88% of Americans use a second screen while watching TV - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2019/12/88-of-americans-use-a-second-screen-while-watching-tv-why/ <comment><USER2> We have redefined boredom [1].

> The more I consume, the more I need to consume, the more bored I feel. I > often turn to video games to release the tension. I can spend two solid > hours shooting at virtual objects until I start to feel less entertained. I > then find myself pulling up my phone closer to consume more scrollable > content while still playing the game. Only when all my sense are stimulated > at the same time, I feel relieved.

> This becomes the new norm. Anything less will result in that acute sense of > boredom. Have a conversation with a friend, you'll feel bored. They can't > possibly compete with a video game, a political rant and a funny video at > the same time. Right in the middle of a conversation you hear that familiar > beep from your phone and you have to pick it up. It's not that you ignore > your friends, or the dinner conversation, it's that you need to have them > all occur at the same time to feel normal.

[1]: [https://idiallo.com/blog/im-bored-what-do-i- do](https://idiallo.com/blog/im-bored-what-do-i-do)

<comment><USER3> That quote presents a good story, but I don't think it is true. I could hardly be more engaged than I was this evening sitting at my brother's kitchen table, drinking wine while he cooked and talking about the endeavor of providing food for the family. That I watch two screens sometimes when the TV is on has hardly changed that. If anything it has made my enjoyment of in person conversation more acute.

<comment><USER4> That's fair but it also doesn't mean much to be able to provide an exception to his general statement, since we still don't know if it's not the case for the majority.

<comment><USER3> True, but I'm implying by my provision of an anecdote that I disbelieve the (also unsupported) assertions in the quote.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> >>According to data from Nielsen, the TV metrics company, 88 percent of Americans "use a second digital device while watching TV." Seventy-one percent of Americans "look up content related to content they are watching," while 41 percent of Americans are busy messaging "friends/family about content they are watching."

Has anyone here actually watched Nielsen TV recently? This is the oldschool stuff. Comcast. Not netflix/hulu/Disney. The commercials are INSANE. I stopped watching sitcoms a few years ago when they switched to 21 minute shows. A third of primetime content is now ads. For reruns, thanks to compression tech/editing, ads are on the screen almost half the time. And those ads are ALL for old people. Diabetic testing supplies. Laxatives. Investment consulting. Erectile dysfunction. Medicare part B. Incontinence products. That's what the second screen is for: To distract one's self until the animated colon commercial goes away.

<comment><USER6> The content itself took a nosedive after the writer's strike too. It feels like 2/3 of broadcast television these days is some kind of low effort singing/dancing contest.

Considering it's basically a live music video, there's no reason why you wouldn't browse the internet at the same time.

<comment><USER7> I feel this way about everything.

GoT took a nose dive when they stopped having source material to work off of. It became stupid, mindless drama. People talk about the ending as if that's where the problems started. No, the writing was crap for the last several seasons.

The latest season of The Expanse was disappointing. It went from a slow burning, character driven series to an action packed run-of-the-mill drama laden mess, like most of the television shows you see nowadays. I'm happy Amazon picked it up, but they basically butchered the show, it will never live up to its potential.

Everything just kind of becomes samey because they're all learning how to do it from the same sources, and the lessons they're learning is unnecessary drama pulls people in and keeps them there. Except it drives me nuts when an entire season's worth of plot points could literally evaporate if character A articulated why they were angry at character B, who would then explain it was a misunderstanding.

<comment><USER8> The source material for Season 4 was not really a Space Opera anymore. There's a bit of similar material in book 5, and then it's back to Space Opera for the remainder of the series.

Season 4 was always gonna be trouble, and I suspect that contributed to SyFy cancelling it.

<comment><USER7> fair enough, I haven't read the books. I purchased them as ebooks, but for whatever reason I can't seem to get into the first book. Love the series though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I suspect a lot of the time spent looking at the "second screen" is while the first one is showing adverts.

<comment><USER10> That's kinda old-fashioned thinking. It's true that people who only watch one screen will find something else to do during a commercial, but people who habitually use two screens will use both regardless of what's on the TV.

Source: A company I used to work for did a metric buttload of research on this subject.

<comment><USER11> > It's true that people who only watch one screen will find something else to > do during a commercial, but people who habitually use two screens will use > both regardless of what's on the TV.

Then they are only using the handheld (or laptop) screen, and they are not watching the TV

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Sometimes, the TV is just background noise. But, I also catch myself doing this when I watch more serious TV shows for the first time.

I feel like a junkie saying this but maybe TV alone isn't enough stimulation.

<comment><USER13> The pacing of TV shows is, in my opinion, not that great. There's a lot of story or visual lulls where if I don't have a second screen, I'll just end up wandering away from the TV and won't finish the show.

Before we had screens, we had newspapers, magazines and coffee table books. I remember this happening quite a bit when watching TVs prior to second screens even existing.

<comment><USER14> > There's a lot of story or visual lulls where if I don't have a second > screen, I'll just end up wandering away from the TV and won't finish the > show.

I think a lot of people feel this way, and not to place too much faith in TV show writers but this seems like a shame as it limits what experiences can be delivered by the medium.

This is exactly what has happened with movies, as well. At some point in the 2010's I noticed that in many movies I watched almost every shot was in motion. No moment of stillness or quieter reflection, just constant noise and motion, even in movies I thought were particularly good like the new Mad Max movie.

I think it's essentially a battle being fought between screens: the movie can't let the modern audience's attention waver for even a second, otherwise they might look down at their "second screen", lose track of the plot and consequently believe the movie wasn't that great.

This sucks because restful or reflective moments can give you a sense of sheltering, or the calm before a storm (for example), but you just can't get that feeling without moments where the camera calms down and people stop shouting.

<comment><USER15> Marvel movies are a good example. They even use cutting of food and sandwiches as a very common transition to slow things down but keep them "tight".

<comment><USER16> Marvel movies are all a prime example of the "all filler" garbage remake movies with sequel after sequel, advertising to you and fulfilling the lowest common denominator. Marvel movies are trash. All the phony superhero movies are made distractions for grown men to act like kids with superhero figures. They all are getting political, I can't believe how duped they have "critical thinking" "hackers."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I think our brains have gotten so dopamine-wired that our attention span has suffered. I am reading Digital Minimalism which touches on this a bit, but I'd be interested to know if there are any rigorous studies relating to this topic.

<comment><USER18> I can feel my brain being caught in a fog as my attention span has dropped drastically due to the over-stimulation. I'm going to start leaving my phone at home a few days a week and meditate in the mornings to improve on myself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I do sometimes look up details about a show I'm watching, but I'm with the author on this, I can't fully keep track of what's going on if I'm not watching.

Moreover, I prefer to watch with subtitles because I feel like I absorb information drastically better if I read it. On that point, I pretty much hate watching YouTube videos to learn anything - I'd rather read the docs and my favorite sources tend to be things like a programming language's official documentation or the manual for whatever software I'm using (Logic Pro X comes to mind - I'd much rather read factual, authoritative text on a feature than watch some random YouTuber talk for 10 minutes and try to get me to subscribe to his or her channel while I could have easily read the docs in half the time). I think a big part of this "text vs video/audio" learning dilemma is that you can't easily skim a videos contents and intuitively know what to skip and what parts are interesting. Text will always have its place.

<comment><USER20> I feel you so much on this one. Visuals certainly help me, but i would take a purely written source over a purely video one any day of the week (talking only about learning material throughout this whole comment btw). For one, with readable sources i can go at my own pace, set pauses, skip over parts that i already know or find to be fluff, etc. The source and the structure of a written source are one and the same, which allows me to consume the material in the way that is personally the most efficient for me. With videos, i have zero control of the flow and zero knowledge of the structure of the material, let alone being able to traverse the structure and control it. This alone makes videos way less efficient for me.

The only scenario where i would prefer videos for learning something are when the material is very short in length and very single-minded, like "explaining how that one specific formula works and how it is used for that one specific application and why" or when i need to fill a small gap in my knowledge of something. And even then, there is some potential for the creator of such video to misuse the video and pad it with fluff and poor narration, though this is not unique to video as a medium and can be done in a text-based material as well.

<comment><USER19> Yep. I wonder if there's been a bunch of research on the topic and it really boils down to us just being written versus visual learners, or if it has to do with something like age-bias - maybe because YouTube wasn't really a thing yet when I was a teen I never caught the bug. I've noticed it seems like kids these days love watching YouTube videos to learn stuff I would never watch videos on, like programming.

<comment><USER20> I had the same hypothesis as you about the generational preferences kind of thing, but personal anecdata seems to run against it. I am in my mid twenties, have plenty of friends spanning from early twenties to early thirties (with a few in their late 30s/early 40s), and have noticed zero correlation between the age and their willingness and preference to learn things from youtube videos vs. written sources.

Not accounting for some specific types of things (e.g., I cannot for the life of me learn intricate details of operating physical things like fixing something on a motorcycle without a video, despite heavily preferring written sources for learning otherwise), the general preference for learning through youtube vs. reading seems to come down (at least from what I've observed) purely to the individual's own preference.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Because TV is absolute trash. low quality, full of filler, 25% commercials (!!)[0].

[0][https://www.marketplace.org/2018/04/30/television-too- many-c...](https://www.marketplace.org/2018/04/30/television-too-many- commercials/)

<comment><USER22> Exactly.

Take late night talk show hosts' shows for example.

Ill watch the monologue of the shows and thats it. Most times - I will just watch the clip on youtube. I dont give a shit about which actor is promoting their crap, or what musician is going to perform a song.

I get the same jokes told in a slightly different angle from Colbert, Kimmel, Meyers, Noah, etc... and I get all their propaganda angles from both sides in short order.

Whats worse is that people like Bill Meyer are so freaking smug about their "unique" perspective....

Its all garbage.

The news is even worse than the "comedy" \-- reality is a freaking joke.

<comment><USER23> I assume you're meaning Bill "Maher," right?

And I'm sure you're probably aware of it, but you're not getting "both sides" from the hosts you've listed.

<comment><USER22> I am aware... and Yes I forgot how to spell his name.

Just that the late night shows dont usually have a bunch of pro-trump comedy...

Regardless, its all garbage.

<comment><USER21> throw into the mix fallon and oliver

<comment> crooked-v Jimmy Fallon is usually really annoying to me. It's something about the constant laughing and him being pretty bad at 'getting it' when it comes to the flow with guests, even though on a shallow level he's quite likeable.

The weird part is that when he gets into bantering with the other cast members (miming stuff at the desk, exchanging dumb jokes, etc), he's really, really entertaining to me in a way that the rest of the show doesn't manage at all, and yet he barely does it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Noone seems to have mentioned the potential for a second screen to _augment_ what's being watched on TV. I'm frequently reaching for phone or tablet to look up details about actors, or references I don't get, or just other related info.

<comment><USER25> This is what amazon x-ray does, but it would be nice if you could connect a phone app with the streaming app so you could look up xray data on the second screen.

<comment><USER26> I love the Amazon X-Ray feature. I wonder if they patented it, because I'm surprised other players like Netflix or cable providers are not offering something similar. I personally find it adds a lot to my viewing experience without being too intrusive.

<comment><USER27> I wonder how they get the "actors in this scene" data. I suspect mechanical turk but maybe they have the movie scripts.

<comment><USER28> Amazon owns IMDb. They have been gathering data about actors for literally decades. They probably have well-trained machine learning models to identify actors on screen. It's really not that hard since they can run it against a narrowed down dataset with the names of the cast.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> >can it possibly be any good for us ?!?!

Oh sorry, let's get back to the "correct" behavior of sitting still watching a screen with no interaction.

The author seems aware that this opinion is elitist. But the idea that putting on a TV as background noise is somehow wasting the planets resources... I mean, but why not compare it to other things you can be doing? Driving a car... Or traveling to a far off country... Using a phone while a TV is on has got to be one of the least pollutant activities a person can spend their time doing.

<comment><USER30> Martin Scorcese recently publicly lamented his excellent Netflix project The Irishman because he didn't like the way people were watching it, on the small screen. I guess he'd be doubly upset that 88% of those small screen viewers had another even smaller screen holding their attention.

I think this is an interesting transition period for the art and artists.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Probably unpopular idea on HN, but my company synchronize digital ads with TV commercials for this exact reason.

When we detect a commercial on the TV for a brand, we run instantly ads on Facebook for the same brand.

<comment><USER32> > _When we detect a commercial on the TV_

How exactly? Is the app always listening?

<comment><USER33> You could do this without targeting that narrowly using the ads that are broadcast on popular channels.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I've caught myself doing this as well and also questioned why this was happening. My initial guess is that it is just manifestation of phone addiction, but perhaps it is also selective boredom. For instance the majority of the time when I look at my phone is when the show I am watching switches to a scene that is showing some plot line I don't care about. As an example, when I am watching a Sci fi show, and there is some romantic sub plot. I simply don't care, and will look at hacker news while it plays out.

<comment><USER35> My mom used to record all her soap operas (on VHS) so she could FF through the ~1/2 of storylines she didn't care about at all. I think this is, or at least used to be, fairly common.

<comment><USER36> I watch boring parts at 1.5x speed, especially speeches.

Then you still get all plot information, but do not become bored

Actually, now I have trouble listening to speeches or tutorials at normal speeds.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I work from home generally 4 / 5 days per week for a lot of reasons (commute, environment etc.). I am one of those people who cannot code in absolute silence, whatever, maybe from years of coding in a loud environment... who knows. But I am most productive with mindless yammering in the background. Which generally is things like, NPR, TV News, CSPAN etc. Music is no good, it has to be just blabbing in the background. So I generally have the TV on in the background on some dumb channel, I am not listening but just talking in the background that I am not interested in at all, in some weird way helps me concentrate. I dunno if I am weird but I am guessing a lot of people have it on in the background as just sort of comfort while they do other things.

<comment><USER38> My father does this too. He codes with the radio on and has been doing it for decades.

<comment><USER37> Ha, good to know I am not the only one. Most guys I know need either total silence, noise cancelling headphones and/or music.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> It's no different from interacting with people while watching tv together. Only now much of that interaction is via electronic devices.

</comment><comment><USER40> In my case, (and I assume this is common) is using the TV as a second screen and my laptop as a first when watching normal entertainment stuff like a comedy, talk shows, etc. And just the TV when I'm watching an interesting movie or tv show.

</comment><comment><USER41> Because American TV is deadly dull most of the time, but people like background noise.

<comment><USER42> Maybe it's when I was born, or the fact that we lived in a somewhat rural area, but I categorically don't get the "background noise" desire.

I live in the city now, and city background certainly doesn't bother me. But I don't feel a desire to artificially adding more.

Is silence that bad?

<comment><USER35> It's a cultural/socialization thing. Lots of people grow up with the TV always on in the background at home, going to sleep to the TV, and so on, so they keep doing that when they're on their own. Some who don't do it when they're alone will turn it on when someone's over, as it's just "what you do". I doubt they even think about it, they just do it.

As to why people started doing that to begin with: dunno. Sports being on often, so having the TV on just becomes normal? Not sure.

Like many social behaviors, you could map it pretty well to one or more Fussellian class, in the US at least.

<comment><USER42> I am an only child, which likely has something to do with my preferences...

At the risk of sounding bougie, it seems kind of trashy to me to just constantly keep the TV on. Echoes of 1984's mandatory viewing, coupled with ignorance of advertising's effect on your brain.

But I've certainly observed that people fall fairly heavily into one category or the other. Either they can't stand it not being on, or they can't stand it being on.

<comment><USER43> I play music through my TV, often by finding a recorded musical performance on an app like YouTube. Does that count as "having TV on in the background?"

<comment><USER42> Point. I guess the more 1:1 analogy would be having the radio on in the background. _muses_

The closest I can come to explaining where my distaste seems to come from is wasted opportunity.

In the modern era, we have unrivaled access to the thing (e.g. the musical piece, specific performance, news report, piece of information, best show or movie of all time) itself. And yet we're so in need of filler that we're willing to put any damn thing on?

That seems close to it, as I don't have nearly the adverse gut reaction to music as I do to television. Or even to television-sans-ads to television- with-ads.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> The only time I ever watch broadcast TV anymore is for (NFL) football. And in that case, I'm usually also , participating in chats and discussion forums, following box scores, and the like.

On the other hand, I've also noticed when watching movies on my computer (which is pretty much how I do it anymore), it can be _really_ easy to get distracted.

On the gripping hand, when I watch shows on Amazon Prime, I generally don't have any difficulty watching through an entire episode without getting distracted. Possibly because I usually watch Prime on my tablet, where it's (a little) harder to switch between apps.

</comment><comment><USER45> This is why I love the cinema. I'm forced to watch the actual movie. Even if it's not great, it's 2 hours where I will be focused on something and not mindlessly scrolling. Sometimes I even enjoy the movie!

<comment><USER46> Agreed.

Recently I watched The Irishman (3.5 hours) at the theatre. Since the reviews mentioned the sombre mood of the film (unlike Scorcese's other gangter films), I was fully expecting to fidget around after some time.

I had no trouble with my attention span throughout the film so full credits to Scorcese and Thelma Schoonmaker for superb pacing. The audience was quite sparse and mostly film fans so I was able to watch it in a quiet atmosphere with occasional applause. In other words, the perfect movie watching experience.

If not at the theatre, I would have caught this at home. I would have taken more than 5 hours to complete the film. Numerous pauses throughout the film for bathroom breaks, googling names and trivia, simply getting distracted etc.

Now sometimes, you watch a movie that has a mind blowing twist, or something happens in the film that makes you go WTF and pause. Even then, you have to admit that watching the same film in the theatre (where you cannot just pause and take it in), with an audience who are going through the same thing, will probably be a better experience.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> It's more that I have the TV on while I use my first screen

</comment><comment><USER48> What else am I supposed to do when 30% of the content is ads? The second screen is for me to look at while the ads are muted and I'm waiting for them to go away.

Once I caught myself doing this enough times, of course I just canceled the cable subscription, but a lot of my family members still seem to do this. At my parent's house, Law and Order marathons are essentially their choice of background noise. They rarely seem to sit down to watch a show on purpose.

</comment><comment><USER49> I don't watch much TV but occasionally I'll have the Reddit thread for the current/previous episode up for background information. But I definitely can't multitask if it's an engaging show.

<comment><USER42> What does the Reddit thread typically provide?

<comment><USER49> Most recent case being Mr Robot it was primarily references and connections that went over my head from seasons back. But it's also fascinating to see people's reactions to the same reveals I'm watching. And of course, the predictions. Similar thoughts on Westworld.

<comment><USER42> The last show I did that with was Lost, albeit not in realtime. So I get what you're saying.

If you don't mind me prying (I'm honestly fascinated), does it feel different watching while not having that simultaneous feed? If so, how?

<comment><USER49> Not prying at all! I suppose without the feed it's like watching a typical movie in a theater: I'm limited to what I notice/pick up/deduce on my own; and if I miss something I might go the rest of the movie without noticing more things. End result is I might miss fascinating angles I would've otherwise noticed, but still enjoyable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> Because I have allowed my phone to absolutely ruin my attention span. If a show isn't immediately engaging enough, I find myself reflexively reaching for my phone to fritter away time.

In the same vein, I have to consciously avoid taking my phone out while sitting at a stop light or going to the bathroom

It didn't used to be this way and I hate it

<comment><USER35> I can't wait until I can get rid of home Internet. And just have a dumbphone as the only way to contact me. Or mail. I'll just hit up a coffee shop or the library every week or two to pay bills and see family photos or whatever. Savings on Internet and related bills would let me buy more physical media than I'd have time to consume anyway, while still saving money, even if I just threw away everything after reading/watching/listening once.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> I am amazed at how many of my friends watch movies while playing video games. It's like they need to make sure something is ready to stimulate them the moment the game fails to.

A particular friend will have the game, youtube playing, and also be betting on online poker on his phone.

</comment><comment><USER52> I watch new/good things like I'm watching a movie. Dark, silent, uninterrupted. I spend maybe 2-4 hours every week watching shows like this. Things like Game of Thrones or Rick and Morty come to mind.

Then there's background watching, which usually means re-watching something I've already watched. I'm almost always using a second screen during this time. This is probably more like 15-25 hours every week, maybe even more when I work from home. I get a significant amount of my work/chores/tasks done during this time.

</comment><comment><USER53> What percentage of Americans use a screen while also listening to the radio? Doesn't seem much different to me. Especially for things like rolling news, political coverage, documentaries.

<comment><USER54> How much of American radio consumption is done in the car?

<comment><USER53> I don't know? Is that a rhetorical question? I almost always have the radio on while working - music or talk.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> Because most TV isn't that good?

<comment><USER56> in recent years I have seen more and more people using phones during content they actively sought out including their favourite tv shows. I have seen Game of Thrones fans staring at their phone while the newest episode was running, only to ask everyone else in the room what just happened five seconds later.

This is definitely not just boredom or background noise TV. It seems that more and more frequently people are unable to maintain singular uninterrupted focus or attention on something without staring at phones or laptops.

I actually started to pay attention to this because it started to get on my nerves when people in cinemas were doing it, and it even seems to happen more and more in actual in-person conversations. The next time you go to a coffee shop or a bar pay attention to how often people in discussions with each other go for their phone and interrupt each other. It's pretty sobering.

Personally I had an epiphany about this years ago when I started checking mail and Reddit when I was sitting down to read fiction and I was so embarrassed because I was less able to read than my teenage self when I could sit down and read for a whole day, and I just felt like the fat people in Wall-E.

<comment><USER57> > in recent years I have seen more and more people using phones during content > they actively sought out including their favourite tv shows

This. The internet (and thus phones) has matured into a platform for behavioral addiction. Even if we want what's on the main screen, our brains _need_ to interface with the second screen with an alarming degree of regularity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> Is this only for regular (broadcast / commercial) TV, or does it include other things that you would watch in front of the TV (movies, or streaming episodic content)? Because for broadcast, I can see using a phone during commercial breaks.

</comment><comment><USER59> I use my phone to find out more about a place, person or topic mentioned in a tv show. Maybe a coffee shop where Larry David's is in Curb - or it could be something a bit more cerebral.

</comment><comment><USER60> Aside from being about a quarter commercials, TV shows often feature quite a bit of filler/padding content. It'd be odd if people didn't pick up on some of it and play with their phone when they have the option.

I always think to this Mitchell and Webb gift shop sketch that parodies the worst of this: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7MFtl2XXnUc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7MFtl2XXnUc)

</comment><comment><USER61> Is this just TV? How many of you second screen while watching Netflix? I'm talking about watching a show for the first time, not reruns just as background noise.

</comment><comment><USER62> How does Nielsen know 88% of Americans are using a second device while watching TV? How is that data gathered, and how is the research conducted?

<comment><USER63> Smart TVs know what you're watching and when. Smartphones know what you're doing on it and when. It's simply connecting the two at this point.

<comment><USER62> That still seems a little too simple. How are they controlling for multiple people in a household from the same IP address? How are they capable of telling the same person watching TV is performing the activity on the smartphone?

<comment><USER64> You can get RAEL people to examine that ;)

Don't worry, we, unlike machines are still capable of doing that

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> Because our friends aren't on TV.

Just wait until AI puts likenesses of ourselves and our social circles into the stories.

</comment><comment><USER66> Who wants to watch commercials? With your phone or tablet you can have an uninterrupted dopamine flow.

</comment><comment><USER67> I feel like this is the death of tightly written television. Getting my wife to pay attention to things well enough to pick up clever nuances has proven nearly impossible. Kids these days.

<comment><USER68> It's the opposite for me. I can't watch anything but tightly written media. The second I pickup an inconsistent plot point made to fill time or product placement, I zone out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER69> I feel like TV now just means Muzak with visuals in the home, tenth time watching an episode of the Simpsons I have my phone out and a movie I've never seen, it's silent and charging.

</comment><comment><USER70> If I can manage to find something on netflix (this is rare), I will watch it on my old TV using xbox360. I don't subscribe to cable TV.

My primary focus is on several other computer screens.

</comment><comment><USER71> Well the vast majority of TV is horrible and/or very boring, so I'm not too surprised.

There have never been more terrible shows to watch than there are today.

</comment><comment><USER72> > I suspect a lot of the time spent looking at the "second screen" is while > the first one is showing adverts.

Inverted: excessively slow software builds. :)

</comment><comment><USER73> what does "watching tv" mean nowadays? I only watch videos through a phone, laptop, or desktop, and when I watch I'm not fidgeting on a 2nd screen unless it's related to what I'm watching on my first screen. I guess I don't watch things that don't require some form of actual thought (e.g. sports). Don't get me wrong I love soccer, but I only watch highlights!

</comment><comment><USER74> For the same reason 50% of Americans will be obese within 10 years and why similar numbers also use a second screen while someone is trying to talk to them.

New England Journal of Medicine: [https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMsa1909301?query=fe...](https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMsa1909301?query=featured_home)

</comment><comment><USER75> It's a thing in our social circle that during an awards show, we all get on Facebook for live commentary.

</comment><comment><USER76> I've gone so far I don't even watch the TV anymore. Just the 2nd screen (only screen?).

</comment><comment><USER77> I definitely agree with the comments here. For me, TVs have the screen size I want but not the software/hardware or content I prefer. Smartphones have great access to software and content but at a screen-size that is limited. Casting works but needs dedicated hardware or else it feels slow and clunky.

</comment><comment><USER78> So, the habit of sleeping or reading a book got replaced?

</comment><comment><USER79> Unless subtitles. Then it's hard to even eat to.

</comment><comment><USER80> How many consider the TV as being the second screen?

</comment><comment><USER81> I do when my wife picks the show (most of the time).

</comment><comment><USER82> for the same reason why you work better at a cafe than alone at home. the tv keeps others occupied but also maintains background noise

</comment><comment><USER38> By TV they mean the device or open/cable TV?

</comment><comment><USER83> Can't get enough of them telescreens.

</comment><comment><USER84> Multi screens is the same as multi cores.

</comment><comment><USER85> What is it you were saying? Sorry, I wasn't listening, I was glancing at my smartphone.

</comment><comment><USER86> Only during commercials

</comment><comment><USER87> TL;DR: "Screens bad"</comment>


Smart People should do Stupid Stuff - <AUTHOR> http://blog.davidwurtz.com/smart-people-should-do-stupid-stuff <comment><USER2> PG says this in one of his essays, I think the example was basically that the secret to making money is getting someone like Einstein to do something like designing refrigerators.

It works for two reasons:

1) The reward for invention and innovation is basically the same, but the ROI on innovation is 10x better than the ROI on invention. (This is one of the main ideas of Seth Godin's book Free Prize Inside.)

2) The best person in a given industry makes 10x as much as the tenth best person, and 100x as much as the 100th best person.

Thus the best way to make money is by innovating, not inventing, in an area that you are way overqualified for. It took me a long time to really understand this, but it's a lesson that's well worth learning.

<comment><USER3> Does anyone have a link to this pg essay?

<comment><USER4> [http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=site%3Awww.paulgraham.com+e...](http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=site%3Awww.paulgraham.com+einstein+refrigerators)

<http://www.paulgraham.com/gh.html>

<http://www.paulgraham.com/bronze.html>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't think this is good advice, and I wouldn't advise anyone to follow in this person's footsteps.

Smart people should _think_ about doing stupid stuff, not necessarily follow through and _do_ it. Selling TV wall mounts online is not a very great contribution to human progress from someone who was experimenting with ferromagnetic fluids. This is advice on how to stay alive and make a living, not advice on how to achieve your full potential and help humanity.

<comment><AUTHOR> Stupid does not mean "not worth it". Stupid means "obvious, and often overlooked".

And plenty of "stupid" things do mankind some good. Amazon invested a whole lot in selling books online, and now they contribute significantly to our quality of life.

That said, I acknowledge in the article that there should always be those aiming higher.

<comment><USER6> If you mean "obvious" then you should use "obvious" and not "stupid" - - because they are different words with different meaning... For example, selling books online is an obvious idea, but not "stupid" and it isn't easy either. Selling books online and creating Amazon is far from a simple achievement and something you could do without intellectual power or really hard work.

<comment><USER7> No, I think "stupid" is right because it speaks to the prejudice that bright people hold against these kinds of endeavors. It is social conditioning but rarely examined as such.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Suitably, his business relies on people doing stupid stuff, like spending $170 on a mount you can get from monoprice for less than half the price.

</comment><comment><USER9> There is a similar line of thought in how tech people always seem to think their startup idea has to be something completely new. It usually goes like this...

Person A: I got this great idea! If you do X to Y you will get Z which is of huge value for people working in M. Great, huh?

Person B: Yawn. Company SomeCorp did that in 1974.

Person A (spirit broken): Darn...

The idea that a new company has to come up with something completely new must be unique to our business. Even so, the number of successful web companies that did not have a unique idea when they started should be enough to kill the argument, but it lives on.

Probably because of the reason mentioned in this post: smart people just don't think it's smart enough to do something someone else has already done.

</comment><comment><USER10> Can someone explain to me, what is the connection between "Science smarts" and "Sales/Marketing smarts" ?

You really think a brilliant physics PhD can create a network that gets 1,000,000$/year in bowling ball sales ?

Or maybe that PhD should go and work as a lawyer, with his brain he can be the best lawyer ever !

Or he can do what he loves, and if money is an issue, work _in his field_ on something he understands and can contribute to.

Please don't send our PhDs to mend shoes. No matter how good they are at it.

</comment><comment><USER11> Question for the author. Why are you working at Google if you are wealthy from selling wall mounts?

<comment><USER12> Money != happiness. Working at Google is probably significantly more intellectually stimulating and satisfying than selling wall mounts...

<comment><USER13> For us, yes.

But not everyone cares to be intellectually stimulated to be happy.

<comment><USER14> Or for that matter gets their intellectual stimulation of choice at work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This article made me nod and shake my head. I agree that so many people incorrectly think you need an "awesome, completely original, patentable idea" to start a business when you don't. However I disagree that all endeavours that do not push the limits of science should ever be labelled "stupid". Selling bowling balls (an example in the article) might not be academic, but clearing a million dollars in profit annually requires plenty of business intelligence.

</comment><comment><USER16> The author makes a couple of assumptions that I don't agree with.

The first is that success is measured by the amount of money you earn. For me it is much more rewarding to work on interesting and inspiring problems than having a huge income.

The second is that people that are good at hard science problems are good at solving the "stupid" problems. You need a different set of skills to solve the latter.

</comment><comment><USER17> First off I don't think that doing anything with a lava lamp as referenced in the article qualifies as "high achievement". But the author does have a point that has been played out in business over and over and that is: Find a niche market and do it well, become the dominating player in that niche and you can make a good living.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've got to agree with that, myself. I guess my point is, the chemistry that went into the ferrofluid project wasn't trivial. And I could have made many "greeting card companies" in the time it took to develop one ferrofluid company.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I would state that simplicity does not equate to stupid, maybe less exciting, but not stupid: "Simplicity is boring, complexity entertaining."

Wealth is measured relative to society. Whether you create wealth in devising an innovative yet complex new device that millions of people swarm over, or in selling bowling balls to masses of people - you're still creating wealth by producing value for _many_ or for _few_ that control a percentage of the value of the _many_.

Simple things are more straightforward to create - usually, only requiring footwork and a solid foundation (generally existing already).

Complex things are not straightforward to create - usually, requiring footwork and the innovation of a foundation upon which to rest.

</comment><comment><USER19> It depends on what brings you inner satisfaction. Is it the "stupid" idea (I personally wouldn't use the word stupid) that brings you $$$ or the smart idea that keeps you up all night trying to figure out a solution?

</comment><comment><USER11> Partly to self-promote but my easiest and more profitable business is a funny shirt site. <http://BangBangPanda.com>. I just put up the design and an company do the hard part of making the shirts, taking the payment, and shipping.

<comment><USER20> Since you've eaten some of our time with your promotion, will you tell us a little bit about the economics of your business? Are you ramen-profitable off of it? How long did it take to build? How severely do shipping costs eat your margins?</comment></comment>


A story about GPT-3, cowritten by GPT-3 - <AUTHOR> https://pastebin.com/v2AbVw1m <comment><AUTHOR> Via the paid version of AI Dungeon. A followup on this thread: [https://twitter.com/sonyasupposedly/status/12841883696316293...](https://twitter.com/sonyasupposedly/status/1284188369631629312)</comment>


ISPs Are Throttling Encryption, Breaking Net Neutrality - <AUTHOR> https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20141012/06344928801/revealed-isps-already-violating-net-neutrality-to-block-encryption-make-everyone-less-safe-online.shtml

<comment><USER2> If true, this is horrible -

First thing, find a VPN provider you can trust, and jump on it.</comment>


Do Economists Have Too Much Power? - <AUTHOR> https://www.foreignaffairs.com/reviews/review-essay/2020-02-11/dismal-kingdom <comment><USER2> Really that article misses the point by attributing power to economists. Largely the powers that be choose economists to support based upon what they already want or believe politically useful essentially. Those who espouse anything inconvenient are dutifully ignored. A broad consensus warned post recession that overly consolidated banks suffering from moral hazard after a bail out needed subdivided for reduced failure risk alone and that never happened.</comment>


Text Particles - <AUTHOR> http://william.hoza.us/text/?t=Chrome# <comment><USER3> The repelling algorithm reminds me of one I accidentally came up with (this one uses a plant-like structure instead of particles though)

<http://www.genesisbbs.com/appstem2.html>

<comment><USER4> Cool! Reminds me of a Chrome Experiment that Ryan Alexander did: <http://onecm.com/projects/canopy/>

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Note that you can add/edit text and you can link texts other than Chrome: <http://william.hoza.us/text/?t=Hacker%20News>

</comment><comment><USER5> Is this a common demo effect? There's a very similar effect on <http://generalrelativity.org/BitmapStuff.swf> (it's been there since 2007).

<comment><AUTHOR> The source code is really small and quite readable. From the source:

          var homeDX=this.homeX-this.x;
          var homeDY=this.homeY-this.y;
          var homeDistance=Math.sqrt(Math.pow(homeDX,2) + Math.pow(homeDY,2));
          var homeForce=homeDistance*0.01;
          var homeAngle=Math.atan2(homeDY,homeDX);

It seems it is just using gravitational like force, where a point is attracted to its original position. So I guess it is a more common effect for particles.

<comment><USER6> Springs?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> In case it's of any help to the author, it basically doesn't run on FireFox 3.6.22 on Ubuntu 10.4. Completely unusable - pegs a core at 100%, takes minutes to do anything. A mouse click makes it change, but you can't "play" at all.

Which is a shame - it looks like it might be very impressive.

<comment><AUTHOR> Canvas 2d is really slow on FF 3.6

It got a lot better from 4+. On the other hand it works great on Chrome. Opera is a bit slow as well, not as bad as FF 3.6 (using Ubuntu 10.4 as well).

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Has there ever been a really good book on demoscene effects, old and new - <USER2> the maths behind them??

<comment><USER9> I miss that old classic stuff. Old animations with absurd graphics for the time. An S3M or MOD playing in the background. Really ground-breaking stuff. One of the classics:

Second Reality by FUTURE CREW

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XtCW-axRJV8>

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> wow, 17 years old? i feel like an amateur. great job on those examples.

</comment><comment><USER11> I spent more time staring at this and running my mouse round the screen than I care to admit. Very cool.

</comment><comment><USER12> You can add ALT+XXX (ex. ALT+13) also, pretty cool. Although you must press 1. ALT+13 2. anything to make it show up

</comment><comment><USER13> I expected an article on linguistics.

<comment><USER14> And your comment contributes to the conversation how?

<comment><USER15> It got me to go seek out <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discourse_particle>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Why doesn't this work in IE 10 Platform Preview? I am just curious if it would run faster there.

</comment><comment><USER17> So cool! But this makes my poor Macbook Air (2011) sound like it wants to die...

</comment><comment><USER18> ADs :(

</comment><comment><USER19> captcha...</comment>


Nigerian Hackers Threaten Government. - <AUTHOR> http://codename-intrusion.blogspot.com/2011/05/government-website-hacked-by.html <comment><USER2> Yahoo boys taking care of business? Quite unrelated, but I bet a lot of Lagos youth wouldn't do bad in the Valley.

</comment><comment><USER3> Follow-up: [http://codename- intrusion.blogspot.com/2011/05/naijacyberhac...](http://codename- intrusion.blogspot.com/2011/05/naijacyberhacktivists-strikes-again.html).

Still no evidence that this is more than a few grandstanding script kiddies, though.

</comment><comment><USER4> An African version of Anonymous?

Would be interesting to read updates on the story.

</comment><comment><USER5> Accoriding to coinmill.com, 1Bn Nigerian Naira is worth 6,343,298 USD.

So, you could call Mr. Goodluck Jonathan the 'Nigerian Six Million Dollar Man' ;-)

<comment><USER6> Judging from precedent, such lavish ceremonies are reserved for dictators-in- waiting.

Do you remember the Putin inauguration? <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6uz- wLPEz6I></comment></comment>


The Navy Admits Something Weird Has Been Going on in the Skies - <AUTHOR> https://slate.com/technology/2019/04/navy-ufo-reporting-guidelines-nimitz-aliens-military.html <comment><USER2> "in the immediate aftermath of the 2004 incident, a video of the encounter was shared and viewed widely by members aboard the Princeton and Nimitz via an internal military email system"

I hadn't realized that the US navy possessed wireless email capable of handling video back in 2004. Seriously though, what's this UFO waffle doing on a respectable tech blog such as HN.

</comment><comment><USER3> The tic-tac UFO:

[https://youtu.be/0Fd6ssvcBoM](https://youtu.be/0Fd6ssvcBoM)

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm suspecting highly experimental drones here. Or a new type of experimental delivery mechanism. Supersonic drones with warheads. Terrifying thought.

</comment><comment><USER5> A try in repeating 60's UFO craze?</comment>


TypeScript language service plugin that gives superpowers to SQL tagged strings - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/segmentio/ts-mysql-plugin <comment><USER2> I have been using this tool for about 2 months at Segment, and I have to say, the experience is just incredible. Being able to catch syntax errors and get autocompletion ahead of time is a pretty massive productivity boost.</comment>


Side-Project - <AUTHOR> http://www.commitstrip.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Strip-Side-project-650-finalenglish.jpg <comment><USER2> I like it that way. I probably only finished about 10%, but I still learned a lot from the other 90%.</comment>


Rethinking Chatbots - <AUTHOR> https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.chatoneapp <comment><AUTHOR> Hello All,

We have launched an android app. This is a chatbot (as everyone calls it). But for us, it is a different way to search required information in the web.

Please install it and let us know what you think.

Look forward.

Team OneApp</comment>


Codecademy vs. the BBC Micro - <AUTHOR> https://twobithistory.org/2019/03/31/bbc-micro.html <comment><USER3> The computer literacy project was basically the last UK government attempt at doing industrial policy. It was a huge success, so they gave up on it and have abandoned industrial policy to market forces and financialisation.

We have gone from that to "eff business". [https://www.theyworkforyou.com/debates/?id=2019-02-14b.1068....](https://www.theyworkforyou.com/debates/?id=2019-02-14b.1068.8#g1125.1)

<comment><USER4> > It was a huge success, so they gave up on it

This made me chuckle. I hear it again and again with regard to British innovation and entrepreneurship to the degree that it's almost a cliche, but would be interested to know if there's anything solid behind the idea (and that's not a snarky 'sources?' comment BTW, just genuinely interested to know if this supposed phenomenon has been substantiated). Is it just the case that circumstances conspired against the UK? Is there something in the culture that led the UK to give up too easily in favour of easy money elsewhere? Was the UK deliberately undermined by e.g. the US (Black Arrow, TSR2)?

<comment><USER3> Several books could be written on the subject. My personal recommendation is Francis Spufford's "Backroom Boys" [https://www.theguardian.com/books/2004/aug/14/featuresreview...](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2004/aug/14/featuresreviews.guardianreview12)

A lot of this needs to be seen in the context of post-imperial decline, and (in the 70s at least) serious financial difficulties. We could probably have made _some_ of TSR2, Black Arrow, Magnox, APT, Concorde, Trident/Polaris, etc big successes with adequate funding, but we could never have done _all_ of them. It looks like Concorde was one of the ones that was chosen to be funded to completion, partly due to the personal intervention of Tony Benn.

(Possible counterexample: the three V-bombers)

A lot of things were funded to the first failure but not to the first success. A common problem - NASA would never have been able to do what SpaceX did because the funding would have been pulled on the first failed landing, despite this being an anticipated part of the development plan.

In the private sector, any history of this would have to cover the class system and industrial action. Also CP Snow's "Two Cultures".

I would probably also list the UK's small mindedness towards immigration; the US was a magnet for fleeing scientists and intellectual refugees after the war. Much of SV's success is due to immigration or internal migration: [https://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/30/us-tech-companies-founded- by...](https://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/30/us-tech-companies-founded-by- immigrants-or-the-children-of-immigrants.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> There's a lot of us mid-forties IT staff who owe our careers to the BBC Micro and accompanying TV programmes. It would come as a huge surprise to today's kids but my school had just one computer (a BBC Micro, of course) which was wheeled on a trolley from one classroom to the next. We'd all take turns, usually in groups of three or four, to run whatever educational game was related to the work we were doing (usually maths quizzes)

<comment><USER6> We're about the same age. My primary school also had a BBC Micro on a trolley. We didn't get to use it much, I guess because our teacher wasn't interested in it.

When I was ~10, my parents spent £129.99 (a lot of money for them at the time) to buy me an Acorn Electron (a cut down version of the BBC Micro).

One thing that was frustrating for me at the time is that I had no one to answer questions. For example, I was writing some 6502 assembly to do something simple (I don't remember what) and the book (either the user guide that came in the box, or the Acorn Electron Advanced User Guide) said I had to provide some value using two's complement. I had no idea what it was or how to find an answer. So I wrote a letter (yes, with a stamp, in the mail) to a Teletext page where these things were discussed, and a few days/weeks later they actually answered my question on one of the pages.

<comment><USER7> The Acorn was my first programming computer at school - I didn't know it was from BBC Micro lineage! We were pretty lucky to have about 20 of them. I did NOT make enough use of this resource as a teenager, to my adult self's chagrin. This was largely because as a teenage girl, the last thing that was gonna happen was spending my lunch hours in the computer room where boys were playing adventure games. _Lame._ (Future me kicks teenage me).

<comment><USER8> Acorn was the manufacturer rather than the model.

So the Acorn logo was on the back of the BBC computers, the Electron and on later Archimedes lines.

<comment><USER9> This one started it:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acorn_System_1](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acorn_System_1)

And this was the breakthrough Acorn Atom:

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

The lessons learned there all went into the BBC Micro.

<comment><USER10> I still my have my Acorn Atom - a FANTASTIC computer.

The manual was exceptionally good as well, with the catchy title "Atomic Theory and Practise". I taught myself to program using that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> BBC Basic was a really good Basic. Its low level routines (for floating point, for example) were available at certain addresses so you could call them from assembly. And since you could mix assembly into Basic also, it gave you a nice path from simple programs to really making the most of the machine.

I find it astonishing how well thought out this machine was.

<comment><USER12> Yes it really was well thought out. Another good example is the 'tube' interface for second processors. Enthusiasts have recently put this to use to interface with a Raspberry Pi which can emulate various processors from back in the day at unheard-of speeds, and also provides a modern native ARM coprocessor. The neat thing is that this all works with no changes to the BBC and no special software; you just use the operating system routines as usual on code running on the second processor and it all just works. Not bad for a system designed in 1981.

[https://github.com/hoglet67/PiTubeDirect/wiki](https://github.com/hoglet67/PiTubeDirect/wiki)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm reading "But How Do It Know" right now and programming a software version of the computer the book is describing. It's fun and gets you to learn about NAND gates and other things without intimidating electronic engineering knowledge (I don't have much of a background here)

I've implemented a the memory module (256 bytes!) the ALU and am just moving into the CPU section now. The book builds up from creating a "bit" out of a few NAND gates, onto registers, the data bus etc

It's actually been a very rewarding little project, yes it's far removed from x86 and modern systems but I think the principles are there to build knowledge on.

People might say what's the point, your day job is gluing libraries together to run websites and stuff who cares about hardware, but I think that's a shame because from what I can tell it's not that complicated and makes what is going on under the hood a little easier to reason about, even if you don't understand the complexities of modern processors

I'm looking forward to getting my little computer to run toy programs :)

</comment><comment><USER14> If you haven't already seen it, 'Micro Men' is an excellent TV drama that details the history of the BBC's computer project and the battle to be the chosen computer:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXBxV6-zamM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXBxV6-zamM)

</comment><comment><USER15> When a friend attempted to teach basic programming to his kids, I realized we're in trouble (for some definition of trouble, see below).

First of all, the article is right in opining that the pathways to computer literacy in general, and programming in particular, are not really all that accessible anymore. The problem becomes even worse due to the sheer number of "teaching" tools available. My friend had trouble even finding the right setting. It would have to be a device or an environment that seems relevant and recognizable to the kid, yet at the same time it must be approachable, well documented, didactically meaningful, and entertaining in a way that would motivate someone who could just play any game instead of making one.

Second, being a tech-illiterate kid today is not a pain point anymore. Devices, apps, and entertainment media are easy enough for anybody to use. Kids are, somewhat reasonably, asking why they should spend any energy on this, to what end?

At first I thought this was a problem. One of my friend's kids quit before the effort started essentially saying "this seems boring, why do I need this?" and the other quit after the first introduction with "nah, I'd rather do something else". I think this is actually fine. It has always been the case that being interested in computers came easier to social outcasts, and kids who had a genuine internal motivation towards technology. The web start up bubble may have skewed this perception for a time, because suddenly there was a lot of money accessible even for people with at best a passing interest in programming. But those days are petering out.

Computing never had a broad appeal, except during short fads. I don't think we need more people in computing and programming. If anything, we need less, because the job market for programmers is likely not going to get better.

Finally, I question whether there is an upside to teaching computing to kids who don't feel a connection to it. I actually agree with my friend's kids here: for what? Using software is as easy and productive as never before. Yes, being a programmer, I see the glaring issues in today's software, but if we're honest we have gained a lot more than we lost in terms of what the "unskilled" user can do.

<comment><USER16> There's a case for programming being a subset of literacy - like art, music, science, literature, and knowing how to make and post popular videos on YouTube.

You don't have to be good at software for the learning to be worthwhile. There's a major potential lightbulb moment for anyone who gets to the point where they realise just how complex the technology that keeps us all alive is, and just how unwise it is to take it for granted.

But there's also no point in trying to relive the past. 70s/80s computer culture was partly driven by the fact that computers seemed to be expensive, room-filling, and mysterious. Now computers are ubiquitous, tiny, and absolutely mundane. So the mystery and inaccessibility have disappeared, and kids need a more direct motivation.

Saying "You'll be able to get a good job" is not a valid approach, because for all anyone knows in 10-15 years AI will have automated away all those well- paying jobs.

But someone who has some curiosity about how things work, and some experience of making them work, will always be able to ride the future better than someone who has never tried and never understood why they might need to care.

<comment><USER15> I completely agree with the sentiment. Even if you're not going to do it as a job, knowing how to program enables you to think about problems in a different way, plus you occasionally still get to solve problems that other people cannot. And I also agree that advertising job prospects to kids is disingenuous.

 _> But someone who has some curiosity about how things work, and some experience of making them work_

That's probably the biggest issue. I don't blame kids for not seeing a meaningful niche there, because we're entering a time where the inner workings of things are abstracted away, and often times they're even hidden away by force.

"Have you ever thought about how text appears on a screen?" is something I could latch on to as a kid, it's _very_ difficult to transfer that perspective to a person growing up today. I'm not necessarily lamenting this. There will always be people who get into computing no matter what. But I don't see a worse path for those who don't. There are _many_ things modern humans in general are not literate about, and I suspect computing will join these fields.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The computer I grew up with was the BBC's little brother, the Acorn Electron. Lovely little thing. Only 32 kB of RAM, but it had a special port at the back where basically the motherboard itself could be extended, so there were official and unofficial extensions that let you extend this little computer- in-a-keyboard to a massive desk-filling beast with a whopping 224 kB of ROM (though still only 32 kB of RAM). It had no power switch, so you had to use the wall plug to turn it on or off, and with all this stuff added it had become so unstable you often had to try a couple of times before it would boot without hanging.

Fun times.

</comment><comment><USER18> Interesting comparison.

Learning computing back then did involve getting right down to bits and bytes and assembly language if you wanted to push yourself. It resulted in an underlying understanding of computing which may be missing this days.

</comment><comment><USER19> The article seems very concerned about what is the right level of abstraction to teach. I understand the appeal of starting with Jacob's loom, especially when you're going to follow up with something low level like basic. But maybe code academy disagrees. Maybe young people these days don't need convincing that computers just follow language commands, and with a high level language that's maybe a safe lie to teach.

We might further wonder about what to teach for futures non von Neumann architectures. What is the Jacob's loom if a multi core machine? The organ of a quantum computer?

<comment><USER20> I guess I've never seen the BBC series, but from the description I don't think it really has the same target audience or goals as Codeacademy. Codeacademy is (mostly) targeted to giving people practical skills to get a job with, while the BBC series sounds like it's more about general education on computers for people who might casually encounter them in real life, not those who are interested in computers as a career. Sort of like in college when everyone might have to take a general biology class, I imagine this would not be structured the same as a biology class targeted to medical school students or those majoring in biology.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> In the U.S. as a kid, they aired some of these programs. On one episode, they showed a computer playing tic-tac-toe (naughts and crosses) and claimed that it learned as it went. To this day, I don't know how it did that - <USER2> building a simple game tree? Still impressive. I always wanted one, but could afford only the TS-1000 (ZX81 but black). I was like 12.

<comment><USER22> I did this as a kid in the 1980s. :) If you exploit the symmetry, so that there are only 3 initial moves (center, corner and edge) its manageable to do by hand. Don't even need a computer.

And here's an old Scientific American article about a device that learns a simplified subset of chess called Hexapawn. It's not a computer, but about 25 matchboxes. :)

[https://www.gwern.net/docs/rl/1991-gardner- ch8amatchboxgamel...](https://www.gwern.net/docs/rl/1991-gardner- ch8amatchboxgamelearningmachine.pdf)

<comment><USER23> That matchbox "computer" in action, courtesy of Standupmaths

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9c-_neaxeU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9c-_neaxeU)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I had a Spectrum at the time but looking back, I'm impressed by the thoroughness of the manual that came with the BBC Micro. From connecting the leads to BASIC to ROM system calls to assembly language, in one book.

[http://bbc.nvg.org/doc/BBCUserGuide-1.00.pdf](http://bbc.nvg.org/doc/BBCUserGuide-1.00.pdf)

<comment><USER12> Yes, though actually the ZX Spectrum was also pretty good.. the famous Chapter 24 about the memory map was my first introduction to such matters and left a deep impression at a young age.

<comment><USER25> I still have the orange-covered spiral-bound ZX Spectrum manual, complete with the Z80 opcodes and binary/hex numbers alongside them.

Alone it wasn't sufficient to program in assembly, but the BASIC tutorials/documentation were adequate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> The programmes in question are available online: [https://computer-literacy- project.pilots.bbcconnectedstudio....](https://computer-literacy- project.pilots.bbcconnectedstudio.co.uk/)

<comment><USER27> I recently went through most of these old shows, it's amazing that the BBC has taken the time to preserve them in this manner.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> as a 46 year old professional software developer I can honestly say I owe my entire career to the BBC literacy project. Thank you BBC!</comment>


The Rank Hypocrisy of a TikTok Ban - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/trump-tiktok-ban-hypocrisy/ <comment><USER2> Is it really "hypocrisy" if China started it first, by banning American apps? If country A bans imports of widgets from country B, and country B retaliates with a similar ban, is it hypocrisy?

<comment><USER3> Careful. You're spilling out 'logic' and 'truths' here that doesn't fit WIRED's narrative. Indeed Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat were banned in China long before TikTok even existed so Wired's point of 'hypocrisy' really falls short at this.

China has other alternative social networks like LINE, Wechat to take their place but alongside the TikTok ban in India, they were also among the 58 apps banned too.

I guess they say it's hypocrisy because it's 'Trump' doing the ban. But when Biden started to tell his own staff to delete TikTok from their phones it's apparent that it is more of a security concern than a 'Trump embarrassment' issue, such that they have less trust in Chinese-owned tech companies in general.

<comment><USER4> And remember that it's not just a matter of trust - we _know_ , from people who've reverse engineered the app, that TikTok is engaging in extremely invasive data collection. It was just a month ago that they were caught copying the contents of your clipboard from the background!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The US is far from the only country floating a TikTok ban, so it's difficult to believe this article's very US centric explanation. If it's about protecting Facebook, why do Japan and potentially Australia also believe there's a legitimate threat? (I'm excluding India because they have other plausible reasons to want to mess with China.)

<comment><USER5> Dunno, but US govt is leaning on them in public and probably behind the scenes to encourage a ban. Pompeo called out an unnamed ally for not joining the US ban of Huawei in a recent speech. The protectionism isn't purely monetary but also about retaining indirect control over communication platforms and infrastructure.

<comment><USER6> I would wager the motive is less about control, and more about about shared values / identity / mutual understanding.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> What about this ban is Hypocrisy? It seems perfectly in line with the freedoms given to American corporations operating in China (IE None.)

I'm not convinced the free speech concerns even apply when TikTok meticulously grooms the content offered on the platform. Who's speech is being infringed? The Chinese censors?

<comment><USER7> Banning TikTok violates the rights of Americans who use the platform, and also Americans who work there.

More generally, violating one right of one American threatens all rights of all Americans.

TikTok should be banned if and only if it presents a military or intelligence threat.

<comment><USER2> >Banning TikTok violates the rights of Americans who use the platform

What rights? 1st amendment? Your speech isn't being curtailed, you just have to take it elsewhere. If you interpret this as a trade dispute everything looks fine. Banning Chinese printers don't violate the rights of Americans either.

>also Americans who work there.

what rights are we talking about?

<comment><USER7> I think your conception of rights is far too narrow.

If the government forces me against my will when I am not harming someone, it's a violation of my rights.

The rights listed in the Bill of Rights are not intended to be exhaustive. One reason some people opposed the Bill of Rights was because they feared that it would later be misunderstood to be exhaustive.

> Banning Chinese printers don't violate the rights of Americans either.

It absolutely does. It prevents me from buying a printer from whoever I want.

Look, I get it: like most people, you probably don't care about a theoretical way of looking at rights.

Nonetheless, we should all agree that the American government shouldn't do things that harm Americans. Does arbitrarily banning certain businesses, even if owned by foreigners, hurt Americans? Yes, it absolutely does. It's not in our self interest as individual Americans.

The point of developing a theoretical way of looking at rights is to delineate, ahead of time, all the things government can do that will be contra the interest of citizens, and disallow them. That's what rights are for.

<comment><USER2> > I think your conception of rights is far to narrow. If the government forces > me against my will when I am not harming someone, it's a violation of my > rights.

Is this something that's recognized by the courts, or your own headcanon? If it's the latter, there no point arguing because it basically devolves into a generic "what's the role of government" discussion.

>Does arbitrarily banning certain businesses, even if owned by foreigners, hurt Americans? Yes, it absolutely does. It's not in our self interest as individual Americans.

So does setting tariffs, yet that's widely accepted (as a government power) by both parties.

>The point of developing a theoretical way of looking at rights is to delineate, ahead of time, all the things government can do that will be contra the interest of citizens, and disallow them. That's what rights are for.

This is probably why you're being downvoted. When you say "x violates your rights", most people take that as to mean it violates your legal rights. They don't mean some amorphous concept that roughly equates to "is the government doing the right thing?".

<comment><USER7> It is a generic "what's the role of government" discussion. It already was, even before I commented.

Not sure why you got involved if you don't want to have that discussion.

<comment><USER2> >Not sure why you got involved if you don't want to have that discussion.

The main issue is that it looks like you're attempting to do a motte and bailey. You start off by making a bold claim (the bailey) of "Banning TikTok violates the rights of Americans" (which is commonly understood by most people to mean it violates the constitution/legal rights of Americans). A few comments later, you retreat back to the motte by saying that what you meant by "violates the rights of Americans" is "harms Americans".

[1] [https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Motte_and_bailey](https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Motte_and_bailey)

Also, regarding your other comment

> You added more to your post after I responded, so here is my new response to > the new content.

It probably makes more sense to edit your existing comment and delete that one rather than starting two comment trees.

<comment><USER7> > A few comments later, you retreat back to the motte by saying that what you > meant by "violates the rights of Americans" is "harms Americans".

No, I didn't equivocate between "harms Americans" and "violates rights." The former is an explanation for why we need a theoretical framework of rights. That was pertinent in that part of the discussion.

I get that you think that everyone understands "rights" to mean "rights in a narrow legal sense," but as I said before, I don't agree. In fact, I think most people understand "rights" in my sense. Anyway, I needed to say what I said, the way I said it, to make my point. Yes, this _is_ a discussion about political theory, and already was, before I joined it.

On your premise about the word "rights," which I disagree with, I would have acted in bad faith, so you are right to raise that as a complaint, from your perspective.

I don't think this is a productive conversation anymore, so I am asking you kindly to refrain from responding further, on the presumption that you continue to believe that I have acted at least irrationally, and possibly in bad faith. I will not respond further.

> It probably makes more sense to edit your existing comment and delete that > one rather than starting two comment trees.

I agree, but I couldn't find the link to edit that particular comment, for some reason, so I had to make a new comment. I know how to use HN (been on here for a super long time), but I probably goofed somehow.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Sounds like classic Trump. Use the threat of a ban to force a policy change in American interests. Maybe bargain down Microsoft's price for TikTok along the way.

TikTok's user base deserves a parent company domiciled in the US and under American regulatory and financial purview.

<comment><USER9> I do hope I deserve better than that. I'd say Canada or Swiss. Now only if they could ban FB and make their own... The slippery slope/trade wars has begun.</comment></comment>


Full TCP/IP Implementation Stack for 8 bit microcontrollers - <AUTHOR> http://www.sics.se/~adam/uip/index.php/Main_Page

<comment><USER2> Open source microcontroller TCP/IP? I give the Makers 6 months, the manufacturers 2 years, and the general public adoption 3.

Welcome to the future. Once again. It still blows my mind all the futuristic technology we have already. Here's yet another key to leapfrogging us ahead again.

</comment><comment><USER3> This has been around for a while. Adam Dunkels used it for a C64 based web server. The other day I was looking at the Ettus hardware that is used with GNU radio. That has an FPGA that implements a microblaze soft-CPU and that runs this stack for communication over 1G Ethernet.

</comment><comment><USER4> Now more commonly seen in Contiki: <http://www.sics.se/contiki/> which is an operating system for resource-constrained platforms ranging from 16-bit 10kB RAM sensor motes to C64s. It's quite an interesting project.

</comment><comment><USER5> This is super old. Last used that in 2006 iirc.</comment>


Show HN: Open source library for building visualizations with react and d3 - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/vx-code/react-d3-vx-6f2705d4daf2 <comment><USER2> vx author here. Happy to answer any questions folks might have. This is a project I've been working on for the past 5 months at my job at Airbnb.

The goal of vx is to make d3 feel at home in any react codebase.

github: [https://github.com/hshoff/vx/](https://github.com/hshoff/vx/)

gallery: [https://vx-demo.now.sh/gallery](https://vx-demo.now.sh/gallery)

tutorials: [https://github.com/hshoff/viewsource](https://github.com/hshoff/viewsource)</comment>


Show HN: Virtual Card Read-Punch – Punch, Read, Execute Virtual Punch Cards - <AUTHOR> https://www.masswerk.at/card-readpunch/ <comment><USER2> Not quite the true experience. It should first start with writing the program on a standard coding form ([https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:FortranCodingForm.pn...](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:FortranCodingForm.png)), after which it is sent to the keypunch department. When the deck and card listing come back the next day, the programmer would proofread the listing and use a Type 029 to replace misspunched cards and insert/delete to correct bugs found in re-reading. This was somewhat laborious, since most programmers did not type well, and unlike the simulation, the 029 did not have a backspace key. JCL or other control language cards as needed by the operating system would have to be punched to define memory needed, tape drives, disk drives, department chargeback accounts, etc. And the output would come back after a few hours on 132 column greenbar fanfold.

<comment><AUTHOR> The input text-area should be styled as the respective COBOL and FORTRAN coding forms. With a bit of luck, if the browser doesn't interfere, the text should also line up with the column index. You are free to just retype and exchange individual cards – for a lengthy program, it's probably the most convenient option. There's also a bit of greeenbar (though not too green and the non-US type) in the reader output (and it's planned for the output of the FORTRAN runtime.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Wow, quite viscerally brings back memories of using punch card decks (Fortran on an IBM 1130) in a high school Explorer post at Teledyne Ryan in San Diego in the late 60's, then in the early 70's (last year of high school) at the Navel Electronics Lab on Point Loma on an IBM 360/65 with an unheard-of ONE MEGABYTE of "large core storage" (cost $1/byte at the time).

Fun!

<comment><AUTHOR> At least, dropping a zip file shouldn't be as punishing as dropping a real card stack. :-)

Also, 1MB must have been really massive then. (Nowadays, a zip archive of a few card images easily has a multiple of that.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Are there any example punch cards we can select and then read and execute just to try it?

<comment><AUTHOR> There's a link to a demo stack (zip archive) at the front page for a Tic Tac Toe program written in Python. (The download has a few MB as the archive comprises 146 cards / images...)

URL: [https://www.masswerk.at/card- readpunch/stacks/VirtualCardSta...](https://www.masswerk.at/card- readpunch/stacks/VirtualCardStack-TicTacToe-Py.zip)

(You may drop both the zip or the unpacked images onto the reader.)

<comment><USER4> Thank you!

Not sure how I missed that.

<comment><AUTHOR> Here's another (shorter) one, demonstrating a nifty feature to auto-transform code case for cards submitted in an upper-case only format. (Here, switch the runtime to "JavaScript" in order to execute.)

[https://www.masswerk.at/card- readpunch/stacks/VirtualCardSta...](https://www.masswerk.at/card- readpunch/stacks/VirtualCardStack-JS-on-Standard.zip)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


I'm Leaving Seattle for Texas So My Employees Can Be Free - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/im-leaving-seattle-for-texas-so-my-employees-can-be-free-11593211124 <comment><USER2> Non-paywalled version: [https://apkmetro.com/im-leaving-seattle-for-texas-so- my-empl...](https://apkmetro.com/im-leaving-seattle-for-texas-so-my-employees- can-be-free/)

For anyone interested, I've been using Runnaroo [0][1] recently to quickly find non-paywalled versions of links submitted on HN by searching the title. Sites that commonly use paywalls are tagged so that they are easier to spot. I'm the creator of Runnaroo.

[0] [https://www.runnaroo.com/search?term=I%E2%80%99m+Leaving+Sea...](https://www.runnaroo.com/search?term=I%E2%80%99m+Leaving+Seattle+for+Texas+So+My+Employees+Can+Be+Free)

[1] [https://www.runnaroo.com/search?term=The+secret+economics+of...](https://www.runnaroo.com/search?term=The+secret+economics+of+a+VIP+party)

</comment><comment><USER3> tl; dr "I don't like taxes or regulations, so I'm moving from Seattle to the slightly less expensive Austin, TX, because it's the only part of Texas my employees would want to live in."

<comment><USER4> This is a misreading. The author says, "both have become hostile to the principles and policies that enable people to live abundantly in the broadest sense." And, "Even in normal times, San Francisco and Seattle go to great lengths to make life hard for families. Both cities. . . are notorious for enacting policies that raise the price of housing."

I disagree with many of the author's framings about the intellectual climate, but the author is correct about both cities's housing policies dramatically raising the cost of housing, which is hard on single and coupled people but much harder and worse on families with kids.</comment></comment>


A Revolution in Custom ROMs How Project Treble Makes Porting Android a 1 Day Job - <AUTHOR> https://www.xda-developers.com/how-project-treble-revolutionizes-custom-roms-android-oreo/ <comment><USER2> Despite being from XDA-Developers this is about an upstream Google update.

Reading about the new Vendor Interface abstraction screams one thing to me - Google plans to silently swap Linux out for Fuschia.

It's gonna be interesting what kind of functionality Google pulls in the process. Based on the ease they seem to be able to pull the carpet out from under established APIs and services, I genuinely do wonder if Fuschia-powered devices will allow access to a terminal, or really anything lowlevel at all.</comment>


Tell HN: A recent project, the Narcissist Quotient - <AUTHOR> http://blog.ethanjfast.com/2009/12/the-tweeting-narcissist/

<comment><USER2> Nifty. What's the correlation of self-mentions and follower count?

It might also be interesting to qualify people: are they more or less narcissistic than those they follow (or are followed by). Or, rank those I follow by narcissism, and find local maxima in the follower-graph.

</comment><comment><USER3> Fun. What are the different levels you can reach?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks -- at the moment, there are only four:

Quite Modest, Rather Average, Self-Important, a Raging Ego</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What are the cheap options for reliable load balancing? - <AUTHOR>

I am looking for cheap options to load balance 2-3 nginx instances, all on vps's, traffic is mostly http for now but may add SSL down the road.
I've look at Linode Node Balancer, currently priced at 20$ per month.
Who are the other contenders at this price? <comment><USER2> Nginx. It is able to load balance HTTP/HTTPS servers in a reverse-proxy mode and lets you use the common strategies for choosing the upstream server. See for example [https://www.digitalocean.com/community/articles/how-to- set-u...](https://www.digitalocean.com/community/articles/how-to-set-up-nginx- load-balancing).

Other options too look at are, HAProxy (level 4 or 7 load balancing) and Varnish.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the input!

I agree Nginx does it and does it well. I've look at this option, getting another VPS and setup load balancing on it. The only things that worry me is having only one front-end.

<comment><USER3> As I mentioned in another comment DNS load balancing prevents having only one front-end.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> In an ideal world you'd use a VLAN spanning locations, with a shared IP to point to the load-balancer.

The load-balancer would route to your real servers, nginx, in your case. I've had good success with ucarp for IP-moving, and both nginx and varnish for load-balancing. (Varnish allows me to do caching at the same time.)

<comment><AUTHOR> Ucarp looks cool, will sure have a look. Thank you for the input.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've used pound[0] in a previous life (peaking at ~22M requests/day). It's lightweight, awesome, and just works.

[0]: [http://www.apsis.ch/pound/](http://www.apsis.ch/pound/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Simplest is the DNS load balancing. You can define multiple A records for the same domain and you are good to go!

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree DNS load balancing is very easy and free. I've also done it in the past. Thanks for the input!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> We are using HAProxy and I can highly recommend it.</comment>


Does English Fulfill the Dream of a Universal Language? - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/blog/does-english-fulfill-the-dream-of-a-universal-language <comment><USER2> Only Esperanto ;-)

It depends what sense of universality we're thinking about. It is and will always be a part of Anglo-Saxons domination story, therefore pretty hard to accept by many. It's same with Russian or Chinese.

Therefore to be universal but not predatory, the language should be more neutral? Maybe without the army or corporations who inflict it?</comment>


I Quit My Job at 50 to Reinvent Myself. Pro Tip: Don't Do This - <AUTHOR> https://narratively.com/i-quit-my-job-at-50-to-reinvent-myself-pro-tip-dont-do-this/ <comment><USER2> This is a great example of how people just want things to happen to them. I really don't feel like I gained anything at all from reading this, though.

</comment><comment><USER3> Funny, I just put in my notice at age 60 to retire. Gotta figure out what to do with my life.</comment>


Back to the future: The Decentralized Web - <AUTHOR> http://dci.mit.edu/decentralizedweb <comment><USER2> Still going through the full paper [0], but I'm finding it insightful. They give an analysis of a number of decentralized systems in the wild, including Diaspora and IPFS, and an overview of aspects/challenges to consider going forward. I believe this is an increasingly relevant subject in society, especially for those working in software.

[0] [http://dci.mit.edu/assets/papers/decentralized_web.pdf](http://dci.mit.edu/assets/papers/decentralized_web.pdf)</comment>


Coronavirus: Act Now - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-act-today-or-people-will-die-f4d3d9cd99ca <comment><USER2> > one death today means 800 true cases today

this is serious. Take it seriously.

<comment><USER3> We still don't have a SARS (2002) vaccine as far as I can tell.</comment></comment>


Scrollback: A friendly portal to your IRC channel - <AUTHOR> http://scrollback.io/

<comment><USER2> If you're wondering which tab is making a random key click sound in the background every couple of minutes, it's this one.

<comment><USER3> this was infuriating

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The beta interface is significantly better: See [http://next.scrollback.io/mozilla- ph?tab=threads](http://next.scrollback.io/mozilla-ph?tab=threads)

It splits up chat logs by conversation rather than time - that's a step up from most IRC logs.

</comment><comment><USER5> I came across Scrollback a few months back but I still wonder what problem is it trying to solve? IRC is not broken. And the IRC clients work just fine for everyone.

I would like to know more from the team about why they are building Scrollback?

<comment><USER6> Besides the fact that most people new to IRC are completely intimidated, a good web client solves connection issues as well. I'm behind a university proxy, for example, and port 6667 doesn't work. Currently I ssh-screen-irssi, but if there's a really good web client out there I might switch to it (I hear irccloud is good, though I'm really beginning to like scrollback)

<comment><USER7> I'm also at a university that blocks 6667. I wrote a blog post on how to get around it.

[http://siculars.posthaven.com/ssh-tunnel-to-blocked-sites- wh...](http://siculars.posthaven.com/ssh-tunnel-to-blocked-sites-while- keeping-your-routes)

<comment><USER8> If you have a pedantic HTTP proxy, you can use ssh over HTTP(S) with corkscrew.

You might have to set up SSH on port 443, but this is guaranteed to bypass most filters.

Another good option is tethering :P

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Scrolling is broken in Chrome on Windows.

<comment><USER10> It has been fixed in the new client. Check [http://next.scrollback.io](http://next.scrollback.io)</comment></comment>


VW Accused of Deceit in U.K.'S Largest Class Action Lawsuit - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-12-02/vw-accused-of-cheating-u-k-buyers-in-largest-class-action-suit <comment><USER2> This article, in my opinion, is so unbiased that it's actually biased.

They completely lack mentioning that VW has already settled similar cases in the US and Europe. They mention the fines paid to the EU but nothing about civil settlements. Here in the US a $14.7b buyback program in 2016 meant consumers could return their car to VW for a refund. [1]

I can't believe this is still ongoing. Here in the states VW recently aired ANOTHER commercial specifically aimed at addressing this PR disaster. They've been releasing print and TV ads for this purpose for nearly 4 years now. [2] [3]

It does not lend credence to their new ad campaigns here that they're across the pond toting some BS technicality and yanking customers through more mud!

It just looks awful that the same company can apologize so profusely in one country and completely ignore another country where their actions might be "technically legal" but are still unequivocally shitty. How can you be sorry in the US and absolved of responsibility in Germany? Especially as a German company.

[1] [https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a15339250/everything- you-n...](https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a15339250/everything-you-need-to- know-about-the-vw-diesel-emissions-scandal/)

[2] [https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/05/business/media/new- volksw...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/05/business/media/new-volkswagen- ad-campaign.html)

[3] [https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&c...](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=14&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwj9pYGUnJjmAhXjT98KHbPRB3cQFjANegQIARAG&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theverge.com%2Ftransportation%2F2015%2F11%2F15%2F9739960%2Fvolkswagen- apologizes-with-full-page-ad-in-dozens-of- newspapers&usg=AOvVaw1LWRZ7zCkap40L0O72pic9)</comment>