My experiences on a one month startup - <AUTHOR> http://www.neverreadpassively.com/2008/08/my-experiences-on-one-month-startup.html <comment><USER3> Some observations:

Firstly congratulations on getting the idea from zero to launch in one month. Even if the thing fails you have invested only 1+ resources building. I tried this yesterday, registered and had a play around. Impressions:

\- name: 2 words, elephant that never forgets but why spicy? longer to type

\- registration: faultless

\- no favicon: with tabbed browsers favicons make it easy to find

\- demo: no video demonstration OR quick visual demonstration from front page to show canned demo how app is better

\- clean urls: yes, but where is clean url on say popular? ~ [http://spicyelephant.com/decks?direction=ASC&order=popul...](http://spicyelephant.com/decks?direction=ASC&order=popular)

\- feedback: google group (good) no twitter, blog. Would have thought a twitter account and blog was a good idea for features and latest new decks?

\- loading: no check for javascript block

\- layout: readability reduced by lots of text. cull text.

\- New deck: there is no easy way to create new deck once registed (ie: need a big easy to find button for people with really big thumbs so they do not have to hunt for it). Link to create deck should be off front page. When user is logged in "Make new deck" should be at the front page not just <http://spicyelephant.com/profile>

Now most of these are pretty trivial. The app works. What about marketing and getting feedback from users to improve? The only real things I'd suggest would be:

\- add "make new deck" to front page easier to find

\- add a demo walk through with story with pictures and text showing how the app is better

\- add blog and twitter support (more feedback & data push).

One feature request I'd really like to see is a widget I could add to a third party site linking back which allows other companies to create information, test and show users results.

<comment><AUTHOR> that is fantastic feedback bootload, thanks a lot mate! I've upgraded you (login:bootload) to premium as a gesture of the thanks.

jase

<comment><USER3> _"... thanks a lot mate! I've upgraded you (login:bootload) to premium as a gesture of the thanks ..."_

Aw gee you didn't have to. But I'll see how I can make use of it. One idea I've had is could you use the flash cards as a sort of measurable help system? Anyway thanks. Keep up the features.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Great stuff!

I think you need a clear _pitch_ of what you're offering users. Something that can leverage word of mouth: short, easy to grasp, exciting. (Of course, maybe through following supermemo's seeding the geek market, you don't need it for us)

The offer is to "help them to learn stuff, by ... ", how? The first part is clear (cute: elephant=memory), but "how" it helps is not clear.

 _"2. We intelligently organize when to study"_

That doesn't give me a sense of it (sounds like "in the morning"?, "after exercise"?, "at night"?) It's cute having your info as the first scheduled training, but maybe more effective to also have that info available _before_ trial. :-) It's probably just me, but (though cute), I found scheduling that a bit pushy.

I'd also feel more comfortable having a clearer sense of when training will occur: what's the scheduling for _this_ deck? I don't think it's needed for the learning task; but it would make the user _feel_ more informed and in control; and not at the whim of a machine (users don't like that).

But I think you could have something really successful going there.

<comment><AUTHOR> some good points. I really like your comment about knowing the schedule for a deck. We do have an overview in the train page, and some more information in the stats page, but a clear visualization of a decks complete schedule would be a great addition.

thanks.

<comment><USER4> You're welcome - I had seen the schedule on train page, but not the one on the stats page (this may be because I'm on a tiny eee PC, and didn't happen to scroll down... for this (rare) case, I think some sites have subtle guides in the design to suggest the page isn't finished more lower down - I see you have narrow vertical margins, but the RHS is off my screen... as said, a rare case (and it could just be me).

It would be nice to know which each deck is scheduled when (just different colours and a key) - ie, the visualization you suggest.

But you've basically answered my issue - actually, the basic schedule you have now is _very_ important, because you need to know, so you visit the site when the next learning is scheduled. One way is (optional) email alerts, to remind people. (Of course, a serious user would be at the site every day anyway).

BTW: somehow, the info on train and profile pages seems a bit confused to me... maybe there's a better principle to organize it by, in terms of what the user needs, in their work flow. (but I think it's OK as it is - this is just a refinement).

Don't know if any of that helps, but thought I might as well pass on my reactions, just in case they do.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> IMO you should offer free subscriptions to people for creating decks - <USER2> free content will attract more people to the site and make you stand out and differentiate yourself from competitors like Supermemo or Mnemosyne.

The "content is king" meme exists for a reason.

<comment><AUTHOR> that is good advice, we really do need a lot more content to get users.

Hard-core users seem to obsess about making their own decks, thus the available content is there as a hook or gateway to becoming a more involved user.

<comment><USER5> Actually the one thing that has put me off using one of these applications is the lack of availability of a library of decks and is probably the main advantage of a web-based approach. I'm not a fan of the over-proliferation of social network-based sites (Halo's law: "Every site expands until it becomes a social network, those that don't are replaced by those that do"), but I think this is the key case where it could really work to both your and your users advantage.

The hardcore users will be more likely to already have bought Supermemo, have lots of Supermemo decks and be unlikely to switch over. I think you could end up with a larger, broader market than that. But I think the concept is good.

<comment><USER6> Consider building a tool to let users import decks they created on other sites/with other tools (and thus probably retain rights on) to your platform

<comment><AUTHOR> good suggestion :) we have import from csv, but you're right - import from supermemo and eqiv would be a useful feature.

thanks

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I love the idea of building a team and then coming up with different products. Your project mayhem is almost as cool as the one in fight club.

I think the idea behind Spicy Elephant might be a bit abstract for most consumers, but the site came out well. The name doesn't help people to understand what it is...but I like it any way =)

I wish you guys the best of luck with your future projects and I can't wait to see what you come up with next.

<comment><USER4> I think the "elephant" part does, esp with the graphic. Though I don't get the "spicy" part... for me, it actually brings to mind an elephant that has eaten too much spicy indian food...

But sometimes, memorability is more important than meaningfulness... (eg. all the weird IT names we've gotten used to, Red hat, Apache, Mozilla).

it would be really cool to have a cute/humorous story to explain the name (and the business), so that someone mentioning the name would be asked to explain it, and get to pass on an interesting story. eg. Ycombinator. Easy for me to suggest - but coming up with such a story is harder. :-)

<comment><USER3> _"... it would be really cool to have a cute/humorous story to explain the name (and the business), so that someone mentioning the name would be asked to explain it, and get to pass on an interesting story. eg. Ycombinator. Easy for me to suggest - but coming up with such a story is harder. :-) ..."_

A parent company that creates other companies as its namesake suggests ... _"a higher-order function which computes a fixed point of other functions"_ ~ <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixed_point_combinator>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Congrats on the project! It does seem a little obscure but as I understand it, it has a lot of academic interest.

The only thing that made me wince was when you put your source repository on your server. Probably a bad idea, as you found out. You really want your production server configured and streamlined to do one thing -- make money. (Or provide value to users, to be more precise) Think of it as a big cash register. Try to keep it as clean as possible.

</comment><comment><USER9> advertising is a clear and big monetization strategy. A lot of startups use it effectively.

<comment><USER10> Yes but it requires you to achieve a huge userbase before you start seeing any significant profit, and honestly I don't see his startup being able to do that, because I'm guessing his niche is very small

<comment><USER9> My comment was regarding the statement:

"The one caveat was that each project must have to have a clear and realistic path to monetization (for example: subscription, not advertisement)"

I don't think an advertising monetized startup is unclear or unrealistic and it means that you discount a lot of ideas from the start.

<comment><USER11> Yes, realistically neither subscription nor advertisement is likely to bring in a lot of money. My guess is that they want to do things the "37 signals" way, and that means acting as though advertising isn't "realistic".

<comment><AUTHOR> yeah, the video of DHH's talk at startup school influenced the team a lot!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Just a quick observation: Compare the comments on Hacker News to that on Reddit. [http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/6uo66/my_experi...](http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/6uo66/my_experiences_on_a_one_month_startup/)

You'd think everyone on Reddit created their own million dollar tech startup based on those comments.

</comment><comment><USER13> Load the next card in the background so I don't have to wait for the next card to appear when I continue. (I know that the next cards depend on what you achieved in the past, but you could still calculate the next card on the past achievements without considering the last answer).

<comment><USER14> Cheers Bluelu,

It's definitely something that's in the cards, pun indended :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I've written a similar system specifically tailored to learning foreign languages, so I'm definitely interested in taking a closer look at what you've produced.

</comment><comment><USER16> paying for hosted SVN is a pain... I found a godsend when in a similar situation- www.assembla.com - free project management, svn, git, trac- just name it.

</comment><comment><USER17> Just curious - why beanstalk and not github?

<comment><USER18> Because they were using subversion, not git.

<comment><USER14> Yup exactly, and since only one member of the group was familiar with rails when we started we thought it would be best to stick with at least a version control system that we all knew.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> tried to register right now but can't for some reason ...

<comment><AUTHOR> sorry about that, out email broke. should be working fine now.</comment></comment>


Decline of play and rise of sensory issues in preschoolers - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2015/09/01/the-decline-of-play-in-preschoolers-and-the-rise-in-sensory-issues/ <comment><USER2> I've worked with high level machine intelligence, it has become very obvious to me that cognitive development goes hand in hand with physical movement and manipulation. Intelligence, real or artificial, do not fully develop without prolonged physical interaction with the subjects they proport to understand.

We learn about space, objects, and people by doing regular physical activity. We learn about things by touching them, throwing them, kicking them into the woods or on the roof. Our brains develop by manipulating and getting feedback from our environment.

I feel far less intelligent after a day spent in front of a computer or a book than I do after a day spent walking in the woods. I'm astonished by how brain- dead I become without physical activity, and how useless and un-creative it makes me.

Kids don't need 30 min of recess -- they need an entire day of working and learning with their hands and feet along with their brains.

<comment><USER3> I work for a Sudbury School (Arts&Ideas in Baltimore) where this is our mantra.

I've long take it as an article of faith that humans are wired this way. But I am astounded by the comment about artificial intelligence. Is there any kind of paper that explores this? Not even sure how to set it up or quantify such a thing, but that would be incredible to prove.

<comment><USER4> There's a somewhat relevant concept in Seymour Papert's book Mindstorms. Papert talks about "body-syntonicity" where the act of drawing a circle on the computer screen with LOGO can be seen as bridging children's sense and knowledge about their own bodies to something abstract. Young children would often pretend to be the LOGO turtle, acting out commands on the floor, during stages of planning a LOGO program, or while debugging LOGO code. It has also been a strategy for teachers to introduce programming and procedural ways of thinking. This video shows this in action (with some followup comments from Papert): [https://youtu.be/bOf4EMN6-XA?t=254](https://youtu.be/bOf4EMN6-XA?t=254)

<comment><USER5> When I was in school with the BBC micro and the LOGO turtle we had an actual physical turtle hooked up to the machine via a long cable.

Needless to say this was much more popular with us than just the screen. I am sure it is partly for the robotic'ness of it but we would often walk around with the turtle as it was moving. So what you are saying and linked to I can well believe.

<comment><USER6> This sounds great. Do you have any more information on the mechanical turtle? (consumer kit, or a side-project by an industrious teacher?)

<comment><USER5> This was a consumer kit aimed at schools. Looks like there were many different types as obitoo has another that I have never seen.

[http://gallery.nen.gov.uk/asset78077_1582-.html](http://gallery.nen.gov.uk/asset78077_1582-.html)

<comment><USER7> Huh! Ours, and the ones I saw on telly as a nipper, did not look like an actual turtle! It was just a smooth hemisphere with gubbins on display, inside.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Sleep deprivation. It explains all the symptoms mentioned in the article.

Kids in kindergarten start early, and stay later than they have in the past with no nap period. Busy parents (both of whom are now working full-time) are lucky to get home by 7pm, so the kid(s) are generally kept up till 9/10pm so the parents can have some time with them.

If parents are going to keep a 5/6-yr old up to 9:30pm or later, then wake them up at 7:15am to get ready for school at 8:15am.... which goes till 2pm with no nap time. Well yea, sleep deprivation hurts.

Ask your parents, grandparents, etc when they went to sleep, when kindergarten began, how long it ran, whether it included a nap/rest-time. Most of us got a _lot_ more sleep than the kids now.

Edit: I agree kids need more free-play time, but that's separate from their sleep deprivation.

<comment><USER9> This really blows my mind if it's what's happening. Are you saying that kindergartens are getting rid of 'nap times'?!?!

Why would they do this?!?!

I thought it was obvious that children need sleep in order to learn and grow.

Secondly even if I put on a tinfoil hat I can't see even a financial incentive for getting rid of naps. That's down time that kindergarten teachers get to relax in the relative quiet and organize things.

So what possible rationale is there for getting rid of nap time?

<comment><USER10> I didn't have nap time in school, I had to go to bed at 7 instead (with school starting at 9). Nap time is only needed if your night time is too short, IMO.

<comment> a-saleh Similar experience. Both me and my sister were not napping at all and instead slept 8 pm - 6 am.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> There is a focus in the article in playing outside which is good and fine.

But another important aspect missing today is age mixing. This is crucial because it is an informal mentoring process, in effect. 4 year olds learn best from being around 6 year olds who learn best from 8 year olds, etc. up the chain. There is also reflection from being a mentor to the younger ones. All of this is absent increasingly today.

It is not just lack of recess or whatever, but a lack of neighborhood, of community. The young ones learn how to share, how to regulate emotions, etc., in part by witnessing the older ones being that way.

<comment><USER11> Some schools practice the concept of "mixed age groups" where each class is composed of 3 different ages in equal proportion. For instance my 5-yo son has 3-yo's and 4-yo's in his class.

Thing is, it's a constant battle for the school with parents who always want their kids to with same-age kids or older-ones, never smaller ones. Everyone thinks their kid's development will be "held back" because of the younger children in the class. Telling them about how older kids also learn from playing or working with younger kids is a hard sell, when all parents think today is academic progress.

<comment><USER12> Unfortunately what they do not understand is that teaching someone else is one of the best learning opportunities you can get, even if you think its not. It both expands and cements your knowledge of a subject, and highlights the areas that you are unsure of.

I spent years training various technical topics, and the reason I was so fluent in them is because I was expected to be able to teach anyone around me on a dime.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm an American parent of mixed French-American children, and I have a very hard time believing that schools are the cause of this. American preschools are way behind French preschools in terms of academic preparation, and yet French children aren't exhibiting the same kinds of problems.

If it really is a play issue, it's more likely that American parents don't allow their children more freedom on the playground, instead helicoptering around (I'm guilty) and not allowing them to just handle things themselves.

<comment><USER14> On a vacation to France last year, my SO and remarked several times on how different the behaviours of children and adults in the playgrounds in cities and towns of France differed from their counterparts in Canada and the US.

The interaction in France reminded me much more of my parents and I than the modern parents of North America.

It's hard to put a finger on exactly what it was but there was a lot more letting the kids climb on stuff, do "dangerous" things, work out their own problems, fight their own battles and basically run around having fun.

<comment><USER15> Today's America has a stronger phobia of getting hurt.... or maybe of getting sued.

[http://www.theguardian.com/society/2011/may/21/children- weak...](http://www.theguardian.com/society/2011/may/21/children-weaker- computers-replace-activity)

[http://www.bustle.com/articles/41370-11-stupidly- dangerous-t...](http://www.bustle.com/articles/41370-11-stupidly-dangerous- toys-of-the-90s-our-parents-probably-shouldnt-have-let-us-play-with) \--- I remember some of these toys and they were great fun.

<comment><USER16> Wow, the only dubious of those choices would be the rocket. The rest of them are great for learning your body, and act responsible. I really blows me mind that a trampoline is seen as a dangerous thing - I'd say a pool is worse. The trampoline is a endless source of fun for children, and I've yet to even hear of someone getting anything worse than a sprained angle from one.

<comment><USER17> > anything worse than a sprained ankle

There were eleven trampoline deaths in the US between 1990 and 1995.

[http://www.avon.nhs.uk/phnet/Avonsafe/Trampolines/Trampoline...](http://www.avon.nhs.uk/phnet/Avonsafe/Trampolines/Trampoline%20Injuries.pdf)

There were about 100,000 ER presentations in the US in 2007. These are all preventable accidents. And these accidents happened after considerable work had gone into making trampolines safer.

Safety nets help (many injuries happen when people fall off), but here's a passage describing another method of injury:

> 3.5 If a trampolinist lands on the mat when out of phase with the other > participants, the mat may be rising to meet them and the effect is of > meeting a hard surface. All the potential and kinetic energy in the system > is transferred to the person, who may be unprepared. Depending on the > child's mass, the energy transfer may be equivalent to falling from 2.2m or > 3.4 m equivalent to a fall from a first floor window7. This fact may provide > a useful tool to communicate the effect of trampolining to parents and > supervisors.

None of this means that trampolines should be banned. A manufacturing standard is probably needed for domestic equipment. And people should be encouraged to have adult spotters and safety nets.

<comment><USER18> > There were eleven trampoline deaths in the US between 1990 and 1995.

Looks like an incredibly safe activity.

How many deaths were there for people simply falling while they walk?

<comment><USER19> How much time do people spend walking versus trampolining?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> As much as the rise in "sensory issues" may be real, it could also be occupational therapists trying to generate more business for themselves.

It's happened in South Africa's[1] for-profit private healthcare sector, where wealthy areas with high concentrations of occupational therapists just happen to have enormous rates of diagnosed sensory issues in normal children, to the extent that medical schemes (insurers) have had to ration these treatments (with the tacit approval of parents, who know it's often a scam, but are forced by schools to undertake OT treatments).

Especially as formerly good South African schools have been forced to cut back, and the overall quality of education has deteriorated, OTs have become the "real" teachers in affluent areas, teaching handwriting and other motor skills, often to every child in some schools. And, anecdotally, bright young women who want to work with children aspire to become OTs, rather than teachers nowadays, exacerbating the problem.

Wikipedia has the citations on this issue. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupational_therapy#Children_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupational_therapy#Children_and_youth)

If I was an parent of a young child in the U.S., my spidey sense would be very tingley when I read articles like this.

[1] yes South Africa is a third-world country, but there are aspects that are very "First World"

<comment><USER21> Pediatric Occupational Therapists are basically "professionally trained parents", people who spent a few years studying child develpoment. You can quibble with the price and the necessity, and in some regions the practitioners might not be qualified, but in general an hour or whatever per week with an Occupational Therapist is going to yield insights into a child's development, and training for parents to be better in their roles.

Modern developed countries have a "no child left behind" attitude. 30 years ago, a kid who couldn't keep up and fit in would be left to waste away in the corner (if they were nonviolent) or pent up in an asylum environment (if they acted out)

<comment><USER20> I don't have a problem with occupational therapists. Indeed, I went for occupational therapy myself, in the 1980's when it was far less common. I had genuine problems that needed addressing (when I was 5 I couldn't do buttons or zips and I couldn't use my hands to save myself when I fell down). This _was_ about 30 years ago, and I was helped, and definitely not left to waste away in a corner.

South African occupational therapists are certainly skilled and qualified by world standards.

The problem arises when "no child left behind" becomes "every child has a problem", especially when there is a clear financial motive for overdiagnosis.

And, in my opinion, the idea that parents need "training to be better in their roles" from "professionally trained parents" is another step towards breeding neuroticism in parents.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Articles like this are not too credible which tries to generalize personal anecdot and a comment from a friend. Where is the research and citations? I'm also not sure what is the take away here. Don't send kids to preschools? If that's the case then there is a fair amount of research that kids who attend full time preschool have much better chance of academic success and they are better at social skills[1]. Montessori crowd is even proud to put kids to school as early as 18 months, 3-6 hours a day and 5 days a week. Is Montessori method considered play based or more academic focused?

[1] [http://www.seattle.gov/council/issues/PreschoolforAll/docs/A...](http://www.seattle.gov/council/issues/PreschoolforAll/docs/Attachment%20A%20-%20Key%20Sources%20of%20Info%20for%20Reso%20-%202013%2012%2005%20revised.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER23> A tangentially related story: Seattle's public school teachers are threatening to strike. One of their demands (in addition to pay and such) is that children get at least 30 minutes of recess per day for elementary school students.

<comment><USER24> What a world where teachers have to not just demand something so basic but have to threaten to strike over it.

<comment><USER25> I wouldn't quite call it "basic". Just look at all the confusing/opposing anecdotes being exposed in the article and the comment section here.

If anything, without more evidence, we might as well chalk-up the pre-school teachers' threats to strike as being self-motivated. I.e. Preschoolers getting more sleep = being calmer = 30mins break for teachers + easier time after nap time.

<comment><USER26> Still, a 30 minute break isn't something they should have to strike for.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I got an interesting perspective from a young teacher a few years back, I'm not sure to what extent this is backed by research and science, but she did quote various studies. Interesting in any case, even as a hypothesis.

Anyway… she thought kids were grossly over-schooled at younger ages. Here argument was basically:

(1) Kids are hitting diminishing returns on formal schooling at 2-3 hours per day. Their attention can't stretch much farther and their progress is ultimately determined by biological limits. A 4th grade reading/math level is determined more by average cognitive ability at that age than by the hours of classroom time they have put in.

(2) The second point was a more intuitive one: classroom sizes, particularly in linear subjects (mostly ready, writing, math in primary school) are way to big to be effective.

Putting these two together, she wanted 2-3 hours of school with smaller classes. IE, a teacher teaches 2-3 classes per day with 1/3 the students. She thought it would be more effective and leave more time for play and other things.

Fleshing it out in my head, I think it would be something like 4 * 30 minute classes with short breaks between classes, which makes intuitive sense if you've interacted with kids 6-11.

The elephant in that room is child care. We live in a monetary world. Education and child are services that cost money. Taking child care away has immediate opportunity costs. But, for people that can afford to lose 5 hours a day of child care, it would be interesting to experiment with this sort of thing for 6-9 year olds.

There are costs to achieving 2 hours of learning in 6 hours too. Boredom, frustration, less time for play or sport or whatnot.

</comment><comment><USER28> Reading this made me sad, but for a different reason than I'd anticipated when I first started reading. The trigger for me was the realization that our children are not having the conversations that they ought to be having.

Talking with/to children is important for their mental development, or so I have been told. I am no expert on this matter, but this is what I have come to understand. It's rooted on the understanding that social expertise is developed by means of continual practice; if kids do not play/socialize/work together at a young age, they risk not sufficiently developing this skill as they grow.

If we are seeing anti-social behavior from children these days it would seem that trends in contemporary society have caused a decline in the opportunities kids have for conversing with others. The lacking development of our auditory sensory skills means a lacking development in the other sensory categories - speaking and hearing are the categories we master first as humans.

I don't believe the cause of this is limited to the apparent advances in the stupidity of early childhood educators, as it is likely that the on-demand exposure to engaging media content at younger ages and other related trends are also to blame. After all, if a kid is staring at a screen, they are not developing their social functions, either.

In general, I believe this damage can be sourced back to the general trends of the modern household, which has both parents working full-time just to get by economically. The humans with which the child is most willing to converse are not available and instead the child is left in a scenario that more resembles Lord of the Flies.

This is all why I, personally, do not plan to bring children into this world until I can afford the time to raise them with the love and attention they deserve. So that the availability of finances has no bearing on their future. I owe any being I bring into this earth at least that courtesy.

<comment><USER15> _> >This is all why I, personally, do not plan to bring children into this world until I can afford the time to raise them with the love and attention they deserve. So that the availability of finances has no bearing on their future. I owe any being I bring into this earth at least that courtesy._

Just be careful you don't end up like this: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hL1-340ODCM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hL1-340ODCM)

As someone with 2 kids, while there are definitely clear _" Wrong Times"_ there is no time that completely feels like _" The Right Time"_, there's always a "More savings", "Just one more promotion", "That one vacation I didn't take", etc.

<comment><USER29> I second this, there's no right time and having children will be a pretty big shock to the system no matter how much you prepare yourself mentally or financially. I must say though if you could take day care out of the equation. Kids really don't cost that much in themselves unless you want to have the newest fanciest everything and designer clothes ha. If you want children don't put it off for the perfect time, there won't be one

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I hope this article is remembered when the next, "I taught my 5-year-old to code" blog post comes around.

<comment><USER30> Probably the key is to provide rich enough environment and be very careful with repetitive scheduled activities... Teaching a five-year-old to code is probably Ok, as long as it is a very small part of life of that 5-year-old...

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> There are too many people who think it would be catastrophic if children had any autonomy. It seems like even the most easy-going person can turn into a despot when it comes to a child. I wish we would treat children with more respect.

On the other hand, maybe most adults simply reflect onto children the strictly regimented structure of modern adult life. Better start young, yes? So they don't know any other way of being a human. It seems, though, no matter how early you start, a child simply knows when she is being a human being in the wrong way.

</comment><comment><USER32> Kids needs to play, trying to treat a 5 year old as an academic is nuts. Imagination and creativity don't come from studying, they come from playing. Thankfully when I was growing up recess was still important even into middle school.

For that matter I think adults need recess too!

</comment><comment><USER33> My son is only 2, but we decided to get him into "school" last winter.

When my wife was interviewing these places, the choice was between "learning" environments and "social" environments.

We chose the social environment. There's plenty of time for him to learn numbers, letters (he's only 2), but it's more important now for him to to learn to take turns, run around with other kids, bang on the drums and sing when the weekly musician comes in, etc...

<comment><USER34> 2 seems way, way too young for any sort of school environment.

<comment><USER35> Depends on what you mean by "school" (NB the quotes in the parent comment). There is a huge variance in options for working parents of a 2-3 year old. From cramped cinder block day care -- aka The Cacophonous Petri Dish; to private nanny; to "forest schools" where kids spend as much time as possible outside digging in the dirt, climbing tree stumps, and learning how to devise and engage in large projects together (yes, a group of 2.5 year olds is capable of this).

I don't think the parent comment was talking about toddler MIT.

<comment><USER36> Do you have experience with any particular 'forest schools'?

<comment><USER35> I do. The one I'm familiar with has large garden areas, trees for climbing/wandering around, uncultivated wilderness areas, etc. It's not a vast tract of land, but enough that it seems huge to a small person. Indoor time focuses on exploration of provocations set up by teachers, telling stories, singing, role-playing, etc.

<comment><USER36> This is interesting. What is it called?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Curious too on how this may relate to allergies.

Indoor activities have become so much more engrossing over the last 10-15 years. All that time spent inside in front of a TV/computer/tablet screen isn't as valuable to a developing immune system as the occasional eating of dirt or mosquito bite.

<comment><USER38> I think it does. People raised on farms have less allergies than the rest of the general population [citation needed but I'm lazy]

Kids need to play outside, in the dirt, interact with live animals and other kids and be exposed to a lot of different food when they're young and later on in life as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> My wife teaches children in the age of 4-6 at an expensive, well-known, and high-achieving school, following a British curriculum but not in the UK.

The whole damn syllabus is play-focussed. Teachers aren't allowed to plan lessons more than a day or two in advance as they're required to follow the children's interests. Play activities are set up to help the children develop certain skills, and their development in those is monitored, but again, it's _all_ play.

This was a difficult adjustment for her coming from a deprived inner-city school in the UK, but she's now on top of it, and the whole child-led development thing appears to be pretty well established in academic circles.

</comment><comment><USER40> Perhaps sitting still in general is not good, especially not for children.

My son will go to school next year and I almost feel a physical pain myself when imagine him having to sit still for hours on end. I think I suffered because of that a lot in school, too.

I also credit not having too many back issues (fingers crossed) to sitting sloppily in my chair most of the time, rather than in an upright (90°) position. Tilting backwards with the chair might be more relaxing for the spine.

I don't have a good solution, though. Perhaps it helps to design the classroom differently, let kids walk to learn stations and communicate with other kids and so on.

</comment><comment><USER41> When I click the link it takes me to the page with the article, but then before I can scroll down, one of those god-forsaken "enter your email address to get updates!" popup came up which I couldn't close. Usually pressing 'esc' or clicking the 'x' takes those stupid things away, but this one wouldn't let me read on unless I give them my email. Thankfully readability to the rescue!

mirror: [https://www.readability.com/articles/zmba4zju](https://www.readability.com/articles/zmba4zju)

</comment><comment><USER42> All that time and effort wasted and even doing harm. Extracting defeat from the jaws of victory.

Pre-school "academic" _what_? I can't think of anything very significant and non-trivial in _academics_ before, say, the ninth grade. _Academics_ can start to get severe for some majors by, say, the junior year of college, e.g., a physics major may want to know differential geometry and exterior algebra. The real challenge in academics is research, if want to take such a career direction.

Learn "the days of the week"? Can't remember when I didn't know those. Maybe Mom or Dad went over them say, several times over a period of two weeks.

The alphabet? There is a little song for that. Reading? Somehow by the second grade or so, I basically knew how to read. Arithmetic? Learn to add and subtract single digit numbers and memorize the multiplication table, and then apply those to the rest of arithmetic.

I have a friend who went to a terrible school, and somewhere in the early grades got sick and was at home for some days. There his mother was shocked to discover that he couldn't read. So, in two weeks, she taught him. He was PBK at Suny and got his Ph.D. in mathematics at Courant.

Here's one: Since we are awash in computers, early on teach _touch typing_ \-- that is, let the kids learn where the a-z keys are.

K-12? Let be mostly play.

</comment><comment><USER43> I remember looking round a local pre-school and being horrified that they had the kids all sat down quietly on the carpet while the 'teacher' stood up front holding up flash cards with shapes on them reading out the names.

</comment><comment><USER44> the special snowflake parent wanted her special snowflake child to be a little genius and forgot that all animals need physical activity

might as well run straight into the ocean

</comment><comment><USER45> it's all these fucking meds American pharmaceuticals love shoving down their own kids throats.

</comment><comment><USER33> How come that kid doesn't have any shoes on?</comment>


If You Guys Are Right, Facebook Is Screwed: Facebook Poll Results - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2008/05/08/declining-facebook-usage/

<comment><USER2> Yes, Facebook has taken some big miss-steps lately, but the thing is, too many people depend on it now. It's a very "sticky" product once it get's it's hooks in you.

<comment><USER3> I guess I've never gotten in deep enough to get "stuck". If I want to keep up with my friends, I've got e-mail, IM and their blogs-- why would I need/want/care about Facebook?</comment></comment>


Brute force password-guessing attempts on SSH - <AUTHOR> http://www.lightbluetouchpaper.org/2012/01/06/brute-force-password-guessing-attempts-on-ssh/

<comment><USER2> Googling for "dark" and "ManualulIngineruluiMecanic" shows a lot of user/password pairs. I'm guessing something is just going off of a list of previously leaked usernames/passwords.

</comment><comment><USER3> This has been going on for years. Idiots. To reduce the annoyance, you can use fail2ban or run ssh on a non-standard port.

From 2007:

[http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/security/protect-ssh- from-b...](http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/security/protect-ssh-from-brute- force-password-cracking-attacks/349)

<http://lwn.net/Articles/255651/>

<comment><USER4> It's even easier to just disable password authentication. SSH agent forwarding makes public key authentication even more convenient.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> speculation: standard trojan login?</comment>


Mastering PHP – Free book on good modern PHP practices - <AUTHOR> https://leanpub.com/masteringphp <comment><USER2> Why do you think PHP is still worthy in this mobile ages? I haven't been convinced myself to choose PHP despite did Laravel for some websites and PHP7 isn't a reason for me as well.

<comment><AUTHOR> PHP is just another tool. If we're talking about backend, then its perfomance is good enough for small to middle sized applications. PHP borrowed a lot of language features from other languages in the last decade, it's a different language now, still there is a lot of old poor written code.

PHP 7 is great for those who are already used PHP for years, cause it uses half of CPU resources doing the same tasks as PHP 5.6. I don't think there is any good reason switching from Golang for example if you are aiming for writing scalable applications; still, every experienced PHP dev I know are still getting their things done and doesn't consider switching.

<comment><USER2> True, but I'm concerning Wordpress are popular and Drupal 8 have revamped for the better or worst.

On the Node.js side, Coffeescript or Typescript write less code if confidence enough to be careful, won't it be better if PHP have a way to write less and more secure? [http://mammouth.wamalaka.com](http://mammouth.wamalaka.com)

<comment><AUTHOR> Looks interesting! I'm all in for writing secure code. Sadly, Zend said that they don't want PHP to change a lot because of backwards compatibility, and that's why we are still stuck with different bad ideas that appeared in its first versions...

PHP 7 will help to speed up Wordpress sites twice, but it doesn't help with code itself anyhow. I haven't looked at it for a long time, but back then its code was pretty bad. Drupal 8 built on top of Symfony 2 components is terrifying, as PHP's main selling point (and Drupal specifically) alwasy was simplicity.

This article gives some details on the future of the language: [https://blog.amasty.com/php-7-and-script-languages-future- in...](https://blog.amasty.com/php-7-and-script-languages-future-insights- from-lead-zend-com-developer/)

<comment><USER2> Yeah, right thinking, I'm disappointed without Drupal 8 after waiting all these years. Wordpress could be where at PHP5.x native speed if they are on PHP7.

After that tweaking, I think you might be interested in SIMD for Javascript and hopefully, WebAssembly will make PHP even speedier performance.

<comment><AUTHOR> Wow, SIMD.js looks neat, thank you for pointing me to this! They even has Intel involved with this.

WebAssembly looks very very promising too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> this shouldn't be called as a book. It is consist of some comments about some specific topics in few pages.</comment>


Employers, Employees and Loyalty - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.lessthandot.com/index.php/ITProfessionals/ProfessionalDevelopment/employers-employees-and-loyalty-oh

<comment><USER2> Loyalty and passion are two words that don't belong in a discussion about employer/employee relations, except in exceedingly rare personal situations.

The Employer/Employee relationship is a business relationship. You may enjoy good personal relationships with individuals, but the relationship documented by your paycheck is a purely business relationship.

What you owe your employer, and your employees, is _professionalism_ , the same as your plumber or pharmacist.

As an employee that means show up most of the time, do the best work you're capable of, improve yourself, play well with the other children.

As an employer that means don't exploit the asymmetric power relationship, for example by not making death marches the norm, maintain a safe and pleasant workplace, pay reasonably well with reasonably good benefits, support employees' self-improvement efforts, and be an ethical member of the community.

A business has no "loyalty" to any employee when business doesn't work out and they need to shed workers. Loyalty in this sense would be when a _family_ goes above and beyond to house a family member even when it results in economic damage. I would never expect that from an _employer_.

So an employer should never expect loyalty beyond good work and a two week notice.

</comment><comment><USER3> Three words: at will employment. It's a two-way street. If you can dump someone at the drop of a hat, then they can do the same to you. Nothing personal. If your company sucks and that means the good people leave and you're left with only the people who have no other options, well try sucking less.

Were things different back in the day? Maybe, due to certain structural differences. There were pensions, which tied employees to the long term futures of their companies. There was investment in training new recruits. There was promotion from within. Today, by and large none of those things exist. Companies, even ones who have the resources and should no better, are more interested in finding someone already trained (and griping about how they can't find them) than investing in training new people (and of course they fail to realize the correlation between the two phenomenon). They prefer to bring outside people into management/executive functions instead of promoting from within.

<comment><USER4> Structural comparison: In the Netherlands, employees are hired for specific terms. Usually this results in employment contracts for 6-12 months, followed by yearly renewals. This is a bit one-sided: The employer can only sever the contract if there is a very good reason, but the employee can leave with 30 days notice. After 3 years employees can be offered a 'permanent' contract... "we won't fire you unless there is a huge problem and/or we will negotiate a severance".

This 'loyalty' seems like a burden to employers from my American perspective. After living here, I've noticed a few things about Dutch employee loyalty.

* Removing the fear of possible instant dismissal seems to orient employees toward long term improvement instead of maintaining status-quo.

* Defined intervals of contract negotiation do the same, they give both parties a goal.

* Employees want that 'permanent' contract, it gives them even more stability. Once obtained, employees are hesitant to give up their luxurious position (true loyalty). My initial fear of a productivity drop doesn't seem to be valid, if I look at the 'perms' around me.

* Children do start to appear around this time, though. Good for loyalty, bad for midnight coding, good for efficiency.

I don't know how this system would play out back in the valley, but I feel that it beats the anarchy of at-will.

<comment><USER5> > After 3 years employees can be offered a 'permanent' contract...

Actually, after three years you are REQUIRED to either be let go or get a permanent contract.

My current employer gave me a permanent contract right away (after just a 3 hour chat, is that normal for someone with 1.5 years experience?). Now I don't have to worry about losing my job after 6 or 12 months, and my employer has fewer worries about me looking around.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Loyalty is not owed, it is earned. If an employer does a sufficiently good job of employing me on number of different fronts then I am inclined to give said employer the benefit of the doubt when I perceive that things have become non- ideal for me in a short, medium or perhaps even longer term.

If however an employer wants a business-only relationship with me that is fine. It should expect that my loyalty will be guided solely with my best interests in mind on all time-scales and without regard for how this may impact the employer/business.

</comment><comment><USER7> In my experience, the "loyalty" of older generations is largely a myth.

I used to work for a company that had an enormous bimodal age distribution - maybe 45% over 50, 45% under 30, and the last 10% between 30-50. The age gap gave an interesting perspective into generational differences because it was so well defined.

Very few of the "old timers" we spoke candidly with were loyal in any meaningful sense, and many truly wanted to leave. However, they were stuck simply because of the pension plan - they couldn't afford to. Very few "millennials" have any lock-in like that.

<comment><USER8> No lock in because we don't get pensions at all. Not exactly a benefit.

<comment><USER9> Well, much of those generous pensions have turned out to be given in Monopoly Money. Recall that, at the time, they were usually negotiated in exchange for significantly lower wages. Capital then realized "hey, we can finagle our way out of paying out those pensions," and here we are.

At least now we get those foregone wages in current USD instead of fake pension money.

<comment><USER2> Airlines do this regularly, in combination with reorganization. It's a business model.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I find this particularly interesting, considering what I know about my father. He was loyal to the company he worked for (he gave Ma' Bell 40+ years of work), in the vein of this author's definition:

"Those of the older generations view themselves as loyal to a company in the vain hope that such a perspective will be reciprocated by the company. "

The result? He was forced into retirement, and the executives plundered the retirement fund. They were able to successfully sue the executives for the act, but they didn't get all that money back.

That's not a form of loyalty I'm willing to give any employer.

</comment><comment><USER11> The wisest words on loyalty I've heard came from my now 68 year old retired programmer mother: "my loyalty to the company goes until they cut a check on Friday, then we start over again on Monday."

Add to that "when you hear 'here at Initech, we're like a family', don't take the job unless you want to be the family dog."

So much for the loyalty of older generations. They knew how fast a company will screw you just as much as we do.

</comment><comment><USER12> One thing I question is whether loyalty, in a broad sense as it relates to employer/employee relationships, even matters going forward. I can't speak for every industry, as loyalty in the military is quite different from loyalty in food service, for example.

But, does anyone think it's a big deal if the chief architect of Google would leave to go work at some startup? Would anyone flinch if a cashier at Wal-Mart left to be a cashier at the local grocery store? Heck, does our skepticism even change when a politician changes party affiliations?

In the end, I believe it is employers who are on the wrong side of the loyalty equation going forward. In a mobile workforce where skills are valued, the ability for employees to find other options for employment has never been greater. This places companies at a major disadvantage, relative to the past.

</comment><comment><USER13> Loyalty is a completely overloaded term. Here are some examples of what people mean:

-A company spending more on a junior employee than the value they initially provide, in exchange for the employee continuing to work at the company after they're profitable

-An employee staying at a job even when they have a better offer elsewhere in exchange for job security

-The recognition that an employee with company-specific knowledge is generally more valuable than an equally competent employee without that company's knowledge, and compensation/training/benefits/promotions to match

-The expectation of extra work/effort during critical moments for the company

-Employees being intrinsically motivated to create value for the company. This is frequently what companies want from their employees, but they often have a hard time articulating it.

Either way, it's helpful for employers and employees to identify exactly what they mean by loyalty, which aspects of it they want to improve, and what they're willing to change to get it. For example, I've taken learning & interesting projects in place of higher short-term compensation, but I wouldn't accept boring work for the sake of job security.

</comment><comment><USER14> For our parents' generation, employers actually tried to be like an academic meritocracy. People gripe about "bureaucracy", but when bureaucracy works, it's actually quite fair and effective.

In 2013, we face a world where management (rarely with competent training in anything other than not getting the company sued) blatantly plays favorites, "teams" sometimes turn on their strongest members, investment in junior peoples' careers is almost nonexistent, and firing is more likely to involve one of those humiliating, dishonest, and impossible "performance improvement plans" than a decent severance check. Imagine what high school would be like if the popular kids graded exams. That's what corporate work is like for most people.

If someone transfers through 5 colleges in 8 years before finally getting a degree, it's pretty clear that something unusual happened. That's a red flag. Colleges make a lot of effort not to be dysfunctional and to make evaluation fair, so it's a real warning sign if someone passes through 3 or 4 and can't succeed. Companies don't. They'd rather sacrifice fairness, decency, and protocol under the belief (perhaps mistaken?) that it makes them more efficient at delivering on projects. That volatile culture would be fine, if they weren't so stuck up about "job hoppers" in the hiring process.

We're not disloyal. We're just honest. Instead of sticking around and sabotaging a company that betrays us (out of fear of a job-hopper stigma, like what our parents faced) we leave. That's better for us and the companies.

<comment><USER15> > That volatile culture would be fine, if they weren't so stuck up about "job > hoppers" in the hiring process.

I've hopped more jobs than anyone I know, and I've _never_ had a single word mentioned about my average time of employment. I don't understand this notion that companies give a damn how long you've been at places, and I know I'm not so lucky as to have avoided it in the last 3 or 4 jobs I've applied for (and gotten).

<comment><USER16> I am aware of a fairly large employer that looks at any stay < 3 years as suspect.

<comment><USER15> Most I talk to simply see it as the changing climate of employment, especially in the tech sector. We're all explorers and we like to move from thing to thing. It may just be a product of the industry, but I doubt I'm simply an outlier.

<comment><USER16> I didn't say I agreed. I just said that that mentality existed. I think long stays in established areas leads to organizational rot and lore accumulation as information and expertise is sunk into an individual (this could be mitigated by migrating around a company every couple years and forcing lore to be written down and documented).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Some of the loyalty depends on the nature of your work. I think of myself as a craftsman, delivering engineering solutions to my company based on my own standards. If I feel I'm no longer in a position to deliver work I'm proud of I move on.

It's much harder for the scientists and inventors here, their knowledge is so specialized they might have mixed feelings about their employer, on the one hand feeling more attachment and loyalty to the company but also getting more frustrated when things don't work out well.

</comment><comment><USER18> As I see it, loyalty means that I look out for the interest of the company while I work there and making an effort not to smooth the transition if I leave. And a continued respect for the confidential or embarrassing information of past employers even in the absence of explicit agreements.

</comment><comment><USER19> I had to swear a loyalty oath "to uphold and defend" the US and California constitutions as a condition of employment, IIRC it is on the same form as the patent policy.

<comment><USER20> I believe that's only for California state employees, and is a relic of McCarthyism. I guess a private company could copy the language into its own employment agreement, but I haven't seen that done.

Here's a 1949 song about it: [http://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/50s/loyalty-oath- ditt...](http://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/50s/loyalty-oath-ditty.html)

And a timeline/summary: [http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/uchistory/archives_exhibits/loya...](http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/uchistory/archives_exhibits/loyaltyoath/timelinesummary.html)

<comment><USER19> The first time I worked for UC Regents I was 17 and needed a work permit; and the admin who did my paperwork had me actually raise my right hand and swear out the oath. (there was no bible; and I did so affirm). The other times I've started work at a UC I've never had to actually verbally swear the oath.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> > Does this mean that employees should not be loyal to their employers? No. > Those companies pay the salaries of their employees which should demand a > certain amount of loyalty.

As I see it, companies try to get the most from you with the least from them, and your job is to try to get the most from them for the least from you. If you go beyond the minimum that you have to do, then you're setting yourself up to be taken advantage of.

If you think working harder's going to get your more money, then you should totally do it if you want more money, same for job security, same for you just find it an interesting problem, but morally you don't seem to owe them your best - they set out to screw you in the first place. That's their job, that's how people who own companies get rich: By not sharing the wealth equitably.

<comment><USER22> Well said. Those are the two opposing sides of labor in capitalism. As Marx pointed out, a company does best by commoditizing labor. To make a worker as replaceable as possible is in the best interest of the company: They can pay less and hold his replace-ability over his head. "I demand a higher pay or I'll quit" is met with "Fine, your position will be filled tomorrow morning" and realizing his replace-ability the employee feels it's better to at least have a job, thus creating the illusion of employee loyalty.

Now with companies like Google you see what happens when the pendulum swings toward the workers' favor. Google employees are top-notch. They are _much_ harder to replace, so the company offers amazing things on top of great pay to keep them. Again, it appears to be loyalty but it's always in their own interest. Keeping and taking care of these amazing employees is how they create great things.

It seems that the best option as an employee is to find an industry/position that requires a unique, hard-to-replace set of skills and dominate that position.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Loyalty already has a definition: stock options. I am loyal to the spirit of the company, and that spirit is always about making money. Just give people a slice of cake, goddamit!</comment>


Rclone – Sync files and directories to many cloud storage providers - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/rclone/rclone <comment> gary-kim I'm an occasional contributor for Rclone. Rclone holds a special place for me as the first open source project that I got seriously involved in and made me far more comfortable with working in open source.

Rclone is now very prevalent in my infrastructure. Almost all my websites are updated by a CI job that builds the website from a repo and pushes it up to the hosting server. There's an encrypted Rclone config in the repo and the password for it is a really long randomly generated string that gets saved in the CI as a secret. Rclone with Restic is how most of my servers get backed up, Rclone is how I access my Nextcloud and Google Drive, I have a containerized s3 compatible storage system that actually stores it's data on a Rclone remote (I hope `serve s3` gets implemented soon this setup can be simpler [1]), and much more.

I'm using it so much that I'm running up against the Google Drive API limit even though I'm using my own key.

* [1] [https://github.com/rclone/rclone/issues/3382](https://github.com/rclone/rclone/issues/3382)

<comment><USER3> I did not know that Restic was built on top of Rclone, but of course that makes a lot of sense. Thanks for contributing to a project that has made my life much easier!

<comment><USER4> rclone is just one of the backends you can use for restic. personally i find it far more performant to use a local disk for your restic repo (and keep the desired number of snapshots, etc there) and then use rclone to clone that repo to a cloud provider. personally i used backblaze's b2 api as it is generally cheaper.

restic is somewhat sensitive to the latency of the backend it uses.

<comment><USER5> I do the exact same thing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Here is what you can do with 'rclone' and immutable ZFS snapshots - <USER2> screenshot:

[http://rsync.net/products/universal.html](http://rsync.net/products/universal.html)

The workflow here is a little different than at Amazon or Backblaze, as we actually built the rclone binary _into our environment_.

So you can run 'rclone' without actually having it installed yourself:

        ssh email@example.com rclone s3:/some/bucket /rsync.net/dir

... and since ZFS snapshots at rsync.net are immutable (read-only) your account accumulates point-in-time versions of your data that are _immune to bad actors_ like ransomware or Mallory in her various forms.

You can also, if you choose, do nothing but "dumb syncs" with rclone since retention can be handled with an arbitrary day/week/month/quarter/year snapshot schedule.

<comment><USER7> Wow this is a true OG account. Good shit btw, keep up the good work!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Rclone also has great encryption feature¹ which allows you to add a crypto layer to all of the cloud storage options in order to relatively easily hide all file names and contents. With it's cross platform capabilities it means you can have a unified secure storage across operating systems and secure it from the underlying storage provider as well as over the wire.

¹ [https://rclone.org/crypt](https://rclone.org/crypt)

<comment><USER9> This is a great feature. The one drawback that I've been able to come up with it is that the password can't be changed after the fact, meaning that I can't rotate credentials without creating a new remote and copying all of the data over. Does anyone know of a workaround for this?

<comment><USER10> Unfortunately not on the user level, but on the software level, it should generate a random 128-bit (or whatever) key, store that on the server and encrypt it with your KDF-strengthened password.

That way, you can change the password by just re-encrypting that file, though you can't do much in case the attacker got that decrypted key. You'd have to re-upload all the data for that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I used to use rclone to keep my files in sync with amazon (1TB) clouddrive (not S3, although it uses S3 infra). But amazon decided to pull support for rclone and all third party access to clouddrive (except odrive) - they revoked their API keys and decided not to hand out any more by shutting down the developer program. The result is that the only way to move files into/out of amazon clouddrive is to either use odrive or use their web interface (which really is a pain). Am now moving all of my 350+ GB of data out from amazon into backblaze (which supports rclone).

So while rclone "supports" amazon clouddrive technically, you can only use it if you already have your own API key that is not revoked.

<comment><USER12> If they're listing clouddrive as a supported backup solution that seems sort of suspect because it was never intended to be used by backup programs such as this to store TB's of files and they started cracking down on that long ago I believe. If you're wanting to use AWS for backups they want you to be using the "real" s3 services.

<comment><USER13> That's long-solved, since they kicked everyone with lots of data off and switched it from unlimited to 1TB. At this point there's no good reason to restrict people from using something like rclone.

If people switched to the 'proper' backup service they offer on AWS, that would be _glacier_ , and they would get significantly less money!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I love rclone but a warning: it's real chatty with default settings with S3 -- I have a backup script that was on its way to a $60/month S3 bill that was 99% driven by _number of requests_ not storage space or egress.

<comment><USER15> S3 is also super slow when you have lots of small files as many developers do. Google Drive performs better and is cheaper.

<comment><USER14> Google drive doesn't do versioning (at least, not for the 180 day period I want), which is why I rejected it as a backend.

Regardless, I haven't had S3 perf be a problem yet for me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I love Rclone and have been using it for years (even recommended it to some customers for data migration purposes when I worked at Dropbox). The simplicity is what I appreciate most and the fact you can just run it every now and then to sync any new or updated files to your cloud storage of choice is what I love. Mind you I could never get the upload throughput as high as the Dropbox client itself (but that might not be RClone's fault).

<comment><USER17> > even recommended it to some customers for data migration purposes when I > worked at Dropbox

Hah, I love this. I was having Dropbox sync issues a while back which support couldn't help with, and used rclone to prod and poke the state of my files and folders back into a state the DB client wouldn't choke on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I've been using a combination of rclone and borg backup to backup my Linux system to an S3 bucket on a daily cron schedule. I'm paying a little under $1/mo for storage, and it just works so I'm really happy with it so far. If you use a cheaper storage provider you could probably get it done for even less.

<comment><USER19> I use two borg backups (one local one remote).

I am very curious what you use rclone for (how it fits into your backup routine)

<comment><USER20> Correct me if i'm wrong, but for a remote Borgbackup you need to be able to create the full backup on your local drive, and only then you can upload it to your server (unless you are able to run something like an ssh-server on the server-side, which you can't with a lot of cloud storage services.)

With rclone, you can simply upload without having to create a full local 'snapshot' of the 'files-to-upload' first.

<comment><USER19> Ah sorry, I did not catch that you were talking about pure cloud storage solutions.

Yes, I have a remote VM where I can ssh and use it as a borg server.

The advantage I see in this vs a copy of the repo is that I have two independent backups. If one fails for some reason (defective disk for instance) then I do not copy a faulty backup further.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I've been looking for something like this for years. Never found it during my googling. My google-fu is weak :(

BTW how does the sync work? Does for example AWS expose a (free or supercheap) way of getting the SHA1 of a file on S3?

<comment><USER22> It uses size and/or modified time if the underlying backend doesn't have MD5s available. [https://rclone.org/commands/rclone_sync/](https://rclone.org/commands/rclone_sync/)

<comment><USER21> But for a repository with millions of files, the GET lists required would be a substantial cost (and something that has to be done every day).

It would perhaps be useful with a mode where a repo of file hashes could be kept in parallell at the cloud provider, as just a file that could be downloaded every day, all the logic is done locally and then the files uploaded that differs, then the file hash repo is updated.

<comment><USER23> If you want to keep the costs down with S3 you use --checksum or --size-only to avoid reading the metadata with HEAD requests.

You can also use --fast-list to use less transactions at the cost of memory (basically just GETs to read 1000 objects at a time).

You can also do top up syncs using `rclone copy --max-age 24h --no-traverse` for example which won't do listings then do a full `rclone sync` once a week (say) which will delete stuff on the remote which has been deleted locally.

There is also the cache backend which does store metadata locally.

<comment><USER21> Hmm, ok seems like you could end up with something practical! Unfortunately any misstep will give you a $100/month extra bill. It was stuff like this I was hoping would be solved already without extra hacks :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Restic has a nice feature set built on top of rclone: [https://github.com/restic/restic](https://github.com/restic/restic) \- deduplication is particularly useful for systems with poor upload connection.

<comment><USER25> Restic is great. The only part I don't like is that you are forced to use a password. For local backups it's unnecessary and if you forget the password all your data is lost.

<comment><USER26> >For local backups it's unnecessary and if you forget the password all your data is lost.

As bad practice as it is, I'm guessing I'm not the only one with a super weak recycled password for instances like that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Rclone is amazing. I've been relying on it for years. Seems like one of those best kept secrets in the industry.

It's also a great advertisement for Go. A single binary installation. Fast. Runs on every platform.

</comment><comment><USER28> They have recently merged multiwrite support[1] for their Union[2] backend, which is a big news for me.

Even if you're not using any cloud storages, rclone works with local filesystem, WebDAV, FTP, SFTP, Nextcloud and Minio. Rclone is the only free- software solution which implements some features of MergerFS for Windows to my knowledge.

Amazing tool.

[1] [https://github.com/rclone/rclone/pull/3782](https://github.com/rclone/rclone/pull/3782)

[2] [https://rclone.org/union/](https://rclone.org/union/)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Excerpt(s):

"Rclone ("rsync for cloud storage") is a command line program to sync files and directories to and from different cloud storage providers."

The following cloud (and other) storage providers are supported:

1Fichier

Amazon Drive

Amazon S3

Backblaze B2

Box

Citrix ShareFile

Dropbox

FTP

Google Cloud Storage

Google Drive

Google Photos

HTTP

Hubic

Jottacloud

Koofr

Mail.ru

Mega

Memory

Microsoft Azure Blob Storage

Microsoft OneDrive

OpenDrive

Openstack Swift

pCloud

premiumize.me

put.io

QingStor

SFTP

SugarSync

WebDAV

Yandex Disk

The local filesystem

 _Program is Open Source Go aka Golang_

Related:

[https://rclone.org/](https://rclone.org/)

[https://rclone.org/overview/](https://rclone.org/overview/)

</comment><comment><USER29> I use rclone daily to sync Microsoft Teams' (aka Sharepoint) files from that horribly slow web-based UI to my local filesystem, browsing crazy fast with fzf.

A good document indexer should help me further, if anyone has suggestions...

<comment><USER30> Check out "Everything" [https://www.voidtools.com/](https://www.voidtools.com/) It's blazing fast, and has tons of great features.

<comment><USER29> I mostly prefer Open-Source, Linux-compatible stuff.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I use rclone to do account backups to B2 on my Virtualmin based web server that only supports S3 natively. I run a backup, rclone it to B2, then remove the local copy. Has been working wonderfully for quite a while now.

One of the wonderful things about rclone is that it's the right tool for _so many jobs_. Much like grep, sed, awk, etc, it is as simple or as complicated as you want it to be.

</comment><comment><USER32> I have a cron job to backup my plex to backblaze.

My primary concern is that it works so well that I forget about it. This is often the case with many automations.

That is why I write documentation for myself.

<comment><USER33> I see I'm not alone!

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> This looks interesting, especially since it supports encryption, which i consider mandatory.

I'm wondering what cloud provider² that works with rclone offers the most storage per dollar? Caveat: I only need 100GB.

\--

² ideally in Europe

<comment><USER35> Backblaze, chose the central Europe server located in NL. 100GB will probably be around 0.5 USD/mo. You read that right.

<comment><USER34> Thanks, i'll check them out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I love Rclone, I use it to sync my static website to Neocities (which I also love) after building it on Gitlab CI:

[https://gitlab.com/stavros/neocities-gitlab-ci- demo](https://gitlab.com/stavros/neocities-gitlab-ci-demo)

</comment><comment><USER36> in addition to the other solutions folks are listing, duplicity also supports using rclone as a backend and in my experience works well.

If you're not familiar with duplicity, it uses GPG to encrypt tarballs of your backup data locally and keeps an index of each tarball separately (also encrypted) which it caches. This reduces the provider API calls to just the encrypted bundles (payload, indexes), the software then works on the indexes locally to do comparisons of what it needs to back up and makes new bundles to upload. (restores as well, it's searching the locally decrypted index caches, not making API calls etc.)

</comment><comment><USER37> i love rclone. my only gripe is that the "sync" command doesn't really seem to act like a sync - it overwrites the target directory with the source directory, there is no synchronization between the two. It was just unexpected behavior the first time I did it.

Other than that, it awesome how it works with so many data storage providers. If it helps anyone, the last time I looked at pricing (a couple months ago) IBM had the cheapest per GB cloud storage of all the providers. I already have 1TB of Google Cloud for $2/mo, so I'm using that to keep my life simple, however, it's slow as far as data stores go.

<comment><USER38> The sync appears to be unidirectional only

>Can rclone do bi-directional sync?

>No, not at present. rclone only does uni-directional sync from A -> B. It may do in the future though since it has all the primitives - it just requires writing the algorithm to do it

The difference between "copy" and "sync" is also a bit subtle:

> Copy files from source to dest, skipping already copied

> Make source and dest identical, modifying destination only.

That is, while "sync" may delete files on the destination so that it mirrors the source, copy will never do so.

I feel a better name for "sync" would have been "clone", conveying both the unidirectionality and the fact that it will make the destination like source.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Last week I was attempting to sync a directory from a public S3 bucket using rclone (which is an awesome tool). I was surprised that apparently there's no way to do this without using AWS credentials (even though it's public). We ended up moving that dataset to Google drive, but even there you have to go through an oauth flow, even for public data.

Is anyone aware of a way to sync a remote directory to a local filesystem without authenticating, either with S3/drive or another cloud storage provider (and using rclone or another CLI tool)?

</comment><comment><USER39> Recently I decided to resurrect a very old Macbook White (2008) by install FreeBSD in it.

All of my workstation (laptop/desktop) have dropbox installed and yet dropbox is not available for FreeBSD.

This is where rclone come to the rescue. There might be other software that can take the role of dropbox client but rclone gives me the flexibility of switching to other provider if I decided to do so in the future.

Bless the author of rclone.

</comment><comment><USER40> There's a similar-ish project called Cryptomator, which encrypts files before storing them at cloud providers. Alas it's only open-source on desktop but not Android.

Web search shows that a bunch of Android clients exist for Rclone: the project's wiki points to 'RCX'. will have to try it and see.

I dream occasionally of an encrypted file-level-Raid-5 made from free storage that the services have already bestowed on me.

<comment> gary-kim There's actually an issue[1] open for implementing Cryptomator encryption support in Rclone.

I use Rclone on my Android device through Termux[2] which works pretty well. Termux includes Rclone in its repo[3]. I just set it up to `serve webdav` then access it through my file browser app which includes WebDAV support.

* [1] [https://github.com/rclone/rclone/issues/1647](https://github.com/rclone/rclone/issues/1647)

* [2] [https://github.com/termux](https://github.com/termux)

* [3] [https://github.com/termux/termux-packages/tree/master/packag...](https://github.com/termux/termux-packages/tree/master/packages/rclone)

<comment><USER41> RCX developer here.

I've thought about including Cryptomator support in the app by reusing the java libaries, but licensing issues make that hard. Support in rclone itself would be really great.

BTW: RCX exposes serve as well, and will get Storage Access Framework (SAF) support in the near future. When it works, SAF seems like magic.[1]

* [1] [https://imgur.com/a/cppw03f](https://imgur.com/a/cppw03f)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Also, rclone seems to have a pretty decent forum and user community (important for tech issues, if/when you ever have them) at:

[https://forum.rclone.org/](https://forum.rclone.org/)

</comment><comment><USER42> Uncanny, I was looking for something exactly like this yesterday to upload screenshots automatically to Google Drive. Ended up using Dropbox's screenshot save feature but I'll switch to rclone instead.

</comment><comment><USER43> just installed rclone yesterday to push a lot of files to OVH cloud object store. Bonus points to OVH for providing the option to export rclone config from their UI.

</comment><comment><USER44> RClone is very much appreciated tool in my collection. Thank you people for this very useful and well made tool

</comment><comment><USER45> Rclone saves my work life to upload many GBs to sharepoint. It resolves many sharepoint typical uploading issues.

</comment><comment><USER46> Is there a design document for this? I am curious about how this handles synchronization.

</comment><comment><USER47> I would love iCloud support for this, but unfortunately I don't think Apple will ever budge :(

<comment><USER48> Have you tried syncing to/from the iCloud Drive directory directly? (Backup your data first!)

        ~/Library/Mobile Documents/com~apple~CloudDocs/

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> Any opinions on Rclone vs Borg?

Seems like both support deduplication, which I thought was the advantage of Borg

<comment><USER50> Rclone is mainly for keeping files in sync/transferring files between multiple storage providers, for example copying a file to GDrive/Dropbox when such file is added to S3 or locally. It supports multiple storage providers.

Borg is for backups. It doesn't support any storage provider.

One can use both of them jointly, creating borg backups and saving them on GDrive for example.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> Does it support bi-directional sync yet so that I serve as a unison replacement?

<comment><USER52> It does support a writable FUSE Mount.

<comment><USER51> Erm, please forgive my ignorance but how would this help?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> really cool project. But I still wanna find a way to sync with icloud. I need to pay for more space, so I can backup my iPhone, but now is most consisting of empty space, since isa pain to sync from linux.

<comment><USER54> They have an issue for it, [https://github.com/rclone/rclone/issues/1778](https://github.com/rclone/rclone/issues/1778). But looks like the ball is in Apple's court to provide a publicly-consumable API that's documented.

<comment><USER53> Yeah... for a company that want to be a service company in the future, apple sure is still a pain in the ass to deal outside the ecosystem.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> deployment using rclone is really convenient, releasing packages could be synced into a bucket, and then from the bucket into servers.

rclone also works smoothly with CI servers.</comment>


How can I set up my home LAN to prevent my employer sniffing all traffic? - <AUTHOR> Looking for hardware solutions. I don't want to have a dedicated firewall. A lot of what I find in Google about switches seems to say they are all about performance, but I've also seen hints that they might help here.
Would this work?
Example setup: Work laptop connects over WiFi to dedicated Wifi router which is then plugged into one port of a switch that is plugged into any router, hub, or switch on my main LAN.
Or is there a simpler setup?
Looking for some there where I rely more on the hardware characteristics of the devices, rather than the detailed configuration settings in a router, which are more subject to changes and mistakes. <comment><USER2> Plug another NAT router into your NAT router. Ensure it's not bridging.

WorkLaptop -> NAT/WifiRouter1 plugged into NAT/WifiRouter2 plugged into ISP

Make sure DHCP ranges do not overlap, and this should lazily accomplish what you're looking for, as long as you don't port forward anything or enable UPnP on the one WorkLaptop connects to.

A switch does not help here.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hmm, thanks. I don't get everything here so I would invite others, even if they have the same solution, to explain it in other words. But this helps. Good to have the switch question tentatively cleared up.

I know what NAT is but are all routers not potentially NAT routers? Does this just mean any old router that happens to be configured for NAT? There we get into the (scary) configuration area I wanted to avoid but maybe if it's just setting the address range I can handle that much.

<comment><USER2> Most (99%+) consumer stuff will default to NATing. You can turn it off.

Usually just set something like router2 = 192.168.2.0/24, router1 = 192.168.1.0/24, and you're fine. If you don't do this, you end up with conflicts/no route to host/no connectivity.

Do note that this is not a guarantee and a kind of side-effect. It may still be possible to sniff all traffic, look for ARP, etc. What you really want is a prosumer or enterprise device that can totally separate VLANs.

<comment><AUTHOR> Have any examples of any such devices on the prosumer (affordable-ish) side? To say my "adversary" here is very sophisticated would not be overstating things.

<comment><USER2> Sorry, didn't notice this. Cheap consumer devices - see OpenWRT's site for compatible ones you can flash firmware onto, otherwise <$100 Edgerouter/Edgemax from UI is common.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> > I don't want to have a dedicated firewall.

If you want to be assured of protection, you may need to rethink this requirement.

Network 'switches' provide some isolation, but unless you buy data-center level networking equipment, and configure them properly, there is no way to guarantee isolation (i.e., the isolation can be escaped when using a basic consumer grade switch).

My setup to avoid the same issue:

fios <\---> Linux router (a PC running Linux) with four ethernet cards installed

first ethernet card connects to fios dmarc box

second ethernet card connects to my internal wired network

third ethernet card connects to an isolated wifi network

fourth ethernet card connects to cisco hardware VPN box (work provided), work laptop connects to this hardware VPN box

Linux firewall rules setup so that the work laptop and cicso VPN box connected to the fourth ethernet card has no access to any data on second or third ethernet cards and no knowledge even of the existence of those additional ethernet cards.

Work laptop _does not_ run over wifi, ever.

This layout has the work laptop on a fully isolated, wired, network, where I have full control over what it can see (via those Linux firewall rules).</comment>