Which Language Uses the Most Sounds? - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/25/world/what-in-the-world/click-languages-taa-xoon-xoo-botswana.html <comment><USER2> Coincidentally, I _just now_ posted the below to my Facebook.

> Taa (or !Xoo) is one of the most phonetically complex languages in the > world[0]. Here is a video[1] of a !Xoo speaker reading a paragraph of text > in English, and then reading the translation of that same text in !Xoo. The > number and variety of phonetic clicks is simply amazing.

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

[1]: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zrek3r29HvE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zrek3r29HvE)

<comment><USER3> Wow this is almost Beatboxing. Someone should create a music out of this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> A long time ago I was interested in finding out what the intersection of all languages sounds would be, would it be an empty set or was there enough overlap that someone designing the next esperanto could build it using universal sounds thus allowing any human speaker to pronunciate it without difficulty. Turns out there is a good degree of overlap if you allow for a very small bit of fuzzyness. For instance, 'a','m', and 'p' are some of the most common sounds across all languages, which is also interesting when you realize "mama" and "papa" \- with slight variations - display high universality in their pronunciation across all languages.

for more info see: [https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-most-common-phonemes- amon...](https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-most-common-phonemes-among-all- language)

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

<comment><USER5> I think if you take the complete intersection, the set is empty. However, the five standard vowels /a/, /e/, /i/, /o/, /u/ are fairly common (although many Native American languages have four vowels). For consonants, /p/, /t/, /k/, /m/, /n/, /s/, and /l/ are probably the most common.

Esperanto's phonotactics is basically Zamenhof's Slavic dialect (Polish and Belorussian). However, Lojban tries for a more neutral disposition, even to the point of permitting epenthetic vowels in complex consonant clusters (stressing that they need to be distinguishable from the 6 regular vowels--the 5 vowels above plus /ə/).

It should be noted that when languages have restrictive phonemic inventories, the challenge is not so much in producing the other sounds as it is in recognizing them as distinct sounds.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Every time I hear Thai language spoken I'm reminded that this tonal language inspired the creators of "Mars attacks" to what the fictional language used by the aliens should sound like, just because it sounded so alien.

I have to say though that the Thai language can be spoken relatively calmly and soothingly, but when spoken by in anger or in a particular kind of formality, it sounds quite similar to the language used in the movie. Doesn't matter if it's a male or female speaker, to a westerner it sounds like.. well, the crazy martians from Mars Attacks.

This is actually mentioned in the extras bits on the original Mars Attacks DVD from like 1998 or 1999 or so. They did use Thai language as the main inspiration for the language of the martians.

<comment><USER7> Since English is (largely) not tonal, you're not used to the rapid pitch changes required by tonal languages, hence the "alien" feel. For what it's worth, I find Thai quite euphoneous compared to Vietnamese or Cantonese, both of which have even more tones.

Question for HN: if your first language is tonal, what do non-tonal languages sound like to you? I've frequently heard Finnish described as boring/mumbling, because it's both non-tonal and has a very predictable stress pattern (emphasis always on the first syllable).

<comment><USER6> My native language is Swedish, not English. They are both quite closely related though.

I'm really curious to that Swedish sounds like to tonal-language people. It's often described as "sing-songy" by "non-tonal" people from e.g. UK/US.

<comment><USER8> It's because of words like anden and andEN. That second version is sing-songy because it has two stresses.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> On a side note (!), I stumbled across that: [http://qz.com/488701/humans-are- confusing-music-composed-by-...](http://qz.com/488701/humans-are-confusing- music-composed-by-a-computer-for-j-s-bach/) Which in turn made me wonder if we couldn't create a program that would translate code into music...

<comment><USER10> A spectrum of increasing respect for those ellipses:

[https://github.com/debugger22/github- audio](https://github.com/debugger22/github-audio)

[https://github.com/Thomasb81/Midi_SynthFpga](https://github.com/Thomasb81/Midi_SynthFpga)

[http://overtone.github.io/](http://overtone.github.io/)

[https://github.com/maximecb/Turing-Tunes](https://github.com/maximecb/Turing- Tunes)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I am thinking that Perl is (probably) the computer language which uses the most operators, but not everyone believes this is a good thing.

I mean, it seems there is somewhere a sweet spot between lack of expressiveness and overcomplication.

<comment><USER12> Perl might have a lot of operators but Haskell's ability to define your own operators leads to a ton of operators in the standard library and third party packages.

<comment><USER13> That's one of the things keeping me away from Haskell. It seems that to be proficient I would need to know way more beyond the "standard library", but go into the String vs Text debates, and the huge amounts of common knowledge out there.

<comment><USER14> Except for Lens, most packages shy away from operator soup. The basic set you need to know to read most Haskell code is quite small, and tied to the core concepts you need to know anyway, such as:

        Functor (<$>)
        Applicative (<*>, <*, *>)
        Monad (>>=, =<<, >=>, <=<)
        Monoid (<>)
        Alternative (<|>)

<comment> nv-vn Also ++, $, ., and some others. But yeah, you don't need to know too many to be able to read 90% of Haskell code.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> If you can't read: [https://www.google.no/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd...](https://www.google.no/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwiW-7-ApMjQAhVpApoKHTo5A6EQFggbMAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2016%2F11%2F25%2Fworld%2Fwhat- in-the-world%2Fclick-languages-taa-xoon-xoo- botswana.html&usg=AFQjCNHklEvK0yDoTI8MZJ4hfvIMxcowUQ&bvm=bv.139782543,d.bGg) (skip subscription by going through Google)

</comment><comment><USER16> So would Taa be helpful or not for noisy restaurants? It's hard to whisper, but the click sounds are also very distinctive so maybe you would need to be loud. Though can you even shout a click?

</comment><comment><USER17> Interesting if children have any problem with acquiring these sounds. Russian speaking kids frequently have problems with the rolling r. I wonder if click languages are hard to learn - as a first language.

</comment><comment><USER18> In programming languages I would say Perl, I have never heard some of the noises I have heard coming out of programmers trying to decipher and debug someone elses Perl program ;)</comment>


Slaves of the Internet, Unite - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/27/opinion/sunday/slaves-of-the-internet-unite.html

<comment><USER2> Thought Experiment: What would shut down if people just stopped giving away their art/photos/writing/"content" away for free?

<comment><USER3> Quite a few people are trying to keep from giving away their music and movies for free, and are getting rather bad "press" for it.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Elist – Help your followers discover all your social media accounts - <AUTHOR> https://www.producthunt.com/posts/elist <comment><AUTHOR> Hi, I'm the creator of Elist.ch!

I have created Elist because I found the need to have a minimal personal page with all the possible information about myself.

Elist is mainly focused on social media, although it can be used as a portfolio.

This is my first real product created using Angular and PHP as backend. For now it is still in its infancy, I have planned to add many more services like analytics and other stuff. I hope you like it!</comment>


Ask HN: Need help - throw-away123

I am regular HN addict and learnt a lot from this community. I need suggestion (sorry guys this is my throw away account.).
I am 30 year old, web developer (Microsoft stack and beginner rails) from last 7 years. From last 6 months (full time) I am trying to run a social media software company with 2 of my friends (both are biz guys and having same years of exp and come from online marketing). We had couple of developers (PHP) in house. Now we are out of cash and business. Need help and suggestion, what to do now? We are based in india. <comment><AUTHOR> I don't understand the popularity of social media companies. It is a very crowded space and its difficult to make money. I know this from a failed startup that had an ad based revenue model. You have have tons of users and with social media that is somewhat of a catch-22.

What is/was your plan to monetize your company? I don't have much advice I could offer this late in the game. My advice for others is to make a product/service and start charging from day 1. If you can get customers to give you money, then you know you have a product that people want.

</comment><comment><USER2> Find work. Quickly.

See if you can extend your runway that way and if not fold.

</comment><comment><USER3> Change directions,you need momentum, and you have skills, just rebrand yourself, salvage what you can of your software & business. Make a new base product with what you currently have as 'features', and do a better job marketing from the start this time. Don't give up!</comment>


So this is what it's like to get your oil changed when you're a dude - <AUTHOR> http://blog.42floors.com/oil-change-when-dude/ <comment><USER2> Argh. This is a little bit frustrating to read. Leaving the gender stuff aside, good shops recommend fluid checks and air filter replacements and battery checks and so on _because it 's a good idea_. A bad air filter won't just hurt your gas mileage and performance, it will destroy your rings, causing your engine to wear out a lot faster and eventually start burning oil, further damaging other components down the line. And for what, to save 20 bucks now and again?

Things leak. A lot of people never realize their car is leaking. They don't get in the habit of crawling under their car and checking to see if their transmission is coated in grimy oil or if their transmission is sweating transmission fluid. They never notice the very slight groaning sound the car makes when turning the steering wheel because the power steering pump is leaky. They see a few drops under the front of their car in the parking lot and assume it's normal or runoff from their AC system when it's actually a radiator or water pump.

If you don't trust your mechanic enough to follow their recommendations, you should get a new mechanic. People -- man or woman -- coming in to a shop and ordering the shop around as if they know cars better than the shop staff are the worst sort of customers.

</comment><comment><USER3> > An event happened to me once.

> All events occur this way.

So this is what happens when you try to inject sex and gender into every aspect of life.

</comment><comment><USER4> If you want to really do a good experiment here: go to an oil change place and say "Please drain and refill with Mobil One Synthetic 0W-40 (and filter replacement per spec for your car, specified explicitly and technically), and please put a sample of waste into this Blackstone sample bottle. Thanks.!"

I'm pretty sure technical competence trumps gender. Not that you shouldn't still get treated well without flaunting knowledge, but it seems like a good way to mitigate this fairly pervasive tendency.

I see this at gun stores all the time; woman goes in and is treated as unfortunately expected; reveals that she's a manufacturing FFL and knows the intricacies of both use-of-firearms and various forms of metal treatment in manufacturing, and is treated like an expert.

</comment><comment><USER5> People will take advantage of others' weaknesses to further their goals. Here they leverage a stereotype that women are more susceptible to take car maintenance advice from a blue collar worker.

As a male one might be shamed into buying more flowers, chocolates, for birthdays, mother's days, etc.

And as a single data point, wipers and air filters are nearly always pushed on me. It's a normal part of my experience visiting an oil change place. The only exception is if i go there in a bad mood. They read that and don't bother you.

</comment><comment><USER6> Not so sure about that. It really depends on the establishment you go to. If you are a repeat customer then over time they stop trying to do the up-sells. If it is a new place they usually go through the full song and dance. Even guys get the "Are you sure?" treatment, this happens with far more frequency when I am dressed in business attire, happens much less when I am in my knock around attire.

</comment><comment><USER7> Yes and no. They still do it to some men. I used to get it all the time. And some places are better about it than others. My original dealership was really bad.

What can I say? some people are assholes. Assholes perform well in sales. Sales has to deal directly with customers. And we're all customers of something, so we'll end up running into a lot of sales people in our lives.

<comment><USER8> > _What can I say? some people are assholes._

What does it have to do with people being assholes? It's a business trying to sell their services.

But I agree, it happens to me, as a man, all the time, regardless of what i tell them in advance. I don't think anything of it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I mean, I know nothing about cars. I would welcome the extra offers for air filters, etc. Men just tend to have a different poison than women do. Just because I'm a dude doesn't mean I know shit about my car!

</comment><comment><USER10> >I'm a car nerd.

Doesn't change own oil or check anything else under the bonnet.

</comment><comment><USER11> Um, lady, if you're so smart about cars, why are you paying extra for synthetic oil for a Subaru?

I don't know your husband but they always used to scam me with all that junk, too, and I'm a dude.</comment>


Google fired an employee who questioned its work with CBP - <AUTHOR> https://www.vox.com/recode/2019/11/25/20982649/google-fired-rebecca-rivers-employee-questioned-work-customs-and-border-protection <comment><USER2> I really like the "bring your whole self" to work attitude in tech. I don't want to lose the freedom I have at work because of aggressive activism.

</comment><comment><USER3> Go make your own google and work for whoever you want.

<comment><USER4> Is this an American thing? Thinking that you can take a companies money and then have the right to tell the company what they are allowed to do. If you are unhappy with the way Google operates then you can move jobs to somewhere else. Somewhere that is compatible with your personal beliefs. If you joined a defence contractor it would be odd if you thought you could tell the company not to work on military projects. If you accept the high pay of Google and all the other benefits, then you work on the projects Google management decide on. Otherwise, bugger off and work somewhere else. Simples.

<comment><USER5> Kind of? I worked in a FAANG and that boasts "everyone is an owner (of the company)". Which must mean I should have the power to change how things are done within.

I can't imagine Google, a company that I have never worked at, would be any different in this sense. And if you buy into that crap and the culture then you want to make that change.

In fact this is how most tech companies operate. I think the hedge funds and boutique finance firms operate on the culture that if you can make everyone money you will be rewarded extremely handsomely.

The oldie research labs would collect great minds and give the opportunity for their research staff to do whatever they like, within reason.

So I think it's more to it than just "if you don't like it then bugger off". But if everyone is an owner - then who gets to decide in the end? Clearly the people with more influence and power. Don't like it -- then bugger off.

<comment><USER3> So how much of the faang do you own when you work there? none. the "everyone is an owner" is hr pr talk.

The political cloud is not something that will take off. If I have to worry about google employees protesting me I wont host my data with google, etc.

Bring your whole self to work, tell your customers to stay home.

<comment><USER5> When you're receiving stock (which is common in a faang) you actually do own some of it.

<comment><USER3> I bet it's b series stock and you're an owner of the a small nonvot8ng part (I might be a bigger owner in my investments without working there at all).

If you really believe what you wrote you're fooling yourself</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Announcing Firebase Support For Java and Android - <AUTHOR> https://www.firebase.com/blog/2013-07-02-firebase-java-android-sdk.html

<comment><USER2> I am starting to like the progress of Firebase. Seems pretty promising. Good job guys.

</comment><comment><USER3> I was looking at pricing on fire base and saw that you had a free option with a peak of 100 free accounts. I think a good option to have is being able to automatically upgrade the account if you are hitting the bigger connection level. I don't think this would be a good default option but a great one for some specific use cases.

<comment><USER4> [Firebase founder] Thanks for the suggestion! We'll chat with other users and see if there is high demand for this.

<comment><USER3> I love that its free for beta and there is a free tier so I am definitely going to start experimenting with it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've been waiting on this day for some time..now maybe I can finish that project I started at Startup Weekend

</comment><comment><USER6> Go support would be really awesome.</comment>


Productivity and Price - <AUTHOR> http://mattmccormick.ca/2010/03/14/productivity-and-price/

<comment><USER2> Your freelance rate should generally be drastically higher than your salary rate expressed hourly even if you aren't especially productive. You're covering self-employment tax, you pay all your own benefits, and you offer scheduling flexibility full-timers don't and, in exchange, shoulder a huge amount of risk.

You don't need to be a technical person to understand why a former employee would charge 2x their salary freelance. Paying the original straight salary rate would be a total rip-off.

<comment><USER3> Rule of thumb: take the annual income you would like to get as a full-time freelance, divide by 100 for a daily rate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's a somewhat controversial practice, but one solution many people use is to quote a lower hourly rate, but bill hours based more on a guess of what "normal" hours for the work would be (minus a percentage to make yourself look extra fast), instead of how long it actually took you.

So if the customer thinks some job will take 10 hours, but you can actually do it in 1 hour, instead of trying to convince them that $5X/hr is a great rate given your productivity, just bill them for 5 hours at $X/hr. They'll still feel like they got a great deal, because they were expecting to pay for 10 hrs for the job.

<comment><USER5> I was under the impression that that was fraud.

<comment><USER6> Yes, you want to keep things open and honest at all times. In the case mentioned above, either quote a fixed price or quote an hourly rate and bill for _actual_ hours worked.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > _I don't blame non-technical managers for not knowing this stuff._

So if you hire an electrician, and he also doesn't know how to do his job and ends up starting a fire and burning your house down, do you not blame him either?

A manager's job is to manage programmers. If he doesn't understand important principles like, "there's so much variation in programmer productivity that, if you know this guy is really good, it might be worth it to pay him 5x as much as the other guy we're considering", he doesn't know how to do his job effectively. Blame him.

<comment><USER7> In the case you describe, I think the author of the post would say he wouldn't blame you for not knowing the electrician would burn your house down, because in your case, you, the home owner, would be equivalent to the programmer manager and the electrician would be the programmer.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great analogy! I wish I had thought of that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Not all freelancers are 2x better than employees. Most contractors we get can't cut code if their life depended on it, and usually make a mess of things and then leave. I've really yet to meet a good contractor.

Also this isn't to say all employees are better than the contractors/freelancers we get as obviously there are some duds that get through. But in general that's how it is. Maybe it's because they better understand how things work than a newer person coming in does, and perhaps overtime the freelancer/contractor might do better...

</comment><comment><USER9> We do fixed fee work at my iPhone/embedded dev shop. One reason why is: Hourly rates tell you _nothing_ about cost. Programmers vary unbelievably much per hour. We'll do hourly after the first contract, but in general, not for the first one.

</comment><comment><USER10> I don't understand the whole "well known" idea of a 10x productivity difference between best and worst programmers. It gets even more confusing when he claims that some developers have negative productivity. Maybe the productivity difference is -10x. One really great programmer can overcome the damage done by 10 awful programmers. Or maybe we can just not pretend that programmer productivity can be described with numbers at all.</comment>


How my father gave me a terrifying lesson at 10 - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-32961309 <comment><USER2> My dad worked for some years on a coal mine when he was 16. Mind you, this was on a remote village during the post-war era on Spain. He has countless histories even though he does not share them often; smelly rooms with bunk beds, cold winters, or fishing on a pond with dynamite. He later moved from there to the big city, took correspondence studies on electricity and started a tour around multiple companies and projects as an electrician until he settled on one company (a company that started small but later became one of the biggest multinational corporations of pool products) where he worked until retiring.

Sometimes he would do side jobs fixing pools and fancy installations on the high profile clients. I've been there with him helping out. He once told me: "see these big houses, two pools and an spa? They think they need all this, but have no time to enjoy themselves. Me? I have everything I ever wanted."

He has been all his life self learning just as a pastime. His side project being going back to his old village to build a well and water installations to help farmers irrigate their fields. He even used water pressure to make a kind of 'protocol' to communicate different panels. When you go there, it's crazy land. He's been iterating over his initial design for more than 40 years, and he keeps going at it now at 79. One thing he usually says, contrary to what most people think is that life is long, really long. There's time for everything.

We come from two different worlds. To me it's not just about him being a role model but showing him gratitude for all he has taught me.

<comment><USER3> >>"see these big houses, two pools and an spa? They think they need all this, but have no time to enjoy themselves. Me? I have everything I ever wanted."

Unfortunately a lot things have changed since those days. In fact a few centuries back you could have a lot of fun in life doing nothing at all. These days things are so organized, anybody who falls out of line is likely to through a great deal of suffering. Healthcare is very organized and expensive, you can't get a decent job today without education and the overall society is moving towards a trend where not having a certain set of things can leave you with social disability.

>>One thing he usually says, contrary to what most people think is that life is long, really long. There's time for everything.

This is very true, and this is why if you are going to live really long you better have a good cache of savings for your retirement.

<comment><USER4> See here's the thing. Happiness is a state of mind, not a physical mode of being. Many people, including you, think that a person needs some parity with an invisible standard in order to feel contentment. But that's not true. You don't need anyone's permission to have fun, and you don't need to obtain anything to start enjoying your life.

A few centuries ago, when you say people could have fun doing nothing at all, what you call "a great deal of suffering" in contemporary society is actually materially _better_ than even the middle class lived back then. Much better. It's just that people are wired to compare themselves to their community, and by default that's what people base their self-worth and contentment on, unless they do some careful introspection and consciously change their source of sense of self-esteem.

A few centuries ago, the average family lived on a small farm with little education, no running water, no electricity, and little excess. A large fraction of the children would die before their first birthday, and dying of bacterial infection was quite likely at any age. The boys could expect nothing more than a life full of hard physical work on the farm, and the girls could expect to get married or, if they were very lucky, get a profession like nursing or teaching. Yet, this average family was _happy_ , and it wasn't because of their material possessions or adequate healthcare (clearly). It was because they were grateful for what they had, and because of a supportive community who were just like them and were always there for them.

You're missing the point of the quote you pasted. His father had everything he ever wanted because he didn't value material wealth, and was perfectly content with what I imagine you (and probably me too) would call "suffering", because he had friends, family, hobbies, time, and relatively good health. That's really all we need.

<comment><USER5> _> Yet, this average family was happy_

That's a huge and unjustified assumption. They likely were exactly as unhappy as a comparable 'average' family today: they would envy their neighbours who owned a better horse, they would fight among themselves (a lot, and with real physical violence among family members), their children would run away and never return, their weakest elements would be bullied mercilessly, and so on and so forth.

Life could be absolutely hellish, even more so for people who did not fit their (fewer and stronger) expected roles.

 _> It was because they were grateful for what they had_

Or rather they were thankful they survived to see another day. That's not happiness, that's just relief.

 _> and because of a supportive community who were just like them and were always there for them._

They were also ready to judge, gossip, discriminate, bully and cast away anyone who wouldn't fit the strict rules of very hypocritical and moralistic communities.

I can agree that modern consumerism is hardly a paradise, but the past was much worse and there is no reason to look back with rose-tinted glasses. The past was worse in _every_ respect.

<comment><USER4> Yes, if you didn't fit the cultural mold, I have no doubt life would be very hard for you back then. Also I am by no means arguing that the past was in any way better to the present, just that it is quite possible to be happy without a lot of material wealth.

However, in regard to the probable happiness of the average 18th century family, I still think most research on happiness would disagree with you. People seem to have a default level of contentment that varies only temporarily when major positive or negative changes occur in their lives: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedonic_treadmill](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedonic_treadmill) This suggests that being thankful they survived to see another day, while grim by our standards, actually _was_ real happiness.

Exceptions to this, that is, things that make lasting changes to one's happiness include:

* A supportive community of peers with whom you meet regularly

* Regular physical exertion

* Regular time for quiet reflection

* Marriage

* True and devout belief in a religion.

Our average 18th century family had all of these.

On the other hand, modern society has a greater capacity for a person to self- actualize and get into a path where they are able to regularly enter a state of flow, which is also shown to increase happiness. But this is only an increase capability, not the norm.

<comment><USER5> None of those elements are necessarily missing from "average" modern society, nor are they necessarily positive things (especially "true and devout belief" in a religion one would not get to choose -- in fact, most "devout" people were anything but, they just went along with it because society forced them to; "marriage" is also a weird one, to be honest, considering how unhappy it can be).

What they _certainly_ had more than us, though, was the certainty that they would not get to choose when or how to interact with such elements. They were fundamentally resigned to a life of reaction, rather than conscious action, as it had been the case for millennia. Again, they were _content_ or _relieved_ at the best of times, rather than actually _happy_. It's an incredible achievement of the XIX and XX century that increasingly large numbers of people can decide what "pursuing happiness" actually means _for themselves_.

<comment><USER6> > None of those elements are necessarily missing from "average" modern society

It's not missing only as long as it is available as a choice, but what the parent meant was probably that the majority of people don't live like that anymore.

<comment><USER5> Last I checked, people in pretty much any country still get married and declare themselves religious in overwhelming majority. We don't have stats for physical activity (which is declining, yes, but for a majority? Probably not) and "quiet time".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> My version of this, with my Dad, was when I was precocious 16 year old, failing highschool because I was spending all my time hacking code, smoking pot, and girlfriends. Not a bit of schoolwork was being done, and my Dad was having none of it.

So he gave me a summer job. In the hot Australian sunshine, I was sent off to be a labourer on building sites. Since I was the young blood, the brickies and other construction types gave me the shit jobs .. moving piles of bricks from one end of the universe to the other, shovelling shit from one end of the universe to the other, getting lunch and ciggies and mud and bricks to the brickies from one end of the universe to the other. It was monotonous, hot, boring work, and I hated getting up at 5am every day just to get there on time, and work until the sun went down every day, just to go to bed in time to get up again and start moving shit from one end of the universe to the other.

It did teach me a lesson, and that lesson - which dear reader I hope you understand - is that work is good for you. It expands your universe and gives you a life beyond the realms of the little box we're otherwise born with.

So, at the end of summer, I took my hard-earned wages, bought myself a new computer, got back to hacking, split up with my girlfriend, and got myself the hell out of that situation.

And I've never looked back.

Well, now I look back .. because now I'm the Dad, and more than anything else in the world I want my kids to grow up knowing that hard work is good for you, but smart work is better. Don't know how its going to happen, but that's the joy of fatherhood, innit ..

<comment><USER8> "work is good for you. It expands your universe and gives you a life beyond the realms of the little box we're otherwise born with"

That's the sad truth for many people. I mean most people even find their love interests at work.

I was unemployed for about 1 1/2 years now and I didn't miss work for a second.

I coded what I wanted, I learned music instruments, I did sports, had much time for friends and slept till noon. After half a year I couldn't even imagine a life with a job anymore. I had so much todo even without a job.

<comment><USER7> Nobody said work is life.

I'm able to do amazing things with my life now, because I worked hard. Work is only a part of the picture - but its an important part, and if you try to occlude it from life, you will eventually get bit. The default state of the Universe involves entropy; working, on anything, is the only way to change that.

<comment><USER8> You're right. It just triggers my bite-reflex if people talk about how good work is for your life...

I often have the feeling for many people work IS life and often not a good one :\

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The coal mines were tough places way back when. I know a few old boys from the mines in Wales and Lancashire, less so over in Yorkshire.

Hard. As. Fuck.

Almost fearless. Grateful for a quiet life now they're out of it.

I know one guy who bought a very small mine in the High Peak which he and a mate thought there was 3-4 years work left in for them. Just them. On their own. Tiny, tiny seam. Off they went. Utterly bonkers.

I grew up in a mill town myself, and all the local towns have stories about kids being put to work and the odd one being killed. My school trips were to Litton Mill, where the working conditions were once so bad there was a Parliamentary enquiry into the child deaths there.

What I'm getting to is, I am unbelievably lucky to live in the age I do where I get to work with my brain, I was able to get a decent education despite relatively modest beginnings and I would never, ever, ever look down on a manual labourer like a coal miner: they were tough bastards.

And it is of course now mostly past tense - not many mines left in the UK, despite there still being plenty of coal down there.

<comment><USER10> Not many in the UK, but worldwide there are plenty of mines and that story could take place in the present day quite easily in many countries.

<comment><USER9> Oh absolutely, and the stuff going on out in China right now will scar generations in numerous ways.

But in the UK at least, coal mining and even big/heavy industry is mostly historical now. Coal mines, ship yards, even a lot of the bigger factories and nearly all the mills are now very quiet. A few still around, but not many.

It's why Fred Dibnah was so popular in his later years: walking, talking history.

<comment><USER11> As an American, I had to Google Fred Dibnah since I had never heard of him. The quick-and-dirty: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Dibnah](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Dibnah)

Extra bonus video: here he is at age 50 scaling a chimney... [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3R3-YwDZrzg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3R3-YwDZrzg) . Made my palms a bit sweaty just watching it. Amazing that he didn't even use a harness.

<comment><AUTHOR> Fred Dibnah was pretty much a steam hacker.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> George Orwell has a great essay about his visits to coal mines: [http://www.george-orwell.org/Down_The_Mine/0.html](http://www.george- orwell.org/Down_The_Mine/0.html)

"It is impossible to watch the 'fillers' at work without feeling a pang of envy for their toughness. It is a dreadful job that they do, an almost superhuman job by the standard of an ordinary person. For they are not only shifting monstrous quantities of coal, they are also doing it in a position that doubles or trebles the work. They have got to remain kneeling all the while--they could hardly rise from their knees without hitting the ceiling-- and you can easily see by trying it what a tremendous effort this means. Shovelling is comparatively easy when you are standing up, because you can use your knee and thigh to drive the shovel along; kneeling down, the whole of the strain is thrown upon your arm and belly muscles. And the other conditions do not exactly make things easier. There is the heat--it varies, but in some mines it is suffocating--and the coal dust that stuffs up your throat and nostrils and collects along your eyelids, and the unending rattle of the conveyor belt, which in that confined space is rather like the rattle of a machine gun. But the fillers look and work as though they were made of iron. They really do look like iron hammered iron statues--under the smooth coat of coal dust which clings to them from head to foot. It is only when you see miners down the mine and naked that you realize what splendid men they are. Most of them are small (big men are at a disadvantage in that job) but nearly all of them have the most noble bodies; wide shoulders tapering to slender supple waists, and small pronounced buttocks and sinewy thighs, with not an ounce of waste flesh anywhere. In the hotter mines they wear only a pair of thin drawers, clogs and knee-pads; in the hottest mines of all, only the clogs and knee-pads. You can hardly tell by the look of them whether they are young or old. They may be any age up to sixty or even sixty-five, but when they are black and naked they all look alike. No one could do their work who had not a young man's body, and a figure fit for a guardsman at that, just a few pounds of extra flesh on the waist-line, and the constant bending would be impossible. You can never forget that spectacle once you have seen it--the line of bowed, kneeling figures, sooty black all over, driving their huge shovels under the coal with stupendous force and speed."

</comment><comment><USER13> If you're ever in the Scranton PA area in the summer, visit the Lackawanna Coal Mine, part of the Anthracite Heritage Museum. Cost is $10. Take a light jacket as it's cool down there.

Fact I learned on the tour - the wooden supports you see in the old mines aren't there to support the roof. They're there to provide warning (when they break) that the roof is coming down.

</comment><comment><USER14> Although not nearly as horrific as a coal mine, I learned this type of lesson in a bout of unemployment. I'm a self-taught programmer, and had been laid off of my job, and with only 1 year of experience and no degree it's super tough to get anything in a small town.

So, I ended up working at a local factory. The labor itself was hard, hot, and sweaty(in the summer, the temp was usually around 120F), but you got use to it after a month or two if you don't have a heat stroke (which is common).. The most horrifying thing I saw in this though was the utter disregard for human life.

If you got hurt on the job for any reason, the company would try to find anyway they could to fire you as soon as possible. One guy had a family to feed and all, and due to a missing guard ended up grinding a spot on his arm down to the bone. Although the department head had told him to work as fast as possible and disregard the missing guard, it was the employees fault for getting hurt. He came in the next day bandaged up and on painkillers (because they still didn't let him have a day off) and then fired him at around an hour before closing.

In another case, a guy in my department that I commonly ate with lost his finger. I didn't hear the story of what exactly happened, but he was fired, determined to be his fault. Also, the factory tended to actually be a highly sought after job. It was well paid (for the area, around $13/hour) and accepted anyone with a high school diploma. So, if you complained about too much, you could easily find yourself canned for not meeting impossible quotas and with a replacement at your station in less than a week.

Also, people drove from all over (Oklahoma) to go to this job. So, when there was a rare snow storm and most people were trapped in their house, they all had to take "points" (ie, their only allocated time off) if they couldn't leave. I think 5 or 6 people wrecked on the way to work.. They kept this crap up even after being sued for some relatively small amount by an ex-employee for being fired due to crashing on the way to work when there was an ice storm (She was fired because she ran out of her allocated time off)

The way the managers and company would treat humans more like robots was really more painful than the work, and when I quit (because I got a programming job again) I did not complete my 2 weeks I was suppose to and ensured that I'd never be able to work there again

<comment><USER15> From a Northern European perspective, it is unbelievable such labor conditions could exist in a (supposedly) first-world country. Preposterous.

<comment><USER16> There was a simple misunderstanding, someone told the owner that his factory needed to be "Prosperous", and he heard "Preposterous". Could have happened to anybody.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> An anecdote...

My father did the same thing in a mid 80s scenario in the UK.

He took me to work. At the time, he was importing containers full of stuff from Taiwan for the the new PC clone market i.e. building PCs, assembling them and reselling them.

I spent an entire day slicing my hands open on cheap PC cases, box cutters, cardboard boxes and standing on dropped PC case screws and installing MS DOS.

To the child poster, as HN has stopped me replying, yes literally slicing my hands up - they were cheap pressed metal back then and had edges like razor blades.

This is why I did electrical engineering and now software :)

(incidentally his volume was 4x Michael Dell's back then but due to sod-all business sense, he screwed the company up)

<comment><USER18> > slicing my hands open

Not literally, I should hope?

<comment><USER19> Some cases have really sharp edges and corners and will easily cut you

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> When I was a grade-school child, we were taken on a tour of a coal mine.

It was an operating mine but there was a section that had been updated to safely give tours.

I was too young to appreciate the kind of effort that went into being a miner but it was readily apparent to me that I did NOT want that kind of life.

When I was working my way through college, I had a summer job at a machine shop. We made parts for train cars. Two months of that work made me appreciate the value of the education that I was getting. Every day when I woke up, my hands were too cramped to move them. I used to have to wake up 10 minutes early and place my hands under my back to use the weight of my body to stretch them out before I began my day. I began to experience numbness in my fingertips that didn't go away until more than 6 months after I left that place to go back to college.

All in all, I think it's a good idea to give people a taste of work like this while they still have choices. It's far better to know, in advance, what you're in for if you do not acquire some other marketable skill.

<comment><USER21> By now I think it's actually more of an asset to have lived through such a "surprise" than something unfortunate. I remember my mom always telling me about her work in a sausage factory before she became a teacher and me thinking something like "hell no, I won't even start like this". Then I messed up my university studies big time and in a lucky shot - born from the threat of imminent homelessness - started my career in 24/7 customer service. By hard work and some luck, I eventually found a back door into engineering at that company, ending up as CTO only 6 years later. I'll never forget the lessons of sitting alone through night shifts though for the rest of my life and it's just such a great way to recall some gratitude and humility whenever I need it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> As people in the UK can gather from my surname my family is originally from the North West. Both sides of my family were coal miners. Both met an early grave thanks to coal dust. My father worked at the pit above ground.

My grandparents and parents worked very hard to provide me with the environment to succeed. Success? Stopping another generation from going down the pit.

Whilst I was at university so many other students had the same background. As mundane as call centre and supermarket work maybe at least so few are subjected to those working conditions in the UK now.

<comment><AUTHOR> There's a fascinating site that maps distributions of surnames in the UK at various times in history:

[http://gbnames.publicprofiler.org/Surnames.aspx](http://gbnames.publicprofiler.org/Surnames.aspx)

Here's the map for Blackburn in 1881:

[http://gbnames.publicprofiler.org/Map.aspx?name=BLACKBURN&ye...](http://gbnames.publicprofiler.org/Map.aspx?name=BLACKBURN&year=1998&altyear=1881&country=GB&type=name)

<comment><USER22> Thank you!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Gave self a "terrifying lesson". Enlisted in the Marine Corps on an open contract. From Day #1, was surrounded by profoundly competent, but wholly crazy, people that seemed to cherish all manner of physical discomfort or mental terror experienced in the course of a day's 'work'. Damn right that the VA benefits were subsequently used for school and CS degree.

<comment><USER24> Hah, I gave myself that experience after leaving graduate school, but I chose infantry.

I am about to be admin separated from the reserves, but I will say that the experience has been an overall huge positive. You learn how to quickly identify all of the ways leadership is poor in the tech industry, and then get it all fixed. You also don't lack for motivation since you know what it's like to be hounded by a DI or NCO :) .

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I can't visualize what's happening when they move the jacks and let the roof collapse. Obviously they don't let it trap them, but I don't understand where the face, cutter, and jacks are in relation to the tunnel that lets them in and out. Does anyone here know?

<comment><USER26> It sounds like they were using this technique:

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

<comment><USER25> Thanks! Those hydraulics are unreal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Here's a rough translation of most of it. There may be errors, and I would be happy for more fluent speakers of proper deep Yorkshire to correct them.

        "Come on, son. Gerrup! Ah've a surprise for thi!"

Come on son, get up! I've a surprise for you!

        "Ah see Leetning lost three on t' thutty-niners
         t' other week, Poke. Bloody belt'll kill some'dy
         sooin, tha knows."

I see Lightning lost three (fingers) on the thirty-niners the other week, Poke. Bloody (conveyer) belt will kill somebody soon, you know.

Poke was the author's father's nickname.

"Lightning" was his father's best friend's nickname.

"Thutty-nine" was the coalface they were working on.

        Dad often threw a sickie ...

To take a day off as sick leave, despite not being ill.

        "Stick wi' me, son. Tha'll be reet."

Stick with me, son. You'll be right."

        "Hey up, Poke. Is that thy lad?"

Hey up, Poke. Is that your son?

        "Hey up, Young Pokey. Is tha barn darn t' pit?"

Hey up, son of Poke. Is the child down the pit?

        "Aye, sither. Ah'm barn darn t' thutty-niners
         wi' t' fa'ther."

Aye, you see. I'm (the) child down the coalface with the father.

        "He's a cheyky young bleeder. Tha wants to
         gi'im thick end o' thi belt."

He's a cheeky you lad. You want to give him (the) thick end of your belt.

        "Tha knows Leetning, dun't tha?"

You know Lightning, don't you?

        "Aye, sither, but even then Ah still do bart
         twice as much as thi fa'ther."

Aye, you see, but even then I still do about twice as much as your father.

        "But thy an't had thi surprise yet,"

But you haven't had your surprise yet.

        "Poke's lad darn yet?"

(Is) Poke's son down (here) yet?

        "Reet oh. Ah'll start droppin 'em.
         Watch thi'sens."

Right oh. I'll start dropping them. Watch yourselves.

        "Tha wain't say nowt to thi mam nar,
         will tha? This is just between us men."

You won't say anything (lit. nothing) to your mother, will you? This is just between us men.

        "But tha knows why he done it, dun't tha?"

But you know why he did it, don't you?

        "Nay, lad,"

No, lad.

        "Thi dad had to grease a few palms to
         get thi darn t' pit that day, tha knows."

Your dad had to bribe a few people to get you down the pit that day, you know.

        "Nar look at thi. Tha passed thi Eleven Plus, ...

Now look at you. You passed your 11-plus (a significant school exam),

        "... tha's bin to college an' tha's got
         a reet good job, an't tha?

... you've been to college, and you've got a right good job, haven't you?

        "Exactly! Sither nar, sunshine?"

Exactly! See it now, sunshine?

<comment><USER28> Shouldn't 'bairn' be spelt that way and not 'barn' as in the article?

<comment><USER27> Dialectic differences.

      Yorkshire dialect word     : barn
      Generally accepted meaning : child
                                  (especially a young child, infant)
      Old Norse source word      : barn
                                   Same as bairn, which comes from
                                   the Old English bearn.  bairn is
                                   used as an alternative in some
                                   parts of Yorkshire, the other
                                   northern counties and Scotland.

From [http://www.viking.no/e/england/yorkshire_norse.htm](http://www.viking.no/e/england/yorkshire_norse.htm)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> "I'd finished college, got my degree and had a highly paid job in social work"

Is that the famous British humor, or do they actually get paid pretty well on that side of the pond?

The popular theme of denigration of labor and blue collar work in general was carefully followed to the letter in the story, but, the author hid some social rebellion in there, describing the feeling of brotherhood and family the workers feel for each other. I worked some labor type jobs as a school kid back when that would actually pay your tuition without taking out loans (aka I'm old) and I also did some time in the reserves and shared adversity leads to brotherhood. You put up with insanity because 1) you actually can do it and 2) your brothers need you. To this day no one has ever had my back and vice versa quite like this one grocery store night shift manager or this one sergeant I was assigned to in the army. Never, in all my white collar experience since. Given the working conditions I don't think making a life of it would be wise, but its an experience worth having.

There's a side dish of most people are extremely soft and aspire to be soft, yet, most people really can also be old school tough.

Also a lesson about anxiety, telling the kid they're going to drop the face would probably create great anxiety and terror for every second from when he heard about it until after the drop, assuming the kid had any idea what they were planning.

It was an enjoyable story and thx for posting.

<comment><USER30> Indeed, the brotherhood and sense of camaraderie is what a lot of people miss today, and may not even realize it. I suppose some people get that thru participatting in sports, I never did.

>> To this day no one has ever had my back and vice versa quite like this one grocery store night shift manager or this one sergeant I was assigned to in the army.

Conversely, no one has ever deliberately and methodically screwed me over the way my old sergeant did. That guy was diabolical. Crazy, mean, stupid, pick two, if you're lucky. If you're not then you get all three.

<comment><USER31> Can confirm, had a nutball bipolar sergeant. On his bad days, he wanted to fight me and then try to bust me down for "disrespect of a superior non- commissioned officer." On his good days, he would whine about how no one respected him or liked him.

I got meritoriously promoted solely to get away from him. The master sergeant congratulated him for "mentoring" me to be such a good Marine. Motherfucker.

Thankfully, he's now EAS'd and in Alaska with the bears, where he belongs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Anybody who is interested in this dialect or 'Yorkshire Life' should give Kes a watch [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0064541/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0064541/)

<comment><USER9> God no, do not put anybody through that.

We had to study the book and watch the movie for GCSE English.

The writing is florid nonsense. The movie is worse: only one professional actor used throughout (the school teacher), and it shows.

Oh, and spoiler alert: the story is you can't have nice things, because even once you've found something nice you enjoy your brother is a dick and will kill it and put it in the bin.

Horrible, horrible, horrible book and film. Awful.

<comment><USER33> Here's Kes again

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBJi5tA-L1o](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBJi5tA-L1o)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Conditions in Victorian coal mines shocked victorian England, particularly when it was discovered that topless young girls co worked with naked men.

My family in medieval times were squires. My grandparents in Yorkshire worked in these conditions. What I've inherited from it is a very strong back.

It's a fascinating time, and a commission was formed by queen victoria to look into it.

This may interest some.

[http://www.victorianweb.org/history/ashley.html](http://www.victorianweb.org/history/ashley.html)

</comment><comment><USER35> This article has a nice photograph of supports being installed.

Those supports are active - they move forward as the coal is being cut. They have something called a "Chock Control Interface" (it's the smallish box, at knee hight, on the hydrolic arm, with the big thick cables attached.)

I used to build and test those boxes. I was part of a sub-contract firm, the client was Dowty Mining, then Longwall, then Joy Mining. They were fun to build - you used a variety of different engineering.

Seeing that photo gave me a bit of a flashback.

EDIT: This article mentions a radio programme, but does not link to it. The BBC iPlayer makes it hard to find the programme the article talks about.

Here are some about coal mining (including "The Light", the programme talked about): [http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/collections/p02t6qzd](http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/collections/p02t6qzd)

(One of those mentions the Forest of Dean, which is where one of the Stack Exchange devs is from.)

and here's a direct link to The Light: [http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05y4f96](http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05y4f96)

And here's another programme from that author about growing up poor: [http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01nzqvr](http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01nzqvr)

</comment><comment><USER36> I'm relieved to say that whole drunk father story turned out better than I expected.

</comment><comment><USER37> ... And that's why you always leave a note!

</comment><comment><USER38> On British regional accents:

I saw a BBC drama from the 1970s where a man with a West Country accent would say (it was subtitled as) e.g. "He'm a farmer", replacing "He is a farmer", consistently throughout.

I have never come across that grammar before and can't find any source for it. All of his other grammatical constructions were comfortably familiar, and no other character (not even neighbours in the same village) spoke in that way.

I wondered, were we supposed to understand something particular from that? Would we have, in the 1970s?

<comment><USER39> Some people say "I is", so I guess it's conceivable that others say "he am". And I think they say "we am" / "we'm" in Norfolk.

* here's a book on Cotswold Dialect, mentioning we'm and you'm. [https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=SNS8AgAAQBAJ&lpg=PA11&ot...](https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=SNS8AgAAQBAJ&lpg=PA11&ots=hRQjlmge6a&dq=%22we'm%22%20dialect&pg=PA11#v=onepage&q=he'm&f=false)

<comment><USER38> > here's a book on Cotswold Dialect, mentioning we'm and you'm. > [https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=SNS8AgAAQBAJ&lpg=PA11&ot...](https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=SNS8AgAAQBAJ&lpg=PA11&ot..).

That's a wonderful reference! Thanks so much!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> As a kid I heard the song 'We Work The Black Seam Together' by Sting. It was protesting the closure of mines in England. Even as a kid I couldn't imagine what was going through his head. Yes many minors were put out of work and I'm sure many of them and their families were put into horrible poverty or worse but breaking the generational cycle had to have been a positive thing.

</comment><comment><USER41> People in the UK can listen to this on BBC (radio) iPlayer as it was on Radio4 this morning: [http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05y4f96](http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05y4f96)

</comment><comment><USER42> Having just read the article, I'm now so much more thankful that watching my parents' relative struggle was informative enough for me to pursue education and a good career, that they never had to "scare" me out of anything.

</comment><comment><USER43> Luxury. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xe1a1wHxTyo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xe1a1wHxTyo)

<comment><USER44> Maybe even more topical: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPSzPGrazPo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPSzPGrazPo)

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> I still have no idea what the surprise was. That was really poorly written. The roof caved in? They did it on purpose and then something exploded?

</comment><comment><USER27> Does anyone need a translation of any of that? I don't speak broad Yorkshire, but I can probably help out with the more difficult bits.

I never was given a lesson like this, but I learned the same lesson by working one summer in a factory that made gas barbecues. I saw the hard physical work, the utter tedium, and it was without doubt the best motivation to get a good degree and work I enjoyed.

This was a great read. Thank you.

<comment><USER46> @ColinWright, can you help out with following text from the article? Just don't want to miss out on the inner meaning of the message from father to son. Many thanks!

> "I'm sorry. Tha wain't say nowt to thi mam nar, will tha? This is just > between us men."

<comment><USER47> Tha = thee, the familiar form of "you". "Only thee-thou's them as thee-thou's you": family and close friends only. This is dying out. I recall my Yorkshire grandmother using it, but only intermittently.

wain't = won't nar = now

These are both on the other side of a vowel shift.

Nowt = nothing. This is a bit of dialect that's still alive, partly due to its use in the TV advertising slogan "Bread wi' Nowt Taken Out".

TV and the class system have long worked against UK regional accents and dialect.

<comment><USER48> I live in Leeds now, but grew up in Nottingham (70 miles south, also coal- mining country) and we said "owt" and "nowt" \- but pronounced like "oat", not "out".

Also your stereotypical Yorkshire would shorten "the" to "t'" (going down t'pit) - we would drop it completely "guin' dahn pit".

Sometimes I reckon Yorkshire folks think I'm taking the piss the way I say things.

<comment><USER49> I was at Uni with a bloke from Burnley, and he used to say "obbat" and "nobbat" (for "owt" and "nowt" respectively), although I've never heard them since.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> Make sure you read to the end. TL;DR doesn't really work.

<comment><USER51> TL;DR: Kid thinks Dad is crazy. Crazy dad takes kid to hell of an workplace. Kid hates dad for that. Kid discovers dad did it so that kid won't ever have or want to work in a place like that. Kid love dad again.

;-)

<comment><USER52> Thank you. I really despise this sort of blatant clickbait headlines.

<comment><USER53> It could have been more descriptive, but I'd say it's pretty low on the scale of headline obnoxiousness. And the story is well-written, detailed and touching, I thought.

<comment><USER46> click baiting from the BBC is quite rare so it is not so bad.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Sculpting text with regex, grep, sed, awk, emacs and vim (2012) - <AUTHOR> http://matt.might.net/articles/sculpting-text/

<comment><USER2> One really cool tool that web programmers should know if they work with JSON data a lot is jq: [http://stedolan.github.io/jq/](http://stedolan.github.io/jq/). It's a line- oriented tool like sed, awk, and grep, but it's for manipulating JSON data. It can be really useful for quickly making sense of JSON-formatted log files. For example, you can do something like

        jq -c .'select(.server_name == "slow_server") | .end_time - .start_time' < my_log_file

where your log file might look like

        '{"server": "slow_server", "timings": {"end_time": 1406611619.90, "start_time": 1406611619.10}}'

to get your web request timings.

Because it's line-oriented, it also works seamlessly with other tools, so you can pipe the output to, say, sort, to find the slowest requests.

<comment><USER3> Somewhat similar to xmlstarlet ([http://xmlstar.sourceforge.net/docs.php](http://xmlstar.sourceforge.net/docs.php)) for xml documents.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> What a great article. Even though I've picked up a lot of this through osmosis, I wish I'd read such a clear and lucid primer of Unix basics (including the author's other articles on the subject) a few years ago.

A good follow-up to read, from the same person, is his article on relational shell programming: [http://matt.might.net/articles/sql-in-the- shell/](http://matt.might.net/articles/sql-in-the-shell/)

<comment><USER5> Thanks for the kind words.

The comment on jq (which I'd never seen) had me thinking about the relational shell programming again.

One could implement a remarkably robust relational DB at the shell with jq.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The composite (or prime) filter regexp is brilliant.

        $^(11+)(\1)+$

see OPs linked article [http://zmievski.org/2010/08/the-prime-that- wasnt](http://zmievski.org/2010/08/the-prime-that-wasnt) for details

</comment><comment><USER7> One tool that should have become more common but isn't is Rob Pike's structural regular expressions, which are a fascinating generalization of awk for non-line oriented data.

[http://doc.cat-v.org/bell_labs/structural_regexps/](http://doc.cat-v.org/bell_labs/structural_regexps/)

Many people have tried to generalize unix pipes and homogeneous data, few have succeeded.

</comment><comment><USER8> I prefer pcregrep, it's more feature rich and syntax is much neater. Using \d instead of [0-9] and etc. makes regexes more readable.

<comment><USER9> Is that any different than grep --perl (should be available most places GNU grep is)? I use that for complex regexes.

For even longer ones I just started using perl with /x, so you can uses insignificant whitespace and comments.

<comment><USER8> I didn't really compare, since grep marks --perl as "highly experimental". pcregrep on the other hand is around for a long time already.

One very useful feature in pcregrep is outputting the matched subpattern only. For example if you do:

        echo 'abcdefg' | pcregrep -o2  'a(bc)d(ef)g'

It will output only second matched subpattern.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Perl is better than sed/awk, but you're still going to write unreadable code. Python or Ruby are a better choice for maintainable scripts.

<comment><USER11> Python and Ruby are just as bad as Perl for this. Python being the least fluent of the three for scripting.

If you want a proper language to support your scripting goals, then if you go right up to something like Ocaml or Haskell you'll skip all the pointless stringly-typed problems of perl/ruby/python.

<comment><USER10> It's hard to take people seriously who suggest Haskell as a good language for general scripting. That's some powerful religion.

<comment><USER12> Yeah, "stringly-typed" isn't really a problem when you're mostly dealing with files made up of strings/lines. Interfacing between programs and files which output mostly idiosyncratic output over an interface of files and strings isn't really made any easier or more robust by using a heavy type system and functional purity...</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Trying out the Pinebook Pro – a $200 ARM Laptop - <AUTHOR> https://www.jeremymorgan.com/blog/linux/pine64-pro-laptop-review/ <comment><USER2> My pbp arrived a few days ago. The stock image it ships with seemed a little laggy, probably due to aggressive cpu throttling for power. Since I'm interested in encrypted disks I knew I would be installing a new OS from the get-go.

Desiring LUKS basically rules out image-based distribution, so to find a compatible installer this [0] page was useful. I opted for straight Debian (bullseye). This amounts to a script wrapping debootstrap that adds in the local firmware and kernel patches. I was required to use a sufficiently fast and large microSD card (16 GB+). As reported on [1] and in the dedicated thread [2] there are a few small issues:

* firefox does indeed crash in the way described, though I expect this will resolve itself after an upstream update

* The brightness up/down keys do not work, though they do in the base image

* I've encountered issues with the wifi getting wedged after resuming from sleep.

Still, on the whole it seems snappier than the base image, and the track pad latencies issues I noticed there don't seem to manifest here.

[0]: [https://wiki.pine64.org/index.php/Pinebook_Pro_Software_Rele...](https://wiki.pine64.org/index.php/Pinebook_Pro_Software_Release#Linux_Installer_Releases) [1]: [https://wiki.pine64.org/index.php/Pinebook_Pro_Debian_Instal...](https://wiki.pine64.org/index.php/Pinebook_Pro_Debian_Installer) [2]: [https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=8487](https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=8487)

edit: formatting.

<comment><USER3> Regarding the trackpad latency, have you seen that there is an update for it ? [https://forum.pine64.org/announcements.php?aid=23](https://forum.pine64.org/announcements.php?aid=23) while it is more about the mouse moving while you are typing, it may help in your case.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Seeing all that empty internal space makes me wonder if they couldn't increase the device's appeal by fitting it with a bigger battery. 8-10 hours of charge time is good, but a $200 laptop that could go for (say) 20 or 30 hours on a charge would really turn heads.

I suppose it's possible that would require some kind of custom battery, and this is just the most appropriate battery for this enclosure they could get off-the-shelf, though.

<comment><USER5> It's an 10,000 mAh battery, though. That's huge, isn't it? I don't know any other laptop that has a battery that big. Looking online, Macbooks seem to have around 6,000 mAh.

<comment> kube-system You'd want to compare watt-hours for an equal comparison of energy for batteries of different voltages.

38Wh is fairly small for a laptop battery.

<comment><USER6> I like how we all commented at the same time. poor OP...

<comment><USER7> Happens often. What's the etiquette ? Answer to each replies ? One single reply that address everyone's point(s) ?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The really nice thing is that the RK3399, while an old and not particularly fast ARM, has almost entirely open documentation. A bit of googling should land both parts of the TRM, which covers every bit of the SOC's registers and devices minus the Mali.

The follow-on RK3588 announced last year with 4x A76's (and 4x A55s) in 8nm should completely crush the RK3399 performance wise. If it comes with open documentation too, it could be a killer hacker chip this year.

(just to add to that) The RK3399 has 2x A72's with a peak frequency of 2Ghz and 4 A53's. The RPi's 4x A72s easily run at 2Ghz as well, given a heatsink. For most workloads the much faster A72s are a big advantage over the A53s.

<comment><USER9> Does it use any proprietary blobs to boot? I have yet to see a GPU without them, and you said "almost", so I assume the answer is yes?

<comment><USER8> I don't think there are any binary blobs in the normal atf+uboot+kernel boot path. The display will run without the mali, so. AFAIK it can be run entirely open source. There could be some additional hidden burned in place firmware to handle the early SPI/etc boot flow, but they actually document the cortex M0 mgmt processor as well. So that puts them ahead of basically everyone.

Not all the documentation is "good" the DDR controller registers are in the docs AFAIK, but lack a theory of operation section.

OTOH, there is example code in TFA for that, [https://git.trustedfirmware.org/TF-A/trusted- firmware-a.git/...](https://git.trustedfirmware.org/TF-A/trusted- firmware-a.git/tree/plat/rockchip/rk3399/drivers/dram/dfs.c)

So, really as far as I know this is literally the most open A72 platform out there when it comes to docs you can get via google. The MALI being the problem, which means that one could consider one of the reverse engineered QC chips or the rpi better understood (because of the Adreno or vp9 efforts) but even then the documentation quality is worse.

<comment><USER10> If there are no blobs in the "normal" path, why isn't this device supported by mainline Debian without special patches? Is this code making its way into kernel/bootloader upstream so that distros can pick it up?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > I eagerly await the day Visual Studio Code is available for ARM.

There are community builds for ARM.

[https://code.headmelted.com/](https://code.headmelted.com/)

[https://github.com/VSCodium/vscodium](https://github.com/VSCodium/vscodium)

</comment><comment><USER12> An "annoying touchpad" is likely a dealbreaker for me. It's the holy grail for Linux to me and I feel like it's never been solved by anybody but Apple (w/o Linux).

That being said, I could exist in the command line most of the time...

<comment><USER5> I wish the author expanded on what "annoying" meant. Is it not responsive, too big, too small, jerky, etc?

<comment><USER13> I have one of these laptops. I would guess that he's talking about the same issue that I would describe as an "annoying touchpad" on my unit. The issue is a tad difficult to describe, but it feels like the trackpad is always a little delayed. I don't notice it when strating to move the cursor, but when ending a movement the cursor will consistently slowly slide a bit further in the direction it was being moved. This happens even for small movements, making fine adjustments a real pain. My trackpad also won't depress anywhere near its top-right corner, to the point where it only comfortably depresses at the bottom-left. I want to like this machine, but the issues are bad enough that I've committed to a keyboard-only setup software-wise.

<comment><USER14> There was a firmware update[1] to fix various issues with the trackpad – are the annoyances you describe there even after applying the update?

[1] [https://forum.pine64.org/announcements.php?aid=23](https://forum.pine64.org/announcements.php?aid=23)

<comment><USER15> Yes this issue is still there unfortunately.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is a tad tangential but has anyone done extensive software development using an ARM device?

I was able to get pretty far with a rooted Samsung tablet running Debian in a container (C++ development works great, you can install stuff like VSCode and Clang without too much trouble) but when it came to anything mobile, ironically it all fell apart because the Android toolchain isn't built for ARM64 (save the one in the Debian repositories, which is too old). I even tried to update the package myself but apparently Debian copies all the code into its own repositories and doesn't make clear how to update it.

The Pinebook Pro, having the same CPU architecture, should have the same problems, at least for now. I'm very interested in seeing them solved though.

<comment><USER17> I've done some web development work on my raspberry pi 4. It's _almost_ there, but even using vim, some things are still too slow (I do primarily front-end development). 4gb of RAM means I can't have a ton of things going on, but it's easily enough for back-end, webpack, editor, and a handful of tabs without much issue.

Now, there are some CPU differences here. 3399 has 2 A72 cores at 2GHz and 4 A53 cores at 1.5GHz. The pi 4 can be overclocked to 1.8-2GHz pretty easily which makes it about as fast. I believe the Pi 4 GPU is slower, but it's mostly not relevant for dev work. When Ubuntu finishes working out the bugs with their 64-bit OS, it should offer another big speedup. That is probably enough to boost JS performance (and general system performance) high enough to not feel especially painful.

<comment><USER18> I would take 4xA72 over 2xA72+4xA53 any time. Heterogeneous systems are annoying. Linux probably has some fancy scheduler settings to prefer fast cores (??) but FreeBSD will happily schedule compile jobs onto the slow-ass A53 cores when the A72s are idle, which is annoying.

UPD: NetBSD prefers fast cores now: [https://twitter.com/mrgtwentythree/status/121661988693740339...](https://twitter.com/mrgtwentythree/status/1216619886937403392)

4xA72@2GHz is not bad for web development (I have that on my MACCHIATObin), the thing with the RPi4 is that it has worse RAM and I/O. SD cards are _garbage_ and you really only have USB3 to share between everything else. Having native SATA makes everything better :)

<comment><USER17> There is only 1 PCIe lane and it goes to the USB3 controller. Running from a SSD on USB3 isn't that bad, but they still haven't made default booting from USB possible yet.

I don't think RAM is an issue though. Performance seems to scale pretty much linearly with clockspeed improvements which indicates either the RAM timing is tied to the clockspeeds (seems unlikely) so bandwidth is increasing or it already has more than it can use. That said, rk3399 designs tend to get about 20% better performance (or around 1gb/s) on synthetics.

I'm surprised better IO doesn't exist on the chip if Broadcomm planned on selling it to other customers. I don't think a single SATA port would greatly increase costs, but would have a huge impact on performance.

As a final thought, they really need to consider mounting the RAM and CPU on the other side of the PCB. That would allow good cooling solutions that don't compromise the other board functionality.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I love the little yellow note they included inside to mention powering without the lithium battery plugged in.

Something built with hackers in mind.

<comment><USER20> Thank you for bringing this to my attention and causing me to go back and look closer at the pic.

I was JUST thinking:

* This makes all the stuff I did to set up octoprint for my 3d printer obsolete in one shot. I have spent more money than $200 and many hours trying to find unusual usb and hdmi ribbon cables and right-angle plugs, and designing and 3d printing a frame and stand for a touch screen and pi4, bt keyboard... for an end result that is frankly not very elegant. And here is all the same stuff in a much tidier package all in one effortless shot. (this is all true of pretty much any laptop of course, not just this one)

* BUT... Oh right, I keep forgetting. Laptops have batteries, which go bad in just a couple years, and many laptops do not run without the battery connected. The pi4 setup has no lithium battery to go bad in a couple years, and it's passively cooled. It can sit there plugged in and powered-on 24/7 for years, and most laptops can not.

So you just removed that issue. Thanks!

<comment><USER7> Any pictures of your pi4 :) ?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Performance is a pretty known quantity as these chips have been in chromebooks for almost 4 years now.

The big question for me is drivers. Last I checked, rk3399 SBCs had terrible issues with non-android linux GPU drivers. Has that been fixed yet?

EDIT: looks like the biggest 64-bit issues have now been fixed. I'll have to try again. Now to get it booting from an external SSD...

[https://ubuntu.com/blog/updated-images-of-ubuntu-for-the- ras...](https://ubuntu.com/blog/updated-images-of-ubuntu-for-the-raspberry- pi-2-3-and-4)

</comment><comment><USER21> I haven't bothered checking TFA's complaints about Debian packaging, but npm certainly is available for arm.

      $ uname -m -p -i
      aarch64 aarch64 aarch64
      $ npm --version
      6.13.6

<comment><AUTHOR> I didn't try very hard to install it, but I'll do that and update the article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> It looks like a perfect "burner" laptop! Can be very useful when traveling overseas, hostile countries.

</comment><comment><USER23> I've been tempted by these as semi-destructible machines for my young kids to cut their teeth on. The oldest has a Chromebook but reinstalled with GalliumOS which has been perfectly adequate so far. I'd be intrigued to see a direct comparison between these as two ultra-cheap Linux options.

<comment><USER24> Why are children these days 'allowed' to 'destructive'? I was using my mother's NeXT Cube back in the early nineties when I was about eleven or twelve and it's still in mint condition. It was made very clear to me that allowing me to use it was an enormous privilege and that if I had in any way damaged it there would have been hell to pay and I have absolutely no doubt that my arse would've been kicked into tomorrow if I had broken my side of the deal. Teaching kids to take care of stuff is a key point in the escape from disposable consumerism.

<comment><USER25> My dad would have loved to have you instead of me. He walked in on me with the family PC taken completely apart and flipped out, lol. I agree with you though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> If anybody wants one of these in like-new condition with an ISO keyboard, I'll sell you mine (I'm American, ordered the ISO keyboard by mistake :/ )

<comment><USER27> Except your mail is not in your profile :(

<comment><USER26> whoops, should be fixed

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Honestly, I'm so impressed with this device.

I really want to get this just so I can hack the hell out of it. With all that empty space in the case, there are _so_ many possibilities...

</comment><comment><USER29> I have an old RK3399-based Chromebook. I now end up using its Intel "Core m"-based counterpart (originally bought for my partner) more, but the ARM machine was/is 100% fine as a fancy terminal for my backend Web dev work. I had no trouble messing with Go on an even earlier ARM (Tegra K1) Chromebook.

The Surface Pro X did not take off, but I suspect that's a combination of ARM not being competitive _at the high end_ and needing a friendlier ecosystem. ARM might do a bit better once larger core designs and denser process nodes (RK3399 is 28nm!) filter down to lower-priced devices and there's great software to run, like a refined Windows/ARM or Chrome OS w/Android or something else.

(I've been hoping for ARM to make inroads into Serious Computers for some time, so who knows, but it _does_ seem successful in lower-end Chromebooks, and Amazon and MS are publicly experimenting with it, so...)

</comment><comment><USER30> > _You can't fault the Pine64; everything has to be built for ARM and that's > still a work in progress. I eagerly await the day Visual Studio Code is > available for ARM._

Thankfully this is changing rapidly, thanks in part to raspberry pi desktops.

Most, if not all, popular server apps are already available in ARM. Desktop apps will take time.

<comment><USER31> There's community builds: [https://code.headmelted.com/](https://code.headmelted.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Would've been great if they had used a Thinkpad keyboard like on the Novena: [https://www.crowdsupply.com/img/b4cb/novena-954-edit_jpg_pro...](https://www.crowdsupply.com/img/b4cb/novena-954-edit_jpg_project- body.jpg)

<comment><USER33> Yeah, except that that's A) the designer, artisan variant, and B) a whole different class of device. IIRC, it uses a semi-integrated standalone wireless keyboard, which would add a whack ton of thickness to something that's marketed as being fairly small.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Enjoyed the article. Thanks for write up.

4GB RAM sounds terrible even for browsing and basic tasks.

I'm looking to switching to one of those devices in future, so far on trusted Thinkpad x230 (no FHD, $150 USD) for travel purposes.

Can anyone comment on "no NPM yet that I know of though" ?

Does node development work normally ?

<comment><USER35> Using a reasonable OS (Linux etc), 4GB is absolutely fine for browsing and basic tasks, and indeed is often fine for development and other more-than- basic tasks as well, depending on how exactly you work (Emacs/Vim instead of an IDE, for instance).

Is 4GB considered too little under Windows these days?

<comment><USER24> It amazes me no end that when I turned 18 I was contracted to work on a Cray J90 with a staggering 128 Mwords of RAM at a financial institution, and that today 4GB is considered tight for running a consumer OS with a browser with more than a few tabs open.

I really cannot fathom what could possibly require so much memory. It's just taking some hypertext markup, some scripts, and rendering a web-page.

I genuinely do not understand. I'm totally baffled.

<comment><USER36> and I think back to the old B6700 ... for which we bought 1.5Mb of core (yes, actual hand threaded core) for $1M in the late 70s ..... it supported 40 terminals

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I've gotten my PineBook Pro and I'm seriously impressed with the build quality and feel for a $200 machine. My touchpad has a minor defect in how it was installed, but it's probably an easy fix.

</comment><comment><USER38> How could one start building their own laptop as a fun side project?

</comment><comment><USER39> Are there any $200 laptops like this one but x86 powered?

<comment><USER5> New chromebooks or used laptops. I recommend used; you get better quality models. Who needs a brand new laptop, anyway?

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Is the screen IPS?

<comment><USER41> Yes, that is listed on the product page.

[https://www.pine64.org/pinebook-pro/](https://www.pine64.org/pinebook-pro/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> self-promotion: i also reviewed this laptop in a YouTube video: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EoIfSnFCs84](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EoIfSnFCs84)

</comment><comment><USER43> Is it possible to buy in bulk for education purposes?

</comment><comment><USER44> This bodes well in terms of lower prices, better battery longevity, and incredible performance for the soon-coming ARM MacBooks.

<comment><USER45> Macbooks aren't primarily priced according to the cost of production. They command a huge producer surplus from brand loyalty, vendor lock-in, etc.

<comment><USER44> Yes, supply and demand are both relevant.

On the supply side, the very high cost of Intel CPUs has been adversely constraining the pricing flexibility of Mac computers. Apple sells orders of magnitude more iOS devices, all ARM-based; if they could sharply increase the sale of Mac computers, it would also be profitable for them -- and it might unify+simplify their software development efforts.</comment></comment></comment>


1491 (2002) - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2002/03/1491/302445/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> There are a lot of first hand accounts from the first Spaniards in the New World. I've read them and they are fascinating. They also provide a direct look at the peoples they encountered.

Cabeza de Vaca provided a very interesting account. Marooned, he wandered the New World alone for many years. He often found groups of people living in incredible squalor and constant warfare-- barely able to feed themselves. He ended up surviving, in part, because he acted as a middle-man between tribes who needed to trade with each other but were constantly at war.

Cortes found fairly advanced civilizations with amazing infrastructure that also suffered from warfare, slavery and ridiculous amounts of human sacrifices.

There is also a lot of evidence in the DNA of Native Americans that tell how and when they migrated here.

The point I am making is that Native Americans were and are Native Americans. They had good things and bad things going for them. This article (and book) seems pre-occupied with trying to tell you that everything we've learned up to this point is entirely wrong and that the New World was a utopia before the filthy Europeans arrived. It wasn't, and there is a ton of evidence to support that. It just was what it was. To be honest, I feel like this is trying to re- focus history with a politically correct slant-- which is what bothers me.

<comment><USER3> There is of course the theory that the reason the Spaniards found it so easy to whoop dat Aztec was because of the hostility caused by so much human sacrifice.

<comment><USER4> > There is of course the theory that the reason the Spaniards found it so easy > to whoop dat Aztec was because of the hostility caused by so much human > sacrifice.

The Aztecs weren't unique in the practice of human sacrifice. It seems a lot more likely that resent of the Aztec Empire by its peripheries _in general_ was the reason than human sacrifice specifically, the former exacerbated by general discontent resulting from the wave of disease the region was facing -- as a result of European contact with the Caribbean islands and trade between the islands and the mainland.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> An article so good it was expanded into a book. In contrast with most books which never have been more than articles. :)

The book was reviewed thousands of times but here's mine [http://gondwanaland.com/mlog/2005/12/28/1491/](http://gondwanaland.com/mlog/2005/12/28/1491/)

Or there's [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1491:_New_Revelations_of_the_A...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1491:_New_Revelations_of_the_Americas_Before_Columbus) and about the followup [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1493:_Uncovering_the_New_World...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1493:_Uncovering_the_New_World_Columbus_Created)

<comment><USER6> The article is pretty old. Do the books, or other articles address the criticisms? eg:

" "I have seen no evidence that large numbers of people ever lived in the Beni," says Betty J. Meggers, of the Smithsonian Institution. "Claiming otherwise is just wishful thinking." Similar criticisms apply to many of the new scholarly claims about Indians, according to Dean R. Snow, an anthropologist at Pennsylvania State University. The problem is that "you can make the meager evidence from the ethnohistorical record tell you anything you want," he says. "It's really easy to kid yourself.""

I just wonder how it's viewed by experts in the field, now.

<comment><USER5> It's been a very long time since I read the first book, afraid I recall few details. The second book probably not as it covers the biological effects of the 'great exchange' and IIRC doesn't retread the 1491 material.

But I had those sorts of questions while reading, and generally do about books. I wish all were continually revised, or at least the articles on English Wikipedia about them would point out obsolete and incorrect claims.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> PBS has a good documentary called "Cracking the Maya Code", [https://youtube.com/watch?v=H5ppfC6y-5s](https://youtube.com/watch?v=H5ppfC6y-5s), about deciphering of Mayan glyphs, centuries after most books were burnt. Much credit goes to Linda Schele, an art teacher who made breakthroughs in decoding the glyphs, [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linda_Schele](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linda_Schele)

There's a longer version of the documentary called "Breaking the Maya Code", including interview clips with Schele, [http://www.nightfirefilms.org/breakingthemayacode/interviews...](http://www.nightfirefilms.org/breakingthemayacode/interviews/ScheleTRANSCRIPT.pdf)

" _The Maya use story.. The advantage to me of stories, like what the Maya used, and the painting onto the patterns of the stars and the Milky Way of images of these great narratives, is you don't have to be a Ph.D. to understand it. You could be a child and understand it and learn it through stories. In our world, to access that, you either have to be one of the scientists who creates the legend of the Big Bang, or you have to be one of the scientific writers who act as translators for the people in our world._ "

</comment><comment><USER8> Fascinating excerpt from the book by Tyler Cowen:

> the modern species [of maize] had to have been consciously developed by a > small group of breeders who hunted through teosinte strands for plants with > desired traits…"To get corn out of teosinte is so — you couldn't get a grant > to do that now, because it would sound so crazy…Somebody who did that today > would get a Nobel Prize!"

[http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2005/08/149...](http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2005/08/1491.html#sthash.wNlmQJ0Z.dpuf)

<comment><USER9> Makes you wonder what else is out there just waiting to be selected...

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> One of the best articles I have read on the state of NA civilization pre colonization. [http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/native- intelligence-10...](http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/native- intelligence-109314481/)

The short version is that Europeans really did not have any idea about the civilization they were replacing, and by the time they really arrived European diseases had killed most of the population, leading to the myth that the continent was empty. Can't really do justice with a summary.

</comment><comment><USER11> There are fascinating parallels between this debate and the debate on the size, economic development and political cohesion of the Palestinian population before the establishment of modern day Israel.</comment>


Understanding Code Signing for iOS Apps - <AUTHOR> https://engineering.nodesagency.com/articles/iOS/Understanding-code-signing-for-iOS-apps/ <comment><USER2> Every time certificate gets expired, process to get new certificate and get it all working again is such a pain. Thanks for putting this up, will try to read it carefully when I will need to renew the certificate...</comment>