Errol Morris Refutes It Thus - <AUTHOR> https://slate.com/culture/2018/06/errol-morris-book-about-thomas-kuhn-the-ashtray-reviewed.html <comment><USER2> _" The 18th-century Irish philosopher Bishop George Berkeley concluded that, since all we know of the universe is what our senses convey to us, things in the world exist only to the extent that we perceive them."_

This is a mischaracterization of Berkeley's position.

Berkeley did not admit even the existence of the senses, much less that they convey anything to us, nor the unstated assumption of the above description that there's something outside our senses to be conveyed to us through the senses.

To Berkeley, everything that exists is either a perception in the mind or the mind itself.

Berkeley's writing is very accessible and clear, entertaining even. To anyone interested, I strongly recommend reading his _" Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous"_[1] where he leads you through his thinking step by step. I wish more philosophers wrote as well as he.

[1] - [http://www.earlymoderntexts.com/assets/pdfs/berkeley1713.pdf](http://www.earlymoderntexts.com/assets/pdfs/berkeley1713.pdf)

<comment><USER3> Before anyone jumps into Berkelyian idealism like a conspiracy theorist into youtube, note that this whole line of thinking is fundamentally based on a genetic fallacy embed in an antiquated notion of causation.

Historically it was thought that the cause of something (the origin) must share properties with the event caused (the product). This is just a false assertion. Today we understand "emergence" in which properties arise in aggregate products that are not present in their constituent origins.

Without that every argument of the form "experience is a closed system" fails: the causal origin of experience does not "need" to be experience.

Light strikes a surface, it collides with your eye, your nervous system enters a state known as "visual perception" and that has properties not present in any prior step (ie., it feels like something). These properties emerge out of the whole interaction of the system, and are not present within any mere piece of it.

Idealism is very much an epistemological virus, a metaphysical conspiracy theory, that will quickly run a wildefire through your whole belief system with its plausible soundbites. "From experience, only experience, surely?!" No.

Berekely's Master Argument is the beginning of a line of "argument by amazement at how cool it all sounds" that ends up in Heidegger. Justified by the constant refrain that the experience is an epistemically closed system, a genetic fallacy whose plausibility is only ever achieved through rhetorically pleasing soundbites.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> In what may be a case of Baader-Meinhof, I just came across the term "Whiggish" for the first time, reading Steven Weinberg's _To Explain the World_ (pretty good so far). He also has a dig at Kuhn, recounting a time when they met briefly and Kuhn gave a defense of Aristotle that he found incoherent.

I'm no expert in the field of scientific thought, but my sympathies fall with Morris and Weinberg and the like. I agree with Weinberg that Aristotle understood physics worse than many schoolchildren do today. Which is not to say that Aristotle was stupid, but just that your knowledge is a function of the times you live in and the volume of past human thought you've had the privilege to learn from.

There are legitimate social and ethical concerns for everyone to keep in mind with the advancement of scientific knowledge. But this shouldn't be conflated with the idea that we don't understand the natural world better than we used to. We do.

<comment><USER5> I reviewed Weinberg's book and took a somewhat different stance on the issue here:

[https://www.chronicle.com/article/VialError/234826](https://www.chronicle.com/article/VialError/234826)

Ironically, given the fact that Morris and Weinberg both prize clarity of thought, I think they are talking at cross purposes when they critique historians of science and are not properly defining their terms.

Take this quote from the OP for instance:

"While studying at Princeton, Morris soon learned that Kuhn held in particular contempt any view of science as a triumphal procession toward a more accurate description of the universe and how it works, a view called 'Whiggishness,' from British politics. The ultimate mouthpiece of Kuhn's anti-Whiggish position in The Ashtray is an unnamed Harvard graduate student who insists that a new paradigm is not necessarily better than the old one, 'just different.'"

But Butterfield and other critics of the so-called "Whig" school of history are _not_ contesting the proposition that we now understand the natural world better than a cave man (or a Hellenistic Greek) did. (They're also not relativists, incidentally). Instead, they're critiquing the idea that the _specific path_ of progress is inevitable.

In other words, there is an underlying physical reality that sets constraints on what we can know and how we know it. But within those constraints there are innumerable potential branching paths. A Whiggish take on history of science might say, for instance, that it was inevitable that the first moon landing would be achieved by a nation with Enlightenment values. A non-Whig interpretation is not saying that the moon doesn't exist, or that we shouldn't care about the Apollo program. It's pointing out that the specific course taken by our timeline of history of science is not an inevitability. It could have been otherwise.

<comment><USER6> > the idea that the specific path of progress is inevitable.

Seems like a straw man.

<comment><USER5> It isn't if we're talking about histories of science and medicine written between, say, 1850 and 1950. Nowadays I agree, few would argue this directly. But then again, that's because of Butterfield and the turn away from Whig histories among hist sci types - which, itself, was far from inevitable. And if you read Weinberg, I think you do still see that point of view in play.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I prefer the longer but more detailed writeup that LARB published: [https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/the-ashtray-has- landed-t...](https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/the-ashtray-has-landed-the- case-of-morris-v-kuhn/#)!

The Janet Malcolm dispute is instructive in this regard. Malcolm's book on the MacDonald case is a classic, assigned reading for many aspiring journalists; her book is on the difficulties of the relationship between journalist and subject, and the impossibility of perfect objectivity. Morris's documentaries, sometimes downright hamfisted in their edits (he is cruel to, for example, his subjects in Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control), could be taken as an opposite extreme. Objectivity is hardly even intended.

</comment><comment><USER8> Off-topic, but their GDPR popup just redirects me to the same popup.

<comment><USER9> Idem, using Firefox 60.0.1

<comment><USER10> Come on man, 'idem' doesn't even have fewer characters than 'same' :)

For other readers: 'idem' = 'the same'

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Whether or not Kuhn was a radical relativist, a great many intellectuals today are.

Radical relativism rests on Cartesian dualism. This is a philosophical doctrine that, as anyone who has studied philosophy knows, is highly problematic. In the last century or so it has been rejected by a long string of major philosophers, include Husserl, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Ricoeur, Whitehead, the later Wittgenstein, Strawson, Putnam, Dewey, Peirce, and James. Kuhn, alas, apparently was unaware of this.

Also, Kuhn believed that James was right when he said that the mind of the infant is a 'a bloomin' buzzin' confusion'. However, this claim was made before there had been any scientific investigation of infant perception. In recent decades there has been a great deal such research, and it has been determined that infants do perceive the world, and according to universal principles.

<comment><USER12> The relativist position in modern philosophy of science has little or nothing to do with Cartesian dualism; it has more in common with the incompleteness theorem in certain respects.

The short version is that any theory of observations (i.e., scientific theory) necessarily defines the observational process and therefore the observations themselves, so that it is impossible to separate an explanation from its explanandum. What's relativist about this is that the very thing you are explaining by the theory is implicit in the theory, so that what you have are a series of paradigms or theories that replace one after the other.

This isn't to say that we don't predict things better, or even that there is no reality separate from the theory, only that it doesn't matter at some level.

All of this too is sort of distinct from what Kuhn is remembered for, which is the social nature of science, which is all too real.

Scientists are often in denial about these social factors, which is naive at best and dangerous at worst. Humans are not conduits of God; they are imperfect machines that are part of the system they are studying.

My sense is that Morris (who I respect immensely for his work) is kind of fighting a strawman argument whose depths he doesn't entirely understand, because of some personal conflict he hasn't come to terms with (ironically, given the nature of what he is arguing against).

<comment><USER11> >The short version is that any theory of observations (i.e., scientific theory) necessarily defines the observational process and therefore the observations themselves, so that it is impossible to separate an explanation from its explanandum.

What I am saying is that all the different scientific theories are ultimately based on a universal understanding of reality that is in turn due to the universal nature of the human organism and its engagements with the real world. That's why I included the last paragraph in my comment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Recent HN discussion of a different review of this book: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17217444](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17217444)

</comment><comment><USER14> I am reminded of the Max Planck quotation, "science progresses one funeral at a time," which sort of makes both Kuhn and Morris correct.

</comment><comment><USER15> I remember some form of this came out on opinionator, a thoroughly enjoyable read!

[https://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/06/the- ashtray...](https://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/06/the-ashtray-the- ultimatum-part-1/)

</comment><comment><USER16> Morris comes across as pulling a Neil deGrasse Tyson stunt.</comment>


Ask HN: Are stock options as bonus worth anything? - <AUTHOR>

(throwaway account, of course!)
I work for a startup where employees are paid performance-based bonuses at year end. Apparently I've killed it last year (yay me!) so management offered me a significant amount of cash as a bonus.
Icing on the cake is that they allow me to convert this cash to stock options. The options are struck about 20% below value of stock.
My question is this: do I take any options or not? I can definitely use the cash. Working like I have these past few years, I have no money in the bank and live paycheck to paycheck. The bonus, though not huge, would give me at least a few months of rent & basic expenses in case I lose my job or the company goes belly up.
A safety net is important to me because I have a wife and daughter to feed. If something were to happen to my ability to make money, they'd end up on the street.
Thanks a bunch folks. <comment><USER2> Choosing the options might be seen as a sign of commitment to the company and taking the cash might be seen as a lack thereof...

...or it might be just seen as choosing cash over options.

The interpretation is going to depend on the culture of the company and the personalities of management.

There's no canonically correct answer.

</comment><comment><USER3> If it is a non-publicly traded company, then you have no access to your investment. You wait and hope for two things to happen: 1. the company increases in value, or at least doesn't go bankrupt 2. you get an opportunity to sell your stock and get your money out. This can happen when it goes public or if they make some deal to sell part of their company to another company, but regardless you have no control over it and it's not something that happens quickly or frequently. Likely years.

I think 20% off is not a good enough bargain for you to take on that level of risk, with no savings and a family.

</comment><comment><USER4> Are you maybe being given the chance to get direct stock instead of options? Check on that.

To be honest if these are options for a non public company than the complexities of it are going to be VERY high, if you can't understand them you could be taken advantage of.

There has to be a whole host of restrictions on the shares and when you can exercise the options etc. In part there HAVE to be restrictions because if you can own enough shares and can sell them freely you could force the company to become public.

</comment><comment><USER5> Look at it a different way. You have $20,000 cash. It's yours, in your hand. It looks like it's your last $20,000. Do you want to invest it in your employer's company or yourself?

</comment><comment><USER6> Cash! Should the company go bust, you get fired, you can't work, etc. you must have a backup! I keep 3 to 6 months worth of cash on hand in a savings account that is at a bank not accessible from my day to day bank. That way I am not tempted to spend it. I never look at it. Ever.

If you do decide to go with the stock options have $50 of your direct deposit each paycheck go into the above mentioned savings account.

</comment><comment><USER7> I think you answered the question yourself in the last three paragraphs.

1\. Are you given enough stock options such that the _difference between the strike price and the "actual stock price"_ (how did you even determine the "value of stock"?) is equal to the cash you would receive otherwise?

<comment><AUTHOR> Let me rephrase then:

s/value of stock/price of stock as determined by management/

<comment><USER7> That's only even more confusing. The strike price is by law supposed to be the "fair market value" of the stock option. So what do you mean by the "price of stock as determined by management." While the strike price is typically kept artificially low by use of 3rd-party audit firms that calculate valuations, how do you know management is not artificially inflating the price of stock (so as to give you a misconception of the worth of the stock).

Also, you should make clear what the cash equivalent of stock is. Is it cash = cumulative difference between strike price and "price of stock as determined by management"?

<comment><USER4> The strike price doesn't have to be "fair market value" by law, but if the price is under the price then it becomes current taxable income.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "A safety net is important to me because I have a wife and daughter to feed. If something were to happen to my ability to make money, they'd end up on the street."

Take the cash. Your situation demands it. Stock Options can always come _later_ when it is time for _next_ bonus.

</comment><comment><USER9> Pretty straight forward here... take the cash. With a wife and family, you need some savings for a rainy day. I don't know your specific situation, but I rarely count on options as money in the bank.

</comment><comment><USER10> Ask for a mix of cash and options. One thing I learned while trading stocks is that you don't have to go all in or all out. It's part of managing risk.

</comment><comment><USER11> No, not unless your company is a public company. Bird in the hand.</comment>


How Lisp Became God's Own Programming Language - <AUTHOR> https://twobithistory.org/2018/10/14/lisp.html <comment><AUTHOR> Excerpt:

"McCarthy explained Lisp to his readers by building it up out of only a _very small collection of rules_.

Paul Graham later retraced McCarthy's steps, using more readable language, in his essay "The Roots of Lisp" ([http://www.paulgraham.com/rootsoflisp.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/rootsoflisp.html)).

Graham is able to explain Lisp using _only seven primitive operators, two different notations for functions, and a half-dozen higher-level functions_ defined in terms of the primitive operators."

</comment><comment><USER2> You HAVE to listen to this song: [https://blog.adafruit.com/2014/09/02/lisp- song-eternal-flame...](https://blog.adafruit.com/2014/09/02/lisp-song-eternal- flame-aka-god-wrote-in-lisp-video/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Excellent read. Well worth the time. I'm motivated to take another look at SICP.</comment>


First business negotiation.... advice needed - <AUTHOR>

Hi everyone.
An experienced freelancing colleague wants me to work for free in return for a share of revenue from licenses on a new product. The other involved is someone with essential expert domain knowledge. I'd do maybe 50% of the coding but would be the junior partner. The rough figues look promising and he anticipates a finished product in about 3 months.
I've not done something like this before. What do you think is a fair distribution of revenue given the differing levels of experience, involvement and knowledge? I was thinking 40% for the senior developer and 30% for the domain expert and myself. When the product is finished is it right to insist that any hours spent on maintenance, additional features, etc are paid at the market rate as corporate expenses prior to dividends? Can anyone give me some general advice for negations of this sort?
We're UK based by the way.
Please ask if you need any other info.
Yours naively,
David <comment><USER2> I'd approach it like this...

Value your time at some number, say $50/hr (USD). Figure 50 hour work weeks, so you should "earn" $2500/wk.

Accumulate your time until the product ships for revenue. At that time I'm going to presume your time involvement drops significantly and the company starts paying you.

You take 75% of the revenues (divided amongst all developers on this plan) until you are "paid off" (or perhaps until you hit 80% payoff). At that time you get 7-10% revenue as "royalties" ongoing.

Any additional development work beyond a couple of token hours/week at first for minor fixes should be paid as worked if the revenues support it.

You may have to mess about with the numbers a bit, but this approach would give you the greatest potential to get paid appropriately, and still participate in the ongoing sales/success of the product.

</comment><comment><USER3> I asked the EXACT same question a little over a month ago (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1809874>) and what I did was I told the guy that I wanted some equity and some cash. Long story short, I never heard back from him which is funny because it was my friend's dad. There's some really great advice on the link above though.

Make sure you get some cash - everyone has a million dollar idea

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thank you both for the advice.

The poor spec stories from your link were sobering.

I know the domain expert was on the verge of paying an IT services company for the work so presumably there are funds available. Maybe an equity/cash arrangement would be acceptable. On the other hand I like the transparency and fairness of brk's approach although of course they are not mutually exclusive.

Thanks again.</comment>


iOS 9.3 Preview - <AUTHOR> https://www.apple.com/ios/preview/ <comment><USER2> I'm split on how I feel about Apple's continuing efforts to make iPad education a thing: [https://www.apple.com/education/preview/](https://www.apple.com/education/preview/)

I have sweet memories of spending many a rainy day in the computer lab during recess on the candy-colored imacs, creating art on kidpix, putting together a crappy HTML site that would link to a friend's crappy HTML site, and playing nanosaur, bugdom, and the oregon trail.

Computer education is huge, but I'm not sure if iPads are the right/necessary stepping stone into using an actual computer. They seem more like entertainment consumption devices than creation driving devices where things get messy and frustrating and force you to fool around to fix them, learning in the process.

I've never owned one and I don't have any insight into how much good vs. harm (distraction) they do in the classroom. Anyone have any anecdotes or thoughts to share on Apple's continuing push into the classroom w/ the iPad?

<comment><USER3> Incidentally, that's exactly what Russell Kirsch (invented the first programmable computer) told me when I ran into him in a coffee shop in Portland.

He said:

> _"I've been against Macintosh company lately. They're trying to get everyone > to use iPads and when people use iPads they end up just using technology to > consume things instead of making things. With a computer you can make > things. You can code, you can make things and create things that have never > before existed and do things that have never been done before."_

The full story is here - [http://impossiblehq.com/an-unexpected-ass- kicking/](http://impossiblehq.com/an-unexpected-ass-kicking/)

I hope it doesn't seem like I'm trying to link to my own stuff, but you asked for anecdotes :-/

<comment><USER4> I agree in theory, but in practice a K12 student-facing Windows desktop is no more programmable than an iPad.

You are locked down to a small subset of site-licensed applications your domain administrator has deemed appropriate for the least common denominator in your age group. All forms of customization are disabled with Group Policy. Novell and Citrix application delivery are common, so you don't even have a Start menu but a proprietary launcher. Extremely aggressive Internet filtering bans large swaths of content about networking to prevent students from learning how to bypass the filter.

Our IT department enabled access to the hilariously antiquated QBasic environment only for students currently enrolled in a programming course and revoked it the next semester. You had to sign a special waiver saying you promised to only write code directly in fulfillment of course requirements and not do any independent experimentation or goofing around.

I get it, but K12 students on non-iPads aren't getting Linux, they're definitely not getting root, and they're probably not getting user-mode code execution either. You'd need to change the entire culture around K12 IT to make that happen.

The best way for kids to learn to be hackers is on _their_ hardware, free from school or parental controls.

<comment><USER5> "The best way for kids to learn to be hackers is on their hardware, free from school or parental controls"

That's why I think the Raspberry Pi et al are so important, they're disposable yet fully capable pieces of hardware that kids can hack on.

<comment><USER6> I don't think the Pi is as brilliant for education as it pretends to be.

The Linux command line and the permissions system are incredibly unfriendly to adults, never mind kids. Have you tried to set up a web server with PHP on a Pi? It makes no concessions at all to beginners. You might as well be setting up Ubuntu Server LTS - only it doesn't give you any clues about security.

I'd be more interested in something that updated the experience of the old 8-bit micros, which dropped you straight into a simplified programming environment, and gave you a path to bare-metal machine code if you wanted to take it.

Maybe something like a Python IDE, with a way through to Linux for expert users, but with basic extras - a web server, a mail server, a VPS that could connect to other Pi users, a few other options - pre-installed and ready to go?

<comment><USER7> Bring back the old 8-bit (C=64, Apple][) machines? Seriously. I know all the above comments are valid - site license lockdowns, iPad 'unprogrammibility', etc - but there's something to be said for no permissions, no network, nothing where you can really make Something Bad(tm).

There's something to be said for those old machines. Basic was a good learning intro and assembly is still valid today. I remember Logo too.. I'm just chomping at the bit when my kids are old enough to dust off the C-64 and start diving in.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> While blue light has the most impact, it's all light that has this effect. For anyone interested, I'd recommend reading this concise 4 page study on the subject.[0]

The synopsis is that there's no substitute for shutting off screens 1-2 hours before bedtime. This coming from someone who not only uses f.lux but sometimes when needing to use the computer late, will adorn an old pair of sunglasses to further cut down on light from 3 monitors.

[0][https://www.gwern.net/docs/melatonin/2012-wood.pdf](https://www.gwern.net/docs/melatonin/2012-wood.pdf)

<comment><USER9> Also, I've looked at f.lux'd screens set to the reddest possible setting through a 470nm narrow band filter. There's still light at the worst color band which gets through. If you are exposing yourself to light over an extended period of time, it doesn't take much to suppress melatonin secretion. (One study found suppression at levels low as 0.5 lumen or lux -- one of those two. Either way it's not much. About commensurate with the light from a brightly lit hall coming in through the gap under your door.)

<comment><USER10> The reddest possible setting for f.lux (almost?) entirely wipes out the blue channel, but the green primary on LCDs is also going to cause some effect.

If you want you can turn f.lux into "darkroom" modes, which inverts the display and uses only the red channel.

<comment><USER9> Exactly. The "channels" don't emit pure light of a single frequency. There is a curve.

[https://www.ecse.rpi.edu/~schubert/Light-Emitting-Diodes- dot...](https://www.ecse.rpi.edu/~schubert/Light-Emitting-Diodes-dot- org/chap12/F12-16%20RGB%20emission%20spectrum.jpg)

<comment><USER10> The light coming from LCD displays is different than single-color LEDs; that picture you linked isn't a good representation of your phone/laptop. LCD displays use a "white" LED backlight (= blue LED + broader-spectrum yellow phosphor), and the various subpixels have band-pass color filters for particular wavelengths.

Here's a sketch of the basic idea: [https://dotcolordotcom.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/filter- sp...](https://dotcolordotcom.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/filter- spectrum.jpg?w=1118&h=640)

My quick google image search isn't turning up any particularly good SPD graphs of real recent LCDs, but if you poke around you can surely find some.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm so happy to see Notes getting attention and new features. Since the update to support attachments and basic text formatting, it has become my digital notebook of choice. I basically use it for everything, from todo and shopping list, to collecting images about a topic, planning trips, work notes, and many more.

Notes has many features that I considered well implemented: a simple interface, native integration with the OS including sharing from and to the app, seamless iOS & OSX syncing over iCloud, decent search, PDF export.

I hope Apple keeps investing in it adding relevant, useful features, but without allowing it to become too big, like it happened to Evernote.

<comment><USER12> Can Notes sync with a 3rd-party server like WebDAV or CalDAV/owncloud?

<comment><USER13> Notes syncs via IMAP, so yes.

<comment><USER14> Not anymore, in the last release thry switched to iCloud syncing.

<comment><USER15> IMAP is still supported.

<comment><USER16> But not for notes with the newer iOS 9 features like attachments.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Glad there is finally a built-in alternative for Flux. Been overdue.

<comment><USER18> It probably also means it will be built-in to Andriod next and then probably Windows itself. That could negatively impact Flux the product, which sucks for him.

<comment><USER19> F.lux is free software and they've said outright that as devices / systems implement color shifting as built-in systems, they've accomplished their goal.

<comment><USER20> Well, on the other hand, their website says this:

> f.lux is patent pending. Do you make a cell phone, display, lighting system, > or other cool sleep tech, and want to talk about collaboration? Email us: > firstname.lastname@example.com

[https://justgetflux.com/](https://justgetflux.com/)

<comment><USER21> It's quite possible that Apple has already obtained a license from them.

<comment><USER20> That's not Apple's MO, but anything is possible.

<comment><USER22> Apple regularly licenses patents when it agrees they are valid. That doesn't make the news. Sometimes they disagree and that makes the news.

<comment><USER21> Not only does it not make the news, it's often confidential.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Holly crap I want 90% of those "Education Only" features in an enterprise environment. Managing AppleIDs, shared iPads and training scenarios are even worse when dealing with adults.

Oh and could they spare a thought for managing devices in remote locations? Oh you've forgotten your AppleID so now you can't update the MDM client and have been disconnected from Exchange? Too bad all we can do is waste 30 minutes on the phone talking you through it. Even basic things like allowing iOS updates over 4G (as well as forcing/postponing updates) would make such a big difference.

Too bad I'm sure it'll be 2018 before half of the features make it to businesses in the US, then 2019 for the rest of the world. :/

<comment><USER24> Total speculation on my part, but my first thought was that the education market would be accomplished by hosting a MacOSX Server instance to support multiple IDs. I'm most undoubtedly wrong on this, but that was my first instinct, anyway.

<comment><USER23> It'll all be iCloud. Caching server I'm kinda surprised they haven't done P2P content distribution. or at least sold caching servers 'Appliance'-style.

<comment><USER25> _Caching server I 'm kinda surprised they haven't done P2P content distribution. or at least sold caching servers 'Appliance'-style._

OSX Server has iCloud caching, that caches both updates and user data.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I can't believe that's [1] the best low-light picture they could find for their flagship mobile OS preview page. It doesn't even add anything to the story:

       Night Shift uses your iOS device's clock and geolocation to determine when it's sunset in your location. Then it automatically shifts the colors in your display to the warmer end of the spectrum, making it easier on your eyes.

[1] [https://www.apple.com/v/ios/preview/a/images/preview/blr_her...](https://www.apple.com/v/ios/preview/a/images/preview/blr_hero_large.jpg)

<comment><USER27> Exactly this, it seems like they didn't pay much attention to this page.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Is it just me, or does that seem like a surprising set of features for a mid- cycle release. Typically it's just bug fixes for anything other than a major OS launch.

<comment><USER29> I agree - I thought the reason this was posted to HN was the fact this is a fairly significant update with its own announcement page, which doesn't appear to have been the case with .1 releases in the past. Perhaps iOS is moving to a faster update cycle?

I hope Safari gets more meaningful updates as well - the once-a-year updates sometimes with not much new (looking at you Safari 9) is real slow progress for web developers, especially compared to Chrome and Firefox.

<comment><USER30> Safari 9 unprefixed quite a few CSS features, and it looks like 9.3 will bring a not-insignificant update to Safari as well!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> The education preview [0] looks like the first step toward supporting multiple user profiles per iPad. iPhones typically are one-person devices (on Android you can switch users, I've never tried it though), but iPads are often shared. I've seen lots of families where there's one iPad shared between the whole family. The kids are constantly logging in and out of their Facebook/Instagram/Twitter/E-mail accounts. The fact that they have to log in and out often usually leads to them using _very_ weak passwords. I hope this feature makes its way to general consumption.

[0][https://www.apple.com/education/preview/](https://www.apple.com/education/preview/)

</comment><comment><USER32> Does anyone have more info on the colour warmths available in nightshift? One nice feature of f.lux is that you can select colour warmths using a slider.

Does nightshift allow a variety of night colours, or just one setting?

Either way, this is great news. For years I had been jailbroken merely in order to have f.lux on my phone. I have mild insominia, and flux has greatly reduced that.

<comment><USER12> Another question: can the user enable "night" mode during the day, e.g. in a dark environment?

<comment><USER33> That's a good question.

It is worth noting that during the day you should NOT use night mode even in a dark environment, the whole point of the color shifting is to reproduce how the sun interacts with the world around you, turning on night mode during the day won't do your internal clock any favours.

That being said, there might be good arguments for having manual night mode control, like if you're a night shift worker and want day mode at night, and night mode during the day. And a lot of international travel scenarios.

<comment><USER12> _> the whole point of the color shifting is to reproduce how the sun interacts with the world around you_

That's one use case. There are situations where blue light reduces the length of time one can look at a screen, and "night" mode enables longer usage.

<comment><USER10> To elaborate: Bright blue light causes much faster bright-adaptation of the eye, interfering with rod vision.

Or in other words, after a short zap of a smartphone display, you won't be able to see very well in the dark.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I hope they bring this Night Shift to OSX as well, just for consistency. I've used Flux for years, but it does have some quirks like when waking from sleep.

</comment><comment><USER35> This will be interesting indeed.

"The Apple private frameworks have been removed from the iOS/watchOS/tvOS SDKs."

<comment><USER36> What's the significance of this? Private things can be removed or modified at- will, seems fine?

<comment><USER37> Apps that are secretly using a private api (maybe not all the time to skirt the review process) might break, hard.

<comment><USER36> This is already the case for any OS update though, because that's a runtime dependency, not just a build-time dependency.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> It's 2016 and Notes still has the questionable skeuomorphic design with a textured "paper-like" background and gratuitous text shadows.

</comment><comment><USER39> The most important thing that I hoped to see was a simple "we fixed Apple Music". Honestly, I've used iTunes for music for years, paid for iTunes Match before, pay for Apple Music now, so I'm nothing if not a loyal customer — but this app is just a complete clusterfuck.

Dear Apple, it's time to stop putting out new features. Instead, bring back the "it just works" again.

<comment><USER40> Agree. I am still having difficult times to locate music i favored. after i switched off data for apple music, it didn't warn me when I start it and i thought it is down. i switched back to spotify now

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Nightshift is nice, but I don't understand why CarPlay, Edu, Health are not just app updates. I don't see how they warrant a whole OS update when really it's just a few extra features added to existing apps (none of which I use or plan to use, unfortunately).

I guess it's just convention by this point. Feature updates across the board periodically, then security updates in between

<comment><USER42> I would guess it's because they want to force OS updates on users, in order to push for a more homogeneous ecosystem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> This is unusual for Apple to release this many features in a point update. If I had to guess, I think this will launch with the rumored 4" iPhone around late February or March

</comment><comment><USER44> My clipboard can still be gleaned with an arbitrary API call in other apps. Please leave my clipboard alone in other apps. They have no business being able to grab it without my permission

</comment><comment><USER45> Man look at that notes app which can be locked with the password being displayed on the locked screen

<comment><USER46> It's not the locked screen, but the "create a locked note" screen

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> Good to see Notes with a lock (fingerprint). It would be great if Apple decided to add fingerprint app locks as a feature for any app that one may want.

<comment><USER48> Fairly sure that this is indeed doable for an app developer. I use 1Password on OSX and multiple iOS devices and many of my passwords can be unlocked with my fingerprint instead of requiring my main & lengthy master password.

IIRC it does require the master password once, perhaps each boot, but after that I'm able to unlock with only fingerprint (this is customizable globally or on a per-password basis pretty sure).

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> I sure hope they improve on Apple Music. The API responses are so amazingly slow, and large parts of using the app are really bad.

</comment><comment><USER50> So, f.lux has a patent pending on this. This may get awkward, depending on if they get it and choose to do anything with it.

<comment><USER51> I agree but Apple has been known to pay for solid patent licenses. I.e. Amazon's 'one click to pay' patent. If f.lux lands the patent, I think Apple could work out a solid deal with f.lux. Or they will find a distasteful legal loophole. One of the two.

<comment><USER52> Has Apple been known to pay to license patents from small startups? The fact that they've licensed from Amazon isn't quite analogous, since Amazon clearly has the ability to enforce their patents in court. A small startup may not have the resources to do this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> This is an interesting beta. I've not seen one that had an accompanying device configuration profile.

<comment><USER54> It's just a much easier way to get the beta installed which doesn't require iTunes. Just open the profile on your device and next time you check for updates in the settings, the beta will be offered to update to.

<comment><USER55> Do you still have to have a developer account to get the profile file? Or is it publicly accessible? I was the beta to try out flux (or whatever they call it) but I don't write apps so there is no point in spending the $99 just for that.

<comment><USER54> In the release notes they state that the device still needs to be registered. Mine were, so I can't tell you whether this really still is required.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> There are rumors of new devices coming in the March timeframe (iPad Air 3, new 4-inch iPhone). I wonder if 9.3 is also going to be the release that adds support for those new devices.

</comment><comment><USER57> This might be my favorite update since iOS 7 added the slide up menu to toggle wifi. The flux and notes locking capabilities have been on my want list for years now.

</comment><comment><USER58> Guess I'll be getting this soon with Apples new "Install now or have us nag you daily till you do" policy. Not quite sure of the virtues of that.

</comment><comment><USER59> Their wording implies that they are encouraging people to use the Notes app as a password manager. That's super weird.

<comment><USER60> It's more like an acknowledgement that many, many users already do this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> Still waiting for the ability to close a browser tab by swiping.

AFAIK, the fastest way to close a tab is to push on the screen to get Safari's bar on the bottom, push on the multiple tabs, then swipe right to left or click the X on the tab I want to close.

On my mac it's Command-W. Which is a lot easier and probably why I prefer to browse a lot on it.

<comment><USER62> What direction would you have someone swipe?

From the left is "go back to previous page", from the right is "go to next page" or "open side app on iPad", from the bottom is control center, and from the top is notification center.

There is no where left to swipe from.

<comment><USER63> Swipe to the right?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> The Notes update looks great! I use Notes for shopping lists and also to store passwords/personal info - so the TouchID security feature is nice.

Another native iOS app I use a lot is Reminders - great for appointments and todo reminders (like calling someone back). It would be great to see if that got a bit of an upgrade.

</comment><comment><USER65> The multiple-ids on iPad thing for schools is something I know a lot of people have been asking for for ages.

<comment><USER66> The way they describe it, this will somehow be limited to school-use iPads, not the general public. Unless I'm mistaken.

<comment><USER37> It could be immensely useful for the enterprise as well if they marketed it right. But apple hasnt seemed to care about business uses for the past few years.

<comment><USER66> Useful. Sure. But it'd cannibalize sales. Why sell once device that can be shared by three when you can sell 3 devices?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> I'm owner of an ios, windows phone and android device. With that said most of the innovation happening lately is just something carried over from others, e.g. the add block feature, or the night shift, both features already present for example on Cyanogenmod with an adblock installed.

Now my point is... (and I'm not pointing my finger to apple, I like my ipad more now than before, with the exception of the music application), seems like we have started to reach the point where enhancements are only marginal.

I'm not sure how much more cpu power can fix that situation (apple can still play the quad-core card), or if this is a development language restriction issue, or a problem with compilers-languages that cannot make use of multi- core cpus or maybe there is nowhere else to go because everything has been made.

If my previous statement holds true... maybe this is the beginning of the "pc era" of the smartphones with lower sales and no more features worth upgrading to the latest and greatest.

<comment><USER68> There is still so much more to do that won't require gargantuan cpu/storage/io/screen/etc. resources, that I don't think we are in an "end of history" phase yet with the current conceptualization of these devices. Just a few personal itches off the top of my head that have yet to be scratched:

* There is still not a good solution for group-transactional data over the devices as a first-class citizen feature in the system. Live, collaborative editing with versioning of just a list, for starters, is considered an app'able feature worth $50 USD per year per person. * Internationalization still takes a back seat. Calendar apps still don't pick up that if you set an appointment for someone in a different time zone than you, you are likely scheduling to a time convenient for them. There should be an option to auto-detect and display applicable time zones as you create the appointment. * Customization still takes a back seat. When I add custom phone types ("concall", "support", "after-hours support", etc.), it ends up UNSORTED in the list of custom phone types when I go to choose one. That's just the tip of the iceberg of enhancements. For address records of people in a specific organization, I want to be able to set only a certain list of custom phone types for anyone in that organization. * There still is no sense of tracking versions of information. I have thousands of contacts, and I keep track of old addresses for example; it helps me orient myself to the possible cultures someone has experienced. But only the here-and-now data is recognized. * Linking data between apps takes an explicit act of coordination between app developers; the Newton data soups were particularly good with breaking down this artificial barrier. * Deep-linking into your own data from within an app in general is not very well-recognized as a use case. Not to speak of deep-linking from an external laptop.

I'm personally gravitating back towards making my information in my Emacs Org mode buffer the primary system of record, and the phone is just a thinly- sliced perspective of that.

<comment><USER67> I didn't thought about the history/versioning possibilities, they sound very interesting. The rules per contact for phone numbers is also interesting. I would say maybe avoiding adding more complexity to the os is part of the reason those things won't get implemented while others as the time/zone calendar issues means inter-zone is broken.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> As a side note: It's really cool that you can finally update to the beta directly from the device by just installing the configuration profile offered on the SDK download page. No more connecting to iTunes.

Let's hope they keep that trend for when the iOS 10 betas start

</comment><comment><USER69> I wonder if this Night Shift feature has anything to do with the rumors of Apple switching to OLED displays for future phones. Reducing the amount of blue light emitted dusk to dawn would help extend the overall life of the panels.

</comment><comment><USER70> No CarPlay support for Waze ಠ_ಠ

<comment><USER71> Waze is owned by Google which is pushing their own Android Auto competitor to CarPlay.

<comment><USER72> That is true, however the only 3rd party apps allowed on CarPlay right now are music apps (using a very basic hierarchical/tree API). The lack of CarPlay support isn't Google/Waze's fault.

It's also worth noting that Android Auto only allows 3rd party apps that do music and messaging. No 3rd party navigation apps, not even Waze.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER73> It will be interesting to see how password/touch id lock for Notes works. Will they be end-to-end encrypted? Will they be searchable? Or is this simply a UI feature to protect against someone looking over your shoulder?

<comment><USER74> One thing I found rather amusing was the fact that there are visible passwords in the picture although it hasn't been unlocked. Hopefully it's at the very least blurred before you input your password.

<comment><USER75> Reading the text on the screen this appears to be in the action of 'encrypting'. i.e. they just hit a button to say 'hide this data behind my fingerprint' and you just have to authenticate and then it will be encrypted. A poor choice though perhaps. I think they wanted to demonstrate the type of data you would want to store.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER76> Any updates to Mobile Safari's support for new HTML/JavaScript features? Perhaps support for service workers?

(I didn't see anything about Mobile Safari on this page, but maybe there's something nonetheless...?)

<comment><USER21> It'll probably include a WebKit version bump as usual, but according to the WebKit Feature Status page, Service Workers are only "under consideration" (not "in development" or "done"), so I wouldn't expect them anytime soon.

[https://webkit.org/status/#specification-service- workers](https://webkit.org/status/#specification-service-workers)

</comment></comment><comment><USER77> I hope they finally fix the bug where the ipod player will start playing a song from the middle (even though it says its at the beginning). It's happened to both me and my wife on every iOS9 version so far.

</comment><comment><USER78> carplay looks like the worst apple feature/product to come out in 9.3. (it feels like they are lending out their UX to the whims of <insert car manufacturer>'s buttons and opening up compatibility issues.

[http://imgur.com/b3OTMJO](http://imgur.com/b3OTMJO) Now available with 13 apps, in 36 brands of cars, 3 different brands of aftermarket solutions on 7 different models of iPhones.

Compatibility with all the things means the experience is going to vary widely across the board.

<comment><USER62> CarPlay isn't new, and it's head-and-shoulders better than the OEM environment on my car.

It's got some bugs (9.2 seems to have introduced one where it messes up system audio playback at times), but interface wise it works very well.

Car manufacturers can't mess with it. Apple pre-maps certain buttons and supports a scroll wheel, but they can't customize it at all, Apple has control.

</comment></comment><comment><USER79> I wish something was done about rotation lock for reading in bed. Activating it from Control Center, which itself changes orientation, is maddening.

<comment><USER80> You can swipe up from the bottom of the screen, and on the menu there enable the orientation lock.

<comment><USER79> No, the point is precisely that the bottom of the screen also changes with the orientation.

<comment><USER80> Do it while you're laying on your back and starting up at your phone, instead of after you've already rolled over?

This seems like an extremely minor thing, and I'm not sure what your proposed solution would be.

<comment><USER79> I guess any sort of trouble with the iPhone is an extremely minor thing in the grand scheme of things.

What to do about it? I can't presume to know what they tested and rejected, but screen orientation control needs to be independent of screen orientation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER81> Does anyone know how to switch from a 9.2 beta to a 9.3 beta? I looked around and didn't see any instructions.

<comment><USER82> You can alt-click not only the Restore button in iTunes, but also the Update button - and then choose an arbitrary .ipsw file.

Of course, things may still go wrong, betas being betas :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER83> iPhone screens look blueish in a warm light environment. I wish Apple would implement real-time dynamic white balance by using data from selfie cameras. So that screen white would blend with white phone enclosure the same way they try to blend black with black.

</comment><comment><USER84> > A better experience every day. And night.

Finally I gave in & upgraded to iOS 9.x (on iPad 4). Suddenly Safari has started freezing on lightweight simple websites. Is that better experience part of "planned obsolescence" ? It's more or less the same story with any mobile device after 2-3 years.

</comment><comment><USER12> iOS 9.2 made the iPad Pro nearly unusable (dropping keystrokes) with the Logitech Create Pro keyboard, and no fix has been forthcoming in iOS 9.2.1 betas. Will this be addressed in 9.3? It worked perfectly with iOS 9.1.

</comment><comment><USER85> Is apple using this to get more apps integrate with HealthKit? Many developers feel integration with HealthKit turns their app into a commodity. _Categories such as Weight, Workouts, and Sleep have a new slider menu that reveals great apps you can easily add to your Health dashboard_

</comment><comment><USER86> Night Shift - about time.

</comment><comment><USER87> "Night Shift" is completely ripping off f.lux...

</comment><comment><USER88> It would be nice to be able to import data from my Fitbit into the Health app. I carry my Fitbit Zip all the time, but rarely do I run with my iPhone.

<comment><USER89> Fitbit has refused to export its data to HealthKit, nothing Apple can do about it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER90> Any developer info already published?

</comment><comment><USER91> So they blatantly copied Flux after denying their app.

Well played Apple.

</comment><comment><USER50> They need to loosen the grips on that background services stuff. Would love to have apps like Dropbox and Owncloud not have to use the stupid location services workaround just to background sync my pictures.

Edit: Seriously? This gets down voted? How would this NOT be a helpful feature? It works wonderfully on my Android devices. Would love to see it on my iOS devices. Wow, Just wow. Bunch of fanboiz or something?

<comment><USER92> This is an excellent example of how not to respond to being downvoted.

Take a step back and a nice deep breath and consider why you might have been downvoted. It may have more to do with the tone of your delivery than the actual content of your message.

Lashing out at those who disagree with you with baseless accusations is counterproductive.

<comment><USER93> Downvoting needs to go away. Upvoting a good comment is a positive action. Downvoting is a power trip, and in many ways protectionist and exclusive. I've seen too many comments downvoted based on unpopular opinions which were perfectly constructive and appropriately toned.

People are very happy to exercise their ability to punish others when given that power. It's gotten out of hand here.

Edit: here being HN, not necessarily this thread.

<comment><USER94> Can you give us links to "perfectly constructive and appropriately toned" comments that are in a downvoted state?

What you're saying doesn't match what I typically observe on HN, which is (a) that most downvoted comments have something wrong with them, not just an unpopular opinion, and (b) inappropriate downvotes usually get canceled out be users who see a good comment faded faded and give it a corrective upvote.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER95> #webosneverforget

</comment><comment><USER96> If I ever have kids, I pray to God that Apple/Google/FB have no role in their primary education.

<comment><USER97> Not trying to be snarky... but what's that got to do with the topic?

<comment><USER98> Not OP but he's probably referring to the Education Preview updates. They're referenced at the bottom of the linked page with more info at [https://www.apple.com/education/preview/](https://www.apple.com/education/preview/).

<comment><USER97> Missed that, thanks. Got downvoted anyway...</comment></comment></comment></comment>


There is no such thing as EQ (2016) - <AUTHOR> https://www.quora.com/What-is-more-beneficial-in-all-aspects-of-life-a-high-EQ-or-IQ-This-question-is-based-on-the-assumption-that-only-your-EQ-or-IQ-is-high-with-the-other-being-average-or-below-this-average/answer/Jordan-B-Peterson?share=4dd9f059&srid=3ctC <comment><USER2> There comes a point in these things where someone always comes in with their thoughts on what the term under discussion must mean.

If there were a thing such as EQ I would suppose it is just intelligence with a focus on understanding other peoples, their feelings, goals and how to get them to work together.

Often this use of intelligence is not found in people who have focused their intelligence on technical mastery of particular non-human areas, although it is not impossible.

I believe people often neglect areas for intellectual achievement based on finding those areas difficult or their subjective feeling that those areas are not important or just not suited to them, thus some intelligent people may neglect math because they are "not good at math", and some intelligent people may neglect learning to understand people because they "just don't understand people", while other intelligent people may not care to read or understand poetry or programming because that stuff isn't important or is for a particular kind of person that is not the kind of person they are.

Time and intelligence being limited for any one person that person will in some way have to choose what they will use them for. I myself have devoted more time and intelligence to logic than most other people do, and I have found that in periods where I devote extreme energies to logical analysis that my skills with humans are diminished by a commensurate degree.

In conclusion, I agree there is no such thing as EQ in the standard formulation, but perhaps there is a usage of intelligence that would counterfeit it in practical experience.

<comment><USER3> Well yeah, Psychology is an almost empirical science, EQ 2.0 is a hands-on approach. When you read it, you may acquire skills that otherwise a Psychologist might teach you.

As you might guess, I read the book. I went through some difficult experiences in my life, that made it at some point really difficult to make new friends, feel happy or reasonably successful at work. That book helped me a lot. It's not answering all questions to life, rather it gives you a set of tools. You can decide by yourself whether you want to use some of them and which.

Anyways, this book falls into the category business books / self-help. I assume they are competing with Psychologists except it's not so stigmatizing maybe. Maybe... if you tell someone in the face which exercise you are doing from this book, the person will probably think you are completely insane... ;) But yeah, it's great that non-Psychologists are allowed to write such books.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I always had trouble with the term EQ or emotional intelligence, because it in my opinion confuses (at least) two things.

One is empathy, our ability to read and perceive emotions of other people.

The other is actual social intelligence, that is understanding of how other people are motivated, what to do in social situations, and so on.

There are plenty good people who have lot of 1st one but little of the 2nd one, and plenty of psychopaths that have the 2nd one but only little of the 1st one.

These groups of people are completely different.

<comment><USER5> You didnt have trouble with the term EQ because it tries to suggest it is like IQ? Eventhough one of them is science and the other is less scientific than a gossip magazine?

<comment><USER6> Yes, incentives in scientific publishing, tenure, etc are messed up and have caused reproducability problems. That problem is systemic and will take a long time to fix.

There are serious people working on areas such as this; and they don't deserve the level of scattergun disrespect that you're displaying here.

<comment><USER5> > they don't deserve the level of scattergun disrespect that you're displaying > here.

You really consider their feelings more important than protecting actual scientific facts from something akin to trademark infringement?

The public perception right now is that IQ and EQ are similar in the level of scientific backing. In world where people stop vaccinating their kids, ignore global warming, etc. i really don't consider the feelings of any particular group of people in any field important enough to not, every chance i get, fight for clarity on just what are reliable scientific facts and what are not, because it is scientific method itself that is under attack.

And if these 'serious people working on areas such as this' are not full of shit, working in service of science, i expect them to have the exact same priority as me.

<comment><USER6> What units are you using to measure "less scientific than a gossip magazine"?

<comment><USER5> A gossip magazine will make statements that are often false but falsifiable. Hence strictly more scientific than statements about EQ. Right now there is no consensus of what the claims behind the phrase EQ even mean -- which gives society free game to just speculate or assume that their assumptions are correct.

The reason for this is actually obvious: an IQ test will ask questions of which there is a strong consensus as to what the correct answer should be (like math questions). If you have different teams make different IQ tests with this rule, the rankings of test subjects will prove to be uniform. Different test, same test subjects: similar ranking. It is a reproducible metric. Although none of this proves it measures 'intelligence' as used in everyday conversation. The name is unfortunate, the metric is quite useful.

People have not succeeded in making a reproducible metric of emotional intelligence -- it is currently not even well defined. Unlike the statements in a gossip magazine, which although may not always be factual, they are at least well qualified and defined statements.

"Celebrity X slept with celebrity Y". There is no ambiguity about what that statement means and what would be considered supporting evidence to convince you that the statement is true. Therefore, the gossip magazine is closer to science than the pop-literature about EQ.

What confuses me, is that to take offense to this, one has to be or know a scientist that has or is trying to get funding or work published that hinges on the EQ pop culture buzz, which would be unfortunate, but not damning. One can do real research and move it away from the magical world of speculation and anecdotes. But to explain to a person in that position the value of and importance of the scientific method, is like explaining to a catholic priest that children shouldn't be raped according to the bible. How is this perspective on science at all surprising to you? Is this how far academica has deformed itself? That the core values of science are vague historic details in a mist of career planning?

<comment><USER6> > _A gossip magazine will make statements that are often false but > falsifiable. Hence strictly more scientific than statements about EQ_

So, are you arguing that people not following scientific method AT ALL are more "scientific" than people who are at least trying to produce scientific research in this area?

I have a hard time taking that position seriously; I assume I must have misunderstood. Are you talking about researchers or someone else?

<comment><USER5> >So, are you arguing that people not following scientific method AT ALL are more "scientific" than people who are at least trying to produce scientific research in this area?

No, that wasn't at all what i was arguing. For politeness sake, i'll assume its a misunderstanding, although that is a bit hard to imagine at this point, since i'm being extremely explicit. I wasn't attacking the scientific field, but people using the phrase EQ in a conversion as if it in any way similar to IQ. It is you taking offense that suggests there may be overlap between these two groups, which is extremely worrying.

"Trying to produce scientific research" means actively applying the scientific method. I'm arguing that hasn't successfully happened with the phrase EQ. Do you have a counter example? And yes I'm arguing that falsifiable statements about celebrities' sexlives is closer to science than current pop culture notions about EQ, because at least the statements can be disproven.

HOW TO SCIENCE

Step 1: discard any statement that is not well defined enough that an experiment could dismiss it

Step 2: test the remaining statements by experiment, and dismiss them if they fail

Step 3: until new knowledge appears, the remaining statements are considered reliable scientific facts

Every statement i've ever read about EQ is discarded in step 1. Most statements in a gossip magazine are discarded in step 2. Hence, a gossip magazine is strictly more scientific than a book about EQ. As for if this an attack on researchers in this area: what the hell are you talking about? what research?

>Are you talking about researchers or someone else?

I'm referring to people who pretend EQ is established science. Those people would either be misinformed or intentionally fraudulent. I hope this group does not contain any actual researchers. That would be disturbing.

The phrase IQ is already very unfortunate, considering the common literal interpretation that it is the definite score of intelligence. To have any new research refer to EQ, to appropriate both the success -as-well-as the distorted nature of how IQ is interpreted by the general public, could be described anywhere from 'pseudo-science' to 'completely fraudulent'.

Things might be different if there was a single example of research establishing some EQ metric that was reproducible and i'm not the most up to date person. So, maybe you have an example of scientific research that backs up the notion that EQ could even exist by having some kind of reproducible metric? A single example would do. But without that example, the usage of the phrase EQ in ordinary conversation needs to be consistently corrected so nobody falsely assumes there are any reliable facts or any consensus even about what this term means, the way there are with the phrase 'IQ'. It it was called differently, this misconception wouldn't happen.

This is actually what made the OP on Quora so angry. The question raised suggested strong misconceptions in the general public. The watering down of the general trust of people in science because too much unproven soft science is appropriating the reputation of the hard science. EQ hasn't been proven to exist any more than it has been proven that water has memory (homeopathy) or that souls exists. Its quackery.

<comment><USER6> > _For politeness sake, i 'll assume its a misunderstanding, although that is > a bit hard to imagine at this point, since i'm being extremely explicit._

By all means do things for politeness sake; I'm fine with that.

It seems you've assumed my discussion of "serious people working in this field" to mean something other than scientific researchers... and I've assumed your disrespectful remarks to include researchers, rather than just "people using the phrase EQ".

> _It is you taking offense that suggests there may be overlap between these > two groups, which is extremely worrying._

This fresh accusation relies on the assumption that I've misunderstood you but you understood me perfectly, which is clearly not the case. Slow down; I'll do the same.

..and FYI, telling you that you're being disrepectful is not the same as "taking offense".

<comment><USER7> I've understood what he's said just fine, richmarr, and you're definitely coming across in the way he's interpreting. You _seem_ to have a problem that you're struggling to define, other than a nebulous issue of "respect" which, as he's pointed out, should have absolutely no bearing on how scientifically legitimate something is. (Indeed, objections such as that are often an alarm bell.)

So: he hasn't assumed that you mean people other than researchers. If there is actual research happening then cite one example (as he already asked). He's also explained that any serious researcher wouldn't give two hoots about respect, and would only want to discover the truth, whatever it may be. Do you agree with that?

<comment><USER6> Goleman, Petrides (2001), and Salovey/Mayer (2004) all "make statements about EQ" so would all fall into ralfn's defined group "people making statements about EQ" that he accuses of being "less scientific than a gossip magazine".

But, as ralfn already clarified, he did not intend to draw actual researchers into his dragnet, so the point of dragging out that misunderstanding is what?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The "THERE IS NO SUCH THING AZ EQ....." part reminds me of the famous "you can't parse html with regex" answer on StackOverflow: [https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1732348/regex-match- open...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1732348/regex-match-open-tags- except-xhtml-self-contained-tags)

<comment><USER9> Wait, it that answer famous for completely ignoring the question and discussing about some completely unrelated problem in a caricature of the SO community, or is it the one famous by the "you can't parse HTML with regexes" line?

Because if it is the one famous by that line, too bad. I always expected that to became famous as an answer about how to parse HTML, not one about how to decide the kind of a tag.

<comment><USER8> The answer is relevant, it answers the question and it is also famous. I don't know what are you talking about.

<comment><USER10> It's famous, funny, and a classic, but the original SO question was about "matching open html tags" with a regex while the answer was about "parsing [X]HTML" with a regex. So the poster made some assumptions about what the original question's author was intending to do. Ultimately the choice between which tool to pick is a tradeoff that has to be made by the author, as hinted in the (much better) second answer: [https://stackoverflow.com/a/1733489](https://stackoverflow.com/a/1733489)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> He quotes an interesting sounding stat - "In fact, if you could choose to be born at the 95th percentile for wealth, or the 95th percentile for IQ, you would be more successful at age 40 as a consequence of the latter choice."

Does anyone know the source?

<comment><USER12> Restricting your analysis to the US, research indicates that IQ is actually more beneficial than your parents socioeconomic status in determining future success. Here's some small articles touching on the subject

[http://spartanideas.msu.edu/2015/04/04/income-wealth-and- iq/](http://spartanideas.msu.edu/2015/04/04/income-wealth-and-iq/)

[https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/12/would-y...](https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/12/would- you-rather-be-born-smart-or-rich/281828/)

<comment><USER13> It's not exactly what it does say. Firstly for some reason the original research link is broken. Secondly (from your own source):

"Nonetheless, for the teens and young adults of the late 1970s, the economy seems to have been, in at least some meaningful sense, a meritocracy. Now about that catch. The unfortunate truth is that, more often than not, the rich kids are the smart kids. For many years now, the single biggest gap in American education has been between the well-to-do and the poor. Thanks to the resources their families can pour into parenting, wealthy students start out academically ahead the day they walk into kindergarden, and stay ahead through their high school graduation day."

Lastly I'll add that it only took white non hispanics into account.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> While I'm certainly willing to accept that "EQ" is unscientific claptrap, coming at this from outside the apparent controversy, this answer is off- putting to me partially because I don't have the context this author assumes (a context which includes enough technical jargon and name drops to make me wonder who exactly this response is written _for_, as presumably academic psychologists are not pursuing professional discourse via Quora).

All that said, his slavish devotion to "IQ is king" makes me seriously question the value of attempting to pursue understanding his point. IQ may well strongly correlate to societally normative positive outcomes, but elevating a single quantitative measure to this degree reveals a worryingly inhuman approach to the field.

I would not want to discuss my health with a doctor who ranted like this about BMI being the most important measure of health we have. And I don't really want to learn about the psychological aspects of emotional health and human interaction from someone who rants this angrily over the transcendent value of reducing human mental capacity to a number, either.

<comment><USER15> I'm a psychologist whose research is close to this area. (Maybe in this area?)

The Quora post is kind of a trifecta of topics that tend to elicit very internet-y types of controversies for lack of a better way of putting it.

I can't speak for Peterson, to provide some context, I can understand where he's coming from. There are researchers of all sorts of backgrounds who spend a fair amount of time studying empirically the contours of human behavioral and psychological individual differences, and there are certain ideas that come up in the popular discourse, and persist despite their being a scientific literature that speaks against them in one way or another. They resonate with people because they do have variously sized kernels of truth to them, but somehow the scientific literature never gets injected into public discourse. This eventually feeds back, though, in textbooks and standardized exams, and it's like you're constantly fighting a battle for precision of terms.

Here's a small sampling of things that will trigger a response like that of Peterson on Quora: EQ, grit, Myers-Briggs.

The new MCAT is an example of this--the behavioral sciences section is horribly outdated in certain sections. I'm not sure how it got the way it is. But it's a major test, so now you have to teach to it, which then leads to a distorted perception of psychology and behavioral sciences by who are interested in the biomedical sciences, which then leads to all sorts of strawman arguments, and so forth and so on. It's like if the biology section included a section on intelligent design or something.

Anyway, the problem with something like EQ is that yes, there are non- cognitive determinants of success: empathy, social perceptual skills, perseveration, conscientiousness, socioeconomic background, and so forth and so on. So EQ captures this vague idea that IQ isn't everything.

The problem is that saying "IQ isn't everything" doesn't mean that a construct like EQ, which basically means "non-cognitive traits", is empirically precise and contributes something meaningful above and beyond other constructs mentioned by Peterson. These kinds of discussions create problems, because they create this false sense that if you argue against EQ, you're arguing against the idea of non-cognitive determinants of functioning, or arguing that IQ tests can't be improved, which is a false argument. Rather, what Peterson is saying is that there are well-characterized constructs like Big Five Agreeableness, or Conscientiousness, which have demonstrated predictive validity, and that are empirically coherent and precise enough to be more-or- less workable for lots of theories. That doesn't mean you can't be _more_ precise; it just means that they represent a certain baseline of precision.

Contributing to this a certain confusion about what's meant by "thingness" in these literatures. Behavioral scientists are often studying actions, states, experiences, which are not physical in the sense of being objects (even though supervenience holds, so physical things underlie them), which is a little more abstract than what people are used to thinking about. So there's predictably some offshoot discussion about that issue. It's a bit like arguing that DL nets aren't things because they aren't instantiated directly in neuromorphic chips.

You're right to be critical of the idea that IQ is everything. But I can see where Peterson is coming from in certain respects.

<comment><USER16> This seems to be the most sophisticated post here, so thank you for the context. Indeed MBTI is also pants. But what is grit? I've not heard of that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> > The idea was popularized by a journalist, Daniel Goleman, not a > psychologist.

Looking at Daniel Goleman's wikipedia page it's clear he was actually both a psychologist and a journalist: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Goleman](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Goleman)

</comment><comment><USER18> EQ is definitely something that can help one in life, particularly leadership. He is certainly correct that EQ is not scientifically valid. Goleman took the valid work of others and "interpreted" it to create/support EI. It probably should be called a theory, a process, a framework, whatever. After learning about EQ, and practicing it, my leadership abilities took off. I've taught it to dozens of engineers who say they are now much more influential, better team players, and better communicators. Some have said it's changed their careers. EQ is most certainly a thing, just not a trait. It's sort of like saying being a good listener (active listening, listening with intent) is not a thing because you can't measure it.

<comment> yjftsjthsd-h Any pointers you could give for those of us looking to learn such things?

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> > _There is nothing that will provide you with a bigger advantage in life than > a high IQ. Nothing. To repeat it: NOTHING._

Parents with bags of money.

</comment><comment><USER20> I think EQ was invented to make those with low IQ to feel better.

<comment><USER21> I think pop media needed a phrase to describe someone who was obviously smart but had a lot of trouble interacting with others. I am sure we all have run into Bob or Alice the cave troll who for lack of a better word can't pick up on any of the needs of other people no matter how hard they try. Pop media isn't going to go for words with academic rigor. They just know IQ = Smart and Bob is obviously smart, but Bob is also an idiot when it comes to reading social situations so Bob is also an idiot. People realize that Bob can't both be smart and an idiot at the same time so society created a way of differentiating that Bob is both an idiot and genius at different things aspects of life.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> The better title is "EQ is a redundant concept".

</comment><comment><USER23> There's also 'no such thing' as SQ (spiritual quotient) and no such thing as VQ (varna quotient) although both have been around and in use longer than our (western) civilisation.

</comment><comment><USER24> There is no such thing as IQ either its also a conceptual model. But agree there is no such thing as EQ.

<comment><USER2> The argument seems to be that there is no such thing as EQ because it is not a workable conceptual model whereas there is a thing like IQ because it is a workable conceptual model - definition of workable conceptual model that it can be used to make good predictions as one generally likes to do with conceptual models.

<comment><USER24> I understand that but it's not a thing it itself.

It's a concept which we use to describe certain abilities in humans but there is no IQ sitting somewhere. While EQ is definitely close to be "fraudulent" it's still sitting on a gradient with EQ being the best model we have when externally accessing someones mental abilities but it's not a thing, it's a human construct.

<comment><USER25> This is a bit like saying there's no such thing as the color red, it's just an arbitrary label for certain wavelengths of light. Why claim "there's no such thing as" something just because it's a human construct?

<comment><USER24> Because it matters. There is no red you cant meassure red we will never experience red axactly the same way. One of the biggest mistake humans make is thinking that experience or qualia is what it represents itself as. Its important to understand that we simulate a reality not the reality.

<comment><USER25> It matters how, specifically? If one person says there's no such thing as red, and another disagrees, there's no physical, observable thing about the universe that they disagree about. They're not disputing how light functions or how vision works, etc; they only disagree about which set of words should describe the whole state of affairs. Disagreements like that strike me as profoundly unimportant.

<comment><USER24> It matters because it will influence how we think about the world, what our premises are. Claiming there is red "out there" vs saying red is a construct in our brain leads to two very different understandings of the world. Its unimportant in many cases but important in some very important ones like how does our brain work and what is reality.

<comment><USER25> Nonsense. If A says "there's no such thing as red, because it's a human construct", and B says "there _is_ such a thing as red, because human constructs are things", that disagreement doesn't stem from different premises about the world. There's no experiment one can imagine where A and B would predict different results.

It's just two different ways of using the word "thing" \- each as valid as the other. Either party could switch to the other's viewpoint without changing anything about how they see the world, they'd simply be defining a word differently.

<comment><USER24> If one believe it's a human construct and the other doesn't and they decide to study science based on that they will end up with very different results. Furthermore depending on how you understand the world you will be encouraged or discouraged from pursuing various paths.

So no it's not just about defining it differently it's about whether you believe red is "out there" or whether it's "in your mind" if you can't see why that's important then that's your problem not mine.

<comment><USER25> > If one believe it's a human construct and the other doesn't and they decide > to study science based on that they will end up with very different results.

Give me an example of an experiment they'll predict different results for and I'll believe you. ;) If there isn't one, then your belief isn't paying rent - and arguing whether red is "out there" is as meaningful as arguing whether Wulky Wilkinson is a post-utopian.

> > [http://lesswrong.com/lw/i3/making_beliefs_pay_rent_in_antici...](http://lesswrong.com/lw/i3/making_beliefs_pay_rent_in_anticipated_experiences/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Jordan Peterson is a bit of a white nationalist, isn't he?

<comment><USER27> That's a cheap, intellectually-bankrupt addition to the conversation if you don't add anything to back it up. It's hard to believe you wrote it in any sort of good faith.

<comment><USER26> Oh please, these guys go on parroting IQ and "race-realism" as if it weren't intellectually bankrupt itself. The guy's apparent obsession with IQ is suspicious enough, not to mention any time I hear about Jordan Peterson it's in the context of alt-right nonsense.

Edit: to make this relevant to the conversation - a white nationalist has a dog in the race when it comes to the idea that "IQ is above all else". IQ has long been used as a reason for, e.g., why there is more poverty in the black community. Why is there more poverty? Simple! Their IQ is low and therefore they're not able to succeed!

<comment><USER27> Where in the link is "race-realism" mentioned?

"These guys", who are you talking about?

It seems to me like you took one look at the guys name and decided you were going to leave a "here be dragons" style comment to sully the conversation. The only problem is that your comment came across as lazy.

You might not like certain followers that you may have come across, you might even be right about them, but it's cheap and nasty to lump someone in with such a disgusting accusation (and done so casually) based on that rather than his own words.

I doubt you'd like to be held to account if someone of questionable character liked a blog post of yours and then someone else plastered you with an identity because of it.

<comment><USER26> I edited my comment above to make my point more relevant.

<comment><USER27> I don't see how it's more relevant at all. The posted submission simply makes the argument of invalidating EQ while showing the rigor behind IQ as a general predictor.

You decided to turn that into "some horrible people use this to back up some horrible beliefs, therefore this guy is one of them", and then in your edit you went "here is an example of one of those horrible beliefs".

Not to mention the fact that he specifically addresses in his text that IQ is not the only predictor, just an incredibly strong one. However, nothing you said addresses that. Which makes me think that you either didn't read it, or you hoped that your comment would be enough to influence other people to avoid reading his quora answer for themselves.

You're basically still lumping him in with horrible people just because some horrible people might use a subset of his argument out of context to try to back up shitty beliefs.

It's an incredibly disingenuous practice to take a _subset_ of someone's argument, correlate it with a horrible group of people and _their_ arguments and then try to apply that identity to that person.

Again, you'd be disgusted if someone did it to you.

<comment><USER25> If it makes things any clearer, the author of the quora comment is apparently a figure in various culture wars, so I imagine GP's opinions about him are coming from things he's said elsewhere, not just what's in TFA.

(I only know this because there was a brief furore about him the other day - he got locked out of his youtube account, purportedly for his conservative views, or somesuch.)

<comment><USER27> Personally, I'm aware of the debates that he's been engaged in outside of the scope of the EQ/IQ topic. However, even taking that into consideration, you have to take an oceanic leap to get from that to branding someone a "white nationalist".

Also, through self-admission: _not to mention any time I hear about Jordan Peterson it 's in the context of alt-right nonsense._

...their opinions have more been informed by what they've been told to think about him rather anything they've claimed he's said or done.

My passioned response to this is to call-out the behavior of how trivially people like to lob these accusations without any empathy as to how it could easily be done to themselves.

<comment><USER25> Fair enough, just checking. I don't think the guy's very widely known, but from what I saw the other day people who have opinions about him seem to have very strong ones.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Well, if you're a dick, there's gonna be an upper limit on how far you go with your intelligence. I don't think there's value in quantifying that with some hokey quotient.

Take, for example, Shkreli. Major dick but pretty clever by the looks of it. Now found guilty of fraud.

Bill Gates was a major dick. Made tonnes of money but yet reviled and found himself in the dock because of it.

Steve Jobs. Really intelligent but still booted out of Apple due to sheer dickheadery.

Now they all found major success, hence why EQ means fuck all. It seems they, or some, found out they had to do some serious thinking. Bill Gates is arguably the most redemptive.

Imagine you had average intelligence or just above and you were a major dick? People like that get asked to leave more often than not.

<comment><USER29> Have you ever actually met any of these people in real life? Reading headlines about famous people doesn't mean you actually know them.

<comment><USER28> There is enough evidence out there to show they treated people they worked with less than well. Are you saying that Steve Jobs wasn't a dick to his staff and to the board? Are you saying that trying to stage a coup in the workplace isn't a dickhead move?

<comment><USER27> I think you're arguing past the point a little. From what I've read, what got him booted out was Apple hemorrhaging money and the board wanting to keep the Apple II gravy train going and Jobs disagreeing.

My point is that questionable behavior didn't oust him initially compared to it being a fundamental disagreement over the direction of the company.

I'm sure the behavior didn't help, but if they were still making money hand over fist, the board wasn't going to turn around and say "you're too much of a dick so we're ousting you".

<comment><USER28> The final straw was Jobs trying to oust John Scully. John Scully said me or him. Board went with Scully. The point is that a lot of his actions that directly let up to that made him a dick. In Jobs case, his destructive behaviours didn't help the bottom line.

Being a dick screws over motivation, colleague happiness/satisfaction, increases turnover, etc. These things have an economic cost. Being a dick can cost your workplace lots of money.

<comment><USER7> This is all rather pointless when Scilly drove Apple into the ground and Jobs subsequently sent it into the stratosphere. I'm no Jobs fan at all, but that much is obvious.

Look at how badly Jobs treated his subordinates and family for an actual criticism of him.

<comment><USER28> No it isn't. If Jobs wasn't a dick and alienated 90% of people with his behaviour, he would have had more sway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> If I was marking this as a student paper, it would go back with demerits for plagiarism, faulty logic, poorly-structured rhetoric, and, to top it all off, bad grammar.

...Dude's a professor?

<comment><USER31> I doubt people place the same amount of rigor into Quora posts and HN comments as they do into academic papers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Wow, so many wrong things with this answer...

Of course, it would not surprise me to learn that measuring IQ as a predictor for success (or at least what a measurer defines as success) is much more accurate than "measuring" EQ for the same purpose. It makes sense - IQ is demonstrably measurable while EQ is some vague concept "popularized by a journalist". However, to go from this to a broad statement that there is no such thing as EQ is just silly. You could just as well say that there's no such thing as beauty because there is no accurate test to quantify it.

For a simple demonstration that EQ is an important quality for prediction of "success", just think of all the successful people you know and ask yourselves whether you think they would be as successful if they had the emotional makeup of an 8 year old.

This Quora answer has too much of a "trust me, I'm an authority" vibe to it

edited: ok, removed stuff that upon reflection does not contribute to the discussion - my apologies for that. The main point however stands. The repeated claims of no such thing as EQ should be qualified with "in the field of psychology" \- in that case, I have no objection to the answer.

<comment><USER33> Did you actually read the answer? Nowhere did he say that those traits don't matter, or even that they are too hard to measure (although he did say they are less predictive of success than IQ).

He says the concept of EQ is worthless because it just bundles together measurements of completely different character traits in a pretty much random way and creates a less-predictive mess as a result.

It's like summing someone's weight in kg and height in cm and saying that's their "physical score". This "physical score" is pointless even though we can measure both components accurately and measuring them is not useless in itself.

<comment><USER32> I read the answer, and my response is to the repeated "There is no such thing as EQ" statements which are stressed throughout it. How is anything I wrote not related to that statement? (edited my reply to be more constructive)

<comment><USER33> By saying EQ doesn't exist he's saying there is no "emotional intelligence" trait that determines how good you will be at various emotional/social aspects of life. Instead, testing EQ just looks at those various things and combines the results. There is no reason to believe that, for example, a person who is conscientious will also be agreeable. They are separate traits. A test which tests both (and other things) and combines the results and calls them "EQ" is not useful.

Contrast this with intelligence, for which they they test something very specific which you can test even in children, and we know this ability, even though on the surface unrelated to any real-world skill, strongly correlates with how they will perform at many different things later in life. It is an actual trait, not just an average of how good you are at various things.

<comment><USER10> Okay I don't want to derail too much, but a couple things to note:

1\. IQ is itself a combination of multiple cognitive functions: verbal comprehension, perceptual reasoning, working memory and processing speed, etc, and people might be better or worse on in individual topics.

2\. Conscientiousness and Agreeableness are part of the Big 5 model, which is itself just a model of personality that has its own share of flaws.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Spreedly + DigMyData = Subscriptions Metrics - <AUTHOR> http://blog.spreedly.com/2013/03/18/spreedly-digmydata-subscriptions-metrics/

<comment><USER2> I've gotten to know both the Spreedly guys and the DMD guys and it's really a great combination. Putting the two together will save a ton of time building models for your subscription data and correlating it with other activity in the business. Great work on the partnerships guys!</comment>


Courses in London? - <AUTHOR> My day-to-day job is as a Digital Designer and I'm a self taught front-end developer.
My wife has suggested that because I'm self taught I should probably get some certification to back up what I say I can do (which makes sense I guess!)
So my new years resolution...
Does anyone know any short recognised courses in PHP, Mysql, Python or front-end ones for Angular etc?
Thanks! Ill <comment><USER2> Getting certified for the sake of getting certified isn't really worth much - in fact, most of the technical courses I've been on could have been replaced with a couple of days to read a thick book on the same subject. Even where the training was expensive (i.e. Red Hat), the course itself was mostly crap and the book was fine to pass any exams.

If you want to back up what you say you can do, release some OSS or chip in to someone else's. If I were hiring I'd rather see someone that contributes to 10 Angular repos than someone that went to 'Angular Bootcamp' from some unknown startup in London.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'd advise against trying to get a "certification" or going on a "recognised course" — I don't think they count for very much. I don't think there are any courses/bootcamps in London (or anywhere) with such a high reputation that they automatically give you a leg up when applying for jobs (whereas with top universities this definitely is the case), so if you think you can gain some actual skills then sure, go for it, but not just for the certification.

<comment><USER4> Agreed, I wouldn't care whatsoever about your certification if I was hiring, you're already employed as a digital designer, if you're interested in moving into front end dev then look for an opportunity to move to that in your company.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ya I've done some bits in my current company but they have sister companies that will be leveraged more and more going forward and extrapolating this it leads me to think that my job may be going the way of the dodo... Anyway, thank yu all for your feedback, I'll need to show my better half that others have said what i have been thinking, and identify some things to get involved with.

Thanks again, and although a little early, Happy New Year!

Best, Ill

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'd suggest checking out [https://skillsmatter.com](https://skillsmatter.com)</comment>