Ask HN: How has meditation helped you? - <AUTHOR> What area's of your life has had the biggest impact due to meditation? What type of meditation you do? How frequently and how much duration? Comparison between daily practice vs long duration retreats? <comment><USER2> The biggest impact meditation has had on me is that it's improved my introverted intuition; my ability to recognize myself, recognize what makes me happy, define my goals, and step back when my feelings are getting the best of me.

I just concentrate on my breath for 10-20 minutes at a time. Take in a diaphragmatic inhale, hold for 4 seconds, release for 6 seconds (technique used by Navy SEALS). Repeat this and focus on the sensations going on in your body such as the feeling of air rushing through your nose, the life of oxygen in your lungs, the dissipation of stress as you exhale through your mouth. Inhale, hold, exhale, repeat. Your mind will naturally try to distract you and chew on problems going on in your life, but it's important to recognize that it's only a fruitless thought and your immediate purpose is to focus on your breath and survive.

After ~15 minutes of this, I stop consciously breathing and just observe the sensations going through my body. Most immediately, you will notice you continue breathing, even though you're no longer consciously doing it. This is a subconscious activity, what other subconscious activities are going on in your body? Start recognizing the sensations in your toes and move up your body, it feels like a body scan that relaxes whatever body part your conscious of.

Once you feel satisfied, wake up, notice your surroundings, and feel the refreshing glow of calm happiness.

<comment><USER3> > Take in a diaphragmatic inhale, hold for 4 seconds, release for 6 seconds > (technique used by Navy SEALS).

I found many mentions of another approach advertised as used by Seals: square or box breathing, discussion on HN: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13508038](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13508038)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I have been doing it consistently, 10 minutes a day after waking up, longer on weekends, 15 minutes or more. I have been consistently doing it for 6+ months now.

I am observing that it is helping me become mindful of my thoughts. Before, when thoughts appear in my head -- I don't take a second to say 'yes, that's my thought'. Now, when a thought, especially negative ones, come into my head -- I can observe it and reflect on it first, seeing it for what it is. It has helped me become the observer of my thoughts if that makes any sense.

I also notice I am calmer in lots of situations and less prone to rush or panic. I think it helped me become slower, calmer, more focused, and more clear-headed. I ended up quitting caffeine or weaning off of it, as I noticed that it was causing negative effects on my thinking and sleep. It also helped me self-reflect and assess my life every day.

I recommend if you want to try meditation, do it consistently until it becomes a habit.

<comment><USER5> Thanks for sharing. My experience, received benefits are similar to yours.

These techniques [http://www.thewayofseeing.com/](http://www.thewayofseeing.com/) helped me get meditating again. The drills I had done as a kid no longer worked, and the many variations I tried since haven't worked, for whatever reason.

I definitely encourage people to experiment, until they find something that works. Maybe it's tai chi, qi gong, hiking, the counting drills I'm doing now, sewing...

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I did a ten-day silent retreat (Vipassana) and the effects were profound. I was far calmer, far more able to focus.

It's hard to explain, but physical pain was also reframed from negative 'pain' to simply neutral sensation.

I also found I had much less desire for stimulus. Usually when I'm cooking dinner or cleaning the house I feel the need to play a tv show or listen to a podcast, but after the retreat I could just experience the activity.

For a year after that I kept up between one and two hours a day, until I found that I was feeling a lot of guilt around the practice - when I put it off, when I wasn't able to find time. It seemed like I had begun to miss the point, so I stopped. I'm getting back into it currently, though.

I'd highly recommend the practice, especially learning by going to a ten-day retreat. It really gave me an experience of what is possible with meditation - true peace and fulfillment.

<comment><USER7> > physical pain was also reframed from negative 'pain' to simply neutral > sensation.

What does it mean to reframe physical pain? How reframing changed your experience of physical pain?

<comment><USER8> It means you no longer experience it as an explicitly negative experience. While physiologically the pain signals are still present, your brain's reaction to them changes. Most notably (in my experience) the change occurs when one learns to stop resisting in any fashion the experience of the pain and just accepting it is there, neutrally observing it. From an uninitiated person's standpoint, I can't say this means things will no longer "hurt," they still do, you just change what it even means to be hurting. At the very least from something that is unequivocally negative and must subside, to something neutral that is occurring in the midst of everything else that is occurring.

<comment><USER9> Well said.

We've conditioned ourselves to pay close attention to pain for obvious reasons (e.g. something presents an acute threat to our survival), and we respond by escaping the sensation as quickly as we can.

With practice, we can learn to accept pain as any another sensation. If you're not afraid of death, it won't bother you at all. If (like most of us) you do, next time you stub your toe, recognize your conditioned response of trying to soothe the pain, just try leaning into it a bit. Know it won't kill you. Just take the opportunity to explore the experience and try to understand it more deeply. Remind yourself that you're not in danger, accept you can't unstub your toe (or whatever it may be), realize that the fight or flight response isn't necessary or appropriate, you can take more of your attention back from it than you gave it in the first place. It will still hurt, but you can make it much quieter, as it were.

<comment><USER7> > We've conditioned ourselves to pay close attention to pain for obvious > reasons ...

Have we conditioned ourselves to acknowledge pain? It seems to me that we evolved the ability to have pain, which is, by definition, a sensation that grabs your attention right away.

> If you're not afraid of death, it won't bother you at all.

Am I understanding your phrasing correctly? That, if you're not afraid of death, then physical pain won't bother you at all? I don't think that's right.

Another q: What kind of benefit/enlightenment do you achieve by leaning into the pain of a stubbed toe? Why lean in to it and pretend that you're "above the pain", instead of shouting out a swear word, complaining about it for a minute or two, and then moving on with your life?

<comment><USER9> >Have we conditioned ourselves to acknowledge pain? It seems to me that we evolved the ability to have pain, which is, by definition, a sensation that grabs your attention right away.

I don't know if I understand what you mean. I agree that we evolved to have pain for a very important reason and that it's extremely useful to react to it differently than other sensations. But does a relatively light, non-life- threatening pain need to take so much of your attention once you realize you're not in danger?

>Am I understanding your phrasing correctly? That, if you're not afraid of death, then physical pain won't bother you at all? I don't think that's right.

I'm not saying submit to it willingly, or not to escape if it's possible, but otherwise yes. To me it's the struggling against the pain that causes suffering.

>Another q: What kind of benefit/enlightenment do you achieve by leaning into the pain of a stubbed toe? Why lean in to it and pretend that you

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> moraya-re I've experienced the thoughtless awareness state. Just being present without any thoughts crossing my mind.

I do around 25-30 minutes of meditation session usually right after bath & try to do 10 minutes before sleep.

Most of the time, I'm able to be thoughtlessly aware. But trying to be more steady.

After trying various meditation techniques, I found "Sahaja Yoga" & life has been gradually becoming peaceful & enjoyable. Give it a try. It's free of cost & the most beautiful experience you can have on planet earth.

Visit Sahaja Yoga center nearby & ask anyone where can I get self-realization.

If you want more information, please comment. I'll be happy to help.

</comment><comment><USER10> It helps you be more mindful and detach from the moment to moment undulations of modern life. This can be good and bad.

I can meditate anywhere. But usually I sit in half-lotus, slowly easing myself into a blank state. I think about radiating outward. Anywhere from 5-25 mins.

Never did a retreat.

The problem with meditation is I think that it can release a latent and light form of schizophrenia. Things that society values, you no longer value as much. It makes it tougher to fit in with "normal" people. The benefit is that you can draw your path more clearly and execute more clearly. I'd like to hear others' opinions as well.

<comment><USER11> Meditation on the Buddhist tradition is more like 'leaning in' or becoming immersed in your experience. It's certainly not at all about achieving a blank state, or detachment. Not saying there _isn 't_ a meditation tradition that works like that, but from a Buddhist/psychology perspective, that sounds more like dissociation..

<comment><USER12> It's called void meditation, and is actually part of the buddhist philosophy. There are many different methods for practicing meditation even in buddhism. The goal with meditation in general is to will oneself into any desired mental state. One "practices" meditation to the ends of being able to call that state wherever one happens to be. It is a future-oriented practice, even when doing meditation that immerses one in the "moment", it is about eventually being able to do it anytime and anywhere one needs it. Often it is about introspection, but void meditation is about self control, and creating a feeling of safety in a mind full of loose and anxious thoughts. Void helps in times of deep emotional stress, so that instead of causing trauma, one can simply ignore the thoughts until they can be processed more coherently.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I would like to say I meditate everyday, but I don't. It was - and still is - my plan to do so, though.

These days are very busy; working 15-18hs a day is normal routine. Being in meetings, talking to clients, making business decisions and still being involved in coding, which requires a lot of focus stresses concentration and eventually health.

I know that meditation can help me. Every time I take the time for it, and may it be 5 minutes, helps me a bit already. I have not yet been able to do it on a daily basis at a fixed point in time even though I had the chance to do so.

How does it help me? I experienced me to be calmer and more thoughtful when I practiced Zazen (my mediation style) over a longer period of time. Days become longer, that is, I am more focused on every small moment. I am not stressed by external factors that much, not angry, never in a hurry mentally - my inner self stays calm even when I am faced with a difficult situation.

I highly recommend meditation to everyone I talk to about topics like stress, work life balance or being more thoughtful. Mediation does not only mean to sit concentrated on a cushion. Going to the gym, taking a walk or "just" sitting on a chair - all of these can be some kind of meditation when practiced with mindfulness. Meditation is not about doing that one thing, it's about finding your own right way, and thus I think everyone can benefit from it.

</comment><comment><USER14> I don't do the meditation exactly, but I recently trekked to Mt Everest base camp and stayed in Nepal for few days. I get mentally overwhelmed with the natural beauty and that sort of creates effect similar to meditation.

After coming back, I feel much calmer. Very few negative thoughts occur in my mind and I noticed that I don't get worked up that easily. I somehow learned to not get angry at the slightest provocation.

Not sure if this helps you, but thought I would put it out there.

<comment><USER12> This happens to me in any encompassing natural situation, or even after watching a well-made nature documentary. It feels as though the troubles of my daily life do not matter as much as the beauty I have witnessed-- it feels like I'm privy to another world that seems external, but feels internal, like the creations of nature are actually a part of me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> The biggest impact has definitely been with an increase in my self-awareness, especially in the presence of great pressure. Such an increase is not as consistently present as I want it to be, perhaps, but it's present enough to make me realize that practicing meditation, and mindfulness as a whole, helps me.

My meditation tends to be simple - wherever I am, I pretty much just take a seat, time a few deep breaths, keep my eyes closed, and either reflect with an objective in mind or just let my mind wander for 10 to 15 minutes. No mobile app, no fancy bells or whistles, nothing like that. No set schedule either, though I'm sure some sort of set schedule would be a great way to approach meditation and be more measured about meditating.

</comment><comment><USER16> Much less mental stress; ~90% of the issues that used to bother me don't any more. Specifically, notice that emotions/thoughts tend have a physical component which you can observe without judgment (tightness, heat, tingling, etc.).

Breaking the loop of "negative" physical sensation -> negative emotion/thought is freeing. Feeling tightness in your chest does not require you to become afraid, it just means you are feeling tightness in your chest. But typically we have years of stimulus/response conditioning so we jump to the negative thought / emotion once the sensation arises.

I meditate 10-30 minutes ~5x a week, usually breath counting or doing the above. I found Noah Elkrief's videos helpful.

</comment><comment><USER17> I am doing something related to meditation, where i close my eyes for 40 minutes and chant for a good part of it. It is really helping me progress spiritually.

</comment><comment><USER18> Not much, my advice is do exercise instead, even 15 min a day will make a difference...

<comment><USER19> I agree - IMO, meditation's benefits pale in comparison to the benefits of regular exercise. That's not to diminish the benefits of meditation but to emphasis the benefits of exercise. I find that with regular exercise, I am much less prone to depression and anger.

<comment><USER20> "I find that with regular exercise, I am much less prone to depression and anger." Agreed. I think meditation touches upon a different aspect of our everyday lives: it makes us more self-aware and makes us want to think clearly in any given situation. And we learn to calm ourselves even in the most unnerving situations.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I live a lot more in the moment. I'm a lot less scared to speak my mind, and I'm a lot more engaged in conversations. It also puts my long term goals at the front of my mind.

</comment><comment><USER22> Meditation helps me. I'm calmer and I can stay concentrated for way longer periods of time when doing something. I also, rarely get bored because of it.

</comment><comment><USER23> I've been trying the wim hof meditation to help with chronic pain and inflammation.

It helps but not as much as I would like.

</comment><comment><USER24> Heartfulness meditation has been a life saver.

</comment><comment><USER25> Can anyone here prove their claimed benefits to actually stem from mediation? Any academic study?

<comment><USER8> I think personal experience here is the answer. Even an excellent academic study, peer reviewed, conducted by experts in the field, published in a prestigious journal, is still at best one single experiment. Pretty sure the common answer to this is question is, try it yourself. Do it consistently 10 minutes a day for at least a week and see if you notice any benefit. That should be more informative than any study and as relevant to you as any experiment can be, you are the test subject. Also probably take as long as any review (a thorough one anyways) of academic literature.

If you see a benefit, consider it "proven," if not consider it a still unanswered question. That being said, I recall having once come across some interesting research in neuroscience dealing with meditation. However, it being neuroscience and not psychology, I don't think the research set out to ascertain any proclaimed "perceived" benefits. Just understanding the impact on the brain, neurologically, of meditation. I will try to link if I can recover the source.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Going to church has been easier for me, and it also connects you to the community. Also only once a week.

Since this will inevitably come up, I am liberal, and yes I still go. If you're liberal and don't like church, one thing I would suggest is that by going to church, you can actually make it more liberal instead of leaving it to others. Also fyi gays are the new jews and will be fully integrated like Jews were between 1930-1960 (until 1959 it was legal in Houston, Texas to restrict Jews on the deed restriction!!).</comment>


Ask HN: Software Engineers (SWE) turned Technical Writers – How did you do it? - <AUTHOR> Hello,
I'm a Sr. Software Engineer with about a decade in the industry. Haven't worked for FAANG. Mostly worked at startups and now, more recently, at IT Departments of Large Banks and Financial Institutions. I'm a full-stack engineer with experience in Python, C#, Java and a whole bunch of front end and back end technologies.
I'm considering switching to a technical writer, as I have a very popular tech blog and have been told that I have the gift of the (written) gab. Other reason is that I no longer feel comfortable competing with 20 something millenials who are lot faster than me, and work longer hours (some on stimulants like Adderall etc).
I've also contributed to a lot of open source API docs on github and feel that a Tech Writer career might be more fulfilling. I don't need the 140K and can make do with atleast a 100K in Tech Writing.
I would like to know those of you who have successfully transitioned from SWE to Tech.Writer
1) How did you go about it?
2) How do you deal with the drop in Salary? I currently make 140K in San Francisco. What can I expect as a Tech Writer at Uber, or FAANG company? Or would it be a stretch to aim for FAANG with no Tech Writer career experience?
3) Is there anything you regret about the switch?
4) Is it possible to make SWE level salaries after few years? If yes, at what kind of companies / Tech Writer jobs?
4) Any other useful info would be much appreciated.
Thanks!
-Sharon Su <comment><USER2> Have you considered building up through freelancing? Having a technical writer available would be a godsend for small startups who lack the time or discipline to document decisions or processes (or anything). I am certain you could find enough SaaS teams to support with a pitch of "I'll speak with you for 2 hours and save you 2 days".

At 10-15 hours per week you could do this at nights and weekends, and quickly test if you want this as a job.

In fact I have a lot of writing that needs to be done, mainly internal for capturing what the product does etc. no massive time pressures so could be done in spare time over few weeks. Feel free to reach out via email in the profile.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you so much! It never occurred to me to try this partime, and see if I enjoy it and if there's a practical fit, rather than risk diving into it full time. I'll email you.

Judging from the lack of response, do you think it's fair to say that not a whole lot of SWEs make the switch to Tech Writer?

-SS :)

<comment><USER2> I've met only a few of SWEs who were good at documenting, and only 1-2 of them who also enjoy it. From my experience, changing from SWE to Tech Writer is highly unusual - I've seen QA and BA folks change over, but never SWE.

Have you considered going into Developer Relations instead? It has a big overlap with Technical Writing, but spans beyond that to include community discussions and direct "support" comms.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> These sound like good questions to ask someone over a coffee or pilsner at [http://www.writethedocs.org/conf/prague/2018/](http://www.writethedocs.org/conf/prague/2018/)

<comment><USER4> Or you could even skip the beverage and join their slack group: [https://writethedocs.slack.com](https://writethedocs.slack.com)

<comment><AUTHOR> EDIT: Got brave and tried the link, it says "Contact Workspace Administrator to join", but there is no link or contact form to contact the Admin?? How do I join? Is it invite-only gated community?

I'm somewhat wary of doing this. Do you know if the community is welcoming of (or hostile towards) newbies?

-SS :)

<comment><USER3> The community talks explicitly about the value of being welcoming to newbies. I've drifted away but I suspect that they still live up to that value.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Malware-Testing Service Scan4You Convicted on Three Federal Charges - <AUTHOR> https://gizmodo.com/operator-of-malware-testing-service-scan4you-convicted-1826093471 <comment><AUTHOR> I am conflicted about this.

The service runs 40 Anti Virus programs to test your uploaded executable. Obviously - this is used mostly by malware and various shady crap ware software.

But making this a federal offense ?

What happens when they outlaw a c# obfuscation toolkit? An anonymous browser ?

<comment><USER2> What I really don't understand is that the same services exist, but inverted, for not only acceptable but _recommended_ use cases. (e.g. it's common in some of the P2P communities I participate in to treat some of these virus scanning sites as a "broad filter" initial vetting for questionable items) Without these services, I would have, on multiple occasions in the past, installed rootkits.

What differentiates from a site saying "your executable is safe" from saying "your malware wasn't detected"? Is it really an aspect of Intent in the law? I find this highly worrying absent comforting words from someone actually versed in the legal framework.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Google's Virustotal is different only because it shares the results with AV vendors right?</comment>


Why Doesn't Creativity Matter in Tech Recruiting? - <AUTHOR> http://prog21.dadgum.com/208.html <comment><USER2> I'm no grade A programmer. Yes, I know all the sorting algorithms and graph theory and all that. I can work effectively in a continuous development scrum based environment. I know .net and all the popular browser stacks. I can engineer dimensional ETL warehouses. Yada yada... Everyone can at this point.

What made me really famous in my little circle was my ability to do really fast problem mitigation. While all the other hardcore devs were freaking out due to all the stress of having to work and communicate directly with management while dealing with rapidfire requirement changes, I took it all in stride and just got it done. My reputation was this: if I was on the case, it got done on time and with a smile... period.

No one in any interview I've ever had was interested in that skill set. They only wanted to know about old school algorithm skills and how fluent I was with popular frameworks. It's as if upper management actually believes that my project management skills are irrelevant because hey! they've got project managers and staff for those. Why would a dev need it!

Oh, and I don't have a college degree. So, good bye... NEXT CANDIDATE!

Sorry...I ranted.

<comment><USER3> I am also not a "rock star" developer and I would have no chance of answering all the language trivia questions in an interview, but despite this I have managed to solve complex problems that nobody else seemed to be able to.

On the topic of language trivia is there anyone out there that can keep it all in their head? I only spend about 25% of my time writing code and I need to work in 5 languages (C, Java, JavaScript, PHP and ObjC) on 5 different platforms (Linux, Windows, MacOS, iOS and Android). I find it impossible to keep more than a limited amount of all the detail in my brain at any time. How do you geniuses do it?

<comment><USER4> I dealt with it by specializing on the C#-Windows platform. Allows me to hold 5x the language trivia I would able to hold if I worked on 5 different languages and platforms :P.

It's easier in the .NET world because a lot of shops for better or worse go pure Microsoft so there is a standard set of technologies and accompanying trivia you can learn. Unfortunately you won't get to work with best of breed products, but the upside is you'll get to familiarize yourself with enough technologies that you can get up and running fairly quickly.

       Language : C#
       Database : Sql Server
       ORM : Entity Framework
       IDE : Visual Studio + Resharper
       Client Side UI : WPF
       Web Server : IIS
       Web : Asp.net MVC/Classic etc...
       Client OS : Windows
       Server OS : Windows
       Development OS : Windows
       Cloud : Azure
       Logging : NLog or Log4Net
       Code Generation : T4
       Source Control : TFS
       Build Server : TFS
       Unit Testing : MSTest
       Build language : MSBuild
       Deployment : Wix or ClickOnce
       Mocking Framework : Moq or Fakes
       etc...

(This list is ignoring many of the different technologies that have been discarded by Microsoft such as winforms, COM, VB6, etc..)

<comment><USER3> Yes I am sure specialisation helps, but as you have rightly pointed out the amount of stuff you need to know even with one language/one platform is enormous.

<comment><USER2> It's insane. At one point I was fully fluent in C#, Silverlight, all the HTML/CSS/Javascript necessary to successfully embed Silverlight, MVC/MVVM, SQL implementation and design, etc etc etc etc... Being a full stack .NET programmer is just as crazy as being a full stack Javascript.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I got asked once "what are the four uses of static in C++". I couldn't recall one (can't remember which one), though I'd shipped a lot of code with all four in more than a decade of C++. He wasn't impressed with my so-called-C++ skills.

I wish I'd asked him what three common words in the english language begin with D and then W, or any three words with just the five vowels in the correct order. I think the chances are good that I could have mocked his so-called- English skills.

These questions, and comp-sci trivia tests, don't test developer ability. I've employed a whole bunch of programmers. The best have been the most agile, creative and curious.

<comment><USER6> So, how do we find employers that want to hire the most agile, creative, and curious engineers? I've long given up on trying to locate those companies, they are unicorns to me after more than 10 years in this industry.

When I switch jobs (for the record, that is > 10 years in and on my 3rd employer), I, too, need to reach for my trusty, old algorithms and data structures books and brush up for whiteboard-style examinations and a few rounds of framework/language trivia.

<comment><USER5> On reflection, I want to say more about this.

The problem with "the most agile, creative, and curious engineers", is it is like "above average intelligence" or "good sense of humour". Almost everyone _thinks_ they are agile, creative and curious, because - hey - who doesn't want to be those things? So trying to interview for that is like inviting people to show you their bullshit circuits.

People who are genuinely agile, creative and curious are as much unicorns as the people who want to hire them. People who think they are among the most agile, creative and curious engineers are more numerous than sparrows.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is something I always liked about the IMVU hiring process. I wish I understood all the ingredients of the recipe, but somehow we managed to hire a diverse engineering team. Creative folks who just got stuff done, people who could find bugs deep in third-party dependencies, people who could design and build high-performance technology at scale.

I no longer work at IMVU, but the lessons I'd take away are:

\- Hire based on passion and innate problem solving ability, not which specific technologies they know. (Except when you need to bring in specific expertise.)

\- Have a fuzzy hiring process where people don't necessarily need to quantify a candidate.

\- Take risks on people. We've had candidates who were a "no" but one person stuck their neck out and said "You know, I saw something special that none of you did, and I'd like to take a chance." Many times the candidates ended up being amazing, and it took that one person to see it.

<comment><USER6> > Take risks on people. We've had candidates who were a "no" but one person > stuck their neck out and said "You know, I saw something special that none > of you did, and I'd like to take a chance." Many times the candidates ended > up being amazing, and it took that one person to see it.

But don't forget the inverse. We had a candidate come on board recently who passed the interview with flying colors... Except for 1 person who essentially said the same thing. "You know, I saw something horrible that none of you did, and I don't think we should take the chance." And here we are, with a bad hire in a company where letting people go in general is a non-starter (which is another problem onto itself).

<comment><USER8> I think you are assuming the problem is symmetrical but it isn't. The cost of a bad hire is higher than the cost of missing a good hire.

<comment><USER9> People say this all the time, but I've never seen any explanation for it besides the quite shallow "bad people make bad code which someone has to fix" .. well yeah, and good people make good code which offsets bad code, so .. why should the cost of a bad hire (who you can fire in the first few month without any problems thanks to probation periods) be higher than the cost of missing a good hire who can - potentially - work for many years for your company and produce good solutions for a long time?

<comment><USER10> Spot on. Bad hires fall into basically 3 categories:

1) A bit worse than average, maybe 10-20% worse than their coworkers. They still add plenty of value and with good management and time can be improved. Just not quite the "gem" hire.

2) Clearly unqualified/unsuitable for the role. Easy to spot and you can let them go with a couple of months serverence. Everyone is happy. Total cost maybe 3-4 months wages.

3) Qualified but toxic. Has negative value and can destroy a team. Problem is these people can get through tough interviews anyway. Having higher testing standards does nothing to stop these people.

On the other hand a good software engineer, working within a company and framework that supports them can easily add $1,000,000/year to the bottom line.

<comment><USER11> I think the worse that can happen is the 3rd options, although I agree that we have no information about "How much bad is hiring a bad engineer"

When I'm asked about how I'd hire I always look for adaptability, creativity, communication, taste. Unless our goal is to find something really skilled on alghorithims or a specific language, it's just ok if they are curious, passionate, and communicate.

That said, I still wonder why we put that much emphasis on the language or the algorithmic skills when what we really care about is culture, passion, and helpful communication.

Maybe it's just me but I feel like searching for a more human skillset seems worthwile in the long term

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Interviews which have you rebalancing trees and what not are really just legally safe IQ tests. They purport to be testing skills, but nobody _really_ cares if you can implement a search algorithm - 99.9% of the time you're going to make a library call to do that. They do care to hire the kind of people that are smart enough to do that kind of thing, though.

<comment><USER13> Implement a search algorithm in 30 minutes!

<comment><USER14> Define "search algorithm" ... simple breadth- or depth-first set membership queries are easily doable in under 30 minutes.

Edit: I don't want to defend such questions in interviews ... it's just that almost everybody has done something like this at some point. It should be easily doable.

<comment><USER15> Yes, I've implemented several search algorithms in the past, but that was over 20 years ago, in school. I've used libraries ever since for doing mundane things like this. While I know the general idea around search algorithms, and given some Google time I could tell you which one to use in a certain scenerio and probably even whiteboard one, it's not currently "easily doable" for me to pop one out on the spot. Does that disqualify me?

What about the fact that I wrote an image processing army to churn through 4.5MM images in a weekend? I didn't write the thumbnailing algorithm (yea, GraphicsMagick) but I did write a GraphicsMagick Ruby gem to work with data in-memory instead of writing to disk.

Could I do it again, in an interview, on a whiteboard. Probably not, but I didn't do like that in my real job either.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> While the question of creativity vs programming skills is interesting, I think it's not even good to assume that people inverting binary trees on a whiteboard are good at coding.

I know several people that are great at algorithms but write garbage code (unmaintainable, unreadable, untestable, etc). Or they can't take business requirements and turn them into low-level details in a useful way.

The number of times a product manager has gone to an engineering team and said that they need a product that inverts binary trees is about equal to the number of working quantum computers.

</comment><comment><USER17> Part of the problem is that the bigger the company the less creativity they want out of their programmers. Programmers are supposed to do whatever task they were assigned by their managers. Creativity is reserved for the product team.

<comment><USER18> This comment seems really broad, I've worked in big and small companies and the size of the company had nothing to do with whether or not I was given the ownership and freedom to be creative. On what basis are you judging that this is the case?

<comment><USER19> I agree with you, I've had good and bad experiences at big and small companies.

One thing - I think that if someone is _hiring_ a programmer, that's already an indication that they are looking more for someone to execute a vision than to be "creative". This isn't always the case, but it leans that way. People have an idea, or a need, and they realize they need a programmer to implement it, so they set out to hire one.

There are some highly coveted R&Dish programming jobs out there at big companies (such as the old Sun Labs) - smaller companies may have trouble supporting something like this. But if you want to really be creative, you may have to strike out on your own, launch side projects, and so forth. It's tough, because it's hard to get this and a stable salary at the same time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Creativity is next to impossible to measure during an interview. So all these proxies for creativity are invented and we use weird memes ('thinking out of the box') to describe some aspects of it without fully nailing it in a way that would make it a measurable quantity.

I think creativity is hard to measure by definition because if you could measure it it would have some other name. It's a bit like 'AI', by the time something gets done it is no longer AI.

Programmers are - by non programmers - in general not considered to be creative people, they are seen along the lines of engineers, whereas architects generally are seen as creative people.

For me good programming is like writing poetry (definitely a creative art), only now all of the poem has to be internally consistent and the computer will mercilessly reject any prose you wrote that isn't.

So it's a very constrained and formalized kind of poetry, an arena where beauty is not only not apparent to non-programmers but largely irrelevant. As if painters produced nothing but white canvases that only they could see with special glasses.

If you want creativity to matter in tech recruiting then stop using proxies for creativity during the recruiting process and throw a new recruit a real life problem and work with them to solve it. That will give you a measure of someone's creativity.

<comment><USER21> > Creativity is next to impossible to measure during an interview.

Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torrance_Tests_of_Creative_Thi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torrance_Tests_of_Creative_Thinking)

These tests measure how many different ideas you can come up with and how detailed and original they are. These seem quite easy to measure during an interview. It doesn't really have anything to do with the formal or aesthetic qualities of what is being created.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> This is a great discussion piece.

My opinion of why creativity doesn't matter in tech recruiting (even in small start ups) is because the person making the decision to hire someone is going to have to defend why they hired that person to someone else (who likely is a business-minded person who does not have a tech background). If the hiring person can't have concrete documentation of why they hired someone, then it is the hiring persons problem.

<comment><USER23> And, like it or not, this is one of the main reasons that certifications matter at some job positions. If I have two candidates that are equal in every way except candidate A is more creative but candidate B has the XYZ certification, which one am I going to be better prepared to defend when pushed?

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> It is the dehumanizing effect of division of labor in action - programmers are not supposed to have ideas about product features, product people are. Programmers are supposed to execute and this is what is tested in these interviews.

</comment><comment><USER25> Totally relate to this. As soon as you're put into a programming role, all of a sudden it doesn't matter if you have domain knowledge, lateral thinking that can lead to improved processes, personable skills etc All that matters during the interview process is whether you can remember some obscure construct in a language, or what the Big O notation of Quicksort is - something that you'll very rarely even have to think about while making web pages...

I guess the problem stems from people hiring others who are like themselves ignoring the fact that diversity isn't whether you are black or white, male or female, but actually stems from the experiences you've had, and the ways in which you think.

</comment><comment><USER26> I challenge ANYBODY to actually define in any sort of concrete terms what a great programmer is.

And without a clear definition, how can any interview process ever work out if someone is a great programmer? It is absolutely not possible and in fact meaningless to try.

Everyone - every company, every interviewer, every recruiter has a different opinion.

Recruiting is, in the end, nothing more than a matter of opinion. Everyone keeps trying to "solve" recruiting. It's not a solvable problem. All recruiting comes down to "Hey what do you think of how this guy interviewed? Yes or No?"

<comment><USER27> > I challenge ANYBODY to actually define in any sort of concrete terms what a > great programmer is.

Definition:

A great programmer is one who can define/identify the problem which needs to be solved as put forth by people who have a vested interest (stakeholders), contributes to or delivers a software solution to said problem definition, within time constraints allowed for by their stakeholders, and does so to the acceptance of the same stakeholders.

Q.E.D.

<comment><USER26> That's your opinion. Others will think differently - recruiting is purely a matter of opinion.

I tried to define it here: 50 characteristics of a great software developer [http://www.supercoders.com.au/blog/50characteristicsofagreat...](http://www.supercoders.com.au/blog/50characteristicsofagreatsoftwaredeveloper.shtml)

In software engineering terms, specify the requirements that make a great programmer and if there is science to it then you should also be able to define concrete test cases that tell you if someone meets each requirement.

It can't be done, doesn't work in real life.

<comment><USER27> You originally asked:

> ... actually define in any sort of concrete terms what a great programmer > is.

And I did. The concrete terms are in measurable aspects of a person who is (or is expected to be) performing the role of programmer. These characteristics are congruent with both tangible metrics (such as time) as well as empirically observable metrics (such as solving the problem at hand and doing so to the satisfaction of other people involved).

Using software engineering terms to identify a person's ability is invalid. Attempting to do so restricts the ability to define, measure, and verify with minimal subjectivity whether or not a person meets the expectations of whatever subjective classification ("great", "bad", "OK", "senior", "rookie") being considered.

<comment><USER26> Then you have solved recruiting and everyone agrees with you.

<comment><USER27> Sighs.

You presented a challenge for providing a definition for the subjective categorization of a "great programmer." It was my assumption that you did not have a satisfactory one, based on how you presented this challenge.

Perhaps the problem domain which you presented is not immediately recognizable. In defining a concept relating to people, a plausible one will include terms/metrics/observations relevant to people. This implies a continuous domain (as opposed to a discrete one) much like what exists in analog systems.

Attempting to apply binary "yes/no" requirements and/or tests when faced with a partially observable universe doesn't work. Which is why AI agents use heuristics such as "confidence factors." And a person with which an organization has little to no history with presents a partially observable universe often limited to their CV. Now, a computer program has to do approximations such as confidence factors because _it_ is a digital entity (assuming a Von Neumann machine[1]).

But we, as human beings, are not Von Neumann machines. We are analog. Which implies continuous domain metrics (IOW: a "spectrum"). Hence the fruitless effort of attempting to apply software engineering best practices onto people.

However, addressing the problem defined as being "evaluate whether or not this multi-dimensional analog system can be of value to a collaborating set of multi-dimensional analog systems, for some equally nebulous definition of value" may reveal that collecting measurements within the observable outputs of said analog systems has a higher probability of success than one which attempts to apply measurements/practices for an entirely different problem domain.

YMMV.

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> When I do interviews I always have the candidate show me some of their own projects and walk me through the interesting parts. Sometimes I'm curious about a certain feature and will have them explain the code to me. I feel like this is the a great way to know their skill, personality and how they solve problems. It's actually interesting for me as well. Brain teasers are good for seeing whether the candidate can memorize algorithms. Since our work involves very little, if any algorithm writing, that's not something we look for.

<comment><USER20> I do something similar during DD, I usually ask the technical people to show me the parts of their code that they are most proud of and the parts that horrify them and/or that are least maintainable.

This gives great insight in their ability to deal with extraordinary needs and the teams potential to hack their way out of a problem and is a good predictor for their long term survival.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> We ask an open ended design question. For example (not a real one), when hiring an ME we might ask, "How would you design a new kitchen stove?"

There isn't a right answer. One person might ask more requirements ("electric or gas? Home or professional") while another might state themm up front ("well for this project I'll make it a gas stove since I think that's nicer to cook on in your kitchen"). One might go down more on the design or cosmetics, another safety, another weight and price...

We look at how they look at the problem and take it apart, how they react as they go down a path they later don't like and want to backtrack ("hmm you know I really should have allowed room for an oven because at home most people want both, and if I do this I can save some parts, so let me cross this part out"), how they react to questions (defensively or confidently) etc. One person might say, "I'm sure there's some safety code about XXX but just for design I'd worry about this shutoff" while another might say, "and we put this valve in here for safety code 1234..." Both are fine.

These are nice because 1> they are open ended and should be fun 2> they don't relate specifically to the company's business (we're not in the stove business) so it's not a trick question to see if the candidate knows some special safety code or something 3> they allow the candidate to show themselves off without needed to be glossy or get everything perfect.

</comment><comment><USER30> Really good interviewers and really bad interviewers both have idiosyncratic candidate judging methods.

Startups, when they start to hire at scale, try to standardize a methodology to compare apples to apples -- to avoid really bad (arbitrary) interview experiences in favor of predictable experiences even if those experiences are not excellent.

They look for interviewer formulae they can plug a random company developer, who would probably rather be working on something else, into.

</comment><comment><USER31> The word creativity has many different meanings, depending on who is speaking.

For "packers" it is an umbrella term they use when they are unable to grasp how, say, Rich Hickey came out with Clojure all alone (a few fundamental ideas put together plus ripping out CL) or how Igor Sysoev wrote nginx (after studying Apache's internals and coming up with a better model) or what is so special about Arc language.

For other people it is just the set of habits of thinking which is natural to them, so they literally cannot see what is that people are talking about.

There are the majority, who think that creativity is something which is related to [visual] arts, some kind of mindset. They use this word to justify an inability of a kid to sit down and do the homework as being a creative nature. No wonder packer managers want none of these.)

There is no "creativity" which can be boosted aside from habitual analytical thinking and hard work. Insights could appear only after extensive training of ones mental maps.

<comment><USER32> > set of habits of thinking

This is called engineering

While "creativity" is, most often, an "over-engineering"

<comment><USER31> Or merely sticking an eagle's head and wings to a lion's body.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Because developing new stuff - although advertisement and PRopangda will tell you the exact oppposite- are bloody dangerous. If you are the first to do a thing, you are the first to craft the tools for it, the first to experiment, the first to find errors in the equations, the first to be delayed and then to be overtaken by a spying competitor learning from your mistakes.

The first to be put out of buisness by somebody who realizes your advances put them into danger- with all the force of a currently working buisness.

Prototypes might make good tv-clips. What they do not show, is how often those endavours end pathetic - Rocket explodes, Cars crash, Robots fall and the guys working on them get laughed at by there collagues who stuck to more incremental research. Getting a steampowered nuclear reactor going- fast- getting a fusion plant going - not so much.

<comment><USER34> You do know that fusion plant will have a lot of steam turbines :-)

I suspect that mech engineers don't have to memorize steam tables for interviews.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> "I'd spend a month or two immersing myself in the technical, in the algorithms, in the memorization, and in the process push aside my creative and experimental tendencies."

Memorization is certainly not the way to learn how to solve math/cs/logic problems. There's a lot of thinking and (creative) experimentation involved when trying to solve a problem.

A lot of problems are classic problems in disguise. You'd be amazed to find out how many problems are just sorting + one traversal: reducing the average wait time in a queue, convex hull, counting duplicate elements (no extra space), interval scheduling, maximum number of overlapping intervals and a ton more. Can you memorize all of these problems individually? No, but you can ask yourself "how about if I sort my data first, what then?". If that doesn't work then try another question: "I have this brute force algorithm, if I use some other data structure will it get better?" \- that question alone solves half of the problems I've ever seen. Follow up questions would be "does my problem look fractal-y?, maybe I can divide it repeatedly" or "can I incrementally build the solution?"

Even more interesting is that problems usually have more than one optimal solution: Prim's algorithms and Kruskal's solve the same problem in opposite- ish ways and use different data structs. How about substring searching: Boyer- Moore searches backwards, Rabin Karp computes hashes while others simulate automata. With self-adjusting binary trees it's the same story: a lot of very diverse solutions to the same problem.

Solving problems implies doing a lot of permutations and experimenting with data structures and classic approaches if you ask me - it's certainly not about memorising more than "sorting sorts and hash tables have constant-ish access time"

Is this process any different than changing colors, fonts and layout on a website until you get a good-looking enough whole? All you have to know are some principles about contrast, alignment, spacing and what not, and the rest is experimentation.

<comment><USER36> The author's point was that memorization is how you pass these silly interviews.

There's a wonderful paragraph in Skienna's algorithm book, where he states that if you can reduce your problem to a graph problem you should do so, and that you should never invent your own graph algorithm - the standard ones will solve whatever problem you have. Perhaps a bit overstated, but by and large true. There is definitely value in having all of that information at hand so you can fairly quickly perform the mental gymnastics to find a good solution.

I think most people complaining about interviews would agree with that. The thing is that so many people _don 't_ work in areas where they need at at the front of their brains, but they do work in areas where similar levels of ability are needed. Product design, finding difficult bugs, working with customers, leading teams, and so on. Bad interviews test memorization.

I'm doing almost all linear algebra these days. I can talk to you about matrix computations, round off errors of various implementations, and so on. You probably can't. But only because you are not doing it, and I am. I TA'ed a graduate level Algorithms class. At the time I could do whatever graph algorithm you wanted, now I can't because it is not what I work on now and most of the details have fled my brain. Doesn't mean I can't do it, just like you not being able to implement a Cholesky decomposition on a whiteboard means that you couldn't do linear algebra programming if it became your job.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I think this herd mentality in recruiting is great. The more companies chase the same 0.1% of developers the easier (and cheaper) it becomes for semi- thoughful companies to recruit those developers who don't fit in the box, but who can get stuff done.

</comment><comment><USER37> Anytime I'm interviewing, these days for contracts as an independent consultant, I try to mention early on that my B.A. was in Philosophy, with a minor in Music History.

I try to avoid (or spend as little time as possible) with companies who are only looking for pure-bred CS majors. It's refreshing when you encounter a medium to large corporation who tell you that most of their best engineers / programmers were originally art students.

</comment><comment><USER38> But it's hard to test creativity. We try to test programming skill because it's one of the few things (we think) we can test.

How would you go about testing creativity?

<comment><USER20> > How would you go about testing creativity?

Solve actual problems to which you currently do not have a solution and observe the _process_ , not the solution.

<comment><USER39> That road leads to "how many golfballs in a minibus" type of puzzlers and we already have data now that shows that those things don't work.

[http://www.deathandtaxesmag.com/200732/google-admits-its- fam...](http://www.deathandtaxesmag.com/200732/google-admits-its-famous-job- interview-questions-were-a-complete-waste-of-time/)

<comment><USER20> That's not an 'actual' problem, that's a fake problem.

I mean actual as in 'problem that you actually have and that needs solving'.

<comment><USER8> I have to humbly disagree with you here. Estimation problems are quite important in science. When dealing with computers and algorithms, a quick back-of-the-envelope calculation can illuminate a lot of things. Maybe your algorithm is running slowly but a quick calculation shows it needs to be orders of magnitude faster. Etc.

It's by no means a super necessary skill to have though. And certainly it makes for a rather silly interview question. I would guess it takes no more than half an hour to an hour to train yourself to do estimation problems.

<comment><USER20> Of course they are important in science. But that's not the kind of problem that you're likely to be hiring this particular (presumably a programmer) for. And if it is then estimation problems are exactly what you should be doing but if they are not then it would be a lot better to pick something related to the work at hand.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I think in mobile development creativity matters. An app is a program but also (and very important) is the UX. Mobile portfolios with good interface are an advantage.

</comment><comment> phatak-dev It's an interesting discussion. Do interviews focus less on side project than pure programming skills on whiteboard?

</comment><comment><USER41> I'm just trying to give an idiot test at this point. I don't know why people still aren't passing it.

</comment><comment><USER19> I've been following the latest rounds on technical interviews, and I think this post raises an important question. Based on my interview experiences at Amazon Google, and a few other companies that emulate them, I would tend to agree that the interview process places almost no emphasis on certain types of creativity. They really are data structures and algorithms exams. I'd be careful not to claim there is _no_ creativity tested, as I would argue that there is a kind of creativity in figuring out how to find the square sub matrix with the larges sum in an NxN matrix, especially if you haven't seen the problem before. But it is true, the ability to see the value in software and build something interesting and useful with it isn't tested, at all.

This blog post makes another good observation - if there is a limited amount of time and mental space, the two could even start to negatively correlate.

I've been thinking a lot about this in terms of another hobby of mine, music. Think about the difference between a great session musician and a wonderfully creative songwriter. The first can do amazing things musically, but might draw a complete blank on what he or she has written. The second may only be able play the open chords, but write truly wonderful songs.

Google essentially tests you like a session musician. Can you play a B flat diminished scale? Put together a quick 4 bar run. Oh, the singer needs to do this in E, immediately shift to that scale, and do it again. Here's the song, and lyrics, oh, there's this one tricky part, let's go over that, ok, ready to record? Great session musicians really can do those things.

Aside: Now, some might reasonably object, saying I've given an overly rosy view of what a tech test truly is, because those are all things a session musician does in the day to day job. But what tech interviewers really do is interview a bassoon player, grill her on obscure points in jazz theory on paper, allow her to strum on "air guitar" but never actually letting her pick up an instrument, and in the unlikely event she passes, will later place her as an oboe player in an orchestra, figuring, close enough. Plenty of support for that point of view on tech hiring as well.

And truth is, there are people who are interested in great songwriters, thing is, you don't audition for the role. You need to create great songs and get someone's attention. No creative person can be successful just by being creative.

In this sense, I suppose google (along other large tech companies) does value creativity, it does this by finding and purchasing new technology and startups at 100+ times the rate they would have paid in salary.

</comment><comment><USER32> Rank and file developers should not be creative. We must follow the rules and do what we're asked to do. Creativity is distractive and destructive. Filtering out too creative candidates is one of the main purposes of an interview in most companies. You can hate this fact, but you won't change it.

<comment><USER42> If that's true, then the people creating the orders for these programmers should simply write code and automate the whole process. We can't do that in other jobs, like coffee servers, because vision and speech recognition, along with robotics, are too weak.

But for writing code, we've got all the tools. If "rank and file" just need to follow rules and do as asked, the asker is far better off asking a computer.

But they don't. Why?

<comment><USER32> Because our tools suck, and when they don't we are still cheaper than such tools.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> So the thing is:

> tricky graph searches

> finding eigenvectors

> building heaps

> balancing trees

> non-recursive quicksorts

All these 'scary' 'hardcore' things are covered in the first year of most good CS programs.

<comment><USER42> And yet I've had people literally laugh on interviews when asked to merely _describe_ binary search (if 10 yr olds can figure it out, it seems fair to ask a pro). Even if they have a masters in CS.

<comment><USER44> Laugh because it's too-easy, or as some sort of "I should know this, and it's ironic you ask me, because I can't remember" type of laugh?

<comment><USER42> Laugh because they think I'm joking, cause how could that possibly be relevant.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Microsoft's Latest Bad Idea? ARAX - Ruby-powered AJAX - <AUTHOR> http://www.rubyinside.com/microsoft-arax-ruby-ajax-913.html <comment><USER2> Are you kidding me? How is being able to run Ruby in Silverlight a bad idea?</comment>


The president is wrong: The NSA debate wouldn't have happened without Snowden - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/08/09/the-president-is-wrong-the-nsa-debate-wouldnt-have-happened-without-snowden/?tid=rssfeed <comment><USER2> For me, Obama has become inaudible; I don't care anymore about what he says.

I'm more interested in his actions; among these we find (by decreasing order of importance):

\- use of drones to indiscriminately kill civilians, "suspected terrorists" or their children (cf. the murder of 16 years old American citizen Abdulrahman al-Awlaki)

\- the detention, and ruthless and aggressive prosecution of Bradley Manning

\- force-feeding Guantanamo detainees on hunger strike, depriving them of even the right to end their own life

I'm not a US citizen, so what I think about Obama really doesn't matter; but he must have set some kind of record in the amount of goodwill he was able to destroy during his time in office.

<comment><USER3> These political discussions on HN are awkward, and I wish they'd stop.

It's not because political discussions aren't important, they are, but because I don't think this is a useful place to have them.

Counterarguments are self-censored, because any moderates calmly pointing out hyperboles tend to be downvoted by the more passionate participants in the discussion.

With the moderates bowing out, online voting systems quickly gel into two extremes, maybe a far right and a far left. That's not sustainable though, one side quickly gets bigger and wins. The losing side now is best off self- censoring, because why get downvoted when you can just comment on other topics? You eventually get a political monoculture representing one extreme, with no voices of opposition or moderation.*

No moderation system has yet promoted any useful political dialogue, because you can't convince the 5% of people who are most emotional to rate argument quality independently of personal beliefs.

That's why, in general, I'm opposed to the political pulpit of HN, even for positions I agree with. It's a bad medium for good discussions on issues of significant controversy.

* (What's admittedly tricky is sometimes a political monoculture is the correct result. If someone made arguments on behalf of the KKK, we don't need a full and fair debate providing a false equivalence between both sides. One side is just wrong. The problem is, with politics, everyone thinks they're arguing against someone else who is just wrong, just like the KKK. There's no objective way to determine whether or not both sides of a discussion hold merit worthy of a full debate, or whether we should just downvote one side out of the discussion before it leaves the gate.)

<comment><USER4> Snowden unveiled a horrifying truth about our government: widespread surveillance has been combined with a class of officials who do not face consequences for breaking the law. I don't think it's hyperbolic to say that the Constitution is facing an existential threat. Normally I would be sympathetic to the view that politics should stay off HN. But this feels different. I would hope that people wouldn't self-censor their counter- arguments, however. The possibility that things aren't quite as bad as I suspect helps me sleep at night. And the truth is, there is reason for hope.

<comment><USER5> The Constitution is not under any kind of "existential" threat. You should be more worried about citizens not knowing their own Constitution than you should be worried about the government breaking it.

Literally _any_ valid view of American history would immediately demonstrate that we are moving _forward_ in terms of overall liberty, not backward. With the possible exception of disenfranchised minority groups and lower classes, there has been increasing political transparency and quality of life in every respect, and the former are only still mistreated because of the power vacuum in their communities.

The only reason why this is so outrageous is because people have short memories - I doubt many people are as shocked at this who lived through the Nixon Watergate scandal. That kind of corruption wouldn't so easily take place today.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The president is both wrong and not wrong. He's saying things that are both true and not true, or true and beside the point.

For example, "No domestic spying program" may be 100% true. It's a foreign spying program that's devouring domestic data because of where the data is tapped and how data flows, then having the data shared domestically outside the program.

Any time government officials are commenting here, the adjectives and adverbs -- okay, even verbs and nouns -- are being used as qualifiers to eke out a "technically true but in a practical sense false" statement.

In another example, when he says "nobody's reading your emails" that's true for all but a handful of his listeners. For the rest of us, an algorithm may be parsing, but "nobody" as in no human, is "reading" as in with her eyeballs, until the emails are flagged live for review or "collected" (read with eyeballs, according to Clapper) later.

It's a shame dialectic isn't a popular school subject any more. The TL;DR crowd doesn't stand a chance against this kind of nuance.

These pronouncements and these nebulously defined NSA behaviors are like Schrödinger's cats. We need Snowdens to help us observe and collapse their states.

<comment><USER7> The word you're after is doublespeak. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doublespeak](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doublespeak)

<comment><USER8> I'm also ok with "lie".

These sorts of "I can pretend it's not a lie" lies are still lies. Words were said with the intent to deceive.

That they are spoken by skillful and practiced liars just makes them bigger assholes, more deserving of condemnation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Obama has his own reality distortion field.

In time Snowden will enter the history books for what he did, Obama not so much. Maybe only to serve as a reminder that the Nobel peace prize lost its prestige.

Part of this is that Snowden did a service to everybody on the planet (including Obama) and Obama serves a limited set of interests.

<comment><USER10> I think he will be mentioned on the same page as Warren Harding.

And also again in the chapter about notable African Americans. Let's not forget that getting elected president as the first African American is an achievement in itself, and one which I believe benefits the African American community, even if Obama's performance as a president doesn't live up to our initial hopes.

<comment><USER11> Yeah but he hasn't done fuck all for all those people who are persecuted because they are black in America. Look at the prison system and the way drug cases are prosecuted. In fact just watch this TED talk - this black president is for the 65 year old white corporate executive more than anyone:

[http://www.ted.com/talks/bryan_stevenson_we_need_to_talk_abo...](http://www.ted.com/talks/bryan_stevenson_we_need_to_talk_about_an_injustice.html)

<comment><USER12> One would argue it was the only way a black person could be elected US President: by being whiter inside than white old men. Someone threatening like Jesse Jackson never stood a real chance; in fact, giving the electoral system, no real reformer will ever have a chance: old white people from rural states are overwhelmingly over-represented, the game is rigged in their favour.

It's like the football/soccer rule-changing committee being structured in a way that nobody can change anything if British federations don't agree.

<comment><USER13> >being whiter inside than white old men

>Someone threatening like Jesse Jackson

Be careful of this kind of talk. I understand and probably agree with what you probably mean to say, but reifying whiteness as some sort of meaningful quality of the soul, and by contrast characterizing blackness as "threatening" is not a good way to think about it.

You're using "white" and "black" here as stand-ins for something else. It's easier for everyone if you just refer to the actual qualities that you intend to refer to, rather than implying that there's a proper ways for people to behave or be that are appropriate or inappropriate in relation to their skin colors.

sorry:)

<comment><USER12> sorry, I apologise if I wasn't clear. By "whiter inside" I meant "unquestioningly faithful to institutions and systems that purposely (an occasionally violently) discriminate not-whites, not-rich and not-Americans". Which I think fits the current US President quite well at the moment, regardless of his skin.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Obama said that? Shame on him. He doesn't even need re-election.

I was so happy for the US and world in general when Obama was elected. This man has become the world biggest disappointment. Americans appear love world records and things that go down as "historic". Well chaps, you have another one.

This man is worse than George W Bush. Bush was clearly what he was. We all knew what we were getting, and could rely on it. Obama is a lie in a suit. He makes the US look like a national and international lie. Maybe it is.

<comment><USER15> Jeez have we forgotten what Bush had done?

Iraq anyone?

And no I'm not saying Obama is doing hecka of a job.

But let's not forget the serious damage Bush did.

Not to mention all this NSA stuff too under Bush.

<comment><USER16> No one cares about Bush anymore, you're being rather irrelevant.

<comment><USER15> Yeah right. The Supreme Court appointees by Bush has caused the greatest damage we will see for years (Citizen United)

The way America supported the Govt involvement in religion and tax money, the senseless wars, the intrusion of our lives by TSA etc. all accelerated by Bush and continued by Obama and will continue until this country collapses.

Yeah keep on not caring about how our history has changed for the worst and for good.

<comment><USER16> It's no use to care about Bush, he himself is not in power anymore.

What does it give us to say 'yeah, Bush was a bad guy'?

If anything Bush did is still having adverse effects, Obama and his successors are the ones who we should look at.

I think the most important thing in your comment is 'and continued by Obama', that's the pain point, that's what's matters to us now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> (Copy and Pasted from) Obama's Ethics Agenda (2008)...in his own words.

Protect Whistleblowers: Often the best source of information about waste, fraud, and abuse in government is an existing government employee committed to public integrity and willing to speak out. Such acts of courage and patriotism, which can sometimes save lives and often save taxpayer dollars, should be encouraged rather than stifled. We need to empower federal employees as watchdogs of wrongdoing and partners in performance. Barack Obama will strengthen whistleblower laws to protect federal workers who expose waste, fraud, and abuse of authority in government. Obama will ensure that federal agencies expedite the process for reviewing whistleblower claims and whistleblowers have full access to courts and due process.

<comment><USER18> I don't know if he was asked about this text, by any journalist. However, read the text from Obama's perspective, and you'll easily find the answer he'd give: Snowden did not use the official channels for whistleblowing. Snowden commited a crime, and should be handled as a criminal.

That text can be read as having the intention to neuter whistleblowers by providing a sanctioned escape valve as much as the interpretation you're giving it (that of general protection of whistleblowers).

<comment><USER19> The proper channel is the press. That's why we have free speech. What Bradley Manning did is much more questionable, Snowden gave the information over to the Fourth Estate and let professional journalists sound the whistle. You would rather have him blow the whistle to the same people who are benefiting from The Way Things Are? What incentive do they have to do anything about it?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Especially as a foreigner, it's pretty clear that there's no end to any of this. Even if it is claimed that spying has stopped, there's almost no chance that anything will actually change. You're talking about an organisation that has it's own interpretation of the rules, has nobody to pull them up on what they do wrong, and for all intents is invisible to the public. If a public court "shuts them down", it's just a facade to keep the media at bay.

If their president is lying to them on simple facts that get refuted by a whistle browser at the next available moment, there's no telling what else goes on behind closed and private doors.

<comment><USER21> Also, rest assured that the US government will continue to put enough pressure on foreign/European governments to continue mass surveillance on their behalf.

If there is no fundamental structural change in the US, the Western World will remain a surveillance society and the current degree of democracy will be so much weakened that the term "democracy" will need to be "redefined".

<comment><USER7> Representative democracy is the rule of more equal people over the less equal.

<comment><USER17> Love the quote. Nice adaptation.

"All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> The headline should be "The president is lying" but that would upset the readers and the sponsors. So lets just say he is "wrong", just like the NSA is just "wrong" about not collecting data on everybody.

<comment><USER21> He had the "balls" to say on TV something to the tune of "the US doesn't have a spying program at home".

That should be enough for everybody to understand even Mr Hope-and-Change is lying now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Obama is not wrong. He's just lying. Who actually believes he would've started any kind of reforms without this, when he commanded over this program for five years? Not to mention that none of these "reforms" seem too serious anyway. The only reform that is needed is to repeal the Patriot Act and the FISA Amendments Act. Then we can start the debate from scratch, rather than trying to win inches in this debate from the privacy point of view.

<comment><USER24> Wrong by choice is still wrong.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> This is beginning to have the feel of a watergate - the press can sense blood in the water - senior administration figures have outright lied, in public, and been found out.

That usually leads to a resignation - but now there are bigger fish to hunt.

Shutting down the program will no longer be enough - there is an impeachment in the offing. What will be enough to call off the dogs?

Edit: I often let my cynical side overrule me - and happily claim "they" will always continue doing shady and disreputable things. But the reason "they" can is that "we" do not stand up and shout loudly enough and so build the laws to prevent them.

It seems an ownership change has not hurt WaPo, for which I am glad.

</comment><comment><USER26> Obama is just saying some things, little things to defuse the situation until it is out of the headlines. The article explains that what Obama said the effect Snowden had isn't true, but since Obama is only trying to defuse the situation before the vast majority of voters who are not paying much attention, that what he said is not true seems not to matter much. And for reminding voters in the future that what Obama said here is not true also seems will not matter much to the vast majority of voters.

I'm concluding that the political process, i.e., involving Obama and Congress, will consist of a lot of pushing to save the Fourth Amendment, etc. from the small minority of voters who care a lot, a little movement by the politicians, the issue out of the headlines, and then no more movement by the politicians.

So, for saving the Constitution, I'm counting on legal cases going to the SCOTUS and the SCOTUS defending the Fourth Amendment, etc.

</comment><comment><USER27> Well, arguably everything he said in yesterday's news conference was at best questionable (and at worst deceitful). But I'm still glad he said it. The fact that he had to address these issues publicly, and in a manner that's effectively "oh yeah, I would have revised those programs anyway" (rather than some senators' "the programs are essential! don't listen to the traitors") is greatly encouraging; the system may not yet be beyond redemption. Are his measures palliatives rather than cures? Very likely. And he's still hiding behind concocted phrases designed to "reassure the people". But the moment can nonetheless be savored as a promising victory for the digital civil rights movement.

</comment><comment><USER28> It's funny to think of how Clinton was hounded for lying under oath about a blowjob, and how the US Congress seems to be asleep at the wheel (or complicit) in this case. At least, that's the impression from abroad.

<comment><USER29> Congress has been investigating, but has been denied access to evidence because it is classified.

<comment><USER30> Uh, Congress has access to classified information. They receive classified briefings all the time from agencies in the Executive Branch.

<comment><USER29> [http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/04/congres...](http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/04/congress- nsa-denied-access)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> _When Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) asked for a "ballpark figure" of the number of Americans whose information was being collected by the NSA last year, the agency refused to give the senator any information, arguing that doing so would violate the privacy of those whose information was collected._

Well, doesn't that answer automatically imply that a very large percentage of the population was watched? Otherwise, if the number were, say, 1%, the mere number would not have violated anyone's privacy.

</comment><comment><USER32> > _" My preference, and I think the American peoples' preferences would have > been for a lawful, orderly examination of these laws."_

Yes, and you had the time to bring that to the fore. I recall one of the rationales Snowden offered for not acting sooner was that he was holding off to see whether you did anything about them via that more orderly process.

I wonder how much faith in the political process, especially among young people, Obama's managed to burn.

</comment><comment><USER33> I was very happy Obama was re-elected.. So much for that. But at least now I've realized I need to start voting independent. Our two party system is a failure. We lose when your voting choices are "bad" or "worse".

<comment><USER18> Even if the US escapes from the two party local maximum, it'd probably land in a three party local maximum like many modern democracies (Germany is a good example). Then, a middle-ground party works with the election winner to maintain government stability. It is not a much better model.

The conclusion we are reaching is that representative democracy has very serious limits. Voting for the whole ideologic package does not allow my voice to be heard on stuff that: a) I really care about, or b) I really know inside and out. I'd prefer to relinquish my opinion on some stuff (agricultural policy, for example), and really be heard on other matters (there's absolutely _no_ excuse for torture).

<comment><USER34> Here, I'll take it one step further.

In this day and age, especially with such a strong emphasis on advertising and consumerism, the people governed on the whole _do not deserve_ a say in how things are done. We had a thread not a day ago where mass numbers of HN folks earnestly pleaded that we couldn't reasonably expect normal people to learn to use computers beyond knowing how to app store a thing, how to socializeauth their twitterscapes--people who routinely bemoan how bad politicians are on tech policy issues.

Fuck it. If we want to progress as a race, we need to stop pretending that the 'common man' ought to have a say in long-term priorities, or in how we should govern their fellow citizens.

<comment><USER35> I think you've got it _exactly_ backwards. We need to rely much more on the "common man" being able to take care of his own day-to-day needs, and take the attitude that the government is what is harmful, incompetent, corrupt, and does not deserve a say in how many things are done.

<comment><USER34> These are not mutually exclusive--let the marching morons manage their own affairs as well as they can, and don't let them intervene in politics and create perverse incentives for "democratically elected leaders" to do the wrong things to get votes.

I can completely get behind the idea that the government ought to function like a microkernel operating system, doing as little as it can get away with while providing services for all. Part of that, though, is that userland stays well the fuck over in userland.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Even accepting on its face the notion that Obama was preparing to look at reforms, how does that make what Snowden did less patriotic? I don't think anybody but Obama _knew_ that he was preparing to look at reforms, and after 6 years of an Obama presidency where things were just getting more spy-happy how was Snowden supposed to assume anything but more of the same? According to Obama, Snowden and Obama _agreed_ that the programs needed change, and they both chose to do something about it.

</comment><comment><USER37> Agree. Snowden's the only reason why people, politicians and the president are talking about this.

</comment><comment><USER38> Of course he's wrong. He's looking more and more like Nixon...

</comment><comment><USER39> The president is not wrong. The president is lying. Big difference.

</comment><comment><USER40> Yeah at some point in history, maybe. Its easy to say that after being caught with your dick in my inbox.

</comment><comment><USER41> > "I don't think Mr. Snowden was a patriot," the president said

was?

</comment><comment><USER42> Does USA have a way to change president mid-term if enough people sign for that?

<comment><USER43> Yes, it's called an Impeachment. According to the Constitution it can only be for an high crimes and misdemeanors. The Congress then holds a trial and if convicted the President is removed from office. Then the next in succession becomes President until the next election. Basically, it's not going to happen over this. Remember, Congress agrees with the actions of the government more or less.

To more directly answer your question. There is no popular recall mechanism. The closest would be if there was enough public outcry to their congressional representatives that Congress began to move against the President. The bar is really, really high on this. It's not going to happen.

<comment><USER35> Of course that would leave us with Joe Biden. Which is probably why Obama picked him.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> [https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BPGk0PXCUAANwGP.jpg](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BPGk0PXCUAANwGP.jpg) tweeted my wikileaks.

</comment><comment><USER45> newspaper blows own trumpet - film at 11.

</comment><comment><USER46> It would happen at the same time as the closing of Guantanamo Bay, I imagine.

<comment><USER7> Yes, simultaneously with the end of drone strikes.

All of these things ended in '08, when he was elected, remember, just like he promised.

<comment><USER30> He never promised to end drone strikes. In fact I believe he _emphasized_ drone strikes even then in order to shift away from American "boots on ground" and the then-current policy of using JDAM bomb strikes (which are even more dangerous w.r.t. collateral damage).

<comment><USER7> You're quite right, actually - he didn't promise anything about drones - as at that point they didn't officially exist, most likely.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> According to Snowden's slides, PRISM began to receive information from Microsoft in 2007. So now in... wait for it.. 2013, Obama was juuust about to start looking into what those crafty NSA people were doing?? The amount of stupid here is Unbearable!!

</comment><comment><USER48> Since Bezos took over, this is the first WaPost article I've taken notice of. Great article - I'm encouraged.</comment>


VLC for Apple TV Now Available on TvOS App Store - <AUTHOR> http://www.macrumors.com/2016/01/12/vlc-apple-tv-app-tvos-app-store/ <comment><USER2> Are the original AppleTV's still supported/updated to include an app store? They came out a while ago now and I assume the original devices are much less capable than the latest.</comment>


Private car ownership is on the road to becoming a rarity - <AUTHOR> http://www.marketwatch.com/story/get-ready-to-share-not-just-the-road-but-the-car-2015-12-14 <comment><USER2> I have seen many of these articles about our car-share future. Few have addressed various factors like:

A family which keeps the car seats/booster seats in the car, because it's easier than moving them in and out each time. And extra diapers, clothes, toys, etc.

An avid windsurfer/skier/cyclist with special mounts for sports equipment, or someone who lives in mountains and keeps tire chains and sand in reserve.

Or medical gear.

People who buy things during lunch, and leave them in the car to take home with them after work.

How often are the cars cleaned, who decides what "messy" is, and who pays for the cleaning?</comment>


Seamless offloading of web app computations from mobile device to edge clouds - <AUTHOR> https://blog.acolyer.org/2020/01/31/web-worker-migration/ <comment><USER2> > you've got mobile devices without the computing power needed to deliver a > great experience

I can play call of duty on my mobile with graphics better than xbox 360, what are you on about?

> cloud computing that has all the needed power that's too far away

The issue is mobile bandwidth not just latency.

> Edge servers are the middle ground

More expensive, less powerful and scales worse than the mobile, while also increasing latency and bandwidth the mobile just doesn't have.

Wifi is a bigger drain on battery than cpu so it will drain phones batteries faster not slower, this is truly a compromise thats the worst of both worlds.

<comment><USER3> Wifi is not a bigger drain than cpu when you're playing CoD on your mobile. Your smart phone now has multiple cpu's and would have a GPU. When you're doing something intensive like CoD it will fire up that GPU and suck up power.

Wifi power used will vary with a few factors, how far you away from the station, how many other wifi signals, etc.

In addition a big bright screen uses a lot more power than wifi. But that would be used either way so not part of the comparison.

<comment><USER4> Agreed. Also, it looks to me that paper's idea intended to be used for batch (or, at least, batchable) computations, where you submit data, and then retrieve the result.

In that case, Wi-Fi isn't used intensively, only for data transmission, meaning it could be idle during computation. So the power savings could be relatively big.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Interesting idea, but why they are offloading heavy computation to the less powerful device? I don't see any device around me that is more powerful than my smartphone. Except for the computer, for which it makes sense to run the computation at the first place.

<comment><USER6> It seems to me they are suggesting adding more powerful processors to edge devices such as routers if this turns out to be a useful technique.

<comment><USER7> With so many WiFi devices it would be very innovative to have my router expose a computation API. Nothing real time but why not move Fitbit data processing to the router and save my battery. Web workers are a great API. Upload the script then get the results later or upload directly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Seems like a complicated process for maybe getting slightly more compute power. Phones are plenty fast these days, processing power is rarely a major limiting factor.

<comment><USER9> > processing power is rarely a major limiting factor.

Autonomy is. I could see compute clouds like this being offered at the OS level rather than browser, along with a claim for multiple days charge cycles, or slashed device weight/thickness. However, it would likely only work well for common and predictable computing tasks. And it would further separate users from hardware.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> What exactly are we doing on IOT devices that we require so much computing power for? Phones are already strong enough and everything else just captures audio/video.

<comment><USER11> Deep learning can be used for many interesting things, like computer vision applications.

Even visual odometry and SLAM, necessary for AR, can be solved through DL.

I, for one, can't wait to have something in a raspberry Pi form _and power_ factor that can run a big deep CNN at 30fps.

That opens the way to a lot of neat gadgets that can be summarized as "computers that can see":

[https://www.ben- evans.com/benedictevans/2019/7/19/computers-...](https://www.ben- evans.com/benedictevans/2019/7/19/computers-that-can-see)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Ahhh the first step of the cycle. We're going back to on premise computing.

<comment><USER13> It really is a pendulum isn't it? Is it driven by cost dynamics? Computers become expensive and incentivize sharing (mainframes, cloud, sevens, ...). Prices come down — either because workload become more complex or hardware becomes cheaper — and the incentives for exclusive ownership come back.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> There's a similar paper from 2018 [https://www.researchgate.net/publication/325255736_Decentral...](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/325255736_Decentralized_Computation_Offloading_on_the_Edge_with_Liquid_WebWorkers)</comment>


S/osx/linux - <AUTHOR> http://paulrouget.com/e/osx2linux/

<comment><USER2> Re: Alfred/Quicksilver supposedly making OS X more keyboard friendly - The #1 use case for them is launching apps, and Spotlight (⌘-↵, Cmd-Return) searches apps, allowing you to launch them with Return.

Not saying that it's better; Alfred/Quicksilver still learn which apps you prefer to launch. It's just a vanilla alternative in case, like me, you prefer not to run nonessential background apps.</comment>


This Powerful PC Runs on Any Device–and Never Needs an Upgrade - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/this-powerful-pc-runs-on-any-deviceand-never-needs-an-upgrade-1519751084 <comment><USER2> Here is a passthrough link[0].

The tech seems like the PC version of OnLive, the stuff behind PS4 streaming.

[0]: [https://twitter.com/FinTechie/status/968674531148693504](https://twitter.com/FinTechie/status/968674531148693504)</comment>


Pivot Results in Cosmo Coverage - <AUTHOR> http://www.cosmopolitan.com/hairstyles-beauty/beauty-blog/kartme-website

<comment><USER2> What was the pivot? Article makes it sound like site was always foe making lists?</comment>


Computing at CERN - <AUTHOR> http://home.web.cern.ch/about/computing "Physicists must sift through the 15 petabytes or so of data produced annually to determine if the collisions have thrown up any interesting physics." <comment><USER2> I wonder if there is any volunteer computing grid exists.</comment>


The code you write makes you a programmer. - <AUTHOR> http://twitter.com/#!/mariofusco/status/47988950903693312 <comment><USER2> Very OOP-centric opinion.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't think that at all. In fact, it's true in any code. If your code is written in such a way that re-use becomes the norm, and that code is written with the future in mind so that it can handle additional design requirements, then certainly it counts. And that is not OOP-centric.</comment></comment>


Ask HN — Native ads in education: What would this look like? Feasible? Ethical? - <AUTHOR> Native advertising is advertising that matches the form and function of the platform on which it appears.
What could this look like in education?
Example contexts: textbooks, tutoring tech, MOOCs, LMSs, OERs, testing platforms, adaptive learning tools, VLEs, study materials, etc.
Obviously this provokes hard questions. Is this ethical? Is this even feasible? What would the model look like?
All thoughts/arguments/questions welcome. <comment><USER2> It's already in place. Math textbooks in the US that specifically use Oreos(TM) and Nike(TM) shoes in examples. Supposedly "the well-known products were included simply to make the math problems more relevant to sixth graders."

      *"Another word problem, this one in the 1999 edition,
      gives a plug to Oreos, made by Nabisco: ''The best-selling
      packaged cookie in the world is the Oreo cookie,'' it begins.
      ''The diameter of an Oreo cookie is 1.75 inches. Express
      the diameter of an Oreo cookie as a fraction in simplest form.''

      "A section on surface area in the same edition asks students
      to calculate the surface area of a box of Cocoa Frosted Flakes,
      adding some gratuitous information about when the cereal was
      introduced. Another page, titled ''School to Career,''
      highlights Lands' End, the mail-order apparel company.
      ''Consumers can purchase unique clothing and accessories,
      and products for the home,'' the section reads."*

[http://www.nytimes.com/1999/03/21/business/math-book- salted-...](http://www.nytimes.com/1999/03/21/business/math-book-salted-with- brand-names-raises-new-alarm.html?pagewanted=all)

</comment><comment><USER3> IMHO this is fundamentally unethical. The purpose of education - again, IMHO - is to equip children with the skills and knowledge they need to be successful in the wider world. Advertising has no place in this model.

The example given by gumby is particularly insidious. I could make the argument for including products that the children will be familiar with to make maths problems seem more applicable to the real world. However, knowing that the "best-selling packaged cookie in the world is the Oreo cookie" does nothing to enhance the child's mathematical ability.

The Merchants of Venus by Frederick Pohl is a satirical SF story about the potential perils of runaway capitalism. I could see school districts experiencing rivalry depending on whether they are a "Coke school" or a "Pepsi school". The last thing school systems need is yet another superficial basis for tribalism and rivalry.

There is one potential benefit that I can see. Advertisers would presumably pay money to schools for the privilege of advertising to such a malleable, captive audience. If this money were to be used to enhance the quality of education at the school, could it outweigh the damage caused by advertising to children? I'm not sure, but I doubt it.

</comment><comment><USER4> We've already had adverts in school textbooks. At least California banned them. [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/436312.stm](http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/436312.stm)

> For example, text books will now no longer be allowed to present maths > problems in terms of the prices of brand-name trainers or show counting > exercises using branded chocolate bars.

Advertising aimed at children is unethical and is not legal in some countries and more tightly regulated than other advertising in many other countries. I would strongly object to advertising in an education setting. I would use every method I had available to remove ads from my child's educational life. He's bombarded with ads every day and I'd like to give him a bit of time away from that.

Also: some people suggest that Youtube kids allows advertisers to bypass tv laws about advertising to children. Youtube should probably push this link a bit harder: [https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/6168681?hl=en- GB](https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/6168681?hl=en-GB)

</comment><comment><USER5> As a professor who teaches tech classes, I can tell you we're constantly courted by companies that want us to use their software in our classes. Some make it easier than others. I've never been offered "sponsorship" although to be honest, I wouldn't necessarily turn it down as long as I was making my own choices about who to take it from. Certainly vendors have been known to provide free equipment and licenses to academic institutions. I think where it becomes problematic is if someone else is taking money and, in exchange, constraining my decisions as an educator. So the real question for me about "native ads in education" is, who's buying and who's selling? Are teachers and students going to suffer the consequences of decisions they're not involved in, for someone else's profit?

</comment><comment><USER6> This clip from the Simpsons should answer all your questions ;) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HK0BMaUMmGw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HK0BMaUMmGw)

</comment><comment><USER7> So, advertising that's hard to distinguish from what you think you're reading? In the context of education, that sounds pretty ugly and manipulative.

</comment><comment><USER8> There are far more lucrative ways to get revenue in education: people are happy to pay to improve their life chances.

Frankly, it feels like this question was the result of mixing two cards from a card deck for generating business ideas.

Next two cards, please...

</comment><comment><USER9> Sounds like in-app purchases for education.</comment>


North Korea goes OSX-like with new operating system - <AUTHOR> http://www.computerworld.co.nz/article/537360/north_korea_goes_osx-like_new_operating_system/

<comment><AUTHOR> We can all laugh but a set of Mac, iPad and iPhone clones sold into the Chinese market could be kind of a big deal.

<comment><USER2> Do you mean North Korean market?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> It's not like they invented or contributed to anything. All of this is open source.</comment>