UK election: Conservatives lose majority - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/election-2017-40209282 <comment><USER2> To me it demonstrates the mastery of the ruling class at strategy. Just the ticket when you plan to want to rule something as complicated as a country!

Seriously, I'm completely apolitical, but this one is probably one of the worst strategic blunder, ever. Oh, perhaps that and Cameron's brexit gamble.

And it feels exactly like that; they are just gambling with the future of the country, repeatedly, with just petty objectives and personal power in play.

And it's on pretty much every sides of the political landscape, it's feels to me (as an adult) like a watching a gang of 10 years old all trying to pull on a rag, only difference being that we live on the rag :-)

Ok, rambling over. it's friday! :-)

<comment><USER3> Honestly, I reckon May's decision was understandable. Great polling with a complex negotiation coming up - makes sense to establish a national convention consensus government and press on (regardless of that decision being a bad one or not).

But she completely fluffed the campaign, to a ludicrous extent. She had a weak opposition and popular support, and seemed to make every possible attempt to run as poor as a campaign as possible.

I'm nervous about this being spun as a victory for the left, which I'm already hearing. It's more of a collapse of the Tories.

<comment><USER4> How is it a collapse for the Tories when they still have 48.5% of the vote? It seems pretty good to me - though I'm not familiar with English politics.

(Serious Q not attacking)

<comment><USER5> The latest projections have them at 42.4% of the vote vs Labour's 40.1%. They do have 48.5% of the seats because of an unfair system.

<comment><USER6> There's always a tension between fairness and stability.

In a perfectly fair system you can end up with dozens of small parties, each having small number of people in parliament, struggling to find majority for a government (see last elections in Netherlands).

That's why some voting systems are designed to give a winning party some premium over their vote percentage.

<comment><USER7> The supposedly stable system has led to 3 nation elections in 7 years (probably another one this year too) and 2 hung parliaments in the same time. Meanwhile Germany and many other countries have very stable politics with proportional representation.

<comment><USER8> To add to this, having a system which has to learn to work with other parties, negotiate and compromise is a good thing. MMPs supposed downsides are not necessarily so.

<comment><USER9> But it does mean that fringe extremist parties can get pet policies passed by holding their partners feet to the fire that the majority of the population wouldn't vote for

Its why NI doesn't have abortion or the same rights for Gay people its down to the Ultras in the DUP as Churchill Said "nothing so loyal as an Ulster "policeman"

<comment><USER10> > But it does mean that fringe extremist parties can get pet policies passed > by holding their partners feet to the fire that the majority of the > population wouldn't vote for

Evidence for this: CSU in Germany (the quite-a-bit-more-right-wing sister party of Merkel's CDU).

<comment><USER8> Evidence of it would be present in just about every MMP government ever formed. Here in New Zealand it's present. Sure, the tail wags the dog a little, but if it happens too much the larger party in government loses votes next election.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm hoping this puts a dampener or even better kills the May-driven Conservative manifesto pledge to "create a new internet".

<comment><USER12> I think two things could happen. A torry-libdem coalition which would kill these nonsensical surveillance laws (libdem vetoed them in the past), or a new general election soon, then all bets are off.

<comment><USER13> Lib Dems were crucified for their vital and successful minority partner in government for 10-15. The UK population wants a dictator, not a grown up concensus.

This will be a Tory government with DUP support on confidence and supply

<comment><USER12> I don't know DUP. What is there view on surveillance?

<comment><USER14> I have a sinking feeling they would love it all along a new border wall with Eire. :/

<comment><USER13> DUP want an open border between north and south.

<comment><USER15> Indeed, and this is likely to be a major sticking point with May. You can't really tell any kind of anti-immigrant story with a fully open border, but a fully open border is what peace in Ireland needs, and the DUP fully recognize that.

It's important to understand that support for moderate parties in Northern Ireland has only collapsed because both Sinn Fein and the DUP are seen as being fully committed to the peace.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Just a reminder, and I think it's getting lost here in the HackerNews demographic narrative.. but:

 _The Conservatives Won The Election_

They will be ruling for 5 years, in a coalition with the even more conservative DUP.

Labour/progressives are out of power for at least another 5 years.

I know it's a bucket of cold water, but I think people aren't facing up to reality after Corbyn did much much better than expected. _But he still lost_.

<comment><USER17> This is not going to be a five year parliament given the outcome. It might not be a five month parliament.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> This election shows once again how terrible the FPTP voting system is. The Tories gained like 41% of the vote, but 48% of the seats. And this is a "better" outcome than it would've been in the U.S., where you also have other high arbitrary thresholds for third-parties, and the media virtually ignores them throughout the year-long election cycles.

If the Tories had 41% of the seats (per the number of votes they received) and Labor 40%, it would've been _much_ easier to form a majority with Labor. Now that seems unlikely, even though all parties should see that the Tories are in rapid decline in the voters' eyes, and they shouldn't attach themselves to the Conservative party in any way.

It's a real shame the Tories killed ranked choice voting (alternative voting) in 2011. I would have still preferred a proportional representation system, but RCV would've been a definite improvement over FPTP, too.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/unitedkingdom/comments/6g6e5d/half_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/unitedkingdom/comments/6g6e5d/half_a_million_votes_for_greens_one_mp_you_wanna/)

It's also an even bigger shame that the Liberals in Canada decided to betray their voters and back-down on moving away from the FPTP voting system, which was one of their biggest campaign promises in the last election. With the risk of getting the Conservatives back in power in Canada, I hope the Canadian voters punish them hard in the next election (by voting NDP or Green), because such betrayal must not be rewarded.

Canada could have finally moved away from the the undemocratic FPTP voting system, but the Liberals decided it may be better to stick to the undemocratic voting system if it means they can just switch places with Conservatives and dominate the government every 1-2 elections, as it happens in the United States with the Democratic and Republican parties.

<comment><USER19> As someone who lives in a country with proportional representation as the basis of its electoral system the UK and US first-past-the-post voting system is really weird to observe. It doesn't seem very democratic that a party could get 20% of the popular vote nationally, but win no seats whatsoever.

<comment><USER20> This is a problem that the upper house in a bicameral system is supposed to solve.

The lower house is assigned to smaller regions, with one representative per region. If every single region has party X at 20% of the vote (and always lower than another candidate), then every region has individually voted for someone else.

The upper house is assigned to larger regions, with multiple representatives per region. You don't have to have to come first to have at least one representative in the upper house. As an example, in my state (victoria, australia) we have 12 senators. They take the total vote count and figure out how many votes you need to get a senator. They take the party with the most votes, give them a senator, and remove X votes. Rinse, repeat. The last senator (or sometimes two) is usually decided by preference flows. At 20% of the vote, you'll be looking at 2/12 senators, and possibly a third depending on preference flow.

The problems in the US and the UK are these: the fewer senators you have per region, the harder it is to be representative, so in the US with only 2 upper house members per region there's not much scope for variation; and in the UK, the upper house isn't elected anyway. Mid-sized minorities just can't get representation (mathematically, at least) in either of those two upper houses.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> What does this mean for Brexit? If Theresa May is kicked out, can/will it be declawed? Can it be reversed?

Also, can someone explain to me the steps by which parties in Britain create coalitions (or whatever) and then put a new PM in place? I'm an American, so any reference to American politics is super helpful.

<comment><USER22> Parliament has already voted yes on Brexit, and formal communication was already sent to the EU. According to Article 50 of the Lisbon treaty the UK now has less than 2 years to negotiate the terms of its exit.

I don't think the process can be reversed but there is certainly a lot of leeway in how it will happen.

<comment><USER23> I think it can be halted - I've seen a number of high-level EU politicians say that it's possible to stop the process if the UK decides to.

It was this that the Lib Dems were (weakly) campaigning on in the election - to give the people the vote whether to accept the deal or stay in the EU after the negotiations were complete.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Someone closer to the UK than me mind explaining why SNP lost so many seats, including several that seemed pretty safe? I thought that Scottish nationalism was on the rise after Brexit, with many people there wanting to remain within the EU. Why the sudden shift to the Tories there?

<comment><USER25> Scottish nationalism is still somewhat popular, but a lot of people voting for the SNP last time weren't actually voting for Scottish nationalism, but for a left party, an area in which Ed Milliband's labour was deemed to be lacking.

The shift to the Tories can explained by: 1\. The popularity of Ruth Davies, leader of the scotrish conservatives. 2\. The left vote being split between the SNP and Labour, allowing the conservatives to win under FPTP.

<comment><USER26> Ruth Davidson has got to be the next Conservative leader, she's hardly put a foot wrong.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> What an absolute mess. It really just again demonstrates that the country is divided right down the middle - inward vs. outward, young vs. old, nationalist vs. unionist.

Nobody is coming out of this well, and I think it's virtually certain that there will be another general election in short order - but I don't really expect the outcome to be much different.

I guess this is what happens when parties move apart like that. Corbyn's Labour have shifted quite far to the left, while the Conservatives have turned completely inward. There's a huge gap in the middle, and unfortunately our electoral system leaves little hope of filling it.

</comment><comment><USER27> Didn't the conservatives face an impossible situation anyway? Hence all the resignations after Brexit? Is this, with the missed debates, possibly just an attempt to sit out a tough round of governing?

<comment><USER28> I'm starting to wonder whether this is a possible ploy by the Tories to sit out of what could be a disastrous spell in politics, given that Corbyn will likely pursue Brexit if he becomes PM.

I like Corbyn, and I think he's done tremendously with a great manifesto, but it still remains to be seen if he can lead a country. He's in his element in an election, as he's been a campaigner and an activist throughout his career. It might make more sense to ignore the DUP, and to allow Labour to try and form a progressive alliance, hoping that the economy will falter under Brexit and a coalition government.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> The BBC feed says: "There's still no result in Kensington, west London, after two recounts. The Conservatives say they'll keep calling for recounts until they are denied any more, rather than concede, the BBC understands. As such, there's going to be a third recount, which is either going to take place this afternoon or tomorrow..."

What's that about? On the face of it it seems so childishly spiteful that I feel I must be missing some strategic consideration.

<comment><USER30> It actually occurred in the 1910s that there was 1 (One!) vote in an area. If its as close as that, there is significant benefit to recounting, as any result that tips the balance could tip the balance of some later votes given the tories lack of a majority

<comment><USER13> 1 vote in Exeter apparently, closer to now there were only 2 votes in east fife last night. Same in Winchester in 1997.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I'm curious what the under-30s turnout is. I'm hoping this will inspire younger people & encourage them to engage more in politics.

<comment><USER32> My 18 year old son was checking results at about 6 this morning - he voted for the first time for Labour and our constituency was a very narrow win for Labour over the SNP (about 250 votes).

Pretty sure his reaction is "Wow this voting thing actually works" :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Man, it's been a bad time for Conservative mandates, hasn't it? Wasn't the Brexit vote set up by a Conservative prime minister to prove that Britain wanted to remain in the EU?

<comment><USER33> no. michael gove and boris johnson tried to use euroskepticism within the conservative party to strip cameron of the leadership. the referendum was a play by cameron to shut down the euroskeptics and sideline johnson/gove

none of gove, johnson or cameron thought the leave side had any chance of actually winning which is why all three of them bailed in the wake of the vote

<comment><USER34> Gove and Johnson didn't stand side. They ran for the leadership, were defeated in various ways, then in the case of Gove was not chosen by May to be part of the Cabinet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I hope the influence of the DUP in Belfast will at least put us on a footing to get immigration and borders sorted more quickly. Those factors will have the greatest effect on tech companies.

<comment><USER36> Honestly the idea of the DUP having actual power in Westminster scares me. They are even more conservative then the Conservatives, especially about social issues.

<comment><USER13> Not to mention the effect on the Bi peace process - the government is no longer neutral.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> The result is quite ironic. It was supposed to be a 'bloodbath' for the conservatives and the extreme right. It looks like the left/hard left got the young out to vote.

This is largely a vote against austerity and possibly also against globalisation. I would hope that this also translates to a more moderate brexit.

<comment><USER38> Perhaps if Labour actually won own majority, sounds more like a very poorly run campaign by May. Complete lack of leadership. Just the single fact of shying away from debates.

Great opportunity to put country before party now.

<comment><USER37> Not a labour supporter myself, but I would saying getting 31 more seats when you were expected to lose 20-100 (according to polls) is a victory. In addition to cons not having a majority, labour can now actually be a proper opposition.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I would really have loved to have been a fly on the wall when this decision was discussed. Maybe someone from the U.K. can explain why, if you have a majority and outright control of Parliament, that you might necessarily need to extend that majority?

<comment><USER40> > outright control of Parliament

Nobody has this! MPs are always free to vote their conscience, and sometimes they do. The Conservatives are not all of one mind about how to conduct Brexit.

The aim was not simply to increase the Conservative majority, but to try to make sure that the new MPs making up that increased majority were on board with May's hard Brexit, so there wasn't a risk of a backbench revolt scuppering Brexit.

The party used an "emergency procedure" for candidate selection that gave the party leadership more control than previous candidates.

* [http://www.conservativehome.com/thetorydiary/2017/05/central...](http://www.conservativehome.com/thetorydiary/2017/05/centralisation-and-chaos-inside-the-rush-to-select-conservative-candidates-in-time-for-the-election.html)

<comment><USER39> Well this is technically the case in American politics. Please, why then is it so important to have a greater majority in the U.K.? Why do you need to reach that line?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> I am not British nor familiar with British politics. Is there any article that tries to explain the reasons behind what happened? Labours were something like 20% behind when the vote was called, but went close to winning yesterday.

<comment><USER42> Anecdote - There wasn't any particular party that I wanted to vote for. My vote was _against_ the Tories in protest of having to give up essential liberties for a bit of temporary safety.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Not familiar with hung parliaments in the UK - normally there would be new elections if a majority government can't be formed - correct?

So if LibDem/DUP and others refuse to even passively back either Labour or Conservatives then what?

<comment><USER44> Labour plus the others won't have a majority. And no other party would join with the tories at this point. So we are likely in store for another election, announced in the next couple of weeks.

<comment><USER43> If you were to guess - what would be the result of that? Hard to say I assume given we don't even know who will lead the Conservatives to that election, but do you think the Labour bounce was a one off thing or a trend that might see them take even more seats ?

<comment><USER33> hard to say. there was a narrative that corbyn was unelectable so a revote might get more buy in from his detractors and a more unified labour front

theresa may also ran an absolutely terrible campaign and is personally unpopular so if the tories replace her they may do better next time around. it's hard to imagine the tories producing a credible leader on short notice though. most of the plausible candidates will want nothing to do with this mess and the second tier was mostly already rejected in favour of may last year

<comment><USER45> Yes, leader of the Conservatives could be a surprisingly difficult post to fill.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Last season of House of Cards is dangerously close to reality this time.

In US, Trump might loose his presidency. UK is a mess, based on wrong political decisions.

I still wonder "Who is Frank Underwood and what does he win from all of this".

There is nothing unusual about a political scandal, but this time is obvious that the elite is quite power-driven and the society is nothing more than a voting variable in their equation.

</comment><comment><USER29> What exactly does a "strong" versus "weak" Brexit imply?

<comment><USER12> The degree of access to the EU market. Which is effectively a tradeoff of access to market for sovereignty. Ie if you implement all EU laws (even though you have no say on them), you are EU compatible and will be given access. That's basically where Norway is. There are legitimate concerns of which is worse between loosing sovereignty over loosing the single market access.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> this worryingly shows the huge divide in the nation

</comment><comment><USER48> edit: I know they're _Unionist_ and eurosceptic, my understanding was that they were _also_ for a single Ireland _inside_ the UK and therefore would want a soft Brexit with an open Irish border. Thanks for correcting me on that however.

\</comment><comment>----

There is no possible outcome here for the Tories that works towards a strong Brexit. The most likely coalition partner - the DUP - is all about a unified Ireland. Brexit is driving a major wedge into Ireland's border, so they will undermine that at every turn.

Expect a revote in a couple of weeks. This outcome leaves no one in a position to govern strongly and that directly weakens the UK's position in Brexit talks.

<comment><USER49> Northern Ireland person here, I'm afraid you have it backwards. The DUP is strongly opposed to a united Ireland, and (until very recently) have supported a border of some description with Ireland.

Sinn Fein are for a united Ireland, but do not take up their seats in Westminster.

The DUP have obtained 10 seats in this election (Sinn Fein have 7), and a coalition between the Conservatives and the DUP looks likely. The DUP has been bigger supporters of the Conservatives, and of Brexit.

<comment><USER48> Thanks mate, I had a blend of the two as my understanding per my edit. I thought both wanted a united Ireland, but one from the Union and one from the Republic. I had that understanding as I thought that was largely what kept the issues within Ireland minimised.

<comment><USER49> No probs, what's been keeping the issues under control here is the Belfast (Good Friday) agreement [0], which (among lots of other things):

\- grants dual nationality (British and Irish) to all the people born in Northern Ireland (simplified, there's a bit of complexity in there)

\- allows for the Northern Ireland to become part of a United Ireland if the majority of people in Ireland wish it

IMO there's been a voice of reason coming from the middle ground, but this election has seen the province move more towards tribalism and the middle ground parties loosing their seats.

[0] - [https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-belfast- agree...](https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-belfast-agreement)

(edited for formatting of the bullet points)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> What is it with the Brits and an inability to do elections right these days. First they screw up the proportional representation referendum. Then the Scots mistakenly choose Remain (which wasn't an error at the time, but became one with Brexit). Then they Brexited, ironically because they want more control and accountability but rejected prop rep. And now this shemozzle.

The rest of the world should take away the UK's voting rights until they promise to behave!

<comment><USER50> As a Brit I have observed a large section of the population seem to suffer from an acute and decades-long case of Stockholm Syndrome.

Much of the populace would prefer to suffer the indignities and gradual erosion of prosperity and civil liberties inflicted on them by their ruling classes than to risk an uncertain future on a potential change.

They are comfortable in their mistreatment.</comment></comment>


Amsterdam HN Meetup - <AUTHOR>

Let's have one for November? <comment><USER2> What can I expect?

<comment><AUTHOR> Bunch of geeks / startup founders meeting up for coffee / beer talking about interesting things they're working on, or would like to work on, or have been studying.

Informal, un-conference styled smallish meetup.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Count me in!</comment>


Nearly Waterless Washing Machine to Debut in 2009 - <AUTHOR> http://www.physorg.com/news136555635.html <comment><USER2> Most people in countries that can afford new washing machines don't worry too much about water. And I don't see how replacing water with plastic could possibly be good for the environment.

<comment><USER3> _Most people in countries that can afford new washing machines don't worry too much about water._

... except if you live in a country that is known to suffer from severe long- lasting droughts as a result of climate change....like us here in Australia.

We're more than able to afford new washing machines - in fact, our government subsidises us (in the form of cashbacks) for getting more efficient machines. The problem is the lack of rainfall combined with increases in population and water requirements as a result.

In fact, we're so water conscious now that there is legislation in place, in the form of water restrictions, to help limit unnecessary water usage.

EDIT - just thought I'd break down some numbers to show why this is a good thing for us.

Household water usage in Australia is just over 11% of the total water usage, the second highest use in Australia behind Agriculture.

I'm not sure on our specific percentages of washing usage to normal usage, but if we assume that the 13% figure is fairly consistent with the UK (given relatively similar cultural backgrounds) then our washing machines account for about 1.4% of all total water usage in Australia.

Being able to cut this down significantly is good news, when you consider water usage (for us anyway) is measured in gigalitres (potentially saving up to 268 GL a year) - thats a whole heap of h2o

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This explains how the plastic chips remove dirt, but what about stains and smells?

<comment><USER5> Washing machine generally work on a couple of principles,

* beating wet fibres to remove unwanted particle mater (stains, dirt, etc) * centrifugal force to extract water

It looks like by adding the plastic chips the surface area and frequency at which the laundry is beaten is increased. This allows for the reduction in water.

Depending what kind of "plastic" is used it may be something biodegradable.

The stains and smell associated with dirty laundry is because of the foreign contaminants in the cloth. If those are removed and absorbed by the plastic particle then the clothes won't smell any more.

Personally I wonder how many plastic particle would 'escape' each wash though. That could be a bit of a pain. But this seems like a great improvement to washing machine technology.</comment></comment>


Three protocols and a future of the decentralized internet - <AUTHOR> https://blog.datproject.org/2019/03/22/three-protocols-and-a-future-of-the-decentralized-internet/ <comment><USER4> The issue with federated services is that they operate from the assumption that everyone has an anarchist sysadmin in their friend group who is going to help everyone run the federated infrastructure.

I'll use SSB as an example. If you install the software and make an identity, you'll soon find that you have to sign up with something called a "pub server" to actually get any of your friend's updates.

Where do you find such a pub server? There's a wiki: [https://github.com/ssbc/ssb-server/wiki/Pub- Servers](https://github.com/ssbc/ssb-server/wiki/Pub-Servers). The author of the wiki has found that it is necessary to admonish people not to just pick the first pub server on the list, since there isn't really any criteria by which to choose them. If there was a sudden influx of more than a few hundred new users, it would cause utter chaos on this list. Someone would need to spend a lot of money on hosting, with no way to earn revenue.

<comment><USER5> In SSB, pubs seem like an essential (and flawed) part of the network, and this may be true at the present time, but not forever. I'm working on a few alternatives to pub servers, one of them is a server that has no storage of data, it just acts as a meeting point for clients, and sets up tunnels between them. The other is a 1-feed pub, where the idea is to setup a mirror for your data in case you are a feed that has many thousands of followers. In both cases I want to make it easy (as in Heroku one click installer button) to start a server. The idea is that the easier it is to start a server, the more servers there will be in quantity. Off from the internet, SSB already has good mechanisms for sharing data (Wi-Fi and Bluetooth), which other protocols don't seem to have. Its hard to grok how good this is unless you're living in poor internet environments. SSB on the internet is not as well designed as SSB off the internet.

<comment><USER6> Despite working with another protocol in the decentralized space, I have to say Andrew Staltz, who I assume is the person who made this comment based on the username, is doing such a great job with manyverse: [https://www.manyver.se/](https://www.manyver.se/) and I recommend downloading it to try it out. It is one of the first breakout apps (in my opinion) in the space that feels user friendly and really makes it seem like theres a viable decentralized alternative to facebook. The bluetooth/wifi option helps alot with making it user friendly when it comes to pub servers, etc.

I actually found out about manyverse last year when it was trending front page on hacker news and I'm glad I looked into it.

He is being humble by not bringing up is app here despite it being a beautiful one that feels seemless, and being extremely responsive to his users (you can even submit issues to gitlab via by clicking a button in app) but listening to his podcasts on solarpunk, and in general, he seems like a humble guy so I'm not surprised. I am very interested to see how the features manyverse plans to roll out help push the user friendly aspects needed is the SB protocol space.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The biggest challenge I've seen with using decentralized systems today is with on-boarding the average user into them. As @woah mentions, the process isn't straightforward and even remotely close to signing for a facebook or ig account. I think there are a few problems that'll need to be solved before all this is actually usable.

(There's definitely a parallel here with the AOL and CompuServes of the world vs the open web, but not quite)

\- It almost feels like that for a variety of decentralized protocols to take root, someone will have to build a browser-equivalent (or perhaps an extension to an existing one) that allows the normal user to partake of these new systems in one place. That means, a chrome or firefox style system that supports IPFS, but also offers tools for ActivityPub and SSB and whatnot - <USER2> the same way netscape navigator used to be bundled with a news reader, a web browser and an email client.

\- The next challenge is to get the average user to use this on the _mobile_ and then the desktop. That's a problem best solved by modeling this as an app - and there needs to be a reason for the average user to use this. The words "killer app" come to mind, but honestly, even if there was something slightly more useful that current services provide that built on top of this - it would be helpful. I'd download this new "chrome" on my phone and use it. Is there something out there that people think can be that?

\- Lastly, we'll need to democratize information and app creation for this browser.

<comment><USER6> Blockstack is not based on scuttlebutt protocol, but when it comes to addressing id creation, user friendly onboarding probably needing a browser, etc

"someone will have to build a browser-equivalent"

we do have a browser that has a somewhat user friendly onboarding process: [https://browser.blockstack.org/](https://browser.blockstack.org/)

If it is your first time, you will be asked to create an identity on Blockstack: [https://docs.blockstack.org/core/naming/introduction.html](https://docs.blockstack.org/core/naming/introduction.html)

Each instance of the "browser" whether on desktop or phone, requires a unique password, associated with the id. The id is stored on the Blockchain, the data is stored in your own gaia hub which you can host wherever you like: [https://docs.blockstack.org/storage/overview.html](https://docs.blockstack.org/storage/overview.html)

"That's a problem best solved by modeling this as an app - and there needs to be a reason for the average user to use this"

The next browser release will have a landing page that features apps dynamically populated from [https://app.co/](https://app.co/) and will have a more user friendly onboarding process, one that explains in more detail that each instance of the browser (we have a desktop version, each login in a new browser, etc) requires its' own password.

I think my favorite app using our protocol is [https://debutapp.social/](https://debutapp.social/) because it is the "facebook" or twitter like equivalent people can associate with to see there is a relevant use to this, and in general user end interaction with the platform can be seemless with integration of decentralised protocols when done correctly.

The founder/creator of this app is a self taught software developer who does this in his spare time outside of a full time job so if you have feedback make it constructive and feed it back to him on the help page.

Same as other protocols, we are working to make our nodes easily hostable. If you know docker at this point or how to launch a vm in digital ocean you are probably good, but we are working to automated images and one click deploys. You will see more rollouts with much less instructions and much more "one click deploy" based in the near future.

We are actually prioritising our gaia hubs being easily hosted with one click deploys by the average user over the nodes, because in our model gaia is where the user's data is stored, and the decentralized aspects of the protocol are related to identity, and authing that identity with a users data, that apps can read/write to, but the user ultimately has the ability to store that data where they want, revoke access to apps, whitelist apps, migrate the data, etc.

You can read more about blockstack, gaia (our user storage) and the rest of the platform here: [https://docs.blockstack.org/](https://docs.blockstack.org/)

Given your very developed opinion on what the decentralised internet needs, and how it seems very aligned with what we are developing, would love to hear your feedback/initial impressions of our platform and app ecosystem.

<comment><USER7> Thanks for the pointers -- I'm pretty familiar with Blockstack and the Gaia ecosystem. I started playing around with it a couple of years ago, and registered [1] my ID in 2017 maybe? or 2018? I forget. Of course, it was much more bare bones then than now. But the owner address link doesn't work for me today [2].

Happy to give feedback directly on DebutApp, but my initial impressions of it when I tried were - it's a good proof of concept, but its a very early incarnation and so definitely rough on the edges on both product and engineering. It's commendable that this is a side project, since it shows promise.

One of my main questions with a lot of blockstack apps is exactly that - <USER3> they prove that something can be done, it's unclear to me how the next person who is going to google for "new blog" and try to pick one of squarespace, medium, or blogger - will use debutapp.

I'm curious about the host-able node comment. Who is this one click deploy targeted at? and what is the incentive for folks to do it today?

Also, any insights on why there's a general sense of lag on the ajax calls that these apps make?

[1] [https://explorer.blockstack.org/name/viksit.id](https://explorer.blockstack.org/name/viksit.id)

[2] [https://explorer.blockstack.org/address/1LMxzW9LbL6HZEo3qeLb...](https://explorer.blockstack.org/address/1LMxzW9LbL6HZEo3qeLbCv21JFencM42dq)

<comment><USER6> Hey thank you for the feedback.

usernames expire after two years, so that could be it depending on when in 2017 you registered your username.

"One of my main questions with a lot of blockstack apps is exactly that - while they prove that something can be done, it's unclear to me how the next person who is going to google for "new blog" and try to pick one of squarespace, medium, or blogger - will use debutapp."

I think apps built with Blockstack like graphite and others: [https://www.graphitedocs.com/](https://www.graphitedocs.com/) are gaining alot of popularity on the "normal" internet and getting recognition in places like producthunt, hackernoon etc: [https://hackernoon.com/is-dweb-taking-off- a-glimpse-into-blo...](https://hackernoon.com/is-dweb-taking-off-a-glimpse- into-blockstacks-growth-88114b089818) , [https://www.producthunt.com/posts/graphite](https://www.producthunt.com/posts/graphite) etc etc

For now we are trying to point people to [https://app.co/](https://app.co/) to show the entire dapp ecosystem, not just blockstack based applications, but you can filter by protocol.

The next browser release will have blockstack apps from app.co dynamically loaded into the browser landing page as we know its a bit outdated based on the apps available now.

but yes there is alot more we can do, and alot of general awareness people can have on the internet. The idea is that applications like

blockusign: [https://blockusign.co/signup.html](https://blockusign.co/signup.html)

afari: [https://www.afari.io/](https://www.afari.io/)

graphite: [https://www.graphitedocs.com/](https://www.graphitedocs.com/)

sigle: [https://www.sigle.io/](https://www.sigle.io/)

stealthy: [https://www.stealthy.im/](https://www.stealthy.im/)

travelstack: [https://www.travelstack.club/](https://www.travelstack.club/)

xor: [https://xordrive.io/](https://xordrive.io/)

diffuse: [https://diffuse.sh/](https://diffuse.sh/)

dpages: [https://dpage.io/editor/](https://dpage.io/editor/)

(secret fave: [https://blkbreakout.herokuapp.com/](https://blkbreakout.herokuapp.com/))

blockvault: [https://blockvault.site/](https://blockvault.site/)

and others listed on app.co, are also searchable on the mainstream internet, and advertised not as exclusively apart of the "new internet" but advertised based on the user value they provide that many centralised apps do as well.

"I'm curious about the host-able node comment. Who is this one click deploy targeted at? and what is the incentive for folks to do it today?" <\-- in reponse to the top ranked comment on this blog about easily hostable infrastructure aka blockstack-core nodes and gaia hubs as well in our case. gaia hubs are where users store personal data (as opposed to ipfs thought gaia hubs can be technically support an ipfs driver/we have a req for this but have not prioritized it yet).

Making gaia hubs easy for users to host supports the idea that if they want to its not hosted by someone else/ a big cloud provider/another company etc, despite the api supporting they decide who has write access to their data/can delete if they want to, etc. It also allows them to host on their own server, or another cloud if they want to.

The incentive is mostly there in that already some applications are hosting gaia hubs for users and charging them for it, so there is an opportunity to make money.

In the future, we see companies dedicated to hosting gaia hubs for users and charging for it, not just applications, and you can see there are many parallel companies doing the same with IPFS type protocols like filecoin, golem computing for example (now lead by the previous founder of QubesOs, which says alot that she would leave her own operating system after a decade to focus on something like this). There is definitely money to be made in this space, I'm just a big believer in despite all of this, still making it easy for users to host their own on their own machine, a rasberry pi or something like Digital Ocean's one click deploy marketplace if they so choose to be wholly consistent with the idea that users can own their own data, manage the gaia hub themselves but not have to be an "anarchist sysadmin" skill level to do so. The incentive there right now is that Digital Ocean is also paying for 5months of one click deploy marketplace droplet hosting ($5/mo). That's something we are working on, but yes, there is definitely an economic incentive here..

The blockstack explorer actually went through some internal infrastuctural changes just this week. We are aware this is an issue and working on it. Will get back to you when you can expect faster response times for this. I would say end of not this coming week but next week, but will get back to your with more detail.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Easy user mobility should be a goal of decentralized protocols and platforms. That would help users leave one provider and join another if/when the need arises. If I join Server A today as User A, I should be able to carry my identity as User A to another server or provider in the future without losing the ability to still remain in touch with everyone I was in touch with or having to tell them that my address has changed. This would be similar to email where one owns a domain but can move it around to any provider (or self- host) for storing and managing the content.

I have generally observed that some initial servers for a decentralized platform get more users over time and remain the largest, while later and/or smaller ones may not get attention, and could possibly even close down because of low usage.

<comment><USER9> Mastodon has this. SSB doesn't, because your identity is just your message chain and key pair on your computer.

<comment><USER8> Mastodon doesn't seem to have a way to move a user account and still have others message or tag one in the same way as before. When you switch from, say mastodon.social to mastodon.xyz, it's almost like switching from Yahoo Mail to Gmail. There seems to be a way to export one's following list and move that to the new instance, but this does require informing others of the address change on one's account.

See [https://medium.com/@jimpjorps/a-non-computer-persons- guide-t...](https://medium.com/@jimpjorps/a-non-computer-persons-guide-to-how- mastodon-instances-work-da6ceac1994a)

Have I misunderstood how this works?

<comment><USER9> If you've moved, your followers don't automatically follow you to your new home. But IMO that is fine. If I was following someone on cat.photo.space I might not want to follow them if they move to callgirls.xxx .

IIRC, you get a warning if you try to interact with someone who has moved.

<comment><USER10> Is it possible to operate a lightweight forwarding service, so my address is portable across servers?

<comment><USER11> That wouldn't be much different from operating a server yourself, so while it's not impossible, it's more a question of what benefits it provides.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> In what way do Dat, IPFS, SSB, Mastodon, ActivityPub, Matrix etc. counter the push for some centralizing effect, in that eventually everyone is still dependent on the same server?

It's still possible to host your own website & server, but not as easy as setting up a Facebook profile. Same goes for e.g. Mastodon: running your own server isn't as easy as creating your just an account.

How do projects like Mastodon not end up with a big server (or a few big ones) that everybody uses?

Edit: Not all of the protocols I mentioned use servers, some are P2P which don't have that issue, I think.

<comment> yjftsjthsd-h If you use Mastodon, hosting your own server can be hard. If you use Facebook, hosting your own server is literally impossible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Another P2P protocol that wasn't mentioned, that is already powering 2M people across Internet Archive, d.tube (decentralized YouTube), notabug.io (P2P reddit) and others is [https://github.com/amark/gun](https://github.com/amark/gun) (mine).

I find it interesting how people mention file stores (IPFS/DAT) a lot more than databases (SSB/GUN). Distributed file stores have been around for a long time, and are not inherently useful for creating Google/Facebook-etc. killers, where-as a P2P database is very needed.

Is it perhaps because everyone already knows about BitTorrent, and there is BitTorrent nostalgia?

</comment><comment><USER14> I would vote for a forth protocol from matrix.org for realtime conversations, instead of the other store-forward other protocols.

</comment><comment><USER15> The biggest problem with decentralized protocol (in practice) is still the speed. Centralized protocols are simply faster. I am hoping someone will discover a way to make decentralized protocols fast in the future. I am personally rooting for IPFS.

<comment><USER6> The speed is only an issue if you are storing all of your data in a decentralised network, but do you need to? What you want to persist is your identity, but you perhaps you don't need to replicate your data on other people's servers, for an indeterminate period of time. Furthermore, IPFS relies on DHT protocols which have shown to have scaliability issues.

At Blockstack, the name persists via the blockchain, which can be slow, but is only an initial barrier on identity creation. After that, you own your own data via gaia hub, which can be stored wherever you like, for example behind an LB with fast i/o on Digital Ocean. You just run docker-compose up on our master on an image of choice on digital ocean for example: [https://docs.blockstack.org/storage/overview.html](https://docs.blockstack.org/storage/overview.html)

We are looking to automate deployments for user friendly rollouts but I strongly recommend checking out gaia. Gaia is not dependent on the blockchain, and can still be persisted or duplicated via networks like IPFS is someone so chose to. We have an IPFS driver request in and are looking to get to it with some eng cycles.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I knew about Beaker and Dat (played with Beaker browser/distribute web sites) but not the other two protocols. Glad to see a discussion here.

</comment><comment><USER17> The world of decentralized web (aka Web3) is witnessing both:

1) Transition of _trust-translucent internet native_ centralized systems (social networks, file hosting services, instant messaging services) to decentralized systems using protocols like Dat, SSB, ActivityPub, IPFS, etc.

2) Onboarding of _trust-opaque internet non-native_ centralized systems (legal tender, corporate law, legal citizenship) to digital decentralized systems using Bitcoin-born protocols like Ethereum, Polkadot, Cosmos, etc.</comment>


Almost all  HN accounts with plain first name (peter,john etc) are Fake ? - <AUTHOR>

Just check out any id of the form:
http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=james<p>For all common names like :
bob,james,john,mary,thames,peter
and many more, I could see that they had no submissions, 1 karma, and created 1250+ days ago.
Anyone else noticed this? Wonder why. <comment><USER2> james looks like a legit account. It has a real email address.

Accounts aren't only created to post; they're also created to apply to YC.

<comment><AUTHOR> Was wondering how I missed seeing an address on that profile.. then I saw who wrote the comment :-) Thanks for the clarification, Pg! Just couldn't help wondering about it- seemed weird to notice that many first-names account not posting/commenting, but just existing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Maybe some people registered to hold the username and then neglected it?</comment>


Show HN: Mandarin Tone Trainer – A 'Helping Ear' for Mandarin Pronunciation - <AUTHOR> https://mandarintonetrainer.com <comment><USER2> Please do not block "using the website" until someone gives you access to the microphone. Simply make the parts of the page that rely on the microphone not work, and make it obvious they won't work until people give access to the devices you need access to.

And in the mean time let them browse the page as normal, instead of force- hiding the content scroll bar and presenting a full screen overlay modal. If your page explains what it's for, locking people out of that content just because they don't trust you yet is intentionally crippling the experience for no good reason.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback! We didn't realise this would pose such a problem. We've updated the website so it asks for microphone permission after people press the 'Record' button.

<comment><USER3> Not on my iPhone you haven't

<comment><USER4> Not on my PC running Chrome you haven't either

<comment><AUTHOR> OK, could we please ask - did you access the website before we made the changes? If so - have you tried clearing your browser cache?

<comment><USER5> Just tried is now for the first time, 8 hours since you commented and it instantly asked for my microphone and I instinctively blocked it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for letting us know - we've realised we were unclear with our initial correction: the modal that asks for mic permission and explains that all audio processing is done in-browser now only appears when 'Record' is pressed, so users can check out the rest of the website.

<comment><USER3> No I don't think so. It definitely popped up before I pressed anything for me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> From experience of trying to converse with actual fluent speakers of Mandarin, there is a huge gap going from what you learn in the classroom, where you practise the tones in slow-mo, and how people speak and listen in reality.

IMO there's no replacement for hardcore practise here - at the end of the day it is most like a physical skill so the learning tools you use for practising an instrument or sports technique are going to serve you well.

Focus on shortening the tones you sound (while staying accurate) and focus on combining tones.

Thankfully there are only 4 tones so only 16 unique combinations of two tones (actually only 15 because 3->3 isn't really used) And only 64 combinations of 3 tones

If you master those combinations in terms of speed and accuracy (both speaking and listening) the rest of it can be composed.

Then begins the long path to memorizing every phoneme+tone -> character pairing :)

<comment><USER7> Listening comprehension, IMHO is the last skill to develop in learning a foreign language.

The reason is that it's "all or nothing". You either know and recognize all of the words in a sentence, or you can't cope with the sentence at all.

The first phase of language learning is mostly theory. Mostly vocabulary and grammar. The second phase is mostly reading, reinforcing the theory, forming a good understanding of how the language is used. Additionally writing things, chatting and the like. Third phase is immersion with speaking and listening.

Those phases overlap, of course, but in my opinion that's the overall process. I've used it successfully for English and Spanish (though I haven't completed phase 3 in Spanish yet). In Mandarin I'm currently struggling towards mastering HSK 4 vocabulary, though relatively advanced.

<comment><USER8> > _Listening comprehension, IMHO is the last skill to develop in learning a > foreign language. [...] The first phase of language learning is mostly > theory. Mostly vocabulary and grammar. The second phase is mostly reading, > reinforcing the theory, forming a good understanding of how the language is > used. Additionally writing things, chatting and the like. Third phase is > immersion with speaking and listening._

To clarify: This is the way skills develop when people _extensively study but barely learn_ a foreign language, the way typically happens in classrooms. It is a cruel method with poor results.

All of the actual learning of the language per se happens from listening to (or reading) comprehensible input, which should start from day 1 (yes this takes considerable effort for teachers to implement). Front-loading explicit study of grammar is a total waste of time. Memorizing atomized vocabulary words is also relatively ineffective.

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

<comment><USER9> That doesn't really pass the smell test for me. Even native speakers of a language in its native country are explicitly taught grammar and vocabulary in school. I could believe the Wikipedia article's weaker claim, that there's an extra step between instinctively remembering "了 is the perfective particle" and being fluent in the perfective aspect. But the idea that explicit instruction is _useless_ , that consciously knowing grammar won't help you acquire it at all, seems obviously wrong.

<comment><USER8> > _Even native speakers of a language in its native country are explicitly > taught grammar and vocabulary in school_

It is not that there's no value whatsoever in formal study of grammar. It might come in handy if you want to be a linguist, an editor, a high-level writer, a lawyer, or the like. If students want to take a grammar course in high school or college that seems okay with me.

It just doesn't teach basic language fluency.

Native speakers don't start studying grammar until they have had 10+ years of full-time experience with the language. And anecdotally, the students who spend a lot of time reading independently don't really need the grammar lessons (they already have a subconscious understanding of what is or isn't grammatical, and the typical school grammar lesson is very slow and obvious for them), and the students who don't spend any time reading independently and regularly speaking with educated adults would get more value out of instead spending the time reading or listening to someone read. YMMV.

<comment><USER10> > Native speakers don't start studying grammar until they have had 10+ years > of full-time experience with the language.

Untrue; formal grammar instruction begins not later than first grade in many curricula, which is age 6-7, which would require using the language several years before birth to reach 10+ years prior use. Native speakers begin studying grammar about as soon as they have the intellectual capacity to comprehend the concepts associated with grammar.

<comment><USER8> There is little if any formal instruction in grammar in reasonable primary schools. All else equal, students who attend primary schools that don't teach grammar at all end up speaking and writing just as well as students who attend primary schools that try to teach grammar.

When primary schools try to teach grammar it is boring, stressful, and generally unhelpful to the students.

The dominant factor affecting students' reading comprehension and writing ability is how much time they spend listening and reading, especially to material which is at an appropriate level to slightly stretch their abilities.

If schools want to spend a relatively small amount of time formally teaching grammar to 12–17 year old students there's nothing inherently wrong with that, but it's mostly only useful insofar as it attaches names to concepts so that students can have conversations with each-other about what makes communication effective of ineffective, or more explicitly discuss their existing subconscious grammatical knowledge. Formal instruction in grammar (or other kinds of formal analysis) is still no substitute for practice listening and speaking and reading and writing (ideally with effective feedback), which should be the main focus of language arts instruction.

<comment><USER11> > There is little if any formal instruction in grammar in reasonable primary > schools

Maybe we need to bring back grammar school.

<comment><USER8> > _Although the term_ scolae grammaticales _was not widely used until the 14th > century, the earliest such schools appeared from the sixth century, e.g. the > King 's School, Canterbury (founded 597) and the King's School, Rochester > (604). The schools were attached to cathedrals and monasteries, teaching > Latin – the language of the church – to future priests and monks. Other > subjects required for religious work were occasionally added, including > music and verse (for liturgy), astronomy and mathematics (for the church > calendar) and law (for administration)._

I am not knowledgeable enough about the topic to say how efficient or helpful medieval Latin schools were at teaching Latin as a second language, but the idea of "grammar" as part of the "trivium" (alongside logic and rhetoric) meant something substantially different than the modern usage of the word.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm a native mandarin speaker but the website said I failed 9/10 questions. I guess it's the accent problem as there are hundreds of different mandarin accents across eastern Asia

</comment><comment><USER13> I'm currently learning Mandarin.

My strategy so far has been to take intensive classes with a private teacher (a professional from a language school), 2h every day I'm in town. Each course is 20 classes (i.e. 40h), and after 10 courses you're supposed to be reasonably conversational. Because I only take classes when I'm not out of town, and I'm constantly traveling, I've completed about 3 levels in 6 months.

I've decided to focus purely on conversational mandarin, and skip learning Hanzi (characters) entirely. So far, tones is the part I have the biggest trouble with. I'm told I'm alright (i.e. a lot of people are much worse), but I still feel entirely inadequate. I often remember vocabulary without the tone. I also have a ton of difficultly distinguishing tones when listening to spoken mandarin and only distinguish them based on context. That triggers some stupid mistakes like not knowing whether I heard mǎi (buy) or mài (sell), which have exact opposite meaning but sound the same to me unless I'm listening extra carefully. Whereas I can easily distinguish shì (to be, to try) and shí (ten) based on context.

I feel, however, like I'm finally reaching a level of being able to communicate in a useful way outside of my classes. I've used mandarin for basic things in China and Taiwan (e.g. restaurants), and have mostly used it to talk to people when going out.

There's something quite amazing about learning something new (really the first time I've endeavored something this big and different since college), and I feel like this'll be one that will pay serious dividends over time.

<comment><USER14> I've tried this approach but it's impossible to find a tutor in SF :/

So far I've used duchinese and wordswing but it's def not as effective.

<comment><USER13> I'm incapable of self-teaching a language. I need the external motivation from a set schedule, and the interaction with another human to keep me progressing.

I moved to Hong Kong this year from San Francisco to do these classes (and because I wanted to make the move). HK speaks Cantonese, so it's not full immersion. But you're a lot closer to China here and there's a decent amount of Mandarin around. The best thing to do would be to move to the mainland, but I'm not quite ready for that yet.

This is going to sound ridiculous, but every class my teacher and I basically spend the first hour (before getting into the official material) just chatting about life. A lot of it is about mundane topics (travel, food, what we did in the previous day, my adventures hitting on girls, etc.). We do it all in Chinese. She helps me by adding to my vocabulary as I try to express these things in Chinese. She adds new vocabulary constantly to this as well, waiting for me to get confused and prompt her about it. These conversation are the most helpful part of the class. They're natural and real. They hit topics I'd use in real life daily. They also involve natural repetition helping me naturally add the vocabulary and grammar to my repertoire.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> If someone wants to learn how to speak chinese, the best way IMO is to repeat and mimic the sound of a native speaker over and over again. I used Glossika (glossika.com) 3 or 4 years ago when they were just selling a zip file of MP3s. So rather than trying to master individual tones out of context, you learn how to say words within a sentence context. And through space-based- repetition and daily practice, these sounds get more easily embedded and familiar with your tongue and your listening ear too. So rather than trying to memorize a bunch of tones, you're learning how all the sounds and words flow together, and that's how you learn to sound like a native speaker.

<comment><USER7> I'd also suggest Duolingo which has audio for all sentences in its course and uses speech recognition.

Additionally the Pimsleur courses are great, with non-interactive lessons you can listen to with a media player. But relatively expensive, if you want to own it legally. They also don't do characters at all, so it can only be a part of the journey.

<comment><USER16> As an alternative to Pimsleur, you can often find a login to Mango Languages at your local library's digital resources, which uses a very similar teaching methodology.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> It's not really working for me or my girlfriend (native speaker). We can't get past 喝(hē) (tone 1). It keeps thinking it's a third tone.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi, yes unfortunately at the moment the classifier can be quite inaccurate sometimes, especially if your microphone is catching some background noise. We will work on improving this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I played back the teacher's recording as a test but it said I was wrong

</comment><comment><USER7> Very interesting. Just because of the visualization I learned that my voice tends to have too much "tremolo" in the first tone and that I may be starting the third tone too low.

Other than that it seems to default to the third tone with me, even when the spectrogram doesn't look like it.

Duolingo has speech recognition for Chinese. It seems to check separate syllables, but I'm not sure how precise it judges and the feedback is lacking.

Even more interesting would be multiple syllables in a sentence. And distinguishing the consonants. In my opinion every long enough Chinese sentence is a tongue breaker because I have to switch fast between consonants that my mother language doesn't tell apart.

</comment><comment><USER19> does it have some connections (in term of inspiration/algorithm etc.) with speakgoodchinese ? (an opensource project to help practice tone)

[http://www.speakgoodchinese.org/](http://www.speakgoodchinese.org/) [https://robvanson.github.io/sgc3/](https://robvanson.github.io/sgc3/)

<comment><USER20> Great! We need more freely available, open-source language learning apps. I made one for reading/typing mandarin on Android: [https://github.com/ReubenBond/HanBaoBao](https://github.com/ReubenBond/HanBaoBao) / [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.tallogre.h...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.tallogre.hanbaobao)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Helping mandarin learners practice the tones in their own time without the need for a private tutor to correct them. Record yourself speaking in-browser, and get instant feedback: pitch contour and what tone that sounded like. Any feedback welcome!

<comment><USER21> Quick problem, It seems to have a difficult time with deeper voices. Please fix. I do like it. Is there anything for whole sentences?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi, thanks for bringing that to our attention. We will work on it. We would like to work towards giving people feedback on whole sentences. We plan to work on 2-syllable words first.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> It's great to have a tool like this be available without any software installation.

I remember when I first started having Chinese lessons, my teacher used some Windows-based software to show me visualisations like these. It helped a lot to know where I was going wrong.

The visualisations here are the most useful part IMO, followed by the example sounds.

If you're a native English speaker learning Mandarin: one tip for the second tone is to make it sound like you're asking a question. In English, we raise the tone of the last syllable in a question. So if you pretend you're asking a question, you'll naturally get the right tone.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi, do you remember what the Windows-based software was called, by any chance? Was it PRAAT?

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Bilingual native speaker here, got 0/3 of my attempts.

<comment><USER24> Non-native speaker but probably tried 20 times? I had to force it to make it work.

I'm very very sure I can do the first tone.

Would love it if this thing did work reliably though. Also would be nice to have one Cantonese.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi, yes the classifier needs some improving. We expect that it would be much more difficult to make an accurate classifier for Cantonese, although we could make a website which presents Cantonese words/phrases and lets you see your (and the teacher's) pitch contour. Would that be of interest?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Incidentally, I'm working on a VR app for learning Mandarin. We use 360 photos of Chinese tourist locations and add interactive content to role play scenarios with your teacher (my company does mostly one-one-one instruction). You causally get to take a guided tour of a location with your teacher.

For now, is just a tool we'll be using internally, but eventually it will be expanded to many languages, have a remote class option, and have homework assignments for individual practice, all integrating into our LMS.

</comment><comment><USER26> This is a nice idea, but I think it needs work. It classified almost every tone that I spoke as 3rd tone. Granted, I'm not native, but I speak well enough that my 4th tone couldn't possibly be interpreted as a 3rd tone.

What's the training data? Is it trained on both male and female voices? Anyways, very nice idea - I hope you pursue it and I'm looking forward to seeing how it improves over time!

</comment><comment><USER27> I instinctively blocked access before reading the page because there was no way for me to read what the page was about before granting access -- and there still isn't, because it blocks scrolling or reading until microphone access is granted.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback! We now let you view the the page and only ask for microphone access when you press the 'record' button.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I use hearing aids and always have trouble discerning tones, this is my only gripe with learning chinese and it is hindering me.

I have learned english and have got rid of my thick accent by imitating how other people speak, I should be able to do that with mandarin. I can just learn the pronunciation of the characters and adapt my accent as I speak. Why is there such a stress on memorising the tone for every character?

E.g. most people will remember which syllable to stress in a word after vocalising the word, but when learning mandaring people add the tone to their flashcards and are expected to have a more direct conneciton.

<comment><USER9> The analogy I've heard is that failing to distinguish between tones is like failing to distinguish between "dock" and "duck" in English. Using the wrong tone is a lot closer to saying the wrong word than saying the right word in a thick accent.

<comment><USER29> The analogy to dock/duck seems fair, but I don't see why you don't want to call that an accent. Vowel troubles of that kind are a major feature of thick accents. Staying in the Chinese context, someone saying "fourth" in a thick Mandarin accent will actually say "force". (Depending on how thick; they'll probably say something more like "four-suh".) That's not because they're saying the wrong word -- they know what fourth means; they just can't say it.

In context, this kind of thing isn't a problem because a speaker with a heavy accent applies their own sound changes in a systematic way. It's very easy, as the listener, to learn their accent and adjust to it... if they're coming out with otherwise normal speech. As a foreign language learner, you probably have a thick accent _and_ you also can't form a normal sentence, so context can't provide the support it normally would for your odd pronunciation.

(If "dock" and "duck" were actually pronounced identically, that would cause no problems, in the same way that the identical pronunciation of "bow" (archery) and "bow" (decorative knot in a ribbon) causes no problems. That's most of why it doesn't matter if someone's accent causes them to pronounce some words as other words.)

<comment><USER9> As you say, a fluent English speaker with a thick Mandarin accent will understand and often hear the distinction between "fourth" and "force". They just can't easily produce /θ/ in their own speech. If someone's flashcards said both words have the same pronunciation, even if they know it's important to "adapt your accent as you speak", I'd definitely say they're learning incorrect pronunciation.

<comment><USER29> Sure, and looking up, I think the answer to the implicit question "Why are we supposed to memorize word tone in Mandarin when we don't need to memorize word stress in English?" is "You do need to memorize word stress in English. The details are up to you, but it's not optional."

But here, what I'm really asking is:

What's the difference between "saying the wrong word" and "saying the right word in a thick accent"? In my eyes, those appear to be the same thing, so I don't see how anything could be more like one than the other.

<comment><USER9> If someone said "strawBERry", for example, I would identify that as unambiguously being the right word. There is a canonically correct stress, and native speakers will notice when you get it wrong, but I wouldn't think for a second they might be talking about some other food I didn't know the word for. Even with the words where stress does carry meaning (content, object, etc.), I would identify them as a single word where context changes the pronunciation and meaning rather than two different words that happen to be written the same way.

<comment><USER29> > Even with the words where stress does carry meaning (content, object, etc.), > I would identify them as a single word where context changes the > pronunciation and meaning rather than two different words that happen to be > written the same way.

Ah, this is where we disagree. In my view, the fact that strawBERry doesn't exist is just a coincidence. It's helpful in resolving what somebody meant by strawBERry, but not meaningful. The structure of English is compatible with a word pronounced strawBERry that means "barstool".

When I was a teacher in an English immersion school, I once asked a student if classes would be happening during a... holiday? I forgot why I thought they might not.

Anyway, the question was whether classes would be happening, and the student understood me correctly and responded "poss", leaving me confused.

He meant that classes were suspended, and he meant to say "pause", and he was aggrieved that the difference between the /z/ in "pause" and the /s/ in *poss meant so much to me when he thought it should be unimportant. But it was unimportant. The real problem was that the single word "pause" is not a valid response to that question in idiomatic American English. If it had been, I would have had no trouble understanding -- after all, there is no word "poss" to get in the way.

I see tone and stress the same way. Consonant choice / tone / stress are all parts of the word, and changing them gets you a different word.

<comment><USER9> That makes a lot of sense to me, yeah. I'm sold that's a better way to think about it than I was.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I wrote [https://pingtype.github.io](https://pingtype.github.io) to visualise tones in pinyin, using colour and font size. It helped me learn to read Hanzi, and sing along in church, even pick up some vocabulary for listening, but I always struggled with speaking. Whenever I'd try to speak Mandarin, people would just switch to English immediately.

Hopefully Mandarin tone trainer will help!

</comment><comment><USER31> This is a really cool idea, but it doesn't seem to work. I enunciated each of the tones, and the only one it recognized correctly was third tone.

<comment><USER32> Tried this for awhile with my girlfriend who speaks Mandarin as her first language. It does seem to be slightly too picky, often calling my pronunciation third tongue when it should be one of the others, despite her saying it was perfectly fine to her ear. But on the other hand it called her pronunciation perfect all but one time, which seems pretty encouraging.

<comment><USER33> I think it might be trained on female voices.

I'm a guy, and it called all of my tones "3rd tone" when said in my normal voice, but when I spoke in a cartoonishly high falsetto, it gave me perfect marks.

<comment><USER26> I tried your trick, and it worked like a charm! I guess that's how I'll be speaking from now on...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> It's a good idea but (a) it doesn't actually work (tones get miscategorized as attested by the number of native speakers in comments who are having trouble) and (b) practicing words in isolation is of limited interest. The hardest part IMO comes from pronouncing sentences, which involves chaining tones correctly.

</comment><comment><USER21> This is GREAT. I have always had an issue with tone 2 and 3 but it turns out I have this tiny dip before the rise in my tone 2. It took a while looking at the tone patterns before I worked it out. Now give me something for that stupid ü or u-umlaut and then I might actually sound ok.

<comment><USER35> That's actually fine. (I'm a native bilingual speaker, although not from PRC.)

Also, the 3rd tone is characterised more by being low than the fall-then-rise. In fast speech the rising part is often not heard; it's only really present in stressed syllables or possibly at the ends of sentences.

<comment><USER21> Any tips for the ü?

<comment><USER13> As a native french speaking, the mandarin nǔ is one of the few things I actually find super easy. Helps that we have the exact same ü sound in french.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Doesn't work on Safari or Vivaldi on Mac OS. After working on tones, I proudly showed them off to a Chinese friend. "Are you saying it or singing it?" he asked. It was then I realized how subtle these tones have to be for conversation.

</comment><comment><USER37> This tool is exactly what I wanted whenever I was first learning pronunciation. I've found myself using siri to check my general pronunciation in longer sentences. This tool with segmentation would be a huge game changer.

</comment><comment><USER38> This is incredible. As a native english speaker, tones were by far the hardest part when living in China and speaking Mandarin. Good on you for coming up with a clever way to teach this effectively, bravo.

</comment><comment><USER39> I just use google translate on my android phone and speak out full sentences. It's pretty good as long as the sentences are long enough, have correct grammar and are common things to say.

</comment><comment><USER40> I'm not sure it's working for tone 1. I played back the teacher's recording and it thought it was tone 3. i was able to get 2,3,4 right though, and i think it probably helped my tone2

<comment><USER41> Haha the bottom of the site says that too: Unfortunately the system isn't very accurate at the moment, but you will quite likely be able to tell whether you are saying the right tone by looking at your vocal pitch contour and comparing it to that of the teacher.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Wish I could use this but doesn't work with Firefox or Safari :c

</comment><comment><USER43> This is fantastic, but would really love if I got realtime feedback on my main pitch as I am making it, instead of the full spectrogram 1-5 seconds later. Like a little line chart.

</comment><comment><USER44> Doesn't work... it doesn't work It only seems to check the frequency. The shape doesn't seem to matter, and i the shape would be correct, it classifies as incorrect

<comment><USER7> They said it isn't accurate. Also check if there is too much noice and that you are for example starting the third tone relatively high.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> I haven't managed to get this working yet on my phone but: would it be possible for the same code to be used for the tones of other languages?

<comment><AUTHOR> The website only works in Chrome or Opera at the moment - this may be what is causing you problems. Potentially yes - we are starting with Mandarin because it's such a popular language to learn. What other languages would you like to see?

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> I think more useful, would be to play phrases and ask users to write down the pinyin along with the tones, at least for me.

</comment><comment><USER47> I can't play the teacher's vocal pitch. It errors out in both Chrome and Safari. Love the idea, though.

</comment><comment><USER48> Didn't get past the microphone permission request. What is it needed for? It could be a good idea to first warn the user that it will be requested and how it will be used.

Also, pardon a shameless plug - not sure how your app work because of the microphone permissions, but I also wrote a freely available Mandarin listening comprehension practice tool. It's pretty simple - I downloaded all zh-*.ogg files from Wiktionary, extracted tone numbers from the filenames and asked the user what they hear. You can find it hosted here:

[https://tones.strokes.ovh/](https://tones.strokes.ovh/)

Source code available here:

[https://github.com/d33tah/chinese-tones](https://github.com/d33tah/chinese- tones)

Anyway, keep up the work, good Mandarin learning resources are always needed!

<comment><USER49> It's an app designed to provide feedback on your tones; I don't see how it would work _without_ microphone access.

<comment><USER48> Ah, so it's about the computer recognizing the tones, not the other way around? Anyway, some sort of warning would make sense to add.

<comment><USER49> Yeah, I admit it would be nicer if the page loaded without the request first so you could see what it's about and then request the access once you clicked the record button.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback! We've done just that.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Dash now available on iOS - <AUTHOR> https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/dash-api-docs/id935284832?mt=8&uo=4

<comment><USER2> I can certainly see the use case for this being on the desktop (and for those that don't know: it is). I have been in plenty of situations where I can not access the internet so having offline copies is incredibly helpful.

I don't understand the use case on iOS. I don't want to just outright poo on the idea so is there anyone who is going to pick this up that can articulate why? I feel great value in having it offline but being able to ctrl + f or copy and paste on a larger screen (the same screen I'm developing on), I just don't get the mobile.

<comment><USER3> I never used Dash (I never heard of it before, I might actually give it a try now), but a use case would be to have an iPad as a second/third/fourth screen.

I have a dual screen setup at work, but windows gets buried really fast. A coworker would printout the most static bits of information (API docs, design mocks, storyboard etc.); this could be an alternative to that.

<comment><USER4> I definitely use an iPad as another screen, like for a UI spec.

I'm skeptical about using the iPad keyboard to look things up, usually I'm copying symbols from code to lookup, or typing into Alfred. Even just moving my hands to a new keyboard would probably be slower.

Which means I'm looking forward to when Dash iOS uses some of the continuity/handoff features to stay in sync with desktop Dash. (Maybe it already does?)

<comment><USER2> > I'm skeptical about using the iPad keyboard to look things up

Yeah this would be my main concert about the use case. Though if you have a bluetooth keyboard that can switch between devices it might not be so bad.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I like the idea of using the iPad as a second screen while I develop, keeping Dash at arm's reach all the time.

If you don't find the necessity for that on a Mac (or if your desk is short of space), use the OS X version, if you're on Windows, I suggest you take a look at Zeal ([http://zealdocs.org](http://zealdocs.org)).

<comment><USER6> Yep. Dash also has support for in-editor lookup. For sublime, highlight the function IE: app.use and hit ctrl+h, it'll popup the express documentation. Very handy!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> What is the use case for this? I can't imagine that I would be doing a lot of hardcore development on a machine that wasn't my dev machine which has Dash on it.

<comment><USER8> How about screen real estate? If you have a super crowded monitor, you can take advantage of a mobile screen that is otherwise underutilized?

<comment><USER9> That's exactly it. I've been waiting for this since Dash first came out. At the time I was doing iOS dev in a lot of coffee shops and airports with spotty wifi on an 11" MacBook Air. This would have been perfect then, having searchable offline docs on a second screen! Even though I'm working in an office most of the time now, I still bought it to use on my iPad.

<comment><USER10> I would still rather cmd+tab and copy&paste into a desktop app than carry around an extra device to view docs, personally.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I've been using the Dash beta, and the use case I have for it is offline docs and quick lookup. I can certainly access Apple's docs in a browser on my iPad, but being able to parse through programming guides, do searches and quick lookups is really helpful. If I want to read up on a Go class, or find something when not at my machine, it's been great. I've really enjoyed using it.

</comment><comment><USER12> Dash has long since become my technical Kindle app. I think of the doc sets as technical books, so being able to carry them around is a massive boon.

</comment><comment><USER13> Dash is one of those Mac apps you didn't realize you absolutely needed until you have it (like Bartender or FlyCut or Divvy). That said, buying it again for iOS isn't appealing.

<comment><USER14> Is the 'buying' not appealing, or is using Dash on iOS not appealing? If you don't think you would look up API much on an iOS device, fair enough. For me, being able to use an iPad as my go-to documentation viewer is tremendously appealing. This is a professional tool, that I use daily (on OS X), and having it on iOS will make my life better.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> If you don't mind being online, you can use [http://devdocs.io](http://devdocs.io) for free.

<comment><USER16> It doesn't seem to have any Apple documentation, which is a common use case for Dash.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> This is incredibly useful, but I don't know why they are charging $9.99. In my experience they would make more with a free/advertising app

<comment><USER18> ... advertising in developer documentation? Seriously?

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Great app, awesome plugins.

</comment><comment><USER20> I didn't say that you couldn't , I said that you shouldn't

</comment><comment><USER21> I guess you mean "Dash API Docs now available on iOS"

<comment><USER22> The original desktop app is called Dash: [http://kapeli.com/dash](http://kapeli.com/dash)

<comment><USER23> When speaking of dash, one usually means 'Debian Almquist SHell'. [In the context: 'dash is now available on iOS' to make it abundantly clear]

<comment><USER16> Seriously, "one usually means"? I could see that phrase being applied to the meaning of "dash" as the punctuation mark, or "run fast," but an obscure UNIX shell only used in a couple of Linux distributions? I hope that was a joke.

<comment><USER23> ... in the context "dash is now available on iOS", since thats what we're talking about, right. Obscure UNIX shell? Wow.

<comment><USER16> How does adding iOS, an OS with no shell and a walled garden that prevents third parties from adding any such functionality, help your case at all?

The ash shell seems somewhat well known. Dash, not so much, what with it only being used on one Linux distribution and some derivations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I designed the docs for my product team, which are extensive, to be mobile- first. There is no such thing as a mobile context or "use case".

[http://kevinsuttle.com/posts/the-right-questions-to-ask- mobi...](http://kevinsuttle.com/posts/the-right-questions-to-ask-mobile-first- deniers/)

<comment><USER24> I love that this was downvoted.</comment></comment>


5th grader's winning pro-marriage equality speech banned by NY school - <AUTHOR> http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/06/15/5th-graders-winning-pro-marriage-equality-speech-banned-by-ny-school/ <comment><USER2> Gem from the article:

"The school's website indicated that "Democracy Speeches" were being delivered by grades 1-5 on Friday."

Very democratic of that school to censor a speech. His next speech should have been on freedom of speech instead of animal cruelty.</comment>