Lead Bullets (2011) - <AUTHOR> http://bhorowitz.com/2011/10/26/lead-bullets/ <comment><USER2> Reminds me of one of my favorite quotes from Admiral Stockdale:

"You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end, which you can never afford to lose, with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be."

</comment><comment><USER3>
      The customers were buying;
      they just weren't buying our product.
      This was not a time to pivot.

Carve this into the tabletops in every Starbucks in San Francisco

</comment><comment><USER4> This was a lessons-learned post, but I would LOVE to read a "How we made those lead bullets" post.

Because his post goes like "guy says lets use lead bullets." -> "We hunker down and use lead bullets" -> _magic_ -> "Boom. $1.6 billion company"

<comment><USER5> > "How we made those lead bullets"

Optimize something, reduce the running time by a few ms, optimize something else, reduce by some more ms, repeat 8 hours a day, with several people in paralel for a few months.

The concept of a "lead bullet" implies that the history won't be interesting to read, just some repetitive boring hard work.

<comment><USER4> > "Optimize something"

I may be the only one, but knowing what the 'something' was is incredibly valuable bc we all, as people, pick 'something' and not everything in any sort of bullet is created equal.

<comment><USER6> In performance tuning, this is actually pretty straightforward:

\- Processes which run many times.

\- Processes which run long time (and block other processing).

\- If at all possible: both.

The more subtle approach is to identify things you don't need to do (needless initializations, "settle" delays, doing (or allowing to be done) the _wrong_ thing requiring both unwinding that operation _and_ doing the right one, and anything you don't have to wait for (if it's an ancillary process, spin it off and handle it out-of-sequence). Redesigning a process to avoid sorting data. Eliminating global locks. Spinning off tasks to parallelized processing (especially if you have multiple cores/systems available. Pipelining data to avoid writing/reading from disk multiple times. Handling data in memory rather than on disk. Realizing you _can_ handle data in-memory, and that disk-seeks will kill you, so sorting or bucketing output. Swapping spinning rust for SSD. Specific tools such as COW, snapshots, or the like can be very useful in such cases.

Algorithms (or methods invoking algorithms) can be another big win.

I've seen processes fall in time requirements by 90% following such an optimization process.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Semi-related: <http://www.paulgraham.com/schlep.html>

Too many people are unwilling to do the hard thing. Probably because their "goal [is] business for the sake of business (<http://al3x.net/2013/05/23/letter-to-a-young-programmer.html>)

</comment><comment><USER8> This seems like a couple of nice anecdotes thrown together due to an unfortunate preoccupation with a barely-related cliche.

The way I'm reading it, the point is to concentrate on your product and making it, in reality, better than the product(s) of your competitor(s) rather than... pivoting? Building a different product? Making your product into something else? Changing your target audience? I guess the only real lesson I'm taking away here is that "if you have product, sell it; if it sucks, make it better." Not exactly groundbreaking, though certainly true.

If the desire was to communicate something more general, taking it out of the context of existing product-based businesses with market share _and_ competitors would probably be necessary (but would have probably killed the anecdotes... which is why I'm guessing the article didn't really get off the ground in this regard).

So yeah, it's mostly true... but where it is, it's sort of trivially so.

<comment><USER9> As you suggest, I think the point was that there's often no brilliant idea that will provide a magical solution to a hard business problem - be that a product pivot or a new sales/marketing gimic.

Instead, you often know what you need to do - it's a long, hard slog, and it's about sticking at it longer than your competitors.

It's a recurring theme in Ben's blog:

>> Mediocre CEOs point to their brilliant strategic moves or their intuitive business sense or a variety of other self-congratulatory explanations. The great CEOs tend to be remarkably consistent in their answers. They all say: "I didn't quit."

[http://bhorowitz.com/2011/04/01/what%E2%80%99s-the-most- diff...](http://bhorowitz.com/2011/04/01/what%E2%80%99s-the-most-difficult- ceo-skill-managing-your-own-psychology/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> That's a great post.

There is also the opposite problem (one much more common in newbie founders IMO) -- seing lead bullets everywhere when a silver bullet would do. I used to believe I can just outthink and outwork other people by sheer force of will. I _still_ believe I can, but I would have saved myself (and my team) a lot of effort if I learned to look for silver bullets when they fit the problem.

Telling lead from silver requires some learnin'.

</comment><comment><USER11> Let's be realistic here - worst case that you can do anything about: it's possible the other side just hopelessly outmatches you in some area, and likely always will (they've better programmers, they're allowed to use more powerful software, they've better connections, they have enough money to put you out of business by undercutting) - and 'maybe you don't deserve to exist' is not a good answer to 'perhaps we should focus somewhere where we've a competitive advantage.' Maybe you'd be really good at something else, or maybe not - but you've the resources there and you may as well make a go of it if you look to be totally screwed otherwise.

You need to have some realistic assessment of how badly you're losing. Gungho "Yay effort!" is not a worthwhile risk analysis.

</comment><comment><USER12> Here is another lesson buried in the post: in most cases, _faster is better than better._ It doesn't matter if you have a much more stable product, with hot swaps, integrated monitoring, auto-balancing, the whole works. If your competitor is five times faster, you are toast.

If you look at the past decade and compare the technologies that "won", you will see that in almost every case, they were faster than the alternatives, and had performance as a major selling point. The notable exception is Ruby on Rails, but it was sold so well (the original Rails screencast was ground- breaking) and it solved such a huge pain point (XML hell) that, in this case, it didn't matter (though even they had to answer the question "but does it scale?" at some point).

</comment><comment><USER13> This reminds me of a product features framework I saw once. It mapped features to a 2x2, which categorized features into 4 buckets. The lead bullets were considered "table stakes" (core features that were necessary and everyone had) and silver bullets are probably "fool's gold" (features that are distinctive, but don't necessarily drive adoption).

</comment><comment><USER14> Netscape towards the end was pitching to business and not consumer. Consumers like touchy-feely-hip things (Silver Bullets), business wants things that work. Price, Performance and Support are all that counts at the end of the day. (Lead Bullets)

<comment><USER15> Our business spent a fortune on a very poor performing, piece of junk, software. Maybe the support is OK, but the real world stability sucks too.

Sometimes hookers, expensive lunches, tickets to sporting events and being golf buddies with managers are what counts. And if those are what counts, then those are the lead bullets.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> related: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3155358>

</comment><comment><USER17> Perhaps I am not getting the point, but it seemed that the silver bullet was to fix the performance issue.

<comment><USER18> I think the connotation of "silver bullet" in this post is an extraordinary idea that solves the problem definitively by changing the rules. A lead bullet, by contrast, acknowledges the current field of play and just plays it better. Less glamorous, but still plenty deadly.

<comment><USER19> These elemental analogies are reminding me of the Manhattan project.

One silver bullet ( _E_ = _m_ _c_ ^2 and Einstein's letter to Roosevelt) and some lead bullets (the long slog of building huge industrial plants to purify the uranium). Maybe sometimes you need both.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I think I can summarize that post in three words:

"Thou shalt execute".

</comment><comment><USER21> I see some lessons in the OP, but not the ones Ben intended.

Ben is saying that at times need to work very hard? Okay.

Ben is saying that if a competitor has a much better product that is selling well and threatening own business, then likely just must do the work needed for a competitive product. Okay.

But after that I lose it with Ben: His "lead bullets" are defeatist, close to luddite, look like he is trying to degrade himself and his company, to fight by getting down, dirty, simplistic, nose to the grindstone, shoulder to the wheel, and ear to the ground and trying to be successful in that position, to suffer first and count on that being the path to success. Not good. Indeed, one of the things we're supposed to be doing is innovating, which likely also means being creative, original, maybe even mathematical or scientific.

Ben reminds me of Edison sending yet another team to the Amazon jungle to look for more plants that he could bake into carbon and try for a light bulb filament that wouldn't burn out so soon. The real solution was to borrow the idea of a tungsten filament from the chemist Swan in England and to use a really good vacuum pump from a guy in Germany. Edison could have had his teams slogging through jungles for 1000 years without finding anything. But, eventually Edison did go with tungsten and the German vacuum pump.

For Windows' first version of IIS being as much as five times faster, tough to believe that just a 'lead bullet' approach would yield what was missing from what Ben had. Instead, look at the architecture and think a little about what the heck the poor computer is being asked to do. Then look at where the computer resources are going. Likely then, tweak the architecture: So, if are spending time walking down arrays or linked lists in O(n), then consider using an AVL tree in O( ln(n) ). If executing the code for a page when know that the output will be the same as the last 10 times, then cache the output and don't run the code again. If caching the output in main memory, i.e., virtual memory with page faults, then consider just using disk file for each page to be cached and save on page faults. If are connecting to a database, then have a pool of connections. Etc.

I.e., think a little. Looks like Ben doesn't like thinking, more likely has, really, a low regard for his people and doesn't trust them to be productive if asked to think. Ben wants to measure hard work by sweat, long hours, and suffering and not good work with good results.

Here's a lesson I draw: I agree with Ben that a business that has been going along well might suddenly encounter some problems, e.g., a five times faster competitive product given away for free.

First, such problems should have been expected. If Ben had inefficient software, then he should have known that and not had to learn it from a Microsoft product. Or, how and why did the Microsoft people do a much better job? Sure: They wanted something fast, at least not wildly inefficient, thought some about the architecture, and did a decently efficient implementation. Why? Because they cared enough. Then before Microsoft's work, Ben hadn't cared enough.

Second, Ben should have done much better trying for, expecting, counting on, working toward silver bullets. I sense that Ben doesn't much believe in silver bullets, suspects that any efforts toward silver bullets will be just time and effort wasted. Bluntly, I seriously doubt if Ben knows how to direct a productive, creative, effective little applied research project. Ben reminds me of the remark in the movie about the auto guy Tucker "A well run company doesn't waste time on research". Yes, some research is close to intellectual self-abuse, but it's the job of a good CEO and a good Board to know that this is not always true (e.g., SR-71, 22 nm line widths) and how to make applied research productive, not just throw out the baby and drink the bathwater.

Third, any entrepreneur with a good chance of doing well has to ask himself at least 10^10th times if he wants anyone like Ben on his Board of Directors. Why? Sure: The CEO and his team have seen an area where they might do better. With the CTO, the CEO outlines an applied research project to get the coveted better results. So, for the next Board meeting the CEO includes some foils on the applied research project. Then in the Board meeting Ben wakes up and starts asking questions: How long will the project take? How much will it cost? How good will the results be? What will be the milestones during the project? What is the project schedule, step by step? Or if an experienced auto mechanic can do a brake job on a Ford F150 truck in the time in the book, why not this 'research' project?

So, the CEO has to tell Ben and the Board that for all of the questions, at present he is comfortable with the situation, will continue to review the situation during the work, but otherwise really has no answers at all for the more specific questions. Presto: Ben gets torqued, brings out his fiduciary powers, fires the CEO, before his stock is vested, and 'gets the company back on a business like, bottom line basis' and just blows it.

Even worse, maybe the applied research has already been successful, and at the Board meeting the CEO introduces the CTO who explains the work and, then, the next step, converting the applied research to production software. Again, just over the software work, Ben does an upchuck.

I just don't see Ben being able to work effectively with things that are new, powerful, valuable, innovative, etc. NSF, NIH, and DARPA problem sponsors can. Ph.D. supervisors can. Successful Ph.D. students can. Research professors can. But I don't see Ben as able.

<comment><USER22> _Instead, look at the architecture and think a little about what the heck the poor computer is being asked to do. Then look at where the computer resources are going. Likely then, tweak the architecture: So, if are spending time walking down arrays or linked lists in O(n), then consider using an AVL tree in O( ln(n) ). If executing the code for a page when know that the output will be the same as the last 10 times, then cache the output and don't run the code again. If caching the output in main memory, i.e., virtual memory with page faults, then consider just using disk file for each page to be cached and save on page faults. If are connecting to a database, then have a pool of connections. Etc._

I read the original article pretty differently. As far as I can see, these all are exactly the kind of lead bullets the article meant. No miracles, nothing that doesn't directly involve _making your product better_ , just some good old-fashioned programming work. The author's point was that if you have an inferior product, you roll up your sleeves and make the product better.

<comment><USER21> Yes, the AVL trees are like you describe, but the caching may not be because it's not clear to me (and I'm writing for ASP.NET and IIS although have yet to look into caching) if knowing when could cache needs just a lead bullet or a silver one. For more, I'm not deep enough into the internals of ASP.NET, the Windows 'global assembly cache', just how SQL Server connection pools work, etc. to know where the silver bullets would be in such work. So, my examples of bullets are too close to lead bullets unless the price of silver has declined a lot!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> silver bullets are actually much less efficient than lead (vampires or not)

<comment><USER24> but if it's a werewolf, it's the only way to kill them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Sounds like the Microsoft strategy (Bing, Windows Phone etc) - and now what G+ is trying to do to Facebook.

What are some examples of startups doing it (or not doing it)?

<comment><USER26> Perhaps duckduckgo?

<comment><USER27> Not to take a cheap shot at ddg ( user), but they are a more consumer focused company. Google on the other hand is more b2b.

<comment><USER6> Google started with a consumer focus. And a large portion of their traffic remains consumer.

<comment><USER27> It started consumer, but it is now B2B. The consumer traffic is what they sell.

<comment><USER6> My point is that if you want to start to get traction, B2C isn't a bad place to start. That assumes you can either translate that to revenues, make a B2B pivot, or shim a B2B service in place at a later date.

<comment><USER27> Why would you even target a market you wont profit in? Makes no sense. What Google did is simple: They saw that there is no money in search (ask around), and saw that there was a lot of money in lead generation (advertising). They copied overture, and it grew.

<comment><USER6> Google's advertising business would be nowhere without its dominance in the search market. Google _earned the right_ to dominate in advertising by becoming a compelling search engine. It's a lean-to, with both sides supporting the other. Pull either out, and it falls.

For a lean start-up, building the consumer side makes the case for the business side.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Colleges Want Students with Character, But Can't Measure It - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/issue/12/feedback/colleges-want-students-with-character-but-cant-measure-it

<comment><USER2> Colleges are attempting to deal with claims of racial bias by watering down their standards. The bias claims are there because disadvantaged groups are well... Disadvantaged. They have a shitty education in primary school that poisons the well for them.

Why should character or "heart" matter? What if you're a smart kid who is a real asshole? Or a dumb kid with a good sales pitch? Or you didn't participate in extra-circular activities for whatever reason? Why should some guy wading through 10,000 applications be making some evaluation and judgement of my character?

They should drop the pretense of some sort of fair selection process and just do a pure lottery. If you can't read and get into Harvard, you'll wash out quickly.

<comment><USER3> > If you can't read and get into Harvard, you'll wash out quickly.

A college does a disservice to students to admit them when they will wash out.

My experience as a student at Caltech in the 70's was they did a pretty good job with the admissions. They selected for smart & motivated & interested in tech. As a result, living in the dorms full of this kind of people, there was never a dull moment.

I only knew a couple of students who clearly didn't belong there, and they soon left.

<comment><USER2> They are doing that now to disadvantaged students. An acquaintance in my state university was a smart guy from a notoriously awful high school.

He was completely overwhelmed and dropped out his first year -- he just wasn't prepared for the material, and the remedial help offered by the college wasn't very useful to someone who wanted to be in a STEM track. He dropped out, joined the Army, and flourished... we're Facebook friends, and he has an MS in CS now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I have said this before, but the admissions system at so many US colleges looks very strange to British eyes.

There is special treatment for people who play sport, whose parents went to the same college (especially if they give money) and for those who have the right sort of hobbies.

If that was not bad enough, there are different rules for different ethnic groups.

It really is quite extraordinary.

</comment><comment><USER5> From TFA:

> The flaws in standardized testing are well-documented at this point.... > their predictive powers only forecast a student's progress as far as the > first semester of their freshman year.

Let's be honest. Raise your hand if you needed markedly more than your first semester of freshman year to figure out which of your friends at college were going to cut it in some traditional academic sense.

Not saying that's the only sense, but as far as the college should be able to measure, academics for 4(+) years are the only fair initial barometer. Of course, academics can't say anything about who can write a 7+ figure donation to the college 30 years after graduation...

<comment><USER6> Actually, that's an interesting thought.

If you asked high-schoolers (not necessarily even seniors) which of their peers would do the best in college, do you think they would give useful answers?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm glad I applied to college before ubiquitous digital storage was a thing...I vaguely remember trying to come up with contrived ways to sound like an interesting person. I think I even mentioned listening to country music.

In terms of measurements of character, has there been much thought given to looking at longitudinal data of a student's career? An easy one would be improvement on standardized tests over time. I qualified for the National Merit Award because I happened to be doing prep work for SATs...I didn't even know the PSATs meant anything, but just because I performed well on one test, I was the beneficiary of all those schools who use "Number of National Merit Scholars in freshman class" as some kind of quality metric...My SAT performance afterward was only middling-good. I don't think that should've put me in a higher bracket than someone who struggled at first, but rather than giving up, did what it took to reach a higher percentile.

But what about students who go from being a flop, say, in their sophomore year, to really growing in terms of performance and accomplishments by their senior years? A student who, over 4 years, has a C average, but by senior year, is acing AP classes...that takes a considerable amount of grit. And the student is on the upswing. Hell, even a student who did no sports until senior year, but manages to letter on a high-performing team in a sport new to him/her...that to me is about as outstanding as a state champion who competed since the age of 5.

</comment><comment><USER8> Does anyone know how/where one might get access to a data set like the one he uses in this paper? (1993 student demographic data, high school GPAs, SAT scores, and freshman GPAs)

</comment><comment><USER9> I've always been fascinated by the philosophical divide among the nations with the best educational systems. Some (i.e. Finland) deemphasize tests, while others such as India and South Korea place strong emphasis on them. The issue is not black and white enough for us to categorically embrace or condemn tests. Different cultural and environmental factors are obviously in play.

<comment><USER10> Idk if the Indian educational system is considered the best (I'm actually pretty sure that it's not). As for the South Korean educational system, idk if it should be considered a model to follow considering kids there spend like 16 hours a day in school but perform comparatively well as kids in Finland who spend maybe less than half of that time in school.

<comment><USER9> _Idk if the Indian educational system is considered the best (I 'm actually pretty sure that it's not)._

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

 _As for the South Korean educational system, idk if it should be considered a model to follow considering kids there spend like 16 hours a day in school but perform comparatively well as kids in Finland who spend maybe less than half of that time in school._

The point is that the children who learn through standardized tests are performing just as well as, if not better than, those in an environment where tests are deemphasized.

Having said that, it's hard to make the cross-cultural argument that standardized testing is always positive or negative.

<comment><USER10> Yes, I'm aware of IIT. That does not really disprove my point though. Your argument is similar to if someone was said that Mexico is a poor country and someone made a counterargument saying that Carlos Slim Helu lives in Mexico ergo it's not a poor country.

> The point is that the children who learn through standardized tests are > performing just as well as, if not better than, those in an environment > where tests are deemphasized.

Kinda hard to argue with this if you are not providing what sort of metrics you are using.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Maybe they should try doing a better job with helping students who have financial problems or mental health issues?

That'd be an easy start.

<comment><USER12> That makes about as much sense as suggesting bar owners should try doing a better job helping drinkers with infertility.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Maybe it isn't quite time for this question to be asked, but I'm damn well sure that the day is soon.

Why are students being admitted into undergraduate programs any more?

There are no admissions for the Khan Academy, and a huge chunk of undergraduate college education could be done in exactly that format.

Donate to have units created very well (and a few different versions just because) copyleft. Pay Universities for thorough certification of knowledge for particular subjects, and finally join Universities for capstone activities which will grant degrees upon completion. Keep graduate-level education as is.

Why do there have to be tens of thousands of Calculus I courses every year when one or two online would do? The technology and market exists for this, but the inertia of an antiquated undergrad education system gets in the way.

<comment><USER14> While I can understand that for basic stuff, there is no way I would ever attend an online course on some advanced undergraduate topics in physics or mathematics online.

There is a benefit of being in a classroom environment when learning an advanced subject. You have a direct connection to the professor and other students, which is essential for advanced material. Plus you can easily go and talk to them afterwards for more details. I learnt a lot by going to professors office hours which doesn't work online.

Also, what about labs? Every science program I am aware of has a laboratory component. That cannot be done at home. Plus good luck trying to get universities to agree on what labs to do. Each university has different types of researchers who focus on certain areas, which is reflected in the labs selected. My former university, for example, had no particle physics people so any lab related to particle physics would be misplaced. Instead they had a lot of quantum people so the labs were more geared towards that. I know of another university that had a lot of particle physics people and their labs reflected this.

Another thought is research. How would undergraduates get exposed to research in your system?

Thinking about it more, having TA'd first year calculus, you need to be able to interact in real time with students. I think online resources are great and I recommended them to my students, but they cannot replace face to face interaction. This is something online technologies cannot replicate, so I say it is a bad idea to even do it for basic things like calculus, which is very fundamental to the sciences.

Personally, I think it is a noble goal, but unlikely. Instead, I think the universities should integrate online stuff in addition to in classroom lectures.

EDIT: I forgot to mention the university environment. Being surrounded by my peers in the same field really helped. I learnt a lot just by hanging around the various clubs. That absolutely cannot be replicated online.

<comment><USER15> It would be hard to do online courses for subjects that require a lot of physical tools for teaching, or loads of physical activity. Some examples are physics, mechanical engineering, computer hardware design, dancing etc.

But it might be useful promote online education more since it increases accessibility and affordability.

> You have a direct connection to the professor and other students, which is > essential for advanced material.

You can ask the student to write down their questions and mail the professor. This way, a good professor can be shared by many more students.

>How would undergraduates get exposed to research in your system?

The professors can guide them to where interesting conversation happens on the Internet, and they can get exposed to interesting research there.

>I forgot to mention the university environment. Being surrounded by my peers in the same field really helped.

There is no law that this atmosphere of dense population of smart people should be limited to universities.

By the way, I am agreeing to your central point, which is that online education should be a complement and not a substitute to conventional education.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> There is a nonsense propaganda behind these critique on standardized testing.

Test scores will always always always always always always always always always always reflect socioeconomic disparities, because there is and will always always always always always always always always always always be socioeconomic difference in student abilities. It is insane to say standardized tests "punish disadvantaged students and minorities". Tests are tests, they do not and should not care about students' socioeconomic background. Whether universities should account for socioeconomic status of applicants or not, that's their consideration, not test makers' consideration.

Of course standardized tests do not measure all aspects of a student, but they never claim they do. This critique is also silly. The problem is, it is extremely difficult to measure "traits such as optimism, curiosity, resilience" of a person, especially when you want to use the results in college admission. Current psychological instruments for those traits are not developed for that purpose. No serious psychologist will suggest colleges to use those psychological instruments in college admission.

Do no blame standardized testing for those silly reasons!

<comment><USER17> > It is insane to say standardized tests "punish disadvantaged students and > minorities"

A test can be written with a bias that favors or punishes _any_ group. I don't think its intentional, as it is quite difficult to create them without these issues.

A simple example to show the point:

        Which of the following is not like the others:

        A) Chicken
        B) Moose
        C) Cow
        D) Pig
        E) Dog

Many people would answer A: A chicken is a bird and everything else is a mammal.

But if you come from an agricultural background, in addition examining the animals based on their Biological Kingdom, you might be tempted to say B, Moose: It's the only animal that has no role on a farm. B is not an illogical answer from that perspective, but within the context of the test it's likely wrong.

When people say a test has a socioeconomic bias, they're saying a question can become easier or harder depending on a student's economic background. The question above is easy for most of us, but would probably be solved slower by anyone who grew up on a farm.

<comment><USER16> > When people say a test has a socioeconomic bias, they're saying a question > can become easier or harder depending on a student's economic background.

That's not their argument.

However, actually the issue you mentioned has long been noticed by psychologists / test makers. Experts in SAT / ACT know a lot about these things. Please refer to Differential Item Functioning [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Differential_item_functioning](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Differential_item_functioning)

<comment><USER17> > Experts in SAT / ACT know a lot about these things.

Experts at ACT maybe. But didn't the SAT recently announce it's re-tooling much of its test to address these issues?

<comment> barry-cotter The new changes haven't been tested at all from what I've read. They're dropping vocabulary tests, for example, which are astonishingly predictive. From the media coverage it doesn't look like the College Board are as interested in scholastic aptitude as plaudits for Doing the Right Thing™.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: One Page Calendar 2020 - <AUTHOR> https://davebakker.io/onepagecalendar/ <comment><USER3> For the last 3 years I've been printing several copies of the Compact Calendar by David Seah [1]. It's as its name implies a compact form calendar that spans the whole year in a single page, and leaves enough side space to annotate stuff as needed.

It's very cool and useful, although it would be nice having an open-source based version (i.e. LibreOffice), for those of us that don't have an MS Office license...

[1]: [https://davidseah.com/node/compact- calendar/](https://davidseah.com/node/compact-calendar/)

(not sure why but upon checking the website I'm seeing all text and links scrambled in the page, probably the author inadvertently broke it during an update)

<comment><USER3> Wow I just discovered that it's uBlock Origin that totally breaks the page layout. Which means that for some reason this page's CSS are detected as an ad source, and blocked! Curious, as it seems to be a plain and simple static site.

EDIT: It is the "AdGuard Annoyances" optional list, which is disabled by default but I like to enable: [https://kb.adguard.com/en/general/adguard-ad- filters#annoyan...](https://kb.adguard.com/en/general/adguard-ad- filters#annoyances)

<comment><USER4> It's also blocked by Fanboy's annoyances list. It's a generic blocker, /wp- gdpr, probably designed to block a Wordpress plugin's GDPR banner. My guess is this site is using such a plugin, and then stuck the rest of its CSS in the plugin's folder instead of a generic folder like CSS, so it ends up blocked there too. You can whitelist this URL on the site if you want without having to whitelist the site as a whole.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Related: The Compact Calendar by David Seah

[https://davidseah.com/node/compact- calendar/](https://davidseah.com/node/compact-calendar/)

I print this every year for almost a decade now!

</comment><comment><USER6> This reminds me of the Doomsday algorithm¹. The doomsday for 2020 falls on a saturday, which is aligned neatly as the diagonal in the one page calendar. Once you know the doomsday of a given year, you can calculate the day of week for any date in that year in your head.

[1] [http://rudy.ca/doomsday.html](http://rudy.ca/doomsday.html)

<comment><USER7> Here's a probably faster/easier way for most people to compute the Doomsday for a given year.

The Doomsday is the sum of a factor determined by the century part of the year and a factor determined by year within the century.

The century factor is:

      Century  Factor

      20xx     2
      21xx     0
      22xx     5
      23xx     3

This pattern repeats every 4 centuries indefinitely forward, and however far back you can go in your jurisdiction before you hit whatever calendar that was used there before the Gregorian calendar. (If you want a formula for this, it is 2 + (C % 4) x 5, where C is the first two digits of the year, but since there are only 4 items in the pattern, and most people will actually only care about one or two centuries, I'd just memorize the relevant factors).

For the factor determined by the year within the century, let T be the tens digit of that year and U the ones digit.

If T is even, the factor is:

      2 x T + U + LE(U)

I'll cover LE below.

If T is odd, the factor is:

      2 x T + 3 + U + LO(U)

LO() and LE() are corrections to take into account leap years in years where U != 0. Leap years when U = 0 are already accounted for in the 2 x T. Here are LE() and LO().

      LE(U) = 0 if U < 4
      LE(U) = 1 if 4 <= U < 8
      LE(U) = 2 if 8 <= U

      LO(U) = 0 if U < 2
      LO(U) = 1 if 2 <= U < 6
      LO(U) = 2 if 6 <= U

Or in English, in even decades add 1 if U >= 4, and add another 1 if U >= 8. In odd decades, add 1 if U >= 2, and another 1 if U >= 6.

Example: 2020. Century 20 factor = 2, T=2, U=0. T is even. Doomsday is 2 + 2 x 2 + 0 + 0 = 6 (Saturday).

Here are the years used for some of the examples in the link you gave.

2019\. T=1, U=9. We've got an odd T, and a leap year correction of 2. Century is still 20. That gives us 2 + 2 x 1 + 3 + 2 + 2 = 4 (Thursday). I've taken the liberty of reducing mod 7 along the way, so used 2 instead of 9 when adding in U. Note that when figuring the leap year factor you have to use the actual U, not U mod 7.

2018\. 2 + 2 + 3 + 1 + 2 = 3 (Wednesday).

2017\. 2 + 2 + 3 + 0 + 2 = 2 (Tuesday).

2069\. 2 + 2 x 6 + 2 + 2 = 4 (Thursday).

1929\. 3 for 19xx. 3 + 2 x 2 + 2 + 2 = 4 (Thursday).

1999\. 3 + 2 x 2 + 3 + 2 + 2 = 0 (Sunday).

1982\. 3 + 2 x 1 + 2 = 0 (Sunday).

1969\. 3 + 2 x 6 + 2 + 2 = 5 (Friday).

2167\. 0 + 2 x 6 + 0 + 1 = 6 (Saturday).

<comment><USER6> I really like the "2053" pattern, it's easy to remember. But I doubt I will be able to remember the rest. I think I'd rather do like this:

Given a year CCXX, we know the doomsday of year CC00 from the "2053" rule, and then:

        (a, b) = divmod(XX, 12)
        c = b // 4
        offset = a + b + c

Then add the offset to the day found by the "2053" rule, and you have the doomsday of the year.

E.g., for 2020 we have:

        start = 2  # from the 2053 rule
        (a, b) = divmod(20, 12)  # (1, 8)
        c = 8 // 4  # 2
        offset = 1 + 8 + 2 = 4 (mod 7)
        doomsday = 2 + 4 = 6  # saturday

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> how in the holy hell do you read this?

there are only 5 dates columns; how do you read days in month columns 6 and 7 (feb aug mar nov)?

am i suppossed to matrix multiply this thing or what. im not normally too dumb for things but boy this is totally opaque to me.

<comment><USER9> I am guessing that people outside the US do not have as much trouble, as the format is naturally dd/mm/yyyy instead of mm/dd/yy, so reading left to right is more natural.

It took me a brief moment to acclimate to this, but after I did I felt it was pretty straightforward and elegant.

<comment><USER10> To me, this looks complicated as well. For a full year calendar I prefer a standard one [https://calendaroptions.com/2020-calendar/](https://calendaroptions.com/2020-calendar/). If you're into space, NASA has a pretty cool science calendar(PDF) [https://eospso.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/publications/202...](https://eospso.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/publications/2020%20NASA%20Science%20Calendar%20508%20final.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> A feature addition: Clicking on a particular month, should select its column and decrease the opacity of other months. Will increase readability.

<comment><USER12> Another suggestion: Keep the width of all dates equal, so that the first column does not look weird.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is pretty clever and I admire the author for coming up with an elegant way to show the mapping of week days to dates. I'd be particularly interested to see the algorithm behind it. Date computations are very tricky.

A few years ago I made script to generate a one page calendar because the ones they hand out at work are particularly ugly. In addition to showing the date<->weekday mapping I also wanted it to show holidays and pay periods. This is one of the (few) things stuck on my wall.

[https://intrepidhero.gitlab.io/mkcal/cal2020.html](https://intrepidhero.gitlab.io/mkcal/cal2020.html)

[https://gitlab.com/intrepidhero/mkcal](https://gitlab.com/intrepidhero/mkcal)

<comment><USER14> Generate grid (it's static);

Find first weekday of month using your favourite algorithm;

Print month's name above the column that begins with that weekday.

<comment><USER13> _favourite algorithm_ is left as an exercise to the reader. ;-)

<comment><USER15> Favorite algorithm can be as simple as "look at the first day of each month on a normal calendar".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Its not clear about such limitations as Feb <= 28/29 & Apr/Jun/Sep/Nov <= 30

<comment><USER17> You can tell that 2020 is a leap year because if you look up the day of the week for Feb. 28, it's Friday, and March 1st is a Sunday. That must mean that Feb. 29th is a Saturday. And indeed it is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> A few years back I took part in an online design challenge to make a pocket calendar - it was a lot of fun, my designs are here:

[https://www.flickr.com/photos/joelanman/albums/7215759450272...](https://www.flickr.com/photos/joelanman/albums/72157594502722552/)

One of them is very similar to this one (Design 2) - I was tidying up someone else's idea. Dunno if David Seah's was related in any way or just people came up with the same idea.

<comment><USER19> Design 3 is quite nice. For me, it's the quickest to read.

<comment><USER20> Agreed. I love stacking the months like that and turning it into a never- ending river of days, looks like it'd be easier to estimate the length of time between two different months.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Where's the 21st?

<comment><USER22> Probably copy paste error. There are two of 18.

<comment><USER23> How does one change the year then?

<comment><USER24> First, you create the universe.

Then you build a new year of the calendar.

<comment><USER25> Then you argue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> It's just wrong isn't it? It says Jan 20 is a Tuesday. It isn't.

<comment><USER27> Ha, yeah, there's two 18's and no 21

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I'd guess the count of a particular month's days could be shown next to its name as an aid? Esp. given that Feb tends to have it different in different years ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feb_29](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feb_29)).

Also, a somewhat related purely-mechanical idea I recently learnt of and liked: [https://www.etsy.com/listing/570041707/desk-wood-eternal- cal...](https://www.etsy.com/listing/570041707/desk-wood-eternal-calendar- accessories)

</comment><comment><USER29> Good to know that Feb 31st falls on a Monday this year :-)

Love it though.

</comment><comment><USER30> Can someone ELI5?

<comment><USER31> It took me a while, but I think I have it: choose a month of the year in the blue table and read only the column pertaining to that month. The column has seven days within it and the first day in the column matches the first day of that month; then, increment each day and date until reaching the maximum for the month and proceed to the next month in its matching column. Never move right to left in the blue month table as if moving through a standard calendar's format; only loop through the column for the current month from top to bottom.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> These upvotes prove that there is opportunity for products to be clever, but not simple. For every windows like product, there is an opportunity for command line tool.

<comment><USER33> Clever but not simple? I have a hard time believing that people want to sacrifice simplicity for cleverness. But I see your point about people preferring a CLI than a web portal. I guess simplicity is in the eye of the beholder. What's simple for me, can often be wizardry for my dad.

<comment><USER34> > simplicity is in the eye of the beholder

My example of this is git. I find it very complex, but it's clever, and very useful.

<comment><USER32> At the risk of facing the wrath of developers, they also choose products that are not are not necessarily clever, but makes them clever. e.g: IaaS Vs PaaS, C++ Vs Visual Basic etc.

Developers usually say that abstraction doesn't give them enough control/flexibility. That might be true in some cases. But in most cases, they are afraid that abstraction will make them dumb, instead of making them clever.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Has anybody noticed that, starting tomorrow, the current day of the week, day of the month and month will be highlighted, with the highlighting changing correctly every day?

</comment><comment><USER36> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kY- pUxKQMUE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kY-pUxKQMUE)

</comment><comment><USER37> Not sure why, but it seems like the script which appends the 'today' class to today's cell doesn't seem to be working.

<comment><USER38> Perhaps it's not 2020 yet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Free - A 200-year calendar that is different from the rest.

[http://trackstar.4teachers.org/trackstar/ts/viewTrackMembers...](http://trackstar.4teachers.org/trackstar/ts/viewTrackMembersFramesMember.do?key=org.altec.trackstar.om.TrackMember;track_member_id\[180015\])

<comment><USER15> [https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/74/Permanen...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/74/Permanent_Calendar_gregorian.png)

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> It took me stupidly long to work out how to read it, which I think was just because days don't progress in the usual way, i.e. avoided if months were swapped to the rows, and days read across.

Another improvement IMO would be to list e.g. 'June (30)', since at the moment the #days in each month is lost to compression.

</comment><comment><USER41> What's cool about this representation is just how compact you could make it. Forget a page, this could fit on a card in your pocket.

EDIT: A very quick (and rough) example: [https://i.postimg.cc/nLrStmBt/micro.png](https://i.postimg.cc/nLrStmBt/micro.png)

</comment><comment><USER42> The date 18 is double and 21 missing.

</comment><comment><USER43> Great concept. I would've prefered an option to switch the days of the week and dates of the month. That way the numbers loop and the day of the week is fixed as a row/column header. That's more similar to how we read usual wall calendars.

</comment><comment><USER44> Very cool, but missing 21st.

</comment><comment><USER45> This is super cool. Since I usually read Month, Date, Year - would've been awesome if the months/day was on the left. Took me a minute to read it - <USER2> makes a lot of sense.

</comment><comment><USER46> [http://sciral.com/free/year.html](http://sciral.com/free/year.html) has worked for me for several years.

</comment><comment><USER47> That's neat! Took me a few second to figure it out :)

<comment><USER48> Me too, the rollover on cells makes a bit confusing because it suggests interactivity that is actually not there.

<comment><USER49> There's a rollover? That explains why I was puzzled that it didn't seem to have any interactive elements: I'm on mobile.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> \- Source code?

\- Is this generated using a known algorithm? Can the same trick be applied to other years?

Very cool idea!

<comment><USER24> It looks like it's currently manual, considering the double date on the 18th

<comment><USER51> It seems like it should be able to be done programmatically, though. It suddenly seems like a neat project.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Author here. Thanks for noticing the mistake! It's fixed now :)

Happy new year!

</comment><comment><USER52> Just increment the 20, 19 and second 18 and it should be correct.

</comment><comment><USER53> Why not simply do 'cal 2020' and embed it in HTML?

</comment><comment><USER54> I'm not really sure what I am looking at.

EDIT: Now I am. Clever!

<comment><USER55> I still am not. Could you explain?

<comment><USER56> 2d lookup table for (month,day) -> weekday

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> With JS turned off the page is not blank!

What a miracle!

</comment><comment><USER58> What happens with the two 18s?

</comment><comment><USER59> 18 is double, 21 is missing

</comment><comment><USER60> Woah this is so clever!

</comment><comment><USER61> this is super cool!!</comment>


People Force-Quit and It's OK - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@mattmass/people-force-quit-and-its-ok-256ac0c2a3ff <comment><USER2> I was put off by the arrogant, condescending tone of the Daring Fireball article. Thanks to Matt for giving us a more balanced, sensible point of view. The Force-quit feature is sometimes indispensable. In an earlier version of iOS, for example, I often had to force-quit the Maps app because the "End Navigation" button would not respond to a tap after I had reached my destination.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's very kind of you - thank you. Of course, people just get frustrated when they see someone doing something they think is silly. In this case, I do think there is interesting technical and psychological aspects worth thinking about. Really glad you liked it.</comment></comment>


Why Kids Should Grade Teachers - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/10/why-kids-should-grade-teachers/309088/?single_page=true <comment><USER4> This is one way this process has been validated, from the submitted article: "The responses did indeed help predict which classes would have the most test- score improvement at the end of the year. In math, for example, the teachers rated most highly by students delivered the equivalent of about six more months of learning than teachers with the lowest ratings. (By comparison, teachers who get a master's degree—one of the few ways to earn a pay raise in most schools —delivered about one more month of learning per year than teachers without one.)

. . . .

"The survey did not ask Do you like your teacher? Is your teacher nice? This wasn't a popularity contest. The survey mostly asked questions about what students saw, day in and day out.

"Of the 36 items included in the Gates Foundation study, the five that most correlated with student learning were very straightforward:

1\. Students in this class treat the teacher with respect.

2\. My classmates behave the way my teacher wants them to.

3\. Our class stays busy and doesn't waste time.

4\. In this class, we learn a lot almost every day.

5\. In this class, we learn to correct our mistakes."

Here is earlier reporting (10 December 2010) from the New York Times about the same issue:

<http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/11/education/11education.html> Here is the website of Ronald Ferguson's research project at Harvard:

<http://tripodproject.wpengine.com/about/our-team/>

And here are some links about the project from the National Center for Teacher Effectiveness:

[http://www.gse.harvard.edu/ncte/news/NCTE_Conference_Using_S...](http://www.gse.harvard.edu/ncte/news/NCTE_Conference_Using_Student_Surveys.php)

LAST EDIT: I'm amazed at how many of the comments in this thread appear to be about issues thoroughly discussed in the submitted article, but unresponsive to what the submitted article said. On this kind of issue, it's an especially good practice to read the fine article before assuming what is being discussed. We all know about school, but specific proposals for school reform have specific details that make some worse than others, and can be empirically tested.

<comment><AUTHOR> >I'm amazed at how many of the comments in this thread appear to be about issues thoroughly discussed in the submitted article, but unresponsive to what the submitted article said.

I'm not, unfortunately. It seems like most people read a headline and perhaps a paragraph or two, then active their pre-existing beliefs about whatever the subject happens to me, and move on from there. That's certainly been my experience with commenters on my blog, anyway, and it's been experience in observing both online communities and in reading student papers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Basing teachers' pay and job security on surveys from students seems like a good idea, especially given the numbers mentioned in the article. One problem is that it might give too much power to students.

I was a dick back in high school. The hacker I was back then would have figured out exactly how the testing and metrics were set up (public information) and organized a union of students to manipulate it. I can't do much with standarized test scores, they reflect on me. But a teacher quality survey? That's just a weapon.

Things like this make me wish that we had some kind of Hacker in Chief, to figure out how to circumvent new systems _before_ they get implemented.

<comment><USER6> "But a teacher quality survey? That's just a weapon."

Only if it's used as part of a (simplistic) algorithm.

And besides, why would students want to fire the good teachers? That doesn't really make sense. (As someone who was sent to the principal's office on a semi-regular basis.)

<comment><USER7> I agree that other factors would prevent students having too much power, but "good" is a very subjective term. Even "effective" depends on how the students learn. Just because I think a teacher is good for challenging me, another student might hate them for being so tough.

<comment><USER8> Even if students are colluding to give poor ratings to teachers they dislike, it won't significantly alter the relative rankings of the teachers - <USER2> better the teacher, the fewer students that are willing to systematically exaggerate the teacher's weaknesses, and the best teachers (the ones who make learning _fun_ ) won't have their scores hurt at all. Students colluding will make it hard to set a threshold for "good enough" to not fire, but even if the students catch on, it should still be a good tool for identifying the best teachers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I know more about student evaluations at the university level than at the grade levels discussed in this article. Here is an excellent overview of some of that research: <http://home.sprynet.com/~owl1/sef.htm>

The message one takes away from that is that (i) yes, student evaluations are a good predictor of some objective properties of a class (and other measures don't even achieve that much), but those properties aren't what teachers should be optimizing. I'd grant that (ii) it does seem worthwhile for students to see that their interests make a difference to what happens in the classroom. I'd also grant that (iii) some classroom situations may be so bad that optimizing student satisfaction may, even if not educationally ideal, still be a big improvement. And for all I know, this may be widely true at the pre-university level; but on the other hand, for all I know, giving these evaluations a big institutional role at the pre-university level could also be counter-productive...the evidence cited in the article hardly enables us to say. Any deliberation about giving student evaluations an institutionalized role should take the evidence behind (i) seriously.

One promising message from the research reported in the Atlantic article is that (iv) the specific tests being discussed have been designed in ways that seem novel and especially revealing. But the article mixed that together with an indiscriminate enthusiasm for student evaluations quite generally. And I think many people will read this and say, "Duh, that's a no brainer." Yes, it is a brainer! These kinds of policy issues aren't settleable from the armchair. Even if we cleared all the political hurdles and made someone the educational policy dictator, he or she isn't going to be able to tell just from the armchair what the results of rolling out one policy rather than another is going to be. So I get frustrated with articles like this one, that report some interesting evidence but mix it together with the kind of insensitivity to the details exhibited in comments like "That research had shown something remarkable: if you asked kids the right questions, they could identify, with uncanny accuracy, their most—and least—effective teachers. The point was so obvious, it was almost embarrassing."

Neither does this inspire confidence: "Some studies...have shown that professors inflate grades to get good reviews. So far, grades don't seem to significantly influence responses to Ferguson's survey: students who receive A's rate teachers only about 10 percent higher than D students do, on average." I hope that readers of this site don't need an explanation of why the clause after the colon is only barely relevant to whether grades get inflated because that leads to better evaluations. It's almost irrelevant. In the first place, teachers needn't be aware of the cited fact; they may experience grade-inflation pressures differently. Also, the cited fact is compatible with the majority of current A-getters scoring their teachers in ways that are largely insensitive to the grades they get, but a minority of current A-getters and a majority of current B-getters being extremely responsive to the grades they get. The cited fact is just not what we need to know.

<comment><USER10> Forgive me for being glib, but this seems like a lot of words to simply say "You can't implement it because, well... you just can't!"

<comment><USER9> Thanks for your comment. I'm sorry that---despite using so many words---I didn't make myself understood. I didn't intend to argue that student evaluations can't or shouldn't be widely deployed. I was criticizing the sloppy, casual attitude towards the evidence displayed in the Atlantic article. And I thought I had linked to a literature review, and pointed out passages in the article, that supported that criticism.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I am worried about adding another metric to the way that we measure performance in schools. It's already been shown that there are problems with the standardized tests. Not that they are terrible things, but students in the US tend to disagree with their proliferation. (Perhaps they would feel less this way if there were less tests)

Having students grade the teachers I think is also the same way. One of the problems is that students don't know what makes a good teacher. The tests can gear students in that direction (ie "I feel challenged but not overwhelmed in this classroom"), but if we look for too much insight from the students I think we will be misdirected. Just like we are misdirected when we pay too much attention to standardized tests.

My fear is that some schools would start to look at these performance measurements as golden bullets sort the way that we've started to look at standardized tests as golden bullets. Most of jr. high was geared towards getting perfect scores on the state exams. My Junior and Senior years of high school were almost 100% (a few teachers went outside of the scope, but it was a teacher decision and not an administrative decision) geared around AP tests and the ACT.

The ACT and the AP tests have their place. And I think that student evaluations of teachers have their place as well. Both are very useful when applied appropriately.

I just don't want to see the system (d)evolve in such a way that too much emphasis is placed on empirical data.

<comment><USER8> "One of the problems is that students don't know what makes a good teacher."

Students don't need to know what makes a good teacher. They only need to be able to assess whether they learned, and whether they had fun in the process. Whether they learned _enough_ is pretty much an orthogonal issue, and one that can and will be dealt with through standardized testing. Students also don't really need to give any thought to a teacher's specific methods in order to offer useful information.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> As with any self-sustaining system (politics, economy, ecology) you need a feedback loop to form among the parties with conflicting interests. If the feedback loop is broken, the system deteriorates and ultimately falls apart. If it's inefficient, the system tends to be inefficient as well. (Examples: soviet-style planned economy, rabbits in Australia etc.)

This kind of thing (teachers grade students, students grade teachers) could improve the efficiency of the feedback loop and thus efficiency of the education system as a whole.

</comment><comment><USER13> This is probably the root cause of grade inflation in American universities. Terrible, terrible idea.

<comment><USER6> Actually that would be the Vietnam war.

<comment><USER14> Are you being facetious? If not, would you mind expanding on this? I'm greatly interested in the recent trend towards grade inflation.

<comment><USER6> No that's the actual reason. During the Vietnam war you would get drafted unless you were in college, which means that anyone who failed out of college was basically put on the next plane to the jungle to get killed. Since most of the faculty were anti-war (or at least relatively liberal) most colleges either dropped the grading system entirely or else made grading significantly easier.

<comment><USER13> OK, but the Vietnam War has been over for almost 40 years now, but grade inflation keeps _getting worse_. Why?

<comment><USER6> \- Grades don't mean anything, so there's no reason to give people bad grades. I know I quote this all the time on HN, but only because it's accurate: "A grade can be regarded only as an inadequate report of an inaccurate judgment by a biased and variable judge of the extent to which a student has attained an undefined level of mastery of an unknown proportion of an indefinite amount of material."

\- Despite the fact that grades don't predict workplace performance at all, companies still use them to hire people. (Basically because it's a legal way to keep out black people.) Because of this, schools can boost their US News & World Report rank by giving people better grades, since starting salary factors into the rankings in many years.

\- Schools are basically run as businesses these days, and that's what the customers want. Asking why schools keep inflating grades is kind of like asking why McDonald's keeps making their chicken nuggets taste so fucking delicious.

<comment><USER15> -I don't know about you, but if I had to hire between 50 A students and 50 D students, I'd hire the A students.

-Schools in Africa grade students, who are they trying to keep out?

-Some schools might be run as a business; I think most aren't (they're subpar and inefficient). If they are, they're run as a mom and pop. If San Francisco schools were businesses, they'd have gone bankrupt and displaced a while ago.

<comment><USER6> "I don't know about you, but if I had to hire between 50 A students and 50 D students, I'd hire the A students."

The science suggests that if you we're assigned both groups at random, you wouldn't be able to tell the difference.

<comment><USER6> "Any citations for this?"

There are only a handful of studies because it's considered kind of a dumb question to ask. But Alfie Kohn references some of them in his books, I think in What Does It Mean To Be Well Educated? But the ones that exist consistently show the same thing.

This includes the huge internal study that Google HR did:

"Unfortunately, most of the academic research suggests that the factors Google has put the most weight on — grades and interviews — are not an especially reliable way of hiring good people."

"When all this was completed, Dr. Carlisle set about analyzing the two million data points the survey collected. Among the first results was confirmation that Google's obsession with academic performance was not always correlated with success at the company."

[http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/03/technology/03google.html?e...](http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/03/technology/03google.html?ex=1325480400&en=e71cadb22a20a3c4&ei=5088)

<comment><USER16> The article you link to and quote, while saying grades are less important than Google thought, goes on to say that progressive Google after doing this study and at least partially implementing its new system "Last week...hired 6 people who had a below 3.0 GPA." 6 out of an estimated 200 weekly hires. That's a far far cry from D student = A student and nobody can tell the difference. Also, all of the direct quotations from Google people in the article talk about years spent in academia, degrees like doctorates, and interviews being the poor predictors. Some of the best programmers I know dropped out of high school. Doesn't mean I couldn't tell apart a room of A students from D students or that I couldn't use the A students better for many jobs I might need to fill.

<comment><USER6> "That's a far far cry from D student = A student and nobody can tell the difference."

That's what the results found. Google just didn't change their hiring policy accordingly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Some kids would be excellent at grading teachers. Unfortunately some would just have a grudge, or just have a power trip and try to sabotage teachers. I think on average they would be a good reflection of how well-liked the teacher is, but maybe not how effective they were at teaching.

For example the tough math teacher would get a bad evaluation, but the cream- puff teacher who never assigned homework and gave everyone A's would get a good evaluation.

<comment><USER18> _For example the tough math teacher would get a bad evaluation, but the cream- puff teacher who never assigned homework and gave everyone A's would get a good evaluation._

I always hear this objection, and it's usually brought up to discourage even experimental data gathering. I don't buy it at all, and I think it says more about the objectors' mentality than about the students'.

<comment><USER19> It's not a crazy objection; in other environments (for instance, inside corporations), peer and customer review regimes do foster CYA cultures. Also: the best teachers tend not to be the friendliest or easiest, and the issue is not just "will those teachers get bad performance reviews", but rather "will the act of measuring disrupt the behavior we're trying to measure?"

<comment><USER20> In many other situations that foster CYA cultures, the people doing the evaluating have as much to lose (might lose my job, lose a bonus, etc).

Student/teacher situations are somewhat unique in that students don't choose to be there, and will usually be gone in 1 year, and definitely in a few years. Students have far less to lose in this situation. That may make some of the be more harsh, but it likely (based on the article) will just make more of them honest.

I can't be honest with my boss because he might make life a living hell or fire me. I can certainly be honest with a teacher in a school who I'll never see again in my life.

<comment><USER21> Teachers can have a very big impact on someone's life. "Oh I see you want to go to this college, wouldn't it be an awful shame if that B turned into a C...."

<comment><USER20> the evaluations wouldn't be done until after the class is over, from how I read it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This survey was part of the larger study funded by Bill Gates. The claim of "prediction" is not supported by the evidence.. the correlations with test scores were low.. and in any case, this is another example of reifying test scores and stupid concepts such as "a months worth of learning" as if all learning is the same, regardless of the subject, the grade level, the prior experience of the kids and so on. The very low correlations with test scores are not surprising and a by-product of the survey questions, designed to check whether the "good" teacher gets kids to comply with rules, defer to the teacher's authority, think of learning as not making mistakes (and for the sake of Gates, stay on task all the time). Perfect conditioning for students being taught that education is a matter of doing well on fill-in-the bubble tests that Gates and this researcher seem to value as the single best measure of great education. See this and the links within it. [http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/guest- bloggers...](http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/guest-bloggers/the- biggest-flaw-in-the-gates.html)

</comment><comment><USER23> If the student evaluations correlate strongly with the standardized tests' measures of student progress, then:

a) What's the purpose of having both?

b) If the evals are preferred over the tests, will "good" teachers continue to teach to a predictable, standardized curriculum?

c) Is the correlation additional evidence in favor of "differential compensation", that is, a compensation program based at least in part on exam scores?

d) Even if the information supplied is similar, doesn't this extra test/survey administration detract from instructional time? Is the information gleaned sufficient to compensate for the loss of instructional time?

e) Atlanta (Georgia, USA) is still reeling from a years-long cheating scandal. If such evaluations become "high stakes" (and there will likely be a push to do so, despite likely union opposition), won't these results be exploitable as well? (And perhaps even more so, through campaigning, social engineering, etc?)

<comment><USER8> "What's the purpose of having both?"

What's the purpose of looking at multiple polls when you're trying to predict the outcome of the upcoming election? More evidence gives you higher confidence and lower margin of error. And as the article says, these student surveys provide clean, stable data that doesn't fluctuate very much from year to year and doesn't require much correction for race and family income.

These surveys take on the order of 10-15 minutes. That's nothing compared to a battery of standardized tests. They wouldn't have to be very informative at all in order to be worth the small sacrifice of instructional time, and if they're the second-best predictor of class achievement, then they're certainly worth the time (if the results are actually used).

I don't think there's going to be much movement to stop paying attention to standardized tests and curriculums, since these surveys don't measure the same thing - roughly speaking, the standardized tests seek to measure how much was learned, and these surveys add a dimension of _why_.

<comment><USER23> The point being, if they're strongly correlated, the "why" can already be inferred (assuming adoption of this particular theoretical causal chain).

I agree the movement toward testing is likely to continue unabated. The point was the futility of additional questions; when a strong correlation is already known, the responses can be predicted with a high degree of accuracy, so the additional information is not really "additional". Yes, social scientist prefer multi-item measures and avoiding a single source bias (particularly when publishing theory), but in the end, if the correlation is maintained, not much new is really learned.

(And one of the reasons for multiple election polls is that the results change over time, and leading up to an election, that's relevant. Additionally, the entire electorate isn't polled each time, so the "cost" to the system is lower, relatively speaking.)

<comment><USER8> Let's make some simplifying assumptions: the survey identifies two causes of poor performance, a lack of academic rigor, and a poor classroom environment (such as a teacher that's mean and unresponsive to requests for help or clarification). Those two categories are weighted equally on the survey - <USER3> teacher who gets 100% on the survey is good in both categories, a teacher who gets 0% is bad in both categories, and a teacher has more than one way to score 50%.

So, if both of those factors affect student performance on standardized tests, then there will be a strong correlation between the overall survey scores and the test scores. But analyzing the details of the survey results can offer actionable guidance that the test scores can't - the survey _does_ provide useful information for how mediocre teachers can improve, even when it matches the test scores in predictive power for future test scores.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> next step , let kids grade there parents , and the administration calls social services when scores are low.</comment>


Show HN: Oolite space game in HTML5/WebGL - <AUTHOR> http://grondilu.github.io/oolite/test-coriolis.html

<comment><USER2> Bring on the flashbacks of all those hopeless docking attempts in Elite.

</comment><comment><USER3> Very cool - I look forward to digging through the code sometime, thanks for sharing.</comment>


Ask HN: How to get simple gadget prototype built? - <AUTHOR>

There are tons of sites where you can list a software problem and people build to write code for you, similar ones for logo and graphic design, etc. Is there a similar site where you can specify the main idea of a simple electronic gadget and have a prototype built (cheaply)?<p>What I need is a stand-alone, self powered Bluetooth module that will continuously transmit a simple code (to be installed in large numbers in a store). I am a software person so don't have the slightest idea how to build a prototype. <comment><USER2> Doing accurate triangulation (localization) of a bluetooth receiver from a bunch of active bluetooth nodes is maybe a little more difficult than it seems.

Certainly a great idea in theory, but the accuracy of your localization will depend on the signal propagation model you apply to the received signal strength (RSS) that the phone provides. I would bet that it's difficult to find a phone that will give you signal strength in dBm at a high update rate.

I worked on a localization project using passive RFID tags and an RFID reader (a more power efficient setup than having active bluetooth nodes). Especially in a store/mall type environment with many people moving around, I think it becomes hard to get a decent model of expected signal propagation (mainly due to constantly changing multi-path signal amplitude).

All of that said, for your application you might be able to get by with the reduced accuracy (within 10 feet might work?).

With bluetooth, you also have to consider the number of connections a bluetooth receiver can handle. That will probably greatly restrict your density of nodes. RFID again holds an advantage here, in that RFID is a very low-level interaction, while bluetooth is much higher level. This problem just screams RFID. Too bad everybody's phone doesn't have a built-in RFID reader... or a software radio!

</comment><comment><USER3> I can help you with that. Email me if you like.

Hardware prototyping is a _little_ different than software proto's, because you mostly incur real costs to develop things, which also makes mistakes costly.

Depending on what you want, there is a high probability you can use COTS dev kits and a little bit of a microprocessor (PIC, Atmel, Stamp, etc.) to make a fully functional (albeit somewhat larger and more expensive than production version) prototype.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks brk, I'll email you tonight to discuss.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If you want to have everything built you are going to have to use multiple people: 1 for the enclosure and then another for the electronics and software. Look on elance.com and guru.com use people ONLY with recommendations and experience in what you want to do. Also in the req doc place a code or phrase they need in the subject line so you know they read the req doc.

To buy parts: digikey, mouser, arrow

There are a ton of good prototyping firms in the US that will make you a prototype within a week, once you have a design.

</comment><comment><USER5> There was a post not to long ago about a guy who made drum sticks that make drum sounds as you beat them in the air. His first prototype was sensors strapped to cardboard tubes. I would suggest doing something similar have your first prototype be anything you can get to work regardless of form factor. After you prove the concept then work on more realistic prototypes.

</comment><comment><USER6> This sounds like it could be better to use RFID. Depending on the application of course. Could you go into more detail?

<comment><AUTHOR> The idea is the basic indoor mall/store navigation thing: Each BT transmitter will send out a unique code tied to its location. An app on the phone detects the nearest n of these and determines location by triangulation.

If the sensors are cheap, they can placed dense enough to provide pretty good localization. The mall can pay for them. Say, if the transmitter is ~$5, we can place 200 of these in a mall for $1K, which isn't that much, I think. The transmitters should be low-power to minimize maintenance, e.g. go for a month or more. They should also be small to be unnoticeable.

What do you think?

<comment><USER6> Hmm. I figured you were depending on people's phones to do the reading. I assume you're doing this in order to help the customer navigate the store?

If you could have the customer pick up a handset RFID reader (with your app on it I suppose?) that they return when they leave, RFID could work. I suggested RFID because the tags don't need any battery or power supply. The readable range might be a little less than with Bluetooth transmitters, but I have seen read distances of 50 or so feet. And tags are cheap and readily available, too.

<comment><AUTHOR> That is actually a good idea in settings where customers can/want to borrow a device from the store or mall, e.g. the RFID reader can be incorporated into the self checkout barcode readers that some supermarkets handout.

For a typical mall scenario, though, I think people will be reluctant to deal with the hassle of another device.

<comment><USER6> Right, another device is always a hassle. Anyway, food for thought.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Magic in a Box: My First Day Using Myo - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@allingeek/magic-in-a-box-my-first-day-using-myo-aded707c2042

<comment><USER2> I have a Myo as well, and it's pretty disappointing. The gestures are so rarely recognized correctly for me (maybe 20% of the time for the fist, pinky to thumb and open palm) that it's always easier to do the action another way. Other people have much better luck, so it may just be limitations in their training data (also, there's no way to train the classifier for your particular body, so you're currently stuck with averages).

But the real disappointment is that there's no access in the SDK to the raw EMG data. This means that as a developer, you only have access to the (in my case useless) gestures and the accelerometer data, which can be captured by much smaller and cheaper devices.

I'm hoping that Myo will open up their data sources, or at least improve gesture recognition. Right now it's pretty useless as a developer device.

<comment><USER3> What were you hoping to do with the raw EMG data?

<comment><USER4> Well, for one thing, he could train a classifier that works for his particular physiology.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> What is this trend of writing a lot of words about a _new_ product without ever _saying what it is_? Am I supposed to already know all the strange, early brands that just released a developer kit? At least this article is linking to the Myo web page at the beginning (that means a context-switch, maybe I'll not even bother returning), and the Myo page actually says what it does (many presentation pages just have a catchy phrase like "it changes everything" without bothering to tell _what_ it is).

<comment><USER6> Even worse the format of article was just unbearable. Such a long article with distracting background and in your face giant images. My reaction was to keep scrolling to get gist of it and in about 20 seconds I lost interest and moved on to see comments on HN to get summary. Now I get it that it's hand gesture device but I already have a feel that article was marketing piece so let's move on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I never heard of a Myo before this article. However, I am extremely intrigued! The idea of magically waving my hand and doing actions is awesome. What if I can make a fist to take a picture, or touch my pinky with my thumb to answer a phone call?

Is there any chance there's some "killer app" that finds a special use case that dramatically unlocks some potential in people to get stuff done faster, or easier, with a Myo? Can anyone think of one?

<comment><AUTHOR> There are a bunch in the works. The dev kits just started shipping but alpha versions have been in the hands of some awesome people for quite a while. The next few months should be loads of fun!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm surprised the Myo doesn't have default actions for various finger flicks or wags. If I could flick to scroll up and down pages or zoom in/out, then make a fist to close, that would be incredibly useful for something like using a TV.

Edit: Another really cool thing would be if you could put it on your thigh and use toe movements as input. Four myos for four discrete types of control!

Edit 2: How about something around the neck? It could be a huge step in enabling people with certain types of disabilities to control things more precisely.

<comment><AUTHOR> There are more coming. This is some beta and dev kit level stuff. I know there are already some Chrome plugins for browsing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I never heard of this until just now and this is my good friend that wrote the post.

It reminds me of Halo from the show Continuum. The early alpha version before it gets deeply integrated into your physical being.

Fast-forward 10 years and we'll be wearing these things, only they'll be called iBod and it will be a combination iWatch and iGlasses and freakishly integrated in our lives.

Ready Player One!

</comment><comment><USER10> We got to play around with these at CalHacks last weekend, the winning hack was actually a Myo controlled drone, if I recall correctly. Really cool stuff!

<comment><USER11> We hand a drone project at Hack The North that we wanted to use with the Myo, but all of us were using Linux machines and they only had support for Mac OS and Windows.

We stuck with a Leap Motion, although we wasted too much time trying to get the Myo to work (VMs and python wrappers) we didn't get to finish our hack in the end..

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I only skimmed it but did he ever say what he was using it for? It seemed to focus more on how it feels to wear than the utility.

<comment><AUTHOR> Since its so early stage, there aren't many applications released yet. So, I figured I'd focus on the device itself and wait to have more data before tackling the uses.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> What's this even about? And calling it "magic" only raises anticipations of hot air painted pink. Medium looks more & more like a collection of useless marketing fluff.

<comment><USER9> I had the same question "What's this even about?" but I decided to read the article and magically my question was answered.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Gingr - A platform for dog kennels & daycares - <AUTHOR> https://demo.gingrapp.com/auth/login?demo=true

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a culmination of a 6 month side project. Have 2 paying customers so far who have helped drive development.

Gingr is a platform for dog kennels & daycares that helps manage reservations, report cards, immunization records, etc...

The next step is to build a customer facing side where they can login and request new reservations, view past receipts, etc..</comment>


New easy-to-use device quickly and accurately screens for a variety of diseases - <AUTHOR> https://www.futurity.org/envision-medical-test-diseases-1911622-2/ <comment><USER2> For a long time, microfluidics researchers we're telling similar stories in academic journals.

But the field seem to have some problem in crossing over to "disruptive" commercial products. Not sure why.

</comment><comment><USER3> Isn't this similar to the Theranos tech?

</comment><comment><USER4> Only 72¢, just think of the potential profit margin!

<comment><USER5> I think there might be an incentive for money eyed businessmen to keep prices for these kind of products low. The more people have a verified decease, the more you can sell specific (expensive) cures to. As opposed to not knowing the treatment they need or people just living with the symptoms because they can't even afford a diagnose. Making people healthy doesn't bring you money. Keeping sick people alive (albiet in better health than before) does.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Theranos 2.0?

<comment><USER7> How is this device anything like Theranos? Theranos promised a world with less of a need for lab testing and claimed to empower individuals to analyze their own vital statistics. This is a product for disease detection in labs. They are more of a thematic contradiction of one another than anything else.

<comment><USER6> Theranos promised to use microfluidics to deliver fast, low-cost test results at the point of care.

<comment><USER8> Theranos didn't publish any studies or do any basic research. This is a press release based on a proof of concept article. It's totally different.

<comment><USER9> For good or bad, any move in this space is going to draw inevitable comparisons to theranos. Yes this current example is based on a proof of concept, but at some point any research has to hit the product phase, and that is especially when theranos blowback will produce both criticism and scrutiny.

<comment><USER10> Theranos is exactly what I thought of as soon as I saw this.

They're not claiming to do it with only a "nano-tainer" of blood, or to do a bunch of the level sensing things (cholesterol, blood sugar, PSA, etc) that Theranos promised. It's also not as small as a package of reagents.

But it looks like this works the way Theranos CLAIMED their tech worked, only in single use form without the machine to do some of the work for you.

Comparisons are 100% inevitable.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


French consumer association warn Nintendo to fix Joy-Con for free or face trial - <AUTHOR> https://www.quechoisir.org/action-ufc-que-choisir-nintendo-switch-stop-a-l-obsolescence-des-manettes-n72531/ <comment><AUTHOR> Context: UFC Que Choisir is the biggest association for consumer protection in France.

They recently raised complaint that the Joy-Con of the Nintendo Switch where prone to early failure and that, when contacting Nintendo about defective Joy- Con, Nintendo would only propose a new one for 45€ or send the old one back for 15€.

This might be a violation of the current EU regulation forcing manufacturer and reseller to repair or change defective product for free for two year after the product was sold.

The association also argue that the new Switch Lite presenting the same issue despite being a new product show that Nintendo is unwilling to fix their product and is planned obsolescence (which is illegal in France).</comment>


Server-Side JavaScript Injection - <AUTHOR> https://media.blackhat.com/bh-us-11/Sullivan/BH_US_11_Sullivan_Server_Side_WP.pdf <comment><USER2> Strangely long article for what amounts to: server runs eval on user input, security problems follow.

<comment><USER3> It's funny how we've been taught for _years_ not to use eval for "security reasons" and I always thought "eh, how much harm can someone do in their own browser? But I won't use eval anyway."

...then Node came along and I vowed to never consider eval even an option. I mean, that's a HUGE risk if you _eval_ any user input on the server side. In fact, the only valid use I've seen for eval is template engines like Jade, but they don't touch user input.

<comment><USER4> What if one of the libraries you call into use it?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's interesting to see SQL injection techniques reworked to attack Mongo, but not really surprising. Not following good coding practices is going to cause problems regardless the language. Nosql, SSJS and the like won't protect you from yourself if you don't sanitize user input.

</comment><comment><USER6> This is all bad code practices. Why use eval since we have a fast JSON parser.

Why use map/reduce for user interaction queries. Since we have mongo's JSON based querying.

Btw. Mongo can also vurnable to JSON queries with taking query JSON directly from the user.

</comment><comment> mck- Makes me wonder if 'eval' still serves a legit purpose

<comment><USER7> It can be nice for quick and dirty things like this:

function sum(numericArray){return eval(numericArray.join('+'))}

Of course, that assumes you're smart enough not to use it on arrays that might contain user input, or you'll end up being susceptible to things like sum(['alert("pwned")']).

<comment><USER8> That code takes a terrible detour. To do a simple reduction, you build a STRING, hand it over to the parser, which creates an expression, which is converted to bytecode and then it can be interpreted/JIT-ed.

I can't imagine it actually being faster than normal array functions, and if it's the case it yet again proved what an abysmal language JS is :-)

But seriously, don't use eval this way. The array may not seem to contain user input on first glance, but it's very fragile: a small bug, a change to the code (for example, by another programmer, or by you when you're not paying attention) can easily cause it to be.

You're never "smart enough" to go around basic security guidelines to gain some (questionable) speed.

I think it's a good question by the grandparent what eval _is_ good for. Arguably it allows for some powerful paradigms such as generating code at run time, but similar things can be done with function closures and eval is just too often abused for parsing (wasn't there window.JSON.parse for that?)

<comment><USER7> All I'm saying is that if I'm putting together a quick demo or proof of concept or reduced test case, I'm always going to favor "easy" over "secure". And sometimes using eval is easier.

By the way, the performance of evaling an array that way is abysmal: <http://jsperf.com/array-summing-loop-vs-eval>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> martin-adams Yes, eval is evil. And remember folks, eval is just as evil in PHP where use defined data is nearby.

</comment><comment><USER9> it would take some next level negligence to write a server you could exploit like this.</comment>


Chuck Williams, Founder of Williams-Sonoma, Dies at 100 - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/06/business/chuck-williams-founder-of-williams-sonoma-dies-at-100.html <comment><USER2> Talk about a SF startup from 50 years ago. Williams-Sonoma is still one of my favorite food retailers. Everything from sous vide to Hario coffee cone drippers, it has really made life much more delicious for me. With a market cap of $5.6B, it makes you wonder if the other SF startups are valued at the right price, considering the enduring legacy of Williams-Sonoma even if it is retail (albeit curated).

</comment><comment><USER3> Williams? So...no moa? RIP</comment>


LiveAgent: Over $250K monthly recurring revenue with a spin-off project - <AUTHOR> https://www.failory.com/mistakes/liveagent <comment><USER2> "Do you want to grow your business? With GenM you can get free marketing from an apprentice as part of their training. The student will work 40 hours per month creating content, increasing SEO rankings, carrying out advertisement campaigns..."

'The _student_ will _work_ '?

So they just straight up admit they're exploiting students as unpaid employees? Students aren't supposed to work, they're supposed to learn. Damnit, America.

<comment><USER3> According the the DoL, it looks like there's nothing wrong with what they're doing. As long as they only work on the free marketing projects, it thier work would just count as training.

[https://www.dol.gov/whd/regs/compliance/whdfs71.htm](https://www.dol.gov/whd/regs/compliance/whdfs71.htm)

<comment><USER4> It wouldn't count as training unless there is some formal training program put on by the company. Additionally, the customers are paying money -- they're paying $49/mo to receive the work of an apprentice.

This sort of stuff happens all the time. Its surprisingly common for unpaid interns to operate in a grey area. Can't really say this company is doing anything illegal without actually knowing what the program looks like for the apprentices. Every company I've worked at has decided its better to just pay them something, even if just minimum wage, to avoid risk of lawsuit. I also just think thats the right thing to do.

<comment><USER5> It seems odd that apprenticeships would prohibit the apprentice from working on activities that make money. I don't think that's the case anywhere. Maybe there's some special apprenticeship model where that's forbidden? It wouldn't make much sense since the purpose of most companies is to make a profit.

<comment><USER4> It doesn't explicitly forbid this, which is where the grey area tends to come into place. The official policy is to consider:

> The extent to which the intern's work complements, rather than displaces, > the work of paid employees while providing significant educational benefits > to the intern.

The argument would be made that since the company is charging for work from unpaid interns to be fulfilled only by unpaid interns, it would be displacing the work of paid employees as opposed to complementing them. Of course, there's a lot more to it than just that going into the litmus test.

<comment><USER5> Yes, it's definitely a grey area. All it would be needed to have it not "displace work of paid employees" would be for a paid employee to have supervision responsibilities to review the final work, even if that would be 0.1% of all the work done. I think that's a valid concern, thanks for raising that point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > including LiveAgent in software directories

Many many years ago I used to produce internal business plans for a big ISP - and if you had to quickly justify a proposed purchase, you always needed some competitor analysis so you had to go _find_ competitors to the product you are looking at.

Yellow pages don't really cut it, but a great source was "Analyst reports" where there would be some bubble diagram showing market share and competitors.

What I think i am saying is that in the B2B space, above a certain price tag, the best thing you can do is to identify the biggest dogs in your niche, and do all you can to have PR stories out there saying "$YOURCOMPANY, unlike competitors bigdog and biggerdog ..." or better still (but harder) "biggestdog, like competitors biggerdog and $YOURCOMPANY"

<comment><USER7> You're talking about Gartner reports, although I'm sure there are other companies which provide similar research data.

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

<comment><USER6> Yeah thanks - could not remember the name. Forrester was another who had locked into this idea, but these days a google search for "competitor x" probably will work as well.

Curious that google casually disrupts even that

<comment><USER8> I usually do either/both of:

\- Search for 'better than [x]'

\- Type '[x] vs' into Chrome's address bar to see what autocomplete provides

<comment><USER7> I do that all the time, usually for software, although it can be a bit more difficult for under-marketed things like open-source software without a marketing budget.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Good interview as usual on Failory. He posts lots of them on Barnacl.es, too. Gotta poke at this:

"On the other hand, no software is perfect and if somebody says, their software is bug-free, they are lying."

Strawman to dismiss folks who argue for high-quality software. If they think it doesn't exist, they probably didn't know about Cleanroom Software Engineering and Praxis' Correct-by-Construction:

[http://infohost.nmt.edu/~al/cseet- paper.html](http://infohost.nmt.edu/~al/cseet-paper.html)

[http://www.anthonyhall.org/c_by_c_secure_system.pdf](http://www.anthonyhall.org/c_by_c_secure_system.pdf)

There's a difference between accidentally being buggy because the problem is that hard and intentionally leaving it buggy for faster iterations. They're doing the latter. Which is fine in their situation. They could probably adopt some proven approaches to increase their QA results on the cheap, though. Easiest route is some slice of design/code reviews plus contracts (esp pre- conditions) with contract/property-based testing and fuzzing. Catches all kinds of problems.

</comment><comment><USER10> I think the title (intentionally) suggests this was some amazing overnight/fast success. While it is successful for sure, I think the fact that it took four years to go from 20 to 250 is significant.

It's still good growth, but I expected it to have all happened in one year based on the title alone.

<comment><USER11> Slightly off topic, but it's not the only thing fishy about the article. In the "Backstory", he talks about his first (failed) venture and this really stood out to me (emphasis mine):

> We were kids and we were _selling virtual server space for_ games like > Counter Strike or _World of Warcraft_ to other kids.

Blizzard has never sanctioned third party or self hosted servers, if you're hosting WoW on a private server you're breaking ToS and risking a hefty lawsuit. I have to wonder if that contributed to the failure of his first company, or if perhaps it was just a poor choice of game title to embellish his story. Either way, it smacks of dishonesty.

<comment><USER12> I'm also surprised Salesforce hasn't tried to shut them down, considering it has a product named "Live Agent" as part of its Service Cloud: [https://help.salesforce.com/articleView?id=live_agent_intro....](https://help.salesforce.com/articleView?id=live_agent_intro.htm&type=5)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm curious how LiveAgent's recent lifetime deal affected their recurring revenue.

Probably lost some current users to that, but in the long-run, it probably increased it by a lot.

Since they where smart enough to only offer two users and more users are set at top-plan pricing.

</comment><comment><USER14> Having worked in customer service for many years, I've used LiveAgent's chat products at multiple companies and was not impressed with the actual software itself.</comment>


Structr.js: Structure for Javascript - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/spiceapps/Structr

<comment><USER2> I might be weird, but I don't like coding in Java. That's why I write js. This sounds horrible.</comment>