China Bans Americans Working for WSJ, NYT, WaPo - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/china-bans-all-u-s-nationals-working-for-the-wall-street-journal-new-york-times-washington-post-whose-press-credentials-end-in-2020-11584464690 <comment><USER2> All: This thread is terrible and violates the spirit of this site in too many ways to list. HN is not a place for nationalistic flamewar or accusing each other. Please don't do that damage here. The container is fragile.

If this epidemic continues, we're going to do less "please don't" and more "we've banned". I don't mean the coronavirus— I mean the epidemic of violating HN's guidelines. Please review [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) and stick to the rules when posting here.

The vast majority of the community come here for curious conversation, not to hear people bashing each other and their countries in the same few ways over and over again. That's not only nasty, it's tedious. Please take it elsewhere.

More explanation in this thread: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22605365](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22605365)

</comment><comment><USER3> I truly don't understand why "expel Chinese journalists" was even considered as a reasonable course of action by the US.

It may not explicitly violate the letter of the 1st Amendment, but it certainly violates its spirit, not to mention invites reciprocal action like this that only deepens the fog of war over our most dangerous adversary power.

There are many, many legitimate ways to punish foreign governments, but the expulsion of reporters should never be among them, unless we are at war with that government.

"But China did it first!" Well, then we should highlight how outrageous and unacceptable that behavior is, and sanction them some other way. Not reciprocate.

<comment><USER4> It's kind of ridiculous all the way around. On the one hand, the U.S. should probably be more pragmatic in cases like this. On the flip side, I'm frankly surprised that they're simply being banned/removed from the country.

I'm all for calling out a lot of the issues on both sides of the ocean on this one, even if I do feel that the actions of one country are _far_ worse than the other. Two wrongs do not make a right.

The U.S. should never have allowed more than half of any given industry (especially medicine and other essential infrastructure) to be produced overseas to begin with. The trade war was bound to happen, still, civility should always remain at the table.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> America will surely retaliate.

Here's a timeline for those who haven't followed this:

Feb 3rd: WSJ publishes opinion piece titled "China Is the Real Sick Man of Asia"

Feb 19th: China expels three China-based WSJ reporters

March 2nd: America limits journalists from Chinese state media from 160 to 100

<comment><USER6> _America will surely retaliate._

No.

There are thousands and thousands of journalists working for foreign governments, friendly and hostile, in the United States. Some hostile foreign governments even operate domestic broadcasting operations in America. (China, Russia, etc...)

The worst thing that's ever been done in recent memory is requiring those operations to register as foreign agents. And I think at one time there was a move to limit the Kremlin's cadre to something like 1,000 people. But I might be remembering that part wrong.

<comment><USER5> Mike Pompeo on March 2nd:

"Our goal is reciprocity. As we have done in other areas of the U.S.-China relationship, we seek to establish a long-overdue level playing field," Pompeo said in a statement to CNBC about the cap. "It is our hope that this action will spur Beijing to adopt a more fair and reciprocal approach to U.S. and other foreign press in China."

Reciprocity = you limit our journalist we'll limit yours.

I expect a ban on those 100 remaining Chinese state media journalists.

<comment><USER7> What a ridiculously stupid goal. If we had a goal of reciprocity with every authoritarian dictatorship we'd end up enacting their policies until our government looks no different from our adversaries'.

<comment><USER8> Assuming it's done on a per-country basis, how else do you not get taken advantage of?

<comment><USER9> You can't force other countries to behave how you'd like. Some countries don't have freedom of the press. The United States should not be in the business of restricting freedom of the press in order to pressure other countries to respect it.

The goal is for the United States to follow the principles laid down in the Bill of Rights. Throwing those out in order to pressure other countries is a terrible idea.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Aw, WSJ videos covering China were some of my favourite content. China is really lashing out.

Nothing is surprising since they banned Zedd from China simply for liking a South Park tweet, he's a very popular (and harmlessly generic) pop musician:

[https://twitter.com/Zedd/status/1182376966495838208](https://twitter.com/Zedd/status/1182376966495838208)

</comment><comment><USER6> For thousands of years, tyrants and small-minded people have always tried to shoot the messenger. It seldom stops the message.

<comment><USER11> "Shooting the messenger" refers to envoys, emissaries, ambassadors, and other official agents and representatives. Harming them has led to some devastating consequences for the people doing the harm.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongol_conquest_of_Khwarezmia#...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongol_conquest_of_Khwarezmia#Origins_of_the_conflict)

Suppression of the press is unfortunately very effective in the short term. Historians may eventually uncover the truth but it will be far too late.

<comment><USER12> > Suppression of the press is unfortunately very effective in the short term. > Historians may eventually uncover the truth but it will be far too late.

As Frank Herbert said: "History is written by historians"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The US and China are at war. The last Cold War kind of gave us the internet so hopefully we fund some big ambitious tech this time too.

<comment><USER14> Nice war, given the amount of trade between the countries. Sure they call each other names but when it comes to money the rest be damned.

<comment><USER15> Given their threat this week to withhold ingredients for pharmaceuticals, we should be seriously reconsidering the amount and kind of trade we do with China. We'll see whether they continue in this, but it has a whiff of Faustian bargain at the moment.

<comment><USER16> > Given their threat this week to withhold ingredients for pharmaceuticals

Source?

<comment><USER15> Most mainstream sources buried this, but search for "mighty sea of coronavirus".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This is a big hit for journalism about China. A lot of very good quality reporting on (among others) Xinjiang came from these people. We will all be much less informed about China in the future.

The subtle shift in confidence that this action implies is that China is confident in itself after "beating" the virus while the west is struggling.

A "media war" between China and the US might be worse than a trade war. While a trade war is just about numbers, this will be about ideology and there will be no middle ground.

</comment><comment><USER18> There's growing resentment against Western media for the way the news reported. Take a look at following links. I saw one of them personally on NYTimes couple of days ago. The one from CNN below the banner reads "California prisons" but the picture is from a mosque in Istanbul. One incident is a mistake, but multiple times same "mistake" only show malevolence.

[https://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=https%3A%2F%2Fpbs.twimg...](https://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=https%3A%2F%2Fpbs.twimg.com%2Fmedia%2FES7n-NcWkAMqaO1.jpg&imgrefurl=https%3A%2F%2Ftwitter.com%2Fcnn%2Fstatus%2F1237986945424334848&tbnid=6WOnxz6YnBrtJM&vet=12ahUKEwji1IDMjaLoAhUJz6wKHXyEBJcQMygBegUIARDzAQ..i&docid=8MWg45kUmJxQrM&w=720&h=960&itg=1&q=cnn%20prisons%20in%20california%20are%20suspending&ved=2ahUKEwji1IDMjaLoAhUJz6wKHXyEBJcQMygBegUIARDzAQ)

[https://img.piri.net/mnresize/840/-/resim/imagecrop/2020/03/...](https://img.piri.net/mnresize/840/-/resim/imagecrop/2020/03/17/09/52/resized_31609-e8c09d93mansetkapak.jpg)

<comment><USER19> Seems like a weird mistake that somehow got propagated to multiple platforms at once. What would be the ulterior motive of portraying Californian prisons as ornate places of worship? I don't see any political angle here, so it seems reasonable to assume it was a mistake.

(I didn't downvote you. As far as I'm concerned, CNN is frequently sloppy and deserves criticism for that.)

<comment><USER20> When people coming back from Iran were getting COVID-19, all the articles reporting on it were pictures of the New York Chinatown. It wasn't even to showcase people wearing masks either, in one instance it was literally just a picture of the exterior of some local Chinese Restaurant.

<comment><USER19> Seems like a trend of incompetence.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> "... whose press credentials end in 2020" is a significant part of the headline missing from the HN title.

<comment><USER22> All reporters must renew visas every year so it is inconsequential. It's a blanket ban.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> It's difficult to have compassion and empathy without discussion. These sorts of maneuvers tend to have horrifying butterfly effects.

</comment><comment><USER24> I'm surprised they didn't start with outlawing receiving money from NED or subsidiaries first.

</comment><comment><USER25> This signals to me that the outlets are good sources of information

<comment><USER22> In reality, it's just that these outlets are the only ones with large bureau operations. There are plenty of other independent reporters and smaller sources with much better coverage.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Note that they are also banning from working in Hong Kong and Macau.

</comment><comment><USER27> Can't read the article behind a paywall, but this is China's side of the story:

[https://www.fmprc.gov.cn/mfa_eng/xwfw_665399/s2510_665401/t1...](https://www.fmprc.gov.cn/mfa_eng/xwfw_665399/s2510_665401/t1757162.shtml)

Seems this is part of an ongoing diplomatic spat.

EDIT: FYI, couldn't read the article due to a paywall, did a search, found out some about the history. Thought this added information to the conversation. Yes, this is clearly propaganda, but I still thought it was interesting. You're all of age, you can read this sort of propaganda without being harmed.

</comment><comment><USER28> This is an information war. The US is also banning Chinese journalists. In the end, everybody is losing and I don't see anyone here doing the right thing.

</comment><comment><USER29> I wonder if they're under-reporting their COVID-19 numbers to win propaganda points.

Naaaaah... impossible.

<comment><USER30> I definitely suspect that might be the case. In order to push back against local public anger, the Chinese government have invested a lot of credibility in the idea that their handling of Covid-19 is a shining model for the rest of the world, but it just doesn't feel like it should work. Exponential growth being what it is, if it failed it'd be possible to remain in denial for a while and cover it up for a while longer but sooner or later...

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I can't blame them..

</comment><comment><USER32> China sucks.

</comment><comment><USER33> China is going to face a deep recession as corporations rethink supply chain. The communist party needs something to blame and US is a perfect target.

</comment><comment><USER34> @dang, please ban all accounts involved in this thread.

<comment><USER18> :) Including yours? Buy why?

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Paywall

<comment><USER36> [https://archive.vn/N2AqW](https://archive.vn/N2AqW)

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> What a coincidence, I'm subscribed to most of those!

</comment><comment><USER38> It's war (of words) The Chinese Virus vs US bioweapon. Plus China might be hiding something

<comment><USER39> Also those newspapers were publishing propaganda pieces accusing the Chinese Government of acting in bad faith during the epidemic. That doesn't go over well at all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Don't forget that the US Government has sought to pursue charges against journalists under the espionage act for reporting on government misconduct, and that America's great firewall (Facebook) started suppressing RT after the 2016 election. Also, Al Jazeera is not carried by most US cable providers.

<comment><USER41> Facebook is hardly a firewall and certainly not aligned to the government much less the current administration.

RT is a full on naked propaganda machine and troll farm.

Al Jazeera is not carried by most US providers because they ran out of cash and mostly went online.

<comment><USER40> If you think about your reply, you'll realize it is nothing more than name calling and does not refute the data points that I mentioned.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> People on HN engaging in whatboutism - can you please find a single article from the CCP state media that criticizes the CCP? I could literally go on WSJ/NYT/WaPo _right now_ and find many articles criticizing US government.

That's what _free press_ means. China has no tolerance for truth if it collides with the CCP image.

<comment><USER2> Please keep canned arguments like "whataboutism" off this site. It's a catchy name that masks a logical fallacy, pretending that comparables aren't relevant. Of course they're relevant. If something is comparable, it's perfectly legitimate to bring up. If it's not comparable, refute it by explaining why, not with a generic label.

[https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20whataboutism&sort=byDate&type=comment)</comment></comment>


An open letter to Mike Arrington: Please stop investing in startups - <AUTHOR> http://www.danshapiro.com/blog/2011/05/open-letter-to-mike-arrington-please-stop-investing-in-startups/

<comment><USER2> Does anyone know if he has stock in Facebook? Or MG? I've watched them post about every single increase in Facebook valuation from $20 billion to $80 billion.

"Facebook now at $20 bn..." "Facebook now at $25 bn..." ......... "Facebook now at $75 bn..." "Facebook now at $80 bn..."

I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say they made a post every time Facebook's valuation jumped 5 bn. I thought it was pretty excessive and dubious. I was wondering if it wasn't actually their posts which lead to the next $5 bn increment every other week.

It gave investors the idea that Facebook's valuation will keep rising. It created a loop. I think $80 bn valuation (or $70 as it is now) is way too inflated for the kind of revenues Facebook is making, and I think some of the investors are realizing this and are starting to cash out now before all the others figure it out.

<comment><USER3> As a general rule, they are reporting investments made at those valuations.

Given the Techcrunch audience and the importance of Facebook in Silicon Valley I think that reporting new investments is reasonable, and when the valuations are as high as Facebook's are that will be news too.

I also think reporting on secondary-market transactions is important. There are interesting legal issues surrounding them, and how much people are prepared to pay for shares is instructive, too (especially since some secondary market investors probably have more financial knowledge of Facebook than you or I).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> TechCrunch has always been Arrington's blog above all else. He uses it to help his friends and defeat his enemies. Ask Jason Calacanis what it's like when he's your friend (lots of easy coverage) and what it's like when he's your enemy (LAUNCH conf boycott).

Any additional bias he may have because of investments won't be detectable in the mass of existing ones he already exhibits.

<comment><USER5> Exactly. Once you have watched how the insider game is played in Silicon Valley, being an investor is the least of your conflicts. There are so many weird relationships going on, it's almost like real life. I'm friends with X, Z owes me a favor, etc. None of that stuff is disclosed, because it's just how the world works.

Don't get upset about the 5% of cases where MA has a direct conflict or interest, use your own judgment and filters 100% of the time. One of the key values of reading TC is that it offers strong opinions. If you just want to read bland press releases, I can point you elsewhere.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> TechCrunch had never been an impartial reporter of startup or tech news. Their coverage of startups even before Mike Arrington started investing is based on how connected the startup is with VCs/angels. The users don't necessarily see all startups in that space covered equally. For TC, it works well since it guarantees access to other news stories before anyone else.

<comment><USER7> It's really awful sometimes, and it's unfair to worthy startups that deserve the attention.

Compare the coverage of Quora versus StackExchange, for example. There was a period when there were two Quora articles _per day_ on TC. StackExchange is lucky to be mentioned once every few months, and even then it's usually only brought up as a comparison to "Quora and other Q&A sites".

<comment><USER8> I am asking an honest question here as I have no idea as to what the answer might be:

What good does it do for a startup to be featured on TC? I suspect it may have to do with getting funding if you are doing a round, but is that it? I would assume that most startups don't derive many paying/staying customers from a TC post, unless the startup itself is narrowly targeted at entrepreneurs/other startups.

<comment><USER9> Echo chamber benefits ... if people keep hearing your name they're going to start saying it too, some will be investors, some will be users, some will be disheartened competitors who can't get a major update written about while your minor layout tweak got 300 words.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> TechCrunch is not some 'outstanding' reporting venue with a long history of righteousness.

This is the internet, this is capitalism.

Start your own 'Techcrunch' if you want fairness, no one is stopping you.

<comment><USER11> No one is stopping us from asking TC to be a better source of unbiased journalism either -- which is what this post is about.

<comment><USER10> Look, I do understand your point and that you want TC to be a "better source of unbiased journalism". But TC doesn't want that. They just want to make money. While once in a while you'll see a good article over there, they'll never be a NYTimes, Tribune, WSJ, or TW. It is just not something they care about.

It is almost like asking TC to pivot.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I've never really expected—nor do I know anyone who expects—a lack of bias from Arrington. People have been accusing him of playing favorites for a long time.

I would be less upset—though it's not like I'm upset about this anyway—if he hadn't sold to AOL, because this lessens his incentive to nurture TechCrunch. If I were him, I'd be staring at the countdown clock that keeps me in my golden handcuffs. One of the things I learned about starting a company is to know when to disengage emotionally. And I'm guessing Arrington's is _way_ disengaged.

And if he's disengaged, it probably doesn't matter whether he invests in companies or not. If he doesn't, it doesn't mean he's going to give attention to the companies he considers boring or losers or whatever. This basically allows him to place bets on the companies that he probably would have have been a cheerleader for anyway.

Yeah, it's hard to get too worked up over this.

</comment><comment><USER13> Hi Paul Graham,

I'm one of your customers.

We don't really know each other. We've chatted at a few events, Hacker News features some of my posts, but I'm mostly just a guy who reads Hacker News a lot. I find it's a pretty good place to see what's important in the industry.

I am software guy, not a media critic. But I'm a big believer that economic incentives shape behaviors in subtle and unmeasurable ways. And I think your decision to make investments in startups is going to make Hacker News a worse product.

I can't tell you exactly how. Are you going to be a little more likely to flag stories about competitors to your companies? Upvote them, even when they're not newsworthy, to show you're not biased?

I don't know. But I think it's going to happen, it'll be subtle, and it'll make Hacker News worse.

I'm not making demands or threatening to leave. Just making a request, from one software guy to another: moderator independence is a great feature. Please don't cut it.

Best wishes,

Reg Braithwaite

<comment><USER14> I think that's not a fair analogy. PG isn't the curator for content on HN, and while you could argue he could algorithmically alter stories about YC companies, or manually remove stories, this isn't an editorial blog. It's a collection, and the users vote stories up and down.

PG's goal from HN is to get a pulse of the tech community, see smart people who may be interesting to invest with in the future.

Arrington theoretically runs a journalistic operation, and he brings up journalistic integrity when it suits him. This is a much stronger conflict of interest for something that perceives itself as journalistic.

While the blog didn't bring up great examples of how this will hurt TC, I don't think it's an even analogy.

<comment><USER13> It's fast and loose, but to be honest I neither agree nor disagree with the post's premise, it just seemed like a good point to bring up to spark some discussion.

As for journalistic integrity, my feeling is that conflict of interest in journalism is between a journalist and his employer, not between a journalist and his readership. Media properties all have strong biases fueled by the self-interest of their owners, the market they are attempting to serve with their product, or other factors. In the era of Wikileaks, Twitter, and blogs, journalistic integrity seems like a quaint notion, more unusual when it is present than when it is absent.

I live in Toronto. None of my daily newspapers are unbiased. How about your town?

<comment><USER15> I disagree with this assertion: "my feeling is that conflict of interest in journalism is between a journalist and his employer, not between a journalist and his readership."

A lot of people view Arrington as the face of TechCrunch and I feel like his stories drive a significant amount of traffic to the portal. I, for one, know that I read stories with his name on it -- even if I'm not terribly interested in them.

But, if Arrington's showing favoritism or is holding back, simply because he's invested in a company, it makes TechCrunch less relevant -- since someone else will break the story, or it may be biased. (And, let's be fair -- nobody expects complete impartiality from an investor. They're already partial, else they wouldn't be investing.)

To quote Arrington, "There's a period of time with any investment when I know an investment is possible or likely but it can't be announced yet. During that time I don't write about the startup at all, because I can't disclose the investment. When another writer wants to break a story we may have to hold that story, or it becomes a forcing function in announcing sooner." And this is the hart of the debate.

To address your other point: I know many, many, many journalists who have incredible integrity -- just avid news consumers today are becoming disenfranchised by news media (and I'd like to point out that Wikileaks, Twitter, and blogs are none of the above) does not mean that it does not exist. Would you really rather go to the biased news source if the unbiased one was right next to it?

This is the type of decision that is an inflection point -- because Arrington's refusal to stop will allow a lot of tech journalists to begin lobbying hand grenades at any unfavorable TC press ("I sure hope that Arrington doesn't have a hand in that! hahaha.")

<comment><USER13> _if Arrington's showing favoritism or is holding back, simply because he's invested in a company, it makes TechCrunch less relevant_

It's up to you whether you want to read his stuff or not, and why. However, I do not believe that bias in and of itself disqualifies a speaker/writer/source from relevancy:

<http://raganwald.posterous.com/bias>

By way of a similar example, most people think Daring Fireball is biased. It doesn't appear to have anything to do with Gruber's investments, just his passion. Some people avoid his writing because of his bias, some embrace it, and some--like me--try to include it in a portfolio of things I read.

I have my own reasons for not reading Techcrunch, but Arrington's investments isn't one of them.

<comment><USER16> >By way of a similar example, most people think Daring Fireball is biased. It doesn't appear to have anything to do with Gruber's investments, just his passion. Some people avoid his writing because of his bias, some embrace it, and some--like me--try to include it in a portfolio of things I read.

The difference between TechCrunch and Daring Fireball is that Gruber presents Daring Fireball as his personal blog. It's not presented as a news source. Gruber is more of a pundit than a journalist, and he wears his biases on his sleeves, showing them to everyone. He's using the soapbox that DF gives him to push his views.

TC, on the other hand, is presenting itself as a news site. The people on it, unless they are offering commentary, are supposed to be Journalists. Their reporting should strive to not be biased, which includes reporting any potential conflicts of interest(i.e. investing) in a company within the coverage of the company. A reader should think that the coverage on the site is noteworthy because it is news, and should not have to question the author's intentions or reasons for featuring it.

Otherwise, it's just advertisement at best. At worst, it's just self enrichment by the author. I should note that I'm fine with with this, if the site presents themselves as such. If you're going to be biased, announce it to the universe. Don't hide behind being a "journalist" as your reason for not disclosing anything.

<comment><USER13> As a matter of personal morality, I would say this. I don't believe that journalists need to >try to be< unbiased. However, if I were talking to someone who does believe that journalists need to >try to be< unbiased, I would be careful not to claim that my own writing is journalism. No matter what I believe the word means, knowingly misleading someone else is wrong.

I don't know if Arrington knowingly misleads people by claiming to be a journalist, but if he is deliberately setting an expectation of lack of bias and lack of personal interest in order to profit from that, well, we can both agree that regardless of what journalism means to me or to Arrington, it is wrong to set a false expectation.

<comment><USER16> I said that the journalists should _try_ to be unbiased, not that they themselves should be. It's a very subtle difference, but I know that it's impossible for them not to be unbiased. They are human, after all.

The problem that I have with Arrington being allowed to invest in silicon valley startups, while maintaining his role as an editor of TC is that it presents a pretty clear conflict of interest.

That knowledge alone would make me, a reader, question the intent behind any story. It makes it hard to take any of their coverage seriously, because for all I know, Arrington could be using his readership to enrich himself over actually reporting interesting news.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Probably this is why some startups get so much coverage from TC while others hit the wall.

</comment><comment><USER18> What journalistic organization doesn't play favorites?

It is role of the reader and other journalistic organizations to balance out any inconsistencies in one organization's proclamations over another's. They do this by:

* writing counterpoints that refute a proclamation

* walking with their feet

It may take time and a lot of effort to counteract a journalistic organization that strays too far off the path, but that time and effort always results in the truth.

</comment><comment><USER19> File this in the category of "questions I never would've thought to ask".

There is a fine line between being a blog and being a journalistic organization. Some argue the former is a case of the latter. In the latter, there is clearly an ethical obligation to disclose any conflicts of interest. Many journalists are either required to or choose not to voluntary (to avoid the appearance of impropriety) invest in anything they're covering.

So while bloggers may not fall under the same umbrella, ethical bloggers I believe would either avoid such potential conflicts of interest or at least disclose them.

It's a real problem here because the issue isn't simply the coverage itself but what companies get coverage and what don't. There's nothing to disclose on for a story that isn't written. For startups this is a _huge_ problem.

What's more, I think AOL views itself as a journalistic organization. As such, I'd be surprised if Arrington's angel investments didn't run afoul of AOL's ethics policies.

Basically it looks to me like Arrington has gotten his big payout and he's not so much interested in his earnout. Basically, I think he wants AOL to fire him. He'd no doubt get some kind of acceleration on any vested stock or earn out and I think he'd be happy with that.

Whatever the case, I think for TechCrunch to survive and be taken seriously (as seriously as it ever was at least) it needs someone at the helm who, well, gives a shit. That isn't Arrington.

<comment><USER20> I think you're asking the wrong question.

The correct question is who is Arrington's constituency? It's not the general public. He doesn't care about ethical investing standards and bias. Motherfucker is biased. Very biased. He represents the Silicon Valley bubble. But he's okay with that. And he wants to know what's going on within the bubble.

I agree that we should do away with the pretense that TechCrunch is some how journalism, but i think that investor advocacy isn't a bad thing. It's just not journalism.

In a way though, it doesn't matter. We live in the era of Fox News, "Caveat Investor", and advocacy journalism as a business tactic. AOL ultimately cares about eyeballs, not journalism. Do you think Arianna cares about ethics and journalistic standards? I think she cares about eyeballs, and getting a certain set of POVs out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> This is interesting to me.

I wonder if we - to a certain degree - might receive better reporting since he is more active on a day-to-day basis in the actual investing. I really have no idea if this would be the case, but it's entirely possible that he might be privy to additional info than he would otherwise.

As for as the open letter...Mike appears to be open about who he's investing with and I would doubt he would want to harm his reputation - or TechCrunch's - by appearing to be biased towards those he has a vested interest in.

Well written letter but perhaps wait until you have examples of the downsides before you write the next. It will carry far more weight.

<comment><USER22> I hadn't thought of that before reading your post, but I agree. Mike getting into investing may actually improve TC because he now is getting involved with startups on a more fundamental level. It might open him up to reporting on startups that would have otherwise been missed because they aren't buzz companies. In any event, it will prove to be an interesting case study in journalistic integrity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Blogs are written by subject matter experts that know their topic better than any generalist. They are, by definition going to have their hands in the pie.

So if you want coverage from people that are unbiased (or less biased) but who don't quite get it, stick with mainstream media. If you want expertise with potentially an axe to grind, go with blogs.

Better to look at both and always question what you read from both angles of competence and integrity.

</comment><comment><USER24> Now that he's sold TechCrunch to AOL, I'm not clear why anyone would expect that he would not invest in start up companies. TechCrunch is no longer just him or him and a few bloggers, it's part of a major media organization. If their rules allow him to invest in the companies he covers then that is a problem with their journalistic policies, not with him acting in his own best interest.

<comment><USER9> Their rules don't, they made an exception for him after the fact according to allthingsd.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Only time will tell, and startups or established business es that will suffer it or not, will let us all know. I dont agree with the letter, and even the analogy with PG. You can still build and launch. and be successful not depending on MA or PG. Let them do what they do, because they do it amazing. Again, time will tell if MA is doing it all wrong. I dont think so.

<comment><USER13> The analogy with Hacker News was not meant as a criticism. I personally think that Paul's interest in investing in startups--which may be more about passion than pecuniarum for all I know--actually makes Hacker News a better forum than if it were moderated (or meta-moderated) by someone with an interest in page views or the size of the community, to give two examples.

I had expected people to follow that reasoning and reply "Actually, HN is better because Paul Graham is more interested in nurturing startups than in selling advertising." I was mistaken and have learned that sometimes a simple, direct argument is going to get the job done while an indirect argument may just come across as noise.

Mea Culpa.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> TechCrunch has already gone downhill. Arrington covers himself more than any other subject. Him investing startups will only exacerbate this.

</comment><comment><USER27> He's always had "companies", i.e. Edgio.

I'm fed up of hearing peoples whiney opinions.

<comment><USER28> Then don't come to a PUBLIC message board.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Invite-only beta test management platform? - <AUTHOR>

With everyone and their dog creating a web app these days, and with 75% of them running invite-only beta tests, it boggles my mind that no one has released the code for their beta test management system (i.e., collecting and management invites, creating and releasing beta invite codes, etc.).
Yet, I can't find anything.
The closest thing I have been able to find is http://www.prefinery.com/ which is a SaaS app for managing beta tests.  Surely there must be others, though?  Certainly someone must have put up their beta management code on Github, right? Maybe someone's created a Rails plugin for this?  Something?
Or does everyone just roll their own...? To me, there seems to be an opportunity here. <comment><USER2> I think most roll their own (we did just did) since it's easier to integrate with your existing authentication system.

Take a look at: <http://railscasts.com/episodes/124-beta-invitations> for some decent starting points.

<comment><AUTHOR> As usual, Ryan to the rescue. :)

Thanks for the link.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> We asked the same thing, didn't see one, and rolled our own invite code stuff for Django. I think it's modular enough that we may release it. I'll ask that site's dev lead about that.</comment>


"How many of the top 20 visited Web sites of August 2003 are still in that ranking? Nine" - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119067606849638002.html?mod=yahoo_hs&ru=yahoo

<comment><USER2> In other words: Facebook isn't worth $10B.

<comment><USER3> Be careful with that logic. It applied to Microsoft in 1990, when their stock was less than $1/share (split-adjusted).

<comment><USER2> Yes, it did. Google too I imagine.

There are way more overvalued Geocities' out there than undervalued Microsoft's though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> One year ago, FB was "worth" $2B, now it's "worth" $10B and this time next year it will be worth nothing.

We're in another bubble and it's about to burst as recession hits in and ad spending dries up.

<comment><USER5> What recession? I think the current Federal Reserve would lower interest rates into the negative to keep Wall Street booming.

<comment><USER3> [http://suddendebt.blogspot.com/2007/09/for-my-next-trick- i-w...](http://suddendebt.blogspot.com/2007/09/for-my-next-trick-i-will-fall- into-this.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Not a meaningful statistic. A site can increase in users and still drop in the rankings. Wikipedia's rise does not equal some other site's fall.</comment>


An Open Letter to my kid's teachers - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@nutanc/an-open-letter-to-my-kids-teachers-7e6edab7a903

<comment><USER2> Really good post. Similar to what I'll write someday.</comment>


Ask HN: Production Win32 MFC Systems? - <AUTHOR> There are many legacy Win32 MFC C++ fat client systems out there; I often see customer service people using old Windows Desktop systems in retail situations. I worked on a mortgage origination system - Vertex Omiga 3 - that is still used by Virgin Money to book all new loans. Recently I got a new tyre fitted for a lease car, and the admin was done in an old style Windows app. Old fat client apps tend to have a lot of biz logic mingled with the UI logic as they tend to be built as client server systems, with just the DB on the back end. So a rewrite will be costly, and will probably miss a lot of the corner case logic embedded in the client.
So my question is two fold... a) What Windows based client server apps have you encountered in production recently? b) What porting strategies do you think are viable?
This post [1] flags some of the porting issues.
[1] https://medium.com/iress/mfc-and-the-future-of-c-a99b608e09b2 <comment><USER2> I'll answer b)

The porting strategy depends on what you are trying to accomplish. If all you want to do is not have to install a desktop app on each PC, just use something like Citrix.

But I had to do something similar with an ancient PowerBuilder app.

1\. write a COM wrapper over the entire app using something like Active Template Library.

2\. Then you write a C# REST API on top of it that interacts with legacy app over COM.

3\. Write a web interface that calls your REST API.

4\. Write integration tests that call you're API and make sure you get the expected results.

5\. Record request/results from users using your web interface from step 3.

6\. Slowly start porting the business logic from the MFC app to a native .Net app

7\. While you are doing #6, run your test from #4 _and_ run all of the requests from #5 and compare them to your new code. If you notice some use cases that you missed, add them to your test suite.</comment>


Show HN: Simple Text Editor that auto saves txt files - <AUTHOR> I created a text editor to use with Jira and their text formatting notation, or really any simple note taking or writing that a user would quickly want to save/have auto save. I used javafx, fxml, and netbeans ide. You can check out the Repo here (https://github.com/rossfletcher19/simpleTextEditor) and any input whatsoever is greatly appreciated. Btw this is also my first app ever, so yay me! ty again! <comment><USER2> Cool little app. I like the idea of the first line "foldername-filename".

Your docs say "Auto saving every minute if changes are detected."

What happens if I write something and exit 20 seconds later or the computer dies after 20 seconds? If it's only saving every minute, can it lose data which is within the minute?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yea right now if you opened the app, wrote something right away, and the comp died after 20 seconds or you quit the app, you would lose that work you did in those 20 seconds! just wait a little longer!! I'll have to thinkk about this and see if there is anything I could do to accomodate for this. Thank you so much for the input!

<comment><AUTHOR> could just reduce the save interval... maybe every 30 seconds?

<comment><USER2> You could maybe just have an event listener or something which listens for the typing event (not sure what the correct terminology is). When a user has stopped typing, then save.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Very good. I like it. But I don't like download type(for jar file in onedrive). This not professional.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey thank you for checking it out! Yea the is a first for me as far as distributing an app. Do you recommend any tools to use for distribution or a way to have users download the app? Thanks again!</comment></comment>


Why Do So Many Judges Cite Jane Austen in Legal Decisions? - <AUTHOR> https://electricliterature.com/why-do-so-many-judges-cite-jane-austen-in-legal-decisions-52e44f96fd81 <comment><USER2> "So Many" == "27 times in American legal decision"

And half of these 27 'don't engage with her work beyond the first line of Pride and Prejudice: "It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of good fortune must be in want of a wife."'

And from some of the examples given, the author includes cases that merely use the phrase "It is a truth universally acknowledged..." followed by whatever the judge is arguing.

So in fact very few judges have used a phrase that is now very much within common usage in English, and which has obvious appeal in legal arguments.

The article then rambles on about Austen and gender and law with no apparent point, argument, or goal.

Nice idea, but looks like the data didn't back up the point the author wanted to make so they just dumped the words out anyway.

<comment><USER3> You sewed it up! Excellent comment.

Statbait blogging is so irritating, and I see it all the time, where some seemingly interesting observation is twisted by someone's pet data mining project to support a crappy blog article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > Since the first published citation to Emma in 1978, Jane Austen's works have > been invoked 27 times in American legal decisions, including references to > Mansfield Park, Northanger Abbey, and, of course, Pride and Prejudice.

Please add (<=27 judges) to the title.

The article was neat, but the headline is clickbait.

<comment><USER5> Betteridge's Law for the new generation: If a headline asks "Why Do...?" The answer is "They Don't."

<comment><USER6> Or "if question mark, assume clickbait".

<comment><USER7> If the title is a question the answer is usually no. If the answer was yes there'd be no need to formulate it as a question.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Jane Austen shows up in many scholarly discussions about morality and ethics; after all, legal discussions in many cases appeal to morality.

MacIntyre discusses about Jane Austen in his book "After Virtue"

</comment><comment><USER9> The works of the philosopher J. Austin, author of _How to Do Things With Words_[1] (and the wonderfully titled _Sense and Sensibilia_[2]), seem eminently more relevant to law, and I hope are cited as well.

Austin writes about "performative utterances"[3] such as "I promise I will give you a dollar" and "I pronounce you man and wife", which by their utterance become true.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._L._Austin#How_to_Do_Things_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._L._Austin#How_to_Do_Things_with_Words)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sense_and_Sensibilia_(Austin)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sense_and_Sensibilia_\(Austin\))

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

</comment><comment><USER10> This is from the section of Edward Said's "Culture and Imperialism and Jane Austen, and feels, in some sense, like a helpful clue about the value of Austen's work to recent US legal culture.

"As in Austen's other novels, the central group that finally emerges with marriage and property "ordained" is not based exclusively upon blood. Her novel enacts the disaffiliation (in the literal sense) of some members of a family, and the affiliation between others and one or two chosen and tested outsiders: in other words, blood relationships are not enough to a sure continuity, hierarchy, authority, both and international."

The full section from the book is here: [http://oldemc.english.ucsb.edu/emc- courses/JaneAusten-2011/A...](http://oldemc.english.ucsb.edu/emc- courses/JaneAusten-2011/Articles/Said.Culture%20and%20Imperialism_Warner.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER11> What is with the editorial meme of putting direct quotes of the article you're reading in line with the text of the article?

I've seen this across media. It almost makes sense to me in print (e.g. a magazine), because you can see the whole of the article at once, spread across the pages.

These quotes are often spread out to, I guess, break the flow of rendered/printed paragraphs.

In web content it seems a bit meaningless to me. This article is particularly terrible, as the quotes immediately follow the article text they are quoting.

<comment><USER12> In print media this made sense because you saw the entire article and these quotes would be picked out. Then upon reading the article you then read the quotes in context. On the web they usually appear directly before or after the sentence and make no sense to include. Especially when you take into account mobile users where there is usually no space between these quotes appearing and their use in the article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I suppose Dickens especially his 'Bleak House', is frequently quoted by Courts, atleast in most of the Commonwealth.

</comment><comment><USER14> Far more Judges quote Cicero and other classical authors I bet</comment>


The Octopart Microcontroller Price Index - <AUTHOR> http://octopart.com/blog/archives/2014/5/announcing-the-octopart-microcontroller-price-index

<comment><USER2> Is it just me, or are almost all of the microcontroolers in that "top 1000" list from Microchip? If so, that doesn't seem like a very representative sample.

<comment><USER3> There are other manufacturers in the top 1000 (e.g. Cypress, Adesto, Atmel) but currently the list does seem to be heavily weighted towards Microchip. This is a first stab at a component price index so it's a work in progress!

<comment><USER4> I don't really care about top microprocessors per se, I'd rather see a feature / price index. Meaning can I run a HLL on a micro, deep sleep, number of io, pwms, usb, etc.

Track mips/watt/$ and ram/$ along with forecast lines. If design with $3 part now, I'd like to know that it will drop to 1.75 in 2 years.

I find it rather ironic that filtering by price in product selectors is new and or rare. We exist in an economy predicated on cost efficiencies, where many of my designs are driven primarily on a price-point, part selection is an iterative process where cost absolutely plays a role and often the first one.

<comment><USER5> > I find it rather ironic that filtering by price in product selectors is new > and or rare

I suppose it is much more common to ask "what is the cheapest thing that can do foo and bar" rather than "what we can get for x dollars"

<comment><USER4> One then misses out on possibilities that open up by spending another 20 cents. Innovation occurs when new applications are unlocked by products moving into different economic regimes.

Boolean satisfiability allows me to meet a design criteria, derivatives allow me to innovate.

I would like to predict when full blown linux can run on a single chip (on die ram and flash) for less than $2 or below 10 mW. I'd like to be able to track when thresholds are crossed or a combination of features exist at a price point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It'd be okay if you created an index of the price of the top-selling N microcontrollers at any given time, rather than tracking them for their entire life cycle. The 8086 was a great and important processor, but it's no longer relevant to any discussion of processor prices.

The S&P 500 does this for stocks; perhaps their implementation and design choices can find some application here?

<comment><USER7> "... but it's no longer relevant to any discussion of processor prices"

Kinda pedantic remark:

No longer relevant as a stand-alone device but don't overlook the IP core market. It's pretty common to find one or more of these old cores as a module in a more complex device (e.g. an FPGA) or as the base for an ASIC (esp. automotive). Same for the 8088, 8051, 6502, ...

<comment><USER8> Do such uses of IP manifest itself in this price index though? (I presume not, since even bare silicon prices should be several cents cheaper than a final packaged discrete device for SIP uses)

<comment><USER7> One extreme is ARM cores: incredibly popular, there are several in your laptop and probably half a dozen in your smartphone, ... ARM holdings is an IP & design company, they design & license cores.

But regarding those old cores I mentioned ... lots of use because it's legacy with lots of developers that know the architecture.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Doesn't appear to include any 8051 descendants. I have doubts.</comment>


New Record Low Solar Price in Abu Dhabi – Costs Plunging Faster Than Expected - <AUTHOR> http://rameznaam.com/2016/09/21/new-record-low-solar-price-in-abu-dhabi-costs-plunging-faster-than-expected/ <comment><USER2> Previous discussions:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12537649](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12537649)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11627965](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11627965)

<comment><USER3> [https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=rameznaam.com](https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=rameznaam.com)

      > How Cheap Can Electric Vehicles Get? (rameznaam.com)

      > How Cheap Can Energy Storage Get? (rameznaam.com)

      > How Cheap Can Solar Get? (rameznaam.com)

      > Why Energy Storage Is About to Get Big – And Cheap (rameznaam.com)

Is anybody seeing a pattern? :-(

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Before getting too excited, realize this is for solar in Abu Dhabi, where umm...they get tons of sunlight as it were :) Though his other graph "predicts" that solar in more temperate climes will equal natural gas in "2020?" [http://rameznaam.com/2015/08/10/how-cheap-can-solar-get- very...](http://rameznaam.com/2015/08/10/how-cheap-can-solar-get-very-cheap- indeed/)

<comment><USER5> Another great thing about Abu Dhabi and solar is that they can use the extra solar power during the day to ramp up water desalination and store energy as clean water.

<comment><USER6> There's a lot of demand that can be shifted to high-power periods, basically anything that requires heat/cold. Modern insulation is fairly good and we do have a lot of liquids with a high thermal capacity. Generating warm water for buildings and cold coolant for aircons during peak power production would be technologically feasible, it just doesn't pay off currently since the power production curve is essentially flat (lot of base power with some peak added on top).

In the future it might also be interesting to move industries with high power demand to places with more solar power - electric arc furnaces, aluminum production, ... Some of those require a base load, but a lot of them can survive a few hours with limited power.

<comment><USER7> While I primarily agree, the problem from a more long term prospective is not intra-day balancing but between summer and winter. Every place that is not near to the equator gets less sun in the time of the year when there is more need for electricity. While there are some concepts with liquid salt etc., it becomes much harder to store such large amounts of energy for long periods.

<comment><USER6> Summer/winter is really not much of a concern in Dubai.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> May be a noob question, but if we can lay down cables for internet across the ocean floor connecting the entire world, why not lay down cables to connect all electricity grids. Half the earth always faces the sun. We shouldn't need batteries at all then, right? And we always have the traditional power stations (renewable and non-renewable) to augment the load. (At least in theory?)

<comment><USER9> It's a very good question. I always thought that it's because of technical difficulties when transmitting electricity over long distances, but it turns out we already do it well (HVDC). When you think about it on a continent scale: why not move all PV panels from Germany to sunnier regions of Europe like Spain or Portugal where you can generate twice more power with them (in average 200 W/m² instead of 100 W/m²). The answer is simple: we'd need to have a common grid across EU member countries, but such a thing doesn't exist and it's unlikely to happen anytime soon. It turns out the biggest issue on this planet is always politics.

<comment><USER10> The amount of copper you would need to constantly convey electricity from the sunny side of the earth to the dark side would be absolutely massive. It is not an issue of common grids, as long distance high power transmission is done at many different voltages depending on the specific route, and has nothing to do with your mains voltage and frequency.

Current long distance power transmission is most often used as a way of 'balancing' production and demand between different types of plants; it is not intended or capable of transmitting the full power needs of the recieving area.

<comment><USER9> You can use aluminium instead of copper (see HVDC Gotland).

I didn't say it's just about "connecting countries with a common grid". Switching from fossil fuels to renewable sources is much more challenging than that. However, transmitting lots of power over long distances is doable and cheaper than many people think.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> For reference, 2.42 cents per KWh is 10x lower than commercial/residential prices in sunny Hawaii [https://apps.axibase.com/chartlab/9e548f6b](https://apps.axibase.com/chartlab/9e548f6b) per data.gov [https://catalog.data.gov/dataset/hi-electricity- prices-815fa](https://catalog.data.gov/dataset/hi-electricity-prices-815fa)

</comment><comment><USER12> This whole machination thing will collapse as soon as the solar panel prices, along with the inverter and battery costs drop low enough to be part of every house.

Once everyone generates and stores their own electricity, the residential market will go away. This might be another 20 to 30 years off, but it is inevitable. And once factories start building Stirling engines and solar facilities into their designs, the industrial power market will collapse as well. It's a good thing.

<comment><USER13> Only for people that own their house; renters won't be able to take advantage of this because it's a lot of capital outlay that the home owner gets no benefit from. Same for anyone in an apartment.

So the residential market for purchased electricity will never go away, but a significant reduction would still be a huge win.

<comment><USER14> If rooftop solar is profitable it doesn't matter too much who owns the house. The owner still could sell the electricity to the renters.

<comment><USER15> Indeed, the landlord can probably get away with mandating that his tenants buy a certain minimum amount of power at a certain cost giving him a fixed income to finance the capital outlay against.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> If the price is dropping so rapidly, this makes a bad deal out of the 30-year loans solar installers are pitching in the US. Furthermore, if fossil-fuel- sourced kilowatt-hours compete by pricing downward, and thus pay solar owners less per kWh, it could make solar seem like a bad deal.

</comment><comment><USER17> I heard that with latest solar panels we can convert 30% light to electricity;

<comment><USER18> They can get a bit higher I believe (40%) in small sizes, so a trick that is also applied is focussing all the sunlight in that small area, to improve conversion rate. There is still a thing called heat, making it a bit more complicated.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> This will create massive pressure on the price of oil. Why would anyone in their right mind not try to sell it off as fast as possible as it won't be worth much in a few years.

<comment><USER20> Solar doesn't really compete with oil. It competes with coal, natural gas, and nuclear power to power homes.

<comment><USER21> Why can't solar be used to capture CO2 and produce fuel?

<comment><USER15> It not so much that it isn't possible, just that it's significantly more efficient, by a large margin, to use solar to displace more dirty energy sources (and of those, coal is by far the highest priority).</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Zynga's new CEO was also its first - <AUTHOR> http://www.engadget.com/2015/04/08/zynga-original-ceo-returns/ <comment><USER2> Its painful to watch them struggle so much. The once mighty Zynga, now cant be seen anywhere.</comment>


Out of the Syrian crisis, a data revolution takes shape - <AUTHOR> http://www.nature.com/news/out-of-the-syrian-crisis-a-data-revolution-takes-shape-1.22886 <comment><USER2> Interesting, but this seems like it would be a crowded product space. More info here: [http://www.dharma.ai/](http://www.dharma.ai/)</comment>


Dropbox is a Feature - <AUTHOR> https://brooksreview.net/2014/08/dropbox-is-a-feature/

<comment><USER2> > If your favorite iOS app switched from Dropbox to iCloud, and functionally > it worked the same, would you really care?

I think you hit the nail on the head here. This is one of the reasons we developed Kloudless [1], s unified cloud storage REST API. Would love your thoughts on it.

[1] [https://kloudless.com](https://kloudless.com)</comment>


When starting school, younger children are more likely to be diagnosed with ADHD - <AUTHOR> https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2018/11/when-starting-school-younger-children-are-more-likely-to-be-diagnosed-with-adhd-study-says/ <comment><USER2> ADHD researcher here, this was already known. ADHD is a neurodevelopmental disorder, the key is that developmental disorders occur over the time-course of typical development. To have a diagnosis of ADHD, there must have been symptoms before the age of 7, and furthermore, it's much more likely to occur in younger children because their executive functions are less well developed.

On the neurological level, there are different dopaminergic systems developing throughout childhood, such as the motor cortex, the prefrontal cortex, and the dopamine-based reward system. If the motor cortex develops too quickly before the PFC, which controls/regulates behavior, well you'll have hyperactivity that's unregulated. With less developed EF's comes getting out of the chair, losing things, daydreaming, hyperactivity, and all of the diagnosable symptoms of ADHD. Naturally, those who are 6-9 months younger (which might be a 10% age difference in kindergarten) are going to be in very different developmental stages. Requiring younger children to sit still and pay attention may be a much more challenging task since their brains are actually less developed. Thus, they more easily get pushed over the diagnosis line compared to their older classmates.

There is another wrinkle here beyond age, which is gender: boys are around 2.5-3X as likely to be diagnosed because they are more hyperactive naturally, i.e. their neurological systems develop at different rates than girls. This sort of behavior in the classroom is much more disruptive than what girls exhibit. Girls tend to be diagnosed with primarily inattentive subtype, since their motor cortex is not usually as over-active, but they still may suffer underdevelopment of the EF that helps them to focus. A girl daydreaming is much less disruptive than a boy standing on his chair, rolling on the floor, or wandering the classroom (all of which happened multiple times in my own classroom).

<comment><USER3> Thank you for your informative comment.

I was as sceptical of ADHD as most of the commenters here and have been resisting sending my son for an assessment for about a year because I guess what the diagnosis will be. However the more I've been looking into it and observing him, the more I'm coming to the conclusion that it seems to be something physical that he can't control. Just this evening we were in a restaurant and he was standing in his chair, climbing up a pole. etc... When he eventually knocked something over and I sternly reminded him to sit down, he started hitting himself on the head, apparently rueful that he's disappointed me again. It seems to be something he can't control and his repeated failures to do so seem to be affecting his self-esteem.

What would you recommend as the best interventions to explore? I would prefer something behavioural but am opening up to considering medication if the will make him feel better about himself and facilitate smoother interactions with his peers.

<comment><USER4> Does your child have enough outlets to burn off his excess energy? It seems to me that kids really evolved to be outside running around with friends and siblings extensively.

I would bet if he was getting his heart rate up for 3-5 hrs a day he would be way way calmer the rest of the time.

It seems to me that the real problem is that we have constructed a world that is fundamentally at odds with our biology and then when people cannot function within it, we diagnose them as having a disorder.

<comment><USER5> > It seems to me that the real problem is that we have constructed a world > that is fundamentally at odds with our biology and then when people cannot > function within it, we diagnose them as having a disorder.

I don't know if you meant it this way, but this certainly sounds like you are implying that people with ADHD (or some portion of them) don't really have anything wrong with them, they just need to exercise or something. As someone who has lived with ADHD for their whole life, I find this attitude really offensive. I have a medical disorder, there's a chemical imbalance in my brain that has been diagnosed by doctors. I can't just walk it off.

It's not a case of the modern world being at odds with how we were evolved, I would be struggling in the ancient world too. Without my medication I have real trouble remembering things, making plans, and following directions. Moreover, if the modern world is so at odds with our biology, why does the overwhelming majority of the population have no problem functioning in it while I do? And I don't mean to come off as hostile here, but I find it insulting to be told by someone who presumably has no problem functioning in the modern world that my inability to function in it isn't really a problem.

<comment><USER6> I don't believe that's what the OP is saying. I understood his comment to mean that ADHD can be considered more of a "bad fit" for the person's environment than an objectively diagnosable disease. Perhaps by changing the environment, ADHD's symptoms may be mitigated. Maybe it's not a 6-year-old's fault that he/she cannot sit still and quiet in a room for 8 hours with maybe a 30 minute break for recess? Maybe it's our expectations that are at fault.

<comment><USER7> You can really see developmental differences at 5-7. My son is 6, his kindergarten last year had kids between 4-6 on the first day of school and they vary substantially. Their lives vary a lot as well... how do you expect a 6 year old in early day, school and aftercare from 7-5 to behave?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I am really surprised at all the skepticism about ADHD in this thread.

1) Attention (or executive functioning in general) is normally distributed, just like a lot of other human traits. If you don't doubt that intelligence is normally distributed (and that some people are smarter than other), what makes you think that there is no variability in executive functioning / attention?

Executive functioning also improves as brain develops, and that's why problems of younger kids are probably more noticeable.

2) Re: diagnosing using checklists and interviewing. That's literally how every other psychiatric disorder is diagnosed. Depression? Checklists and interviewing. Anxiety? Checklists and interviewing. Schizophrenia? Also checklists and interviewing.

Studies show that there are measurable differences between ADHD brains and normal brains. People complain that these are not used for diagnosis. The reason these scans are not used for diagnosis is because the resolution of common brain scan methods is not high enough, and these differences are seen on the population level.

3) Some graphs on brains differences: [https://adhd-institute.com/burden-of- adhd/aetiology/neurobio...](https://adhd-institute.com/burden-of- adhd/aetiology/neurobiology/)

<comment><USER9> I suspect the rather poor diagnosis situation is going to naturally produce a lot of skepticism. Anyone is going to start questioning things if they see kids with a diagnosis who seem basically normal. And, unfortunately, that does seem to be happening quite often.

<comment><USER8> > Anyone is going to start questioning things if they see kids with a > diagnosis who seem basically normal.

How do _you_ know if they are normal or merely seem normal though? What is your definition of normal here?

<comment><USER9> Is the diagnosis situation poor? Yes. Do people pick up on that sometimes? Of course. How do I, personally, define normal? Who gives a shit?

<comment><USER8> > How do I, personally, define normal? Who gives a shit?

If you care enough to leave a comment on HN, please also explain _why_ you think it is poor. Because right now your comments add no substance to the discussion.

<comment><USER9> We are in a discussion about an article providing strong evidence that diagnosis is poorly done. Do a little research yourself, and you'll find it's hardly the only evidence. Feel free to peruse a good New York Times write up from a while back: [https://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/01/health/more-diagnoses- of-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/01/health/more-diagnoses-of- hyperactivity-causing-concern.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> My birthday is in November, and the cutoff when I started school was October 31st. I was always the oldest kid in my grade, all the way through highschool. Back when I went to school, ADHD didn't exist as an identified condition. If it had, I may have been diagnosed.

Everything was way too easy for me, and I acted out a bit, perhaps out of boredom, or simply because I had way too much free time. I've always been "book smart", even among people my age, and it was particularly true when I was six months older than the median student in my class and nearly a full year older than some.

I'm highly skeptical of ADHD as an actual condition. Some kids clearly have learning and behavioral problems, but I've got plenty friends and family whose kids were diagnosed as ADHD and they are now medicating them into submission. I think most of them are more like me; they're not being stimulated enough at school, or stimulated properly. These kids need better schooling and better parenting. They don't need to be drugged up.

<comment><USER2> Anecdotal evidence isn't enough. There is actual neurological evidence that those with ADHD have mismatching development of their motor cortex and their PFC which controls the executive functioning of the brain. Most meta analyses of the diagnoses in recent years do not support your skepticism, in fact, some researchers believe the condition is properly or even UNDER diagnosed.

<comment><USER11> Let me unpack what you're saying here. Note that I have not surveyed the literature, but I am slightly skeptical of ADHD as a diagnosis, having seen "early detection/intervention" results amongst the children of my peers that seem patently ridiculous.

> There is actual neurological evidence that those with ADHD have mismatching > development of their motor cortex and their PFC which controls the executive > functioning of the brain

That is to say that the set of people diagnosed with ADHD correlates to the set of people who have mismatching development. But the tests for ADHD (especially in early childhood) do not undergo any sort of PET or fMRI scans for mismatched development; they typically have a set of questions that they ask with a threshold for the number of "wrong" answers. I suspect (without evidence) that as the testing moves earlier in age, there is more "success" with early intervention simply because the condition is transient.

In situation where intervention is recommended, I think overreactions are common and doing large-scale studies to determine how effective the questionnaires are at rooting out both positive and negative findings of "mismatched development" through directly measurable means like fMRIs or PET scans, which are contraindicated in non-acute cases for children of the ages in question, so we have to have longer-term survey studies before we can begin to evaluate effectiveness.

The age-related results referenced in the article (thought I haven't read the study) seem to indicate that at least some of the ad hoc testing is just measuring normal childhood development milestones rather than serving as a useful indicator of ADHD.

<comment><USER12> " But the tests for ADHD (especially in early childhood) do not undergo any sort of PET or fMRI scans for mismatched development;"

That's not the entirety of the diagnostic process.

Also, you may be putting more faith in PET and fMRI than they deserve.

[https://harvardneuro.wordpress.com/2016/01/21/tbt-the- lesson...](https://harvardneuro.wordpress.com/2016/01/21/tbt-the-lessons-we- learned-from-a-dead-fish/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm a bit surprised I haven't seen any comments (admittedly, I got too distracted to read them) about the decline of children's free play and the increase in adult-guided activities in America over the past 50 years.

I was diagnosed with ADHD when I was 15 and have intermittently suffered through it over the years. I took meds for a while, but I felt like an amped- up zombie and stopped some time during college.

Kids have not always gone to school for full 7 hour days starting at age four or five, where they have been subject to strict rules that emphasize obedience to adults and "sitting still." In fact, some research indicates that children at a young age learn best how to regulate themselves through play with other kids, including through games (that they themselves create) and role-playing. Kids figure out how to regulate themselves from each other, not from adults. (This could explain why increases in ADHD, bullying and teen suicide seem to be happening at the same time.)

I look back and think that at least in my case, this might explain a bit of my issues. In my case, I think there are probably underlying causes that are only now, years later, being looked at, including pretty serious trouble sleeping and some hormone problems. But I also think that I lacked the child-oriented play that kids really need, and was wound up in adult-guided activities where I didn't learn to govern myself.

I'm not anti-schooling, but I do think that the schools have gotten too high- stakes at earlier ages, and we should probably limit younger kids to shorter school days and allow them to engage in relatively hands-off free play with each other. (Of course, this is much easier said than done - teachers unions and the lawyers' guild are quite powerful, and we moms and dads love the free babysitting we get at the public expense.)

</comment><comment><USER14> It's interesting because one thing about ADHD, and Autism Spectrum disorders too, is that diagnosis is very dependent on people having a base point to compare against. That's why for most of these disorders, you're more likely to be diagnosed if you're 2nd born and 1st born doesn't have it. The parents are familiar with how the first child developed and can see the discrepancy sooner.

Meanwhile, in cases like my family, where me, my sister, my Dad, some cousins, and probably my mom's siblings too all fit the criteria for ADHD (we're a family of troublemakers) - my parents couldn't tell anything was off. When my cousins got a diagnosis through school, my parents were skeptical of the whole thing. But the treatment they got for it early on helped a ton and those cousins turned out better adjusted in many ways than my sister and I who didn't get diagnosed til adulthood.

It's funny though because now I have a step-niece (no biological relation) and my mom keeps commenting on how crazy well behaved she is, because she doesn't run around every time they go to a restaurant or talk incessantly or constantly run into things... So from her perspective, children without ADHD- behaviors are the abnormal ones. Go figure.

</comment><comment><USER15> I don't dispute that ADHD is an observance of a real phenomenon, but maybe the prevalence of the diagnosis is a result of society overoptimizing human productivity? Having ADHD, especially now that ADD is ADHD-PI, seems very normal these days, but it we treat it more like an affliction than a common behavior the modern world needs more compassion towards.

If I have a child and they seem to have ADHD, I would pull them out of the public school system so as they don't have their time wasted and their esteem destroyed. If the system doesn't become more understanding, then it's up to me. At least then my child can be brought up to learn good coping mechanisms they'd be lucky to otherwise learn before it's too late.

<comment><USER2> I researched ADHD and was a teacher to boot. You wouldn't think it's about human productivity when you have ADHD children standing on their chairs, shouting, wandering the classroom during examinations. It's a serious neurological disability and it's not just down to societal pressures for productivity.

Some sad facts: Those with ADHD are much more likely to be friendless, to have fights with parents, to abuse alcohol, nicotine, marijuana, and cocaine, and to develop mental health problems like depression, anxiety, and conduct disorder. The brain of those with ADHD is not "normally" developed and that leads to a lot of issues.

<comment><USER16> Another sad fact: medicating such kids is often a problematic solution. ADHD drugs make one lethargic and just feel "off" (according to my sister, who was on them for a long time).

What we need are more vocational schools to give the "hyperactive" among us a realistic, career-oriented outlet.

<comment><USER17> I got "diagnosed" with ADHD and tried taking the medicine for two weeks and it was terrible. What's the point of doing better in school if you feel terrible, lose your appetite, and have problems sleeping?

<comment><USER18> Compliance.

You're more easily molded into an economically productive little cog for the workforce.

<comment><USER19> Tell me, how do stimulants make someone more compliant? Why is it that when someone comes to the hospital in an agitated state, they aren't given adderall? Why isn't ritalin given before surgery? Why are people with schizophrenia given antipsychotics instead of vyvanse? This type of attitude is as ridiculous as it is cynical.

People act as if the idea of a Ritalin zombie is the goal for ADHD medication. It's not. I'm not going to deny that stimulants do make some people lethargic, but that's the exception, not the rule.

Do you want to know what it's like to take medication for ADHD? For the first time in my life I can make choices. I can choose to clean up my desk without something deep inside me rising up to stop me. I can sit down and read a book and not feel the tensions building up inside me until it feels like a rubber band about to snap. I can wait at a restaurant without feeling the need for stimulation itch over me. My mind no longer jumps from idea to idea until I get lost in my own head. I can speak without stumbling over words because my mind is three sentences ahead. I can read a paragraph and actually remember what I just read.

The notion that I'm just some lobotomized zombie shuffling to the strings of my corporate masters is frankly insulting to everyone that struggles to live a normal life with ADHD.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Anecdata, but this was my experience. I have a November birthday, and the school district in Massachusetts gave my parents the option of having me start a year younger than everyone or wait a year. My parents opted to send me to school a year earlier. I performed poorly, and at one point was labeled with ADHD. On the standardized tests they gave in 6th grade I scored at the 12th grade level, so I don't think my problems were cognitive as much as behavioral. Also, in high school having some peers who have been held back a grade being 15 years old while one is just turning 13 can lead to some rather unpleasant physical bullying. I often wonder how those early experiences may have limited my life.

I was so tempted to send that article to my mom, but I didn't know how she would take it.

<comment><USER12> I was born in September, so was usually younger than most of my grade peers. Did fine in K-6. Behavior was never an issue.

But I was diagnosed with ADHD in college.

<comment><USER20> By behavior I mean not doing the class work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This is a striking statistic: "...children born in August in those states are 30 percent more likely to receive an ADHD diagnosis, compared with their slightly older peers enrolled in the same grade."

<comment><USER21> Is there a cut for date for starting school?

Here in Spain, everyone born in the same year goes to the same class, is it different in USA?

<comment><USER22> As per the article itself, many states implement the "1st of September cut date". A kid born in September has to wait an entire year to start school compared to one born on 08/31.

<comment><USER23> And in Switzerland, 1st August. Retardness.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> In my area, it is very common for parents of boys that will be "young" when starting kindergarten to hold them back a year. They call it redshirting (a reference to US college athletics).

Our local school district prohibits the practice, but really can only enforce it at the kindergarten level. So many parents continue to enroll their boys in private preschool for two additional years and then enroll them in first grade when the school district can't say no. It is very rare for girls because of the assumption that emotional and behavioral development is far ahead of boys at that age.

<comment><USER25> I want to do this with mine. He is younger, short and very active.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> The September 1st cutoff for Kindergarten is treated as a distinct milestone when it really should be treated as part of a developmental window. As far as California is concerned, if you have a kid born on September 1st, they get 2 years of Kindergarten (TK + K). If their sibling happens to be born on August 31st, they get 1 year of Kindergarten (K only). And that 1 day distinction could be the difference between a childhood of grade appropriate behavior (older, more mature) or being labeled as ADHD (younger, less mature) with many years of drug treatment to look forward to.

</comment><comment><USER27> My best mate in college started using Adderall when he was about 11 and abused it through college. He's growing up to be a high functioning lunatic. My best analogy of him would be a Bender from Futurama, but with a few STEM degrees.

</comment><comment><USER28> There has always been ADHD around. When my normative group were kids, we climbed trees, played Indian and cowboys and had a lot of outdoor fun. There were some kid or two who was more risky or over the edge, but hey, we had fun.

Today, looking back, I would consider some of my childhood friends to have ADHD or some kind of other diagnose.

Yesterday, these ADHD-kids, was not a great deal. There were also a lot of local jobs and other opportunities as well that didn't demanded a high education.

Now kids don't play outdoor and it's easier to single out the ones with ADHD. Further more people have moved to the cities and there is a greater pressure to study. Today it's hard to find a decent job for a supporter of a family without a good education.

Hence, without a diagnose, these kids would not stand a chance. They need all the help, support and understanding they could get.

<comment><USER12> Even in the old days when there were good jobs for people without high school educations, I'm sure the jails were full of people with ADHD. As they probably are today.

<comment><USER29> Indeed. [https://add.org/undiagnosed-adult-adhd-a-high-cost-for- socie...](https://add.org/undiagnosed-adult-adhd-a-high-cost-for-society/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> My kid was born in September and I remember my wife doing a little research around that "for fun" (yeah, that's how she has fun) a while ago, how kids far and/or close to the cut off do.

She found a few studies mentioning that older kids (like born between September and February or something) were doing way better in terms of the academics as well. Which in a way makes sense, but maybe indicates that either children start school too young or that programs are too agressive.

<comment><USER30> I don't think it indicates that students start too young, as much as 1 year increments is too granular for grouping young children.

<comment><USER31> This. My older kids have birthdays later in the academic year but have ended up in groups for more advanced students.

Mind, nursery was a complete wash when it came to academics -- learning to count to 3 when you can already count to 20 is rather futile. Public schools just can't tailor to individual students.

Socially though, nursery was well timed for them IMO.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> They don't really talk about the harm that could be done by "overtreating". Between treatment options being quite safe and there being a continuum of maturity/impulse control I would guess it is relatively low. Especially compared to the consequences of ADHD not being treated (lower academic success, lower social abilities, more violence, maybe even addictions later on).

</comment><comment><USER33> "Fun" fact in the not so distant past lobotomies were used to treat hyperactivity in children.

I wonder if the next generation will look back at the massive drugging of children for ADHD in a similar light.

<comment><USER32> Probably not, because the benefits and side effects of appropriate ADHD drug treatments are completely reversible and the scientific evidence for treatment being positive is extremely strong.

<comment><USER34> Everyone benefits from taking stimulants. That's why we drink coffee. The efficacy of ADHD medication is not limited to people with ADHD. Should we all take them?

The long-term effects of taking stimulants from childhood onward are not well understood, let alone completely reversible. We're performing uncontrolled experiments- but that's nothing new.

Not sure creating a situation where people are incentivized to get a diagnoses giving them access to performance enhancing drugs is a great idea, though.

<comment><USER32> The line between disease/disorder and "unsatisfactory performance" is drawn somewhat arbitrarily. But in general, those patients with an ADHD diagnosis have much more to gain from "stimulants" than those who do not have this diagnosis.

The potential for abuse of a drug should not limit its appropriate use, though this happens all the time. Also, the safety of ADHD medication is quite well understood, and even the long-term effects seem to be less than the disadvantages of the disorder itself. There may still be a lot of room for exact quantification, but at the moment it looks like ADHD medication is a "good deal" in general.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> It is surprising to me that people are so dubious of ADHD when for people with the disorder who metabolize caffein normally diagnosis is remarkably simple: give a six year old a cup of coffee. If they settle down or go take a nap, they quite likely have ADHD. Give a neurotypical kid a cup of coffee and then live with the results because no way are the parents going to thank you for helpfully demonstrating how normal their child is.

</comment><comment><USER36> Actual paper (paywall but abstract available): [https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1806828?query=fe...](https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1806828?query=featured_home)

One part out of many that interested me in the discussion: "data from insurance claims do not allow us to determine when a child starts school. Parents may delay school entry for children born in August, which would mean that those children start school at 6 years of age rather than 5 years of age. Because we did not directly observe children's ages when they entered school, we cannot know how often this occurred"

There are other confounds, but suffice to say that this is not a very well controlled cohort study. It is however interesting for guiding further research.

</comment><comment><USER37> This first part of this article about the realities of diagnosing ADHD is worthwhile reading: [http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/12/28/adderall-risks-much- mor...](http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/12/28/adderall-risks-much-more-than- you-wanted-to-know/)

One particularly interesting quote:

"Trust me, no matter how unsuitable a candidate you are, no matter how bad a liar you are, somewhere there is a psychiatrist who will give you Adderall. And by "somewhere", I mean it will take you three tries, tops."

<comment><USER35> Ironically, having ADHD makes it much harder to do all those things required to get Adderall.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> [https://m.soundcloud.com/instituteofartandideas/e123-minds-m...](https://m.soundcloud.com/instituteofartandideas/e123-minds- madness-and-medicine-lucy-johnstone-david-nutt-david-healy)

</comment><comment><USER39> PSA: If you have ADHD symptoms, the first thing you should do is see if getting enough sleep makes them go away. I'm not saying all ADHD is sleep related, but bad sleep spawns ADHD in otherwise non ADHD people.

<comment><USER32> The first thing you should do if you see symptoms of virtually any disease/syndrome/disorder is to see a doctor ;-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Get rid of a single long summer break and the entire concept of a "school year". Divide the year into quarters. Students can start in summer, spring, winter, or fall.

<comment><USER41> > Students can start in summer, spring, winter, or fall

That's much harder to do than it sounds because now you have 4 groups 3 months apart in the curriculum. The only way to really do it would be to segregate the kids from the different start times into separate classes otherwise it'd be pretty impossible to teach. There will also be a slight variation in class size depending on the quarter it's for. as August and September are over represented as birthdays.

I do think year round schools probably make more sense overall so there's not such a huge gap where kids forget so much.

<comment><USER24> My local elementary school has 3 classrooms per grade. If we broke the year into quarters and made each student attend 3 out of 4 quarters, what you'd end up with is more efficient use of school facilities making up for a slightly higher teacher cost. Probably.

<comment><USER41> I think before we do rolling quarters moving to a year round schedule would do more to improve student performance than the more granular age groupings. Could also just group the kids into however many classrooms are in each school to do both.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> FiveThirtyEight ran an article on ADHD prescriptions [1]. It's getting pretty silly. If people don't know ADHD was not recognized as a disorder until 1968. And the popularity of drugging people for it didn't really take off until the 90s when a pharmaceutical industry astroturfing group called CHADD (Children and Adults with Attention Deficit) started marketing ritalin hard. Since then the use of using various pharmaceutical stimulants has become extremely widespread - jumping up by multiple orders of magnitude.

I'm unsure what the latest numbers are but they offer the data to 2013. And just between 2008 and 2013 adult usage of ADHD medication doubled. It was at 2.8% and has likely continued to rapidly increase. That's completed dwarfed by what we're now doing to kids and particularly boys. In 2013 we were up to 9.8% of all boys 12-18 years taking ADHD drugs. And those numbers again were, and presumably still are, rapidly increasing.

I have this likely decreasingly controversial view that history is not going to look back so kindly on psychology and our decision to start pretending we can create a pill for everything. I mean what could possibly go wrong getting 10%+ of boys setup with stimulants, and increasingly often other sorts of psychotropics as well, from their earliest and most critical developmental years?

\-----

Of course I'm sure people will now respond with how these drugs saved their life and without them they'd be homeless, in prison, etc. To these people I have a simple logical question. Let's assume this is true that you would indeed be homeless, in prison, etc without these drugs. We now see these drugs numbers are absolutely skyrocketing to the point that sizable chunks of our entire population are on them. So if we go back in time, why don't we see skyrocketing prison/homelessness/etc as a consequence of people not being able to have these drugs? Given the exponential increase in prescribing rates you don't need to go back far. We should be able to see huge and causably linked differences just over the last decade or two.

[1] - [https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/dear-mona-how-many- adul...](https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/dear-mona-how-many-adults-take- adhd-drugs/)

<comment><USER43> The realities are a lot more mundane than your last paragraph tries to paint them. I was 29 when I finally got treatment (therapy + low dose of adderall). I had been making 100k for years. It's perfectly possible to have an okay life with ADHD.

But stuff falls through the cracks. You forget to brush your teeth. To pay your bills. There was a year when I was making over 150k and every single quarter, as often as was possible, my water got shut off to my house. I had to shower at the gym and call the company with my tail between my legs and pay over the phone and it was turned on 2 days later. I had the money. I had the desire to pay the water bill. I just... couldn't. It was stupid. I felt like a caveman, scared that a coworker in my open office would overhear this frantic call and wonder WTF was wrong in my life that I couldn't pay my water bill.

I turned down promotions onto the manager track because it felt ethically dubious to manage people when I couldn't even manage myself. Do you want a person who can't remember to pay their water bill to be pulling the strings of your career lader? I stayed on the IC Principal track to try and localize the logistical fallout of my inabilities.

It's a little better now. It's not the difference between homelessness and elon musk. It's the difference between a guy who pays his bills on time, has a clean dishwasher, and goes to the dentist, versus a guy who is constantly browbeaten by everyday life as the shit that most people think of as routine and invisible derails you over and over in tragicomic ways.

I'm not sure what statistic would capture that. On paper, barring a decrease in collections notices and faster email response time, I appear to be exactly the same person.

But my life is better now. There are still cracks in the sidewalk – my life is still pretty scattered, but you're not as likely to lose a leg when you trip on one.

<comment><USER44> This is my experience being diagnosed with ADHD at 29 as well. Things seemed fine from the outside. Well paying, stable work. However, I had an incredibly difficult ability to do anything that needed intrinsic motivation, and my self-image began suffering as a result. I was constantly finding motivation from external factors and/or fear of rejection/failure and/or adrenaline to accomplish anything.

The first time I took a central nervous system stimulant (Modafinil as a nootropic) I could suddenly book my dentist appointments, and book a doctor's appointment to talk about mental health, and book holidays I'd been putting off. And read several chapters of a book in one sitting. And make my bed and remember to brush my teeth. And check in with friends I hadn't heard from in a while. Normal life stuff. Is this what neurotypical people can do!? I wish my frontal lobes had more activation and bloodflow by themselves.

My GP didn't understand how I could think I had a problem since I could maintain a 9-5. My family compared me to my less "obedient" ADHD older brother and never had me tested. I am pretty sure my mother has it but is in denial.

Dr. Russell Barkley has some great videos explaining how ADHD is an intention disorder, and how knowing and doing are separate parts of the brain.

Thanks for sharing! There's a lot of misinformation about ADHD out there. I'm glad that there are treatments that help right away (unlike most psychiatric conditions).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Can we stop drugging children and just give them a little more recess?

<comment><USER46> When we sit children down to do low-grade, menial clerical tasks for eight hours a day with minimal breaks, what do we expect?

<comment><USER47> When we sit _adults_ down to do low-grade, menial clerical tasks for eight hours a day with minimal breaks, what do we expect?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Listen to Jordan Peterson on this topic...

<comment><USER49> Why don't you quote him? I'll go ahead and summarize it for others: Jordan Peterson, among other things, thinks that we are using drugs to alter the brain structure of little children because they can't sit still for 6 hours a day. He thinks it's harmful and we over-diagnose ADHD in children who act naturally.

<comment><USER50> Don't forget the part about lobster dominance structures apply to human society.</comment></comment></comment>


VW offers $1,000 in gift cards to diesel owners - <AUTHOR> http://www.engadget.com/2015/11/09/volkwagen-goodwill-package-emissions-scandal/ <comment><USER2> I know the card reader says $1,000 when you check the value of the card, but when I actually go to spend it will it still be $1,000?

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't own a VW. How will they compensate me for breathing their shit?

<comment><USER4> Hopefully there would be a class action lawsuit that will bankrupt WV.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Any good (PHP) PaaS with UK datacentres? - <AUTHOR>

Hi,
Has anyone had any experience or know of any good PHP PaaS with UK datacentres that they can recommend? Thanks, <comment><USER2> You could try Engine Yard ([https://www.engineyard.com/](https://www.engineyard.com/)), I think they are using EC2 (has a datacenter in Ireland).

Can't vouch for how "good" their PHP offering is having never used it, definitely a passionate team though, I've met several of them over the years at PHP related conferences (in the UK) as the company has grown.

<comment><USER3> I can vouch for it - it's solid. Feel free to jump into #engineyard on IRCFreenode if you have any questions - or just use the trial hours to spin up a staging version and give it a try.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Had a play with Layershift - Jelastic. Seems pretty good so far. Through Jelastic I am able to edit nginx configs, php-fpm configs and php.ini.

</comment><comment><USER4> shameless plug: fortrabbit (i am founder) is dedicated "PHP as a Service". Our infrastructure provider is AWS Ireland, we have a lot of clients from the UK.

at least one alternative: [http://viaduct.io/](http://viaduct.io/) looks promising to me. seems to be from the UK, running on own hardware.

<comment><AUTHOR> Nice - I'll take a look at fortrabbit. Your MYSQL Add-on pricing seems a little steep between 64mb and 512mb. Shame you do not have anything in the middle.

Shame that I have a wait to have a quick play. "Yeah! You will get a free slot in 5-7 days"

Viaduct looks promising but no pricing information.</comment></comment>