Kids to learn how to code before high school in New Zealand - <AUTHOR> http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/political/333999/kids-to-learn-how-to-code-before-high-school <comment><USER2> This is a fantastic move. In this day and age we should treat _" everyone needs to know how to to program"_ just like _" everyone needs to know how to read, write, and do basic maths"._

Does everyone need to write code for a living? No, just like we don't expect everyone to be a professional writer or mathematician. But software is so pervasive that within a generation or two, not understanding how it works will put you at a severe disadvantage.

<comment><USER3> This is nice in theory, but I would like kids to be able to actually read, write and do basic maths correctly today instead of trying to add things.

Cause last time I checked a crazy numbers of them lack basic skills after they got out of high-scool. That's is a terrible and grave problem we should try to solve in an emergency before doing anything else fancy.

Stuff that anybody should be able to do WAY before being able to code:

\- make the summary of a text

\- calculate % of something

\- understand correlation is different from causality

\- read graphs and maps

\- follow instructions in a book to do a simple task

\- write a letter explaining directions in a clear way

\- being able to demonstrate causality on a simple system they just witness working without using an example in their demonstration

\- calculate the cost of buying a car or having a baby when given the proper metrics and projecting on that

Those are stuff our system is supposed to succeed in teaching at a very young age and many adults don't even have such basic skills.

We have a problem here.

<comment><USER4> You can break reading, writing, math, and code all down to the simple act of logical reasoning.

Reading is a man made system of information conveyance. To master reading, you master the rules of it, while understanding the intent and purpose. Writing is the same - a man made system of information conveyance, except for creation rather than consumption. It has rules, and you need to understand intent and purpose to master it.

Math is the patternized structural implementation system of the universe. Again, to master math, you learn the rules, and understand the intent and purpose.

Code is a man made system of information conveyance meant to implement math for practical applications. You need to learn the rules and understand the intent.

All of your examples just demonstrate that fundamentally, education _starts_ and _ends_ with the ability of someone to understand a system - to interpret it rules, understand its intent, and use that knowledge for purpose to apply the rules with intent.

That fundamental abstraction is horrifying, because it becomes so obvious that these stills are _never_ acquired. I'd postulate a _majority_ of public school graduates in the US cannot use structured logic to adopt new ideas and structural systems in a consistent way, which belays the fundamentals of what education is meant to accomplish.

More punctual orators call this "learning to learn". It is a lacking subject in almost all educations, something you are meant to hopefully acquire on your own, but the absence of which is worse than any other failure of development. Living without critical thinking is akin to a failure to thrive.

<comment><USER3> You can't teach somebody to learn in a generic manner. However, you can teach even several subjects that will be useful everday that approach a range of ways to learn, building the foundation required for the person to "learn to learn" by him or herself.

This is what we are supposed to do.

This is not, however, what we do in school.

School is now doing :

\- baby sitting

\- killing creativity and autonomy

\- blending all kids into on uniform bowl

\- giving them examples on how to avoid admiting your are wrong, using fear, cheating, power abuse, bad food, fact distorsion, memorizing and forgetting...

\- ranking kids against each others according to arbitrary yet not objective metrics

\- teaching kids to pass, and fit a disfonctional system, at all cost, or be ashamed

I have been a student to 11 schools due to my father moving a lot for his work, from the worst in the hood to the best private ones. None of them prepared me for my life. Most of the kids that went in there came out without required basic skills, and yet passed. The most expensive ones are the less evil, so money is an issue.

<comment><USER5> > You can't teach somebody to learn in a generic manner.

Nonsense.

However, the fact that this is often considered a valid view shows how little philosophy/ethics are part of common education..

Once someone realizes it is their _duty_ to learn, and that learning is a virtue that is rewarding on its own and brings benefit to themselves and others, the 'skill' is rapidly acquired.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I was lucky enough to attend the NZTech Education Summit on the 26th and 27th of June.

And can speak to even cooler changes happening in NZ classrooms. In Campbell's Bay school they are running their classrooms similar to how scrum teams work. Teachers act as facilitators and the learning is student led. At the start of the week students get to choose their learning outcomes from things that must be done this week and optional subject areas. And the week plays out like a sprint where students plan it out, some like to do the most difficult things first others unwind on a Monday with group activities with friends. There a 4 classes that all share the same space for this, which is broken in a quiet zone, a collaborative zone, the makerspace and a few smaller glass rooms dotted around. Once kids are happy they have completed a learning outcome they just supply their learning evidence to their teacher and it gets ticked off (BAT).

I also got to here about Kauri Flats primary school that uses design thinking and works with local communities on projects as part of their learning.

These big changes are limited to primary school levels for now largely because of the regulatory assessments put in place at a secondary level. But after hearing from representatives of the ministry of education and the NZ Qualifications Authority, there is definitely room for change in the coming years.

Super cool stuff. And a big step towards the kind of skills needed to succeed in today's society.

</comment><comment><USER7> Great this should put people off the subject for life and help keep the software developer shortage going.

<comment><USER8> The only thing that will fix the "software developer shortage" is for companies to stop being unrealistic and fickle in their demands.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The goal is admirable, but It looks to me that the government has just gone "Make it So".

This is quite a relevant issue for me because I have taught computer programming to primary school students in New Zealand. Teachers need to not only be taught how to program themselves but also how people learn programming. Which concepts are contingent on the understanding of other concepts.

Every programming teacher (myself included) that I have encountered is just someone who knows how to program muddling though best that they can.

I attended a seminar on how numeracy is taught in NZ. They have a lot of information about the order and time it takes for individual concepts to be grasped. Information from similar research on how children learn to program needs to be coalesced into a teaching plan, and teachers need to be taught that plan.

Doing this right will be a tough job. It will require resources. Probably more resources than will be provided.

<comment><USER10> Though your intent is admirable, programming is something that can be very easily thought, and yet quite difficult to master depending on your aptitude and inclinations and personal commitment to learn. Should everyone be able to write a simple script sure, and the tools that are being developed for corporations are exactly to allow scripters to do more with simpler tools, more drag and drop stuff with a simple scripting language. But real programming is something that comes from your own efforts and endeavors. Not something in my opinion that can be taught, even by talented teachers who are programmers because the amount of time and dedication does not fit into an hour or two a day, it fits into countless hours spent trying to hone your skills out of your own personal interest and hours and hours of frustration due to it. For a self-motivated programmer all you need is on YouTube and the net. For everyone else some basic teaching is adequate to get people started down the path, the rest they can learn by trying to do.

<comment><USER11> 0.) Teacher who gives up on trying to figure out how to teach more effectively won't be good.

1.) This is abut children. Their brains are not developped yet and their motivation is flicky. Pedagogy matters a lot.

The whole point is to teach them basic concepts so that they become able to learn more by themselves later on. They won't be taught modern stack, the point is to make them able to learn real stuff later on. A kid that encounters for cycle first time at university has much much harder time then the one that was even causually playing with logo.

2.) Even adults have common sumbling blocks. Having access to other people's experience - which explanation worked and in what order makes learning more effective.

<comment><USER12> > 1.) This is abut children. Their brains are not developped yet and their > motivation is flicky. Pedagogy matters a lot.

Pedagogy matters for adults too. The best kind of pedagogy is pedagogical content knowledge. That is, how do you plan a lesson around the specific content you're teaching? For example, what metaphors are effective for a given topic? What are the common stumbling blocks? What classroom exercises and demos are the best?

I've taught first year programming for a few years to collage age students. I don't have data, but I'd guess the difference between an effective lesson and an ineffective lesson is somewhere around 3-4x. That is, if I teach a concept (eg, pointers) ineffectively it seems to take about 3-4 times as long for a median student to 'get it' compared to if I teach it well.

Out of a classroom of about 25 people, there will be about 5 students who are going to become great programmers no matter what I do. And about 5 students who I am convinced will never learn to program, or if they do it'll take them about 2-3x as long as everyone else to master the skill. The knowledge that the remaining 15 students walk out of my classroom with is dependant on my skill teaching programming. Practically speaking most of those students actually learn a patchwork of the things I happened to teach effectively plus whatever they learned on their own while doing assignments.

I hope its enough.

<comment><USER11> I agree. But I still think it is all more sensitive in children. They have less self control and it is easier to discourage them. As adult, I was more able to distinguish between "the topic is uninteresting" and "the class was badly taught".

Then again, children can learn by themselves when it is all framed as game they are freely exploring - adults learn much less that way.

Then there is a factor of developing brain - your students all have already brains fully developped. So it won't happen that someone does not possess abstract thinking yet, but still may suddenly click 6 month later on.

Basically, adults are more able to overcome obstacles and be independent in learning while children depend on teacher much more - both for motivation and actual content.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Learning or understanding code really isn't useful for most people in a strict sense; with the proliferation of quality software applications there's really no need to code for most people since the application they'd end up making to fulfill one of their needs probably already exists.

You need to be able to communicate and express yourself to exist in society and be useful in an organization, but in order to build anything useful with code it usually takes a huge commitment of time and effort, so application developers specialized in writing code are better suited to making things with code than the average person.

A great example is this: yes I could develop my own music streaming service, but I could also just use Spotify.

That being said, we should still make sure people understand how technology works at a high level just because it's so important for modern society. One of the goals of education should be to help people understand the world in which they're born. And analytical skills are important so in the sense that learning to code can develop these skills, it can also be helpful for the average person.

<comment><USER14> Spotify is an extreme example, people need to write macros for applications, even understanding the formula syntax of Excell needs an understanding of programing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Given the amount of "How did you get out of this cursed industry" threads on here, if initiatives like this open up a pathway from coding to teaching I wouldn't be surprised if that was actually a pretty popular avenue for people sick of the day to day coding jobs. Likely a lot more satisfying than technical management.

</comment><comment><USER16> This is backwards.

There should be regular class periods where the students must work together and figure out some way to teach the technologically illiterate adult in the room.

Each project could start with the technologically illiterate adult crying and venting about their mortal fear of being replaced by a robot. In one project, the adult would let it slip that they get insecure when the students just go on their own to Wikipedia to find out information. The students must then put together a workshop with lesson plans and demos that teaches the illiterate adult how to apply their esoteric knowledge of the late 18th century textile industry to the relevant Wikipedia articles.

Repeat as necessary. By the time the kids graduate, the teachers should have a decent grounding in digital technology.

</comment><comment><USER17> Great stuff! Speaking from the UK (where this was mandated back in 2010), it's all very well having a curriculum, but what if none of the teachers have the skills needed to deliver effective and inspiring learning?

In the UK the government said, "make it so" and failed to provide training or resources for the many computing teachers who don't know how to program (which is most of them since the vast majority of UK based computing teachers come from non-computing subjects like business studies).The difference in quality of teaching, expectation of attainment and learning resources is staggering.

I wish NZ well, but I hope they realize that the teachers are fundamental in making this a success. A lack of investment in teacher training or classroom resources will make this dead in the water.

<comment><USER18> Scratch works pretty well in practice, to get across to kids that computers aren't magic:

[https://reddragdiva.tumblr.com/post/127964136013/it-turns- ou...](https://reddragdiva.tumblr.com/post/127964136013/it-turns-out-scratch- is-probably-the-answer)

[https://reddragdiva.tumblr.com/post/137374628373/scratch- is-...](https://reddragdiva.tumblr.com/post/137374628373/scratch-is-probably- still-the-answer)

[https://reddragdiva.tumblr.com/post/137376311558/scratch- is-...](https://reddragdiva.tumblr.com/post/137376311558/scratch-is-probably- still-the-answer)

That's in the UK. The maths teacher was pretty on the ball here, but the main thing is it caught the kids' interest and communicated _the concept of programmability_.

Scratch for young children, Python later and you've basically got this coding thing introduced.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> My daughter did some "Coding" a few years ago in NZ as part of her ICT, I looked over her work when she was getting frustrated and to tell the truth it was just end-to-end acronyms and jargon and the program they had to write in java script was soul destroying.

If I had to have done this at such an early age I would never actively avoided learning electronics or programming. The rest of the ICT course was basically learning Microsoft office and outlook.

She's taking HR at university so should have a job (sacking people) come the robot/AI revolution :-)

</comment><comment><USER20> What percentage of teachers know computer science? Who will teach the kids?

I am afraid this will end up a disaster because the teachers themselves do not know how computer science.

this could end up in a situation analogous to Lockharts lament

<comment><USER21> The teacher needs to tell the kids to open [https://hourofcode.com/](https://hourofcode.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> In the 80's, kids in various enrichment (AKA "gifted") programs learned how to code back in _elementary school_! I remember learning Basic on Apple II's and TRS-80's.

</comment><comment><USER23> We've been learning to code as kids (12-14 years old) too (things like Logo and Basic). (Russia here). Is this something new or unusual?

<comment><USER24> I was taught logo in NZ at 11, and started teaching myself Basic around the same time. High school students can learn programming as part of optional computing classes starting at age 13. Actually, age 11-12 students can probably choose to do it at some schools.

The difference here is the age, and that it would be compulsory for _everyone_.

<comment><USER23> >would be compulsory

Well, in Russia there is no alternative. Everything, including Informatics\CS is compulsory for everyone :)

Now I'd like to the process nowadays. Because in 90s most kids didn't have a PC at home (I'm pretty sure my class had two kids with a PC including myself), so from the 3rd year we were taught how to use it at all and some games (you know that maze with a mole moving boxes to get out or something like that). Then Logo, Basic and even Internet at some point. But what now? Most kids use iPad better then their parents by the age of 7...

<comment><USER25> At what age is Informatics\CS first compulsory, and when does it stop being compulsory? Are there specialist teachers or is the maths/music/English teacher being pressed into service to teach computing too? Sorry for all the questions, but I'm keen to know how the compulsory education in CS works!

<comment><USER23> >At what age is Informatics\CS first compulsory

2-4 grades - elective (in some schools) 5-end of school as compulsory for all schools.

>when does it stop being compulsory

It doesn't. Here in Russia we don't have a system where you can chose your subjects, even in high school (university[1] etc). Instead there is an educational programm to follow. Plus some schools provide elective subjects which you can add to you programm (for example second foreign language).

>Are there specialist teachers

Yep, there are. Specialized schools (we have general schools and schools with specializations, for example with deeper math&physics, or biology, or languages) might have several CS teachers (for example one who teachers younger kids simple things and general programming and the other one with algorithmic\math\network bias).

[1] Obviously in university the programm will differ depending on department you are in and other small things.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Similar discussion on /r/DevelEire about introducing coding to Irish primary schools.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/DevelEire/comments/6jsee6/teachers_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/DevelEire/comments/6jsee6/teachers_say_plans_to_teach_children_coding_not/)

</comment><comment><USER27> You cannot mention efforts to teach programming to school-age children without talking about the work of Seymour Papert:

[https://www.media.mit.edu/events/papert/](https://www.media.mit.edu/events/papert/)

A few comments have already mentioned Logo, which came out of Papert's work.

</comment><comment><USER28> This isn't good, but it can't stop here. It has to be continually taught over the child's educational life and implemented and shown how it is useful in other courses. Otherwise it's "just some thing I learned in high school" and the applications of it won't seem relevant.

</comment><comment><USER29> Won't count for much unless they give related subjects some attention. The way maths is taught in NZ is archaic.

<comment><USER24> Can you give some examples of how the maths teaching is archaic?

I teach undergraduate maths in NZ, so I'd love to hear your thoughts. I think the current approach is working, but could definitely be improved.

<comment><USER29> Sure but let me first say my beef is mainly with how it's taught in secondary schools (had no issues at tertiary level - CS major here). I should also note that this was my experience during the early 2000s and I really hope things have changed at least a little.

Our maths classes basically consisted of being handed really old textbooks and then being left to our own devices. The teachers when they did interact with us had no passion for the subject. I recall when someone asked why we were learning quadratic equations the teacher basically told the class he had no clue. I almost left high school with a deep loathing of the subject, and I say almost because I had one teacher in year 12 who was passionate about the subject and taught it well. I would later learn that his background was in a field related to mathematics (electrical engineering), not teaching which was my impression of all the others.

I guess my main point here is that the New Zealand government could be investing in it's education system by hiring people who have a real world background in the subject matter they're teaching. Having that knowledge and passion for a subject made all the difference - at least for me.

<comment><USER24> Wow, that's really different from my high school experience in the late 90s. Sounds like it very much depends on the teachers (which is unsurprising). I agree there needs to be much more incentive for people with real world experience to go into teaching. Difficult problem though.

I think tertiary lecturers are generally much more passionate.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Cleo Robotics Demonstrates Uniquely Clever Ducted Fan Drone - <AUTHOR> https://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/drones/cleo-robotics-demonstrates-uniquely-clever-ducted-fan-drone <comment><USER2> Unless the fit of the casing parts is atrocious, there appears to be a slit right above the grey ring the camera is mounted in.

Due to the shape, and it's location it's quite possible that internal shutters or ducts can be configured so as to allow partially disrupting the coanda effect on either side by selectively allowing air to exit through the slit. Possibly, but not necessarily ducted in from the fans high pressure zone.

This would likely cause a rather strong vectoring of the thrust as it would also almost certainly lower the lift on the detached side due to interactions with the fans.

If that isn't how its done, I'm quite positive it can be done in this way. I'll be happy to be named inventor in any thusly aquired patent and collect a very modest licensing fee, if only that would be how the world works...

</comment><comment><USER3> My wild bet: The two rotors are not coaxial. It is a very narrow bicopter (if the two rotors are not actually on the same axis and contrarotating then you get 3 degrees of freedom)

</comment><comment><USER4> Throwing my idea out there: What if the to propellers are synched. Depending on desired direction, they are "un-synched" ever so slightly. This causes additional thrust on one side of the "duct".

<comment><USER5> ATH Zurich have a single prop craft that uses just a single channel high speed motor control to stabilise and steer it: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3fM6VwXXFM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3fM6VwXXFM)

I wonder if this maybe has two contra rotating single blade props that they can control quickly enough to be able to speed them up for half a revolution to generate asymmetric thrust to provide pitch and roll?

<comment><USER6> Pictures show 2*3 blades (well, one three bladed and two blades of a similar layout, with one obscured)

But it could still be based on the same idea: if the blades are not flexing in the same way under acceleration, any asymmetry might do it, if it can be properly controlled.

Which brings us to how I thought this thing does pitch/roll until I noticed that I just got hung up on a difference between a prototype in the picture and a later iteration in the video: contrarotating propellers will influence each other when blades meet, creating nonuniform efficiency over the duration of a rotation. Three peaks and three troughs, like the legs of miniscule of pressure differential. I don't know where the peaks would be relative to the meeting points, but given the general fickleness of aerodynamics thrust of contrarotating propellers just can't be perfectly even all around the rotation. But that's still three-symmetric. It could become a control option when overlapped it with e.g. an n-symmetric grid where n is not a multiple of three, even if not a good one (mixing it with yaw would be a wobbly mess). The prototype picture shows five arms which is how I got the idea, but in the video it seems to be six/three, so this candidate is out (unless the specifically made a misleading dummy for the video, which I don't think, even though the video is cut in a way that it might be).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Perhaps the attitude of each fan blade rotates independently. To angle the drone, say, forwards, the fan blades might angle flat when they're at the forward position, every cycle, and angle tilted at the backwards position?

Seems expensive and tricky though.

<comment><USER8> "An Underactuated Propeller for Attitude Control in Micro Air Vehicles"

Paper is not free but video conveys the idea well: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZe7l5_LfoA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZe7l5_LfoA)

Likely with clever two-material molding you could do away with the hinge and it would look similar to the prototype shown in the article.

<comment><USER9> That is very clever, but the article says that this drone "introduce[s] control surfaces into the airstream to change the direction of the airflow and create a thrust vectoring effect." My guess is tiny spoilers around the inside of the duct to cause separation of the flow in one quadrant of the duct, allowing the Coanda effect to draw the stream in the opposite direction.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I don't know a lot enough about aerodynamics or airflow to be sure, but could they be moving pieces of plastic on the inside of the donut to block some of the airflow on one side to make it bank in that direction?

</comment><comment><USER11> > _Cleo, meanwhile, boasts a useful battery life in the 12-15 minute range_

For some definition of useful. Batteries really are the worst thing ever. We got dense energy from oil so early, and then nada.

<comment><USER12> If there is a charger at each desk only 5 minutes of battery is needed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> > With fewer motors than conventional quadrotors, it promises to be more > efficient as well [...]

I doubt that, because in "stacked propellers" configuration the second propeller gets very turbulent air, causing extra noise and vibration, i.e. loss of efficiency.

</comment><comment><USER14> Could you flex the shape of the inner donut somehow to change the vortex?

<comment><USER15> +1. This is what I was thinking but I'm not a a MechE. Would it work?

<comment><USER14> I'm not a mechanical engineer either :p

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Very interesting. I wondered when someone would try to mesh coaxial rotors [0] with quadcopter use cases.

To make a real co-axial vehicle, you'll need to handle changes in the 3 translational axes (forward/backward, strafe left/right and up/down) as well as the rotational axes. Despite being a complicated movement, it's pretty well understood and Kamov has been making coaxial helicopters for many years.

My best guess based on the video is that there are two contra-rotating fixed pitch props in the middle. This gives you up/down and by varying the speed of the props gives you yaw right/left. A couple of clever ducts forward, aft, left and right on the duct give you stability forward/backwards and left/right.

I look forward to actually learning how they did it. It certainly looks cool.

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

<comment><USER17> You only need four degrees of freedom to control an air vehicle in gravity (upward thrust and roll/pitch/yaw). You could still use internal ducting (as you suggest) to do that, but it'd probably be easier and more effective to have little flaps that deploy into the airstream under the rotors to divert the airflow.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Would it be practical to use a gyroscope to control one axis of rotation in a "drone" like this?

<comment><USER19> That is a cool idea, if you can get really light and efficient mechanical gyro.

A boring solution will be fins operated by micro servo/

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Coanda effect? Some little jets somewhere to entrain the flow?

<comment><USER21> Yep, perhaps just coanda effect with control surfaces on the bottom. Sort of like what the AESIR guys did:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXVtUCABiv8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXVtUCABiv8)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Anyone seen any tip driven motors in drones ? I found one test but not much detail, [http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/8101907/](http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/8101907/)

</comment><comment><USER23> Did anybody else notice that this is a flying saucer?

<comment><USER24> With a little control autonomy, it's the throwable flying map-ball bots from Prometheus.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> they could just deform the shape of parts of the duct, altering lift generated on one side or the other.</comment>


Norman Borlaug on Organic Farming - <AUTHOR> http://www.reason.com/blog/show/132479.html <comment><USER3> Borlaug had no problem with people buying organic (e.g., "Let them buy it. Let them pay a bit more. It's a free society."). His issue was that first-world people shouldn't completely abandon the advancement of genetically-modified food as it doesn't agree with their views of how food should be grown.

Most of us can buy organic food I would imagine, and it usually does taste better. But we shouldn't force our ideals of what others should and should not eat when organic is not a viable option, and _any_ food is better than tastier food. That was Borlaug's message.

<comment><USER4> Amen. There's nothing wrong with buying organic. Not respecting the differences between the first and third worlds is what is irritating in the food debate. Maybe people don't want genetically modified food domestically - but these innovations are critical to continuing to feed the planet. When you vilify them, when you start labeling foods as modified to create two classes of food, you're screaming loud and clear, "I don't give a shit about people that aren't just like me, and I don't respect the differences between first and third world realities." Personally - I want to be eating the same wheat as the guy pushing rickshaws in Old Dheli. I want genetic modifications rigorously tested so as to be safe for us all.

Acting like first-world boutique farming represents a viable model for the entire world - despite all the evidence - just because new age idealism says it should be, is the height of western arrogance.

<comment><USER5> _Acting like first-world boutique farming represents a viable model for the entire world - despite all the evidence - just because new age idealism says it should be, is the height of western arrogance._

I find the belief that mega-agricultural conglomerates are at all interested in our long term well-being to be the height of technological arrogance. The market incentives are just not aligned with our interests.

It's not that genetic engineering can't be safely and responsibly leveled, but simply that given the track record of the foods provided by these organizations, I don't see why they will behave particularly responsibility towards our interests in the future.

It's also disturbing that you're attempting to turn the debate into one of classism or racism:

 _When you start labeling foods as modified to create two classes of food, you're screaming loud and clear, "I don't give a shit about people that aren't just like me, and I don't respect the differences between first and third world realities"_.

Why is my desire to know exactly what I'm purchasing in any way remotely related to how I feel about people who "aren't just like me" or living in a third world economy?

<comment><USER4> You don't have to believe that GMO companies are do-gooders. Just take a look at the agricultural efficiency charts over the last century, global population, and rates of starvation. Seriously, the data is on wikipedia. Check it out. As a planet, we need GMO food. Its not up for debate, if the data means anything whatsoever.

As to your last comment: Why would labeling GMO foods as such create a food class system, and why is this wrong? (not something you claimed btw, just part of my rant :) Because only people rich like you will be able to choose the non-GMO variety, because you are undermining the development of safe GMO foods with that label, and because without GMO foods large numbers of poor people will starve. To me, thats a pretty clear connection. As to why class matters? Because North America has more food wealth than the rest of the world, maybe combined? As to racism: you put that in there, I said nothing about race.

<comment><USER5> _You don't have to believe that GMO companies are do-gooders ..._

They're not. They're corporations.

As a corporation, their primary incentive is, correctly and necessarily, profit -- not people. If that coincides with "do-good", then they do good. If it doesn't, then they don't.

There's plenty of historical precedent here -- take, for instance, the research into genetic use restriction technology as to require re-purchase of seed stock or a chemical activator every year. The work was shelved due to widespread outcry from farmers and consumers, which directly leads to my next point.

 _... Because only people rich like you will be able to choose the non-GMO variety, because you are undermining the development of safe GMO foods with that label, and because without GMO foods large numbers of poor people will starve._

So if I want to know what's in my food and how it was produced, I'm a rich American undermining the good of the mankind and causing the starvation of poor people everywhere? That's certainly a bold argument.

Instead, why doesn't the blame lie with GMO organizations that engaged (and continue to engage) in behavior that does not appear to be in our direct interests?

<comment><USER4> 'Instead, why doesn't the blame lie with GMO organizations that engaged (and continue to engage) in behavior that does not appear to be in our direct interests?'

Because GMO research is absolutely vital to continuing to feed our species. Monsanto may be a terrible company - but this is mostly related to patents. Patents bad. Feeding people good.

GMO for the people.

<comment><USER5> If you want GMO to succeed in the marketplace, then try convincing them to start serving the market, rather than trying to apply regulation to prevent the market from making informed decisions.

"GMO for the people" is just sloganeering.

<comment><USER4> People aren't interested in making informed decisions about this, they're interested in making a religious decision, which is why the labels must stay off. Its for the good of the planet, not first-world consumers. We need their food dollars driving research to feed the rest of the planet.

<comment><USER6> Yes, informed consent and other nonsense underpininning freedom and democracy be damnned.

And please, let's ignore how industrial-scale farming makes it difficult for agricultural societies to escape poverty. It doesn't apply to everyone, but there are large numbers of people who can grow a surplus of food without requiring large amounts of capital. Unfortunately that food is all but worthless becuase they have to compete with the substantal direct and indirect subsidies industrial agriculture enjoys. The result is that they can't generate extra money that could help them through lean years, or that they could invest in education or equipment that would help them move up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I buy organic for three reasons:

1) Despite what Norman Borlaug said, the vegetables taste better. I don't really care why. Maybe it has nothing to do with the fertilizer used, rather that they simply don't ripen the tomatoes with ethylene (the other side of the techno-farming coin).

2) I can afford it.

3) I don't trust Monsanto and their ilk to integrate technology to better feed me. I expect them to rely on technology to improve their bottom line, very likely disadvantaging me in the process -- their goals and incentives are simply not aligned with my own.

<comment><USER4> There's nothing wrong with you buying first-world, boutique food. Buy hydroponic vegetables if you want. You are not the problem: there aren't that many of you.

The problem is that new age extremism has vilified Borlaug, and the very Green Revolution that makes modern civilization - largely absent from starvation due to inefficient agriculture - possible. This man saved a billion people from starvation and resulting war, won the Nobel Prize, and your average North American has no idea who he is. As a result of the efforts of eco-extremist organizations like Greenpeace, the debate on agriculture is incredibly misinformed, and the very innovations in research that are critical for supporting the increasing global population are vilified by arguments that are entirely religious, rather than scientific. And people don't know that is what they are.

As a wealthy westerner, wanting to eat any kind of food - fine by me. Wanting to end research into genetic improvements in crop yields - <USER2> condemnable.

<comment><USER5> _There's nothing wrong with you buying first-world, boutique food. Buy hydroponic vegetables if you want. You are not the problem: there aren't that many of you._

 _The problem is that new age extremism has vilified Borlaug ..._

Isn't calling organic food "first-world, _boutique_ food" and many of its proponents "new age extrem[ists]" bit of hyperbolic vilification in of itself?

Commercial farming practices brought both good and bad, and you illustrate both extremes by railing so strongly against the one of them in multiple posts.

<comment><USER4> Have you ever grown a traditional garden, vs. an organic one? Try it on any kind of scale over 100 square feet, then tell me about the work involved, and tell me whether 'boutique' fits organic or not :D

<comment><USER5> Seeing as I can buy organic produce in large grocery stores for a relatively low price above the baseline, it is, _by definition_ , not a boutique product.

You're clearly using _boutique_ as a backhanded pejorative for the production model. The argumentative slight-of-hand is ridiculous.

 _Have you ever grown a traditional garden, vs. an organic one? Try it on any kind of scale over 100 square feet, then tell me about the work involved, and tell me whether 'boutique' fits organic or not :D_

What were your experiences in attempting this, and where did you find the organic approach led to significant inefficiencies in production? How does your experience compare with that of successful larger organic operations?

<comment><USER4> Relatively low? Organic foods are about 150% of the price of non-organic foods. Producing them is much more labor intensive. If you don't use roundup, you have to weed.

Boutique: small scale, upper crust.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is a typical ideologically charged topic - so I will present a few facts that that I think may put some of the debate in perspective:

1\. There are now more obese people than starving people in the world. The diseases that are killing those overweight people are largely nutritional in origin (heart disease, diabetes, at least some cancers).

2\. The EU (and I assume the US/Canada as well) are destroying agricultural products en masse, due to subsidized overproduction.

3\. Population growth is rapidly decelerating - the largest countries in the world have or are rapidly approaching "first world" birth rates. Western Europe is shrinking.

Borlaug did phenomenal work for his historical period, however, looking at it in a historical timeframe, we should remain aware that the parameters of our world are constantly changing, and thus it's not that simple.

Personally, I think it requires a careful look at the political and economic production and distribution systems around the agriculture and food industries. The whole "granola hippie" versus "libertarian corporatist" debate is simply a huge distraction that misses the point.

<comment><USER8> _There are now more obese people than starving people in the world._ : "Obese" and "starving" are not parallel: you only call someone "starving" if their lack of food is putting them at considerable risk of imminent death, whereas being "obese" -- while it does indeed increase your risk of various nasty things -- isn't nearly so dangerous. (It depends a bit on how you define "obese". I'll guess that to make it true that "there are more obese people than starving people" you need to define it quite broadly.)

[Edited about 1m after posting, for clarity only.]

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Where Borlaug and organic farming have differences is modeling sustainability.

As a scientist, I think (based on very little knowledge of him) , Borlaug was interested in sustainability and open to criticism.

The problem of sustainability can be addressed by various forms of science - Borlaug probably doesn't deserve to be a lightening rod. The politicization of agriculture (and the sustainability debate) is industrial farming techniques are sometimes (obviously) in conflict with ecologically "holistic" practices - that is, the model of the systems are different, and both models get things wrong.

My two cents: Profit clouds science as much as fear or ignorance.

<comment><USER4> Borlaug takes the stance that even if having 6 billion people on earth is 'unsustainable,' that we should still feed them all. At the root of all the 'sustainability' counter-arguments is the idea that we shouldn't feed everyone no matter what it takes, that people SHOULD be starving... just never the person making the argument. This is why Greenpeace does things like run a successful campaign to ban nitrogen fertilizer exports from Western Europe to Africa - its environment over people. Better for the people to starve than the environment suffer the fertilizer load, and the problem of increased populations when people stop starving.

Which is what I call environmental extremism - the non-extreme variety has people first, and seeks sustainability for our entire, well fed population.

<comment><USER9> '''the non-extreme variety has people first, and seeks sustainability for our entire, well fed population.'''

I agree partly - starving now or later - is the problem.

Isn't humanity just a startup?™ - industrial agriculture has "technological debt". We either pay the debt now, or face bigger debt later.

Borlaug, I don't think, was trying to define and deal with debt - and I think sustainability/ecology does.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The only reason I ever buy "organic" is when I think the regular product is cheating me by adding in a lot of stuff I wouldn't consider an improvement, like water in meat, corn starch in sauce, etc. Ironically these are often things with organic equivalents - but the organic brands are selling to a demographic who read the ingredient labels.

<comment><USER11> Check the definition of "organic." There is no requirement regarding food additives, save that the additives themselves must also be organic. Nothing is stopping the organic farmers from introducing these additives any more than it compelling the conventional farmers to do so. Whether they do or don't is entirely a matter of goodwill.

<comment><USER10> See my last sentence above. The connection of organic and not-messed-about is indirect - the same buyers demand both characteristics. Adam Smith gave a good explanation of such "goodwill".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Opponents of organic food never bring one of the main reasons why people buy organic - it tastes freaking awesome. While it may not be true for all products, there is a pretty clear difference between a lot of organic and non- organic products.

<comment><USER13> I would be willing to bet that in a double-blinded study the difference would be a lot less clear cut then you propose.

<comment><USER14> To be fair, I think you'd have to distinguish between Industrial Organic and true farmers-market / moms-backyard organic.

You give somebody a tomato, an apple, a pear from Kroger or Safeway or Publix, and another from an organic farmers market... I'd be just as willing as you to bet on that random consumer selecting the organic produce.

<comment><USER13> So you want to compare a piece of produce that has probably traveled for several days and sat around waiting to be selected against one from a farmers market where it was probably picked the day or two before? It seems like you are arguing against distribution methods, not organic/non-organic.

<comment><USER14> The trouble is that there often isn't a choice of "non-industrial non- organic." The 2 farmers markets in my area are stocked full of organic produce. Probably because a farmer can sell it for a few dollars more to people just like me if he produces organic.

And you can't separate the distribution method from its production method. They're part and parcel of each other. I would much rather buy locally-grown, non-organic produce than organic produce grown in an industrial operation a thousand miles away.

<comment><USER11> _I would much rather buy locally-grown, non-organic produce than organic produce grown in an industrial operation a thousand miles away._

Why? Outside of the arguments of freshness, which could be dealt with by a more efficient distribution mechanism, I don't see any net benefit.

I'll admit that the argument toward supporting local farmers carries little weight with me. Outside of the freshness argument, it strikes me as little more than small-town sentimentalism. There are a number of other industries where we did far better when we dispatched that argument; I'm not yet convinced that food production is any different. I can imagine all sorts of economies of scale that could be exploited, but we have to let the economy scale first.

<comment><USER14> The trouble is that food production is more organism than industry. And most of our obesity problems in this country, and a great deal of greenhouse gas effects, derive from ignorance of that fact.

The American industrial food chain consumes more oil than American automobiles. The industrial food chain enforces a farm mono culture where a plot of land sees only one crop, year on year, for decades. Or maybe two: Maybe soybeans get thrown in the mix. Local polyculture farms raise animals and a number of different crops in a little dance that mimics the natural cycle of life. Cows eat grass, and they and horses are the only animals that can. Birds clean up after the cows. What's left when the birds are done grows more grass. Goto 1.

The industrial farm leaves over-tilled dead soil in desperate need of artificial fertility, and ridding these farms of animals leaves them all on gigantic feed lots with manure ponds.

If you don't see the problems with this, you've buried your head in the sand. And that doesn't even touch the surface of the massive amount of fossil fuel we use to truck produce and meat 2000+ miles to a supermarket that itself is filled with thousands up thousands of food-like substances.

Huge agribusiness has proven you can indeed industrialize food. And to anybody that's ever looked closely at it, it's also proven that you shouldn't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> "That's ridiculous. This shouldn't even be a debate. Even if you could use all the organic material that you have--the animal manures, the human waste, the plant residues--and get them back on the soil, you couldn't feed more than 4 billion people."

Quotes like this make me sad. This is so ignorant coming from a brilliant man. Organic or conventional farming isn't the issue. The way most Americans consume meat 3 times a day is the issue. It would be like having a debate on oil consumption in this country and two people were arguing about heating homes with oil and nobody ever brought up transportation. Eating meat 3 times a day isn't sustainable. Organic farming is. The way this debate is framed is just beyond stupid for how intelligent the people having it are. Everyone just assumes that meat 3 times a day is ok and it's the organic farming that isn't sustainable. This is laughable.

This isn't an all or nothing thing here. Eating meat in moderation is fine. This country (American) has a taste for federally subsidized, extremely cheap and unhealthy meat. That is the issue. Not farming.

<comment><USER4> Maybe he isn't ignorant. Maybe he realizes that removing meat from our culture is more difficult than engineering more efficient agriculture. But really - North America is so agriculturally wealthy that is can afford to eat any way it likes. Borlaug engineered hybrid crops that made it possible for the rest of the world to self-sustain. In most of the world people don't eat as much meat, and that is not changing - and it is there that his innovations were most helpful. They ended starvation by providing enough wheat and rice for everyone - nevermind that it isn't always distributed evenly - he ended the literal shortages.

Anyway, this is changing. Look at meat's prominence in California (feed lots aside, I mean consumption) - much less than elsewhere. California leads, the rest of the nation follows.

<comment><USER14> It's not a lack of agricultural wealth that should limit our meat intake. It's a lack of fossil fuel wealth. Raising cattle uses an enormous amount of fossil fuel. And even organically speaking, the only reason we have such cheap meat is a massive amount of subsidized corn. That's not good for the soil, it's not good for the environment, and it's certainly not good for the cows.

<comment><USER16> > Raising cattle uses an enormous amount of fossil fuel.

s/Raising cattle/Raising cattle on corn/

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Until now, I haven't said much about this, because arguments about organic farming seem to quickly part with reasonableness and come to rely on blanket assertions and condescension. It's getting old, and I would argue that we either need to change the way we approach this topic, or keep it off the front page; I'd prefer the former, but I think that will be hard.

I worry that it has become to tied up in people's sense of identity. Not in the sense of an environmentalist lashing themselves to a tree, but in the sense of two neighbors attempting to win a battle about who loves and cares for their families safety more by buying expensive items. It might still be true that one of them loves their family more, but it is irrelevant to the battle; the real battle is who can buy more of the expensive shit to prove it to the person they are fighting against. This is a class conflict, above everything else that is going on.

And hence the problem with organic food; it provides a more expensive option that is, ostensibly: better for you, better for the environment, better for the farmers, better for the rest of the population, better for wildlife, and likely any of a number of other groups of people or things.

Do we know if any of this is true? No. Do we know if any of it is false? _No._

Does any of this really matter? I'd like to believe it does; it does for me. But I'm not convinced it does for most people.

We can argue that we _know_ the above is true, but the data we have is relatively limited. Even when we have data, it isn't entirely clear what it is measuring, because people have such confused definitions of what "organic" actually means. It has nothing to do with local farmers; it has nothing to do with the complete elimination of pesticides, herbicides or fertilizers. It just limits the types of substances used, based on _origin,_ not known health effects; organic farmers are required to use "natural" farming aids. What we have to go on is gut feelings that "natural," whatever we define that to mean, is "better." We also have the gut feeling that "artifical" things, whatever we define that to be, are "bad." This falls apart the instant someone points to something artifical that is better than the natural version -- as an example, please see Canola oil. But it can so fuel the senses that food we consider to be artificial will taste noticably worse. Does it? Who knows; we need more double-blind studies on this.

The problem is that the debate is working from an assumption _a priori,_ that organic food _is_ the better option, at least by the organic proponents. I am not pro-conventional food; I don't believe that most of the people who still buy conventional produce _are_ that religious about it. They'd like to see data on both sides of the debate, and would like to sit down and have a reasonable pro-con discussion. But that can't happen when one side of the debate is screaming "YOU'RE KILLING YOURSELF AND THE PLANET!" It's like the guy who buys the more expensive car seat while screaming at his neighbor "YOU'RE KILLING YOUR CHILD!" The poor neighbor now has a choice: submit to the religious fervor of expensive car seats, or deal with the continued condescention of his neighbor.

We need to start having a rational discussion about this; I'm surprised, given the level-headedness by which we approach other topics, that we are so unabashedly biased on this one. Maybe it's just a vocal minority?

<comment><USER17> _We need to start having a rational discussion about this; I'm surprised, given the level-headedness by which we approach other topics, that we are so unabashedly biased on this one._

Hurrah. I applaud anyone on HN who urges participants to look at evidence and to examine their preconceptions as we discuss issues thoughtfully.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I can't agree with him about organic food health benefits. When you eat industrially raised food (oil based fertilizer) you get a smaller spectrum of minerals, etc.

And, as my young grandson once said: "why would anyone want to eat food with bug spray on it?"

That said, it is a matter of free choice - my wife and I gladly pay slightly higher prices for locally grown organic food. If not organic, we then at least favor locally grown food.

<comment><USER4> What you are saying is scientifically false. As in: there is no evidence this is true, and the opposite has in fact been demonstrated.

It may FEEL like you're getting more nutrients - but you aren't. You are getting fewer traces of pesticide, which is probably a good thing. But nutrients - no.

<comment><USER5> Neither of you have referenced supporting papers or research. Which one of you is correct?

<comment><USER4> [http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/jul/29/organic- fo...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/jul/29/organic-food- nutrition-fsa)

<comment><USER5> "The findings, partly published today in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, contradict previous work that has found organically grown food to be nutritionally superior."

It doesn't seem as cut and dry as you've made it out to be above, but I'm no expert.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Use ShowKit to walk your clients through their in-progress iOS apps - <AUTHOR> http://blog.showkit.com/post/53793668561/use-showkit-in-your-app-for-live-client-walkthroughs

<comment><USER2> Yeah, well. I didn't appreciate the spam marketing they did to me today. I got an email stating that I seemed heavily involved in CocoaPods and I might enjoy their software with a link using a campaign URL. They even used my real name, which nothing uses that unless I have paid them as I always go by a nickname. So, I am not sure how they got my info and why they would come up with some BS about CocoaPods.

Here is the email, who sold me out?

Hi <my name>

I noticed you're petty active in the online CocoaPods community. I'm a big believer that online contributions rarely go unrewarded, so I thought it'd be cool to share with you this awesome SDK called ShowKit.

It lets you add Audio+Video Conferencing to your iOS apps as well as Screen Sharing. I think it's cool since users won't have to leave my app anymore to make calls or share documents.

You can also check it our for free with my promo code (some_code) if you'd like here

Thxs for your time <my name> . Look forward to learning more in the forums from you :)

<comment><USER3> Apologies Millerm,

ShowKit announced support for CocoaPods in a recent release ( [http://blog.showkit.com/post/50453719278/showkit- beta-0-2-3-...](http://blog.showkit.com/post/50453719278/showkit- beta-0-2-3-released) ). I oversee the marketing efforts for ShowKit. Sorry for the overzealous approach. Most likely an overly ambitious junior level business development associate. I'm looking into the specific details behind this outreach and will make sure the practice is discontinued. If you have any future issues, or want to get a hold of us: [http://chat.showkit.com/](http://chat.showkit.com/)

<comment><USER2> Apology accepted.

I am just not a fan of fishing. The "I noticed you're petty active in the online CocoaPods community." and how my real name came in on my gmail account means that some other company sold you the address/info. Grr, I am more angry with them than you. My ex's profession was marketing and we use to have some heated debates about certain practices.

Anyway, hope your product does well!

<comment><USER3> Hey Millerm,

So I did a bit of detective work -- and as it turns out, the company you ought to be upset with is Google. Apparently, if you add a Google Group email to your Google Calendar event, and then you select "don't send invite email", the Google Calendar event displays the emails of all the people in that group (along with names). Anyway, just thought I'd through that out there, as it was a surprise to me as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This also looks really useful for learning applications, for example where the learner needs to be guided remotely by a teacher, mentor or peer. Could even facilitate some fascinating collaborative learning exploration if it is extended a bit further.

<comment><AUTHOR> If you have features you think will make the product better we're pretty open to considering them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Wow... just jumped into the beta and had a conference call going in a couple of minutes. Not entirely sure how I'd fit in the use of this yet, but it seems pretty cool!

</comment><comment><USER6> Could this be used to do remote support? Where the app user initiates a support session (or via push message) or something) and then the admin can walk them through things?

<comment><USER7> Yes, that's one of the major use cases. We have a demo for remote help desk as well in the samples section [http://showkit.com/samples](http://showkit.com/samples)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> If anyone wants to jump the line for the beta, use the promo code 'HN-demo' and you will get bumped in the line.

</comment><comment><USER8> Anything like this for websites? I would gladly pay premium price for something that was easy to use.

<comment><AUTHOR> We're working on a browser plugin currently, and are enthusiastically watching WebRTC developments so we will certainly have a product for web down the road.</comment></comment>


Paged.js: Paginating content and making books in the browser - <AUTHOR> https://www.pagedmedia.org/paged-js/ <comment><USER2> I did a big deep dive into this when I was implementing offline caching of web pages and annotations in Polar.

The issues I had were mostly to do with converting to pagination and I decided that in practice it just wasn't worth it.

The problem is that pagination on web pages just doesn't work. People have figures and so forth that need new page breaks to properly work.

CSS has extensions for this but the problem is that no one uses them because they're not intending their pages to be printed or paginated.

I have more work on this if you're interested:

[https://getpolarized.io/2019/10/06/Whats-Next-For-Web- Captur...](https://getpolarized.io/2019/10/06/Whats-Next-For-Web-Capture.html)

[https://getpolarized.io/2019/05/11/portable-web- documents.ht...](https://getpolarized.io/2019/05/11/portable-web- documents.html)

... I've decided to just migrate all this work for EPUB for various reasons but I'm also going to migrate to one continuous 'page' due to the CSS pagination issues I mentioned above.

<comment><USER3> Holy Moly, this Polar thing looks amazing! And it's open source too!! I was definitely not expecting that when I followed the link nor when I started reading about it.

Document management, and saving web pages is a huge deal and something that I have been looking for a solution for but which until now I have not found anything that would quite fit, and most of the ones I have looked at and seriously considered would require too much integration work and customization to be usable. But Polar looks really really promising!

I have avoided Electron based software until now for the same reasons you often find people echoing in the HN comments section when the topic comes up, but for Polar I would make an exception because it looks to be perfect for me so I am willing to sacrifice some of my precious RAM for Polar and am willing to accept a certain degree of UI and performance problems that I associate with Electron based apps.

Since a web browser extension is in the works though, would you recommend that I wait until that is released or should I start using the Electron based app now and then migrate/switch?

<comment><USER2> > Holy Moly, this Polar thing looks amazing! And it's open source too!! I was > definitely not expecting that when I followed the link nor when I started > reading about it.

Thanks... 2.0 should come out next week too so it's going to be interesting to see how the community responds.

Here's more on the release:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/PolarBookshelf/comments/du68gf/plan...](https://www.reddit.com/r/PolarBookshelf/comments/du68gf/plans_for_polar_20_and_big_release_this_week/)

The browser version is almost on par in terms of features with the desktop version. The main features that we're missing in the web version are offline support (which will be resolved soon), support for syncing with Anki, and web capture.

We're working on porting web capture to completely run within the web extension though. I think the web version should be completely on par with the desktop/web version in the next month or so.

Also, it's really not THAT much of a resource hit. On my machine it burns like 100MB or RAM and say 300MB of disk space.

<comment><USER4> I remember when WoW ran on 300 mb

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's surprisingly difficult to navigate to a clear example of this project in action.

<comment><USER6> Found a sample, here are the first 50 pages of Moby Dick: [https://s3.amazonaws.com/pagedmedia/pagedjs/examples/index.h...](https://s3.amazonaws.com/pagedmedia/pagedjs/examples/index.html)

<comment><USER7> That link is hilariously broken on my phone (Safari iOS 12)

I see the tiny zoomed out 2x2 layout of the page, but if I try to zoom in, it zooms in on the abyss.

And if I try to pan while zoomed in, it zooms back out to the illegible zoomed out view...

-

Actually the more I play with it, the more interesting the way it breaks are.

I was able to zoom in when I scrolled down first, and very inefficiently pan around the 2 column view, but if I pan too far, the zoom resets.

And sometimes I just end up being taken to the abyss again.

Which I figured out is way off in the right margin.

<comment><USER8> It's apparently made for printing online content, not reading in the browser / on your phone.

<comment><USER9> We have media queries, there's no need to break one to make the other look good

<comment><USER8> Maybe I don't understand the project, but the top of the docs shows that it all goes inside the @media print{...} media query.

<comment><USER9> Sure, just make another @media screen {…}

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think pagination works better in books because books are finished. Websites get updates all the time, so when you mentally organize an idea as being part of page 3, that might just lead to confusion next week.

The embedded links and ads everywhere we look just throw garbage all over the place too, or else published news articles might match pretty well

<comment><USER11> I think you're thinking about web apps. I imagine there's little purpose in printing those.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> It always felt embarrassing to me how incomplete (and still in draft status) the CSS for paged media is...

I would be so happy if this polyfill takes off!

<comment><USER13> We're working hard for that to happen, and to see browsers implements more of the paged-media specs!

<comment><USER14> Thanks for your work. I've been re-reading Knuth's _The TeXbook_ as a reminder of fine points in typography. So much can be covered in just provisioning for floating blocks, top-floating blocks, widows and orphans, a few counters, some flexibilty in headers and footers, and such. It seems like you and/or CSS are hitting those high-points.

I hear you emphasizing this might just be for print, but something like a Kindle in-browser reader (hidden nav; spacebar or < or > to turn a page) can also provide a nice experience (different to scrolling) in reading longer works.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I searched through the site and still couldn't find a demo hosted anywhere. The idea of making paged media a more pleasant in-browser experience sounds neat, but the lack of examples is troubling.

<comment><USER16> We'll need to make these easier to find, but there are a few examples mixed in with the Readme and more at [https://paged.design](https://paged.design)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Is it possible to use it to convert a web page to a paginated mode in the browser? Like the reader mode but put the content in pages instead of continuous mode.

</comment><comment><USER18> This might be a hot take, but I think this is unnecessarily complicated and is a solution looking for a problem. My thoughts apply more broadly to the CSS Draft for pagination as well.

In general - why does the Web need this? This is a less-flexible CSS grid, with some auto-increment and @media(print) styles mixed in.

The use case for faithfully representing a textual work is not convincing - this can be done already, more accurately, and in a far less complicated manner by using images or PDF or any other format more suited than hypertext markup and CSS.

We already have pagination on the Web, it's called a web _page_.

This just feels so _wrong_ and not what a Web document should be: [https://www.w3.org/TR/css-page-3/](https://www.w3.org/TR/css-page-3/)

<comment><USER19> I think (hope?) it is for printing, and not for reading in the browser. The example has `@media print{..}`, so I assume that is what the intended end result is for this project.

<comment><USER18> Eh, I'm not so sure. I spent more effort than I should have to find an example of this working and I'm not impressed [0]. Everything about it seems worse than browsers' reader mode for accessibility. It's also very slow, but I'll let that skate since it's probably just the polyfill[1].

I don't get the appeal. This isn't anything like a book, since I'm still scrolling, squinting, and _reading words from a backlit screen instead of a physical page_. Not to mention, using the browser's zoom functionality just straight up doesn't work (the pages and text stay the same size). So much for accessibility?

I really dislike everything about this.

[0]: [https://s3.amazonaws.com/pagedmedia/pagedjs/examples/index.h...](https://s3.amazonaws.com/pagedmedia/pagedjs/examples/index.html)

[1]: But actually, JS is supposed to be pretty fast nowadays - so let's not build this bloat into the browser's rendering engine please?

<comment><USER19> Printing books directly from the browser isn't a solved problem, so it seems like a good project, to me.

I don't see any evidence on their website this is intended for reading in the browser, and tons of clues that it's intended for printing books from the browser. I mean, there are tools for physical page sizes, blank pages, front/back matter, page counters, etc. Things that make zero sense in the browser and are necessary for a nice book printing.

So, what makes you think this is intended for reading in web browsers? As you note, it's horribly unpleasant in a browser...seems like they would have noticed that if they were testing in the browser, rather than using it to print books.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Pagedown[1] leverages paged.js to create reproducible scientific documents. It's still a little rough but I prefer it to fiddling with LaTeX templates.

[1] [https://github.com/rstudio/pagedown](https://github.com/rstudio/pagedown)

</comment><comment><USER21> Is this library needed, if you are using PrinceXML?[1] Looks like a lot of the pagination and margin stuff is already supported by CSS 3

[1] [https://www.princexml.com/](https://www.princexml.com/)

</comment><comment><USER13> Hey folks!

@julie_b @fredjc and myself are working on paged.js and we'll be happy to answer any question you may have :)

We're in [https://mattermost.pagedmedia.org/](https://mattermost.pagedmedia.org/) :)

Come play with us :)

<comment><USER13> If you want to know more, you can also go to [https://www.cabbagetreelabs.org](https://www.cabbagetreelabs.org)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> This looks interesting. I work on a project to help convert articles into printable PDFs. Created a video a few years ago showing how CSS can be used to control columns based on paper size and orientation: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=854Csokl3QA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=854Csokl3QA)

We currently have a browser extension you can test here: [https://pdf.fivefilters.org/simple- print/](https://pdf.fivefilters.org/simple-print/)

</comment><comment><USER23> The page printing of this website is somewhat broken on firefox. The two columns are neat I guess, but the subtitle overlaps the text, the top margin is unreasonably small, and decreasing scale (to save paper) makes right margin very big.

I understand that some people may not care about Firefox, but can you at least not break things for it?

<comment><USER24> Firefox does not support the page size declared in the @page when printing. The page is in A4 or letter by default, it is necessary to manually modify the size of the page in the personalized sizes. If it's not done, strange things happen. We care a lot about Firefox and paged.js team tried to have a discussion several times on this point. It should be moving in the next few months, I hope.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> How well does it handle orphans and widows? That's my litmus test for whether it is suitable at all for making books.

<comment><USER13> Since we use Blink rendering engine, and columns, we do have the ability to set up widows and orphans as we want it :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Any cross pollination with EPUB?

<comment><USER27> FAQ says you can export to ePub, but not via the UI yet.

<comment><USER6> There is an example where you can upload and view an ePub: [https://s3.amazonaws.com/pagedmedia/pagedjs/examples/epub.ht...](https://s3.amazonaws.com/pagedmedia/pagedjs/examples/epub.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> when i gave it a go, the demo "moby dick" was completely broken :/

</comment><comment><USER29> All show something like two page zoomed out overview, firefox for android.

</comment><comment><USER30> These two concerns seem rather unrelated. I mean, pagination is valid for 2 pages. A book is hundreds of pages, and the concerns there relate to that very long length. (I would settle for a nice in browser solution for merely the former!)

</comment><comment><USER31> I don't want to sound snarky but this is a sincere question: why?

Why would I want to make a browser act like a book? Or vice versa? Didn't we kinda try this with Flash? And didn't we realize they are two different mediums?

<comment><USER12> It is not about making the browser act like a book. It is about using HTML (a document markup language) and CSS (styling independent of semantics) to write paged media. I personally need to write the same documents fairly often in both latex and HTML in order to make them pretty for paper and screen. I would love to use HTML/CSS for both.

</comment></comment><comment> ga-vu Oh, great! Some more garbage that only works in Chrome... because hipsters and lazy devs looking for jahbs!

<comment><USER13> Because the other browsers havent made the @page size property available, which is the only thing we can't polyfill.

But Firefox is now looking at this, and Safari too. I hope we'll get to support more browsers soon enough (Firefox is my daily driver)</comment></comment>


Experimental Vacuum Method Used to Transport Salmon in Washington - <AUTHOR> http://www.outdoorhub.com/news/2014/06/06/experimental-vacuum-method-used-transport-salmon-washington/ <comment><AUTHOR> Can you replace fish ladders with pneumatic tubes? These guys seem to think so.

There are more videos at [http://whooshh.com](http://whooshh.com).</comment>


International Space Station View of Sarychev Volcano Near Japan [gif] - <AUTHOR> http://i.imgur.com/a1mi760.gifv

<comment><USER2> That's an incredible perspective. It seems like their are missing frames as the motion isn't fluid throughout. Do you have the original source?</comment>


A lazy, functional Javascript library that ain't nuthin' ta f*ck wit. - <AUTHOR> http://fitzgen.github.com/wu.js/

<comment><USER2> WU TANG HAHA I GET IT</comment>


Bitcoin for the Befuddled – Our fancy new book and website - <AUTHOR> http://befuddled.org <comment><USER2> The yellow "inserts" that pop open are neat but appear too often and become an annoyance. I think you should keep it limited to the fortune teller, cover color voting, and cointagion link. The rest of them seem like filler and add no value, in my opinion.

<comment><AUTHOR> Jayschwa, you might be right, we'll work to adjust that.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> We'll hang out in this thread and answer any questions. (Also happy to answer questions on my other books, "Land of Lisp" or "Realm of Racket")

<comment><USER3> Are you long BTC at this moment? Do you think that makes your opinion of it unbiased?

<comment><USER4> Co-author writing here. Although we think Bitcoin has (probably) a bright future, the book is really just about explaining how it works (the protocol and the cryptography behind it).

<comment><USER5> Question to both authors - The Cicada 3301 group has been linked to BTC (suggestions that Satoshi is a pseudonym for the group), their most recent puzzle had a key code around The Book of Law by Crowley. Just coincidence that your character is also named this, or by design?

<comment><USER6> Cicada 3301 is fascinating. Taken at face value (and that's a huge assumption to make) it appears to be a self-styled "cypherpunk freemasonry" of sorts. Care to cite or summarize the evidence and case for a satoshi/cicada link (other than "hey wouldn't that be so awesome if...")?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Has anyone yet been able to articulate a defense for BTC against von Mise's "regression theorem" for the origin of money? or show that von Mises was wrong? "this time it's different" is not good enough.

<comment><USER8> Isn't emergence of bitcoin falsified regression theorem?

From "Human Action":

 _No good can be employed for the function of a medium of exchange which at the very beginning of its use for this purpose did not have exchange value on account of other employments. And all these statements implied in the regression theorem are enounced apodictically as implied in the apriorism of praxeology. It must happen this way. Nobody can ever succeed in construction a hypothetical case in which things were to occur in a different way._

[https://mises.org/humanaction/chap17sec4.asp](https://mises.org/humanaction/chap17sec4.asp)

<comment><USER9> It sounds like there's nothing wrong here -

Bitcoin is (since its beginning) exchanged for something else at market rate (e.g. dollars), so that a more convenient transfer can be made later, and then exchanged back into something else (e.g. dollars). At no point did it have "no exchange value on account of other employments".

Right? It's the same way how physical money works. They were exchanged for goods (e.g. horses), so that a more convenient transfer can be made later, and then exchanged back into goods (e.g. horses).

It is more convenient than our existing currencies, and you should be able to see our existing currencies as being similar to "goods" like horses.

<comment><USER7> I beg to differ. I did have "no exchange value on account of other employments" at the time the very first BTC was mined, and I suspect quite a few months after that. The same cannot be said of paper money as from the moment of its inception and for many long years thereafter it was redeemable in gold, thus satisfying the regression theorem. Even today a tenuous link is still maintained as the gold reserves of every central bank factor, to a limited extend, in the assessment of a currency's health.

<comment><USER10> > The same cannot be said of paper money as from the moment of its inception > and for many long years thereafter it was redeemable in gold

But since the dollars themselves had no inherent value, its value was derived simply from the cumulative belief that they could be redeemable by gold. I could even say that when the dollar was first created, the rest of the world was wary of it since it was so new.

I don't see how bitcoin is much different, except for the fact that a large organization (e.g. government) didn't state that it had value when it was first created, which is actually one of the strong points of bitcoin (a currency by the people for the people.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Cointagion is the first site I seen that shows how simple it would to buy digital goods with bitcoins. How could this work with physical goods? Would you just have to "tie" a shipping address to a bitcoin transaction?

<comment><AUTHOR> Were still trying to wrap our heads around the issue of physical shipments in regards to bitcoin purchases ourselves. There is a new "bitcoin payment protocol" for authenticating merchants that is part of the solution and which we discuss in the book... But more and more goods are becoming virtual every day (just consider 3d printing for instance as a way to increase virtualization of products) and this is where bitcoin shines.

<comment><USER11> I guess I am thinking about it from the perspective of some company like Amazon adopting it. That would be absolutely massive for bitcoin. I think we are still a long way from being able to "3d print" any product you need.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> With the mouse sidebar, I think you meant terminal velocity (not escape velocity).

<comment><AUTHOR> Darn, you are right...

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Tulips, except you don't even get the flower delivered this time round..

<comment><USER14> Oh you are so clever.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Seriously cool stuff. Are there other formats (PDF for example) for those who want to buy this and read it on their smartphones later?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi, we're releasing the full book and ebook in Jan-Feb. It will also be available in PDF form and will include all the comics from the website.</comment></comment>


Taxi groups unite to fight Uber - <AUTHOR> http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/bb5fa9ee-78e7-11e5-933d-efcdc3c11c89.html#axzz3pbhGudt8 <comment><AUTHOR> Non paywall link [https://archive.is/LAKLr](https://archive.is/LAKLr)</comment>


Bitcoin Is 300 Times Cheaper Than Wire Transfers, Banks Take 83% Profit - <AUTHOR> https://www.newsbtc.com/2018/09/18/bitcoin-is-300-times-cheaper-than-wire-transfers-banks-take-83-profit/ <comment><USER2>
      According to Bank of America's official data, the $302
      billion bank charges $30 for outbound domestic wire transfer
      and $35 for outbound international wire sent in foreign
      currency.

      But, Fedwire, the official real-time gross settlement funds
      transfer system operated by the United States Federal
      Reserve Banks that allows banks to electronically transfer
      funds, charges $0.25 per transaction.

The bank, not FedWire, must cover the cost of fraud.

<comment><USER3> [https://www.bankofamerica.com/content/documents/deposits/ser...](https://www.bankofamerica.com/content/documents/deposits/service/pdf/Domestic- international-wire-transfers-info-sheet.pdf)

I wish Bitcoin was around when I was sending international wires to China.

People forget it takes days to get fiat to BTC then back to your local fiat. So, in reality, Bitcoin is not usable real-world solution.

<comment><USER2> The fees are high largely because of fraud. Both directly (cover the costs of actual fraud) and indirectly (channel consumers to using other methods that leave the bank less exposed). Wire transfers are tailored for businesses sending large amounts of money. If the bank has reason to trust you (e.g. wealthy client), you can often work with the bank to reduce or eliminate wire transfer costs.

Transactional banking law has evolved over the centuries to leave the retail bank holding the bag for fraud. That's because they're the least cost avoider (i.e. the agent best placed and most skilled to minimize fraud). But it also means they're highly sensitive to these issues, and are reticent to expose themselves unless they've arranged recourse in case of fraud.

Newer methods of transferring money seem cheaper only if you discount the cost of fraud. Nobody factors the billions of fraudulent Bitcoin transactions into the cost of Bitcoin, even though a stolen ATM password or account number is exactly analogous to a stolen Bitcoin wallet password or online account. If Bitcoin miners were legally made liable for fraudulent transactions (as banks are for unauthorized use of stolen credentials), you can bet the cost of Bitcoin transactions would skyrocket.

Fast, automated payment and money transfer mechanisms are unfathomably attractive to criminals.</comment></comment></comment>


The Idea of Lisp - <AUTHOR> https://dev.to/ericnormand/the-idea-of-lisp <comment><USER2> > Should I blame my Computer Science education for not teaching it to me?

Which computer science curriculum doesn't require a course in theory of programming languages where functional programming concepts and history ( most likely lisp or scheme ) are taught? But if you weren't taught that, then yes, you should blame your CS department.</comment>


Vancouver Developer Week (Nov 11-17) - <AUTHOR> http://vancouver.devweek.org

<comment><AUTHOR> OP here. If you're interested in learning more about the startup and developer community in Vancouver, BC definitely consider coming up for VDW in November.

</comment><comment><USER2> Bummer - I'm just across the border in Bellingham, but I'll be on my honeymoon then! Looks like some great content.

<comment><AUTHOR> We're hoping this will turn into a regular thing, there are also plans for Seattle Developer Week and Portland Developer Week on the horizon. Stay tuned!</comment></comment>


Perl Developers Actively Care About Backwards Compatibility - <AUTHOR> http://consttype.blogspot.com/2009/07/darkpan-matters.html

<comment><AUTHOR> See also

<https://www.socialtext.net/perl5/index.cgi?history>

Perl 5 was released in 1994. The current production version of Perl is 5.12. You can really consider Perl 5 as something very, very stable by now.

<comment><USER2> The difficulty maintaining Perl comes from the large number of modules that will only work with the perl version it was compiled with. A module might work with any version 5.8 or later, but only one version at a time. So if you upgrade perl on a system, you'll have to re-install the module from CPAN as well.

<comment><USER3> You mean XS modules, and any well-written XS module should be binary compatible with any other point release. That is to say, if you compiled an XS module against Perl 5.10, it should work unchanged with Perl 5.10.1.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The article to which this one is a response, has exactly the opposite point of view:

[http://perl-yarg.blogspot.com/2009/06/darkpan-schmarkpan-sto...](http://perl- yarg.blogspot.com/2009/06/darkpan-schmarkpan-stop-meme.html)

As, to some extent, does a followup from another developer:

<http://use.perl.org/~chromatic/journal/39228?from=rss>

I suggest an alternative title for this post: "Some Perl Developers Care About Backwards Compatibility (While Some Don't Give A Hoot And Others Just Try To Keep Up With Conflicting Needs)".

<comment><AUTHOR> There's big difference: those who care actually develop Perl (like, they maintain the C kernel of the language etc.), and those that don't just use Perl and just make noise and are clueless outsiders looking for attention.

Edit: I don't count as outsiders or anything anybody who is a Perl contributor and has his own opinion! Not everybody is supposed to have same opinion, and even when people do cooperate it's a part of the process! My personal belief is still that Perl 5 aged more gracefully than a lot of projects!

<comment><USER3> That's... quite a claim. I'm hardly the only contributor to Perl 5 who thinks that the obsession over backwards compatibility with an unknowable and unmeasureable DarkPAN is unhealthy.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh, sorry! I wanted to refer _only_ to the guy who wrote the schmpan text who apparently wasn't contributor but was making noise!

I immediately withdraw my claim and beg for forgiveness from everybody who does contribute but have the opposite opinion!

<comment><USER5> nperez (author of the darkpan-schmarkpan post) may not be a contributor to p5p (Perl core language developers' mailing list), but a quick glance at <http://search.cpan.org/~nperez/> shows that he's contributed some interesting code to the POE and Moose codebases. I think Rafael was a bit harsh in his "Perl Developers Actively Care..." post when he seemingly dismissed the opinions of anyone who doesn't contribute sufficiently good patches to p5p.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>