What Americans Keep Ignoring About Finland's School Success - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/12/what-americans-keep-ignoring-about-finlands-school-success/250564/ <comment><USER3> It's interesting that the PISA scores are always used to declare that the school system of X is vastly superior to Y, (usually some other country in comparison to America), a conclusion that ignores the fact that test scores are affected by variables other than the educational system of a country.

If you correct for ethnic background, America holds up very well. Asian- Americans (including Asian-Americans from developing nations like Vietnam and Cambodia) score as high as Asians in the wealthy countries of Japan, South Korea, Singapore, and Hong Kong. European-descended Americans score in the upper third of the pack when compared to other White Europeans (ahead of Australia, Denmark, France, and the EU average, below Finland, Switzerland, Canada, Germany) [1]. In this comparison, Finland does stand above the rest, admittedly. But what drags down our scores? Disadvantaged ethnic minorities. The same applies to European countries: "In almost all European countries, immigrants from third world countries score lower than native born kids."

Even immigrants to Finland score poorly compared to native Finns; it's just that only 4% of Finns are immigrants. In fact, the gap between immigrant and native PISA scores is _greater_ in Finland than the USA.

With all the institutional and socioeconomic baggage that comes with being Hispanic or black in America, you cannot seriously compare the raw PISA scores of a nation of immigrants that is 13% black and 16% Hispanic (America) with a nation that is by and large culturally and ethnically homogenous (Finland), and use that to draw meaningful conclusions about the educational system.

[1] [http://super-economy.blogspot.com/2010/12/amazing-truth- abou...](http://super-economy.blogspot.com/2010/12/amazing-truth-about-pisa- scores-usa.html)

EDIT (reply to below): No, because even immigrants/minorities in Finland score lower than average; the gap between immigrants to Finland and native Finns is even greater than the gap between immigrants to America and native Finns. Furthermore it is very hard to make a comparison because it's pretty easy to have "equity" when your entire society is largely ethnically/culturally homogenous, and when you only have to scale that equity across a very small population.

<comment><USER4> This just underscores the headline statement of the article though, wouldn't you say? If e.g. US education policy were strongly focused on equity, chances are that those immigrants _wouldn't_ score lower than the average. And since powerful groups would still want their children to score well, chances are that the system would change in a way that _pulls everybody up_ rather than pushing anybody down.

From the other perspective, it seems perfectly possible to have a culturally and ethnically homogenous country with high inequality (along class lines rather than racial lines) and hence worse education results.

<comment><USER5> Ethnic issues aside, I think the OP's most important point is that schools are not the only thing that goes into education. Their family, community and friends might even be more important. Imagine you took a school performing in the top 5% academically and swap the students with a school performing in the bottom 5%. Which do you think will perform better?

Universities ares someplace where this is widely accepted. Go to a good Uni because that's where the good students are. It probably works for primary schools too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think the article misses some of the scaling issues. Finland has, I think, 1.5 million school age children, while the US has ~84 million to educate.

I'm far more interested in the classroom "flipping" model[0] coming out of Colorado. It combines the scaling advantages of online video lectures with supervised group practice. I don't think it has been fully studied yet, but it sounds very interesting.

[0] [http://www.npr.org/2012/12/07/166748835/more-teachers- flippi...](http://www.npr.org/2012/12/07/166748835/more-teachers-flipping-the- school-day-upside-down)

<comment><USER7> But doesn't schooling pretty much scale horizontally? Is schooling 84M really any more complex then schooling 1.5M?

If anything, I'd suggest there is a fairly large fixed overhead for a country to set up a school system (teacher training, set curriculum, exam structure etc) and beyond that it becomes fairly cookie-cutter to scale out each school.

<comment><USER8> It doesn't work that way. Students in South Los Angeles, for instance, need a different curriculum than students in wealthy Cambridge. Students at the former still struggle with English, while the latter are scions of Harvard and MIT.

<comment><USER9> I bet students in Finland start off with a lower English level than students in South Los Angeles.

<comment><USER10> I bet students in South Los Angeles start off with a lower Finnish level than students in Finland.

<comment><USER9> Well, that's an easy bet to settle. 97 percent of Finns have either Finnish, Swedish, Russian or Estonian as native language and only 0.26 percent of Finns are native English speakers. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_Finland>

<comment><USER10> It's as easy to settle as your bet. That was the point I was demonstrating with my sarcasm.

<comment><USER9> Sorry. Got lost on me :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> "Instead, the public school system's teachers are trained to assess children in classrooms using independent tests they create themselves. All children receive a report card at the end of each semester, but these reports are based on individualized grading by each teacher. Periodically, the Ministry of Education tracks national progress by testing a few sample groups across a range of different schools."

Children aren't being taught to pass tests. They're being educated. Teaching quality is maintained using sampling. Could this be the key?

<comment><USER12> "Teachers are trained to assess children in classrooms using independent tests they create themselves."

So, they do testing. They probably test more often than standardized testing.

<comment><USER11> Presumably that testing is catered to the specific children the teachers are teaching, rather than testing that is catered to some kind of national standardized performance metric.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> A very interesting read on the subject of equality and competition in education is Lorenzo Milani students' book 'Lettera a una professoressa' (Letter to a Teacher) [1].

Milani was a catholic priest that was deemed a bit too radical by the church establishment and was sent in a tiny rural community as a teacher so that he would stay away from the workers in large cities. There he developed a full time school, where older students would teach the younger and there was no notion of marks, testing or even holiday.

Learning was a collective experience that relied on critical thinking and research rather than rote learning. The book is also seminal (at least in Italy) since it uses hard numbers to show the social inequality of the school system. The statistical and economical analysis was performed by his students as a research project.

[1] <http://www.swaraj.org/shikshantar/LTAT_Final.pdf>

<comment><USER14> _"The statistical and economical analysis was performed by his students as a research project."_

That is the way to do it, thanks for this reference. Paulo Freire has had a similar influence in _adult_ teaching. One quick quote from the PDF...

" _I'd have you paid by piecework. So much for each child who learns one subject. Or,even better, a fine for each child who does not learn a subject. Then your eyes would always be on Gianni.

You would search out in his inattentive stare the intelligence that God has put in him, as in all children. You would fight for the child who needs you most, neglecting the gifted one, as they do in any family. You would wake up at night thinking about him and would try to invent new ways to teach him - ways that would fit his needs. You would go to fetch him from home if he did not show up for class._"

Er - no, I'd just go and find another job, subject to a definition of what 'learn a subject' means! I'll print and read the _whole_ PDF carefully but this is _exactly_ the opposite of what the Finnish system does.

<comment><USER13> I think this quote is more of an hyperbole, however the principle of the quote would be: spend most of your energies on the most difficult students, not on the gifted ones; probably the most gifted student will find something to satiate their interests anyway and their families are already providing them tangentially with learning material.

An educator I know likes to say that's not the really worst students you should spend your energies on, but the ones just a little better, that's where the best return on investment is, according to him.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Can we talk about poverty? In many communities in America schools are the only places students can get something to eat. We know that academic performance correlates closely with the economic conditions parents. So why don't we talk about it more?

Schools are in many ways just reflections of a society and its values. Schools don't exist in a vacuum, so comparing American schools to Finnish schools can not be done as an apples to apples comparison.

<comment><USER8> "Can we talk about poverty? In many communities in America schools are the only places students can get something to eat."

I've worked with inner city youths, and that is completely false. If that were true, we'd expect a very skinny poor population. Instead, a large percentage of America's poor are overweight.

<comment><USER16> A large percentage of the poor are overweight or obese because of the low nutritional value of cheap, readymade food.

<comment><USER12> I don't think that's the cause. I think that's just some middle class bias in the debate.

I think the real reason is that food generally costs a lot less than it used to cost, relative to housing and other expenses.

Poor people often know how to cook, out of necessity, and make the food taste better by retaining more of the fat, adding carbs like rice, and plenty of meat.

Food is sustenance, culture, entertainment, and reward all in one experience. And the price is relatively low. If you have $10, you can dine very well if you can cook.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> A point that seems to come out of this:

> Finland offers all pupils free school meals, easy access to health care, > psychological counseling, and individualized student guidance.

Schools should be more about this. Creating a good environment for kids, especially those from poorer backgrounds. We somehow delude ourselves into thinking that schools are about test scores, but it's about forming children into decent human beings.

<comment><USER18> > but it's about forming children into decent human beings.

This used to be the parents' job.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I know I might be a bit pedantic, but Finland is not part of Scandinavia; only Sweden, Denmark and Norway are. Finland is part of the Nordic countries, along with Scandinavia and Iceland.

This _tiny_ bit of research makes me concerned about the rest of the article's content. And as jared314 correctly points out; things are different in Finland compared to the United States. Moreover; remember, what is good for Finland, may not be good for Colorado. Hell, what is good for Colorado may not be good for Maine. Or Finland versus Denmark, for that matter.

Each country and/or state is different, and should - appropriately - <USER2> treated that way. Don't be too swayed by success, also learn from failure.

<comment><USER20> I'm not sure what you're saying... There's no point in making comparisons because the U.S. and Finland are different?

Canada is much closer to Finland in PISA rankings than the U.S., but probably has more in common with the U.S. in most respects than Finland. Of course, Canada is not Finland or the U.S., and what is good for Canada may not be good for the U.S. ...

Seriously, look no further than the text-book industry in the U.S. It's a friggin' mess. If I were designing a curriculum in Canada, my #1 criteria for choosing a text-book would be "must not be used in Texas or California".

<comment><USER19> Not _that_ bold. We should not ignore what others are doing, but we should not think that because someone else is doing well, a carbon copy of their solution will fit here. I am just saying that things are never simple.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The article makes it sound as if public vs private is the only way in which schools differ. Even if all schools are public, some of them are good while others are bad, and you still have to somehow select students who get to attend good ones.

Soviet Union had a similar system, and selection was driven by a combination of merit exams, social status/personal connections, and corruption. This actually worked reasonably well. But "equal access for everyone" was more of a propaganda bs then reality, and I doubt it is much different in Finland.

<comment><USER22> > Soviet Union had a similar system, and selection was driven by a combination > of merit exams, social status/personal connections, and corruption

I gather that you've also attended one of these schools :) Anyway, I also come from that part of the world and I remember how my parents had to pull a lot of strings to enroll me in a better school compared to the one I had been automatically assigned to.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> What I do like in the Finnish schoolsystem is that it gives an equal chance for everyone from every background to aim for their individual dreams and goals. It does not rank people based on their welfare, but the equality in the schoolsystem gives every single child an equal chance to be whatever they want. You are not judged on your social status and income, but how hard you work for your grades and goals. Children and teenagers are not restricted when it comes to applying to schools and universities. You can even apply to the top universities of Finland if you have studied hard and have good grades. Tuition fees? Nope. And how's your income? - The schools don't care as long as you've proven that you're hardworking or talented. System takes care of the funding, students can focus on the studying.

Maybe in some countries, changing to this kind of system might be considered just an idealistic nonsense, but I believe that's what has made the Finnish schoolsystem as strong as it is - equal chance for everyone to be whatever they want to be and work hard for.

</comment><comment><USER12> My sister is a teacher in elementary school, in a somewhat diverse school community, and achieves high scores by focusing on equity and a community outreach to get parents involved in the classroom.

</comment><comment><USER24> The finnish model sounds very much like the swedish model, and Sweden is constantly slipping in the PISA studies. 2009 we were below Norway, and even behind United States in reading and mathematics.

</comment><comment><USER25> The author of this article would have his readers believe that out of all the things about Finland which make sense regarding their better achievement, the only element that really matters is that Finland doesn't have private schools.

Stated another way, the only thing that is causing public schools to fail in the US is the existence of private schools.

Eliminate private schools and suddenly the US will have achievement on par with Finland, if we are to believe this analysis.

Is it really that simple?

<comment><USER8> America's top schools are privately-run (Harvard, MIT, Stanford, Andover, Exeter, etc). If we eliminated private schools, does the author expect better test scores?

<comment><USER26> The use of "school" here is about primary and secondary education, not University/College level tertiary education.

<comment><USER8> So? My point still stands. The best secondary schools, like Andover, Exeter, Harvard-Westlake, St. Paul's, Horace Mann, to name a few, are privately-run.

<comment><USER26> I wasn't disagreeing with your point, merely pointing out that in this context those were poor examples.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Finland has a very quirky school system, it's nigh impossible to apply in other countries. It's also a matter of a concerted PR effort - the paper reality often looks better than what actually happens in schools. While it's very interesting and certainly still a role model, many educational professionals are slowly dropping the 'Be Finland' chorus and are starting to look elsewhere.

New Zealand seems to be the new hype.

</comment><comment><USER28> Take some people and 'partition' them, that is, for some positive integer n, have n boxes and put each person in some one of the n boxes. Each box is a 'partition'. Have no empty boxes.

Okay, pick a measure. Might pick accuracy with a bow and arrow, skill at adding a column of numbers, ability to memorize a passage of music, distance on a broad jump -- you get it, essentially anything.

Now apply the measure to each of the people, and for each partition get an average for the measures of the people in that partition.

Now rank the partitions on the averages. Typically will have no ties -- assume no ties. So, there is no ambiguity in the ranking.

Note: Likely picking a different measure will result in a different ranking.

Now pick one more box, A, and move some people from the partitions into box A from some of the other boxes, and get the score of the people in box A.

So, here we have an experiment with any people with any partitions with any measure and have said nothing, zip, zilch, zero, about ethnicity, race, income, parent's education, school systems, teachers unions, school budgets, etc.

Claim: Essentially always, the score of box A will be significantly lower than the score of the best partition and significantly higher than the score of the worst partition. That is, the score of box A will be, in the word of the OP, 'middling'.

So, just this little thought experiment is enough to explain the fact that the US is not either the best or the worst in the world on the PISA tests.

But, if in each partition the people are homogeneous, then typically the result will be the same except the difference between partition at the top of the ranking and the bottom of the ranking will be larger. Net, both the top and the bottom of the rankings will have homogeneous populations, and the diverse partition A will be middling.

For more, if want to compare the school, home life, etc. of Finland what those aspects of the US, then compare PISA scores of students in Finland, native to Finland, with the PISA scores of US students of recent, native Finnish descent.

Of course, there was

"McKinsey's report, The Economic Impact of the Achievement Gap in America's Schools"

of 2009. The URLs of the PDFs are no longer live.

There in the "supporting materials" on page 24 is a bar graph of

"PISA Science Literacy Scale for 15-year-old students, 2006"

with

         Finland      563
         Hong Kong    542
         Canada       534
         Japan        531
         Australia    527
         US whites    523
         ...
         US average   489
         ...
         Greece       473
         Israel       454
         US Latinos   439

Now, how can Israel be so low?

Exercise for the reader!</comment>


Would a /leaderposts on YC make sense? - <AUTHOR>

At times when the top stuff on YC seems less interesting, I've occasionally gone back through the recent submissions of the leaders to look for older stuff I may have missed that doesn't appear in /best.  I.e.
http://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=pg
http://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=nickb
http://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=edw519
Does anyone else here do this sort of thing?  If so, would it make sense to have here or would it be better for something like http://searchyc.com to have? <comment><USER2> Yes I do the same thing, but the profiles that I look at are a bit different from yours.

I think that what is needed is some sort of algorithmic approach, like my yc news. I note that I see many of the same users in the discussions I'm contributing to, and that not all of these are in the top list. And some of the people in the top list I never see. What this suggests is that there are different subsets of users with differing interests.

<comment><USER3> "there are different subsets of users with differing interests"

What a perceptive observation of something I never understood. I submit and participate all the time and, for the life of me, could never figure out what helps a story get "traction". Sometimes I submit something I find extremely interesting (Enterprise moving to Web 2.0 or How to Make Trains Go Faster) and they go nowhere. Then I'll submit something with what I think is of marginal interest (Indian Outsourcing), and it goes wild. I used to think it depended who was on-line the critical first hour or two to make it to the first page. I like your theory better.

One extremely popular type of thread I never find interesting (so I never participate) is the "language war". People seem to love these discussions. My attitude has always been, "Write it in whatever you want, and I'll rewrite it in BASIC (heh heh)".

<comment><USER2> I think that this observation is actually the key to growing a social news site without it becoming diluted, as it happened to Reddit. If you make an algorithm that simply looks at what posts you contribute to, post in and look at it should be possible to locate other users that fit into the same subset. These users submissions and comments are probably the ones that you like.

I also think there's a pretty good business model in developing a good back- end that people can use to create their own social news sites.

Maybe someone from here would be interested in helping explore it?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Sounds like you want <http://news.ycombinator.com/best>

What I should do is let people adjust the time on that.

</comment><comment><USER5> This page links to the profiles where you could then click on the submitted link <http://news.ycombinator.com/leaders>

<comment><AUTHOR> That's in fact what I do. It's just a little tedious.</comment></comment>


What's the chance you have drunk the same water molecule twice? - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/4mndsq/whats_the_chance_of_having_drunk_the_same_water/ <comment><USER2> In Quantum Field Theory, the concept of "the same water molecule" is not a well-defined concept, because of wave-function symmetry. (The only water molecules that are fully distinguishable are those where the isotopes of hydrogen or oxygen are different.)

<comment><USER3> You can still chart the history of a single molecule in theory, you just can't tag two molecules and tell them apart later without context. I guess that's another way of saying "the only true quantum configuration is the entire universe" though.</comment></comment>


Amsterdam pays alcoholics in beer to clean streets - <AUTHOR> http://www.timeslive.co.za/world/article10413118.ece

<comment><USER2> "Amsterdam" should be "Some guy in Amsterdam who managed to get some limited government funding for his foundation". But that doesn't sound as good as title, I guess.</comment>


Newsom's stay-home order wasn't worth a $54B deficit - <AUTHOR> https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2020-05-10/newsom-25-million-covid-19-budget-deficit <comment><USER2> It's easy to criticize after the fact. 2 months ago we had very little information on the virus and what we knew said that the virus had the potential to kill a large number of people. The governor made the right move. No one can foretell the future. The best we can do is make the best decision with the information we have.</comment>


Jeff Bezos Is Just $5B Away from Being the World's Richest Person - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-04-27/amazon-surge-places-bezos-within-5-billion-of-world-s-richest <comment><USER2> Has there ever been speculation as to who the richest person in the world is when taking into account private funds instead of just public? Would the list be any different?

<comment><USER3> I'm sure there are a number of __old __money families that control wealth of at least an order of magnitude higher. They are powerful enough to not make it visible and directly tied to them. Rothchilds are most likely effectively trillioners.

<comment><USER4> Do you have your tin foil hat on? Intergenerational wealth breaks down relatively quickly when dealing with significant numbers of heirs to a family fortune. Most will probably still be UHNWIs, but that's it.

<comment><USER3> A family whose wealth was built by their knowledge of how to manage wealth let their fortune dwindle? If I'm a crazy conspiracy theorist for finding that hard to believe I guess I am.

<comment><USER4> As a family, they'll be worth a lot. But not that much. We're probably talking 100-200+ descendants over the centuries. Some will have done well in life (e.g. doubled / tripled / quadrupled their inheritances), others will have wasted it all.

<comment><USER3> You are speaking in certainties and making baseless assumptions to come to your conclusion.

<comment><USER4> So are you? The things I brought up are relatively common sense. Common sense aside, I also know several old money families (some 3rd generation entrepreneurial, some old 12th century EU aristocracy) and I'm partially basing my assumptions based on what I've noticed and what they've told me about similar families they know.

If you feel the need to prove the Rothschild family are trillionaires, go ahead + best of luck.

<comment><USER3> > So are you?

What certainty am I speaking in? I'm making a clearly expressed assumption that they are using their family core competency of managing wealth and not pissing it away.

> The things I brought up are relatively common sense.

If you mean common sense as in having no sense how to properly manage wealth. Which is what very few people on average understand.

<comment><USER5> House of Saud seems to have a pretty good _grip_ on retaining wealth. Did someone say "trillions"?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Saud#Wealth](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Saud#Wealth)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Meanwhile, I'm "just" 5B away from becoming the word's 324th richest person.

</comment><comment><USER7> 1\. Bill Gates divides his money, half into his personal bank account[1], half into a tax shelter.

2\. Various other people hover around the value in Bill Gates' unsheltered personal account.

3\. "Bill Gates is passed up as the richest person in the world!"

Let me know when their net wealth exceeds the value of the wealth controlled by Bill Gates.

[1] metaphorically

<comment><USER8> If only every billionaire had a "tax shelter" that saved millions of lives.

[http://www.businessinsider.com/infographic-is-bill-gates- bet...](http://www.businessinsider.com/infographic-is-bill-gates-better-than- batman-2012-1)

<comment><USER9> thaumasiotes' point is not that Bill Gates is not a philanthropic individual, it is that most estimates of wealth are not accounting correctly for the total amount of wealth he has accumulated. He is simply using his wealth for more moral actions.

<comment><USER7> I'm not even talking about "the total amount of wealth he has accumulated". If he went spectacularly broke, that wouldn't take away from his lifetime earnings, but it would take away from his current wealth.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is under his direct control and the money goes where he thinks it should go. It's fundamentally identical to a personal entertainment fund. There is no reason to leave it out of estimates of his current worth.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> To be clear, are these estimations of wealth "money in the bank" wealth (minus liabilities), or "worth of assets in the eyes of investors"?

Things like stick price are, in my opinion, a fickle thing. Until you sell yours stocks/shares for money, their value is still shifting.

In that sense "wealth" is similar to "perception"/"confidence" \- it's not the same thing, because you have to figure in market/investor hype/rationality.

<comment><USER11> What would you call "money in the bank"? I mean when you have this kind of money you cannot just put it in the bank... probably even at the kind of money a tech worker has. To my knowledge, these estimations are based on the worth of assets.

<comment><USER10> "money in the bank" means assets that might only vary by inflation/FX etc, not dependent on a specific stock price.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> "just" $5B.

<comment><USER13> It's closer to reality when you consider that this is a 6.3% increase over his current net worth.

But yes. It's a ridiculous sum of money to be thrown around casually.

<comment><USER12> That little B makes it so easy.

"Jeff Bezos Is Just $5,000,000,000 Away from Being the World's Richest Person" reads slightly differently

<comment><USER14> Yes, it reads like a click-baity headline. Read the HN comments. It worked.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Well, I'm just $1B away from being a billionaire.

<comment><USER16> You're closer than I am.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> "Just"

<comment><USER18> I'm just a billion dollars away from being a billionaire.

<comment><USER19> that's closer than some people

<comment><USER20> Louis CK has a great bit about going into negative dollars when his bank charged him a fee for not having enough money. "Now I have negative ten dollars. I gotta raise ten dollars just to be broke. If something's free, I can't afford it!"

<comment><USER21> That's why in some statistics, 10% of the US population counts as the poorest people in the world. Starving people in developing countries usually have exactly $0, in the US most students finishing college are technically poorer than most of the world's population.

Doesn't reflect reality in any way though.

<comment><USER22> There's a story that Ivanka Trump told to a documentarian about how her father told her once that a homeless man they passed on the street was richer than them because of how much debt they were in. IIRC she told that story because it was supposed to demonstrate something about her family's humility. I always thought it was a pretty dumb thing to say.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> His company's profits are minuscule by any historical valuation but Amazon stock is at an insane valuation. For this value to be justified he would have to become the world's only distributor of everything.

<comment><USER24> That's an extreme exaggeration.

Amazon's market cap at close today was $438 billion.

To match Google's earnings multiple, Amazon would need something in the ballpark of $14 billion in net income.

They're chugging toward $200 billion in sales. $14b in net income off of that is very reachable. Even if we apply a much more conservative premise to it, they're still growing above 20% - maybe it takes them $280b in sales to get to $14b in net income; they're going to get to that sales level within six or seven years plausibly. AWS alone is all but guaranteed to generate $5+ billion in operating income within a few years. The issue isn't whether Amazon will one day justify ~$400 billion, as that's very likely, it's how far from the future are the gains being pulled. 3 years? 5 years? 10 years?

<comment><USER25> Amazon has $136B in sales, which produces $2.4B in net income (1.7% margin). How do you get $14B in net income from $280B in sales?

With a 1.7% net income margin, Amazon would need $824B in sales to get $14B, compared to the $135B now.

As a reference, Walmart is largest company in the world by revenue at $438B. Apple $233B.

The P/E ratio tells you how many years to recover the cost of your investment. Amazon is at 187 years.

<comment><USER20> > _As a reference, Walmart is largest company in the world by revenue at > $438B. Apple $233B._

Weird that the catchcry for one is selling the cheapest crap possible, and the catchcry for the other is premium blend, no discounts. What about us poor folks in the middle? :)

<comment><USER26> You're either "aspirational", meaning that you shoot for the expensive Apple products rather than a simple run of the mill PC for status reasons, or you're "thrifty", meaning that since you've blown most of your cash on a few aspirational products, you can only afford Walmart for anything else you want to buy.

Yes, I'm being a bit glib, but there's some truth in that analysis. People in the middle do try to buy some higher end goods in areas they want to signal status on... they do so selectively, but if they can afford it and its a product that makes a desired statement, they go for it. An Apple product that a billionaire would typically buy is often the same model that a middle income earner can buy, yet everyone knows they aren't the cheapest things around. On the other hand, if you're buying expensive in one area, you're also probably buying cheap in other areas, so Walmart, Ross, etc. are on the table for the middle earner as well.

For middle of the road price/products there's less prestige so you don't get that and there's can be debatable quality difference... so... the appeal can be less for something middling.

<comment><USER27> I've read other market analyses that say basically the same thing - there's no money to be made in being a 'good brand', you'll do much better chasing either high-end market or competing on cost. That's why companies like Gap & Macy's are suffering, whereas each of Louis Vuitton / Burberry and H&M / TJ Maxx have been expanding like crazy.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Next Mainstream Programming Language: A Game Developer's Perspective - <AUTHOR> http://www.st.cs.uni-saarland.de/edu/seminare/2005/advanced-fp/docs/sweeny.pdf

<comment><USER2> _Purely Functional is the right default

Imperative constructs are vital features that must be exposed through explicit effects-typing constructs_

This is precisely the argument Haskellers make every time someone complains about algorithms that are difficult to formulate functionally.

</comment><comment><USER3> For those of you, who don't know, Who Tim Sweeney is?

Tim Sweeney is the founder of Epic Games and the person behind very famous Unreal game engines. John Carmack,Tim Sweeney have been some of my heroes from gaming world.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Sweeney_%28game_developer%2...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Sweeney_%28game_developer%29)

</comment><comment><USER4> There's some further discussion of this over at LtU (<http://lambda-the- ultimate.org/node/1277>)

</comment><comment><USER5> More relevant now than ever, but note that these slides are ~4 years old.

</comment><comment><USER6> Those requests for the ability to have range limited data types reminds me strongly of Ada.

<comment><USER7> Me too. And as Tim might hope, Ada seems to be more popular among safety- critical software implementers. However, Ada also seems to run a bit slower in practice than C -- which is odd, considering that you are handing the compiler more information about the code.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This might be old, but it very excellently done. One thing I like about it is that the assertions an conclusions are backed up by 1) real-world experience 2) deep understanding of programming language issues.

</comment><comment><USER9> Slideshow from Gears Of War developer, seems to be advocating Haskell as the "next mainstream programming language".

<comment><USER10> He actually mentions at the end of the slides why Haskell doesn't work. I would phrase it as "Let's take these really good ideas from Haskell and move them into a more mainstream language."

<comment><USER11> surely if mainstream is the thing you want, then more people using haskell would solve that? I don't see how moving to another language helps the mainstream problem, actually it hinders it since less people will be using your new language than are using haskell already.

<comment><USER12> "Mainstream" isn't the only reason given for not using Haskell. He also says that lazy evaluation is a bad default (too costly) for games and the syntax is too complicated.

<comment><USER13> The syntax too complicated bit bugs me. Haskell syntax is very minimal, more lisp like than C like. The syntax is "different" than traditional imperative languages but coming from Lisp/Scheme/F# background it was very easy to pick up.

I am not sure I buy that lazy evaluation is too costly either, as it is actually what buys performance gains in some areas. That was a broad statement and it doesn't hold everywhere but I just want to say that it isn't cut & dry like you make it sound.

I would say the only argument he makes against Haskell that I totally agree with is its inference engine. I have very mixed feelings about type inference. It is very nice because it makes everything so concise, yet I often find myself writing function types just for clarity. Also type errors are not fun to track down as he shows in the slide.

<comment><USER14> As much as I like Haskell, I would be nervous about using it in a AAA-class game engine. The space leaks that lazy evaluation can produce could end up even harder to debug than usual in such a complicated product.

Please note I said "nervous", not "I would never consider it ever". Another couple of years of development and I might be less nervous; Haskell has been making a lot of progress lately. Some stuff in the absolute inner core might still be C or Assembler, but I could see the bulk switching to some other language.

<comment><USER15> Space leaks are the real problem, and not just for the reason you state.

These days it's hard to even buy a computer with less than a gig of RAM, but the Playstation 3 - the most powerful console of the new generation - has only 256 megs. Granted, they're 256 _really fast_ megs, but it's still a tiny amount of space by modern standards. You don't even have a hard drive to swap to when you run out of space - if a memory allocation fails, you work around it by hand or you crash.

If you're going to write a game engine that's meant to run on consoles, you really need fine-grained control of _all_ the memory allocation in your system. That'd be my big worry with Haskell, more than speed or garbage collection latency or whatever.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Warren Ellis on internet "Burst Culture" - <AUTHOR> http://www.warrenellis.com/?p=4374 <comment><USER2> While it's easy to argue against his statement about the ease of monetization (does Warren even put ads on his sites?), I'm grateful for the note that burst culture is NOT killing attention spans, and the evidence is Harry Potter. (I'd say further evidence is three-hour epic action movies aimed at the same kids who watch 30-second YouTube clips.)</comment>


Show HN: BOOLR – A digital logic simulator - <AUTHOR> http://boolr.me <comment><AUTHOR> Last year we wanted to make a working computer in a simulator for a school project. We had learned something about digital logic, and we planned to build a computer in a digital logic simulator. We had tried many simulators, but we couldn't find what we were looking for. That's why we decided to make our own simulator, BOOLR, with electron and JavaScript. Because we were quite new to programming, it was quite buggy and slow, but it was much better looking and easier to use than other simulators.

Now, one year later, we have gained much more programming experience and we decided to start building a second version that is stable and fast enough for professional use. We are really exited for this project. We have huge plans and it will take a lot of time, but we hope we can make a lot of people happy with it and help people learn more about digital electronics.

If you have any suggestion for new features or changes, please do not hesitate to contact us on GitHub or send us an e-mail at email@example.com.

<comment><USER2> Nice work.

One question: were you able to simulate the full working computer (that you originally planned to make) in this simulator?

And some advice: you might want to gain some experience in hardware languages such as VHDL/Verilog/System-C. Then you'll quickly learn that the best tool for designing real digital logic isn't drawing diagrams. But for education purposes, those diagrams are still very helpful of course.

<comment><USER3> Looks like they did. Take a look under "Download Boards" part of the site.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I also wanted to make a computer in a logic simulator. However, I found [http://www.cburch.com/logisim/](http://www.cburch.com/logisim/) was good enough for my needs. It allowed me to create a 16bit simple cpu and run it at about 4khz. You can even create custom components in javascript so that things like memory modules aren't just giant arrays of simulator-time wasting flip- flops.

Unfortunately, logisim has been abandoned by its creator

</comment><comment><USER5> Wow, this is pretty cool, I can definitely see myself using this over Quartus for experimentation. It would be even better if it supported displaying logic gates in the ANSI style: [https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:ANSI_logic_gates](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:ANSI_logic_gates)

</comment><comment><USER6> I've used QUCS for this purpopse, which allows inclusion of Verilog/VHDL modules via FreeHDL.

</comment><comment><USER7> Nice. Good to know that this is a high school project. I was in university already when heavily used Xilinx to wire those logic gates, flip-flop, Mux etc. And burnt it down to FPGA, pretty fun.

Does your high school teach Digital Circuit & Logic Design, like, K-map, Quine–McCluskey?

</comment><comment><USER8> To move components use Ctrl and Left-drag. Also works for the background.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's right! You can also scroll around by moving the mouse with the middle mouse button down.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> How to rewire? "Remove connection" and then wire again?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, unfortunately there is no easier option to rewire... We will definitely make a more efficient and more stable wiring system in BOOLR 2.0 with also, for example, options to draw many wires at once.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Its pretty old now but has anyone tried out Tk Gate?

</comment><comment><USER10> This is very impressive

</comment><comment><USER11> You should try Logism!

<comment><USER12> May I ask whats Logism?

<comment><USER11> A cheeky name for logisim: [http://www.cburch.com/logisim/](http://www.cburch.com/logisim/)</comment></comment></comment>


NASA contracts Uber to build flying taxi air control software - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-portugal-websummit-uber/nasa-contracts-uber-to-build-flying-taxi-air-control-software-idUSKBN1D81AE <comment><AUTHOR> This is sort of baffling. Why was Uber even considered for this type of partnership?</comment>


A search engine for the human genome - <AUTHOR> https://blog.color.com/a-search-engine-for-the-human-genome-part-i-the-genome-in-software-d66b82323888 <comment><AUTHOR> Building on decades of insights from the information retrieval world, and using highly-scalable, battle-tested open source packages, we've found it invaluable for exploring genetics in novel ways.</comment>


4-Hour Profitable Project: Viral Marketing Explained - <AUTHOR> http://madebyloren.com/posts/13

<comment><USER2> It sounds like your "4 Hour" mantra is really not accurate -- you are spending more hours on fulfillment, and even more on all the posts and discussions.

I'd be interested to see what the actual profit/hour ends up being once you take all of that into account.

<comment><USER3> Sort of like Tim Ferris!

edit: There's nothing shameful about spending more than 4 hours on your thing. The other thing is that this also looks like Sprezzatura [0] (someone else made this analogy on HN before, although I can't recall who.) in that it probably took lots of experience to achieve the state in which you can recognize a good idea, decide to go for it, design a great landing page, set up payments and analytics, know how to advertise and encourage viralness etc. in such a short period of time.

[0] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sprezzatura>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I had a similar experience during the presidential debates. When McCain pointed at Obama and called him "that one," I quickly made a CafePress t-shirt and began pointing to it using #thatone as a hashtag on Twitter.

Shirt sales began before the debate had even ended.

I ended up selling 118 t-shirts, nearly all of them sold within 3 days of the debate.

Loren, would you mind sharing your sales totals?

<comment><AUTHOR> Back of the envelope calculation: 200+ shirts (over half in the first day) in a few days, ~$9 profit per shirt. Should be an interesting trip to the post office.

Just curious - what kind of profits did you get for your Cafepress shirts and how much did you sell them for?

<comment><USER5> I seem to remember you saying you had a new visitor every 4.5 seconds for 48 hours (can't find it again though). That works out to about 38,000 visitors.

So the conversion rate was 200/38000 = 0.5%? Or am I missing something?

<comment><AUTHOR> Good memory, and your calculations are pretty much spot on. Low conversion rate, but high traffic - so I can live with it.

<comment><USER5> Sure, I was just curious if paid traffic could have been profitable for you. With $8 in profit per shirt and a conversion rate of 0.5%, it looks like anything over $0.04 per click would have resulted in a loss.

Your site was gorgeous, and the idea was strong. Amazing how hard it is to push people to action.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> In a previous post (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2173155>) there were many, many questions regarding marketing. I decided to do a detailed writeup of exactly how I marketed my little project. Hope this helps!

<comment><USER6> Once again your willingness to share is very much appreciated!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Moneyshot:

 _"The guy who started the larger of the two events emailed me several hours after I began posting links, and half-jokingly asked for "royalties". How could I pass that up? I didn't know what his privileges were as an event administrator, but I told him he would be subsidized if he could leverage the attendees (200,000+ at that point). He agreed[...]"_

I see the above as the most important factor in the huge success! It would be interesting to hear if guynamedloren agrees with this.

Generalizing: One should attempt to achieve exclusiveness in the promoting medium.

<comment><USER8> I can see where it would help a ton to have that link up there. Very interesting write up!

Loren, just out of curiosity, would you be able to say how much you promised him for posting the link and removing the other T-Shirt links? ...or if you promised him a set amount/shirt at all. If that is coming up in another write- up, I can be patient. Thanks for sharing!

<comment><AUTHOR> To be honest, I had absolutely no idea how the shirts would sell so I didn't make any promises or mention a specific number up front. At the time of the initial email (a few hours in) I had sold a handful of shirts.

I ended up giving him $25 and a free shirt, which he gladly accepted. After all, he did only spend a few minutes uploading a photo and adding the link, so for his effort, I think it was plenty. Like I said before, it's hard to quantify how many sales came as a result of his effort. About 8 hours after I started marketing is when things really picked up and went viral, which I think had little to do with the event itself and more to do with so many "shares". The events were a good launchpad, however. FWIW, my profits for this project (after costs of shirts, shipping, paypal fees etc) were in the low 4-figure range over a couple days. Some were estimating I made upwards of $100,000, which is obviously nowhere near accurate. I am ecstatic with how things turned out, considering it only took a few hours to build and I am now covered for 5 months rent (yea, cheap college apartment).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> You might be addressing this in the next post but I am very much interested in the manufacturing and shipping portion of this project. Will it be a big job to match up the addresses to each size that they ordered and ship them? Are you just going to receive in the mail all the different shirts of the different sizes and have to ship them yourself or is there some fulfillment company you're using?

<comment><AUTHOR> Lots of questions regarding manufacturing/processing/shipping, so it's coming in detail in another post. Here's the gist of it: wholesale screenprinted tees (no fulfillment service), giant paypal spreadsheet to match addresses with sizes, and USPS first class mail. Shouldn't take more than a night to complete once the shirts arrive.

<comment><USER9> Thanks, ok that answers a lot of questions, one though I still have is if you are buying all of the necessary USPS boxes before hand and just filling those yourself?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, but not boxes - bags. They're called polybags, and they're cheap, durable, and very professional.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is not a criticism, but an observation. I felt that the simplicity of the website itself (it was real easy to understand what you were selling, and what we get for our money) really helped.

My biggest problem is, i can never do a simple elegant design. Im not a designer and always have to rely on either wordpress or html templates.

<comment><USER4> I'm not a great designer myself, so I always go with a simple rule of thumb - keep it simple and don't try to do things I'm not good at.

You don't have to be a a capital-D designer to make good work. I'd recommend picking up "The Non-Designer's Design Book" by Robin Williams.

Sometimes all you need to do is not make any glaring mistakes in order to create a design that works.

<comment><USER10> Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Thanks for sharing this on HN. I have a question: When you posted the link on the FB events, didn't it cross your mind that the admins of the event might have considered that as form of spamming or advertising? Or, is such a thing fairly common? (I don't use Facebook, so I don't have much of a clue.)

</comment><comment><USER12> Congrats on your success, dude!</comment>


WebKit exploit write-up - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/Cryptogenic/Exploit-Writeups/blob/master/WebKit/setAttributeNodeNS%20UAF%20Write-up.md <comment><USER2> Man, it takes so much effort to write up exploits. I discover 'em regularly, but really, the effort to write-up is the best security companies have these days...

<comment><USER3> Then don't do a write up? If you find and exploit just push a POC. Nobody's forcing you to explain it.</comment></comment>


Apocalypse now: London's property crash has begun - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@dreilly35/apocalypse-now-londons-property-crash-has-begun-4bd489e594ce <comment><USER5> I'm sorry, but this article just seems bizarre. It's not economically literate - it doesn't actually examine the cost of a house relative to earnings and access to mortgages. It doesn't make any attempt to quantify how much money foreign entities actually invest in London. It doesn't cite any evidence that prices have even started to drop!

Let me tackle this. Firstly, interest rates are still at historic lows, it's cheaper to buy a house and pay the mortgage than to rent, so that core reason to buy is still there. The only limit is deposits. The government has just handed £5k to every first time buyer in London (stamp duty cut). That's not going to cause lower prices.

Foreign investment doesn't come from Saudi Arabia, it comes from Hong Kong and Singapore and Malaysia.[0] So his entire argument there is just misinformed.

None of the evidence he sighted actually points to a price crash now - <USER2> points to long term pressures for prices to drop. You could have made that argument 5 years ago.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying house prices won't drop at some point. This just doesn't argue it at all well. It's more wishful and wishy washy thinking that anything else.

There are far better arguments that the prices will drop in 2019/2020 - <USER3> interest rates recover, buy-to-let investors will get stung by harsher taxes and Brexit actually happens.

[0] [https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/jun/13/foreign- inve...](https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/jun/13/foreign-investors- snapping-up-london-homes-suitable-for-first-time-buyers)

<comment><USER6> Plus the additional stamp duty on second properties, reducing the profitability of BTL

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> As a Londoner, I'm sad to say high property prices seem sustainable.

With a decent deposit, you can borrow long term at around 2%, which makes living in a £0.5m flat cost £10k a year, less than £1k a month. That's very affordable for a couple.

The problem is the vicious cycle of low interest rates. I would argue that most important variable affecting house prices is long term expectations of interest rates. Very (very!) roughly, if long term mortgage interest rates half, we would expect property prices to double.

In the past decade, property prices have been driven up by very low interest rates, which have meant that's its affordable to service very large mortgages. Interest rates have stayed lower, for longer than anticipated, which has driven higher and higher prices

The problem is that these low interest rates have increased the potency of monetary policy: with higher house prices, an increase of 1 percentage point on mortgage rate hits you really hard. Previously a movement from say 5% to 6% interest on your mortgage mattered less.

This means that rises in interest rates will be smaller and take longer than historically, 'locking in' high property prices. I don't expect to see interest rates return to 'normal' levels any time soon.

I'm not arguing that the market is not overinflated, but I doubt there will be anything like an apocalypse. Maybe we see prices coming down 10%-20% at most.

<comment><USER8> > Very (very!) roughly, if long term mortgage interest rates half, we would > expect property prices to double.

This is only really true if interest payments dominate capital repayments. A move from 10% to 5% (which happened in the years 1995-2005 [0]) might cause prices to double, but a move from 0.5% to 0.25% won't.

On the other hand, it's instructive to play with a mortgage repayment calculator. You can get a five-year fixed rate on a 25 year mortgage for 2% per year at the moment: that means £424 / month. If the rate increases to 3%, you pay £474/month. That's an 11% increase in mortgage payments - i.e. an 11% drop in purchasing power. So either people pay more on their mortgages or house prices drop.

The market is only pricing in a rate hike of about 0.4% in 2018. All other things equal (which they never are) the pricing of swap rates suggests a drop of 5%. It's worth remembering we're in a hiking cycle.

[0] [http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/boeapps/iadb/fromshowcolumns....](http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/boeapps/iadb/fromshowcolumns.asp?Travel=NIxSTxTIxSUx&FromSeries=1&ToSeries=50&DAT=RNG&FD=1&FM=Jan&FY=1963&TD=20&TM=Feb&TY=2018&VFD=Y&VPD=Y&html.x=20&html.y=16&CSVF=TT&C=EP0&Filter=N)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> One thing that really makes me angry about owning property in England is the (imho) fraudulent setup where I buy house (or flat) and have to pay rent to the land owner. Yes, that is right. The LAND doesn't come with the HOUSE.

Also money laundring helped plenty, on insanely inflating the prices - <USER4> from anyone who could afford this. There are buildings in London that are empty. Kind of like a piece of jewelery that you keep as a safe-keep in the safe (but only bigger).

That said, it is a pitty that plenty of people will see that they got a mortgage of 999 for a flat that "now" costs 200-300,but it is healthy for this parasitic/fraudulent behaviour to end.

<comment><USER10> Freehold properties are by far the norm in the UK. Leasehold usually only applies to flats/appartments. You are making it seem like leasehold is the norm which is absolute nonsense, dare I say fraudulent.

<comment><USER11> Flat conversions aside, what he's describing is a common practice amongst builders of new-build homes, which I assume is the experience he's most familiar with.

Developers will allow the freehold to be purchased, although restrictive covenants can be attached - in effect, binding the homeowner to similar restrictions as if they were still leaseholders.

The Government recently announced that it would be banning the practice of charging ground rent for properties on leaseholds longer than 21 years.

[https://www.gov.uk/government/news/crackdown-on-unfair- lease...](https://www.gov.uk/government/news/crackdown-on-unfair-leasehold- practices--2)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> A rather thin and sensationalistic piece. While everyone would love for property prices to crash, share prices to collapse and everything to become miraculously cheap again, nothing mentioned hints at this.

Oil prices? Might have driven the run up in properties in Mayfair but are all these owners suddenly going to hit the market to sell as they desperately need cash? I don't think these buyers are particularly hard up.

Similarly, the 8k debt figure is across the UK. Not really relevant to those spending £1 million+ in central London.

Yeap, it's depressing for buyers in London, SF and NY. Either figure out how to make a high salary or don't try climbing that ladder!

<comment><USER13> There is certainly a significant slowdown and a tsunami of stock of new built luxury towers coming to the market. Just in canary wharf you have perhaps 10 residential sky-crappers in construction now. They started slashing the asking price but I don't even know if all of them will be completed. While rates are low, sellers can abstain from selling which is what I understand is happening now, transactions have dried out. But rates are on the way up and people will be forced to sell (relocation, divorce, family expanding, inheritance, etc).

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> > the prospect of Jeremy Corbyn waiting in the wings to become Britain's next > Prime Minister is a rather more relatable bad omen for London property > values.

This seems to be contradicting itself: it's not a bad thing that house prices come down if they're too high. Arguably they _should_ be brought down if they're too high (ideally in a more controlled manner, no one wants prices to collapse in a catastrophic manner). As such, shouldn't we be welcoming Corbyn's strategy here?

> While undoubtedly a lovely sentiment, Jez, making state confiscation threats > out loud isn't great for shifting houses to minted foreigners.

As if we should endeavour to endlessly bow to the wishes of foreign investors? Running your own country into the ground and making it hard for your own citizens to live there doesn't do you any favours. Foreign investors should take a backseat to ensuring the people who live and work there can actually afford to and aren't having to suffer exorbitant rents.

<comment><USER15> It entirely depends on your perspective. I think the article is relatively balanced on either side, both stating the positives and negatives for the property market failing and also making tongue in cheek remarks about Londoners.

Personally I think the state stealing property is not a good thing, however, this could be a good thing if you take the opposing view.

<comment><USER14> Whilst attempting to seem like they're presenting both sides of the argument they do misrepresent what Corbyn says: he's never says or implies that the state will steal the property, he says houses/apartments/etc that are kept vacant would be bought and turned over to residents who need the accommodation.

I don't think it's particularly partisan to say that's not a bad thing, in my experience when the government buys something off citizens they usually do it for a very good price, so it's not like it will be taken from them with no notice and no recourse.

<comment><USER15> Ah, I have not kept myself well informed enough. Thanks for clarifying!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> >>> While undoubtedly a lovely sentiment, Jez, making state confiscation threats out loud isn't great for shifting houses to minted foreigners.

I found this passage very strange. Throughout the article, the author seemed to be advocating the position that most Londoners seem to hold: that houses should be for people to live in, and not for overseas property investors to use as an investment vehicle. So why should anyone be concerned about "shifting houses to minted foreigners"?

Legislation that would stop housing being kept deliberately empty by overseas investors has been shown to be hugely popular with the public – but that's not mentioned by the article, either.

<comment><USER17> I think he was just pointing out that it is contributing to the uncertainty in the market, and therefore increases the chances of a crash. I didn't read it as a criticism of Corbyn per se.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Title should read:

"London house prices suffer a blip, will recover in a year to 18 months"

Read the blogs own reference: [http://uk.businessinsider.com/london-house- prices-2-drop-in-...](http://uk.businessinsider.com/london-house- prices-2-drop-in-2018-2018-2)

2% is not a crash, nor an Apocalypse...

<comment><USER19>
      > 2% is not a crash, nor an Apocalypse...

Perhaps overall, but the article is mostly talking about the high-end market. From the reference:

      > Prices falls are concentrated in the most expensive areas of London...
      > The top 11 of London's 33 boroughs are down an average 7% annually...
      > Kensington & Chelsea .. have fallen sharply there by 12.9% in the last year — more than £200,000.
      > Prices in Camden fell 10.8%, the City of London by 18.2%, and in Wandsworth by 12.7%.

Perhaps you meant the lowest end, as this part more closely resembles your 2% drop:

      > The 11 cheapest boroughs have seen a modest fall of 1.3% over the year overall...

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> >>> the cost of getting by — long ago went past insane (£17,040: the cost per year of educating a four year-old child at Thomas's school in Fulham, not including uniform).

Note that this is only if you send your child to private school, not merely "getting by". Even among the middle classes, this is not very common, especially at four years old. The nicer parts of London have some of the best state schools in the country.

<comment><USER21> Spot on, and looking at the last paragraph: > Whisper it: 2018 will be the year smug Londoners finally stopped boring on about basement and loft conversions at smart dinner parties Sounds like someone who just against rich rather providing facts. The article seems to target the expensive areas in negatively emotional approach.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Another thing which non-UK readers might not be aware of is that the UK government introduced a "Help to Buy" and "Lifetime" ISA, which is essentially an account with some bank where, any money you put in (up to a certain limit), the government will give you an extra 25% free if yiou use it to buy your first home. While this might seem to help with home ownership, I think studies have shown that it only really benefits people who were already saving hard, and thus it only really contributes to house price inflation. I'd be interested to know if other countries have similar schemes.

<comment><USER23> Australia has the "First Home Buyer's Grant". It just serves to inflate the general price of houses though.

<comment><USER14> Yes, it's a pity that went south.

For readers not familiar with this mechanism in Australia, sellers just raised prices by the value of the grants.

<comment><USER24> And for people not familiar with economics, the pool of potential buyers all ended up with the same bonus and used that bonus to bid up the fixed pool of available housing stock.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Which London though?

There are a lot of different boroughs, and the way their house prices move seem to be somewhat independent of each other.

The bottom falling out of Kensington because there is no oil money seems like a vastly different situation to just generally people wanting to live in outer suburbs.

<comment><USER9> I don't think that any borough was left un-manipulated. I spent some time in Deptford.. (yes Deptford).. very lovely and alive place, nice community gym, flea market, train lines that take you to LB/CS..

A 30sqm studio went for £1.3k. With that money in some EU capitals you rent a 3 bedroom flat in a brand new & modern building (parking included).

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Nope. Demand still exceeds supply otherwise the government wouldn't be trying to build thousands of new houses and flats each year. Also, London is an employment hotspot. When people stop moving to London, then prices will drop. UK _net_ migration is still over 200,000 a year, so that's 200,000 people on the demand-side of property prices.

<comment><USER27> I think the top of the market is falling as foreign buyers are deterred for various reasons. You are right though, there is so much demand for entry level homes a substantial crash is unlikely

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Most people aren't sending their kids to private school, I stopped reading at the point where they talked about school fees - this simply doesn't affect the majority of people.

</comment><comment> cup-of-tea While it might happen, I can't help but think articles like this are partly wishful thinking and partly trying to be self-fulfilling prophecies. I find it's extremely hard to get unbiased opinion about markets, even from friends, because you just don't know if they are actually in the market themselves.

</comment><comment><USER27> Having been observing the market closely for a few months, it does look like the asking prices for many £1-3M properties are being reduced. When you consider inflation is running at 3% in the UK currently it's easy to see house prices fall by 10% this year.

On the high end, it's easy to see that figure reach 20-30%. At the entry level of the market though, there is still so much pent up demand for housing I personally can't see any significant falls, just growth flatlining.

<comment><USER29> Asking price is irrelevant, the price at which the property exchanges ownership matters.

It's like the people that insist their super special collectible widget is worth $5000 because there is an eBay listing with that price that has been up for 7 years and not sold.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> The sentence "It's not all skagheads in tenement blocks running up these debts" really shines a light on the author.

Pretty offensive, I thought.

<comment><USER31> In what way? There are people who do think this. He's saying it's not correct. Is it the use of specific words that's offensive?

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> A rather bitter article,let's not forget the last time prices crashed was after the banking crisis 10 years ago, and then subsequently recovered all their losses and went up some more. The fundamental reason for high prices in London is a serious lack of supply. Until that's solved, prices aren't really going anywhere.</comment>


Superconductivity Near 20 Celsius - <AUTHOR> http://www.superconductors.org/20C.htm <comment><USER2> I'll believe it when I see it in a peer reviewed journal--published by more than one group. Until then, it's a USO (unidentified superconducting object). If it were real, then reports would be all over the March Meeting of the American Physical Society which is celebrating 100 years of superconductivity this year.

<comment><USER3> I don't know about physics, but in robotics and computer vision and CS, there is no correlation between credible research and journal publication. I suppose physics attracts more quacks, though, and it's not quite as easy to verify because you need expensive equipment generally owned only by people who publish in journals all the time anyway.

<comment><USER4> If you look into the history of high temperature superconductors (or any realm of physics where 'world changing' is in play... like fusion), it's full of quacks, frauds, overeager scientists publishing before checking properly, unrepeatable experiments, or just plain honest errors.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This has been posted before, and there was much interesting discussion: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2041675>

<comment><USER6> That article claims 3 deg C. The article just posted claims to have furthered that research to 20 deg C.

Amazing how 3 months of research produced such a significant jump.

<comment><USER7> Until further replication I think it is more probable that three months of waiting resulted in somebody using a text editor.

<comment><USER6> Haha very true.

They have both posted on their news, however, under the root. However I'd like to see the claim backed up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> If this is for real, the implications are huge. Seems odd that news like this would be broken on a weird page like this, and not on arxiv, for example.

Not holding my breath.

<comment><USER9> What would some of the implications be?

<comment><USER10> Big magnets, for MRI, and for trains. Maybe flying cars :)

Run a big, refrigerated line (or just dig underground where it's cooler), and you can transmit unlimited power coast-to-coast, or even around the world. You could put some big nuclear power plants in the middle of a desert (or several deserts, to reduce the risk of a failure taking out the world's power supply), and a wind/solar grid around the world, and send that power anywhere. They are already building this kind of thing (Tres Amigas SuperStation), but it's expensive and small-scale.

<comment><USER11> Wouldn't you still hit a wall due to the maximum field in the superconductor? I'd expect the wires needed to transport gigawatts of power to be pretty large and require exotic metals to build, so much that it may not make economic sense compared to a regular, slightly lossy wire.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I don't see that website linking to any kind of a scientific or academic publication about this. If this was real, I don't think it would be only on the web.

</comment><comment><USER13> Wow - I liked this part:

"This discovery is being released into the public domain without patent protection in order to encourage additional research."

Let's hope this works!

<comment><USER14> I'm not even sure what it means. Not patenting the invention makes sense, but exactly what is being released into the public domain? I don't see any benefit to not retaining the copyright on your writeup. (Provided you make it publicly accessible - but that's clearly the case here.)

<comment><USER15> You can patent the process for creating superconducting materials:

[http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=superconducting+patents&...](http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=superconducting+patents&hl=en&btnG=Search&as_sdt=1,14&as_sdtp=on)

Presumably, that's what is being release into the public domain.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Just half year ago I thought that it can't happen any time soon. Now I think some day we will have a new kind of transport and many other technologies based on superconductivity.

<comment><USER17> Don't hold your breath.

It's not the temperature that makes HTSC a problem, it would still be fantastic if they were usable at liquid nitrogen temperatures. The difficulty is that most of these materials have a very low maximum field, in anything approaching the sort of fields you need for an MRI or even a motor the material stops superconducting. They are also difficult to form into wires.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> That's the temperature of a nice day in San Jose.

<comment><USER19> That's a typical summer day here in eastern Canada. Seriously.

<comment><USER20> But the question is, how many summer days do you get in a year?

<comment><USER21> I'm not really certain about eastern Canada, but in Calgary the seasons are something like:

      Spring: Mid-March til Mid-May.  Snow goes away.  Then it
              comes back.  Then it goes away.  Then it comes
              back.  Then it goes away.
      Summer: Mid-May til early September (with luck) or late-
              August (without it).  Mostly warm, usually dry.
              Punctuated by hailstorms.  Once every few years
              punctuated with a smallish snow storm.
      Fall: Early September til late October.  Stuff cools down.
            Frost is common.  Occasional hail or freezing rain.
      Winter: Late October til mid-March.  October-til-Christmas
              swings back and forth between (very) cold streaks
              and stereotypically fall-ish weather.  January to
              March is mostly just cold and snowy and icy.

Bear in mind that the climate really only gets worse the further east you go, culminating in the maritimes - where winters of five-foot snow alternate with summers of hurricanes. :P

<comment><USER22> No, the one between `Spring' and `Fall' is called `Construction'.

<comment><USER23> I'm from Montreal and currently that's now year long.

<comment><USER24> It's pothole season here.. That's how we know it's spring!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Can someone explain this?</comment>


Fanboys Continue To Boggle Minds  - <AUTHOR> http://mattmaroon.com/?p=344 <comment><USER3> I just upvoted this article and now I feel dirty. I did it because I agree with it and want to sock one to those Apple fanboys, but there just isn't any substance here. Normally I upvote something because I think its interesting and (or) I want to see what the rest of the HN community says about it. Upvoting to agree, or to express an opinion not about the article itself, seems to be a problem in need of addressing in social news sites.

<comment><USER4> Agreed. Voting up things to express opinions is exactly why Reddit became overrun with Ron Paul posts. I'd rather not see Hacker News devolve into OS/browser/editor/etc wars.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> They had an earlier article covering the Apple fall:

[http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewA...](http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9072959)

I assumed this Vista one was just a continuation rather than a "VISTA HACKED (oh by the way the mac went too)".

</comment><comment><USER4> Ugh. This is exactly the kind of commentary that Winer ([http://www.scripting.com/stories/2008/03/30/proofThatTheEndI...](http://www.scripting.com/stories/2008/03/30/proofThatTheEndIsNear.html)) and BrandomM (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=149887>) and myself are fed up with.

Perhaps I'll write a blog post called _Matt Maroon's Trolling Continues to Boggle the Minds_.

<comment><USER6> Interesting. Is this a DH1 response or a DH2 response? (<http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html>) Maroon seems to inspire lots of highly charged responses, both positive and negative. But it seems that most of these stem from his acerbic and slightly glib writing style. His biggest critics are critics of his tone, I think. Not critics of actual content.

<comment><USER7> How long are we going to have to put up with the ridiculous labeling of every post. If you like Paul's article, fine, use it as your own frame of reference. But please don't litter News YC with your analysis of what is DH1 and what is DH2.

<comment><USER4> DH-1: Labeling other people's arguments with DH levels.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The cult of mac is really interesting when you see it from a business perspective. It is similar to a religious cult in many respects - A sense of being superior to others, near-total devotion to their god (sorry, couldn't resist...), ,the constant need to tell the world that their way is the only right way. And they have a charismatic leader.

This is what it is, and not all mac fans are like this - but many are. Whatever Apple puts on the market they will buy. And they will tell all their friends about it - whether they like it or not.

This has to be one of the best marketing ploys ever deceived by man, Apple has thousands and thousands of fanatical marketing representatives in coffee shops all over the world who are ready to tell everyone of the superiority of the mac. I think that this cult is a primary success factor for Apple, evidenced by the fact that under Sculley's reign at Apple shares fell, and Apple wasn't cool. When Jobs came back he got the cult going again, and they are now heading for new heights.

It's absolute marketing genius...

<comment><USER9> Do you know what else was a "great marketing" ploy by Apple? Making products that were better than their competitors. Customer evangalists aren't created by a marketing team - they are created by making great products.

Your cult references could be pretty much be applied to fans of anything: the Yankees, the Beatles, some restaurant, or even YCombinator. It's certainly not exlcusive to Apple.

<comment><USER8> No it's certainly not exclusive to Apple, and your examples of other instances of this phenomenon are good - My point is just how much they have perfected it.

<comment><USER8> Oh - and look at the posts in relation to this post that got downmodded - <USER2> other company would be able to convince it's customers to actually start modding something that is the least bit negative about their product down?

As I said - it's marketing genious.

<comment><USER10> Or genius.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Well, remember that the next time you see an article with such phrasing as, "Hillary Clinton lies about her past."</comment>


Study participants typically did not enjoy spending 15 minutes by themselves - <AUTHOR> http://www.bostonglobe.com/news/science/2014/07/03/idle/J2LpEcTdZzLykRCTnZ80fL/story.html <comment><USER2> This seems like a poor study to gauge peoples' desire/aversion to thinking. You put me in a room with nothing but a button I'll probably press it out of curiosity. Put me in a garden with a enjoyable drink and I'll happily contemplate whatever comes to mind until I want to get a refill.

<comment><USER3> You didn't read the article.

It says they shocked the participants before the study started so the curiosity factor was not present.

<comment><USER4> The article says they exposed people to the shocks and other stimuli to get a response to the 5$ question. It doesn't say they took the people and gave them 15 minutes to play around with the thing. Curiosity is still very much in the game, especially when there's nothing else to do.

A much more meaningful way to do this experiment would've been to have people sit and receive regular shocks (not under their own control), and to sit with nothing else to do, provide an incentive for staying 15 minutes and see how quickly they give up.

And while i'm writing: The article also mentions they couldn't find people who enjoy the time alone, but didn't mention whether they asked people who habitually medidate.

<comment><USER5> One participant shocked themselves 190 times. I'd say I'd concede curiosity is the main factor the first one or two times.

<comment><USER6> Yes, but the mean number of times was less than 1.5, with maximum 4 if you exclude that outlier. The vast majority of cases are perfectly compatible with curiosity, a scenario the paper ignored completely, and which could have been at least partially addressed simply by asking participants why they pressed the button.

This is an OK study, sexed up in a very cynical and ignorant way.

<comment><USER7> Isn't it also a false dilemma? I'd be lost in my thoughts and will shock myself just for the kick of it too, maybe as a curiosity or maybe in a masochistic way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I get the point that people may prefer external stimulation to internal thoughts. But I think the result of this study hinge on whether the electric shock was really all that unpleasant. For safety reasons, I'll assume the shock wasn't large enough to be harmful or create anything but a momentary sensation. People are curious, and it would seem a fairly safe environment. What's to stop them from simply experimenting with a new sensation. Roller coasters and scary movies should logically be avoided, but they aren't. The guy they mentioned who shocked himself 190 times clearly must have thought it was fun.

<comment><USER9> """I get the point that people may prefer external stimulation to internal thoughts. But I think the result of this study hinge on whether the electric shock was really all that unpleasant."""

All of these is beside the point.

An electric shock, mild, even pleasant is a BS diversion.

People prefered BS diversion (could be even clicking a button that did nothing at all) that spending a few minutes with their thoughts.

That's the real story -- not how bad the electricity was etc.

<comment><USER10> Unless the 190 buzz guy was the norm, those people spent a lot of time not hitting themselves. Anyone who hit himself once did spent time thinking, then pressed button and then spent another time thinking.

The other thing is, I love spending time with thinking when I choose to and have something interesting to thing about. It does not mean that I will contemplate something cool at every random void moment or never get bored while waiting in queue.

<comment><USER11> I tend to agree there's not a lot to see here. But the headline reminded me of this:

[http://partiallyclips.com/2005/09/08/hell/](http://partiallyclips.com/2005/09/08/hell/)

Time alone with your thoughts doesn't have to be a good thing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is sad and a bit disturbing because it suggests that average people seem to dislike _thinking_. I'm quite the opposite, and 15 minutes of pure thinking for me would pass by quite easily - I feel like I can't get enough time to think more carefully about all the ideas that I have for the things I do, or want to. Then again, I'm introverted and definitely not representative of the average population.

(Of course, I'm assuming here that their test subjects weren't secretly masochists who enjoyed shocking themselves, and ignoring some of the other biases that might be present - e.g. if their participants were self-selected, most of them might be those who are bored with nothing else to do.)

<comment><USER10> I read somewhere that they used device with 9V battery. We used to lick both 4.5V and 9V batteries as kids. I found 4.5V hit to be quite pleasant and I would repeat the "experiment" a lot. Licking 9V battery was less pleasant, but not really too uncomfortable. I did that multiple times too even through my room was full of toys.

Their device could generate less pleasant feelings, sure. But I am kind of skeptical of big conclusions people take out of this study.

<comment><USER13> I went from licking 9V batteries to charging a 4700μF capacitor with a 9V battery and discharging that through two audio output transformers used "backwards" (so 8Ω primary/1kΩ secondary) using a momentary SPDT switch. Felt just a bit different, that did.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is getting posted a lot. Here's one from yesterday, where I commented: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7988759](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7988759) (edit: whoops, fixed the link!)

This one elaborates a bit further, saying that the percentages of each sex that chose the shock were out of the group that had already had the shock and said they would pay not to have it again.

Still would be nice to get the original text instead of all these piecemeal, borderline blogspam articles, but it's behind a paywall at Science, here: [http://www.sciencemag.org/content/345/6192/75](http://www.sciencemag.org/content/345/6192/75)

</comment><comment><USER15> I think the article makes a mistake in assuming that everything painful is unpleasant. Why do people eat spicy foods then?

I find that as I get older, my tolerance for boredom has become lower and lower. When I was younger, I used to be able to just sit and think. Now I dread long drives because the sheer boredom of it drives me crazy. And it gets even weirder, because although I don't like social interaction that much, I find myself craving "going out and doing something" every night because the thought of just sitting inside watching a movie is painful.

I blame the internet. My attention span and focus are noticeably worse than they used to be, and I feel like I need constant stimulation all the time now.

<comment><USER16> Audiobooks + driving = bliss.

<comment><USER17> Audiobooks are awesome for long drives. Podcasts too. For me especially Radiolab, This American Life, The Moth, Escape Pod, and The Dunesteef Audio Fiction Magazine

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> "All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone." - Blaise Pascal

</comment><comment><USER19> > One person pressed the button 190 times.

New study finds researchers trolled by subjects.

<comment><USER20> New study found short-circuits in study test materials.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> It isn't surprising that we are most happy when we are able to forget ourselves.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's book 'Flow - The Psychology of Optimal Experience' talks about optimal experiences. He has found that humans are generally happy in what is termed as a 'flow' experience. Activities in which we immerse ourselves fully, temporarly forgetting ourselves, like programming, are flow experiences.

A few relevant quotes from the book:

"So loss of self-consciousness does not involve a loss of self, and certainly not a loss of consciousness, but rather, only a loss of consciousness of the self. What slips below the threshold of awareness is the concept of self, the information we use to represent to ourselves who we are. And being able to forget temporarily who we are seems to be very enjoyable. When not preoccupied with our selves, we actually have a chance to expand the concept of who we are. Loss of self-consciousness can lead to self-transcendence, to a feeling that the boundaries of our being have been pushed forward."

"The similarities between Yoga and flow are extremely strong; in fact it makes sense to think of Yoga as a very thoroughly planned flow activity. Both try to achieve a joyous, self-forgetful involvement through concentration, which in turn is made possible by a discipline of the body."

"When a family has a common purpose and open channels of communication, when it provides gradually expanding opportunities for action in a setting of trust, then life in it becomes an enjoyable flow activity. Its members will spontaneously focus their attention on the group relationship, and to a certain extent forget their individual selves, their divergent goals, for the sake of experiencing the joy of belonging to a more complex system that joins separate consciousnesses in a unified goal."

</comment><comment><USER22> Isn't the main impulse behind pushing the button simple curiosity rather than boredom? I'd be sitting there thinking about what the shock would feel like until I gave into my own curiosity and pushed the button. However, I still definitely like spending time on my own with own thoughts.

<comment><USER23> > Isn't the main impulse behind pushing the button simple curiosity rather > than boredom?

I thought this too at first, but it turns out they exposed everyone to the shock along with a bunch of other stimuli in preparation for this part of the experiment. Also one guy shocked himself 190 times.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Well, how long have any of us tried to simply be alone with our thoughts? 15 mins is a long time - no music, books etc, quiet room. I think I would enjoy it, but I will happily admit that I might be wishing I had a book by 10th minute.

And personally I think meditating _is_ doing something.

</comment><comment><USER25> People in solitary confinement can certainly confirm it's not very enjoyable to stay by yourself with your own thoughts.

<comment><USER26> People who meditate can certainly reject it. I don't think it's categorically unpleasant. Confinement is unpleasant because of the high opportunity cost.

<comment><USER10> People who meditate have way more control over when it ends, what they eat and when they turn off the light. Read up about psychological effects about long term solitary confinement and sensory deprivation that goes with it. The problem is not just the high opportunity cost. The experience can cause long term psychological issues.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Of course the journal article isn't open access. But hey, Google.

"To see whether the difficulty with "just thinking" is distinctive to college students, in study 9 we recruited community participants at a farmer's market and a local church. The par- ticipants ranged in age from 18 to 77 (median age = 48.0 years). As in study 7, they completed the study online in their own homes, after receiving instructions to do so when they were alone and free of any external distractions. The results were similar to those found with college students. There was no evidence that enjoyment of the thinking period was related to participants' age, education, income, or the frequency with which they used smart phones or social media (table S2)."

So apparently it's not related to the prevalence of distracting technology - according to them. I would question the second (S8) 'at home' studies which only used 15 people per experiment. This was to test whether allowing participants to distract themselves had any effect.

It's a very short paper, only a couple of pages, so I think needs a bit more digging to actually find out whether it's true or not. The whole thing seems very speculative.

</comment><comment><USER28> >"It seems that the average person doesn't seem to be capable of generating a sufficiently interesting train of thought to prevent them from being miserable with themselves."

Aside from being unnecessarily harsh and condescending, I think this comment is off-base and makes unwarranted assumptions about the nature of boredom.

</comment><comment><USER29> Sometimes, I felt like I was reading The Onion -

"... people basically found being alone with themselves not very fun and kind of boring."

"It seems that the average person doesn't seem to be capable of generating a sufficiently interesting train of thought to prevent them from being miserable with themselves."

</comment><comment><USER26> What if there was no novelty factor? Electric shocks aren't so common; I'd play with a machine that let's me have a new sensation. I might prefer it to time alone with thoughts because I believe I'll have the latter available any time I want.

</comment><comment><USER30> I bet this is part of the reason most people are not independent & creative thinkers. And I would bet that it also has something to do with why creative people often end up with mental health issues down the road. It's definitely easier and more fun (and maybe even healthier) to whip out your smartphone and Google something you're wondering about, play a quick game, read what someone else thinks, etc. in otherwise idle moments, but doing so precludes having a bunch of potentially valuable thoughts.

</comment><comment><USER31> Think about the deeper implications of the experiment. Yes, people will shock themselves when there's nothing to do. However, that also means that when there's nothing to do, the majority of people will try to physically stimulate themselves because that's all there is TO do. To say that we're stupid because we would administer a painful shock to ourselves rather than sit in our own silence for 15 minutes is a very naiive way to approach the results. Come to a conclusion, dammit!

<comment><USER12> Indeed, "physically stimulate themselves", in every sense of that phrase. :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> It's not like they aren't capable of amusing their selves with their own thoughts. It's more like they aren't willing to try.

</comment><comment><USER33> I guess one way to test what might have happened in this study is to time yourself for 15 min and see what you'd do. In my experience, being alone with my thoughts and meditating or just sitting there is useful, but not particularly pleasant. Silence is often where people have to find and deal with all the shitty truths about themselves.

</comment><comment><USER34> > _One person pressed the button 190 times._ (...) _The researchers were > stunned._

Well, the researchers weren't the only people stunned, apparently.

Not everything in life is about being "happy"; just because one isn't happy doesn't mean they wasted their time.

</comment><comment><USER35> While I'm totally surprised people would shock themselves after only 15 minutes, now I'm more interested in the people who did _not_ shock themselves. What are their ages and occupations? What could explain their ability to enjoy a bit of isolation?

</comment><comment><USER36> A perfect time for Pavlok: www.engadget.com/2014/07/04/pavlok-wearable/

</comment><comment><USER37> "All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone."

― Blaise Pascal

</comment><comment><USER38> The title this was submitted with is pretty awful. There is a huge difference between "by themselves" and "time alone with thoughts". I was expecting a completely different argument.

</comment><comment><USER39> Does this have anything to do with thinking, or just the idea that most people are unhappy and want distraction? Is that a surprise given how much of society is devoted to creating distraction?

</comment><comment><USER40> [http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=2225](http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=2225)

Terrifyingly accurate.

</comment><comment><USER41> Kudos for posting this with a less sensational title than the original

</comment><comment><USER42> when i was a kid i would touch 9v batteries to my tongue.

even today occasionally i touch my electric flyswatter and it hurts like hell but i'm compelled to do it for some reason.

maybe it's a mild form of cutting?

</comment><comment><USER43> Looks like time alone with thoughts is ready to be disrupted.

</comment><comment><USER44> Clearly these people are not parents of young children.

</comment><comment><USER45> Some people.

</comment><comment><USER46> Many, many people willingly meditate ("alone with their thoughts") on their own will in order to focus and clear their mind, including me. And that's despite I do have traumatic events in my past that float up from time to time.

No thoughts of self-mutilation or electroshocking myself so far.

Either is this study flawed, or it was reported poorly (hey, what's new, right), but I'm so sick of shitty studies in popular media, I won't even try to figure out which one.</comment>


Larry Hastings – Python's Infamous GIL – PyCon 2016 - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3AyI_u66Bw <comment><USER2> It's helpful to know the abstract for Larry's talk before watching:

        DESCRIPTION

        CPython's GIL means your Python code can only run on one CPU core at a
        time. Can we remove it? Yes, we can... in fact we already have! But is it
        worth the cost?

        ABSTRACT

        CPython's "Global Interpreter Lock", or "GIL", was added in 1992. It was
        an excellent design decision. But 24 years is a long time--today it
        prevents Python from capitalizing on multiple CPUs. Many people want us to
        remove the GIL.

        It turns out, removing the GIL isn't actually that hard. In fact, I
        already removed it, in my experimental "gilectomy" branch. But the GIL is
        one reason CPython is so fast! The "gilectomy" makes CPython shockingly
        slow.

        This talk will discuss the history of the GIL, how the GIL helps make
        CPython fast, how the "gilectomy" removed the GIL, and some ways we might
        be able to make the "gilectomy" version fast enough to be useful.

from [https://us.pycon.org/2016/schedule/presentation/2101/](https://us.pycon.org/2016/schedule/presentation/2101/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Nice handling of the crappy question at the end...</comment>


The moon is surrounded by a permanent dust cloud - <AUTHOR> http://www.space.com/29691-moon-dust-cloud-mystery-comets.html

<comment><AUTHOR> There is a journal article [0] (paywalled for me) too.

[0] [http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v522/n7556/full/nature1...](http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v522/n7556/full/nature14479.html)</comment>