Why Do Teachers Quit? - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2013/10/why-do-teachers-quit/280699/ <comment><USER3> One reason, at least in North Carolina, is the aftermath of the No Child Left Behind Act. There are teachers here who are passionate about education. Many of them feel as though any creativity and skill they have as an educator has been revoked by the state. They no longer have the freedom to create their own lesson plans. Efforts to encourage students to reach beyond the curriculum are stifled. All that matters is what grades they get on some multiple choice test that was mandated by the state.

Even students enrolled in more demanding programs like AP and IB are expected to pass the standardized end-of-grade tests. Now that's two (sometimes three, for students enrolled in both) standardized tests students need to be prepared for.

The people who've dedicated their lives to teaching no longer get to decide what's best for students. Only politicians get to do it now.

To put it in software development terms, imagine a customer giving you requirements that specify not only the desired product, but _exactly_ which programming languages, design patterns, and frameworks you have to use. Now imagine realizing that the tools mandated by the requirements aren't quite a good fit for the solution, and you have 9 months to ship or you fail. How quickly would you drop that client?

The No Child Left Behind Act has led us to a school system where the government -- rather than the students -- is the client of the teachers. More like All Children Left Behind.

<comment><USER4> I've heard this argument before, but I've never really understood it.

Aren't the mandated exams extremely easy? Isn't the barrier to pass so low that they don't really matter that much anyway?

Why would this be that big of an issue?

I'd also assume that having some sort of standard by which to judge public education is difficult, but I can sense the need for some sort of standard. I went to public school, and while personal anecdotes aren't that valuable - <USER2> quality of teacher varied wildly from great teachers who made memorable impacts to teachers so damaging I still remember how horrible they were years later.

If standardized testing is the issue then what's a better way to work towards improving it? Better teachers? Being able to fire bad ones? It's a complex problem.

<comment><USER3> It's more than just standardized testing. A letter of resignation was discussed on HN about a year ago [1], and that sentiment is far from unique. Teachers, _especially_ the ones who are passionate about education, are leaving the school systems in Mecklenburg and surrounding counties in droves.

[1]: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4713000](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4713000)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I taught for over 3 years, high school social studies. At times it was amazing (usually when you recognize you made a breakthrough moment with a student), however it was mostly brutal.

Grading is endless. Lesson planning is also non stop. I would always look at my plans and wonder -- is this good enough? Can I make this better? How can I engage the students?

What pushed me over the top was a brand-new principal who tried way too many initiatives all at once. At that point I knew I had to get out -- and do something else.

And now I'm in web development, making way more money that I did as a teacher, and actually enjoying my work!

Oh, and that first-year principal? He was fired a year later.

</comment><comment><USER6> The complaints I hear centre around grading, lesson planning and of course bureaucracy.

Now, I believe that the education system of the majority of the world is fundamentally broken - and I am cheering on the likes of coursera, khan academy and the like to get to fixing it.

But in the mean time...can we take the first of these...grading. At the risk of trying to find a technical solution to everything this sounds like it should have a nice technological solution to it...

I can see some of the issues in English and the like where answers may not be 0 or 1 but if google can instantly translate English to Swahili...someone should be able to find a way to grade English assignments of high school student efficiently.

Or is this a money issue? The technology exists or could exist but there is no funding, so instead we are wasting hundreds/thousands of teacher hours a week while they repeat the same manual chore over and over again?

I would be interested in hearing some teachers comment on this.

Reminds me of this: [http://www.ted.com/talks/geoffrey_canada_our_failing_schools...](http://www.ted.com/talks/geoffrey_canada_our_failing_schools_enough_is_enough.html)

<comment><USER7> It's entirely within our technological grasp to automatically grade high school English papers, but a big part of paper writing in high school (in theory) is getting feedback and improving as a writer and thinker. Getting accurate, clear and detailed feedback on your writing from an autograder seems like it would be extraordinarily difficult.

Disclaimer: my own high school had a phenomenal English department. Do many teachers simply plop a score at the top?

<comment><USER6> A very good point that I did not consider, I remember getting very good feedback from my teachers - It would appear I underestimated the size of the problem.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Teachers are the anvil on which the hammer of public policy gets constantly, ineptly struck in the vain attempt to turn raw stock into... some kind of shape the smith can't even define.

It's no wonder enthusiasm dies out so quickly.

<comment><USER9> My ex-wife teaches high school, and I hear her talk about the hours and the mandatory extra-curricular activity support, for the same low low price.

I tell my high school age kid never ever be a teacher, unless God himself comes down and puts his finger on his heart. America hates teachers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Former teacher here. I can sum up the reasons why I quit below:

* Dealing with kids has hard. Really, really hard. Computers sit down and shut up when you tell them to; kids don't.

* Rules. Rules rules rules. It's easier to list what you're allowed to do than list what you're not allowed to do.

* I was a 25 year-old male teaching high school. Lots of teenage girls flirting with me => lots of risk for sexual harassment lawsuits. It's not enough to just write them up or ignore them. You have to document _everything_. If even once it might be implied that you're encouraging it, game over.

* For a vast majority of my kids over the course of 2 years teaching at two different schools, their parents simply did not care. One phone call ended with "I can't control my kid." With all due respect, ma'am, if you can't control your kid, why do you think I can?

Money wasn't really on the list. $41K/year in Alabama (Masters) is more than enough for a single 25 year-old bachelor. Although I will admit the way they pay teachers is fucked. It's based on years of work and degree level. The crazy part is that 1 degree level = 5-ish years of work. I started off making $41k salary, but that's just because I started teaching with a Master's degree. To get to $41k salary with a Bachelor's, you'd have to work 5+ years in the field. Are you telling me that a rookie kid out of college with a Master's is worth more than an experienced teacher with 5 years under her belt? C'mon.

I loved teaching. It's one of the most rewarding things I've ever done. But I just couldn't do it any more after the second year. It's not teaching that sucks -- it's everything else. It's the paperwork. It's the threat of sexual harassment. It's the pressure from administration. It's the parents who don't care. It's the kids who don't want to be there.

Frankly, I'd rather code for a living and tutor on the side.

<comment><USER11> I'll base this on NJ, but your reference to the salaries is largely to do with unions. Union reps negotiate the salary guides with administrators and since most reps/heads are senior staff members they negotiate the guide to favor themselves. This may not be the case everywhere but if you look them up (public record FYI) you will often see later years see significant bumps in salary while lower level years are small COL increases.

The main ways they're usually negotiated are: 1. high starting salary, but more steps to the top or 2. low starting salary, with less steps.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> My wife is a high school teacher.

She taught full time for 3 years, and burnt herself out with 70 hour weeks of planning, marking, parental communication, and miscellaneous bureaucracy.

Now she's working as an on-call substitute, working 8:30-3 whichever days she wants, and (get this) making more money than she was teaching full time.

<comment><USER13> Presumably it's the same where you are here where substitute teachers are paid at a higher rate due to lack of benefits, so that isn't that surprising.

Although I definitely see the advantages of the stability of knowing who your classes are, sick and long service leave and paid holidays over the freedom from preparation, marking and report writing and other paperwork. I think being a substitute teacher you miss out on a lot of the benefits of the actual teaching too, like building a relationship with your students, and being able to teach long-term concepts instead of a period at a time.

One of my co-workers makes most of her living from substitute teaching (she teaches a part time load) though and seems to be fine with it, so different strokes I guess.

<comment><USER12> She doesn't get anything in lieu of benefits, but she gets a full 1/180th of the annual salary per day she works (there are 180 teaching days in the year). On top of that, she still contributes to the pension and can claim unemployment during the summer.

She does occasionally get longer-term assignments for teachers who are away for a couple weeks at a time, so there's a bit of relationship-building and long-term-teaching here and there. She also likes that she has a less authoritative role and can relate to the students on a friendlier level.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> My wife taught at a small for-profit high school for one year. Long hours, extra BS like babysitting the lunchroom, dealing with parents, low pay, having to write her own curriculum: she quit because it totally sucks ass.

Seeing how hard it is made me appreciate a few excellent teachers I had through school more.

</comment><comment><USER15> Whenever I read something like this, I struggle to formulate a response that I hope will add value to the discussion. I get so disgusted considering the many facets of the issue that, after wasting too much time, I close the page and move on with my day. I suppose that's why we're in this mess.

</comment><comment><USER11> I decided to enter the teaching field and decided to never go back after I finished my initial 3ish month fill-in. Among most of the stuff that got mentioned, the single biggest thing I couldn't accept was the rigid structure of the course work. I was teaching computers to elementary kids and throughout the entire year of lessons there was nothing about what actually makes a computer work. When I approached the supervisor about this I was told "As long as it fits the curriculum". This struck me as odd that in a computer class, in 2006, the district had not built anything in for discussion of what a computer actually is. Instead, kids were spending 4-5 weeks typing for 40 minutes as their lesson.

This, in the end, was what did me in with teaching (aside from the bureaucratic and nepotistic BS). That in 2006 the biggest factors in exposing kids to computers was by having them play Dr. Seuss games and typing all day. I'm not saying kids should be programming by age six, but the there needed to be something better. NJ's curriculum standards are still pretty terrible and could be a lot better ([http://www.state.nj.us/education/cccs/standards/8/](http://www.state.nj.us/education/cccs/standards/8/)), but they're far better than what they were six years ago.

</comment><comment><USER16> Somehow nobody ever says that people who love investment banking or running a multinational corporation should do that for peanuts.

</comment><comment><USER17> I never really understood why teachers and preschool teachers make so little money (and recognition/work environments etc. aren't great). As a society I'd expect we'd put a higher premium on educating our children.

It's an interesting double whammy because in many countries there's mandatory school attendance until a certain age. So basically you "force" kids to attend school and then don't even try to create the best learning environment possible.

From my very limited samplesize of being an exchange student in the US back in high school I have also noticed that the situation in the US is actually worse. There's quite a different level of respect for teachers. In Germany being a HS teacher is a fairly respectable job socially (they also get lifelong tenure which may or may not be a good thing, I'm leaning the concept is flawed because I'd rather be able to fire people).

</comment><comment><USER18> Love the kids, hate the bureaucracy.

</comment><comment><USER19> Nothing really surprising here; assuming there are alternatives for workers (even a homemaker is a serious alternative to teaching at some of the pay rates), then when you make people work long hours with poor pay and no agency, they will quit.

</comment><comment><USER20> By the way, in Brazil most teachers get mininum wage (currently around 300 USD mo for 44 hours of work every week, summing classroom time with preparation time)

Because it is not enough to pay even basic living expenses in many cities (like São Paulo) some teachers here fill all their waking time with classroom time, and hope they will figure the homework somehow (thus they end having two or three jobs, working 60 hours at classroom or even more)

Public Universities here are the best stuff you can have without being a 0.1% richest (when you can pay actual Ivy League on US like Facebook founder Eduardo or when you can pay Ivy League-like stuff here, like Fundação Getúlio Vargas), to get in one you must pass a test that is a competition, Computer Engineering for example usually has 45 candidates for every spot.

The public university course to teach children (I forgot the name) is the only course that has more spots than people wanting to get in (last time I checked there was 0.3 candidates for every spot), usually they cannot even fill the classroom, because beside not having enough candidates in first place, many fail the test completely (ie: although the test is a competition and you usually do not have to bother with mininum score, most universities do not let you in if you go abysmally bad on the test, like having a zero in any subject or having a average below 30%...)

</comment><comment><USER21> I have never worked at a school of any kind, but I have worked in several different city, state, and federal jobs. Again, I cannot speak from personal experience in actual schools - but if the government jobs I have been exposed to are any model, I would say somehow privatize education. If by vouchers or other means, do it somehow.

Government entities in my experience are the most wasteful and ineffective organizations that I have ever seen. Couple that with the teachers unions and who is actually surprised that the education system gets worse every year?

No government agency would survive if it were a private company. The quality and quantity of work that it produces and for the huge sums of money that it costs/wastes - would cause it to go belly up in a matter of months.

There has got to be a better way.</comment>


Hack the POS System at Your Local Bar/Restaurant - <AUTHOR> http://www.subtledata.com/blog/?ID=36

<comment><USER2> I haven't seen such a deceptive title in a while.

<comment><AUTHOR> Were you assuming a black hat hack meaning? Obviously I was referring to "hack" as a clever use of technology, or way to get technology to do something that maybe it wasn't intended for.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Chief Software Architect of SubtleData here. Happy to answer any questions you might have!</comment>


How Canada's Health Care System Helped Create a Killer - <AUTHOR> https://thewalrus.ca/how-canadas-health-care-system-helped-create-a-killer/ <comment> 52-6F-62 The Walrus is normally a magazine with high standards, and very good quality content, but I find the headline a little misleading or at least sensational. Canada's healthcare system is beloved, and has surely saved a far greater number of lives than it has put at risk. That said, most would prefer it be expanded and improved upon its current state.

Canada's healthcare system has long needed improvements in mental health capacities. I figure that is what they're trying to explicitly illustrate here. The result has been iterations of separate mental health institutes, leading to driving efforts like CAMH (Centre for Addiction and Mental Health) in Toronto. Sadly, many remote regions do not have ready access to these kinds of resources. The northern regions of the provinces are particularly starved for social and medical resources.

Hopefully the article will have the enlightening and impactful effect I interpret its author having intended.

<comment><USER2> >beloved

What a strange word to apply to a medical system. I mean, really think about it. That's like saying the "DMV is beloved". It's just a strange word usage that makes me wonder if you're more of a "fan" of their system than an unbiased source.

My Canadian friend I regularly play PUBG with, remarked that non-life- threatening illnesses like a broken arm can have waiting times _measured in months._ (Sounds like our VA.) And he lives in one of the large cities. He is glad that nobody goes bankrupt but he would NEVER use the world "beloved" to describe it.

"Better than the USA"\--probably, I'd easily give you that without raising my brow. But "beloved"?... I'm sorry, I just can't get past that word. It's so out-of-place. If this was a novel I was reading, I'd have to set the book down for a moment and go, "Really?"

<comment><USER3> "... non-life-threatening illnesses like a broken arm can have waiting times measured in months ..."

It astounds me that people can hear stories such as this and actually believe them. No, of course people don't wait months to get their broken arm taken care of. I broke my foot and had it in a cast that night, and the only reason it took as long as that was because I didn't realize at first that I'd broken it.

<comment><USER2> My friend... lives in Canada... and his relative had to wait that long.

I'm not going to throw away his experience because it doesn't fit into someone's worldview.

Just because you had a good experience doesn't mean he can't have a bad one.

<comment><USER3> I ... am Canadian ... and have never in my life heard anything so absurd. I'm not going to throw away a lifetime of experience because of some ridiculous and obviously false comment on the internet.

Use your head: a society that couldn't deal with broken bones without months- long lineups would grind to a halt. How can you seriously believe something so ludicrous? Notice how many other Canadians are jumping in to tell you your statement is totally untrue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> > The doctors were talking about what they'd decided, and one of them was kind > of joking about it, saying there's no homicidal plot or something. They > said, 'We think Johnny just got mad at the cat because the cat scratched > him.'

Sadly, that doctor will likely continue their practice.

</comment><comment><USER5> Would this have been handled better anywhere? It seems really hard to decide when to take action. I knew a family whose autistic son regularly injured them but they still kept him. I wouldn't have been surprised if he had killed them at some point.

</comment><comment><USER6> Terrible article. Canadians live 2 years longer on average than Americans. And you're telling me the US mental health system would have been more pro-active? Come on.

"Hers was Sault Ste. Marie's sole homicide of 2013."

How many small towns in the US can you say that of?

<comment><USER7> Classic case of whataboutism. I didn't see anything discussing the quality of the US mental health system. It's a Canadian website discussing a Canadian case. It failed here and the author of the article is trying to point out where it failed. This is an attempt to prod the system to improve.

<comment><USER8> Definitely agree. I saw virtually no comparison to what the US does / would do nor how America handles similar cases, etc. America was mentioned zero times in the article (0) and United States was mentioned twice in the article (2) and that was only to mention background information about the victim and her family, nothing to do with health care, mental illness, violence, or anything else to do with the editorial.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I was annoyed at the way the victim was portrayed. They just kept dancing around it.

</comment><comment><USER10> Not surprising...people always slip through the cracks in Canada's healthcare system.

<comment><USER11> It's not perfect but we get access to lots that an American would go out of pocket for. The poor never even have a chance.</comment></comment>


Stephen Hawking pushes for posthumous pardon for Alan Turing - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/12/14/alan_turing_pardon_hawking/

<comment><USER4> I believe this issue needs to be dropped. Turing is beginning to be remembered only as a gay man wrongfully punished. His actual accomplishments are taking a back seat, what he did is becoming less important than who he did.

<comment><USER5> > _what he did is becoming less important than who he did._ //

No one seems to mention "who he did" either from what I can gather - <USER2> teenager (19) he picked up at the cinema in the incident he was arrested for. He was 40.

It's kinda weird to me as many in the UK wouldn't be particularly accepting of that sort of age gap now, particularly not for casual sexual liaisons. The age of consent for homosexual male sex was lowered to 18 in 1994 - that means that up until 1994 Turing's actions were illegal in the UK.

If you add in that he was privy to official secrets and would be a potential target to foreign powers then his apparent promiscuity would also be an issue of national security - I think a person in his position now would be vilified by the press and that it would be right for them to be disciplined (at least) for conduct unbecoming of an intelligence service office holder.

> _remembered only as a gay man_ //

Whilst he's being made a poster boy for casual homosexual sex it seems people too forget he was engaged to a work colleague. Perhaps he was bisexual, it's got to be a strong possibility.

Are there any quotations from him about homosexual sex, or his lifestyle choice? Did he revel in his liaison(s) or regret them? I've not seen anything from these points apart from material that appears to have a bias towards promoting him as a model of gay pride.

If he was given a pardon this would set a very difficult precedent. Consider if cannabis is made legal in a couple of years how many pardons, and subsequent lawsuits, would that single legal change produce. Then think of all the other laws - even minor things like regrading of a speed limit on a road, the law has changed making a former activity that was prosecuted no longer illegal.

That all said I agree in general this story appears not to really be an argument about Turing. Or if it is then it's attempting to leverage a strange moral attitude that those of note should not be subject to the rule of law.

<comment><USER6> _If you add in that he was privy to official secrets and would be a potential target to foreign powers then his apparent promiscuity would also be an issue of national security - I think a person in his position now would be vilified by the press and that it would be right for them to be disciplined (at least) for conduct unbecoming of an intelligence service office holder._

This is puritanical BS. He was a single man dating adults. That's his own business, the press plays it up because society as a whole loves gawking at this sort of behavior, but it's no risk to anyone.

<comment><USER5> It may well be too puritanical for you but there have been far more recent cases of sexual impropriety with intelligence personnel (like affairs, or being married to someone who's promiscuous) that have ended the careers of the intelligence personnel.

Personally I'd expect a current serving officer with high level security clearance who is privy to some of our most sensitive national secrets to be disciplined for seeking sex with random youths (of any persuasion).

If you're in this sort of position you need to get security clearance for sexual partners surely? Do you really want your "spies" getting intimate with any random person that flirts with them at the cinema?

The Profumo Affair doesn't seem a million miles away as an analogue. I'm not cognisant with many such cases however. There was the Max Mosley scandal - <USER3> MI5 agent "resigned" because his wife had sex with someone else.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm a homosexual, and Mr. Turing is one of my heroes. The conviction should stand, not as a shame for Mr. Turing but for those who convicted him.

<comment><USER8> I think the conviction should stand because it's pretty ridiculous to go around pardoning dead people convicted under laws we now view as having been wrong. Where should it end? Should the UK start hunting down and posthumously pardoning some of the convicts it shipped off to other continents for petty crimes during the Victorian era?

Unless you go and systematically posthumously pardon people how are you serving justice by only pardoning historical persons famous enough to have enough of a modern following to petition the modern-era government on their behalf?

<comment><USER9> I agree, but there has in the UK been at least one posthumous mass pardon.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armed_Forces_Act_2006#Pardon>

<comment><USER5> Whilst these were, by that link, not really "pardons" in the legal sense there is another important difference. These represent a change in the material facts considered in the convictions (hence presumably if anything happened the convictions should really have been overturned; doing it the way they did probably avoided getting sued though?) - these people were shot for cowardice/desertion but it is now understood that they were suffering a mental health condition, ie shell-shock.

So as far as precedent goes this doesn't appear relevant [to me] as in Turing's case it is a revisionist attitude to the moral underpinning of the law at the time that has changed things and not the material facts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> After we posthumously pardon Alan Turing, we should posthumously give Ada Lovelace the right to vote.

<comment><USER11> Only provided that both are next posthumously converted to Mormonism.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> A pardon implies that there was, in fact, some kind of a crime.

What we should be pushing for is a redaction, and an acknowledgement that the prosecutors were ignorant morons who harassed and extinguished a great mind because they didn't know any better.

<comment><USER13> Actually, no. In the UK pardons are usually given when there is a presumption of innocence. In Turing's case, he was in fact guilty of a crime according to the laws at the time.

<comment><USER14> In the UK a pardon doesn't _necessarily_ presume innocence. It simply means that you can't be punished for your crime.

Although rare these days there were times when a pardon could be won or purchased in exchange for services rendered. It didn't mean that you were innocent of your crime.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> What would a pardon do that the formal apology not already has done? Posthumous pardons rarely have any point.

<comment><USER15> Obviously so the ghost of Alan Turning doesn't haunt us eternally...haven't you watched movies before

<comment><USER10> > so the ghost of Alan Turning doesn't haunt us eternally...

If giving him the pardon gets rid of software bugs, it's a small price to pay for a great gain.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Nobody is "gay".

(For the record: "gay" means joyful, basically.)

But nobody _is_ this by Nature. We all are sometimes happy, sometimes tired. This is the normal way of life.

We all are _persons_ (by definition), and sexual behaviour can change in someone's life (we have hundreds of thousands of examples of that).

So, what does "gay" even mean? An excuse to allow a lobby to abuse the rest of us?

<comment><USER17> You aren't joyful from time to time? I am, especially when working on my Arduino robot.

In current usage, "gay" refers to homosexuals, a group of humans which other groups of humans enjoy hating and fearing. A group which is still fighting for the basic humans rights the rest of us enjoy, such as the right to marry their lifetime partners.

<comment><USER18> don't feed the trolls.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Geo-Info – A Simple Geocoding API - <AUTHOR> https://geo-info.co <comment><USER2> This looks great - is it open source?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! It's not open source. No current plans of open sourcing it either</comment></comment>


Can cascades be predicted? - <AUTHOR> https://research.facebook.com/publications/680551081983090/can-cascades-be-predicted-/

<comment><USER2> Yes, but it depends on how much data you've got and how much computational effort you put into this data. (And obviously some luck) Can't await reading their paper later today...</comment>


Bot that retweets pictures of people's credit cards - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/NeedADebitCard

<comment><USER2> First reaction: Jackpot! It's like free money with little risk. Second reaction: People actually post this kind of stuff? And that's just with one simple bot to retrieve it.

</comment><comment><USER3> Someone who is feeling generous should write a bot that warns these people once their card numbers become public.</comment>


Never run 'python' in your downloads folder - <AUTHOR> https://glyph.twistedmatrix.com/2020/08/never-run-python-in-your-downloads-folder.html <comment><USER2> Python's import system would be my biggest complaint about the language. I've used Python for more than ten years, but there are so many pitfalls with regards to imports that I still have to look things up on a regular basis. What makes things even worse is that packages sometimes even meddle with how imports work. (See e.g. Tensorflow – I recently had to debug the import magic they're doing. It was a nightmare.)

Don't get me wrong, I LOVE Python! It's my go-to language for both small and big tasks. But sometimes I do wish Python had a function like PHP's require()… (Obviously for package-local imports, not for importing other packages.)

<comment><USER3> Lua uses a "require()" function instead of an import statement for loading modules. I think that this is a crucial difference from a lot of programming languages that is vastly understated. What this means is that you can completely replace "require()" with your own function that has complete control over how the module importing system works. Because of this it is possible to build your own runtime code hotloader entirely in Lua without needing to modify the source of the compiler, and thus Lua is the only "mainstream" programming language listed in the list of notable live coding environments on Wikipedia[0]. (I'm surprised that Clojure isn't listed there, though.)

The only way this can be accomplished is by designing the import system from the start to use a function instead of a statement. It's too late for Python to redo things and change its import system, unfortunately. It really is the one language feature you have to get right the first time or you'll miss out on those kinds of enhancements forever.

[0] [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Live_coding#Notable_live_cod...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Live_coding#Notable_live_coding_environments)

<comment><USER4> Untrue, you could literally replace `__import__` in python and achieve the same thing: [https://docs.python.org/3.8/library/functions.html#__import_...](https://docs.python.org/3.8/library/functions.html#__import__)

<comment><USER3> Sorry, I think you're right. I think the actual problem I was trying to get at is that Python makes it easy to both import from a module and bind the imported functions/values to local names at the same time. This means the values get bound privately in the module, instead of always being late bound by accessing the module as a dictionary. And because the code in libraries uses this way if importing things, you can't get at the old names if you try to hotload a module.

The docs for Python's importlib say as much:

> If a module imports objects from another module using from … import …, > calling reload() for the other module does not redefine the objects imported > from it — one way around this is to re-execute the from statement, another > is to use import and qualified names (module.name) instead.

But Lua isn't actually different here since you can still bind the members of an imported module to local names manually, it's just that there is no "from" keyword that does this for you. My personal theory is because of the lack of something like "import * from" in Lua, it became more common for library authors to use late binding and access the returned module by indexing into it. However this is just my personal theory.

Also, now that I think about it you still have to make adjustments to your code in order to have hotloading be feasible, even in Lua. I deliberately chose to use late binding in the code I wrote with "qualified names" (really just table indexing). And all the third party dependencies are versioned in the project's repository, and don't have dependencies on other external modules, so there was no need to worry about a dependency breaking hot reloading because it uses imports differently. I think this might be a cultural thing. A lot of Lua libraries are written in a single-file, no- dependency manner which makes them much easier to integrate in the ways I want. Python seems to have a much larger ecosystem with many external dependencies depending on others.

So yes, I think it makes sense that Python could have module reloading, but the problem is that the language encourages the use of local binding from imports which is incompatible with it, and there is already a lot of code that imports things like that, so it's not as practical if you're using libraries from pip or use "import <...> from" anywhere in your codebase.

<comment><USER5> I think you have problems if you just write local foo = require ("foo") in two different files and you want to replace the module object in both of them at once.

Edit: the below is probably wrong about what you're doing. It sounds like your require-replacement merges the new return value of a module into the old one, so code that accesses stuff through the module's top level table will get the right result.

Wrong stuff: Maybe the hot reloading system you use relies on modules mutating the module object rather than making a new one. This is pretty unusual among Lua modules though. I usually see people unconditionally make a table and return it.

<comment><USER3> Yes, the table merging is what mine actually does. It clears the old table reference and inserts the contents of the new module into it. It seems to work well enough for my use-case.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Well, to be clear if you accidentally downloaded a main.c file with a virus and then accidentally copied someone's advice to compile an app using "cpp main.c" while being accidentally in your Downloads folder, you will also accidentally end up with a virus on your computer.

This article is too long for what it is trying to say. Although I will go the author a kudos for being able to write so well about nothing - it took me to scroll about a third of the article to realise that what they were saying was blatantly obvious.

PS: the only reason I clicked on it was because I thought python by default would import files with some "magic" names in the current directory.

<comment><USER7> For most people it's not blatantly obvious that running

      python -m pip install ./totally-legit-package.whl

in a folder will execute a file pip.py in that folder

<comment><USER8> The real question is who runs python -m pip when there is a perfectly good /usr/bin/pip?

<comment><USER9> That's an easy question to answer.

python -m pip is often advised over pip or /usr/bin/pip, because it uses the version of pip associated with that particular major+minor python install.

[https://snarky.ca/why-you-should-use-python-m-pip/](https://snarky.ca/why- you-should-use-python-m-pip/)

<comment><USER10> Wait, but isn't the point of the article that it will not do that, and rather just run the pip.py in you current working directory?

<comment><USER11> Only in the (probably unlikely) case that you have a `pip.py` in your CWD. In all other cases, it will execute pip as intended.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Python seems to embrace more magic and other subtle visual cues than any other language. I am convinced it is only "beginner friendly" because of how much folks insist it is so.

<comment><USER13> Python has little magic in it. It's 3rd party libraries that do un-Pythonic things.

<comment><USER14> The descriptor protocol is definitely magic!

It normally doesn't _matter_ that it's magic because most people don't need to interact with it. And it causes a very intuitive result in the part of the language that most people actually do interact with: that x = obj.foo; x() is the same as obj.foo() (not true in Javascript!). But that doesn't change the fact that method binding happens in a more complex way under the hood than you'd expect.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> With Perl we fixed that security risk earlier (3 years ago) and better. The path of the script is never added to the global script path anymore. This fixed all these attacks automatically. If the script was in /tmp, ~/Downloads or just ~/. We don't need to warn our users to take care, they won't. Most of them don't even read such best practice warnings.

<comment><USER16> Similar to how Bash usually doesn't have current directory on the default PATH for executables, you must explicitly reference it ./local-executable for similar concerns.

<comment><USER17> csh (tcsh?) used to be my default shell, and the current directory was first in the path. That was really convenient. At the time, I didn't realise the risks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Hmm.. it seems that part of the problem is that Python interprets "empty entry in PYTHONPATH" as being the same as ".". That just seems wrong. If you want the current directory as one of your PYTHONPATH entries, then you should be required to insert ".".

Perhaps the sharp edge would be reduced if Python skipped empty entries in PYTHONPATH. This might require some people to explicitly add "." in their configurations, but they should have done that anyway, and it wouldn't require _code_ to change. PYTHONPATH is also getting less used anyway, so this might be a relatively unnoticed change by most.

What do you think? Would that be worth proposing?

<comment><USER19> It is probably for compatibility with the way POSIX handles $PATH [https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799.2018edition...](https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799.2018edition/basedefs/V1_chap08.html)

<comment><USER20> Right; but for PATH this treatment of empty entries is mostly harmless, because the variable is normally non-empty.

<comment><USER18> Yes, that is _exactly_ the problem. People treat PYTHONPATH just like PATH, but the "easy scripting tricks" that are fine with PATH become subtle security vulnerabilities when you do the same thing with PYTHONPATH.

E.g., people will often add a directory to PATH by doing:

PATH="$PATH:my_new_dir"

This is practically always fine for PATH, since it's practically always set. If you use exactly the same syntax with PYTHONPATH, you have an instant security vulnerability. Now the first directory searched is the current directory, and if you ever wander into directories with untrusted fils (like "Downloads/" or "somebody_elses_container/") it could become serious fast. This is a sharp edge that was never intended.

I'm going to look into proposing this as a PEP. The change is trivial, but there may be surprising uses. A PEP would mean that it'd get more scrutiny (so the change will be less likely to be reverted later).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The Python 3 executable has the "-I" (isolated mode) option to mitigate this kind of thing.

<comment><USER20> -I is hardly useful, because it also removes the user's site directory packages directory (typically ~/.local/lib/python3.X/site-packages/) from sys.path.

So packages installed with, say, "python3 -m pip install --user" wouldn't be importable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Aside from the Python related stuff one thing that confuses me about this article is the claim than a browser can put files in your Downloads directory without you requesting that. Exactly what browser/HTTP feature allows that ?

I don't think I've never encountered this behavior and any time I've downloaded a file I've had the opportunity to see and change the name it is stored under.

<comment><USER11> It is possibly when you select 'always save to downloads' in your preferred browser.

<comment><USER23> In safari it will not let you download without explicit user interaction.

<comment><USER24> Safari will absolutely let you do it, though it might not be the default anymore (certainly used to be, and you can configure it in Preferences > Websites > Downloads).

Way more problematically, Safari will also open "safe" files (which includes zips and PDFs) by default after having downloaded them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Reminds me of a Wordpress site that ended up having a bunch of files uploaded to the uploads directory with the extension .php -- and the webserver allowed them to be executed. Unfortunately things like this are often overlooked!

</comment><comment><USER26> Some Windows programs has similar issue (DLL preloading attack). The vulnerability is common since around 10 years ago but the mitigation is not enabled by default so some apps/installers still vulnerable.

</comment><comment> Const-me I wonder who and why decided that downloading files from the internets into a fixed location is a good idea? A downloaded file may be a PDF document, installer of a software, a song, a photo, CAD file, anything at all. Makes no sense to save everything into a same location.

Hierarchical file systems were invented for a reason. For the same reason, I want browsers and chat apps to ask me where to save each file I download. Fortunately, most of these apps have an option to enable such behavior.

As a nice side effects, this prevents security issues like the one described in the article.

</comment><comment><USER20> Relevant Python bug report:

[https://bugs.python.org/issue33053](https://bugs.python.org/issue33053)

</comment><comment> cool-RR Great observation about Python scripts in the downloads folder. Here's a way to make this vulnerability even easier to exploit: Place a `sitecustomize.py` file in there. That way, you don't even need the `-m pip`, since that file will be imported automatically on any Python run.

</comment><comment><USER27> SELinux is made to prevent this kind of issues. Or rather: To encode the safety advice made by the author as a set of rules/constraints and ship it to everyone.

Now the question is: Is SELinux the sawstop the author asks for?

<comment><USER28> SELinux is bearable on a server, but I don't know if I could live with it on a dev workstation though (to be fair, as a mainly Windows dev, I never made the effort to "learn" SELinux properly).

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> All these security issues stem from the fact that all the programs have a common view of the system.

It's a major operating system flaw that no solution for it is in the horizon.

</comment><comment><USER30> Given that python 0.9.0 was released in 1991, it's kind of astonishing (in a good way) that issues like these take nearly 30 years to creep into our collective consciousness.

In my view, the focus on low friction and getting new users quickly productive with minimum fuss (shared by many scripting languages) sets the stage for these inevitable discoveries. And I'm not just hand-waving with the vague "these" characterization. Focus on ease-of-use creates roving best-practices factions that wax and wane over the years, with consequences perfectly captured in the famous xkcd "Python Environment" cartoon.[0] The fact that the empty string interpretation in PYTHONPATH hasn't been a bigger deal much earlier raises interesting questions. (Are bad guys not trying as hard as we imagine? Will newbie-friendly languages always end up with these kinds of exploitable surfaces? etc)

[0] [https://xkcd.com/1987/](https://xkcd.com/1987/)

</comment><comment><USER31> This isn't a solution, but I recommend always using /tmp as a Downloads folder (i.e. symlinking ~/Downloads to /tmp under macos so that it is at least purged every time you reboot.</comment>


Regular expressions are hard, let's go shopping - <AUTHOR> http://www.jgc.org/blog/2009/08/regular-expression-are-hard-lets-go.html

<comment><USER2> I'm sorry but I seem to be missing the deeper point here; the post pretty much looks like a two-page description of a PHP plugin coder forgetting to put [&\?] in a regexp. Please explain!

<comment><USER3> it's a two page _blog_ post. let's go shopping!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Am I the only one tired of the "Let's go shopping" meme?

<comment><USER5> No. Though the "meme" meme isn't too far behind. :-) Seems to me that "let's go shopping" is merely an _expression_ or a _figure of speech_.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> _there's a plugin for WordPress (that hasn't been updated for years) that's intended to highlight search terms when the visitor comes from a search engine_

This functionality is wrong in and of itself, broken or not. I am sick of sites which highlight my Google search terms. I already KNOW what I was searching for, you don't have to tell me! I can search within the page if I have trouble finding it - though these pages often also sabotage my efforts by also displaying the search term somewhere. Just show me what your page actually looks like. Do you think that because I found a summary of the page on Google and clicked through that perhaps you should show me a ... different page.

<comment><USER7> That misfeature _infuriates_ me in Trac, partly because the highlighting is _fucking neon_

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Wordpress and its ecosystem have such exceedingly great code quality. :/

<comment><USER9> Automatic tests take too much time to write. I tested it in the browser and it worked fine!

<comment><USER8> What do you mean it didn't work when you tried it? It works on _my machine_ just fine, you must be doing something wrong. Noob.</comment></comment></comment>


Long Live Mister Rogers' Quiet Revolution - <AUTHOR> https://daily.jstor.org/long-live-mister-rogers-quiet-revolution <comment><USER2> I grew up on Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood; it was still in production when I was a child.

I still occasionally hear criticism of the show as being unrealistic, that it papered over things or was shallow or ungrounded. As if children's perception, compared to adults, is particularly realistic, deep or stable! What adult worries about going down the drain after a bath? Who understands the deep, existential angst a child feels looking over the precipice as the two most important people in their lives "suddenly" aren't together anymore? Rogers' genius was to take what was meaningful to a child and speak frankly about that. He never belittled those anxieties; he merely explained them and what they could do. And if there wasn't anything they could actually do, he could at least convince them the world would not end.

The show represented an idealism that you just don't see anymore. I was too young to have seen the episodes first-run where black community members were simply introduced, without fanfare, but that's exactly how he would have done it. Of _course_ black people live in our city. Lots of people live in our city. They're just like you and me. They have the same jobs and live in the same houses because _why shouldn 't they?_ It wasn't polarized or political, it wasn't beating people over the head for not believing what he believed. It was simply matter-of-fact.

When he did the Emmys in 1997, you saw that idealism in practice. Of _course_ there are special people in your lives who brought you to where you are today. Why _wouldn 't_ you honour them? And people obeyed, for he was right. (If you don't know this story, see [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Rogers#Emmys_for_programm...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Rogers#Emmys_for_programming) .)

I have a DVD of some of the episodes with a little toy cardigan wrapped around them. I was quite upset when he passed away, even with a graduate degree by then.

As a moral authority, there couldn't have been one much better in the United States.

<comment><USER3> I agree. In terms of being unrealistic I think it is important that we have to be able to picture a better world if we are going to obtain it. You want kids to know that certain things don't have to be the way they are, that the world can be a different place.

<comment><USER4> Exactly.

Another notable show that tried to represent the future 'as it should be' was Star Trek.

It had a Russian and a black woman as officers an 'alien' as 2nd in command etc...

<comment><USER5> Star Trek, to me, is more realistic to the inner workings of ourselves as social members and as individual minds/hearts than any other program that has before or since existed. It shows what the unknown feels like, it shows how each person is not only a member of the whole but also a complete whole in and of themselves, it shows not only compassion when things go wrong but also justice (angry justice or not). Everything is there on the final frontier! Literally the limits of human attainment and a drama within that exact scenario.

<comment><USER6> Star Trek has a lot of great aspects, but its model of utopian society is the "benevolent dictator" one. Captain Kirk is the dictator - he's brave, benevolent, incorruptible, and fixes everyone's problems by decree. His minions utterly lack ambition and selfish desires, and are ideally altruistic members of the collective.

It's a nice fantasy, but completely unworkable.

<comment><USER7> Kirk was the captain of a ship, not of society. A ship captain is generally the dictator of their vessel.

There are certainly valid criticisms of the quasi-utopian vision of society in Star Trek, but that one ship was not meant as a model or microcosm of how the whole of their society was run. Just one aspect.

<comment><USER6> > Kirk was the captain of a ship, not of society. A ship captain is generally > the dictator of their vessel.

That's correct, but the Enterprise was clearly written as a metaphor for the perfect society. I've also seen it referred to as such by people wanting to create the perfect society.

<comment><USER7> > That's correct, but the Enterprise was clearly written as a metaphor for the > perfect society.

My perspective: I grew up in and around the military, I understand military command structures and I see them as distinct from our overall society. That doesn't mean that there is no place for that sort of structure _within_ a society. Star Trek always appeared to me as representing that military structure within the overall structure of the Federation's society. In fact, most members of the Federation were not members of anything military-like (or so it's claimed in the show, you don't really see too much outside the ship and non-Federation planets). The ship, the Enterprise, never seemed like a metaphor for anything (the Federation, on the other hand, was clearly meant as an analog to the the US and most of Western Europe, or the direction Rodenberry thought they were headed).

> I've also seen it referred to as such by people wanting to create the > perfect society.

I do not doubt that you've seen this. But I've, personally, only heard and read people reference the _Federation_ as a perfect society, not the _Enterprise_. Until today.

<comment><USER6> > Until today.

Not much is ever seen of the Federation in ST. But the parent I replied to, and its parent, are referring to the Enterprise.

Also, when I've seen references to ST as the model of utopia, Captain Kirk is often talked about front and center. Clearly, they are referring to the society on the Enterprise.

You can also see in this article cited later in this discussion:

[http://grantland.com/features/next-generation- turns-25/](http://grantland.com/features/next-generation-turns-25/)

with quotes like this:

"and Picard's personification of enlightened humanism"

<comment><USER8> Picard was a model of a good leader. That doesn't mean a spaceship command is a model for how all society functions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Besides the senate testimony linked in this article, my favorite Mr. Rogers fact is this:

He would help move freshman into CMU and Pitt dorms every year, because he lived only a few miles away _and he wanted to welcome them to his actual neighborhood_.

How cool would it have been to look up from figuring out where to put your bag of clothes to see Fred Rogers holding a box of your books...

<comment><USER10> This story [1] from Anthony Breznican stuck with me after he shared it on twitter. I firmly believe that the actions Mister Rodgers took would come across as insincere and self-serving if it were basically any other "celebrity". However, that was the power of Mister Rodgers. He could connect with anyone and made everyone feel like they genuinely mattered to him.

I grew up in Pittsburgh and was in a Catholic Grade School when he died. We held a special memorial mass for him because of the impact he had on both our city and kids generally. I can't think of anyone else that would be done for, not even Dan Rooney or Mario Lemieux. Mister Rodgers was one of a kind.

[1] [https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation- now/2017/05/23/mr...](https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation- now/2017/05/23/mr-rogers-story-probably-make-you-cry/340111001/)

<comment><USER11> > I firmly believe that the actions Mister Rodgers took would come across as > insincere and self-serving if it were basically any other "celebrity".

On the one hand, I think Fred Rogers was a wonderful human being. What I say next is not meant to detract from that in any way at all.

I don't think Fred Rogers was special.

Anyone can do what he did; the problem is that most people simply don't want to, I think. We've been taught that that kind of behavior is tiring, that we deserve "me" time and thoughts, that the public space is also "our" space.

When I think about Fred Rogers, my mental image is that service is first, then celebrity came from that consistent service. Any modern day celebrity could slowly take on a Fred Rogers-like image if they chose to consistently and wholly devote themselves to kindness and service.

In the beginning, it may seem insincere, but then as it continued consistently, I think that sincerity would be born from that consistency. Especially if they ceased other commercial activities or used those activities solely to plainly drive their service.

Edit: I've been reading the Esquire article about him ([https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/tv/a27134/can-you- say-...](https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/tv/a27134/can-you-say-hero- esq1198/)) and interestingly enough, there's a quote about this: "You would think it would be easy by now, being Mister Rogers; you would think that one morning he would wake up and think, Okay, all I have to do is be nice for my allotted half hour today, and then I'll just take the rest of the day off . . . But no, Mister Rogers is a stubborn man"

<comment><USER12> > I don't think Fred Rogers was special. Anyone can do what he did ...

He's special because he stepped up and did it.

<comment><USER13> In this day and age though, who would want to?

Everybody has skeletons in their closet. Lots of people have tried to dig up dirt on Mr. Rogers' saintly image, but failed.

Meanwhile, Melanie Martinez, the host on PBS' "The Good Night Show" for children got canned when some "offensive" humor video she had made prior to her position surfaced. Her on-air personality was perfectly congenial.

Mr. Rogers only worked because he was less human than the rest of us. He never slipped up. We never caught him picking up hookers by the docks. We could never find a reason to take him down.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I moved to Pittsburgh for school, and became interested in the 'mythology' that had grown up around Fred Rogers. In particular, there's an anecdote that gets shared around that his car once got stolen, but it ended up parked back in the spot a few days later with a note on the dash that said "If I'd known whose it was, I wouldn't have taken it!"

As best I can tell, that one's just an urban legend. But what I discovered most surprisingly poring over the newspaper clippings and books is that almost everything else I'd heard isn't. Of every childhood hero I had, Fred Rogers is the only one who turned out to be exactly who that child thought he was. And more than that: his work was driven from both his education in theology as a Presbyterian minister and his tutelage under Dr. Margaret McFarland, child psychologist and associate professor at University of Pittsburgh. His show's content and structure was grounded in those philosophical and scientific foundations.

My favorite anecdote I can source ([http://www.neighborhoodarchive.com/misc/mr_rodney/index.html](http://www.neighborhoodarchive.com/misc/mr_rodney/index.html)): Burger King ran an ad campaign for a bit in '84 that featured a 'Mr Rodney' parody taking shots at McDonald's for inferior quality. Fred Rogers contacted Burger King's SVP, Don Dempsey, and simply asked the ad be pulled, because he was concerned it'd be confusing to children.

BK yanked the ad. As news sources quoted Mr. Dempsey, "Mister Rogers is one guy you don't want to mess with."

<comment><USER15> > Of every childhood hero I had, Fred Rogers is the only one who turned out to > be exactly who that child thought he was.

Same. I like to think I'm not so wrapped up in the characters of celebrities, but a scandal around Mr. Rogers would be a _serious_ bummer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I literally lived in Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood.

As a Mormon missionary I lived in Latrobe, PA in a house just neighboring a house Fred Rogers had lived in growing up. Latrobe was a quaint town with the sort of mailman and library and cute little streets that I remembered from "Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood". It was a well-ordered place in many ways (though obviously with its own intrigues and local politics---people are people.) But I could see that the show in many ways portrayed a not-that-idealized version of a real place. To those who call it "unrealistic" I say that there actually are lovely places and people in this world, and especially in the eyes of a compassionate and loving person like Fred Rogers we can make our communities and countries better and more beautiful.

I was living in Latrobe at the time of Rogers' death. We attended a memorial service his Latrobe connections held in his honor, and the esteem he was held in there was substantial.

The article is a good reminder of the power of a positive vision and of consistency and compassion to make islands of love in this divisive human existence. A very timely message indeed.

<comment><USER17> I served in the Pitt Mission from 89-91. He had the missionaries for dinner every few months.

I had the honor of being one of those missionaries, though at the time I thought he was condescending. I've come to realize he was, but not the negative kind. He was a genuinely kind and compassionate man.

The only thing I remember about that dinner was his opinion on our missionary service, which was that even though we were misguided, our hearts were good and God counted that. He sincerely prayed for our success as well as our conversion. I left a very humbled young man.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> When I feel sad and frustrated, I watch the melodysheep remix of Mr. Rogers: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFzXaFbxDcM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFzXaFbxDcM)

Definitely read the Esquire profile of him: [https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/tv/a27134/can-you- say-...](https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/tv/a27134/can-you-say-hero- esq1198/)

Honestly, I recommend reading everything you possibly can about Mr. Rogers. I never watched his show as a kid, but I still idolize him. Stories of his life and doings are good for the heart.

<comment><USER19> I recently listened to the audiobook of The Simple Faith of Mr. Rogers. It's good:

[https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-simple-faith-of- mister-...](https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-simple-faith-of-mister- rogers-amy-hollingsworth/1111012865#/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Were he a Catholic, Fred Rogers would have by this point been beatified if not fully canonized. Few people within living memory exemplified the values Christianity purports to teach as thoroughly as he. If his approach was unrealistic, it was supposed to be. He applied a sort of extreme version of the Kantian categorical imperative: always acting as if he were at the same time willing that the real world be as peaceful, gentle, and tolerant as the Neighborhood of Make-Believe.

<comment><USER21> He was actually a Presbyterian minister, and the mission that the church gave him was to do his show. He approached everything in a way that was incredibly kind and caring for everyone, without being preachy in the slightest. He was even part of an LGBT outreach program at his local church! I'm not Christian (though I did grow up with a very religious mom and nana) nor am I a particularly religious woman, but I'm sure Fred Rogers would be chilling with the most holy people up in heaven lol. Like I honestly think that he was one of the most "Christ-like" people in a long time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Mr. Rogers was nice and calming. So were the early Sesame Streets. Now children's shows are hyper and frantic, refining that 3 second attention span.

There is a congressional testimony video in that link. He was still nice and calming speaking to an asshat politician. He is like a kid's Carl Sagan.

If you need to de-stress, bring up Mr. Rogers.

<comment><USER23> The new animated show "Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood" is a rare example of a successor that is true to the spirit of the original. My kids love it.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Tiger%27s_Neighborhood](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Tiger%27s_Neighborhood)

<comment><USER24> I think it does miss out on some aspects of Mr. Rogers's humanity, though. I think it's harder to learn from abstract characters.

<comment><USER2> I agree. There's a lot to be said for a kindly human figure explaining these (to a child) weighty topics. An anthropomorphic tiger seems to undercut the message.

(Mind you, this is not intended to be a heavy slam on the show, which in my limited experience is head and shoulders above what passes for children's TV now.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I think of Mister Rogers as a towering moral authority; he is basically my Jesus. That said, the entirety of his goodness is boiled down to his simple commitment to taking others exactly as they are. It seems simple, but it's magic.

</comment><comment><USER26> Obligatory XKCD: [https://xkcd.com/767/](https://xkcd.com/767/)

Be sure to read the alt-text.

</comment><comment><USER27> I grew up with MrR. However when I try to show it to my 5yr old, he can only sit through the factory-on-site visits ( which are very cool ) the rest he doesnt have the patience for as those interactions can't compare to all the hyper activity of NetFlix Kid's shows. He prefers to watch a marathon of Power Rangers kicking ass all day long.

Is there a moder-day Mr. Rogers out there ?? If not someone please invent him.

<comment><USER28> I grew up with him also, but Mr. Rogers isn't something we'd put on and sit and watch and do nothing else. It's something that's on while you're playing with other things. For example, building a Lego castle while the TV is on. The non-factory scenes are more about listening and occasionally looking up rather than staring at. At least that's my experience.

Years ago we'd leave on the TV in the background and watch sparingly sometimes. But now, my TV is always on-demand and if I'm not watching a series or movie, I'm on my computer in the other room.

<comment><USER8> A big part of Mr. Rogers appeal was back in the pre-Internet less-connected world, he and his cast were _people_ you could see and who talked to you when you were home alone.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Errata: that should read: WQED and 'The Children's Corner'. [https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0250142/](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0250142/)

... the show for which Rogers created many of the later famous characters. In between (beginning in 1961) he did over over 300 'MisteRogers' shows for CBC.

</comment><comment><USER30> I have to admit that I have trouble following stories with holes in basic details. Conclusions drawn or stitched together end up missing something or being wrong.

Early on the story notes:

> the former Presbyterian minister

Except his biography notes:

> He graduated from the Seminary and was ordained as a Presbyterian minister > in 1963 with a charge to continue his work with children and families > through the mass media.

[https://www.fredrogers.org/fred-rogers/bio/](https://www.fredrogers.org/fred- rogers/bio/)

When telling the story of someone it's important to get core characteristics right (or try to). His belief and faith, no matter how any of us feel about it, was part of that.

<comment><USER31> 1\. Article was not a biography but a rumination over the values and impact of his show (with historical commentary).

2\. "Former minister" refers to an occupation. It's accurate.

<comment><USER30> A couple thoughts...

> 1\. Article was not a biography but a rumination over the values and impact > of his show (with historical commentary).

The values of his show were part of an active ministry, not as a pastor for a local congregation but a different form of ministry. To talk about values and impact while not capturing where those intentionally came from is misleading at worst and at least a poor portrayal.

> 2\. "Former minister" refers to an occupation. It's accurate.

This is trying to put the concept of minister into the job designations we typically have in the current work force structure we have today. It doesn't fit.

There are many ministers who have the job of Pastor of a church congregation. There are some who don't have have a job doing something that is part of their ministry.

He had an active ministry, with the Presbyterian church, to do this. If anything we get into semantic debates on roles rather than former vs active association.

<comment><USER32> Interesting. I think it's a rather small mistake, which does not invalidate the whole story, but I agree it does change the perspective somewhat.

Do you know how much he was involved in the church? Was he a member of a presbytery? Did he attend synods or general assemblies? (I might not be using the terms exactly correctly.)

I'm just curious, doesn't change things much either way. My grandfather was a Presbyterian minister and very much still considered himself active after retiring from being a pastor to a congregation – I think in large part because he attended a lot of the organizational meetings, mentored young pastors, etc.

<comment><USER8> Being involved in the church is lovely, but rather separate from bring a pastor. That's the point with Mr Rogers. He was an active pastor who ministered _outside_ church.

<comment><USER32> Sure, agreed, I totally get that point. I was trying to figure out to what degree he was involved in the organization and to what degree they officially supported him, endorsed his ministry, etc.

Like I said, it wouldn't affect my high opinion of him, but it could affect my opinion of the church somewhat. I know the church honored him when he died, but I was curious if _they_ considered his show a Presbyterian ministry – i.e., outside of _a church_ does not mean outside of _the church_.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Mister Rogers' Neighborhood first aired in 1968.

Star Trek (the original series) first aired two years later and it's often cited as "the first" for many things. But... Mr. Rogers often did it first. He really was a pioneer.

<comment><USER7> _Star Trek_ debuted in 1966, not 1970.</comment></comment>


Textbook Publishers Invest Millions In Digital Textbook Startup Inkling - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/03/22/digital-textbook-startup-inkling-nabs-multi-million-dollar-investment-from-mcgraw-hill-and-pearson/

<comment><USER2> Why doesn't every college charge students $400 for textbooks and then just give them all DRM-free epub files? You can't steal if you're forced to pay, and who's going to notice an extra $400 on tuition?</comment>


What's Wrong With Our Front Page: 100% Bounce Rate. HELP - <AUTHOR> http://reviewmailer.herokuapp.com/

<comment><USER2> First off, why even have a separate sign-up page? You aren't getting any details there really.

It completely looks like spam. How are you going to know what my app is? You don't ask for my app, you only ask for my e-mail.

You could make this much simpler.

1) (as others have mentioned) state on your homepage what you do.

2) include a space for me to put my e-mail address, don't take me to another page

3) don't ask to spam me with your "We make some really cool things. Check this box if you would like the occasional email about our other products. Don't worry, we dont like spam either!" That just looks really bad.

Basically make it all a simple as possible.

<comment><AUTHOR> I though I would answer your 1,2,3 points as it might generate some more ideas about how to go about achieving conversions.

1) I thought it was simple (but I may be too close to the project). We scrape the apple website in all countries for reviews to apps that you have entered in the site(they don't have to be your own). Then we translate the non english ones and email them to you if you have any new ones that day. It's really great to help you track what your users are saying about your app. Or what users are saying about your competitions apps.

2) This is good advice and easily fixed. Thanks!

3) Noted. I will remove it!

Thanks a lot for your feedback.

<comment><USER2> Ok, let's look at #1. That is the product you are selling, not just my reviews, but the reviews of competing apps or other apps in the space.

Which leaves me with two more questions. 1) where is the text field where I enter in the apps that I want to recieve reviews about

2) why don't you turn this into an app? Why is it a web/e-mail solution?

We all have so much e-mail already, you could simply create an app, the app user gets a unique ID, you go scraping and when you find new reviews, you send a notification and the person can then see them.

Furthermore, you should be able to do some metrics on "people who are getting reviews on x app are also getting reviews on y app, which may help companies stay up on new competitors.

<comment><AUTHOR> 1) You need to sign up before you can add the apps that you are interested in tracking

2) We are considering an mobile app version of the the product. We wanted to gauge user interest before expanding even further

I like the last suggestion. We are looking to add extra features in the future but we are concentrating on getting the MPV off the ground first

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> First: I don't know what the app does. Not in technical terms, but what problem it solves for me. Imagine your ideal customer. Imagine his itch. And then imagine, that you have less then 5 seconds to tell him, that you solve his problem.

Even after reading the comments on HN, I do not know, if it mails me the reviews I wrote, or the reviews, that anybody wrote on my app.

If it is the 2nd, I could imagine a use-case, when I look at my workmates, who manage our apps. They might be users. But I would not tell them of this service, as I did not understand it.

Else:

\- Sign-Up-Button(Call to action) below the fold. \- Get a lot more feedback on Design-Iterations from people outside (so the HN-Post was good) \- A|B-Test your Design (For example with Genetify: <https://github.com/gregdingle/genetify/wiki>)

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi sdoering,

You are correct, it is the 2nd one. It emails reviews that other people have written about your app.

It is targeted at iOS app developers who want to know what their users are saying their app (or even their competitors app). It removes the need for the developer to manually check the App Stores each day to see if customers have left feedback (as a bonus it also translates reviews into English).

Thanks for the tip about the sign up button above the fold.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> TLDR: What is it?

It doesn't give enough info about what you're offering. As a potential (paying) user I need to see some features and benefits on the homepage.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback. I always look at mailchimp.com as a basis. Should it be something more like that?

<comment><USER4> Perhaps, <http://mailchimp.com/why-mailchimp/> will give you some more pointers.

When I visit your website I would like the following answered:

\- Why do I need to read new reviews of my iOS applications?

\- And more importantly, why would I pay for this service?

\- What's your value proposition?

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome! Thanks. All this 'obvious' marketing stuff isn't obvious to everyone. Thanks for your help.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Don't care about the product, the button is below the fold, the whole thing looks like cheap clipart and I don't enter my email on pages that look likely to be spam-collection mechanisms.

Mostly, though, the idea of having my app's reviews emailed to me is entirely unappealing. The only time I'd expect you to find people who wanted that service was right after they had googled for "app store reviews emailed to me".

<comment><AUTHOR> Hehe, I'll not be offended by the clipart comment as I made the image myself and I am an engineer! Could you give me a hint about how to make it look less spammy? The app relies on your email address to send you reviews.

This was a "scratch your own itch" project. I find it really useful as a developer to know what my users are saying. But each to their own.

<comment><USER5> :) I wasn't intending to offend, so I'm glad none was taken.

As an engineer, I usually cheat and stick to text with typography. I'd put the name in big-and-bold, with detail information below, offset but at least as prominent. I'd describe exactly what it is the product does, add at least a link to some information about yourself or the company and change the "sign up now" button to something like, "enter your email to give it a shot!"

<http://pinboard.in/> is my favorite example of engineer-driven-design. You have an advantage: you are an engineer selling to engineers. I'd suggest thinking about what makes you respect a website or noticing which calls-to- action you follow for a week, and then trying to apply those lessons to your own site.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great advice roguecoder. Thanks. I will have to think about this!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I believe I understood exactly what it does (mail new reviews by other people of "my" app). I also think it looks OK.

It may be no one wants a service like that.

</comment><comment><USER7> Well, it's completely ambiguous. Why is your land page not an explanation of what your product is?

<comment><AUTHOR> It seems this point is coming through clearly. I think maybe I was too close to the project when I wrote what it did.

See above comment for a description!

Thanks for your feedback.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Anyone?</comment>


LinkedIn is a Virus - <AUTHOR> http://a.wholelottanothing.org/2013/03/linkedin-is-a-virus.html <comment><USER3> My version: I was on the iPad, somehow hit a link to send invites to everyone on my "you might know" list.

Much embarassment ensued.

Surprisingly, about 75% of people who I've never met (online or IRL) accepted the invite.

I'm not exactly sure why Linkedin is worth a damn anymore.

<comment><USER4> That explains why $random people I've never met send me connect invites. I normally ignore them, but still waste time trying to figure out if its important or not. -.-.

Can one safely ignore all these "Business" networks? Wonder what people get out of it.

<comment><USER5> I'll connect with someone in my field and location, because those are the connections I hope to foster with LinkedIn.

One of the weirder things I've experience is people "endorsing" my skills. Many of which are skills they've certainly never seen me use. I assume they were doing it for some sort of reciprocal endorsement, but I don't want my name attached to someone's skills that I know nothing about.

<comment><USER6> My mortgage broker endorsed my jQuery skills. While they are excellent - <USER2> doubt she knows what jQuery is.

<comment><USER7> Yes, I accepted a request from someone today (first time being there in quite some time) and it immediately suggested I endorse him for a slew of skills. I presume some people just click the button, thus I largely ignore it, I assumed other techies did as well (I.e. Put no faith in someone's endorsements).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> All of social networking is a virus.

They all rely on viral growth, viral "features" are often pushed despite no one liking them (see everything Facebook ever did). And most disturbingly if they succeed in growing big enough (Facebook again) then not having one can become a bit of problem in real life.

Of course LinkedIn is a virus. It's what works.

<comment><USER9> App.Net isn't like that.

<comment><USER10> Of course it is, there's a reason why they started giving out free invites.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Rule 1: Make sure your linkedin password is not the same as your gmail password. I've tried to login to linkedin a couple of times in too much of a hurry, thinking I was logging into linkedin from some request and not reading the actual page. Luckily my passwords are different.

I'd have to say I'm not sure how someone who is tech savvy can knowingly give a company their gmail account info and expect nothing bad to happen. I only connect with people I know on Linkedin (and generally on g+), so I've never wanted to let them use my gmail info. If you willingly let Linkedin scan your gmail, I'm not sure what you would expect to happen, other than it inviting everyone on your contacts list, just like it says it will.

I'm not exactly a fan of Linkedin, but handing out any credentials to a website you aren't absolutely certain about seems a little naive. Also he admits he pushed the 'connect' button, which is clearly going to connect you to someone. I can see asking Linkedin to put a bigger warning or something, but knowingly giving them your info and hitting connect without scrolling down isn't the act of innocence professed here.

Post should be titled "Be careful giving information to websites".

<comment><USER12> A lot of those websites scan your address book and show you people that are already on the site and then ask you to send emails to people who aren't. It's reasonable to not know that 11,000 people would be on linked in. Also Linkedin isn't exactly a website that he "wasn't sure about". Everyone knows what the site is and does. Also your Rule 1 is kinda silly. I guess as long as I keep the passwords to those to sites different then I should be safe?

<comment><USER13> Believe it or not, I blame this entire incident on Google, not LinkedIn.

Reasons?

a) you sign in using google. That is actually a REALLY GOOD PRACTICE because it gives you lots of benefits of oauth (I can de-authorize an account).

b) you only have the one password to remember, which is good for most people.

Why it's bad? Because when signing in, the other side can ask for details from your account and the best you can do is say "yes" or "no" and if you accidentally said yes, it's plowing though user preferences (something most people can't do) at google.

What should happen instead? An intentionally slow experience.

a) user clicks the sign in with google+ or whatever.

b) user is presented with option "allow/deny access for XXXX domain to log in with your credentials"

c) user is now presented with (all default off) options to allow sharing of data. There is a big message up top saying "these options are not required for you to log in with your google account. You may lose some functionality, but will not share any extra data with the 3rd party"

Vuala. Everyone is better off.

<comment><USER14> Not to detract from your point, just nitpicking for a moment. The word you're for at the end is voilà, of French origin.

<comment><USER15> Points for originality with "vuala", though. Usually it's just "viola" or "wallah"

<comment><USER16> "vuala" is actually pretty phonetic-esque without all those weird characters.

Also, I had to re-read it about 4 times before I stopped seeing "vulva" :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The exact same thing happened to me with <http://viadeo.com/>, a linkedin clone pretty popular in France.

The way it was worded hinted that I could chose from contacts who were on both my gmail contacts and viadeo users to connect with them. Not send an add to subscribe to viadeo to my entire contact list (who would ever want to do that??).

It's such a horrible feeling when you realize what just happened.

It emailed my grandmother, who had no idea what that was, it emailed past companies HR, ex-girlfriends, CEOs... This is unacceptable. I don't know how gmail could prevent applications from doing that, but they should not even TRY to do that in the first place.

<comment><USER18> ex-girlfriends, ouch. I initially thought this feature, while annoying, wasn't that big a deal. I've changed my mind.

<comment><USER19> LinkedIn does a real number on this one. A few weeks ago, I got a "Do you know so-and-so" email from LinkedIn. Most of the people they suggested that I knew were people in my general social circle, and I presume that LinkedIn was just saying, "Person X is a connection of persons Y, Z, Alpha, and Beta, as are you. Perhaps you know person X?"

But one was an ex-girlfriend.

Which was weird, because we hadn't dated long and had, to my knowledge, no social overlap before, during, or since the time that we dated (we met using a dating site). So, I thought, "How does LinkedIn know that I know her?"

And the conclusion I came to is that she had at some point recently uploaded her address book, and deliberately not chosen me as a contact, and then LinkedIn decided to try to nag me into initiating the contact that it knew we probably had.

Which is, to my mind, pretty evil. She didn't choose to contact me. LinkedIn basically used information out of her address book without her permission or knowledge. In an admittedly very minor way, LinkedIn decided to cyber-stalk her on my "behalf," without either of our permission.

(As it happens, we broke up amicably and no harm was done. But still, it was kind of gross.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> There is surprise when an address book with over 1000 entries is voluntarily connected to a commercial service designed to link people together?

Surprise when closing a _browser tab_ does not stop the request from running at LinkedIn?

Calling it a virus is disingenuous at best.

 _Edit:_ ... or a way to get page views.

<comment><USER21> This, wait... no, sorry, not this. Joking aside; the first button is one that deselects all contacts and they mention the numbers of connections to be created right in the top. Here it is: <http://i.imgur.com/3qiT140.jpg>

I do hate LinkedIn but for very different reasons, like pretending is a safety measure to not connect with strangers and then charging you for a premium service for direct-emailing anyone you want.

<comment><USER22> Is "Add connections" the final step?

Granted it does allow you to deselect contacts and does (discreetly) indicate the interface is obscuring ~100 people it's defaulting sending invites to when you go to the next step, but you can understand why Joe VP might not expect clicking the blue button to send invitations to the mistress, disgruntled former employee and rival contractors who are hidden away somewhere near the bottom of the list.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Here is an example of another LinkedIn Virus (or may Crunchbase-linkedin virus), that I experienced the other day and got really pissed.

1\. Go to this page: <http://www.crunchbase.com/company/facebook>

2\. Click on the "In" Widget

3\. It says X connections work at Facebook. with "X connections" hyperlinked. There is another link below that says "Follow Facebook"

4\. Now you'd think that clicking on "X connections" will show you the connections.

Try it....

5\. It actually makes you follow the company.

Now, its not bad to follow Facebook but the other day I was checking out a competitor company and realized it made me follow the company and NO WAY To unfollow from anywhere.

So SCREW you LinkedIn Virus!!

<comment><USER24> How to unfollow a company:

1\. Go to this page: [http://www.linkedin.com/companies?dspFllwed=&trk=hb_tab_...](http://www.linkedin.com/companies?dspFllwed=&trk=hb_tab_compy_flw)

2\. Click 'Stop following' under the company you wish to stop following.

<comment><USER23> Thanks but I still have the status that "I'm following <My Competitor>" that I cannot remove

<http://help.linkedin.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/3003>

<comment><USER24> This won't fix the past, but it's not a bad idea to go to: <https://www.linkedin.com/settings/> and 'Turn off activity broadcasts'.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I really despise LinkedIn. A while back I got sick of their emails, so I attempted to unsubscribe, which failed (I got more emails), so I attempted to cancel my account, which also failed. When the news came out about their encrypted passwords getting leaked (and cracked), I took another stab at canceling my account, and that time appeared to be successful because I now seem to be rid of them once and for all.

</comment><comment><USER18> I'm willing to wager that the "ease" by which this "feature" is executed was not entirely by accident (supporting the headline's premise).

<comment><USER26> I tried LinkedIn Pro as a _try free for 30 days_. This required a credit card as it will bill you if you forget to cancel. After a week or so, I was unimpressed and canceled. Or I thought I did. $150 later and three months of not seeing the recurring transaction on my credit card I realized that I had not clicked the right buttons to cancel. I felt cheated by deceptive UI design.

<comment><USER27> Good ole' forced continuity[1]. BTW, what OP describes is also a dark pattern[2]. I guess they use darkpatterns.org as their handbook.

[1] <http://darkpatterns.org/library/forced_continuity/>

[2] <http://darkpatterns.org/library/friend_spam/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> This happens to 13.000 people for me! I kid you not, I wish I made a screenshot, but it said that on the browser, I also tried the "close the browser" thing. It was not my intention at all to invite people to Linkedin, just to invite like 30-40 people that I know well and were also using Linkedin.

Although I never received follow-up on this. Maybe everybody rejected my request and ignored the e-mails, or the invitations/e-mails were never sent.

I felt really bad when I saw that I just sent an invitation to 13.000 people... including ex-girlfriends, connections so long ago, I checked my e-mail box for the next 2-3 hours, but FORTUNATELY nothing came up.

</comment><comment><USER29> Social networking sites in general only grow through this type of spamming. Facebook was one of the worst offenders in its early days - Hotmail even blocked their invite messages for a substantial period of time. It is no coincidence that many of the sites that use the contact-list/auto-invite feature most aggressively have grown the fastest. Although we might find it objectionable, apparently most users either don't object to it or don't realize that it even happened (my guess would be that hundreds of millions of FB/LI users fall into the latter category).

</comment><comment><USER30> I use LinkedIn the same way I used to collect Business Cards in the pre- Internet darkness.

The folks you contact regularly go into my address book, the rest go into my desk drawer tied up by a big rubber band.

Outlook is the address book, LinkedIn is the rubber band.

</comment><comment><USER31> This is wildly off topic, but I'm genuinely curious... What is with the profile pictures of people looking up and to the right, with usually a circular gradient solid color background? I see it a lot in the SV/tech industry, and am wondering if it's a particular "startup photographer", or some meme I don't know about. Any ideas?

<comment><USER32> There was a study done that said that people not looking at the camera are found to be more attractive then those who look directly into the lens. Also, the left side of your face is more attractive than the right.[1]

[1] [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/21/face-left-side- more...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/21/face-left-side-more- attractive_n_1443325.html)

<comment><USER31> Now this is interesting. I'm not sure if this is the reason for what I'm talking about, but it's certainly good information to know!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I'd point a finger not at LNKD but at GOOG for not having better a better security impl in gmail. If _anyone_ can send an email that requires just one click in it to peruse and use your contacts list, that is a bug. Any 3rd party should need to formally request access to resources like a contacts list, and the user should be clearly prompted by the GOOG platform to approve/deny the request.

<comment><USER29> It does require authorization. You have to connect your Google account to Linked In in order for this to happen and Google has a one-click authorization process with which to do that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> YES. This totally happened to me.

Now I'm connected to every apartment manager, recruiter, and random person I've ever emailed -__-

<comment><USER35> I'm surprised this point hasn't been made/stressed more in the comments here.

LinkedIn has essentially given recruiters another possible avenue for connecting with people; by enabling their random, direct emails to users to turn into leads.

I thought I was being kind in replying and saying "no thanks" only to suddenly start getting connected with people whom with that was my only interaction.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Am I the only one who read that and thought "perhaps you should have paid attention to what you were doing?" I know it sounds dickish, but seriously, why not own up to the fact that not every user interface is tailored to you, and that sometimes you are fallible?

<comment><USER37> I wish I took screenshots, but honestly my memory is I only saw six invites to review and in tiny 10px text below the "connect now" button was a thing saying (and also 1,132 more).

For what it's worth, a designer that works on this feature tweeted an apology and said they should add a warning, as it was way more common than intended.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Another Linkedin Virus feature:

the default setting on group discussion is that whenever someone replies to a discussion, all the people who replied before get email notifications.

At one time, I thought Linkedin is nothing but a huge email spam machine.

</comment><comment><USER39> I've been eyeing the gmail import tool with suspicion, and I'm glad I didn't give in to my curiosity. I'd be mortified if all the contacts in my address book got an email blast from a 3rd party website.

</comment><comment><USER40> I've always hated LinkedIn but recently it seems to actually have people talking to each other in forum-style threads, which actually makes it a bit more useful.

</comment><comment><USER41> This happened to me when I did something similar on Gowalla several years ago and I had a very similar experience. It was nice getting the random correspondence from someone I hadn't heard from in years but I was way more embarrassed than anything else.

</comment><comment><USER42> I hope "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." applies here, but I just can't get the picture of the management over a LinkedIn laughing their asses off because this is exactly how they designed it.

<comment><USER43> Hanlon aside, I interviewed there in, oh October or so, and my sense of the general trajectory of LinkedIn in light of that experience is that they may have a terminal case of not being able to see the forest for the trees.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> I hated Linkedin since it started 10-ishyears ago because it managed to get to my private email because a friend invited me. Now I know how that happened.

People use it for jobs and so I'm loathe to delete it entirely, but I still loathe it.

</comment><comment><USER45> Huh. Inconvenient I'm sure, but this actually sounds rather fun.

There are people I haven't talked to in a while. Maybe I should invite them to LinkedIn.

Well, that, or I could just send them an e-mail, but that doesn't sound nearly as interesting.

</comment><comment><USER46> This same thing happened to me. Thought it was a "see if these people are on LinkedIn". Instead it emailed them. Somewhat mortifying, but fortunately I tested with a limited subset of my address book.

</comment><comment><USER47> I hate that LinkedIn tricks you into endorsing others and accepting endorsements. It was embarrassing to get endorsed for my expertise on Excel from people I barely knew.

</comment><comment><USER48> This a a case where the double confirmation would be a good design decision. "Are you sure?" "Click yes to invite 1000 people to connect."

</comment><comment><USER49> I wonder how many of the 1,138 accepted the request?

<comment><USER37> Last I checked, about 400-500 had accepted. I put the blame squarely on me for not reading carefully, but also on LinkedIn for not warning me, but Google as well. Turns out Google has a group in your contacts for everyone you've ever emailed and it's at something like 6,000 for me, so I guess about 1/5th of those were on LinkedIn, who got invites.

Some of the invites went to people I'd banned from my sites for spamming, an old accountant I haven't talked to in ten years, and PR flacks I had arguments with over sending me press releases I didn't want. My LinkedIn account used to be a pretty well-curated list of people I'd actually interacted with in person before and done some business with, and now it's just a random hodge-podge of a bunch of internet strangers I crossed paths with at some point.

<comment><USER50> Supposedly LinkedIn has a karma system where you will be punished for anyone not accepting your requests.

You may end up banned from making future requests, although that might come as a relief and it sounds like LinkedIn might be BSing there given that combine that with support for mailing >1k people at once.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> There's only three types of folks that contact me on LinkedIn: bots, recruiters and prostitutes.

Correction, that's only two types...

</comment><comment><USER52> Happened to me a few months ago, didn't delete my linked in account, but pretty much stopped using it.

</comment><comment><USER53> Did the exact same thing over a year ago. I can't believe they haven't changed that workflow yet.

</comment><comment><USER54> I did the exact same thing. Awkward.

</comment><comment><USER55> glad i'm not the only one

</comment><comment><USER56> I've got a feeling that just about everything in LinkedIn interface is made to be intentionally broken or deceptive, I think there's a lot of "discourage through bad ui", for example, here's a past tweet of mine, I've actually had to GOOGLE to find out how leave a group:

"<http://t.co/RTAOpvTo> 10 minutes to find how to leave a group on linkedin and need to follow step by step... discouraging through bad ux?"

</comment><comment><USER57> How did this happen without giving them your password or using the same one?

</comment><comment><USER58> So is Capitalism.

</comment><comment><USER59> LinkedIn is a Scala shop. So if LinkedIn is a virus, I think that's a first for the Scala language. "Scala, good for viruses too!" :O</comment>