Programming with Punched Cards (2005) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.columbia.edu/cu/computinghistory/fisk.pdf <comment><USER2> An absolutely wonderful write-up. My first contact with punch cards was in 2005. As a tradition, my alma mater uses two punch cards and magnetic tape to make the name tags for the new computer science students. Supplies are of course limited, so this is a dying tradition. I remember reading about how they worked and even, late on a Friday night, learning a bit of Fortran that could have been punched onto my name tag.

From the older professors I learned about the diagonal stripe trick and that the biggest fear they had on a cold winter day was to slip when carrying a box of cards down the long nasty stone stairs just outside the maths department, when taking their code to the computing centre. Something that I did not see mentioned in the submission that I learned from them was that at least some computers in the 60;s would make a different sound depending on which instruction that was being processed. Now, remember that this, just like in the article, was before the days of displays. So, a way to detect infinite loops was to listen to the machine. An infinite loop would of course be detectable by the same sound pattern repeating itself over and over. Auditory debugging indeed.

<comment><USER3> You could secure a card deck with a rubber band. And if you had a card sorter and your cards has line numbers, you could recover it.

So they tell me - I missed punch cards by months. We had them around the lab as a reminder and as note paper.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've stumbled across this before, its a very good read. Highly recommended! There are some great videos on YouTube about the subject, left over from that era. I really like this one: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oaVwzYN6BP4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oaVwzYN6BP4) (produced in 1969)

Its interesting how little programming has changed since these days. The _way_ we program has changed significantly, put what we produce is almost identical. Each punch card represents a single instruction, equivalent to a line of code in our modern text editors.

I wrote a small punch card toy in JavaScript not too long ago to get a feel for what programming with punch cards may have been like. That's here if your curious: [http://tyleregeto.com/article/punch-card- emulator](http://tyleregeto.com/article/punch-card-emulator)

<comment><USER5> Programming in the punch card-era sounded better. When it was time to compile your program, you got to take a walk, and you met girls.

<comment><USER6> mm but the waiting in line wasn't fun - back in the 80's we had a dial up link to a mainframe to run CFD models,

I recall one day in our terminal room one of the engineers came in logged on - then commented with a sigh 48 jobs in the queue ahead of hers.

<comment><USER5> You were using punch cards in the 80s? I thought they'd given way to magnetic storage by then.

<comment><USER6> Not at out end we used to get data back from some of our partners (Admiralty Research Establishment at Portland from memory) in paper tape form - I had a few paper cuts from our high-speed paper tape reader.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I "learned" to program Fortran IV on punch cards in 1973. Punch cards were not the only option for input--you could use machines that looked like teletypes to create paper tapes. However, there was the problem of typing errors: with the teletype you got underline marks to show your deletions, so changing "wile" to "while" left you with WILE___HILE on the paper, which I found hard to read. With a punch card, you could copy to another card up to the point of error, then proceed. And believe me, nobody thought of providing keypunch help for college freshmen. I didn't mind Fortran, I did OK in the class, but the experience did not encourage me to go on.

One of my leading regrets from college is that a couple of quarters later, I sat in the back row of a classroom where I could see the cursor blinking on a CRT (probably connected to a Data General Nova), and thought "Hmmm" but did not follow up, and let a dozen years go by before I took up programming again.

</comment><comment><USER8> This makes me wonder: In 50, 100, 1000 years, what will be the state of studying computer languages from the present? Surely many of them will be gone by then (although probably not C), but some programs may still exist written in them. Or, some future archaeologist may recover a bag of servers and attempt to understand what they do.

Will courses teach old languages like they teach Latin and Greek now? Centuries from now, we may need people to decipher old computer programs just like old texts.

Or, perhaps all the documentation will be preserved and there will be little need to study the old languages beyond their primary docs.

<comment><USER5> >> (although probably not C)

C has good survival characteristics. The other language that I expect to last 1000 years is Javascript.

<comment><USER9> I could see Python surviving as well (maybe not a 1000 years, but 100). With its heavy usage in scientific computing, It's rapidly becoming the next Fortran. LISP will also probably exists in some incarnation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Fantastic read. My first real glimpse of what programming was like back then :)

He speaks of the paradigm shift he underwent there, from punched cards to terminals with screens (which seems close enough to using a text editor or IDE on your workstation now :)). Do you think a similar paradigm shift may happen again? If so, what could it be?

Could programming with a keyboard ever become obsolete? What if you could just ask your computer what you want in plain English and it actually understands and "implements" it?

<comment><USER11> You mean like SQL? That is a literal / formal language, but still quite legible in English. A looser one is Siri and Google's voice recognition, same idea. The main problem though is interpretation and specificity, something which English isn't very good in (multiple interpretations possible). Which is what programmers are paid for; translating loose requirements ('I want a contact form') into code (fields, styling, validation, submission, storage, reporting, etc).

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Yeah, those were the times! Columbia's computer history pages (links at the end of the document) are also very enlightening.

I don't write self-modifying code any more, but I can relate to the times when that was a sheer necessity. I find it important that documents like these help us keep those times alive so we don't forget where we came from.

</comment><comment><USER13> My recollection of the punched card days is the tyranny of the Data Processing Manager - the keeper of the gateway to the computer.

</comment><comment><USER13> We can thank Bill Bridge for killing the punched card. George Snively</comment>


Cloud Computing Savings - Real or Imaginary?  - <AUTHOR> http://www.appirio.com/blog/2009/04/cloud-computing-savings-real-or.php

<comment><USER2> Very interesting. I would like to see some hard numbers though. I am not sure how that got to these stats.</comment>


Renault-Nissan lays out plans for electric and autonomous vehicles - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2017/09/15/renault-nissan-lays-out-plans-for-12-new-evs-and-robo-global-ride-hailing-service/ <comment><USER2> > _The company provided few details of how it plans to get to its end points: > no information about what tech they would use for these self-driving cars, > and whether or how they would work with partners or if they planned to build > everything from the ground up._

> _Nor did they give any information about the progress of these common > platforms for building electric vehicles — although they noted that they had > sold some 500,000 EV's all in across the group to date — still just a drop > in the ocean of the multiple millions sold by the three, and the tens of > millions of cars that are sold across the whole industry._

> _The group was also thin on specifics when it came to its plan for > transportation services offered alongside their vehicles._

What is there to even talk about here?

<comment><USER3> How about the massive opportunity for surveillance? Roving robo-cop cars on dual-use contracts, parking, observing, instantly connecting to a remote operator when a violation is detected. Easily reduces the requirements to be a police officer to somewhere near "can you stare at a computer screen?". In places where the "speed cams" went down in flames (~70% of the vote against where I live) I'm more optimistic the people wont tolerate it, but god help the nanny states. Just to be clear, I sincerely appreciate the dedicated and excellent police out there, many of them share my views on the "speed cams", robo-cops etc.

<comment><USER2> Will state actors abuse their ability to tap providers on their shoulder and siphon the data? Yes

Will consumers use such technology increasingly more, esp as cost and availability of it increases? Yes.

Will non state actors have eve more ability to use/exploit such tech for their own purposes? Yes.

What people will do combat such? Who knows, though I know showing up to a voting booth wont change much in the scheme of things…

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> When demand for oil peaks what happens to all the people - and countries - that dpened on oil maintaining a certain price per barrel. What is the new source of demand for oil that replaces internals combustion engines in millions of cars?

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for it... just like thinking about those ramifications.

<comment><USER5> If history is any indicator, it is going to get very ugly. Between this, AI, process automation etc I am not convinced societies will gracefully migrate to a social state everywhere which then leads me to believe that population control will start to get enacted (ie in 60 years people may need a license to have a child) among one of many potential outcomes.

<comment><USER6> Ugly is probably a massive understatement, given the state of that region know when they are practically rolling in money. I think you can probably expect the next couple of decades to look like a fairly precipitous decline, followed by a stupendous explosion.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> No one wants to be left behind. Even if they had no plans they don't want to be seen as not keeping up after recent announcements from Mercedes, VW, Volvo etc.

<comment><USER8> Yes, the commitment to electric (and hybrid) technology seems to be spreading very quickly since Volvo's announcement in July. It feels like it has taken forever for electric vehicles to catch on, and suddenly they're on the verge of mainstream.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> If they and other companies succed the number of jobs disappearing is going to be massive. Technologically we are almost there, but socially just a few see this coming, and we are not prepared.

<comment><USER10> You are short-sighted. Would you say the same about the telecommunication industry? Would you say the same about computers (machine), because computers (people) lost their jobs?

I recommend you to read Bastiat's famous Candlestick makers' Petition.

[http://bastiat.org/en/petition.html](http://bastiat.org/en/petition.html) [https://fee.org/articles/the-candlemakers- petition/](https://fee.org/articles/the-candlemakers-petition/)

<comment><USER11> > You are short-sighted. Would you say the same about the telecommunication > industry? Would you say the same about computers (machine), because > computers (people) lost their jobs?

I'd say the same about globalization, which is just as powerful as a force as technology advancement; globalization which has driven populist policies and candidates into office.

At what point did the guillotines come out in France? [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Revolution](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Revolution)

Displace too many jobs at once, be prepared for revolution if you have not put social policies in place to provide a soft landing for those displaced.

EDIT: This is not meant to be inflammatory or political, simply factual. When inequality reaches a tipping point, revolution and violence is inevitable.

[http://news.stanford.edu/2017/01/24/stanford-historian- uncov...](http://news.stanford.edu/2017/01/24/stanford-historian-uncovers- grim-correlation-violence-inequality-millennia/)

<comment><USER2> > _This is not meant to be inflammatory or political, simply factual. When > inequality reaches a tipping point, revolution and violence is inevitable._

Don't disagree at all, but if people are coordinating their revolutionary activities with any of the technology that they couldn't learn to leverage to empower themselves when this time comes, I foresee more metadata drone strikes at wedding parties outside of the ME, with a lot less casualties defined as collateral damage, powered by a industry that prefers profits from wars when they have indefinite timelines…

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I barely trust most car companies to build a radio. What makes them think I will trust them to build an autonomous car?

<comment><USER13> There never was a roadmap for building that radio.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Will a dozen++ automakers license the autonomous versions of "android" or "iOS" /Windows /Unix or have their own solutions? Gazillion dollar question.</comment>


File Sharing and Chat in Node.js - <AUTHOR>

Hi everyone, I'm a Node.js developer. I would like to share with you all a site that I've been working on the past 8 months. Hopefully someone will find it useful. The source code is available on my github account.
The application is an IRC-like chat with file sharing.
URL: http://www.canisshare.com GitHub: https://github.com/winicius24/open-source-drive
Let me know what you think about it.
Best Regards, Bucking Charlie <comment><USER2> This is really cool, but I think you should improve the design of the app to make it more user-friendly.

I'm a freelance designer, and I'd love to help you out.

You can checkout a chat app I designed on my portfolio: [http://ash.co/work/superchat/index.html](http://ash.co/work/superchat/index.html)

Email me at email@example.com if you are interested.</comment>


4Clojure Easy Problems Updated on Clojurecademy - <AUTHOR> https://clojurecademy.com/courses/17592186045426/learn/overview# <comment><USER2> 4Clojure is really fun! Reading just the book by itself got boring for me and I thoroughly enjoyed working through the problems side-by-side! Thanks to everyone who contributed to it.

Another thing that I found great for practice was Advent of Code[0]. The exercises are more challenging and most of them lend themselves really well to the conciseness and elegance of Clojure collections. The reddit community[1] is also helpful and even if you can't crack the algorithm, porting someone else's solution to Clojure is a valuable & fun exercise.

[0] - [https://adventofcode.com/](https://adventofcode.com/)

[1] - [https://www.reddit.com/r/adventofcode/](https://www.reddit.com/r/adventofcode/)

<comment><USER3> I agree. For someone with a math background and not much algorithms training, the 4clojure exercises were just the ticket for me when i worked through term in 2013. Whoever wrote them put a lot of effort into breaking them into informative chunks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> All 4clojure problems on PicoLisp: [https://bitbucket.org/mihailp/tankfeeder/src/default/4clojur...](https://bitbucket.org/mihailp/tankfeeder/src/default/4clojure/?at=default)

</comment><comment> j-pb 4Clojure empasizes non idiomatic solutions way to much imho.

"Now solve this without using the standard way of solving it." doesn't seem like a good idea when you want people to write good readable code in the end :/

<comment><USER5> I disagree w/ this comment. The types of problems where it disallows using built-ins are typically those that have you re-implementing a function for purposes of learning. The implementation of that function, in my experience, is still fairly idiomatic if you are following the right users. Particularly those functions that force you to build a lazy implementation. I found the exercises (and more importantly comparing to more experienced user's solutions) incredibly helpful not just for clojure but FP concepts generally.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why did Google create and invest in Android? - <AUTHOR>

How does it make money off Android and how is the investment justified? The popular analogy is its the Windows of the smartphone world. Not quite true because Windows gets money from partners. Android is free. They have to rely on ads and app purchases. Google services are immensely popular (and very good) and if they create apps for other operating systems (like maps, voice, voice assistant etc) most people would definitely use them giving them ad footprint. Also their admod could be built into every app irrespective of the OS. So their share of ad revenue is not going to be dented. So what would Google lose if say Android did not exist today? I know they got into hardware now but that is not their plan to begin with. I know I am definitely not seeing something, What am I missing here? <comment><USER2> There are more cellphones than there are computers. With iOS and winmobile you have to play by their rules. You think Netscape enjoyed it when IE was default? iOS have some really stupid rules for browser too, Opera had to hack it. Netscape ended up bankrupt and releasing Mozilla and it worked out well. I can see some similarity to this and for example how the internet work. Let it free and capitalized on it via great services and ads.

What you're not seeing is the fact that GOOGLE make money mainly through ADs! They're first and foremost a search engine that get money via ads! If there are tons of these mobile computer aka smart phone out there than there are computer. The future gotta be smart phones. They're not going to wait and lose the market and let someone else dominate it. Microsoft lost the search engine market cause they were still OS oriented and google ended up capitalizing it and now dominate it. Google isn't going to sit back and let Apple do the same thing with smart phone. That's just foolish.

I think they also want to branch out to hardware to be like Apple. Or at least try to innovate and find new market, like the google glasses and such.

<comment><USER3> I'd like to add that a near-monopoly of a closed platform like iOS would be much worse that the situation we had with Microsoft.

Microsoft had an advantage by shipping IE with Windows and making it the default browser. With a closed system like iOS, they have just removed Netscape/Firefox/Wikipedia/Google/Adobe Reader from the platform. And nobody could complain, because they all agreed that this is OK when they submitted their apps.

So if a closed platform wins the current smartphone war, the platform owner could just "turn off Google" at will.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think you're on the right track with Google wanting to increase their ad footprint. I tend to view every move that Google makes as an attempt to increase their ability to collect ad revenue. Even the self-driving car frees people up from staring at the boring road and offers an opportunity to look at ads.

Android can be explained in the same manner. Google saw the traffic potential the mobile web had, and they wanted to make sure they were the search engine of choice. The best way to do this is to control the software people use to access that mobile web.

<comment><AUTHOR> The problem is I cannot see Android specifically adding to that. Specifically I cannot see the ROI. Google is in such a position that people want to use their apps/services (unlike yahoo or some other company) so I cannot see why they could not have gotten the same ad footprint with just apps instead of an OS.

I don't know if I would reduce the self-driving car to just increasing time to see ads though. Its much grander and in fact revolutionary than that.

<comment><USER5> Apple could block Google from iOS in an instant. For example, Maps just got dropped. Most of the revenue is in the default installed apps not downloadable alternatives, the mass market won't seek alternatives.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> In addition to advertising, they don't have to rely on a competitor's system(s). The latter I think is more important than advertising in the long run.

Before Android and Chromebook, the masses all accessed Google's services through competitors.

</comment><comment><USER7> Google created Android because the iPhone made users switch from using the web to using apps. Since Google makes its revenue from web ads, it needed to take control of the phone market and make sure the web and/or their ads were still relevant.

</comment><comment><USER8> An article I always refer to when talking to people, techies and non-techies alike, is <http://techcrunch.com/2011/03/25/search-googles-castle-moat/>.

</comment><comment><USER9> Google didn't create Android. Google acquihired Android with Andy Rubin.

</comment><comment><USER10> Android was originally a Blackberry competitor.

<comment><USER3> This is nonesense. Android is a software platform that organisations can use to build interoperable operating systems for mobile devices.

A Blackberry is a piece of hardware.

<comment><USER9> He must have meant Blackberry OS but I don't think he's right anyway.</comment></comment></comment>


SendGrid: Hosted Email service for password reminders, welcome messages, etc - <AUTHOR> http://www.sendgrid.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> There's been a few threads about sending Outbound email- I always bookmark them because it's a particular pain point for us. Sending out Thousands of daily messages without ending up on SPAM lists or having ISP problems can be difficult.

There are a couple of other solutions people have suggested, but SendGrid looks easy to script, and the pricing is much lower than what I've seen in the past.

I don't know if the quality is any good, but they seem a decent contender.</comment>


Making Sublime Text 2 Beautiful - <AUTHOR> http://floatleft.com/notebook/making-sublime-text-2-beautiful

<comment><USER2> > Overall I'm really pleased that Sublime is flexible enough to allow this > kind of customisation but it would be nice if the developers could spend > some time on making it a more native Mac experience.

Sublime Text is cross-platform application and if you made it look more like a Mac application, then it would look too much out of place for Linux and Windows users.

<comment><USER3> The devs already go to great lengths to respect each platform's idiosyncraties. The only thing lacking is a default visual theme per system.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> *How to make Sublime Text 2 the way one guy likes.

</comment><comment><USER5> tl;dr

1\. use this theme <https://github.com/cafarm/aqua-theme>

2\. use this icon [http://dribbble.s3.amazonaws.com/users/13658/screenshots/468...](http://dribbble.s3.amazonaws.com/users/13658/screenshots/468176/dribble- sublime.png)

3\. and use my theme mod <https://github.com/mrappleton/aqua-theme>

<comment><USER6> 2\. The actual link is [http://dribbble.com/shots/468176-Icon-Sublime-Text- for-theme...](http://dribbble.com/shots/468176-Icon-Sublime-Text-for-themes- with-white-background/attachments/30058)

Edit: I missed your #3, so my #1 is actually wrong. But I'll leave it here in case someone wonders how you can 'Add Repository' as it was not mentioned in the article.

1\. He has forked the Aqua theme and added a nice, "folder" icon to the sidebar. It's what I always wanted (maybe I hate it when I use it, but I think I'll love it). Screenshot: [http://sublimetext.userecho.com/s/attachments/201203/i_190.p...](http://sublimetext.userecho.com/s/attachments/201203/i_190.png) relevant discussion: [http://sublimetext.userecho.com/topic/19274-theming-of- the-s...](http://sublimetext.userecho.com/topic/19274-theming-of-the- sidebar/#comment_110552)

Press command-shift-p, select 'Package Control: Add Repository' and type firstname.lastname@example.com:mrappleton/aqua-theme.git then change the theme in user preferences (command+,).

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I can't agree with the title of this post.

Perhaps "Author makes ST2 look like any other OSX application because they seem to hate anything they're not used to."

</comment><comment><USER8> I've never been much a fan of native themes. Also I really like the design of Sublime text.</comment>


Ipad competitors - <AUTHOR> http://sectiondesign.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/ipadmockup-680x984.jpg

<comment><AUTHOR> Not sure I agree with all of it - but I do like the design.</comment>


Doom creator John Romero on what's wrong with modern shooter games - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/games/2019/nov/12/doom-creator-john-romero-shooter-games-id-software <comment><USER2> My gaming never really evolved past the golden year of 1998, when Age of Empires was greater than Command and Conquer, and Goldeneye on the N64 with three friends was better than sex (not that anyone gave me that option).

Every time I dip into modern games (usually watching a friend play), the complexity wears me out. So Romero's point about 'modern shooters turning into inventory games' resonated - I'm not sure if I ever completed Doom or Duke Nukem 3D, but both definitely felt like you could just run with them and have fun in a way I don't feel with today's AAA options.

Maybe I'm just old. Or having too much sex.

<comment><USER3> > the complexity wears me out

This! The complexity of so many modern games turns me off from them. Have to learn a bunch of complicated systems? Sounds way too much like my day job.

<comment><USER4> And programming as a genre has become popular...

Ever seen Lightbot, TIS-100 or Shenzhen I/O?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The prevalence of the shooter genre is one of the main reasons why I've still got to be embarrassed about this video game hobby outside tech circles (The other main, of course more problematic reason being the visibility of free to play mobile games). Pretentious Guardian views about shooter corridors won't change that. That's just a sign of an industry having lost touch with developed art forms. I wish this would change, but big guns / mindless repetitive gameplay / violence / explosions seem to address primal instincts for too many out there.

I've heard one of the Commander Keen developers did not like the direction id and gaming was heading with Wolfenstein already. Would be interesting to read a modern day interview with him.

Got mild hopes that streaming will improve things as it won't only select a market of people who are already very financially committed to this hobby. Very curious about how Stadia will turn out.

<comment><USER6> _I've heard one of the Commander Keen developers did not like the direction id and gaming was heading with Wolfenstein already. Would be interesting to read a modern day interview with him._

Perhaps Tom Hall? There's this recent audio interview [1] with him that seems interesting, thanks for the hint!

[1] [https://www.devgameclub.com/blog/2018/1/17/dgc-ep-096-tom- ha...](https://www.devgameclub.com/blog/2018/1/17/dgc-ep-096-tom-hall- interview)

<comment><USER7> Probably Tom Hall. The breaking point for him was Doom; When you look at the level of interactivity/story in Doom 3, consider that it was 'closer' to his vision for the original than what was released in 1993.

Anachronox is probably the best example of what he thought was a 'proper' game, and while I've never had the chance to play it, I understand it was a very underappreciated gem in it's day.

<comment><USER6> Thanks, I'm having a great time reading about Anachronox!

If you play on Windows, it's $5.39 in GOG: [https://www.gog.com/game/anachronox](https://www.gog.com/game/anachronox)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Just finished Doom (1993) for the first time on switch the other day. I really enjoyed the soundtrack, but the main thing that caught my attention was the absolutely dark rooms where a monster would jump out. Funny about the secret rooms, I didn't get in any until the later levels.

</comment><comment><USER9> Romero always wanted a better story and got beaten out by Carmack's appreciation for simply quantity inside id.

I see the same cycle repeating. Anybody wanting to do a story in games should make sure their leadership is secure on that. Big dumb cheesy gameplay is back.

<comment><USER10> I want gameplay, I could care less about some big dumb story.

<comment><USER9> Billion dollar franchises have always included a big dumb story, CoD, Warcraft, Diablo, Elder Scrolls ect. Even Doom has a story it's just there to be pushed aside, but still is a story. Pushing aside the story is part of what makes that game great fun.

The ludology/narrative split in games is always there even if you pick only one side. Walking sims still have gameplay and multiplayer first person shooters still have lore & world building.

<comment><USER10> You are wrong. Dead wrong. Doom does not have a big dumb story, dialogue, cut scenes etc. It has great gameplay, pure and true.

<comment><USER9> It literally has scenes where you do not shoot things, are not allowed to shoot things and cannot shoot things so that you can listen to Samuel Hayden tell you what you have to do. Or Vega. Or Olivia. You have passageways in levels that are empty of gameplay with voice over that cleverly looks like gameplay but is the same as a walking simulator. It has rooms that lock you in and give you 30sec of voice over and visuals to tell you what's happening and you get a power up at the end.

It has a fleshed out world with characters, big green blocks you can touch to get lore and story progression via action. Smashing the argent accumulators opens hell and progresses the story.

You may have ignored all that, but it is there.

'Just gameplay' is beat saber or DDR or a gameplay prototype. Go play them.

<comment><USER10> Were you born after the year 2000 or something? I am talking about the original Doom, not Doom for millennials.

John Romero created the _original_ Doom, not 2016.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> John "Daikatana" Romero telling the world how to make games. Right...</comment>


Swift Covid-19 vaccine within reach, say Swiss scientists - <AUTHOR> https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/sci-tech/bern-research_swift-covid-19-vaccine-within-reach--say-swiss-scientists/45704796 <comment><USER2> they do not seem to have even started human trials only mouse based experiments - so how would it be within reach?

the article is surprisingly convoluted and feels a little suspect ends with a call for 100 million CHF funding.

</comment><comment><USER3> How do they make the virus-like particles?</comment>


CodeStream master plan - <AUTHOR> https://blog.codestream.com/index.php/2018/10/16/codestream-master-plan/ <comment><AUTHOR> Sourcegraph CEO here. CodeStream is a really awesome product that adds discussions to code in your editor. I was just reading their master plan and wanted to post it here.

I have a few questions for the CodeStream team:

\- How do you think discussing code fits in with code review? Is it a partial replacement?

\- What % of interactions with code discussion do you foresee occurring in GitHub (or other code hosts) vs. the editor?

\- What % of code discussions do you foresee being posted by bots (such as CI) vs. humans?

<comment><USER2> Thanks for the post and the questions! CodeStream CEO Peter here.

1) from the teams we speak to, code review is generally a somewhat formal process, and almost always involves code that is changing in the current sprint. with codestream, we want to enable continuous collaboration by making it possible to comment on (and soon create an issue on) any block of code at any time, whether it changed this sprint or not. so rather than trying to compete head-to-head with code review tools, we see codestream as complementary. with integration possibilities, perhaps even more.

2) the major difference between github PR comments and codestream-enabled comments are that a) codestream is in-editor (although there are some early plugins for PRs now), b) codestream is real-time (as compared to the email- like transactional semantics of web-based comments), but more importantly c) codestream comments allow you to talk about any part of the codebase at any time, not just what's changing in a given sprint, and d) codestream comments don't get buried when the PR is merged, they persist as annotations on your codebase even as your code changes. we're excited to see how this enables new modes of communication about code, although to be honest we don't yet have an idea what % of discussions that will represent. we hope a lot!

3) in the beginning, it's all human-driven. the next phase will introduce integrations with defect tracking tools such as trello, jira and asana, so that you can more easily create an issue on a block of code you're looking at in your editor. the third phase will be bot-driven or system-driven alerts which, given our integration into the editor, will be able to preserve context (repo, file, line, range), and optionally persist, and therefore hopefully become more powerful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> awesome product!

<comment><USER4> agreed...now if they only had an integration with Glip :)</comment></comment>


Swiss journalist re-implements ClearViewAI in two weeks with OS software - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/grssnbchr/status/1225846790093725696 <comment><USER2> The head of swiss data protection (Eidgenössischer Datenschutzbeauftragter) was on the news program [1] and scolded them since according to him it is illegal in Switzerland to scrape data of the internet and then do facial recognition on it to identify people.

He said because they are media it may be ok but the average joe and company should not get any ideas of doing the same thing.

He also said it is facebook/instagram's responsibility to keep the users data safe and prevent it from being scraped.

I'm not sure how anyone can prevent data scraping and I also don't see how it can be illegal if the data is on the public internet. Can anyone elaborate why it would be considered illegal to scrape data in Switzerland? I can see there being a conflict between the privacy laws and doing identifying recognition on public images but downloading the images themselves I don't see being illegal?

We deal with scrapers taking our data all the time and this is the first time I heard that it may be illegal.

[1] [https://www.srf.ch/play/tv/10vor10/video/fokus-heikle- gesich...](https://www.srf.ch/play/tv/10vor10/video/fokus-heikle- gesichtserkennung---das-experiment?id=579ffb3b-dadf-490b-be62-e9c692f2e3bb)

<comment><USER3> > He said because they are media it may be ok but the average joe and company > should not get any ideas of doing the same thing.

That's not the first time I've seen someone claim that a journalist claim is allowed to perform some kind of information processing that's off limits to regular people. These claims are specious and ridiculous. Journalists do not form a distinct class with special privileges, even if they claim to be one.

<comment><USER4> They're nonsensical. There's no legal definition of journalist. You don't get a license from the government

<comment><USER5> This is Switzerland, not the United States. In Europe at least in many countries journalists _do_ indeed have special privileges and they do have recognised legal status and licenses, usually represented by private/public institutions that oversee ethical standards in the industry and so on. In Germany for example this would be the German Press council, in Sweden it is the Opinionsnämnd etc..

For the love of god can we please stop pretending that every country on the planet is the US.

<comment><USER6> I sure wish those journalists would have any more credibility than regular people though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Not claiming this is the result of, but this article is the wet dream of Facebook lobby groups. Facial recognition won't go anywhere, that ship has sailed, but regulation might restrict which data you're allowed to use for it and oh boy would Facebook love monopolizing their throve of data and use regulation to fend off any threat to their leading ability to profile individuals.

In the topic of restricting access to others the author says:

 _But I ask myself: How difficult can it be for a billion dollar revenue company?_

Pretty difficult when the law prohibits you[1]. Hopefully that forces regulation to cover the weaponization of technology not access to data. Right now this comes off as; you're not allowed to enrich uranium, unless you own the land.

[1] [https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/09/victory-ruling-hiq- v-l...](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/09/victory-ruling-hiq-v-linkedin- protects-scraping-public-data)

<comment><USER8> "Mark Zuckerberg: Then I guess that would be the first time somebody's lied under oath." \- The Social Network

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> While this demonstrates the capabilities of easily accessible ML software, it also shows the power held by large corporations and governments who have bulk access to this kind of data (images from social media, crawling) and how ML makes them able to abuse it. It's really scary to think they know where and when I was photographed or filmed in public (doing whatever) by random people while I don't...

<comment><USER10> This specifically shows that you don't need to be a large corp to do this.

Everyone can do this at home today and on a budget, with publicly accessible data.

<comment><USER9> As an individual, you have to try your luck with collections of images that happen to be publicly accessible, whereas large entities have access to many, many more images (all private collections in the cloud for example, or security camera material) and can search them systematically. That's a big difference IMHO.

<comment><USER11> At the moment (as someone who works at a large company), it honestly seems easier to scrape->do something sketchy with the data than it would be to overcome the internal privacy protections that are in place at a large company.

<comment><USER9> Do the internal restrictions apply to everybody at Google (my guess from your past comments) equally, or are there departments with easier access, government contracts etc.?

<comment><USER11> I can't speak for all of Google (maybe there is something secret I don't know about, although I doubt it given how much leaking there has been), but for the sensitive data I have had to deal with for my job, I'm not aware of anyone having a way of bypassing the controls.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > But I ask myself: How difficult can it be for a billion dollar revenue > company?

Am I the only one who has trouble believing that someone who was at a technical level involved in scraping and running facial recognition on 200k photos would genuinely answer "Not very?".

<comment><USER13> I've implemented a few scrapers for various purposes, and run bulk data analysis over the results.

It was years ago, and it was not very difficult.

I'd guess this would be an easy summer intern project for a bright undergrad.

<comment><USER12> Would the same bright undergrad be likely to believe that stopping scraping on a service with a billion users is an easy problem?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I got a privacy notice update from my bank today. In the past I was generally OK with my bank to generally share data and all that because it goes toward credit scores and a variety of other things.

I'm not so sure any more. I feel like we've reached a point where a massive, trustable, profile of me is for sale. I don't think I want a bank that is allowed to do it any more.

Does anyone have any recommendations for a bank focused on privacy? (and for that matter credit cards?)

I know I know - probably impossible, but I am pretty sure I just created a market, who's with me?

<comment><USER15> That banking wet dream used to be subject of this article, Switzerland! As long as you had enough money.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> It seems hard if not impossible to prevent illegal use of profile pictures. If a web browser can access them, collecting them can be automated. Even if they are only accessible through an app on iOS or Android, you could still, on a device with root access, capture the API calls and reverse engineer how to get those pictures. So we might just assume any intelligence service already has that. The only protection against a more widespread development of those products would be legal I think.

<comment><USER17> There's a simple, practical way to do this: don't make the images public. Limit them to some degree of separation by friend connections.

I think this should satisfy most friend-finding use-cases while eliminating comprehensive large-scale scraping.

You can still reconnect with that guy you saw at a party a few years ago or that teacher from high-school. Chances are they're within 2 or 3 degrees of separation from you.

<comment><USER18> >Limit them to some degree of separation by friend connections.

Haha, oh sweet summer child. How do you think Cambridge Analytica got all that data? All you need is 1 friend with lousy security practices.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Learning a foreign language - <AUTHOR>

For the past 6 months I've been learning Russian and am still struggling to break through.  While I'm making progress, it's very slow going and I'm looking for a better way short of moving there (maybe in a few years).
Every piece of advice I've received has fallen into 1 of 2 categories - the traditional (grammar heavy lectures, canned dialogues, workbook exercises, flashcard drills...) or the pragmatic (talking with native speakers, local language groups, learning only the vocabulary for common situations, watching subtitled movies).  I've tried different cocktails of all these.  I do learn from the traditional methods, but only if I repeat them 10 times.  And while the practical methods are more authentic, I end up drowning in the uncharted waters of the language instead of absorbing it.
Is learning a language just miles of crawling through the shit, or is there a way to make non-linear progress?  I'm willing to try anything. <comment><USER4> I am a language teacher, so factor that into the advice that follows: 1\. Find a language teacher that excels at teaching beginners. Tell the teacher that you only want to study 1 hour a week but that you promise to do 6-10 hours a week of homework (for at least 3 months). Ask for a plan from the teacher based on this schedule. A good teacher is much like a good doctor and should be able to give you a good plan. The teacher should be able to fill those 6-10 hours with productive work.

2\. Do not evaluate yourself based on what you can produce (say) but rather on what you can understand. Listening in particular is the royal road to language learning. Also, if you can understand slow normal speech you will have personal proof of progress which will reduce self-doubt. Remember communication is not possible without understanding.

3\. Make sure that you have mastered all the phonemes in the target language. By doing this first you can avoid many problems later.

<comment><AUTHOR> IYO, what is the best audio to listen to? Tapes for language learners? Radio? Subtitled movies?

<comment><USER5> When I was learning Turkish, I spent a summer listening to an hour-long talk radio show every morning. Three guys chatting about local issues and making jokes, with callers phoning in to offer their opinions. It bumped my comprehension to effectively fluent, and I learned a lot of colloquialisms that make me sound more fluent than I actually feel when I speak.

<comment><USER6> Can you tell me the talk show you are referring to and if it's accessible in the US? I'm trying to learn Turkish, and compared to when I was trying to learn Spanish, it feels like there are very little accessible resources.

<comment><USER5> Sure thing. It is "Modern Sabahlar". Here's a link to the podcast archive. They are very good about keeping it current. You can also follow them on Twitter for updates.

[http://podcast.modernsabahlar.org/](http://podcast.modernsabahlar.org/) [https://twitter.com/modernsabahlar](https://twitter.com/modernsabahlar)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Don't think about it as "language learning" or "language study". That is not how humans learn languages. Think about it as "language acquisition", something you will pick up over time. There is a bunch of research about this, much of it focused on classroom methods, however. Search for books on "second language acquisition"; but the only popular science book I know of isn't coming out until August: [http://www.amazon.com/dp/0262029235/](http://www.amazon.com/dp/0262029235/)

All humans learn languages by interacting with other speakers, constantly attempting to communicate more successfully ourselves, and trying to understand the communication of other people.

As adults, we have a harder time perfecting the target language's phonology (or perhaps this just tends to fossilize), but we have a huge advantage in learning the grammar/syntax of the target language, because we already know about such things in our own language. We don't have to make the massive cognitive leaps that children do—we've already done that. This is what all the emphasis on grammar exercises is about: trying to supercharge our language learning ability. But it has to be built on a foundation of interaction, comprehensive input, and effective communication.

Learning a language to near-native fluency levels is a years- or decades-long process, and most people will stop at a level that they find "good enough" and let their second language fossilize. And there's nothing wrong with that, it probably is indeed good enough!

It's a question of continually finding new motivations, and motivation over a long period of time, of setting new goals, and especially establishing an identity as a person who speaks that language. Just have fun, keep it interesting, engage in it constantly (or intensively). You'll be more likely to keep at it if you enjoy it and don't look at it as "miles of crawling through the shit".

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't know where I got the idea that one can reach fluency in a year (especially without living in the country). Perhaps the marketing weasels. Thanks for the perspective.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> If there was a short-cut, wouldn't everyone take it?

Here are some tips:

* Finding a Russian-speaking buddy you could go out with shouldn't be too hard look. Look around for local ex-pats - at least Russian-speakers are everywhere. No need to actually go to Russia.

* Drink a small amount of alcohol when practising speaking - its called a social lubricant for a reason. Or do things you enjoy - find a buddy you could talk with about your hobbies in Russian.

* There is a false dichotomy between practical and formal learning - they complement each other. Unless you are 5, learning a language only from practising can form bad habits and learning only in a classroom means you cannot apply your knowledge.

Желаю Удачи!

<comment><AUTHOR> I never thought about having a drink before speaking Russian - that probably would help muffle my self consciousness.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I actually built a Russian app for my sister to keep up her Russian: [https://billfranklin.eu/russian](https://billfranklin.eu/russian)

It was a fork of my German app which was on HN fp a couple months ago. While the app was just to scratch an itch and probably isn't as useful as the many others available (Memrise, Duolingo, etc ad finitum), working on a project that made me use German was great for learning (probably more effective than the app itself).

So my ¢2 - work on something that forces you to use the language. This project was basically an immersion course (of course a very short one).

</comment><comment><USER10> How do we learn to talk when we are toddlers? You point at something and ask what is it, you learn its name, you repeat it out loud (use it in a few phrases, with more or less success). You generally ask something about it, too (what does it do, why is it so big, etc...). So when you are done, you know the name, the use, how does it looks like, what does it do, etc.

You have to understand that just memorising words or phrases won't get you very far. You need to associate these words with something that makes sense to you, to fully understand and integrate them into your brain.

I teach myself languages as a hobby, now and then. I've learnt some Japanese and Chinese, for example (using iKnow [1], great website and apps). I wanted to learn the Russian alphabet but was having a hard time reading the characters until I came across an article [2] which provides cheeky associative method. It's brilliant, I can read any text in Russian now (I can't understand it yet, but hey, it's a first step!).

[1] [http://iknow.jp/](http://iknow.jp/) [2] [http://gadling.com/2009/03/30/gadling-teaches-you-to-read- th...](http://gadling.com/2009/03/30/gadling-teaches-you-to-read-the-cyrillic- alphabet-in-5-minutes/)

</comment><comment><USER11> Immersion seems to be the best way. Just use the foreign-language all the time.

Those of us who have gone along the foreign language route seem to find that it takes a short but definite time-lag within the brain when 'switching out' the foreign-language and 'switching-in' the native-language. And then the same thing happens with the reverse, you have to 'switch-out' the native-language, and 'switch-in' the foreign-language. Consequently, by continuing to use the native-language, you never get out of the habit of thinking in your native- language.

On the other hand, when never having to 'switch-in' the native-language during immersion, the brain gets much more acclimated to the foreign-language and after a few days to a week, some thinking in the foreign-language occurs. The down-side to this is that you feel a bit like you're living in a bubble, because you don't get to speak freely (easily) to anyone else while you're in immersion, and it just feels so relieving when you finally get to speak to someone else in your native-language.

Good Luck. And if you go travelling to places where that foreign-language is spoken, try not to go with a spouse or friend that only speaks your native- language. They will prevent you from learning the other one.

<comment><AUTHOR> The time lag bit rings true. I think you're describing a longer term version of the peopleware phenonmenon, where a programmer needs 15 minutes without distraction to "get in the zone".

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Not quite giving you any tips, but a word of warning. Avoid learning Russian through Russian-language community sites based on user-submitted content such as comments, posts etc. For the last couple of decades we've been seeing a trend of getting more and more people who are illiterate in writing, with the last three years seeing an explosive epidemic on our hands. It is now very rare to see user-submitted content written with the quality ready for publication. Speaking of reasons, there are many. Young people don't like to study and become smart so they don't read books anymore. Basically they hang out online and learn illiterate language from each other, such that these incorrect forms of speech have now proliferated to every corner of the web, polluting everything and affecting the rest of the Internet users, gradually replacing the correct forms with the wrong ones in their minds.

If I were to take HN community for example, this level of quality writing many display while expressing their thoughts cannot be found on the Russian community sites anymore.

There is also a staggering amount of hate speech and insults of all kinds. Most of it is not moderated as this style of interaction has become the standard way for most users. If it were to be moderated, it would mean wiping out over 90% of the user-submitted content resulting in a substantial drop of traffic, so nobody is doing it.

Many people (myself included) are now ignoring Russian sites seeing them as dumping grounds, preferring to stick with the international community instead.

Read books, not the modern ones, but those from at least 30-40 years ago. That's where you find a rich beautiful language in all its colors and the depth of thought.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't know exactly what you're referring to (I do read pikabu sometimes). I've always heard writing correctly is less important than writing at all. Do you suggest that this isn't true, that sloppy grammar isn't something that can be improved later?

<comment><USER12> I was trying to highlight the fact that if you intend on improving your Russian by hanging out on Russian community sites, you're going to be learning broken language and will be doing yourself a disservice in that regard.

I realize I talked about a local problem that the global community is unaware of. In short, people are becoming increasingly illiterate, as in they cannot compose grammatically correct texts, coherently express their thoughts and sometimes cannot understand certain words from the imaginative literature from just 50 years ago. People used to have large bookshelves at homes during Soviet times, now the majority doesn't read anything except what they can find on social networks. As it is, they unlearn correct language and learn broken language from their own illiterate fellows. If you attempt to interact with the community online, you will learn wrong things. And I cannot say if it would be possible to relearn the corrected variants later. Better not go down that road.

Basically I'm talking about: wrong spelling of words, non-existent words, wrong expressions, wrong combinations of words, ways of constructing sentences that are wrong and incomprehensible, not to mention a large amount of curse words. You really don't want any of these.

As to the language itself, while it is massively different from English and related languages families, it is a natural language derived from the lifestyle of our ancestors. Words are sufficiently different from each other to be easily recognized and sometimes their sounding alone can give you an idea of what these could mean like something good or bad or whatever emotions they might express. Way better than learning German words for instance.

I'm struggling to give you some useful advice, not being a language teacher however I'm not quite sure where I can help. I'm dwelling on that though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Read some of the research by Paul Nation into how people actually learn languages. [http://www.victoria.ac.nz/lals/about/staff/paul-nation- pubsd...](http://www.victoria.ac.nz/lals/about/staff/paul-nation-pubsdate)

In particular this research on how much vocabulary you will need to read and converse. [http://www.victoria.ac.nz/lals/about/staff/publications/paul...](http://www.victoria.ac.nz/lals/about/staff/publications/paul- nation/2006-How-large-a-vocab.pdf)

For vocabulary I did the following.

1\. Learn a few thousand words from scratchcards. (4000-9000 words is ideal, use a memory technique such as linkwords.)

2\. Buy a kindle and install the foreign language dictionaries.

3\. Start reading simplified books. (Not children's books, they have a surprisingly large vocabulary. i.e. a 6 year old has around 6000 words of his native language.)

4\. After this start reading 'normal' books, i..e hunger games. You may have to fetch a few samples from amazon to find authors with a simple writing style.

When you get to step 4, the vocabulary acquisition becomes fun.

Forget the Bennie Lewis guy, his stuff is pay for bollocks.

<comment><AUTHOR> Can you talk more about how you learned thousands of words? I've been drilling words with quizlet, and find that it takes ~10 drills to burn a given word into my brain.

<comment><USER14> Why do you think it will take less than that? Why are you assuming that there is a magic bullet?

Yes, some people seem to find it easier than others, but acquiring another language takes time. For some people, a lot of time, and there is, to misquote, no "Royal Road to Language."[0]

People are always asking for the easy way to do things. Pratchett wrote about this[1][2] in the context of writing. Sometimes there is nothing better than taking a mashup of techniques and just putting in the time.

I've never mastered a second language, but I've got to the point of having conversations in acquired languages. I always use the same technique:

* Memorise 100 phrases from a phrase book

* Memorise 500 words

* Substitute memorised words into memorised phrases

* Read a book in the target language: preferrably an action novel aimed at 14 year old boys.

* Lather, rinse, repeat.

[0] [http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Euclid#Attributed](http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Euclid#Attributed)

[1] [http://terrypratchettappreciation.tumblr.com/post/6680240757...](http://terrypratchettappreciation.tumblr.com/post/66802407570/terry- pratchetts-advice-for-writers)

[2] [http://jackscarab.tumblr.com/post/105468067469/i-get- asked-a...](http://jackscarab.tumblr.com/post/105468067469/i-get-asked-all- the-time-in-letters-and-e-mails)

<comment><USER15> _Why do you think it will take less than that? Why are you assuming that there is a magic bullet?_

Because surely by now someone has hack disrupted this space with a webapp using DJango and swift across the whole stack with a leveraged angel investor buyout round.

<comment><USER16> Are you having a stroke, or am I?

<comment><USER17> He's having a Series A.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> An interesting thing I've noticed about language learning is that it is different from most skills in that the vast majority of its practitioners are basically expert level. Learning a new language is uncommon enough that I rarely met other people who had spent the same amount of time learning the same language as me. So you end up judging yourself by an internal sense of progress, by the things you can and can't do. This is sort of like if you were learning to play the piano and everyone else but a few dabblers were playing at or near the level of Mozart. Also interesting is that language learners are always a master of at least one other language, so you inevitably compare yourself in that way also. It can really skew your expectations.

Also a lot of times in language learning is sort of all our nothing. Comprehension drops very fast or each additional thing you don't understand in a sentence. So progress can feel very slow and then suddenly you have a big jump in understanding.

</comment><comment> T-R My basic strategy is that component composition gives you more leverage than memorizing individual words. Most languages have some degree of composition for vocabulary, like root-words, prefixes/suffixes, or individual chinese characters (and the radicals they're built up from) for CJK languages. Learning those root-words/components and how to put them together into compound words, or learning how to compose words into sentences by learning grammar gives you the most leverage, once you have a small base vocabulary to practice with - it doesn't just let you build more words, it also gives you bits and pieces you can look for to help you parse out meaning of things you don't know. For vocabulary, focus memorization on verbs and their conjugation - nouns and adjectives tend to be easier to look up (and not conjugated as much as verbs, and so easier to identify), and tend to be easier to infer from context if you don't know them - if you don't know a noun in conversation, you or they can usually point to it.

I also listen to music in whatever language I'm learning - I used to use it to switch my brain between languages on the way from one language class to another. For memorization, the best way really is to just write it and repeat it a dozen times, so putting a song on repeat is really useful for refreshing your memory on commonly used words, practicing pronunciation, and even occasionally picking up new words by looking up lyrics, etc. Nothing beats immersion, though, just because, on top of practice (inherently prioritized by common usage), it gives you all the extra context to infer or reinforce meaning - memorizing words or working from a textbook means you have no extra information to go off of but what's written there. If you want to get those benefits of immersion without actual immersion, find things that mimic those qualities (extra context, prioritized by common usage, repetition), like music, kids TV shows, comic books, conversation, etc.

</comment><comment><USER19> Learning a language requires constant effort and practise and finding a method that works for YOU. For me what works ( I am learning Korean):

* 1 lesson a week on cafetalk.com (not related to them, great/easy website). We sometimes do grammar/vocab or just free talking

* 1 book. There is a great one for korean called: Magic Korean which has a very good learning style. I have tried another 3-4 books but they did not _click_

* Podcasts while at the gym . I listen to "talk to me in korean" which has over 1000 lessons recorded and still going

* 3 hours studying a week. I usually do it during commute. This includes homework for the online lesson and studying the book

* Live group lessons every Saturday morning. I did these for 10 weeks and stopped due to no availability of lessons at the appropriate level

So in total:

* 1.5 hours of podcasts at the gym

* 1 hour lesson

* 3 hours homework and learning

* (I used to do 2 hour sessions with a group but stopped)

Total: 5.5 hours a week

Also, going to Korea yearly for 1-2 weeks has helped.

Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER20> Few people reach even simple conversation topics in six month.

Spaced Repition is one of the most succesful systems for memorizing, but learning vocabulary is not enough. Listening and talking is important too.

People will tell you of all sorts of short cuts and immersive methods and learning like a baby. There is no easy way. Children are better learners for 2 reasons: they mind is geared toward language learning and secondly children love repitition.

Matter of fact is, that you need to do category 1 and 2. Yes the Repitition is boring, yes it's terrible to drown in uncharted waters.

Humans have been teaching adults language for thousands and thousands of years, and we still haven't found anything close to a silver bullet.

</comment><comment><USER21> Russian's a fun one, that's for sure. Stupid noun declension.

Immersion's still your best bet. If you've got the time and the money to put towards this, I'd recommend a intensive summer program like Middlebury College's Language School - if you're in Silicon Valley, they've also got a similar one in Monterey. For two months they put you in a group of about a dozen with the same level of Russian you've got, make you vow to use Russian and only Russian with each other 24/7, and then put you through an intensive program of classes and cultural activities. It makes your head throb, but it works.

<comment><AUTHOR> Unfortunately they don't seem to teach Russian. Is there an advantage to this type of immersion as opposed to just moving to russia for a month?

<comment><USER21> They certainly do teach Russian. I went through the Russian summer program myself in the early 2000s.

[http://www.middlebury.edu/ls/](http://www.middlebury.edu/ls/)

[http://www.miis.edu/academics/language/programs/summer](http://www.miis.edu/academics/language/programs/summer)

An immersion program like Middlebury has huge advantages over just moving to Russia for a month. Off the top of my head:

In Russia, everyone with any English will talk to you in English. People want to practice their English - or just communicate more efficiently - more than they want to help you practice your Russian.

In Russia, the people you meet often have no interest in conversing with someone who speaks Russian poorly. (Russians make great friends, but they're not the outwardly warmest people to strangers.)

In Russia, when you do find someone to speak with, that person won't be speaking at your level - they'll be speaking fluent Russian, and quickly.

There's language schools in Russia, but it's unlikely that you'll find one with as good teachers, and the curriculum won't be as intensive.

Living in an unfamiliar country where you don't speak the language can be stressful like you wouldn't believe - it's not the same thing as tourism. Language learning while dealing with all that crap is way harder than language learning while living like a pampered college student in a pleasant little Vermont town.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Попробуйте учить на память русские детские стихи. Аналогично тому как это делают дети в детстве, когда они учатся говорить.

Из авторов рекомендую: Михалоква, Маршака, Чуковоского и Барто ([http://deti- online.com/stihi/](http://deti-online.com/stihi/))

Try to learn by heart Russian poems for children. In the same way as they do it in childhood, when they learn to talk.

I recommend to start from the the authors: Mihalokv, Marshak, Chukovoskiy and Barto ([http://deti-online.com/stihi/](http://deti-online.com/stihi/))

<comment><AUTHOR> отлично, большой спасибо!

<comment><USER23> s/большой/большое/

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Memorize the 2000 or so most common words via spaced repetition with Anki or Super Memo using pictures.

Learn the grammar.

Start reading simple books / websites about stuff that interests you, accompanied with a dictionary website, as you'll need to look up a shitload of words.

Once you can read well enough, interact with people via forums or web chats in the language, which will improve your skills further.

If you want to sound like a native you'll need lots of speaking practice until your brain adapts.

Some people will sound like Arnold Schwarzenegger for life though.

</comment><comment><USER25> You're at the foot of Mt. Everest asking if there's a shortcut to the top. Learning a second language is like having a child. It's a life long commitment that will consume much of your time for 10 years or so, assuming you really want to be fluent, and will require maintenance thereafter. Consider learning Russian history and culture instead if it sounds too daunting. That's almost always a better choice for native English speakers, in my opinion.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, I was asking if I was wearing the right kind of boots. The conclusion seems to be that while there are many boots to choose from, none will make you walk any faster.

I think your suggestion about history and culture is wise. Sometimes when I get tired of learning the language I'll read Russian politics or recipes, just to remind myself why I'm trying to learn it in the first place.

<comment><USER25> Yeah, boots is the better analogy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I suspect you might have heard of him but I found Bennie Lewis' blog to be really good in my own language learning:

[http://www.fluentin3months.com/home/](http://www.fluentin3months.com/home/)

My wife who speaks a couple of languages says that to really ingrain it you must think in the language, don't think in english and then translate.

</comment><comment><USER27> Some advice from someone who thought languages were impossible in school and then learnt a second language in adulthood:

Input is much better than output. Reading and listening actually give you new words, new phrases, new connections and new ways of saying things. Speaking and writing only reinforces the things you already know. If you have never heard the word "spatula" once you won't be able to say it.

Also, in a real conversation you only have to be able to say something one way: "Where is the station?" or "How do I get to the station?" are just as good, but you have to understand many different possible answers.

When you are looking for learning materials try to only use things aimed at native speakers. Lots of resources for adults over-simplify to fit their pedagogical idea, whereas even books for very young will children give you a full range of grammatical forms and vocabulary.

Never learn vocabulary as single words. Doing a flashcard that says "dog"=="hund" is just not that useful. Instead, make flashcards of sentences, fragments and phrases. This way you learn which verbs combine together with which nouns and all the unwritten rules.

Don't just blast through x000 flashcards. You will get bored and quit. As you have noticed already, just dumbly repeating words takes a lot of effort to get them to stick. When you are having fun with the language (whether that is watching TV, reading books, playing games or speaking to people) words tend to stick much better. That said, you should still use spaced repetition for these words you find "in the wild".

Be realistic with the amount of time you put in. If you compare yourself to a native speaker you're comparing yourself to someone who has had 24/7 practice in the language for many many years.

Don't get tricked by the vague word 'fluency'. A 6 year old can hold a conversation and knows a great deal of words. He is also easily confused by simple words like "tax" and has very little spelling ability.

</comment><comment><USER28> I've done a Spanish course in my early 30s. I went to Spain, did a two week course there, four hours a day, very basic. The afternoon was free, although we had to prepare homework, which could be quite a lot if you wanted to commit to it.

Before going there I learnt some basic stuff: conjugations of being, having, doing, most prepositions, basic counting (1-100), some emotions and words like walking, seeing, right/left etc. The first morning they had a basic test and I could skip the first course because of my preparation. The first week was quite boring, just like being in high school, with stupid stories etc.

The second week on wednesday night we had a Sangria-tour around town. After several beers and sangrias I started speaking Spanish. Up til then my Spanish was mostly impaired by fear of failure, afraid to make mistakes. My teacher was there and I spoke to her for a half hour, of course with lots of help, searching for the right words, making many mistakes, but suddenly the fear was gone.

Russia: do the vodka tour! ;-) Laugh a lot and don't care about what they think. Listen to their English and compare that to your Russian.

I stayed in an appartment with other foreign students. Among eachother we didn't speak Spanish. You could stay with a Spanish family, and they don't speak English in general, so then you have to find a way. That will help a lot.

After these two weeks I've done two courses in my home town, and left it at that. Now when I'm in Spain I can speak Spanish after several days. I can manage in hotels and shops, have very basic conversations. My French has improved incredibly since then as well.

Disclaimer: in High School we had English, German, French, and even Latin and classic Greek, so I had a good basic knowledge and knew how to learn a language. It takes a lot of effort. After finishing high school my languages were bad and clumsy. After going on holidays I suddenly got to enjoy it. Doing a study where all books were English it all started to change.

Long story short: it takes a lot of effort. Do it all - traditional and pragmatic. Going to Russia is probably most effective.

</comment><comment><USER29> Ah I'm learning Russian too right now (about 30 days in). I'm bilingual, native English, became fluent in Italian in my 20s after spending a few years living in Italy (fluent to the point of thinking and dreaming in Italian). I'm finding the process of learning a third language to be really interesting in the sense that all sorts of "patterns" are bubbling up now that I have two under the belt, akin to what one experiences after having learned a few programming languages.

Even so, no doubt Russian is difficult for a native English speaker. :-) The State Department classifies it as a "Category II" in terms of difficulty, meaning it is no walk in the park.

By far the most troublesome issue has been casing (nominative, dative, genitive, accusative, instrumental, prepositional). So I've been spending some extra time learning how the vocabulary changes according to each case. On the bright side, word ordering really isn't an issue because of this, unless you would like to stress a particular aspect of the phrase.

I use the free Chegg Flashcards app for iOS, it's great and there are tons of Russian vocabulary flashcards. I also purchased a _paper_ Russian-English dictionary; it's far more convenient than constantly tabbing over and typing a word in, particularly since I don't have a Russian keyboard.

Additionally, I _write_ out vocabulary and phrases every day, basically pretending like I'm taking a middle school quiz. It's tough and tedious, but this is how I most effectively commit things to memory.

Finally, every single evening I spend time "reading" [http://www.pravda.ru/](http://www.pravda.ru/) and [http://izvestia.ru/](http://izvestia.ru/), dictionary in hand, looking up word after word and then trying to find repeat occurrences of the word in the page. This has been hugely beneficial.

Finding a Russian interested in learning English is on the TODO list, so we can help each other out. Fortunately here in Ohio there is a large Russian speaking population.

Bottom line: learning another language is tough, but also a lot of fun. It is hugely satisfying to actually start understanding a phrase here and there in the newspapers, and over time, phrases will become sentences, and sentences, paragraphs.

xaybey I'd love to talk to you further via email, my address is in profile. -Jason

</comment><comment><USER30> I can tell you the steps I used to learn German -- it took about 6-8 months until my only remaining hurtles were sheer vocabulary. Granted, I have a background in Ancient languages, so learning an inflected language like German (or Russian) is much easier for me than it would have been, already understanding gender and case and such. BUT, the methods I used to learn Classical languages did _not_ work for German. I was not a believer in the "practical methods", but they really do work if you do them right, in my opinion.

1\. Started with Duolingo. I did not find it useful whatsoever.

2\. Started reading Harry Potter in German. At first it took me like an hour to get through a page, I would just look at the English if a sentence was too complicated to figure out with the dictionary. I started to notice patterns, and would read grammar blogs and help sites for stuff that was reoccurring, (e.g. looking for "relative pronouns" on mydailygerman and german language stack exchange). After making it through about 20 pages in HP, the improvement was dramatic. Reading is most important for thinking in a foreign word order. Now people tell me that I use some very sophisticated words and constructions, and it's definitely because I learned German from reading. I've read three books in german now, and can read HP-level stuff without a dictionary.

Btw, I got a kindle for this purpose, but I think that part of the slowness of having to type the word out yourself in an online dictionary helps with memorization. Also, translations are never 1:1, so often the kindle dictionaries are not very helpful. I would go to the park and use my phone to look up words.

Also -- translated books are way easier to read than books originally written in a foreign language. Natively written stuff has too many idioms or strange constructions for a beginner. So reading translations of books you already know is much, much easier (you can also follow the story and not miss an important detail because you don't understand a sentence and have to skip it).

3\. Did Memrise for vocab, 1000 Elementary German words. This is huge for speaking confidence (and therefore, speed) -- that you _know_ the gender of the word you are using. They also have sets that teach you which cases and prepositions verbs take, etc. (e.g. In german, you say "I am proud ON you <you in the accusative>". These are hard to learn from just reading) The important thing is to say it out loud, just like the example. Eventually, you'll just use the right gender without even thinking about it! (Something I thought was impossible)

4\. Watched all the Harry Potter moves dubbed in German, with German subtitles. Twice. First time, I paused when I didn't know a word, and used google translate to translate the sentence. So it would take me like 5+ hours per movie. But, this was one of the most dramatic things that helped my listening comprehension. In the two week period where I did nothing but vocab and watched these movies, I would say my german understanding at least doubled. I also re-watched the movies without subtitles (understanding much less), because it forces comprehension speed and really listening. But the subs are important at first so you know how to spell things ;)

Now I watch movies in German, and always have German subtitles on if the channel has them. If there is Russian Netflix, you can use a VPN and watch your favorite movies subbed/dubbed. You just really have to get high-quality productions, or the subs are too different to be helpful. The news is good non-subbed because they enunciate very clearly. Nature documentaries are also great, because they speak slowly and clearly. Never be afraid to pause/repeat/look up a word!

5\. Writing. If you can get someone to write to, it's great, because you have time to carefully express stuff you would want to say every day. So you effectively learn to write phrases that you will later want to say in conversation, but you have the time to research some more about how to do it correctly (and get in good habits).

6\. Obviously, speaking. Though I have relatively little speaking experience (my job is in English), I am very capable of expressing myself. If you don't have a native speaker to talk to every day, it also works to talk to yourself and try thinking in the language! Better if you live alone, so only you know that you're crazy :)

So, in a summary: Watch movies and read books. If you see a pattern, research it. Look it up again and again until you memorize it (by seeing it in context). Tools like memrise are great for stuff that is hard to get from movies/reading, like genders. And of course, you need to find someone to talk to! Above all, realize that you will never know what is going on with 100% confidence :D

To give you some realistic expectations: I've lived in Germany since Jul. 2013. It took me 6 months to be conversational, and 8 months to read HP/only really need to improve vocabulary/expressions/comprehension speed. Interacting with German every day cannot be understated as a motivating factor -- you should visit Russia :)

</comment><comment><USER31> I've learned several languages in my life, I'm trilingual now, and I've succeeded on some and failed miserably on others. Here's my experience and advice.

First, I guess you could say I learned Spanish, but really I was so young it never even felt like learning it, so I can't give you much advice from that account, just that speaking it was hard for me, I could literally feel things get clogged on the way from my brain to the sounds coming out of my mouth - <USER3> was wierd but went away quickly enough. The only advice here is that you should probably be speaking the language a lot to train those brain to mouth muscles :)

The language I really had to learn though was German, it was later in life at around 20 when I started learning it.

From German I think the take away is dedication. You have to be motivated and seriously dedicated in order to learn a language. I literally spent hundreds of hours absorbed in German. I would listen to Deutsche Welle radio all the time and lookup words I didn't know. I would always try to visualize everything in my head for new words and grammatical constructs and it seemed to help. When I saw people running it was "die laufen" not because I had to think about running and then translate it, it was just thats what it was. One thing I didn't do much of was learn grammar I found it terribly boring and just learned whatever people on the radio said that I didn't understand.

I also spoke a ton with native speakers my then girlfriend being one, but in the very beginning I remember that talking with native speakers was very difficult.

What helped a lot in this regard was having a friend who also wasn't a native speaker, we could both easily communicate with each other in German, we didn't use slang and didn't speak very fast, but it helped us get used to it, we'd talk about new words we learned and never spoke in anything besides German. After about 6 months of serious hardcore learning we were both able to carry on fluent conversations with Germans to the point where we didn't annoy them by being too slow and dumb. It was also around this time that things started getting enjoyable, before that it was all work and zero fun, just straining your brain to internalize grammatical rules and meanings of word sounds. After that most improvement just came through reading and learning written formulations since the everyday word-set was more or less mastered, which is another benefit of just learning to speak/understand - the language itself becomes a whole lot smaller.

Finally, much later I tried to learn Polish and spent about a month on it before giving up because I couldn't motivate myself enough to go through those grueling months again. One thing I remember thinking with Polish, which probably applies to Russian as well is that it would take longer than German did to get to that same level where you start enjoying things. The grammar was extremely difficult and its phonetical system and vocabulary much more different than the western european languages I already spoke.

So in summary, my advice would be the following:

1\. Make sure you are really motivated and dedicated to learning it - <USER3> sounds like you are :). It will become fun and a really amazing thing that you can read literature and enjoy movies and a completely different culture than your own, but in the beginning its just a lot of hard work so make sure you have the internal motivation to carry you through the rough waters at the beginning.

2\. Once you can carry even a broken conversation find someone who's at or slightly above your level that you can talk with and don't fallback to some other language, make yourself use Russian.

3\. When you are comfortable communicating without long pauses to think about what word you want to say, find native speakers you can talk with.

4\. Listen, listen, listen - radio is the best. You have to concentrate on sounds and their meanings to know whats going on and your brain isn't dumbed into just understanding the visuals like tv or movies do. Also music, especially rap is good if you can find songs you can rap along to and you memorize the words and their meanings as well.

5\. Learn any grammar you need to, but don't overdo it. You'll have time later to go into the nitty gritty and all the written language literary constructs.

Best of luck</comment>


Obama trying to close S CORP tax loophole - <AUTHOR> http://news.yahoo.com/white-house-closing-tax-loophole-could-fund-student-172330175--sector.html Alot of us including myself have formed s corps to save money through distributions we take.
Obama is trying to close this tax benefit and instead tax the whole portion of profits with medicare etc. instead of just wages.
I don't see how this helps small business at all.  Means less money in our pockets. <comment><AUTHOR> I don't see how this going to help small businesses.

As a registered small business S Corp, if this passed it would be thousands more in taxes for me( about 10k).</comment>


SEO Advice from SurveyMonkey [audio] - <AUTHOR> https://blog.ycombinator.com/seo-advice-from-surveymonkey-director-of-seo-and-growth-eli-schwartz/ <comment><USER2> First off, I think it's great that you're trying to address this key topic for non-marketers on HN and YC in general.

That being said, there's not much here that will move the needle for most people. I would highly recommend that people checkout either Moz's blog or Brian Dean's Backlinko to see what you need to win at SEO in terms of actionable steps.

"Create good content to get good backlinks" is pretty much the same as "build it and they will come".

A critical part of a link building campaign once you've created a piece of content is the outreach.

I was also surprised that none of the amazing tools used by marketers were mentioned. Just Google Search Console and Keyword Planner. There's BuzzSumo to find existing top content that you can improve on and reach out to people who linked to the original as a low hanging fruit. Ahrefs, SEMrush, the list goes on.

<comment><USER3> Digital marketer here. This is spot on. Brian Dean's "Sky Scraper Technique" is quite effective as well. Neil Patel's blogs[1][2] are also extremely helpful.

[1][https://www.quicksprout.com/blog/](https://www.quicksprout.com/blog/) [2][https://neilpatel.com/blog/](https://neilpatel.com/blog/)

<comment><USER4> Neil Patel is not a good resource anymore. His blogs are all about quantity, not quality.

Brian, on the other hand, is a great resource. Not sure why you didn't link to his post on the Sky Scraper Technique, yet posted both of Neil's blogs?

[https://backlinko.com/skyscraper-technique](https://backlinko.com/skyscraper- technique)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Dear SurveyMonkey, please let me filter by custom variables when I query the API.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thought this interview was interested.

For startups specifically trying to get off the ground, I highly recommend the Atrium article SEO Playbook for Seed Stage Startups: [https://www.atrium.co/blog/seo-seed-stage- startups/](https://www.atrium.co/blog/seo-seed-stage-startups/)

Animalz blog Content Marketing Strategy is pretty good too [https://www.animalz.co/blog/](https://www.animalz.co/blog/)

</comment><comment><USER6> If you are interested in a good surveymonkey alternative checkout [https://www.surveyking.com](https://www.surveyking.com) it has everything my company needs and it's only $19 a month. They have been trying to get noticed for a while bu Google won't rank anyone who doesn't pay an arm and a leg.</comment>