Men Are the New College Minority - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2017/08/why-men-are-the-new-college-minority/536103/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> From the article:

> Added Maloney: "There's a lot of attention on empowering girls. I'm not > saying there's anything wrong with that, but males are the ones in crisis in > education."

It's no secret here that there is a crisis of masculinity and of men's role in our society.

There are plenty of men at the top, and plenty in powerful positions. Contemporary social justice movements certainly are aware of that. But what they don't account for is this: most mean are _not_ in positions of power, and a lot are living lives in the shadows of underemployment and partnerlessness.

In this environment men get squeezed at both ends: Painted as suspicious and exploitative when successful, but still shamed and unable to find partners when not successful. When people offer compelling messages that resonate with men - take for example Jordan Peterson's message of living honestly, embracing duty and responsibility, and promoting conscientious habits - it is immediately pilloried as regressive or simply horrible. And we end up back where we started: A relative handful of successful men that made it "over the hump", and the rest who live in society's margins with little interest or regard by broader society and increasingly distanced from wealth, mates, and family. There will be fallout still for generations to come.

</comment><comment><USER3> Having more male teachers in K-12, with a specific need on the earlier years, can help boys stay interested in education longer. 76% of the teachers are female [0], with most of the male teachers teaching in later years. This isn't a silver bullet, and I don't have advice on how to achieve this, but my gut tells me this can help.

Male teachers provide male role models for boys to look up to.

Male teachers have a more personal understanding of what it is to be a boy.

Men and boys communicate differently than women and boys do.

Male teachers show boys that education is something males value enough with their time and attention.

[0][https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=28](https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=28)

<comment><USER4> Extremely anecdotal, but has anyone else also noticed an alarming amount of anti-male sentiment in K-12 teachers? Even thinking back to my education, it is pretty clear there was not just a lack of male educators, but also female teachers who simply did not want boys to succeed.

<comment><USER5> It was an open secret at my school. We knew which teachers were which and passed down the "secrets" of how to exist in certain classrooms. I'm sure there was similar feelings on the other side. When you're young, you tend to only externalize that which impedes you.

<comment><USER6> This.

I feel like it has been true that many teachers target boys to make them do worse for a long time. I mean, let's be honest, there are always "those people" out there. And it's probably been true for many different groups of students by the way, not just boys. There are probably teachers who don't like Asians, or what if you're hispanic? or... heaven forbid... what if you're black for instance?

But I think, for ALL these students, the more helpful question to answer is, how do we help them to successfully navigate this and other obstacles to their education? Because they are going to run up against it, there's really nothing they can do to avoid hitting that obstacle in today's world.

If we can find an answer to this question, we'd really make progress towards improving outcomes in our educational system.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I wish the authors had broken down the statistics better, but on the whole it was refreshing to see a discussion around college not focused on the same few elite private universities. The way we as a culture tell stories about college is so disproportionately affected by those universities that it's hard to really understand things like "student debt" or "rape on campus" \-- I forget where I read it, but I believe that the average American college student is involved in a 2-year community college. I think all discussions of "college" need to specify what "college" means: private elite university, private university, public university, community college.

Also, interesting to see how as soon as there is a gender disparity people reach for the "pipeline problem" as the most likely explainer.

</comment><comment><USER8> College is a poor return on investment right now. I think more women should avoid it too.

The cost of tuition is simply far too high for the real value, of course this differs by majors and degrees. Overall its just not worth the debt load. I think the overall drive to send people to college simply turned it into a a high school diploma 2.0 except now we have soo many kids deep in soul crushing debt.

At the same time jobs are decreasing in value or total to exported labor or automation, we are really having multiple overlapping crises each making the overall domestic situation worse.

It's really concerning. I'm fully expecting a social revolution from the post millennials, whether it leads to good times or hard times, who knows.

But I do know I won't be sending my kids to a university in its current form, I'm hoping Khan Academy becomes the model for replacement.

EDIT: my kids won't be going to college for another 16 years. I highly doubt colleges won't undergo some kind of significant change.

<comment><USER3> I strongly disagree. If you judge an education by three factors you can see there are opportunities to receive great ROIs from a college degree.

1) Which degree you receive.

2) Which institution you receive it from.

3) Your total out of pocket expenses for four years. (Tuition + Fees + Living Expenses + Interest - Scholarships - Salaries)

My $55,000 out of pocket degree payed for itself and all opportunity costs in 5 years, and I fully enjoyed my college experience.

<comment><USER9> I'm glad it worked out for you. Didn't for me. Going to college is probably the worst decision I ever made.

<comment><USER10> Going to college is more then just being at a place.

<comment><USER9> I know what going to college is. Save your platitudes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Might be because Men are waking up to the reality that they can make more money going to a trade school.

<comment><USER12> That is probably part of it, but the work they'll be doing is more labor intensive. I was a union electrician/power plant operator for nearly a decade before I finished my degree in CS and took a job as a software developer. I'm not in SV/NY/Seattle so my pay is roughly equal to what I was making as a topped-out Journeyman, but the work is less stressful on the body.

In the trades, after the job was over or I had turned over to the oncoming shift operator, I didn't think about work at all until my next shift, it was great, my off-time was mine. It was much better mentally compared to now where I have to have my phone on me at all times and respond to emails from our customers (granted, my customers or Transmission System and Distribution System operators controlling the electrical grid, so it is pretty critical when the applications experience issues). There are pros and cons of each, with pay being roughly equal (outside of the major tech hubs). Am I glad I switched? Sometimes, but the skilled trades (electrician, pipe-fitter, plumber, HVAC tech, welder, etc.) are definitely a good way to go if you want to learn a useful skill and have a relatively stable middle class life.

<comment><USER13> If they learn things! That's a huge if. People in all jobs appear to only want to learn in first five years and the be done. They don't learn new things. They don't learn about new products. They just what they always do.

For example how many Floridian contractors know about Bora Care? From my interactions, few. It poisons wood. Termites can't eat it. In Florida you can charge an extra 1k for a house and permanently protect the home from termites. Few even know to offer as a perk on restoration. Think about it, for $75 plus labor a reno contractor could termite proof your kitchen studs while they redo the walls. Poor training.

<comment><USER14> I think you're being a bit too sweeping, but your point doesn't apply only to tradespeople at all. The good ones are constantly learning and keeping up with new technology as much as any of us are. The lazy ones don't, and I know plenty of developers who only learn something new when they have to, and expect it to be delivered on a plate in the form of an offsite "training" session.

Home renovation is also where a lot of bottom-feeders end up. It's very easy to do and doesn't require much skill to get into.

<comment><USER12> > "Home renovation is also where a lot of bottom-feeders end up. It's very > easy to do and doesn't require much skill to get into."

When I was talking about skilled trades I was mainly referring to your union/licensed/Journeyman types. We had continued training programs to keep up with latest NEC/NFPA/ASHRAE/ASME changes. We also had the option of teaching at the union hall (all apprentices work normal days and go to training at the hall on Tues/Thurs) to earn a little bit extra money.

I've met good craftsman as well as lazy ones, but like you said, now that I'm a full-time developer, the same still holds in our industry as I'm sure it does in most industries.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> While I sympathize somewhat, I suspect (most likely due to my own biases) that there is a strong economic class component to this trend they note. I think it's more likely that wealthier men from wealthier families are more likely to end up enrolled in college than poorer men or men or boys who come from lesser means.

Like everything in America, just focusing on ethnic or gender groups _before_ class doesn't really work to reverse the more real disenfranchisement that exists in society.

<comment><USER16> Of course that's true (and it's the same for women: higher socio-economic status is positively correlated with college matriculation and graduation across sex and race lines).

But it's always been true, so what changed?

<comment><USER12> What's changed is that while there are groups advocating for pretty much every group, poor white men are lumped into the same category as rich white men, and are seen as "not needing help" or being a part of the "ruling hierarchy" even though they are poor. I think that is what OP was getting at, that is, by looking first at race/gender, before class, you're alienating a whole group of poor white males that don't see themselves as part of the dominant "white male" narrative. They're struggling just like all the other poor people, but told they "have it good" because they're white, and this is contrary to what they experience day-in and day-out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> What seems to be playing out on college campuses is in stark contrast to what is playing out inside many employers. Our leadership is getting its feet held to the fire to find more qualified female candidates for exec roles, which are dominated by white men. Is this likely to equalize itself over time?

<comment><USER8> My personal theory probably not. Its looks like small but significant percentage of men are extraordinarily sensitive to economic advantages of different activities.

I think the bitcoin billionaires and millionaires are mostly men, and good evidence of something changing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> The articles' subtitle:

>> Males are enrolling in higher education at alarmingly low rates, and some colleges are working hard to reverse the trend.

This may not be alarming depending on how you weigh the value added by college. Conference of credentials by/for authority vs competence and independence with work.

</comment><comment><USER19> The main school in the story was originally an all girls school, which I think has an effect now since they only started to promote it to men starting in 2004. I am willing to guess that overall the numbers aren't that bad, with a little bit less men than women.

</comment><comment><USER20> > Through 21 years running one of the few campus support centers exclusively > for men, he said, "I've thought it can only get better. But it just has gone > nowhere. Not only are there not programs like ours that are supportive of > male students, but at most college campuses the attitude is that men are the > problem. … I've had male students tell me that their first week in college > they were made to feel like potential rapists."

> Added Maloney: "There's a lot of attention on empowering girls. I'm not > saying there's anything wrong with that, but males are the ones in crisis in > education."

We could start by fixing this problem, which seems like it should be one of the easiest to solve. Lets make sure college is not a hostile environment for _anyone_ , including men.

<comment><USER21> Is it possible that for some women the first weeks on campus they were made to feel like potential rape victims?

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> > Men may also feel they have more alternatives to college than girls do. "For > a lot of my [male] high school friends, it was just too much time," said > Smith, the orientation leader at Carlow. "They were ready to get out. As > opposed to a four-year college, they could go to an 18-month [vocational- > education] program and make just as much money."

Seems like something that HN loves to push.

</comment><comment><USER23> Finally getting that diversity they wanted!

</comment><comment><USER24> I thought this was an interesting quote: "discourage men from believing a degree is worth the time and money"

I don't think that's so much the case as it is men are shamed and discouraged in popular culture right now and particularly on campus. There are so many women's programs (which I have no problem with), yet how many men's programs are there?

The typical rebuttal is always "man up and take it" or men have an inherent advantage, but what happens when that advantage has actually disappeared? If I attempted to form a men in engineering group when I was a student I would have been sued and expelled for gender bias or sexual harassment or something.

We need to make sure we continue to make men feel valued by society. I think with the 24/7 news cycle and how focused it is on the bad things that some men do (and how all men are subsequently guilty be association) it's no wonder that men are dropping out of society.

</comment><comment><USER25> Perhaps it is the case that women are just smarter and find education more appealing than their male peers, in aggregate.

Access to higher education for women is still a relatively new thing, historically speaking, so why is it even surprising that the demographics continue to change?

</comment><comment><USER26> 44% men vs. 56% women this fall. What a crisis.

<comment><USER27> I think the issue is the inconsistency, or possible double standard, with considering this gap "okay" but similar gaps "not okay" if the genders are reversed.

I'm for equal opportunities (and upbringing and social environment to encourage use of those opportunities) for both genders. I hope others who share that view will be consistent in their application of it.

For example, if as a result of the education imbalance, some day in the future the pay gap is such that men earn 70 cents on the dollar to what women make, are the same people who say "that's not okay" if it's true about women going to say "that's okay" when it's about men? My anecdotal experience leads me to think that might happen.

<comment><USER28> I suspect that there are many people who would accept a 1% difference without blinking, but would view a 5% difference with concern, and regard a 30% difference as clearly unacceptable.</comment></comment></comment>


MKS: Mechanical Keyboard Simulator – Bogdan's Blog - <AUTHOR> http://sdbr.net/mks-mechanical-keyboard-simulator/ <comment><USER2> Cool idea, but how do I know you're not a Keylogger in disguise?

<comment><USER3> i think this should be open source

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Interesting idea. Some feedback:

\- I'm getting a lot of "colliding" of the sound, resulting in a really awful sound, when I type quite quickly \- It works for mod keys, but not if I repeat the second key, e.g. Cmd+Tab then with Cmd held down, hitting Tab repeatedly. \- When a key comes back up very quickly after traveling down, the sound is a bit odd; it should probably "cancel" or smooth out the up sound \- as others have said, for something this trivial, it requires a lot of extra system privileges, would be cool to trial this first before requiring this (web version of video)

Personally, after the novelty wears off, it's not something I'd keep installed. But, beat tool, best of luck :)

</comment><comment><USER5> Please add a toggle that inverts the function of the app and instead emits keyboard noise cancellation chirps.

</comment><comment><USER6> Years ago, when a few of us were shifting from Atari 800s to PCs, a friend asked me to write a TSR to put an Atari 800-style key click out the speaker. I did so, but found it amusing; I'd wired a toggle switch in line with my Atari's speaker so I could turn it off.

<comment><USER7> _a friend asked me to write a TSR to put an Atari 800-style key click out the speaker._

IIRC, on some PC clones? you could press a key combination to toggle an audible "click" that would be emitted from the built-in PC speaker on key down. (Or it might have been a feature of the keyboard?)

Does anyone else remember this?

So, the topic of this submission is a (probably unknowing) software recreation of something that existed in ROM 30-some years ago!

<comment><USER8> Yes, I remember this. We hated that click and always turned it off.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> For Linux, there is also the famous IBM Model M simulator: [https://github.com/zevv/bucklespring](https://github.com/zevv/bucklespring)

Using it with my Cherry MX Blues is an almost symphonic typing experience.

</comment><comment><USER10> I like my cherry browns because of the feel, not the sound. Clicky sounds is just a side effect that prevents me from using it elsewhere but my home office.

</comment><comment><USER11> It may make the sound, but with a bit of latency. And it won't make rubber domes not feel like garbage. Hell, not even the new "membranical" keyboards can make rubber domes not feel like garbage.

</comment><comment><USER12> Any love for Windows?

</comment><comment><USER13> Ugh, its 2018. Why no web version?

<comment><USER14> Given what it does, why (how, even?) should this be a web app

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> "The sound is a form of feedback. On modern laptop keyboards there is so little feedback that every bit counts. The sound is like a reassurance. It's your computer telling you, yes, you did indeed hit that key."

Oh, feedback like say...

* a character appearing on the screen?

-or-

* the action you were attempting to effect happening

I have a few twee coworkers who insist on using these obnoxious things. Worse even than the physical keyboards, and their arguably beneficial tactile feedback, this is exclusively the worst attribute of these. Why would anyone who isn't basically cos-playing on a computer want this trash?</comment>


Zap - American officials can destroy foreign firms like gremlins on a screen - <AUTHOR> https://www.economist.com/news/business/21741556-there-are-also-big-downsides-actions-against-rusal-and-zte-zap-american-officials <comment><USER2> Yeah, because that's the Free Market at its finest. At least this batch of "zaps" is out in the opoen, and not classified, which I'm sure there's a bunch of those, too.</comment>


Designing a RESTful Web API - <AUTHOR> http://publish.luisrei.com/rest.html

<comment><USER2> SOA will save the world! :)

Great overview on REST, specially for those who have heard of it but never took the time to understand it and end up making some honest "mistakes".</comment>


Actually, I was biologically designed to be an engineer - <AUTHOR> https://code.likeagirl.io/actually-i-was-biologically-designed-to-be-an-engineer-460ab0c377dc <comment><USER2> In my experience women in tech get opportunities thrown at them simply due to desperation of companies to meet the prevailing mantra of 'must have more women in tech'. That's not to say that the women I've met are any better or worse than the men, but it does seem that all else being equal women manage to avoid the crappier jobs and often get put on prestige projects.

If I were starting again I wouldn't go into tech - I'd go into an area where there's more women!</comment>


Show HN: My casual project - a pastebin for poetry - <AUTHOR> http://www.obscurious.org

<comment><AUTHOR> Any thoughts or criticisms appreciated. Poems especially so.</comment>


Utilities puzzle mug - <AUTHOR> http://mathsgear.co.uk/products/utilities-puzzle-mug <comment><USER3> For anybody that doesn't know what's going on: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water,_gas,_and_electricity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water,_gas,_and_electricity)

</comment><comment><USER4> This can be solved on a torus, no?

<comment><AUTHOR> To some extent, that's the point. People go "Oh! Three utilities - <USER2> problem - excellent mug."

It's sometimes only much later that people go "Hang on! It can be solved on the mug!"

It's a cool mug.</comment></comment>


When will I have to jailbreak my Mac? - <AUTHOR> http://vallettaventures.com/post/20955866279/when-will-i-have-to-jailbreak-my-mac

<comment><USER2> > we are to face a possibility that unsigned and eventually unsandboxed apps > are not allowed to run by the operating system.

I've heard this argument often, and I still don't understand it. What reason would they have to choose to forbid unsigned apps? It's like saying "we are to face a possibility that Apple will not allow any apps to run, and all apps will have to be web apps accessed by the built-in browser". Technically they could make those changes to the OS, but why on earth would they?

While you could argue this is similar to what they did with iOS, I think the author points out why that was done:

>Well, the third option that you stop doing anything useful with your Mac, only using it to browse the net, consume media content and read books...

iOS devices were limited for that reason, they weren't meant for what the author describes as "actual work". If you want to do "actual work", you buy a Mac, not an iPhone/Pad, etc. Arguing that Apple would move to a signed-only experience is essentially arguing that they would sell only iOS devices.

<comment><USER3> > Technically they could make those changes to the OS, but why on earth would > they?

Look at their history, there has been a gradual trend in the app store from free-for-all to sandboxing, and now code signing is moving beyond the App Store. The question is why would they stop their current trend?

> Arguing that Apple would move to a signed-only experience is essentially > arguing that they would sell only iOS devices

I think it is highly likely that in the future Apple will only sell iOS devices. Look at the XServe, a profitable product line killed off solely because it didn't fit in with Apple's strategy of mobile media consumption.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "rendering their Macs no better than Linux boxes whose distributions have to be painstakingly maintained".. um what?

"apt-get update && apt-get upgrade" in a cron and I can get on with working. Hardly painstaking. Updates on OS X are more annoying, I've found, with constant restarts.

<comment><USER5> > "apt-get update && apt-get upgrade" in a cron...

You're brave! Or you must be a Debian stable user...

<comment><USER4> Hehe.. Ok I wouldn't do this on production servers, but in about 2-3 years of doing this I haven't had a single issue :-P

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I will never have to jailbreak my Mac. Because I will not buy a computer that requires jailbreaking.

<comment><USER7> I completely agree, but most of us can't build computers the way Steve Wozniak can. So we're stuck buying whatever's available off-the-shelf. Which makes for a potentially scary future...

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This post is scary.</comment>


Galaxy Nexus Speed Test On Verzion LTE Is Amazing - <AUTHOR> http://www.techieinsider.com/news/12908 <comment><USER2> _The performance on this is looking very good and with the results of 4 test runs the average is over 8 Mbps download speeds and over 2 Mbps upload speeds_

Of course this depends on the location of the test, but on T-Mobile HSPA+ in Los Angeles, CA I am getting speeds of 16Mbps down, 1.7Mbps up.</comment>


Got an idea? We'll build it for $20k - <AUTHOR> https://www.20kprototype.com/ <comment><USER2> Not the author here and I don't particular appreciate advertisement landing pages on HN which this is. But as someone who routinely charges $50k for similar projects, I'm curious...

The pricing in the software consulting industry is a bit opaque. Very few companies do what this one does and advertise their price up front. Which I respect.

So my question is, is this sort of pricing common? Am I over charging? Are they under charging? Are we both over or under charging? [1]

[1] I know there are a LOT of factors and there is no way someone could say for sure without due diligence but I guess you can take a guess.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey @throwaway2016a, responding to some of your comments:

1) Not sure why you'd have complaints with this site versus, say, any business on HN that attempts to make money being advertised. I originally put "Show HN: " in the title, but it was changed by a moderator. Was mostly looking for feedback.

2) Re pricing: I'd say in order to assume you are over/under pricing, I'd have to know what you are building. Are you building simple 5 page static sites? Probably overcharging, depending on the complexity. Are you building a complicated clustercuss of interconnected API calls hooked up to a background processor that munges the data and distributes it through multiple channels?... it gets complicated.

The reason I made 20kprototype.com is because I see a lot of people who have ideas, a decent amount of money, but no way to get from A to B. If they go to an agency, the overhead alone will cost them near $100k. If they go to a developer, the dev will say "Okay. Do you have a designer? Who's doing [insert whatever they don't want to do here]?" Then who manages those people?... This idea is: I'll take it from 0 - working so you can prove the idea or show investors. All the work goes into the functionality.

Hope that answers your questions!

<comment><USER2> Thanks for the reply.

Re #1:

Typically said posts are under Show HN. So the fact you put it there originally was right, I think the mod was wrong in that case. If it said Show HN I would have objected as much.

But I think the other part is because the only piece novel here is the price. There are a lot of services that do what you (and I) do. Unless there is something I missed.

Again, that second part is mostly moot because I don't think I would have cared if it was "Show HN"

Re #2:

Typically in that range I give the client an API, a single front-end (mobile or webapp) and all the database and design that goes with it.

I do really appreciate you trying to cut the crap and focus on shipping functionality. I also like how some things that people could call a negative you turn into a positive (like cutting edge tech and lack of fancy sales decks). I'm not calling it a negative mind you.

I do have one question, and feel free to not answer if it is prying too much. What do you pay the developers? How many of these a year does it take to pay their salary?

In the interest of transparency: our staff is all US based. Here it is $75k - $150k USD and if we have them on 3 to 5 projects a year we've paid for them.

Again don't answer if you don't want to. I can hide behind anonymity which lets me be a little bit more transparent.

Anyway, good luck to you!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I'm not sure I've conveyed this accurately enough on the landing page: we don't route $20k to a bunch of developers that we find dirt cheap; a _single_ seasoned developer takes the project from start to finish and they get all the money. Now, how much money they make is based on how quickly they can finish the project. This is where the vetting becomes crucial. If someone calls me up and goes "I want to make the next Facebook!", I explain to them this is beyond the scope of a $20k prototype and guide them to other agencies that can help. Worst case scenario, they gain a little knowledge about their project.

The price/time ratio is the key to making this work. I've done a ton of prototypes that are near that sweet spot. Some will take longer than expected, some will fly out in a few days.

The biggest obstacle I see right now is finding the right platform for targeting the demo-graph I'm going for: people who have ideas, money and not a lot of connections to tech.

<comment><USER2> Thank you for the detailed answer!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> If that landing page is any indication of what you'll get its not worth 1k let alone 20

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Anyone know why this link got flagged? I'm confused.

<comment><USER4> It's spam

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> "SansDegree LLC" ..?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey @benguild, I'm the creator. What's the question?

<comment><USER2> I think he's curious about the origin of the name.

San usually meaning "without" and degree often meaning "Diploma from a higher education institute" it is a rather interesting chose of company name. Not something people typically advertise so explicitly if that is indeed what it means.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah, the origin is: I'm self-taught ;) So you hit it on the nail.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> INR 12,60,0000</comment>


A melody written by a crowd - <AUTHOR> https://crowdsound.net/ <comment><USER2> Isn't this like trying to paint a painting one pixel at a time? Music has patterns, is going somewhere; disputing the next note will result in noise for lack of a coherent plan.

<comment><AUTHOR> You can see the stats at [https://crowdsound.net/stats](https://crowdsound.net/stats)

There are parts where the crowd is divided and I guess you could call those areas "noise", however there are other parts where the crowd has strongly decided what should come next. The future pattern is generated piece by piece by the crowds judgement about how the next bit of the song should combine with the previous patterns.

So perhaps if there are some places which are random noise, it is regularly brought back to coherence by obvious subsequent patterns, deduced by consensus.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> hahahahahaha. This sounds godawful. I think this is the best argument I've ever heard for the great person theory of history[1]. I think the next time I hear someone deny it I will point them at this work of the crowd. (In case I didn't express it sufficiently, I think it's clear that most important progress is made by individuals doing something great, and standing out from the crowd - something that is true not only for every composer who lived, but inventors, entrepreneurs, philosophers, writers, scientists, what-have-you. I've heard rather large orchestras play well without a conductor: but not _truly_ well.) I realize this link certainly does nothing prove my thesis, but it shows a good reflection of my thinking about the alternative claim, i.e. by analogy. I like it! It's a true experiment. (I was expecting a better result.)

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

<comment><AUTHOR> Don't forget the song is in a very simple form (basic chords and melody) and is incomplete. It will sound a lot more acceptable I think when it is put together in a proper arrangement at the end.

Personally, I wouldn't say it is awful. I think it is surprisingly coherent.

Regarding Great Man Theory, I find it hard to be convinced about that. Doesn't linking to a Wikipedia link rather than say Britannica illustrate that the crowd has produced a more useful source of information than the experts in this case :)

<comment><USER3> We will have to disagree that it sounds "surprisingly coherent". (So does a markov chain, _if you ignore the parts that don 't_.) The page says they are next crowd-sourcing lyrics - that should make it more obvious.

 _(on your other point, practically any single author can write in two sentences something much better than the entire wikipedia article I linked; there 's nothing great about it except that it happens to be there. The great person in this case would be: Jimbo Wales. No Jimbo Wales, no wikipedia. we are getting really off-topic though; there's an email in my profile, you can mail me if you'd like to discuss this further.)_

<comment><AUTHOR> The Great Man theory is an interesting point of view - I would like to read more about it. One immediate observation though is that the majority of the Wikipedia article is a criticism about the theory.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> > This melody will eventually become a song with a chord structure of C, G, > Am, F

<sarcasm> Thanking my lucky stars that someone has _finally_ thought of this </sarcasm>

Axis of Awesome put it better : [http://youtu.be/5pidokakU4I](http://youtu.be/5pidokakU4I)</comment>


Scientists think the cell nucleolus may play an important role in aging - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/20/science/nucleolus-cells-aging.html <comment><USER3> The effect that they observe makes sense, implicitly, but I struggle to see a causal link here.

The nucleolus is the site of ribosome synthesis, and ribosomes are needed to make proteins. Under caloric restriction, the growth pathways in the cell get turned down, and protein translation is held back until resources become available again. It makes sense that the cell would stop synthesizing ribosomes, which are HUGE structures that take lots of energy to make.

So I would say that reduced protein translation is a hallmark of longevity, and the methionine restriction experiments support that. The nucleolus getting smaller is likely one of the many effects of this adaptation.

I agree with the author however that this is a great and easily-measured microscopic phenotype. Perhaps this can lead to awesome assays of cellular aging, and perhaps even drug screening for compounds that are rejuvenating.

</comment><comment><USER4> It is funny what does and does not catch the attention of the popular science press. This really isn't all that important as an example of research. It is a very incremental increment in exploring the connections related to cellular housekeeping and stress responses. There really isn't anything that can be done with this knowledge that couldn't be done already with the existing knowledge of the ribosome.

This is an example of the broad, dominant class of aging research that is purely investigative. Most research into the detailed mechanisms of degenerative aging is very far removed from any thought of application, and it is lucky happenstance when such an opportunity does arise.

Unfortunately, systems very closely tied to cellular housekeeping, or responses to stress, or replication seem unlikely to result in the foundations of truly effective therapies. We can look at calorie restriction or exercise, both of which alter all of the above items quite profoundly and throughout the body, to see the plausible benefits that might be attained through manipulation of these fundamental aspect of cellular behavior. We can also look at the past fifteen years of research into these mechanisms to see just how slow and expensive it is to try to produce therapies to slow aging - <USER2> is very little to show for all of the effort invested.

Searching for means to adjust metabolism to modestly slow aging is not a winning strategy; the expected benefits are just not large enough. We must find ways to add decades of vigorous life, not just a few few healthy years.

</comment><comment><USER5> So another datapoint indicating that caloric restriction might be a good idea, with a plausible sounding mechanism of action.

</comment><comment><USER6> Based on various stories that have popped up on HN in the last few years, there seems to be a lot of things inside us that _might_ determine how long we live...

<comment><USER7> It's a fundamental problem with modern day medical research. Rational people would start from the principle that "every x is correlated somehow to every y" (in this case "every aspect of the human body and environment is related to aging"). Now that aspect is taken care of, so rational people can proceed to figuring out quantitative models of these relationships.

However, the current paradigm is to reward people who check for "significant differences/correlations", which just means that they "discover" all these non-zero correlations. Basically it is a huge waste of time and money but it works really well to generate an endless series of breathless press releases.

<comment><USER8> Go ahead and knock yourself out. If you think "creating a quantitative model" of senescence is easy for "rational people", then go right ahead. Your Nobel prize awaits.

<comment><USER7> Well, I didn't study senescence but actually did do something similar.

It required training myself in math, programming, history of the topic, and stats in addition to the normal grad school stuff (memorizing stuff for classes, data collection, etc) which amounted to about 3 years of working almost nonstop.

Turns out nobody cared, all they wanted to know is if there was a significant difference between groups. My attempt caused me health, financial, and social problems for literally an anti-reward so I would not recommend anyone try it. I also don't believe anyone would get a nobel prize for that in the current environment, they would be ignored or fought against because some holy cows would need to be sacrificed.

EDIT: As a more concrete example. Look at the pushback against Tomasetti & Vogelstein for daring to point out that there is a base rate of mutations per cell division and accumulated mutations lead to cancer, so cancers arise more often in tissues with more divisions. This is almost common sense, but people cannot handle it for some reason: [https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/03/no- cance...](https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/03/no-cancer-isnt- mostly-bad-luck/521049/)

<comment><USER9> Yes there are some idiots that dismissed the tomasetti and vogelsteinn paper due to it conflicting with their worldview, but they only got momentum because the original paper really was crap from even a critical scientific POV. What's very ironic is that the problems with the paper seem to be the same things you're bitching about in your post. No one smart is criticizing the paper for the "common sense" part, but because they actually tried to quantify it and their method was quite flawed.

<comment><USER7> What were the problems in that paper? The good stuff is that they were able to come up with estimates for stem cell divisions and were able to see a correlation with the cancer risk.

The bad stuff was the usual misinterpreting correlation coefficients and p-values (this is standard, found in pretty much every paper) and that the data is messy/incomplete. I mean, sure more people should be working on figuring out the number of stem cell divisions by tissue and other nations should collect data of the same quality as SEER...

If it was just another standard "smoking/sunlight/etc causes cancer" paper with the same issues there would not have been this response. It even says so in the atlantic, people think this information undermines their public health campaigns:

>' _The paper triggered a hailstorm of criticism. Some scientists chastised the methods. Why did they ignore common cancers like breast and prostate? Why did they only focus on the U.S.? Others accused the duo of undermining public health. Many personal choices, from quitting smoking to staying lean, can dramatically reduce one's risk of cancers, but why would you bother if you read headlines saying that these diseases are "largely down to bad luck?" '_ [https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/03/no- cance...](https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/03/no-cancer-isnt- mostly-bad-luck/521049/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I like the SENS explanation for aging because it is more comprehensive and plausible to me. See [http://www.sens.org/](http://www.sens.org/)

"The fundamental drivers of degenerative aging lie in the biochemical and cellular side-effects of essential metabolic processes in the body. ". [http://www.sens.org/research/aging-as-weve-known- it](http://www.sens.org/research/aging-as-weve-known-it)

</comment><comment><USER11>
      Nucleolus = ProteinFactoryFactory

<comment><USER3> It makes little models, of factories

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Really excited to see YC Bio longevity startups when they launch.

</comment><comment><USER13> So will my new born become immortal or not? Do I have a chance?

<comment><USER14> I still fail to see why the scintist-god would give you/me immortality unless we become their slaves ?

Just give it to Bill Gates and he can hook you up with enough cash?

<comment><USER15> The need to head for the dystopian view is overwhelming?

Of course, with some effort we might simply figure out how to double our lifespans to 160-200 years.

Albert Einstein, for example, could still be alive discussing physics with Stephen Hawking.

<comment><USER16> Science advances with the death of prominent scientists who have become obstacles to progress. I see no reason why Hawkings or Einsteins would be exceptions to that rule.

<comment><USER17> Yeah we can at last make some more progress in science, now that we're finally rid of Hawking.

<comment><USER16> You are entirely missing the point.

If Hawking and Einstein lived longer so would everybody else. And that would mean that a younger generation of scientists would have to wait _much_ longer before their ideas could be discussed without opposition from the established elders who see their pet theories attacked by these uppity youngsters.

The quote is a riff on what Max Planck, himself an eminent scientist said on the subject:

"Science advances one funeral at a time."

[https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Max_Planck](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Max_Planck)

<comment><USER17> > And that would mean that a younger generation of scientists would have to > wait much longer before their ideas could be discussed without opposition > from the established elders who see their pet theories attacked by these > uppity youngsters.

Okay I will accept that premise for the sake of the argument even though I don't actually believe it's true.

Based on that you go on to conclude it's a good thing that scientists die, so that science can keep advancing.

You're essentially faced with a trolley problem, where pulling the lever one way will make everyone immortal at the cost of slowing down scientific progress, but pulling it the other way will euthanize everyone in the world, and euthanize the countless billions that might live in the future. Somehow your morals (or whatever you call it) tell you that euthanizing everyone is better than slowing down scientific progress. I disagree with you there.

Why not even try to solve the problem some other way than killing everyone? I don't know, why not, say, create an off-world colony outside the reach of those evil progress-impeding elders. Just throwing ideas out there.

Taking your logic to its limit, why not just kill every scientist after their first paper is published? But I don't think you actually want that, so lets hear your argument against my strawman.

<comment><USER18> I also don't believe it's true. The entire nature of science is that theories are modified or discarded as new empirical evidence disproves them. This idea that established immortal scientists would cling to proven-false theories despite evidence from "uppity youngsters" just flies in the face of what science is all about.

If he were talking about politics, he'd have a point, since there's a lot of irrational dogma in that field.

Also, don't forget, if we can figure out how to eliminate aging, that also means we'll eliminate many (maybe all) things that go along with biological aging, such as the changes to the brain that cause older people to tend to be less adaptable (which really is a bit of a stereotype and not all that true; my 80 year old mother happily uses a laptop computer, smartphone, and tablet, while 30 years ago she wouldn't have dreamed of being like this).

<comment><USER19> > If he were talking about politics,

You seem to be operating under the assumption that science is apolitical. As someone who's worked in science, I can assure you that it is not. Many non- scientists listen to popularizers like Neil deGrasse-Tyson and come to believe in a very idealized model of how science operates when the de facto "nature of science" is more akin to what Thomas Kuhn describes in "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions". I really wish that NDT were a bit more forthcoming about his own experiences in science, seeing as how he barely made it through the grad school gauntlet himself. Ditto for Carl Sagan, who made a powerful enemy in Harold Urey (I can't find a link right now, but iirc Urey basically gave Carl a bomb of a recommendation letter that cost him a tenured position Harvard and compelled him to "settle" for Cornell).

In my personal experience (as well as the experience of many, many others if you dig deep enough into this), some scientists can be very egotistical to a point where they take a challenge to their theories as a personal affront, and will employ insanely Machiavellian tactics to suppress dissenting opinions (i.e., senior researchers are the ones who hold the purse when the NIH makes funding decisions).

<comment><USER18> Problems like this can be mitigated or solved with policies, such as limiting tenure or forcing professors to move on after a certain term. We already do this with some politicians. What you're describing is really a problem with academia, not science in general. Corporations doing scientific work don't have those problems (they have other ones though), for instance.

<comment><USER19> True- I guess I should have specified "science within academia".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I've reached my article limit so i'm going to die.

<comment><USER3> Try becoming "born again" in an incognito tab?

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> To save you a click, the Thing in question is the nucleolus, which manufacturers ribosomal RNA.

<comment><USER22> And for those wondering (because I was) 'nucleolus' is not a typo, it is contained _within_ the nucleus.

<comment><USER18> I remembered _just_ enough of my high school biology to (barely) remember the term nucleolus when I saw it here....

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> The immortal boomer meme inches ever closer.

<comment><USER18> First, Boomers will probably be mostly dead before all this anti-aging research can benefit them.

Second, even if that's not the case, people are constantly getting killed off thanks to our addiction to the automobile (and in America, the gun). Eventually these Boomers are going to get knocked off. Maybe if we restrict guns and get better public transit the Boomers can live for centuries, but I don't foresee this; these changes are going to take centuries.

Edit: "addiction", not "addition"

<comment><USER24> I feel like I've read similar comments on HN about cars and guns over and over. Seems odd to be preoccupied with cars and guns when most people don't die of either. What about chainsaws and bathtubs? Cigarettes, trampolines, etc?

Pneumonia, heart disease, stroke, COPD, pneumonia and lung cancer each kill more than cars in the first world.

In the third world, top causes of death are HIV, pneumonia, heart disease, diarrhea, stroke, malaria, TB, COPD, and measles - cars don't even make the top ten.

Source: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_causes_of_death_by_rat...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_causes_of_death_by_rate)

<comment><USER18> >I feel like I've read similar comments on HN about cars and guns over and over. Seems odd to be preoccupied with cars and guns when most people don't die of either.

Cars are the #1 killer for people less than middle-aged (where age-related diseases take over). 30,000 people a year die in the US alone from cars, and it's even worse in other countries.

>Pneumonia, heart disease, stroke, COPD, pneumonia and lung cancer each kill more than cars in the first world.

Only for old people. For young people, the ones who really matter more for the future of society and the economy, cars are easily the #1 killer.

Here's a source: [https://www.everydayhealth.com/kids-health/car-crashes- the-n...](https://www.everydayhealth.com/kids-health/car-crashes-the-number- one-killer-of-us-children-6504.aspx)

Guns are probably the #2 killer of children.

<comment><USER24> I agree that cars and guns are common causes of mortality among groups that already have low overall mortality.

It occurred to me to look up statistics adjusted by years of life lost, which gives more weight to younger victims and seems to favor your agenda.

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

"While the most common cause of death of young people aged 5 to 40 is injury and poisoning in the developed world, because relatively few young people die, the principal causes of lost years remain cardiovascular disease and cancer.[4]"

[Regarding Australia:] "When disability adjusted life years are considered, cancer (25.1/1,000), cardiovascular disease (23.8/1,000), mental health issues (17.6/1,000), neurological disorders (15.7/1,000), chronic respiratory disease (9.4/1,000) and diabetes (7.2/1,000) are the main causes of good years of expected life lost to disease or premature death.[7]"</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Chronos Will Turn Any Watch into a Smartwatch - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-11-05/chronos-will-turn-any-watch-into-a-smartwatch <comment><USER3> Recognizing that people like their existing watches is a great idea. The hardware looks really slick too.

The big problem, one that afflicts pretty much every smartwatch, is one of battery life. One of the great things about non-smart watches is that they run for years, not days. Chronos doesn't bypass this limitation (although one nice thing w/ Chronos is that if one forgets to charge, the main watch will continue to work).

<comment><USER4> I think that's the crux. Its core functionality (time keeping) is not nulled when you forget to charge. Also, battery life is 3 days (EDIT: 36 hours), apparently, so better than any other smartwatch out there! (EDIT: Except the pebble) Plus, it looks like it adds nothing to the current watch in terms of weight/volume!

<comment><USER5> The Pebble is able to for a week without needing to be charged. [https://help.getpebble.com/customer/portal/articles/1564016-...](https://help.getpebble.com/customer/portal/articles/1564016-battery- life)

<comment><USER6> and when it runs to 0%, it goes into "watch only" mode for a day or so , where it just shows the time

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> That's... a really good idea. Just reading over the article I was trying to find some issue with the Chronos, and I really can't. Half the utility of my pebble is it vibrates when I get a notification, which is really all you need. The LED aspect of it seems like a good solution for it's lack of screen.

The only issue I can see with the device isnt actually related to the device- it looks like it depends on proprietary standards, meaning it needs its own apps and hooks.If noone wants to support another smartwatch in their app, this is dead before it hits the water.

<comment><USER8> Agree totally about the Pebble vibrate function.

I hate hearing my phone ring and ALWAYS keep it on vibrate, but sometimes you don't feel a pocket vibration in your pocket.

After realizing a hated all of Pebble's apps, and not needing a watch face to tell time, Pebble just became a wrist vibration band for my text messages. But that feature alone is enough for me to keep the device around.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> How about something like this except make it as a watch strap? You could just replace your strap and not make your watch thicker (my pet peeve when it comes to watches). You could probably even have a larger battery and have it last for several days. Most watch straps are standard and either 18mm or 20mm. You'd also be sure it wouldn't fall off - I know they say the chronos won't fall off but come on, many people aren't going to trust micro suction.

<comment><USER10> [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1113076301/unique- make-...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1113076301/unique-make-any- watch-a-smartwatch) is a smart strap like you describe. Unfortunately it seems to be rather thick. I doubt it can look and feel as good as a thicker watch.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Clever. Appeals to me: I have a scuba watch with a rubber strap, the only watch I've ever been able to wear comfortably for extended periods. I'm so used to it (and I miss it _a lot_ when it goes in for service) that I will likely never replace it - despite having far more means than when I bought it, and some interest in smart watches.

Chronos means I get to keep it _and_ get smart watch functionality. Cool.

<comment><USER12> Depends. I'm curious if waterproof includes scuba-depths. I feel like it doesn't tend to

<comment><USER13> No watch is "water proof", they are only water-resistant. The test goes like this: put the watch in a chamber full of water, pressurize it to the equivalent depth, bring it back to the surface, does it still work?

What this test overlooks is that that doesn't reflect how watches are used e.g. do the buttons stand up to pushing when at depth? Does moving your wrist cause the case to flex imperceptibly, etc? This is why diving watches have ludicrous depths on them, 300m and 600m, because you need that kind of static strength to stand up to normal use at 30m or 50m.

There is no way that this device will be suitable for scuba. Probably OK for swimming tho' as it has no buttons. But since it's removeable, as another diving watch wearer, I'm interested...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This hidden smart watch really captures what Mark Weiser meant when he wrote about Ubiquitous Computing in his Scientific American Ubicomp article "The Computer for the 21st Century" [1]:

"The most profound technologies are those that disappear. They weave themselves into the fabric of everyday life until they are indistinguishable from it."

"Such a disappearance is a fundamental consequence not of technology, but of human psychology. Whenever people learn something sufficiently well, they cease to be aware of it. When you look at a street sign, for example, you absorb its information without consciously performing the act of reading.. Computer scientist, economist, and Nobelist Herb Simon calls this phenomenon "compiling"; philosopher Michael Polanyi calls it the "tacit dimension"; psychologist TK Gibson calls it "visual invariants"; philosophers Georg Gadamer and Martin Heidegger call it "the horizon" and the "ready-to-hand", John Seely Brown at PARC calls it the "periphery". All say, in essence, that only when things disappear in this way are we freed to use them without thinking and so to focus beyond them on new goals."

"How do technologies disappear into the background? The vanishing of electric motors may serve as an instructive example: At the turn of the century, a typical workshop or factory contained a single engine that drove dozens or hundreds of different machines through a system of shafts and pulleys. Cheap, small, efficient electric motors made it possible first to give each machine or tool its own source of motive force, then to put many motors into a single machine."

Mark Weiser on Ubiquitous Computing: [2]

"Ubiquitous computing names the third wave in computing, just now beginning. First were mainframes, each shared by lots of people. Now we are in the personal computing era, person and machine staring uneasily at each other across the desktop. Next comes ubiquitous computing, or the age of calm technology, when technology recedes into the background of our lives. Alan Kay of Apple calls this "Third Paradigm" computing."

[1] [https://www.ics.uci.edu/~corps/phaseii/Weiser- Computer21stCe...](https://www.ics.uci.edu/~corps/phaseii/Weiser- Computer21stCentury-SciAm.pdf)

[2] [http://www.ubiq.com/hypertext/weiser/UbiHome.html](http://www.ubiq.com/hypertext/weiser/UbiHome.html)

<comment><USER15> This is my mantra.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is one step closer to when I think wearables will turn an important corner: when they're commoditized as OEM parts that can be built into enhanced versions of things you already want. Rings, shoes, bracelets. Oh, and when people resign themselves to wait another 5-10 years for parting the workspace from the device form factor.

<comment><USER17> I disagree completely. The players in those markets are so big that they are constantly on the look out for differentiation. It just so happens that in the watch market analogue is worth more than digital (ie $30k for a fancy time telling watch and $350 for an apple watch). Digital watches have been big for a while and so they have a designated place in the market. Digital rings, shoes, bracelets... not so much.

<comment><USER16> TBH, I don't entirely understand your point, so a reply is maybe out of order, butt ... :)

< The players in those markets

Wearable market = created by people who want wearables. Enhanced shoe market = created by portion of people who wear shoes.

<comment><USER17> players in those markets > example Nike: Nike makes shoes. They are looking for differentiation in that market. They have massive resources. So it makes more sense for Nike to make a new model that incorporates technology than it is for them to make something that attaches to their existing models (and presumably everyone else's).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is an interesting twist on an idea I've had to bring the aesthetics of automatic-wind mechanical watches to the smartwatch world. The principles would be to have a power-source powered by the motions of the user - <USER2> notifications would be through mechanical movements of watch hands or whatever. Chronos tries to address the gap between what mechanical aficionados look for and smartwatches... but I think it misses the mark.

</comment><comment><USER19> Since it doesn't have a screen I don't think you can call it a smart watch.

It does seem like it could appeal to some people who don't need the convenience of reading a text or app notification from a regular smart watch.

<comment><USER20> Why does a smart watch have to have a screen?

<comment><USER19> That's the main buying point for me, a small screen on my wrist that can give visual notifications so I don't have to pull my phone out.

<comment><USER21> That's the main reason I haven't bought a smart watch.

<comment><USER22> And the main reason I didn't buy a tractor is because a tractor would let me to start a farm.

The point is, people have different needs. Some like getting notifications on their wrist. Myself, I like smartwatches more for the input side - ability to control stuff without interacting with the smartphone directly.

Also, that's good that some people just don't see the need for it. It means the tool is useful. I hate the trend that hit the mobile market (and already affects the smartwatches) that makes companies design for lowest common denominator - it means people like me, who would like to use a specialized, feature-laden device can't get anything, because they don't exist on the market.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I don't wear watches. I don't wear smartwatches either. But I... I kinda want this. I want to stick it to the back of a pendant or something, and have a piece of smart jewelry.

Sadly I doubt it'd work well for the fitness tracking uses if I used it that way. It'd have to be on a wrist to track pulse and whatnot.

</comment><comment><USER24> Similar project that just launched on Kickstarter: [http://www.trivoly.com/](http://www.trivoly.com/)

</comment><comment><USER25> Check [http://maintool.me](http://maintool.me)

Very elegant, up to 20 days battery life. Fits on any watch

</comment><comment><USER26> I wish I could get a fitness band that doesn't rely on a smartphone. I don't take my smartphone on runs with me. I don't have it on me when I'm working out... Pretty much any time I'd like to know my heartrate, I'd like to not have my smartphone on me.

I want one with a tiny LCD on it to show me my footsteps and heartrate, and I want to plug it into my computer and get a CSV. That's it. For the 99% of normal people who don't want to play with their data in python, you can give them a simple OTG cable and have your app do everything there.

I don't need a smartwatch to read me my text messages or buzz for notifications.

<comment><USER27> that product already exists[0], running watch have been around for many years and do exactly that.

[0]: [https://www.google.com/search?q=running+watch](https://www.google.com/search?q=running+watch)

<comment><USER28> Indeed. but I also want to listen to spotify while I run. Doesn't seem any of those can do that, but if I'm missing something I'd love to know. I also want that data to go into runkeeper.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> When I saw this I immediately thought of the Xiaomi Mi Band. The Mi Band isn't meant to affix to the back of a watch but otherwise the two devices are feature equivalent. They both have a vibrator, an array of multicolored LEDs, accelerometers, and Bluetooth. The primary differences being battery life and software.

While they're radically different form factors, they appear to be similar in volume. The battery life on the Mi Band exceeds 30 days which makes me wonder why this thing can only manage 36 hours.

Speaking of software, this thing seems to do everything I wish the Mi Band did. The Mi Band is such a waste in this regard.

</comment><comment><USER30> 2.5mm is too thick. Thickness is an important criteria on watches for me, so the idea of adding 2.5mm to a watch with a thickness of 13mm is not very appealing.

</comment><comment><USER31> The Pebble is useless to me because you have to dismiss every notification twice: once on the phone, once on the watch. I like getting notifications on the watch when my phone is in my pocket, but when carrying on an extended iMessage conversation I have to deal with notifications on all 3 of watch, iPhone, and computer.

Does anyone know if there is a way to solve this problem?

<comment><USER32> yes, a setting. (Are you running the latest version of app?) Also Pebble Notification Centre is a good alternative.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I wonder if I could just stick it to the back of my hand or inside of my wrist with a gentle glue, since I don't wear a watch.

<comment><USER34> I'll tell you where to stick it... to your phone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> This is absolutely perfect for my needs. I've wanted a smartwatch solely to be able to track exercise and steps, but I have been unimpressed by the aesthetics of the current offerings (square design of the Apple watch, the tacky looking FitBit).

The notifications system (simple vibration & optional LED) seems discreet as well.

<comment><USER36> Have you checked out the Microsoft Band 2?

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> I've never been able to use my smartwatch (Pebble) frequently enough. It's a combination of battery life and the fact that it doesn't look enough like a real watch. This might change that for me.

</comment><comment><USER38> I like the idea. Like others have said here, the Pebble is nice for the notifications. I've been curious to try something that acts solely as a notification device such as this. It could be very discrete, placed in a band on the upper arm or around the ankle (if you want to keep track of steps). I wish the battery life were longer (that way I could use it as a sleep device as well, but I think with it's life of ~36 hours, I could probably work with it), but I like the concept, and look forward to it being compatible with Android.

</comment><comment><USER39> This interests me. I originally wanted to get a Apple Watch but I am not a fan of their overall look. I like traditional watches.

<comment><USER40> What do you think of the Pebble Time Round? Thin, round, and an unbacklit display.

<comment><USER39> I just could never get into the Pebble's look. Knowing I can get a classic watch and turn it into the things I'd use an Apple Watch for is pretty appealing to me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Great idea.

<comment><USER41> Odd that I got 2 downvotes for "great idea."

<comment><USER22> I.e. _only_ 2 downvotes?

I sometimes too want to express my appreciation for something with more than just an upvote, but find myself without anything insightful to say. The current solution is to get an "yes, it's ok to just upvote" counseling, but I sometimes wonder if there isn't something to improve there.

Upvotes signal everything from "it's a great idea!", through "oh, cool", to "headline looks interesting, I want to save that for later reading". On the other hand, since posting "it's great" doesn't seem like much of a contribution, even the best ideas (or Show HNs) end up having lots of criticism in comments here, despite that most HNers may actually really like it. A way to signal "it's a great idea" besides upvotes could correct the comment bias.

<comment><USER41> Here's how it should work, IMO:

(1) An upvote signals a positive sentiment

(2) A downvote signals a negative sentiment

(3) A subject's "newsworthiness" is measured by the sum of upvotes and downvotes (i.e. 5 upvotes and 5 downvotes = 10 newsworthy points)

(4) A subject gets buried by measuring the square of the difference between downvotes and upvotes, divided by total votes squared (i.e. 5 downvotes and 1 upvote has a newsworthy score of 6, but it will have a "bury" score of (5-1)^2 / 6^2. This would only apply to subjects with more downvotes than upvotes.

Currently, upvotes end up being a mixture of "positive sentiment" and "newsworthy" \-- there needs to be a method of distinction between those.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Useless tat</comment>


A look back at memory models in 16-bit MS-DOS - <AUTHOR> https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20200728-00/?p=104012 <comment><USER2> > MS-DOS had an additional memory model known as Tiny, in which the code and > data were all combined into a single 64KB segment. This was the memory model > required by programs that ended with the .COM extension, and it existed for > backward compatibility with CP/M.

The usual "tiny" memory model had all the segment registers ES DS SS CS set to the same value. It was loaded by simply copying the program file into memory and jumping to it.

At Zortech we realized that it wasn't necessary for all the segment registers to be the same - it's just that the program file needed to be less than 64Kb. This meant the code plus the statically initialized data had to be less than 64Kb. SS and DS, though, could be changed to the start of the initialized data, and had access to 64Kb beyond that, enabling significantly larger programs while still using near pointers.

<comment><USER3> Heh, I was about to point to that same paragraph because of how disingenuous the term "backwards compatibility" is. I'm sure the author wasn't intentionally trying to revise history and probably didn't think about the term much, but to set the record straight, DOS wasn't a _successor_ to CP/M, but a "quick and dirty" clone, then later an actual competitor. COM files were included in DOS to make sure programming for it was similar to programing for CP/M.[1]

The story (which I'm sure many of you know) was that in 1979, Seattle Computer was selling an 8086 board, but CP/M didn't run on that CPU yet. So Tim Paterson solved the problem by whipping up QDOS to help sell more boards, cloning the architecture and APIs of CP/M directly from the manuals (without access to the actual source code).[2]

The simplest sort of executable code is a COM file (doesn't get much simpler, actually), so if you're copying the way an OS works, that's pretty much where you'll start. It was about being a familiar paradigm for programmers, not some sort of cross-platform binary compatibility to an out of date OS as insinuated by the term "backwards compatible".

1\. [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/COM_file](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/COM_file)

2\. [http://bitsavers.org/pdf/imsai/dos-a/05_CPM_Interface_Guide_...](http://bitsavers.org/pdf/imsai/dos-a/05_CPM_Interface_Guide_1976.pdf)

<comment><USER4> Its totally reasonable to use back compat to mean "compatible with a legacy system made by someone else that our system replaced"

<comment><USER5> Sure, but it wasn't that, it was "compatable with a contemporary system that did not survive as long as our system"

<comment><USER6> Sure, but an earlier system nonetheless. Similarly, I'd describe Windows 95 as backwards compatible with Windows 3, even if one might describe Windows 3.1 as a contemporary system at the time of 95's release.

<comment><USER5> Was OS/2 backwards compatible with Windows?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> At one point I added the "v" memory model for Zortech C++, which was a virtual memory system for code. Functions would be loaded from disk on demand, and discarded from memory when not needed. The loader would do all the fixups necessary. I was pretty proud of it, it was far better than the usual hierarchical overlay system.

But by then people were using 286 DOS extenders which were better.

<comment><USER7> Is there a good article on how DOS overlays worked?

Back when I learned (?) C, I never learned about the x86/DOS memory models. I just knew I was always hitting the 64k limit, and fortunately DJGPP existed at the time so I just switched from Quick C/Turbo C to that.

<comment><USER2> Overlays were not part of the DOS operating system. But there were at least three different methods:

1\. the traditional one (used by the PDP-11), where overlays were loaded into fixed addresses. This was used by Microsoft tools.

2\. Borland's "Zoom" overlays, I forgot how that worked.

3\. Zortech's "virtual" system where overlays could be loaded into whatever memory was available

<comment><USER8> > Overlays were not part of the DOS operating system.

Microsoft introduced overlay support in MS-DOS 2.x, via the "load overlay" function – INT 21h,AH=4Bh,AL=03h. You can see the references in the MS-DOS source code here: [https://github.com/microsoft/MS- DOS/blob/master/v2.0/source/...](https://github.com/microsoft/MS- DOS/blob/master/v2.0/source/EXEC.ASM#L16)

This was already known long before Microsoft released the MS-DOS 2.x source code; Ralf Brown's Interrupt List documents it:

[http://www.delorie.com/djgpp/doc/rbinter/id/51/29.html](http://www.delorie.com/djgpp/doc/rbinter/id/51/29.html)

[http://www.delorie.com/djgpp/doc/rbinter/it/91/15.html](http://www.delorie.com/djgpp/doc/rbinter/it/91/15.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The near and far pointers bit is also the reason why in the Windows flavor of Systems Hungarian notation, you have a lot of "LP" prefixes; I believe it means Long Pointer and would give you a far pointer. It's typical to have one pointer typedef for Long Pointer, like LPBYTE, and sometimes one near, like PIMAGE_DOS_HEADER. Of course now it's all ignored so if you see someone writing LP in modern code chances are it's just tradition.

Also, today the segment-jumping far call still exists on modern AMD64 machines, and is how you cross "heaven's gate" to go between 32 bit and 64 bit execution.

<comment><USER10> > Also, today the segment-jumpimg far call still exists on modern AMD64 > machines, and is how you cross "heaven's gate" to go between 32 bit and 64 > bit execution.

Addendum: this model only exists on Windows. On Unixes, programs are entirely 64-bit or entirely 32-bit, so there's no LDT setup to have a 32-bit segment in 64-bit code. And there's no syscall on x86-64 to let userspace muck with the LDT as there is on x86-32.

<comment><USER9> Hm? I don't think this is true. It's CS 0x23 and 0x33 just like on Windows, no? This is, afaik, how Wine WoW64 works. I cannot find a definitive source, but for ex: [https://stackoverflow.com/questions/24113729/switch- from-32b...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/24113729/switch-from-32bit- mode-to-64-bit-long-mode-on-64bit-linux)

I also think on Linux the x86 syscalls using software interrupts will still work in a 64 bit process, too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It's worth pointing out that, outside the IT industry, very little "professional" software was actually written to use far data pointers as a default type (a long function call, on the other hand, was only a tiny bit slower than a near one -- this was pervasive). The overhead involved in doing the segment dance for every pointer indirection was simply too high to be practical.

Almost all real mode software made use of some home-grown framework for managing large data across a segmented space.

</comment><comment><USER12> As someone who wrote 16-bit x86 Asm for a long time, if you are writing Asm by hand, the "tiny" model is not as tiny as it may sound at first glance --- 65,536 bytes seems very far when you can write useful applications starting in the dozens of bytes and going up to a few KB. A "Hello World" is around 21 bytes, half of which is the message itself. The majority of the executables that came with MS-DOS 6.22 are under 64K as well, despite being written in C.

Then I look at the Win32 C equivalent with the default MSVC compiler options, and it's over 64KB already...

<comment><USER9> FWIW: it's trivial to make minimal binaries, just, nothing optimizes for it for the most part. If you use OpenWatcom v2 with nodefaultlib you can get win32 binaries that are around ~1500 bytes, which is not too shabby when you consider its padded to 512 byte boundaries, and that the PE headers take at least 300 bytes or so if you aren't overlapping structures.

I have a project that implements a regular expression engine, JSON parser and some game patching code into a DLL that is around 10 KiB (iirc) using OpenWatcom. Of course it's easy if you're only targeting Windows and 32 bit but you can do similar if you drop the standard library in MSVC.

<comment><USER13> Oh yes, "This program cannot be run in DOS mode". Decades have passed, but Microsoft still has not learned how to make them run.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Weird I was just thinking about this last night, in terms of how a multicore computer might work.

Imagine a chip with, say, 256 cores, arranged in an 8x8 grid. Each core would have 64k locally, but could call out to other memory regions and retrieve them automagically in less than 2*sqrt(N CPUs) memory clock cycles.

I'd like it to work like DOS, where the unsigned 16 bit pointers would access the local memory of each chip. But also be able to write a program in 32 bit mode where all of the cores can access the global memory space like in a regular computer. A high-memory program like that might reserve the bottom 64k for system code and low memory variables.

Even better, I'd like progressively more powerful versions of this computer, starting with 4 or 8 bit cores, on up through 16 bit, 32 bit and even 64 bit.

Does anyone know a starting point for a memory architecture like this? Does it already exist?

<comment><USER15> Some architectures you might like reading about:

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

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connection_Machine#CM_designs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connection_Machine#CM_designs)

[http://www.greenarraychips.com/home/documents/index.html#arc...](http://www.greenarraychips.com/home/documents/index.html#architecture)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> That's one of the reason Atari/Amiga fans were so happy with their 68000 CPUs. It was so much simpler to program on.

</comment><comment><USER17> I'm having flashbacks now of programming in Windows 3.1 and the 64k limit for contiguous allocation. We rolled our own Vector template in C++ in order to get around it, but it still made things a pain, like sorting.

And then there was the dreaded GPF... General Protection Fault.

</comment><comment> mark-r I always considered myself very lucky that I didn't start programming Windows until it went 32-bit. I knew about near and far pointers but never had to worry about them because they weren't relevant to anything I did.

</comment><comment><USER18> Ah this brings back memories of x86's Unreal Mode [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unreal_mode](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unreal_mode)!

</comment><comment><USER19> Not complete without memory maps and what the interrupts do: [https://github.com/generalram/normtech](https://github.com/generalram/normtech)

</comment><comment><USER20> 68k programmer at the time: blissfully unaware of all this.

</comment><comment><USER21> The non-uniformity of GPU programming models sometimes makes me think of the days of segmented memory ... The agonizing pain ...

</comment><comment><USER22> One word: burgermaster.</comment>


Algebra, Topology, Differential Calculus, and Optimization Theory for CS [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://www.cis.upenn.edu/~jean/math-basics.pdf <comment><USER2> Don't know what to make of these notes. A bit of a kitchen sink. And too brief for learning the materials.

<comment><USER3> like many other PDFs like this what they really are the author's personal notes, which served the purpose of firming up the author's own understanding of the material.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I wonder where is topology used in comp sci other than computer vision (?) ?

<comment><USER5> Topological data analysis[0] is a new application of topology.

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Does anyone know some good supplemental exercises to pair with this text?

<comment><USER7> You can check out the homeworks from the class these notes were intended for: [http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~cis515/cis515-hw-mid- fin-16.html](http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~cis515/cis515-hw-mid-fin-16.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> CS shouldn't be in the title. If you learn everything in this set of notes you will have learned something close to a standard 3 year undergraduate math curriculum. So the only way it's related to CS is that undergraduate math is applicable to CS, as expected.

<comment><USER9> A lot of the math in the notes are not covered in the standard engineering mathematics curriculum. Chapter 1 is not. No one taught me about rings except in discrete (just briefly), and the next time I visited it would be in algorithm and cryptography class. I honestly cannot recall my exact curriculum, but a quick glance at the table of content, more than half unknown to me.

Now, different school, different teacher will have additional materials. That's possible. Most importantly, the author of this PDF created this for the CS students, so it CAN be in the title.

<comment><USER2> Schools usually have two or three abstract algebra classes just to cover materials in Chapter 1 and a couple later chapters (polynomials, modules, etc).

<comment><USER9> Not really (though again I emphasize every school is different). At least my school doesn't teach these abstract algebra covered in Chapter 1 except in discrete mathematics, which is not offered to most engineering students.

Sure some axioms, vector spaces, some polynomial, logic, here and there would be covered in calculus, differential and linear. But large part of the content would not be part of a CS/Engineering classes. Only what is relevant.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Previous discussion not too long ago:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15923338](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15923338)

Though I note that this link has been updated by one day.

<comment><USER11> That discussion appears to be in regards to a different paper. Or do you mean to relate it to a previous relevant discussion?

<comment><USER10> Maybe an interesting discussion that would keep the link relevant is what the difference actually is? The table of contents do differ, but are very similar. Thanks for pointing that out, I was mostly going on memory, but looking at the ToC there are some differences between the two, but how much would be interesting to ascertain.

<comment><USER9> They are very different. They might have some overlap, but they each have many unique contents.

The one you linked: Fundamentals of Linear Algebra and Optimization

The one here is: Algebra, Topology, Differential Calculus, and Optimization Theory

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> CS is basically math++, i.e. a CS graduate is considered elite, capable of mastering in 1 year what math graduates do in 2 years. Deal with it!

<comment><USER13> Please don't post unsubstantive comments here.

<comment><USER12> World's elite universities will tell you right away that as their CS student you are considered the best group they have and that math students go slower than you are, and increase your load to crazy levels. I am not going to post "unsubstantive" comments that I haven't heard at those places. As a CS student, you are expected to master (continuous) calculus, discrete calculus (discrete math proofs, hypercubes for parallel algorithms), optimization (machine/deep learning, compilers), category theory (functional programming), logic (up to automated proofs, i.e. including set theory), differential equations, topology (computational geometry, distributed algorithms), probability and statistics (reinforcement learning, queueing), number theory (cryptology), graph theory (almost everywhere)... There is no functional analysis needed yet, but it's heavily used for PhD degrees anyway. You need to know all this down to the level of proving theorems if you want to achieve anything in CS.

<comment><USER14> I know several CS PhDs from "world elite universities" with undergraduate math or physics degrees who switched to CS for grad school because they decided that math/theoretical physics were too difficult or too competitive, and found their CS programs comparatively much easier mathematically, with most CS fields requiring much less background to get to the academic cutting edge (as should be expected for a much younger and more application focused field), with an easier path for newcomers to publish meaningful results in high-impact journals. YMMV.

<comment><USER12> Ok, I should quantify it as "some of world's Top 10 engineering universities" then. YMMV as you say; imagine you are required to read 100 papers a term in a single subject in CS these days. Moreover, you should be almost assured that most of the facts you learn will be/are already obsolete due to crazy pace CS is having in some areas. I am not aware of math/physics having such a crazy pace, but I might be ignorant there.

<comment><USER15> Except for the "borderline mathematics" parts of computer science (algorithms, PL semantics, etc.), the scientific rigor in CS publications is much, much, much lower than in math or physics publications. Scientific progress is to be measured in terms of advances in human understanding, not in number of publications, our current "publish or perish" culture notwithstanding.

<comment><USER12> Again, if you want to coast, collect grade inflated Bs and Cs, you can do without much rigor. If you want As and are ambitious, you have to master both CS and related math. Publish or perish is terrible, I agree; if you focus only on super hard high risk problems that might advance humanity, you'll get kicked out of university in no time. And as a professor, 90% of your time will be spent on chasing grants.

<comment><USER15> I am talking about scientific rigor, not grades. A more relevant question (at least to my interests) is "What tests does a scientific proposal have to pass to become an estabilshed scientific result?"</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>