How the Iranian-Saudi Proxy Struggle Tore Apart the Middle East - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/20/world/middleeast/iran-saudi-proxy-war.html <comment><USER2> I really disagree with this article. This is the sort of fundamentalist thinking that Americans trained themselves in during the Cold War.

> Behind much of the Middle East's chaos — the wars in Syria and Yemen

Both of these wars are domestic in nature. In any Civil War parties naturally seek to ally themselves with outside powers. The powers then see the opportunity to win big for small(ish) cash, or at least avoid losing an ally.

It is true that Iran and the Saudis are fighting for supremacy, but it is not true that all the wars in the middle east are because of that.

Its equally wrong to force all of this into a even deeper into a pure sectarian conflict. Neither the Saudis or the Iranians are above supporting people that they ideologically disagree with it is politically useful to them, even people who would attack and kill them if they could.

This article tries hard and fails to make everything about Iran. Saudi Arabia going against the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, clearly that is because of Iran. The Saudis have enough reason to make sure they have allies in Egypt even when Iran is not a factor. Every countries ties not to have enemies on all sides.

<comment><USER3> >This article tries hard and fails to make everything about Iran.

No, it just says there is a rivalry. It does say it started when Iran decided to promote revolution throughout the Middle East, but has gone on of its own momentum ever since.

>It is true that Iran and the Saudis are fighting for supremacy, but it is not true that all the wars in the middle east are because of that.

The article wasn't claiming that, but it was claiming those wars are a lot harder to end because of the Iran-Saudi conflict. I don't see how you can deny that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The invasion of Iraq, which the New York Times played a major role in, tore the ME apart.

Very soon we'll be blaming some other group for Libya and Syria.

<comment><USER5> The Saudis and Kuwaitis gave the US 30 billion dollars to attack Iraq for the first gulf war. After giving Iraq a loan of 25 billion to attack Iran, which basically put Iraq in a difficult financial position which the Kuwaitis and the Saudis would not help it get out of it by cutting their supply, so he threatened them with war [http://www.nytimes.com/1990/07/18/business/iraq- threatens-em...](http://www.nytimes.com/1990/07/18/business/iraq-threatens- emirates-and-kuwait-on-oil-glut.html) But at the end of the day who gave Saudis all this money, which ended with a bunch of backward tribal nomads running international political schemes? The Americans built Saudis from scratch, and their little monster now rocks the cradle.

<comment><USER2> > Kuwaitis and the Saudis would not help it get out of.

There is long distance between 'would not help' and 'drop all your debt claims against me'.

Nobody had forced Saddam to invade Iran. He took the risk and took the debt knowingly. He then turned around and and claimed 'I did all of this for you, so I don't have to pay anything back'.

The Americans did help to build the Saudis, but the Saudis would almost certainly have succeeded without the Americans as well. Saudi Arabia was never a America child.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The title implies the middle east was ever not torn apart. A quick glance through a history book shows it has always had more than its fair share of sectarian violence.

It is resource starved and a major crossroads, why should we expect anything else without major effort to fix it?

<comment><USER2> You are implying that there was not 'a major effort' to 'fix it' yet.

And you are also implying that 'a major effort to fix it' would make us expect something new.

Both things are wrong. The US has been military active in middle east since almost 40 years (longer with the CIA). The US has major military bases all over the place, has invaded, bombed and fought wars with many countries, has supported one group or another in a civil conflict in all of them.

All of this was basically done because of the Carter Doctrine, the ME is a vital strategic area and its stability is very important to keep the oil flowing. How does this not qualify as a major effort?

What of all of this suggest to you that the US, or even a bigger international community could 'fix it' with a 'major effort'?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The article didn't mention Qatar. Difficult to see it as complete without understanding what the Qatari's are doing, especially in Syria.

</comment><comment><USER8> This article missed a very important point: Iran encouraged and supported the invasion of Iraq. They supplied the evidence and polticians that would topple Sadam and take over his goverment. The Iraq was a major Iranian victory.

<comment><USER9> Why is this noteworthy? This is obvious to anyone with even minimal knowledge of the Middle East.

There was an Iraq/Iran war in the 80's with casualties in the millions. Iraq, a country with a dominant Shia population was ruled by Saddam and the Baathists, an elite Sunni minority.

The conflicts and politics in the Middle East are very complex, but you can paint it with a broad Sunni vs. Shia brush. Before this, there was a secular, pan-Arab movement in the middle east, tacitally supported by the USSR, but the west didn't like the idea of a pan-Arab movement. So this is the result

<comment><AUTHOR> I recently listened to a podcast where Jeremy Scahill (the author of the book Dirty Wars) claims Saudi Arabia has been belligerently bombing Yemen to show unruly groups inside of Saudi Arabia that they have the ability to bomb people too.

[https://soundcloud.com/chapo-trap-house/episode-52-dirty- war...](https://soundcloud.com/chapo-trap-house/episode-52-dirty-wars-2-rise- of-mcraven-feat-jeremy-scahill-102316)</comment></comment></comment>


Practice Safe WordPress - <AUTHOR> http://www.verelo.com/blog/2012/06/02/we-love-wordpress/

<comment> mkr-hn The pricing page is short on detail. It only gives prices, not features (or benefits). And the blog name in the screenshot might not be a good thing to feature.

edit: Apparently it gives you more detail if you click the plan. It's bordering on mystery meat navigation.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback. The blog name is actually my personal blog (edgy hey...)

We'll look into the pricing area and try un-hide it a little more. Believe it or not it was actually a lot more hidden before, so we'll keep working on it!

<comment> mkr-hn I've always been a fan of the plan-per-column approach. It's perfect for things like this where the only difference between plans is quantity. It makes for quick comparisons.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think that makes sense too, shouldn't be too hard to revise it. Thinking back its laid out how it is mainly due to some old indecisiveness around what our pricing was going to look like, and its just sort of grown. Time for a cleanup, appreciate you reminding us it needs attention!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> "conneciton" - typo on your homepage.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks we'll fix that!</comment></comment>


Practical Internet Privacy and Security - <AUTHOR> http://markwatson.com/blog/2013-12/practical-internet-security.html

<comment><USER2> Many have taken to running their financial related transaction on a virtual system to isolate the system rather than just the browser.</comment>


Google Cleans Up Their Logo Design - <AUTHOR> http://imjustcreative.com/google-cleans-up-their-logo-design/2009/05/23/ <comment><USER2> A direct link to the google blog: <http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/05/new- logo-look.html>

<comment><USER3> Interesting bit of story with that:

Doug Bowman (@stop): "Proud of @google for trying a new logo system that @jeromyhenry and I designed and proposed well over a year ago: <http://bit.ly/d1Sdc> " (<http://twitter.com/stop/status/1876443229>)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> too bad they won't change the dated logo they have now. i understand they have "equity" in it but the elementary typography, photoshop beveling, and color palette leaves a lot to be desired.

nevertheless, I really like what Google (and artists) have done with the logo around important events, etc.

<comment><USER5> I don't get why people don't like the Google logo. It's playful and it's simple. It's a bit childish, but it gets away with that since it appears on a blank white page and so it's not conflicting with any other elements.

I do prefer their white-on-color logo that they use with products like Chrome, though.

<comment><USER6> It is playful and (conceptually) simple, but that is not enough to make good design. The Google logo has a lot of problems. The biggest is that they chose a bad typeface for a logo. It's the kind of typeface you'd use to set a page of text; it's too spidery when used for just 6 big letters. Especially with dropshadows.

They also use nasty colors. With the yellow in particular they just couldn't win. To get enough contrast they had to make it a dark, dirty yellow. Whereas the green is shockingly bright-- which makes it look like different parts of the logo are in different light.

In sum: bad shapes and bad colors. Graphically, everything's bad about it.

(Yes, Google is a very successful company. But not because of their logo.)

<comment><USER5> I guess I've been brainwashed through having Google's logo in my face since my youth, but I don't mind the colors or the spikiness of the font. It's vastly better than Yahoo's, anyway, which screams childishness in my face.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I like their new logos. As everything google does, it is simple and clean.</comment>


Ask HN: What would kill Bitcoin? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> I'm not sure on how mining economics will work out after the bitcoin limit is hit and miners will no longer get new bitcoins - has someone worked out the math on how much transaction fees will increase to cover mining expenses after that?

The implication is that bitcoin won't function without (lots of) miners, and if miners would be getting more money in an alternative currency where they can use their hardware, they'd leave bitcoin.

</comment><comment><USER3> I was at an event with Peter Thiel this weekend, and he seems to think that the government will eventually do them in, if anything

<comment><USER4> The U.S. government made it illegal for individuals to hold or invest in gold for quite awhile. It didn't "kill" gold as a storage of value or as a de facto currency in many parts of the world. I think Bitcoin may be "killed" in a subset of national jurisdictions, but I do not think it is going anywhere.

<comment><USER3> IF you want an example, of how the US govt could completely kill a digital currency, look up e-gold.

<comment><USER5> E-gold had a central provider. Bitcoin has anonymous miners all over the world. Has anyone shut down Bittorrent or The Pirate Bay?

<comment><USER6> Bittorrent/TPB ticked off a small number of industries (media,software, etc...) their persecution was largely a function of how well those industries could lobby the government.

If bitcoin ever got large enough to be perceived as a threat to USD (which is a long ways off) the bitcoin community would not have the resources to take on the US gov. Being geographically spread out is irrelevant. For a small fraction of one of its many defense institutions annual budgets the US gov could easily build an ASIC cluster larger than the entire bitcoin mining network. They could even just start maliciously buying/selling large quantities of btc to keep the btc market volatile. To put it into perspective: btc current total market cap is ~4billion, and the NSAs annual budget is ~12billion.

<comment><USER5> Here's my version :)

Bittorrent is used to download fucking movies while a lot of serious people invest millions in Bitcoin. Federal armies will have to deal with a lot of vested interested. In addition, some bankers and regulators may look seriously into Bitcoin and realize how good it is for storing their own bribes and bonuses and thus buy it. Then "fight" against it only to confiscate for themselves even more.

By the time anyone would seriously decide to throw billions to fight anonymous miners and billion of smartphones, Bitcoin monetary base will be a trillion USD and hashrate will be boosted by Chinese government protecting and taxing their miners.

<comment><USER6> The US government took down egold when it reached ~2 billion in annual transactions. I suspect they will take action against bitcoin before it reaches a trillion dollar monetary base, but only time will tell ;)

<comment><USER5> Like I said above, Egold was a single entity. In U.S. feds must shut down multiple very different service providers related to Bitcoin and even then there are other countries with their own companies and legislation.

Also, it's one thing to say that some company helped Osama bin Laden to launder his money - there will be evidence and no one would make a big story out of it. Another thing is to say that "we cannot do anything about this protocol, so we will shut down every single company just because they might use it". To shut down tens of companies you'd need to show evidence that they all somehow launder tons of money. That would be an epic event and it will be well-advertised, so prosecutors would have to be even more careful in what they say, or they will look like simple bullies on every newspaper. It's just entirely different scale of action to take on everyone connected with Bitcoin.

If they do things slowly and try to kill companies one by one, then each time they would create more clarity on how to be compliant with the law which will make every next case even more difficult.

I have no doubt there will be war (there's one already with all this regulatory crap, seizure of funds etc.), but it sure won't be one single decision and little attention, like in case of Egold.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Bitcoin's value comes entirely from its utility as a currency, but its deflationary nature would mean people won't be willing to use Bitcoin to buy actual stuff. It'll be interesting to see how this plays out.

I suspect Bitcoin will occupy the same space that gold does now, as just another place to store your money during economic downtimes.

<comment> atom-morgan "...but its deflationary nature would mean people won't be willing to use Bitcoin to buy actual stuff."

It's all about time preference. For certain goods people have a very high time preference. For other goods, it's low. Would I forgo dinner simply because I think my Bitcoin will be worth more a week from now? Probably not since I have a high time preference for food. I need it to survive.

Just think about goods in technology. They are extremely deflationary. Using the deflationary logic people use to criticize Bitcoin, why would anyone buy an iPhone 5S or Nexus 5 today when they know it's going to be cheaper 6 months from now?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> People loosing confidence in it. With no one & nothing backing it there is nothing to prevent the value from going to 0. The only thing keeping the value of bitcoin from being 0 is the willingness of people to trade them for other things of value.

<comment><USER9> Ultimately, that's the only thing keeping any currency from going to zero.

<comment><USER10> Well, on one level, yes, but in practice there are many organizations and governments that would step in if a national currency were headed towards a value of zero. Bitcoin doesn't have the same level of institutional support (yet?), and so if it's value starts crashing hard, it could turn into an unrecoverable death spiral.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Some potential scenarios are:

* A security or encryption issue discovered in the protocol that leads to compromise of most wallets. The bug could be fixed, but existing balances and trust may be wiped out.

* Government regulation that makes it illegal to exchange bitcoin for cash or goods at legal businesses. It may remain as a niche underground thing, but even drug dealers need a way to eventually buy _something else_ with their bitcoin.

* Insecure exchanges that make it impossible to exchange bitcoin for cash. Exchanges seem to get hacked and disappear even without government "help". The result is the same: people need a way to use bitcoin for it to have any value.

* Another digital currency becomes more popular.

* Someone with enough computing power takes over the network. This could be a government agency aiming to shut it down, or perhaps a back-door in ASIC miners.

</comment><comment><USER12> Bitcoin will become a sentimental Gold while a more robust, efficient protocol such as Ripple will become cash

</comment><comment> jack-r-abbit It seems that Bitcoins keep getting stolen from the bitcoin "banks." I've not followed closely in those cases but I imagine that people don't get those bitcoins back like at a real bank with real money. I suspect THAT will kill bitcoin.

<comment><USER13> If you hold your own gold, and it gets stolen, nobody is going to pay you back (unless you have some kind of insurance, which presumably could cover Bitcoins as well). Similarly, if you hold a gold certificate and a trusted party actually stores your gold, and it is stolen from them, you're in the same boat. Maybe they have a refund policy and enough capital to cover the loss. Maybe they don't. The point is, equal protections could be offered for Bitcoin.

Personally, I think that hardware wallets have the potential to solve this problem. Picture a device that contains your private key, and is capable of signing transactions (after you press a physical button). This thing could be designed such that it is physically incapable of leaking your private key via its USB port (or whatever). And maybe it has a little LCD screen that shows the transaction it's about to sign before you confirm. With something like that, there's really not a whole lot a bad guy could do to steal your Bitcoins.

Of course, if a bad guys does coax you into sending them Bitcoins via some more social-engineery-type means, that could be a problem. E.g. if they briefly took over a popular website and made it show their Bitcoin address rather than the real one, there wouldn't be a whole lot of recourse.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> 1) potential flaws in the logic being discovered.

2) the iron fist of the Empire.

</comment><comment><USER15> The big one is obviously a critical flaw being found which makes it possible to counterfeit bitcoins or steal at will from (genuinely) protected wallets.

<comment> atom-morgan Do you have a link to counterfeit bitcoins?

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I think Bitcoin will be around for a while, but even when it dies out, for whatever reason, one of several other cryptocurrencies will take over.

</comment><comment><USER17> Being able to email money to people. Somehow.

<comment><USER18> Somehow ==> [https://square.com/cash](https://square.com/cash) (which isn't the same at BitCoin, I fully appreciate, but it's good to see some thinking in this direction)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The government. It's obvious that people want to use it. Its popularity will only increase from here. The government is the biggest threat to bitcoin by far.</comment>


Show HN: SummerStageLove, my first web app in AngularJS and CoffeeScript - <AUTHOR> http://www.summerstagelove.com/#/

<comment><AUTHOR> I should've put it in the title, but I only even attempted to learn Angular and CoffeeScript at the same time because of how awesome the Yeoman build system is, which made it trivial to test and deploy this app (which is entirely flat files): <http://yeoman.io/></comment>


NSA asked Japan to tap regionwide fiber-optic cables in 2011 - <AUTHOR> http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2013/10/27/world/nsa-asked-japan-to-tap-regionwide-fiber-optic-cables-in-2011/

<comment><AUTHOR> And Japan refused to do so.

<comment><USER2> The question to ask here is why these 'sources' are talking about a rejected request. The Japanese press is at least as subservient as the American press (the newspaper in question belongs to its fair share of kisha clubs), and this information is being leaked to it. Why?

The cynical explanation is that they are leaking for domestic consumption about one rejected request in order to make themselves look better, and it's entirely possible that there is otherwise deeply extensive cooperation which they are not mentioning. (What, the NSA waited until 2011 to ask for some wiretapping capability? What about all the decades before 2011? What about since 2011?)</comment></comment>


One Camera in Sight, and One Hidden - <AUTHOR> http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/12/23/one-camera-in-plain-sight-and-one-hidden/ <comment><USER2> _At all times, he said, the police must disclose if a camera is present if someone under questioning asks questions about it_

If the camera is hidden, the person under questioning might not think to ask about it. One scenario comes to mind where police could secretly record an interrogation and get around the disclosure requirement. They could have a hidden camera and a visible one. You disclose to the person under questioning that this interview is being videotaped and make it obvious that you are pressing record on the camera on the tripod. Then, a few minutes later, tell the suspect that you want to help them out, and say: "Look, I'm going to turn this camera off if it makes you nervous" but keep the hidden camera on. Technically the police would be in the clear because they disclosed that the interview was being videotaped (though not the number of cameras), and the officer only promised to "turn _this_ camera off" and not any others.</comment>


I have a billion dollar idea. Which investors should I speak with? - <AUTHOR> http://www.quora.com/I-have-a-billion-dollar-business-idea-Which-investors-should-I-speak-with

<comment><USER2> _"I'm in a unique position: I've identified and fleshed out a billion dollar business idea that goes after a multi-hundred billion dollar market."_

As far as uniqueness goes, "I have a dog" is only slightly less so.

</comment><comment><USER3> If there's any chance that was a real question, I'd be curious on an activity over the past 8 months.

</comment><comment><USER4> lolololol</comment>


Rate my startup (3rd time's the charm) - <AUTHOR> Well here I am again.  I've done this twice before and received from seriously amazing feedback.  I couldn't have made it to this point without you awesome people here on HN providing me with helpful feedback and criticism.
The current (third) revision is a million times better than the first two... and I actually think the first was better than the second (less clutter but less information).
My first submission's feedback: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2123579
And my second submission's feedback: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2206413
(The old site may be broken now... I haven't checked and I don't care to.)
So... here's what I did...
Someone said something along the lines of "the name is terrible" (and it really was)... so I ended up spending a couple of days trying to figure out a new name.  It's seriously absurd how many .com domain names are taken for resell and not used whatsoever.  Out of principle I didn't even bother contacting those nimrods for a quote.  I put together a long list of potential, available domain names and finally got one... and registered it for $5.
Next I had to come up with a new design.  I believe someone called my 2nd revision's design "appalling" (LOL) and it most definitely was.  I had my reasons for doing it like I originally did but it just didn't work as I intended.  I wanted to fit pretty much all of the information on one, concise page... but it ended up looking stupid and unprofessional.
I also got rid of the demo animations and video tutorial.  Those were lame too!
As for the new design, I looked around the web a while for some inspiration and found a few sites of which I felt had a lot in common with my product.  I combined the look and feel of one site with the structure of another and of course added my own touch to it.  Some of you may be able to recognize which sites I used as inspiration.
It took me about a week to complete the entire new front end and recreate the sign up process to be much more user friendly and match the new look.  And of course I had to tie up the old back end with the new front end and do a ton of testing.
Last... I added a walkthrough for first-time users.  It should guide users through the entire app enough for them to know how to use it.  This needs further real world testing, I'm sure.
I've also considered adding a demo button that has all the functionality of the free trial except for the networking aspects and no data is saved after they log out... so that people can click once to try it out rather than go through the sign-up process.  Maybe I could give demo users the ability to switch over to the free trial mid-demo so their data stays intact.  Anyone have thoughts on that?
Oh and today I added a small feature that should scale the text for various resolutions (since the app itself is based on percentages)... I still need to add an option for users to toggle this on and off and possibly specify their own font size.
And in case anyone mentions it (as was mentioned in revision 2)... I go straight to https because users can log in on any page.
There's definitely still some more work to be done but I think I'm finally at a point where I can officially release my product into the wild.  And I couldn't have made it what it is today without the help of you fine folks... so thank you.  HN is truly a valuable resource.
http://www.tourlogger.com <comment><USER2> I am no where near the target audience for your app, but the difference between this version and the last is miles apart. I did a double-take to make sure both sites were done by you.

One thing I ran into was that when I first loaded up the page, I didn't realize it was for musicians touring -- I thought it was about 'sight-seeing' touring. Maybe you can emphasize the musical element somehow. Nothing on the front page indicated to me that this was an app for bands. Maybe your tagline ("Instantly track merch sales and expenses") could be tweaked slightly ("Instantly track your bands merch sales and expenses while you tour").

Good luck with the official release!

<comment><AUTHOR> Haha yeah I had a feeling people who saw the original would doubt I created the new version. I had a number of people respond to my previous revisions telling me to hire a designer. I never bothered saying "I can do it myself" because I figured I'd let my new design say it for me. My original design is very misleading regarding my abilities... I was just trying something different but it clearly didn't work out.

I'll definitely let your suggestion about the sight-seeing confusion twirl around in the ol' noggin. Thanks! :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Wow - worlds better. One thing that strikes me is the logo... maybe it's a style preference, but the overlap distracts me. I would keep it that size and make the white top bar bigger, or shrink it a bit, so it doesn't overlay on to the middle. Also, on your features pages, I would try to do something more with the "Get Started Now" button. The color definitely works, draws my eye, but maybe you can offset it from the text more? Feels jammed in there. Should be a solid, set out call-to-action.

Good luck with it! Looks like an incredible improvement.

<comment><USER4> Plus 1 on the logo -- it looks a little fragile on the page, and hangs oddly over the page with an effect that I can only describe as resembling the "Floating Sausage" or "Finger Sausage" effect you get when you put your two fingers close together in front of your eyes.

It definitely is a MAJOR improvement though, 100%.

<comment><AUTHOR> I put the "Get Started Now" buttons on their own lines and indented them slightly.

And as for the logo, I have the g's hanging over the image so that the rest of the text lines up. I tried moving it up but it just looks weird to me. I prefer it to hang over like that... reminds me of when I was first learning to write... and the g's, p's, j's, etc. hung below the line.

I did add a slight stroke to the g's to make the bottom overhang stand out more.

Let me know if that's any better!

<comment><USER4> The 'g's I'm okay with dangling, though I still don't think they look great.

What I was specifically talking about with the 'floating sausage' remark was the 'o', 'u', 'o' and 'e' in the logo, and how they seem to ALMOST touch the border they sit above.

For what it's worth, I fancy myself a designer too, and I constantly struggle with letters that dangle and figuring out the appropriate alignment for them.

In general, the site looks amazing, but if I had to point out its achilles heel, it's definitely the logo.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think the page design overall is quite excellent. On the questions page I would enlarge the font size of the bolded questions just a nudge. The absolute worst part of the site however is the logo, in my opinion. The thin, noodly font seems completely out of place against the strong blocky composition in the background. It's look more like an afterthought or a temporary logo put in place until the final one is completed. Otherwise, great job on everything else!

</comment><comment><USER6> Overall looks nice but there is a thing that I don't like: the dark background on your homepage and pricing page, it really breaks the page as a whole. Make it a lighter color, a light, warm blue or green or yellow. The dark color really bothers my eyes.

</comment><comment><USER7> total nitpick but something I noticed that has an easy fix:

when you hover over the big three images on your landing page, they 'blink' while the new image loads.

the easy fix is to preload the hover images in javascript.

alternatively, you would make them a sprite (one image) and change the background offset on hover to show the appropriate one.

congrats on the progress.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah I had noticed that but didn't think much of it. It does get kind of annoying.

It shouldn't take long at all to do... so I'll add a div with a fixed position way off the page and out of sight to preload the images since I want the landing page(s) to be 100% functional without javascript.</comment></comment>


Open source software is also copyrighted - <AUTHOR> http://www.antoarts.com/yes-open-source-software-is-also-copyrighted/

<comment><USER2> In other news water is wet...</comment>


Microsoft joins App Store backlash after xCloud game streaming blocked - <AUTHOR> https://developer-tech.com/news/2020/aug/07/microsoft-app-store-backlash-xcloud-game-streaming/ <comment><USER2> I am really excited that this is finally a chance to break the tight grip Apple has had on the App Store.

I say this as someone who enjoys having an iOS device but also knows that Apple absolutely can allow other app stores in a secure (PKI based) way. They're just choosing not to do so for monopolistic reasons but talking about safety.

If we think of the PKI trust chain, and the Apple App Store as a root authority, there's no reason why ecosystem vendors (like MS, etc) couldn't be "intermediate CAs", with their own app stores, with strict rules in place for running one.

<comment><USER3> One reason I love Apple devices is that I can hand one to my parents and they have a very low chance of screwing it up.

All that goes out the window when you introduce a third party app that can do whatever it wants to system settings.

This is an honest question, why do you choose to use an Apple device instead of one that's more open like Android?

<comment><USER4> I'm not sure why the App Store and third party apps couldn't just co-exist.

There is nothing preventing your parents from continuing to use Apple's sanctioned distribution system even if side-loading were allowed.

Why don't we flip this question? As a savvy software engineer, I want to use my phone in whatever way I see fit and accept the risk of using unverified software. Why am I not allowed to? Oh right, bc Apple wants a cut of any profits that app developer may receive. The iPhone at this stage is a full blown computer and should expose capabilities as such.

<comment><USER3> As a savvy software engineer, you should realize how much work it would take to implement a system to allow secondary stores when it would be of absolutely no benefit to Apple.

<comment><USER5> Less than zero. They go out of their way to keep people from installing apps from anything but their own App Store.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I don't fully understand apples argument here of "we can't moderate everything"

They've allowed the Steam Link app on the App Store for a while now. It's Remote Desktop to my PC and I can play loads of games through it. That's barely any different. Steam made the store functionality less built in, so it's harder to buy things, but it's still game streaming. There are loads of Remote Desktop apps on iOS already, is the difference that it's "end users machine" vs "cloud"? Or that it's a subscription? I don't understand.

<comment><USER7> That answer has been engineered to "make sense" to Random Joe. It is basically a PR move and has no other merits.

Dont believe me? Have a look at what people are tweeting today.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is sad, unlike Stadia (which will probably be abandoned by google without a real explanation) xCloud is backed by a company that is heavily invested in gaming and could contribute much to gaming on iOS.

</comment><comment><USER8> Sounds great. I guess since MS is doing this, they will stop collecting the 30% on games for Xbox?</comment>


Hacker News Chrome Extension - <AUTHOR> https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hacker-news-browser/bobajmolpbfffmkdmhlnnhhokeeegbjd <comment><AUTHOR> Hacker News Browser is a fast and beautiful way to browse Hacker News Stories from any website. * Browse Top Stories from last 24 hrs. * Save your favourite story directly into your Pocket account. * Tweet directly from the extension. * Search for specific topic.</comment>


Obama to Propose Paying Community College Tuition for Some - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/09/us/politics/obama-proposes-free-community-college-education-for-some-students.html <comment><USER2> Community College absolutely transformed me and many of my (at the time) classmate's lives.

In my case I grew up poor, without much opportunity, and the (again, at the time) dirt cheap rates, open admission and guaranteed transfer to a local 4-year gave me opportunity I absolutely didn't have in the few years before I got sick and tired of the dead-end shitty hourly part-time jobs I could get.

Many of my classmates were immigrants and refugees, there to learn English, or get started in their new lives. Now, many years later, they're happy productive citizens, married, with families, working six figure jobs... _easily_ paying off each year what they're entire community college education cost any sort of taxpayer subsidies. Most of them have gone on to get M.S. and even a couple of PhDs.

The doors to get into higher education don't admit everybody equally, but sometimes you can get into other doors if you're willing to go in the side entrance. On the other side, I've worked pretty consistently with people who went to much more highly ranked schools than I did, or came from better pedigrees, and we've all ended up in the same place.

Bonus: my entire college education, from Freshman through my M.S. cost about what a reasonable family sedan cost, and raised my marketability so much that I paid it all off by the time I finished school. I hear of peers, decades later, still paying hundreds of dollars a month on insane student loans, and I feel really lucky to have stumbled into the path I ended up on...despite a little pride swallowing.

<comment><USER3> Since I'll probably get more than a few downvotes for my main comment below, I'll start by saying that I adjunct teach software development at our local CC, even though the pay (if you calculate it on a 'per hour' basis) is way less than my 'real' job. Adjuncts get screwed, but I enjoy teaching, and appreciate the opportunities that CC gives to students ... I just wanted to frame my comment so that you understand my perspective.

Now, on to the part that's going to get me into trouble: I completely and totally disagree with the idea of letting students attend CC without paying.

Many students coming into CC, even when they are responsible for part of the tuition (which at most current CCs is only about 30%), struggle to find motivation to work hard on their classes and finish them. Although some students surely would benefit from 'free' college (I put it in quotes because nothing is free -- the rest of us will be paying for it), I do not think that offering free CC is a good use of taxpayer money. Simply put, CC is already heavily subsidized, and I think that if the students have no skin in it at all they'll be less motivated to succeed, which doesn't do anyone any favors.

Additionally, for those students who do try, and who do succeed, the potential return will GREATLY eclipse their investment (as you noted). For these students, it is once again totally unnecessary to subsidize tuition because their increased income will more than offset the cost of their education.

<comment><USER4> Not downvoting, there's a legitamate concern about skin in the game mentality. But that's not how it is now. People take on debt by signing a piece of paper, they have no idea what that amount really means until they start paying it off. College loans are too easy to get, 20k here, 40k there, don't start paying until 4 years after. At 18 years old, how many students have experience struggling with interest payments that would take up almost all their disposable income?

Another thing is the peer pressure to attend college from an early age. Those that don't qualify for top tier schools settle for 2nd and 3rd choices, sometime state schools, other times private colleges that are basically degree mills charging 30k/yr.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I went to community college and transferred into an excellent, top 5 (according to some rankings anyway) school. I would say that most people in community college don't really want to be there. Many of the students that I started with are still there (3 years later), and will likely not graduate nor transfer.

From my experience I still think the education problem needs to be solved in K-6th grade. I believe my successful transition from community college to a university was the result of excellent classmates who I joined in middle and high school (many of them went to schools like Yale or MIT so perhaps there was some sort of exposure effect) and/or very encouraging community college teachers/professors. Personally I found community college professors to be way more invested (on the upper end, anyway) then my high school teachers, and I went to a pretty good high school.

The reason it should start at K-6th grade is because so many people lack solid foundations. There are people in community college who are not good at algebra. These fundamentals need to be well taught. In addition, kids need to learn how to teach themselves and also need to be properly motivated, but not coddled.

Increasing the pay of teachers and making teaching as a profession more prestigious and rigorous will solve the K-6th grade education problem, which will help with education as a whole.

Oh, and we should do something about poverty (because let's face it, if you're poor and in a terrible neighborhood, the odds are against you. I know, because I was that person).

<comment><USER6> > I would say that most people in community college don't really want to be > there.

Odd. That wasn't my experience at all.

I went to Cabrillo College, a community college in Aptos, CA.

Great school, inspiring profs (many with PhD's), students were generally engaged and excited to be there.

I transferred to Berkeley, did well there (felt well-prepared) and saved a heck of a lot of money a long the way. Zero debt post graduation.

I highly recommend Community College, albeit make sure good transfer options exist.

I have heard of people transferring the Stanford and Yale from Cabrillo, but maybe it's just an exception.

<comment><USER2> I concur. At least in the circle of people I spent my time with, we were there really to study and grab the opportunity CC gave us. The teachers don't make anything there, so they're also extra eager to help students who really put forth the effort.

Hands down, 9 of the 10 best teachers I had were CC profs. They were so happy to help, they'd show up on weekends and help out with study groups and review coursework again to make sure you really got the foundational stuff so you didn't get lost later.

The age range was crazy too, from sharp 14 year olds there to take Calculus, to senior citizens. _always_ somebody interesting to run into and incredible tutoring opportunities everywhere.

CC can be an _incredible_ resource.

Most important, they're also designed for mid-career training, so you can go and take classes in whatever they offer even if you aren't in a degree program, just because you want to. My wife and I both take classes from time- to-time in subjects we've tried to autodidact, but some cheap classroom time has ended up helping everytime. Or we'll take a class together in something like Art and turn it into a date-night....get dinner after work, take a painting class, come home with a little piece of art.

<comment><USER7> _" The age range was crazy too, from sharp 14 year olds there to take Calculus, to senior citizens."_

I took a Recent American History class, and one of my classmates had been a member of SNCC.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> aaron-lebo The student loan crisis is a much bigger problem.

18 year old kids are being given the ability to take on massive, crushing debt that is too easily used for vacations, boob jobs, or whatever else, and even when it is only used for classes, people feel like they need to take on this debt to spend 4 years learning (and forgetting) material that they will never use, for degrees that probably won't be relevant to their career.

Just to get a slip of paper that says "bachelor's degree". It is trapping people.

Making community college easily accessible is a nice step, but community college is already incredibly cheap in most places, people don't go there because of costs but because they don't have the name recognition of a state school or a big private school.

Sometimes small policy steps like this (it won't get passed in this climate anyway) are more destructive than not doing anything at all. They give the illusion of progress, or treat the symptoms when the real illness remains unresolved

<comment><USER8> > people feel like they need to take on this debt to spend 4 years learning > (and forgetting) material that they will never use, for degrees that > probably won't be relevant to their career. Just to get a slip of paper that > says "bachelor's degree". It is trapping people.

My wife and I have this argument frequently and I usually take your position. She likes to point out that college graduates are not just earning more than their less-educated peers, but the income gap has never been wider between young college graduates and those who only finished high school: [http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2014/02/11/the-rising-cost- of...](http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2014/02/11/the-rising-cost-of-not-going- to-college/)

I think we can all be angry that most colleges don't measure or seem to care whether students are better thinkers by the time they graduate. Too many are interested in funding third-rate research by second-rate academics, too few are interested in pedagogy and making sure their faculty are good teachers. Why is the lecture still the core of university teaching when everything we're discovering about human learning says it's a terrible way to teach anyone anything?

<comment><USER9> Looking at the broad stroke (i.e., median income) can be useful, but if I were helping my child make this decision, I wouldn't focus on that. Depending on the career path, income can be highly variable. I also think that these numbers are skewed by the fact that more and more jobs are requiring degrees which didn't before.

I would also argue that degrees should not be required for many of these positions. I mean, a Bachelor's of Hospitality? Restaurant management? Come on, learn that on the job.

<comment><USER8> The other part I don't like about these conversations is that _I still really believe that a good college education isn 't about learning a job skill_. It's the one time in your life that you can think full-time about life's big questions and devote yourself fully to intellectual curiosity. It's a shame to use that time to learn about restaurant management.

But it's crazy that it costs $50k/year to read great books and discuss them with a small group. It's a crazy price if you're intellectually uncurious and just want to get a job. It's an especially crazy price if you just want to party and grow up a bit before working.

Our society should have room for both vocational schools and big-picture- intellectualism schools. It's part of the reason I'm so excited about developer bootcamps, if only as a model of what adult vocational learning could look like -- shorter time commitment, much lower cost compared to university, and a faculty fully devoted to pedagogy and student outcomes. You should be able to attend a low-cost big-picture-intellectualism school for a while if you want, then learn vocational skills at another school when you're ready to work.

<comment><USER7> _" Our society should have room for both vocational schools and big-picture- intellectualism schools."_

Moreover, it should be reasonable for someone to attend _both_.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Nice idea, but the final effect will be higher prices across the higher-ed system.

<comment><USER11> Since government started subsidizing higher eduction by underwriting student loans, college tuition has risen much faster than inflation, both for private and public schools.

At the same time, more and more people have gone to college and the value of a college degree has declined, as more people enter the marketplace with them.

Anecdotally, it appears (from the college graduates I've interviewed) that the quality of a college education has also declined noticeably in the past 30 years.

All of these are unintended consequences, but not surprising results when you look at the situation from the perspective of economics.

<comment><USER12> True, but when you talk about the perspective of economics, it behooves you to talk about demand, I think. The broad based demand for a college education is based on the irrational thinking that so many should have a college education in order to work, which is pretty much untrue.

It's hard to argue that the quality of a college education has declined when its purpose has changed. So many folks just need a college degree to remain competitive, at least on paper, and not much else. I think this is a much more modern trend.

Perhaps one could make the case that the low cost of a college education somehow spurred this irrational demand for it. So many people have set off to set themselves apart with a degree that now only substandard prospective workers don't have them.

<comment><USER13> Perhaps the demand is irrational, but the effects are very real:

[http://www.bls.gov/emp/ep_chart_001.htm](http://www.bls.gov/emp/ep_chart_001.htm)

It would be nice if we could change the fundamental problems underlying that irrational demand (pre-college schooling which doesn't prepare students for work, a national obsession with white collar jobs, etc.). However, if I was staring down a big wealth gap and decided to propose a concrete policy shift to resolve some of it, I think that it's not a bad idea to get people moved from the 7-11% unemployment category to the 5.4% unemployment category.

<comment><USER14> > if I was staring down a big wealth gap and decided to propose a concrete > policy shift to resolve some of it, I think that it's not a bad idea to get > people moved from the 7-11% unemployment category to the 5.4% unemployment > category

Sure, as long as the categories have no content other than an employment rating, this makes sense. According to the same logic, you could have huge effects on unemployment by giving black people cosmetic surgery and calling them white.

<comment><USER13> It's not exactly great that race is a decent predictor of education level[1], or of income[2], but that doesn't mean that we have to solve the entire race problem to improve social equality. America has failed miserably for some time now to "cure" racism[3]. So what's wrong with throwing resources at improving some of the social factors which contribute to racial/socioeconomic trends?

As an aside, it's a bit simplified and inflammatory to cast this as a black/white thing. If you insist on boiling this down to only being about race (a stance I would disagree with), the comparison is much starker when cast as hispanic/asian[1] or black/asian[2].

[1] [http://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_caa.asp](http://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_caa.asp) [2] [http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2012/tables/12s0691.p...](http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2012/tables/12s0691.pdf) [3] Any contemporary news story about the police in dense urban areas.

<comment><USER14> > As an aside, it's a bit simplified and inflammatory to cast this as a > black/white thing.

I agree in a limited way. I was originally going to use forced religious conversion as my example instead of cosmetic surgery, but I discovered that while it's easy to find unemployment statistics by race, it's not so easy to find unemployment statistics by religion.

Regardless -- as far as I can see, you've completely missed the point that being in a bucket labeled "5.4% unemployment" doesn't necessarily cause people to personally experience 5.4% unemployment. If it sounds strange to you that a group of people might develop better employment statistics by having cosmetic surgery en masse, or by all converting from voodoo to judaism, that should give you pause before concluding that forced education would have any more effect than forced conversion.

<comment><USER13> Making it easier/cheaper to get an education != forced education.

Looking at a trend and making a pretty fair assumption about it having cause/effect tendencies is not "missing the point" of statistics about employment and education. As far as I can tell, it's the whole reason we collect them. One does not become employed to become educated, it's the other way around. Similarly, one does not fail to become educated because one failed to be employed. There might be less of a connection than some would claim, but the link is there.

Further, I would be eager to hear about a __practical__ alternative to improved education for reducing inequality. I'm sure there are some, but I'm also sure that making sweeping assumptions about the economic viability of being {religion}/{race}/{insert difference here} doesn't really help anyone unless there's a magical way to make the human brain more tolerant of difference. Surely the real solutions to inequality will come from assessing our weakest points and shoring them up -- education is a pretty weak point in the US right now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> When the other party controls Congress, presidential proposals without the active involvement of that other party aren't real and aren't intended to or expected to pass. This is just politics.

</comment><comment><USER16> I do wonder what type of effect this will cause with job requirements, will master's now be the new bachelors?

The more worrying issue is the government taking on more student loan debt. There is a student loan bubble but it has not hurt the economy partially due to federal requirements that the loan not be discharged. What happens if current graduation rates hold steady and the US is stuck with a large bill but nothing to show for the effort?

<comment><USER17> "...but it has not hurt the economy partially due to federal requirements that the loan not be discharged."

I'm curious to know what you mean by the requirement that it not be able to be discharged being beneficial. So far there seem to be three types of student loan borrowers:

1) Those who can and are paying their loans; 2) Those who got way over their heads--either through poor borrowing practices or income shortage--and who are struggling yet still paying their loans instead of creating other economic activity; 3) Those who can't pay--again, through poor borrowing practices, income shortage, or some type of major life event--and are now screwed.

The idea behind bankruptcy is to let even the most buried of us be able to at least partially fill in the hole. That certain classes of loans create a permanent millstone seems, to me, a bit skewed.

<comment><USER18> #3s can get their student debt discharged if they can demonstrate undue hardship: [http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/11/523](http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/11/523)

It requires a good attorney & YMMV

<comment><USER17> That's theoretically true but for the "good attorney" part. I wonder how many debtors in that position can afford such an attorney. For example, one proceeding that took a decade and many hours of pro bono work by a five-star bankruptcy firm:

[http://www.usnews.com/education/blogs/student-loan- ranger/20...](http://www.usnews.com/education/blogs/student-loan- ranger/2013/06/12/bankruptcy-case-offers-hope-for-student-borrowers)

The 9th Circuit opinion made things a tiny bit better, at least for student loan debtors in the Pacific time zone (plus Hawaii and Alaska), but the standard is still exceptionally, almost punitively, high.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Sounds like a good plan to me. Community colleges are one of the most overlooked--yet most important--parts of the educational system. Almost everyone who attends a for-profit school with flashy ads would have been better off at their local community college.

America has been forsaking our commitment to public higher education for decades now. If we're going to finally start investing again, community colleges are a great place to begin.

<comment><USER18> > America has been forsaking our commitment to public higher education for > decades now.

Direct aid to students was flat when adjusted for inflation in the 80s and 90s, but doubled under the second President Bush. The recession & financial crisis curbed our enthusiasm for Pell grants & whatnot, but funding has climbed in the last couple years & will again.

In addition the federal government funds university faculty, administrators, and researchers through the DOD, DOE, NSF, NIH, etc. This funding has fallen over time as a percentage of GDP, but has increased relative to inflation.

I don't think the US has forsaken its commitment to public education from a spending standpoint. We have lost track of the purpose and value of education. Schools today spend a lot of their money on administration and facilities that do not directly advance research or teaching.

<comment><USER19> You're writing about funding at the federal level (Pell grants, DOE, NSF, etc.) but traditionally the most important component of public higher education was state university systems. Until the 1980s, California had world- class universities (UCLA, UC Berkeley) that were _free_ for any students from the state.

<comment><USER18> That's a good point. CA spends less out of its general fund per student in real dollars than in the 80s. I think "other" accounts for more UC $s than either general funds or tuition/fees.

The UC's spending tracks the CA economy pretty closely. CA's "world-class prisons", on the other hand, just keep getting more money in good times & in bad.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> My girlfriend and mother both started at community college, both transferred to Berkeley and both did very well there. They saved a lot of money in the process. And while those success stories are great (and not that rare) the more important role of CC may be preparing people with sub-par high school educations for a more rigorous college experience.

Having said that, I'd rather see a push for universal pre-school education.

<comment><USER21> >Having said that, I'd rather see a push for universal pre-school education.

Why? Several studies have shown that the initial advantages of pre-school are gone by 3rd grade.

Here's a quick summary with a link to one of the largest studies commissioned by the federal government. [http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2013/01/09/15headstart.h32...](http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2013/01/09/15headstart.h32.html)

<comment><USER20> Because of this: "Parents of Head Start participants in the 4-year-old cohort reported less aggressive behavior in their children at the end of 3rd grade than did the parents of the other children. For the 3-year-old group, Head Start parents saw better social skills in their children."

Learning is great. Being sufficiently socialized is more important. I'd like to see data from when these kids are in their teens or twenties.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> TFA says Fed currently pays 16%, students pay 30%, and presumably state pays the balance. Under the new program the Fed would pay 75% and states would pay 25%?

Then they have quotes from Tennessee Rep calling it "a top-down federal program that will ask already cash-strapped states to help pick up the tab." Maybe I'm missing something...

In contrast to the Tennessee program, which is a "last dollar" scholarship, paying only for tuition costs not covered by other programs. A low-income student who is eligible for a maximum Pell Grant of $5,730 would not receive assistance under the Tennessee program, because that amount would already cover tuition."

So in short, need more details but this just doesn't add up. If students already only pay 30% to the Feds 16%, why not just boost the Fed contribution to 25% and call it a day?

</comment><comment><USER23> I went to Bellevue Community College in 1992, right after high school, and was fortunate enough to take part in their nascent "Multimedia Design" program. Considering the neighborhood, we had software and support from a lot of the local tech companies. I got to use early versions of Director, Photoshop, even Linux, which definitely set me on a more productive path with computers. I ended up going to a University the following year, but that was due to other circumstances and not that I didn't find the school and the education I received there valuable. Indeed, it very much set me on my path.

</comment><comment><USER24> Macroeconomically, a program like this would have made more sense at a time of low-growth/high-unemployment, like a few years ago. (It might work best as a countercyclical program: when many people are idle, subsidize skills-building education, but as unemployment drops, expect people to pay their own tuition or learn-on-the-job instead.)

</comment><comment><USER25> I'd rather see a more general program that would pay anyone's tuition for one class per semester.

</comment><comment><USER26> As AI/automation takes over jobs, this is exactly what people should be paid to do - go to school.

</comment><comment><USER27> I hate that the federal government is getting involved. The states are figuring it out. Leave this alone... Vote for local politicians to follow the Tennessee model or don't. There is no need for federal involvement.

<comment><USER28> Going state-by-state is going to take decades. The 'laboratories of democracy' thing is extremely overrated, oftentimes you just end up with 51 hills to climb. 'That may work for them over in _____, but it's not how we do things in ______!' It's not like US politicians (or voters) are famed for their analytical rigor and intolerance for logical/rhetorical fallacies.

<comment><USER29> And federal programs take effect quicker, but trying to balance the realities and concerns of all 50 states, and getting enough politicians and special interests on board results in bloated systems that are easier to abuse.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I would actually go farther and say we should merge the current K-12 into 11 years instead of 13, and make every student complete an associate degree by the age of 18.

The current system of K-12, especially in the US, has always been way too padded. The advent of the internet and readily available educational materials has accelerated this exponentially. A child born today would be shocked to hear that I learned C++ by driving to a far away building and checking out a dead tree with ink on it. That same child should be equally shocked that we can't expect him to learn actively at home and in the classroom faster than his grandparents did, who had a sliver of the access to information of modern generations.

I saw first hand what this could look like. My parents were not affluent enough to send me to a private school, but they were affluent enough to move to a area in New Jersey with a very well-funded public school system. We had a sister community college that had a great reputation, and as a option for upperclassmen who skipped grades or took courses early, they could drive the community college and take classes instead. We actually had one student my senior year who got an Associate Degree _before_ his High School degree.

Personally I took 2 summer math classes and 2 programming classes at this college, and the difference between the CC and High School was stark.

\- Professors didn't have to babysit: If you acted out, you got kicked out. No discussion.

\- You self-selected to other like-minded individuals who were both interested and aggressive about learning the material in the class.

\- Teachers could actually teach without dealing with school board restrictions or materials.

\- Funding policies actually made sense since the entity managing them wasn't completely government run.

\- You could treat the students like adults, and not have to worry about discussing controversial material, or that a parent would helicopter in and threaten to sue the school.

This whole process made me a lot more excited for college. It also showed me there was so much more material out there than what I thought about in High School. I think this process should be funded, and eventually mandatory, otherwise the US will find itself behind.

I remember a Star Trek TNG episode (I can't recall the number) where a parent was chasing a 10-yo child for skipping class. The child complained casually that he didn't want to learn Calculus. We may never get that far for every child, but I dream of a world where a brilliant 10-yo could get that far if he wanted to.

Part II.

To continue my rant, I actually think the Obama Administration is smart in how it is executing on this issue.

In the US, the execution of compulsory education happens at the state and local level. Local governments get to decide how "important" education is to them, specifically with their budgets. On the plus side, this helps us avoid the (potentially republic-damaging) process of convincing 316 million people that the federal government is the best entity to handle child education (and create a massive bureaucracy to boot). On the downside, as a country we are dropping the ball in preparing the next generation to be solid competitors in the global marketplace.

When this problem last came up it was during the cold war, specifically after Sputnik launched. There was a massive, national push to make more students in tune with modern education, which resulted in the passing of the National Defense Education Act [1]. Basically, it required a existential crisis in order to motivate the US to seriously fund education nationally.

Now, 50 years later, I'm continually blown away when I discuss education with my colleagues who grew up abroad. In European (especially ex-soviet bloc) countries, India, and Asia, education is significantly more rigorous and highly valued, which results in a significantly more prepared workforce.

I like, or hope, to think that in case the Obama Administration sees the same thing. Specifically:

\- We are now 17th in global education ranking [2], and even lower in Math and Science [3]

\- In the rapidly globalizing economy, this gap in education is now a national security issue

\- Other up-and-coming economies all have much deeper cultural values for educations, with a national government that reflects it.

\- Federalizing the system (ala West Wing Season 7) is too drastic, and will never pass congress anyway

\- Our one massive advantage, our higher education system (which is the envy of the world), specifically the relatively affordable community colleges, is being underutilized.

By taking federal funding and pumping it into a solution that is reasonably affordable, partially shared with the states, and bypass the State and local governments, we are essentially doing what educational reformers have always dreamed we could do: Fund education like we do the military.

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

[2] [http://www.ibtimes.com/us-17th-global-education-ranking- finl...](http://www.ibtimes.com/us-17th-global-education-ranking-finland- south-korea-claim-top-spots-901538)

[3] [http://www.businessinsider.com/pisa- rankings-2013-12](http://www.businessinsider.com/pisa-rankings-2013-12)

</comment><comment><USER31> Since republicans control congress at the moment, they know it will be veto'd, but it will only help to push the agenda that republicans are bad. I see this being used to push the next presidential race.

<comment><USER32> It's probably not a coincidence that Obama is going to announce this plan in Tennessee. The Republican governor of Tennessee, Bill Haslam, has made affordable college a key part of his platform.

One comment I've read today sums it up: _" Watching [Obama] co-opt the crown jewel of Haslam's 2020 or 2024 presidential run is so, so beautiful"_

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I'm all for education, but so much of what passes for it is pure nonsense (IMHOP).

And I'm not sure taxpayers ought to pay for, nor encourage, nonsense. That's what parents are for. They have an incentive to say "no" after a bit.

Maybe cleaning up the "educational" system a little might be a better first step. This program could simply be an expensive way (for taxpayers) to have a bunch of semi-bored kids half studying the sociology of Amish Lesbians while claiming they are getting a useful eduction.

(this comment is not intended to offend Lesbians, Sociologists, The Amish, nor Semi-Bored kids... it's just that there is so much nonsense in schools.....I'd be all for the program if it was free math classes only.)

This just seems like a pork barrel type thing for some groups, without achieving the stated objective of eduction.

<comment><USER21> Most community colleges don't offer anything as specialized as _Survey of Late 20th Century Post-Grunge Tribal Tattoos_.

Community colleges usually just take care of general education classes--like English Composition, College Algebra, Calculus, and History.

I'm sure there are some nonsense classes, but there isn't much room for specialization in a 2 year degree.

<comment><USER33> [http://nypost.com/2014/01/30/rutgers-university-offers- class...](http://nypost.com/2014/01/30/rutgers-university-offers-class-on- beyonce/)

I'm sure you are mostly correct. My concern is that given free subsistence, I believe the plague of nonsense will grow. I also believe that paying for something is a way to give it value to those who pay. I don't see high school being very highly valued by most kids. And their valuation is probably not far from fair either.

This article does very well at summing up some of my observations...

[http://www.popecenter.org/commentaries/article.html?id=2734](http://www.popecenter.org/commentaries/article.html?id=2734)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Dear Republican Friends,

Don't worry about Obama's community college announcement, it's a great idea.

I mean, clearly the education market is far too competitive as is. With average annual tuition rates of $2,700, who can afford to go to community college I ask you. Clearly, if we remove all competition in the market, that price can only go down, right?

And I shouldn't need to remind you that the teachers unions have clearly shown themselves amenable to keeping education affordable. Putting all power in their hands is a sure-fire play for better education.

Look at the public school teachers in my home-state of Pennsylvania! They're absolute saints, taking in a pathetic $62,000 dollars average per anum, after being short-changed with only a 23% raise in income in the last 10 years. Granted, that was with a Republican governor, so they may have gotten a fair 38% with a Democratic governor, but I think the point stands. They never use their union clout in a way that hurts our students.

And just look at what they did with public middle and high schools! The taxpayers of Washington, DC, for example, are paying a measly $29,000 per pupil, and we all know the high quality of the DC public schools! This is clearly a place where government regulation is needed.

No, don't get upset my friends.

Obama is just looking out for the little guys on this one. This has, I assure you, nothing to do with Obama trying to claim back support from the teachers unions after they started attacking him, quite rightly I must add, for instantiating our evil (Republican) decade-long request that poor schools be given the tools to fire incompetent teachers.

Don't fret, big government loves you.

<comment><USER21> >And I shouldn't need to remind you that the teachers unions have clearly shown themselves amenable to keeping education affordable. Putting all power in their hands is a sure-fire play for better education.

Community college professors aren't generally unionized. They're definable not part of public school teachers unions your talking about.</comment></comment>


Portland introduces CivicApps: contest promoting usage of their open datasets - <AUTHOR> http://siliconflorist.com/2010/04/20/open-data-civicapps-101-datasets-data-geeking-portland-oregon/

<comment><AUTHOR> Direct link to the contest (I thought SF had a better explanation of what it's about): <http://civicapps.org/></comment>


Think Strategically About Your Career Development - <AUTHOR> https://hbr.org/2016/12/think-strategically-about-your-career-development <comment><USER2> "A study by Wharton professor Matthew Bidwell showed that external hires into a company get paid 18-20% more than internal workers who are promoted into similar jobs. (Gratingly, they also perform worse for the first two years.) That's patently unjust, but it points to an important truth: professionals are often taken for granted inside their own organizations."

It always amazes me that this has never been rectified within the corporate culture. Maybe the percentage of employees that look is so low that the risk of losing them isn't worth the cost of proactively keeping them happy with their salary?

<comment><USER3> Anecdotally in support of your quote:

Where I presently work, about half of the staff have migrated from a technical/support (but not IT) side of the business to the "productive side of the business.

They all get the national minimum wage plus a few coins, to make them happy. Where they came from, where I am, is minimum wage part-time/casual (legally part-time/permanent, contractually casual). If anything goes wrong - and with our failing electronic equipment it happens all the time - then there are warnings, there is much screaming and swearing at, and so forth.

Since we recently merged with another business, the new hires - who are fresh out of training with no experience and rather poor skills in our particular area - get about 35% more pay, better conditions, and the managers are far more tolerant of their mistakes. (You produced under 40% of your weekly minimum requirement? That's OK! You've opened us up to serious lawsuits because of your poor work? No problem! You smashed the state-of-the-art equipment we bought you, and then snatched your supervisor's unit to replace yours, and she couldn't do her job? That's fine!)

The lowest paid of these staff, the internal promotions, are responsible for all our production and training at a fraction of the pay. The new hires are classed as full-time/permanent, the internal promotions are part-time/casual and so can be dismissed at any time with minimal notice. Needless to say, they're leaving as soon as they can find a job anywhere else.

<comment><USER4> Just playing devil advocate here but:

If there's at least 2 business doing this, why don't you just go to the other side and vice versa? There should be new openings everywhere everytime, and you could demonstrate that you're worth the 35% pay increase.</comment></comment></comment>


Batman.js full-stack micro-framework - <AUTHOR> http://batmanjs.org/

<comment><USER2> Interesting, but the Todo example is misleading. Far more than 5 lines of code, it's heavily reliant on mixed logic in the template, which itself relies on HTML5 data. The data attributes are not namespaced, which could easily lead to collisions.

It looks very similar to Spine, but Spine is much less DOM-reliant and has clear separation of MVC. Perhaps a more complex Batmanjs example will better show how separation of logic is addressed.</comment>


Ask HN: Did doom3 run for you after compilation? - <AUTHOR>

I have just install doom3 in my neo folder using scons (ubuntu 11.04). I typed ./doom.x86 and I got the following message.

  DOOM 220.127.116.114-debug linux-x86 Nov 24 2011     00:27:04
  found interface lo - <USER2>
  found interface eth0 - 10.0.0.19/255.255.255.0
  no 'base' directory in exe path /home/kun  /doom3.gpl/neo, skipping
  WARNING: using hardcoded default base path
  <comment> Initializing File System </comment><comment>
  Current search path:
  /home/kun/.doom3/base
  /usr/local/games/doom3/base
  game DLL: 0x0 in pak: 0x0
  Addon pk4s:
  file system initialized.
  </comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>--
  Unknown command 'vid_restart'
  idRenderSystem::Shutdown()
  Sys_Error: Couldn't load default.cfg
 </comment><comment><USER3> You need the Doom 3 data files - buy the game.</comment>


How Sticky Is Membership on Facebook? Just Try Breaking Free - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/11/technology/11facebook.html?ex=1360386000&en=a3dab29e8dd0e185&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=all

<comment><USER2> I attempted to delete my Facebook account over the last week and it has been a grueling experience. I tried to change my name to "Delete Me", but that name is on the list of names you're not allowed to change your name to.

I've had to go directly to Facebook "customer support". I was asked what email address I used to create my account. I answered with the email that I was using. I was then told that I couldn't have my account deleted because I needed to respond from one of the email addresses associated with my account. Yet, presumably they had some way to confirm the security question they gave me, regarding the address I used to set up the account. Doesn't that mean that the sign-up email is associated with the account? (Sorry to be repetitive here; it makes me dizzy, too.)

I'm slightly concerned that the reason they won't delete my data is that they've already sold it to Satan.

</comment><comment><USER3> Surely filling all your personal information fields with obscenities and changing your name to something that insults facebook would get your account terminated. I haven't tried, but hopefully that would work. Anyone heard of doing this?

<comment><USER4> I have tried this, and it won't allow you to change your information to any common obscenities, etc. A message box pops up that says something like, "Please enter your real name." Maybe its possible if you get really creative, but I didn't have the patience to try.</comment></comment>


Heroku Postgres PGX: Bigger Databases, Improved Infrastructure, Same Price - <AUTHOR> https://blog.heroku.com/heroku-pgx-plans <comment><USER2> We switched off Heroku to AWS Aurora once Aurora came out with a production- ready Postgres offering.

We haven't looked back. On Heroku we used to run up against their CPU burstability limits and would get throttled. Simple Queries for an indexed field would take 100ms+. Web requests would queue up and customers would have a terrible experience.

The worst part is that Heroku support would often take days or weeks (!) to respond. And we were paying them $500+ per month. When they did, they gave us no insight into when we hit the burstability limits or when we'd be back to normal - the app simply got slow and it was never clear why.

Switching to aurora was fairly painless. And we pay less for a box that's got roughly 4x the resources, decent management tools, and no burstability limits. It's been fantastic.

We sent detailed and kind feedback to Heroku before and after switching and got a fairly bland response. Perhaps they couldn't let us know that these kinds of new Postgres plans were coming, but it came off like Heroku didn't really care much about the experience we had on their platform.

<comment><USER3> Have you experienced any pain-points with Aurora that perhaps you would have avoided by using RDS? We've been thinking of switching over, but some teams reported seeing different performance behavior from their existing queries that in some cases made them roll back.

<comment><USER2> Haven't seen anything negative so far. It's been a couple months now and super snappy. But perf with Heroku was so unpredictable that Aurora would have to be terrible for us to consider going back.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I used to love, love, love Heroku. I would tell everyone about it, and at one point I was probably running 20+ projects on it.

I can't quite put my finger on why, but I've gradually transitioned everything off it over the past few years. I think it's been a combination of the ease of AWS, along with Heroku's changes to their Dyno pricing, but I never actually sat down and did the math. It just started to feel a little less controllable and a little more than I wanted to pay. To be fair, their database tiers were pretty pricey, so this article is nice news.

I'd be curious to hear if others have had a similar experience?

<comment><USER5> Their database prices are actually similar to AWS RDS Postgres now, and weren't that much higher before, especially with the nice features & interface you get in return.

Their dynos are insanely expensive though. A dedicated instance (VPS) with 2.5GB of RAM will set you back $250/month, while a similar EC2 instance will cost <$75/month.

It's hard to justify that the Heroku platform makes up for that $175/month/server difference compared to what AWS & co have nowadays.

<comment><USER6> > A dedicated instance (VPS) with 2.5GB of RAM will set you back $250/month, > while a similar EC2 instance will cost <$75/month.

To get actually more data on this, I'll show a direct comparison – that same instance (Heroku Dyno Performance M) would cost you at

        Heroku $250/month
        GCP $24.27/month
        AWS LightSail $20/month
        DO $10/month
        VULTR $10/month
        Linode $10/month
        OVH $3.80/month
        Hetzner $3.67/month
        Scaleway $3.26/month

(Disclaimer: some of the services may differ in price due to different exchange rates and different taxation)

<comment><USER7> Just to add another data point--

AWS Fargate 1 VCPU, 3 GB RAM

      1 CPU = 1*0.00001406*3600*24*30 = $36.44
      3 RAM = =3*0.00000353*3600*24*30 = $27.45

Total = $63.89 + bandwidth (I believe dynos come with a generous bandwidth allocation included)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> They screwed up when the messed with the free tier.</comment>


Ask HN: Where do the smartest people you know work? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> For themselves, brilliant...</comment>


100 Days of Swift - <AUTHOR> http://samvlu.com/ <comment><USER2> This is a cool set of projects, though it would be better titled: "100 Days of UIKit."

There are Swift-focused ways to build apps, but the use cases where Swift shines tend to be on the application architecture side rather than the visual result.

That said, you're bound to learn a lot about Swift by virtue of using it to build UIKit projects, so well done!

</comment><comment><USER3> This would be more useful if the source was provided. It would help the next [motivated] person learn the same material is half the time.

<comment><USER4> Or the next lazy person in 1/100th the time.

<comment><USER3> yep. There's nothing wrong with making it easier for the next person. Swift will be a great language for a lot of people.

Btw, I'm putting some notes online too:

[http://www.h4labs.com/dev/ios/swift_cookbook.html](http://www.h4labs.com/dev/ios/swift_cookbook.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This web site nearly seized the CPU on my MacBook Pro running Firefox. I don't really recommend clicking it.

<comment><USER6> It appears to load all of it's large animated gifs all at once...18MB total page weight.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> It would be interesting to see the code for these as you progressed, too.

<comment><USER8> Yeah, sadly, showing off his cloning abilities were more important.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is pretty neat. As a professional iOS developer who loves Obj-C (yeh omg), this is a good set of projects/tutorials to compete step by step. I'd suggest cleaning up your code and posting on github. It'll be a great way for people to reference and even possibly show your future employers.

</comment><comment><USER10> Anyone know what his experience level (with programming in general) was outside of swift prior to starting?

Was this a pro iOS developer learning to do stuff he already knew in another language, or a guy who's never written a line of code in his life before this?

<comment><USER11> From his Medium post[1]:

"My background is Motion Graphics and I'm a self-taught Web Developer. I know HTML, CSS, Sass, Javascript, jQuery, some Ruby and Python, but haven't built an app before."

[1] [https://medium.com/@samvlu/100-days-of- swift-736d45a19b63#.f...](https://medium.com/@samvlu/100-days-of- swift-736d45a19b63#.fg9ts1n4b)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I think this is a more detailed write up from the same author: [https://medium.com/@samvlu/100-days-of- swift-736d45a19b63](https://medium.com/@samvlu/100-days-of-swift-736d45a19b63)

</comment><comment><USER13> I would really love to learn more about these sorts of advanced animation techniques honestly - never bothered to learn much about them, given how painful they were on Android.

<comment><USER3> Here's a bunch of animation articles written within the past 6 months:

[http://www.h4labs.com/dev/ios/swift.html?q=animation&age=180](http://www.h4labs.com/dev/ios/swift.html?q=animation&age=180)

It's actually not that difficult on iOS.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Totally clicked thinking this was going to be some of weird but interesting Taylor Swift shrine, but yeah, this is cool too. Useful for my buddies who work with iOS devices.

</comment><comment><USER15> I especially love the clone of Twitter launch screen. Looks so smooth.

But would be great with code snippets.

</comment><comment><USER16> nice to see that you've managed to engage and improve yourself using swift for 100 days.

being a reletiely new languauge, i think it would have been a more interesting article if you had compared / benchmarked it to a languages you already know and use…

</comment><comment><USER17> Any idea how much time per day the author spent on their projects?

</comment><comment><USER18> Very nice way to force yourself to learn the swift.

</comment><comment><USER19> I was supposed to see it's a girl. Lol</comment>


Show HN: Yellow pages for start up resources - <AUTHOR>

http://www.foundersstash.com<p>Hackers we made this for you guys. Please tell us what you think and how we can make it more useful.  Hope it saves you lots of time. <comment><USER2> The curated categories coupled with upvoted resources within seems a pretty useful model.

</comment><comment><USER3> That double SS is going to confuse some people.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yea good call. Do you think founder stash is better? Doesn't have that ring to it as much though

<comment><USER4> Honestly sounds no different to me. It's probably better to go with the single S in Founder Stash.

<comment><AUTHOR> Nice thanks</comment></comment></comment></comment>


NYU Startup Week - <AUTHOR> http://techatnyu.com/nyu-startup-week I'm one of the students behind an organization at NYU called Tech@NYU.  We're hosting our second startup week.  You may want to check out one of our events if you're in the NYC area.  They're all free to attend. <comment><AUTHOR> I'm one of the students behind an organization at NYU called Tech@NYU. We're hosting our second startup week. Feel free to check out our events if you're in the NYC area.

</comment><comment><USER2> On a related note, HackNY is next weekend, and I'll be there along with a few of my friends.

<http://hackny.org/a/>

<comment><USER3> I'll be there as well, as a tech ambassador...looking forward to it!

<comment><USER2> Awesome, looking forward to meeting you. What company are you with?

<comment><USER3> Ah, my company isn't presenting - Evan Korth invited me when we met a few weeks ago and I'm coming mostly for networking reasons (and maybe a little light recruiting).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This seems to be an incredible opportunity for students to get a taste of the NYC tech/start-up scene. What a roster.

Congrats and thanks to Tech@NYU for putting together this event.

I'm currently studying abroad in Shanghai -- any chance of the panel discussions being recorded or broadcast in some way?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks a lot for the support. We're going to do our best to record all of the panels. Check techatnyu.com next week for links to the recordings.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This sounds awesome!

Man I keep hearing about NYU in the news -- Diaspora*, hackathons, venture funds, etc... Good stuff!

Sounds like they're cementing themselves at the east-coast capital for tech.

<comment><USER6> NYU is hustling but we'll see if they can really keep this going

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> More colleges need these types of events. NYC schools like NYU and Columbia definitely have an advantage by having direct access to the NYC tech scene.

</comment><comment><USER8> really good stuff! it's nice to see colleges finally adopting a new type of student and entrepreneur!</comment>


Ask HN: What is your go-to thing to do while compiling/building - <AUTHOR> What's your go-to thing to do while your build is running? <comment><USER2> [https://www.xkcd.com/303/](https://www.xkcd.com/303/)</comment>


Always mount the scratch monkey (1987) - <AUTHOR> http://edp.org/monkey.htm

<comment><USER2> That's a very painful story, and a good reminder that when you wire up something 'unexpected' (such as monkey brains) to a computer you should probably not rely on simply taping off a switch or a cardboard sign.

The poor service guy is probably still having nightmares over this, if he's still alive.

What bugs me though is how the patterns written to that disk managed to get sent out to the DACs if the machine was being serviced and running diagnostics, after all, simply writing to the drive would not automatically cause the DACs to be written to.

edit: got it, the DACs where connected right over the top of the drive controller.

</comment><comment><USER3> My first reaction to this was to laugh - it's really rather funny/unbelievable, when you're looking back on this incident with all the years for perspective. But then I attempted to put myself in the DFS engineer's shoes and didn't like what I saw. Poor soul. This is one maintenance incident he's unlikely to forget.

<comment><USER4> <http://tafkac.org/faq2k/animal_618.html>

"At this writing, the Jargon File claims the incident actually happened, at Toronto in 1979 or 1980, and that the sysadmin on duty was actually interviewed. The account doesn't provide enough details to track down an independent account, however.

Current University of Toronto sysadmins have expressed skepticism. For one thing, in almost all versions of the story, including the ostensibly documented one in the Jargon File, the computer is a VAX; at the time a VAX would have been a very unusual platform for this kind of data acquisition (they used PDP-11s). The Toronto zoology department has never been licensed to work with primates; the only section of the university that could have done experiments of this nature was the School of Medicine. Investigation continues."

<comment><USER5> Actually, the original story does say it was Medicine buying the Vax and doing the experiment, with Zoo helping. The VAX 11-780 was _the_ hot machine of 1979/80 ("a 1 MIPS beast!", I heard).

I've seen Laura Creighton's name on Python lists - I believe she's on LinkedIn. The author's "Statistically Invalid Sampling of My Life" (<http://edp.org/index.htm>) is also pretty amusing - don't think he'd need to embellish _that_ incident.

P.S. The story is, for instance, alluded to here: [http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python- list/2002-May/756589...](http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python- list/2002-May/756589.html), without either rebuttal or elaboration.</comment></comment></comment>


Glassomer: Glass shaping at room temperature - <AUTHOR> https://www.glassomer.com/ <comment><USER2> Not sure if this is supposed to be a marketing plug or generate discussion?

Either way, the company would've been better off making a blog posting and posting HQ images of what they can do. The images on the site kind of suck and you have to go digging

<comment><AUTHOR> OP here; I am not associated with this people in any way and wanted to create discussion.

<comment><USER3> I think the problem was that you editorialized the title, and it sounded like marketing ("Glassomer – glass structuring is becoming as easy and fast as plastic processing"). A better approach would be to make the title reflect what the page actually says, and then to post a first comment explaining what you find interesting and what sort of discussion you were hoping for.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> So the website is pretty crappy at giving a simple summary. Nature's video is better: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uBMB4FNoYz4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uBMB4FNoYz4)

TL;DW: they sell glass powder that's mixed with a polymer binder. You can buy it as a liquid or solid. It can be cut/machined as a solid, cast or 3d printed as a liquid, and there's versions that set from liquid to solid with UV exposure. Final processing in a kiln burns away the binder and melds the glass powder together, forming the final object.

<comment><USER5> I suspect that the glass powder will quickly wear through machining tools and 3d printer nozzles. So I'm not sold on this actually being economical.

<comment><USER6> Nozzles are fairly cheap.

<comment><AUTHOR> Diamond coated tools are not that expensive either.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Not a great link for HN, but I was surprised to learn they have a process for 3D printing glass objects using photo curing. Sounds neat.

</comment><comment><USER8> I would imagine that burning off the polymer binder in the final processing step leads to significant volume change and porosity, which would be a major challenge in many applications. I'm not seeing any information about how they approach these problems.

<comment><AUTHOR> See the publications of Frederik Kotz: [https://scholar.google.de/citations?user=TQBKvzsAAAAJ&hl=de](https://scholar.google.de/citations?user=TQBKvzsAAAAJ&hl=de)

Citing from the Nature publication:

"The shrinkage of the part during the sintering process is isotropic and dependent on the solid loading (hence can be calculated; see Supplementary Information). The sintering shrinkage for stereo- lithography and microstereolithography does not depend on the scale of the sintered parts (for example, the honeywell structure in Fig. 1a with a solid loading of 37.5 vol% showed the expected linear shrinkage of 27.88% in height from 3.05 mm to 2.2 mm and width from 2.177 cm to 1.57 cm)."

"During a final sintering step at 1,300 °C the density of the brown part is increased (ρ final = 2.2 g cm −3 ) to that of high-quality fused silica glass with no remaining porosity and no cracks."

But of course these processes could be quite sensitive to hard to control parameters.

<comment><USER8> If they can reliably get those densities and shrinkages from this procedure that is quite impressive. After a brief look through the papers, there is some promising evidence but I'd like to see a more thorough characterization, especially demonstrating spatial homogeneity of porosity and shrinkage.

It's certainly a very interesting technology, and I think it could potentially be applicable to materials beyond glass.

<comment><USER9> > I think it could potentially be applicable to materials beyond glass.

It's been used for quite a few years already. Precious metal clay is basically this. You can 3d print with it, then fire it and it turns into solid metal.

<comment><USER8> What's most interesting to me is subtractive manufacturing of ceramics.

From what I've seen in metals, there's a preference for powder bed technologies over binder technologies. But it's not like I have a wide scope of current industry or research.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Wow this looks promising, wonder if the technique can be used to cheaply prototype optics. Stratasys has VeroClear but material properties aren't ideal (e.g., lack of heat resistance), and injection molding is rather expensive for making a bunch of one-off prototypes.

</comment><comment><USER11> This is very cool - it looks like you have a substance that looks and feels a bit like ceramic clay -- but when fired, it becomes true silica glass!

</comment><comment><USER9> Very nice!

If I'd known about this last year ago it would have been a serious contender for the shell of a photonic processor.

I'll definitely keep this production technique in mind for future projects. Shaped & machined glass is really useful.

</comment><comment><USER12> The thermal expansion coefficient seems pretty good - I wonder if this could be used for making lab glassware? Lab glass with complex shapes (think condensers, soxhlet, etc) can get _very_ expensive

<comment><USER13> I was just thinking that it might be useful for making lab glassware. Often you have complex shapes which takes a master scientific glass blower to make. 3D printing would make that a lot more accessible.

In case anyone is wondering it takes years to become proficient as a scientific glass blower and the wages totally suck. Used to be scientific glass blowers would up and quit and open a neon shop because it paid better.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> A more interesting part is here:

[https://www.glassomer.com/index.php/technology](https://www.glassomer.com/index.php/technology)

3D printing glass, hmmmm.

<comment><USER15> Dumping us on the home page isn't really news, especially when there is basically no 'about' information there.

Even the tech page is 2 screens long with only 3 paragraphs, and I can't find any news articles about them in the last 6 months.

So it's a feedstock for very high resolution 3d printing, cured by UV to set it and then annealed in an oven to fuse it properly?

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> You can get 3d printing filament with a mixture of like 80% metal powder and the rest PLA that can be sintered, ie heated to be like 1200-1300C, to end up with a metal object that's essentialy printed on a regular 3d printer. Maybe glass powder could also just be mixed in melted PLA and then extruded to get a filament that could be used in regular 3d printers and then sintered to get a glass object.

</comment><comment><USER17> It'd be interesting if they could create some sort of laminated or reinforced plastic by also printing a PLA scaffold. It'd reduce the amount of plastic but also combat some of the brittleness you get with glass.

<comment><USER18> Only the shaping takes place at low temperatures. The material still needs a heat treatment at well over 1000°C for its final form.

<comment><USER19> > The conversion takes place at 700 °C below the temperature for handling of > silica melts (~2000 °C) and thus safes [sic] a considerable amount of > energy.

[https://www.glassomer.com/index.php/technology](https://www.glassomer.com/index.php/technology)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Is glass dust sintering really so special? Hasn't SLS printing been done for a while now? [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selective_laser_sintering](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selective_laser_sintering)

<comment><USER21> SLS typically works with plastic not glass.

<comment><USER20> This is plastic that has glass dust in it. The plastic burns away during sintering.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> How does it compare with other materials from end-of-life and waste / recycling standpoint?

</comment><comment><USER23> > Meet our competent team of scientists, technicians and entrepreneurs. We > have competent solutions for your needs.

Maybe a thesaurus?

<comment><USER24> This looks like an overextended version of something similar to "A competent team, with competent solutions." Which, well, still doesn't sound very convincing to me, but at least it flows better.</comment></comment>