Are Google employees being discouraged from using Python for new projects? - <AUTHOR> http://groups.google.com/group/unladen-swallow/browse_thread/thread/4edbc406f544643e <comment><USER2> It sounds less like they're being discouraged from using Python, and more like they're being encouraged to think critically about what sorts of projects Python would excel at.

Put another way, they're being encouraged to use the right tool for the job.

<comment><USER3> What's wrong with prototyping a service using Python and if it takes off port it to a better language for scalability?

<comment><USER4> The problem is that at Google, "taking off" is often equivalent to "launching". When Google launches stuff, it can have millions of users on day 1.

<comment><USER5> This. Working for a company with a large audience means that your problem often is no longer getting people to pay attention. Your problem is getting it right, at scale, in multiple languages and locales. This can be alleviated somewhat with internal tests, invite-only alphas, bucket testing, and "labs" features.

<comment><USER6> That and good monitoring.

I always try to launch services with very detailed server monitoring - I want to know how much memory is being used with what, how much I/O and how much time the CPUs spend doing non-application stuff. I want to monitor response times, queue and dataset sizes and anything that helps me say if we will need more servers, different servers or what parts of the application we should port to amd64 assembly.

<comment><USER7> Out of interest.. How do you do that?

<comment><USER6> Munin and some custom plug-ins. It does not give me all the data I would like, but we found a bug the other day by looking at some graphs and how one related to the rest of them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The biggest risk Google faces is _not_ developing some awesome new thing. There is very little risk that they will develop some awesome new thing, but not be able to make it scale.

If discouraging developers from using Python means that one great project doesn't happen it's probably a net lose for them.

<comment><USER9> But would it mean that? Would using server-side javascript make the project less likely to happen? How many projects absolutely depend on the language they're implemented in - especially given that javascript gives you all the scripting features that c++/java lack.

<comment><USER10> _Would using server-side javascript make the project less likely to happen?_

Yes. The library infrastructure of server-side JavaScript is pitiable compared to Python (or C++ or Java). This will change, I have no doubt, and I believe JavaScript will become the most popular language for practically everything short of systems programming in the not too distant future (7-10 years, perhaps), but it's definitely not as easy to build a server-side app in JavaScript today as it is in Python, Ruby, Perl, etc.

<comment><USER11> I'm using Rhino on the JVM.

Imagine writing Java code, without having to type classnames all the time and you have a rough approximation of what its like.

(And yes, you can import arbitrary Java bits into Rhino. It is "freaking sweet")

<comment><USER10> But Rhino has the same performance issues as Python and Perl and Ruby, doesn't it?

According to one benchmark ( <http://ejohn.org/apps/speed/> ), Rhino is generally several orders of magnitude slower than Spidermonkey and Tamarin. Which probably means that it is also orders of magnitude slower than Python, Perl and Ruby.

Since JavaScript was suggested as an alternative to Python to act as a reasonable substitute for C++ and Java for performance reasons, suggesting a JavaScript implementation that seems to be _dramatically_ slower than even Python seems nonsensical.

While JavaScript is a lovely language, and I'm all for it being used more on the server-side, Rhino only solves the lack of libraries problem when compared to Python...it does not solve the performance/memory problem of using Python at Google scale.

Unless, of course, things have changed dramatically since any of the benchmarks I found were run.

<comment><USER11> Rhino is a mature project, so at least for my purposes, this was actually a bit more important than performance.

The other thing is that it allowed my team to rewrite pieces into Java as needed without it looking dramatically different.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Also, keep in mind that you have to get _very_ big before this becomes an issue. If you're at Yahoo, Google, MSN - yes, language issues can become a performance design consideration.

If you're at merely a big site, like Ticketmaster, IMDb, or Livejournal, with good software design you can handle a lot of load with reasonable responsiveness. (All those three sites are written in perl, in fact. I've worked for one of them.)

If your page views per day on your project aren't peaking in the billions, you're probably better off optimizing for the language that your team is most competent in.

<comment><USER13> No you don't have to be _very_ big, not even big, for the language to become a design consideration. You just have to do more than ship a few strings back and forth between the browser and the database.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> "I don't think it's possible to make an implementation like CPython as fast as an engine like V8 or SquirrelFish Extreme that was designed to be fast above all else."

Are they saying that JavaScript is already faster than Python? I've only recently started using some Python, and while it seems to be a decent language, I have not yet seen much that would make me prefer it over JavaScript. Some things are a bit smoother in Python, others are smoother in JS. Here's hoping that JavaScript will win :-)

<comment><USER15> V8 is very impressive. It is one of the fastest virtual machines for dynamic languages. Look where it scores on the shootout.

[http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/u32/benchmark.php?test=all...](http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/u32/benchmark.php?test=all&lang=all&box=1)

It is nearly 10x faster than Ruby 1.8 and 5x faster than CPython. Of the shootout, it is the fastest dynamically typed language other than LuaJIT.

<comment><USER16> Uh, SBCL is dynamically-typed.

<comment><USER17> The SBCL tests submitted to the shootout are using type annotations heavily.

In that test it doesn't count as a dynamic-typed language.

<comment><USER16> So is C dynamically typed when it converts an integer to a pointer?

<comment><USER17> No, that's called loosely typed.

Having type annotations is a big deal because you can infer certain things at compile time.

Take for instance (+ x y). In CLisp "+" is a multi-method, the dispatch being done at runtime, but if you know that x and y are both integers, there's no need to search the right method to call at runtime, its address is already known. And then you can also decide to inline its code at compile-time if there aren't any conflicts (mostly like a macro, but without the laziness).

Of course, in dynamically-typed languages you have the freedom to infer these things at runtime, in certain situations you can infer the types of "x" and "y", you can use a cache for the call sites, and so on, but it's a lot more complicated, and one of the reasons is that for every optimization you do, you have to be ready to de-optimize when the assumptions have been invalidated.

That's why I said SBCL doesn't count as being dynamic in that test because it probably makes full use of those static annotations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It just depends on what sort of project it is. If you know that you will get millions of users per day starting from day 1, then you have to design for some level of scale from the beginning. Prototypes in Python are common at Google, but usually it will have to be rewritten before launch.

</comment><comment><USER18> So (at least small) Python programs tend to have less lines than Java ones - OK. That makes them maybe less bug prone. But Java, being laughed at all the time, has got to be one of the most mature and supported programming languages out here. It means it have an outstanding toolset on every platform, and that the Virtual Machine is extremely well optimized. Damn, Java is almost as fast as C++ when written well. After that, it depends on the programmers skill. That's another discussion :)

</comment><comment><USER19> The scalability argument doesn't make sense to me. When you're dealing with Google's scale, you need to parallelize horizontally, and you need to design your software in a way which lends itself to horizontal parallelization. For this type of software how much you squeeze out of a given machine is almost irrelevant to scalability (other than the cost of maintaining the extra machines). Of course once the cost goes up too much, you can always rewrite in C.

<comment><USER20> The cost _starts out_ too high to justify releasing something that's not optimized when you're operating at Google's scale, especially since the development costs are largely up front whereas the ongoing compute costs keep going for at least a few years. If they didn't keep an eye on this stuff, those factors of 2-10x would eat them alive.

For some value of M and N, having N million users around for M months means that development costs are actually cheaper than compute costs, and I'd assume that they've now reached a point where most new products expect to see more than that magic number of users. A few engineers for a few extra months is only ~100k, and I have no trouble believing that many Google products cost them at least that much over their lifetimes due to resource consumption.

The rest of us can safely ignore all this because our products actually need to grow before we pass that threshold, at which point we deal with the issues; Google is in an enviable position where no optimization is premature.

Even for the rest of us, though, given the performance differences in Python vs. Java (best case 2-4x, worst case more like 40x) relative to the productivity differences (I can't believe this is more than 10x, even for someone very comfortable in Python and merely competent at Java), I'd suspect that many high use software projects even outside of behemoths like Google are actually cheaper in the long run if they're done in Java than they would be in Python.

Prototypes are another issue altogether, but I haven't seen anything that says Google is discouraging people to do those in whatever language they want; AFAIK it's production code that we're talking about here.

<comment><USER21> Some concrete numbers on the productivity differences would help.

The chart in _Software Estimation_ by McConnell, adapted from _Software Cost Estimation with Cocomo II_ is that projects are 2.5 * bigger in C than Java, and 6 * bigger in C than they would be in Perl or Smalltalk. Assuming that Python is equivalent to Perl, that would mean that Java requires 2.4 times as many lines. Those estimates are from 2000. Both languages have improved since then, but I'll go with that estimate because I don't have more recent figures backed up by quantitative data rather than someone's opinion.

Research across many languages suggests that lines of code/developer/day are roughly constant, so Python development should average 2.4 times as fast as Java.

Let's suppose that your programmers are paid $80K/year. On average people cost about double their salary (after you include benefits, tools, office space, etc), so each programmer costs you $160K/year. Per Python programmer replaced you need 2.4 Java programmers which means an extra $224K/year in cost. Let's suppose your computers have an operating cost of $14K/year. (I am throwing out a figure for regular replacement, networking, electricity, sysadmins, etc.) Then the cost per Python programmer replaced will cover 16 more machines.

And it can get worse. Research into productivity versus group size suggests that productivity peaks at about 5-7 people. When you have more developers than that the overhead for communication exceeds productive work done unless you introduce processes to limit direct communication. Those processes themselves reduce productivity. As a result you don't get back to the same productivity a team of 5-7 people has until you have a team of around 20 people. If you grow you'll eventually need to make this transition, but it should be left as long as possible.

Therefore if a Python shop currently has less than a dozen webservers per developer, switching to Java does not look like it makes sense. And furthermore if you've got 3-7 Python developers then the numbers suggest that a Java switch will force you over the maximum small team size and force you to wind up with a large team at _much_ higher expense.

For this reason I believe that the vast majority of companies using agile languages like Perl, Ruby and Python would be worse off if they switched to Java. When you serve traffic at the scale of Google this dynamic changes. But most of us aren't Google.

<comment><USER22> > Research across many languages suggests that lines of code/developer/day are > roughly constant, so Python development should average 2.4 times as fast as > Java.

Some people, with more Java experience than me, claim that modern IDEs like IntelliJ make them as productive with Java as they would be with Python. Java's verbosity is "mechanical", and if your tools help you with that, it's hard for me to buy 2.4x productivity difference. You are also assuming that static typing has no effect on how many people can work together. In Python (which I use for prototyping and appreciate), one might often wonder "does this method take a class, an instance of a class, or the returned value as an argument", etc.

<comment><USER21> Debates on relative productivity are endless. I used the only numbers I have available that are backed by actual quantitative data rather than opinion. I'd love to see more up to date numbers.

However even if you assume that the difference is much smaller, say a factor of 1.2, then you can afford an extra 2.3 computers for every developer. Oddly enough in the various companies I know well with small teams of experienced scripting programmers I've never seen that high a ratio of webservers to developers, so even so switching to Java doesn't make sense.

On the question how many people can work together, needing to talk about data types is such a small portion of what people talk about that I would be shocked if it changes where the cutoff is between where small teams break down, or where large teams become as productive as that peak. That said I fully agree that Java is designed to let large teams cooperate, and that's likely to matter when you have teams of 50+ programmers. However if the productivity difference really is a factor of 2.4, and we assume linear growth in productivity for large teams, then you'll actually _need_ a team of 50 or so programmers in Java to match the team of 5-7 programmers working in a modern scripting language. Given that, if you're working in a Java team below that size you should seriously ask yourself whether having a team size that requires getting that many people working together is a self-inflicted problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Where comes the imperative that Google ought to always consider using Python for new projects? Or more Python in general?

They already contribute to Python and apparently use it in production, too, but I don't see that translating to the above.

</comment><comment><USER24> Now if "all" the opensource dynamic languages could run off the same opensource VM then that would be something?

The combined effort of all communities working towards producing a scalable & fast VM could make a big difference?

Is it time to think Parrot?

<comment><USER25> Are you posting this from 2005?

<comment><USER24> Are you posting from 1991? ;-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> If Google had a choose their development stack today without worry about any legacy development, what do you think it would look like.

I think Python/C/Erlang or Jython/Java/Erlang would be a good fit.

</comment><comment><USER27> Question popped into my head: why is Colin Winter wasting his time with idle chit-chat like this? Is he bored of Unladen Swallow already?

</comment><comment><USER28> No. Next question?

</comment><comment><USER29> <sarcasm>Maybe they should just develop everything in lisp!</sarcasm>

PS Here's to hoping the W3C adopts the sarcasm tag.

</comment><comment><USER30> Java instead of python..? ick..

Also, with the resources that Google has I'm a little baffled as to why they couldn't devote some serious effort into getting python up to spec performance wise.

<comment><USER31> They are, hence the Unladen Swallow project. But the improvements are that are possible are constrained by the language and having to maintain backwards compatibility. If Google were to just take the language and do with it what they want, they would risk alienating the community which would weaken the utility of the language. So while improvements are being made, the types of improvements are limited.

<comment><USER30> Thanks. Makes a little more sense now.

So basically: it's complicated.</comment></comment></comment>


A Group of American Teens Are Excelling at Advanced Math - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/03/the-math-revolution/426855/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> I am continually surprised by how many emails I get from teenage students thanking me for writing my math blog.

On top of that, I try to occasionally make it out to high schools to give guest lectures. I posted an example experience from one of these online [1] and I am usually looking for other opportunities to do this sort of thing. I think that if every math graduate student who is a reasonably good teacher took a day or two out of every year to visit a high school math class, we would see much more interest in math. Many of us (myself included) were not particularly interested in math in high school and didn't discover the cool stuff until college. So we were once the audience we'd be appealing to.

[1]: [http://jeremykun.com/2011/06/26/teaching-mathematics- graph-t...](http://jeremykun.com/2011/06/26/teaching-mathematics-graph- theory/)

<comment><USER3> The sad thing is that the cool stuff isn't even always complex. It's little things, like going through how the quadratic formula is derived instead of just telling someone to learn it by rote. Explaining differentiation with a bit of the logic behind it instead of just teaching rules.

But at the same time - I know I'd have/did enjoy that stuff but maybe 60% of my classes would have played up if a whole lesson was spent deriving and exploring concepts without rote learning.

Being a maths teacher has to be pretty rough, especially given the number of students who are openly hostile to it as a subject.

As an aside, I often think about my Religious Studies teacher who'd disparage topics like Maths as being irrelevant after school. We'd never use them she said. RS was vital to life success, Maths a pointless exercise. _It still winds me up to remember_.

<comment><USER4> >It's little things, like going through how the quadratic formula is derived instead of just telling someone to learn it by rote. Explaining differentiation with a bit of the logic behind it instead of just teaching rules.

Once you get in the mindset of deriving equations, rote memorization becomes insanely difficult, at least in my opinion.

During my last year as an undergrad majoring in physics I got a 4.0 in quantum mechanics, but very nearly failed introductory chemistry (which I was taking to fill a science distribution requirement at a liberal arts college), despite many of the chemistry concepts just being edge cases of applied quantum mechanics.

There was also the very embarrassing case of being called to the blackboard to complete a problem in an elective course on number theory only to draw a blank on what 9 times 7 was. I understood the solution to the problem itself, but when the professor started giving me hints I had to admit in front of the whole class that my issue wasn't with the number theory proof -- it was with the multiplication table we learn as children.

<comment><USER5>
      10 - 1 = 9

      9 * 7 = (10 - 1) * 7 = 70 - 7 = 63

I often do little calculations like this when I forget multiplication table entries.

<comment><USER4> As do I, but the pressure of the situation didn't help, especially when the natural assumption of the professor/rest of the class was that I didn't understand the much more "complicated" aspect of the proof and not something most people take for granted as just "known" from elementary school.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I was frustrated by this article because I find it taking for granted the idea that math is only accessible to a small group of people - 'talented, gifted, with an affinity for, confluence of specific abilities'. I find similar language around programs like the Russian School, Brilliant and quite obviously the 'gifted' programs.

Yet in this article they quote the following statistics:

\- High achievement in math: US 9% to SK 30% \- Ratio of high achievers affluent vs poor: US 8 to 1, SK 3 to 1

These statistics communicate to me that half of all students are capable of high achievement in mathematics. From my experience tutoring and visiting classrooms of various grade levels and demographics, most students are capable of the rich problem solving described in the article.

US education's biggest issue is social justice. We spend the least resources on the children who need it most. It's funny to me that the closing of this article suggests that it's time for the advanced mentors to step in to the public education scene. What would a group of people that cater primarily to the best-served students in the system have to say about how to help the worst-served? What would they know about the obstacles faced by poor children and parents; overworked, undertrained and unsupported teachers; and underfunded schools?

<comment><USER5> "What would a group of people that cater primarily to the best-served students in the system have to say about how to help the worst-served? What would they know about the obstacles faced by poor children and parents; overworked, undertrained and unsupported teachers; and underfunded schools?"

Hopefully they wouldn't get caught up in all that and just teach some math to whoever's interested, regardless of income level.

<comment><USER7> > teach some math to whoever's interested

But in public school you have to teach math to _everyone_. Any they aren't all interested.

<comment><USER8> One of my teacher friends taught 6th grade math. In his classes, he had to account for 4th through 8th grade math skill levels. Those with 8th grade being Khan Academy-style motivated learners.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I've taught a summer program in number theory for high school students for the past several years. Each summer, my classrooms fill with high school students that are intrigued by the idea of math and extremely capable. That is nice and inspiring, and generally more rewarding than when I teach calculus classes to university students during the school year.

But my program is prohibitively expensive, and I'm acutely aware of the fact that when my students return to their high schools, they will almost certainly return to lackluster curricula. There are exceptions, of course. My summer program is filled with a far-above-average percentage of students attending private high schools.

The fact remains that students who attend the summer program are introduced to interesting math with no guided way to continue their exploration. Sometimes, students with supportive schools end up scheduling a self-study with some supervision from a high school teacher or counselor; I've been asked to help set up and guide self-studies, and I know at least a few of them have been successful. In my experience, this has been the best outcome for my students continuing exploration of advanced math. I'm not sure what this says about math and American high school education.

<comment><USER10> "But my program is prohibitively expensive"

Why? Just curious if there's any brainstorming to be done.

Also expensive relative to what? Some people think Kumon is expensive. My kids did it for a couple years. Its about $100/month. Its very popular among immigrants who make a whole lot less money than I do. Of course Kumon isn't "real" math because its very drill -n- kill (which is why we quit, more or less)

<comment><USER9> > Why? Just curious if there's any brainstorming to be done.

I'm afraid that I don't know about the actual costs. There are several classes offered, and though students only take one at a time, they sometimes link a few and stay for up to 8 weeks. It's a pretty large board-at-the-university- for-x-weeks style summer program.

I'm an instructor, and I don't set prices. I also understand that there is a non-negligible cost to house and feed a student for a month. But program costs each student about $6000 dollars. I think that's enough to be called "prohibitively expensive," although I'm not sure how to compare these things really.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The example problem they give is pretty neat, but they don't mention the (IMO) interesting part of it. After sketching out the answer, I was suprised that the height you gain is _independent of the size of the underlying circle_. That certainly suprised me, as my intuition was that the height you would gain would shrink as the underlying circle grew -- after all, you'd be adding a constant length to an ever growing value. But the answer only depends on the amount of length you add, so the problem has the same answer whether it's the earth, the sun, or a proton. Neat!

<comment><USER12> Thanks! :) We were really thrilled to post the problem.

Our rope question from expii.com/solve is a multi-layered math puzzle. If you haven't seen it before, the answer is often quite surprising: a human can walk under the circle even though the 710 inches of extra length are shared over the whole earth's circumference. Basic human intuition produces the most common answers, which are the bacteria or the ladybug. This helps to illustrate the purpose of math: to help us reason to determine the truth when basic intuition fails. If basic intuition were always right, then we wouldn't need math!

If you had seen the puzzle before though, you would already know that the rope lifts high, because it lifts by 710/(2*pi) inches, which is 113.0000095... taking us to the second layer of math embedded deeper in the problem. That is remarkably close to a whole number, which is surprising because pi is an irrational number. This means that pi is very close to 355/113, which brings us to the topic of Continued Fraction representations of irrational numbers, and amazing rational approximations of pi: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mil%C3%BC](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mil%C3%BC)

So, this problem hits at both basic and advanced levels. :)

There are many interesting ways to teach math through multi-layered puzzles which have something for everyone, no matter where you are in the experience spectrum. Our goal is to provide these for free, disseminated over the Internet. :)

<comment><USER11> Ahh, I had assumed you had chosen that length because 2*pi is close to 6, which easily divides into 60 feet. But this is way cooler. Very neat!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> "The No Child Left Behind Act, which shaped education for nearly 15 years, further contributed to the neglect of these programs. Ignoring kids who may have had aptitude or interest in accelerated learning, it demanded that states turn their attention to getting struggling learners to perform adequately..."

teaching to population averages will prove disastrous to our long-term growth. thank goodness we have private institutions to pick up the slack where massive bureaucratic oversight often (so often) gets it wrong.

<comment><USER14> I'm glad private institutions exist too. But remember you can only get the education you can afford. Since brilliance is not necessarily related to parents' income, private education is a poor substitute for efficient, timely public education.

<comment><USER15> Exactly - that's why things like [https://www.teachforamerica.org/](https://www.teachforamerica.org/) have to exist. It's a socio-economic issue that's holding back talent in developed countries across the world, where parental income directly impacts on academic success. Considering the imbalance is so pronounced in-country, it's a real shame...

<comment><USER16> I applaud Teach for America for the effort, but I'm not sure that's really that successful. I graduated with more than a handful of people that went into TFA, and around 90% of them burned out hard after a couple years. Most of them had no teacher training, and, really, no cultural context for understanding the cultures they got dropped into. Inner city ghettos, Cajun Bayous, and Appalachian hollers are a different world than white-bread East Coast suburbia.

I think if you want to fix the disadvantaged areas of the country, you've got to reverse the brain-drain that's sucking the best and brightest people out of these communities. Decentralizing the economy would be a good first step.

<comment><USER8> The deeper problem with TFA is that by hiring TFA teachers they are literally ensuring 100% turnover in 2-3 years since TFA teachers do not usually stay past their 2-3 year assignment in their placement areas. There are a few who do stay, however, as a pure numbers game, it is not enough. Also, you can Google (or Bing) away for stories of how TFA teachers are given inadequate training and special-needs students (or worse, disruptive students) are put into their classrooms.

Up the Down Staircase is a lightly fictionalized novel about teaching in the 1960s in a public school system. Bureaucracy, parents (or lack thereof), funding, burnout. Almost 60 years later, many of the same fundamental problems still exist.

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The fundamental problem of education in public schools and its ineffectiveness is not being addressed.

It's great that many of these extracurricular clubs and institutes exist to impart advanced education to interested students. But it does not solve the underlying problem.

<comment><USER18> >The fundamental problem of education in public schools and its ineffectiveness is not being addressed.

If it so ineffective, how come americans win so many nobel prizes, have thriving high tech industry ect

[http://graphics.wsj.com/which-country-has-the-most-nobel- pri...](http://graphics.wsj.com/which-country-has-the-most-nobel-prizes/)

<comment><USER17> You cannot conclude that the current school education is not ineffective(effective) just by looking at the number of Nobel Prize winners.

The USA is lagging behind many countries in key areas( especially STEM fields).

Anyway the point I was trying to make was that, these extracurricular initiatives are great, but it cannot be a solution to a poor public school system.

<comment><USER18> >The USA is lagging behind many countries in key areas( especially STEM fields).

Lagging how?

Test scores are not a good way to measure the "lag", imo.

<comment><USER17> There is lots of research which suggests that the USA is indeed lagging behind in STEM fields. K-12 does not prepare students well enough when compared to many Asian and European countries. The numerous research articles are a Google search away.

Another indicator is the lack of sufficient skilled workforce in STEM fields in the USA. This forces many tech companies to hire from abroad.

<comment><USER16> To make a reasonable comparison to the United States, you'd have to lump a European country in with a third-world developing country to get the same level of racial and cultural heterogeneity. People always try to compare the US to Finland, when Finland has less population than New York City and the demographics of New Hampshire.

Tech companies hire abroad because it's cheap, not because there is a real skill deficit.

<comment><USER17> I don't how you would take into account all possible factors to make a perfect comparison, but objectively looking at the research and data available on this topic, it's clear to me that the USA is lagging in STEM fields.

Some tech companies do hire from abroad because it's cheaper, but there is a real skill deficit in STEM fields and there are just not enough skilled people available to recruit. This has been openly acknowledged by the tech companies, universities and the Government.

The question is not whether the USA is lagging in STEM, it is what should be done about the fact that the USA is lagging in STEM fields?

<comment><USER18> > but objectively looking at the research and data available on this topic, > it's clear to me that the USA is lagging in STEM fields.

I did some googling around this but all the research uses test scores to come to that conclusion.

I would like to see some other methodology.

<comment><USER8> While imperfect, test scores provide some context for comparison.

The being said, back in 2013, this article was widely shared. It demonstrates that you can teach STEM ways of thinking (e.g. CS), starting from early elementary grades. It does not have to be a AP-level course.

[https://neil.fraser.name/news/2013/03/16/](https://neil.fraser.name/news/2013/03/16/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Reminds me of the math program that Jason Roberts is providing to a group of younger students in Pasadena. If you've never heard the TechZing podcast I'd recommend it: [http://techzinglive.com/](http://techzinglive.com/)

</comment><comment><USER20> "Nearly everyone in the accelerated-math community says that the push to cultivate sophisticated math minds needs to start early and encompass plenty of thoughtful, conceptual learning experiences in elementary and middle school."

What hope do I have to study advanced math when I've begun to teach myself in my mid 20's?

<comment><USER21> A lot of hope. Your brain is still incredibly capable of uptaking new skills at a high rate in your mid 20s.

Your brain starts to slow down around 25-30 years of age or so, based on the major studies I've read. Eg:

[http://time.com/63500/brain-aging-at-24/](http://time.com/63500/brain-aging- at-24/)

Per that, the drop between 25 and 40, is only around 15%.

Becoming better at learning, and wiser in how you spend your time, can offset some of the cognitive decline that comes with age versus the raw capability of youth that is perhaps more squandered due to lack of wisdom.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I think that excellence in math is actually in everyone's reach. The main questions are why and how to reach it. :)

The article surveys the field of enrichment programs and activities, many of which are available only to people in certain areas. I've witnessed the immense local impact of those outreach efforts, while visiting Math Circles, high schools, and academic competitions around the country. The people who lead those events (mostly after-hours or on weekends) are an incredible bunch, and many of them do it out of their passion for the subject.

However, I think we would all gain if we could engage everyone in math/science, no matter where they live. The success of these programs shows that interesting content increases interest! The Internet allows us to level the playing field, and scale the impact of free educational resources to the world.

I was once at a math education conference where groups were pitching ways to develop math talent. These programs sometimes need financial sponsorship from governments or foundations, so that they can remain accessible across socioeconomic lines. On the second morning of the conference, I suddenly thought: how much money does our public school system spend trying to teach soccer each year? (I don't think it's much.) It seems that many students achieve fairly high levels of proficiency regardless.

Of course, there is still much value in funding the current math education efforts, but that made me think about whether significant gains could come from finding out how to communicate educational content in the most engaging way. That would take a page from the startup playbook (optimizing for engagement).

So, I got my hands dirty. I launched a startup (expii.com) to crowdsource and rate free interactive lessons in math and science, to quantitatively evaluate an organized collection of these resources, distributed at scale across the world. The objective is to turn every smartphone into a pocket tutor, delivering the most engaging lessons produced by the combined creativity of the world.

That's a big project. In the meantime, while the content is crowdsourcing, I also am broadcasting interesting nuggets of math each week at expii.com/solve (again free). These deliver the same topics I talk about in person at middle- and high-school math enrichment events around the country when I visit them to give guest talks: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sxVgJ_wPaM&feature=youtu.be...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sxVgJ_wPaM&feature=youtu.be&list=PLqv4sKOD1bsUoSs- SbzlA2BE1tML4A33u)

My thought process is that if I'm taking the time to develop the materials to deliver to only 200 people at a time, then we should harness the Internet to scale the distribution to the world, while also packaging the content in a fun way, to show to the mass audience why math is actually a very interesting subject. :)

Ultimately, I think that the global project to build interest and excellence in math is an enormous task, which needs the insight and hard work of a great multitude of people, and a diversity of ideas and approaches. Thanks to everyone who is pitching in on this mission! :)

</comment><comment><USER18> what a strange thing to subject your kids to, shame on these parents.

Has anyone done any studies on what these 'math wizards' end up doing in life.

I grew up in Indian community where this kind of stuff was the norm, many of my friends won regional championships but __none __of them do anything remotely related to math now. Instead of associating math with magical patterns that explain the world, they now associate it with stress /anxiety/competition.

Please don't do this repulsive stuff to your kids, read Richard Feynman's bio and see how his parents inspired him to like math/science/world.

<comment><USER22> The sort of thinking in Feynman's bio is what drives math circles, though.

I taught at a math circle for a few years; we did 'looking at awesome stuff' for two thirds of the year, and competition prep for one third of the year. Different kids came for different parts, but will came out smarter for the experience, I think.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> TLDR : American public schools suck but there is an increasing number of extracurricular math programs that help talented kids learn advanced problem solving skills. Mostly only well-educated and well-off parents get their kids into these programs. That kind of sucks, and there are marginal efforts to reach out to poorer students. But the real story right now is, if you have kids in public school, their math education sucks and you might want to look into extracurricular options -- there are lots out there.

<comment><USER24> The difference between "good schools" and "bad schools" is much more about the kids that go there than anything about the school itself. You're seeing this starkly in D.C. where gentrification in certain neighborhoods is shifting the student demographics from 90% low-income to 20% low-income over just 4-5 years. Test scores are shooting up, but it's not like they fired all the teachers and hired new staff at twice the salary.

American schools are fine. Our problems are social. For example, the U.S. has the second-highest rate of single-parent families along with one of the highest gaps in PISA scores between single-parent and two-parent households: [http://educationnext.org/international-look-single-parent- fa...](http://educationnext.org/international-look-single-parent-family).

The U.S. also has a larger fraction of children in the lowest income distribution than comparable countries: [http://www.epi.org/publication/us- student-performance-testin...](http://www.epi.org/publication/us-student- performance-testing). Accounting for that eliminates a lot of the supposed gap in U.S. student performance:

> If U.S. adolescents had a social class distribution that was similar to the > distribution in countries to which the United States is frequently compared, > average reading scores in the United States would be higher than average > reading scores in the similar post-industrial countries we examined (France, > Germany, and the United Kingdom), and average math scores in the United > States would be about the same as average math scores in similar post- > industrial countries.

<comment><USER25> Aren't schools financed by local property taxes in US. And the rich parents pay more in taxes and there is more resources in the system.

Also well off parents could help school in other ways.

<comment><USER13> teachers in bad / poor areas in the states aren't paid less than teachers in the "good" areas. cps for instance, chicago public school teachers are among the best paid and worst performing in the country.

<comment><USER26> I didn't know the teachers were the ones earning the grades. See the posts above that cite what happens to re-gentrified areas, where the social-economic make-up of a school changes but the teacher make-up does not.

<comment><USER27> You're implying teacher quality and school financing are irrelevant, and yet every conversation about public schooling in the US brings those arguments up.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


How My App Failed Even Before Making It to the AppStore - <AUTHOR> https://neilkakkar.com/quickreps.html <comment><USER2> Interesting story, I believe you should finish this project and publish it. This will also be a part of your portfolio.</comment>


Launch HN: Foiz – Holidays Tracking App - <AUTHOR> Hello everyone!
My name is Danail and I'm kind of new here but I wanted to share with a website that I have been working on -> https://foiz.io/
If is free to use, vacation days (days off work) tracker that allows you to share your calendar with other people and see the public holidays for a specific country (for now it only works for Bulgaria and Netherlands but more are coming).
It would be great if you can check it, play with it, leave some feedback and if you like it, share it with a fried :)
PS: I hope this is the right way to post on HN, if not please tell me so that I know how to do it correctly the next time. <comment><USER2> Clickable URL [https://foiz.io/](https://foiz.io/)

Usually people use 'Show HN' instead of 'Launch HN'. During submission use title and URL, and instead of text add a comment to the story. But what you've done also works.

<comment><AUTHOR> Noted, thanks I'll keep that in mind next time I post.</comment></comment>


The Larry Page Era at Google is Going to Be Aggressive - <AUTHOR> http://kara.allthingsd.com/20110203/googles-bing-attack-has-larry-page-written-all-over-it/ <comment><USER2> oh, that what I was talking about

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2168753></comment>


The Meritocracy Myth - <AUTHOR> http://www.ncsociology.org/sociationtoday/v21/merit.htm

<comment><USER2> As I see it, there are two components of a meritocracy: does merit imply success, and does success imply merit.

Many of these arguments are meant to prove that success does not imply merit. This may be true, there are plenty of rich people who did not work hard to earn their wealth.

These arguments should be removed.

We should be more worried about whether hard work implies success or not. After all, this is what will determine if people decide to work hard or not.

<comment><USER3> There's also the element of chance. A technical acquaintance of mine has a daughter who went to school for TV and film writing, and managed to land a job writing for a popular show a few years back (Ugly Betty), and make a considerable amount of money in the process.

His take on her success was as follows - in that career even if you were really good, you have a small chance (2-5% he estimated) at being in the right place at the right time (had writing credits on a show that didn't get canceled, and became popular) in which case you could make a very impressive income.

On the other hand, you could go get an engineering degree and get a job at an engineering firm. You'd have a much better chance (85-95%) at getting a job that paid well provided you did the job properly, although possibly not as well as the wildly successful writer mentioned above, and it may not be what you wanted to do. The implication is that he would have rather had her get that kind of job, but considering the outcome was quite proud of her.

I tend to think of internet startups like the TV writer gig - it's a way to have a small chance at hitting the goldmine, but less of a sure thing.

Similarly, my father is a pediatrician. He often sees kids for physicals who want to get into professional sports because they really dig soccer/basketball/football/etc. He does a math exercise with them, going over how many people are drafted a year, and basically it comes down to "Are you the best person this year in the entire state?", which the answer is usually no. Not to crush their dreams, but it's an honest dose of reality

So, in short, people should look at the chances of success before pursuing a field. Internet startups are a pretty good chance, especially considering that doing them often involves a lot of technical and business self-investment that can carry over into other jobs if it doesn't work out.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> "First, we suggest that while merit does indeed affect who ends up with what, the impact of merit on economic outcomes is vastly overestimated by the ideology of the American Dream. Second, we identify a variety of nonmerit factors that suppress, neutralize, or even negate the effects of merit and create barriers to individual mobility."

<comment><USER3> And the conclusion:

"Rather, we argue that meritocracy the idea that societal resources are distributed exclusively or primarily on the basis of individual merit is a myth. It is a myth because of the combined effects of non-merit factors such as inheritance, social and cultural advantages, unequal educational opportunity, luck and the changing structure of job opportunities, the decline of self-employment, and discrimination in all of its forms."

In short, because the universe already has an economic "state" and is changing independent of what any one individual does, the value you may derive from your own individual merit is extremely variable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The article fails to define merit, perhaps, because, it is extremely hard to define in practical and objective ways.

Failing such definition, any arguments can be made, but they will not necessarily be about merits, but maybe about agendas or thoughts or beliefs or simply opinions that the author has.

Let me take education as the only example. It states that people "tend to" get the education of their class, that is rich people private and ivory league, middle class public and public universities and the poor inner cities schools and no university. Now, the word "tend to" is extremely important. It acknowledges that it is not a rule or anywhere close to it, but somewhat the norm. So that, most people, say 80% do so. Why do the 20% not however? Might it be because the inner city poor kid is intelligent enough and has the right attitude to focus on his studies and go to university? And might it be that the rich guy does not and drifts off into a world of drugs and depression?

Merit is a quality which we define almost to be a prerequisite for success. We know it when we see it, but, to define it, is hard. In the absence of such definition, then, I really can not criticise the article because many of the points it makes may be correct in one view, but quite wrong in another.

Lets take inheritance. Of course a rich person has many benefits, money, the right attitude, the culture as the article defines it, or, nowing the rules of the game. So, seeing as this kid has all of this, then, does not whatever he acquires means that he did so because of merit? Or are we trying to define merit in the way of inherent intelligence, that is, we are all born with a certain equal number of merit, thus, there should be an equal number of poor people in each state. Or is merit a highly complex phenomena, blind indeed to your environment at times, and quite susceptible to it at other times.

I think, for me, merit is this certain quality which does contain ambition, intelligence, high self awareness, and perceptive attitude, a tendency to use reason and logics, as well as environmental factors such as a warm and loving family and others. The combination of this all is that you have these certain attitudes which make you competent and able and willing to do certain things which may lead to achievement and higher earning potential and above all, it gives you the ability to be in control of your environment and control it when things go out of control or try your hardest to do so with all your might and ability and get back on your feet.

</comment><comment><USER5> Sometimes life is unfair, but I hold as an article of faith that almost anything can be made better by getting off your butt and working hard. For me personally, there's almost nothing of value in that study. It wouldn't change my approach to life.

<comment><USER6> This article isn't so much about individuals and their decisions but society. The claim isn't that "hard work doesn't pay off". The claim is that "hard work pays of more for some than others based on non-merit factors."

Even if they are correct, this shouldn't affect our behavior. We should still try to climb to the peak of our local maxima. Even if hard work pays off more for others, it makes sense economically for me to work hard if it pays off some.

This doesn't mean we should ignore the study either. It is important as a society to continually self-evaluate to ensure that the systems we have in place are moving us toward our ideals. The purpose of a paper like this isn't (necessarily) to push a set of ideals, but to help us self-evaluate.

<comment><USER7> _"We should still try to climb to the peak of our local maxima."_

Why?

<comment><USER8> The presumption is that people like to be happy, which I believe is a tautology.

<comment><USER7> Happiness doesn't necessarily come from climbing to the top. Some people find the whole ordeal to be rather nasty, for a variety of reasons.

<comment><USER8> You're free to define your own objective function, it doesn't have to be fame or monetary success.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> People aren't paid according to their merit, they are paid according to the market value of the good or service they produce. A history major might have "merit", but they might have to go to law school to leverage it in the market.

The social policy conclusions are thrown off by this assumption that people should be paid well because they are smart.

</comment><comment><USER10> I believe that there are some factors that I do not have control over that restrict me from moving up. The things I was born with, inheritance, social status, race and the things I can't directly control such as luck or the discrimination of myself by others are just challenges to overcome or circumvent so that I might merit the success I seek through hard work and perseverance.

Whether the article is right or wrong I will not accept that I cannot get ahead through my "individual merit, which is generally viewed as a combination of factors including innate abilities, working hard, having the right attitude, and having high moral character and integrity" which are all things that I can and do control.

<comment><USER7> _"'a cobination of innate abilities, working hard, having the right attitude, and having high moral character and integrity' which are all things that I can and do control."_

Do you really control those?

Let's take them one at a time:

\- _innate abilities_ \- Do you control your _innate_ abilities? The whole point of them being innate is that you're born with them. Do you control what abilities you're born with? If so, I'd sure like to learn that trick.

\- _right attitude_ \- If you're depressed that could put a damper on your attitude. And no, seriously depressed people can't just "snap out of it". And it's not their fault they're depressed. Much the same could be said about various other emotional and psychological issues that could hamper having a "right attitude". And this doesn't even get in to the question what the "right attitude" is, or in to the phenomena of "learned helplessness".

\- _having high moral character and integrity_ \- Much of this is due to the environment you grew up in, and your family and friends. Not much you can do about any of those except your friends. And to spurn anyone who wants to be friends with you usually takes a whole lot more consciousness and "character" than most kids have. And if they do have it, it's likely due, again, to the influence of their environment, friends, and family.

Finally, there are other, more philosophical issues such as whether anyone has free will at all. If we don't have free will, then (by definition) we have no control over what we do.

<comment><USER10> You're right that you can't change the abilities you are born with but if you do use the skills that come easy to you then you can learn new abilities or work around your inabilities with those you had from birth.

I've been depressed and suicidal and if you believe that genetics contribute to it then it runs in the family since my father and brother also suffered from it. One of the most wonderful things about depression though for me was with the help of medication I was able to overcome it. Depression is just one medical issue that can effect your "right attitude" but with the right assistance you can work through those problems. You have control over your attitude. (Up to a point, there are cases where the brain as magnificent as it is will not function normally and can result in a permanent inability to have the "right attitude")

I don't believe that we are a sole product of our environment, we aren't what society made us. I haven't always had "high moral character and integrity" but I've change how I think over time about my life. You can change how you think, I believe we aren't set in stone completely.

Ah and then free will comes into play. I believe we have free will and thus we have complete control and responsibility for what we do.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The article is largely trying to, in effect, refute the usefulness of HN. If merit counts for little, i.e., if reading about and doing all the things that are discussed on HN is a waste of time, then why is this site here and why are you reading it?

If you save and invest $40 a day for the next 35 years you can retire comfortably, though you won't normally be rich. Deferral of gratification will conquer a lot in a reasonably free society. That's harder now, as inflation punishes those who save and we're seeing rising prices everywhere except housing prices.

<comment><USER12> > The article is largely trying to, in effect, refute the > usefulness of HN. > If merit counts for little, i.e., if > reading about and doing all the > things that are discussed > on HN is a waste of time, then why is this site > here and > why are you reading it?

I don't think the article is trying to say that work (or entrepreneurship) is independent of wealth, just that it is not nearly are correlated as people would like to think.

The article is probably not useful to an individual trying to optimise their own wealth; it is, however, useful when it comes to the evaluation of public policy (which is a duty of all citizens in democratic countries).

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> _"We suggest four ways in which American society could be made more genuinely meritocratic.

First, current forms of discrimination could be reduced or eliminated. Second, the wealthy could be encouraged to redistribute greater amounts of their accumulated wealth through philanthropy in ways that would provide greater opportunity for the less privileged. Third, the tax system could be redesigned to be genuinely progressive in ways that would close the distance between those at the top and the bottom of the system. Fourth, more government resources could be allocated to provide more equal access to critical services such as education and health care. "_

The "North Carolina Sociological Association" sounds socialist. Color me surprised.

A system doesn't have to guarantee results in order to be fair. Some people work a lot harder or smarter than others and that is the ultimate source of any wealth discrepancy.

<comment><USER14> If the conclusions they've draw are illogical then you should point out why. Perhaps the methodology is bad. If so then state why. If you are unable to point out any of these things then why do you not agree with the conclusion?

<comment><USER15> I found the article to be weak, throughout. Shoddy analysis dressed up with citations of marginal importance. It starts by just asserting that the American dream is that America is a meritocracy. The section with with tables showing American wealth and income distributions concludes with this bit of "reasoning":

> The highly skewed distribution of economic outcomes, however, appears quite > in excess of any reasonable distribution of merit. Something that is > distributed "normally" cannot be the direct and proportional cause of > something with such skewed distributions. There has to be more to the story > than that.

Right, so the American Dream is a perfect meritocracy AND that doesn't just mean wealth caused by merit, but it means wealth is supposed to be directly proportional to merit (e.g. contains no winner-take-all dynamics).

It's a long article and I'm not going to address everything it contained, but the facts it cites weren't new or surprising and the analysis wasn't insightful.

<comment><USER16> _...it means wealth is supposed to be directly proportional to merit (e.g. contains no winner-take-all dynamics)._

And that merit is assumed to be normally distributed. They also seem to make some fairly strong independence assumptions:

 _If poverty were exclusively due to individual differences, we would expect rates of poverty to be randomly distributed throughout the county._

This of course makes the implicit assumption that individual differences are neither correlated with location, nor do individuals of high merit _change_ their location. The latter is certainly false...</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Incorporating and legalities is not an excuse. - <AUTHOR> http://kulpreet.com/post/2575535086/incorporating-and-legalities-is-not-an-excuse

<comment><USER2> I'd like to offer a correction/clarification. My intention isn't to point out that you were wrong, but to prevent someone else from getting the wrong idea.

You said that you decided to form this corporation as a not-for-profit [assuming this was a 501(c)(3)] because: "a project of this sort could only generate so much revenue," and "since it was my first major project, it only made sense to start somewhere small and make the organization non-profit."

The revenue generating capability of an organization is not something you consider when you decide to go not-for-profit. There are non-profit organizations that receive hundreds of millions of dollars a year in income. Non-profit organizations can make a little or a lot, it doesn't really matter.

The size of a corporation also has little or nothing to do with whether or not you should structure your company as a not-for-profit. Examples of some large non-profits are:

Org (2010 revenue) Mayo Clinic ($7.9 billion) United Way ($3.84 billion) American Cancer Society ($926 million) National Red Cross ($3.21 billion)

Not-for-profit organizations have many strict limitations on their method of operation. Everything from funding to salaries are limited in some fashion. You typically opt to form a not-for-profit corporation when you are forming a charity that you want to protect from becoming a profit motivated enterprise once you've moved on.

<comment><AUTHOR> You make a really good point. But as I mentioned in the article during my research process I found that for tax purposes if you keep the gross receipts of a non-profit below $5,000/year you automatically get 501(c)(3) status and the process of filing taxes is very straightforward. Before the Pension Protection Act of 2006 non-profits that made less than $25,000 weren't even required to file annual tax returns. Regardless, I wasn't expecting to make more than $5,000/year anyway.

Basically, since it was my first major project and I wasn't expecting to make more than $5,000/year non-profit seemed to be the way to go.

<comment><USER3> _Heavily edited_

Ok, so my wife is around now. She's a CPA/PhD in accounting and does a lot of work with small businesses, so I suppose she knows what she's talking about. While non-profits are not her specific area of study, she does do the accounting work for a couple of local non-profits. She's never steered me wrong yet:)

So that said:

The $5000 exemption you reference does not alleviate you of the other requirements for operating a 501(c)(3). More specifically your company must operate for a specific "exempt purpose" ([http://www.irs.gov/charities/charitable/article/0,,id=175418...](http://www.irs.gov/charities/charitable/article/0,,id=175418,00.html)).

If I'm following the article correctly, you wrote an iPhone app that does not fall under any of those exempt purposes. Therefore, even operating under the $5000 receipts limit, your company is not eligible for 501(c)(3) tax exempt status.

Any income that you made from the app should be treated as personal income. You don't even need to form a business entity to do business at all. You can take that $5000 and declare it as personal income just like any other income you make throughout the year. That does open you up to increased liability, which is why LLC's have become a preferred vehicle for proprietorships and partnerships. In most states it's nothing more than a very short form and $25-$100. It grants you some protection for your brand as well as limiting your liability in certain situations (for instance, it provides a shield to your personal assets for lawsuits around copyright infringement).

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for asking your wife :). I'll keep that in mind next June because 2010 was our first "profitable" year.

We have a tax-exempt purpose— it's charitable. We're actually raising money to build computers for remote villages in North India and donating the rest to a blind school. The iPhone app is just a means of fundraising.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Did you incorporate in Rhode Island for any reason other than the absence of age restrictions?

We aren't exactly known as a business friendly state, unless you're an anti- government[1] retired up baseball player who has decided to take handouts from the governor [2].

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curt_Schilling#Political_advoca...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curt_Schilling#Political_advocacy)

[2] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/38_Studios>

<comment><AUTHOR> They also automatically grant state tax-exemption, if you are tax-exempt for federal taxes

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Only tangentially related to the article, but please use a more screen- friendly font than Helvetica Neue Light for bodies of smaller-point text. It was a bit painful to read.

</comment><comment><USER6> Based on what you did, its pretty obvious that you did not consult a lawyer, because what you did is illegal under US tax law.

Nonprofits are required to meet specific requirements to get tax-exempt treatment _before_ engaging in income-generating activity. 501(c)(3) status _is not granted automatically_ (IOW, it is not granted "statutorily"). It is a legal status specifically granted by the IRS after a review.

Income raised prior to receiving the exemption is almost always treated as income earned through non-exempt (i.e., for-profit) activities. There are exceptions, of course, but you need to consult a tax lawyer (specializing in non-profit/charitable tax law) to figure out if you qualify for those exceptions. There are very important reasons behind this (including, but not limited to, the deductibility of transactions).

State tax law may be more permissive, but that only affects your state tax status. Federal tax law governs your federal tax status. It may be possible to be a non-profit for state taxation but a for-profit for federal taxation.

Also, to address inaccuracies in your blog post: 1) There are no age restrictions in any state on incorporation. However, few businesses will enter into contracts with minors unless their parents guarantee the contracts because minors have very special rights under American contract law.

2) There is no need to incorporate a solo operation. Incorporation is intended to simplify accounting for collaborative efforts. Individuals can simply register a DBA (if they're making up a "company" name"). In your case, incorporating is proper: you claim to be founding a charitable organization, so incorporation is a necessary step to receiving tax-exempt status.

3) It's humorous to see that you believe that a non-profit only needs to file 2 forms, online, once a year. Those two forms are just the start. There's a lot more paperwork involved.

You need to consult a lawyer, immediately, because you may receive a call from the IRS in the near future.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the heads up. You're probably right that filling out 2 forms is humorous, but it is the bare minimum and I did get away with it for the 2009 tax year (which we had no activity because we incorporated late in the year). I'm eventually going to have to file the W-9 with Apple and some other forms if I plan on sending money abroad.

After I was done incorporating and everything was ready, I did consult an accountant and he did say there might be some issues down the road, but only if I was planning on taking money out of the country (which I kind of am). I also did have to make a phone call to one of the IRSs numbers to have them add the organization to the list of tax-exempt organizations, so I could file my 990N online. They did make me verify that my gross receipts were less than $5,000/year.

Regarding age restrictions: In New Jersey and a lot of other states, the law specifically states that you need to be 18 years or older to incorporate and/or be a board member of the organization. This isn't true in some other states, depending how lenient their laws are. I ended up incorporating in Rhode Island, because they didn't have any age restriction and you are automatically tax exempt at the state level if you are at the federal level.

Thanks for the advice. I'll probably contact you or someone else if I do have any issues.</comment></comment>


Mastodon 2.5 released - <AUTHOR> https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2018/09/mastodon-2.5-released/ <comment><USER2> The broad approach to social networking presented by Mastodon and other federated networks is "spend your time/resources on funding the network instead of paying someone else much less to do it." It wont "work" for the same reason everyone doesn't host their own email service. It flies in the face of a broader cultural movement we have: specialization of labor.

For instance, the solution to content moderation and harassment is:

> "Mastodon comes with effective anti-abuse tools to help protect yourself. > Thanks to the network's spread out and independent nature there are more > moderators who you can approach for personal help, and servers with strict > codes of conduct."

The solution can't just be "there are more people moderating," which translates to: the network is much more expensive to run. But that abstraction is the solution to everything in a federated system: spread out power so it isn't corruptible.

As a libertarian this is really attractive to me, but in our current system, politically, it's completely infeasible and more than that just a little actively not wanted. People don't want to moderate themselves, they want a larger power to do it for them. It's why we have representative democracy instead of direct democracy: people don't want to be involved. Governing is a pain in the ass.

I can respect that Mastodon is philosophically consistent: if you want to really control your communications, you need to put in the effort. I hope to be wrong about this, but people simply to not want to put this much effort into online communities. If they did we wouldn't have FB, IG and Twitter already.

Please: CMV.

<comment><USER3> I think you're maybe forgetting that the goal of Mastodon, or any federated (as opposed to distributed) system, is _not_ to have every single user run and administer their own instances, but rather to enable users to freely select from a wide variety of compatible interconnected peers.

> People don't want to moderate themselves, they want a larger power to do it > for them.

I think people mostly want a _smaller_ power to do it for them, or at least a "smaller than The Platform, or The Government". In the case of Mastodon, I can find a smaller instance with a handful of moderators who I trust, and let them curate that instance. If I later find that they have abused that trust I can disassociate with them and move to a different instance, and all of my contacts or the general public on other instances remain unaffected.

If a user doesn't want to go to the effort of finding a specific instance that suits their desires for moderator activity, they can easily set up on one of the biggest instances (much the way one can easily set up a gmail account), while the design of the system still preserves their freedom to move to another instance if they later decide to do so (as I can choose to set up a yahoo or fastmail account, or even run my own server).

The basic experience for the average user can be just as moderated (well or poorly, by as many or as few people) as Twitter is, if a big instance chooses to do so, and the freedom of users is still preserved in a way that Twitter or Facebook cannot.

<comment><USER2> > I think you're maybe forgetting that the goal of Mastodon, or any federated > (as opposed to distributed) system, is not to have every single user run and > administer their own instances, but rather to enable users to freely select > from a wide variety of compatible interconnected peers.

This looks like a networking protocol, but this is actually process for electing the main node in the network, which will eventually revert it back to the mean of centralization. Let's see how Mastodon scales.

> I think people mostly want a smaller power to do it for them, or at least a > "smaller than The Platform, or The Government".

People want the freedom of small networks while gaining the moderation protection of larger ones. People's beliefs about this are largely incoherent imo. That being said I'm broadly against heavy handed moderation, and so I'm happy to see it being solved by fragmenting the community rather than enforcing undesirable norms across it.

<comment><USER4> > This looks like a networking protocol, but this is actually process for > electing the main node in the network, which will eventually revert it back > to the mean of centralization. Let's see how Mastodon scales.

I don't entirely understand why you assume that one node will come to dominate such that it will be equivalent to a centralized system?

The term "federation" is borrowed from political science for a reason. Just like in the USA, multiple federated states who share broad-strokes policies maintain interoperability while also maintaining their own sovreignty.

The main difference is that, if you want something smaller and less overbearing, it's a lot cheaper to move from mastodon.social to some small instance than it is to move from California to Vermont.

<comment><USER2> > I don't entirely understand why you assume that one node will come to > dominate such that it will be equivalent to a centralized system?

One, or a small number, and because this is the history of these types of things.

> The term "federation" is borrowed from political science for a reason. Just > like in the USA, multiple federated states who share broad-strokes policies > maintain interoperability while also maintaining their own sovreignty.

The USA is actually not a federation, and purposefully stopped being one (it turned in a _con_ federation, removing the right to leave, effectively centralizing it under federal control) when the country was founded.

(Edit: I reversed the terms confederation and federation here, but what I mean is that the founding of the US _removed_ sovereignty from the states.)

This is where the rubber meets the road: any decentralized system will need to be able to answer the question "how do we [the govt, usually] forcibly remove content from the network?" The way you answer that question will be the way the network centralizes.

The history of true confederations (Colonial States, Personal Computing, the Internet) is that they are temporary chaotic moments before we revert back to the mean of centralization (United States, SaaS/FB/Gmail/centralized communication and iphones as tracking devices, PRISM).

This is all an instance of [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_law). Our culture is not confederated, and so we wont be able to build scalable confederated systems within it.

<comment><USER4> > The USA is actually not a federation, and purposefully stopped being one (it > turned in a confederation

You have it backwards. The USA was a Confederation (a weak alliance of almost entirely independent nations) under the Articles of _Confederation_ , 1776-1789

Then in 1789 it became a Federation (a strong national union of autonomous but not independent states) with the new Constitution.

In a confederation, the central government has negligible power and states can come and go as they please. The EU is arguably a confederation, and it's pretty much the only modern example, because confederations rarely last long. Historical confederations include the CSA and Holy Roman Empire.

That is not the model that the Fediverse wants to uphold (otherwise it would be called the confediverse). Mastodon is intended to be structured as a Federation, like the United States, Germany, or Malaysia, with a strong but limited central power that maintains unity among the federated members, while mostly letting them do their own thing.

<comment><USER2> Sorry yeah, I reversed the terms, in response to this:

> The term "federation" is borrowed from political science for a reason. Just > like in the USA, multiple federated states who share broad-strokes policies > maintain interoperability while also maintaining their own sovreignty.

which is not true, under a federation the members do _not_ maintain sovereignty, and this is the important point. The Colonial States gave up their sovereignty when they became federated.

Everything else, besides the terms reversal (my bad), it seems we agree on?

> The EU is arguably a confederation, and it's pretty much the only modern > example, because confederations rarely last long.

Exactly!

> That is not the model that the Fediverse wants to uphold

So what are we even arguing about here? We agree decentralization wont last long. If you're using the US as an example of a desirable "light hand" federation I guess that's just where we agree to disagree.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is a good read for anyone curious what this is all about, and contains a roadmap for an "instance-of-one" via Masto.host:

[https://laurakalbag.com/what-is-mastodon-and-why-should-i- us...](https://laurakalbag.com/what-is-mastodon-and-why-should-i-use-it/)

<comment><USER6> I've been quite satisfied with my "instance-of-one" via Masto.host.

Mine is a much shorter domain than the average instance that I've had in my back pocket for years, which I find is also nice for a number of interesting small reasons (including sharing links to Mastodon statuses on places like Slack).

I'm not sure I intend to always keep it to just myself, and I've made offers to give accounts to friends, but so far no one has taken me up on the offer. I definitely don't ever expect to allow public signups, though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> So tweets are "toots" in Mastodon.

Could it be that extinct mastodons grunted or growled instead of tooting?

I would rather bark, bleat, caw, croak, howl, quack or screech.

Toot? Nah.

Too many associations with musical fruits.

<comment><USER8> Starting fights with other users is known as "tusking".

Having a wildly popular toot get boosted all over the place is "going woolly".

A server going down for good is an "extinction event".

[https://mastodon.social/@nolan/1522550](https://mastodon.social/@nolan/1522550)

I think it's all very cute.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Today I tried another software for the fediverse: pleroma.

So far the fediverse isn't for me. I don't want to join an existent instance. I don't want to run a large project like Mastodon.

And pleroma looked about right for me. But it's currently only for insiders. (I'm using Linux since the 1990s and have installed different news and mail servers. Maybe my patience isn't what it used to be but I don't have any plans on trying pleroma again soon.)

All the other projects are either in a very early stage or use technology I trust less than C News.

<comment><USER6> > I don't want to run a large project like Mastodon.

There are good options like Masto.host that will run Mastodon for you, but you can bring your own domain. I find that a satisfying middle ground, and it's what I use for my own instance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Is there a way to make a mastodon instance for a private community where it requires registration (& approval) like a forum, but still have the federation between instances? (if not, is it possible to unfederate an instance?)

<comment><USER11> As I understand it, you can require users to get approval in order to register locally, and there are at least patches out there to create a whitelist of instances that are allowed to federate with you, but there's no way to require users from the allowed instances to get approval before interacting with local posts.

<comment><USER6> Private Accounts (also sometimes referred to as Locked Down Accounts) require explicit follow approvals and many federated actions are restricted only to direct followers. It's an easy task if you are an instance admin creating all accounts to default new accounts to Private instead Public (which is the usual default elsewhere). Accounts can switch themselves between Private and Public as needs change (though there are obvious caveats when switching).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'd join an HN-oriented Mastadon if there was one.

<comment><USER13> For tech there is:

[https://mastodon.technology/about](https://mastodon.technology/about)

<comment><USER6> toot.cafe for various reasons also has a pretty high percentage of technologists.

[https://toot.cafe/about/more](https://toot.cafe/about/more)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Release #100.

</comment><comment><USER15> Still not sure why they named it after an extinct Mammoth.

<comment><USER16> Or named their tweets "toots". It's like they want it to fail.

<comment><USER5> > It's like they want it to fail.

This is software -- if you have a better idea create your own implementation of the underlying protocol:

[https://www.w3.org/TR/activitypub/](https://www.w3.org/TR/activitypub/)

<comment><USER17> There's already a different implementation of the protocol: [https://pleroma.social/](https://pleroma.social/)

<comment><USER5> And a few more too such as Pixelfed and PeerTube:

[https://www.w3.org/wiki/ActivityPub](https://www.w3.org/wiki/ActivityPub)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Skype has launched an instant translator - <AUTHOR> http://www.sciencealert.com/watch-skype-has-launched-an-instant-translator

<comment><USER2> Previous post of the same topic: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8752171](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8752171)</comment>


Google Maps Nighttime - <AUTHOR> http://www-static.cc.gatech.edu/~pesti/night/

<comment><USER2> Having built something like this would help if you apply to YC. It doesn't take too much work, but shows you can make cool things.

</comment><comment><USER3> Check out South Korea and North Korea. Yikes, what a difference.

</comment><comment><USER4> Not sure what the point is, but it sure looks pretty!</comment>


Microsoft: NSA security fallout 'getting worse' ... 'not blowing over' - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/06/19/microsoft_nsa_fallout/

<comment><USER2> Good. No matter how actively US tech companies are collaborating with the NSA and other security services, they deserve distrust until they actively protect their users' privacy with open, verifiable strong encryption tools.</comment>


PCWorld listens to Friday Apple iPhone 4 event, then un-recommends the phone. - <AUTHOR> http://technologizer.com/2010/07/18/pcworld-yanks-iphone-4-from-top-spot-in-smartphone-chart/

<comment><USER2> So why did the recommend it so highly in the first place, despite the antenna problems?

<comment><USER3> Because this is the latest media du jour.

It's like consumer reports saying it can't recommend the phone despite them rating it the highest rated smartphone. The whole antenna thing is completely overblown.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Sort files too large to fit in RAM - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/mopatches/file_sort_ruby_gem

<comment><AUTHOR> Weekend project, would love any feedback!</comment>


Why Is It Bad for Tech to Eat Jobs? - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2014/11/01/why-is-it-bad-for-tech-to-eat-jobs/ <comment><USER2> _Consider that the tedious, dangerous drudgery of truck driving is a job that few actively enjoy._

Does truck driving have noticeably lower job satisfaction than other jobs? I doubt that the author has even checked.</comment>


Ask HN: How do you know if your coworkers are sincere to you? - <AUTHOR> I feel everyone is on their best behaviour at work. How do you figure out if someone is really sincere to you at work? <comment><USER2> Empathy.</comment>


Atom: Now with pair programming - <AUTHOR> https://atom.io/packages/firepad <comment><USER2> It was so much fun to build this package. Atom is very modular, and any piece of functionality in the editor is open to being extended.

The documentation still has some ways to go (events aren't documented, for example), but I'm excited about the future of this editor!

<comment><USER3> Is there any trick to getting a beta to try this out?

<comment><USER4> If you add your email to your HN profile, or at least a hint to it, I can send you one. Or you can email me. (See my profile.)

EDIT: all out :(

<comment><USER5> Can you spare one for me as well? (email's in the profile)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Is it really "now with pair programming" when the software hasn't been released?

Wouldn't it be "Atom: Eventually with pair programming"?

<comment><USER7> Some people are in fact using it now. You just had to snag an invite.

Beta software can gain features.

<comment><USER8> Even so, isn't it only for OSX?

<comment><USER7> Yes, which is why I'm not yet able to try out my own copy :/

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Having painfully hacked together a few packages for ST (and TM) over the years, I'm impressed at how fast they pulled this together. If it's this easy to extend, Atom could have a very bright future.

<comment><USER7> > I'm impressed at how fast they pulled this together.

Not that fast:

> But seriously, I've gotten to watch the development of Atom over the last > two years and am soooo excited to see this baby ship.

[https://twitter.com/nrrrdcore/status/438805221574066177](https://twitter.com/nrrrdcore/status/438805221574066177)

<comment><USER10> I think he literally meant the speed at which the package was created for Atom Steve ;)

<comment><USER7> Oh, yeah, maybe that. :)

Language is hard. :( I read it as "Wow, Atom is really extensible-friendly, even though they've only been making it a short while."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I have used firepad as well as other online collaborative text editors extensively, and believe it to be the best one on the market. Go Firebase!

<comment><USER12> Isn't Firebase an externally hosted database-as-a-service? Seems like a no-go for me in post-Snowden times.

<comment><USER13> It depends what you're doing with it. If, for example, you're collaborating together on an open-source project then I don't see any problem.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Firebase and their data sync api's are really great. You could really build a lot of things if you're creative.

PS. It would be nice if anyone could send me an invitation. thanks!

</comment><comment><USER15> I've never really done pair programming, but I feel like I'd benefit from it. My boss was looking over my shoulder the other day while I doing some Clojure, at which I'm still very new, and had some suggestions on my workflow. It's on my list of things to look into.

Anyone have any invites left, by chance? Email in my profile. :)

</comment><comment><USER16> Very cool! This has been, in my experience, a factor limiting the use of GUI editors in places with a heavy emphasis on remote pairing. Of course not everyone does this, but if you work someplace that does, this is a big selling point. I'm excited about this!

</comment><comment><USER17> Been doing this since a long time ;) [http://scummos.blogspot.in/2013/08/gsoc- collaborative-text-e...](http://scummos.blogspot.in/2013/08/gsoc- collaborative-text-editing-in-kate.html)

</comment><comment><USER18> It's promising to see that features like this can be hacked into the editor in a very short amount of time.

I would love to find out what emacs-like features I could implement myself. Anyone that can help me with an invite? (email in my profile)

</comment><comment><USER19> I'd love an invite. How long has everyone waited to get one?

<comment><USER20> Kinda offtopic: I have three Atom invites in case anyone wants one just send me an email (in profile).

Or if you want just ask one from [http://twitter.com/mdo](http://twitter.com/mdo)

<comment><USER20> Hi folks, sorry I'm already out of invites. Hope you guys enjoy using Atom!

<comment><USER19> Ok, thanks. If anyone else has one, please consider me. My email is in my profile!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is why Atom is so great. New packages can be quickly hacked up using existing web libraries and technologies.

</comment><comment><USER21> Will this notepad ever evolve into an IDE (automated refactoring, static analysis, intellisense)?

</comment><comment><USER22> Any Windows package?

<comment><USER23> It's on the way [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7316893](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7316893)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> it's time to stop using github.

<comment><USER25> Why? And use what instead?

<comment><USER26> Bitbucket? Gitbucket? There are viable alternatives for many purposes. That doesn't answer the why, though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Do we really need random Atom extensions posted _two_ hours after the first commit? Is this the shortest time from initial commit (like, it looks like this is the real first commit instead of a squash-like commit for release)?

<comment><USER28> I guess we do, this really shows the extensible nature of Atom. So you get an idea, you pull some code together (only 70 lines!) and it works. I think that is reason enough to post it.</comment></comment>


Galaxy S III preorders approach 10 million - <AUTHOR> http://www.bgr.com/2012/05/18/samsung-galaxy-s-iii-preorders-9-million/

<comment><USER2> This phone is one of the most exciting things happening, at least for me: It has a barometer! Joining the ranks of the Galaxy Nexus, Note, and Moto Xoom. Except, I think the SGS3 is way more popular than any of those others (by a couple orders of magnitude in some cases).

I'm the developer of pressureNET, an open source Android project to build a live, global barometer network. The project has seen solid growth, but not on the scale that would allow for groundbreaking weather prediction. We get about 17,000 measurements per day, but I think I need something like 1,000,000.

Does anyone have ideas that could help me with marketing and growing the network with the release of this phone? I've been posting to Reddit, XDA, HN, Twitter, Facebook, etc, but I worry about spamming them and I think I have saturated my audience there.

Sorry if this isn't the right place to ask, but I'm anxious about missing out on all these new barometer users.

<comment><USER3> Given that a barometer is seemingly so rare on the market (and your app is probably one of the few set to take advantage of it) maybe you could talk to Samsung about a cross-promotional type deal? It could allow them to further differentiate and market their phone, and you'd get your data!

<comment><USER2> I've been thinking about contacting the manufacturers for a while, but the task is daunting. Does this kind of thing actually work? I'll definitely investigate this with the kind of response I've had here on HN, it sounds like it may almost be common. Thanks for the help!

<comment><USER4> Who cares? If it doesn't work, it doesn't work. Just contact them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is bullshit, the "preorders" are from carriers not actual customers. Samsung could sell zero units and still claim to have 9 million preorders.

> Samsung Electronics Co has received some 9 million pre-orders for its third- > generation Galaxy S smartphone __from more than 100 global carriers __, the > Korea Economic Daily reported on Friday.

Source: [http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/18/us-samsung- idUSBRE...](http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/18/us-samsung- idUSBRE84H00X20120518)

The number of "news" sites just blindly reposting this as if it were actual customers is frankly disgusting.

<comment><USER6> What is your point exactly? I'm pretty certain the carriers do their homework before placing orders. They don't want a ton of inventory just sitting on their shelves. So the carriers expect to sell them and Samsung did sell them (doesn't matter who bought them).

<comment><USER7> The point is it doesn't matter how many units they sell to Best Buy, what matters is how many units they sell to consumers.

This happens all the time, we hear about X millions of units "shipped" only to find out months later that a small fraction of those actually made it into consumers hands.

<comment><USER8> Given the incredible popularity of the GS2 among the Android community, I'd say it's not unreasonable to think the GS3 will sell well.

<comment><USER9> No one is saying it won't sell well. They're saying that reporting carrier orders as "sales pre-orders" lacks an important detail. Thus, some are calling bullshit on the headline.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10>
      Chipset 	Exynos 4212 Quad
      CPU 	        Quad-core 1.4 GHz Cortex-A9
      GPU 	        Mali-400MP

<http://www.gsmarena.com/samsung_i9300_galaxy_s_iii-4238.php>

The Mali-400MP is quad-core (x2 from before) <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exynos> This seems feasible, with similar battery life, as they've shrunk the process to half the area: 45^2 vs 32^2.

Its performance per core is comparable the sgx543 of the iPhone/iPad. [http://www.arm.com/products/multimedia/mali-graphics- hardwar...](http://www.arm.com/products/multimedia/mali-graphics- hardware/mali-400-mp.php) vs <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PowerVR#Series_5XT> (though depends on the clock actually used)

So, this phone's GPU is similar to the "new iPad"3 (quad-core sgx543). (Apple have also done a shrink, but it's only used in the old iPad 2 so far...)

I think quad-core _CPUs_ are past the point of diminishing returns (consider the latest Transformer); multi-core are still hard to code for, and they are usually underutilized on desktops.

Note: the iPad 4 is likely to have the next in the GPU series (Rogue 6200), which apparently is comparable to the xenos GPU in the xbox360. So, it's leapfrog, jumping x2 as far each year.

<comment><USER11> Both ARM CPU's and GPU's seem to jump 2x in performance every year, so at least so far, they've been moving faster than Moore's Law.

Personally, I'm looking forward to the Exynos 5250 chip, with a dual core 2 Ghz Cortex A15 CPU and a Mali T-604 GPU (new Midgard architecture) that's supposed to be 4x faster than Mali400 (the original in GS2), so probably 2x or faster than the current overclocked Mali400 in GS3 (will also support OpenCL). This chip should appear in some tablets and phones, and maybe even a Chromebook by the end of the year.

I'm also looking forward to them pairing Cortex A15 with the ultra-low-power Cortex A7, maybe in a 2+2 core configuration. Samsung mentioned that they might be ready with Cortex A7 by the end of the year, but in general we can expect Cortex A7 to arrive next year.

I would prefer this over something like a pure Cortex A15 quad core chip, which should also appear next year. Starting with 2014 we should see the successor of Cortex A15 in dual core version, based on the 64 bit ARMv8 architecture.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I find it quite ironic that the same site posted this article 2 weeks ago: [http://www.bgr.com/2012/05/04/samsung-galaxy-s-iii-htc- oppor...](http://www.bgr.com/2012/05/04/samsung-galaxy-s-iii-htc-opportunity/)

Basically saying that the SGS3 looks like a dud and HTC is where it's at. HTC currently isn't able to import phones into the US.

<comment><USER13> Do you remember how much fun they had with the size of the Galaxy Note? BGR,buisinessinsider,gruber,siegler,the verge,... The whole techmeme club.

Then Samsung sold 5 million Notes in the first months.

<comment><USER14> A ton of films get trashed by critics and imdb then go on to be commercially successful.

That doesn't mean it was a good piece of film. More likely it was accessible everywhere and well marketed.

<comment><USER13> this is a good argument for sales vs quality.

But the lesson with the Galaxy Note was that many people want a device with a 5.3 in screen, and the critique was that people do not want a device with a 5.3 in screen.

Remember that Samsung sold the Note together with the Galaxy S2 (same hardware, smaller screen, higher marketing budget) and even smaller form factors.

Or, to put it another way: The lesson is that there is no "average consumer".

<comment><USER15> _> Remember that Samsung sold the Note together with the Galaxy S2 (same hardware, smaller screen, higher marketing budget) and even smaller form factors._

The Note has been promoted much more than the S2. In SF I see as much ads for the Note as you used to see for the iPad 2 when it came out, which means they're everywhere.

Last week three guys with Samsung t-shirts stopped me on the street to make me try it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Has BGR ever written an article longer than a few paragraphs? (Edit: huh.. that struck a nerve it would seem).

<comment><USER17> First rule of tech blogging -- all stories, even those best reported as just one line, must be expanded to meet Google News's minimum word count requirement.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Still waiting for a high end Android phone that isn't enormous.

</comment><comment><USER19> Now this is quite amazing . Has Samsung also started to attract an albeit smaller apple like following .. ?

<comment><USER20> It's certainly a good indicator of smartphone demand, although I'm not sure it's comparable with iPhone 4S pre-orders. I _suspect_ that a lot of the S3 pre-orders are direct from carriers, rather than individuals, so it's more of a 'product shipped' rather than 'product sold' statistic.

I could of course be totally wrong, although as it's a leaked stat it's hard to know exactly how a 'pre-order' is being defined...but in my office (of about 180 people, all mobile facing) far fewer people have pre-ordered the S3 versus the iPhone 4S.

<comment><USER21> I guess Samsung phones are more popular outside US. Among my colleagues, of 10 smartphones, 8 are Samsung ones (includes 3 Samsung Notes) and only one iPhone4S.

<comment><USER20> Our split is fairly even (I lead a mobile dev team in London, both Android & iOS). Maybe it's a demographic thing: most developers have a Galaxy Nexus, and they don't really see any compelling reason to move on to the S3 right now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> > CPU Quad-core 1.4 GHz Cortex-A9 > GPU Mali-400MP

Finally, smooth animations?

<comment><USER23> I've been getting smooth animations on my Nexus S ever since I put ICS on it a few months back and this phone "only" has a 1 GHz single core CPU and 512 MB of RAM.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I just got my first Android phone (a 1ghz dual-core 512mb LG) and it its fuckin slow :( (my iPhone 3GS felt way way snappier).

<comment><USER25> That's because in iOS the UI has maximum priority. It can even pause the app so the UI keeps a high framerate.

<comment><USER26> This is a myth, introduced by an uninformed Google intern in a blog post. Hint; start Skype on an iPhone, switch to another app, and scroll a list. Note how your Skype call continues.</comment></comment></comment>