Critical Bluetooth vulnerability in Android - photon-torpedo https://insinuator.net/2020/02/critical-bluetooth-vulnerability-in-android-cve-2020-0022/ <comment><AUTHOR> That's heavy. There are tons of phones out there that will never be patched again.

The situation on the phone market is so miserable.

The industry forces us to throw away perfectly fine hardware after just 3 years or so.

<comment><USER2> The solution is rather simple; buy devices with better documented and open internals rather than what's cheapest, shiniest, and most convenient. There are alternatives, and we all vote with our wallets.

<comment><USER3> Or just buy Apple. The iPhone 5s was released in 2013 and got an update less than a fortnight ago (January 28).

<comment><USER4> Can you make assurances that iPhone doesn't suffer from similar issues, given it's not open source solution?

<comment><USER5> Depends what you mean by "similar issues"

If you mean "a bunch of relatively new Android phones not getting security updates because their manufacturer doesn't support them", then yes. Apple is actively providing not just security patches but entire feature software updates for the iPhone 6S, which is 4.5 years old at this point.

<comment><USER4> Yup, that's what I mean. While I do have an Android phone that is patched (Samsung), I understand that many people will be hmm... irritated that this vulnerability won't be fixed and requires them to upgrade. I'd not treat switching to Apple ecosystem as panacea to everything though and would be more for security through audit, not obscurity.

<comment><USER6> Apple's security is heavily audited in a lot of ways. They give special phones to researchers that make it easier to audit them, and there are significant bug bounties.

<comment><USER7> > They give special phones to researchers that make it easier to audit them

Did this already happen? I only remember the announcement and then researchers on Twitter complaining that the first one is yet to be seen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> My OnePlus 3 phone just got its last security patch and is now out of support from the manufacturer.

I use bluetooth constantly for my smartwatch and headphones.

I think it's time for custom firmware just because of this. Goodby banking apps and Google Pay, because apparently a newer but unofficial OS is more insecure [1].

[1] [https://developer.android.com/training/safetynet](https://developer.android.com/training/safetynet)

<comment><USER9> You can usually still pass safetynet with latest magisk, even on custom Roms. Go check the xda forums and you might find that.

<comment><USER10> > You can usually still pass safetynet with latest magisk, even on custom > Roms.

It's unreliable by definition. You're better off keeping a device around with the stock OS on it, that you only use for SafetyNet-required stuff.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > _Only enable Bluetooth if strictly necessary. Keep in mind that most > Bluetooth enabled headphones also support wired analog audio._

Reason #4373 that ditching the headphone jack is pure insanity.

Sigh.

<comment><USER12> I haven't missed the jack for a single day.

<comment><USER13> I miss the jack every single day.

Recently the wire of my regular ear buds gave up (as they do) and, since I had gotten some BT ones, I decided to use them. They're Jabra Elite Sport, which got good reviews from what I can recall.

They're dropping out like crazy. It's seldom to get an entire minute of music without a small dropout. The area around the bus stop at work is particularly bad, with sound drops every few seconds until I get away from that area.

I upgraded the firmware and it got a bit better, but still pretty poor. If I hold the phone in my hands and keep still it's usually ok, but as soon as it goes into my pocket, all bets are off.

I don't miss the cable tangle, but I miss being able to enjoy music.

<comment><USER14> I am probably adding to the pile of fanboyist Apple blah blah but I honestly think my AirPods are the single best tech purchase I have made in the last 5 years. They took away so much hassle and work exactly like I would expect.

AirPods are one fine product for daily casual use. Obviously they aren't going to meet an audiophiles demand at $150 but AirPods Pro might even be enough in that case.

My AirPods drop out at the rate of once a month or something. When it happens it's a quick fix and they have been nothing but convenient otherwise.

Would never use wired headphones again unless I am trying to analyze a Beethoven piece.

<comment><USER15> I have my $20 wired Sony buds drop out about once every never.

<comment><USER16> My wired buds pop out if I do anything more than sit still while listening with them. Any other activity I'm bound to accidentally karate chop the cord out of my ears. Or they catch on something. It's quite a bad experience.

I didn't think BT headphones were worth anything until I tried them. They are surprisingly liberating for someone active like me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Why haven't most of the billions of Android phones been hacked already? Most never get updates and seems like there's 100 ways to hack them.

<comment><USER18> I think phones are also relatively hardened so the attack surfaces are not super convenient.

Bluetooth: get in reach of an attacker (and from another comment: have your device searching for bluetooth devices)

Web-stuff: if a patched browser doesn't help you are still relatively safe browsing all the non-infecting websites in the world.

file-stuff: you have to be stupid enough to open files, on your phone, from phishy mails (unless you are targeted they are always suspiciously generic, even when spreading from a hacked acquaintance )

I guess if there was a vulnerability where you could remotely gain full control over a phone without any action on the phone side you'd indeed have phone botnets. Looks like there are no such vulnerabilities.

Take what I write with a grain of salt, I'm actually just a noob trying to make sense of this, too.

<comment><USER19> > Bluetooth: get in reach of an attacker

This part looks very different if the attack is a worm.

How many phones are _not_ in reach of another vulnerable phones at least once a workday?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Gotta say, having worked with the Android Bluetooth stack, I'd be surprised if there weren't lots of serious issues like this. The handling of pointers in there is often both _clever_ and _not helpful_.

</comment><comment><USER21> "We could roll out the patches, or we could make all our customers buy new phones!"

Stagefright again.

</comment><comment><USER22> So some questions:

> with the privileges of the Bluetooth daemon

Which priviliges is that? Can it access user data? Snoop on input/output?

> For some devices, the Bluetooth MAC address can be deduced from the WiFi MAC > address

So if wifi is off, I'm safe?

I have bluetooth on all the time, because it automatically pairs with my car for cellular and audio, and turning it on and off would be a hassle. I rarely, however, use wifi unless I have to download a very big amount of data, which is almost never.

<comment><USER23> > Which priviliges is that? Can it access user data? Snoop on input/output?

This is somewhat addressed in a comment/reply by jorge:

[https://insinuator.net/2020/02/critical-bluetooth- vulnerabil...](https://insinuator.net/2020/02/critical-bluetooth- vulnerability-in-android-cve-2020-0022/#comment-103506)

> Hi, the Bluetooth daemon is a process on the Android system that runs in the > background (daemon) that is responsible for managing the Bluetooth > controller and handling of various Bluetooth related protocols, such as HCI, > L2CAP and GATT. As it has to process attacker-controlled input it is > susceptible to attacks. In addition, it has to run with high privileges (not > as 'root' like on Linux) to support features like: – file transfer => read > files – share Internet connection => configure network and VPN – Human > Interaction Devices => emulate keyboard and mouse

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> On the plus side, could this be used to root phones?

</comment><comment><USER25> > As soon as we are confident that patches have reached the end users, we will > publish a technical report on this vulnerability including a description of > the exploit as well as Proof of Concept code.

It is likely to be a long time to never for most Android phones to receive patches for this :-(

</comment><comment><USER26> > Keep in mind that most Bluetooth enabled headphones also support wired > analog audio.

Is this true?

<comment><USER27> Actual headphones, yes - many of them have an analog jack.

But I haven't ever seen a bluetooth headset that support analog audio.

<comment><USER28> My Bose QuietComfort 35 has a cable and jack for analog audio. It is quite common among germans, afaict.

<comment><USER29> Those are headphones. I think OP was talking about wireless earphones.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Am I right to understand that this vulnerability only works when Bluetooth is in discoverable mode?

If yes, then most phones are safe even if they have this vulnerability, it's only when you go in the Bluetooth menu that you are at risk...

</comment><comment><USER31> It's exactly this type of reason that I'm excited for the Librem 5 and PinePhone. I don't use many apps, and I value security updates, so using a community supported phone based on standard Linux sounds a lot more appealing to me than getting another Android phone. My current phone is an Android One device and so _should_ still be getting updates, so hopefully I can stay reasonably secure until those phones are usable as replacements.

</comment><comment><USER32> I hate to say it, but it seems like only a large-scale worm outbreak that gets media coverage would be enough to fix the utterly broken Android patching landscape. From the description, this appears wormable (especially in crowds and possibly in vehicles). And unlike other wormable vulnerabilities that go through a service (like Google or even the phone company), this is just two phones with no intermediary to protect devices.

</comment><comment> photon-torpedo > only the Bluetooth MAC address of the target devices has to be known

Android has a feature of "Bluetooth scanning" to improve device location (similar to Wifi scanning). I'm not sure, but even if Bluetooth is disabled in the menu, this might still activate Bluetooth occasionally and perhaps reveal the Bluetooth MAC to the (nearby) world?

<comment><USER33> IIRC that doesn't enable BT if disabled, only uses it if available.

<comment><USER34> It says "Bluetooth scanning — Let apps use Bluetooth for more accurate location detection, even when Bluetooth is off." I doubt it makes the device discoverable though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Surprising that Project Zero didn't catch this.

</comment><comment><USER13> > For some devices, the Bluetooth MAC address can be deduced from the WiFi MAC > address.

Which ones would that be? Anyone know?

</comment><comment><USER36> Great, because of limited Android updates I have to get a new phone.

</comment><comment><USER37> I'm now wondering if I can use this to root my phone.

</comment><comment> Brave-Steak > Keep your device non-discoverable. Most are only discoverable if you enter > the Bluetooth scanning menu. Nevertheless, some older phones might be > discoverable permanently.

Does this mean your MAC address isn't visible while on, non-discoverable and connected to a BT device?

<comment><USER38> Actually Android keep bluetooth on even when UI says off for Google to radiolocate your position.

<comment><USER39> Are you sure? I know they keep some WiFi on, but I didn't think there was much location value in bluetooth signals because most bluetooth devices people use are portable (headphones, cars, etc.)

<comment><USER38> Actually yes, I did investigate that. Can post a screenshot.

<comment><USER40> Did you also disable that setting under the "location" submenu, which explicitly says it works even if bluetooth is off?

Not that this is good design, mind you, but if you turned both settings off and still say BT activity, then that is much different.

<comment><USER38> If you do that, it will disable it. Yes, it's a well hidden option deep in the menu.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Judging by the three commits added by the android-9.0.0_r53 tag in the platform/system/bt android subcomponent, the vulns seem to be UAF + OOB write. All vulnerabilities thus belong into the class of vulnerabilities that safe Rust eliminates.

[https://android.googlesource.com/platform/system/bt/+/1d788d...](https://android.googlesource.com/platform/system/bt/+/1d788d25a8e1632eee1bfdb2b7c42176ad24b43a%5E%21/)

[https://android.googlesource.com/platform/system/bt/+/c20f24...](https://android.googlesource.com/platform/system/bt/+/c20f248f7530252c749004c1efe6e1074f92e72d%5E%21/)

[https://android.googlesource.com/platform/system/bt/+/abc302...](https://android.googlesource.com/platform/system/bt/+/abc3023b05872f49a1e0e5c078a33dc055b62afb%5E%21/)

<comment><USER42> This is not a constructive comment. Saying an entire OS "would have been safer on this language" is just trolling. Comment should be reported IMO.

<comment><USER43> ...especially when the large majority of HN readers are already aware of rust "thanks" to the rust evangelism strikeforce.

<comment><USER44> A day or two ago there was an embedded software developer here claiming that low-level C developers "know what they're doing", so any languages with built- in safety features impose unnecessary safety restrictions, and that since any software can have bugs, there is no reason to use anything but C. Once that kind of stubborn attitude dies out, maybe we'll stop seeing people leave comments saying "This could have been prevented if they had used language X".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Android is such a mess. Google needs to do a rewrite and dump legacy support.

<comment><USER46> Quite possibly the worst piece of software ever. Hot garbage.</comment></comment>


The World Cup at work - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/message/the-world-cup-at-work-ac2fc335e31e

<comment><USER2> I hadn't thought of it like that before... And this is spot on. Two of my good friends didn't want to watch the games with me at home last cup since it interfered with their shows and evening plans. This year, however, I got a bunch of friends from work to watch in the cafe during work. They loved the first US match and actually made time to watch the US-Portugal game last Sunday...

On a side note, I think another problem to achieving more popularity is the nature of the game. Two halves of non-stop action means no time for commercial breaks. Major networks certainly can't be a fan of that, unlike for other US sports with plenty of breaks in the game.</comment>


Tesla driver again dies in crash with trailer, Autopilot not yet ruled out - <AUTHOR> https://electrek.co/2019/03/01/tesla-driver-crash-truck-trailer-autopilot/ <comment><USER2> When will the US require trucks to have side underride guards like the EU? These accidents happen even with human drivers.

<comment><USER3> I was researching vehicle safety for a new car purchase a few years ago and came across this video: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bT3G-kcKN70](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bT3G-kcKN70)

It freaked me out and I stay as far away as possible from semis on the road now.

<comment><USER4> After that video came out, a bunch of trailer manufactuers improved their underride guard designs, and the newer ones are apparently much better at stopping cars: [https://www.iihs.org/iihs/news/desktopnews/all-major- trailer...](https://www.iihs.org/iihs/news/desktopnews/all-major-trailer- makers-earn-iihs-award-for-good-underride-protection)

It's going to be a long time before most trailers have the improved guards, but hopefully it will get better eventually.

<comment><USER5> Why is this problem not legislated out of existence?

<comment><USER6> Because of lobbyists.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > In this new accident, the vehicle again kept going for over 500 yards (half > a km) before coming to a stop.

Disturbing.

<comment><USER8> Presumably if the roof was taken off, lots of components of the autopilot system would have been seen as unavailable.

In that case, I would design the system to apply the brakes quite hard (unless autopilot was disengaged by the user). Going to full emergency stop mode would clearly cause accidents in other more mundane cases like a malfunctioning sensor.

A deceleration of 1 m/s from highway speeds ends up with the car travelling 400 yards, which is broadly in line with what happened here.

<comment><USER9> That's reckless. If the car is effectively blinded, continuing to travel at highway speeds for nearly half a kilometer sounds like a terrible idea.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Statically are you more or less likely to die using Tesla auto pilot?

I wonder if the number of hours drivers went without autopilot, the number with, and the number of fatal accident occurred with and without autopilot are public?

<comment><USER11> Tesla has published numbers stating that the accident rate with autopilot engaged is roughly half the rate with it disengaged - across their fleet, so same driver pool. [https://www.tesla.com/blog/q3-2018-vehicle-safety- report](https://www.tesla.com/blog/q3-2018-vehicle-safety-report)

Note, this data is almost certainly biased since AP can only be engaged in certain circumstances and is mostly used on the highway, where accidents are much less likely overall.

<comment><USER12> > Note, this data is almost certainly biased since AP can only be engaged in > certain circumstances and is mostly used on the highway, where accidents are > much less likely overall.

I don't disagree but highway accidents have to be the most dangerous as well due to the speed as well as other factors. I'm not as worried about fender benders as I am a 3, 4, 5, 6.... car pileup on the highway.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Preventing SQL injection/XSS in web apps - <AUTHOR>

Before releasing a new web app, what are the top security-related items you check in order to prevent SQL injection, XSS, etc.? <comment><USER2> To prevent SQL injection, use bound SQL variables instead of embedding user input in SQL queries. You will also gain performance.

To prevent xsrf attacks, check referer header before you take action.

</comment><comment><USER3> if you're obtaining input from a user, sanitize and validate it. for everything.</comment>


'Flash crash' trader loses US extradition battle - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-37656303 <comment><USER2> This is insane.

How could a small trader like that possibly move enough volume to even budge the market as a whole, never mind crash it?

They claim he was spoofing trades... That's more the domain of HFTs, where you can automate the process, not a lone trader, however sophisticated.

And finally, let's suppose this trader is guilty of everything they allege... He still couldn't have crashed the market, it would have been a chain reaction of algos dumping stock at the same time, which he can hardly be blamed for...

<comment><USER3> Okay, there are problems with the case but not the problems you mentioned.

He had negotiated a credit line from Credit Suisse to the tune of 30million. He would then use 30 million to open futures trades with a much much greater notional value.

His real positions would be in the hundreds of thousands long/short the market.

His credit positions would be a little deeper in the order book, knowing that other people and algorithms would front run his order because they think it is an indication of a big buyer or trend happening.

He'd close his real position at the better price to the people trying to front run him, for a profit. And simply remove the super big order from the order book.

This is spoofing

and yes this is what everyone else does.

He is being prosecuted for it.

During the flash crash, liquidity dried up and spreads got super big, front running algorithms were still responding to the spoofing and matching orders at really bad prices with wide spreads. It doesn't matter who "caused" it.

<comment><USER4> Do you have any news articles pointing to the Credit Suisse credit line? I've been following this story since last year but didn't catch that one.

<comment><USER3> "nav sarao credit suisse" first result

[http://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2015/04/22/flash-crash- trader...](http://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2015/04/22/flash-crash-trader- struck-agreement-with-credit-suisse/)

I recall reading the charges from the government though, and I believe there it mentioned the size of credit line from Credit Suisse

<comment><USER4> They don't mention the figure of 30 million on there, is that from somewhere else?

<comment><USER3> > I recall reading the charges from the government though, and I believe there > it mentioned the size of credit line from Credit Suisse

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought this was a tactic employed by HFTs? Don't they regular place market orders and immediately cancel them to manipulate the market and slow down other HFTs? How is this illegal?

<comment><USER6> I'm not sure how widespread it is, but Nanex have a breakdown of a single case where Citadel were using this strategy: [http://www.nanex.net/aqck2/4670.html](http://www.nanex.net/aqck2/4670.html)

<comment><USER7> Very bizarre reasoning: a misconfiguration can cause the strategy to do X => the strategy was designed to do X. Seems more like evidence for "quote stuffing is a bug": [https://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2014/quote_stuffing_is_a_...](https://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2014/quote_stuffing_is_a_software_bug.html)

<comment><USER6> That article is extremely bizarre. Nanex make a pretty clear argument that Citadel fired out a set of orders it didn't intend to get filled to introduce a delay between SIP and Nasdaq and intended to take advantage of the delay.

The Chris Stucchio article opens with a cute take on the South Park underpants gnomes list ("2\. ???") and suggests that nobody has outlined why this strategy would be profitable ... which is weird because this is _exactly_ what Nanex did:

"What is the benefit of a feed delay? For one, latency arbitrage is enhanced, especially if the delay is predictable, which it would be for someone running a Quote Stuffing trading strategy. The type of firm that would benefit the most from latency arbitrage would be an internalizer - someone that matched retail stock trades based on the slower SIP, but could buy and sell the same stocks on the faster direct feed, a strategy that became visible during the Nasdaq Blackout. By the way, Citadel's bread and butter is internalizing (matching) retail stock trades"

This is extremely easy to understand. Reading on there are a number of xkcd- style graphs that basically say "testing is hard!" but still don't really provide a solid rebuttal. I stopped reading at that point, I'm afraid :(

I'm far from an expert on this, and my opinion really doesn't matter - but I'm far more persuaded by the Nanex explanation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Ridiculous. No single trader could affect the whole market - it does not work that way.

This is another example of how wrong the current models based on traditional assumptions and academic theories are.

If a market could be nearly destroyed by one single trader, there is no market at all, but a fraud, smoke and mirrors.

</comment><comment><USER9> The headline is a bit of click-bait. The charges apparently include wire fraud, commodities fraud, market manipulation and spoofing. This is relatively boring stuff, if you omit the connection to the flash crash, which everyone agrees is tenuous at best.

It doesn't seem unusual at all to me that someone charged with fraud in US markets would get extradited to the US.

<comment><USER10> All of those charges relate to the flash crash, so not sure why you would omit it.

Since most everything we do today involves computers and the internet, wire fraud has become a catch-all charge that can be selectively enforced (see Aaron Swartz) to suit a prosecutor's needs.

Despite the fact that many large players spoof on a regular basis, only this guy has been actually criminally charged. When a government anointed HFT firm does it, they only get a small slap on the wrist. Ironically, this guy pointed out to regulators how everyone is spoofing, and only after they did nothing to stop the spoofing did he say "well if everyone is doing it, I will too".

The corrupt financial elite have found their scapegoat, and the message is clear: if you're a connected Wall Street firm, the laws do not apply to you, but if you're a regular guy day trading from home, the book will be thrown at you.

<comment><USER11> Can you show evidence that spoofing is common?

<comment><USER10> [http://www.nanex.net/aqck2/4555.html](http://www.nanex.net/aqck2/4555.html) summarizes a study here: [https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1955965](https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1955965)

Key quote: "This manipulative practice [spoofing] is illegal under the U.S. securities law, yet it has been frequently discovered in both equity and futures markets."

Here's an example of the penalty a middling HFT firm sees: [http://www.reuters.com/article/us-sec-enforcement- spoofing-i...](http://www.reuters.com/article/us-sec-enforcement-spoofing- idUSBREA331DD20140404?feedType=RSS&feedName=businessNews)

$1.9M in fines - no jail. By contrast Sarao is facing up 380 years in prison.

Others faced fines of only several hundred thousand dollars: [http://www.wsj.com/articles/how-spoofing-traders-dupe- market...](http://www.wsj.com/articles/how-spoofing-traders-dupe- markets-1424662202)

Note that the most connected HFT firms (Virtu, Citadel - oh hey, Ben "Revolving Door" Bernanke works there) don't even get fines, despite engaging in spoofing, and even being banned from China for spoofing: [https://www.ft.com/content/d4b61458-398d-11e5-8613-07d16aad2...](https://www.ft.com/content/d4b61458-398d-11e5-8613-07d16aad2152)

Also note that there have been many "flash crashes" triggered by spoofing HFT's. There's nothing special about the Sarao one, other than the fact that he was an individual operating out of his home.

<comment><USER7> That paper uses simulated (i.e., fake) market data. The quote is just a bare assertion, not a conclusion. It's very difficult to identify spoofed orders in market data unless you're the exchange and know who sent all of the orders.

<comment><USER10> The paper uses "fake" data to develop a baseline for their model, which they then compare to real data to test its accuracy, which they claim is 90%.

Furthermore, the study is based on the premise that there is lots of spoofing going on. That's because EVERYONE knows that spoofing is rampant. Everyone has acknowledged it, including the SEC and the Fed, so to dismiss the study by simply saying "it used fake data" with no other context is not a forthright appraisal of the situation.

<comment><USER7> > the study is based on the premise that there is lots of spoofing going on

That's fine, but you can't then claim the study as _evidence_ of spoofing, since it was injected into the simulations explicitly.

> which they then compare to real data to test its accuracy, which they claim > is 90%

The validation with real data was just comparing things like trade volume, volatility, autocorrelation, etc. They didn't put a specific number on it (the 90% accuracy mentioned in the abstract is about detecting HFT in simulated data). And they added in the spoofing after the validation.

There definitely is spoofing going on (some of my job involves trying to detect it), but I'm deeply skeptical of anyone who claims they can detect it accurately or quantify the amount. 92% accuracy for detecting spoofers in simulated data is insanely high, and makes me doubt the applicability to the real world.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> We've seen it before: expect to see more of it as Britain tries to keep its US ties strong in the wake of 'Brexit'

<comment><USER13> Well, that and also that he was one (of many) doing something that adversely impacted the markets.

As a former trader, I think it is bullshit and he is a scapegoat, but I think he'll get due process.

<comment><USER14> He won't get due process. He's being charged with offences that carry sentences totaling up to 380 years. He'll plead out to ten years in jail.

<comment><USER15> A plea bargain is still part of due process.

<comment><USER16> Much of HN would disagree. Search HN's history for arguments.

<comment><USER15> It would seem so from the downvotes. I think it would be much more fruitful to explain those arguments, even if briefly. I'm certainly interested in hearing them.

Unfortunately, the search you suggested yielded no obvious results.

<comment><USER17> I've seen it argued mostly in relation to drug charges. Essentially, when faced with charges with a potential penalty in the decades and offered the option to plea guilty for a sentence orders of magnitude more lenient, nearly everyone will plea rather than fight their case, even if they have a strong case. Unless they know with absolute certainty that they will win, it makes more sense to take a slap on the wrist than to risk losing your life as you know it. Then there's the information asymmetry, where you don't have enough information to know if you have a guaranteed case, and aren't given the opportunity to find out before the plea bargain is taken away. So, essentially, instead of a court determining your guilt based on evidence, you have a game theory scenario what forces you into a guilty plea with no regard for the evidence.

I would expect that a savvy financial type who can afford to pay a competent lawyer would be significantly less impacted by this phenomenon (if at all) than the typical person charged with a drug possession offense represented by a public defender who has too many clients to properly serve each one.

Really, it seems to me that the issue isn't necessarily with plea bargains in general so much as with plea bargains with massive differentials to the original charges.

<comment><USER15> Thank you for explaining that.

> Really, it seems to me that the issue isn't necessarily with plea bargains > in general so much as with plea bargains with massive differentials to the > original charges.

I agree with you. I think the root cause is completely unreasonable penalties for certain charges (which is especially true of drug charges). With a smaller differential, the bargaining power of the prosecution is drastically reduced (as it should be).

<comment><USER18> Well, the root problem is prosecutorial misconduct which is how they get their success rate so high that you're forced to plea-bargain.

As proof of misconduct, note that when evidence is proved systematically unreliable, prosecutors argue that the rulings should remain. (eg, hair testing, etc) There's no desire to get the right answer, just to get the most convictions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I live in a country which doesn't extradite its own citizens and the concept of my own country extraditing me to another one seems very strange and ungrounding.

<comment><USER20> Which country is that?

<comment><USER19> A few countries have such laws. Wikipedia has a (seemingly complete) list:

        Austria, Brazil,the Czech Republic,France, Germany, Japan, the People's Republic of China, the Republic of China (Taiwan), Russia and Switzerland [1]

1\. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extradition#Bars_to_extraditio...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extradition#Bars_to_extradition)

<comment><USER21> Not trying to shout "think of the children" but for the sake of discussion would it still seem strange if the crime was hypothetically murder?

To me it seems clearer cut in a case which is more obviously criminal.

Now unbalanced extradition, which is the case for us in UK with regard to the US, seems odder to me. Our politicians should sort that out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I have to think parties that are actually more responsible for the flash crash pointed fingers.</comment>


An Andre To Remember (obit to andre hedrick) - <AUTHOR> http://article.gmane.org/gmane.linux.ide/52517

<comment><AUTHOR> a few days old. and it raises a few good points in the end.</comment>


US pastor, who believes floods are God's punishment, flees flooded home - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/article/37116661/us-pastor-who-believes-floods-are-gods-punishment-flees-flooded-home <comment><USER2> It will be interesting to see if he changes how he speaks and acts because of this.</comment>


Anybody else can't save stories or vote? - <AUTHOR>

For weeks now I can't save stories or even vote. When I click the arrow it just disappears, with no visible effect.  Is my account suspended or something? <comment><AUTHOR> Wow, maybe someone saw my post from HN b/c it is working now! Or maybe getting a comment on my post gave me a few more karma and that is what did it? (I had 1 before and now have 3).

</comment><comment><USER2> I have also this problem. And i tried different browsers and computers.

</comment><comment><USER3> (´;ω;`) I have the same problem. I want to save favorite stories.

</comment><comment><USER4> When I click the up-arrow, it disappears and there is no effect until I reload the page.

But I also wonder if you have to have a certain amount of karma before you can upvote, and if that was a recent change?

<comment><USER3> I'm worrying about that karma limitation. I've got only one karma being downvoted.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> save for me here</comment>


Syncing data between iOS devices - <AUTHOR> http://www.objc.io/issue-10/

<comment><USER2> Interesting read. I've been working on multi-device sync for some time and noticed a few things I ran into. The article speaks of P2P, and goes on to say that transaction logs are uploaded to the cloud. Not P2P then. P2P doesn't work anyway, because there's no guarantee that any two devices are active at any one time. I'm pretty sure my understanding of P2P is limited, compared to the author's.

The other issue is that all approaches described seem to preclude multi-user sync, which is what I've been struggling with. Security also becomes a ball- ache in that changing a password, which unlocks a private key that unlocks a symmetric key that encrypts and decrypts content means storing two copies of any one sync item until all sync clients have the new keys. There are ways of simplifying this, but complexity always creeps back in if I want a zero- knowledge server.

The third thing I'm working on is the idea of multiple, disposable servers. If one goes down, another steps in. If server A offers better comms to device 2 than device 1 which syncs via server B, then device 2 should default to server A without affecting sync scope from device 1.

It's a fascinating subject.

Good article, all the same!

<comment><USER3> I'm stuck on this too. I wish to make my invoice app with offline support + async sync, where a company sync several devices, in both ways:

[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/21733360/algorithm- that-s...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/21733360/algorithm-that- synchronizes-two-database-sources)

<comment><USER4> We built a custom solution at SeatMe to sync multiple iOS devices with offline support to a central database. There were a lot of edge cases that make it pretty difficult.

There was the embedded mongo (or maybe couchbase?) db available for iOS that does multi-master sync that was being developed for a while that might work though.

<comment><USER2> I use Mongo to store entities. I front that with a relational database to a. map entity locations and b. hold associations. That lets me track entities by device/application/users (one item can be shared bu multiple apps and multiple users, each using multiple devices). I want to be able to disable devices and user accounts. Only the creator of an item can hard delete an item, and so on. My code is custom too, because there's nothing out there I could find that does that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is great. Guys, I love what you're doing with objc.io. Please keep it up!

Everyone else: if you want to help support the site, set up a recurring purchase for the objc.io app in the App Store. It's something ridiculously cheap (for the value provided), like $5.

Also, for more on iOS data syncing and Core Data, this has been a frequent topic of late on Brent Simmons' blog: [http://inessential.com](http://inessential.com)

</comment><comment><USER6> Firebase is also a good solution: [https://www.firebase.com/docs/ios- quickstart.html](https://www.firebase.com/docs/ios-quickstart.html)

</comment><comment><USER7> Couchbase Lite supports both iOS and Android, and it's all open source. [http://mobile.couchbase.com](http://mobile.couchbase.com)

<comment><USER8> There's also Cloudant Sync based on CouchDB, which is also open-source and for both iOS and Android. [https://cloudant.com/blog/introducing-cloudant- sync/](https://cloudant.com/blog/introducing-cloudant-sync/)

But how do we choose between CouchBase and CouchDB sync?

<comment><USER9> Here is more info on Cloudant Sync: [https://cloudant.com/cloudant-sync-walk- thru](https://cloudant.com/cloudant-sync-walk-thru)</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: A Natural Language Query Engine Without Machine Learning - <AUTHOR> http://blog.ayoungprogrammer.com/2016/10/natural-lang-query-engine.html/ <comment><USER2> I think you might get better results in the first stage using the dependency parse from CoreNLP - rather than the phrasal parse. Online demo at [http://corenlp.run](http://corenlp.run)

If you're willing to drop CoreNLP there's also [https://demos.explosion.ai/displacy/](https://demos.explosion.ai/displacy/) that's worth checking out.

<comment><USER3> Nice work by the O.P.

Amusingly a year or so ago I took the Stanford Dependency parser and fed its output tree into a Prolog system to try to pull out the semantics. It was used to analyze business news (getting at the who's, what's and why's).

The easiest approach was to wrap a very simple DSL around Prolog (which, BTW, Prolog is great at). Then in the DSL (which still retained logical variables and backtracking) you could write things like:

%% Simple statements -- root is an announcement word whose subject and object tell the story. %% 'IBM announced a new computer today' announce(Who, About, What) ==> s+root(['announc', 'releas', 'introduc','launch', 'unveil', 'reveal', 'agre']), #Dep1, subject(Who), Dep1 >> object(About, What).

%% 'IBM has announced a partnership ...' is caught by the above. But 'IBM has entered into a partnership ...' needs %% a little more work announce(Who, About, announcement) ==> s+root(['enter']), #Obj, subject(Who), Obj >> prep_pobj_chain(PPC), {PPC = [Prep|About]}.

I think a Prolog-based query planner as a front end to Sparql on Wikidata could be quite interesting.

Alanl

<comment><USER3> Bah -- try again so it is readable !!

        %% Simple statements -- root is an announcement word whose subject and object tell the story.
        %% 'IBM announced a new computer today'
        announce(Who, About, What) ==>
            s+root(['announc', 'releas', 'introduc','launch', 'unveil', 'reveal', agre']),
            #Dep1,
            subject(Who),
            Dep1 >> object(About, What).

        %% 'IBM has announced a partnership ...' is caught by the above. But 'IBM has entered into a   partnership ...' needs
        %% a little more work
        announce(Who, About, announcement) ==>
            s+root(['enter']),
            #Obj,
            subject(Who),
            Obj >> prep_pobj_chain(PPC),
            {PPC = [Prep|About]}.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Nice work! You said that you avoided machine learning because labeled data is hard to find. What about unsupervised approaches?

Frankly speaking, I am a bit skeptical about pattern matching algorithms for answering questions. It would help if you showed some kind of stats about your algorithm's performance on a diverse question set. For example, you can scrape simple quiz questions (and answers) from quiz sites [1] and report back on the performance.

[1] [http://www.quiz- zone.co.uk/questionsbydifficulty/1/0/answers...](http://www.quiz- zone.co.uk/questionsbydifficulty/1/0/answers.html)

</comment><comment><USER5> In addition to the questions it does answer well, it also has these answers:

Q: "What is purpose" A: "Justin Bieber album" Q: "What is a car?" A: "country in Africa" Q: "What is a male?" A: "capital of Maldives" Q: "What is a female?" A: "human who is female (use with Property:P21 sex or gender). For groups of females use with ''subclass of (P279)''"

my point in this comment is just to say that when it does give an odd answer, it can be funny, not to say that it sometimes gives odd answers.

</comment><comment><USER6> This seems almost completely useless. I tried ten questions, and only one was answered, incorrectly (Moby Dick question misunderstood, answered as "novel by Herman Melville"). I think even Ask Jeeves back in the 90s had better performance than this. Questions tried:

how many lines of resolution are there in an ntsc television signal?

what is the melting point of tin/lead eutetic solder?

what species of whale was moby dick?

what grain is most often used to make beer?

what is the boiling point of water?

how many chromosomes does a normal human have?

what animal is known as "man's best friend"?

what fps did id software release in 1993?

what is the largest known prime number?

what is the clock rate of the arduino uno?

As a comparison, Google gives 8 correct answers directly (either as an special info box, or as highlighted part of a web page), 1 correct answer as the 2nd search result (Doom), and 1 incorrect answer (largest known prime).

<comment><USER7> "This seems almost completely useless" \- seems pretty harsh. Someone making a cool project, open sourcing it, and documenting it really well is something that should be praised. Of course Google is going to do much better, its a company focused on search.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> These things are always so interesting in their totally inhuman failure cases. It can tell me George Washington was born in 1732, but doesn't know which planet America is on (much less which planet George Washington was born on).

Also, it seems to have issues formatting dates before 1900 (for the bday one, the answer it returns is more of an error message than an answer: "year=1732 is before 1900; the datetime strftime() methods require year >= 1900")

</comment><comment><USER9> Partially related - has anyone worked on natural language queries with time expressions in it? Imagine analytics queries, where you want to count the number of events/unique users, given certain conditions, and in a certain time window. i'm particularly interested in the time aspect of it.

</comment><comment><USER10> Have you studied Prolog? Its matching (logical unification) capability may give you some more ideas.

</comment><comment><USER11> Very interesting! Nice to see how little code it is. I wonder how much work it would be to get it to answer questions like "What is the biggest planet?" or fix that "Who was Prime Minister of Canada in 1945" drops "of Canada"?

</comment><comment><USER12> This is cool! I like how you've iterated on a central concept (NLP) with different codebases.

Tip: The link to the source is pointing to github pages, which hasn't been set up.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Fixed the link.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is nice! Would it be possible to run the code with other language models? (Spanish, German, and any other CoreNLP language model)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes it should be possible! You would need to add the grammar matching rules for those languages though.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Demo should be working now. The stanford parser getting dying from running out of memory so I moved it to a another box

</comment><comment><USER14> This Is cool! Is it easy to convert a mediawiki to the graph store your system reads?

<comment><USER15> While the note other commenter left is correct (wikidata is not your regular mediawiki) you can also look at DBpedia which is doing pretty much what you have suggested. The TLDR answer would be: "possible, but harder than it seems".

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Couldn't tell me who the CEO of Apple is... :(</comment>


Why Tech Companies Love Manor, Texas - <AUTHOR> http://www.inc.com/magazine/20100901/why-the-high-tech-industry-loves-manor-texas.html Town officials embrace the Gov 2.0 ethos <comment><USER2> Well, surely being 10 miles from downtown Austin doesn't hurt.

</comment><comment><USER3> The headline is misleading. It should be something like "Why Tech Companies Love Having Manor, Texas As A Customer". As it is now, it implies that tech companies like _being_ in Manor, which isn't the case.</comment>


In Kaua'i, botanists rediscover an extinct plant once mistaken for another - <AUTHOR> https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/kauai-botanists-rediscover-extinct-plant <comment><USER2> Future generations will be in great debt to the people working today to carve out sheltered exceptions to the great biodiversity collapse.

</comment><comment><USER3> (Great, a Campanulaceae that looks like a mix between a Caricaceae and an Apocynaceae... damn you, mother nature)</comment>


Welcome to 'the Matrix': At FedEx's sorting hub, 1 night, 1.5M packages - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnet.com/news/at-fedex-sorting-packages-1-5-million-at-a-time/ <comment><USER2> Should be marked (2014), but otherwise it's good!</comment>


NLP with Prolog in IBM Watson - <AUTHOR> http://www.cs.nmsu.edu/ALP/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/PrologAndWatson1.pdf <comment><USER2> While I do not know whether or not Watson actually does this, the paper doesn't mention anything about parallelism -- I suspect that the exploitation of structured parallelism is another handy benefit to using Prolog on as many machines as Watson was using.

(For example: <http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/1867.>)

<comment><USER3> There is so much ambiguity in language that parallelization is often possible at a very course-grained level. This usually doesn't require more cleverness than multi-processing or multi-threading.

Given that they switched from their own pattern matching language to an optimized WAM, I suspect they use one of the common Prolog implementations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Nice article. I haven't been hired for Prolog work in a number of years, but I used to use the language a lot.

I liked the characterization of appropriate uses of Prolog: "excellent solution for the problem of pattern matching and all problems that involve a depth-first search and backtracking."

<comment><USER5> When was the last time you were hired to do prolog?

I have always longed to be paid to work in prolog since I was introduced to it in college.

<comment><USER4> About 5 or 6 years ago. Prolog is still used so if you are enthusiastic you might do an open source project in Prolog to draw attention of other people using the language.

<comment><USER6> You do Clojure, right? I've been working on a Prolog in Clojure, <https://github.com/clojure/core.logic>. Hoping to get stratified negation and Definite Clause Grammar support soon.

<comment><USER4> Thanks, I'll look at your project.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Fascinating! Recently I've been falling in love with Prolog and it's possibilities particularly when it's fast and embedded in a Lisp.

<comment><USER7> Prolog is awesome as a library, embedded in another "normal" language.

Prolog as a culture is amazing; the depth of it, specially when it's submerged in other disciplines, like constraint logic programming.

But, standalone, as a language, by itself: it either forces your problem into a text-book toy exercise, or drives you to frustration. It does all the difficult stuff out of the box, but you will need to cut through it with a machete to accomplish the mundane.

<comment><USER3> My experience is the opposite. I work on a parsing/generation system that was developed in our group. Such a system consists of mundane parts (rewriting trees, applying a log-linear model) and sophisticated parts (parser, generator, guidance, grammar recompilation), and I find both to be natural in Prolog.

I suspect that you have just used the wrong tool for the job. Prolog works well for problems that require reasoning, and unification extensively. But if you are trying to write, say, a parameter estimator in Prolog, you are using the wrong tool for the job.</comment></comment></comment>


Analyse Asia #14: State of Northeast Asia and Taiwan with Catherine Shu - <AUTHOR> http://analyse.asia/2015/01/21/episode-14-state-north-east-asia-taiwan/ <comment><AUTHOR> Synopsis: atherine Shu (@catherineshu) from TechCrunch shares with us her perspectives on the state of Northeast Asia (China, Taiwan, Korea, Japan & Hong Kong) from interesting companies to startups. In the discussion, we analysed the BAT (Baidu-Alibaba-Tencent) companies in China and the emerging Xiaomi gearing to step out globally out of China. We also deep dived into the startup and venture capital ecosystem in Taiwan and how the country is moving upstream to be a force in hardware startups. Lastly, we take a quick run through on the remaining countries in North East Asia.</comment>


What are great books for boys? - <AUTHOR> I'll start:
The Way Things Work (http://www.amazon.com/dp/0395428572/) and pretty much any book by David Macaulay (http://www.amazon.com/David-MacAulay/e/B000AP72G0/)
The Stars, A New Way to See Them, by HA Rey (author of Curious George) (http://www.amazon.com/dp/0395248302/)
and another collection (not intentionally for boys) over on Edward Tufte's site: http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=00018v <comment><USER2> Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson.

Alice in Wonderland iff still young enough not to think girls are gross. Otherwise you must sneak up on him with the poetry, then introduce the book. (I've had success with reciting 'Jabberwocky' and 'The Walrus and the Carpenter.')

Learn 'If,' by Kipling, by heart. Then teach it slowly and patiently.

As an aside, quite a lot of Kipling is truly excellently boy friendly.

The Proverbs of Solomon, et al. Found in any Bible or Talmud. Bears repeated reading, as most eastern 'wisdom' literature does (The Book of Five Rings, The Art of War, etc.).

While we're at, why not the Narnia books? I loved them, and I'd no idea the Lion was apparently Jesus until I was nine or so.

But by far do not DO NOT forget Michel Ende's marvelous 'The Neverending Story.'

If you're only familiar with it from a movie, you've missed the best part, when the boy 'Bastian must take up arms and become the adventurer he has read about and loved.

</comment><comment><USER3> If you actually want literature, my favorite book as a child was _Where the Red Fern Grows_. If they are around 14+ there are some great, captivating Hemmingway books. _A Farewell to Arms_ , _Island in the Stream_ , _A Movable Feast_ , and _The Garden of Eden_ (In that order).

I keeping editing as I think of new things. This may sound odd, but if they are in the 14+ range, _How to Win Friends and Influence People_ is great. It changed a lot for me.

When I was like 9 I got the book _How to be Twice as Smart_ and it taught me a ton of mental tricks.

This book taught me a lot (probably if the boy is like 10 or 12+?)

[http://www.amazon.com/Backyard-Ballistics-Cannons- Cincinnati...](http://www.amazon.com/Backyard-Ballistics-Cannons-Cincinnati- Dynamite/dp/1556523750/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1285352917&sr=1-1)

<comment><USER4> I think Where the Red Fern Grows was the first book I read as a kid that had any genuine emotional impact - I distinctly remember ending up in tears. I hope my son will get as much out of it when he's a bit older.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> My Side of the Mountain---about a kid running away and actually living off the land.

Book of Virtues---don't give him this, just have it around in your house to read when bored. Gambling scandals notwithstanding, it's full of good stuff.

Blind Man's Bluff---for a kid a bit older, but it's about submarine history in the Cold War.

</comment><comment><USER6> Surely your joking Mr. Feynman. This should be required reading for people in this thing of ours. Also Enders Game (fiction)

</comment><comment><USER7> My son is 3.5 years old. Here are some of the books he loves.

The Magic School Bus series. For example:

[http://www.amazon.com/Magic-School-Bus-Ocean- Floor/dp/059041...](http://www.amazon.com/Magic-School-Bus-Ocean- Floor/dp/0590414313/ref=sr_1_4?s=gateway&ie=UTF8&qid=1285361104&sr=8-4)

If I Built a Car (a great book on design)

<http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0142408255/ref=oss_product>

Manfish: A Story of Jacques Cousteau

<http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0811860639/ref=oss_product>

</comment><comment><USER8> My children like the George R. R. Martin books, the Philip Pullman books, the Harry Potter series, and other books much in that genre category. They also read "classic" literature as they get older, for example _Oliver Twist_ or _Tom Sawyer._ Two of my sons have really liked _A Tree Grows in Brooklyn_ (which I have never read) and I really liked _The Chosen_ by Chaim Potok (which I reread a few years ago, and still thought was very good).

<comment><USER9> >y children like the George R. R. Martin books

How old are your children?

They're great books but extremely...non kid-safe.

<comment><USER10> What's non kid-safe about them, and for kids of what ages?

<comment><USER9> Graphic rape, death, mutilation, etc. Probably OK for a kid in their teens but for an eight year old... it might be a little much.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The I Hate Mathematics Book was always a favourite in my family growing up. It's the kind of math they don't teach you in elementary school. I learned about googol, infinity, topology, permutations, parabolas, game theory, and all sorts of fun stuff. It taught me that math is not just the boring arithmetic that you learn in elementary school. [http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d.html/ref=redir_mdp_mobile/187-...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d.html/ref=redir_mdp_mobile/187-4537131-9360105?a=0316117412)

</comment><comment><USER12> Fiction:

1\. Life of Pi - Yann Martel

2\. The Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas : An awesome closeup of revenge

3\. The complete Sherlock Holmes series : 'nuff said.

Non fiction:

1\. Cosmos - Carl Sagan : I fell in love with science post-reading this book.

2\. October Sky - Homer Hickham : A real life story of how a group of boys in a backwater town build a rocket that changes their lives.

3\. Chariots of the Gods - Erich Von Daniken - A real mind bender, even if you choose not to agree with his ideas.

</comment><comment><USER13> My favorite book as a kid was Lord of the Rings, so I'll recommend that. Also H2G2.

</comment><comment><USER14> Little Boys: Anything by Sendak, Donald Crews, Byron Barton. Dorling Kindersly Eyewitness series.

Bigger Boys: Phantom Tollbooth,Avi,anything with swords

Older: Jack London, Shakespere

<comment><USER15> Jack London for older boys? Maybe his later works... I re-read The Call of the Wild last year, and it practically reads like a children's book.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> What would you recommend for a younger boy, say 5-7 years old? Harry Potter might be too complex to catch on at first read IMO.

<comment><USER4> I'm reading the Harry Potter series to my 5 year old at a somwhat slow pace; slow, as we typically only have time for half a chapter per night and he seems to ask questions every odd sentence! I think he's managing to follow the story though - he just requires a bit of processing time and the odd query to keep it in order.

You can never go wrong with Roald Dahl of course - my son loved the BFG and Fantastic Mr. Fox.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Pocketknives are always good. But how old are you thinking?

Personally, I'd stick with a pocketknife regardless of age. Or a lighter.

</comment><comment><USER18> Jules Verne. Any would be good, but particularly Around the World in Eighty Days.</comment>


How to Write Good - <AUTHOR> http://www.plainlanguage.gov/examples/humor/writegood.cfm <comment><USER2> *Well ... Superman does Good.

(I'm aware it's humour)</comment>


Sabbath mode - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabbath_mode <comment><USER2> If you go through this much trouble to exploit a technicality in rule, perhaps that rule need not exist.

</comment><comment><USER3> Why? All of these things seem to be rather wasteful, leaving the power on, just for you to obey some religious rule. I wonder why that rule was instituted too. A lot of old religious rules made sense for the time period too.</comment>


LinkedIn Sent a Notification to My Work Email - <AUTHOR> https://www.linkedin.com/help/linkedin/forum/question/10185606 <comment><USER2> Just means someone imported their address book and added everyone.

<comment><AUTHOR> LinkedIn trusts their address book to deliver my account notifications?

<comment><USER3> My guess is that the notification in question was just letting you know that the person who imported your address is on LinkedIn and wants to connect?

It may look like an account notification but I'd think of it as more of an invitation.

It's not that they've connected your work email to the account with your personal email (publicly at least, privately I'm sure they keep that info). And it's not like they're sending any other types of sensitive/account/password reset information to that address assuming it's associated to the account connected to your personal email.

They're just trying to get you to join LinkedIn and connect with a coworker who gave them your work email address – assuming if you already have an account with a different email you'll login with that and connect with said coworker there.

<comment><USER4> Yes, the intended recipient sentence probably wouldn't be an email if LinkedIn was sending it to an existing account..

But I do think sending unsolicited emails in this fashion is illegal anyway in many places. I always found their attempt to get around this with a specific sender interesting, but I doubt it is universally legal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> How easy is it to match your name as it is recorded in Azure Active Directory to the one you use on LinkedIn?

I specifically ask for this because like Azure AD LinkedIn is wired into Microsoft Graph so they probably matched your LinkedIn profile with your Azure AD profile and got the information from there.

</comment><comment><USER6> What type of notification was it?

<comment><AUTHOR> A reminder that I had a pending connection request from a random recruiter.

<comment><USER6> redbergy's guess is probably right. It sounds like an invitation to join LinkedIn that doesn't necessarily assume that you already have an account.

<comment><AUTHOR> No, it was a reminder for an invitation that had already been sent to my personal account.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Feedback needed on NewsQast - new local news aggregator - <AUTHOR>

NewsQast is a local news, weather, and traffic aggregation service providing a single view of news across multiple local sources.
I would like to ask the Hacker News community to provide me feedback on the concept and usefulness of the service. I'd like to know what you think would make a news site more valuable to you as a consumer.  I'd also like to know if anyone has any suggestions on making news sites like this more engaging.
URL: http://www.newsqast.net/
Thanks for the feedback. <comment><USER2> Right now it's just all the news thrown up in a jumble. Adding some order to it would be better. You arrange it by type a bit but it's still a kinda scatter-shot feel.

Also, say I live in Boston but hate the Herald and love CBS. I would like to be able to personalize my content aggregation so as to receive more from CBS than the Boston Herald, or to cut out the Herald entirely.

You can't just aggregate all the sources through RSS and say you're providing a service. I can do that myself. You should figure out where you add value; is it by putting more than one city? Perhaps you can add metrics and comparisons from city to city or allow users to select multiple municipalities.

Who is your audience?

</comment><comment><USER3> I went to the site and was expecting something even more local. I am within the "Boston Manchester" area -- is that the TV market designation or the census bureau metro area?

Like the design. Headlines are nice and clear. Could use photos, though.

I think you could definitely work on your sources, too. All I see are the major Boston dailies and TV news stations at the top. If you're using RSS, I would see what you could come up with using blog, Twitter sources, or other social media -- I find that with news, the discussion is often the big draw after the headlines.</comment>


Sony Got the Permission to Access Geohot's Paypal Account - <AUTHOR> http://www.coveringweb.com/2011/03/sony-got-permission-to-access-geohots.html <comment> T-R Also discussed here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2335555></comment>


How should mathematics be taught to non-mathematicians? (2012) - <AUTHOR> https://gowers.wordpress.com/2012/06/08/how-should-mathematics-be-taught-to-non-mathematicians/ <comment><USER2> Do other disciplines ask similar questions?

How should physics be taught to non-physicists?

How should writing be taught to non-writers?

How should car maintenance be taught to non-mechanics?

I guess my point is, why should we teach mathematics any differently to "non- mathematicians" than we do to "mathematicians"? I mean, at the point when you're first teaching someone, how do you even know if they're a "non- mathematician" or a "mathematician"? After all, they haven't learned enough yet to know if they'd want to continue in that field of study.

<comment><USER3> Yes, all the time. I've heard it for physics, I've heard it for CS and I've heard it for programming, all with good reason: the way you teach somebody deeply invested in your field is different than the way you teach somebody deeply invested in a _different_ field, learning yours as a supplement. Or maybe a better way of putting it is that the way you teach somebody interested in a field _in and of itself_ is different than the way you teach somebody who has other interests and motivations, but still needs to learn.

And hey, maybe before college, almost everyone is a non-mathematician. There's the small majority of students who'd love learning group theory because it's fun and beautiful, and then there's everyone else who need practical applications and real-world examples. But the way you teach them is ultimately just like the way you'd teach non-mathematicians in college or further on in life, when there's a clearer delineation.

<comment><USER4> This situation actually started a pretty nasty divide at my university. Engineering and Math are in separate organizational units which gives each a degree of independence. The politics worked out that most of the operational budget of the Math department came from teaching students from other disciplines. Over the years Engineering was dissatisfied that after going through the prerequisite Math courses their students had plenty of theoretical knowledge but couldn't actually _do_ the Math -- even those that took the applied variants. So after Engineering came into more money they hired engineers to teach "Calculus/LinAlg/DiffEq For Engineers" courses that focused on application and topics that more directly applied to their other curriculum.

It was a success overall for the Engineers but Math wasn't happy. The engineers working on advanced coursework needed higher level math courses that were only available in Math. Not only were they constantly failing which angered Engineering but the professors teaching them had to devote more time to the Engineering students which took away from the math students and angered Math.

The sort of uneasy truce that they eventually came to was Engineering students take the regular Math courses and their Physics/Engineering curriculum supplements what they're taught in Math. This annoys double major Math/Eng students because there's far too much repeated material in their curriculum but it's the best they could do.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > Objection 5. You'd never find enough teachers who were capable of teaching a > course like this. To do it well, you need to have a very sophisticated > understanding of probability, statistics, game theory, physics, > multivariable calculus, algorithms, etc.

Objection 6: If it's hard to find teachers to teach it, maybe it's a little challenging for students (even though a good math expert might find it interesting).

Just because a math expert thinks something is interesting doesn't mean low performing students will find it interesting.

For a more HN friendly example - what bunch of high school students wouldn't want an IT class that taught compiler design, instead of stuffy old Excel? Even Python is more fun that spreadsheets, right?

Certainly there are large swaths of high school math that can be cut, and replaced with more relevant stuff. But some care needs to be taken that it's actually teachable.

The article does partly cover this though:

> Thoroughly road test questions before letting them loose on the nation's > schoolchildren. In fact, that applies to the entire course: make sure one > has something that definitely can work before encouraging too many schools > to teach it.

<comment><USER6> > what bunch of high school students wouldn't want an IT class that taught > compiler design

The majority of high school students can hardly wrap their brains around the AP curriculum (probably for lack of time or effort, rather than ability). There are some that are honestly, actually interested in computer science and are thus capable of stuff like that... but they are low in number.

What might be able to work is a fully-fledged web design course, using modern standards instead of boring stuff from ten years ago. With HTML, CSS, and finally JS (probably React, then Node). Maybe even SQL. With knowledge like that, you have more than enough of a base upon which to stand. You could likely even get a job.

> Even Python is more fun than spreadsheets, right?

Spreadsheets are easy computation for a wide audience, with a little learning curve. What can Python do, out of the box? What could you convince a high school kid to program with it that isn't a derivative of "10 PRINT HELLO WORLD; 20 GOTO 10;" ?

<comment><USER7> A course designed around using a particular "modern" web technology stack will have to change too often (every time it doesn't become "modern" anymore) for it to be sustainable. Imagine that in 2016 you have a course centered around using what was modern in 2006. That would inevitably happen with a course like that.

I'd rather teach programming from 0 to making a really basic 2D game (be it in C++ or Python or whatever language and whatever library). The results are eye- catching and the coding process is engaging, and there's no need for it to rely too much on how trendy the framework is in the current year.

<comment><USER6> I love games as an introduction to programming. But then you have to teach kids how to do collisions (or physics), you have to teach them how to keep track of multiple sprites that behave the same but are in different places at the same time (I'm talking about classes, yes), and it's harder to point to a "real world" usage of game programming... which makes it harder to get your course approved.

I know, teaching today's web standards means they'll be out of date within the next ten years. But I believe the improvement of the web is asymptotic and will slowly come to a halt in the coming years... that and I would never forgive myself for not refreshing a course when it's too old to be applied to the real world, as a pragmatist. Finally, I don't think Vue will beat React too quickly.

(I'm not an educator, but I've spoken with a few on some of these topics.)

<comment><USER8> I went to a private school, where the only CS class was game programming; and it was offered as an art elective [0]. The class itself was very much a programming class, requiring only a couple of supplemental lunch time classes to be prepared for the AP exam [1].

[0] According to the teacher, the class was originally planned as offering a CS credit; but was changed to art when they realized that a CS credit is not a graduation requirement, while art credits were.

[1] This was not out of the norm for my school. The only class that was designed for the AP was calculus.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Wow, that's a nice collection of problems. They are exactly the opposite of the dry and artificial "word problems" students are used to.

The discussion at the bottom of the blog post is also very interesting. The socratic approach is very good to "break the ice" and introduce the application, but I wonder how scalable this approach is. Does the teacher need to be very knowledgeable/entertaining to pull this off?

BTW, I'm working on a new project, which is essentially "math lessons by email" that will walk readers through the math material from the _NO BULLSHIT guide to MATH & PHYSICS._ Anyone interested in learning or reviewing basic math (expression, equations, functions, algebra, geometry) should signup: [https://confirmsubscription.com/h/t/4C2D9C45B88734F3](https://confirmsubscription.com/h/t/4C2D9C45B88734F3) (it's free)

<comment><USER10> They are, but I think non-math people will look at just about all of them and think "I have no idea where to start."

Worse, I think they don't teach generalisable skills.

That's probably the core problem with all school-level math and science teaching. You learn a vocabulary of basic symbols and some rules for manipulating them, but you don't learn math _skills_ \- in the sense of understanding the real world well enough to make the leap from symbols and abstractions to useful life skills.

The point of math teaching shouldn't be to know how to solve problems like these, but to learn how/when you can use math to answer your own questions for yourself.

There's also a deeper level where you can teach the process of abstraction as an end in itself. I suspect that may be too far for most people - although I haven't completely convinced myself that's true yet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> If anyone cares to share, I'd love to hear some opinions about at what point someone switches from "non-mathematician" status to "mathematician" status.

<comment><USER12> One becomes a mathematician, even if only temporarily, if one becomes interested in an investigation into purely mathematical matters (e.g. in finding a rigorous proof of a statement) rather than in using mathematics as a computational tool in one's (original) area of interest, such as physics or biology. Even when one happens to invent a new mathematical method _that works_ , one does not, in general, instantly become a mathematician - unless, of course, they lose the focus and turn their attention to making the method just discovered more efficient or better substantiated from the purely logical standpoint.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> The post is about suggesting more fermi estimates problems, see for example [http://lesswrong.com/lw/h5e/fermi_estimates/](http://lesswrong.com/lw/h5e/fermi_estimates/)

Fermi estimates require you to look for relations in the real world, construct a model of the situation and then iterate improving the model by adding more information. You don't use that process just to give an example of using a rule or solving an equation, instead you emphasize how the problem could be tackle mathematically. So there are more room for open questions, incentives for exploring and suggesting new approaches, in a more relaxed atmosphere creativity can flourish, perhaps maths is more than a single equation written in an old book.

</comment><comment><USER14> Mathematics is just the extreme end of the two most fundamental concepts Abstraction and Generalisation. Start the intro to these concepts including showing how these concepts are useful and used by everyone in their day to day life in using natural language.

<comment> semi-extrinsic My wife has studied mathematics pedagogy, and one concept that really struck me from what she learned is _compression_. Put simply, you can't learn a new thing until you've compressed the old thing it builds on. If you have not compressed "addition" to the point that it requires little effort, you won't be able to learn "multiplication". Same holds for e.g. "derivatives" and "Taylor series", or "group theory" and "rings and fields".

(I think this was from Piaget, or maybe Brissiaud.)

<comment><USER11> I would guess Piaget, because it reminds of this quote from Papert (who drew heavily on Piaget):

> Slowly I began to formulate what I still consider the fundamental fact about > learning: Anything is easy if you can assimilate it to your collection of > models. If you can't, anything can be painfully difficult.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I really like the collection of problems, but I'm not sure it is easy to teach this kind of problem solving. I, for one, would love to try someday. (I'm a mathematician teaching at a large research university in the US, and most of the courses I get to teach are not anything like this.)

I'm also not sure this can completely replace the more "traditional" way we teach math, which is not to say I don't think it has problems (there are lots). If I may make an imperfect team-sport analogy, traditional classroom teaching of mathematics is all drilling and very little scrimmage / play. These problems are sort of on the other extreme. If we are to (1) equip students with intellectual tools that they can use, and (2) convey, to at least a fraction of the students, the sense of beauty and joy that attracted many of us to mathematics in the first place, we would need a balance between the two. I get the impression that this is something like what Gowers is actually advocating, but I haven't had a chance to read all his blog posts on this topic to find out (will have to do that later)...

</comment><comment><USER12> Teaching mathematics has two aspects, or goals, that are largely not related to one another. One is teaching mathematical methods as a computational tool, as used in a certain area of expertise (such as, for instance, electrical engineering). The other one is teaching how _to do mathematics_ , i.e. how to generalize facts, find efficient proofs and algorithms, etc.

<comment><USER16> I've always thought one of the most important goals of learning math was learning how to think logically. This may be coming from a physics perspective where the language is used because it is (arguable)the most accurate tool we have to analyze the world around us.

The average person doesn't need efficient proofs and algorithms. But they can use generalized facts.

<comment><USER12> I think that the idea that studying math is necessary to train one's logical abilities is a misconception. Learning any of the sort of non-trivial activities, such as cooking, which requires a high degree of awareness and logical thinking, would have the same side effect.

<comment><USER16> Sorry if it came off like that. I don't think it is necessary, but it sure is a helpful tool. So if we're going to teach people basic math skills we might as well focus more on this aspect so that they can use those basic skills and know why knowing how to find the angle of a triangle can be useful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I think music is the best example. There are two ways of learning music:

* learning solfege

* learning how to play directly

Most great school of musics will teach you solfege first, and you will have to go through hardcore solfege classes while you start learning how to play an instrument. Some teacher will do the same, or some family will make their kid do the same.

Now I can tell you this is not fun, but this is the way to become a great musician. You need the theory, you need to know how to read that stuff like you're reading English. But this is not fun, and I've known many in my youth who gave up learning an instrument because of this.

Now if you would teach every kid to play an instrument first, and have fun with it, and actually producing music with their fingers/mouth then... they would maybe enjoy it enough to get interested into taking solfege classes and music theory later on.

<comment><USER18> I agree that music is a good analogy. For example, in the US there is a guy who has "shortcut" piano courses. His point is that yes, if you aspire to be a concert pianist, then you should spend years learning scales, reading music, and playing music from classical composers. But if you just want to play a few Billy Joel or Beatles songs, you can skip all that and cut to the chase. You won't have that great "foundation" needed to be a master player, but most people don't want that in the first place.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> When you consider how mathematics, an understanding of probability, and so on enhances your ability to see through bullshit in advertising, government, and to some extent religions (not faith, just religions); it's not hard to understand why so many people are not thrilled at the notion.

<comment><USER20> Why exclude faith? For PC sake?

<comment><USER21> Not many people change their foundational epistemic stance in response to mathematical arguments.

<comment><USER22> It would help if fewer people _had_ foundational epistemic stances. Fallibilism is much more realistic than foundationalism, as I understand the terms.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Gower suggests story problems. Many, many story problems.[1]

[1] [https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BTwHsS5CAAAzBBu.jpg](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BTwHsS5CAAAzBBu.jpg)

<comment><USER24> The problem with story problems is, as the article states, that they are never really presented in the open ended way they claim to be. You almost always teach a class a fixed operation, multiplication for example, and then give them a bunch of word problems where multiplication is thinly disguised.

A much better exercise is to give an absurdly open ended exercise. "I'm at the supermarket, which checkout should I go to?" is one I have used in classes before. You can get a discussion going and generate a lot of interesting ideas, and almost every time I do it in a class someone says something I've not thought of. Once students have given you some good ideas you can massage it into a model and do some more 'proper maths' work. Of course, this takes a good teacher that can engage and steer the class.

<comment><USER25> So much this. Through a series of unexpected events, I ended up studying math in undergrad with no clue why or what I was going to do with it. My senior year I took a class called "Applied Modelling". The first project was a simple, one sentence question: "What would happen if the Greenland ice cap melted?".

It reminded me a lot of Randal Munroe's "What If" blog on the XKCD site [1]. Easy to understand, open ended questions that encourage readers to learn a little about topics _outside_ of math to answer the question. The class gave me an appreciation for math that was lost during all those years of study before that, and it's basically my career now.

[1]: [http://what-if.xkcd.com/](http://what-if.xkcd.com/)

<comment><USER26> My university's Engineering Science department runs a competition each year for high school students along the same lines -- mathematical modelling of an open-ended question.

I also found it very valuable; it was one of the factors that pushed me over the line into studying STEM at university (I was a better English and economics student in school).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Your question made me think.

Could be innate. My part time job forces me to make 10-20 micro decisions an hour. Most involve minimizing negatives and max positives. And knowing what to ignore.

Yet my co-workers are quite unable to even know how to get 10% from a cash register total. Other managers lack a "math approach" imo to want to get sales numbers or staff assignments. For example, what should you do if you have 80 hours of work and only 70 hours of workers? Some fail because they can't even frame the task that way.

Could be vocation only. Get paid by using math, you are one.

I'm still thinking

</comment><comment><USER28> Great article. Did anything come of the Gove-era math education policy changes he's referring to?

<comment><USER29> In my opinion: Gove's main change in Maths was in the exam syllabus that is taken at age 16. The new syllabus will be examined for the first time this summer, most schools started teaching the material in 2015. It will take another 3 years or so to see the effect of that on the GCSE classes (basically age 14 to 16) and then another five years for earlier years to shift what they do.

Change takes a bit of time when it is 700,000 children in each year group moving through 10 years of compulsory education. Politicians know this but the news cycle requires changes on top of changes...

<comment><USER28> Can you say a few words about the direction he took the new GCSE syllabus in?

<comment><USER29> Well, there is plenty of stuff on t'web about the current state of play [1] [2] [3].

My recollection is that Gove's original idea was to scrap the GCSE completely and replace it with a new 16+ qualification consisting of a single 3h exam for each subject. Maths represents a difficulty of course as the range of ability encountered at age 16 for all 700,000 children each year is huge. Maths and science subjects differentiate by topic, wheras Humanities subjects differentiate by response to a brief.

As a concrete example you can ask a group of 30 students to write two sides about the best learning experience they have ever had. Everyone can leave the room feeling they gave it their best shot. Some will be excellent and creative with a good range of vocabulary and demonstrating some self-knowledge and analytical ability. Others will produce a description description, possibly with limited vocabulary, possibly with deficient skills in punctuation, grammar and spelling.

Now ask the same group of 30 students to take a single Maths test. Some will finish in 5 minutes with full marks (it wasn't the right test for them) and some will take an hour and score close to zero (it wasn't accessible to them either).

'The Blob' (the education establishment in the UK, i.e. the people at the sharp end) managed to head this one off together with the QCA and the House of Commons' select committee on education lead by Graham Stuart - a conservative but with experience of work in education unlike Gove. The result was a re- vamped GCSE Maths in which the Foundation tier has some topics previously only found on the Higher tier such as trigonometry, surds, rules of indices with fractional indexes, simultaneous equations, quadratics: solving by formula, factorisation and substituting into to plot graph. Much of the more useful statistics has been removed (graphical presentation &c) and replaced with harder probability. Much more emphasis on technical algebra and difficult fractions/ratio questions.

This lot is working its way down the school system now. If _they stick to it_ the result might be OK in 5 years but my guess is they will get stick for the atrocious pass rates for the next couple of years (or fiddle them somehow) and then fudge it.

[1] [http://qualifications.pearson.com/en/qualifications/edexcel-...](http://qualifications.pearson.com/en/qualifications/edexcel- gcses/mathematics-2015.news.html?article=%2Fcontent%2Fdemo%2Fen%2Fnews- policy%2Fqualifications%2Fedexcel-gcses%2Fmathematics%2FDownload-our-new-SAMs- and-2-new-sets-of-specimen-papers)

[2] [https://bettermaths.aqa.org.uk/2014/06/28/gcse-maths- topic-c...](https://bettermaths.aqa.org.uk/2014/06/28/gcse-maths-topic- changes/)

[3] [https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web...](https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=29&ved=0ahUKEwiwwOSNo87PAhXII8AKHcckC_E4FBAWCFEwCA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fsmartfuse.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fshirebrookacademy.org%2Fuploads%2F2014%2F05%2FNEW- for-2015-Higher-AQA-GCSE-SoW-010414.doc&usg=AFQjCNHVq9hT- i_mdzu32vNjFPhrYJMsNQ)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> There's no need to invent popular mathematics. You just need a teacher that can show a student how beautiful mathematics is. It's an art. A way of thinking and creating.

</comment><comment><USER31> Capturing the interest must always be first. So to capture the interest, one must use math applications like game or physic simulations that allready captured the audience, allow beginners to modify the laws and abstractions within and create a "im at home with this"-intuition to delete the "im just not cut out for math" bias. Questions would not come from the teacher, questions will come from the students on how to modify the application.

</comment><comment><USER32> Fermi estimates require at least some knowledge of the quantities you're using as inputs. Are the students expected to know these, and tested on that, or are they allowed to state any values they like for the inputs? Do the teachers and the test-writers think only the process is important, or the results as well?

For example:

> How many molecules from Socrates's last breath are in the room?

We can estimate the number of air molecules in the room by using Avogadro's number (6.022e23), the rough chemical composition of the air (roughly 80% nitrogen, element 7, and 21% oxygen, element 8), and the room's volume (which can be hard to estimate by eye unless it's a very small room).

We also need the total mass of the atmosphere; we can estimate it from the Earth's surface are and atmospheric pressure, but we need to convert 1 atm to kilos per square meter. Would an average student remember that conversion rate? I certainly don't. (Turns out that 1 atm ~ 10,330 kg/m^2).

That's quite a few constants to remember from physics and chemistry.

(I'm aware that Fermi estimates are only one of many kinds of example questions in the post.)

</comment><comment><USER33> The title is missing year 2012. ("This entry was posted on June 8, 2012 at 4:53 pm")

Does anyone know what happened regarding all this?

<comment><USER29> Probably not a direct consequence but...

The UK elected a Conservative government who decided to base all 16+ Maths for non-mathematicians on the revised GCSE Maths syllabus. Colleges are now coping with large numbers of students aged 16, 17 and 18 being required to take the GCSE exam again while studying vocationally based qualifications. I'm teaching maths to trainee hairdressers, trainee car mechanics and would-be fine artists.

Pass rates are not high (we are starting with a selected sample after all and schools are pretty good at getting non-mathsy youngsters through). The statutory requirement ends at age 19 and so the majority of late teens will experience three more years of failure in a subject that they experienced failure in at school. That should guarantee another generation of the general public whose loathing of Maths is pretty marked.

Taking a wider view, I think that we all tend to learn things in a situated way and I therefore have a lot of time for the 'Functional Skills' approach to Maths and English _if done properly_. This was the approach adopted in most vocational training courses prior to the Gove era.

I also think that there is a place for a qualification based around probability, statistics, and critical thinking. I'd love to call it "How to spot bullshit when you see it". I'd make discussions of issues like genetic defects and screening, obesity and health education and so on a core component. It will never happen of course...

<comment><USER34> Not sure if you're teaching in the above environment, but one of the schools I teach A-level at has a high number of maths-failing pupils, and as a result, many of those I teach are re-sitting maths in both their first and second years that I teach them. It's a typical case of Gove not thinking of the consequences of his (backwards, IMO) ideas - these people are definitely part of the generation you outline; it spreads so they not only think they are bad at maths (which admittedly is often true), but that they are incapable of any meaningful learning. Those who do take functional skills and pass at least feel they have made some progress - despite this being a level of maths which most people would feel was far below the age level of someone taking at aged 17.

I know that anti-Gove rants are all over the place, but most of the people I know outside education don't have a clue about how poisonous his ideas have been; they don't withstand any serious scrutiny, but on the face of it may seem sane, so people who haven't thought about it will defend them. His replacement isn't far off his level, and I seriously fear for the future of education in the UK.

<comment><USER29> Charlie Chaplin's film Modern Times has a section where the tramp is working on an assembly line and parts are coming down the conveyor. He has at it and manages to get 10 yards ahead of the conveyor, and has a rest. Just as he is relaxing, the conveyor belt catches up and he has to start again.

In my opinion a lot of the Coalition policies (housing benefit changes, nursing/police/teaching pension changes, reduction in the number of nurse/teaching training places) were like Charlie's conveyor belt. They got a couple or three years of savings but now the belt has caught up. It is almost as if they did not expect to form a second government.

Many colleges are using the legacy syllabus this year. So when the majority of those come back again next year, we will be catching up with the conveyor because of the topics previously on the Higher tier added to the Foundation. I especially like it when a youngster 'taught' (i.e. coached in a smattering of topics) Higher tier can tell me some half remembered facts about the sine rule but has to use her fingers to work out seven sixes...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> The problems he suggests overall seem too difficult for the average non- mathematically inclined student. And they also require quite a skilled teacher to teach.

I'm not sure stuff beyond "algebra 1" needs to be taught to everyone in high school. Even the concept of using "x" to stand for an unknown is very difficult for some to grasp. Instead, schools should make sure all students can properly understand how to use addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, with applications to things like personal finance. In my experience, even many college graduates have trouble understanding when to multiply, divide, etc...

<comment><USER36> At the risk of being sarcastic, the suggestion seems to be that mathematics is best taught through stereotypical management consulting interview questions. Or the apocryphal (?) Google interview questions like how many ping pong balls can fit on a bus.

ADDED: I also suspect that the average high school student lacks the world knowledge to come up with meaningful guestimates for the inputs to many of those questions.

A lot of the high school mathematics that I learned such as geometric proofs and trig are not all that useful. And it seems as if things that would be more generally useful like probability and stats are not that broadly taught--and are often taught in a very theoretical way when they are.

<comment><USER35> Unfortunately, probability and stats are not easy to teach, and even many professional scientists / researchers have major confusions about the subjects. Common sense actually provides a decent enough guide for most people (i.e a baseball player with a high batting average is more likely to hit the ball).

Euclidean geometry as taught in school does seem rather archaic and out of place though. Some people say it's an introduction to "proofs/rigorous thinking", but it seems to me that that purpose could be better served with a first order logic class.

<comment><USER12> How is learning facts about the space we all live in is "out of place"? Geometry continues to be extremely useful. In fact, in its generalized forms it is one of the most important parts of the modern mathematical thought. If anything, for a mathematically inclined student learning geometry, I imagine, would be much more both instructive and fun, than some "first order logic".

<comment><USER35> well I can only speak to my own experience. personally I really enjoyed geometry but can't say the same for most students

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> These problems are examples of questions that can be tackled with the help of mathematical tools. They can show students some applications of mathematics, but IMHO they don't really teach mathematics. Maths have to do with statements and proofs about abstract objects. I'd rather learn about euclidean geometry than trying to figure out the number of piano tuner in manhattan (I'm sure most students will be bored either way).

Actually, this is an endless source of discussion among instructors, not only maths. Should classes be driven by applications in order to motivate students?

<comment><USER32> _Do_ applications motivate students? Personally I would expect examples like these to de-motivate, since they make clear that the subject does not, in fact, apply to the students' idea of real life.

If you teach abstract mathematics and make vague promises they will be really useful, some students may believe you. But if you try to demonstrate how they're useful, and the best examples you can come up with are estimating the number of piano tuners in Chicago or the number of air molecules in the room, things students know they won't ever need to do in their lives, they should become less interested.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Sanjoy Mahajan [0], who is the author of perhaps the two best books on Fermi estimation (freely available online, too!), has linked on his website a really fascinating account of an experiment to reform mathematical K-12 education from 70+ years ago [1].

[0] [http://web.mit.edu/sanjoy/www/](http://web.mit.edu/sanjoy/www/)

[1] [http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/sanjoy/benezet/](http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/sanjoy/benezet/)

</comment><comment><USER39> There's a book by a Hungarian mathematician for this exact purpose. Péter Rózsa: Playing with infinity. That's the Hungarian name order of her name. [https://books.google.ca/books?id=pj5G-3boMBwC&redir_esc=y](https://books.google.ca/books?id=pj5G-3boMBwC&redir_esc=y)

</comment><comment><USER40> Bootstrap: teach enough math to turn non-mathematicians into mathematicians.

Then teach mathematician-to-mathematician.

</comment><comment><USER41> Applied math around areas of interest.</comment>


After Returning the Money They Stole, Feds Will Pay Interest and Legal Expenses - <AUTHOR> https://reason.com/blog/2016/02/04/after-finally-returning-the-money-they-s <comment><AUTHOR> direct link to ruling: [http://ij.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/ECF- No.-35_Order-De...](http://ij.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/ECF-No.-35_Order- Denying-Motion-to-Dismiss-IJ075527xA6322.pdf)</comment>


From charred death to deep filthstep: the genres that make modern music - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/music/2014/sep/04/-sp-from-charred-death-to-deep-filthstep-the-1264-genres-that-make-modern-music

<comment><AUTHOR> The creator of Every Noise at Once enjoyed the article:

[http://www.furia.com/page.cgi?type=log&id=415](http://www.furia.com/page.cgi?type=log&id=415)</comment>