Chinese students and families fight for the right to cheat their exams - <AUTHOR> http://www.smh.com.au/world/chinese-students-and-families-fight-for-the-right-to-cheat-their-exams-20130621-2oo6o.html <comment><USER2> Cargo Cult Education - Schools are built, students attend, teachers lecture, assignments turned in, tests taken and degrees granted. Everyone gets what they want: politicians, students, staff and parents. Yet nothing needs to be taught and nothing needs to be learned.

Doesn't this go on a lot more often then we want to admit?

<comment><USER3> I'm a spring 2013 undergraduate in CS, and this goes on in America just as it does in China. (the entire process is a charade.) I will admit it without hesitation.

It's incredibly interesting that not a single party in the process sees actual knowledge as the value gained. Everyone sees the piece of paper as the value: the box that's checked. How long can such an illusion continue? Your guess is as good as mine. At the end of the day though, you either learn what you need to learn or you don't. Industry isn't too terrible at calling out those who can't produce value, but can only cross their t's and dot their i's.

EDIT: I should definitely draw a distinction between the magnitude of cheating/carelessness described in the article and what I encountered at an American university. The article describes a situation that is much worse.

<comment><USER4> This has most to do with the student. If the student wishes to acquire knowledge, most American universities can provide the student with a great deal of knowledge. If you are not at such a university (unlikely, though some schools are significantly weaker in some disciplines than other schools, so YMMV), then such a university is generally just a transfer application away (protip: admissions standards are different for transfer applicants, it is _generally_ , though not universally, easier to get into a more prestigious school as a transfer, having already shown an aptitude for college work).

No student at an American university can honestly claim not to have learned anything and yet be blameless for not having learned anything.

I will admit that many students are not ready to attend college at the age of 18. I think we should do more to allow students the freedom to take some time to explore their options and possibly even take a year or two off of school before deciding whether or not to attend college, where to attend college, and what to study once there.

<comment><USER5> I agree, and disagree.

Having recently been a student in an American university, I found that in a number of my classes, having a wish to acquire knowledge puts you at a disadvantage. When the majority of your peers are "working in a group" (read: academically sanctioned cheating) and you are not, your grade is likely to suffer. I was able to grasp and learn the material better in the long run, but at the cost of not having a great GPA.

This situation forces any student interested in maintaining a high GPA to focus more on the grade and not the material. The delicious irony being that students who are most eligible for graduate studies are those least intellectual.

<comment><USER6> > Having recently been a student in an American university, I found that in a > number of my classes, having a wish to acquire knowledge puts you at a > disadvantage. When the majority of your peers are "working in a group" > (read: academically sanctioned cheating) and you are not, your grade is > likely to suffer. I was able to grasp and learn the material better in the > long run, but at the cost of not having a great GPA.

You are possibly conflating "working in a group" with "academically sanctioned cheating". There are several situations where working in a group happens:

1\. Cooperatively solving an assignment as a group, e.g. a programming assignment where pieces of code are divided amongst the members. In such a scenario, I would argue that if you were solving it on your own, you were being stupid. Sure, you learnt how to solve a technical problem on your own; on the other hand you missed out on learning how to work in a group.

2\. Studying together in order to comprehend the material better. I am not even sure how this could be interpreted as cheating.

3\. Solving say a theoretical assignment together where in reality one person solves the damn thing and everyone else copies the solution. Most math/theory classes (in a decent school) acknowledge that this can happen and have exams to smooth out the grades.

> This situation forces any student interested in maintaining a high GPA to > focus more on the grade and not the material. The delicious irony being that > students who are most eligible for graduate studies are those least > intellectual.

Really? Tell me more about these graduate programs that look _only_ at your GPA. If you are so damn well intellectual, you should be out there working with professors on research projects and whatever to show that you are cut out for graduate school.

<comment><USER7> > If you are so damn well intellectual, you should be out there working with > professors on research projects and whatever to show that you are cut out > for graduate school.

Out where? Do you mean in between your class load? (I'm not too familiar with US graduate schools)... I thought your GPA was exactly what they looked for?

<comment><USER4> No, GPA is not generally a priority in graduate school admissions. You need a reasonable GPA, but a 4.0 is totally unnecessary. GRE scores and other factors like letters of recommendation and research projects with faculty members during undergraduate are usually more important.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> For those who haven't read the article yet, when they say "fight", they mean actual physical fighting:

> By late afternoon, the invigilators were trapped as students pelted the > windows with rocks. Outside, more than 2000 people had gathered, smashing > cars and chanting: ''We want fairness. There is no fairness if you do not > let us cheat.''

Cheating in China goes way beyond cheating to get into school. Two years ago, the Journal of Zhejiang University-Science became the first Chinese journal to use text analysis software to spot plagiarism.

They found that 31% of their papers were plagiarized. 40% for computer science and life science papers. [1] [2]

[1] [http://www.npr.org/2011/08/03/138937778/plagiarism-plague- hi...](http://www.npr.org/2011/08/03/138937778/plagiarism-plague-hinders- chinas-scientific-ambition)

[2] [http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v467/n7312/full/467153d...](http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v467/n7312/full/467153d.html)

<comment><USER9> Yes, we have this scheme in our Finnish polytechnic. Regardless though, people still do it and try and get away with it. Sometimes they don't even try and make any small changes to the original document. I have no idea why they do it -- perhaps they don't believe the system will catch it?

<comment><USER10> People plagiarize because doing the actual work is soul-crushing. How motivating is it to read a bunch of high quality work, put them together and produce a mediocre work? It's not motivating at all, and people simply try to stay sane.

<comment><USER11> "Students plagiarize because the source material will always be of higher quality than their paper" is a very novel argument! And yet, it doesn't hold water. For one thing, teaching kids how to synthesize information, explain how a process works, is quite valuable and not at all soul-crushing. "To learn is to teach," they say, and writing papers about what you've learned is, essentially, teaching about what you've learned. It's a good thing.

And of course if you generalize the argument, then students could be excused from learning entirely. How "soul-crushing" is it for a piano student to try to play Étude in C major, when there are countless recordings of it being played perfectly, and with great genius? Following in the steps of great thinkers and doers is not soul-crushing, because you're walking in the footsteps of greatness. Those notes are the right notes. You play it badly, but _you 're playing it_. It is humbling, though. The difference between soul crushing and humility is that for the latter, there's every reason to believe that one day you too could be great.

The other good thing about writing papers is that, no matter how expository it may be, there is _always_ opportunity for viewpoint. Even if the viewpoint expressed has to do with how best to organize the material, every paper is a chance for self-expression.

The reason students don't like writing papers is that it's really hard. It's hard to consume the information, and it's hard to organize it, especially if you're not used to organizing information. But you have to make mistakes, write papers that are all jumbled and confused, before you can get better. Those jumbled, bad papers are clearly worse than the source material, and the teacher is there with her red pen marking the next step toward greatness.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Entrance exams treat undergraduate admissions as an O(n) problem.

As anyone who has worked in undergraduate admissions will tell you, it is far more complex than that. But when n grows prohibitively large, you have to go with solutions that are less than ideal.

My alma mater, thirty years ago, eschewed the traditional college application in favor of a more homebrew approach: since it was a small liberal arts college, it felt that the best way to see if a student was a fit for the college was to place him there for a span of a week or so: meeting with professors, faculty, taking a tour of the place, making sure things 'clicked'. He or she took an exam at the end of it, focused less on trying to define the student intellectually and more whether or not they were engaged with the college: there were quizzes on campus trivia (we're the second oldest college in the nation, and talk about our history incessantly), open-ended questions about what they liked, et cetera -- all designed to see if the student was really meant to be a part of the college.

This worked twofold: it let the admissions faculty see whether or not the student was really taking the experience seriously, and it let the student see whether or not they wanted to take it seriously.

(Why no math tests? When a professor spends a few hours with a prospective student, they can generally deduce whether or not they're smart enough to handle the rigor.)

Today, such a practice is impossible: the number of applicants has increased by at least 20x. There literally are not enough days in the calendar.

<comment> anon-cheater That is a great system, but unsustainable for the volume, you are right. As a non-cheater who has been blessed with a lot of academic success, this article upsets me so much. my academic success has been dearly earned and I feel like cheaters completely undermine my efforts. True, cheaters don't have the knowledge and maybe I am a step ahead of them, because I actually put in the effort. But still, it feels like someone stole a taxi medallion and I bought one.

<comment><USER13> I get the impression that these people are fighting for the right to have more decent lives and better schools. If so, organized cheating is a cost of the unequal system they live under.

Reminds me of Basho's chief architect (the Riak company), who advised at Ricon's closing keynote that you should lie and misrepresent yourself to anyplace doing interesting things, as he did at Apple (where he got to write a distributed filesystem), Akamai, etc.

Once in "the real world", we discover that corporations and governments routinely lie, cheat and steal. Because it's effective. Does anyone honestly think Steve Jobs was averse to sociopathic behavior, or went unrewarded for it? We live in institutions which reward such sheer winning over obeying rules. (Regardless whether those rules are important or terrible.) The people who make the rules themselves are subject to such pressures. The mass of cheaters here on HN simply are too wise to speak up and admit it.

I say that as someone who never cheated on a school test or homework. I don't begrudge those who did, because the mainstream educational systems are disgusting. I have no fear that a cheater will make my worklife hard, because that's what interviews are for. I'm more concerned about play-by-the-rules people who've stuck to conventional wisdom all their lives, and defer to bosses.

<comment><USER14> > Once in "the real world", we discover that corporations and governments > routinely lie, cheat and steal.

Really? I'm not sure I've experience of this. Might be a geographic/cultural thing, I guess, but business and governance in the UK doesn't seem to be particularly corrupt.

<comment> barry-cotter You live in a high trust society with an impartial and competent state, where the rule of law is a real thing and opportunities for real, lucrative corruption are relatively limited. Given the demographics of this website there is an above average chance you work in an industry or sector that is dominated by literal minded men that tend more autistic than the general population, and associate mainly with people who are basically bourgeois in their values. All of these characteristics make the level of rat bastard weaselness in your environment lower than it would otherwise be.

Nonetheless the upper echelons of the corporate world in the UK probably resemble those in the UK in that sociopaths are ten to twenty times more common in the executive class than the general population. I can't see any reason politics would not favour the same group in the same way.

For further reading see gwern's notes on psychopaths and the psychology of power.

[http://lesswrong.com/lw/fzy/notes_on_psychopathy/](http://lesswrong.com/lw/fzy/notes_on_psychopathy/)

[http://lesswrong.com/lw/dtg/notes_on_the_psychology_of_power...](http://lesswrong.com/lw/dtg/notes_on_the_psychology_of_power/)

I have also heard good things about Ashok Rao's Psychopaths, Losers, Clueless series.

<comment><USER15> > I have also heard good things about Ashok Rao's Psychopaths, Losers, > Clueless series.

That would be _Venkat_ Rao's Sociopaths, Losers, Clueless series.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is going to take a long time to change for the better. My Chinese friends who don't cheat because they actually want to learn stuff definitely complain a lot about the rampant cheating. If you want to get into and finish Uni completely legit, you have to work way, way harder than everyone else :\ And you will end up doing worse than people who cheated and got away with it, just have to suck it up.

There's a lot of inertia to solving it, and it's very hard to do across the board. For Uni entrance, there's ~10 million+ people taking the exam every year - that prevents a lot of non-exam based solutions to "who do we let into Uni?"

I do not envy the position of the people in charge of all of this :(

<comment><USER17> I am not coming from a perspective that has inherent insight into this, but this all seems very strange to me.

It seems to me that only the top [whatever] percent of a population is going to be able to get into a class of school of their choosing, and only a top [whatever] percent of those admitted to those schools are going to successfully graduate. Now, China's population is unfathomably large, so that means _way_ more people are going to be rejected or fail to graduate. On the other hand, it also means _way_ more people are going to be accepted and graduate. 10x the population should mean 10x the rejected people, but it should also mean 10x the accepted and 10x the graduated, right?

I don't really see why a larger population should mean that cheating is incentivized more, unless the real problem is an undersupply (proportionately) of education.

Now, if lack of education positions is the real problem, then cheating isn't a solution to that; rampant cheating just changes the equation from "top [whatever] get accepted" to "top [whatever] _at cheating_ get accepted". But do those who don't meet "top [whatever]" in a large population have more incentive to cheat than those who don't meet "top [whatever]" in a small population? I don't see why. The incentives should be the same in either a large or a small population, right?

<comment><USER16> Sorry, I didn't mean to say that the higher population CAUSES cheating. Just that the insane volume of people applying makes the current system (single exam being 99% of your entrance to Uni) more logistically feasible than a lot of other potential systems.

The disadvantage is that you have no other way to prove yourself than a single test score. That's also why you're seeing such outrage, because that single test is going to open (or shut) a lot of doors.

(See above comment about O(n), he articulated it way better than me :P)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This isn't just a problem with Chinese students in China. A large for-pay cheating operation which catered exclusively to Chinese students was just uncovered in New Zealand, too.

[http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/education/8662224/Chinese- ch...](http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/education/8662224/Chinese-cheats-rort- NZ-universities-with-fakes)

<comment><USER7> These are completely different issues (which you are simply conflating by race).

The exam mentioned in the article is THE exam. If you fail, that's it for you. You can't re-sit and you can't attend a reputable university. Your choices are the equivalent of technical colleges (few which have any reputation), working in low skill jobs, or (if you have A LOT of money) studying abroad.

Given the circumstances, I think cheating is the sensible thing to do, given their are cheaters, by not cheating yourself you put yourself at a disadvantage.

<comment><USER18> The term "Chinese" doesn't describe a race; it is descriptive of a nationality. And I don't see how the two issues aren't related at least at some basic level. Cheating at this scale seems to be a cultural phenomenon moreso than a racial one.

<comment><USER7> Well sure, technically, blacks aren't a race either, nor are whites or indians... technically we are All "human" but these semantics don't progress the discussion.

I agree that right now, given China's recent history and current state of affairs their is widespread corruption and exploitation. If that qualifies as "cultural phenomenon" then I agree, but I don't agree it was always there, and think it is more to do with the mao/deng transition and the massive injection of wealth into china since.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> "We want fairness. There is no fairness if you do not let us cheat."

I can't imagine how people can say it out their mouth. Just like when someone kill, due to fairness you kill too.

I am a Chinese, and I feel shame on this kind of Chinese logic. They use wording like fairness, human right not seek for proper, but their benefit, I have see too much ridiculous in my homeland.

<comment><USER20> Well, I'm not Chinese, but I think they're right. Fairness requires impartiality, and they're being discriminated against. The solution should be to implement the anti-cheating measures everywhere, not just in a few schools.

<comment><USER9> I think it's wrong for people to jump on the band wagon. It just adds to the problem instead of making it a minority thing which can be easier to deal with.

<comment><USER20> But is it a minority thing? That doesn't seem to be the case.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> This may be obvious, yet unmentioned in the article, but if you are a Chinese student, you can take this exam exacly once, and this is the one single number they will judge you on. Understandable if you are upset. Perhaps if no single exam would be so important and you were able to retake them whenever you want, there were less pressure for cheating. Our education and qualification systems are indeed unscalable. Are we in a need for a more granular and more subjective way of "quantifying" peoples achievement?

</comment><comment><USER22> This reads like an article from the onion. I had to double check just to make sure it wasn't.

<comment><USER23> Welcome to the People's Republic of China.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Stories likes this make life worth living! It's got irony, farce, class struggle, crushed dreams - everything human existence is made of.

I actually have a lot to say about it, but this great Baffler piece, _Adam Wheeler Went to Harvard_ , says it best: [http://thebaffler.com/past/adam_wheeler_went_to_harvard](http://thebaffler.com/past/adam_wheeler_went_to_harvard).

Then, I would add a snippet from this Thomas Frank article[1] in Harper's:

 _After all, what universities were selling then, and what they are selling today, is an extremely valuable commodity: entry into what sociologists call the professional managerial class. There's a reason that Lexus LX 570 that almost ran you down in the crosswalk the other day had a harvard sticker neatly centered on its rear window. And it isn't because the driver believes we would all profit from immersing ourselves in theories of intersectionality, or because of a lifelong attachment to Crimson field hockey. That sticker is there because Harvard is a crucial part of who that SUV driver is. A college degree from a prestigious school is the credential that matters most in American life, and growing college-enrollment figures suggest that an increasing number of Americans have figured this out._

[1]: [http://harpers.org/archive/2012/06/the-price-of- admission/](http://harpers.org/archive/2012/06/the-price-of-admission/) (subscribers only)

</comment><comment><USER25> This is going to effect innovation and education in China very badly. If there elite University students are getting there by cheating, then it means there elites aren't really elite: just better at being dishonest.

<comment><USER26> Devil's advocate: grades are a stupid thing; if someone sits in class and learns and for the exam needs to cheat in order to keep up with cheat-driven- grades-inflation, we have not made a comment about that student's ability or anything. The elites may yet be elite.

<comment><USER25> All that proves is that exams aren't the best way of assessing someone's ability. However, cheating doesn't show ability in anything, other than deviousness.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> In the usual pre-exam instructions this year at university (in the UK) the invigilators made specific reference to network enabled watches as a prohibited item - I have a Pebble, as do a few of my friends, but not many students do in general.

One interesting thing I've noticed is with assignments we have strict anti- plagiarism checks which always seem to be emphasised for foreign students. We have quite a few students from China and India on our courses and it's almost like it's a special mention for them. Several times lecturers have made reference to different cultures having an expectation of plagiarism, and I've spoken to academics who say it is a very common thing from foreign students.

</comment><comment><USER28> If this was jeopardy, the question would be: "What is the combination of a child-centric culture and a one child policy."

</comment><comment><USER29> Selecting to enforce more strictly the law in a particular area is unfair and not the way to go when you have such high cheating levels reported in the whole country. To walk the path of the "Rule of Law" they have to make the rules stricter for all.

</comment><comment><USER30> I am a native Chinese and I must say this is something considered very abnormal in China.

The college entrance examination is one of the most important exam hold in the whole country level. If anything happen in this exam, the governor whom in charge of the area will lose a lot of score in their KPI performance.

<comment><USER31> Less important in this case, from my perspective, as the students are competing SPORTS and ARTS colleges/majors, which are always seen as categories that requires less solemn test scores on everything(, except for the talent in specific sports/arts, which is hard to test though).

My mother always watches Youth Singers Competition year after year on TV, where they draw random questions as 'overall quality' section. And you can tell many of the best youth singers in China are less competitive in literature, history and some common knowledge in science(, and some of them are even less competitive in answering questions in music theory/history).

I am not trying to generalize any conclusion about the cheating rate or something. I am just less inclined to believe that the media have already reported all the truth(, nothing but the truth). And it may not necessarily hint that other students who focus other majors like science, technology or business are cheating in the same level.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> If everyone cheats and they construct a pilot enforcement program that focuses on .1 percent of the population, of course it's unfair. The real solution is to drop the cheatable system altogether. You aren't going to fix universal corruption with baby steps.

<comment><USER33> Cheating is not endemic within the gaokao system because, as a testing regime, it's excessively vulnerable to cheating. It's not any more cheatable than the SAT, GREs, or other standardized entrance or aptitude exams.

Mainland Chinese society at all levels is thoroughly corrupt and its pretty much impossible to achieve what a reasonable observer would recognize as a materially successful life within the PRC without being actively involved in corruption.

Even simply to muddle along and live hand-to-mouth, content to have most of the doors to success either closed to them from the get-go or slammed in their face, a regular Mainland person has to turn a blind eye to a steady stream of illegal, unethical, and downright harmful behavior on the part of their peers.

That's a part of why (along with many other factors) many Mainland citizens are eager to emigrate to pretty much anywhere that's not the PRC.

<comment><USER7> This feels like a massive over generalisation (given the size of china)... Any kind of evidence of this?

<comment><USER33> Can I provide evidence to prove to you that my generalization is accurate?

Can you prove to me that Antarctica exists? That there were ever dinosaurs? If I'm intent on not being convinced?

Come to China for an extended visit. Reside in one region for a while, then move to another for a bit. Repeat that process a few times until you're satisfied. Being able to read and write Chinese (simplified characters) and speak Putonghua (or, if you stay in one place long enough, the local dialect) would probably speed things up for you.

Even then, you could (if you were determined enough) maintain a conviction that you had just had a run of bad luck in terms of the places you'd chosen to live and the people with whom you'd happened to interact.

I don't know how much time you'd have to spend here to be satisfied.

<comment><USER7> I do reside (a lot of the time), in GuangZhou, and whilst there is certainly people who are like that, I know a lot who aren't. (Much like any other country).

So I have a counter proof that your generalisation is too broad, hence why I asked for you to clarify.

My take is, (having travelled a fair amount within china). That China is very different depending on which region you are in (much like the US is). So alarm bells ring, when I see people making broad statements such as "Chinese are all corrupt".

You are essentially saying that some weird twist of the CCP causes corruption in the society, else how do you explain Taiwan, and HK? Is that what you are meaning to say? That is an interesting thesis.

<comment><USER33> You've read the linked article, wherein readers are informed that more than two thousand people (not a tiny number given that only 800 students were sitting for the exam at the school in question -- so think parents and family members) rioted outside an examinations hall demanding that children be allowed to cheat on a test and the local government's response was to agree that enforcement of anti-cheating measures had been too strict.

Are you going to ask me to Google up images of thousands of dead pigs clogging a major river after being dumped there by farmers? Photos of walls of buildings damaged during the 2013 Sichuan earthquake showing that they contain quite a lot of styrofoam beneath a thin layer of cement? Reports of intentional (rather than accidental) food contamination and tampering? The gutter oil rackets -- one of which was busted operating in HK late in 2012? You can find all of that information for yourself.

As for HK, off the top of my head, besides the gutter oil operation there (similar to some of those in the PRC proper) ... Both CE candidates had illegal structures in/on their homes but one managed to squeak through the Beijing-run coronation process before his was discovered, the development secretary resigned last year as a result of a corruption investigation, the head of the city's urban renewal authority resigned recently after being targeted for investigation, the head of security at the airport (a former high-ranking police officer) is being investigated for corruption, etc.

How could you really have lived in Guangzhou for any significant length of time and be so in the dark?

<comment><USER7> You seem to believe this kind of corruption doesn't exist elsewhere in the world, and that P.R China is somehow unique in it's corruption. I don't agree with this. I'd say the recent wealth in china means you have very rich, and very poor very close to each other and thus corruption is more visible. But the "chinese" are not any different to any other people. Spend some time in India, there is just as much corruption there (if not more?). Spend some time in the U.S discover how corrupt they are... it's no different the world over, just the visibility changes

All those cases you raise, are indeed bad, but are you saying they are the majority?

The cheating example isn't a show of corruption, it's a show of fairness. If this generation of students sitting the gaokou are all cheating, forcing a tiny subset of them to not be allowed to cheat, is disadvantaging. You seem to understand china fairly well, if it were my child, I'd be angry (even if they weren't cheating), as it is clearly setting that group at a disadvantage. Perhaps if the government did it either ubiquitously or (probably better) at random each year, then the issue of cheating would go away. But to "trial" it in one area, is wrong.

> How could you really have lived in Guangzhou for any significant length of > time and be so in the dark?

Perhaps I am just more optimistic about where things are at.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Instead of calling it cheating, whynot describe _objectively_ what they are doing and let us judge ourselves whether it's cheating? This article makes it sound obvious that everyone is using cell phones or other devices to communicate with people outside or with each other, but for all we know that was a single occurrence out of thousands of students. Too often articles like these turn out to tell only one side of the story, and I don't like it. It sounds too crazy that all Chinese students think cheating is fair; heck, it wouldn't be called cheating by them if they thought it was!

</comment><comment><USER35> The article reads as if it was something from The Onion. It's funny, then you realize it's real, and it become _scary_.

I got a very similar vibe from "Journey Beyond Tomorrow" by Robert Sheckley. It's half SF, half satire, and very witty. The book chilled me a few times because I realized things he makes fun are happening around the world, just on a smaller scale (for example, people committing crimes in order to be sent to jail. Free food and shelter). When reading the book, I had to make breaks not because I was tired, but because it was like overdosing laughing gas.

</comment><comment><USER31> Back in the days of the Great Cultural Revolution, students who handed in blank answer sheets were praised as 'white paper heroes'. Now, at least they are trying to write something rather than nothing.

</comment><comment><USER36> This is about the 高考 (gaokao) or the university entrance exam. There are many discussions about this since ages. The parents in other provinces think it is unfair their child needs a higher score than those from Beijing; well, the cheating is one reason, but also the universities are paid by the taxpayers from Beijing. In short: This exam decides a lot about the students future... If they have a bad score, no good uni, no good future. After this, only money can help you get a way to buy you into education or a good future.

</comment><comment><USER37> 1) Stephen Covey often talked about the "personality ethic" over the "character ethic." The set of ethics a society chooses will determine its future in the long-term. Charades cannot last forever.

2) The article didn't hesitate to conflate the events at this one school with the character of the entire country, which, given the disparate scale of the two, seems to be poor journalism. But then again, such articles have come to be expected nowadays.

</comment><comment><USER38> > Transmitter disguised as a pencil eraser

Let's not forget, resourcefulness is a greater predictor of success than raw intellectual ability.

<comment><USER39> If all your friends are using pencil eraser radios, then how resourceful do you really have to be to use one too?

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> "...Mr Li had confiscated a mobile phone from his son and then refused a bribe to return the handset.

Cohen Bros' A Serious Man, deftly sounded this Asian custom as a passing grade bribe into a mixed-metaphor with 'Schrodinger's Cat', all the while quantum engineer uncle Arthur's Mentaculous, returns a fortune.

</comment><comment><USER41> As a though experiment, what do you think Americans would do if the government banned SAT prep courses? I know this isn't exactly a parallel; but consider that in many ways those courses are a leg up for the _with it_ and _able_ families.. just as this racket sounds like it was.

<comment><USER42> Nothing, because there are about a thousand colleges one can get into with dismal SAT scores.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> This is a perfect example of the problem with test scores. The test becomes a metric to game, and any actual learning is negated in the process.

</comment><comment><USER44> At this level, some might say "Cheating is an art", the more crafty and resourceful you get the more you'll go farther!

</comment><comment><USER45> I'm glad to see that there wasn't a comments thread on that story. It would have probably been filled with racist comments.

</comment><comment><USER46> Surprisingly, not The Onion.</comment>


Top 15 U.S. Startup Accelerators and Incubators Ranked - <AUTHOR> http://techcocktail.com/top-15-us-startup-accelerators-ranked-2011-05

<comment><USER2> This site is banned on HN (I'm not sure whether for posting fluff articles or for spamming), but I unkilled this post lest it seem like we were trying to suppress it.

They certainly don't seem to understand how YC works though. They say that YC has a "hands-off approach," when in fact the biggest distinction between us and the others is that at YC the startups are advised by people whose full time job is to advise them, while at most or all of the others they're advised by a pool of people who've agreed to advise a few startups on the side.

<comment><USER3> This is another major ding for the Kauffman Foundation, though they were only indirectly involved. For instance, shouldn't exit size/frequency be measured? If so Heroku alone would crush the rest of the competition. Shouldn't there be some kind of rating, rather than just a ranking? Sequential ordering doesn't begin to illustrate the distance between YC/TC and the rest. You were very kind to unkill this.

<comment><USER4> Should the last sentence be, "You were very kind to unkill this."?

<comment><USER3> Yes, my bad, edited

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I imagine there is a large gap between the top 5 and the bottom 5. But, I guess I would need to see the data behind the calculations.

<comment><USER6> While their analysis may or may not be valuable, it's completely useless to the public as long as they don't publish their data. I think the ranking is probably secondary to collating all the data and other information they've dug up in one place.</comment></comment>


The Experts Have Spoken - <AUTHOR> http://www.theawl.com/2016/05/the-experts-speak-its-good-to-be-wrong <comment><USER2> It seems silly to expect that the experts never get anything wrong. It even seems silly to expect that they don't get any of the big questions wrong. The real question is whether the ratio (or some other function) of wrong predictions to right predictions, suitably weighted by their strength and complexity, is decreasing.

<comment><USER3> My mom is sick, so I've been hanging around her house to sit with her. She has some 5-10 year old magazines, including some of one of my favorites _The New Yorker_. I like the intelligence of the commentators and I feel that they often put into words things that I vaguely feel.

I was stuck reading them (or else: Fox News and the Catholic channel). Boy, they get just about every prediction wrong. It was shocking.

Makes me doubt we do much better than people in the past.

<comment><USER4> We _can_ do better, but it isn't expertise that is the difference.

It's worth taking a look at the Good Judgement Project and their success at making forecasts.

[http://www.nesta.org.uk/sites/default/files/1502_working_pap...](http://www.nesta.org.uk/sites/default/files/1502_working_paper_- _prediction.pdf) is a good overview.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> So, I work in this area and follow a lot of the work on ways to make predictions (Superforecasters, etc)

One thing I see time and time again is that what we think of as predictions are really aggregates of large number of assumptions and projections of how these assumptions interact with each other and the world.

"Experts" generally are very good at estimating the likelihood of some of these assumptions changing. BUT it is only a limited number of these things they are experts in, and that make them no better in other areas.

<comment><USER5> > "Experts" generally are very good at estimating the likelihood of some of > these assumptions changing.

Is that really true? I'm dubious, and I'm curious whether there's ever been any empirical studies.

Also, I'm not entirely clear what you mean by "some". Do you mean "some kinds of assumptions" or "some number of assumptions?

<comment><USER4> _Is that really true?_

I think so. For example, in fields relying on scientific progress, a scientist working in the field is generally fairly accurate in predicting the likely progress in their exact field over the next couple of years. For example in materials science the researchers are relatively good at estimating what progress will be made.

There was an IARPA program around estimating scientific progress that may have done some empirical studies.

 _Also, I 'm not entirely clear what you mean by "some". Do you mean "some kinds of assumptions" or "some number of assumptions?_

I mean they are good at estimating the likelihood of specific estimates changing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> There's a difference between binary and open-ended predictions. "Will the iPhone be a commercial success?" is easier than "How many iPhones will be sold?". It's the later that matters when you are directly involved. This can lead to seemingly paradox statements like "The iPhone will most likely fail, but assuming that it doesn't, it will be wildly successful".

Philip Tetlock and some controversial author have written a paper about it: [http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2284964](http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2284964)

</comment><comment><USER7> Why do all these "experts" always try to predict the future? I would much prefer if they actually gave some background about the present and the past so we can make better decisions.</comment>


For Home Prices in London, Check the Tokyo Listings - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.imf.org/2018/04/10/for-home-prices-in-london-check-the-tokyo-listings/ <comment><USER2> Weirdly this article brought to mind a shop I'd walked past a few times:

[https://www.london-tokyo.co.uk/en/](https://www.london-tokyo.co.uk/en/)

<comment><USER3> Finchley?

<comment><USER2> Marylebone

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> That's a pretty bold claim in light of the disconnect between Japan's housing market and those in the west, highlighted in a recent thread:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18548742](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18548742)

<comment><USER5> The article is about Tokyo specifically not Japan as a whole.

Japan's population is decreasing but Tokyo specifically is as people migrate to the big cities increasing.

<comment><USER6> Increasing to the point htat Japan is paying people to leave Tokyo and move elsewhere

[https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/12/01/japans-offer- res...](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/12/01/japans-offer-residents- overcrowded-tokyo-20000-move/)

<comment><USER7> That's weird because the countryside is amazing compared to the ugliness of Tokyo (speaking as a tourist)

<comment><USER6> One global trend is urbanisation. Partly this is because of jobs, but it's also because of socialisation

I may think that living in a city is horrible, but it seems that even if you take away work people still choose to live in high density areas.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Mossberg: Eero Makes Wi-Fi Simpler and Stronger - <AUTHOR> http://recode.net/2016/02/23/mossberg-eero-makes-wi-fi-simpler-and-stronger/ <comment><USER2> If you're handy with hardware it's also extremely easy to build your own high quality network equipment using Microtik [1] or Soekris [2] boards.

[1] [http://routerboard.com/](http://routerboard.com/)

[2] [http://soekris.com/](http://soekris.com/)

I've heard some quite positive stories from people who have dumped their stock CPE and are now routing their 1 Gbps FTTH internet connection through Microtik based equipment. This stuff is _that_ good.

<comment><USER3> Bought a small $49 Mikrotik wireless access point [1] recently on the recommendation of a HN user. It's absolutely fantastic.

For those who don't know them, Mikrotik is a Latvian company that builds boards, and pro/prosumer products based them, using their own RouterOS, which is built on the Linux kernel. In addition to a terminal interface (with nice modern commands, ANSI colors and SSH), you get a rather bare-bones but really beautifully designed and consistent web GUI called Webfig.

Webfig would be terrible for most end users, but it's a godsend for techies, especially compared to the slow, antique GUIs that come with other routers such as Asus and Netgear. For example, everything in the GUI shows live metrics. If you add a NAT rule for port forwarding, you'll see bandwidth usage updated live via AJAX for each rule. Lots of little things like this make it really nice to use.

They have a live demo [1] for those curious about how it works.

[1] [http://routerboard.com/RB952Ui-5ac2nD](http://routerboard.com/RB952Ui-5ac2nD)

[2] [http://demo2.mt.lv/webfig/](http://demo2.mt.lv/webfig/)

<comment><USER4> > Bought a small $49 Mikrotik wireless access point [1] recently on the > recommendation of a HN user. It's absolutely fantastic.

From what I'm understanding of "single-chain AC", it's a 1x1 antenna that promises up to 433Mbps? This sadly doesn't sound like good value for money. I'm guessing speed isn't the whole point with these types of equipment.

<comment><USER3> I'm getting the same performance as with my previous router. Using just one device at a time. Probably not appropriate for an office, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I wish them luck as having better wifi in the home is nice, but I suspect that the limiting factor has been the price rather than the lack of technology. One could get a Ubiquiti UniFi AC Lite device for half the price of an Eero.

<comment><USER6> We bought unifi hubs for our office - ALL of them died within 18 months. Total garbage

<comment><USER7> I'm not sure that UBNT makes a hub.

By "hub" do you mean their managed switches, their wireless access points, their routers, or their long-range outdoor point-to-point wireless radios?

I own three indoor Wifi APs and have had good service from them. I also own one of their three-port routers.

About ten or so months after I purchased the router, I would get spontaneous reboots that became increasingly more frequent over time. It turned out that the external power supply that shipped with the thing had become unreliable. I replaced the power supply with another suitable one that I had lying around and I've had no troubles in the year+ since then.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> So cool!!</comment>


Microsoft Productivity Future Vision - <AUTHOR> http://www.microsoft.com/office/vision/ <comment><AUTHOR> John Gruber is critical of this video and Microsoft on his site, saying they should stop talking and start shipping. But I actually think this video is cool. Sometimes you need a long-term idea and vision of where you're headed. This instills some hope for Microsoft for me.

<comment><USER2> It's also interesting to note that the Office team has done these in the past, at least one other time when Stephen Elop was running the division. Perhaps that says good things about where Nokia is heading.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Great concept. Entrepreneurs should take this concept and try to make it a reality..</comment>


Adblock Plus announces members of independent Acceptable Ads Committee - <AUTHOR> https://acceptableads.com/en/blog/independent-committee <comment><USER2> 1) Left the acceptable ads enabled, didn't care.

2) Made a google search for "<popular software>" on my mother's computer.

3) All the first results were sponsored links from sites distributing a copy of the real software, but ridden with adware, or worse.

4) Disabled all ads without mercy.

*) Switched to uBlock Origin later.

\-----

5 years later...

6) Become sysadmin of a global company with more than 10 000 computers.

7) Distribute Chrome and Firefox to all of them with ad blocking software pre- installed.

<comment><USER3> > with ad blocking software pre-installed

Which?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> And if you don't want acceptable ads, use uBlock Origin:

[https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ublock- origin...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ublock-origin/)

[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ublock- origin/cjpa...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ublock- origin/cjpalhdlnbpafiamejdnhcphjbkeiagm?hl=en)

[https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock](https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock)

<comment><USER5> How long until the ABP guys stop their generosity and either 1) incorporate its acceptable ads into EasyList (which they maintain) or 2) block every other ad-blocker from leeching off their lists. I predict former. There are already tons of white-listed rules in EasyList.

Until other ad blockers actually start to maintain their separate list, I don't see a reason to stop using ABP. Ghostery is the only extension that doesn't use EasyList as far as I know. But they too have their own telemetry tracking.

<comment><USER6> > How long until the ABP guys stop their generosity

EasyList is not owned neither maintained by Adblock Plus.[1]

Adblock Plus ("ABP"), like other blockers benefits from the work put into EasyList by volunteers.

[1] [https://easylist.to/pages/about.html](https://easylist.to/pages/about.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I just read the criteria for acceptable ads the first time. Not that I really expected otherwise, but all the criteria are just about non-intrusiveness and recognizability, tracking is not mentioned once on the entire site. At least for me blinking text is not the primary concern, it is being tracked on every click I make. So in my opinion acceptable ads is not even roughly heading in the right direction.

<comment><USER8> Context is the king.

Ads acceptable only when their subject matches context of browsing and the user intent. And works only when done in non-interruptible manner. If you break context and/or flow, people get uncomfortable, frustrated, angry. Angry people will install ad-blockers.

Some examples:

\- if you search for a solution on how to fix a fridge, then fridge ads are acceptable. Google does exactly that in their search.

\- if you're on sports stats tracking site, then athletic gear, food, etc are acceptable

\- if I search stackoverflow for specific problem with my code - NO ads please, I'm not in a mood to buy something.

\- in movies: John Wick is using TTI Glock 17 - having TTI ad near is perfectly fine (people will crave to know what's those cool things he's using). I.e. product placement is the way to go. What's happening on TV? You're watching Keanu shredding through the movie, then it suddenly stops and Chevy ad coming in. WTF?!111

<comment><USER7> As long as the context is what you are watching or searching right here and right now, that seems acceptable. If the context includes what I did a few minutes ago on another site, that is in my opinion no longer acceptable. And personally I would not mind if the entire advertising industry just went out of business, I think ads are simply a bad idea.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> We're one of the companies on the committee.

Lots of strong emotions here, as usual with anything ad related on HN. The fact is that advertising pays for much of the internet content you consume for free.

Yes, it's not ideal and the online implementation is poorly done most of the time. It's because of perverse incentives and a lack of regulation in the entire industry that force bad formats, fraudsters, malware, and the pursuit of data and volume to win over quality and user experience.

As much as I don't care for the ABP approach, it's something that can be used to actually make progress and that's what this is, progress. It's finally some outside pressure on the industry to change from the segment of the advertising mechanism that matters most - the people themselves.

<comment><USER10> > The fact is that advertising pays for much of the internet content you > consume for free.

I've never had free internet... which ISP do you use?

> It's because of perverse incentives and a lack of regulation in the entire > industry that force bad formats, fraudsters, malware, and the pursuit of > data and volume to win over quality and user experience.

The whole point of advertising is to trick people into buying shit they don't need.

> As much as I don't care for the ABP approach, it's something that can be > used to actually make progress and that's what this is, progress.

This is a step backwards, not progress.

> It's finally some outside pressure on the industry to change from the > segment of the advertising mechanism that matters most - the people > themselves.

Bullshit. This is a way of lifting the pressure on the industry, and this initiative is mostly supported by players in the industry. Not the people.

<comment><USER11> I don't agree that this is a step backwards, but I certainly do agree that this is not a step forward.

Progress will be defined by decreasing the amount of obnoxious advertising, until we see that there is no progress and this is all talk.

I do enjoy that both sides are trying to improve the situation, but I still feel like the ad industry has yet to acknowledge that _they are the root cause of the problem_.

We almost need an advertising "intervention"... If the creation and rapid adoption of adblocking software isn't the embodiment of that though, I don't know what is.

<comment><USER9> > Progress will be defined by decreasing the amount of obnoxious advertising

That's exactly the point. Advertising is necessary, but showing that we _all_ agree to a better implementation of it will let us move forward rather than making things worse.

The people in the industry know the reason, but again it's about incentives and lack of oversight. Far easier to just look the other way and make a few dollars than try to go against the grain.

<comment><USER10> > Advertising is necessary

No it's not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Well, the definition to me is quite simple: "a non-animating image or line of text that occupies no more than 2% of available space, served directly by the displayed web site domain".

Also, it's definitely not just advertisers these days that make me go straight for the uBlock Origin settings panel. I'd say on 50% of browsed articles, _some_ obnoxious component halfway down the page auto-plays a VIDEO with SOUND. This isn't advertising, this is just some web site's utterly misguided thinking in what a person might want when visiting a _written_ article _online_ over a limited data channel! And yet, "ad"-blocking tools work just as well: select obnoxious element, turn it off. (And you can sort of tell they expect you to do this now, because some of these video players are buried in about 6 layers of HTML components that appear to have no real value other than to make it harder to find the element that _actually_ makes the video go away.)

<comment><USER13> > _some of these video players are buried in about 6 layers of HTML components > that appear to have no real value other than to make it harder to find the > element that actually makes the video go away._

My impression is that this is just an unintended effect of the proliferation of JavaScript frameworks and the evolving web "best practices". Makes it no less annoying, though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm okay with this. It's not like Adblock Plus is the only option or even the best option for ad blocking right now. I switched to uBlock Origin and never looked back.

</comment><comment><USER15> There are really 3 separate things lumped into the word "ads". Advertisements (obvious); annoying UI/audio/video (modal dialogs, video, etc); and 3rd-party tracking.

Advertisements in general I accept and I don't have any desire to prevent people or companies from including it in their own content, although, if included, I'll likely view the content as less reputable and the creator as having less integrity. Some people flat-out hate all ads and that's why they have an ad blocker. Their acceptable ad list would have 0 entries.

Tracking is a non-starter for me, advertising is possible without tracking but it's not generally done that way, it works for TV and radio. Most "ad" networks don't actually give a hoot about advertising, they care about tracking and tricking companies into footing the bill for collecting the data. I use my ad blocker as a tracking blocker, I wouldn't have bothered to install it if tracking weren't possible. I have no qualms about preventing someone from collecting information about me. I'd want anything ads that come from a third-party to be off the acceptable ad list (effectively an empty list).

Annoying UI I can tolerate to a point. Most of this is blocked by my "ad" blocker so I only see how bad it really is out there in the wild when I forget to install it. Assuming the ad blocker didn't do that, if things get too annoying I'd leave the site, if I find myself returning to the site and getting annoyed often, I'll filter out links to the site wherever I can. There are handful of really annoying sites that come up often enough that I've made a browser plug-in for myself to do link filtering on. Right now most of the sites on the list have a pay-wall or "ad" block blocker and keep playing the cat & mouse game and winning (good for them, they must imagine Sisyphus happy).

This is how I wish "ad blocking" worked: Community driven list of "bad players", bad being any tracking, dark patterns, or very annoying UI; links to bad players get removed from all pages, I never want to see them or their click-baity titles ever again; white-list for site you want to let track, trick and annoy you; grey-list for sites you want to see but still block in the traditional way. This would also provide feedback to bad players, giving them a chance to change their ways and new players would fear getting added.

<comment><USER9> > Most "ad" networks don't actually give a hoot about advertising, they care > about tracking and tricking companies into footing the bill for collecting > the data.

Where did you get this info from? Ad networks care very much about the ads.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> No ads are acceptable if I choose to have an ad-blocker installed.

<comment><USER17> Not sure why you got downvoted. I will not accept any ads.

<comment><USER9> Do you expect content producers to get paid?

<comment><USER18> Not through ads displayed in my browser. There are other ways to get paid, though.

<comment><USER9> So content displayed through browser should be behind a paywall then? What if the solution is ads blocked for a fee?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'm opposed to all advertising and marketing on ethical grounds. In my book human attention isn't for sale, and all attempts to sell my attention will be dealt with by technical means with extreme prejudice. It's true that content producers need to get paid; it's not true that human attention is an acceptable currency for which this payment must be exchanged.

Find some other way. Show some fucking adaptability.

<comment><USER20> The current concept of advertising has been around for more than 200 years now... I think the "all ads have to go away forever" approach is doomed to fail.

<comment><USER21> Depending on your definition, advertising has been around for millennia. Hell, there are billboard advertisements in Pompeii.

[https://blogs.ubc.ca/etec540sept10/2010/11/29/the- evolution-...](https://blogs.ubc.ca/etec540sept10/2010/11/29/the-evolution-of- advertising-from-papyrus-to-youtube/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Based on just a skim of the story: I'm sure that people will complain about this, and I'm sure that there genuinely is much to complain about—advertising is, almost by its nature I think, an adversarial business—but:

Ever since ABP announced the Acceptable Ads program, the biggest complaint lodged against them has been that it's within their control, and so in their interest not to enforce policies strictly in their users' interest. (See [https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Adblock%20Plus%20Acceptable%20...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Adblock%20Plus%20Acceptable%20Ads&type=comment) .) I am certain that this latest step is not perfect, but it _is_ a step forward, and a sign of at least apparent willingness to listen to the community, and I am glad to see it.

<comment><USER23> I find the entire idea of "Acceptable Ads" to be the antithesis for an ad blocker. Ads are an infection vector and privacy leak.

It's like concept of "acceptable groping" from an HR department. Completely at odds with their stated intent and standard ethics.

Sorry, I'm now using uBlock Origin and/or Safari content blockers. I'll go with those organizations who don't have any interest/stake in permitting ads.

If I am going to pay for content, I'll do so. If that's not kosher with the content producer, I'll simply abstain.

<comment><USER22> > Ads are an infection vector and privacy leak.

Both of these are undeniably true about _specific_ ads, but surely not the genre of advertising in general? I think that magazine ads, for example, are neither infection vectors nor privacy leaks. To the extent that these can be audited, surely preventing malware distribution and respecting my privacy are part of what _should_ be included in the definition of 'acceptable'. (If they are not included, then I would argue that that is a failure of a specific implementation of "acceptable ads", not of the notion of acceptability itself.)

> It's like concept of "acceptable groping" from an HR department. Completely > at odds with their stated intent and standard ethics.

While that is a potent analogy, I would argue that there's a difference: most of us agree that there is no level of groping that's acceptable; whereas I _think_ that, even among those of us who would _like_ a web with no ads, the position that there is _no_ level of advertising that's acceptable is extreme.

> Sorry, I'm now using uBlock Origin and/or Safari content blockers. I'll go > with those organizations who don't have any interest/stake in permitting > ads.

I agree, and don't mean to argue against those options. For what it's worth, I also use µBlock; I left ABP over what I perceived as conflicts of interest, and I am not interested in going back. Nonetheless, since some people _do_ use it, surely this divestiture from a conflict of interest is a good thing, even if it's not perfect.

<comment><USER24> > Both of these are undeniably true about specific ads, but surely not the > genre of advertising in general? I think that magazine ads, for example, are > neither infection vectors nor privacy leaks.

We're obviously not talking about magazine ads, and an infection vector doesn't necessarily carry an infection (just like not all flies carry disease).

> I _think_ that, even among those of us who would like a web with no ads, the > position that there is no level of advertising that's acceptable is extreme.

There are some people who block all javascript. That's far beyond "no level of advertising".

> Nonetheless, since some people do use it, surely this divestiture from a > conflict of interest is a good thing, even if it's not perfect.

ABP has always sought revenue. Every time I installed it back in the day, a web page with the author and his significant other would pop up saying something like "I want to marry my fiance, please give us money!". Later ABP turned into a bait and switch. They gathered a lot of people who thought were protecting themselves, reducing load times and cleaning up the web, and then they violated their user's trust by making them targets for the highest bidder. I find that infuriating and disgusting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I am surprised Google does not have a seat at the table.

<comment><USER26> Maybe to Google attending such an event legitimizes the use of ad-blocking tech. As far as I've seen, Google has either ignored it or been hostile towards it.

<comment><USER27> They already do that with Google Contributor.

<comment><USER28> Which has already been sunsetted... for a "new and better" one that hasn't launched yet, so I'm bearish.

[https://contributor.google.com/v/signupdisabled](https://contributor.google.com/v/signupdisabled)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Raise your hand if you're surprised that the only unfilled seats are the ones who will be in favor of fewer ads. I wonder how many meetings have been held already to discuss strategy, in their absence. I also wonder whether it will matter, with 7 seats for ad agencies (4+3; I'm not fooled by this "expert" bullshit for one second), and 3 for anti-ad advocates, plus some rando.

<comment><USER30> The good thing is that everyone, including the ad agencies, has a motivation to not allow shitty ads. The acceptable ads program only affects people who have already demonstrated tech-savvyness (either directly or by having a relative helping with it) and unwillingness to tolerate bad ads by installing an adblocker in the first place.

They know that if the ads get too annoying, people will block them completely, and they've seen how much it sucks when that happens.

Hence, if they're smart, they'll try to be decent about the criteria (and might find a way to get rid of the taboola/outbrain clickbait that makes people disable acceptable ads, but is tolerated by ABP because it pays). If not, that's OK too - acceptable ads will die, and their ads will be blocked completely.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> AdBlock. The software that unblocked ads. Orwell intended 1984 to be a cautionary tale, not an instruction manual.

</comment><comment><USER10> Fuck off ABP. Use uBlock Origin.</comment>


How I Work - learn about new tools by watching screencasts - <AUTHOR> http://how-i-work.com/ <comment><USER2> Seems to be dominated by Mac OSX + Rails stacks... a little diversity would be nice.

<comment><USER3> Well you can certainly submit your own and bring some diversity

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Are you looking at making the video's available using the HTML5 <video> tag? Because I don't have Flash installed locally (or on my iPhone) there's nothing much to see there right now.

</comment><comment><USER5> i just have the feeling of watching slides in scribd.</comment>


Ask HN: Your favourite style guide? - <AUTHOR> I was laying in bed and suddenly found myself wondering, what are the best examples of style guides for different languages. As a python enthusiast and moderate Google fan boy, I thought I'd take a look at how Google does things.
I've visited Google's Python style guide several times before, but never really spent time reading through the fine print and digging into the company's reasoning for their style choices.
In retrospect, there are many mistakes I could have avoided and good practices I could have adopted, had I originally read Google's style guides more comprehensively.
An example of some interesting things I learned or of which I was reminded:
http://google-styleguide.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/pyguide.html
* utilizing methods of the 'operator' module instead of composing lambdas to perform basic operations
* cautioning against testing for 'implicit false' when dealing with numerical values (to avoid conflating 0 and None)
The experience left me wondering, which style guides hackers have found most helpful for different languages. I'm also curious to hear opinions on whether these style guides are adequate for all skill levels (do they help programmers grow) or whether they cater to building a 'good programmer/code base' rather than a 'good programmer'.
best wishes + happy hacking,
- mek <comment><AUTHOR> In case other Python enthusiasts are seeking additional resources (besides reading PEP 8) Bhadra and others on stack overflow suggest:

Code Like a Pythonista: Idiomatic Python (<http://python.net/~goodger/projects/pycon/2007/idiomatic/>)

Common mistakes and Warts (<http://learnpython.pbwiki.com/PythonTricks>)

How not to write Python code (<http://eikke.com/how-not-to-write-python- code/>)

Python gotcha (<http://eikke.com/python-gotcha/>)

Here's the stack overflow thread I was looking at: [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/356161/python-coding- stan...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/356161/python-coding-standards- best-practices)

</comment><comment><USER2> PEP 20.

If you need something longer, the official Java Coding Style[1] is getting a bit old, but Java is probably _the_ language where you're least surprised when you start working at a new company or project.

Other than that, I prefer actual books that don't just focus on indentation, but go beyond that, like Perl Best Practices or Smalltalk With Style.

[1]: [http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/codeconvtoc-136057.ht...](http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/codeconvtoc-136057.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> Google's Javascript style guide is also pretty helpful:

[http://google- styleguide.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/javascript...](http://google- styleguide.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/javascriptguide.xml)

We have a linter run checks on each commit. Adding too many barriers to committing isn't good, but so far this seems to work well.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'd also be very interested in hearing how different companies have come to develop their own style guides and what special cases necessitated said changes. If anyone has a style guide they've written and would like to share it, I'd love to take a look.

</comment><comment><USER4> I am particular to Netbsd's Kernel Normal Form:

[http://cvsweb.netbsd.org/bsdweb.cgi/src/share/misc/style?rev...](http://cvsweb.netbsd.org/bsdweb.cgi/src/share/misc/style?rev=1.50&content- type=text/x-cvsweb-markup)

</comment><comment><USER5> Github has a collection for CSS, HTML, Javascript and Ruby: <https://github.com/styleguide/>

<comment><AUTHOR> This is great, I didn't know this existed. Thanks Hates_!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Twitter's scala guide is fantastic: <http://twitter.github.com/effectivescala/>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for sharing this reference, lmm. Pretty solid guide. I'm pretty new to scala so I'm looking forward to reading through this.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Role2Vec: Learning Role-Based Graph Embeddings, Ijcai 2018 - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/benedekrozemberczki/role2vec <comment><AUTHOR> The reasons that I had for implementing the paper (things that I loved about the paper):

1\. Compared to other structural node embedding techniques it is fast.

2\. It was easy to build it on high performance implicit factorization packages (e.g. gensim).

3\. The structural features are learned from motifs.

4\. Structural properties of neighbors are also included.

5\. The paper has some theoretical aesthetics.</comment>


On the Nature of Creepiness [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://scottbarrykaufman.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/McAndrew-Koehnke-2016.pdf <comment><USER2> Sometime ago I came up with the formulation that "you're creepy" means "you're too focused on something that you want from me". It doesn't cover all the cases, but it gives a hint on how to avoid appearing creepy.

<comment><USER3> There is a large class of "creepy" which covers men creeping on women. In that case your formulation is correct, but I would reword it as "you're too focused on something you want, my ass and cleavage for instance, that I am locked in competition with other young women to attract some cute guys--that's why we've left left them only scantily and barely clad--but that guy is not you and your leers make me feel self conscious."

Another big class of creepy which works in both gender directions but because men are more threatening (for size if no other reason like testosterone) perhaps seems more one way is, "you seem or are desperate for friendship so you over interpret every little thing I do as a genuine or encouraging bond between us and you overdo your reactions"

But I'm not sure what else people might want that would fall into the same category. Salespeople, for instance, can seem "oily" but not usually creepy.

<comment><USER4> I think it's interesting that you phrase things the way you do in your first paragraph. When I moved to California for college from a cold place, I was young and female. (Still female, less young now). Sometimes in southern California it gets very hot. A logical response to heat if you want to be outside is to wear a tank top. So sometimes I would wear a tank top. This would be interpreted as being "locked in competition with other young women to attract some cute guys" \-- which was creepy to me, because it's putting a whole layer of sexual intent on wearing a tank top when it's 100 degrees that was not present in the clothing choice. This sexualized interpretation by random guys did increase the likelihood of encounters with high creepiness factors as described in the article.

It is really hard to find a tank top that doesn't show cleavage if you are a certain shape. Tank tops are not always about a struggle for cute young men: these boobs are stuck to the front of me no matter what I'm thinking or doing, and their presence is not a sign of interest.

To assume otherwise causes creepiness.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> " _Everything that we found in this study is consistent with the notion that the perception of creepiness is a response to the am- biguity of threat. ... We are placed on our guard by people who touch us or exhibit non-normative nonverbal behavior, or those who are drawn to occupations that reflect a fascination with death or unusual sexual behavior. People who have hobbies that involve collecting things that we are predisposed as a species to fear such as spiders or snakes, or things that can only be acquired after something has died (e.g., skulls or bodies to be stuffed) seem creepy to us as well. We are also wary of individuals who have a preoccupation with monitoring the activity of others._

" _While they may not be overtly threatening, individuals who display unusual patterns of nonverbal behavior, odd emotional responses, or highly distinctive physical characteristics are outside of the norm, and by definition unpredictable._ "

<comment><USER6> > We are also wary of individuals who have a preoccupation with monitoring the > activity of others.

The fucking NSA for example.

<comment><USER7> Though not quite the same topic, I do think the NSA could be considered creepy, and the definition of creepy should reflect that. A creep's interest doesn't necessarily have to be sexual.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Interesting paper and... well, expected conclusions. One thing that makes me skeptic about the entire work is that they use different p-value levels for each hypothesis, which is bad practice. The entire meaning of the p-value is to compare it with a previously decided threshold to be sure to limit the type 1 error rate

</comment><comment><USER9> Interestingly the paper does not consider physical attractiveness as a factor, other than (indirectly) "has very pale skin" (.566), despite considering a separate "Appearance/ NV" variable.

</comment><comment><USER10> > The person had bags under his or her eyes

This makes me wonder, are we all destined to become creeps?

<comment><USER11> I believe there is an age when confidence is created. Teenage years. You carry that status the rest of your life. Even if you are successful later in life, you still feel a bit like an impostor. (see impostor syndrome) And it shows in your personality.

[http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/everyday_economics/2002/0...](http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/everyday_economics/2002/03/short_changed.html) "Height at age 7 or 11 turns out to have no impact at all on future wages. But height at age 16 makes all the difference in the world."

<comment><USER12> This is really interesting in light of the studies suggesting that tall people are more successful.

Those results almost always claim that it's an _externally_ mediated result (i.e. that we respect tall people more because they're tall). This would suggest that it might be an _internally_ mediated result (i.e. that tall people are more confident). That would make a lot of sense to me, since we tend to be more acutely aware of our own height than other's heigh.

<comment><USER10> I can see a business opportunity here:

If you are a rich parent and your kid is too small, just buy him classmates that are even smaller :)

<comment><USER13> Or just inject your kid with growth hormone - it's one of the primary determiners of human height.

Of course, physicians will only prescribe it if it's deemed medically necessary, i.e. your kid is way at the bottom of the height percentiles. "Not tall enough to be a CEO" isn't considered a medical condition.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > Males were perceived as being more likely to be creepy than females, and > females were more likely to associate sexual threat with creepiness.

This appears to just be another one of those, largely undefined, vaguely sexist, insults - like "bitchiness".

<comment><USER15> Women realistically do experience a lot more sexual violence than men, so it's not an unfounded worry. [http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/ss6308a1.htm](http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/ss6308a1.htm)

<comment><USER3> Yes, women realistically do experience a lot more sexual violence than men, so it is not an unfounded worry; but as ordinary and normal and safe reproductive courtship entails a lot more approaches to women, the physically smaller nurturing gender, by men, the larger more aggressive hunting gender, such examples of deviant and opportunistic sexual violence can be seen to "come with the territory" of our evolutionary history. It's nice to imagine that we as a social species could have evolved past this, but in studying our history on the scale of hundreds of years rather than evolutionary scales of thousands of years, and in studying works of scholarship such as the Selfish Gene by Dawkins, one may not be at all surprised that we are where we are, but perhaps by continuing to educate one another we can takes steps to make all people feel, and more importantly be, safer.

The reason I felt it necessary to add the "context" to your statement is that our world consists of many many interacting postitive and negative stochastic processes, and when we look at a simple "violence" statistic it might seem "oh, this is terrible, we must stop this" when in fact things are much more complex than that.

<comment><USER16> Oh, but despite all the biologistic determinism, it really is that easy: there is violence – and it needs to stop.

It doesn't matter why is exists, and even if we believe the stuck-at-13-years simpleton you're quoting, an explanation is not an excuse.

<comment><USER3> nobody is excusing it at all. But you are dreaming if you think you are going to stop it cold turkey along with you stopping shoplifting, child abuse, elder abuse, car accidents, bank fraud, armed robbery, etc. Those things are also biologically determined, they simply don't involve the reproductive function directly which seems to make you ... more optimistic? more outraged?

Actually, BTW, I have read (but not looked up myself) that if we count prison rape, men actually experience more sexual violence than women, so that part of the above formulation should perhaps be changed. And in terms of child abuse including to the point of murder, women perpetrate more of it than men do, so there is some value in looking at these issues from the point of view of "strong vs. weak + opportunity" biology rather than "gender".

But you are correct, violence between humans is for the most part a very bad thing, and I too would like to see it reduced as quickly as possible regardless of the cause.

<comment><USER15> The prison rape thing is a little more complicated than that, but thanks for bringing it up, since I wasn't aware. More context here for anyone who's interested: [http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/cifamerica/2012/feb...](http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/cifamerica/2012/feb/21/us- more-men-raped-than-women)

I do think evo-psych tells us a lot more about human nature than we sometimes want to admit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm going to drop this here: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLPZmPaHme0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLPZmPaHme0) and yes it's kind of a novelty song but maybe it'll help some of the people in this thread realize "hey maybe I shouldn't do that."

</comment><comment><USER18> Being creepy = making people feel uncomfortable.

I think knowing how to make people feel comfortable around you is success 101.

</comment><comment><USER19> Also smurfiness.

</comment><comment><USER20> How to be creepy:

1.) Be unattractive.

2.) Perform the same behaviors that attractive people do.

3.) Goto 1

<comment><USER9> It's not necessarily the lack of physical attractiveness that's a problem -- more so the lack of social awareness in exhibiting such "high status" behaviors as a "low-status" person, as mentioned in the paper ("People who follow social rules of behavior are not perceived as creepy").

It's more socially acceptable for unattractive yet wealthy/high-status people to perform such behaviors, as this can be explained by considering them "eccentric" or "confident" rather than "weird" or "creepy".

<comment><USER21> Is that not the same as what GP said? Your modifier is wealth or status. Without those, you move from eccentric to creepy on the sliding scale.

<comment><USER9> Perhaps. If for the sake of the argument there is such a sliding scale, maybe attractiveness should also be a factor. Attractiveness is more than just "physical attractiveness", and by definition pretty much excludes creepiness.

Not to imply that people who are considered attractive can't be creepy -- but they do get more leeway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> > In the study, I'm glad that clowns are finally being called out!

Also garbage collectors. Very creepy not to manage memory manually.

<comment><USER23> Dogs tend to get very upset about garbage collectors as well. Is there some deep unease about strangers taking things away which used to be yours?

<comment><USER24> Idk, my dogs seem to like java and lisp on their bigger projects. Then again they are known to be the worst at creating memory leaks whenever they hack C.

<comment><USER25> Weird. My dogs, which are rather naughty, use Lisp on most of their projects too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I guess this paper explains why my clown bordello failed.

<comment> _-__--- Clown-garbed garbage collection service, using found trash to taxidermy up some foxes?

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> creepyness is 100% based on the attractiveness of the person being "creepy"

<comment><USER7> Not true at all. It's entirely possible for an attractive person to be creepy, and certainly for an unattractive person to not be creepy. Though I suppose the creepiness itself doesn't exactly make you attractive either, so in that way it could be a self-fulfilling prophesy or even a tautology.

But it's definitely not about looks. It's about behaviour.

<comment><USER28> Every good rule has an exception. Also it can definitely be about looks or the person, as opposed to behaviour. Really comes down to how shallow the alleged- victim is.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Careful. Anything that calls creepiness anything but arbitrary -and especially those that say it originates in the one being called creepy- is bound to draw the ire of the bitter untouchables (even though this only provides more evidence for the claims the research makes). I applaud the people brave enough to publish such research anyway.</comment>


Ask HN: Which hand do you use to hold your phone? - <AUTHOR>

I'm doing some work right now on mobile apps and we were discussing the differences between iPhone, Android, and BlackBerry 10. On BlackBerry 10 and iPhone, handedness is less of an issue due to the absence of a back button. In both cases, it's in the actual app and is on the left side, which follows what most left to right readers would expect. The hardware volume buttons are on the right side of the device.
On Android, this is a bit different. On a Galaxy Nexus, the back button is on the left, and so are the hardware volume buttons. On a Galaxy S3, the menu button is on the left, while the back button is on the lower right. The hardware volume buttons are on the right too.
I usually use my phone in my right hand, so the iPhone, Nexus, and BlackBerry make sense to me. Apparently some of you hold your phone in your left hand.
I'm wondering what the distribution is. I don't think it has much to do with which hand is your dominant hand, because if it did, I can't explain why Samsung would switch sides. Could it be due to reading direction?
Interested in reading the responses. <comment><USER2> I hold my phone (iPhone) in my left hand and it goes in my left front pocket when I'm done using it. Even though I'm right handed, this has always felt natural to me.

My left hand has enough dexterity that navigating menus and scrolling is never a big problem and it frees me up to occasionally do something with my right hand at the same time like write something down.

</comment><comment><USER3> Left handed Android user.

hold to talk: left hand

operate 1 handed: left hand

operate 2 handed: right hand holds, left hand drives

stored in right front pocket. (keys and money clip incumbent in left front)

I wonder if mouse use in the right hand has any impact on left hand use?</comment>


Inside Microsoft's surprise decision to work with Google on its Edge browser - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/6/18527550/microsoft-chromium-edge-google-history-collaboration <comment><AUTHOR> These interviews with MS executives are quite revealing. I was especially shocked to see them on the record bad-mouthing UWP.

> _Edge is also built on Microsoft's Universal Windows Platform (UWP), the > company's previous big push in Windows 8 and Windows 10 to get single > universal apps that run across desktops, tablets, phones, Xbox consoles, and > devices like the HoloLens. "Our third headwind was UWP. And it's not that > UWP is bad, but UWP is not a 35-year-old mature platform that a ridiculously > huge amount of apps have been written to," explains Belfiore. That meant > things like multiple monitor support weren't always solid for UWP, and the > Edge team would have to wait for general UWP improvements. Microsoft had to > get Edge back to a real desktop app, available across Windows 7, Mac, and > Windows 10._

I agree with every word of that, but you could have imagined somebody saying, "let's spend into this; port UWP to Win 7 and Mac and fix the bugs."

Instead, Win32 has defeated yet another desktop competitor, as it always does.

<comment><USER2> If you work for a few large companies you start to notice the pattern of Win32 like code. It should be dead, but it cannot be dead and it will not be dead until the company is dead. Network effects and political power of entrenched players means that they can freeze out any new replacements because the new replacements have to interface with the older entrenched solution.</comment></comment>


Behind 'King Lear': The History Revealed - <AUTHOR> http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2015/nov/19/behind-king-lear-history-revealed/ <comment><USER2> Wow, that is some deep stuff. "The King's Man in his red royal livery plucked his master's anxiety about the need for unquestioned authority and used it to summon up the deeper fear that, in their most secret selves, must haunt all kings."

Is anyone doing this today?</comment>


Ask HN: I am a back end developer that wants to dive into VR, where do I start? - <AUTHOR> Hi, I'm a full stack back end developer that works in SF. I am neither junior nor senior (those don't mean much really). I've got a lot of experience just working on back end server stuff, as well as some front end web stuff.
I am very self driven, and can follow any classes / complete projects / read papers. I am just not sure where exactly I should begin, but I do know that I want to join the VR industry, since I think it will be huge.
Any suggestions? <comment><USER2> Depends, what part of it do you want to join?

Networking, analytics, multiplayer servers, etc. as a service is increasingly big business in games.

Amazon released their Lumberjack 3D engine alongside their GameLift server architecture and scaling platform: [https://aws.amazon.com/gamelift/](https://aws.amazon.com/gamelift/)

Software Sandbox has their EpicData platform: [http://swsb.io/](http://swsb.io/)

There's not a lot of value in making 3D engines these days, unless you're working on a real niche experience that needs something custom, a one-off.

There could be a lot of value in working on input devices, like the Leap, or Gest. But that requires really deep, low-level electrical and mechanical engineering expertise, plus probably ergonomics, physiology, machine learning, simulation, and who knows what else. You have to not only have the vision of a future input device, but a long runway to even get to prototypes, and you're behind Leap, Gest, the PlayStation Move, the Vive controllers, and Oculus Touch.

But if you want to be making the actual VR experiences, I'm not sure there's a way to do that without _actually making them._ All the companies in the space right now are cranking away on content and figuring things out as they go, and for all of them it's sometimes hard to tell what's a principle or maxim and what's just a current generation-hardware limitation. No-one's publishing original research on physiology and visual perception; everyone's too busy doing.

There's nothing of substance to read. There are no worthwhile classes to take. There are no projects of value to dissect.

I believe the only way forward today is to spend $1-3k on a high-end Windows 10 computer: [http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/03/ars-system-guide- vr-e...](http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/03/ars-system-guide-vr-edition- cheap-vr-great-vr-and-optional-4k-craziness/) , buy the Rift ($600), the Vive ($800), or the HoloLens ($3000), and start learning Unity or Unreal until your VR headset shows up.

What do you build? I have no idea. What do you want to do?

360 degree video is much more open right now than games VR is, per some talks at GDC 2016 (going on right now). That requires a wide variety of skills, many more than traditional videography or filmmaking, though, skills closer to theatre production and improv and perhaps even ARGs.

The UI talks at GDC which emphasized the need to understand physiology and attention and visual fields and focus as a first-order design principle (not that it ever wasn't, but in VR it makes people sick if you don't) means that, while in server command-line UIs you could get away with an awful or arcane interface, in VR I suspect there will be a quick winnowing of any products without substantial design effort exerted on them. As a back-end developer, those probably aren't skills you have right now.

Perhaps the one saving grace everyone new to the field has right now is the quote from one of the GDC talks, "It's very possible that you might be the first person to encounter and solve a UI problem in VR."

But, VR right now isn't the web in 1999. Back then, you had HTML, you could copy and paste text and something would appear. VR right now is the design equivalent of the Homebrew Computer Club. Yes, use a 3D engine like Woz's Apple I schematics and cobble something together, but it's not going to _do_ anything, it's not going to _be_ anything unless you have a vision for the experiences you are working towards.

And then that experience can still only be shared by a tiny minority of people who also have $1-3k Windows 10 computers plus an additional $6-800 of VR hardware, or you have to get through Sony's licensing procedures to publish for PlayStation VR (good luck with that).

In 2-3 years the field will be completely different, the next generation of hardware will be out, and there will be paths forward, classes to take, books to read. But VR today isn't a software problem, it's a hardware problem and a content problem and a design problem.

If you don't have something you actually want to bring to life, I'm not sure it's worth spending the money. You might want to wait.</comment>


Kobe Bryant had startup work ethic - <AUTHOR> https://www.businessinsider.com/kobe-bryant-woke-up-at-4-am-to-practice-before-olympics-2013-3 <comment><USER2> Can someone explain why "Kobe Bryant has died" submissions seem to all be getting deleted, but the ones that approach it from a tangent (like this one) aren't?

I have seen plenty of "x has died" posts on HN for people who ostensibly have nothing to do with HN's core topics. For example, Terry Jones received such a submission with nearly a hundred responses just a few days ago.

Why is this different?

<comment><USER3> Here's a tech/startup-related tangent to hack the submission guidelines:

Will this tragic accident completely sour the idea of air commuting to the public, thus rendering Uber's efforts moot?

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22141293](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22141293)

<comment><USER4> But the Terry Jones one wasn't doing anything like that. The title and article was simply about his death.</comment></comment></comment>


Learning Complex Goals with Iterated Amplification - <AUTHOR> https://blog.openai.com/amplifying-ai-training/ <comment><USER2> Could this be used to build ML models themselves?

<comment><USER3> They use Iterated Amplification to train ML models on toy problems to validate the approach. So, yes.

<comment><USER2> I meant, could a toy problem be construction of a ML model for a given dataset?</comment></comment></comment>


Dribbble Is Not For Product Designers (but that's okay) - wells-riley http://blog.wells.ee/dribbble/

<comment><AUTHOR> Excellent read. I love the graphs that detail what dribbble is made up of.</comment>


Show HN: Scripts for Trello - <AUTHOR> https://scripts.blockspring.com/trello <comment><USER2> Very interested to see this rolled out to Airtable

<comment><AUTHOR> Message email@example.com... we'll get you an early look at it :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I recommend cleaning up the copy. It took me a few minutes to figure out this is Trello-specific editor in a chrome extension.</comment>


Show HN: All of the AppleTV 4k-HDR aerial drone footage - <AUTHOR> https://aerial-screensavers.netlify.com <comment><AUTHOR> The AppleTV4k has a host of stunning 4k-HDR content mostly filmed on drone.

For a while I've wanted to watch these on an interface other than as screen savers on the AppleTV.

Put together some scripts to downloads the JSON bundles, parse them into a uniform dataset and then output those asset-links to HTML with options for 1080p, 4k & HDR :)

Link: [https://aerial-screensavers.netlify.com](https://aerial- screensavers.netlify.com)

Repo: [https://github.com/Tawfiqh/aerialWallpapers](https://github.com/Tawfiqh/aerialWallpapers)

Built off the offline documentation for: [https://github.com/JohnCoates/Aerial](https://github.com/JohnCoates/Aerial)

<comment><USER2> this is pretty handy, thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> They are not wallpapers (static), they are screensavers (moving), don't you agree?</comment>


Ask HN: What Technology does Optimizely use? - <AUTHOR>

I was playing with Optimizely's experiment creator today and I really want to know how they grab any website and then allow the user to interact with it.
I want to do something similar, but instead of editing the code, I want to allow the user to select a region of the page and take a screenshot of it.
If someone can comment on how they do that, I would really appreciate it. <comment><USER2> There's a proxy that attaches JS to a frame. It needs to be proxied to bypass the same origin js limitations. Another way you could take would be to make a browser extension.

I used a similar technique in [http://wikify.antimatter15.com/server/proxy?http://optimizel...](http://wikify.antimatter15.com/server/proxy?http://optimizely.com)

source code: [http://code.google.com/p/wikify/source/browse/trunk/appengin...](http://code.google.com/p/wikify/source/browse/trunk/appengine/webwikify/main.py#124)

<comment><AUTHOR> How can I contact you? You can also drop me an email at tabtrickapp at google's email service

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> After a quick glance, they load the page in an iFrame and inject their CSS + JS into it.

Any of changes you make will be "compiled" into a JS file which you then include on your page. Whatever edits you made will only be reflected client side on load.

Generating a screenshot is a completely different process than editing a website so I'm not sure Optimizely's tech is that useful to you.

</comment><comment><USER2> It's not possible to take a screenshot with unprivledged javascript (there's a method to draw a window into a canvas for privledge js in firefox and a screenshot api for chrome and safari). The only way would be to use a browser extension unless you wanted to use implement your own rendering engine (perhaps based on getComputedStyle) in canvas (that would be cool though!).

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Clickable Link: <https://optimizely.appspot.com/edit#url=http://tabtrick.com>

</comment><comment><USER4> i would say typically sites use a java applet: <http://www.barklund.org/blog/2009/10/14/how-snapabug-works/>

examples in action: <http://screenr.com/record> <http://www.screencast-o- matic.com/create>

google it for you: [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/701798/how-to-take-a- scre...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/701798/how-to-take-a-screen-shot- of-a-web-page) [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/60455/take-a- screenshot-o...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/60455/take-a-screenshot- of-a-webpage-with-javascript) [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2046812/javascript-to- tak...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2046812/javascript-to-take-a- screenshot-of-a-website-without-using-activex)

</comment><comment><USER5> Check out "wkhtmltopdf", I think it has a library to take a screenshot.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I am more interested in getting an existing website to display inside my own, than doing screenshots. There are services and APIs out there that does screenshots quite well.

</comment><comment><USER6> Building a browser extension wold probably make the most sense for taking a screenshot of a full page or portion of it.</comment>