Nicely phrased.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> How does a _non-technical_ single founder get "recognized as one of the smartest _technical_ folks on HN"?

Other than that, enlightening post.

<comment><USER3> "When it came time to reapply, I did so with someone who was widely recognized as one of the smartest technical folks on HN."

<comment><USER22> Oh duh, I read the "with" as "as". Thx.

<comment><USER13> I did the same thing, then I read his comment on a previous post where he said the same thing and realized my mistake. I wonder if the prior paragraphs where he talks about building his online reputation may have inadvertently primed us to read the sentence that way?

<comment><AUTHOR> "I wonder if the prior paragraphs where he talks about building his online reputation may have inadvertently primed us to read the sentence that way?"

It's because I wrote this in a hurry so I didn't take as much time to polish the white spacing as I normally would, which makes it more difficult to read. The issue is that there are basically three or four separate ideas that are all chunkified together. I edited that sentence though to at least make it more clear.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Don't Get That College Degree - <AUTHOR> http://www.nypost.com/seven/06282009/postopinion/opedcolumnists/dont_get_that_college_degree__176545.htm

<comment><USER3> If Bill can get 8% returns on his money every year, he might wanna start a hedge fund. Or at least borrow as much money at 5% as he can and invest it all.

<comment><USER4> The stock market generally returns around that amount, though not in a stable manner. (Hence its hard to infinitely borrow stable capital at 5% to fund unstable returns at 8%).

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> "How can that be? College degrees bring higher income, but at today's cost they can't make up the savings they consume and the debt they add early in the life of a typical student."

That's a very interesting analysis. I've read for a while now that for many young people who pursue college degrees, the economic return of the investment to gain the degree is actually negative. There are some broader societal implications here too, as much of funding for college study is third-party payment funded by taxes on people who never attend college at all. Some economists of education, notably Mark Blaug, point out that public subsidies for college study are massive wealth transfers from the poor to the rich.

<comment><USER6> All investment in formal education is a net negative, from pre-k onward. Right now my town spends about 11k per student per year, not including extraordinary expenses. Multiply this by 13 years, and it comes out to 143k.

Let's say that instead of investing 11k in each student every year, my town just put 143k in an account for me on the day I was born. From the town's perspective this is feasible given the current tax structure, since we are doing this for each student instead of spending that money on schools.

Furthermore, let's say that my parents had invested the money they spent on pre-k in that account on the day they would have otherwise paid tuition. This means that we are adding, say, 8k per year at age 3 and 4.

Furthermore, let's say that we add 20k to the account for each of the four years between ages 18 and 22.

Then we invest the whole thing in smallcap stocks. Assuming we can get a 10% return per year, then by my chubby-fingered iPhone math this looks like I'd have had ~1.2m in the bank by age 22.

<comment><USER7> And after no education, what is your 22-year-old self qualified to do?

<comment><USER6> Who said anything about no education? Also, I'd have started working at age 16, and I didn't even add any of that income into the mix. Even assuming I was making minimum wage for the first five years I'd easily have enough money to retire by age thirty.

<comment><USER7> How would you gain that education? Keep in mind that without public money, most of our educational infrastructure wouldn't exist - <USER2> universities.

<comment><USER8> Ah, just as grocery stores didn't exist before the taxes that support them. Hm. Wait.

<comment><USER9> But grocery stores cost money! I don't think Alex can simultaneously claim:

1\. A million-odd dollars in savings by the age of 22 by forgoing public education

2\. An education by the age of 22

At very least, it requires some justification.

<comment><USER6> Homeschooling, competitive athletics, community engagement, apprenticeships, mentors, freelancing, boostrapping, public libraries. And maybe a Ph.D. someday just for fun.

<comment><USER7> Homeschooling isn't free.

Your suggestion is basically school-vouchers with no strings attached. For the kids whose parents want them to get an education, they would use that 11k a year to help pay for it - either private schools, tutors, educational materials and food. (If you, like me, went to a public school, then about a third of your food on the weekdays was heavily subsidized by the school system. Normal lunch at my high school cost $1.55 ten years ago - the food I ate cost more than that.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I have read that Newton would not put numerical examples in his writing because he feared people would pick over some small error and use it to claim the whole work was wrong. I think that's what most of the negative comments here are like that - you guys are probably right about different ways to run the numbers, but you are missing the forest for the trees.

The investment in a college degree is so large, and involves speculating on payoffs that are so far in future, at a time when whatever you think you will do as a career will likely change several times, that the pay off has to be an enormous no-brainer. If the college investment pays off if the interest rate is 8% but not if it is 5%, the college loses just by a bird-in-hand rule. The college guy has to beat the non-college guy by something like 10 times no matter what back of the envelope estimates you make.

Some related personal observations:

\-- Ten years ago online forums argued about how to get into the best college, no one even raised the question of if college itself is useful. Now articles and discussions like this are commonplace.

\-- No one I know really uses anything they learned in college to make money. Even people working in the same field their degree is in, had to learn how to really work in that field on the job after they left college. College was a big time and money consuming initiation ritual.

\-- Most the people I know who earned a large amount of money -- not those who inherited it -- either did not attend college at all or did very poorly in it; nad none of them admitts to using any college education to make money.

\-- A handful of the most agressively and purposely stupid people I have ever met have advanced degrees ( medical and legal). I suspect that some part of the culture of those evironments educates people in the stupid direction, not the smart direction, in a kind of "reverse education", encouraging aggressive pronouncements of certainty on uncertain questions, for example.

\-- Taking a personal sample of the people I know who have made a lot of money (avoiding those I hear about elsewhere -- just people I personally know, to avoid a media bias but replace it with a personal bias), the way to get rich is to fail out of college after one year of hard drinking, and inherit enough money to buy a small business such as a restaurant or retail franchise and work your ass off for about 15 years, expanding to a chain of those businesses.

\-- Most of the people who I know who are going to college now, don't really actively want to go to college. They want to not be at home, and to be around people their age particularly of the opposite sex, and they are passively following the path of least resistence.

All of this sounds bad, but I see a great thing in it: if we as a society really only should be sending about 5 to 10 percent of people to college (perhaps half of them only after a few years in the work force), then we can hugely increase the productivity of our economy very easily. I think, like medical care, we spend a lot on education in this country to get something that is at best only the same as what is available in countries that spend much less.

</comment><comment><USER11> Depends on the field. According to the American Chemical Society, starting salary for BS Chemical Engineers is 58K in 2007. This is higher that the numbers mentioned in the article, and I suspect the oil biz is a reasonable gig. I think everybody's in agreement that the starting salary for, say, orthopedic surgeons is a little bit higher than this. And Wall Street paid those MBA's quite a lot up until recently.

So, maybe SOME degrees are worth the hassle. Others, less so unless you're really turned on by the subject - I really love history, but I'm not going to try to get degrees in the subject.

As buugs said, don't get one if it's not what you want. Get one if it's what you need...

<comment><AUTHOR> "Depends on the field" isn't really a good argument, because the counterargument is that the same thing applies for people without college degrees. Some make minimum wage, some make more than the average given in the article. Just as an example corresponding to yours, laborers on oil rigs make really good money straight out of high school. In particular, here in Canada during the oil boom (now not so much) it was quite common for a laborer straight out of high school to make $50 - $80 US an hour in northern Alberta. Admittedly dangerous, dirty, unpleasant work.

<comment><USER12> I agree with the other commenter. So your examples are ones without much of a ladder in terms of pay scales and incur serious risk of death. That's wonderful.

Also, the fact that you say "some make more than the average given in the article" really makes me want to say something flippant, but I won't. Politely, I will say: Notice the word _average._

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm a college graduate, so I'm amenable to arguments against the original post's thesis. But "depends on the field" is a logical flaw, because it's assuming that the distribution of results for college graduates is more positive than is represented by the average, while not accounting for the same possibility for non-college graduates.

Also there's a pretty good ladder for some trades, which generally involve something that should be welcome here. Namely starting your own business. Over the course of my career I've met plumbers, cabinet-makers, steel workers, etc, etc. who took the higher pay they made right out of high school (or more often, two year trade school programs) and turned it into their own business. And have earned more than I have, with zero debt, at every step of their career.

ADDITIONAL RANDOM EDIT: Bill Gates...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Don't get a degree if you don't care what you do? What an insight.

<comment><USER14> Yup. For some reason, I can't see a non-college grad doing research in high- energy particle physics. Importantly though, a whole lot of people aren't doing research in high-energy particle physics. If you're really good at fixing cars and like it, don't go to college to get a degree in psychology.

<comment><USER15> What's with that anyhow? How did psychology become the degree of choice for uninspired students?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Two things about the numbers in this article don't work for me.

First, Bill makes $23,505 after college? What's his degree, basket-weaving? Shoulda gone into engineering.

Second, Bill and Ernie each save exactly 5% of their income--even though Bill earns much more than Ernie? This is not a basis for a fair comparison, it just means Bill is choosing lifestyle over retirement. I calculate that it would take Ernie about five years of living Bill's lifestyle to pay off his college debts and catch up to Bill's savings. And then he has 25 years of a higher income and hence options Bill doesn't have. Ernie's lack of financial planning does not negate the value of his degree.

In fact, the fact that the article assumes financial illiteracy on the part of both parties is revealing and disturbing. And it reinforces the point that, at least in Ernie's case, he really would have done better to get a degree in something involving some sort of math background.

</comment><comment><USER17> Its very bad comparison. A couple of problems: the comp is purely of retirement savings, however the college kid is spending more on consumption per year all through his life (not considered), also the assumption of 8% returns is unlikely.

Stay in college kids!

<comment><USER4> The article has a huge flaw in not comparing equal consumption.

The interesting question isn't how much retirement savings you'll have at the end, but how much "net return" you get from the college degree.

I'd like to see a Net Present Value calculation of the two choices instead of some flaky calculation assuming a fixed 5% savings rate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> What happens if the college graduate invests 10%, which wouldn't be too hard? What happens if the non-grad only invests 1% because that's all they can afford? If the college grad invests all of their extra money, how long does it take them to catch up?

<comment><USER19> "What happens if the non-grad only invests 1% because that's all they can afford?"

The world is basically divided into two categories of people: those who can afford to save 10% of their income and those who are currently accumulating additional debt (I, as a college student, am in the latter group). The odds that your expenses _exactly_ match the amount you need to spend are pretty small. If you find that you have exactly $0 left over at the end of the month- you don't have savings, but you aren't accumulating debt- you're probably just increasing your expenses until they match your income. You can live decently on $10K (after-tax) in this country.

"If the college grad invests all of their extra money, how long does it take them to catch up?"

Not long at all, but people _don't_. The American national savings rate is _negative_.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> What absolute horseshit. People who go to college as part of a calculated attempt to make a profit aren't the sorts of people who ought to be in college. College is for living with people who share the same interests as you, learning to develop yourself as an adult, and learning under people who know what they're doing.

I don't know if my forthcoming college degree will help me make money, because right now I don't know what I want to make money doing. College is giving me time to try out a dozen different things and meet a few hundred terrific people, so that when I leave I know more about myself and about what I want to do than I did when I came in.

</comment><comment><USER21> The author lost me with his silly retirement argument on the first page. Note that the college grad starts out making so much more than the high school grad (by the author's figures) that s/he could start adding to that index fund at the time of graduation, while still paying off his student loans and having a higher standard of living than the high school grad. The college grad also could invest sufficient money in the fund each year to quickly surpass the amount of equity the high school grad has and still have a higher standard of living.

The author would have been better off skipping the pseudo-finance.

</comment><comment><USER22> This seems to ignore the fulfillment of the work. There's always more money to be made if you're willing to be miserable.

</comment><comment><USER23> _I'm not arguing against higher learning but for it -- and against the degree system that stands in its way._

</comment><comment><USER24> Does anyone have numbers for average earnings for programming jobs with/without degree?

</comment><comment><USER25> always great to hear your thoughts all over a newspaper article...

<comment><USER20> Sarcasm?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> What an ill-conceived article. On the other hand it could be an interesting cynical ploy. I guess if you could convince enough people that getting a formal education is worthless or "not worth it" then it could actually increase the market value of those who have one. So, if I was being cynical I should probably just say "Thanks!"

But, presuming the intentions are not cynical I found these arguments troubling. Indeed, ironically the one arguing for less education doesn't seem to understand basic elementary math:

"Some students will get a better-than-average deal. They'll get more aid or end up in higher-paying jobs. But far too many will lose money."

What a joke. Of course "some students will get a better-than-average deal." Why don't people understand averages? That's like those numb skulls who say "half of all students read below the average level; what a crisis!"

Also, I'm not impressed with citing Charles Murray. He presents an even more cynical and myopic view. As for the state of universities: sure, many large public universities have some ridiculous courses; I agree with that. However, to quibble with the author's list, History and Philosophy of Dress is not a silly course. There is a lot to be said of a society and it's positions regarding norms of attire. In courses like that the primary subject, in this case "dress," is simply a scarecrow on which to hang a much deeper discussion.

Now examples like "Campus Culture and Drinking," that may be a bridge too far and I know many like it. However, my undergraduate institution, which admittedly was private, had no such "mickey mouse" courses and we had comprehensive exams. People who completed all the course work but could not pass the oral exams failed to complete their degree programs. They _FAILED_. And these were not dumb people. They didn't fail because they didn't turn something in on time. This is in direct opposition to the author's premise that universities are just so easy.

That makes me angry. That disrespects many brilliant students for whom the author of this drivel could not be worth of shining their shoes. The idea that the curriculum has been dumbed down is just without merit. Are there mickey mouse degree programs? Sure. Now let's stop knocking down strawmen and deal with reality. I'd like to see the author of this article, who apparently has a very fanciful notion of averages, pass any of my colleagues course on advanced algorithms, distributed computing, differential equations, and the like and then tell me about rampant "grade inflation" or falling standards.

As far as the online courseware. That's fine. But I thought education was worthless anyway, right? Anyway, so the answer now is that everyone is going to become autodidacts? Wow, great idea. Autodidactism is fine but let's not be naive with it. So the answer is either be a Ramanujan or go get a job a Super Wal-Mart or something like that, just don't go to college, right?

This article is just full of contradictions. Don't get me started on the "Knowledge Tree Shapes."

</comment><comment><USER26> Do degree holders earn more or are the kind of people who get degrees the kind of people who tend to earn more?

<comment><USER27> I'd argue it's both, many employers pay more when hiring people with degrees and certainly the people who end up with a degree tend to be the kind that would end up in higher-paid positions regardless.</comment></comment>


Google working on a Facebook competitor: Google Me - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/2010/06/28/google-trying-to-build-facebook-competitor-good-luck-with-that/

<comment><USER2> At some point, Google is bound to get "social" right. Maybe this time round. Maybe the next.

Once they do, however, they will have some serious synergy effects with all their existing projects, which Facebook, Twitter etc don't have.

<comment><USER3> Not to mention Google can afford to experiment and make mistakes like Wave, Buzz and Orkut. Whereas Facebook or Twitter don't have that luxury as their revenues are a fraction of Google's.

Personally, I think web search is a lot more valuable compared to social networking. I hardly ever even bother to check my FB profile anymore. If I want to get in contact with a friend, I text or call them on the phone. If I wish to maintain a business contact, LinkedIn is the way to go. At one time MySpace seemed like a good purchase for $580 million. In a bubble economy, things look best right at the peak. I don't know if Facebook has peaked, but if they continue to become ever-more spam infested and continue to annoy and frustrate users over privacy, I can see someone beating them at their own game.

<comment><USER4> It is however surprising just how big mistakes Wave and Buzz have been (IMHO).

<comment><USER2> Buzz still seems superior to me technologically. The reason it hasn't caught on is probably either lack of simplictiy, or bad luck/timing.

Wave I see as a work in progress/concept work. Features will probably bleed over to docs over time. In that it is not a failure I would say.

<comment><USER5> I think part of the reason Buzz hasn't caught on is the privacy debacle at the start. It left people with a bad association with Buzz, and that's not something that's easy to shake.

Wave I see mostly as an experiment. It can do some cool stuff, but I've never really had a use for it. I did see it used for streaming commentary the Google I/O keynote (courtesy of Lifehacker), and it worked fantastically for that. In fact, I'd say that was the nicest live coverage method I've seen. However, I _personally_ still have not found a use for Wave.

<comment><USER6> For me Buzz is the tweets of about a dozen people I already follow on Twitter.

<comment><USER7> For me, it's one guy 'liking' YouTube videos.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Like everything else that is social - social networks are likely to be cyclical. Things that are fashionable will become unfashionable once _everyone_ uses it and people will move onto the next cool environment.

Rinse repeat every 5 years or so.

If Google can time this right so that it becomes the next fashionable social network then it might well succeed.

<comment><USER9> Very true. I'm not a teenager but I can imagine Facebook is definitely beyond "cool" for them at this point. Their parents and extended family are now their friends on Facebook. They'll soon be ready for the next thing where they can be with just their friends.

<comment><USER10> I am a teenager, and Facebook has not been cool ever since the police use it as a way prosecute underage drinking.

<comment><USER11> Do you still use Facebook or is there something else out there that teenagers are using?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Anyone else concerned about privacy? Google already has heaps of your search data, can track browsing history with the doubleclick and adsense network already. With social network data, they can directly tie in who you associate with, age, birthdate, etc.

<comment><USER13> I'm actually less concerned about Google having my data than, say Facebook. Google already has a ton of my data, but they don't sell it off to third parties. They practically define the analytics and targeted advertising. Facebook's problem is that they can't figure out how to actually make money with the data they have so they're resorting to selling it to third parties (Google, Bing, Yelp, Pandora, CNN, etc). That is what scares me at least.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm not too sure how this would fare. People already have trust issues with Google, not sure how willing they would be to give Google (more) access to their lives.

<comment><USER15> I'd feel safer in the hands of google than facebook to be honest.

I have a recurring nightmare that one day, all the world's software developers will be facebook/apple employees and that startups will be limited to the facebook/apple platform, made by facebook/apple subsidiaries, and will only be available to those with a few million to throw at the advertising...

<comment><USER16> I don't understand why you feel this way, do you have any rational justification, or is it just a gut feeling? I don't know if you use GMail but Google already has a lot of information about you. Do you also want them to have your social network?

EDIT: If you want to downvote OK, but please also add a comment with an _argument_ to back your beliefs, other than "I think Facebook is evil"

<comment><USER17> With Google, it's at least "just" Google who has the personal data.

With Faceboook, a lot of unwanted entities get access to personal data. ([http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870451310457525...](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704513104575256701215465596.html))

Also, disabling the "sharing" of all personal information is quite cumbersome in Facebook. ([http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/05/12/business/faceb...](http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/05/12/business/facebook- privacy.html))

Google does have its drawbacks, but compared to the "social websites" it seems to be the lesser evil.

<comment><USER16> The links you cite are before the latest big changes to the security procedure in FB. Have you tried it after the changes?

Also "just" Google may be bigger than you think, e.g. your voice or text mail may end up in a lot of different departments that use it to train algorithms. Remember what happened with their WiFi sniffing.

My default stand is: all big companies are evil and _will_ abuse my data if they need to. Therefore I want to spread the chances of abuse among different companies.

<comment><USER18> I think the biggest difference is that Google has aligned its interests more in line with users (as their best long-term strategy). Facebook seems willing to exploit users any way they can.

It's wise to be cautious sharing your data with any large company, but not all of them are created equal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Adam D'Angelo: [http://www.quora.com/Is-Google-Me-a-fake-rumour- Misleading-e...](http://www.quora.com/Is-Google-Me-a-fake-rumour-Misleading- evolutionary-product-update-Or-is-it-really-a-new-social-network-from-Google)

</comment><comment><USER16> Currently this is just a rumor but it seems to be well-founded. If they do this, it would be the one of the stupidest things that Google has done: (i) Facebook has grown too large for just another contender, even from Google, to kill it easily, people (including me) will show great resistance since they have so much time invested in FB; (ii) People do have trust issues with Google, I want to hedge my information among different big companies. Google already has my checkout, voice and mail, I don't want them to also have all my social network.

Social is the buzz but I can't understand why the big G is wasting time on such things while not updating their Android Market strategy or trying to better their very weak TV offering. The social battle is won by FB, accept this and gear up for a different one.

<comment><USER20> _people (including me) will show great resistance since they have so much time invested in FB_

The solution is to make something that can coexist with Facebook which solves the problems with using FB. The truth is that you _don't_ have to absorb someone's entire social graph. You only really want the approximate 20% they talk to about 80% of the time. That's the part with most of the value anyhow. In fact, knowing what that 20% is might be even more valuable than having the entire graph. What this means is that a genuinely useful Facebook adjunct can easily map out the most valuable part of the Facebook graph.

Note that Myspace and Facebook coexisted for awhile.

<comment><USER16> Good point! Cringely was talking about the disadvantages of huge social graphs recently, too (<http://www.cringely.com/2010/05/lets-get-small/>). I don't think so. I think the interesting messages coming from the 80% I communicate 20% of the time may be even more valuable, e.g. to casually keep in touch, learn interesting stuff, etc.

A social app is not just status messages.How will the Google social app easily absorb all the photos, etc. I'm sharing in FB? What if the friends I enjoy on FB decide not to join the Google thing? I think tehse are _huge_ drawbacks. Look at Plaxo, Ning, etc. They are just wannabes in this space.

You are right about MySpace and FB, but the crowds they were catering to quickly diverged. That also explains how LinkedIn can thrive independent of FB.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'm not surprised at the news actually. And I'll put my money on Google Me being based on the OpenSocial framework. Wave, Buzz, iGoogle, Google Friend Connect etc. looks like MVPs which would fit into this new social network. Part of the master plan.

</comment><comment><USER22> no matter what the results of google vs facebook will be, we can be sure this has currently given quora a lot of press. very ingenius marketing

</comment><comment><USER23> The clue is in the title I think. This will be a standard profile page aimed at business users (a bit like LinkedIn) - OR perhaps just a connections site for people. Your average web user will not use a service named 'Google Me' as a social networking tool like Facebook. If this supposed site/project is happening that is.

</comment><comment><USER2> When I enter "google me" in google, it shows me:

See results for: teyana taylor

What is that about??

<comment><USER24> Seems she wrote a song titled google me in which she tells people to google her.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> If only it could be as successful as Google's Twitter competitor, Google Buzz!

<comment><USER26> Nothing wrong with giving something the ol' college try. I admire Google's desire to get out there.

<comment><USER27> There are plenty of things wrong with the "ol' college try", the a few big ones off the top of my head would be a dilution of resources (engineering and otherwise - though this doesn't seem to bother Google much). Turning allies into enemies - I'm not really sure its smart for Google to try to "beat" everyone in the valley. They need some strategic partners. Brand overload - frankly as much as I like, and use, some Google products, I'm getting seriously sick of them sticking their nose into every corner of the internet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> You know what they say: the hojillionth time's the charm.

</comment><comment><USER29> Again?

</comment><comment><USER30> Google should buy Twitter.</comment>


90 percent of everything is crap - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_law <comment><USER2> Having been in the field of software, I know a lot of software is rickety. Having studied and learnt a lot about finance, I know one rarely gets rich following advice of financial planners. Having worked in fast food, I know during busy period a lot of procedures are skipped. Working with other students and myself in high school and university I know how haphazardly put together most homework and assignments are. The miracle isn't in how good is the best humanity has to offer, but how good human life is, despite human civilisation building itself on a mountain of crap.

<comment><USER3> Good point. However, I think the miracle is exchanged for another one if you believe that civilization was built not on a mountain of crap, but through the efforts of the few who put true rigor into their contributions. Science, philosophy, art, politics, religion and so on have been developed by a relatively minuscule handful of individuals throughout the ages. These greats have built us the walls of civilization which have been filled with crap from within. In my opinion civilization is not built upon a mountain of crap, but is the very walls keeping the crap in place. That these walls are strong enough is the true miracle.

<comment><USER4> A handful of people invented the internal combustion engine, but thousands of engineers and hundreds of thousands of factory workers and mechanics, of various shades of competence, designed and built the actual engine in your car.

A handful of singular individuals penned the broad outlines of our Constitutional structure, but it's the masses of people that built the system and keep it running. The difference between say Bangladesh and the United States is not the ingenuity of their respective founding documents, but the file clerk at the American courthouse who wouldn't even think of taking a bribe, versus his counterpart.

Big ideas mean nothing without execution, and it's the plebes that do the execution. Every great endeavor lives and dies by the virtue of the rank-and- file people undertaking it.

<comment><USER5> Word. [http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/29/world/asia/bangladesh- cour...](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/29/world/asia/bangladesh-court-islam- state-religion.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "If you can do a half-assed job of anything, you're a one-eyed man in a kingdom of the blind." \- Kurt Vonnegut

These two things in tandem should be enough to motivate anyone to take a stab at a problem.

<comment><USER7> "Never half-ass two things. Whole-ass one thing." - Ron Swanson

<comment><USER8> "If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly." \- G.K. Chesterton.

<comment><USER9> Nice quote, but that's not what Chesterton meant.

Chesterton had great respect for the wisdom of the common men. He believed that the matters most important to society as a whole should not be left in the hands of mere experts.

<comment><USER8> What's not what Chesterton meant?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> So this originated from a defense of sci fi, and appears to talk about low quality. But if you think about it, this law is really a tataulogy, and is less judgmental than it sounds. It's a statement that in any category to which one applies a metric, there will be a ranking, and thus a top 10% will always exist. It is drawing an arbitrary line at 90/10, and that arbitrary line can be drawn for any category that exists - there is no wrong choice. There is always a top 10%. The line can be drawn somewhere else, at 75/25, or 99/1, it really doesn't matter if you reflect on the idea that there's always a best under any metric, and always a large set under the same metric that you can and should ignore for the purposes of determining what is "good".

</comment><comment><USER7> So, of the remaining 10% which is not crap, 90% of that is crap.

Following this logic, everything is crap, which seems about right.

<comment><USER10> Following this logic, everything is crap and turing complete

<comment><USER11> Crapturtles all the way down.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> My personal experience in photography is closer to "99% of everything is crap". About 1 in 100 of my photos has the minimum level of artistry I want. That being said, about 1 in 1000 have really high impact. This jives with dschiptsov's comment about creative content on the 'net in general. I wonder if the power curve of quality of a some type of work compresses out to the high and low ends as the total number of works of that type grows.

</comment><comment><USER13> Reminds me of the half life of knowledge [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Half- life_of_knowledge](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Half-life_of_knowledge)

<comment><USER14> The wikipedia article links to it, but I'd recommend "The Half Life of Facts", which introduced me to this concept - it's an entertaining and insightful read.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Is that anything very surprising though. Surely similar things have been expressed a lot elsewhere. Even the very basic normal distribution tells us something similar as well. So I don't think it really helps a lot in any way. I'd only say that 90% might be too extreme a number for "crap". You may say they just fell short of being magnificent but "rubbish" is really an overstatement.

</comment><comment><USER16> Sturgeon is my favorite SF writer. Highly recommend picking some of his stuff up. For some reason he seems under represented amongst the famous SF authors of the period.

<comment><USER17> Absolutely. Sturgeon seems like one of those writers you tend to discover by picking up a second hand paperback with his work on a whim. Second hand book stores and book fairs are great places to pick up some of his novels and short story collections on the cheap.

<comment><USER16> That's exactly how I found him. Now any time I'm in a used bookstore I look for something of his I don't own.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> With cheap paper-back publishing, blogs and now social media. modern copy- paste, citation-compiling "science", the percentage is approaching a hundred.

</comment><comment><USER19> I believe this rule to be true in general, and in all environments. I.e. 90% of software developers (or any other profession) are terrible at their job. But this _also_ goes for prestigious company environments like Google -- 90% of Google developers are mediocre. And conversely, the top 10% of developers in a 100 man, mid-west company that you've never heard of do work on the same level as the top 10% of Googlers. (This does not extend to functions that the small firm does not have, i.e. R&D.)

This is partly due to selection (firms filter out exceptionally good people and select for mediocrity) but also due to the hierarchical nature of social organizations: only the top of the pyramid have the agency and corresponding authority to think critically instead of obey orders, and do important original work.

</comment><comment><USER20> 90 percent of the internet is javascript

</comment><comment><USER21> 90% of Hacker News content is crap. However, you can learn a lot by studying crap and do the opposite. Since 90% of that is crap as well, well, crap.

<comment><USER22> Yes, but it's crap of a higher quality than Reddit, and that's what matters. Hacker News is the crap of the crop.

<comment><USER23> Might I dare to childishly call your handle suitable without you being offended?

<comment><USER22> Might as well, people have been doing that for years.

edit: and asking me what the frequency is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> A longer exposition on the concept, at ribbonfarm...

[http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2015/03/12/the-art-of-agile- leader...](http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2015/03/12/the-art-of-agile-leadership/)

tl;dr: fate of civilization rests on .1% of our effort...

</comment><comment><USER25> Can this law be applied to itself?

<comment><USER26> It's not a law in the strict sense.

<comment><USER27> Crappy law then?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> You are not special. You're not a beautiful and unique snowflake. You're the same decaying organic matter as everything else. We're all part of the same compost heap. We're all singing, all dancing crap of the world.

<comment><USER29> > You are not special. You're not a beautiful and unique snowflake.

It really depends on the level of abstraction. In the big picture, yes, sure. But if you zoom in, my neural pathways aren't shared by anyone else, and probably never will in the history of the universe.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Perhaps science fiction was receiving the criticism because it was fairly new at the time, and there wasn't much of it. With other arts you could point to countless anecdotes of genius, while with sf at the time, there were a handful.

</comment><comment><USER31> 90% is really generous

</comment><comment><USER32> So 90% of the comments you are reading here are crap...

</comment><comment><USER33> I always apply the 80/20 rule to everything, so I'd say 80 instead of 90 but I certainly understand the sentiment.

</comment><comment><USER34> 100% of excrement is crap. Therefore this law is false.

<comment><USER35> Isn't most of it water?

<comment><USER36> Isn't water the best stuff on earth? So crap isn't even crap anymore.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> It's not crap; It's irrelevant for you;</comment>


New research provides solution for the 'Dust Bowl paradox' - <AUTHOR> https://phys.org/news/2020-09-solution-bowl-paradox.html <comment><USER2> This is quite interesting. The explanation was quite simple and wonderful even. For what it's worth, I never thought of a drought as causing the rainfall to be evenly spaced throughout the year but technically it's true.

On a tangential note, I wonder how much the dust bowl played a part in making California the agricultural powerhouse it is today.

<comment><USER3> Or an agricultural disaster, which way you look at it.

<comment><USER4> Which way of looking at it makes it look like a disaster? Only way I can think of is in terms of the rest of the country's dependence on it, but I'm no agriculture expert.

<comment><USER3> You do realize that California's pursuit of agricultural production is largely fuelled by a massive expenditure of its water resources right?

<comment><USER4> Yes but is this a problem that is actually alleviated by having this farming elsewhere, or is this just farming at California scale takes an enormous amount of water?

Certainly there's some "non-ideal" water intensive farming (eg cotton in Arizona) but I don't have a good sense for how much water expenditure is actually wasteful/where else we'd grow it.

<comment><USER3> It's most certainly the latter, California isn't designed to handle as high a load for the extreme hot weather.

Growing cotton in Arizona is plain madness. This year, Arizona was hotter than Saudi Arabia during summer.

Honestly, I don't see how the US can dig itself out of this one. The Chinese circumvented this problem by reducing the agrarian population significantly while acquiring massive land tracts in Africa for cultivation, but the US will be bound by the farming lobby.

Perhaps government incentives to shift water utilization to newer technologies, instead of effectively subsidizing agriculture, might help.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Health grading [A,B or C] of NYC restaurants' hygiene to be displayed - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/28/nyregion/28inspect.html <comment><AUTHOR> It's about time NYC got this system. They have this in LA and I love it. Why would you ever eat at a restaurant rated a B when an A is right next door?

I think it's great that some restaurants are trying to fight this. Another way to filter out places I won't eat at.</comment>