Excoin exchange's Bitcoins stolen, will be shutting down - <AUTHOR> https://exco.in/ <comment><USER2> "We noticed the hot wallets dwindling but assuming it was members moving their funds off site during the DDOS, we loaded all the cold balances onto the site so that users would not have withdrawals interrupted during our periods of up time.This fatal mistake allowed Ambiorx to continue to drain the site." \-- World's stupidest bitcoin exchange admins, or some of the ballsiest? Inside job?

<comment><USER3> As I pointed out the previous three times this happened to a Bitcoin exchange, these operators seem to be totally clueless about basic bookkeeping and financial controls. Consider a typical large supermarket. Cash, credit cards, coupons, and merchandise are being handled. There are multiple cashiers, usually more than one shift of staff, cash drawers, safes, cash pickups from an armored car service. That's a lot going on.

If there's a $10 bill missing, it will noticed within hours. Where it went will probably be figured out the same day. If someone is stealing, management will usually find out who, how much, and when.

The Bitcoin crowd has a much simpler problem. They're all online, they don't have a staff of people handling money, and they don't have as many special cases as a supermarket does. (Travelers checks, returns, check cashing, etc - Bitcoin exchanges don't have to deal with that.) Most Bitcoin exchanges are doing a few transactions a minute. Bigger supermarkets do more than that. Yet the Bitcoin crowd consistently botches it.

The Bitcoin crowd needs to get some people who have passed Internal Financial Controls 101 at a 2-year business college.[1] This isn't rocket science.

[1] [http://www.georgiacenter.uga.edu/courses/governmental- traini...](http://www.georgiacenter.uga.edu/courses/governmental- training/internal-controls-payable)

<comment><USER4> _> The Bitcoin crowd needs to get some people who have passed Internal Financial Controls 101 at a 2-year business college. This isn't rocket science._

To quote somebody who has forgotten more about cryptography and digital currencies than probably the entire population of Bitcoin startup founders put together will ever know, many Bitcoin founders take "offense at the very notion that there might be something to be learned from several millenniums of financial services best practices."[1]

What's really interesting for me is that VCs seem happy to invest in such startups. It's one thing when a small, bootstrapped exchange/wallet provider gets hacked. It'll be a different story when a major, VC-backed one gets done.

1: [http://lists.randombit.net/pipermail/cryptography/2014-Febru...](http://lists.randombit.net/pipermail/cryptography/2014-February/006256.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Seems like whoever writes financial code in the future should treat it more like NASA code than startup technical-debt code.

<comment> ryan-allen This is true if you intend on running an exchange properly and not being a highway robber posing as a travelling dentist.

<comment><USER6> Exactly... From my perspective, their plan worked perfectly.

1\. Open an exchange. 2\. Collect real money in exchange for fake money. 3\. "Get hacked" losing all the fake money and keeping all the real money.

<comment><USER7> Yeah, "We noticed the hot wallets dwindling but assuming it was members moving their funds off site during the DDOS, we loaded all the cold balances onto the site"

sounds extremely suspicious.

<comment><USER8> Possiblely, but in light of the protracted duration of the DDoS, it makes sense that people would be moving their holdings off-exchange when they could connect. If the withdrawal addresses were all different -- and from what Excoin posted on their site it looks like the party responsible used multiple BTC and NBT addresses to move the funds -- multiples of small to moderate amounts of coins being requested doesn't sound out of the question.

In retrospect, it was a horrible decision not to research these transactions in depth as they happened, but the Excoin team was fighting a "bigger" fire at the time with the DDoS.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> "We noticed the hot wallets dwindling but assuming it was members moving their funds off site during the DDOS, we loaded all the cold balances onto the site"

I'm a bit shocked that their tracking of their transactions was so easily broken as to prevent them from seeing that all the funds were being pulled by so few users.

Also, the part at the bottom where they basically post a wall of IPs and addresses seems like a weird way to move forward. Do they not plan on there being an official investigation?

<comment><USER6> "Do they not plan on there being an official investigation?"

How do you officially investigate someone stealing your monopoly money?

Where is the FDIC insurance? Exactly what are they suppose to tell the police? The FBI? ... oh thats right, nothing, because they are not a bank, and the only thing "stolen" was some ones and zeroes off a hard-drive.

Seriously though... where is the police report on this? Or any of the other hacked bitcoin exchanges for that matter?

<comment><USER9> It doesn't matter if you're storing bitcoins or roflcoins or pictures of kittens: in most places, maliciously accessing somebody else's computer system and stealing data is a crime.

The government investigates stolen "ones and zeros" all the time. The FDIC provides protection for users, but the lack of FDIC doesn't mean that no laws apply.

<comment><USER6> What about the laws the operators of the exchange broke by running un-audited code to handle financial transactions?

<comment><USER9> Assuming such laws apply to them, and assuming they broke them, "so?". Their guilt or innocence does not have any connection with any investigation of somebody hacking into their systems.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > Users are now able to withdraw their remaining funds from Exco.in with new > deposits having been disabled. If you have any issues withdrawing, please > contact support we will assist you as soon as possible.

In case the administrators of exco.in happen to be reading this -

You fools, what the hell are you doing leaving automated withdrawals turned on after you know you've been hacked? That'll just lose you even more money. The first thing you need to do is get the coins, databases and log files into secure offline storage. The second thing you need to do is get qualified professionals to investigate. Only after the investigation is complete can you safely return funds.

<comment><USER11> > The first thing you need to do is get the coins, databases and log files > into secure offline storage.

All logging and auditing data should be sent in real time to a write once medium, whether that's an S3 account with append (no overwrite/delete permissions) access, local DVD/Bluray, or even a dotmatrix printer if your volume is low enough.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Of that IP set:

           Host                ASN     CIDR
        184.108.40.206      62567   126.96.36.199/19
        184.108.40.206      62567   188.8.131.52/19
        184.108.40.206       15169   22.214.171.124/15
        188.8.131.52     62567   22.214.171.124/19
        126.96.36.199     15169   22.214.171.124/16
        188.8.131.52       15169   18.104.22.168/17
        22.214.171.124      55286   18.104.22.168/21
        18.104.22.168      36351   18.104.22.168/18
        22.214.171.124        36351   18.104.22.168/18
        18.104.22.168        13238   188.8.131.52/24
        188.8.131.52       15169   220.127.116.11/24
        188.8.131.52        15169   184.108.40.206/24
        188.8.131.52       15169   22.214.171.124/24
        22.214.171.124       15169   22.214.171.124/24
        184.108.40.206       15169   184.108.40.206/24
        184.108.40.206        15169   126.96.36.199/24
        184.108.40.206       15169   188.8.131.52/24
        126.96.36.199       15169   18.104.22.168/24
        184.108.40.206       15169   184.108.40.206/24
        126.96.36.199       15169   184.108.40.206/24
        22.214.171.124         15169   220.127.116.11/24

Distinct ASNs:

         14 15169	GOOGLE
          3 62567	DIGITALOCEAN-ASN-NY2
          2 36351	SOFTLAYER
          1 13238	Yandex
          1 55286	SERVER-MANIA

So ... yeah, these jokers got themselved "DoS'd" by a couple of search engines and couldn't even figure that out.

But they might want to look at Digital Ocean, SoftLayer, and ServerMania.

Or figure out where the traffic was actually coming from.

</comment><comment><USER13> The tinfoil hat in me has to wonder if there's some reason all these exchanges are failing so extravagantly.

<comment><USER14> a currency whose value is underpinned by drugs and money laundering may attract criminals you say

<comment><USER15> Bitcoin is underpinned by drugs and money laundering, you say? That is funny considering "the most powerful drug trafficking organization in the world" just had 32 people arrested for running a multistate gold-for-cash scheme that laundered more than $100m in US profits.[0]

[0][http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/feb/12/gold-for- cash...](http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/feb/12/gold-for-cash-scheme- sinaloa-drug-cartel-profits)

<comment><USER16> You're just bolstering the point with this argument.

<comment><USER15> How, exactly? The point is: drug and crime are currency-agnostic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I wonder if this is related to the loss at [http://bter.com/](http://bter.com/) ?

<comment><USER8> Different exchanges and principals, so it's unlikely. I don't know what BTER uses on the back-end, but unless it is written in Go, I find the likelihood of a connection to be very small (due to a common vulnerability). On the other hand, if there is a shared vulnerability, it may be in a commonly used library lower in the stack.

There is one possible tangential relationship, however. As I've been researching the transactions, early indications point to a portion of the stolen BTC and NBT from Excoin being placed on BTER prior to BTER's announcement. If this is the case, the parties responsble for the Excoin theft may have inadvertently deposited their coins into an exchange that was subsequently pillaged...

(Disclosure: I'm a member of the Nu development team, so Excoin's and BTER's exchange problems affect our community)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> "...We fixed the caching issues with the trades and moved forward"

Caching trade info sound like a bad idea. Atomic and transactional operations directly to the ledger so integrity is easier to achieve sounds like the way to go. A caching layer gives basically speed at the cost of simplicity, not sure if I'd like that when running a btc exchange. Am i wrong?

Of course we don't know the exact nature of those "caching issues" so my comment is highly especulative regarding the nature of that cache.

</comment><comment><USER19> I think a trustworthy Bitcoin exchange requires the software development capabilities/requirements similar to a real bank.

The amount of money at stake is probably not he same, but the anonymity of Bitcoin makes up for attractiveness as a target.

AFAIK most smaller banks use third party software/services. Maybe there is a need for a bitcoin exchange software provider that takes care of the critical parts and you build your interface/business on top.

</comment><comment><USER20> "I will be resigning from Blackwave Labs and looking for regular full time employment to help pay back the lost funds. I will also ask drunkonsound to help cover my loses with Blackwave Labs holdings as well."

They may not have been good at security but I still have to admire someone who is willing to take responsibility for their mistakes. Where's Mark Karpeles?

<comment><USER21> This guy needs to get a lawyer immediately. He's extremely naive in thinking he can 'fix' this. In addition, he's exposing his personal asset and future liability to all of these creditors.

As I said, amateur hour.

<comment><USER22> It's a woman

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I am now comparing the bitcoin holders to regular banks' online systems in my mind and I wonder why bitcoin systems are constantly getting hacked while regular banks' are functioning properly. I am not really sure which one of these reasons are true;

\- Code that is written for bitcoin banking is fairly new comparing the real banks' code which contains lots of vulnerabilities.

\- These guys hold huge amount of money from other people which becomes very tempting so that some insiders decide to take it and make it look like they are hacked

\- Law enforcements are not as high as comparing to stealing dollars to bitcoins which makes hackers to focus on bitcoin.

Not really sure and i am really not an expert on bitcoin systems, i just wonder.

<comment><USER24> When you put $100 in a bank it doesn't matter if that exact $100 bill is stolen by a bank robber, you still have $100 in the bank. Additionally bank accounts are federally insured.

That isn't the case with bitcoin.

<comment><USER8> > When you put $100 in a bank it doesn't matter if that exact $100 bill is > stolen by a bank robber, you still have $100 in the bank.

For the majority of digital currency exchanges that I've used, deposits may be sent to unique address to associate it with your user record, but the funds are then typically moved into a pool to facilitate trading. I don't know off- hand of any exchanges that atomically isolate user funds and utilize the block chain to handle internal transaction reconsiliation. There's an off-shoot of block chain tech that is attempting to do atomic, cross-chain trading using the block chain, but it's still very new and experimental[1].

> Additionally bank accounts are federally insured.

Up to a certain amount. The standard insurance amount is $250,000 per depositor, per insured bank, for each account ownership category.[2]

\---

[1] [https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Atomic_cross- chain_trading](https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Atomic_cross-chain_trading)

[2] [https://www.fdic.gov/deposit/deposits/](https://www.fdic.gov/deposit/deposits/)

<comment><USER24> Right, $250k, not really worth nothing every time since that is basically infinity to everyone in the US.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> From the announcement:

"during the DDOS two separate trades spiraled out of control either due to a bug or an exploit and transferred a very large number of small Bitcoin transactions to Ambiorx's account."

Note "either due to a bug or an exploit". Then:

"Ambiorx used the fraudulently obtained Bitcoins..."

If the cause was a bug in your own code, that's not fraudulent is it? Isn't that the exchange's fault? That line seems to assume exploitation, when they already said it was possible it was a bug.

<comment><USER26> If tomorrow you wake up and find 10000000$ in your account and then go on a spending rampage what do you think will happen?

The bank will notice it, revoke the funds and then at best you will end up with a pile of debt and at worse will be charged with some financial fraud or another.

It's time that exchanges will develop the ability to reverse bitcoin transactions by extending the chain or by building their own transaction protocol on top of the current BTC chain. It's also about time that these establishments will get some private insurance if they want to play around as they were some private banks for oligarchs which are not tied directly to the central bank or insured by it.

With how BTC transactions work in general, and how exchanges seem to operate these days im amazed that people still use them.

<comment><USER27> >If tomorrow you wake up and find 10000000$ in your account and then go on a spending rampage what do you think will happen?

Something pretty similar to this happened here in NZ in recent years. A couple who ran a BP franchise had applied to a bank for a $100k line of credit. They were accidentally given $10m instead. They decided to rapidly transfer the money offshore, where they then fled. The woman eventually returned voluntarily, the man was extradited. He received jail, she a home detention sentence and reparation.

[http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/2428243/Couple- missing...](http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/2428243/Couple-missing- after-10m-bank-bungle)

Sentencing: [http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objecti...](http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10829144)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> "Excoin is still under DDOS attack which makes it very difficult to investigate the causes of these issues."

This makes little sense to me.

<comment><USER29> It sounds like they have no physical access to their infrastructure, and cannot remove it from the network.

<comment><USER6> ... running a financial institution on servers you don't have physical access to, What is the worse that could happen?

Isn't physical access security like OpSec 101?

<comment><USER30> Yeah, but mostly focused on keeping bad guys out, not making sure the good guys can get in. (E.g. hving your servers in someone elses data center is probably more secure than trying to secure them physically in a startups office, but means getting to them is harder for you as well)

<comment><USER31> I could see an argument for colocating this type of enterprise in a secure data centre. There are places with 24/7 surveillance and 24/7 armed staff on site and they are going to do the security better than your average group of startup guys.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> 1\. Create exchange

2\. Realize its not going anywhere

3\. Close citing a hack

4\. Profit! go laughing all the way to the bank with the "stolen" ahem ahem bitcoins

<comment><USER20> I was thinking of that old Slashdot trope too ... someone has finally filled in the step(s) before profit!

<comment><USER33> It's not a slashdot trope - it's from South Park - Underpants Gnomes

1) Collect underpants 2) ... 3) Profit

[http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/dd/Gnomes_plan.pn...](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/dd/Gnomes_plan.png)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> As long as centralised Bitcoin exchanges exist, this will happen.

It's why I built CoinTouch, which finds friends of friends that trade Bitcoins (FB / G+). Post buy/sell orders, priced at a spread to market rates:

[https://www.cointouch.com/](https://www.cointouch.com/)

</comment><comment><USER35> Does anyone have an estimate of their volume, or how much was 'lost'?

<comment><USER36> 28th Dec: "Exco.in surpassed 60 BTC 24H Volume" [https://blackwavelabs.com/](https://blackwavelabs.com/)

It seems to have happened over a 5 day period. So a back of the packet calculation: 60 x 230 * 5 = $69,000

Of course that doesn't tell us anything about if people had larger amounts stored, just that the hot wallet should have contained around that amount before they needed to refill it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> I don't see the outrage over this. Bitcoins are just sequences of ones and zeros. How can anyone "own" information? And how do you "steal" a bitcoin? Doesn't the exchange still have its copy of the bits?

<comment><USER38> Bitcoins are not sequences of bits. There is a global blockchain that keeps track of transactions in the network. Each block contains transactions. Since a transaction is the fundamental unit, if you want to know the balance of a particular address, you have to look at every transaction since the beginning of time and add up all the ones that involve that address. You can't just edit the books to say that an address has more or less money. And to add a new transaction to the chain, whoever has the private key for the originating address has to sign the transaction, then the transaction is checked by a miner and added to the global chain.

So to get the money back, you would have to get the private key for the address where it all ended up. Our have the owners of the majority of mining power commit fraud on your behalf, that could work too.

<comment><USER39> So what was stolen, exactly?

<comment><USER38> This is more a case of fraud than burglary. The attackers tricked the exchange into sending then tons of money.

<comment><USER40> Burglary traditional implies physical entry of a perpetrator into physical building or space. I assume it would not apply to "breaking into" a computer or network in most modern legal systems. Regardless, this would almost certainly be considered larceny, as well as computer fraud.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> I swear Dick Cheney could run for President right now and have more credibility than any Bitcoin exchange.

I know there are a lot of BTC champions here, but as a former investor, the writing is on the wall: BTC is dead.

The coin will die, the concept will live on.

Which was Bitcoin's true power anyway.

<comment><USER15> People can whine all day long about exchanges being hacked but until there is a significant vulnerability within bitcoin itself, it isn't dead. If you were around when everyone was excited about the technology of bitcoin and not excited about making "mad profitz", this would be clear.</comment></comment>


After 3 years, admin of Free Rainbow Tables has decided to quit - <AUTHOR> http://www.freerainbowtables.com/ <comment><USER2> I wonder if he's found anyone to take it over - shame to see it die (I learnt a lot from the site)

</comment><comment><USER3> "Current CPU power 998 GFLOPS"

Doesn't seem like they have much computing power behind their project. You can get 8 times that with a single machine with 4 of the latest Nvidia graphics cards in them.

<http://www.tomshardware.com/news/PC-supercomputer,5513.html></comment>


Mt.Gox does not mean "Mount" Gox - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mtgox#History

<comment><USER2> Hacker News says Mt. Gox doesn't mean "Mount Gox", and cites Wikipedia.

Wikipedia says the name was originally "Magic: The Gathering Online Exchange" and cites The Verge.

The Verge says the same and cites... Hacker News.

I still believe it, but circular citation is often cause to raise an eyebrow or two!

<comment><USER3> Here is something with a bit of substance: [http://web.archive.org/web/20070817170606/http://mtgox.com/g...](http://web.archive.org/web/20070817170606/http://mtgox.com/gwt/mtgox.php)

<comment><USER4> That only proves that the domain was used for something else in the past. So what?

<comment><USER5> The page's title is "MTG Online Exchange" and refers to itself as Mt. Gox and MTGOX.COM. It's fairly clear they are the same entity.

<comment><USER6> What I don't get is that if it's an acronym for "Magic the Gathering Online eXchange," then why do they write it as "Mt. Gox?" Wouldn't that translate to, "Magic the. Gathering Online eXchange?"

<comment><USER5> Magic the Gathering is often abbreviated to MtG.

<comment><USER7> I think he's asking why they had the ". " in the middle of the name. It would make sense if Magic The Gathering was often abbreviated as Mt.G but that seems unlikely.

<comment><USER5> Well, "MtGox" could be read "Mt. Gox", it's probably intentional that they made it also sound like the name of a mountain.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It does now. Etymology can be fascinating, but eventually weight of consensus will shift a word to mean what it looks like it means (in a process that's oddly similar to bitcoin's consensus on the transaction history)

<comment><USER9> The word _"forte"_ has undergone this change. The actual correct pronunciation of it is _"fort"_ as in a sturdy structure used for defence.

I have only ever heard it pronounced correctly twice, people typically say it as _"fortay"_. This has now become so common that some dictionaries are showing it as a valid pronunciation.

Language is always evolving, which is great.

<comment><USER10> I don't like to be a pedant, but what the hell.

Your belief about which is the "correct" pronunciation depends on whether you believe the "correct" etymology is French or Italian. It appears to me that people agree that the word came into English from French earlier, but also that (at least in 'murica) people have settled on the other pronunciation.

It's not that there's a correct pronunciation that got corrupted, as you suggest. There are two legitimate derivations of this word with different pronunciations and one has won out.

By the way, the word in French would be pronounced \ˈfȯt\, which is a common usage in Britain. And it refers not to a fort (which is the Italian etymology for "a strong point") but rather to the part of a sword between the middle and the hilt.

Source: I like to read about usage and etymology. Sadly my dictionary of classical word origins suggests that _forte_ comes from _fortis_ in Latin, which (while ultimately true) doesn't reflect either later usage or pronunciation.

<comment><USER9> You are mistaken. There IS a version of "forte" that is correctly pronounced "fortay" and that is the musical term for loud, which is Italian.

The correct pronunciation of "forte" as in an area of strength or speciality is "fort". Older dictionaries will give this as the correct pronunciation but more modern and especially online dictionaries sometimes give "fortay" as an alternate pronunciation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> You want to call it Mount, because otherwise people will say 'em tee' which sounds close to 'empty', and that has negative connotations when talking about money.

</comment><comment><USER12> I think the poster is hinting that having the largest trading platform for a (formerly) $1bn economy based on an RPG trading card site is not wise.

The events on mtgox in the last few days are irritating but not all that surprising. Bitcoin as a protocol is still solid but traders need to take their business to a less amateurishly run platform. Mtgox already has several competitors (Bitstamp seem good) but a shock like this was required to overcome the critical mass they had.

As an aside - it's fascinating to watch a new financial system being built from the ground up. Through the regular disasters in the Bitcoin ecosystem I'm starting to see why parts of the 'real' banking world function the way they do.

<comment><USER13> Trading platforms evolve depending on the needs of the marketplace. It is not like there are plenty of existing trading platforms that stand in line to trade bitcoins. It is not as if there hasn't been similar issues with other trading platforms. Remember the Facebook IPO issues, for example..

If anything, MtGox should be congratulated for executing a wildly successful pivot.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Ironically, Mt. Gox appears to process vastly more transactions far more reliably than Magic: the Gathering Online itself, with its infamous lag and regular reboots. But hey, if Bitcoin crashes again, Magic is a great platform for speculators:

[http://ark42.com/mtg/pricehistory.php?q=Sphinx%27s+Revelatio...](http://ark42.com/mtg/pricehistory.php?q=Sphinx%27s+Revelation&d=0)

</comment><comment><USER15> Useful information to disseminate; however, I fear trying to "correct" the popular perception on this would be quixotic, much like trying to change how "begs the question" is used back to what it originally meant.

Descriptivistically, the "Mount Gox" backronym seems to have more currency. (pun intended, but immediately regretted!)

</comment><comment><USER16> Oh - thanks for the info. I was under the impression it would be a pun towards Fort Knox.

<comment><USER17> That would have been rather ironic

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Actually their official video about withdrawal methods disagrees with you / wikipedia.

Right at the start she clearly says "Mount Gox" - <http://vimeo.com/m/40056755>

</comment><comment><USER19> Then why the dot and the wierd lower- and uppercase mixture?

<comment><USER5> Because nobody refers to it as Magic The Gathering Online Exchange any more, it is now "Mt. Gox" to most people, and their logo reflects that.

<comment><USER20> You would be surprised at how many nobodies still refer to it by the old name. It's also much funnier to say outloud.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I don't care, there is no faster way to say it. Every other way I can imagine is cumbersome.

</comment><comment><USER22> I really love that song by The Who. I think it's called "Teenage Wasteland"

<comment><USER23> Wayland! The song is called Barbra O'Reilly, after Pete Townshend's second wife.

Mt. Gox ~ Fort Knox

A bank or brokerage should have a name of weight and substance, to give customers a sense of security.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Proof that changing your idea is OK if the circumstances are right!</comment>


Scientific Communication as Sequential Art - <AUTHOR> http://worrydream.com/ScientificCommunicationAsSequentialArt/ <comment><AUTHOR> Interestingly the equivalent of "Computational Notebooks" in computer science and programming has been around for long time. It just hasn't caught on much. Perhaps we just need better implementations, like "Jupyter for software"?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literate_programming](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literate_programming)</comment>


Ask HN: Can I get some suggestions on web languages? - <AUTHOR>

I've been thinking about which would be the lightest language for the web that's also not as painful to use.
I'm planning on starting a project for the company I work for and I've already settled on MongoDB for the database system but I'm spoilt for choice when it comes to choosing a language.
Any suggestions? <comment><USER2> For fun, I would go with Ruby

For team consistency, I would go with Python

For ease of building a prototype, I would go with PHP

For scalability in human capital, I would go with either .NET or Java

<comment><USER3> I believe you can find plenty of PHP programmers out there. Your average PHP programmer is no better or no worse than your average Java or .NET programmer.

Also, us Python folk like to have fun too :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Ruby.

Why did you choose mongodb for the data store?

<comment><AUTHOR> It looks like a fun piece of technology to use.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Python would be fun as well as easy.</comment>


Dairyland in Distress (2019) - <AUTHOR> https://projects.jsonline.com/topics/dairy-crisis/dairyland-in-distress.html <comment><USER2> This a is a global trend: 'The quiet suicide epidemic plaguing French farmers' (1) + 'Europe loses 1,000 farms per day'. Meanwhile mega-corperations are receiving millions of European subsidies.

(1) [https://www.france24.com/en/20181026-suicide-epidemic- plagui...](https://www.france24.com/en/20181026-suicide-epidemic-plaguing- french-farmers-loire-atlantique)

(2) [https://www.agriland.co.uk/farming-news/europe- loses-1000-fa...](https://www.agriland.co.uk/farming-news/europe- loses-1000-farms-per-day-new-agriculture-commissioner)

</comment><comment><USER3> >There is no more quintessential image of Wisconsin than a red barn with a herd of cows grazing in a green field against a blue sky.

This traditional farm cannot compete with modern operations of 30,000 cows or more. It's too bad, because dairying fit in well on farms with land that was not good for plowing and cropping. Marshy or sandy land was used for pasture and hay meadows. Now you rarely see small herds of cows in pastures along the highway. Marshes are either drained or left unused.

<comment><USER4> When people complain about flooding problems in the Midwest, I wonder if they realize how much of our land has been tiled and drained for farming.

Wetlands act as a sponge to keep water where it fell and slow its movement to the main arterial rivers.

Habitat destruction is honestly something that concerns me much more than carbon emissions.

<comment><USER5> Too few people recognize grazing land as destroyed. Very often it used to be bog, forest, grassland supporting many wild species (before the soil was pumped full of nitrates) etc. A big grassy field can be an ecological wasteland.

<comment><USER6> Grazing is one of the healthiest things for soil and grassland as long as it's not overgrazed.

<comment><USER5> True - the land around me has tons of fertilizer applied to maximize grass production and is grazed or cut for hay and silage. It supports very few wildflower species though. Take hay cuts for a few years and you can restore it though.

[https://twitter.com/collbradan/status/1166416101997273089](https://twitter.com/collbradan/status/1166416101997273089)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Off topic: the URL ("jsonline.com") is short for "Journal Sentinal Online", not "JS Online" or "JSON line" as my brain insisted on parsing it.

</comment><comment><USER8> Maybe this results in replacing much of our dairy consumption with more environmentally sustainable plant-based alternatives?

(Not almond milk, which is worse, but oat, hemp, and pea based milks and yogurts are much less taxing on the environment.)

<comment><USER9> Most immediately this is the result of the trade war with China. The government has been pumping tens of billions into the agg industry. But most of this money is funneled to the big players to keep them from complaining too much, and it does nothing for the supply-side. So the small/mid tier producers have been hit especially hard.

It could be that long term trends were headed this direction anyway, but the trade war has been devastating to the industry.

<comment><USER10> How would the trade war with the Chinese bring this about? Asians are generally lactose intolerant.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Wow, this is amazingly comprehensive and in-depth reporting. Wish we had more of this, especially on topics I was close enough to that it made sense to read the whole thing.

</comment><comment><USER12> 1\. Develop a "value-added" dairy brand 2\. Wait for Coca-Cola to buy your business 3\. ??? 4\. Profit!

[https://www.fooddive.com/news/coca-cola-acquires-full- owners...](https://www.fooddive.com/news/coca-cola-acquires-full-ownership-of- dairy-brand-fairlife/569873/)

<comment><USER13> Brown, sticky, sugary, water is not a good product for a health conscious future. A future where people learn from an early age the perils of too much sugar. A future where governments limit the sale of such goods.

Coca Cola needs to diversify.

Then again, dairy seems like an awfully bad segment to get into given the issues it faces.

Who am I to judge the brass over there though? I'm sure they paid some consultants eight figures to tell them that this was a good idea.

<comment><USER14> > _Coca Cola needs to diversify._

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Coca- Cola_brands](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Coca-Cola_brands)

<comment><USER9> I was about to say, Coca Cola is the epitome of a well diversified, but focused company.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This looks like consolidation of small (family owned) farms into larger (corporate, maybe multinational) operations.

</comment><comment><USER16> im not convinced this is an entirely bad thing as it seems the US has had a glut of dairy for quite a while. Here in the United States, we put cheese on everything and its slowly killing us. We largely started this trend when the USDA began eschewing whole milk in favour of skim. As a result, dairy farms simply redirected their waste fats to the production of cheese and cheese-like products instead of limiting their production as a whole. Efforts to tackle childhood obesity have zeroed in on things like sugary chocolate milk and unhealthy dairy products (aerosolized cheese and processed cheeses in general) to quantifiable success.

I also question whether the newspaper for the largest dairy producing state in the US is capable of covering the issue without bias. "fake milk" and "fancy water" are a few key phrases that concern me. The coverage also seems to try to have its cake and eat it too...highlighting the urgent need for Latino workers (a critical requirement almost exclusive to industrial farming) while bemoaning the struggles of small farms as "the industry" which is actually in turmoil.

Disclosure: I am a vegetarian, and derive a nontrivial amount of calories from dairy.

<comment><USER17> A couple of years back I had a rather abrupt dietary change due to some health issues. One of the key parts was the total elimination of cheese from my diet. I began to say to myself, "Props to those National Dairy Council guys," because cheese was everywhere I looked. It is kind of impressive, really.

I am not against labels like "fake milk." If anything, I find myself increasingly annoyed by products that are not what they actually claim to be: silk that is not _really_ silk, milk that is not _actually_ milk. I'm quite okay with linguistic prescriptivism when it comes to product names.

<comment><USER18> > I am not against labels like "fake milk."

I agree, anything other than full fat human milk that is non-homogenized and unpasteurized, with no additives (vitamins or otherwise) should be labelled fake milk.

<comment><USER4> Me and my wife were actually joking the other day that at some point there's going to be a human milk industry. We envisioned something similar to the places you can go to sell your blood plasma.

There already is a network of sorts where lactating moms will donate milk to hospitals and mothers that can't nurse for whatever reason. [1]

[1] [https://uichildrens.org/mothers-milk-bank- iowa](https://uichildrens.org/mothers-milk-bank-iowa)

<comment><USER19> There was that human-milk ice cream in the UK around 2011:

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

I don't know how well that turned out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> While comprehensive, this reporting is very shortsighted -- I don't see how one can ignore the horrifying image of hundreds of cows locked in mechanical milk-extraction machines, while only reporting on the very narrow Wisconsin industry. Clearly health, animal-rights and environmental awakening is also a factor pushing more consumers to prefer plant-based milk (soy, almond, etc.) which influence the cow-based industry.

<comment><USER21> That's not an accurate image of dairy farms, at least based on the large farm I visited. Cow productivity is strongly influenced by the quality of life of the cow. Stressed, stick or otherwise unhappy cows produce less milk and as a consequence, farmers put a lot of effort into keeping them healthy and happy. The particular farm I visited used milking robots produced in the Netherlands. Cows spent their days outdoors and would visit the milking robot on their own when they decided to. The robot would also clean the cow, give it a snack and record some some basic health data.

The only thing that seemed inhumane to me was how calves would be separated from their mothers so early. Just a few weeks (days?) after being born, they were shipped off to a separate location a thousand miles away.

<comment><USER20> 95%-99% of farm animals in the US are born, raised, and die in factory farms [1], i.e. they are born into constant unimaginable suffering and die a gruesome death. These stats are about the same throughout the Western world.

Cows and other farm animals who are raised in relatively "humane" captivity, like the one you're describing, are an anecdote.

[1] [https://sentientmedia.org/u-s-farmed-animals-live-on- factory...](https://sentientmedia.org/u-s-farmed-animals-live-on-factory- farms/)

<comment><USER22> While it's entirely possible that's a reasonable article, my first impression is to ignore it

\- "amimal rights think tank Sentience Institute"

\- popup that asks "do you love animals"

\- image a a crying cow

It reeks of an extremely biased article to me. I mean, that doesn't mean it is such, but my "links from shitty news on facebook" meter certainly labels it that way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> kind of a bad title given the fact that dairyland is not a word but is the name of a major insurance company. "dairy land" would have been better.

<comment><USER24> Wisconsin considers it a word.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_registration_plates_of...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_registration_plates_of_Wisconsin#/media/File:2007_Wisconsin_License_Plate.jpg)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Well, animal agriculture has no future and the sooner farmers realize that, the better for us all

<comment><USER26> I wouldn't go as far as saying it has "NO future". I think we are seeing a correction right now. From an over-reliance on animal agriculture and hopefully start transitioning to a more balanced relationship with animal agriculture.

<comment><USER25> Maybe. Still doesn't seem like the best investment :)</comment></comment></comment>


What is your review of Hyper-V? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> I like it. It is a nice idea for the hypervisor to be a system service, that way applications that need it can just hook on to it. (e.g. an android emulator like Bluestacks, Docker, ...)

As it is, many virtualization tools that don't use Hyper-V can't be run when you have Hyper-V enabled so you have to make a decision that you are going to use it or not use it.

I remember having a hard time setting it up to use constant IP addresses on the the internal ethernet with the GUI (say you want to put the IP address in your ssh config) but when I used Powershell to set it up it was easy.</comment>


We Don't Need More Moral Elites. We Need Less Powerful Ones - <AUTHOR> http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/01/davos-david-brooks-the-rich-have-become-too-powerful.html <comment><USER2> Or, we need the powerful ones to internalize their impact on others more.

Either can work.</comment>


Beekeeper Studio SQL Editor 1.7 – Table Editing and FK Lookups - <AUTHOR> https://www.beekeeperstudio.io/blog/release-1.7 <comment><AUTHOR> Hey all!

Super proud of our latest release. We think our table editing is really slick (and helpful obvs).

Walkthrough video here: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FTzCYNnsNAU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FTzCYNnsNAU)

Happy to answer any questions!</comment>


How AeroPress Fans Are Hacking Their Way to a Better Cup of Coffee - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/04/14/399337724/how-aeropress-fans-are-hacking-their-way-to-a-better-cup-of-coffee <comment><USER2> In my (limited) experience of using an Aeropress, it doesn't make espresso - there's no crema, etc.</comment>


Multi-Inflection-Point Alert - <AUTHOR> http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2008/04/24/Inflection <comment><USER2> I like this article as a summary of the State of the Hype, but I'm skeptical of the word "inflection point". Most of what I see here is either noise (spiky but meaningless) or long-term trends. Some of these trends are ten years old and more:

 _Today you'd be nuts not to look seriously at PHP, Python, and Ruby._

If you substitute "Perl" for "Ruby", this sentence could have been written in 1999. The only difference is that Java was on the _upward_ slope of the hype curve back then, so fewer people would have _believed_ the sentence.

I'd agree that software is changing a lot right now. But is it really changing that much more rapidly now than in, say, 1998? Or 1988?</comment>


New research suggests new ways to nurture gifted children - <AUTHOR> https://www.economist.com/news/international/21739144-new-research-suggests-new-ways-nurture-gifted-children-how-and-why-search-young <comment><USER2> I have a young relative who was tracked into special education from early years. Finally, his educators gave him a standardized intelligence test. To their shock (and perhaps) horror, he came in in the top 1% for his age bracket. He is really, really intelligent.

After this test, his guidance counselor sat him down and asked him how smart he thought he was. Answer, a morose and defeated "I'm stupid." Mind you, this answer came out of an 8-9 year old.

After being told repeatedly that he was not good at school and that classes were too hard for him, he fully believed he was stupid.

Once the adults around him stopped seeing a redneck country kid, once the adults recognized his poor school track record as a reflection of _their biases and their poor performance_ he excelled.

He is now captain of his high school robotics team. The team just won a position to compete in an international robotics competition in the next couple of weeks. Assuming they can raise the $30k to travel to Kentucky, ship their robots, find lodging, etc. It's a large fund raising amount for a non- Texas, non-football red state.

<comment><USER3> > I have a young relative who was tracked into special education from early > years. Finally, his educators gave him a standardized intelligence test.

It stuns me that people are tracked into special education without an assessment that included, at a minimum, an intelligence test. (I had public school teachers raise concerns that I _should_ be in special ed in early years, was given an assessment that identified a speech impediment and a high IQ, was subsequently given a performance assessment that wasn't limited to be grade-level skills, and it was realized that I was performing well beyond grade level. So I was skipped ahead a grade _and_ moved into the gifted program.

And this was back in 1980. I thought that virtually as long as gifted education has existed it was widely recognized that gifted students frequently underperform other students when not challenged, and, similarly, I thought it was a fundamental concept of special education that it required individualized assessment of the particular needs and abilities of the student.

<comment><USER4> I'm convinced society won't give IQ tests to kids out of cowardice. So instead we spend 13-20 years of school giving different forms of IQ tests tiptoeing around the concept.

Taking a test requiring abstraction and pattern matching skills is all the same. It doesn't matter what the features are. The best you can do is also test memory.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Despite going through gifted education programs myself, I'm deeply skeptical of the concept of them in general, and I've only become more skeptical as new research emerged. Here's a good example for why I'm skeptical:

>There is evidence that aspects of gifted education should influence education more broadly. Project Bright Idea, developed at Duke University, saw 10,000 typical nursery and primary-school pupils taught using methods often reserved for brainier kids—fostering high expectations, complex problem-solving and cultivating meta-cognition (or "thinking about thinking"). Nearly every one of them went on to do much better on tests than similar peers.

Another way to phrase this is that this study demonstrated that people may become "high-achieving" because of gifted education programs, and not the other way around. Or perhaps typical pupils can become high-achieving by exposure to high-achieving pupils.

The article's refutation of these ideas is the King's College study that determined that "50% of the variance in intelligence is heritable." Plomin's more recent (2015) research suggests this estimate was far too high, and should really be about 30% phenotypically, which makes me think there's no point in trying to find young Einsteins. If students are of average or slightly above average intelligence, Bright Idea style programs will be best for them, and if they are truly a "young Einstein," they'll demonstrate it on their own, just like old Einstein did.

<comment><USER6> When I was in 3rd grade, I was placed in a remedial math course. My mother requested I be removed from it. I was. Today, I am a senior machine learning engineer working on my third math heavy degree.

Needless to say, I am also very skeptical of identifying gifted students at a young age. IMO society over-values so called natural talent, and trying to find that talent in an 8 year old is silly, with rare exception.

Now, many of my higher performing peers from 3rd grade are lost. Hopping from career to career, city to city without a sense of direction. A few of the high performers have gone on to do impressive things, but nothing shocking, nothing that is any more impressive than what my stoner friends and I were able to accomplish after a few extra years to mature.

It took me more time to find that what I really enjoyed was engineering and math. Of course, this is a first person account, so take it or leave it. Worth noting that there is a whole lot of very bad education research, so anyone whipping out journal articles to prove a point should be cautious.

The problem with treating "gifted" students differently is similar to gender bias in STEM, and racial bias in education overall. Some people are told they can, and other are implicitly told they can't. These messages get internalized by students, especially if you are unlike myself and don't have a mother who will stick up for you, and take you out of that remedial math course.

<comment><AUTHOR> I have taught a few tens of gifted students. I could identify them based on a short test from grade 1 (5-6 years old) onwards. I could even identify some just by a short conversation.

All of them went on to become successful in college (only a few have graduated so far). They consist of medical students in top medical schools in the country, one International Physics Olympiad gold medalist (currently at MIT), one International Chemistry Olympiad gold medalist (currently at U of Tokyo). All of them from a 200k-people city in a developing country and I only taught math to a few classes of these students (for about 4 years) before moving on to another education venture.

I would say it is highly likely most of these students would go on to have very good careers. We still do not know whether they will achieve great things but their trajectory is much brighter than average kids.

I agree that putting young kids in remedial classes could be problematic, but gifted kids do benefit from suitable gifted education.

<comment><USER6> >gifted kids do benefit from suitable gifted education

If you show me that other students don't benefit from suitable gifted education, then you'll have an argument. Claiming that treating children with gifted education increases their chance of success is obvious, but misses the point, does it not?

I can specifically remember back to when the TAG Math students (Talented and Gifted) were learning what negative numbers were. I kept hearing about them. I imagined what they might mean, how you use them. When I was finally introduced one year later, I was disappointed, you mean it's literally just subtraction? I could have done that one year ago. And same with all the other students in the normal math course, if they had the same level of attention and care.

The worst part was this: the students in TAG math had a student:teacher ratio of 10:1, while the normal math students had a ratio of 20:1. The remedial students had a ratio of 10:1, but the remedial teacher was from the special ed department, not a specialized math teacher that the TAG and normal students got. The TAG program at my school was praised, and the teacher acted as if she was doing God's work. Of course, she had children who were students at the school, and of course, they were in all of her classes.

Now, looking back on it, I realize how broken this frame of thinking is. Yes, students will benefit if you put them in an elite math course with more resources than other children. Other students will bare the cost. I think a better allocation of our time and money would be to spread resources evenly. If you really want to get ahead by one or two years, take summer classes in middle or high school. That way, the students bares the cost of the additional time and effort, and we can still evenly allocate resources so every eight year old gets the same opportunity.

EDITS: spelling bear -> bare

<comment><USER7> How well do you think those students would fare if placed in normal class? Most of the normal people I meet either openly make fun of things I know or assume I'm full of shit for the volume of information I can pull out of things I've read. Most people also treat me as if I'm a geek because they wouldn't have a use for the things I remember.

You're thinking about this as if they're taking your resources. Let me turn this around for you. What if they aren't being given special treatment because they need the resources, but because they need an environment where the way they think is acceptable? How many of them would still show any talent or aptitude in normal class with normal classmates? Think about your reaction to negative numbers versus their own. Maybe gifted and talented classes aren't so much giving them more resources as they are giving them an appropriate education. Maybe it's about creating a safe environment for kids who tend to be more abstract to flourish.

<comment><USER6> They'd do fine, because for the most part, the students who were placed in TAG math were the same students whose parents were on PTA or whose parents had the time and self entitlement to go to the school and not so politely request their child be placed in the program.

The notion that gifted students need a special environment to learn is comical. If they're actually talented and gifted, they should certainly be able to learn effectively in the same environment as "normal" students.

Learning to read and do arithmetic is important in the 3rd grade, but it isn't as important as learning social and communication skills. I don't deny that there are gifted individuals among us, I'm advocating that we wait on trying to identify the gifted ones at least until puberty.

<comment><USER8> > The notion that gifted students need a special environment to learn is > comical.

They may need a special environment to be allowed to excel in learning without getting bullied.

<comment><USER7> Which is what I was getting at, that intelligence and giftedness can function as a handicap in a lot of situations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> As someone who has been through many forms of 'gifted' and 'enriched' and 'special' education, these articles always sadden me. Does anyone truly believe that optimizing _children_ for their _economic output_ really leads to a good life for their country?

Here's a radical idea: let them have childhoods!

I strongly support letting kids be free to develop and think for themselves. If a 'gifted' child can succeed despite being imprisoned in a school for many years, imagine how much they could grow and contribute if they were free?

For anyone with children, or who cares about the future of western democracy, please look into [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudbury_school](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudbury_school)

<comment><USER10> I'll bite - yes, I think it leads to both a good life for them and benefit for country.

I don't know what your gifted education programs were like, but I never recall feeling like I missed out on my childhood. Occasionally I would take different classes to some of my friends (but with others), and that was about it.

Far from keeping people from being free to develop and think for themselves, most of the gifted classes I took actively encouraged that, with open-ended problem solving and free-form classes often led by student interest.

But children need to be reined in, they don't have the reasoning skills or understanding of adults; the one time I was allowed to fully control my own syllabus it led almost directly to me losing the ability to speak Cantonese, which I'd been fluent in up to that point. As a kid who'd spoken it all his life, I simply didn't believe all of the people who told me I'd forget it without practice. Because I was a child.

I don't know exactly how free-form Sudbury Schools are, but I'd have extreme reservations about sending my children to one.

<comment><USER11> So the lesson you learned wasn't that you had the power to choose what you learned and how to do so responsibly?

Did you instead learn these things?:

• exercising that power could lead to you losing a skill

• doing so is bad

• you don't have the power to choose your own course corrections when you notice a skill waning

Based on your suggestion that children need to be controlled, I think your experience was limited and too short.

<comment><USER10> I grant I learned all of those things, but I think pretty well everyone learns those things by adulthood, and I don't think my forgetting a language especially honed my understanding of those points.

I don't even know if you're arguing in good faith, because your second dot point isn't really a thing that even a child needs to learn.

I'll also thank you not to suggest that our differences of opinion are due to your superior understanding of my upbringing.

<comment><USER11> I agree...I think those are things we're culturally taught, typically implicitly and not explicitly.

And I don't assume to have an understanding of your upbringing. That's why I was posing it all as questions. The points I made are things I think can potentially hinder learning and are commonplace in society.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> "Giftedness" doesn't just refer to high IQ, at least not as the US educational system treats it. It also refers to a cluster of personality traits that combine to make some kids utterly fail to thrive in normal classrooms, yet completely turn around in specialized environments.

I can't take any article seriously that doesn't appreciate that giftedness is an educational concept, not a function of intelligence.

My insight regarding giftedness is that if we could afford it, all kids would thrive if they could be placed in the kinds of small classroom creative learning environments that gifted kids can _only_ thrive in. In other words, we're all "gifted", it's just that some of us are less adaptable than others.

And while intelligence might be heritable, nurture is far more important when it comes to the development of children. The argument that it's largely heritable is the argument that the educational system is fine as it is and doesn't need any new ideas or money.

<comment><USER13> That sounds similarly euphemistic to the way the word "special" is used in the US.

<comment><USER14> "special" isn't a euphemism in education. It literally means "non-mainstream customized treatment". It's used for both disabilities and gifted. "Special" is also a slang term for people with disabilities.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Instead of trying to strengthen "gifts", I think a more effective approach would be to remove barriers from growth. Even the most gifted children have countless barriers, whether financial, emotional, or motivational. If a child is painfully shy then therapy or some other form of work to open the child up would be far more effective than special teaching methods. Helping a child find a passion is more effective than deeper teaching on a subject they don't care about. These examples are high-level and grossly generalized, but everyone has countless micro and sometimes major traumas they've accumulated over time, and more attention needs to be put on mitigating these.

</comment><comment><USER15> Did "gifted and talented" for two years in the government program in Sydney, Australia, and it was awesome. Ages 10-11. This co-incided with my introduction to programming and electronics (I now run a robotics startup in China, after a successful software career). Almost no homework. Focus on collaboration and discussion, creativity and inter-domain reasoning. On the whole perhaps a big part of the benefit was being in the same school as others who weren't in the program and realising it's OK to be different/introspective.

</comment><comment><USER16> It is important to acknowledge that school serves multiple purposes. It is definitely meant to educate students and hone their minds (and bodies). But given that students spend most of their day at school or doing school related activity, it is the only playground for kids to learn to socialize with their ilk. And cloistering someone away from that experience in a formative phase just to emphasize one axis of development (because they are "gifted") is to do them a profound disservice. At the same time, the same can be said of forcing them to socialize while neglecting their mental development.

So, the "right" solution would involve giving kids opportunities to challenge themselves in avenues where they are strong, and ensuring a rounded experience.

Which is what schools are supposed to do, but they find it hard enough to cater to the "average" student :-/

</comment><comment><USER17> For those impeded by the paywall:

[http://archive.is/DIVlJ](http://archive.is/DIVlJ)

</comment><comment><USER18> I was in the GATE program in Utah [1] growing up and it was very project based. I think all education should encourage projects. In one case, we had to come up with products for younger kids and present and research the ideas, brainstorm, build prototypes, do user testing, and deliver it. A key aspect of the program was brainstorming which no idea is a bad idea but the best ideas floated to the top, this is important to learning.

Finland is tops in education and lots of their teaching is letting kids pursue projects together and individually especially, the latter is very important for self-confidence. Finland does this through project- or phenomenon-based learning (PBL)[2]. This empowers kids and more closely resembles real life, you constantly have projects of all sorts going on in your life over overlapping timeframes, sometimes in a team, sometimes all by yourself.

The best teachers also encourage projects. My 6th grade teacher had Apple II's and let us experiment with building games in BASIC of which I built a Tron game. I still think of it to this day. He also always had access to educational games like Oregon Trail. My high school computer lab teacher Mr Iles had gaming, programming and media/internet hardware and software setup to experiment with, many of the kids in that class and group are great programmers and some worked for intel while there. We had TV running on computers and internet before most saw those things and built things on it. He also let us play Scorched Earth and let programming projects be self-driven. My art teachers did critiques so you learned to take criticism and explain why. At Chandler High School there was a video class where you had to come up with video content, edit, produce, direct, write etc and that was amazing in terms of fun projects where I learned a great deal. All of this led to great educational outcomes both in team projects and individual.

As long as a program is project based, a kid from anywhere or any level can benefit. We need more project based education in the US. Most gifted programs that do well do have a project based element to it, but not dictated to the kids as much as curriculum but a set of requirements and the rest is a creative exercise.

[1] [https://www.schools.utah.gov/curr/giftedtalented](https://www.schools.utah.gov/curr/giftedtalented)

[2] [http://www.bbc.com/news/world- europe-39889523](http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-39889523)

<comment><USER19> > [...] but a set of requirements [...]. What kind do you think of? \- The > steps you take? \- Requirements on the results? Please enlighten me.

<comment><USER18> For instance you say create a game that teaches people about handling money, you might say it has the requirements of 1) earning interest on saving and 2) a market value that changes upon events. Then let kids run with that. You can say it must be played in a certain amount of time and other kids play the game and give feedback or feedback from other schools. Make it a competition with winnings for their school and some will go in depth.

Or create a game for kids to learn math, it must be targeted at kids ages 6-8 and include addition, subtraction, multiplication and division but it cannot be flash cards. Then see what they come up with. The game creation projects really teach people to simplify and iterate especially when you get feedback from players.

Every kid needs the basics but besides that, projects to apply those skills. Rote memorization doesn't work as well as application to a project. So you find something that you can apply those skills. For instance math can better be taught by making a software/web game, algebra/trigonometry/vector maths can be fun that way. Markets can be taught with stock market games. Economics can be taught with simulated mini economies. Critical thinking with looking at the news and seeing sources of funding/content.

Check the BBC link on Finland for some of their ideas, their project based programs have critical thinking skills in learning about fake news, sources of those and why, learning about fallacies and making projects around that. It also has projects where kids learn about immigration and what to do with refugees including market research. Kids can learn to setup computers or networks and then make something on top of it, or teach younger kids skills they already know. I truly believe Finland is a mobile gaming startup hub because of their project based education system and possibly a bit of Nokia influence.

An example of one in Finland:

> _They use 3D printers to create a miniature of their Roman building, which > will eventually be used as pieces for a class-wide board game._

 _This is a history lesson with a difference, says Aleksis Stenholm, a teacher at Hauho Comprehensive School. The children are also gaining skills in technology, research, communication and cultural understanding._

 _" Each group is becoming an expert on their subject, which they will present to the class," he explains. The board game is the culmination of the project, which will run alongside normal classroom teaching._

> _The school 's skate park came from an idea suggested by the children, who > helped design and raise funds for it_

Other great things about Finland education systems:

\- Teaching is a highly respected, well-paid profession

\- School days are short and the summer break is 10 weeks

They get more freedom and more projects in Finland and generally school is more fun but they are still testing well for basic skills.

 _For nearly two decades, Finland has enjoyed a reputation for having one of the world 's best education systems. Its 15 year olds regularly score amongst the highest in the global Pisa league tables for reading, maths and science._

Many times the projects are teaching through learning to teach or educate others or make games for others. The moment you teach the ability to teach, the mind opens up a bit more.

<comment><USER19> Reading this I feel like I want to go to school again, over there. (:

So to recap correct me if I'm wrong:

      1. Learn basics
      2. Form a project with rules where basics are applied (often teaching through learning to teach or educate others or make games for others).
      3. If that doesn't work get tutoring from other kids and teachers.

<comment><USER18> Pretty much, don't forget they have much shorter days at actual school which is nice. In the US people use school as a daycare/babysitter in early years so that might be more difficult.

Finnish kids have more time to work on projects and play in addition to school that is more interesting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Gifted education has a big problem, pupils are fed the education adults feel they need to excel. Problem is that if students are always given the answers to life then they never learn how to maneuver thru the unknown path that life is.

In academics the path to a Ph.D. is known, you can figure it out even for newborns. The problem is that in life there is no determined path. Gifted Education lacks the ability to teach children how to get from A to B without a determined path. So many of these programs are teaching kids how to be great students but not how to excel in life, 2 different goals.

What society needs from their brightest are trailblazers that solve problems and make advances in any given field. What these programs produce are great professionals that aren't likely to be leaders in any field.

I truly believe that once these kids know the basics these programs should help them figure out how to excel at life when the path is unknown by letting them make their own decisions and nudging them in the right direction rather than showing them how to get there.

Also, every time I read about these kinds of programs, they try to identify the best by some kind of IQ. But as we all know smarts, not necessarily high IQ, and hard work is what makes the successful individual. Given 2 smart kids at the same level, hard work will determine who comes in on top. There needs to be a way to ID these kids so that it's not just IQ but a combination of hard work and intelligence.

Also Gifted is a horrible name. It should be high achievers. My view is that geniuses are made not born.

</comment><comment><USER21> It's upsetting that we've known about this for decades from an insane random experiment that would never pass review today. Consider the 1966 study by Rosenthal and Jacobson "Teachers' Expectancies: Determinants Of Pupils' IQ Gains"[0]

> Within each of 18 classrooms, an average of 20% of the children were > reported to classroom teachers as showing unusual potential for intellectual > gains. Eight months later these "unusual" children (who had actually been > selected at random) showed significantly greater gains in IQ than did the > remaining children in the control group. These effects of teachers' > expectancies operated primarily among the younger children.

[0]: [http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.495...](http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.495.5453&rep=rep1&type=pdf) [1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pygmalion_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pygmalion_effect)

<comment><USER22> You can push g around quite a bit at an early age, but by adulthood everyone regresses back to their original potential. This is just another way of saying there is a shared environmental component to g at an early age, but none in adulthood [0].

0\. There is a shared environmental component for deprived shared environments, but it has to be very extreme to not washout by adulthood.

<comment><USER14> Ok, but g is an abstract psychological theory, not practical achievement and success in life.

<comment><USER22> Yes g is abstract, but it is more a summary of all the different factors that go into intelligence. It explains the otherwise very puzzling fact that if you measure one aspect of intelligence (say speed at which someone can do simple arithmetic) you can predict well how well they will do on something totally different (say identifying grammatical errors in a text).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> In my experience, children don't thrive in one-size-fits-all programming. I apply intuitions from computer science when I think about this.

As an example, let's look at teaching them to use the word "yet" when speaking negatively about themselves.

This is a practice I took up at one point in my recovery from information addiction. It wasn't enough to really open me up. I had to make several other language hacks. I learned how to speak in active voice, largely dropped the words can't/should/shouldn't, and redefined a whole host of words for myself. I had to believe what I said, too, which we're awful at teaching how to do. I'm guessing it's because science is taught in a way that typically undermines the skill of choosing beliefs.

I had to hack my language way more and I think a generalized approach to teach kids how to identify words they use to undermine themselves will work better than being told what words they need to change. The purpose of the hacks is to change their perception, after all. Language is an indicator, but without a process to identify what meaning they give you words and what they believe, we probably won't see much improvement if we focus on superficial language hacks. Hacking perception takes more than that.

<comment><USER23> I'm a little confused. Why did you start to change the way your spoke? I understand using the word "yet", but why the other ones like dropping "can't"?

>I had to hack my language way more and I think a generalized approach to teach kids how to identify words they use to undermine themselves will work better than being told what words they need to change.

Is this approach of yours about being more positive and less normative, and also being more optimistic that you can improve?

<comment><USER11> I started working on active vs passive voice at the request of a therapist who recognized I was taking a very passive approach to life and thought the language shift might help with a mental shift. I found it helped me realize the ways I could change my behavior. Simply the act of monitoring and correcting my language was a practice in taking a more active role in my life.

I dropped most words with opposites as a practice in nonjudgment. I kept a few around, like "love" and "can" because they're useful. "Can't" implies a belief that something's impossible. Believing that can keep us from imagining ways things CAN happen. It's therefore not useful to adopt the belief of "can't" if we want to explore possibilities. Having an exploratory mindset is really helpful while trying to learn how to meet one's needs.

This approach is about seeing a way through things by learning to let go of how I judge something in order to see a way through it. Everything is a learning opportunity, so I'm working to enable/configure myself to learn more frequently. I do experience deep optimism. As for positivity, I prefer to acknowledge both sides of the coin.

Does that answer your questions?

<comment><USER24> Partially, yes. Can you give some more examples of changes you've made to your use of language? Also, is this for speaking only or writing too?

>I dropped most words with opposites as a practice in nonjudgment.

Don't pretty much all words have opposites? Looking at verbs, it's hard to think of ones that lack an opposite.

I really like this general idea, and thinking about it, I want to alter my language accordingly. I would appreciate any resources.

<comment><USER11> This is for speaking/writing/doing, which is to say it's for thinking/being.

A core set of principles and language hacks came from nonviolent communication. I practically started with it and added a practice of acknowledging both words and their opposites (Maybe I mean adjectives with opposites, but maybe try it with whatever opposite-having words you catch?).

Here's a great free resource for NVC: [https://youtu.be/O4tUVqsjQ2I](https://youtu.be/O4tUVqsjQ2I)

The nonjudgment practice went something like this:

1\. Hear/read a word I detected as having an opposite.

2\. Say "eh...<first word>...<its opposite>...eh" while shrugging and mentally considering the opposite within the same context.

3 weeks after having adopted the practice every day, I started enjoying foods I'd historically hated. Then I began enjoying everything in the world more, including people, country music, and watching sports.

Let's connect off-site and keep this convo going.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> A simple way to help _any_ kid: find out what he enjoys the most and help him to do more of it. Rinse. Repeat. No compulsion. No testing.

<comment><USER26> Maybe if the kid enjoys torturing animals a different approach is better.

<comment><USER27> I know you're joking but there is an approach that seems to salvage some of those kids. [https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/06/when- yo...](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/06/when-your-child- is-a-psychopath/524502/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Unless they score very high on an _adult_ test it's impossible to tell how well they will do on the same test when they get older. So it's impossible to tell if a child is gifted or not. It has more to do with motivation and family support. One problem when everything is easy at young age is that they do not learn to work hard, and when their peers develop to the same level it will be very though for these children because in their mind they are the best.

</comment><comment><USER29> I think there are a lot of good points being made here re: nature vs. nurture and not allowing children to have a childhood.

As long as we agree that education should be a part of childhood, a good middle ground would be normalizing "skipping grades." It was definitely beneficial for me from a life and academic standpoint, the only negatives were social ostracism which decreased as I got older. I think this ostracism from peers would decrease if it was considered normal to skip.

</comment><comment><USER30> My personal opinion especially now is that gifted programs are a waste of time for the following reasons:

1) All students should be learning the fundamentals.

2) If you are gifted, being able to work with, communicate with, and help people less gifted than you is going to be a valuable life skill.

3) Finding new intellectually challenging things to do even in boring circumstances is a useful skill to learn. Even Einstein had to sit through boring faculty meetings.

4) In a gifted class, the child is probably substantially smarter than the teachers. Highly gifted people aren't going into elementary education in large enough numbers for their to be enough gifted teachers for the number of gifted students.

5) With the Internet and widespread knowledge, the truly gifted can learn so much on their own. Once a child knows how to read, curiosity, ability, and time are the only limits. With a truly gifted child, the less challenging the schoolwork is, the more time and energy they can dedicate to other things.

6) A stable, nurturing family that values and encourages intellectual achievement is probably far more important than what kind of school you go to as long as the school is competent.

With regards to number 5, how many of you that learned programming as a kid, leaned it in school vs learned it on your own by reading books or via the Internet?

As a society we should strive to make school something that teaches to basics well for all children and stimulates curiosity and gives children the necessary tools to learn on their own.

* As an example of a gifted child, Von Neumann [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_von_Neumann](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_von_Neumann) is a much better example than Einstein.

</comment><comment><USER31> I benefitted a lot from my public school district's pull-out gifted program (about 10% of days spent there, but 100% of the value I got out of school), as well as JHU's SMPY/SET/CTY.

</comment><comment><USER32> Having been labeled "gifted" and various things, growing up (and "blowing" a few grade curves, either pleasing or pissing off the instructor, depending upon their personality).

And after having suffered immensely, simultaneously, particularly because no one accepted what I actually said: "I need peace and quiet to work." "Stop fighting." "Just leave me alone."

Number one way to nuture gifted children (per me): TEACH THEM TO STAND UP FOR THEMSELVES. AND TO RESPECT THEMSELVES, RATHER THAN CONSTANTLY DIMINISHING THEM WITH "CORRECTIONS" AND "COMPLIANCE".

I was a pretty nice kid. And I've tried to be a pretty nice guy, as an adult. (I don't know, maybe I ended up partly being that "nice guy", as well... Clueless.)

I didn't need a bunch of "socialization". I needed some acknowledgement and acceptance of what worked for me, and what didn't.

And some HONESTY. Some of the things that most fucked me over, were people being dishonest. Whether maliciously or with "good intentions".

So, if someone had taught me how to (physically, when necessary) keep the bullies off. And that I could indeed trust my intuition.

Well, retrospect, but I kind of think I would have had the rest.

In most of my classes, I pretty much ended up teaching myself, anyway. And I remember the subset of genuinely _good_ instructors who did teach me things.

They didn't merely recite. They _paid attention_ , and added things they could see would be informative and useful to me.

"Gifted". Right there, in the use of that term: You're often dealing with someone who doesn't "get it".

/bitterness

P.S. Lately, I've been on a medication that tends to get me a bit ramped up while also short-circuiting some of my natural "attention to detail" (aka "pause and check", etc.) This may be reflected in some of my posts. Sorry.

Also, why didn't I do this for myself, as an adult. Well, the last couple of years of college and right after, prior history culminated in a couple of serious injuries that took away from my physical capabilities.

I'll add that, in my personal experience, that's a real cut-off: Once you experience physiological losses you can't recoup, your world changes. The journey back from that is much more difficult, especially if/when they start to snowball.

Another real reason to teach kids how to take care of themselves. And to respect themselves (NOT what you arbitrarily tell them). Get them self- sufficient in keeping themselves in good health. "Health is wealth". Boy, did I learn the aptness of that as I got older.

</comment><comment><USER33> Paywall.

<comment> the-dude Web link

<comment><USER33> I don't understand your comment. I can not read the article as it says "You've reached your article limit."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Paywall makes it impossible for most people to read this article.</comment>