"I have toyota corola" - <AUTHOR> https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2016/11/14/i-have-toyota-corola/ <comment><USER2> Back in the days of shareware, around 1985, I wrote a program called TXT2COM. It was a simple way of turning a text file into an executable. All a user had to do was run the converted com file and the text file appeared on the screen with full scrolling, search and save. I had my name and phone number embedded in the program.

My first problem was when someone converted the Constitution of the United States into a COM file, but made some typos. I got hundreds of calls.

Then someone converted a entire library of gay porn text files which resulted in some uncomfortable phone calls to my wife while I was at work.

I released another version without my name and phone number, but the damage was done. I can still find my name embedded on com files in old archives.

The program was eventually bundled with an edition of "The Art of Computer Programming" by Donald E. Knuth. He used it to wrap some of the text files on the disk that came with the book. He paid me with a signed copy of the book and a very nice letter.

<comment><USER3> Knuth is such a class act. I don't think I've ever heard a negative story about him. Contrast him to, say, the harsh laguage Linus Torvalds routinely engages in or the many stories pointing out Steve Jobs' unfriendly side. I'm not 100% sure if you have to be a jerk to get ahead in life and lean towards 'yes' on this but when I see guys like Knuth, I wonder if nice guys do win sometimes.

>TXT2COM

As an 80s BBS kid, I thank you for this. I'm sure I used this many times over and never considered the author. I think this was commonly used to package text files for download back in the day.

<comment><USER4> You're confusing being a jerk with communication styles and cultural differences. You'd never hire anyone from the American inner city, from parts of Scotland and Ireland, parts of New York, and similar. Some very nice people talk loudly, swear, and use politically incorrect language.

This is part of the reason some URMs can't get ahead in US corporate culture.

Yes, Linus does swear a lot, and uses aggressive language. That's part of his style, his culture, and how he communicates.

No, he is not a jerk. The reason Linux beat the BSDs is because Linus is a very nice guy. He created a community which, despite the harsh language, was very welcoming, and willing to mentor new people. The BSDs created elitist, closed-off communities, which were unwelcoming to newcomers.

If you made a mistake, the BSD communities would write you off. The Linux community would tell you what you did wrong, and how to fix it, even if they used harsh language to do so.

The Linux culture is also quite meritocratic. It doesn't matter how you communicate, or how incompetent you were a year ago. If you're doing good technical work today, you're welcome. More than other cultures, arguments are taken at technical face value, not by who makes them.

<comment><USER5> Your argument is shit. (Another Linus quote) And here's why.

 _" I'm a bastard. I have absolutely no clue why people can ever think otherwise. Yet they do.

People think I'm a nice guy, and the fact is that I'm a scheming, conniving bastard who doesn't care for any hurt feelings or lost hours of work, if it just results in what I consider to be a better system.

And I'm not just saying that. I'm really not a very nice person. I can say "I don't care" with a straight face, and really mean it._"

\-- Linus Torvalds, 09/06/2000, LKML

 _" I like offending people, because I think people who get offended should be offended."_

\-- Linus, 2012.

Linus Torvalds on why he isn't nice: _" I don't care about you."_

[http://arstechnica.com/business/2015/01/linus-torvalds-on- wh...](http://arstechnica.com/business/2015/01/linus-torvalds-on-why-he-isnt- nice-i-dont-care-about-you/)

<comment><USER3> There's this bizarre thing going on on HN, reddit, and other tech sites. We saw it with Linus and we see it again with Trump. Suddenly, all these people are making excuses for terrible behaviors and outrageous claims. Usually following a "he didn't really mean that" playbook of justifications like "productivity" or "politics" like either excuses acting like a child.

Why are we afraid to call people out on the shit they say? Is this some new level of political correctness? Or do we just see these people as something to project onto and dismiss anything counter to that?

No idea, but it seems we live in strange times where a man's own words are ignored for feel-good conclusions that have no merit or basis in reality.

<comment><USER6> If you want to join the marines, you'll be screamed at, verbally abused, and generally pushed to your limits. It has to be that way, they are training 18 year olds to run to the sound of gunfire and perform under fire and the threat of death. You must put up with it or you do not belong in that group.

At the other extreme, if you want to join your local flying club, you can expect to be treated courteously. If anyone treats you like an asshole, the problem is with them rather than you. It can be that way, because the group is not trying to achieve anything extreme, its just for enjoyment and largely social.

If you want to join in the white hot stream of activity surrounding one of the world's most important pieces of software, its not going to be like your flying club.

Its not quite the marines either, but it is a place where very complex stuff has to get done, urgently, absolutely correctly, in the face of hundreds or thousands of interjections and "what about" from more or less well-meaning contributors who just don't have or get the big picture in the same way the core of the group does. (Talking about Linus here, not Trump :)

Sometimes, such an environment functions better with a culture of abruptness and "take no shit" is built.

Its very unfortunate for anyone who aspires to join such a group that they have to put up with that. But sometimes we have to acknowledge that that "terrible behaviour" is part of what makes the group work. Not all clubs are suitable for all people.

<comment><USER5> It's software. Software. Programming. There is no tough mentality required to write good software. You do not have to be a dick to write good software. Ever.

<comment><USER7> I disagree. Some software projects require a tremendous amount of communication to accomplish any task of any measurable importance. If there are three reasonable people involved in this communication, being a dick is probably not required. If there are tens of thousands of individuals involved, you will either be forced to be less than polite to some of them or you will not accomplish anything.

Politely saying no takes time and effort, especially if communication isn't your strong point. If I'm walking down the street, I'll probably be pretty polite to the first homeless guy that asks me for a dollar. By the time the hundredth flags me down before I'm even halfway to my destination, I'll have boiled that initial polite response down to "Fuck off."

<comment><USER8> I agree with this, especially since a lot of people will interpret politeness as being a sign that your decision is negotiable.

That polite "No, because of X, Y, and Z" rapidly turns into "I have made up my mind, no" and then into "This is not a fucking debate, so no, and fuck you." very quickly, especially if you're dealing with a constant deluge of stupid requests.

I'm not going to judge Linus for his outbursts, as obviously his method seems to work pretty well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Reminds me of the SQLite developers who got overwhelmed:

[https://github.com/mackyle/sqlite/blob/3cf493d4018042c70a4db...](https://github.com/mackyle/sqlite/blob/3cf493d4018042c70a4db733dd38f96896cd825f/src/os.h#L52)

<comment><USER10> If it's possible for me to wake up a developer with only a phone call, I think your support system is broken.

<comment><USER11> Developers have phone numbers like anyone else. And when people aren't paying for support, because this is open source, there isn't exactly going to be a 24/7 support helpline.

<comment><USER12> Why do people have a publicly listed personal phone number though?

<comment><USER13> When I was writing some shareware and other PC software, there were basically two ways to reach me: write me a snail mail letter or call me. So it was pretty normal to publish your personal phone number (and address). I wouldn't do it today, but those were pretty much the only ways to contact people.

<comment><USER12> Even if you want to publish a phone number, you can get a voip number for under $1/mo from many providers these days and redirect it as needed, block numbers, send to voicemail, etc. Complete control over it and complete separation. It may have made sense at one point but today it seems crazy.

<comment><USER14> You're being downvoted because the parent clearly isn't talking about present day, but is talking about writing shareware probably in the 80s or 90s. Not much useful/cheap VoIP going on back then.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> As somebody who has written to companies about bugs in their products (and almost always ignored), I would really appreciate a response even if it was some form letter thing to the effect of "I just make a small component that happens to be used in your car, kind of like the people who make the screws in your car. Please contact your car manufacturer directly."

I personally just like knowing somebody read my letter instead of going into a black hole. And I kind of expect these things to go into black holes, so it's actually kind of heart warming when I receive any kind of response.

And this response would at least tell me to try a different contact. (I know in this case who Daniel Stenberg is and know what curl is so I wouldn't make this specific mistake, but sometimes hunting for support contact information returns things that are vague.)

If the customer gets angry at the response, it's fine because it just means they don't understand, which means they are just getting angrier at the car company. The car company deserves that since they made it so hard to contact them.

<comment><USER16> Yeah you would, but you're on Hacker News and not stupid, like 99.999999999% of users are.

To them a reply and it doesn't matter what's in the reply as they're not reading it anyway, means they have somebody to vent to. And if Daniel doesn't solve it. T-mobile is a bad company. DO NOT ever understimate the stupidity of people. No reply is best reply in cases like this!

<comment><USER13> No. 99.999999999% of users are not "stupid." They are just not educated or interested in technical arcana like you possibly are. I could say more but that's probably sufficient. Grow up.

<comment><USER17> Have you ever worked support? Of course the percentage is an exaggeration, but seriously, many people are idiots and won't take no or "that's not our product" for an answer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I have had a similar problem for about two decades now in regards to eCards (virtual greeting cards). I own youknowwhat.com and one of my email addresses is youknowwho@youknowwhat...

Turns out that thousands of people every year think they are being super clever by putting my email address in the "From" field. So of course I get zillions of "receipts" for these eCards.

"Sister, I hope you feel better soon"

...is the most popular by far.

I stopped looking at them years ago but there's often some very personal information included and if I were an evil supervillain it would be trivial for me to use a lot of these eCards to blackmail people!

Fortunately for these people there's a highly ethical person at the helm of that email address that filters them all right into the trash.

<comment><USER19> I get something similar. I was an early adopter of a popular email service, so I managed to get <firstname><lastname>@<emailservice>.com. Pretty neat, pretty simple, right? Except I have a really common name, and people seem think that if the email address has their name in it, it must be their email address. I get sign-ups for Facebook all the time. I get emails about credit scores that make me panic until I realize I didn't sign up for that service. The other day I got an appointment reminder to take my Vauxhall into the shop for service (I live in the US, we don't have Vauxhall here).

Email is hard and confusing for a lot of people. It's easy for us to forget that.

<comment><USER20> I'm amazed how many people get their email address wrong. I have <firstname>.<lastname>@gmail.com, which is fine, and hardly gets any mail meant for someone else. <firstletter><lastname>@gmail.com however, is basically unusable. Funny thing is, the latter was the one I created first, but I forgot the password so had to create the other. I managed to recover it later and I'm glad I have the former.

<comment><USER21> Sort of off topic, but did you know that the '.' gets ignored in gmail addresses, you can remove it or add extras and you will still get the email.

<comment><USER22> This is true in general, but some of the very early Gmail addresses do differentiate based on the '.'

For instance, my very early-adopter Gmail address has a '.' in the address but it is an entirely different account from the one without. If you send mail to the one without the '.' I do not receive it.

<comment><USER23> God I love edge cases / grandfathering

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I usually break E-mail addresses into the following categories:

Monolithic. That one email address you put on business cards, hand out at conferences, post in public forums. Basically a catch-all that quickly becomes a firehose for spam and bacn[1] but every now and then you get an actual _reachout_ as described in this post. They are infact gems when you get them, and always remind me how precious E-mail, as a loose social network, is.

Registrations. For creating throwaway accounts on various online social outlets. Got an IMGUR.com meme you must send to a friend over IM? No problem, your trusty registrations e-mail account, or account(s) have you covered.

Commerce. Super secure email address which is on a trusted provider, and is rarely, if ever, given out publicly. You change your password frequently on this, and make sure not to contaminate it with other identities. Typically tied to several accounts where money moves in them. Accounts with credit cards, PayPal, etc.

Others? I am interested to hear other people's single-duty uses for email? I know I could write about other categories, but those three cover a large portion of what I use E-mail for.

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

<comment><USER25> I use a catch-all domain, and every site/business gets its own <businessname>@example.com. For business cards and friends I use something like myname@ or contact@

When one businesses address starts getting spam I blackhole it.

Similar to the + suffix trick but works on any site.

<comment><USER26> What software do you use to manage that?

<comment><USER27> You can do that with Fastmail easily.

<comment><USER28> +1, I use fastmail, if you use the domain only for e-mail, you can use fastmail's nameservers, DNS setup takes 2 minutes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Back when I was a grad student at Cornell I wrote a random number generator for Javascript (back before there was an RNG function for Javascript.)

It got used all over the web, including the home page of Peoplesoft, which set me up to receive a lot of spam, and then when the "Love Letter" virus and it's competitors came, I was getting something like a million viruses an hour. As of 2005 I was the biggest email recipient at Cornell.

<comment><USER30> Enjoy [http://jdebp.eu./deluge-of-microsoft- worms.html](http://jdebp.eu./deluge-of-microsoft-worms.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> So we run a price comparison engine, and I occasionally get support emails from visitors who bought a product from one of our retail stores listed, and request help from me (ie want tracking or something)

Nobody has ever NOT understood the situation when I tell them that we're just a deals site and to contact the store instead.

On occasion I've had to intervene on their behalf with a store and get things expedited. Stores always oblige because I'm the traffic source.

I of course have a brand to promote, and curl doesn't really need to do that. But when someone's in dire straights looking for _anyone_ to help, I help at all costs. Because I've been on the other end of that support email and it sucks when you can't get a hold of any human.

</comment><comment><USER32> Along similar lines (someone grabbing on to an email address and blaming the recipient for their problems), from a few years back: the city of Tuttle, OK vs. CentOS

[http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/03/24/tuttle_centos/](http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/03/24/tuttle_centos/)

[http://www.jaduncan.com/2006/03/centos-vs-city-of- tuttle.htm...](http://www.jaduncan.com/2006/03/centos-vs-city-of-tuttle.html)

<comment><USER33> > I am computer literate! I have 22 years in computer systems engineering and > operation.

good grief. that poor cent os person.

<comment><USER34> Taylor's followup (according to wiki) is icing on the cake:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuttle,_Oklahoma#Controversy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuttle,_Oklahoma#Controversy)

<comment> nommm-nommm Wow, what an asshole... "Taylor stated that those commenting about him online were "a bunch of freaks out there that don't have anything better to do ... [CentOS is] a free operating system that this guy gives away, which tells you how much time he's got on his hands.""

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I used to run a tech job board in the UK called Hacker Jobs. I used to get two or three emails a week from folk (almost always outside of the UK) asking me to hack into Facebook and gmail accounts.

The best thing was that the job board was very obviously a normal tech job board yet these people had to dig pretty deep into the site to find my contact email.

<comment><USER36> The development IRC channel for the Wine project is #winehackers, and we pretty regularly get morons asking what kind of hacking tools we develop, or if we can help them crack some software's DRM.

<comment><USER37> Can you blame them? Wine and hacking does sound like fun.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I have a similar story. I made an Android app which was getting like 2K installs a day. The app was meant for non-english speakers in India.

I started getting hundreds of emails on by developer email with empty body and empty subject text. I wrote back asking why they did it and never got a reply.

The friction to find and email a developer is pretty high in playstore. Then when I actually travelled to India and started low bandwidth networks I realized what was happening. There was some scrolling issue on playstore where people actually attempted to click on a related app but ended up touching developer email. Not knowing how to close the gmail's compose screen they instead pressed on send. (Many of these users dont know how to use email).

</comment><comment><USER39> Looks like Daniel's website is under a bit of load. Here's a cached version:

[https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:os8OBl...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:os8OBljOwjoJ:https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2016/11/14/i-have- toyota-corola/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk)

<comment><USER40> Select "text-only version" to have it actually load any content.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> > I am using in a new Ford Mondeo the navigation system with SD Card > FM5T-19H449-FC Europe F4. I can read the card but not write on it. I want to > add to the card some POI´s. Can you help me to do it?

Sounds like somebody has the write-protection 'clicky-thing' in the wrong place. If I had a penny for every time this has caught me out.

<comment><USER42> Well, that and the data on the card is probably in some proprietary format. But that's not the point. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> > I can't help them and I've learned over the years that just trying to > explain how I have nothing to do with the product they're using is often > just too time consuming and energy draining to be worth it.

You could write out a form response once, then just send it to everyone, and not respond to follow-ups. Not that you have to, of course, but it shouldn't be energy draining, at least.

<comment><USER44> I've been in that position before, where people would find my e-mail address as a supposed tech support for something I have no relationship with whatsoever. Usually when you tell them they have a wrong e-mail, they get really angry ("I want to talk to your manager!" kind of angry). So it's better to just not respond at all.

<comment><USER45> That sounds extremely funny. I would pay good money to get to be on the receiving end of "I want to talk to your manager!" when you can act however you want.

<comment><USER46> It gets old very quickly.

I used to have a phone number that was one easily mistaken digit away from the largest pizzeria in town, and people angrily complaining about wrong or delayed orders was not funny. One of my siblings sometimes took orders he had no intention of fulfilling :P

Edit: see also legal (or other) threats, from the same author (mentioned elsewhere in the comments)

[https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2016/01/19/subject-urgent- warnin...](https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2016/01/19/subject-urgent-warning/)

<comment><USER47> _" Also, I have yet to figure out how to unhack the hackers"_

Couldn't read any further due to tears in my eyes from laugh.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> GWBasic is an old version of Basic used on PCs in the 1980s. I've used it as my online handle for about 20 years because the first time I logged into a dial up BBS, my GWBasic manual was the first thing I looked up when I had to come up with a handle.

For a period of time, googling for "GWBasic" lead to my home page, even though there is no mention of "GWBasic" on my web site.

I once got a support request for GWBasic. It was rather flattering, and my response basically went along the lines of "I haven't used GWBasic in 20 years and no longer have the manual."

</comment><comment><USER49> When I was little, back in the 90s, I ran a Star Wars fan site on my AOL account. This was a time where you could still count on your hand the number of "popular" sites for Star Wars and if you knew how to remove the border from an image with a hyperlink you were well ahead of the design curve.

One day I received an email from some school kids in Missouri(?), St Louis maybe. They addressed it to, "Mr. George Lucas" and asked if I (George Lucas) would go to their school to talk with them.

I was totally blown away. At first I found it incredible someone would think George Lucas would have the website I built. Then I realized how incredible the Internet was that someone from St. Louis could even go on somewhere and assume that in the first place.

I think I ended up emailing them and breaking the new to them.

</comment><comment><USER50> How can you find text of license of curl in Toyota? I have friend with Toyota wanted to verify. Or maybe someone in this thread can verify this? Is it somewhere in user-guide?

Seriously how people can possibly think some random email from user guide or whatever text they find in car is valid support channel? It is either completely idiotic or there's something wrong with Toyota information guide that leads to this misunderstanding.

<comment><USER28> People's ability to not read the text in front of their eyes is amazing. I imagine people click around and pattern-match the e-mail address, without reading any of the text/license around it. I can imagine that for some not too tech-savvy users, most email addresses they encounter in the wild are support addresses of some sort.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> Ask Google for help. Yes, I know that's an oxymoron, Google doesn't do customer service for a reason. Most companies find it easier to ignore problems with their customers than to do anything.

<comment><USER52> Sign up for Google ads...they roll out a red carpet and even call you first to check up or offer free tutorial by a human on new features.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> What on earth does a car need curl for?

<comment><USER54> curl somedomain.foo/latest_car_software.sh | sh

<comment><USER55> [http://somedomain.foo](http://somedomain.foo) obviously, wouldn't want to have to deal with certificates and all that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> I've got the feeling I've read this before.

Could it have happened to someone else? Or maybe to Daniel himself but under different circumstances?

<comment><USER57> He previously posted one about someone emailing him about a hacked Instagram after finding his name and the email @haxx.se in the licenses.

EDIT: Here's the link: [https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2016/01/19/subject-urgent- warnin...](https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2016/01/19/subject-urgent-warning/)

<comment><USER58> Ironically, one of the analogies suggested in the comments on that post starts out "Imagine you have a Toyota..."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> I wonder if any of those carputers and infotainment systems are using a custom identifier in the curl they ship. Imagine scrolling through access logs listing regular Firefox, Chrome and IE entries and then all of a sudden you get to one that says

        User-Agent: Toyota Corolla

:)

<comment><USER60> The Tesla Webbrowser is sending a custom user agent:

Model S (4/8/14, v5.9) = Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux) AppleWebKit/534.34 (KHTML, like Gecko) QtCarBrowser Safari/534.34

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> I can sympathize. I am not hiring, nor am I looking for a job, but I get several resumes and interview offers a day, because some dingus in Andhra Pradesh used my email address to apply for jobs all over the world, and a separate dingus used my email address to make postings on a "tech jobs in india" board.

I used to have an auto-reply to tell them that they're hitting the wrong address, but I suspect most people don't even read my reply, and I know a percentage of those who do are ready to start an argument with me about why I'm wrong. Nature of the internet, I guess.

</comment><comment><USER62> Hug of death. Couldn't find it in a cache. Anyone else able to?

<comment><USER63> "Proudly powered by WordPress"

[https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:os8OBl...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:os8OBljOwjoJ:https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2016/11/14/i-have- toyota-corola/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk)

<comment><USER62> Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> I have the "classified" user account in one of the big web email providers. For years, the Boston Globe was setting "reply to" on the emails they sent to people that placed classified ads to "classified".

So guess who got the replies from advertisers using the same email provider? That's right. Me.

I explained the problem to the Boston Globe, but they just didn't get it.

Once, somebody sent me all their credit card information so they could place another ad.

</comment><comment><USER65> Working cache link: [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:os8OBlj...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:os8OBljOwjoJ:https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2016/11/14/i-have- toyota-corola/&num=1&hl=en&gl=uk&strip=1&vwsrc=0)

</comment><comment><USER66> During some computer archeology once I was trying to find out more about a binary running on a very old system.

I ended up e-mailing a guy who had worked on translations for a library that was statically linked into the binary. He had no idea what I was talking about but I jumped on his address because he was danish so I could speak to him natively.

</comment><comment><USER67> Great article thanks! Although the article was about the unfortunate side effect of having contact information publicly available, I also discovered that there is an open source community to establish standards for the back end infotainment systems in cars (and other things). Neat stuff.

</comment><comment><USER68> I wrote the database abstraction layer and interface for wordpress (ezSQL). I can't tell you how many 1000's of emailes I've recieved asking me to fix Wordpress installations!

</comment><comment><USER69> Off topic, but what's the deal behind the bluetooth audio lag? Does it apply to calls as well? I've experienced it with music. Is this an Android problem or a problem that could be fixed by the automakers?

<comment><USER70> Pretty common issue with Bluetooth, I've found. Average latency is ~100ms.

Here's a good (albeit brief) read about it.

[http://stephencoyle.net/latency/](http://stephencoyle.net/latency/)

<comment><USER69> What I'm experiencing is way beyond 100ms. At least a second or more.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER71> > I'm sad to say that I rarely respond at all. I can't help them

Well you could say "please contact your local dealership".

</comment><comment><USER72> corola or Corolla?

</comment><comment><USER73> I believe this is karma of every stable open source product, which gained enough popularity.

<comment><USER74> That would be the opposite of karma, wouldn't it? Unless OSS is unrewarded evil in your eyes

<comment><USER75> $ google "define karma"

      karma
      /ˈkɑːmə,ˈkəːmə/
      noun
      noun: karma
        (in Hinduism and Buddhism) the sum of a person's actions in this and previous states of existence, viewed as deciding their fate in future
      informal
        good or bad luck, viewed as resulting from one's actions.

Not all karma is good. The important part is the "resulting from one's actions"

<comment><USER76> These definitions aren't a computer program. They require some degree of cooperation from the reader.

<comment><USER75> Yes, language, as well as culture and money, exist because people cooperate on some level.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER77> I guess this is what you should expect when you are requiring your copyright notice to be disclosed... Live with it or change license.

<comment><USER78> Don't know why this downvoted. Perhaps the wording used? Because the idea is correct. One way to fix would be, for example, changing the license in any future version to read "If you're using this software inside any component that will be used in a car, you should display the _Copyright_automotive.txt_ contents instead of this one"

<comment><USER79> If you're really going to complicate displaying the license, you could try to compel the company using libcurl to provide _their_ support contact information immediately before the license text.

I doubt it would actually work.</comment></comment></comment>


Flickr Places Announced - <AUTHOR> http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2007/10/web2summit_flic.html

<comment><USER2> From the title, I thought this was going to be an announcement of automated digital cameras in tourist spots that uploaded their pictures to Flickr.

I may have an overactive imagination.</comment>


Parasites That Brainwash Their Host - mark-t http://scienceblogs.com/neurophilosophy/2007/08/brainwashed_by_a_parasite.php

<comment><AUTHOR> Cysticercosis (pork tapeworm) can cause marked personality changes in humans when cysts form in the brain.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cysticercosis>

<comment><USER2> I think I saw that on an episode of House M.D.

<comment><USER3> As the Wikipedia article notes, it was the pilot episode.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Robert Sapolsky has a fascinating article on this topic called "Bugs in the Brain." I couldn't remember the article title, but I just had to google for the terms:

sapolsky french kiss polar bear

and that did it. Read the article and find out why. It's classic Sapolsky.

<http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=bugs-in-the-brain>

</comment><comment><USER5> hmm, no comments yet? I'm assuming its one of those articles that speaks for itself. I know I read it last year, but watching it/reading it all over again was just as fascinating. The fact that similar proteins were used in the fungi, which coordinated with the actual organism was pretty amazing. It's almost as if evolution hacked itself to brainwash an organism. Kind of nuts...

<comment><USER6> There are some who believe that fungi and plants like marijuana and psilocybin mushrooms actually co-evolved with mammalian nervous systems, as opposed to the more common theory that their psychoactive chemicals evolved as pesticides (like caffeine, which is deadly to insects). For example, one theory is that psilocybin developed to inspire herbivorous animals to break out of their routines and seek new ranges, defecating over a wider area and creating a larger habitat for the mushrooms. Terrence McKenna, though it should be said that he was far from a skeptical researcher, believed that psilocybin actually drove human evolution; for example, drug-induced synesthesia, mapping concepts to symbols, is his explanation for the emergence of language. (However, language has been shown to emerge naturally in the absence of psychedelic chemicals, so I find this to be particularly far-fetched.)

<comment><USER7> Language has been shown to emerge naturally? I'm not sure what you're referring to, could you provide a link?

<comment> a-priori One major example that has stuck with me in the case of Nicaraguan Sign Language, which was spontaneously developed by a group of deaf schoolchildren. Wikipedia has an article on it, and Stephen Pinker discusses the phenomenon at length in his book _The Language Instinct_.

<comment><USER7> Yeah, but that doesn't show how language evolved, it just shows that language is innate in modern humans rather than a purely social construct.

<comment> a-priori That's not what you asked. You asked for evidence that language "has been shown to emerge naturally". The case of NSL is such evidence.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Could someone have said "that page starts off with a huge close up of an insect"? I freaked as soon as it popped up and had to close my eyes.

</comment><comment><USER9> Gross. This stuff's used in Chinese medicine. My parents have a friend who drinks a tea made from this fungus.

<comment><USER10> Mushrooms are fungi, you know.

<comment><USER9> I do know. The mushrooms on my pizza, however, weren't grown by planting spores in a poor animal's head and growing and growing until its exoskeleton cracked.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is an awesome example, as the article says, of the extended phenotype of Prof. Richard Dawkins. The genes of the worm parasite for example, produce proteins which manipulate the central nervous system of the grasshopper, ergo, one has the genes of one organism affecting the behavior of another organism. I'm a big Dawkins fan, ever since I got 'The Selfish Gene'. I am particularly intrigued by the ability of the parasite to escape once its host has been preyed upon, so if a frog eats a grasshopper that has a worm in it, the worm can escape both the carcass of the grasshopper and the frog. In the end, the grasshopper becomes nothing more or less than the worm's mechanism of replication. One could view this as a restricted class of cases, however, I think one can generalize this by saying as some do, that in fact all life from parasites to ourselves is simply a form of intermediaries to preserve a relatively restricted set of phenotypes, i.e., we are indeed, like the grasshopper, "gene carrying robots". Of course I think I take a certain geeky pleasure from this knowledge, to be able to disabuse people of their quaint, deluded notions of life having mystical attributes, when in fact it is finally speaking a fancy chemical process brought about to preserve genomes, this, and nothing more! :-)

<comment><USER6> * Of course I think I take a certain geeky pleasure from this knowledge, to be able to disabuse people of their quaint, deluded notions of life having mystical attributes*

1\. Evolution does not disprove a vitalistic or "mystical" explanation for the origin and progress of life.

2\. The "mystical" position has lost no ground to scientific advances, although rigid systems of belief (e.g. creationism) have. Atheism has existed for thousands of years; presumably, it's as old as theism. The partial retreat of Christianity from mainstream Euro-American life has to do with cultural forces, not science.</comment></comment>


Rust: low-level programming without the segfaults - <AUTHOR> https://speakerdeck.com/dherman/rust-low-level-programming-without-the-segfaults

<comment><USER2> what fun is low level programming without segfaults?

<comment><USER3> What fun is a slide show without a talk?</comment></comment>


Ask YC: Site usage data for math modeling exercise? - <AUTHOR>

For my undergraduate Probability Models course, I want to do a small queueing theory analysis of submissions to Hacker News. I've looked through the source and found the submission ranking formula, so I can proceed, but it would be great if I could find site usage data or submission times throughout the day and week.
I'd like to determine things like the most and least effective times to post, the effect of early upvotes, the variance of hitting the front page (which would tell you how robust the system is to chance, how well the ranking system is working), etc. If I can't get numbers, I'll academicize it and make them up (does anyone have an idea for how to distribute them?), but it would be much more interesting to have them.
I realized that this kind of data has been asked for before: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=179981 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=114862 I figure it is worth asking again. I wouldn't have to post the analysis, if thoughts of gaming the system are a stumbling block. <comment><USER2> Why don't you just use the next few weeks worth of data?

<comment><AUTHOR> By daily manual polling, I can track when submissions occurred and how many points they received, but I can't so easily track _when_ they received those points.

I could write a program to poll more frequently, to look for changes in each submission's score. That might be even more valuable data than hourly traffic data. I wonder how involved that would be.

Is there a better way of doing it?</comment></comment>


Mobile UX Design: Ways to Ask Users for Permissions - <AUTHOR> https://uxplanet.org/mobile-ux-design-the-right-ways-to-ask-users-for-permissions-6cdd9ab25c27#.wldxowb7j <comment><USER2> There are a few big failings with pure permission-based models:

1\. Given only the most basic of assurances (assuming an app tells you anything at all), you have to trust that some software you just downloaded is going to do exactly what it claims, and _only_ what it claims.

2\. By requiring the user to grant permission at a prompt, we are pretty much guaranteed to not ask questions very often and have coarse granularity. Apps can therefore count on easily gaining more access than they really need, rather than having to try really hard to work within serious limitations.

3\. Data is rarely structured in a way that allows it to expire meaningfully. For instance, I cannot _guarantee_ that an app has access to a particular contact for exactly 1 second while it transmits a message, and then "loses" that information; in reality, the app can probably upload my entire contacts database anywhere in the world and continue to do so for months at a time.

An example of a better model might be to force everything to go through the user and to require applications to sign their data. For instance, if an app wants to send my friend an E-mail, maybe _they can't_ : maybe they have to give _me_ text that is signed by them, and then _I_ send it, ensuring that the correct message is sent but that the E-mail address itself is not shared.

<comment><USER3> There's always a compromise between security and convenience, and how much you're willing to give up of the other.

That email example might work in specific examples, but requiring the user to be a constant gatekeeper would get very tiresome quickly , particularly when it comes to things like GPS and Camera access.

<comment><USER4> What if the operating system acts as an agent in these scenarios? Say, sending a message to a contact requires the app to make a system call which they get back a handle to said contact. All operation on that handle is done via calls to the system, so the data about the contact never actually gets to the app. It'd be annoying to write the simplest of programs under this paradigm, but the use can then completely control an app'use of their data or hardware.

<comment><USER5> This is how Android and content permissions work. It's totally possible to take a picture without permission to access the camera, and to share a contact without granting access to all contacts.

Many apps choose not to use this functionality, because they want to own the UX for contact picking or taking a picture, and most users don't know about the privacy difference between sharing a Uri with a grant permission flag, and granting access to contacts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> CAN I HAZ ALL CONTACT 2 SEND 2 CAT BOSS? (M)EOW/(W)OOF ></comment>


Java Best Practices – String performance and Exact String Matching - <AUTHOR> http://www.javacodegeeks.com/2010/09/string-performance-exact-string.html <comment><USER2> Along the lines of String best practices, my favorite is to reverse the usual order of variable and literal to avoid null pointer exceptions:

      if("botulinum".equals(bacteria))

instead of:

      if(bacteria.equals("botulinum"))

<comment><USER3> Folks might also be interested in the PMD string checks:

<http://pmd.sourceforge.net/rules/strings.html>

<comment><USER4> And checkstyle: [http://checkstyle.sourceforge.net/config_coding.html#EqualsA...](http://checkstyle.sourceforge.net/config_coding.html#EqualsAvoidNull)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Truth be told, I hoped for a bit more from this article. Ok, so now we know that the indexOf() approach works great on strings with the length of 1150000 characters or less. But at what point do other algorithms start outperforming indexOf()? In what circumstances (for example the size of the document, length of the pattern and so on) should I use one algorithm, and when should I use another?

Shame that the article didn't really answer these questions.

</comment><comment><USER6> Another tip for the manual-scanners out there to make that for-loop a little bit faster:

      for(int i = 0, len = text.length(); i < len; i++) {
        // do something
      }

avoids the method call to length() in the comparison expression every time. I imagine a lot of you know this, just from time to time I run into someone that balks at what you can do inside of the old-school for headers and how flexible it can be to help make your life inside the loop a hair bit easier. (e.g. init your variable that you want to pull out)

As for this article, was excellent. I was surprised at how robust of a test suite it was; fortunately it looks like you only need to get concerned with really robust/complex search algorithms if you are working with large chunks of text and brute-force is surprisingly fast in most shorter cases.

Chalk one up for raw, unsexy CPU power ;)

<comment><USER7> Assuming text is a String variable, the JVM should almost always pull the length call out of the loop anyways, since length() is merely a getter of the final 'count' field within the also-final String class (see <http://www.docjar.com/html/api/java/lang/String.java.html>), and hence cannot change within the loop, aside from re-assignment of the text variable itself (which is something that, IIRC, the modern JVMs should notice). In fact, that type of optimization is _precisely_ the reason that if you want to access fields from multiple threads you need to perform some kind of synchronization or mark them volatile, if you don't then the JVM assumes that kind of optimization is allowed, by default, and it will do it in most cases.

That said, if you're really in a performance critical section sometimes it doesn't usually hurt to hand-optimize like this, just in case the optimizer craps out for whatever reason and decides to skip optimizing certain sections of code (these reasons can be hard to predict).</comment></comment>


Cell Phone Records Can Show Where You Sleep and Where You Pray - <AUTHOR> https://www.aclu.org/blog/technology-and-liberty/cell-phone-records-can-show-where-you-sleep-and-where-you-pray <comment><USER2> Also worth seeing is Google's Location History. For me it has come in handy a number of times when I'm trying to figure out the exact time I left or arrived somewhere.

[https://maps.google.com/locationhistory/b/0](https://maps.google.com/locationhistory/b/0)

<comment><USER3> Where do they get the data? I just checked mine and have nothing for the last 30 days. But I only sparingly log in to Google in an incognito window, don't have the Google apps on my Android phone, don't use Google Maps much, etc., so I didn't expect anything.

Also, does anyone have a good solution for tracking yourself, for purposes like reconstructing the time/date you were somewhere? I used a GPS logging app for awhile, but I don't remember if I ever even looked at the data. I had concerns about battery life, and how to use the data even if I got it reliably and efficiently.

<comment><USER4> If you use Google Now, and have Location Services and Location History turned on, it'll triangulate your phone periodically.

Both of these you can turn off, and I believe are off by default until an app prompts you to enable them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I have a friend who is a first-line tech support for a local cell-phone carrier (Rogers Wireless in Canada). He once lost his cell phone on a camping trip. He just logged on to his system and checked for a "ping" from his cell phone and triangulated the exact location.

My point is...this guy is just a front-line tech support and he has access to find the exact location of any given cell phone. So when they say "he makes calls from this tower so he must be home"...they actually have a lot more information available than just which tower was used.

</comment><comment><USER6> Uber records can show where you sleep. Uber "can and does track your one-night stands".[1] Uber internally used the term "Ride of Glory" for this.

[1] [http://www.oregonlive.com/today/index.ssf/2014/11/sex_the_si...](http://www.oregonlive.com/today/index.ssf/2014/11/sex_the_single_girl_and_ubers.html)

</comment><comment><USER7> IANAL but these observations are all location related. The police don't need a warrant to follow you (I don't think). Isn't observation by tracking your phone a lot like that? A detective following you could also observe private details about your love life and your place of worship.

<comment><USER3> Yes, one detective can learn a lot about one person's life in a given timeframe by actively following them. That's different from X00,000 detectives who never sleep and can follow everyone, everywhere, constantly, at very low cost. People/agencies with access to these "detectives" can "retroactively follow" people, something not possible with the lone human detective. IMO there's a huge difference in both quantity and quality of this tracking.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> "Are you interested in travel time to this place?"

</comment><comment><USER9> Unsurprisingly, of course.

</comment><comment><USER10> Joking speed for 2 hours? Possibly good health.

Walking speed taking twice as usual? Possibly bad health.

Beyond the obvious about who you know and hang around with (both, often, at the same place), what your interests or politics are (every friday, he is the vicinity of that ACLU gathering place), etc, etc. ..And I haven't even tried.

Welcome to freedom and democracy, and all that.</comment>


White House sidewalk to be closed to public permanently - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-whitehouse-security-idUSKBN17M05B <comment><USER2> FTA: _" The closure will "lessen the possibility of individuals illegally accessing the White House grounds," Secret Service Communications Director Cathy Milhoan said."_

Silly me, I thought the _fence_ around the White House, coupled with a small platoon of Secret Service agents, were in place for that.

At this rate, by the time I have grandchildren they'll need to pass a background check to even enter DC to gaze at an outdoor monument between the hours of 9am and 5pm.</comment>


How to implement a programming language in JavaScript - <AUTHOR> http://lisperator.net/pltut/ <comment><USER2> Cool... but nitpick about the parsing part (only glanced at it): _why do people always forget about parser combinators and don 't present them as obviously 'the first thing to try' when making a new language?!_

They seem the simplest and most intuitive tool for an unbiased newbie designing a new language, and you can even introduce them by skipping the theory with something like this: [http://theorangeduck.com/page/you-could- have-invented-parser...](http://theorangeduck.com/page/you-could-have- invented-parser-combinators) .

</comment><comment><USER3> If anyone is interested in making a language in JS I can recommend the "Nearley" parser/lexer:

[http://nearley.js.org](http://nearley.js.org)

Very easy parser/lexer to use, accepts a larger class of grammars than yacc/lex and is reasonably fast.

I use it for the language in my project: [http://emunotes.com](http://emunotes.com) and Nearley is fast enough to parse stuff as the user is entering text.

It may be tempting to see if you can get away with not using a parser generator (as the author does here) but I found it is not worth the trouble it generates down the road.

<comment><USER4> Emunotes is really cool. A magical word processor. Is there a way to make functions that connect to expanded services?

<comment><USER3> Thanks; if you by expanded services mean integration with external pieces of user-defined javascript or data sources (such as a YQL query) it is a good and very potent idea. It is something I like to do a little further down the road. In the near future I am focusing on graphics and collaborative features.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is also a really good resource: [https://github.com/thejameskyle/the- super-tiny-compiler](https://github.com/thejameskyle/the-super-tiny-compiler)

</comment><comment><USER6> Immediately thought about another awesome resource about how to write a language in JavaScript:

[http://nathansuniversity.com/](http://nathansuniversity.com/)

</comment><comment><USER7> UNIX/Linux has had off the shelf tools for doing this for nearly 40 years. Two of them are called lexx and yacc.

Kind of reinventing thevwheel for those unfamilar with history.

<comment><USER8> Parsing is the smallest part of writing a compiler.

<comment><USER9> It's also one of the most conceptually difficult parts, which makes it a good learning opportunity.

<comment><USER10> One common criticism of compiler classes is that the first semester spends all of its time on parsing, so the students don't learn very much about compilers. And btw, there's an infinite number of conceptually difficult parts when it comes to optimization.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It would be nice to read some books like Language Implementation Patterns for deeper thoughts after following some easy tutorials. That book is good for designing both DSL and general-purpose languages and explains multiple patterns with pros and cons, tradeoffs, etc.

And also, it's better to check out some metasyntax notations, e.g. EBNF [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extended_Backus%E2%80%93Naur_F...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extended_Backus%E2%80%93Naur_Form)

</comment><comment><USER12> Cool! This is a great, clear tutorial.

I strongly recommend this activity to almost any programmer. No matter what, you'll end up with a deeper appreciation for great system design. You realize how almost every design decision boils down to a compromise between convenience and flexibility. For better or worse, you'll also get new respect for the cruel reasoning behind more arcane, but also more flexible APIs. Red pill blue pill kind of thing.

And, just to share: Last year I took a crack at creating a JavaScript- interpreted Lisp and this is the result - [https://github.com/matthewtoast/runiq](https://github.com/matthewtoast/runiq) \- I haven't added anything since then but I might pick it up again, as it was a helluva lot of fun and also quite mind-expanding.

</comment><comment><USER13> Is there such a thing as a language that compiles to a value rather than an executable program?

I've done a really hacky version of something this where a user would input a succinct, high-level description of a sequence of colored lighting, and my program would parse* that and build the tedious, low-level JSON representation of that sequence for yet another program to perform. Is there a fancy or unfancy name for that?

*Ok really it was a little bit of munging and then eval.

<comment><USER14> Well, at some level _every_ language compiles to a value rather than an executable program - the parse tree of a source module is a data structure describing the program, and the executable is a sequence of bytes that is interpreted by the processor.

There's a continuum between this and what we think of as a "value" in programming terms (eg. an int or a string), but the boundary is fuzzy. It was pretty common at Google to write DSLs that compiled to a protobuf that'd be loaded into the server as configuration, for example. CUDA compiles programs into a buffer that is then sent to the GPU. HTML compiles into the DOM, which is a value that can be manipulated with Javascript.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> The dude writes good code. He's the author of Uglify.

</comment><comment><USER16> So this is how magic happens

</comment><comment><USER17> The new hotness seems to be transpiling, turning an enhanced language into Javascript. Any good resources for this?

<comment><USER18> It's the same as any other compiler, just generate javascript out of the backend.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> It would be nice when saying things like "don't use regexps for parsing" that it is accompanied by an explanation (possibly I didn't read far enough to see the explanation...)

There are only a few actual computer science theory things that I think all programmers should know and this is one of them. There are classifications of grammars (1). Without going into detail, regular expressions can only be used to parse regular grammars.

The problem is that most grammars for programming languages, file formats, communication protocols, etc, are not regular grammars. With a regular grammar you can look at the current state and the next input symbol to determine the next state. With context free grammars you need to have a stack of states. With context sensitive grammars you need to have a stack of stacks states. With unrestricted grammars you are essentially screwed ;-)

So your first task when you are designing a language or file format or communication protocol or whatever is to choose a simple grammar. If you choose a regular grammar then you _can_ (and probably should) use regular expressions to parse it. With context free or context sensitive grammars you can often do lexical analysis (creating symbols that you then pass to your parser) with regular expressions, but you need something more complex for parsing the stream of symbols (i.e., you need to be able to put parser states on a stack).

The problem that you often see is that people design things and have absolutely no idea what kind of grammar it is. They use regular expressions (or some ad-hoc code) and then try to keep track of state in global variables. If they happen to have a context sensitive grammar then chances are their parser simply will not work correctly no matter what they do.

You may be wondering why people choose to use more complex grammars if it is harder to parse. The main reason is that complex grammars give you more options for expression. Sometimes it is extremely difficult or even impossible to represent something with a regular grammar. Having said that, though, you should almost always try to keep your grammars at least context free. Once you get into context sensitive grammars, the difficulty of parsing will either make your parser very difficult to implement or buggy as hell (usually both). Usually it is better to remove functionality than it is to move from a context sensitive to context free grammar.

In the past I have often seen file formats that have unrestricted grammars (converting file formats used to be my job). People who do this should be replaced with programmers who know what they are doing :-P

(1) - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chomsky_hierarchy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chomsky_hierarchy)

<comment><USER20> This is all true, for sure, but I'd like to point out that PEGs are a formalism that isn't much harder to learn than regular expressions, and totally appropriate for parsing a fairly large class of languages. I've also seen PEG-based (pakrat) parser generators for just about every programming language (some better than others, of course). Again, these tend to be not much harder to learn than regular expressions, and because of the "ordered choice" operator, many programmers seem more comfortable reasoning about PEGs than a Yacc specificiation, for example.

PEGs aren't the only formalism that attempts to make writing certain classes of parsers easy. You can get a long way with parser combinators, and Matthew Might's "Yacc is Dead" paper discusses another (extremely general) approach, which I have unfortunately not seen many implementations of.

Anyway, enough of an addendum! Keep on spreading the Good Word ;)

<comment><USER19> Thanks for addending :-) I wasn't aware of PEGs. That definitely does look promising for a lot of cases.

<comment><USER21> I recommend checking out [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/OMeta](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/OMeta) and [https://github.com/cdglabs/ohm](https://github.com/cdglabs/ohm)

<comment><USER4> This. OMeta and Ohm are awesome.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Just wondering if it is true that most of the modern language parsers are written in C?

<comment><USER23> I don't think this is true. Loads of FP languages are self-hosted.

<comment><USER24> Not only FP. Lots of languages are self-hosted. So actually most modern parsers are _not_ written in C, since they are written in the language they parse.</comment></comment></comment>


Harvard Admissions Drop to 7% on Record Applicants - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aO5lGe1UPa5M

<comment><USER2> It's been a couple years since I pulled the numbers, but here's a chart of the undergraduate admission rates for Harvard, MIT, and Stanford for class years 2004-2011:

<http://www.keacher.com/files/undergrad-admissions.png>

As you can see, the trend is nothing new. The only question is: where will it end?

 __Updated: I added the data for the two most recent years:

[http://www.keacher.com/files/dir3/undergrad-admissions- rev2....](http://www.keacher.com/files/dir3/undergrad-admissions-rev2.png)

<comment><USER3> I don't think in the foreseeable future. tokenadult brings up some very good points regarding the rising number of applications.

Even if domestic student class sizes were to remain flat (which they won't, as class sizes are getting larger by the year), many foreign students (esp from India and China) of the current generation are now for the first time able to apply to college in the United States.

<comment><USER4> And the follow up might be that more people applying to Harvard (and other good schools) even if they're not really qualified for the schools (but they think they are).

America's entitlement problem (and the "we're all winners attitude" some schools teach early on) could lead to a serious education disparity. Public universities, like the one I'm currently attending for my master's, has something like a 90% acceptance rate (and a high wash out rate, as freshmen sometimes learns that college isn't all kegstands and tail gates) whereas Harvard only takes the 93rd percentile...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Elite schools are judged, in part, by how many applicants they receive each year.

Knowing this, the top schools have done two things:

1\. Aggressively market themselves to students earlier and earlier.

Many of the top schools begin mailing material to students with desireable profiles as early as freshman year. When I left admissions in '06, people were starting direct mail campaigns to sophomores and we were all wringing our hands over the icky-ness of it.

2\. Make it as easy as possible to apply.

For all the griping they do, applying to college is crazy easy compared to the process even just 10 years ago. All the top schools take the common application now. And top schools will often waive the application fee if you ask them nicely and tell them you can't afford it.

The impact?

Kids are applying to more and more schools each year. I don't cry for the kids who get rejected from Harvard. 60% of them applied to at least 7-8 other schools if not 12-13.

When all you have to do is check a box, why not apply to 15 schools?

This works out great for the schools. Their yields go down, but they get their hands on more applicants than ever.

<comment><AUTHOR> _the top schools have done two things:

1\. Aggressively market themselves to students earlier and earlier._

Here's a link about how Harvard recruits students:

[http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_34/b3998441....](http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_34/b3998441.htm)

Harvard sends out 70,000 letters to high school students to get enough applications to warrant 2,000 offers of admission, which will result in 1,600 new students enrolling in the next class at Harvard.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Similar numbers for Stanford: [http://news- service.stanford.edu/news/2009/january28/admissi...](http://news- service.stanford.edu/news/2009/january28/admission-012809.html)

Apparently, Stanford got 20% more applicants this year than last year. If it were an increase in grad school apps, it might have an explanation in the economy, but I'm not sure what could explain such an increase in undergrad apps.

<comment><USER7> I dont have any stats, but since I have been applying to grad schools this year (and accepted, woo!), I can tell you that for most schools the numbers have been way up across the board. Since most of the admissions stuff is happening at this very moment, good numbers wont actually be available for a few more months.

<comment><USER6> Congrats on getting accepted. I remember getting my first acceptance (UCSD); it was a great feeling.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Just got accepted into Emory today. I'm sorry but I want to yell it to the world. I hear back from the last college I applied to tomorrow. I have to keep telling myself to expect a rejection. It's the one ivy league I applied to. Gulp.

This whole process has been odd and strange. It has put a very friendly group of students at odds sometimes. And by no means is it over yet. It only intensifies with the work load. As seniors, we constantly expect things to cool off, but they never ever do.

I suppose this is welcome to the real world.

I have done well in this system of admissions thus far but I do not feel deserving, I feel lucky. I feel shit damn lucky. Qualified friends of mine are getting rejected or wait listed left and right. This system is flawed. I feel as if it has destroyed the best in me. Tore me down. And for what?

The college admissions process and high school as a prep-school need serious fixing and nobody is talking about it. And by talking I mean doing things.

I wrote about this today: [http://blipfoto.com/view.php?id=275574&month=3&year=...](http://blipfoto.com/view.php?id=275574&month=3&year=2009)

<comment><USER9> Congratulations on getting in.

I graduated about 15 years ago. I'll give you a quick summary of the top people in my class. I went to an "average" midwest public high school with about 2000 students freshman year and 450 students graduating senior year.

If it is at all reassuring the one person I knew in high school who went to Harvard is now unemployed. He's also a schmuck and I wouldn't be surprised if he ended up in politics in the near future... no surprise.

Out of the other top ten in high school that I still keep in contact with three went to state schools on full rides and one went to a second tier ivy league school. They are a chiropractor, a vet and and two doctors. This is also no surprise if you saw them in AP Biology. I think I was the only one in the top 25 to go into Engineering (actually Computer Science). Everyone thought the best way to succeed was to be a doctor, which was largely due to growing up in my home town. The doctors appeared to be doing far better than most engineers or executives at engineering companies.

The most financially successful (as far as I know) is the girl who ended up at google working in the Marketing department pre IPO (I'll take luck over skill any day).

As for the admissions process, it's just the beginning of the journey. So don't get to wrapped up in it. From my experience: In a six months no one will ask you where else you were accepted... In six years no one will ask what your college GPA was... and in twelve years no one will ask where you went to college. Or at least they won't care much.. only in idle conversation. So use it as an opportunity and enjoy it while you can.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> The numbers will continue to decline, the student body is growing larger and larger every year. My year is the largest freshman class ever...until next year.

The pressure put on students these days is insane. It's a non stop competition since conception.

<comment><USER10> > _The pressure put on students these days is insane._

I'd argue it's mostly self-imposed.

> _It's a non stop competition since conception._

"Non-stop competition" against what? Most of the students in the harder courses care more about helping each-other understand difficult material than about competing.

<comment><USER3> >"Non-stop competition" against what? Most of the students in the harder courses care more about helping each-other understand difficult material than about competing.

I was referring to the competition to get into the coveted few spots available at the top schools in the country. Granted, it's always been competitive, but it only gets more competitive with larger and larger class sizes

<comment><USER10> Ah, fair enough.

A few things:

First, such competition is on such a massive scale that _local_ competition against classmates, &c., is harmful. Indeed, I think even thinking about college admissions as zero-sum is counterproductive.

I also still think most of such pressure and competition are self imposed, and frankly often a misdirection of effort and attention: students who care about learning for its own sake and spend effort on what they're curious about and have enough free time to pursue those interests (clearly some who have a language barrier, and must take part time jobs to feed younger siblings, etc. are at a disadvantage here) will manage to get into a decent college somewhere (there are so many fantastic ones!).

Then again, I'm rather less motivated by grades/prestige/promises of future salary/etc. than most students around here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Only 7%? Last I heard, after their endowment went down 30% they pretty much had a hire/tenure freeze on faculty/staff.</comment>


Star Performer Created a 'Toxic Culture' at Silicon Valley Community Foundation - <AUTHOR> https://www.philanthropy.com/article/A-Star-Performer-Created-a/243159 <comment><USER2> Wow. Bullying, sexual harassment, all the usual stuff.

How are people still getting away with this for so long? Didn't they even notice the high turnover and Glassdoor reviews?

<comment><USER3> As long as there was no actual expensive lawsuits and publicity wasn't too bad, it sounds like she was a major net contributor. What was in it for the foundation to get rid of her sooner?

<comment><USER4> I am not sure why the above comment is getting downvotes but seems like a valid question to ask.

Extraordinary people need extraordinary compensation. Maybe pissing off a few people is part of compensation and company has no problem with that as she is worth 100 such people she is gonna piss off.

<comment><USER5> The reason this is problematic is that it downplays the risk associated with the behavior. It's a form of short-term thinking that emphasizes the immediate gains over the longer term losses.

This article may possibly impact the business longer-term and the hidden opportunity costs they have already experienced are both harder to quantify and also really costly.

It also assumes that you couldn't find someone just as effective with good people management skills as well. I personally think it is a myth that someone is irreplaceable unless you make them irreplaceable. If you do that then you deserve the fallout for when that irreplaceable person becomes a liability.

This foundation is likely now opened up to lawsuites, a reputational hit, and potential loss of business. Can they weather it? Probably. Did they have to weather it? No.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > _Former staff members say Loijens 's fundraising prowess allowed her to get > away with treating people badly. Her value to the organization, they say, > includes the deep knowledge she has developed over the years about how to > value complex assets such as artwork, real estate, and especially stock in > privately held companies that can bring significant tax benefits to donors > when they give it away._

Why was she a manager? Without a power advantage she wouldn't have abused anybody: obviously she wasn't screaming at her superiors, given that she wasn't fired. Most absuers only unfold their unique traits when they're surrounded by subordinates that have no chance of retaliating.

<comment><USER7> _Why was she a manager?_

People don't just want more money. They want to be important and powerful as well. If there's someone in your organisation that you want to keep, paying them more to stop them leaving won't work. They leave anyway, but with a higher salary to use as a bargaining chip for their next role. You _have_ to give them more responsibility, and that usually means bringing people in under them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's interesting to note that despite the "toxic culture", Mari was protected because she was getting the job done, and done well. In her mind, she must have thought that her harsh methods were necessary in order to achieve the desired results.

This almost seems analogous to the armed forces, where recruits are subjected to all forms of screaming, yelling and demeaning comments. I would never want to be in such an environment, but clearly, they are doing it because they believe that it works. Do we think that the Marines should be pressured into not yelling at recruits? If not, shouldn't other organizations be given the same latitude if they genuinely think it works best?

<comment><USER9> 1) I think that organizations whose normal mode of operations includes physically dominating others and violating their bodily autonomy are a different enough case that my intuition is that you'd probably not want to apply the same reasoning. If we were having a conversation about the cultures of police or prison guards, I think this would be a productive analogy to start working from.

2) "They're doing it because they believe that it works" implies a certain deliberateness and design. Having spoken with a few USMC recruiters back when I was a teenager, I'm very inclined to believe that they've put a lot of thought into this and that there is a fair amount written about how they use these harsh methods to solve the problems like "How do we give people from a wide range of social backgrounds the mental toughness to be able to do trigonometry in their heads while mortars are going off near them?"

This is quite different from refusing to deal with one employee who has a habit of randomly screaming at people about accounts receivable issues.

<comment><USER8> 1) This seems like a very arbitrary distinction. Is there any hard evidence that yelling is only effective in training people to "physically dominate others"? In the absence of such evidence, we should default towards consistency

2) Your point here is that it's ok to engage in yelling if the decision was made "deliberately" and "by design"? I don't think we as a society should be micromanaging the internal working of a private organisation to that extent. We should be regulating organizations by their behaviors and outcomes, not their thought processes.

Lest anyone misunderstands me, I certainly do not advocate for yelling and belittling behavior. I don't think it makes for a productive workplace, and I would never want to work in one. But I do think there's an inconsistency wrt the wide latitude we give the armed forces. To the extent that such inconsistency is acceptable, I'm curious as to why.

Edit: Another example that just came to my mind, was many athletic coaches in sports like soccer. Specifically, the "greatest football manager ever", Alex Ferguson.

[https://www.givemesport.com/1251440-sir-alex-ferguson- used-t...](https://www.givemesport.com/1251440-sir-alex-ferguson-used-to- shout-at-rooney-when-he-really-wanted-to-shout-at-nani)

[https://www.telegraph.co.uk/football/2016/01/29/how- cristian...](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/football/2016/01/29/how-cristiano- ronaldo-was-reduced-to-tears-by-sir-alex-ferguson/)

<comment><USER10> > But I do think there's an inconsistency wrt the wide latitude we give the > armed forces. To the extent that such inconsistency is acceptable, I'm > curious as to why.

The armed forces are specifically looking to replace any creative or independent thinking with responsiveness to the chain of command and willingness to commit acts of violence. Those are exceptional requirements which are generally in direct conflict with the productive functioning of any other organization.

I do think it's worth inquiring into why we've created a society which necessitates such broad-scale weaponization of human beings, however.

<comment><USER11> > responsiveness to the chain of command and willingness to commit acts of > violence

There is even a term for it: Followership. Something I had never even heard of until I looked into joining ROTC, and realized they weren't looking for future leaders, but robots they could program.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I thought the guy in the picture was the main offender. Why did they put his picture instead of Mari Ellen Loijenss'.

</comment><comment><USER13> The title is missing "at". It sounded as though there was a community foundation that tongue-in-cheek called itself "Toxic Culture".

</comment><comment><USER14> Wow, as a silicon Valley outsider I had no idea an entity like a community foundation would control 13.8 billion dollars!</comment>


How Linux Was Announced to the World in 1991 [pic] - <AUTHOR> http://www.methodshop.com/2011/05/linux-1991.shtml Linux was created as a hobby by a Finnish computer science student named Linus Benedict Torvalds. But did you ever wonder how Linux was "announced"? Linus first told the world about his "hobby OS" on a Usenet posting on Aug 26 1991 at 2:12 am... <comment><USER2> Why the picture? The post is still up.

[https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!msg/comp.os.mi...](https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!msg/comp.os.minix/dlNtH7RRrGA/SwRavCzVE7gJ)

</comment><comment><USER3> It's cool, but it's a pity that this thing is on Google Groups.

<comment><USER4> Where else would it be? I wasn't aware there even were any other Usenet archives out there.</comment></comment>