Maker's Schedule, Manager's Schedule (2009) - <AUTHOR> http://www.paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html <comment><USER2> This is directly analogous to memory allocation[1].

Your day is the heap of all available memory.

"Manager time" is a small allocation. Since the manager's heap only uses blocks this size, she can do this all day without any problems or fragmentation.

"Maker time" is a large contiguous block. If the heap is empty, you can allocate them without any problem. But stick one manager-sized block in the middle and now you've split your heap such that the total time available is large enough, but it's not contiguous. Classic heap fragmentation[2].

pg's solution is the classic one in memory management: memory pools[3]. Partition your heap into regions for different-sized allocations. Small allocations always go in one region, large ones in another. "Office hours" is your small block allocator.

I often hear people say, "Look, I program in <high level language> with <giant standard library> all day. Why should I care about this old low level CS stuff? It's already been done for me!"

This is a great example to me of how those old concepts are still useful once you realize they are only a single analogy away from being about your new high level problem.

[1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_management](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_management) [2]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fragmentation_(computing)#Exte...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fragmentation_\(computing\)#External_fragmentation) [3]: [http://gameprogrammingpatterns.com/object- pool.html](http://gameprogrammingpatterns.com/object-pool.html)

<comment><USER3> Hah, wow. What a great reply. Props to you, man. That's just a terrific analogy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> As a relatively recent manager (former dev), I've embraced the idea that it's my job to be interrupted. It's not a bug, it's a feature. It signals that the interrupter's time is more important than mine, which is what I want for people on my team.

Any new manager should embrace this, and moreso, develop the skill to be interrupted gracefully.

<comment><USER5> I think that is certainly the way, any manager or lead developer should always open to interruption, that way we can manage our team.

Being a lead dev or manager, i think we should always expect less coding.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've been sharing this article around for years, especially in the enterprise gigs that I dayjob at. It really clarifies a lot for people, even people with zero interest in startups.

If they're really interested, I usually advise them to take a few hours some afternoon and read through all of pg's essays.

<comment><USER7> Cool! Did you get positive feedback from the people who read them? I mean, PG is quite critical regarding large enterprises, which might cause some people to discard him.

<comment><USER6> Oh, sure. Everyone gets it, managers included (and sometimes, it helps them be a bit more sensitive). And anyone who works in the bowels of Big Enterprise is more critical than pg on the subject. We have the scars.

That said, I think the Silicon Valley startup community is profoundly ignorant about the enterprise, and its strengths as well as its weaknesses. There's this perception that the enterprise sucks because people there are lazy and stupid. Not true! Much of the problem is just because the enterprise will tackle problems so large and overwhelming that they're just really, really hard to win, hard to make sense. The problem with enterprise projects isn't the result of laziness or stupidity. The problem is that this is the best that really smart, hardworking people can do at that scale.

<comment><USER8> I agree with a handful of your points, but I think the biggest thing broken with enterprises is that accountability is hyper-distributed, both internally (through massive org/bureaucracy) and externally (by selling things to your users', bosses', bosses) and not having a clean enough feedback loop.

It makes them effectively irrational machines, who can survive (or die) fairly independently of their ability to create value.

I think these misaligned incentives are the reason Enterprise projects suck, not because people are lazy and stupid (is anyone really honestly arguing that?), but also not because we've literally reached some hard-limit on the theoretical ability for 6,000 people to do great work.

I also disagree that the problems enterprises purport to be tackling are all that large or overwhelming... not that they're not large or even overwhelming, but the idea that some group working on Oracle's Business Intelligence Solutions is saddled with a much harder problem than I dunno... Google, or Oculus, or NewRelic is _super_ hard for me to swallow.

<comment><USER6> Good points. I've worked a lot in banking and healthcare, so where I see complexity isn't the software so much as the regulatory environment. This leads to a much more process-intensive way to work.

I was in a brief conversation this morning about Conway's Law in the enterprise, and something I realized (I'm surprised I'd never realized it before) is that that ever-changing fault lines of corporate org structures break existing, successful software projects. Conway's Law says you create software that is a reflection of your organizational structure. What if the org structure changes, but you have a valuable legacy software product to support? Now the software and the organization are at odds with one another. That feels like a Big Truth to me, one of the key reasons things get screwed up in the enterprise.

<comment><USER9> Another factor is that sometimes the software becomes the "battleground" between different facets of the company, especially when there's some social/organizational problem nobody is capable or willing to deal with. By spending money (dev effort) and eroding the software, the company gets palliative care.

Hypothetical example... suppose Sales makes little white lies when quotas are looming or commissions are at risk. This causes problems for Finance when they have to reconcile some things down the line. Rather than fixing incentives, a feature-request comes in for a meaningless "I Pinky-Swear I'm Telling The Truth" checkbox that all sales-people must tick in the workflow.

Next release, the sales-people complain about the unnecessary extra time it takes, and there's a counter-effort to make it ticked by default for users in certain "trusted" roles.

Either way, it hasn't helped much, because the sales-supervisors have no incentive or willpower to chasten the salesfolk for broken pinky-swears. So a new feature-request comes in, for "Sale Validation Logic" or "Sale Approval System"...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm in a position where I spend half my time working on "manager's schedule". After a relatively short time of doing so, I adopted the trick of scheduling an all-day meeting for Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. Then, when people want to schedule a meeting (regular or recurring), and it isn't incredibly urgent, they'll generally default to Monday or Tuesday, days where I primarily handle meetings, email, and short activities. This works well with automated tools that find the next available timeslot that everyone has marked as "free". Occasionally, someone will ask if I can accommodate something urgent on Wed- Fri, to which the answer is usually "yes", but despite that, I tend to have 7-8 hours of uninterrupted time on those days.

<comment><USER11> I use the same trick by blocking out my whole afternoon every day, and find that it works really well. It turns out that most meetings have no particular time that they need to be scheduled for, so this gives me maker schedule time and makes me far more productive.

One caveat is that if many people in an org start doing this it might become difficult to schedule things, in which case it might be useful for the whole company to coordinate (eg "no meeting Mondays").

<comment><USER12> I do the same but the other way round (maker = morning, manager = afternoon).

I find that sometimes at night I wake up and think about problems and it's best to put them into practice in the morning, before absorbing all the noise during the day.

When I'm really lucky, I just schedule 2h manager time after lunch (because there my stomach is full and my productivity low) and then return to maker schedule.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> A hot tip that may help others, here at Dropbox a lot of the engineers (and other folks) schedule "maker time" in their calendar and when people see that they respect those times as sacred and won't bother the person.

<comment><USER5> Do they each really keep a calendar filled with schedule in their desk? :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I sent this post to my boss at a previous job. Why? Because I became tired of his constant interruptions. One week I decided to keep track of his interruptions. The average number of interruptions -- just from him -- was 10, with a maximum of 17. His response was "You need to learn to get more work done between my interruptions, so I won't need to interrupt you so much to check on you."

Just one of many reasons why I don't work there anymore.

</comment><comment><USER15> We've been blocking off Wed/Thurs as no meetings day for engineers largely inspired by this article. It's amazing how much you'll get done with 2 days a week uninterrupted. Down side is that it's tough to schedule a meeting (and room), so some meetings get pushed back by days or weeks.

<comment><USER16> That's not a bad thing. It means meeting time is precious and valuable, so the bar for meetings is higher. People are also less likely to put up with non- productive meetings.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Definitely one of pg's simplest and most enduring essays - it resonated with me in 2009, and I continue to reference it (most recently while delivering a presentation to business owners yesterday morning).

There's a direct analogy (I believe) with the concept of Fast paced / Slow paced behavioural preference some of my business and health colleagues have developed [1]. I find that process (and there's an online indicator that can score you) fascinating because it looks at Maker/Manager (Slow/Fast) time for Leisure, Nutrition, and Exercise as well as Business. I'm quite consistently the Slow/ Maker's Schedule in all areas of my life, but work with some people who are opposite between Work and Home as a form of life balance.

[1] [http://www.shirlawscompass.com/pacefaq](http://www.shirlawscompass.com/pacefaq)

</comment><comment><USER18> The day unit is not the only unit in play. I split my week up this way, where I try to keep one day in the business schedule and four days in the maker's schedule. Unfortunately, as my career has progressed I've started putting two days into the manager's schedule and three days into the maker's schedule, but I find this a highly effective partitioning scheme. You have all your coffee meetings and whatnot on a day of the week of your own designation.

</comment><comment><USER19> Sidenote: Customer's Schedule both trumps and ruins both.

<comment><USER20> Sidenote to sidenote: If the customer is too unreasonable, then the developer finds a new job elsewhere. A manager's job is to balance these polar opposites in a way which makes the company prosper.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Never thought of it that way, but your right on. And even small things can turn into an afternoon chasing something down or rewriting things. I always wondered about "programmers block" similar to "writers block", too. The article reminded me of it because it groups writes and such into a group makers.

</comment><comment><USER22> As a maker-turn-manager I've become skeptical of this perspective. I think it's indulgent and misdirected. Yes, if _I_ as a manager schedule _your_ time, I'm probably not going to schedule it for your best performance. But I don't think the problem that as a manager I don't leave you giant blocks of uninterrupted time. It's that as a manager I tend to interrupt your time with meetings that serve _my_ role, and a manager's role tends to be focused on prediction, expectations, upward-directed planning, balancing work, status, risk... all things that aren't even intended to improve actual execution. In theory of course a manager is supposed to be focused on team performance and execution, but the heaviest pressure on a manager is about how the team fits into the larger organization, not how the team works.

If a maker's days are interrupted by meetings that are genuinely structured to improve their execution, I don't think the interruption is very concerning, and may be beneficial. This theory about a Maker's Schedule, and these theories around attention, make these positive interruptions less likely to happen – the maker's become skittish about all meetings, become reclusive, sometimes causing a downward spiral because the maker _actually needs_ those meetings and becomes more reclusive out of shame because the maker is confused and performing poorly. Defensively the maker reacts against the structure that remains – the structure of meetings created by the manager, meetings which aren't supportive, where the maker is not sufficiently engaged to feel confident in repurposing the meeting... but the dysfunction is that in the face of these meetings a better response would be more meetings, better meetings, meetings where the makers leave the meeting ahead of where they started instead of behind. But don't expect the managers to call those meetings – frankly as a manager I often can't make those meetings happen even when I want to.

I'll also copy a post I wrote on the topic ([https://plus.google.com/u/0/+IanBicking/posts/jgJCdMkzyBE](https://plus.google.com/u/0/+IanBicking/posts/jgJCdMkzyBE)):

I'm somewhat pro-meeting, which maybe puts me at odds with the cultural norms of developers.

I think I realize some of the problem. Meetings tend to be called by managers. Managers have management goals. Process, deadlines, coordination, etc. The developer sits around in case they provide some important input on one of those topics, or to give status, or to commit to a deadline. Nothing in that kind of meeting helps the developer's work. And the developer tries their best to withhold, to protect their own work, but also to protect the project which actually needs that output.

In a developer-oriented meeting the topics would be decisions to make, architectural choices to consider, noting places of tension where a creative solution could be helpful. In a developer meeting it is reasonable to take some time to look at code. To do a bit of research – right in the meeting – to answer a question. To brainstorm ideas. If a problem is hard, it is reasonable that everyone go silent for a minute and ponder the problem.

In The New Science of Building Great Teams ([https://hbr.org/2012/04/the-new- science-of-building-great-te...](https://hbr.org/2012/04/the-new-science-of- building-great-teams)) they discuss some evidence-based observations about communication patterns. In it they suggest that high levels of communication lead to more productivity. By developer sensibilities, _very_ high levels. But mostly peer interactions – developers interacting with developers.

I'd really extend this to all the people engaged in making the product, design, user experience, user research, development, probably support and other roles. In an ideal model there would be dozens of meetings, as different sets of these people came together to talk about what is relevant to those groups of people. These meetings would not have clear and firm agendas, the product is the agenda, finding the agenda is some of the work of the meeting.

It's easy to blame management for the unproductive meetings. We're calling these snooze-fest status meetings. But I'd turn it around: professionals shouldn't depend on management to initiate meetings. Sure management can try; I try to setup meetings I think will be productive for other people. The Standup is the quintessential example. But we know where those so often end up: as yet another management-led status meeting. And it's a form without a clear purpose. Who should be in the standup? What should we talk about? When those things are defined by management we get management-style answers. Even better than trying to fix the standup, keep it from being necessary: make the meetings that help everyone do their work, where the topic is always execution and not prediction or planning or status.

With Project Managers and other professions focused on planning there is a danger that we defer to the specialists. But everything needs to be planned. The next line of code I write has to be planned. Developers have to be planners, every one of them.

</comment><comment><USER23> Another factor here is lots of pointless meetings, especially ones that rehash status or repeat status when there are no updates, are especially demotivating.

Design meetings, one can live for, if one is interested in how to solve a problem. Killing the design meetings is probably something to be avoided.

The zone exists, to an extent. I sometimes think there are parallels to something like videogame-esque canon that takes a long time to charge up. The best work I'm going to do is going to come at some random hour during the day, and if I'm interrupted, the charge counter is likely to reset. But maybe not.

I'm sort of interrupt driven at times, and I think our culture being very triggered by email, phones, other things, can cause people to wait for interruptions to do things too.

So there's a balance. But yes, pointless meetings are bad things. But it's ugly when there are meetings you have to have, and there's a backlash against the manager calling the meeting, because then "the manager is something different", and I think there's a bit of negative legacy to this article in that vein.

Really, I think the question is to ask, at the end of whatever meetings, how much value did you get out of it, and what actionable conclusions came out of that meeting. If the meeting doesn't produce action items (that hopefully get done before the next meeting of the same kind), it's not a good meeting.

And meetings are really about getting people together that need to talk about something. If it's not that, then don't do it :)

Make sure everybody's time in there is valuable. If you have a meeting where somebody only talks for thirty seconds out of an hour, it's probably not worth that person's time. However, it's also destructive to think a meeting isn't worth someone's time, and use that to "protect" their time.

Everybody should get to be involved in some decision making that wants to be.

Do I find that in technical-manager-mode I can't code very well because I'm too distracted by 1000 different things? Yes, pretty much. And one of the first things I do is try to cut the B.S. management meetings and make sure the ones I'm involved in is important. If you can't cut that, it's frustrating.

But the complexity of having more people means conversations to organize things do have to happen, and to crush them in the spirit of "meetings are bad" can be dangerous too.

I think that's wrong. Again, the important part is to have the right meetings. If you can block them out to happen during major blocks of time just a few days a week - most of the time - I think that's great.</comment>


Ask HN: Is it okay to lie to sell your product? - <AUTHOR>

What is your take on lying to sell a product?
Does it mean to say that the product does not have real value to customer or Is it "okay" in any ways? <comment><USER2> I've been on both sides of this. I've been in meetings where people from a company I worked for oversold a product (promised features that didn't exist) and I've been in the receiving end as well. It never works out well. At best you'll end up making your team miserable to deliver on the lies you've told, probably delivering a subpar product in the process. In the worst case you'll be called out as a liar by your customer.

Sell your product by making something that delights your customers/users.

</comment><comment><USER3> Fraud is a deception deliberately practiced in order to secure unfair or unlawful gain (adjectival form fraudulent; to defraud is the verb).[1] As a legal construct, fraud is both a civil wrong (i.e., a fraud victim may sue the fraud perpetrator to avoid the fraud and/or recover monetary compensation) and a criminal wrong (i.e., a fraud perpetrator may be prosecuted and imprisoned by governmental authorities). Defrauding people or organizations of money or valuables is the usual purpose of fraud, but it sometimes instead involves obtaining benefits without actually depriving anyone of money or valuables, such as obtaining a drivers license by way of false statements made in an application for the same.[2]

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

</comment><comment><USER4> Is it okay to lie to sell your product?

No.

Even ignoring the issue of morality (which you shouldn't), what happens to your company when the lie is discovered?

</comment><comment><USER5> be straight with your customers; never lie to a sales prospect.

sales is not just about getting a deal done: each customer represents potential upsell and references. you lose those possibilities when you lie because the lie will generally be uncovered.

this is why good sales orgs emphasize integrity in the hiring process. unethical salespeople damage customer relationships, the company reputation and the bottom line.

</comment><comment><USER6> Define the word "lying". Now compare your definition with "marketing", "advertising" and stretching the truth.</comment>


The Best Industries For Starting a Business Right Now - <AUTHOR> http://www.inc.com/ss/best-industries-starting-business-right-now <comment><USER2> Printer (& Human) Friendly Version: <http://www.inc.com/print/579>

</comment><comment><USER3> Somebody I know of -- and memory escapes whether I have permission to mention the specifics, so I won't -- runs a rather successful software business based on solving one "technically undemanding but financially pressing" problem for one of these industries.

<comment><USER4> That kind of company is a recurring theme in entrepreneurial pep talks of Waterloo econ professor Larry Smith.

He spins very intriguing tales of recent graduates creating companies in extremely tiny niches (single or double digits of possible worldwide customers) that, while not very exciting, solve problems that companies will gladly pay "big bucks" for. These are business problems where companies are desperately throwing many times more money at less efficient solutions or know they are leaving huge amounts of money on the table by not having a better solution.

He has a few talks where he talks about some success stories that he happens to know about because he's advised them as former students. Nobody knows how many "under the radar" companies like this there are, but I would bet it's far easier to make a fortune from a company that fits this profile than a Google acquisition.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I would disagree with (1). For a start, the industry, at the moment, heavily relies on government subsidies to stay in business. Those subsidies are either in the form of rebates for purchases, rebates in the form of artificially high electricity buyback prices, or more favourable tax treatment or other perks (electric cars & city parking, for example)

While the political winds are blowing in your favour it might be plain sailing, but any business that does not have a fundamental basis in return on investment without subsidy is highly risky. With the endless talk of reining in government spending in countries all around the world, any industry relying on government subsidies to keep it afloat has a large risk factor of cuts to those subsidies resulting from a switch in government.

Exceptions to this are probably in personalised, high end sales and consulting to wealthy businesses and individuals who want the technology for the wow factor. Because a self-sustaining office or house will continue to be something that people desire when cost is no longer a factor. This trend will change slowly and be well-signalled by the next 'shiny new thing' that these people want.

Politicians are the worst kind of business partner. Keen to take the credit and revenues, and then run like the wind when it's no longer a vote winner and leave you with the leftovers.

<comment><USER6> The cost of traditional energy (gas, electric, etc) is only going in one direction. In fact, the level of subsidies in those traditional sectors dwarfs those you mention.

That said, to your warning regarding politicians and "government run " industries, I couldn't agree more.

<comment><USER5> I've never seen any credible evidence to support the theory that major power generation is subsidised to even a fraction of what wind/solar is.

Certainly, where I live, all electricity is generated by coal powered generation. The state government is a net winner on this because they receive royalties for the coal dug up. There's certainly no subsidy. The only upward pressure on the price of electricity is, again, political. There's enough coal in the ground to provide cheap power for centuries, the only thing that is going to change that is laws made by politicians to either restrict the building of new power stations, or to lump the power stations with extra costs. Again, both of these changes would be politically led, rather than anything occuring naturally in the marketplace. As a perfect competitor for alternative energy, political changes in towards coal powered electricity would be just as devastating as political changes away from alternative energy. I'm not commenting on the 'correctness' of either change, just saying that both are equally as likely, thus making the sector the last thing I would get involved in.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Most of this list is from anything research.com. This list fascinates me more:

[http://www.anythingresearch.com/Top-Industries/Market- Fragme...](http://www.anythingresearch.com/Top-Industries/Market- Fragmentation.htm)

<comment><USER8> What they all have in common is a requirement for individualized service and a strong emotional quality-of-life component. If you have the skills to do well in any of these spheres then you probably enjoy a _lot_ of repeat business. Successfully franchising that is difficult because it's not obvious where the economies of scale are, plus the typical franchisee is looking to leverage a brand rather than obsessing-to-excel.

One area where it does work, which you might find surprising, is bars - particularly Irish bars (or pubs, as we like to call them). Over in the UK and Ireland, the vast majority of pubs are owned by retail groups rather than being individual businesses. If you google 'Irish pub franchise' not only will you find an opportunity to open up your own 'authentic' Irish pub, you'll find a large number of companies offering similar franchises. In my San Francisco neighborhood, there are two actual Irish pubs (which have both good and bad aspects; more fun but much worse hangovers), and two fake ones.

They look superficially similar: lots of dark wood, lots of old Irish signs and historical photographs hanging on the walls, plenty of Irish booze and loud-ish music several nights a week (real pubs have a jukebox or karaoke; fake ones buy a piano and hire performers). I sometimes go to the nearest fake one because they have decent food. While waiting for the restroom one evening I was passing the time by looking at the many 'historical' photos on the wall, only to notice that on close inspection you can see jpeg artifacts on all of them! My folks in Ireland tell me there's a thriving light industry in making authentic-looking but completely fake old agricultural/domestic tools, like grass scythes and mangles (for washing clothes), all destined for export to the US where they are used to decorate 'traditional' Irish pubs.

Edit: on rereading, this sounds as if I spend all my free time at the other pubs, but in fact I'm getting too old for that :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> How many people at YC have proposed starting a ferry company I wonder?

<comment><USER10> I've often thought about starting a business that's outside of my skills/competencies, but I suspect that, much like a non-programmer doing a software business, there's much I don't know, which would lead me to failure.

OTOH us developer types do know how to learn :) so maybe my fears are misplaced.

I never gave serious thought about a ferry, but I have sometimes wondered about it (when stuck in traffic :) ).

There is a potential ferry route over here (Bay of Montevideo) from the wealthier residential neighbourhoods to downtown that should be faster than the land route during peak hours, as it avoids congestion.

However, I don't know if the potential customers would tolerate sea-sickness or bad weather, or if the time savings would be enough, or even if it could be made profitable when competing against subsidized public transportation... (quite a few unknown variables).

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> wow that site thoroughly broke my back button

</comment><comment><USER12> 1) Environmental Consulting, 2) Translation and Interpretation Services, 3) Home Health Care, _4) Mobile App Design_ , 5) Ferryboats and Inland Water Transportation, 6) Tea and Healthy Beverages, 7) Fun, Games, and Hobbies, 8) Exam Preparation and Tutoring, 9) Bakeries and Baked Goods, 10) Self-Storage Leasing, 11) Handmade and Vintage Goods Online, 12) Medicinal Marijuana Retailing, 13) Self-Published Video Games, 14) Blood, Plasma, and Sperm Banks, 15) Water Supply and Irrigation Systems, 15) Safety and Quality Testing

</comment><comment><USER13> I was surprised to see Bakeries and Baked Goods (9). I know someone selling an established commercial bakery in a major metro area. I don't think the margins or growth are all that great. (But I could be wrong.)

As an aside, I have it from a principal in a private equity fund that he's seeing a big up-tick in the number of businesses for sale.

<comment><USER5> Given the appallingly low quality of most baked goods in the USA, I think there is a lot of headroom for growth in fresh bakery stores. Done well, it's got every chance of becoming the next 'starbucks'. Who would have said 20 years ago that premium priced coffee would be a growth industry?

In European countries, even the smallest two-horse town supports a local bakery, and most small french towns will have several. It's part of the lifestyle to buy bread fresh each day and eating processed factory produced bread is just not done. Anyone who has eaten a fresh baguette from a french bakery will know what I'm talking about.

You could say the same about coffee in the USA today - who will pass up a freshly brewed cup over some processed instant coffee, even though the price is 20 times higher for that latte? The cupcake craze might be the first leg in a takeup of small bakeries offering freshly baked goods which become woven into people's daily lives.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> One of the most interesting trends that I don't see a lot of people talking about is Mass Customization. Part of this is because people haven't fully figured out the answer, but that just means there's a lot of money to be made.

</comment><comment><USER15> "Medicinal marijuana retailing"? Now, there's a business!

<comment><USER16> A friend of mine did that in california for a few years. He was completely legit, rented a warehouse, payroll, taxes, etc. It's a bit too counter- cultural for me (although I don't have a problem with it) but he was good at it.

<comment><USER17> Did your friend quit to do something else? [He sounds like a good Reddit IamA candidate.]

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> "This industry is well suited to independent contractors with the skills to install environmental gear such as wind turbines. . ."

This doesn't sound right. Installing wind turbines is in the domain of huge energy corporations, as far as I know.

<comment><USER19> I don't know about the US, but here in Europe there are huge numbers of small wind and solar installations going up on residential and commercial property. Architects and energy experts are calling it "eco-bling" - largely useless, but a highly visible and expensive way of signalling how much you care for the environment. I've lost count of the number of solar panels I've seen fitted on the north side of a building so as to face the main entrance rather than the sun.

<comment><USER9> The same sort of thing is happening here in the US as well.

<comment><USER20> There is a difference. The solar panels in Europe go up everywhere nothing compared to US you see. Some countries in Europe have a highly subsidized government programs where you get paid 50c per KWh for so many years. That spurred a rush to install a panel on the roof top and with it came many small solar installers/companies.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


C++: A language for next generation web apps - <AUTHOR> http://stevehanov.ca/blog/index.php?id=95

<comment><USER2> To be fair, after coming back to C++ after years in the world of Python and Haskell, it's not as bad as I remembered.

C++ is actually a moderately effective functional programming language. With reasonable knowledge of the standard data structures, and using BOOST, one can actually write fairly expressive and effective C++ code.

Most of the time, I feel like all I'm doing is writing a much more verbose version of Python. The rest of the time, I'm hunting nightmarish segfaults and segfault and template errors.

<comment><USER3> Oddly enough I'm back to C++ too, after Ruby.

One nice thing is; in a fast language, tests run quickly too.

Also, Python and Ruby don't have the equivalent of an ASSERT (you could roll your own but it's not _standard practice_ ).

Also, C++ has standard hash lists and complicated data structure are actually going to run quickly.

And while memory management can be a pain, you are doing it yourself so you can track down memory leaks rather than having them be inherent in the interpreter...

... _as in Ruby AND Mono_.

<comment><USER4> C++ doesn't actually have a standard "hash list" (I assume you meant hash map or hash set?). Depending on your implementation, you either have hash_{map,set}, unordered_{map,set}, both, or something entirely different. tr1 specified unordered_{map,set}, but tr1 is only technically a proposal, not a standard.

I think a safe assumption is that tr1::unordered_{map,set} will be available in all implementations by now, but until C++0x is ratified and implemented by major compilers, you will run into different platforms having (possibly) different implementations. And lets be honest - even after C++0x has been implemented in major compilers, you will _still_ have subtly different/buggy implementations.

 _edit:_ I had conflated {hash,unordered}_{set,map}. Fixed

<comment><USER5> Nah, the committee isn't going to change unordered_set or unordered_map; they're struggling with far more urgent things, to finish the std off. Those have already gotten the full treatment, they have the usual std:: collection interface; what's to change?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's perfectly sane to write web _services_ (computationally heavy processes accessed via REST) in C++. But for the algorithm-light, marketing-heavy _frontend_ to such a service, use something easier—the optimizations C++ offers aren't worth it there.

<comment><USER7> I don't have any experience with it, but I'm under the impression that MSVC / C++.net has all the goodies you'd need to do the easy frontend stuff also?

<comment><USER8> Sort of - I don't think that the web templates and CodeDom are there like they are for VB/C#. It's also kind of a mess going between managed and unmanaged code, which you'd be doing extensively if you want to use the System.Web namespace. Managing references on the managed heap is an extra hassle that has a fair amount of complexity. To top it all off, the support for the managed C++ extensions has been lackluster.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I thought at first that the article was sarcastic :-| I mean, what's taking time is not whether you use ruby python or c++ but the http request, request to the DB, IO or javascript loading..

And anyway, the part that really need to be optimized can still be done in C even if you use python.

There was a time I was a C++ guy who wanted to control memory and everything.. but now, I've got other things to do. If I can write 1 line that is more readable and cost less to type, why should I use C++ ?

And by the way, C++ isn't a verbose python. And, even if I once thought that boost was the best thing ever made, I feel that it's a waste of time. Instead of using meta-programming hacks to use lambda in a clumpsy/ugly way, why not simply use python or scheme ?

<comment><USER10> > I thought at first that the article was sarcastic

This article definitely is sarcastic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> IIRC OkCupid uses a webserver and application stack that is all C++

Ref: <http://www.okws.org/doku.php?id=okws>

</comment><comment><USER12> What has not been mentioned at all: how C++ webapps will spell the end of XSS and SQL injection as hackers refocus on the much more interesing but almost- forgotten buffer overflow vulnerabilities.

Oh joy!

<comment><USER13> Such vulnerabilities still exist in PHP, Python and Ruby, because they are written in C. And they are much easier to exploit because almost every web app uses one of these languages.

<comment><USER14> Nonsense. Just because the Python interpreter is written in C does not mean that you can overrun Python strings and smash the stack like you can w/ C strings.

<comment><USER13> Its not just strings, all kinds of data structures are vulnerable. See: [http://www.hardened- php.net/hphp/zend_hash_del_key_or_index_...](http://www.hardened- php.net/hphp/zend_hash_del_key_or_index_vulnerability.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> _"MySql is GPL'd, so you can't even link to its client library in a closed source app."_

AFAIK it's GPLv2 (and not AGPL) so this is only true if you intend to distribute your application itself, not just host it yourself.

<comment><USER16> I believe it does however mean that your application code has to be GPLv2, and thus can't be linked to code using some popular licenses, for example Apache 2.0.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> For a two to three years i was running in a VPS server in VPSLink which had about 64MB of RAM - for everything and without swap space. The target use of this VPS was probably as an email server or something as most people recommended the more expensive 128MB and 256MB plans for serving (static) pages. And actually there were only about 40MB left since the OS needed some memory for itself too.

Personally i thought that with better resources management i could do much more, so i wrote a custom HTTP server in that could fit in less than one MB of RAM. Most of my pages were generated offline using a custom program in FreePascal.

The server could also execute CGI scripts, so i also wrote a forum in FreePascal.

According to my logs, the whole system ran out of memory only once :-). Until the day i decided to give myself a little more features (when i got a much better VPS from Linode) i had about 5-6 sites running (different domains), a Subversion server and a few "dynamic" apps.

The forum can be found here. I still run it in my new VPS, although it got some spam. The a + b = ? anti-spam feature was new when i wrote the forum but seems that bots got better :-P.

<http://www.badsectoracula.com/projects/mforum/>

<comment><USER18> Interesting to see that you used FreePascal! We are also experimenting with FreePascal and (fast)CGI. My collegue put up some sample pages: <http://services.cnoc.nl/lazarus/index/fclweb>

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Let's say C++ can code be executed OVER 9000% faster than python.

However this does not imply a web app written in C++ will run even 1% faster than a web app written in python unless the performance bottleneck is code execution.

If the performance bottleneck is instead the database server (which it almost always is) then choosing C++ for your next webapp would be a _very_ masochistic premature optimization.

</comment><comment><USER20> Way back in 2000, when we launched Planetarion (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetarion>), we used C++ with a custom webframework, and CORBA for communicating with the database.

At our peak late in 2002, we served about 320 million dynamic webpages a month using three desktop Pentium 3's for webservers, and a dual CPU P3 for the database. No caching, as that wasn't needed.

Blazing fast, and not all that difficult to work with once the basic framework was solid and in place.

</comment><comment><USER21> He does have a point about efficiency, or about delivering a single app ... but you also get those advantages with a Java, or a .NET, or even an Erlang or Haskell app which are reasonably efficient ... and still, you won't have to deal with segfaults.

Also, if you want extreme scalability, like being able to serve 10000 requests/sec on a single server ... sorry, but raw performance doesn't cut it ... see this article for instance ... <http://www.kegel.com/c10k.html>.

Not to mention that the most usual bottleneck is the database (how many apps can you build that doesn't use one?). So even if you build the fastest web server in the world, if you're using a RDBMS you're going to end up with 100 reqs/sec, unless you're sharding or caching that data.

The bottom line is ... if you want extreme scalability, I don't think C++ is going to cut it, and you're going to invest a whole lot more in optimizations that are already done in more mature web frameworks.

Well, unless you have Google's resources and skill.

</comment><comment><USER22> "Also, as often overlooked by anyone over 30, you have to handle UTF8 to Unicode conversion, but this is easily achieved in a 10 line function."

lol.

<comment><USER23> I had to read that a few times. What is he talking about?

<comment><USER24>
        1     wchar_t *
        2     utf2wide(const char *utf)
        3     {
        4        size_t len;
        5        wchar_t *wide;
        6        len = mbstowcs(NULL, utf, 0);
        7        wide = malloc(sizeof(*wide) * (len + 1));
        8        mbstowcs(wide, utf, len);
        9        return wide;
        10     }

<comment><USER25> thats C not C++. geesh :P

<comment><USER26> I hear C++ can call C functions these days.

<comment><USER27> It's amazing the bridges technology can create these days. _cough_

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Excellent satire.

<comment><USER28> I thought so too, until I got to the part where he claims it's running rhymebrain! Still can't figure out whether he's joking or not. Naw, on second reading, definitely sarcasm.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> The reason why dynamic scripting languages are more appropriate for web applications than C++ is simply that the bottleneck is somewhere else - namely, the Internet is slow enough to make the performance of the server-side code irrelevant. That can very easily change in the future.

<comment><USER30> Roundtrip latency is certainly going to add up to a substantial chunk of time, but that's not much excuse to discard performance considerations. Requests that take say 50ms of processing will take even longer if the box is busy; it doesn't take much to add up and becomes noticeable.

And if your implementation on the server side is very fast, you can do more.

<comment><USER29> My point was indeed that performance can matter, and will matter even more in the future, since no apparent technological limit on network speed has been reached so far.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> If this guy is really running his web server on an Acer Aspire One 512, as he says at <http://stevehanov.ca/blog/index.php?id=71> C++ sounds like an excellent choice.

</comment><comment><USER32> if you're on an embedded device, this is actually not a satire

<comment><USER33> So, serving web pages from an embedded device? Have we finally got to the "your washing machine is on the Internet" era? :)

<comment><USER34> I can't wait for the RESTful API for my alarm clock, and washer. ;-)

<comment><USER35> For the alarm clock radio with iPod dock I just got for Christmas, I think the RESTful API would be easier to use than the array of buttons on that thing. My wife got the old, red-LED clock radio back out because she knew how to set the alarm on it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Objc is probably a better candidate because it is so dynamic?

<comment> s-phi-nl See <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1046516>

      Web apps in Objective C --- the second-least safe programming language
      on the market. Oh please, oh please, build your next huge application
      in this. College tuition for my kids is freaking me out.

<comment><USER37> That has got to be the dumbest thing I have seen in quite a while. "Smalltalk is garbage-collected. ObjC deals in raw memory addresses. It's actually less secure than C, as I see it" shows a level of fail that is beyond explaining.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Anyone else remember ISAPI?

I still use it. Every day.

It really isn't as terrible as you'd think.

</comment><comment><USER39> I think he does a good job of humorously pointing out the difficulties involved with writing a C++ Webapp, but I don't doubt that he's serious about the performance characteristics being a good thing.

</comment><comment><USER40> Reminded me of this: <http://code.google.com/p/madfish-webtoolkit/>

</comment><comment><USER41> Language {x} would be good as a next generation web app if there was web app libraries. Typically those are not {x}.

</comment><comment><USER42> Was anyone else let down that this was a sarcastic thing and not real?

<comment><USER43> Why believe it's satire? He's got an actual app already deployed and a full history of blog posts demonstrating his knowledge and interest in this field.

<comment><USER43> Here's a link to the C++ code for his app: <http://stevehanov.ca/blog/index.php?id=8>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> I just drank a couple of Pliny the Elders with my neighbor, and now I read this. My head is definitely spinning now.

</comment><comment><USER45> Ending up at C++ because of design constraints is understandable... starting there is idiocy.

</comment><comment><USER46> I missed the <sarcasm> tag.

<comment><USER47> From the article:

 _I gave a_ tongue-in-cheek _talk on how C++ can fit in to a web application._

<comment><USER46> The thruth is, my company maintains a C++ we application. It's implemented as an Apache module and employs some very interesting in-memory shared structures.

And, like I said, I missed that part.

It was not proper markup ;-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> He's lying, C++ apps are not portable.</comment>


An exclusive social network. $75k to signup - <AUTHOR> https://calma.io <comment><USER2> Wow an email address and a VA for $75k. Bargain.

</comment><comment><USER3> A fool and their money are easily parted!</comment>


Twitter is not for teens, Morgan Stanley told by 15-year-old expert - <AUTHOR> http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/jul/13/twitter-teenage-media-habits

<comment><USER2> I didn't know anybody (but me) who read a newspaper when I was 15 either. That was 22 years ago now.

Turns out 15-year-olds have never read newspapers. This revelation may not be enormously useful to them.

<comment><USER3> I did! I was a paperboy, dear god did that teach me about how trashy newspapers are and the shocking amount of people that read the very worst (The Daily Mail was by FAR the most popular on my round).

<comment><USER4> It's the same with everything else in life no? The large number of people who watch trashy TV, the large number of people who eat fast food, etc. Principle of least effort and all that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think the bigger news is that he managed to get someone listen to the painful truth about online advertising: that it's ignored or grudgingly endured with little actual chance of conversion. Moreover, people are actually learning to avoid looking at areas with ads (Banner Blindness: <http://www.useit.com/alertbox/fancy-formatting.html>).

This is not new to web app creators, who long ago discovered that simply adding Adwords to a non-monetize-able service was not the key to vast internet riches.

But as soon as the marketing departments who buy online ads come to grips with this, it's going to be a(n even greater) shock to older content creators (e.g. newspapers) that have placed their hopes on online advertising as the easiest transition to a web-based business.

Of course, I don't have any better ideas, and solving that is indeed the million dollar question.

</comment><comment><USER6> A 15 year old that got a job at Morgan Stanley is supposed to be the average teenager?

</comment><comment><USER7> The "report" is extremely banal, with the only point of interest being the apparent reaction to it. That is, why exactly is the media pretending this is significant in any way?

<comment><USER8> Well, it contains the string "Twitter". (To be fair to the media, I don't think they're "pretending" it's significant - IMHO they, like Morgan Stanley, really have no idea anymore what's significant and what's not. Next stop - Nobel prize :))

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> It took a 15 year old "expert" to point out the obvious? What a world we live in

<comment><USER10> When I was 15 I believed advertising didn't work.

<comment><USER11> I still 'believe' advertising doesn't work, but when I check out how much 'brand' stuff I own and consume I have to admit there is not much basis to my beliefs (this is probably true for most beliefs...).

<comment><USER12> If you don't think advertising works, seven words for you: The Most Interesting Man in the World.

This campaign has done insane wonders for Dos Equis and the ads aren't about beer. They're about some old dude with a beard.

<comment><USER13> I had to look up what you were talking about, so apparently there are still some wonders to be done.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> One interesting difference i see between Facebook & Twitter is that i've never seen someone being peer pressured into signing up to Twitter whereas i see it constantly occur for facebook. I too share the 15 year olds position, i signed up to twitter but hardly anyone i know in real life uses it and i'm not interested in celebrities.

<comment><USER15> From the relatively external POV (I don't care for facebook), this is just the 3rd round of the social pressure thing, the first two being friendster and myspace. Facebook is the first one that has really also dragged in older generations, but that's not enough to prevent it from ending up like the others. Sure, there's no obvious single replacement on the horizon, but the networks have switched platforms en masse twice before and there's no reason to believe they can't again.

In fact, now that all generations are getting acclimated to the concept of social networking, some of those new people will almost certainly start looking beyond facebook, and with interoperable web services this could result in at least a good chunk of the social web increasingly using focused components rather than one monolithic system.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> A sample size of '1' and this guy is an expert ? One would hope that Morgan Stanley knows enough statistics to get a more representative sample, or god forbid a panel.

Of course, if they've managed to corner the one 15 year old whose friends are a perfect cross cut of their group then I stand corrected.

If you generalize from such a small sample size to a large number of individuals you are going to have to include some very large error bars around your 'conclusions'.

<comment><USER16> Here is the article on Bloomberg: [http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601204&sid=aG2U...](http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601204&sid=aG2UIb23pNQ0)

Sample size is the kid + his friends.

If you just choose a child at random, you are likely to get an average child. There isn't just one average kid, there are MANY, and a few weird ones.

<comment><USER11> This kid is from a certain social background and is likely to associate with kids from a similar social background, unless he is a networker par excellence and has contacts all over the globe with teenagers from every income level and education level.

There are untold variations on that, and each of those subgroups has their own 'averages', this kid is at best - and I'm not saying that he is, just leaving open the possibility - in the middle of his own subgroup.

<comment><USER17> Of course, but these are a bunch of middle-aged analysts we're talking about. Actually getting some first-hand information from teenagers is going to be a huge step up regardless of statistical bias.

<comment><USER18> any suggestions for items in a questionnaire? :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> So, a teen points out that many sign up to Twitter but few bother to use the service after the initial novelty wears off.

That reminds me of another fabled kid who pointed out that the emperor was walking around stark naked.

</comment><comment><USER20> If I was a 15 year old, I think I'd find twitter completely useless too. I use twitter for professional networking -- almost everyone I follow or am followed by is a potential customer, vendor, recruit, or employer.

</comment><comment><USER21> Though I can't recall where I read it, I recall reading another source that claimed that teenagers and tweens did not use twitter but instead were more enamored with direct texting.

It would be worth someone actually doing a study of this.

</comment><comment><USER22> Probably a bad sample to go from for the report. Same as getting a "social media guru" who is 15 years old to tell you otherwise.

Twitter isn't liked by teens, but for other reasons outside the article.

</comment><comment><USER23> I'd love to read one of these from the US.

<comment><USER23> It's from the UK. RTFA.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> here it is: [http://media.ft.com/cms/c3852b2e-6f9a-11de- bfc5-00144feabdc0...](http://media.ft.com/cms/c3852b2e-6f9a-11de- bfc5-00144feabdc0.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER10> "So?"

</comment><comment><USER25> And yet NYT stock seems unaffected. Go figure.

<comment><USER26> Down 35% YTD is what you call 'unaffected'?

<comment><USER25> Unaffected by the kid's proclamations.</comment></comment></comment>


Formations in China Desert Are Still a Mystery - <AUTHOR> http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/18/formations-in-china-desert-are-still-a-mystery/

<comment><USER2> I think they are gold/uranium/diamond mines. these minerals are usually found in channels. depending on the concentration of the minerals, they dug out the sand/mud and half-filled them with chalk, so that they can take an aerial picture and analyze the area for coverage, further prospecting etc.

<comment><AUTHOR> Some articles speculated they were nuclear testings sites. In one picture you can see what looks like an explosion with surrounding fallout damage. However there are quite a few different structures so who knows.</comment></comment>


Should I be worried? - <AUTHOR>

my cofounder revealed today that if he were a billionaire, he wouldn't be working on our startup (he'd be on some island).<p>does that bode ill for our startup? <comment><USER2> Are you saying that if you had a billion bucks, you _would_ be working on this startup?

<comment><AUTHOR> yes. I want this company to exist and to do well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Nope. It's a prediction. you simply know what his goal is.</comment>


Thirty three (33) can be written as the sum of three cubes - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASoz_NuIvP0 <comment><USER2> For context:

> _42 is the only remaining (eligible) number below 100 which has not been > represented as the sum of three cubes... 33 was cracked by Andrew Booker > from the University of Bristol._

<comment><USER3> Well, of course. It's 42. There are many integers, but only one answer.</comment></comment>


Netflix for clothes - <AUTHOR> https://www.sfclothingcompany.com/ <comment><USER2> has anyone actually tried this? looking to try it</comment>


Blockchain.info down with over million wallets unaccesible - <AUTHOR> http://newsbtc.com/2014/03/17/blockchain-info-due-database-issue-may-take-several-hours-come-back-online/

<comment><USER2> Surely a statement about an infrastructure problem should be signed by the CTO rather than the Chief Security Officer? I wonder why they chose to put his name on it.</comment>


Why aren't you (really) good at graphic design? - <AUTHOR> http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/03/why-arent-you-really-good-at-graphic-design.html <comment><USER2> I voted this up because I'd like to see a discussion, not because I necessarily agree with the article.

Certainly, I agree that the bar is high for graphic materials nowadays. However, I think it is often better to hire a professional to do this work. It's very easy to burn a lot of time on graphic design as a leader or developer only to produce designs which, at best, are 'rather good' not 'really good'.

Past experience: launched a website without a designer because we had a developer with some design skills. Result: we paid a great developer (at the cost of a great developer) to do average design work. Next time I hired a dedicated designer - the results were an order of magnitude better, we got it done at a lower cost and that great developer got to get on with writing great code.</comment>


Singapore employs a mathematics teaching method called productive failure - <AUTHOR> http://qz.com/535443/the-best-way-to-understand-math-is-learning-how-to-fail-productively/?linkId=18512366 <comment><USER2> This sounds extremely similar to the way I was personally taught trigonometry, calculus, linear algebra, and tensor calculus.

First you are asked to work out some monstrous 4 page problem by hand. Then you have a lecture on the specific tricks in each of those courses (SOC-CAH- TOA, differentiation by dropping the power, linear algebra by matrices, tensor calculus by superscript-subscript interaction). Then you are asked to do the same problem again in 3 lines... Perhaps it's not outright failure, but you are forced to "discover" an advanced concept for yourself before being given the proper tool.

I feel perhaps the author is too bold with: "Singapore, the land of many math geniuses, may have discovered the secret to learning mathematics (pdf). It employs a teaching method called productive failure (pdf), pioneered by Manu Kapur, head of the Learning Sciences Lab at the National Institute of Education of Singapore."

I feel a bit more research will show that this is an extremely well established teaching methodology. I mean, who _wasn't_ taught integration in this manner?

["Given the curve f(x), find the area under the curve from x=0 to x=10" so you pick a bunch of random points, find the value of f(x) at those points, multiply by however far you chose to put the points apart, go in with the wrong-but-kind-of-close answer "Oh, by the way, there's this thing called integrating, sit down for a sec kids"]

</comment><comment><USER3> Interesting, sounds like another instance of problem solution ordering: [http://mkremins.github.io/blog/doors-headaches- intellectual-...](http://mkremins.github.io/blog/doors-headaches-intellectual- need/).

>Think of yourself as someone who sells aspirin. And realize that the best customer for your aspirin is someone who is in pain. Not a lot of pain. Not a migraine. Just a little.

>One of the worst things you can do is force people who don't feel pain to take your aspirin. They may oblige you if you have some particular kind of authority in their lives but that aspirin will feel pointless. It'll undermine their respect for medicine in general.

>Math shouldn't feel pointless. Math isn't pointless. It may not have a point in job [y] or [z] but math has a point in math. We invented new math to resolve the limitations of old math. My challenge to all of us here is, before you offer students the new, more powerful math, put them in a place to experience the limitations of the older, less powerful math.

</comment><comment><USER4> Singapore gets a lot of attention for having good schools, high-achieving students, novel teaching methods (sometimes), and in a sense, all of these things are true.

But there is always a cost. The enormous pressure that minors have to perform well in school in Singapore has led it to having one of the highest teen suicide rates in the world. In the short time I lived there, I knew 2 highschoolers who committed suicide.

There is nothing wrong with challenging a child, but I hope Singapore's culture eventually evolves to be a little easier on kids in general.

<comment><USER5> Spoken like a true american.

Given 8.5/100000 suicide rate in US and 10.27/100000 in Singapore, what would you choose, 999989 well educated, well developed in mathematical and analytical thinking, highly proficient in solving unknown problems individuals, or 999991 lower than average (US has notoriously low education standards), highly afraid of math, often leaning towards social and gender "sciences", overconfident and self important, yet having very little skill practice or general knowledge, individuals? The answer is pretty obvious.

<comment><USER4> I'm specifically talking about teen suicide rates, not whole-population suicide stats.

Additionally, your stereotyping of the rest of the world as self-important is not the right attitude.

p.s. I do not live in the U.S.

<comment><USER6> Do you have any stats for this claim?

I found only this link and look like rate isn't really high [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1414751/table/T1...](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1414751/table/T1/)

>Suicide numbers and rates per 100,000 young persons aged 15-19 - Canada 10.8, Singapore 8.5, USA 8.0

<comment><USER4> I've seen that before as well, but it is based on real old data. Many of the numbers are from over a decade ago.

My claim for this statement is a bit less formal; within Singapore, where I lived, it is common word-of-mouth that the teen suicide rate needs serious attention, and they often say there that it is much worse than in most other places. But I can't point you to a specific study.

Also, regarding formal stats: Singaporeans are (rightly so) quite skeptical of any official figures released by the government. Singapore's leaders tend to keep private any stats that are unfavorable (much of the recent haze-related details the last couple of years were promptly removed from public media if they were too critical; and if anyone there writes articles, even on a personal blog, that are critical of the culture, its policies, or raise serious questions, they often get severely fined or imprisoned).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This sounds a lot like the well established - but poorly implemented - idea of constructivist learning [1]. A difference seems to be that it would be much easier to design an activity in the Singapore method since it's OK if the student never actually discovers the proper method and in the end the teacher will simply tells them the answer.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructivist_teaching_method...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructivist_teaching_methods)

</comment><comment><USER8> this seems naively similar to the "problem-solution ordering issues" post that was on here a few days ago:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10483695](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10483695)

face people with the problem first, let them struggle on their own for a bit and try to figure it out, then show them a way of solving it.

</comment><comment><USER9> This is a good idea, though we shouldn't act like it's completely novel. I received most of my math education in the US (I was a math major in college as well), and my high school calculus textbook (this was in the US) was very open about how some of the problems were there to be _tackled_ rather than solved. There were almost always a few problems at the end of the chapter that weren't easily solvable without the principles and techniques that would be introduced in the next chapter. You might be able to estimate it, brute force it, various other things… who knows, maybe you'd discover the next chapter for yourself.

Personally, I think it's an excellent approach. It does sound like Singapore is doing this much earlier in math education than I encountered it in the US.

In spite of all this, I don't see the technique as being especially promising in the US. Not because I think it's a bad approach - I think it is an excellent one. But because people in the US seem to think that they need to copy a _process_ from Singapore or Finland or whatever. Oh, see, what we need to do is teach _productive failure_. Let's get it into the textbooks!

What we need to do is to start drawing our math teachers from the top tier of math graduates who are inclined to teach and show talent. A lot of these processes that we try to copy from other countries come naturally to people who really understand math and are good at teaching it. I'm not saying there should be no agreed on curriculum, but these success stories, I think, are more the outcome of talented teachers than a curriculum created and imposed from above.

</comment><comment><USER10> Didn't know this was a thing but normally (it requires time) I learn like that - often being scorned by more experienced people, saying it is inefficient and/or I I'm rude not to hear their advises.

In the long run, this actually builds confidence to attack any (engineering and more) problem you face and being relatively independent from a teacher.

</comment><comment><USER11> The current Prime Minister of Singapore was the best mathematician in his year at Cambridge:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Hsien_Loong#Background_and...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Hsien_Loong#Background_and_education)

<comment><USER12> It is fitting then that Singapore is teaching its students to wrangle with mathematics.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> > They recognize that the approach is good but they worry about efficiency and > standardized tests

"We know the students learn better but that's not our personal performance metric"

</comment><comment><USER14> This sounds a little like test driven development.

</comment><comment><USER15> This is definitely the way I learned Haskell. I spent ages trying to learn by reading and didn't really start making progress until I learned to just write some code and figure it out as I went.

</comment><comment><USER16> This might be suitable for motivated students. I don't think it will work for everyone.</comment>


What is the latest fad among the youth of America? - <AUTHOR> What is the latest fad among the youth of America? <comment><USER2> Spinners.

</comment><comment><USER3> What age is youth?</comment>


Welcome, Wired. We call this land "Internet" - <AUTHOR> http://gadgets.boingboing.net/2009/05/18/welcome-wired-we-cal.html

<comment><USER2> It discusses the tension between wired.com and Wired magazine, with a good dose of head in the sand from Conde Nast. The comments are particularly good including Chris Anderson and several Wired writers. One theme running through is Wired is well written but not timely, wired.com is timely but not particularly well written. This is a microcosm of the whole print media collapse, but with people who ought to know what to do.

I think beyond what was discussed, advertisers and agencies need to figure out how to engage readers on the internet. We are looking for information or entertainment, but for the most part web ads do neither.</comment>


Atlantropa - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantropa <comment><USER3> When I read the first paragraph, I was immediately reminded of my feelings when watching the Star Trek:TNG episode, made in the late 80's where Picard considered quitting Star Fleet to head the Atlantis Project. When I watched that episode recently, I found the idea that future people would allow large alterations to the earth to be discordant.

It is interesting that, according to the article, Roddenberry also incorporated the idea of a dam across the Strait of Gibraltar into one of his works.

Today, I expect that terraforming Mars and mining the moon will face significant opposition. Would massive land reclamation projects like those in the Netherlands ever happen today, if a particular hyper-conservation Western mindset were in place when they commenced? We can't even let go of outdated urban streetscapes, and buildings past their useful lifespans[1], so it isn't far-fetched to think of moon miners having to recreate impact craters on the moon's surface after mining them, if mining happened in the first place.

Large segments of humanity are becoming sclerotic. Even if [2] the positive effects of damming the Mediterranean (or terraforming central Australia or Antarctica) were found to outweigh the losses, and the impacts could be mitigated, it would still be extremely unlikely to happen, for sentimental reasons.

[1] See recent news about Lloyds of London building, which has became an expensive burden, but can't be touched because of its "iconic" status

[2] yes, obviously there are risks, and they would need to be weighed carefully.

<comment><USER4> Realize you are considering completely altering the hydrology that has historically served as the cradle of humanity's longest-lived civilizations. This project would touch huge population centers, many different cultures that speak different languages. What happens when people that have lived in costal communities for generations suddenly find themselves landlocked?

There's a reason this was an undertaking contemplated in the time period that it was. Herman Sörgel could propose this and simply not care what the consequences would be for the people that were already present. The Superior Race simply needed more Lebensraum, to hell with the inferior races.

One man's sclerosis is another man's stability. This is not hyper-conservation Western mindset, this is living in a world where one remote political power can not radically alter the living conditions for millions of people that are not represented in that power.

<comment><USER3> As I said, there would have to be careful study and consideration of the effects, and in all likelihood, it would fail, probably for the reasons you cite.

However, I suspect the modern knee-jerk reaction would be to reject these sorts of ideas out-of-hand, not because of infeasibility, but because of the "preserve at all costs" mentality that has taken hold among many, and then to look for ways to justify the rejection.

<comment><USER5> The will of industry has such a strong influence on political outcomes that it seems rational (though perhaps unfortunate) for people to oppose big projects as early as possible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Imposing large scale engineering projects of this nature will probably have to wait until after production and point control of self-replicating nanorobots, organic or otherwise, is fairly mature. At that point the cost reduces down to design and raw materials and looks feasible when compared to simply going to other worlds in search of additional space, or building arcologies, or other methods.

Sadly much vision has been lost somewhere in the last century. People are much more conservative about preserving the present state of whatever exists, and have lost the sense of wonder and ambition that characterized the opening of the modern age of machinery.

<comment><USER7> Can you say more about this ambition we've lost? In my eyes that ambition is more arrogance that we can control the forces of nature around us without consequence.

<comment><USER8> It is the peculiar human genius that we adapt our environment to ourselves, as well as the converse; we're not the only species on Earth which does so, but we're the only one for which adapting our environment is the keystone of a species survival strategy so successful that we have made ourselves, and for the foreseeable future will remain, the entire planet's apex predator.

Lately, we hear much of how this strategy is doomed to failure, of how such failure will come sooner rather than later, and of how anything less than its immediate and radical replacement will surely doom our species. I don't buy it for a second. That the developed world has some rough times ahead, I don't doubt. But we're smart apes, and mean, and tough to kill, and there are an almighty lot of us. Perhaps we're due a new dark age, and perhaps not. But if so, we'll come out of it eventually, and we'll be better and smarter still for it, just like we were last time.

Be it ever so popular of late, the belief otherwise is, in my considered opinion, born entirely of arrogance, in two parts: first, that even we have the capability to so radically reëngineer this planet as to no longer support our species, and second, that our species is somehow apart from nature, such that the axiom that all species not killed outright by them eventually adapt to changes of environment, somehow does not apply to us. That humanity is special, I happily agree, but we are not gods.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> _The Atlantropa movement, through its several decades, was characterised by four constants:

\- ...

\- Pan-European sentiment, seeing the project as a way to unite a war-torn Europe;

\- White-centric superiority (and even racist) attitudes to Africa

\- ..._

It interests me how such a positive sentiment (Pan-Europanism) can be combined with a very negative sentiment (white supremacism) without any trouble.

I'm not sure we can play the "they were different times" card so easily. Currently, the EU has open borders, so the Pan-Europanism part worked out quite well, actually. As a consequence, the outer borders of the EU have become rock hard, because once you made it to Spain or Italy, you made it to most of Europe. We treat Africans who try to make it across like animals - <USER2> out of some white supremacist sense, admittedly, but the effect is the same.

</comment><comment><USER10> Brings to mind Aral Sea where the diversion of rivers for irrigation projects have led to the shrinking of the sea area with disastrous consequences for local ecosystems and communities. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aral_Sea](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aral_Sea)

EDIT: There must be better ways to become a Type I civilization [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale)

</comment><comment><USER11> If you like this, you should get yourself a copy of "Engineer's Dreams" by Ley. It is fairly old and full of such grand projects. One of them, the Channel Tunnel, is no longer a dream.

<comment><USER12> any other book recommendations?

<comment><USER13> It's fiction, but still a fun read: Harry Harrison's _A Transatlantic Tunnel, Hurrah!_

In Which Our Hero, A Descendent of the Traitorous George Washington, Builds a Railway Under The Sea, Wherein Passengers Travel To The Court of Her Britannic Majesty In Atomic Powered Comfort.

[http://www.amazon.com/Transatlantic-Tunnel-Hurrah-Harry- Harr...](http://www.amazon.com/Transatlantic-Tunnel-Hurrah-Harry- Harrison/dp/0765327864)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Hilarious that the first two comments are diametrically opposed: "Wow that's pretty fucked" versus "Sadly much vision has been lost somewhere in the last century"

I'm going to tread a line between the two and say that I miss the visionary engineering works of old but that I am not completely heedless of the Law of Unintended Consequences. I do think that the Straits of Gilbraltar should be either bridged or dammed. (I'm assuming damming means bridging.) Too good an economic opportunity to pass up.

<comment><USER15> I'm not convinced the economic opportunity is that enormous, or even enough to pay back the costs of a relatively trivial bridge over a long time period, at least until there are some very radical changes to the political and economic stability in North Africa. At the moment vast sums are being spent on trying to _prevent_ North Africans getting into mainland Europe (the Spanish enclaves in Morocco have barbed wire fences and military patrols on either side).

As far as transport links for those fortunate enough not to be fleeing abject poverty and brutal regional conflicts goes, the fast ferry ride is less than 40 minutes between the Spanish mainland and Morocco/Ceuta, flights to major Moroccan cities are very cheap from most European cities and Libyan oil is piped direct to Italy.

<comment><USER16> The upside of a bridge isn't passenger transport, it's freight. There's an awful lot of trade between Africa and Europe, e.g. for agriculture.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Does anything come closer to this than Flevoland?

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

Slightly related: _" a narrow body of water was preserved along the old coast to stabilise the water table and to prevent coastal towns from losing their access to the sea."_

</comment><comment><USER18> There's a documentary about the project here: [http://vimeo.com/92381391](http://vimeo.com/92381391). Fascinating watch.

<comment><USER19> Nice, this was interesting. Thanks for sharing; I never really see good documentaries on vimeo, but I don't go looking often.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I don't think big projects are intrinsically bad because they are big, but it's probably true that something of this scale would have drastic, wide- ranging effects on climate, geological characteristics, rainfall, and many other aspects that might adversely affect millions of people. Due diligence would require us to study and characterize these effects before spending trillions of dollars on such a project.

<comment><USER21> In fact, the formation of the Mediterranean is mentioned in Episode 9 of Cosmos (2014), in the context of climate change affecting evolution.

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> This is not mentioned in the article, but plate tectonics actually closed the straight of Gibraltar and caused the Mediterranean to completely dry out for a period of hundreds of thousands of years. It eventually reopened with what may have been the largest waterfall ever.

See [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messinian_salinity_crisis](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messinian_salinity_crisis)

</comment><comment><USER23> Awesome, in the more formal sense.

Reading about the intended colonization of Africa puts me in mind of something I read about Moroccan phosphate reserves [1] a while back.

1: [http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/essential- element-...](http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/essential-element- becoming-scarce-experts-warn-of-impending-phosphorus-crisis-a-690450.html)

</comment><comment><USER24> "Most proposals to dam the Strait of Gibraltar since that time have focused on the hydroelectric potential of such a project, and do not envisage any substantial lowering of the Mediterranean sea level."

This sounds a tiny bit more sane.

What would be the capacity of such a gigantic hydroelectric dam?

</comment><comment><USER25> Note also what I consider a spamming by "Cathcart, R.B." who probably added to the article himself the big list of his texts as relevant for the subject and even a clumsy attempt to the citation.

</comment><comment><USER26> Is there an explanation for how adding these dams _lowers_ water levels?

<comment><USER27> The Mediterranean loses more water to evaporation than it gains from rivers and rainfall. It's only at sea level because it's connected to the Atlantic at the Strait Of Gibraltar. Dam the Strait, and the Mediterranean goes down.

That isn't just speculation, the Mediterranean actually _was_ a dry sea, when the Strait closed 5.9 million years ago: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mediterranean_Sea#Geology](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mediterranean_Sea#Geology)

A better question is "how _quickly_ would the Mediterranean dry up if you dam Gibraltar?" A thousand years? More? Would you have to dam every river that drains into the Mediterranean?

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Wow that's pretty fucked. No one would even dream of anything so crazy these days. The world certainly has improved in the past 90 years.

<comment><USER29> What is "pretty fucked" about this?

<comment><USER30> Dude, it's totally fucked. Like removing the sea from seaside towns. i'm sure if you're a mediterranean fisherman you would not be happy having the sea forcibly moved away from your home... The environmental impact is probably immeasurable.

<comment><USER29> How is this any worse than normal dam construction, apart from scale?

<comment><USER31> How is a flood worse than a drop of water, apart from scale?

<comment><USER32> Wise words.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> No wonder they are digging out this Nazi projects now when they occupied us on Balkans. But as before, we will rise again and free ourselves.

Not that everything Nazis did was bad, but this is classic megalomanic project, which honestly doesn't sound completely bad, but it is like those Chinese 3 gorges dam, huge and rife with potential problems.</comment>