ABCs of IBM z/OS System Programming Volume 1 - <AUTHOR> http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/Redbooks.nsf/RedbookAbstracts/sg246981.html?Open <comment><USER2> If your software stack has per core licensing, a z/architecture mainframe can make a lot of sense. They are extremely efficient at running virtual machines (with linux guests for example). Where an Intel cluster can handle 10-20 VMs per core, a z/arch mainframe can do 100s per core.

They have dedicated processors for offloading IO operations, which has a big impact on reducing pipeline stalls, and also part of why they are so much better at handling a multitude of VMs.

They have 4 levels of cache, with gigabytes of memory at level 4, data is kept close to the processors.

The hardware costs a lot, but if your software is licensed per core, there is a good chance you could save millions compared to an Intel solution. It depends on your usage scenario though. If everything is open source and you aren't paying per core fees, then there is probably no advantage for you.

<comment><USER3> _cough_ Oracle _cough_

Just be careful with this strategy. When you could start offloading per-socket IBM licensed software to more performant multi-core Intel or POWER CPUs, IBM switched from socket to "Processor Value Units". (Aka "give us more money")

<comment><USER4> A single core is not equivalent to a hexa core so I think PVU's make more sense in today's world. What I would like from them is to be more transparent with the requirement to use ILMT.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Does anyone know what kinds of companies or applications make use of z/OS mainframes?

<comment><USER6> Every large financial institution, airline, or large company that does millions of transactions an hour that isn't competing with IBM or young enough to implement a different platform that can scale to that level.

There is a z/OS security talk I saw that partially dispels the myths and prejudices against mainframes as legacy. In some cases z/OS is more modern than what you might find on your desktop and OSs like Linux are implementing features in its kernel that have been in zOS for years.

<comment><USER7> That would be Soldier of Fortran - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xfl4spvM5DI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xfl4spvM5DI)

<comment><USER6> Right I love his stuff. I was thinking of his talk at BSides LV 2014 which he gave the same talk but he also had talks this year also at BSides and DefCon.

I also wanted to mention that where I've worked and many other places there is a crisis of brain drain at companies as the mainframe experts who are highly paid retire out and there are programs to recruit young people who are more attracted to other platforms. There is a lot of pay and job security in the field. I know of one situation where a guy past retirement is paid full salary to work 1/3 of full-time from his vacation home because the company could not afford to lose his knowledge and struggled to find someone competent enough to learn under him that was interested in mainframe. In other words, someone young with these skills would be highly paid and in higher demand at many companies.

<comment><USER2> Is there any way to learn this sort of thing outside of being at a company with a z/architecture mainframe? I know about the Hercules project, but as far as I can tell, you can only run predecessors to Z/OS (due to licensing as I understand it), and zLinux.

<comment><USER7> Yep. IBM has been running a hackathon since early 2002 all around the world as a recruiting funnel to resolve the talent shortage problems @surge refers to. Runs every year, all across the world and there are always great prizes (mainframe tshirts, ipads, iphones, macbook pros) just for completing the exercises plus side-track options to drop out of uni and instantly obtain six- figure employment at one of IBM's customers if you do well.

[http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/z/education/academic/masterthe...](http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/z/education/academic/masterthemainframe/) and [https://www.facebook.com/MasterTheMainframe](https://www.facebook.com/MasterTheMainframe)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "... a 13-volume collection that provides an introduction ..."

</comment><comment><USER9> What's the z/OS jobs scene like now?

<comment><USER10> Best time to get in it. Learn mainframe, CICS, RPG, and COBOL. Among these are many jobs that work steady hours with pay that stays the same or increases over time due to lack of labor. Boring, predictable work. Pretty much the opposite of IT in general. And remember that you can always do consulting or FOSS in modern tech after hours for fun. ;)

<comment><USER11> What do you base this on? There are also tens of thousands of layed cobol programmers who are unemployed or working in other fields (in the US), the legacy of offshoring and cost reduction of the past 15 years.

I am one. I started mainframe cobol in 2003, grew the skills you listed for 5 years. It's a miserable existence for anyone really interested in developement. The company I worked for had just started their off shoring program when I switched to JEE (I took a pay cut, but am way ahead now). That same company subsequently laid off most of their onshore developers.

This is mainframe applications programming today, there maybe jobs, but not in the US.

<comment><USER10> There's job adds all over the country plus people retiring. Personally, I think it varies area by area. Places with a lot of big companies with legacy systems need employees. Others... not so much.

The offshoring issue is real. It's why most of America's brightest in CompSci and Math are going to financial sector instead of IT. Any time I meet someone trying to get into IT I recommend against it. Only exception, which is risky, is embedded where the need to physically be there reduces offshoring risk. ASIC's, too, so long as you get out of RTL work as quickly as possible: it's all going to Asia.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Airline GDS such a Sabre are on such systems.

<comment><USER13> AFAIK, SABRE is/was an airlines reservation system, not a GDS. SABRE evolved into TPF which is not related to z/OS except inasmuch as they are both operating systems that run on IBM z-series mainframes.

See [http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/z/os/](http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/z/os/) for a list of IBM z-series operating systems.

<comment><USER14> I worked with SABRE -- it's a GDS, and a reason I really want to avoid the entire industry.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Looks like an uphill, learning experience.

<comment><USER15> And frustrating for anyone with extensive experience with modern software stacks. The zseries is a strange combination of semi-modern hardware with ancient software/hardware practices. I spent a year of my life with a recent mainframe as part of my previous job. During that time I discovered a long list of things that are frankly unbelievable to anyone familiar with modern computing. I should write a book about all the crazy crap, but I don't really have too. Just reading the install/setup/operating guides with a mainframe in hand should be sufficient for anyone with a clue. Bonus points if you install any industry standard benchmarks to measure things like memory/disk io/networking latency/bandwidth.

But, in the end I get it. People talk about all kinds of crap that isn't true about the mainframe, but that doesn't matter. What companies are getting when they buy a zeries from IBM is a software stack with a 99.99% future compatibility statement. That means the millions you invest in developing software today will still work two decades from now. IBM isn't going to pull the rug out from under you when the latest OS/language/etc shows up. That is why its possible to run JCL/COBOL/etc written decades ago without change on modern machines. For companies that use computers to assist their main line of business (rather than being the main line itself) this is an extremely valuable feature.

<comment><USER10> "What companies are getting when they buy a zeries from IBM is a software stack with a 99.99% future compatibility statement. "

That is the greatest benefit. I think there's a potential market for a company using something modern (and maintainable) that offers same benefit. Especially if it can work side-by-side with mainframes and/or popular stacks.</comment></comment></comment>


Pixar's Rules of Storytelling (2013) - <AUTHOR> http://www.aerogrammestudio.com/2013/03/07/pixars-22-rules-of-storytelling/ <comment><USER2> \--Brian McDonald added that in the original story spine tweet a step was actually left out. The final step should be "And ever since that day…" As Brian says, the list 'keeps getting copied with this missing step and it's an important step.'

[http://www.aerogrammestudio.com/2013/03/22/the-story- spine-p...](http://www.aerogrammestudio.com/2013/03/22/the-story-spine- pixars-4th-rule-of-storytelling/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Holy shit, tip number 5, "Simplify. Focus. Combine characters. Hop over detours. You'll feel like you're losing valuable stuff but it sets you free.", is so absolutely true here in the world of software development (replace characters with features / bugs). They never taught me this in school, but from real life experience the best bugs / fix / solution you can come up with when you're trying to solve the problem is almost always inferior to the one you just sort of stumble across in the wild much later on.

<comment><USER4> I am confused by your reference to bugs in the form of storytelling? Or characters in relation to Software Engineering.

<comment><USER5> It does sound a bit like the KISS principle[0] and the UNIX design philosophy[1].

[0] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KISS_principle](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KISS_principle)

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_philosophy](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_philosophy)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > Coincidences to get characters into trouble are great; coincidences to get > them out of it are cheating.

This one made me laugh. I hate it when stories violate this one

<comment><USER7> and it's why I wasn't a fan of Toy Story 3. They get saved at the climax by coincidence

<comment><USER8> 50 million Tolkien fans can't be wrong

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Pixar is miraculous.

Their incredible technology is integrated into beautiful storytelling so that what matters is not the ray tracing, global illumination, server farms, petabytes and GHz:

It's the characters.

<comment><USER10> The same applies to Games, and pretty much everything with technology as well. People are generally too focused on Ghz, SuperHigh Pixel Density, memory speed or what so ever.

What's important is the soul of the product, the story, the character, the user experience. After all these years I am still amazed that so few people failed understand this.

<comment><USER11> _> People are generally too focused on Ghz, SuperHigh Pixel Density, memory speed or what so ever._

There are different people. Most of those who are interested in gaming from those whom I know are interested in the story first. Naturally such people usually like RPG and adventure genres where story is the key element of the game.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I wish I had this before I started on my novel:

 _Once upon a time there was ___. Every day, ___. One day ___. Because of that, ___. Because of that, ___. Until finally ___._

<comment><USER13> Adding on this.

Trey Parker and Matt Stone's rule for story telling : "Every new plot point should be connected to the last with either a "but" or a "therefore"."

Eg:

Cartman wanted to go to Casa Bonita BUT he was dick to Kyle and wasn't invited. THEREFORE Cartman fakes kindess to win him over, BUT Kyle sees through it. THEREFORE...

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Amazing how many of these points are good advice for new founders too.

#14 (why must YOU found this business?) is one I use a lot to reality-check

<comment><USER15> These are great rules. I was thinking they are also quite nice for game design/story rules.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Wow, this is VERY helpful. Thank you for sharing!

</comment><comment><USER16> The only rule of story telling: Don't tell other people the rules of storytelling.

</comment><comment><USER17> _Why must you tell THIS story? What's the belief burning within you that your story feeds off of? That's the heart of it._

She's right. We've been wasting out lives. Aw, To hell with cartoons. I'm going to do what I always dreamed of -- I'm going to write that sitcom about the sassy tropical fish.

Seriously, guys. They're well-crafted kids movies with predictably intervaled adult jokes inserted as a sop to the parents. The advice ranges from the sophomoric to the nattily aphoristic, but I can't see much that can be applied in a practical sense. "Make it better" sums it up just as usefully.

<comment><USER18> There are plenty of deeper adult themes in Pixar movies, not just sops; classifying them as 'kids movies' is a mistake.</comment></comment>


$270 Spark Linux tablet is powered by KDE Active Plasma - <AUTHOR> http://www.geek.com/articles/mobile/270-spark-linux-tablet-is-powered-by-and-generates-funds-for-kde-active-plasma-20120129/ <comment><USER2> That is really freaking cool. And it might be the thing that spurs me to switch to KDE across the board. I run Gnome on my F12 desktop now, but have been reluctant to upgrade to Gnome3... KDE, OTOH, I've always liked, but I shied away from it in the past since there were some bits of software I used that didn't have native KDE support (purportedly because of the KDE libs being GPL'd).

Now, KDE is under the LGPL, this tablet looks pretty cool... and I'm thinking that it might be a good time to go head, bite the bullet, and make KDE my standard environment. I really need to upgrade the OS on this laptop anyway, since F12 is like a bazillion years old now.

</comment><comment><USER3> Based on the performance shown in the videos I have some serious reservations about an X/KDE tablet with only 512MB.

<comment><USER4> I think the fragmentation of X11 video acceleration is partially responsible, as well - it's really hard to write a reasonable driver for every X acceleration technology (which is in good part why Intel keept pushing for MeeGo to use Wayland instead).

<comment><USER5> The lead developer of Wayland works for Intel.

<comment><USER6> And why do you think he's the lead developer? :) Not out of the goodness of his heart, I should imagine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The performance seemed lacking, but more importantly, while watching the demo the concept of an "activity" confused me -- I assume its similar to the notion of an app, but it was hard to tell as the "activity" was represented as a desktop -- overall fairly confusing.

It doesnt look ready for prime time but its exciting to see the FOSS community working on it; who knows, in a few years it might be able to garner the same eminence as xbmc has in the htpc space.

<comment><USER8> The whole "activity" thing tends to get confusing, even in desktop KDE. It's a nice concept on paper, but badly in need of intuitive appeal.

<comment><USER9> <http://blip.tv/file/get/Chani-activities46160.ogv> That video may help you, like had helped me.

<comment><USER10> There was a lot of nice things there, but .. I'm still confused :D

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> That. tablet. has. really. jerky. performance.

<comment><USER9> I don't think that tablet is Spark. I suppose it is the WeTab.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is very good news. We desperately need an open source alternative to the closed platforms which play along the DRM censorship technology.

My dream Pad would support "dual view" modes in the sense that it could be used as a Pad and as a classic PC as well. Which means: Put the Pad on a table, connect a keyboard and mouse and use it as a classic PC for Software development and Office.

The first mode would require the touch GUI (KDE Active Plasma) while the second mode would be best supported by the classic KDE desktop. Wouldn't that be nice to have?

</comment><comment><USER13> I'd like to see a Meego tablet instead! It's probably more mature too..

<comment><USER14> MeeGo is dead. This runs on Mer[1] which is a continuation of MeeGo, combined with Plasma Active[2], the KDE Tablet UI and apps.

[1] <http://merproject.org/> [2] <http://plasma-active.org/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I see they've changed the UI but it still mostly looks like a desktop interface shoehorned onto a tablet.

Beyond basic stuff like a web-browser I'm not sure what other software you could run on here.

<comment><USER16> Apache/Nginx, python and all those programs and emacs.

What more do you need? ;)

<comment><USER17> > What more do you need?

Not a tablet anyway, it seems.

Kidding aside, I believe you've nailed the problem with this tablet's UI: it seems designed by people who don't see the point of a tablet. They understand it as "a laptop without a keyboard".

We've seen that before with Windows CE, designed by people who saw smartphones as underpowered, keyboard-less computers, with a stylus as a poor substitute for a mouse (they even had a right-click button on some styluses IIRC). They "adapted" the Windows UX into a phone as an accessibility issue, although it was to support challenged hardware rather than challenged users. And indeed, Windows CE felt as compelling as Windows with sticky keys, high contrast, big fonts and a Braille reader.

I'm afraid this tablet's UI deserves the same success against iOS devices as Windows CE experienced.

<comment><USER16> Good analogies are rarely seen as this one.

All this just goes to show that for most products there is room for improvement in UX.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> It's running on the Mer Core <http://merproject.org> and I wonder why developers aren't given credit for in in the article.

</comment><comment><USER19> i might be interested in this if it is $27.0

</comment><comment><USER20> I like the idea and the hardware, but the article was really offensive to me.

I design hardware for a living. To rephrase, I design hardware for money, aka PROFIT. So when I read something like "at the end of the day you are just passing along profit to the device makers." like that is somehow a bad thing, I'm not only irritated, I'm mystified.

I've been in the market for a tablet, but it won't be this one.

<comment><USER21> The actual quote is:

"Android tablet options abound, and Google's operating system is as open as you're going to find on a retail shelf. At the end of the day, though, you're passing profit along to the Android device makers."

Isn't that more of a swipe at Google/Android than at device makers in particular? Ie, presumably he feels that Android and their makers don't contribute back to the software community, whereas this device does?

(Personally, I think he's wrong in that assertion, but I still don't think this is a swipe at hardware guys at all)

<comment><USER22> Are any Android tablet manufacturers selling enough to make a profit on the tablets?

<comment><USER21> The Asus transformer has done pretty well, and is almost certainly profitable (cf, [http://www.pcworld.com/article/235925/asus_transformer_table...](http://www.pcworld.com/article/235925/asus_transformer_tablet_surprising_second_best_in_sales_after_apple_ipad.html) though I suspect those numbers are a bit high). I don't know how many of the other models would have to sell to reach profitability, but I'd be shocked if the cheap shenzen tablets were unprofitable (why would they keep going if they weren't?). Not to mention the Nook Tablet and Kindle Fire.

The others don't seem to be selling as well, but that has to do with a very poor quality->price ratio (cf, any Acer tablet). Anyway, I think the argument that Android tablets aren't selling has been vastly overstated. There was a huge line for these things on Black Friday in the US for example.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> This looks great, and now all the people complaining about Microsoft's locked firmware have a place to take their wallets.

</comment><comment><USER24> like what we need is yet another convoluted home screen shenanigans.

just focus on getting regular gnome/kde/whateverwm on those things and be done with it.

most devices lack drivers even when proprietary.

the touchpad has a chip for hdmi from the usb port that webos doesn't have code to use</comment>


Criticizing the Rust Language, and Why C/C++ Will Never Die - <AUTHOR> https://www.viva64.com/en/b/0324/ <comment><USER2> Myopic rant.

         "If your C++ code is not good enough or Java code is painfully
          slow, it's not because the technology is bad - it's because you
          haven't learned how to use it right."

More 'program better and you don't need Rust.' This was said of C++ by C programmers and it regresses until we're programming punch cards in octal.

At one point the argument is (indirectly) made that Rust is on the "innovative yet too idealistic" side of the ledger. This is bogus; Rust is pragmatic. Otherwise release code would pay the cost of detecting integer overflows and unsafe wouldn't exist. Rust just doesn't cop out on all the stuff that _can_ be dealt with in a reasonable manner.

         "static and dynamic analyzers [exist for C++]"

Dismissing the obvious value of providing one uniform and precise analyzer integrated into the compiler is just bad thinking.

         "But these are actually two dialects of one language"

Unsafe changes a small and finite set of rules. It is an outrageous exaggeration to claim a new 'dialect' is created by unsafe.

At one point the following construct rears it's ugly head again. It's become a favorite for Rust haters:

        Vec<Rc<RefCell<Box<Trait>>>>

The cause of this somewhat unergonomic construct was dealt with over two years ago[1], and a workable alternative using Cell<> existed at the time. Also, how does a C++ advocate look at that type and somehow imagine it to be worse that the utterly incomprehensible line noise that C++ templates routinely devolve into? Hell, almost any given pointer to function in C is that bad or worse.

         "it doesn't have a decent inheritance and exceptions"

C++ doesn't have 'decent' inheritance either; most C++ programmers don't even understand how inheritance in C++ actually works. Arguing that the lack of exceptions in Rust is somehow a problem is deeply wrong; better and well defined alternatives are provided. C++ exceptions are a failed language feature and an enormous fount of UB. In all likelihood you're reading this using a browser written by developers that have banned C++ exceptions from their code bases (Google and Mozilla.)

         "Rust is safe indeed but, unfortunately, far from fast"

The one Computer Language Benchmarks Game benchmark cited here is cherry picked. Rust does very well against C++ in that set of benchmarks, winning 6 of 10 at the moment and only a little less well against C. And we all know the sort of issues inherent to those benchmarks; citing them without qualification is either poor thinking or an insult to your intelligence. Two terrible alternatives.

         "Macros used as a crutch to make up for the excessive verbosity
          caused by the absence of normal exceptions"

That doesn't make sense. _mic drop_

[1][https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/pull/24619](https://github.com/rust- lang/rust/pull/24619)

<comment><USER3> > Myopic rant.

A 2 year old blog post adequately discussed back then --

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9531822](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9531822)

> And we all know the sort of issues inherent to those benchmarks

Inherent to those benchmarks or inherent to benchmarks?

Innuendo.</comment></comment>


$10 3D Printed Epi Pen - <AUTHOR> http://www.intermedpartners.com/oo-box <comment><USER2> The current headline does not match the page title, and is clickbait and false, both literally and in its intended implication of commonality (what is there is nothing like an EpiPen, and its hard to see what its point is at all -- it seems to be an unregulated "at your own risk" medical device that adds no clear value and considerable risk compared to just using a syringe, and clearly doesn't have the ease-of-use-in-an-emergency utility that justifies autoinjectors like the EpiPen.)

</comment><comment><USER3> I guess if an Epi Pen was some sort of Rube Goldberg device for making an injection _more_ complicated.

The whole point of an Epi Pen is that it can be easily carried (in a purse for example) and used by people with very little training to give an injection (just "stab and go"). This device doesn't serve any of the purposes of a real Epi Pen.

</comment><comment><USER4> When drawing up a medication from a glass ampule, you're supposed to use a filtered needle to prevent glass shards from being drawn into the syringe[1]. Now... many folks don't do that, because if you break it properly, the odds of getting glass shards inside the ampule are pretty small (and people are lazy).

In this case though, you're smashing the ampule inside a (non-sterile) container, which will keep all the broken glass, and mix it with the solution (along with any bacteria that have taken up residence on the outside of the ampule, or the inside of the 'ampule breaker' thing).

You're then supposed to draw that up (in a process far _more_ complicated than just drawing up a medication from a vial) and inject it into someone? No thanks...

[1]: [http://www.safeinfusiontherapy.com/documents/Products/Partic...](http://www.safeinfusiontherapy.com/documents/Products/Particulate_Contamination_M.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER5> I don't get it, how is that better than just doing an injection with a pre- filled syringe? I see the point of the Epi Pen, but not of this.

</comment><comment><USER6> This is strictly worse than a prefilled epinephrine syringe, which a quick google search tells me costs about $10 [0].

In fact, Adamis recently tried to get FDA approval to sell prefilled syringes as an alternative to Epi-Pens, but it was rejected with demands for more expansive patient usability study and product stress testing [1].

The creator of this "3D printed Epi Injector" evidently does not understand the problem that actually needs to be solved.

[0]: [http://www.buyemp.com/product/epinephrine-prefilled- syringe](http://www.buyemp.com/product/epinephrine-prefilled-syringe)

[1]: [http://www.fiercepharma.com/marketing/still-no-epipen- challe...](http://www.fiercepharma.com/marketing/still-no-epipen-challenge- sight-for-mylan-as-another-competitor-hits-a-snag)

</comment><comment><USER7> I get it, we like 3D printers, but this isn't a good use of them _at all_.

This doesn't have the same accessibility and is no better than just using a damn syringe. In fact, this is plain stupid and lack of understanding the requirements that the EpiPen is intended to fill.

Take news story. Apply 3D printer. Success?! No, just stop.

</comment><comment><USER8> Isn't there a patent or copyright issue involved here?

<comment><USER4> No, there is basically zero commonality between this device and the EpiPen (this is a bad idea for a number of other reasons though...)

<comment><USER9> Failure rate is unknown. Consequences of failure are nasty, up to and including death.

<comment><USER4> Not to mention the whole "injecting glass into yourself" thing.

It's no less complicated than simply drawing up the medication from a rubber topped vial. It's still a bunch of things you have to unpack at the time you need it (the syringe, stopcock, and needle will all need to remain in their packaging until they're used). There are a ton of downsides...

<comment><USER10> I'm curious how they keep the vials sterile, I guess you can't really handle them until the day of and then do so with gloves on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I like it. It breaks the neck not the glass. Micro glass particles in muscle are meaningless anyway. Sterility is meaningless. Epi outside in air oxidizes and its effect is compromised. It's life or death. Plus what's anyone else doing to save $ for those who can't afford epipen. It's a start. Jmo

<comment><USER2> What people are doing (arty least medical personnel I've heard from) is recommending people get prescriptions for epi vials and syringes for self injection. Which is simpler than this. And cheaper. And easier to use. And safer.

Which is still not a perfect replacement for an autoinjector, but it's better than this contraption.</comment></comment>


The Myth Of The Missing Business Model - <AUTHOR> http://dev.zeraweb.com/the-myth-of-the-business-model <comment><USER2> The author takes a popular claim and lambasts it without ever actually addressing it.

First is that the greater fool theory suffices as a valid business model--that the fact that founders can get rich by pawning off an overvalued asset to a hyped up market is a business strategy. It is surely one way to make money, but it isn't a business model.

The secondary claim is that these businesses -- such as Twitter -- will figure out their business model at some point in the future, which is as good as having one today. But if there is any risk that they won't find profitability before cash runs out -- and we have seen before that this can happen -- then that isn't true, and the premise that the potential for the discovery of a business model is as good as having one today doesn't hold.

The best defense offered is this:

 _As to the business model, there are many, many ways to monetize access to hundreds of millions of consumers with enough money for a smart phone, computer, and enough leisure time to spend on social networks. Are you kidding me?_

But of all the "many, many ways to monetize" the audience, none are mentioned, which would have been the most credible piece of the article.</comment>


WordPress Just Made Millions of Blogs Real-Time With RSSCloud - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/wordpress_just_made_millions_of_blogs_real-time_wi.php

<comment><USER2> Summary: For some reason Matt Mullenweg started paying attention to Dave Winer. It's one of the worst ideas he's ever had, _and he's the idiot who wrote Wordpress_ , so that's really saying something.

After a year or so of uselessness and a few epic flameouts from Dave, they'll probably implement PubSubHubBub on Wordpress.com, and rightfully not waste effort trying to make it work for self-hosters. With any luck, they'll stop serving duplicate feeds and go pure Atom at the same time.

<comment><USER3> Wow no reason to be so angry -- it's just some pings going back and forth. There's no need to make it personal. Besides, I've had way worse ideas.

We've always planned to have a variety of update notifications available -- the first we did was Jabber/XMPP, now RSS Cloud, after this we'll do some others. I mentioned this in my post on the subject, which you can check out here:

<http://en.blog.wordpress.com/2009/09/07/rss-in-the-clouds/>

We've supported other things before, like Atom Publishing, that to this day get almost no use (literally less than but we support them anyway because it can't hurt and might help. In general I would consider myself API- and format- agnostic.

<comment><USER2> The vitriol on my part was due to the Winerian aspect -- the man has a long history of fucking up everything he touches technically, and vindictively fucking over anyone less than sycophantic. _Run away._

APP doesn't see much use in Wordpress because nobody uses desktop blogging clients anymore. However, it is widely implemented on both sides (even Microsoft!), something that will never be true for <cloud>.

'RSSCloud' is inelegant, idiotically-designed (he thinks traditional SOAP posted to a resourcey URL is REST!), doesn't help centralized aggregators scale, doesn't work with NATed clients, and worst of all it was specced/never- implemented/forgotten by Dave Winer 8 years ago. At least you were smart enough not to use rpc.rsscloud.org -- Winer can't be trusted to host anything for anyone (eg: weblogs.com).

Google, Bloglines, Facebook, Twitter, et. al. will never implement it. The only people <cloud> could possibly help would be the few running their own server-side aggregators. Implementing PubSubHubBub would actually help people -- doing this just feeds Winer's ego (and thus pumps up the drama).

Why the hell were you still serving duplicate RSS2 at all anyway? The only extant feedreaders that don't grok Atom were written by Winer (and he's the only user left!).

<comment><USER3> Last month we got 688,000 new blog posts via XML-RPC, so desktop clients are still meaningful. (XML-RPC API is also used by other folks like Flickr.) APP may be better, I don't have a strong opinion, but it's hardly used and in fact we had trouble finding clients to test with when writing support for it. Regardless, we try to have the best support for APP possible.

Same thing with feeds -- we offer every feed in a choice of 4 formats (two Atoms, two RSSes). It's the same content and there's no overhead to us (it's just a template file) so why not let people choose what they like best.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Brett Slatkin on the difference between PubSubHubBub and rssCloud:

from <http://jy.typepad.com/jy/2009/07/pubsubhubbub-rsscloud.html>:

In a nut-shell, rssCloud's subscriptions are merely a way of redistributing pings to subscribers. We think this is still on the publishing side of the problem and does not simplify the life of a subscriber. With rssCloud, subscribers must re-fetch the feed to see if it's changed. In contrast, Hubbub delivers the actual changes to the subscriber so they have no more work to do. This makes it much easier to subscribe, and has some nice properties when it comes to scalability.

</comment><comment><USER5> It won't mean anything if they can't convince RSS readers (specifically Google Reader) to adopt it.

<comment><USER6> Google Reader adopted PubSubHubBub. PubSubHubBub is similar to RSSCloud, but fixes many issues with RSSCloud.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Still waiting on the Feedmesh...

</comment><comment><USER8> Isn't Ping pretty much realtime, too?

</comment><comment><USER9> So in plain english without all the hype, it's RSS pushed from the server instead of pulled by the client.

How are they doing it over http without thousands of connections being open and closed constantly on the server per second? Are they just announcing to a central server and the client only polls the one server for any one of thousands of blogs they could be subscribed to?

I guess I'll look at the code tomorrow.

<comment><USER10> The client has to have a public internet port available for XML-RPC or an HTTP post. The central cloud server sends pings to all of the subscribers.

It's a bad idea.

If you're going to do this, just use XMPP. Otherwise, use HTTP the way it was intended and just have the client poll the server. Why does everyone think this is such a bad idea? Polling works. It scales. It's simple.

<comment><USER11> I agree on XMPP, but there's a certain amount of pressure to keep this working entirely inside the web-stack as much of the blog-community (and especially the Wordpress community) relies on fairly limited shared LAMP hosting, where XMPP running in the background (or anything else, for that matter) just isn't available.

Of course, the cleaner solution is to make this XMPP "inside" for thos who can use that, and then make a XMPP-to-HTTP frontend for those who can't. But on the other hand, there's a good point in keeping things simple.</comment></comment></comment>


The Forecasting Fallacy - <AUTHOR> https://www.alexmurrell.co.uk/articles/the-forecasting-fallacy <comment><USER2> This seems to fundamentally miss the reason why we forecast. To quote Eisenhower:

>Peace-time plans are of no particular value, but peace-time planning is indispensable.

The end result of these forecasts isn't particularly valuable, but the thinking used to develop the forecast can help us preempt, react, and respond. This is like criticizing climate scientists because they didn't get the exact amount of warming or sea level rise correct in their predictions. I'm not saying every (or any) consultant forecast is worth reading, but to dismiss the idea of forecasting because we are wrong is a fundamental misunderstanding of the value of forecasts.

<comment><USER3> > I'm not saying every (or any) consultant forecast is worth reading, but to > dismiss the idea of forecasting because we are wrong is a fundamental > misunderstanding of the value of forecasts.

I agree with your original statement but in the portion above you talk about reading someone else's forecast as if that was equivalent to the forecast 'thinking process' you had mentioned.

Reading the end-result of another individual's analysis won't necessarily give you the benefits you just mentioned.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The only way in my opinion to really separate snake oil sellers from serious forecasters is to require that the companies or pundits register their predictions in some database, so one can then assess how often they are wrong.

<comment><USER5> Even more than this: they should personally invest.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hat tip to the fantastic Browser newsletter ([https://thebrowser.com/](https://thebrowser.com/)) for this one. As its editor & head curator writes:

"How can it be that forecasts of global trends and outcomes are almost always wrong, yet nobody seems to mind, no stigma attaches, and the appetite for them seems only to grow?"

From the article: "To understand the extent of our forecasting fascination, I analysed the websites of three management consultancies looking for predictions with time frames ranging from 2025 to 2050. Whilst one prediction may be published multiple times, the size of the numbers still shocked me. Deloitte's site makes 6904 predictions. McKinsey & Company make 4296. And Boston Consulting Group, 3679. ...

I believe the vast majority of these to be not forecasts but fantasies. Snake oil dressed up as science. Fiction masquerading as fact."

</comment><comment><USER6> The article is misguided in thinking anyone cares about forecast accuracy in the first place. Accurate forecasting would usurp political authority, since it would provide a mechanism by which you can accurately hold policy creators accountable.

"It's hard to get someone to understand something when their job depends on not understanding it."

Robin Hanson wrote very well about this years ago:

[https://www.cato-unbound.org/2011/07/13/robin-hanson/who- car...](https://www.cato-unbound.org/2011/07/13/robin-hanson/who-cares-about- forecast-accuracy)

</comment><comment><USER7> We can predict GDP. Everyone knows ballpark where it will be without calamity.

The GDP is an overal measure of something not based on 'events'.

What we cannot predict are 'events' \- like COVID, or a rash of market information coming to light like 2008 causing a domino effect.

Predicting marketing spend is like predicting what colour someone will chose for their favorite colour: it's within some range, but it's a choice.

</comment><comment><USER8> I want to point out that Tetlock went into checking if there were ways to get better forecast and better forecaster.

It was the Good Judgement Project, and the results are slightly more positive

</comment><comment><USER9> To what degree does the predictions alter the future?</comment>


GitHub is used for anti-censorship on Peking University student's protesting - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/sikaozhe1997/Xin-Yue <comment><USER2> A large amount of Chinese Github users feeling bad for gov would ban Github due to this repo. [https://github.com/sikaozhe1997/Xin- Yue/issues](https://github.com/sikaozhe1997/Xin-Yue/issues)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Context: [https://supchina.com/2018/04/23/beida-student-to-school- stop...](https://supchina.com/2018/04/23/beida-student-to-school-stop-trying- to-gag-me-on-rape-case/)

Suggestions for title welcome</comment>


"If you get a C or lower, I'll buy you a present" - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/17/opinion/my-asian-pussycat-parents.html <comment><USER2> Part of the problem is our culture lauds perfectionism as a case of someone caring too much or being too ambitious. That's not what it is.

Perfectionism is a failure to optimize across a complex goal space, settling, instead, on ignoring the difficult (and beautifully complex) prioritisation problem in favour of over-optimizing a limited set of easily-defined goals ("getting an A") over longer-run priorities ("being a fulfilled and productive citizen").

<comment><USER3> A long time ago I noticed a trend in job listings. Words you would associate with perfectionism (detail-oriented, accurate, etc.) are usually used with lower-paid and lower-status jobs. For example: admins, data-entry, etc.

Words you see in higher-paid and higher-status jobs often focus on strategy and planning in a complex goal space, as you note.

What's interesting about our education system is we focus a lot on precision and accuracy and not that much on strategy and planning. It seems like a system built to produce accountants and actuaries more than a new generation of entrepreneurs.

<comment><USER4> Let me offer an opposing point of view.

In all the people I ever hired and worked with over the years (data entry, devs, bizdev, sales or otherwise), attention to detail was the single most predictive trait for good performance. "Conscientious" is a better word perhaps. People who can't be bothered to understand how things work rarely produce amazing "high level" work either. It's a fallacy to assume you can "skip the details" IMO.

It's like inspecting a house: if you see shoddy plumbing and the walls are crooked and all the details are off, it is still possible the construction is amazing in all the attributes you CAN'T inspect so easily. But it's also quite likely the construction company didn't give a shit and were cutting costs left and right, and buying this house would be a safety hazard.

Also, you can pay attention to detail in strategic jobs as well. "Attention to detail" and "complex spaces" are not mutually exclusive.

<comment><USER5> Yep - totally.

I have literally no patience for the idea that attention to detail/conscientiousness is anything less than absolutely necessary at any level of an organisation.

Lack of attention to detail leads to screw-ups. Lack of attention to detail at a higher level just leads to bigger screw-ups. Lack of attention to detail at the top leads to colossal screw-ups.

Just think, for example, of RBS. No attention was being paid, certainly not at the top, to the details of all those supposedly investment grade CDOs. And then one day... BOOM! Turns out they were stuffed with junk and the whole shebang comes crashing down.

I also have literally no patience with people who describe themselves as "big picture thinkers" (thankfully this seems less prevalent these days; maybe I just move in different circles). You may as well skip the BS and say, "I am totally useless and ineffectual," because to me they're synonymous.

If you do anything without paying attention to the details you will do it badly.

(As an aside: I'm not here talking about micromanagement - you can't pay attention to _all_ the details, obviously, at a higher level, but you _can_ pay attention to the details that are appropriate at that level. This obviously only works if the people working for you are also trustworthy. If not, you clearly weren't paying attention when you hired them.)

<comment><USER6> I don't disagree with the correct general claim but the specific example is much more of a control fraud problem... you can't expect someone to understand something if their paycheck next week depends on their careful avoidance of understanding...

<comment><USER5> I don't know. I may be interpreting this wrong, but having read "Making it happen" (which obviously has a bias) I came away with the distinct impression it was more of a lack of interest; very little of what I read would suggest that Goodwin was in any way careful about RBS's investments, even if that carefulness was manifest in avoiding understanding. It is just one perspective though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> In Japan perfectionism is not encouraged. The rough translation _kanpeki shugi_ (完璧主義) will bring up more ways to fix it than become it on the first page of google.

What the Japanese culture and other Asian cultures similarly encourage however is discipline ( _majime_ , まじめ), and the proper way ( _matomo_ , まとも). This means parents instill time management (basically they force kids to take the time to study) and procedure (study environment, tools, focus, resources). This is the true cultural advantage.

With regards to suicide, this too can be correlated to culture with statistics, but it has nothing to do with perfectionism. I would attribute it more to their naivety when it comes to mental well being, and to self sacrifice. In other words, they think it's okay to suffer and sacrifice their mental health far past the safe line, and fare more than most would permit in the west. In Japan, your "self" takes a back seat to the onus of being the majime and matomo Japanese citizen.

The answer is to learn time management, discipline, and procedure, but while staying healthy, both physically and mentally. That's what OP's father did. He made sure his daughter's mental health was okay. That's what parents ought to do, and he deserves all the credit in the world.

<comment><USER8> I'm not so sure what you're defining is completely different. Doing things the "right way" in Japan and other east asian cultures has more or less the same effect as trying to be "perfect" in American culture. The effect is both cultures encourage the individual to act in a manner they may not accept themselves. The difference being that in a conformist culture the avenues for self expression are limited by culture and society. In an ambition oriented culture the concept of "failure" has the same damaging effects.

This isn't to say that both traits, conformity and perfection are inherently bad, instead we should be teaching the purpose or reason to do so rather than blindly require the behavior without justification.

<comment><USER7> Conformity and perfectionism is the western translation, but they are inaccurate, for the same reasons most translations are inaccurate. They are translations by appearance only. As a culture perfectionism is shunned, and individuality is encouraged. The translation would have you believe the opposite.

The cause lies in their extremely specific moral values as a society. They call it the Japanese spirit ( _nihon no kokoro_ , 日本の心) and it embodies discipline, proper procedure, mastery, sacrifice for the greater good, among other things. A good member of society is one that aspires to be an iconic Japanese. And when an entire culture behaves in this manner, they do appear to conform, and to value perfection, and to even act as one. But they're aligned only because they uphold similar values and share common goals.

The Japanese are conformist as much as a good Christian wants to be a good Christian. Christians don't conform to Christianity. They embody it, and hence become similar as a result, not as their motivation.

They are perfectionist as much as an aspiring athlete wants to be like Mike. They aren't looking to master Perfect or become Perfect. They just want to be like Mike.

And we don't say kids playing basketball are conformist for all wearing Jordan or Steph Curry gear, nor do they wear it to conform. They do it because they love those players (just as the Japanese love their country).

Another great Japanese word is _kodawari_ (こだわり). It's the obsessively picky and uncompromising soul of a craftsman. This too could easily be translated as perfectionism, but "perfection ( _kanpeki_ )" is not their goal. "Ideal ( _risou_ )" is their goal. And _kodawari_ is an emotion, whereas perfectionism is not. And "ideal" is a dynamic and personal target, where as "perfection" is not. Perfection is for amateurs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Do you think there is more uncertainty about the future today than there was, say, 50 years ago?

Anxiety about school and grades may be an outcome of an increasing sense of uncertainty. The less confident one is about the prospects of the future, the more safety net they will desire. Getting the best possible education is perceived to be the best safety net short of a trust fund.

One major difference between 2016 and 1956 is the perceived likelihood (for Americans, anyway) that you'll be able to work on an assembly line, or, a customer support group, or that your white collar job will be done on-shore.

My advice to my kids was to seek a profession that could not be sent overseas, one way or the other. Such as dentist or lumberjack :-) But of course, we now have hair transplant robots which bodes poorly for both professions.

What it means to me is that navigating the rest of the 21st century requires thoughtfulness, sound analytical skills and a sense of agency. People have to be able to understand the relative impact of all manner of dynamic systems in the world, not just technology, but economics and government, and the way they all interact. Then, they need to plan how to do to stay relevant and execute their plan.

Learning that seems like a lot to ask from a public high school education these days, yet, I believe I learned it 40 years ago.

What has changed?

<comment><USER10> I wasn't alive in 1956 nor have I studied the 1950s enough to make a valid judgement, but I graduated college this year and high school in 2012 and the attitude was definitely one of uncertainty. If you didn't get X grade or Y internship (or any random thing like that), your chances at a good career were well, uncertain.

A lot of people paint the 1950s and early 60s such that you could do okay in high school and not go to a 4-year college and still manage to provide for a middle class family. Can anyone who has studied or otherwise know if this was true? The only thing I can be certain of is that this is only true if you were white.

<comment><USER11> _> If you didn't get X grade or Y internship (or any random thing like that), your chances at a good career were well, uncertain._

You left out one thing: if you _do_ get X grade or Y internship, your chances at a good career are still uncertain. There is no magic bullet.

 _> A lot of people paint the 1950s and early 60s such that you could do okay in high school and not go to a 4-year college and still manage to provide for a middle class family._

To an extent this was probably true in the US, but the reason was something temporary: there was a huge economic expansion going on in the aftermath of WWII, with new markets being created, and many industries were willing to basically overpay their workers in order to increase production and capture market share. In the US auto industry, for example, most new car sales in the 1950s and 1960s were genuine _new_ sales--families who had never had a car before or who were adding a second (or even third) car they hadn't had before. In that environment, yes, a person with a high school education can have a middle class income, because the cost of his labor is a minor expense compared to the potential value to be captured.

In the current US auto industry, by contrast, almost all new car sales are for replacement of previous cars--the market is saturated. That means there is a huge price pressure being exerted, and hence a huge pressure to drive down wages and to automate jobs that used to be done by human workers in order to reduce costs. In this environment, a person with only a high school education is unlikely to have the skills that would make them valuable enough to a company to be able to earn a middle class income. (Note that I said "unlikely"; it's possible to develop such skills without a college education, but statistically few people do.)

Does that mean things are more uncertain now? I'm not sure. I said the situation in the 1950s and 1960s was temporary; it was also not the same in all industries. So I don't know that one can make a general statement either way.

<comment><USER12> There certainly are magic bullets. Look at any software engineer who has ever interned at Google. For anyone else, the hiring process is uncertain, chaotic, and basically random. Success is a function of your past performance, your appearance, the emotional reaction your interviewer has to you, your interviewers mood and frame of mind during the interview, how stressed you happen to be that day, etc. There are exceptionally strong candidates who are rejected by the Google process and poor candidates who make it through. The latest thing in the Google interview crapshoot is a new emphasis on GPA - I've never (in the past two years) heard of someone with less than a 3.5 even being considered for an interview and they ask for a transcript with the application. There are lots of exceptional candidates who push themselves into hard subjects, work on personal projects, and lead on campus that are ignored because of that magic number. On the other hand, once you have that Google internship, every other tech company is falling over themselves to interview you and extend an offer - I've never heard of a Google intern not getting ab excellent full time offer months before graduation.

Group affiliation helps, too. On my campus there is a very strong and old computing interest group with a strong alumni network. Every year, company recruiters do interviews directly with that group of people before even considering applicants at the career fair.

<comment><USER13> Let me rebuke both parts of your statement.

I both got a google internship with a well sub 3.5 GPA; and have since then gotten both accepted and rejected at equivilent tier bigCos with that (and other "prestigious" establishments) on my resume and nonetheless saw a good mix of clean and chaotic hiring processes.

What I'm trying to say is there is NO silver bullet; as other sister comments say, it's a crapshoot even with your cards all in order. I believe the aspects you list of the "normal" level of chaos are quite accurate, my tailoring to your statement is merely one that the leg up helps less than you seem to imply. (from both my and peers in similar situations's anecdotes.) I make this statement not to be pessimistic but to be optimistic. Someone without G on their resume shouldn't feel helpless, they are not alone, and they are not in an impossible or insurmountable situation. The only "real" path I've found, regardless of who or what background you have, is to just keep bullheadedly driving towards your goals and building the skills required to do this more effectively. Everything else for me has been ephemeral and less impactful. (I would note, you're right re: network, but I bucket that more under a skill you can build than something implicit, since for better or worse, networking is a skill one must practice in modern professional life as one mechanism to support ones stability)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This sentiment, while important to remember if you ARE a perfectionist, also sounds like a really slippery slope similar to something like eating right. "Well if I just eat when I'm hungry" you'll find you're frequently "hungry" if you're a certain type of person. That said, if you're a certain type of person, "not being a perfectionist" could be a great avenue for never pulling yourself out of your slump.

"I messed up at school" Well, I'm not a perfectionist so that's fine I'll just keep at the same pace. TURNS OUT, that pace wasn't so useful. "I am failing Chemistry" OH WELL. I'm not a perfectionist so it doesn't matter.

You can see how this can be a problem as a mantra to a certain type of person.

<comment><USER15> > if I just eat when I'm hungry

That is how I lost way too much weight. Got hungry, wasn't able to eat _right then_ by the time I was able to eat I was no longer hungry. I gradually taught myself to eat very little and was very ill because of it.

Eating is a slippery slope in all directions.

<comment><USER16> Have you ever practiced controlled intermittent fasting?

<comment><USER15> I have since, but not before the incident I was referring to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> These parents were able to send their kid to NYU, an extremely expensive private college with almost no financial aid.

Many of the parents who put insane pressure on their kids to succeed academically do so because they can't afford schools like NYU- they have to get into more competitive schools that offer more financial aid or lower tuitions.

<comment><USER18> That sounds pretty anecdotal, only because (also anecdotally) I was surrounded by many, many wealthy kids at my school whose parents put insane pressure on them due to the perceived status of telling others that their children go to "insert well-branded school here"

<comment><USER10> Same.

I don't doubt many lower income families pressure kids to get merit scholarships, but it's not true that higher income families don't pressure kids as much.

In fact, I'd argue (anecdotally also!) that the American upper middle class has the most pressured kids. It's not always to say that "my kid goes to Harvard" but rather it's some strange attitude that parents have one they reach a "not wealthy enough to not work, not poor enough to get state financial aid" stage.

<comment><USER19> They say "my kid goes to college in Boston". :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I have experienced both types of approaches from my family. As a kid attending school in Ukraine we had classes 6 days a week and hours of homework each day. My grandmother was a teacher before retirement - I remember her having some very harsh words over my late nights doing math homework in 3rd-5th grade (I can't remember why but in my school there was no 4th grade, everyone in my class went from 3rd into 5th). I just could not get long division for the longest time - there was yelling and tears.

When my family (not including grandparents) moved to the U.S., my parents noticeably loosened up. I think it was because they didn't feel like they had to chase after me to do well so much anymore. They were kind of caught off guard by the school system. Math was the most important, but the stuff we were learning in math at the U.S. school were things we learned long ago in Ukraine so to them it looked like I was doing well and needed no chasing. In truth I was only doing well because my grandmother made me drill math so hard in Ukraine in prior years!

Unfortunately when in later years what we learned in American schools started to overtake what I had already known from Ukrainian schools, the relaxed attitude began to show in my grades. Perfect scores slipped to mid-lower 90s, then to Bs, and even some Cs. I remember failing one test - still can't remember why, even my teacher was shocked. I ended up graduating high school with "above average" grades, but nowhere near as good as they would've been had my grandmother kept charge of my learning.

While I don't miss my grandmother's yelling, I do wish my parents were a bit more strict back then (and at the same time realize that my lack of motivation in school was entirely my fault). I turned out ok, but feel like having a stronger grasp of math and more structured study habits would've been very beneficial later in life.

<comment><USER21> That's an interesting story.

One reason I'm not a perfectionist about my kids' homework is that a lot of it is crushingly uninteresting. I have two kids, and I work with them often on homework, especially math. I like to look for interesting ways to approach problems, to show them there are ways to do things that aren't a series of steps that need to be followed with high levels of exactness. Sometimes the teacher heaps on so much basic arithmetic that there's no time to do both. if it comes down to a choice between investigating interesting ways to go about a problem or chugging along with a mechanical approach, I'd rather investigate a problem in greater depth. That may mean a worse grade, but it's a balancing act. To be clear, I always advocate respect for the teacher in terms of civility and politeness, but I do want my kids to independently assess the learning value of their assignments.

There have been assignments that seem to be little more than an exercise in penmanship. I have reflected on how teachers used to (perhaps still do) force kids to write a dull sentence 100 times as punishment. In that sense, at times, my kid's homework is nearly indistinguishable from a punishment.

Just to be clear, this isn't always the case, my kids have also had good teachers and interesting assignments as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> My dad always believed that if you're going to do anything, you should try to be the best at it. In terms of grades I certainly have not seen a positive effect, but I think the reason is I don't value professional education as much as passion learning, which for me is much more rare. The sentiment however has been instilled in me, and when I discover something that I enjoy doing its hard for me to be second place.

<comment><USER23> >My dad always believed that if you're going to do anything, you should try to be the best at it.

My dad would say similar things.

Boy, how wrong he was. (Fortunately, he was not pushy about it.)

In my years, I have learned the value of making mistakes, and _not_ pursuing the path of minimal mistakes.

I have also learned the value of quitting. Always trying to be best in what I pursue would mean I would often pursue the wrong goals.

(Tangentially, "Finish what you start" ranks highly on my list of really bad advice).

I have also learned the value of "good enough". There are things I passionately want to be the best at. There are other things that have no value for me beyond being "good enough". Our dad's advice would ensure we either do not pursue the latter, or we aim for perfection in it to the expense of other endeavours.

Simply put, the advice is good only if you have unlimited time. When you get old enough and can reflect on your past, you'll get a better sense of how much time you have left and what you can accomplish in it. That time is very precious, and it may be in your best interest to be good at many things, as opposed to the best at a few (and poor at the rest).

<comment><USER24> >(Tangentially, "Finish what you start" ranks highly on my list of really bad advice).

I tend to agree. People have told me that they were only doing something because they started it and 'don't want to be a quitter'. My response is always that the concept of a 'quitter' doesn't really exist to anyone but high school football coaches.

In the words of Kenny Rogers, "You've got to know when to hold 'em, Know when to fold 'em, Know when to walk away, And know when to run…"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> That motivation may have been contextually valuable for Ms. Chia, but speaking as a former teacher, the majority of American students would probably benefit from parenting that sits further down toward the "Tiger Mom" end of the parenting spectrum. Not off the deep end, of course, but definitely further than at present.

<comment><USER26> > former teacher

Sorry but I'm going to be that person :)

How much do you think parents should be involved with kids' homework?

My wife and I got tired of the daily battles with our 3rd grader over homework. Until a few days ago one of us would review it at home and point out any mistakes. The response to _any_ mistake was a fit of rage. Our daughter gets extremely frustrated whenever we point out she did something wrong.

So we decided to try a different approach. We told her we won't review her homework anymore, unless she explicitly asks us to. Her end of the deal is that at the end of the week she has to read her teacher's feedback and take note of what she got wrong, and figure out how she could have gotten it right.

Do you think it might be a good strategy?

<comment><USER25> I'll preface by saying that most issues surrounding homework are in general very debatable, and even the best educational research (which is not great) suggests a lot of age and subject dependent policy variation. And even the individual teacher and his or her relation with your daughter are confounding variables, not to mention whatever lessons in values and character building you and your wife might have, so this answer comes with a lot of unstated speculation on my part.

It sounds like the original interaction you had with her consisted purely of negative reinforcement. That rarely produces the long term results loving parents want, even in very obedient kids.

Your second approach is fine for a child who is either mature or has significant intrinsic motivation. A weekly assessment is a good frequency, but you're leaving it entirely up to her to report, and she seems to have the option to give you no feedback. Can you trust her not to slack off and surprise you with an unacceptable grade at the next test? Maybe you can; I don't know your child. Maybe she's naturally bright in the subject, or can at least pull her act together and study hard enough when test time comes around. Do you expect 100% mastery on each assignment? Not every mistake reflects a gap in knowledge or conceptual understanding, and the smartest children are often the most acutely aware of when they're penalized for careless errors or unnecessary formalism. That's not to say diligence and tolerating unliked procedures are bad lessons to learn either, but a good teacher can distinguish from the nature of the error what kind of feedback to give. I realize I'm raising more questions and factors instead of answering directly, because I'm trying to convey that parents should grow more sensitive in general to the academic behaviors and values their rules encourage. Be ready to iterate on your strategy (maybe 1 month of weekly feedback) make sure you're able to get reliable feedback. If you wanted a more proactive suggestion, why have her demonstrate her knowledge around homework at all? Typical 3rd grade psych. development sees children still interestep in showing their parents their accomplishments to seek their approval across the board. What if when you see her in a good mood, and not engrossed in something else, like around the dinner table in casual conversation, you ask her to teach _you_ something new she learned in class that day? (Maybe start with other subjects if the homework one is too sensitive.) Feign surprise and gratitude, as if she really taught you something new. Having to reexplain content knowledge in one's own words from memory is a very powerful retention technique.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> If my parents bought me a present after I had received a bad mark in school when I was a teenager my twisted mind would have interpreted that as a catastrophe, "my god, they really do think I have failed and now they are even trying to bribe me to be better, they must be desperate".

<comment><USER28> I'm with you, I would be staring in the mirror having an existential crisis. "What the heck? Are they giving me a thinly disguised participation trophy? They hate participation trophies?!?"

I guess know your audience applies to parenting as well as performance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> By the time her father said this to her, she obviously already had strong intrinsic motivation. Her parents just did a good job of managing it.

How to create intrinsic motivation is a harder question. There is some research that parents can create it by setting and clearly communicating expectations from an early age. But it's not conclusive.

We're clearly deep into nature/nurture territory here.

<comment><USER30> This article might help give you some ideas or pathways to discover other ideas on cultivating intrinsic motivation: [http://www.edutopia.org/blog/intrinsic-motivation-growth- min...](http://www.edutopia.org/blog/intrinsic-motivation-growth-mindset- writing-amy-conley)

<comment> q-base Thanks a lot for that link. Really interesting and a few books now heading my way from Amazon :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I agree with the sentiment and hope to raise my children without tiger parent pressure. Though graduating with a psychology degree and studying copywriting seems to make for a tough life ahead. I certainly don't want my child to "have to break [their] neck to make a living", but it seems like that might end up being the case here anyways.

</comment><comment><USER32> I seem to be saying it even more, but once again I must state that perfect is the enemy of good.

Often people strive for perfection in their grades, to the detriment of their finances, friendships, and personal development.

It happened to several people I know, they'd lock themselves away and study for hours instead of being social and forging relationships (which in the real world outside university are a lot more important than grades).

At the end of the day, everyone gets the same Degree (unless you're doing honours, where there are grades). It doesn't really matter what your grades were if you can network yourself into a job instead.

</comment><comment><USER33> As others in the NYT and HN comments have said, the best parenting strategy seems to depend on the psychology of the kid.

My parents were more or less in the pussycat camp, which led me to put an enormous amount of pressure on myself as I felt like they just said that to be nice, because they knew I was "gifted" and would ultimately do "what they really wanted". It wasn't good for me mental health wise.

</comment><comment><USER34> The work ethic correlation with suicide at the end of the article in a common sense way is sort of sound but it also begs the question: "maybe some cultures are more comfortable with suicide" (a->b) instead of idea of the author has "since asians work harder/have higher expectations more asians must commit suicide" (a->b->c). Obviously the author has the stats that asians are in more prestigious schools but that doesn't necessarily mean they are pressured more or that they are consequently more likely to commit suicide.

For example you could have devout catholics that have the same work pressures and stressors but would never commit suicide (I don't know if that is true but I'm not sure about the authors position either).

<comment><USER34> I noticed I got downvoted and now I'm terrible nervous I offended someone. I wish downvoters would comment (I have never downvoted anyone on any forum without a comment). I don't mind disagreement of opinion even if it deserves downvotes but I'm concerned if I offended anyone. All I meant is that the expectation of parents of the culture reference in the article might not entirely be the cause of the higher % of suicides.

<comment><USER35> I did not downvote you and as of right now you're comment seems to be hovering around positive points, but I do have some thoughts.

Keep in mind that even though college aged AAs have higher than average suicide ideation, the suicide rate of all AAs is half the national average: [http://www.apa.org/pi/oema/resources/ethnicity- health/asian-...](http://www.apa.org/pi/oema/resources/ethnicity-health/asian- american/suicide.aspx)

In fact from the stats, being engaged in the AA community tends to reduce the likelihood of suicide. That aligns with what I've seen myself from my parents and my friend's parents.

<comment><USER34> But that goes against subtle hinting of the article of parenting being the cause of suicide. If it were parenting wouldn't suicide be high earlier as well (before college)?

Maybe it isn't cultural within families but peer social groups that are setting the bar too high. I'm arguing the stress may not actually be from the parents but the desire to fit in with others in the group.

<comment><USER35> Then I misunderstood your toplevel comment as "Asians are more comfortable with suicide culturally (insert samurai references here) therefore we can expect higher rates of suicide". My evidence against that was that AAs don't actually have higher than average suicide rates and that being part of the culture reduces suicide rates.

Also since you mentioned catholics, you may be interested in this: [http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn- church-a...](http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-church- attendance-suicide-20160629-snap-story.html)

<comment><USER34> Yes that is why I was deeply concerned that my comment was interpreted as _" samurai reference"_.

I really regret mentioning catholics as I could see how it easily confuses even more.

My overall point was the author seemed to be connecting too many dots and thus in my mind might make it less likely to be true.

Originally I contemplated bringing up the the stereotypes of cultural conformity (as in some cultures are influenced by groups and deeply desire to be part of the group/conform) but this is a dangerous topic (regardless of being PC as it can quickly get heated). Peer conformity would certainly be less points to connect (cause/effect) than parents causing college aged AA's to commit suicide (regardless of ethnicity).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> My parents and collegiate experiences were much like the author's. I would call them asking for advice, only for them to ask about how I'm pursuing happiness. That openness and lack of using perfection as a goal allowed me to pursue first (pre-)medicine, then (pre-)graduate school (Biochemistry), and finally Computer Science throughout college. After four years, I found myself with two majors (Biochemistry and CS) and can only thank my parents for not pushing me in one direction, as I've never been happier as I am now developing software in the biotech space.

</comment><comment><USER37> > Kate Chia, a 2015 graduate of New York University [with a degree in > Psychology], is studying copywriting at Miami Ad School.

Not sure we should be looking to this person's story as a role model.

</comment><comment><USER38> In my experience, asian parents tend to vastly underestimate the importance of genetics that predetermine a child's strengths and dispositions. Kids that are born with some combination of great working memory, processing speed, and abstract reasoning ability will do fine at math and science with an order of magnitude less effort than others. For these kids, being pushed to perfection in school can be beneficial. For others, the expectation that they need to do as well as the other kid on the SATs or in engineering or medicine or whatever often leads to the problems the author describes (suicidal ideation, depression, etc...). Sure, everyone should be encouraged to try their best but there needs to be more focus on cultivating everyone's unique strengths. Often times the people getting perfect SAT scores aren't studying any more than others (in my experience, less), yet asian parents will tend to believe that their kid's imperfect score is due merely to a lack of effort.

<comment><USER39> Interesting - to me, it seems like asian parents have recognized that genetics have less of a role than you might think. When I look at math contest results (in the US), asian kids are completely dominating. Either asian kids are just inherently better at math (probably not), or their parents have realized that they can instill the work ethic and studiousness to produce these results even if their kid isn't a natural genius.

<comment><USER38> Yes, preparation makes a big difference in math olympiad but most of those competing at a high level are already very talented to begin with. The problem is when a parent expects their kid to achieve similar performance when they don't have the raw skills. By attributing no role to inherent ability, blame is always put solely on the child for not trying hard enough. Even within a given family, you'll notice that some kids are better much more talented than their brothers or sisters at a given task, and the difference is not really preparation (especially since these differences can often be seen at a very young age).

<comment><USER40> You're describing a fixed vs. growth mindset. This applies both to your current perception of people (notably children), and also your perception of yourself when you're a child.

I believe in the growth mindset - to explain your example of sibling dominance, I believe that a child's mindset heavily influences their ability to learn. If it has a positive effect, the preparation they do is both more effective and more bountiful (this is usually classified as stubbornness / determination). But preparation _is_ necessary to perform a task at a high level. When you hear of 'prodigies', they often started whatever it was - math, music, sports, programming - at a very early age, and reaped the interest.

<comment><USER38> Why not both? Both preparation and inherent ability are important. I find it implausible that everything can be explained by "mindset." Perfect pitch is a good example, it's a useful ability and cannot really be developed through training. Other factors are more subtle but are also fixed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> I was raised the oppossing camp. The effects: psyche to fix, loneliness and I still have to work in warehouses.

</comment><comment><USER42> This phenomenon reminds me of what it's like to send PRs to a project, hoping it gets approved and merged ASAP... Then being given push rights, and suddenly finding yourself on the other side of the fence: hoping PRs are reviewed very rigorously and merged only after much scrutiny, to keep the code quality and maintainability up, scope low, etc.

</comment><comment><USER43> In high school I asked my parents if they'd pay me for hood grades, like I'd seen from some of my friends.

Mh parents agreed they'd pay me my GPA, which converted from the Danish grade range and currency meant I could make from 0 to 2 dollars a year..

I actually quite liked that system.

</comment><comment><USER44> What amazing parents. I know Asian parents well, and this is utterly extraordinary.

</comment><comment><USER45> I had to tell my son something similar as he was terrified of getting detention at school. I told him if he got detention, I'd get him whatever toy he wanted.

</comment><comment><USER46> Had to think for a bit about the sign or direction of "or lower". A and B are less than C in my everyday existence.

</comment><comment><USER47> I'm gonna show this to my mom now. Hope she doesnt smack me.

</comment><comment><USER48> That was a very good clickbait for me as a college student.

</comment><comment><USER49> maybe it's just genetics then.

<comment><USER35> This is where I really wish there were a good dataset of SAT scores of non- asian kids adopted by asian parents. Of course that also runs into the issue of asian-american parents who adopt might be different than the tiger parents.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> When I was a 3rd grader in South Korea I had the hardest time solving the simplest arithmetic problems. My teacher used to keep me after hours as a punishment until I was able to solve them. I think it was literally something like "2+3-3+2+2-100+39". You could say that I was pretty much in the opposite end of "exceptional" on any subject — was NEVER serious about school back then and completely ignorant of education (probably didn't even know what this meant).

To me school was a place where I went to hang out with friends for 7 to 8 hours, and yet, I don't remember my parents doing anything about it, not even a light discussion about my education. This went on for several years even during my early school years in the U.S. (my family immigrated in the middle of my 3rd grade year).

It was only when I started watching stargate and other scifi movies/tvshows that I got interested in science and technology, and thought "Hey, maybe I might try this thing called education so that I can do things that these guys are doing in the tv!", but realized that I was still extremely subpar at math and english (not to mention i even sucked at korean - got worse now, but i think i got a little bit better at english), and pretty much everything else, flunked algebra in high school and mostly Cs and rarely Bs on other subjects, and miraculously A in PE hahaha.

At the time I knew I had to do something about it, so I asked my parents for help, but sadly got close to none. They hired some tutors for me but it never worked out (you could really tell, the tutors were frustrated at how stupid I was). At some point I realized that I had to take this matter into my own hands - had to start all over from the fundamentals. At which point I actually started reading books, writing, memorizing, solving (math problems), I had to pretty much make up for what people usually learned in their primary school up to jr. high years. I eventually managed to do well in math, improved speaking/writing/reading in english a little bit, trained myself in scientific thinking, got into physics at a university and now I'm working as a software engineer. Buried in financial aid debt... :(

The thing about people though... is that we forget quite a lot of things we learned 10 years ago, but the most coolest thing nowadays is that as long as you have a way of getting information into your head, your education only ends at your last breath. Although when I was growing up I hardly saw my father, and my parents never intervened in regards to my education, they were there for moral support, life lessons, and the list goes on. I think that in the near future if I were to have children of my own, first and foremost I'd hope to see them growing up healthy, and that they'd find something they're interested in earlier in their lives, but I'm not sure if it will help to be strict with their education, we'll see.</comment>


Success Is Official: Russian Team Breaches Buried Antarctic Lake - <AUTHOR> http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=russian-team-breaches-buried-antarctic-lake

<comment><USER2> This is totally off-topic but why, oh why, must publishers still break the stories over to 2-5 pages? Why is this ancient optimization still such a common and seemingly ever-continuing practice?

I understood it in the 1990's when bandwidth was scarce and downloading a 5KB beginning of an article made sense instead of downloading a 30KB complete text before you could evaluate if it's a good article or a bad article. But these days the text body is still few kilobytes but it is decorated with hundreds of kilobytes of images, advertisements, and scripting while the broadband could suck up even a lot more. So we actually end up using a lot more bandwidth because we have to essentially load the same article several times, at different sections.

Printable versions and Readability do help but it's still a nuisance. Who would lose and lose what if the articles were generally offered on a single page?

<comment><USER3> > But these days the text body is still few kilobytes but it is decorated with > hundreds of kilobytes of images, advertisements

Multiple page views for a single article means multiple advertisement impressions, which often means more money for the publishers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Hmm Russians Americans and Brits with 2 out of 3 using state of the art equipment. Looking for oil under the cover of science?</comment>


Oh wait...Official Dates and Official WWDC 2012 iOS App Announced - <AUTHOR> http://www.shoutpedia.com/wwdc-2012-iphone-app-download-11162/

<comment><USER2> Someone needs to do their homework. The dates have been official for at least a month.</comment>


Solution to climate change? Learn to let our current civilization die - <AUTHOR> http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/12/21/were-doomed-now-what/?_r=0 <comment><USER2> This article reads like the rantings of someone who was well educated long ago, but has since watched daytime news every day.

The world is more peaceful than ever. You are less likely to die to violence now than at any other point in history. Medicine is better than any other point in history. As populations grow larger, they also grow older and people have fewer kids.

We aren't going to overpopulate the earth. We aren't going to run out of materials. We aren't going to destroy the environment. We aren't going to blow up the earth.

That is lazy thinking. Life has grown and expanded for billions of years. Humanity will continue growing and expanding into the future. We couldn't stop it if we tried.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hm, I think though there will be serious societal consequences to climate change in particular - particularly around scarcity of resources (we may not "run out" but there is a finite amount of resources that we are rapidly using up) and territorial claims (I think they will shift from land to sea, as we're already seeing with the South China Sea and the Arctic) - while humanity will continue growing and expanding, it's about consciously shaping what we want that expansion to look like. I really liked the point about multiple perspectives - "Most important, we need to give up defending and protecting our truth, our perspective, our Western values, and understand that truth is found not in one perspective but in their multiplication, not in one point of view but in the aggregate, not in opposition but in the whole."

<comment><USER3> On the other hand giving up western values would produce a vacuum so abhorred by nature; The truth in multiplication and aggregation of perspective is actually one of the western values, as is egalitarianism of sexes and races. To give up these values is to replace them with ones quite potentially less humanitarian; who in their sane mind (and education) would rally us to give up enlightenment and rationalism as values? If anything, we must cherish and defend them, while simultaneously expanding them. Now the platform for those values - the dogma - is of another question; if we are talking about progressing economic systems, social systems, methods of up-keeping our values - count me in. But casting all values aside, while so Nietzschely romantic (breaking old tables without having written new ones), is short-sighted and very, very dangerous.

<comment><USER2> Get rid of religiosity and give me scientific education and political decision making and we will be fine

<comment><USER4> Problem here is that we don't have "scientific" viable moral framework. Western values are built on the fading influences of Catholicism and Protestantism, neither is coming back. Utilitarianism has been trying to break into mainstream, but its not really applicable to real life.

Then there is individualism. But it has gone bit too far. It is currently making people lonely, unsafe and unhappy. Then as persons yearn for collectivity, they are giving up their privacy in virtualized group meetings over internet.

<comment><USER5> There's no such thing as a scientific moral framework; the concept is incoherent, like a four-sided triangle. Science answers "is" questions, not "ought" questions.

Science can inform moral decisions by providing information about which actions will achieve the goals set by a moral framework, but not can't provide you with a moral framework.

(Specific religions also probably get too much credit for providing moral framework; while its not an incoherent idea, its usually inaccurate -- usually, a moral framework coevolves with a religion, or has a religion constructed -- ot split off from some predecesssor -- to support it, rather than really emerging from the religion.)

<comment><USER4> I don't really care if religions didn't create moral frameworks. The point is that a religion can justify one. "Why can't I kill Joe, he is an asshole! - Because God said murder is wrong."

Philosophy might be able to do that too, but the west doesn't seem to be aligning behind any one philosophy. And there are no credible purely philosophical moral frameworks to pick from.

<comment><USER5> > Philosophy might be able to do that too, but the west doesn't seem to be > aligning behind any one philosophy.

The West was never united behind one religious moral framework even when it had, at the highest descriptive level, one dominant religion -- _both_ racial/sexual equality (as cited above) _and_ strong racial/sexual discrimination were justified by reference to Christianity; likewise both religious tolerance and religious persecution have been.

"People don't agree on one moral framework" is an issue, sure, but its not a new issue in the West, nor is it one in anyway linked to the decline in the dominance of Christianity.

> And there are no credible purely philosophical moral frameworks to pick > from.

There are plenty of moral frameworks not grounded in religion to pick from (everyone, inevitably, _has_ a moral framework, and lots of people don't have religions.)

Not sure what your criteria for "credible" is, or how you've determined that no existing non-religious moral framework satisfies it.

<comment><USER4> The "egalitarianism of sexes and races" is based on bible. West didn't agree on many single issues, but for couple millenia west agreed on bible as moral authority.

In the future if there is something that deviates west from those values, there is nothing to turn us back. For a long time there was bible and "god created all men as his image". But we don't care about that shit anymore. We only care about money.

Nazi Germany could not happen before 1930 because people were too religious. It was pushed back by outside forces, still clinging on religious moral framework. When memory of concentration camps fades eventually, there is no such thing left.

The only current challenger for moral framework for the atheist is utilitarianism. Which happens to he hopelessly inapplicable to real life. So we can't really rely on any "western values" endlessly. Which could be good or bad thing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> There really is a lot to this piece, but my favorite passages, to start, grapple with Nietzsche's quote, "Man will sooner will nothingness than not will." -

"When he wrote 'Man will sooner will nothingness than not will,' Nietzsche was exposing the destructive side of humanity's meaning-making drive. That drive is so powerful, Nietzsche's saying, that when forced to the precipice of nihilism, we would choose meaningful self-annihilation over meaningless bare life. This insight was horrifically borne out in the Götterdämmerung of Nazi Germany, just as it's being borne out today in every new suicide attack by jihadi terrorists — even as it's being borne out here at home in our willfully destructive politics of rage."

"Our drive to make meaning is more powerful than oil, the atom, and the market, and it's up to us to harness that power to secure the future of the human species."</comment>