Evidence That ADHD Is a Genetic Disorder - <AUTHOR> http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/09/100929191312.htm <comment><USER2> One thing to note about ADHD research: The bar for getting diagnosed with ADHD in a clinical trial is much higher than getting diagnosed with it by your family doctor. All of the symptoms involve a great deal of leeway and personal interpretation, and in a clinical trial, they are really, really strict about that stuff. A doctor, who has a financial incentive to prescribe ADHD medication is much more likely to bend the diagnosis towards positive.

There is no shortage of writings by smart people arguing ADHD is over diagnosed. I am also of the opinion that it is. But I also think ADHD is a real disorder. I have no doubt that the findings of this study apply to people who really have ADHD. I also have very little doubt that this study doesn't apply to the vast majority of kids who have been diagnosed with it.

</comment><comment><USER3> As a child of 8 years old, I was given 120MG of Ritalin per day. I rarely slept the first 2 years. If I did it was around 6am for an hour or so. Then I had to take my morning dose for school. They also wanted me to take a pill to sleep, which felt so horrible I cannot even explain it. I was a zombie in the morning if I took it, then onto the morning ritalin dose. I would just do pushups in my room until 3am some nights just to get the energy out.

Yes, I did well in school while I was on it. Yes, I stayed out of trouble when I was on it. But I was not myself. I felt as if I were on drugs. I did not learn "how to learn" or "how to get things done" without being on drugs. When I finally kicked the habit in college, I was a mess. I couldn't do anything that took more than 30 seconds of concentration. I had to learn how to live life without drugs. For a condition I may or may not have had. It took me to more years to finish my last semester of college because I could not function. Years later I've relearned what I should have learned as a child – how to discipline myself and get things done.

The DSM IV/V has a very loose definition of this "DISORDER". The genetic basis I don't doubt, because at one time in our evolution it was a selective adaptation that made us better at hunting, preventing accidents, and trying new things. Now, because our society resides in cubicles, desks, and institutions, it's a "DISORDER" that needs to be medicated.

Just be good parents and give your child an environment where his or her differences can thrive. Find some open space and let them loose for several hours a day. Homeschool them with creative and intriguing lessons tailored just to them. Do whatever you can to allow their abilities become advantages rather than brand it a disorder and ruin their self-esteem by sending them to the nurse twice a day to be force-fed a pill they don't need.

Don't just give them a pill. That's lazy and detrimental to them in the long run.

The over-prescription of these drugs is epidemic and I can't stand by and watch comments say :

"Each year a parent doesn't take actions is a year lost for a child" to convince people to medicate children for what used to be a genetic advantage (and still is given the right environment).

Each year a parent doesn't take actions to provide the right environment for their child's natural ability to thrive (rather than be told to have a disorder) is a year lost for that child.

<comment><USER4> What are you saying, that people should build corralled pens for children so that they can 'thrive' on their natural ability to bounce from left to right and generally moving about a lot but accomplishing nothing?

Your appeal to emotion argument is detrimental to all those who are (through prejudices like yours) denied treatment for what is an actual, physiological brain defect. 120 mg is a lot, it may have been too much for you, or you may not have ADHD, I don't know. But denying that a disorder exists because you had a bad experience is intellectually dishonest and holding back the treatment of hundreds of thousands if not millions, and social acceptance of treating it.

The science is clear on this point: ADHD exists, it is treatable, and the quality of life of people who have it is improved significantly with medication and behavioral therapy. That methylphenidate works has been widely proven scientifically, and its effects have been studied for decades. It's true that we don't know everything about it, and we will need further studies for decades, but that doesn't take away from the dramatic improvements in functioning that many people get from it.

Your 'argument' seems to be based on 'But I was not myself.'. I'm sorry that you apparently feel that there is some sort of mystical 'true self' that is somehow different when your neural functioning is chemically improved, and I hope that until you come to terms with reality you can live a productive life and be generally happy. But until then, don't be the crab at the bottom of the bucket.

<comment><USER3> Is that so? I don't recall saying those things.

I did say an open space for them to get the energy out, so that when they return they are more able to focus on 'accomplishing things'. Whatever it is kids need to accomplish other growing up.

Yes, I'm biased (not prejudiced). Due my experience, which I stated clearly.

Taking a set of traits that don't work in modern society and calling it a DISORDER is the only intellectual dishonesty here. Prescribing meds for a behavioral traits that people don't approve of is selfish, controlling, and a true detriment to those kids.

That ADHD (which I did not deny exists, I stated it did, and that I believed it's genetic basis) is treatable by Ritalin/Adderall I don't deny.

I just happen to know the long-term effects are detrimental. Studies happen to back me up.

Studies also show behavioral therapy is as good as medication. It's far better for kids as they get to learn about life without being on drugs. They learn real life skills rather than brute force concentration through drugs.

"I was not myself" is true. I was drugged with something that crams neuro- chemicals into my brain making me into something other than I wanted to be.

There is no true self (especially mystical). There was a natural me and a me on Ritalin (which was very different). I would have preferred to learn the life skills I needed and haven't learned until recently. I had the experience for a reason and often I believe it is to let people know about it and possibly protect other kids from what I experienced.

Sincerely, -Crabby McGee

<comment><USER5> The human brain is arguably the most complex system on the planet. We have a very poor understanding of how it functions so we fall back to the old, "is this useful metric" and DISORDER only refers to things that are less than optimal.

There are plenty of environments where a mild level of ADHD is not an issue; unfortunately children are expected to be able to sit and concentrate for several hours a day. In that context the term DISORDER is appropriate which is not to say it can be compensated for just that there is an issue. There are plenty of ways to compensate for poor vision and people are starting to think of mental issues in those terms. Unfortunately it's harder to change the environment or give extra attention than a cheap external prosthetic. Thus, drugs are often the first choice, even if they have minimal value or just trade harming the user to help those around them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is welcome news. I recently got diagnosed and after taking the medication, I've found a great increase in the quality of life.

There are a few who are very _anti-drug_ when it comes to this condition and their children. Let me tell you from personal experience, these people are doing more harm to their children than good. Education is important.

Depending on the severity, each year a parent doesn't take action is a year lost for their child.

<comment><USER7> "Let me tell you from personal experience, these people are doing more harm to their children than good."

The problem is that the science clearly says the opposite:

"At the end of 14 months, core ADHD symptoms were reduced more in the children treated with stimulants than with behavioral therapy. However, at the end of three years, 'medication use was a significant marker not of beneficial outcome, but of deterioration. That is, participants using medication in the 24-to-36 month period actually showed increased symptomatology during that interval relative to those not taking medication.'"

[http://www.madinamerica.com/madinamerica.com/Children_files/...](http://www.madinamerica.com/madinamerica.com/Children_files/3-year%20followup%20of%20the%20NIMH%20MTA%20Study.PDF)

"At the end of six years, medication use was 'associated with worse hyperactivity-impulsivity and oppositional defiant disorder symptoms,' and with greater 'overall functional impairment.'"

[http://www.madinamerica.com/madinamerica.com/Children_files/...](http://www.madinamerica.com/madinamerica.com/Children_files/Mta%20at%208%20years.PDF)

"Within 21 months, 11 percent of children treated with a stimulant for ADHD developed 'psychotic symptoms.'"

[http://www.madinamerica.com/madinamerica.com/Children_files/...](http://www.madinamerica.com/madinamerica.com/Children_files/Psychotic%20side%20effects%20of%20stimulants.pdf)

"Two-thirds of the adolescent patients hospitalized for mania at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center had been on stimulants 'prior to the onset of an affective episode.' Stimulants, the researchers concluded, may 'precipitate depression and/or mania in children who would not have otherwise developed bipolar disorder.'"

[http://www.madinamerica.com/madinamerica.com/Children_files/...](http://www.madinamerica.com/madinamerica.com/Children_files/Prior%20stimulant%20treatment%20in%20adolescents%20with%20bipolar%20disorder_%20association%20with%20age%20at%20onset.pdf)

via <http://www.madinamerica.com/madinamerica.com/Children.html>

<comment><USER6> If we're getting into a debate of whether medications can have other effects than intended, I cannot argue that.

ADHD and ADD should be treated in completely different ways. People diagnosed with ADHD have a much higher chance of psychotic symptoms than those who are only of the inattentive type. Then there is the old saying, "if you've seen one child with ADHD, you've seen _one_ child with ADHD."

In my experience, and for many others, it has provided a world untold, halted depression, increased motivation and enjoyment in life. Stimulants aren't perfect, but we're throwing the baby out with the bath water when we ignore their usefulness.

<comment><USER3> Your experience is yours. How long have you been on medication? What medication specifically?

I've heard that some new meds are not stimulant. They might be good. But the old Ritalin/Adderall stimulants have quite possibly caused the psychotic symptoms you are talking about. That's what they do.

Are you familiar with street meth? Ritlain/Adderall are pharma grade long duration forms of that. They have made me crazy before. And they don't "Halt Depression" they get you so busy you that you won't reflect on yourself.

Artificial increases in motivation are silly. If you aren't inspired on your own to do something, you probably should be doing something else.

Stimulants are much less than perfect and throwing out a pharma grade street drug with the bath water is fine with me. It's drugs or it's not.

There are ways to handle ADD/ADHD without drugs. Change the environment. Forcing kids to take meth is just wrong.

<comment><USER8> If you're willing to throw out a "pharma grade street drug" then wouldn't you be willing to throw out _any_ pharma-grade drugs that are used directly on the street such as codeine, morphine, Valium, Vicodin, and any other broad spectrum pain reliever.

<comment><USER3> Not pain meds for legit pain.

But as a ex-addict of benzos I would restrict those to epileptic patients...

The data on benzos for mania, depression, and suicide is scary. Long term use has terrible effects.

Most docs don't prescribe the heavy ones for psychiatry anymore. Seizures are a different story.

<comment><USER7> "Most docs don't prescribe the heavy ones for psychiatry anymore. Seizures are a different story."

Benzos have actually made a huge comeback recently, and are quickly catching up to their peak prescription levels in 1975. In 2009, benzos were 3 of the top 20 most-prescribed psychiatric drugs prescribed in the US:

1\. Alprazolam (Xanax) 44,029,000

3\. Lorazepam (Ativan) 25,868,00

10\. Diazepam (Valium) 14,009,000

There were 83 million prescriptions for benzos written in 2007, as compared with 103 million at their peak in 1975. (Granted there are more people today, but still.)

source: [http://www.erowid.org/general/newsletter/erowid_newsletter18...](http://www.erowid.org/general/newsletter/erowid_newsletter18.pdf)

(And also Anatomy of an Epidemic, p. 131)

<comment><USER3> That is scary.

My experience,when I was addicted, was that I couldn't find a doc to prescribe them for me. Was it the dead-faced junkie staring back that prevented it? Probably.

It's sad they are so heavily prescribed again, because I know how it feels to rely on a pill to stop the pain and get out of my own head/anxiety. I'm lucky to have found another way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm one of those people who wishes they were diagnosed as a kid.

I've been diagnosed by two different psychiatrists with ADHD. I've been on Adderall (XR) at dosages up to 80mg, Strattera, Wellbutrin XL + 10mg Adderall (actually my favorite, but not so effective), and now I'm on Concerta (Ritalin) 27mg/54mg.

The 27mg dose of Concerta is minimally effective without affecting my sleep, so sometimes I need to boost it. I hate stimulants though, and I wish I could get along fine without them but it's just not possible. Strattera worked good but the "sexual side effects" were too weird for me to continue on. Wellbutrin + Adderall worked okay (with the benefit of me generally being a bit happier) but my psychiatrist after moving didn't want me on two medicines that can raise your blood pressure.

I ended up going to 6 different schools between 8th grade and graduating across 4 different cities. Despite that, I graduated high school with a 3.5 and started college as a Sophomore. My first semester in college I got a 1.8 and thrown in academic suspension. The next three years would be really rough. After that, I went to my family doctor and got adderall, and that helped out a lot at first, but it wasn't a miracle drug and I still had to really force myself to concentrate in weird ways to get through school, and that's really where the adderall helped. Towards the end, school got easier and I enjoyed it more, but I could also sit down and do homework.

I've gone off meds completely for a few months at a time almost once a year, and I just can't do it. I wish I would have been diagnosed with it as a kid and had the behavioral therapy along with it instead of having to wing it for the past 6 years, but that's in the past. I also wish there was a non- stimulant that worked really well without side effects too, but for now, I'm happy with the Concerta.

</comment><comment><USER10> I'm 26, and I was diagnosed with ADD last year, at the suggestion of my dad, who was not diagnosed until his 40's. It took me almost a year to start actively researching ADD, because I grew up in an upper-middle-class community where it was primarily over-diagnosed in unmotivated kids whose parents were convinced that brain dysfunction was the only thing that could _possibly_ keep their children from being A students. To say the very least, I was skeptical.

When I finally began learning about ADD, I was startled by how standard my story was. Reading _Driven To Distraction_ was a watershed experience for me; at times I was convinced that they had simply copy-and-pasted my academic transcript: " _Dreamer_ ," " _Has a creative mind that would produce incredible results if he applied himself once in a while_ ," " _Inconsistent. What happened to the A student sitting in my classroom last year?_ "

In perspective, so much suddenly made sense; not just my experiences in high school, but beyond that as well. I failed only one class in my entire academic career, a programming course in my second year of college. How ironic and confusing that my only failure would be in the subject for which I had the most passion. Now it made sense. Only two or three years ago from today, I almost lost my job because my output was so inconsistent. I barely scraped by and recovered, but the experience shook me. Now, I understood.

There are many forms of treatment, all of which I have experimented with. When it comes to medication, it took me a long time to settle on Adderall, which lets me focus like a normal person without any appreciable side-effects. The drug was a game-changer for me, like the first time I put on glasses.

I think I'm glad that I wasn't medicated as a kid, if only because of a deep uncertainty about medicating something as malleable as a child's brain. Conversely, going 25 years without diagnosis has also drastically affected every part of my life. (I have no idea how my dad dealt with it for almost 50 years.) This was also something that I grew to understand as I learned more about ADD; undiagnosed, it can lead to perennial struggles with depression, self-esteem, poor impulse control and a host of others. I think the most important thing about ADD isn't necessarily medication or even "treatment" but simply _awareness_.

"Laziness" is a symptom, not a root cause. If we can be mindful about the signs of ADD in childhood, we have already taken a huge step towards improving the quality of life for people with the disorder, and everyone they interact with. I'm sure there will be debates about how to treat it for many years to come, but simple awareness can only help.

<comment><USER11> I literally double-checked to see if this was copy/pasted from an old post of mine. Getting treatment for ADHD changed my life for the better immediately and dramatically, as well. And I've even used the, "It's like putting on glasses for the first time" metaphor.

<comment><USER10> Glad to know my post resonated with someone! I still struggle almost daily with ADD-related complications, but getting on the treatment bandwagon was a huge step forward.

<comment><USER11> Still struggling? That's kind of depressing. Sorry, hope it gets better.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Another popular (anecdotal) explanation why this disorder is more prevalent in America is that somehow the same genetic trait that motivated inviduals to pack up and move to another continent, when amplified (after hundreds of years) is somehow responsible for hyperactivity.

Basically "the settlers were a restless folk" they all come to America and breed with each other, after hundreds of years you end up with a good number of people who are "too restless to function".

Anway that is one popular theory, not sure if I personally endorse it but it would seem to be somewhat supported by this find.

Of course the counter-point could be that doctors + parents + pharma companies are just more eager to diagnose it in America, and I can see that happening too somewhow.

<comment><USER13> Nahhh. I think it has more to do with people being dead poor in their own countries and is why they immigrated to America (Occam's Razor), better opportunities. It is still the reason why people come to America today. Also, too many people want to use disorders as an excuse for their lack of success. "See, is not me, I'm actually pretty smart, is this damn disorder that is holding me back. Not my fault."

<comment><USER14> The overwhelming majority of "dead poor" people still wouldn't leave their home country. Most people have very, _very_ strong ties to friends, family and familiarity and have great difficulty with the concept of uprooting thier life, no matter how bad, in such a manner.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> > Children with ADHD have a significantly higher rate of missing or duplicated > DNA segments compared to other children

The problem with this study is they looked at kids who had been diagnosed and were on long term drug therapy. This is similar to studies that show that ADHD diagnosees on long term drug therapy have "brain damage", which matches the brain damage of long term stimulant users. The findings are not an indicator of ADHD, they are indicators of brain and genetic damage from long term drug use.

Much more effective than Ritalin, and safer, for treating ADHD is the prescription drug Desoxyn. It's not used as much because of the stigma of taking methamphetamine hydrochloride. I mention this because everyone agrees that methamphetamine is not an innocuous drug to take long term, the same goes for Ritalin, they both have very similar effects on brain chemistry.

<comment><USER16> This is not at all similar. It would be _highly_ surprising to me to find that long-term exposure to ritalin leads to deletions and copy number variations in someone's DNA. Furthermore, it is improbable that a drug causing DNA changes would cause the same changes across a population in a statistically significant way. Can you point me to any research that shows this to be the case?

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> For me, ADHD isn't a disorder as much as a collection of personality traits. I have a bunch of traits I constantly have to look out for to ensure I complete work, and I've built a system so that I can cope really effectively, w/o medicine.

To argue that it's any other case is sorta weird.

<comment><USER10> I don't think "disorder" and "collection of personality traits" are mutually exclusive terms.

<comment><USER17> I guess to be more specific: I don't think this should be treated as a medical condition. I'm in the Temple Grandin camp of neurodiversity.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neurodiversity>

<comment><USER18> I agree with you. I don't think just because one's trait isn't optimal to the modern environment it should be as a mental disorder and try fixing by medication.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> ADHD is a real problem, but the rate at which it's diagnosed, and the rate that kids are just thrown Ritalin and other drugs is alarming. A child's brain is a very plastic environment that is still developing. The impact it can have on the brain is not as predictable as a developed adult.

It would be foolish not to try more sensible approaches like diet/exercise/parenting FIRST, and if those have no impact, then consider alternatives. However, this is not how parents of today approach problems. They want the quick fix: give my child a pill/shot/instant gratification, so I can get back to my job.

Also, this article is from Sept 2010.. not exactly news is it?

</comment><comment><USER20> I think this article understates one point. ADHD is already known to be highly heritable, which already tells you genes are involved.

<http://i.imgur.com/G7jDX.png>

Also, the first association between ADHD and polymorphisms affecting the dopamine transporter was found in 1995.

<http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1801209/>

</comment><comment><USER16> This study is nearly a year old. Even at that, it is not an example of the _first_ eidence that ADHD is a genetic disorder. There's at least one other study from 2009 (<http://www.research.chop.edu/publications/press/?ID=475>) that had similar evidence.

</comment><comment><USER21> This is a debate about a pseudoscientific norm set by a bunch of "experts" who evidently dislike children and have convinced millions of parents their children are sick because they fidget in class.

</comment><comment><USER22> First, I do not believe ADHD is an disorder. It's a certainly a condition, but it's not an disorder. And so I say this: ADHD is a genetic advantage and not a generic disorder.

</comment><comment><USER23> The term ADHD is meaningless. It is simply the level of activity deemed excessive by the "expert" making the diagnosis.

</comment><comment><USER24> Interesting. Is there any way I can volunteer my DNA for them to have a play with? I was on Ritalin all through school.

</comment><comment><USER23> "ADHD" is not a medical condition. It is the level of activity deemed excessive by whichever "expert" is making the diagnosis. It was voted into existence by a show of hands.

</comment><comment><USER25> Genetic? I highly doubt th... Squirrel!</comment>


Why Is Zambia So Poor? - <AUTHOR> http://www.psmag.com/business-economics/zambia-poor-poverty-globalization-mining-corruption-66080/ <comment><USER3> >I don't even have a clear narrative for how my own country went from Deadwood to Real Housewives,

Because Zambia is poor.

To become a strong country, find a number of smaller countries and start killing their populations until they let you extract their resources and ship them back to your country. Eventually, leave the responsibility for killing people to local representatives that you give a bunch of guns and a tiny cut of the resource profits to. If the locals rebel, and look like they will be successful, find the strongest rebel and offer him the same deal. If he refuses, kill him, and go to the next strongest rebel.

Leave $1 in the country for every $100 you take out of it, and since you're leaving it with the elites that you created, they're just going to spend it on imports anyway.

Isn't that what the global south is for?

<comment><USER4> Which countries did, for example, Singapore invade and start slaughtering?

<comment><USER5> Or South Korea. I know South Korea was invaded, but cannot remember they started slaughtering people before becoming rich.

<comment><USER6> My favorite example would be Taiwan.

Kicked out of their home country, yet they thrive.

<comment><USER7> It's the other way around, I believe. Some of the citizens are exiles from China, but as for Taiwan they declared independence. China wants them back, they don't want to go back into the fold.

At least, that's what I've been told.

<comment><USER8> It's a lot more complex: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_of_taiwan#Political_st...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_of_taiwan#Political_status_and_the_major_camps)

Taiwan has very emphatically _not_ declared independance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Perhaps it's just my ignorance of Africa, but I was recently amazed to learn Zambia had a thriving 1970's rock music scene known as Zamrock. I was even more amazed that it sounded incredible. I can't say it will help you understand Zambia, but "Strange Dream" by Witch is one of the most haunting songs I've ever heard:

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6jOTvDU9Ts](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6jOTvDU9Ts)

Here's an interview with Emmanuel Jagari Chanda, the leader of Witch, which includes an overview of what else was happening musically in Zambia at the time, as well as some perspective on what's changed since:

[http://www.redbullmusicacademy.com/lectures/emmanuel- jagari-...](http://www.redbullmusicacademy.com/lectures/emmanuel-jagari-chanda --we-intend-to-cause-havoc?template=RBMA_Lecture%2Ftranscript)

</comment><comment><USER10> I guess this is the core reason

"It's easy to paint all of the problems in Zambia with this brush, to talk about kleptocrats wringing their privilege for as much income, as many perks, as they can squeeze. But even if Zambia was run by a coalition of charitable technocrats and Mormon philanthropists, that wouldn't solve the most fundamental problem of all: There simply isn't that much money to go around. In 2011, Zambia spent a total of $4.3 billion running itself. Stretch that to cover every man, woman, and child, and it amounts to just $325 per person per year. That amount—less than a dollar per person per day—has to cover education, health care, infrastructure, law enforcement, foreign debt … everything."

<comment><USER11> so.... the reason they are poor is that they don't have a lot of money?

<comment><USER10> I'm not an expert in economics, so maybe someone with a better understanding can weigh in.

But what I think the writer is trying to say here the economy (value of the total goods produced which is reflected in money circulated) is too small to support the population of zambia.

<comment><USER12> I would say that is not a very interesting answer. When asking why people are poor, the answer, "because the economy is small," makes about as much sense as, "because they are poor." It doesn't add any information.

Why is the economy small? Answers like, "because they are poor," are forbidden.

<comment><USER13> Perhaps the problem is with the question, not the answer. The Zambian economy has been growing fairly nicely recently, according to Google the GDP growth in 2012 was 7.3%.

A more useful question would be: was the growth of Zambian economy slow historically? If yes, why?

<comment><USER14> Zambia was a relatively wealthy place in Africa around independence, but the economy relied almost exclusively on copper, which is one of the most volatile commodities around. The pseudo-socialist government led by Kaunda helped unify the country but also drove the economy into the ground by providing massive subsidies all around and failing to create institutions to support long-term growth. The economy declined massively through 70s and 80s. Impending bankruptcy and structural adjustment programmes forced the government to pull back support, and then people protested and rioted to bring down the government and introduce multi-party democracy. The rebuilding process has been continuing (the first democratic handover of power happened a few years ago) and copper prices have been great, led by incredible demand from China.

The politics isn't perfect and economic diversification from mining is still only in it's infancy, but the trends are pointing in the right direction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Why are people in America so eager to help out other countries?

We have so many people in need here.

Is it just more glamourous to be Leonardo di Caprio in Africa on an zany adventure than help some poor homeless family on the streets of Tagg Flatts Oklahome?

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

<comment><USER16> Ah, you know what's interesting about that list? Most of those places have _very high_ proportions of Native American populations.

So we're looking at a different problem here: helping out the Native Americans. If the Europeans hadn't come over and colonized this continent, America would've been yet another "Africa" \- so to speak.

<comment><USER15> Damn, just noticed that now that you mention it.

America just kinda wants that whole 'Native American holocaust' thing to kinda quietly slip under the rug.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Wealth can't be created by transfer payments, it can only be grown.

Many countries, like Zambia, are really bad at economic growth. The reasons can be kleptocracy, bad legal systems, but also lack of investments in infrastructure.

<comment><USER18> This is really the major issue. "Growth" in the sense of "increase in actual production" is going terrific (granted, mostly by virtue of "Copper is practically the new oil - reserves, especially easy to access them" matters). What isn't going so great is the second part of "We should be careful with that and funnel it back into the national economy. Pay to play - the copper and other metals are only there once and we know what they are worth".

You can't really grow forever, but you can still grow and they do. But this is sort of like the early oil rush in the midwest. Oh wow, holy crap, people will give us 25 cents a barrel for crude! And we don't even have to dig it up, they'll even come over and do it! How cool is that?!? Uhh, not that cool when you were sitting on top of oil reserves the size of saudi arabia that are now all but bone dry with some entrepreneurial farmers pumping up a few barrels for a slight short term profit.

The main law that seems to be missing everywhere is "X amount stays here. No really. Invest whatever you want, but a certain part of the gained value is stuck in the local economy and another chunk is paid to locals because OUR HOUSE".

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Zambia's average IQ is 77. Is it _possible_ that an average IQ of 77 isn't conducive to prosperity?

<comment><USER20> People reject this for various reasons:

1\. They firmly believe IQ doesn't means anything.

2\. They realize IQ means something but that it is mostly mutable (Flynn effect, etc).

3\. They realize it's not especially mutable, but the tests in poor countries are unreliable.

4\. They reject such possibilities because they actually believe their lifetime of propaganda that "All men are created equal" etc, etc, and so don't even give IQ much thought.

5\. They don't even raise the question because it's politically or socially uncomfortable. For people in academia or in charities, this could extend to losing employment and gaining pariah status.

6\. They realize demographics actually do matter but don't want to consider the fact because:

6a. Same reason as #5.

6b. It's hopeless. No one wants to just walk away from a problem.

6c. Sunk-cost fallacy.

6d. "Helping" people or even discussing "helping" people gives a sense of moral purpose, or even moral superiority. (This is Bill Gates' reason, almost assuredly.) By contrast, saying, "Well, forget Zambia, look at the whole damn world: Black people just sort-of breed poverty," is the exact opposite. To say that in polite company is very offensive.

<comment><USER19> You'd think for people in academia, addressing socially and politically uncomfortable truths would be their du jour. How can the world fix the problem when it won't even look at possible causes?

<comment><USER21> I think the above poster is getting something wrong. While no one is going to come out and say "IQ is the cause for poverty", they'll happily say that poor education is and aim to fix it.

By providing good nutrition to the young, and good education the IQ 'problem' mostly takes care of itself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> "So Zambia is not failed. It is simply very, very poor. Sixty-four percent of the population lives on less than $1 per day"

And that is the key fact. Many of the comments in this thread are not specific to Zambia. There was a time when Zambia looked like a success story among African countries, as the first national leader after independence seemed more democratically minded and less corrupt than many leaders in Africa. The year Zambia became independent, I have read, it was wealthier than Taiwan--where my wife was living at the time. Zambia was neither unusually poor nor unusually badly governed among countries of the world when it gained independence.

So the key question in looking at international examples of national development is to slog through the process of John Stuart Mill's "method of agreement and difference"[1] and figure out what commonalities help countries develop and prosper, and what commonalities drag down the fortunes of the inhabitants of a country. "Ninety-four percent of the land in Zambia is customary or traditional, no one has a title to it. It's not just sitting there, people are living on it, farming, grazing animals, it's just technically under the control of a chief." That jumps out at me as a huge difference between Zambia and many countries that have developed more successfully--clear land title that can be readily transferred for money. Taiwan makes better use of its land, and developed better, I hypothesis, in part because it is clear who owns what land and who has rights in land. (There was land reform for poor peasants, making them landowners, in Taiwan in the 1950s. Then the economic development began there.)

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mill's_Methods#Joint_method_of...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mill's_Methods#Joint_method_of_agreement_and_difference)

AFTER EDIT: I posted hurriedly at first, having an appointment to get to. One other point, which generalizes to more parts of Africa and more parts of east Asia, is that for a given level of educational spending, many east Asian countries invested mostly in good-quality primary education for the masses, while many African countries set up a national university available only to an elite minority of the population. (And often enough, the national university graduates from African countries became part of the "brain drain" to other countries.) Raising the skill level of the masses diversifies the economy and makes even countries with very limited natural resources--of which Japan and Taiwan are noteworthy examples--able to develop through trade and transition from an agricultural economy to an industrial economy and then to a postindustrial economy. Few African countries have pursued a national education policy of broad primary education, those that have are among the African countries that are faring best.

</comment><comment><USER23> If you want to get a feel for what Africa is really like watch the acclaimed documentary Darwin's Nightmare ([http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0424024/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0424024/)). I've knew a couple who slummed it in Tanzania for a few years and there stories are hard to believe but are more or less in line with this movie.

</comment><comment><USER24> Democracy is a way to guarantee human rights in a developed or semi-developed country, it's not a way to develop your poor country. Installing democracy in a poor country is like installing Windows 7 on a 486: you gain the benefits of the new system, but you have to live with the accompanied slow speed, caused by the fact that the minimum system requirement is not met.

</comment><comment><USER25> The reason Zambia is poor is the exact same reason other countries are poor: the people of Zambia don't sell enough products to other economies in order to get richer.

Why don't they do that? it's a matter of culture. They don't open up to the possibilities of the economy around and outside their country.

</comment><comment><USER26> Not sure, but I heard that the book, "Guns, Germs, and Steel" by Jared Diamond addresses this question.

</comment><comment><USER27> Westerners, and Americans in particular, are very bad at understanding nationalism. This prevents them from understanding the failure of post- colonialism.

Throughout Africa and the Middle East we see countries with straight borders that used to be colonies of Western powers. These powers left and left behind democratic governments. These governments are plagued by the fact that the _countries_ they rule over are not _nations_.

A country is a political entity - a set of borders enforced by an army. A nation is a psycho-social entity. It is a group that people identify with, normally composed based on ethnic, linguistic, or religious similarity. Nationhood marks an in-group. Americans have an anti-nationalist, universalist ideology, so their brains reject this reality to the detriment of the places their armies occupy.

In most post-colonial countries, there are many different nations within an arbitrary border. Democracy does not work because the citizens don't see themselves as the same _people_. When a person gets power in the government, of course he turns into a "kleptocrat" instead of working for the common good because he doesn't value the "common good". He values the good of his people.

These post-colonial countries are also prone to civil war. If one ethno- religious group gets the majority over another, the losing group doesn't see the government as legitimate. So there is war and genocide. The post-colonial idealists in the West have done more damage to the world than the colonialists ever did through the proxy of civil war.

Democracy in the Congo led to decades of Civil War and now we even see Bantus eating Pygmies[1] - rape, disfigurement, and even cannibalism have become weapons in a brutal civil war. Likewise, if American troops leave Afghanistan, we will see a recap of the 90's civil war between the northern and southern ethnic groups.

There is no "Afghan" people - there are Pashtun and Tajik and Uzbek[2]. And they were on the tail-end of a civil war before the USA invaded, and now the USA wants them to _vote together_. What insanity. In an ominous sign, no Pashtun will join the "national" Afghan army. Putting people within the same borders and putting a single army in control over them doesn't magically make them care about each other.

This is leaving behind the absurdity of trying to impose Western norms on an African continent lacking thousands of years of western history with literature, law, and democracy. You don't get to Tom Paine without Cato - <USER2> there was a 1700 year process connecting the two. Western thinking about the rest of the world is full of unicorns and pixie dust.

[1] [http://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/jan/09/congo.jamesasti...](http://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/jan/09/congo.jamesastill)

[2] [http://origins.osu.edu/sites/default/files/2-12-map586.jpg](http://origins.osu.edu/sites/default/files/2-12-map586.jpg)

<comment><USER28> I lived in Zambia for a year around 2005, and my impression was that this 'nation-building' is one thing that Kaunda did really quite well. There is a strong sense of identity of being Zambian in parallel to the tribal identity. One way of achieving this was stationing secondary school students(almost all secondary schools are boarding schools) and young public employees (and in 70s quasi-socialist Zambia almost everyone with a job was a public employee) in regions other that their original tribal region. As a result, very many people married into different tribes, and very many people now have several tribal identites, which as a result aren't very strong.

Also they are indoctrinated that 'tribalism' is a bad thing, and they learn a lot about Bismarck in school. There is also a bantu language that isn't really associated with one of the major tribes but is a kind of lingua franca beside english in the urban centres.

<comment><USER29> Why Bismarck?

<comment><USER30> Because [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_von_Bismarck](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_von_Bismarck) unified Germany (I guess).

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qin%27s_wars_of_unification](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qin%27s_wars_of_unification) of China was more significant, I think, but via war.

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

<comment><USER28> Yes I believe that is the reason. Not a perfect analogy but I guess the point is that a nation can be united from what used to be a collection of fiefdoms.

<comment><USER29> I guess Italy would be a better comparison, because that didn't used to be a nation. Germany was united by culture and language for a while. (Only 1 in 40 people spoke what later became standard Italian upon unification.)

But I guess Germany is the more aspiring role model.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Zambia is poor because it never had an Ice Age.

<comment><USER32> explain?

<comment><USER31> Observation is prior to explanation. Compile a list of countries good at wealth-creation. Then make another list of the ones where people went through Ice Age conditions. Now compare them.

<comment><USER33> Correlation does not equal causation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Anyone care for a little tdlr; ?

<comment><USER35> It's a little long for a TLDR, but:

> The only thing I'm able to conclude after my trip here is that it's > incredibly difficult for a poor country to go about getting un-poor. Just > when you think you've got the right narrative, another one comes bursting > out of the footnotes. It's the informality. No, it's the taxes. No, it's the > mining companies. No, it's the regulators.

> And that's what makes fixing it so difficult. Does Zambia need better > schools? Debt relief? Microfinance? Nicer mining companies? Better laws? > Stronger enforcement? Yes. All of them. And all at the same time.

> You can't fix the land issues without tackling the corruption. You can't fix > the corruption without tackling the politics. You can't fix the politics > without addressing the culture. Thomas' family told him his nephews didn't > need to be in school. From their perspective, that's not totally irrational. > In a country with so few formal jobs and so much competition for getting > them, I can see how spending hundreds of hours, thousands of kwachas, on > education would seem superfluous. Thomas' daughter wants to become a lawyer. > You could almost forgive Thomas if he told her that the bar exam failure > rate is more than 90 percent, so what's the use?

<comment><USER35> Shortly thereafter, the author also writes:

> A week after I leave Lusaka, I meet a Zambian expat in Zimbabwe. She left > Lusaka four years ago, and she says every time she returns, there are more > cars, more roads, more restaurants, bars, gyms, decent cappuccinos.

> I tell her that in Lusaka I saw construction cranes on the horizon in every > direction.

> "It's all malls," she says. "Zambians love to go to the goddamn mall."

> That's not the only reason for optimism. Inflation is down to seven percent > from 20 percent last decade. International investors pledged $750 million > last year to build infrastructure. The new draft of the constitution limits > presidential powers and confronts the MP-hopping problem. Fundamentally, > Zambia is a stable country sitting on top of an El Dorado of fertile land > and lucrative minerals. In the long run, things will probably get better.</comment></comment></comment>


How Our Startup Does Technical Hiring - <AUTHOR> http://www.learnboost.com/how-our-startup-does-technical-hiring/

<comment><USER2> Rafael, thanks for sharing this great post. As my startup is building tech talent, the github magnet and contracting advice came just in time.

How do you pay programmer during contracting period (by hour or by project)? If pay by hour, how do you evaluate their work ethic? How long is your default trial period? Thanks!</comment>


Snap Inc. presents Yellow – An investment and mentorship program in LA - <AUTHOR> https://www.yellowla.com/about <comment><USER2> From the terms:

       By applying to Yellow, you agree to irrevocably waive any legal claim you
       may have against us under any theory of law in any territory, including, without
        limitation, copyright infringement or breach of implied in fact contract
        (idea submission), that your rights were infringed due to any similarity between
        your Content and any other content that is or may be developed by Snap

<comment><USER3> The funniest part about this, is that the chain would continue into one of Facebook's products after snap gets it.

I come up with a great idea for storytelling --> Snap says "yeah, that's our's now" \--> Facebook says "yeah, we prototyped it in a weekend and folded it into Instagram."

<comment><USER4> Yellow isn't looking for product ideas. They are looking for content.. Content is on a platform rather than folded into one, no?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I have to admire the courage to set up something like this when their own company is tanking.

<comment><USER6> My first reaction is that they're trying to give birth to a unicorn that'll save them

<comment><USER7> Yahoo's biggest asset was Alibaba

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "Investment of $150k for equity on founder friendly terms"

Interested to know the actual % they are taking for $150k...

<comment><USER9> Yeah seems like an important point to gloss over.

<comment><USER10> I'd imagine that it's different for each incubated project/startup

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Huh...so it's a play to get better/ more structured content on snapchat. Seems kind of anthetical to the whole point of snapchat(unstructured, free style content)

</comment><comment><USER12> FYI, email@example.com seems to be down. Tried to reach you and got the following response:

Message not delivered

Your message couldn't be delivered to email@example.com because the remote server is misconfigured. See technical details below for more information.

The response from the remote server was:

550 5.7.1 Relaying denied

Final-Recipient: rfc822; firstname.lastname@example.com

Action: failed

Status: 5.7.1

Diagnostic-Code: smtp; 550 5.7.1 Relaying denied

Last-Attempt-Date: Wed, 23 May 2018 15:13:45 -0700 (PDT)

<comment><USER12> Incidentally, so is firstname.lastname@example.com

Message not delivered

Your message couldn't be delivered to firstname.lastname@example.com because the remote server is misconfigured. See technical details below for more information.

The response from the remote server was:

550 5.7.1 Relaying denied

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I like this idea - does anyone know if there are other incubators for content creators? I never thought about building a show/movie/experience/etc as though it were a startup.

<comment><USER14> Popular Youtube vlogger Casey Neistat recently started 368. And he's teaming up with Patreon's CEO, Jack Conte.

> Conte detailed his idea in a video he uploaded to YouTube on April 20. > "Imagine if 368 had some sort of program where you could essentially be > sponsored as a creator," he said. "Say you get three or four thousand bucks > a month for some period of months to essentially quit your day job and just > be a full time creator."

> Sponsored creators would be able to take advantage of 368's facilities, > which could include podcast studios, video game streaming stations, and > screening rooms, according to Neistat. Meanwhile, the funding for those > sponsorships would come from Patreon, where Conte believes Neistat could > raise significant resources. "I think the community would be super excited > about participating in a program like that," he said, "that helps people > pursue their dreams."

[https://www.tubefilter.com/2018/04/24/patreon-jack-conte- cas...](https://www.tubefilter.com/2018/04/24/patreon-jack-conte-casey- neistat-368/)

<comment><USER15> I'm trying to get a hold of him :)

[https://twitter.com/thepatwalls/status/998727187707686916](https://twitter.com/thepatwalls/status/998727187707686916)

<comment><USER16> Keeping it brief is good and all but maybe give him a link to the website in question and also mention what would be the topic of your podcast?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I think I'm one of the few who liked the site. It loaded extremely fast on my horrible internet. I was able to get the information I needed, including which questions I should answer if I wanted to sign up.

No excessive photos, videos, and other nonsense. I found the font chosen to be adequate and easy to be read.

About the program, it seems to me that they saw a limit point on the content that people are creating on their platform. It is clear that they want more quality productions that serve as an anchor for users.

I've never been a heavy Snap user, but I always visit to see how it works when someone reports a change. It seemed to me that the new design was meant to divide my friends from the artists or the content produced by companies.

You in the middle, being able to choose, your friends on your left and content to spend time on your right. Few people debate this, but other social networks want the exact opposite. They have always gone in the direction of merging the two.

Thus, this incubator could facilitate the creation of content to its right. But she could also demonstrate better ways to consume this content and how to interact with your friends, who would always be on your left.

</comment><comment><USER18> Snap seems to be in full desperation mode. I understand the value of moonshots, but this isn't like Google X. This is just plain ridiculous.

</comment><comment><USER19> > What should I know about the program as an international founder?

> Applicants do not have to be United States citizens, but should be able to > stay in California for at least three months for the program.

> It will be the responsibility of each applicant to ensure their team members > have the proper paperwork in place to join.

> Do we have to be U.S. citizens?

> No, as long as you are legally permitted to operate your company and > physically participate in the program (not virtual).

> Can you get us work visas?

> No, we won't be able to handle any immigration related matters. If you need > help, we can refer you to legal and immigration services teams.

Can someone decode this one for an EU citizen?

<comment><USER20> Basically the answer is "no". If they're not willing to help with visas, there is no legal way for someone who isnt a citizen or GC holder to stay in the states for 3 months and work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'm looking forward to reading Snap Inc's bankruptcy filings.

When the US Fed interest rate rises above the inflation rate and fiat money has value again, Snap stock is going to be the first to snap.

</comment><comment><USER22> Please allow me to ask, what exactly is "mobile storytelling", is it a "newspaper" but for cool kids?

<comment><USER23> I think it's meant to be more like visual/interactive novels

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> This website seems to go out of its way to have an unfriendly design. The sharp yellows, the highlighting of singular characters in words in a different color.

Snap Design makes simple things complex.

<comment><USER25> It's been dubbed "digital brutalist" [1] style; as a rejection of the "streamlined, flat" designs of the last decade. Style evolves; Snap is targeting a younger demographic and the best way to say "we're not Facebook or google; we're cooler" is to reject all their design principles.

[1] [https://envato.com/blog/brutalism-ugly-web-design-trend- taki...](https://envato.com/blog/brutalism-ugly-web-design-trend-taking- internet/amp/)

<comment><USER26> > Snap is targeting a younger demographic

The design makes it look more like they are targeting a demographic nostalgic for the worst of late 1990s design atrocities.

<comment><USER25> Design is cyclical in about 30 year cycles. Grunge is back in. Everything ugly is beautiful again.

<comment><USER27> I recently learned Doc Martens boots are fashionable again. Makes me regret throwing my pair away in the 90s. Yes, I'm old. But at least back then they were all made in Great Britain.

<comment><USER25> Yep; docs, ripped jeans and flannel are all really fashionable right now. Feels like high school.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> The way the word "yellow" is highlighted can't be good for dyslexic people, right? (Or people blessed with the gift of sight for that matter)

</comment><comment><USER29>
      *Each year* we will choose a small group of individuals and teams from around the world to join our *inaugural* three-month program

</comment><comment><USER30> Now its facebooks turn

<comment><USER31> Ever heard of FB start?

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Was the name derived from: If it's yellow, let it mellow?

</comment><comment><USER33> Not sure what to think of this. Google & FB have internal frameworks and/or hackathons to encourage their own people to come up with ideas. After all the failed attempts of Snap (glasses, the redesign etc) to come up with some key new ideas, poor IPO, layoffs and other bad news, this seems to be a clear signal that screams: "we don't have the smartest people working at our company. We need your ideas to save our future."

<comment><USER34> They had layoffs? I did not know this.

<comment><USER35> ~220 engineers, salespeople, and content folks:

[http://variety.com/2018/digital/news/snap-snapchat- layoffs-7...](http://variety.com/2018/digital/news/snap-snapchat- layoffs-7-percent-cost-savings-1202740730/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> There is this trend where people build content heavy sites like this on using React. It's a weird choice since you want to optimize for SEO. Anyone know why people are doing this? Have this SEO issues around React been resolved?

<comment><USER5> React has server-side rendering so SEO is covered.

However it's still a complete waste of developer time & server resources to do this in React when a static website would be better suited for the task.

<comment><USER37> I really disagree that it's a "waste of developer time" to use React for projects like this.

`npm install next react react-dom` takes an insignificant amount of time and gives you an extremely efficient developer experience immediately, with automatic code splitting, server side rendering and great modern CSS support. Compared to the amount of time I've spent over the years fiddling with gulp/grunt configuration files for "static websites", it's a no brainer for developers who are already productive in React.

<comment><USER38> All you need for this site is a .html file and a single style sheet...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Taking a moment here to ponder the design of the webpage. If that style was the result of an amateur at an unsexy company, I'd imagine this would be considered "ugly" or "uninspired". Knowing its the product of a hip young company however one might label it "bold" or even "innovative". Reminds me of fashion, where the only difference between a person wearing goofy clothes and a model is everything besides the clothes themselves.

<comment><USER40> It feels if though they went for the YC/HN minimalism thing but executed poorly. A dark/black background can be pleasing to the eye, but combined with the yellow and hard white texts it's almost unbearably hard to digest. When I clicked to the application form, the white input boxes blinded me to the point where I had to close the tab almost immediately.

<comment><USER41> at least it's responsive!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Smart. People here are too focused on the design of the page.</comment>


Ask HN: How important is persuasion to your career? - <AUTHOR> Hey HN – how important is persuasion to your career?
On a thread a while back, one commenter had really positive things to say about it. I'm curious if other people feel the same way.
Here's what they said:
"There are some people that are magical. You go into a meeting with your mind made up, and then 30 minutes later, you leave the meeting with a completely different mindset. And you don't know how they managed to convince you so successfully. If you could figure that trick out, most of your non-technical career problems would be solved.
I've personally never learned this skill of persuasiveness, but I'd pay a lot of money if someone could teach me quickly."
I'm talking about the kind of person who is so good at persuasiveness that they convince you without you even realizing it. That's a totally different skillset from "argue until your opponent is exhausted and gives up". I had a coworker once that was pretty good at this. I'd go into a meeting with a strategy that I was positive would work, and I'd walk out of that meeting with his strategy -- and somehow I was convinced it was even better than my original one! (Sometimes it was, sometimes it wasn't, but I never resented him if it wasn't -- because he always somehow made it seem like it was the natural choice, not just his choice.)
Anyway, that's the kind of thing i'm talking about. It's easy to talk over people and beat them over the head til they do what you want. I'm more interested in getting everyone on my side and excited about it."
original thread - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11869688 <comment><USER2> I've done this by accident occasionally but don't have it enough under conscious control that I can reliably get my way every time. Actually, from the perspective of the person doing the persuading, it doesn't feel like persuasion at all: rather, it feels like the eventual outcome was _obvious_ and you simply explained it well enough that everyone agreed with you.

I will say that the key ingredients appear to be

1.) Comprehensive knowledge of the subject matter

2.) Lightning-quick, reflexive creativity.

3.) Immediate unconditional acceptance of what everyone else tells you.

That last point is key. To persuade people effectively, don't argue with them. (Arguing is very effective for persuading _yourself_ , but it doesn't change other peoples' minds.) Instead, you need to reframe the debate in other terms, bringing in alternatives that were outside of their conscious awareness. Since those alternatives were outside their conscious awareness, they have no preconceived bias for or against them, and since you were listening very carefully to what they were saying, you can propose things that avoid any of the hot-button concerns that will cause them to object to a proposed course of action.</comment>


The Amateur Cloud Society That (Sort Of) Rattled the Scientific Community (2016) - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/08/magazine/the-amateur-cloud-society-that-sort-of-rattled-the-scientific-community.html <comment><USER2> Here's a particularly dramtic asperitas cloud, from NASA's astronomy picture of the day:

[https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap130227.html](https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap130227.html)

<comment><USER3> If you love clouds, then you'll love New Zealand.

I did some flying down there, and not only do you see every type of cloud in a day, they change from one minute to the next.

IFR (I Follow Roads) navigation is still acceptable in NZ when the clouds come down to tree-top height and you're in a valley.

One of the most fantastic times of my life was flying a small airplane from North Island to South Island and back over the huge crater lakes. And lots of sheep!

<comment><USER4> Once flew with a guy in the now defunct CAF of NZ (redubbed Black Sheep Wing) from Auckland to Nelson and the general landscape resembled a beautiful stylized golf course (with a zillion sheep) . If you want a spooky sensation try flying from Dunedin to Christchurch, low (not too low) over the Banks Peninsula around sunset in October when the advection fog starts oozing down the mountain slopes. Reminds you of the old Steve McQueen grade B SF movie 'The Crawling Eye'.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What is best java hosting server available for cheap? - <AUTHOR>

* What are the features you like in the hosting server * How much does it cost per year * Is there a data limit? <comment><USER2> I learned this the hard way: never get the cheapest hosting. It's cheap for a reason and in the end, your business/app will suffer because of it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Do you have any java hosting in mind, which I can rely on?</comment></comment>


Facebook's Director of Engineering unwittingly reveals their Achilles' heel - <AUTHOR> http://sefsar.com/post/18189514096/facebooks-director-of-engineering-unwittingly-reveals

<comment><USER2> I think the basic point being made is valid. It might seem like splitting hairs to look closely at those three words, but the assumptions that Youssef argues lie behind them are (i would agree) borne out by the FB UX as a whole. I think the YoZuck blog has shown that he has thought hard about the issues. This opinion is not a case of over-reading, but something arrived at.

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't know if I agree with you on this one. I think you're diving in too deeply on three words that really could mean almost anything. It's like the way people tear apart a line of poetry to make it mean something it may not actually be attempting to express. I would be careful not to make a mountain out of a molehill.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't believe I'm diving too deeply into these words at all. In fact, I'm not really talking about the words; my point is that they are a symptomatic of a larger problem, that is, Facebook does not seem to adequately understand emotion, love and friendship.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Well written. I think you hit the nail on the head with the fact that it should be an experience rather than us just consuming information. Consuming makes us sound like we're mindless zombies.

</comment><comment><USER2> Furthermore, I think the point is not that Boz, by his choice of wording, "attempted to express" anything like the view Youssef gave; he did it without intending to! (Any decent reader knows not to trust an author to know themselves the significance of what they say!)</comment>


The Internet is Infected - <AUTHOR> http://blog.weatherby.net/2009/03/the-internet-is-infected.html

<comment><USER2> Saw this on 60 Minutes. Not a mention of Windows or IE.anything. Jaw- droppinginly shoddy.

Best part: Ms. Stahl talks to Vint Cerf, who agrees that Bad Things can happen on the Internet, but also says that he's been using the 'Net since it was invented and none of that bad stuff has happened to him. Does Stahl ask him how he accomplished this apparently impossible feat? Of course not!

Meanwhile, much uncritical time is given to Symantec who, surprisingly, paint the Web as the 9th Circle of hell. Go figure.</comment>


Computational Thinking for All Students - <AUTHOR> https://research.googleblog.com/2016/08/computational-thinking-for-all-students.html <comment><USER2> This is so cliche, and so utterly passe. I wasn't a K-12 student all that long ago, and if I saw this, I would view it as another thinly veiled attempt at the teacher trying to feel good about how good a teacher they are, while being utterly boring.

That might be because I totally drink this flavour of kool-aid: [https://www.cs.utexas.edu/~EWD/transcriptions/EWD10xx/EWD103...](https://www.cs.utexas.edu/~EWD/transcriptions/EWD10xx/EWD1036.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> Why is it cliche and passe? (asking as someone who was K-12 a long long time ago)

<comment><USER2> It's difficult for me to put a finger on it, and that's exactly why I stoop to using words that signify subjective feelings like "cliche" or worse yet, "passe".

The long story would be that it doesn't actually teach you _how_ to grok things (like Barb Oakley's "A Mind for Numbers" [https://www.amazon.com/Mind- Numbers-Science-Flunked-Algebra/...](https://www.amazon.com/Mind-Numbers- Science-Flunked- Algebra/dp/039916524X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1471415187&sr=1-1) and the related Coursera "Learning how to learn").

If I am taught metacognitive skills, I can pick up new ways of thinking, and heck, even create them.

On the other hand, if I rabbits are just pulled out of hats in front of my eyes, with said rabbits being sexually appealing with some buzzwords, then it all comes off like this: "hey fellow kids[I highly recommend [https://www.reddit.com/r/FellowKids/top/?sort=top&t=all](https://www.reddit.com/r/FellowKids/top/?sort=top&t=all)], check out this cutting edge new algorithm called Eratosthenes' Sieve, presented by Big Data specialist Google; also, did I already say big data? Maybe I should say deep learning too then! Oh yeah, all the buzzwords! Over 9000 of them!", my eyes glaze over...

I know this is going to be great for those one or two random kids in my class who seem to get it "right away" (i.e. have seen it before), while I am probably just going to feel dumb: "Hey mister, how can I too pull out rabbits from hats?", and their only answer for me will be "Well, it's easy! Let me pull out another rabbit from a hat, and you'll totally get it!". A few tries later, they'll just be disappointed with me and then we'll all realize that I am _not_ the next Tony Stark, and I definitely won't be getting a job at Google.

EDIT: thinking about it a bit further (especially by considering why I got a "hey fellow kids!" vibe from it), I now come to realize that I had warning bells ringing in my head that this is basically a way for Google to raise brand awareness amongst youth, which is especially off-putting because of how easy it is to see-through, since no effort is made to hide it:

"Our videos illustrate real-world examples of the application of computational thinking in Google's products and services..."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I think in this blog post, "computational thinking" means "procedural thinking" in the sense of automated data processing, which fits pretty well with the "big data" agenda of Google (and IBM in the pre-internet days).

There is another kind of "computational" in the sense of simulation, data modelling and interactive computing. It follows the line of augmenting human intellect and man-computer symbiosis in the sense of Doug Engelbart and J.C.R. Licklider.

What kind of future do we want our kids to be in?</comment>


My investment in Tumblr (11/2007) - <AUTHOR> http://english.martinvarsavsky.net/investments/investment-in-tumblr.html

<comment><USER2> I'm not sure what I'm supposed to take away from this. Wow, this guy was really lucky, I guess.

There are probably thousands of blog posts just like this for websites that didn't become popular or mainstream.

</comment><comment><USER3> What's the value of this post on the front page of HN?

</comment><comment><USER4> And?

</comment><comment><USER5> well done now fuck off</comment>


What if I want to build a device to run Android? - <AUTHOR>

I'm really interested in slate tablet style computers and I'm looking into building a prototype of one this summer. I think it would be cool if it could run Android and leverage all of the apps people are writing for that but I can't find any info about what hardware to use. Can someone in a garage build an Android capable device? Is it really an "Open Handset Alliance" if the only people who can build the handsets are established phone makers?<p>Anyone have any info on this? <comment><USER2> Does this help? [http://www.anddev.org/first_android_hardware_development_boa...](http://www.anddev.org/first_android_hardware_development_board_available-t981.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> Very nice find, Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> <http://www.coolsmartphone.com/news3968.html> shows a demo to run android on an Windows mobile phone.

I thought about the possibility to run Android OS on embedded devices. One reason is that I just like the SDK. But I know it will takes time to add own device driver and customized apis for my customized device.

</comment><comment><USER4> Android _will_ be open _after_ they release the source. Right now the hype has gotten a little ahead of reality.

</comment><comment><USER3> I later found this. <http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS4262102607.html>

I guess google with "android hardware development board" will get a lot of info.

</comment><comment><USER5> Start by taking a look at the hardware that is/will be supported. If I remember correctly, Texas Instruments has an ARM based development board that runs Android.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Mobiln looks pretty interesting as well. <http://www.moblin.org/>

Built on Intel's Atom platform

</comment><comment><USER6> If you are, then you must investigate www.openmoko.com

Its an open-source linux based operating system - I think.

</comment><comment><USER7> Look at buglabs.net too, there are a few threads in the their forums about Android

</comment><comment><USER8> I suggest you read up and let us know.</comment>


A data pipeline built with capnproto-rust and ZeroMQ - <AUTHOR> http://dwrensha.github.io/capnproto-rust/2014/01/04/zmq-explorers.html

<comment><USER2> I'm impressed by the rate at which Rust has begun accumulating serious ports of and bindings to valuable libraries.

There's already varying levels of support [1] for a number of serialization and compression formats, databases and computation frameworks.

Obviously there's still a long ways to go before Rust can be considered a 'batteries included' programming experience, but it's exciting to see how fast the community has put this together.

[1][https://github.com/mozilla/rust/wiki/Note-wanted- libraries](https://github.com/mozilla/rust/wiki/Note-wanted-libraries)

<comment><AUTHOR> I think the healthy library ecosystem is due in so small part to the fact that a lot of people want to learn Rust; porting an existing library can be an excellent way to do that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Nice! I've been wanting to play around with this particular combination (Rust, Capn' Proto, and ZeroMQ) myself. Glad to see others are doing it.</comment>


Amazon S3 Select Is Generally Available (April 2018) - <AUTHOR> https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2018/04/amazon-s3-select-is-now-generally-available/ <comment><USER2> Link to relevant docs which were weirdly hard to find: [https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonS3/latest/dev/s3-glacier-s...](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonS3/latest/dev/s3-glacier- select-sql-reference.html)

</comment><comment><USER2> Does this work for finding all objects in a bucket that match a criteria?

i.e. SELECT name FROM myBucket where object.name LIKE '%.log'</comment>


Death of the newspaper and rebirth of news - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/opinion/displayStory.cfm?story_id=13649304&source=hptextfeature

<comment><USER2> _Technological change has destroyed all sorts of once-popular products, from the handloom to the Walkman, and the world has mostly been better for it._

I think this sums up my thoughts on the death of the newspaper pretty well. News isn't going away even if the newspaper does.</comment>


The Antisocial Laptop - <AUTHOR> http://scattered-thoughts.net/blog/2019/01/16/the-antisocial-laptop/ <comment><USER2> Seems like a feature to me.

Worried about the NSA or other nefarious forces tapping your mic or webcam? Worry not! This mainstream, off-the-shelf laptop will terminate its internet connection the moment someone tries to access its webcam! If that hasn't stopped it, the laptop will dutifully reset itself. Purism ain't got nothin' on this.

<comment><USER3> No built-in cameras or mics would be an excellent feature, even for phones. I would have already pre-orded the Librem 5, for the same price, if Purism had offered that.

<comment><USER2> How would you make phonecalls on the Librem 5 without a mic?

<comment><USER4> Attach a microphone with USB or Bluetooth, and then turn off or detach it when done. Same for a webcam.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > my mental model of causality was limited to the design of the machine - > software interfaces and physical connections - and was completely missing > the possibility of non-intentional interactions via the physical world.

I love hearing of stories like this. Similar line of thought to my personal favorite interview question: ""What happens when you type google.com into your browser and press enter?" (Answer in as much depth as you like.)"

[https://github.com/alex/what-happens-when](https://github.com/alex/what- happens-when)

</comment><comment><USER6> When you write software at any level on top of the OS the number of possible causes for bugs starts out at unmanageable. If you allow for unreliable hardware, the possible cause count rises to unthinkable. As a result, I prefer to pretend that hardware doesn't exist when at all possible.

I used to work in firmware, and spending hours chasing down a software bug only to find that it was a hardware issue, and vice versa is a maddening process.

</comment><comment><USER7> Reminds me of [http://web.mit.edu/jemorris/humor/500-miles](http://web.mit.edu/jemorris/humor/500-miles)

> "We can't send mail more than 500 miles," the chairman explained.

</comment><comment><USER8> I was wondering if this would be about how having your laptop open in a meeting is bad form on a few different levels (distracting, signaling, body language)

<comment><USER9> Depends on the workplace, and specific behavior.

At my current workplace it is perfectly fine to bring in your laptop and continue work in a meeting. The context is that this is an engineering organization and everybody is cranking on their laptops all day and we expect work to get finished. In a meeting you are expected to pay some attention though, and contribute. It would be rude if a high-level executive were running the meeting though.

It is rude if you are completely engrossed in your laptop when somebody is speaking to you directly. One fellow (now gone) would sometimes ask a question to me and then become engrossed in his laptop when I replied. That was rude, but rare. And it is just basic listening skills.

At my previous workplace we generally didn't allow open laptops in meetings, and that made more sense as there were more meetings with other non- engineering groups that didn't have the same work culture.

<comment><USER8> If you wouldn't act that way with a high-level executive why act that way with your coworkers- do you respect them less?

It's as easy as saying "Do you mind if I take notes on my laptop while you answer your question" if you really have to.

<comment><USER9> Again, depends on the workplace. And the meeting context.

I walked into a meeting today and said "some people think it is disrespectful to have your laptop open during a meeting" and everyone laughed. And it was a diverse group, men and women, a wide age range, from different parts of the world. People are professional, respectful and notably productive in that meeting. With laptops.

Regarding a high-level executive, it's just that those kinds of meetings are not engineering meetings.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I was thinking about getting an XPS, but I could not understand if this is resolved in the latest editions of XPS/precision or not.

<comment><USER11> I have the XPS 13 9360 and love it.

2 day battery life and zero problems on multiple versions of Fedora over the past 2.5 years.</comment></comment>


Raspberry Pi Zero Headless Setup - <AUTHOR> http://davidmaitland.me/2015/12/raspberry-pi-zero-headless-setup/ <comment><USER2> One of the very useful things to own when dealing with embedded computers is a low-voltage/CMOS usb-to-serial cable, such as this one: [https://www.adafruit.com/products/954](https://www.adafruit.com/products/954)

There are modules that have variable I/O voltage, very handy when dealing with devices that have 1,8V, 2.5V, 3.3V or 5V logic: [https://www.sparkfun.com/products/12731](https://www.sparkfun.com/products/12731)

Equipped with such a cable, you can also observe any errors that might occur on bootup, such as when you have made a mistake in configuring your config files on the filesystem.

For normal "Rasperry Pi"-Level work, the cheapest eBay-cable will probably be ok. If you have more exotic devices you'll appreciate UARTs that can produce almost arbitrary baudrates, or might support inverted Tx/Rx pins. I found some chinese knockoffs using a "CH310" UART/i2c/spi chip to be particularly broken.

(EDIT: Added last paragraph, fixed a few typos)

<comment><USER3> I noticed that the SparkFun product has export restrictions, which seemed funny.

I dug up this text on their site: [https://www.sparkfun.com/support#IntExportRestrictions](https://www.sparkfun.com/support#IntExportRestrictions), which says:

 _[...] These are products designed for civilian use, but that could be used for devious purposes in the wrong hands. [...]_

So, I guess that tells me there are weapons or other "dangerous" machines that have UARTs. Who would have thought that, huh? :| Really dubious restriction, but I guess they don't have a choice.

<comment><USER2> You get that for an awful lot of chips or software which are thought to have "dual use" to aid inadequately defined nefarious things.

On most orders for electronics parts, even if it's European distributors shipping to me, in Europe, I'll have to click some boilerplate where I assert to not make the chips available to terrorists on the Denied Persons List of the US department of commerce, which is conveniently available in ASCII...

[https://www.bis.doc.gov/dpl/dpl.txt](https://www.bis.doc.gov/dpl/dpl.txt)

<comment><USER4> The same applies when buying microcontroller starter kits, like the MSP430 for school.

That, and clauses about not using it to controller missiles. Which is admittedly more applicable than the weapons of mass destruction (exaggerated) clause in iTunes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Having had a proper play with a Raspberry Pi (Zero) for the first time this week I've been very surprised that setting up wifi is so much harder than it ought to be, especial when taking it out and about.

Is there any reason why Pi plus Raspbian can't/won't/doesn't have a Chromecast style setup built in, i.e. boots up, finds wifi adapter but no known network, hosts own network allowing connection from smartphone app to configure wifi settings for new network?

<comment><USER6> That would be a pretty useful utility to build actually. I can't think of any reason why it wouldn't work unless these wifi adapters don't have the ability to broadcast their own network. Would be fun to give it a try!

<comment><AUTHOR> I really like this idea actually. May see if I can cobble together a little program to do this.

<comment><USER6> Found a guide to do this [0] but without a web interface for configuration, or figuring out if there is a wifi device. Would be easy to setup a script to run on boot to check to see if a wireless network interface is attached, then set up the ad-hoc network accordingly and serve a simple config page. Finally something to do with my pi(s)!

[0][http://spin.atomicobject.com/2013/04/22/raspberry-pi- wireles...](http://spin.atomicobject.com/2013/04/22/raspberry-pi-wireless- communication/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Pro-Tip: Raspbian comes with loads of bloatware. If you really need a _headless server_ go ahead and install Ubuntu Server 14.04... IMO much better than Snappy Ubuntu Core

[https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ARM/RaspberryPi](https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ARM/RaspberryPi)

<comment><USER8> Or Raspbian Lite: [https://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads/raspbian/](https://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads/raspbian/)

<comment><USER9> This distro was just added a couple weeks ago, and is the same as Raspbian, but without all the GUI bits, apps like Minecraft and Wolfram, and it boots to the console without automatic login.

I used to use 'Diet Raspbian,' which took plain Raspbian and stripped it down, but this is a much nicer alternative, since it's an official build!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Another way (which I usually use) is to plug in a USB ethernet adapter (or on Pis with LAN, just plug in onboard), then when the Pi is booted, use something like Fing[1] to ID the new IP address on the network. SSH into it (it's enabled by default) with `ssh pi@[ip]` and away you go!

Look also at the official Raspberry Pi documentation[2], which is more succinctly summed up on SO[3].

For WiFi, you can configure the microSD card in another Pi (I usually mint cards on my Mac, then configure a master copy in a Pi 2, then drop it into other Pis headless) so it has the SSID/PSK in the wpa config file.

[1] [http://www.overlooksoft.com/fing](http://www.overlooksoft.com/fing) [2] [https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/troubleshooting/ha...](https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/troubleshooting/hardware/networking/ip- address.md) [3] [http://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/a/13937/6506](http://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/a/13937/6506)

<comment><USER10> Thanks for posting this, I was second guessing that a simple nmap/fing and SSH would do the trick. From there you can set up a VNC and be able to tackle most tasks. Thats what I did on my Pi 2, not sure why it would be different on a zero.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's no different at at. Although VNC is a bit overkill for most tasks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I've always just used this [http://www.adafruit.com/products/954](http://www.adafruit.com/products/954) and connect to the pi via serial. Although with the 0 it would require soldering on 2-4 pins.

</comment><comment><USER12> I've got an older raspberry pi, like maybe from 2013, that I never got around to using because I haven't got a monitor handy that'll work with it. Will this work on that model?

<comment><AUTHOR> It sure will. It's a bit easier though as you can just use the ethernet port as that's already configured to use DHCP. So you can skip the step that envolves changing the files on the SD card.

<comment><USER12> Cool, thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I wouldn't do this without having a USB serial cable as a fallback. It's too easy for the pi to not come up and then you have basically zero options to debug remotely.

<comment><AUTHOR> Umm, but you can always remount the SD card on your computer or even reinstall the image. There is essentially no way to brick your device by doing this.

<comment><USER13> How does that help debugging why your device didn't come up on the network? There are a number of reasons the device won't come up; often those are not easily deduced from a log file but can be easily debugged with a serial connection. Also that doesn't require you to mount the SD or reinstall the image.

<comment><AUTHOR> A serial adapter is great if you have one. But for the average person who may have picked up their first Pi free with a magazine is highly unlikely to have one. For most people changing two files is a pretty quick, safe and easy way to get wireless networking going with minimal extra hardware. Although you could easily remount the SD card and view the log files if you needed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> If you don't have a computer that can read and write the filesystem on the image, it gets a little more complicated. In that case, you might be able to make these changes using a hex editor directly on the Raspbian images.

<comment><USER15> Not a chance.

<comment><USER14> I've done it myself on a FreeBSD RPi image. I don't see why it wouldn't work on linux.

<comment><USER15> What is the "it" that you did?

Changing a string like 'foo=yes' to 'foo=no ' would be easy enough - as long as the filesystem does not checksum data.

Adding multiple lines to multiple files is not going to work very well.

<comment><USER14> I've modified configuration files on a FreeBSD filesystem image with a hex editor to cause it to obtain a dhcp lease and allow password ssh login for the default account. (Linux cannot read/write to the default FreeBSD filesystem.)

This allowed me to set up the RPi headless and keyboardless.

Of course the filesystem was dirty, but it's nothing an fsck couldn't solve.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>