A Rigged Game - <AUTHOR> http://www.metamorphblog.com/2010/02/a-rigged-game.html

<comment><USER2> I'm not sure what all the swearing adds to this article. Chill out, man.

<comment><AUTHOR> It was my initial reaction to this post by Jordan Cooper: [http://jordancooper.wordpress.com/2010/02/06/full-of- potenti...](http://jordancooper.wordpress.com/2010/02/06/full-of-potential- full-of-shit/)

"So today I am 28 years old. When I was 24 I used to look at other Associates at venture capital firms who were 27 and 28 years old and think to myself "well, I'm four years ahead of these guys." When I was 26 and founding my first company I used to look at 30 year old founders and think "well, I'm 4 years ahead of these guys." Now that I'm 28, I look around at my peers and I'm pretty much right smack in the middle, not really "ahead" of anyone. And what's worse is, 2 years from now, I'm going to look around and start to say "well, I'm 2 years behind these guys." It's already happening. I spend time with a guy like Chris Hughes (26 I think) and leave thinking "well, I'm 2 years WAY behind that guy."...

Hence the cursing.

<comment><USER3> "Hence the cursing."

While it may make sense in light of your internal narrative, to an outsider like me it's immensely distracting. So much so that I ended up not caring about whatever point you were trying to make. Instead, I was trying to figure out why people try to write like angry disaffected hipsters.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Well, it's certainly a fool's errand to strive honor or recognition as ends in themselves. However, one may hope that being truly outstandingly useful in society may have the side-effect of social recognition.

</comment><comment><USER5> _A strange game. The only winning move is not to play._

<comment><USER6> Broderick enters "ZERO" instead of "0" for the number of players, which made me chuckle.

I suppose a more modern version of WOPR might simulate WoW.

        Number of players?
        ONE MILLION SEVEN HUNDRED THOUSAND FIVE HUNDRED FORTY TWO
        Initializing...

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHWjlCaIrQo>

<comment><USER7> There are several things that make me smile, grin, chuckle or groan:

Launch codes being found one character at a time

\- "Plasma to the Face" when the game of Tic-Tac-Toe is found to be a draw

\- The _long_ list of scenarios

\- The completely gormless expression on the General's face during the playout of the scenarios

\- Falken typing "Hello Joshua" so quickly and without looking.

That said, and put in its time, it's a surprisingly good film. I remember watching it in the cinema - it is better on the big screen - and it was there I learned about the existence backdoors and a few other things. That started my interest in hacking. Before that I'd just written a compiler and a booking system.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> FTA: "Honor. Being honor-driven is about seeking recognition from society and your peers."

No, honor is the quality of doing the right thing when _nobody_ is looking.

Or maybe he only pays the snack box at the office when the boss is behind him?

<comment><USER9> You're getting honor confused with character, if we believe J.C. Watts - "Character is doing the right thing when nobody's looking"

The two are similar; someone with strong character is by definition honorable.

<comment><USER7> > _The two are similar; someone with strong character is by definition > honorable._

Not quite - someone with a _good_ strong character is necessarily honorable. Some villians have strong character.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Sounds like something Tyler Durden might have said.</comment>


Dropplets - A simple database-less CMS - <AUTHOR> http://dropplets.com/ <comment><USER2> Looking over the comments I want to say I am surprised the attitude of some people towards this project, but given this is Hacker "Hate On PHP" News, I am not. I am disappointed to see people nitpicking over the way some things have been coded. As someone who's used Dropplets on a couple of small sites now, I've found it to be a breath of fresh air compared to Wordpress.

Not only is Dropplets a lot more simple to work with compared to other CMS's/blogging platforms written in PHP, it works. It's easy to write themes for it, it's easy to publish content and easy to make it do whatever you want. It's perfect for those times when you want something lightweight that isn't bloated Wordpress.

So I am going to surprise you all by not weighing in on the dick-measuring contest that is language comparison. You can write bad code in any language, PHP just makes it easier to do so. I think this is a great project and if you have a problem with the way it's coded, remember it's open source and anyone can contribute.

This is the other problem with a lot of people that frequent this site, but not limited to this site. They're quick to complain and point out problems with other peoples code and their choice of language, but rarely ever put their keyboard where their mouth is and actually bother to make a difference by contributing to an open source project.

So my advice to anyone who came here to comment on the choice of PHP or the way it's coded would be to take it elsewhere and learn to compliment someone else's work. It's attitudes like the ones I am seeing that make people (like the author of this project) not want to release their work as open source because people are far too critical and judgemental of others.

<comment><USER3> There's good code being written in PHP, but as far as I can see, not really in this project. JS, HTML, PHP are all mixed together, global functions and variables everywhere, no classes or objects.

Also they are not using an existing PHP framework so they'll have to reinvent the wheel many times for proper session handling, caching, encryption, and for countless other problems that have already been solved.

<comment><USER2> Once again, it's open source we are talking about here. You do realise the problems you describe are also prevalent in other content management systems and publishing platforms? Wordpress is the worse offender for global variables, the theming system in Wordpress mixes HTML,CSS,JS and PHP together, the code-base is a mixture of object-oriented and procedural code as well. But it powers most of the web. Any blog you visit is most likely powered by Wordpress and why is that? Because it works.

Dropplets might not have the prettiest code, but there aren't many projects out there that do. In-fact, Dropplets is no worse than Wordpress is and that hasn't stopped Wordpress being hugely successful. Why? Most people don't care how things are coded if they work. Dropplets works, Wordpress works. If it works, who cares really? As a developer, I don't care, I'm not a code purist. My clients don't care either if I use Wordpress or Dropplets for their site.

Frameworks do have the added advantage of giving you things like encryption, database abstraction and a structure to adhere to, but there's nothing wrong with wanting to do things for yourself, sometimes understanding things on a lower-level makes you a better developer. Besides, the overhead of a PHP framework would be too much for a project like Dropplets in my opinion. Considering it's database-less, you don't need any database abstraction, ORM, no custom-built session management or complicated caching libraries.

Even a framework as light as Codeigniter would be far too heavy to build something like Dropplets on-top of. And people need to realise the future of PHP is not within frameworks, the Composer package manager means we can include what we want in our projects like a framework without the added overhead: include only what you need and ignore everything else.

I was hoping to avoid a framework, language, code-quality discussion but I guess it's fair people raise their hands after I question the intent of the comments on this submission. At the end of the day, good code is important, but as developers we know that it just isn't possible to write good code all of the time without help.

This highlights why open source is important and I think if people truly care about good code, they should roll up their sleeves and help. You can't deny Dropplets is pretty-darn cool. Not nearly enough people contribute to projects like this. I've forked the project and am planning on helping clean up the code-base a little bit if it means more people will use it.

I thought the whole point of open source was getting your ideas and work out there so others can improve it, not criticise it. If we spent all of our time perfecting something, most open source projects in existence would probably not exist. Sometimes it's best to get something that works, but isn't exactly coded to God-like developer levels out into the public. Criticism stems open source. We need to embrace imperfection and achieve perfection as a whole over time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The presentation is awesome. Super clean, I love the logo and the video's that let you know just what this thing is. The blurbs of text were enough to get me interested enough to watch the video. The videos were clean and to the point. Damn, for me this is what all landing pages for projects like this should be. I'm not sure if I'll use your product but I'll certainly bookmark the page to learn from later.

</comment><comment><USER5> A small rant: I think it is bad practice to hide content below the page height. I just wanted to close the website because I thought 'nothing to see here' before I accidentally scrolled and more content was revealed.

<comment><USER6> There's a learn more button...

<comment><USER7> It has really faint text semi-transparent text on a semi-transparent background which is covered by a Twitter icon, at least in my Chrome with my browser height.

If I zoom out all the way, there's still no indication you can scroll down, because the page "helpfully" hides everything from you.

It's pretty bad.

<comment><USER8> Agreed, also, don't make me click on a button to figure out what I am looking at and why I should be interested.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Mods - I think this should be "CMS" (content management system) instead of "CRM" (customer relationship manager), as it's a blogging tool.

<comment><USER10> Maybe "blogging tool" would be the correct description, a cms is should support much more than just one content type.

<comment><USER11> Exactly. From just scanning the website my impression was Wordpress without a DB dependency. Even though Wordpress is used a lot as a CMS and this might eventually take that route they are clearly pushing blogging.

<comment><USER6> Not exactly. There aren't pages, and posts are written in your text editor, and the files are "dropped" into the admin section.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Since there seems to be some discussion about the code quality for Dropplets, I just wanted to clarify that Dropplets is really just a proof of concept. I'm not a developer, nor do I want to be. I'm good at creating concepts like Dropplets, but that's where my skills as a developer ends. I decided to publish Dropplets with the hope that developers that actually knew what they were doing would help me take the concept to the next level. I stated this on Dropplets.com as well.

</comment><comment><USER13> Code - [https://github.com/circa75/dropplets](https://github.com/circa75/dropplets)

</comment><comment><USER14> Certainly, learning to use Composer ([http://getcomposer.org](http://getcomposer.org)) to manage the packages such as PHPass and Markdown and autoload will clean up a lot of the mess, also updating packages is as easy as running a shell command (or even in my case a batch file..)

I'm a bit worried about the amount of mixedin html and php I see too -- one of the benefits of sticking with an existing templating system (though people will say that's superfluous since PHP is a templating system) is that data passed into templates can be automatically escaped, whereas just mixing in adds the possibility of an xss issue.

It also looks like he's using index.php pages as a way to protect his files possibly? I think he need to look into proper .htaccess protection and url routing - ensure that only predetermined urls can even resolve to anything.

Overall it looks interesting and there's definitely a place for it conceptually but as others have pointed out, the style of PHP is a bit behind what's considered best practice. Still, that can be easily fixed.

</comment><comment><USER15> Side note: I love how this has been in development since at least February (when the Twitter was launched). Too many half-baked projects get posted to HN the weekend they're launched and then never end up progressing much further. The fact that this has been in the works for a while gives me the confidence to try it, knowing this isn't as fly-by-night as a Show HN weekend project.

</comment><comment><USER16> "Dropplets is compatible with most server configurations [...]". Requires PHP (at least), I guess none of my servers has a common configuration :)

EDIT: the installation part in the README.md needs some extra info. Like it requires PHP and some file/directory permissions.

<comment><USER17> In case anyone is curious, it seems you need to add full write access to the root install directory as the config.php file is added there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> The concept and simplicity make me think of Ghost's ([http://ghost.org/features/](http://ghost.org/features/)): free, open source, near-minimalist, and self-hosted.

The seemingly only advantage is that Dropplets doesn't require a database, and its landing page is amazingly beautiful, clear, and to the point (though Ghost's "features" page is slick as well).

On a more technical note, click events seem to be propagated up the player on the landing page, closing it when toggling HD for example.

<comment><USER19> But Ghost uses node.js which almost nobody can actually host themselves, because the hosting that people already pay for doesn't (and perhaps wont) support it. Node may be hip and all, but PHP still seems like the right choice for something as simple as blogging software to me.

<comment><USER20> Almost nobody? A $5 virtual host can run Node.js.

<comment><USER19> Yes, almost nobody. Certainly, everybody CAN get a VPS from Digital Ocean. But should I tell my friends that have never touched a commandline and really struggled with just uploading Wordpress.org (and running the installer) to their shared hosting to start administering a VPS running Linux.

The abysmal HN crowd, no problem. But I bet most people running a WP installation on their shared hosting are not as proficient as you believe.

<comment><USER21> Stuff like Wordpress and Ghost exist to have a sharecrop of cheap hosting services with it pre-installed — with Ghost it just looks like JS was the language the developer (a front-end dev on Wordpress. . .) was most familiar with, And That's Fine

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I like Pico ([http://pico.dev7studios.com/](http://pico.dev7studios.com/)).

</comment><comment><USER23> I thought this had something to do with Drupal. I guess not :)

<comment><USER24> Especially since the drop is blue.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Looks nice, nothing new \- [https://github.com/kolber/stacey](https://github.com/kolber/stacey) \- [http://bolt80.com/piecrust/](http://bolt80.com/piecrust/)

The video was down for me, but maybe the uploader makes it easier then some other systems? When I try to teach non tech people to use a db-less CMS with no online admin, they get Markdown (they can at least copy and paste my example pages). But uploading files, WinSCP, FileZilla, etc and opening its NOT in word... this blows their minds. So if anyone has seen the uploader and it makes it super simple, it might be worth checking out.

</comment><comment><USER26> This looks awesome. Kudos to the author for doing this. Not a big fan of PHP, but I love everything else about this project - from a product perspective.

Not getting into the code.

I tried playing with the demo and the 'admin panel' (by pressing the dropplet icon in top left) didn't show up for me in Chrome on Windows 7.

The screen moved slightly to the right (say 2 px) so I knew it was supposed to move...but it didn't go the full way.

Not sure why that is.

 _Edit: It looks like some sort of JS error:

Uncaught TypeError: Cannot call method 'create' of undefined measureIt.js:120 (anonymous function) measureIt.js:120_

</comment><comment><USER27> This looks promising. I'm gonna give this a try since I'm looking for a simple and lightweight CMS for my blog. Speaking of which, anyone have any recommendations about that (apart from Jekyll)? I still haven't found what I'm looking for and I'm on the verge of coding my own blog in plain HTML instead of just installing something like Wordpress but that may be a pain in the ass to manage once I have more than handful of posts on my host.

But who knows, maybe Dropplets is the one.

<comment><USER6> I started playing with Anchor last week. I like it thus far, because it really focuses on blogging, something WordPress kinda deemphasized two years ago.

Plus, it's pretty. Which is always a nice bonus.

\----

If you're not averse to paying for something, Statamic looks really awesome.

<comment><USER27> They both look pretty good, thanks for the suggestions!

As long as its price is reasonable, I don't mind paying for a CMS, but it looks like Anchor fit to my needs better than Statamic. All I want from a CMS is to have its own search and markdown support. That's it. I don't care much about themes and all that. I'm perfectly fine with having white background and black text on top of it centered on the page as a "theme".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Having tried it out before, I found the format used for blog posts to be incredibly arbitrary. It requires your twitter username for every post, and a bunch of other things. Plus, instead of using key/value pairings with yaml or something similar, it required that your headers be in a specific order.

It seems cool, it also seems like a little bit of work could be put into making it more accessible to people who didn't write it.

</comment><comment><USER28> I tried to set this up a few months ago. Apparently I was formatting post headers incorrectly, because I couldn't get any posts I wrote to show up on the site after upload. No error messages or anything.

It's pretty, but the workflow isn't much better than Jekyll. I would have been happy if there was a post editor in the admin panel, but that's apparently not going to happen.

</comment><comment><USER29> Just a note: Chrome 24 on Ubuntu and the videos aren't autoplaying. I have to right click + play. Would be nice to show some controls :)

</comment><comment><USER30> Quick link to demo: [http://dropplets.com/demo/](http://dropplets.com/demo/)

</comment><comment><USER31> looks great! definitely will have to try this out.

it's a little discouraging, however, that the issue queue has so many pull requests, comments, etc. without comment.

i love the concept of simplicity and i'm sure the maintainers have a roadmap in mind. it'd be nice if that was communicated a bit so i can know how simple they plan to keep it.

</comment><comment><USER32> This is very nice looking, but I have to nitpick about the "30 second" install. It takes 30 seconds, assuming you've already installed an operating system, a webserver, PHP, and set everything up securely. For a beginner that is really non-trivial. Still better than Wordpress, though.

<comment><USER33> Yes, that's definitely a nitpick.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Looks like a nice system. Coincidentally I've been working on something similar, albeit a little more on the simple side: [http://www.grimmdude.com/2013/08/22/jebson- cms](http://www.grimmdude.com/2013/08/22/jebson-cms)

</comment><comment><USER35> It looks really good, but I hate a lot about the demo theme. Why does anything move without me doing anything? Will the annoying bottom bar always be there? What if I can't find a high-res artsy photo? Was it necessary to knock off Medium's (distinctive) menu icon?

</comment><comment><USER36> Not sure if it's the same for everyone or not but I'm having issues playing the videos on Chrome.

The videos either just stay on the Dropplet background with the music playing, or it just goes away. In all this the BG music keeps playing though like it's playing like normal.

</comment><comment><USER37> This project its architecture would benefit greatly when leveraged by a framework like Laravel.

<comment><USER14> I was thinking Slim, but yes -- a framework would definitely help.

<comment><USER37> Laravel __is __slim. :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> _With no database, you can install Dropplets in seconds on any server, compose offline using markdown, then simply upload to publish._

Cool, sounds almost as easy as writing html and deploying it with ftp. We've come full circle to 1996.

</comment><comment><USER39> Can someone please tell me how this is different from Jekyll? They both work based on the same concept if I'm correct?

Also, how about support for category pages? I mean, show a page full of posts from one particular category only? Possible??

<comment><USER6> They work on completely different concepts:

Jekyll requires you to generate your site. Dropplets generates pages on each request.

Jekyll runs on your machine, and is written in Ruby. Dropplets runs on your server, and is written in PHP.

Jekyll's posts require very minimal metadata, and use a key/value pairing system with YAML. Dropplets' posts require a ton of metadata, and the same metadata for every post, and in a specific order, and you can't add arbitrary metadata.

\----

I don't think Dropplets has categories, but I may be mistaken.

<comment><USER39> Thanks, that was very kind of you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> One could argue that in this case the server's file system acts as the database.

<comment><USER6> That's true of any flat-file system... But, I agree.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Amazing. Since the dissolution of Posterous, I've been looking for something simple and easy. And with the theming abilities, it looks like it might just be perfect for me. Can't wait to give it a try today!

</comment><comment><USER41> I love the design, concept and copy, but will someone please explain what Dropplets uses in lieu of a database? (I may have missed something, but I don't think that was explained in detail.)

<comment><USER42> You apparently upload full .md files straight to the server via a frontend interface, it seems.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> warning: typical HN nitpicking (I know, typical, but it was just my first reaction upon seeing the code & I want to be honest).

I looked at the code and my first impression wasn't good. These are minor issues but such "smells" are red flags (to mix metaphors) and warn me away from the codebase

[https://github.com/circa75/dropplets/blob/master/index.php#L...](https://github.com/circa75/dropplets/blob/master/index.php#L25)

        } else if($_GET['filename'] == 'rss' || $_GET['filename'] == 'atom') {

why would you set a get var called "filename" to request an RSS feed? There is no actual file called `rss`, so it's not a file name. So the filename get var is really maybe a file name, maybe some other non-file resource being requested. This is confusing & unintuitive, makes the code harder to read & parse.

[https://github.com/circa75/dropplets/blob/master/index.php#L...](https://github.com/circa75/dropplets/blob/master/index.php#L74)

        $posts = ($pagination_on_off != "off") ? array_slice($all_posts,$offset,($posts_per_page > 0) ? $posts_per_page : null) : $all_posts;

too many ternaries!! Why are you testing against a specific string ("false") to indicate a boolean value? This is a major smell as it suggests the author doesn't know the proper use of basic PHP data types.* Why are you adding a ternary if to test posts_per_page size rather than just setting it to `null` to indicate "all posts" in the first place? How can pagination be true with unlimited posts per page anyway? Make posts_per_page null by default, remove redundancy in pagination config var name, make it a bool, and you're left with:

        $posts = $paginate ? array_slice($all_posts, $offset, $posts_per_page) : $all_posts;

I don't mean to condemn the efforts of the author: everyone starts somewhere and this looks like a pretty dang cool project, but smells like these make me walk away immediately because they indicate this code is going to be confusing and hard to work with. One last one: functions.php. This will send a cold chill down the spine of any PHP dev familiar with the bad old days. Group code logically, write reusable modules, and use namespaces (well skip this last one if you want to support old/cheap hosting)! No need to code like its PHP 4 anymore :)

* Yes I see that it's a user defined setting in settings.php or config.php and an argument could be made that a user would understand "on"/"off" more easily than true/false, but this is a trivially solved by a comment & would make the code more robust and readable. More robust because string comparison in PHP is case sensitive, so if the user sets the setting to "OFF" it will effectively be "on." Boolean solves this.

<comment><USER44> I'm actually the one that wrote the last two nasty parts of code, not the author himself. I'm really sorry that it confused you.

I actually don't remember why I wrote them like that, but I'm pretty sure I had a reason (at least I think I do..)

Again, sorry about that.

<comment><USER45> And this is how PHP hell begins.

<comment><USER46> Not unique to PHP in any way shape or form.

<comment><USER45> Perhaps not, but PHP certainly makes it unusually easy.

<comment><USER46> I know this is a popular idea, but it's pretty easy to write terrible code in any language. See: most code.

<comment><USER45> Yes, but, in most langauges, this doesn't work

        <?php
        $a = 0;
        $b = 'x';
        var_dump(FALSE == $a);
        var_dump($a == $b);
        var_dump($b == TRUE);
        ?>

This results in

        bool(true)
        bool(true)
        bool(true)

<comment><USER42> Seriously? (string) x fuzzy equals to (int) 0? Holy crap that is some cancer.

<comment><USER45> Yes, seriously.

[http://php.net/manual/en/types.comparisons.php](http://php.net/manual/en/types.comparisons.php)

<comment><USER47> "PHP: It's worse than ColdFusion."

<comment><USER14> That's just... that's just _cruel._

<comment><USER47> As a CFML developer who has had to bear the brunt of gleeful derision, you won't get an apology from me. :-)

Modern CFML running on Railo is an awesome environment to work in: PHP-like hackability, a very consistent language spec, native JVM performance, first- class java library integration, and it's a 100% pure open source software stack.

Whereas PHP has a much slower runtime, a horrific language spec, and nothing similar to the benefit of running on a common runtime like the JVM.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> My only recommendation would be to use the new password api going forward and password_compat for versions less than 5.5. I don't see a php version requirement in their docs though.

</comment><comment><USER48> All I see is a link to a zip and a link to "[http:///"](http:///")?

<comment><USER13> The link is all JavaScripty, or you can just scroll down. I'm not keen on that UI.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> Anyone looked at the code and see how this works? When you publish does it generate html or does it do it for each GET?

<comment><USER50> The code is unfortunately written in straight procedural PHP. It is kind of spaghetti code. The end result is quite pretty, but it ignores all of the best practices in PHP development right now.

Also the last time I tried to set it up, it required that I have a twitter account.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> Old always becomes new again. 10-15 years ago this was called Newspro/Coranto by early bloggers.

</comment><comment><USER52> So is the marketplace going to be open to developer/designers as well?

</comment><comment><USER53> Nice design, next step, a mobile friendly CSS.

</comment><comment><USER54> This is actually sort of cool-looking.

</comment><comment><USER55> Promising CMS. Installs in a snap. Any new templates being released soon? The cupboard is bare.

</comment><comment><USER56> It is powered by PHP. They probably feel ashamed as they don't say it anywhere on the webpage ;-) Seems nice tough!</comment>


Path, Foursquare, and Quora: the underdogs of social - <AUTHOR> http://pandodaily.com/2012/12/26/while-twitter-and-facebook-spar-path-foursquare-tumblr-quora-and-nextdoor-should-voltron-it-up/

<comment><USER2> Quora and Foursquare have so much data that they're valuable services to non- account users -- but that probably doesn't help their income statements. But Path is only useful to Path users and it is such a small network that there isn't enough of a network effect to keep Path users in the habit of using it -- so how much more appeal can it have?</comment>


Was Email a Mistake? The maths of dist-systems suggests meetings are better - <AUTHOR> https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/was-e-mail-a-mistake/ <comment><USER2> Opinion piece by a computer science professor. From the article: "There's nothing intrinsically bad about e-mail as a tool." Whew, what a relief. I wonder if the click-bait headline was his idea?

<comment><USER3> This is the third time I've seen the "was email a mistake" title in the past week, from different publications too, if I recall correctly. What a silly thing to ask.</comment></comment>


Mathematicians are chronically lost and confused (2014) - <AUTHOR> https://j2kun.svbtle.com/mathematicians-are-chronically-lost-and-confused <comment><USER2> To me, this is about "mathematical maturity".

My observation is that many programmers, especially those who have come of age by working in startups, tend to value ability and sometimes experience over formal education. This is a result, I believe, of noticing that they can outperform many people who have a classical education, and also seeing that many of the people to whom they look up also do not have much in the way of formal education.

However, I truly believe that Mathematics is a discipline that is very hard to engage with outside of formal education - or at least nobody has really found a great model for doing so yet.

Learning Mathematics in a classical, structured way really does change the way you think. I notice a substantial difference even between those of my colleagues who entered industry straight after their Masters or even Bachelors, and those who completed Doctorates or even held postdoctoral positions.

In my opinion, it is this lack of mathematical maturity that makes the switch from general programming to scientific programming more challenging than the converse.

<comment><USER3> I disagree that mathematics itself is difficult to engage with outside of academia.

There are some academic mathematicians who think mathematics has to be hard because it was difficult for them to understand. There are others for whom sharing their insights is more important than searching for new ones. I think that the set of mathematicians together have done a rather good job in the 20th century of producing mathematical literature and pedagogy that laypersons and the polymaths can understand.

I skipped university when I was young due to circumstance. I still had a love for maths but couldn't pursue formal training. When I came around to programming as a career instead of odd-loner-hobby it was as you say. I was quite impressed with my ability to code circles around CS graduates who, for all their theory and training, weren't prepared for "coding in the real world."

I never stopped studying mathematics. I've recently been going through temporal logics. If only more programmers were aware of the beauty of the proof of weak fairness. And its implications in system specifications.

Where I can see formal training being useful is exposing you to subjects you were not aware of in short order. My experience has been more akin to the mansion metaphor. Where I encounter limitations or difficulties in my programming I look to maths for the right tool to simplify the task and ensure it is correct.

So I agree about "mathematical maturity." I just don't believe it is exclusively acquired in an academic setting. I think some people have an inclination or awareness that pushes them to think this way.

<comment><USER4> Not knowing your level of mathematical insight and knowledge makes it hard to know if your belief about your mathematical talent is a self deception. I've never encountered anyone who understood typical second year graduate level mathematics without formal training. I know such people could exist. I've just never met any. I have met people who claimed to be self taught in mathematics and it was obvious that they didn't really understand the concepts though they were absolutely convinced they knew what they were talking about.

Outliers exist. But have any good mathematicians been self taught in the last 50 years?

<comment><USER5> > I have met people who claimed to be self taught in mathematics and it was > obvious that they didn't really understand the concepts though they were > absolutely convinced they knew what they were talking about.

This is an interesting contrast with my experience with learning programming, where, it doesn't matter how much formal education / training you get, you're still going to have to do a massive amount of self-learning before you can hope to achieve excellence.

All good programmers are self-taught. No good mathematicians (currently) are. I wonder why this is. Probably boils down to what 'math' is trying to accomplish vs. what 'programming' does.

<comment><USER6> Simple profit incentives.

You can't really make a living off of being a self-taught mathematician, whereas you can by knowing how to program, and run your own business.

The only way to make a living as a mathematician is to into academia, so that why you see all mathematician in academics. Basically it isn't that academia produces mathematician, although it helps, but that it attracts mathematicians. Just as, say, Y-Combinator attracts good startups.

<comment><USER7> As someone who just finished a ph.d. in (non-applied) math I would agree profit incentives are a large percentage of the reason - in programming, you can learn enough basic skills to make money, and then smoothly transition that to higher skill / profit levels just through the experience you gain doing more actual programming. In math, you can't really make money with a lower level of math skill (your options of making money at a lower math level are maybe accounting or teaching, and neither of these provides a transition to deeper math skill levels). Thus your option to increase your math skill is to tough it out through 5 years of grad school making about minimum wage, and then another three years of a postdoc, making a 1/3-1/2 of the average software developer salary, and then you can start making more money if you are lucky enough in the problems you choose, and work hard enough.

I would guess the more applied math you care about / the closer to software your math is, the better you can do as a self-taught. I actually know of one guy who transitioned from an engineering ph.d. to teaching applied math doing self-taught / working on fluid dynamics in aerospace, but I expect the examples of someone doing this in more abstract / pure areas are extremely few.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I have a great personal story that highlights how long the journey of understanding mathematics is.

I took linear algebra my freshman year of college. It was the non-math major course, so it didn't require proofs. I got an A+ in the class. Not just an A, an A+. I was able to obtain such a high grade by taking tons of practice tests, and since the actual tests were basically mildly veiled calculations, I just had to map the question to the right calculation. So for instance, if after a little interpretation, I figured out that the question was asking for me to calculate the singular value decomposition of a given matrix, I would mindlessly compute, check my algebra, and move on.

However, it was very clear to me by the end of the course that I didn't really understand what the heck linear algebra was about.

Five years later, I started a job as an algorithmic trader. One of the first things my boss wanted to do was to do a Principal Component Analysis (PCA) of bond price movements. This is a very common thing to do. I didn't know what PCA was, but I read a short paper he gave me and I was able to grok it. After reading that paper and actually performing the PCA (which by the way was basically one line of R code), I finally came to understand the core essence of linear algebra, which is the idea of linear transformations. I was able to connect the equation Ax=lambdax to the geometry of what an eigenvector meant. Through a little more reasoning, I realized that every real matrix corresponded to a linear transformation of that space via a rotation, a reflection, a stretching, a shearing, etc. At that point, all of the mindless calculations I had been doing half a decade earlier instantly clicked, and I was enlightened.

This was literally half a decade later after I "aced" my linear algebra class. I know that it seems absolutely ridiculous that I could "score so well" in a math class yet so clearly miss the core idea behind the entire class, but that's been my experience with math for as long as I can remember. You start by doing the calculations and just getting comfortable with them. Some arbitrary time later, you have an insight and suddenly everything is so crystal clear and trivial that you wonder how you could even _not_ have understood it before.

Oh, and even to this day, I don't understand what singular values actually are. Something to do with a mapping from the row space to the column space, blah blah. I'm sure if I spent an hour to read about them and picture the geometry, I could figure it out, but I just haven't gotten around to doing it.

<comment><USER9> Linear algebra is the sort of topic where it seems like you can always go deeper. I also got an A in my linear algebra class in college. When I got to grad school for math, I took the first year graduate course on algebra and saw linear algebra in terms of algebraic things like modules and representations. I decided that I hadn't really known linear algebra before, but that I did then. Then I took differential geometry, which involves studying infinite collections of vector spaces parameterizes by points on a manifold. I realized I still hadn't know linear algebra, but after that I certainly did. Then I took a functional analysis class, where we did infinite dimensional linear algebra, where a lot of the finite dimensional theory has analogues but everything is more complicated (e.g. instead of finite bases and dot products, you consider things like Fourier analysis and Hilbert spaces).

The same realization that I don't know linear algebra came when taking a Lie algebras class, and again when learning homological algebra, and probably a few other times as well. There are certainly lots of areas of math that I've never explored that take linear algebra in some other direction (for example, I don't have any idea what the applied math guys do with....).

It's really an amazingly vast subject, especially considering that it's usually just thought of as a tool used to study more advanced topics.

<comment><USER10> I've been learning (trying to learn) linear algebra by studying Gilbert Strang's "Introduction to Linear Algebra" book. There are some really mind bending sections in which he explicitly treats a concept like linear regression in terms of geometry and then algebra and then calculus and then probability and then ties them all back together.

What's really struck me is when I dive into a Wikipedia rabbit hole of linear algebra, following links for terms I don't know. I start on the Topology page, read the introduction section of 10 articles that start with "x is a generalization of y" and somehow end up back on the Topology page. Shallow exposure to the sheer volume and conceptual depth of stuff like topology and algebra has really made me respect modern math.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Author here.

I can't help but plug my mailing list for a book I'm writing, called "A Programmer's Introduction to Mathematics." Cheers, and thanks for reading!

[https://jeremykun.com/2016/04/25/book-mailing- list/](https://jeremykun.com/2016/04/25/book-mailing-list/)

</comment><comment><USER12> This reminds me of the book "The Perfect Wrong Note". The book is focused on learning to play music but the principles it teaches apply to learning just about anything. The core message to not be afraid of mistakes during practice. Little kids fall over when they learn to walk, you'll have moments of confusion learning new things. There's a time to get things done well, like playing at a recital or releasing production code. There also needs to be time to practice and part of practicing is the expectation that there will be mistakes.

</comment><comment><USER13> I feel the same way when solving tasks in my day job. The thing I tell to young people learning programming/tech that I hope they don't get frustrated easily, because they will spend every day of their life feeling rather stupid and confused, never knowing when will they discover a solution for a particular problem.

This is something that was a great source of stress early in my career.

<comment><USER14> It's a game of educated guessing.

Experience helps.

<comment><USER13> Indeed, but the more experienced I get the harder/bigger problems I work on, so that balances it out. I still feel rather stuck on a daily basis, but I accept the situation and try to deal with it with a calm focus.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> A mathematician was walking home from campus one day, and as he walked he was pondering a particularly thorny problem. At one point, he snapped out of his reverie and looked around and realized that he had no idea where he was. He saw a young boy playing with a ball in a yard, and figured maybe the boy could tell him the way home. So he says to the boy, "young man, do you know where Prof. So-and-so lives?"

The boy looked at him and said, "Dad, what's wrong with you?"

<comment><USER16> This story is usually told about Norbert Wiener and his daughter.

<comment><USER15> Good to know.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> My favourite quote about Mathematics is from John von Neumann: "In mathematics you don't understand things. You just get used to them." \- This quote highlights precisely why I ended up choosing software engineering over maths.

I'm just not very good at applying processes/methodologies which I don't fully understand.

For example, I wasn't very good with linear algebra until I was able to visualize the equations in my head. For example, now, when I think about the equation 'f(x) = ax^2 + bx + c' \- I can see that this represents the set of all possible quadratic equations and I can roughly visualize what that looks like on a cartesian plane (well it would turn the whole plane black because there would be an infinite number of graphs). Then if I choose any three points on that crowded cartesian plane, I can visualize that among this infinite set of curves, one of them passes through all three points. Thinking about it in that way allows me to make sense of Gauss-Jordan Reduction and other mathematical processes related to linear algebra.

Programming is much easier for me because I can visualize the results instantly on a computer - I don't need someone else to explain it to me. Any uncertainty can be quickly resolved by simply running some code.

<comment><USER18> >Any uncertainty can be quickly resolved by simply running some code.

Until you have to interact with a black box of someone else's code. You can only be certain that the data you sent that particular time works, not that all possibilities of valid data work.

<comment><USER17> I guess with programming, you can never get 100% certainty when it comes to correctness of your code - Unless you perform formal analysis which is impractical for most use cases.

<comment><USER19> You might not succeed at 100%, but you can remove "classes of error" by adopting particular styles or techniques backed by formal analysis. That's one of the biggest appeals of compiler technology - it can encode an understanding of patterns proven to detect failure, and in so doing lower your resulting bug count.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Does anybody know a good guide on where to begin? Resources are not the issue here, but usually the overwhelming amount of information regarding all those topics and areas of mathematics. I was always very interested but got discouraged rather quickly, even after a semester at university. So far my favorite access to math was through philosophy.

<comment><USER21> Step 1: Read Lockhart's Lament: [https://www.maa.org/external_archive/devlin/LockhartsLament....](https://www.maa.org/external_archive/devlin/LockhartsLament.pdf)

Step 2: Download the Book of Proof: [http://www.people.vcu.edu/~rhammack/BookOfProof/](http://www.people.vcu.edu/~rhammack/BookOfProof/) You read through it and do all the odd numbered exercises (the solutions are at the end of the book).

Step 3: Get a book called Real Mathematical Analysis by Charles Pugh and you work through that and attempt as many problems as you can, with a view not to rush through it, but to expand your mind through each problem.

Step 4: Pick any of these books that interest you the most and do the same:

\- Calculus by Spivak

\- Algebra: Chapter 0 by Paolo Aluffi

\- Linear Algebra Done Right by Axler

By then you should have enough mathematical maturity to know what to do next.

<comment><USER22> I'd also recommend Hubbard & Hubbard for a beautiful and beginner-friendly mix of algebra and analysis.

My preferred starter kit is Rudin plus Halmos or Axler, but treating Rudin as a summary. So a helper would be needed, like Counterexamples in Analysis. This is what Math 55 used to do.

<comment><USER23> I don't really recommend Rudin for a true beginner at all (unless, by "as a summary," you mean not really digging into the proofs themselves, in which case any good analysis book will do). Rudin will always try to take the most elegant route to the theorem, regardless if that route goes anywhere near where the rest of the text has been. The result, for me, has been that many of his proofs seem to just meander about for a little while until, at the very end, you arrive at the theorem. It's a bit like driving to work on auto pilot, and just as disconcerting to me.

<comment><USER22> I should have said as an outline, instead of a summary.

I think the beauty of Rudin is how compact it is. But of course you need an alternative book to be able to digest it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> As an undergrad who recently became serious about math (thanks to its importance in areas I am interested in) this is very inspiring. I have been trying to grok mathematics for some time and sometimes being too frustrated with problems I can't handle. I have experienced the phenomena of giving up on something and coming back to it and finding it trivial. This is exactly what I needed.

</comment><comment><USER25> Beautiful article. Love the advice at the end!:

"What's much more useful is recording what the deep insights are, and storing them for recollection later. Because every important mathematical idea has a deep insight, and these insights are your best friends. They're your mathematical "nose," and they'll help guide you through the mansion."

<comment><USER26> I can't think of a better argument to goad programmers into writing code comments, especially for elegant code.

For some reason, programmers think good code should be self explanatory. It doesn't have to - if your insight is outside the flow (or the argument) of your code.

I see a lot of Java code written like this; if the programmer's job is to multiply two numbers, they add number a number b times, and say comments are not needed!

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> tao's stages of math is relevant

[https://terrytao.wordpress.com/career- advice/there%E2%80%99s...](https://terrytao.wordpress.com/career- advice/there%E2%80%99s-more-to-mathematics-than-rigour-and-proofs/)

</comment><comment><USER28> What a great blog post! Totally agree with him. And, personnaly, it is why i'm having so much fun doing maths. Everytime it's a new exploration, a new challenge. My best math teacher I had was seeing math with this philosophy in mind and his class was like discovering new lands every time. I'm sure that if we explained in a way that failing a math problem is as normal and challenging that failing a Mario Bros Level, more people would be in peace with it.

</comment><comment><USER29> > _Finally, after six months or so, you find the light switch, you turn it on, > and suddenly it's all illuminated. You can see exactly where you were. Then > you move into the next room and spend another six months in the dark..._

What are you supposed to do if you like math and the idea of grokking it, but you also have a job and a family and can't afford to spend six months contemplating each room in the mansion?

<comment><USER30> > What are you supposed to do if you like math and the idea of grokking it, > but you also have a job and a family and can't afford to spend six months > contemplating each room in the mansion?

Learn to come to grips with the idea that the universe isn't always going to support your mutually exclusive preferences?

<comment><USER29> Yep, that's probably the only option, huh.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> One of the ways to acquire a taste for mathematics is to try solving elementary but challenging problems, such as those included in MathCamp's qualifying quizzes: [http://www.mathcamp.org/prospectiveapplicants/quiz/pastquizz...](http://www.mathcamp.org/prospectiveapplicants/quiz/pastquizzes.php).

</comment><comment><USER32> All they have to do is read this article: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11874395](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11874395)

</comment><comment><USER33> Shouldn't the year the article was written (2014) be included in the title?

</comment><comment><USER34> any discipline where you are attempting to answer yet to be answered questions leaves you in a state of chronic confusion and lacking direction

math the same

</comment><comment><USER35> "mathematicians don't work like this"? Sure they do. Reading textbooks is normal. As a mathematician, this post is foreign.</comment>


Could gambling save science? (1990) - <AUTHOR> http://mason.gmu.edu/~rhanson/gamble.html <comment><USER2> >funding an automatic inventory-based [St] market-maker, which always offers to buy or sell at prices determined solely by its current inventory, one gives away money only to those who move the market price in the direction of its final verdict. Interesting idea. So, by pumping money to such market, one could establish current consensus without having to ask anyone and if current consensus is on the wrong side, you just get some money as consolatory prize.

</comment><comment><USER3> This submission was probably sparked by the recent prediction market results from the Social Science Replication Project. In this study, a prediction market with 206 traders and $20,600 of incentives was able to predict whether 21 psychology studies would replicate with pretty astounding accuracy (5/5 bets with <50% predicted did not actually replicate, and 13/16 with >50% did - and the 3 misses were predicted at like 51%, 52%, 53%).

Coverage by the Atlantic here: [https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/08/scientis...](https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/08/scientists- can-collectively-sense-which-psychology-studies-are-weak/568630/)

Coverage by 538 on previous work by the same authors: [https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-to-tell-good- studie...](https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-to-tell-good-studies-from- bad-bet-on-them/)

Commentary on LessWrong here: [https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/7w2tCRocphK9yW8rG/unknown- kn...](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/7w2tCRocphK9yW8rG/unknown-knowns)

And my own thoughts here: [https://www.facebook.com/tedsanders/posts/10106092033737384](https://www.facebook.com/tedsanders/posts/10106092033737384)

For reference, I was one of the top prize winners on SciCast.org, an academic science prediction market that Robin Hanson (author of linked article) was involved in. I personally am excited by scientific prediction markets because they are a systematic way of making hidden knowledge public.

</comment><comment><USER4> I was sad to see intrade.com close. predictit.org still offers political prediction markets.

BTW, Robin Hanson's blog is a good read: [http://www.overcomingbias.com/](http://www.overcomingbias.com/). He explores in-depth the topic of "Ems" (people emulated on computers in a world where AGI doesn't exist).

</comment><comment><USER5> >Yet little has really changed. Academia is still largely a medieval guild, with a few powerful elites, many slave-like apprentices, and members who hold a monopoly on the research patronage of princes and the teaching of their sons. Outsiders still complain about bias, saying their evidence is ignored, and many observers [Gh,Re,Syk,Tu] have noted some long-standing problems with the research component of academia.

I dont consider 'research' science. I consider engineering more scientific.

You dont get to fudge data when you need things to work. Things need to work. And if you did mess up, you will keep working until things 'work'.

Academia produces a paper and these are rarely verified.

<comment><USER6> This is one of the points the author makes in the book "Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder". He points out that one of the big examples of something where theory came first, then application came afterwards is the atomic bomb.

In a lot of other areas of practical invention, application comes first, then people come in afterwards with a theory. And frequently, the theorists take credit for the invention as if the theory had come first. He had some examples of this happening.

<comment><USER5> This hits home the most in Industrial Engineering.

That field was not invented by academics, that was done by industry, and academia realized there was demand to teach it.

Getting a PhD in Industrial Engineering seemed like a contradiction. The studies my professors were pushing seemed useless and untestable. I tried to make suggestions towards my interests, using big data on life at home, or specific ergonomic issues were useful to every human alive.

When I left both my meetings with the professors, I realized I would be at their whim for the next 4-6 years.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is the same Robin Hanson that recently authored "The Elephant in the Brain: Hidden Motives in Everyday Life". His physics background makes for interesting economic analyses.

</comment><comment><USER8> Staking reputation does not reward people who are right, rather than it rewards people who are good at being right

<comment><USER9> How are the two different when you talk about scientific theories?

<comment><USER10> PR and taking credit</comment></comment></comment>


The World's Largest Wind Turbines Have Started Generating Power in England - <AUTHOR> https://www.technologyreview.com/s/607908/the-worlds-largest-wind-turbines-have-started-generating-power-in-england/ <comment><USER2> Someone on here was slagging off the UK over Brexit the other day, and one of their digs was that the UK has hardly any resources left. I couldn't be bothered to post back then, but here's an indication of why that notion is nonsense. The UK has some of the best renewable energy potential in the world, including obviously wind but also tidal, with some of the fastest tidal races on the planet. There is also apparently considerable potential for fracking, and if we really needed it there is still a huge amount of coal left underground.

</comment><comment><USER3> I thought the cool part was the ship that lifts itself up on stilts to become the construction platform!

<comment><USER2> Indeed, some of this oil and gas derived tech is amazing.</comment></comment>


Ask HN:Is there any way i can black out my Facebook page? - <AUTHOR>

I think that will get more attention from my facebook friends <comment><USER2> Use the new 'timeline' style profile page and you can select a header image for your profile.</comment>


Update on Internet Censorship in Iran - Tor Blog - <AUTHOR> https://blog.torproject.org/blog/update-internet-censorship-iran

<comment><USER2> The number of directly connecting Iranian Tor users in Iran has dropped from 10000 or so to virtually zero -- they've blacklisted all the known Tor nodes and bridges. It's the latest twist in the arms race ...

"In a short few months, Iran has vastly improved the sophistication of their censorship technologies. Right now, the best option is to use tor through open socks/https proxies."

</comment><comment><USER3> May the next level will be steganography.

</comment><comment><USER4> Once again, consider where Iran is buying its networking equipment from. Aren't Western companies directly at fault?

</comment><comment><USER5> A lot of Tor use is so people can connect to US websites that are blocked "voluntarily" by US companies.

Google code, Sourceforge and many others block Iran.

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm in Iran and the only left way to access free internet is now UltraSurf! government is banning every opportunity to access websites. some of banned sites in Iran are: facebook, myspace, twitter, youtube, rapidshare, wordpress, bbc, cnn, voa, thepiratebay and LOTS of other ones!! now you can imagine how essential was having tor!

<comment><USER7> Contact me privately and I will give you a VPN and unfettered access to the net, IF you promise me not to get yourself in trouble.

Regards.</comment></comment>


The More Gender Equality, the Fewer Women in Stem (2018) - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/02/the-more-gender-equality-the-fewer-women-in-stem/553592/ <comment><USER2> From 2018.

For reference, the discussion from back then: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16411227](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16411227)

<comment><USER3> Also [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16407678](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16407678)</comment></comment>


IOS app: Rainbow - Sync your data between cloud services - <AUTHOR>

How many hours have you spend on searching for a file among the cloud services and their folders?
How difficult is to transfer your data from one cloud service to another?
The Rainbow application is a powerful tool to transfer data from one cloud service to another, in three simple steps:
1) Select the source service.
2) Select the files (or folder) that you want to transfer, and
3) Select the target service.
More importantly, the Rainbow application offers a simple interface to search for files. A powerful search engine will return all the files that match the key-word that you typed. Then, you can long press on a file to learn more info about that file or you can drag and drop that file to the file cabinet to transfer it. Finally, the Rainbow application supports multi-accounts
The app is free of charge and you may download it from iTunes at https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/rainbow-sync-data-between/id531874282?mt=8 <comment><AUTHOR> Those of you who are interested can see some screenshots about this app at [http://www.i-smartsolutions.com/rainbow/](http://www.i-smartsolutions.com/rainbow/)</comment>


So I got a startup job - <AUTHOR> http://tempo32.wordpress.com/2007/09/05/so-i-got-a-startup-job/ Hi. This, my first blog post, explains what I learned in the process of getting a startup job in the Valley. Feedback of all kinds is welcome: from typos and style to things I'm so wrong about. <comment><USER2> I think your experience is atypical. Most people I know who work at startups, myself included, got their job through a personal introduction to one of the founders. We have one employee whom we hired from Monster, but he wasn't specifically looking to work at a startup; he just applied for jobs that sounded interesting regardless of the size of the company. I don't know anyone who has gotten a job at a startup by sending resumes to twenty of them and getting lucky on one.

<comment><AUTHOR> You have a point. The post is most useful for people who are in a situation similar to the one I was in: coming from the outside, unfamiliar with the culture, and trying to break in on merit alone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Congrats! Me too (I start at justin.tv on Monday).

The most important piece of job-seeking advice I can think of: You are interviewing _them_ as much as they are interviewing you. If you don't ask hard questions, and pay attention to the answers, you risk taking a crappy job and regretting it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Cool, congrats to you too. And you're so right about the interview. Want to post that on the blog comments?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Sounds good. What kind of work will you be doing?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> All feedback welcome

<comment><USER5> nice blog?</comment></comment>


Aito.ai raises $1.1M aiming to make machine learning as easy as SQL queries - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2019/05/07/aito-ai/ <comment><USER2> Hi, here's Antti Rauhala, one of the co-founders, and the father of the concept.

It has been quite a journey so far for our incredibly team and our pretty amazing predictive database-product. With no doubt, the journey will be ever more interesting in the future with our quite unique piece of AI technology.

Please, feel free to ask questions about aito.ai. We are more than happy to answer. Especially Aito's non-narrow AI capabilities (ability to instantly predict anything based on anything) has been a source of wonder :-)

</comment><comment><USER3> Wow, cool that you got Siilasmaa with you! :+1:

So please tell us a bit, what exactly is "predictive database"? Should this replace my other db solutions or is it more like an add-on?

<comment><USER2> Hi Markku,

While a normal database can give you the knowns, e.g. that Bob has seen these products, and clicked on few: Aito can give you the unknowns: e.g. Bob might click on this item if he would see it. Another example is, that you may ask for a known product's tags in normal DB. In Aito, you may predict tags for a new, unknown product like this:

{ "from":"products", "where":{ "name":"rye bread" }, "predict":"tags" }

Essentially: Aito serves the role of auxiliary database, a bit like ElasticSearch/Solr, but instead of providing you just the full text search functionality, it also provides you the AI functionality (predictions, matching, recommendation/personalization, statistical relation discovery)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: When doing leetcode problems do you focus on specific types? - <AUTHOR> So I've started looking at leetcode, and I've done a few problems(c# which doesn't seem to be popular on there). However, there are a lot of problems. I'm wondering what everyone does to figure out what to study, and which problems to focus on. <comment><USER2> i think it's customary to do at least 100 to 200 problems to cover a decent range of topics.

here are some relevant threads on Blind:

[https://www.teamblind.com/article/preparing-for- interviews-w...](https://www.teamblind.com/article/preparing-for-interviews- wPkyC8nU)

[https://www.teamblind.com/article/AMA---How-I-got- multiple-o...](https://www.teamblind.com/article/AMA---How-I-got-multiple- offers-from-FAANG-and-Tier-1-companies-zwYyBPF7)</comment>


Ask HN: What's the best way to relax before sleep after coding hobby projects? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Personally, it helps me relax if write I down everything that's on my mind at the end of the coding session.

I have found it frees me from thinking further about the project, and it also helps me achieve better productivity since I can pretty much recover my previous thought process when I start my next session.

<comment><USER3> I've heard other successful people do this to, not in writing but just mentally going through the day and assessing how good/bad the events of the day went. It gives closure and makes it easier to drop them from the conscious mind. This was also what the methodology in Getting Things Done was mostly about.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do you manage your sleep schedule? - <AUTHOR> I've never needed to wake up early before at my old job but at my new one I need to start waking up at 7am. How do you manage to shift your sleep schedule? <comment><USER2> This android app helps me a lot: [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.urbandroid...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.urbandroid.sleep.full.key&hl=en)

It will tell you when you should go to bed to wake up easily at a certain hour. There are lots of similar apps for fitness devices and smartwatches, too.

</comment><comment><USER3> Honestly the only way to do it is to make yourself wake up when you need to wake up. You deal with sleep deprivation for a few days until you "learn" to fall asleep when you need to.

A lot of experts suggest waking up at close to the same time every day (in other words, also on weekends) to help manage a proper sleep schedule. I can say it works for me!</comment>


Help me Choose: Application devlopment or Low level system programming. - <AUTHOR>

I know a bit of stand alone application devlopment using c++,c etc. I have got 2 new offers one is the same application dev using c++,sql and it would be web based (and the money is good)and the other job offer is firmware devlopment from a chip making company(money is not so good). I am unable to deceide which one to go for, as both seem's to be attractive in terms of learning curve. I need some expert advice which will help me choose a better option , which will help me secure my future in terms of both nice work and good money :). I have confidence which ever I will choose I will do good in that. But help me to choose one. <comment><USER2> Congragulations again.I'am a beginner c programmer and i don't intend to learn anything other than c and c++.I'am crazy about low level coding like firmware and device driver development.If i was in your shoes i would go for the other one,no matter the pay is low.[not that i'am rich!!]

</comment><comment><USER3> Congrats on your offer! Personally, I would chose the Firmware one because it will add a new skill set to your resume. The high-level software job sounds like just another job (in the context of your resume). The difference in pay is an important matter which only you can decide.</comment>


Is the Drive for Success Making Our Children Sick? - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/03/opinion/sunday/is-the-drive-for-success-making-our-children-sick.html <comment><USER2> Many of the posts have to do with the expectations of business, society, etc. Maybe we parents have something to do with it too.

I should be happy. I'm educated, have interesting and rewarding work to do, have a roof over my head, and get to play music on the side. I've got two great kids, who are both smarter than me. What's wrong with that? Why should I be neurotic about success? Why should push myself and my kids harder than I was pushed? And make no mistake, I was pushed.

Because I can see that my class -- the middle class -- is vanishing, so the expectations of my generation are no longer valid. Get an OK degree in _something worthwhile_ and work hard. Gone. I literally followed exactly the same education and career path as my father. That's gone.

We don't know what the future expectations will be, so we aim as high as possible. I don't know if this is a good thing, but it seems like what's happening. Not to mention, I grew up in a family culture that held education to be one of the highest values, so we were inclined to be demanding about education even before all hell broke loose.

Another thing I've noticed is that the school curriculum is more intensive and consuming, but not necessarily more advanced. My kids are ahead of where I was at the same age, in terms of simplistic milestones like Algebra. They have perfect GPA's. I sure as hell didn't. But the curriculum is more superficial and more based on drill work, worksheets, and computer busywork. They write more papers. That's good. Their papers are written to fill out a thing called a _rubric_ , which is a glorified worksheet. That's bad. I recently found a copy of my 12th grade public school math textbook. More than half of the problems are proofs. Today there are no proofs. The proliferation of homework merely gives the _illusion_ of a rigorous curriculum, and robs kids of the time that they could spend learning interesting things or just having fun. I learned things like programming and electronics while in high school, _during the time when I was not doing homework._

</rant>

<comment><USER3> I nearly failed out of high school and college because I spent my time on things I found more interesting that classes - computers and journalism for the most part. The skills I learned outside of my studies have been more useful by far than anything I learned in a classroom. I feel like we've pushed people away from the kinds of self directed learning that really stick with a student towards the easily quantifiable "no student left behind" style of learning.

<comment><USER4> I very clearly see this with 2 nephews of mine, both 14. One is in a highly competitive school district in the bay area, the other in a relaxed Texan school. One has no free time and is pushed into this or that class or activity all the time. The other has quite a bit of free time. The second nephew is very creative, street smart and communicative. He also managed to teach himself how to program and make games. The first nephew simply lacks that creativity.

<comment><USER3> I experienced this in my Bot Scout troop of all places - people, kids especially, need room to fail. Having a structured environment, having every day planned out with something new and enriching is great and all - but it doesn't give you room to stretch your own brain. You're stuck following someone else's plan. One could argue this is a major failing of our education system.

(Apologies for the late response)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _Expectations surrounding education have spun out of control. On top of a seven-hour school day, our kids march through hours of nightly homework, daily sports practices and band rehearsals, and weekend-consuming assignments and tournaments. Each activity is seen as a step on the ladder to a top college, an enviable job and a successful life._

Small-print: Successful life not guaranteed. Neither is happiness but we didn't specifically mention that.

For me the depression stemmed from existential nihilism paired with a lack of control of what I had to participate in. It taught me, once I was fully in control of my own time and energy, to be careful with who I spent time with and what I was doing with my time. Not in the _Get-Shit-Done_ sense, more in the _Will This Shit Affect My Zen-State_. Often the answer is _Yes_ so instead I play games, drink beer, read, hang out with my partner and friends and occasionally make cool things.

I won't be remembered in 200 years, few people will, but at least my time was mine.

<comment><USER6> Read HN. Write code. Play games. Eat with family & friends. Repeat. Thank you, universe.

<comment><USER7> This also describes my current situation almost exactly, and generally I am pretty happy with things. I know that these are the things that make me happy and I try to keep them in balance.

Sometimes though there are some nagging doubts that creep in. I worry that the balance I'm comfortable with doesn't quite line up with what society seems to expect, or at least idealize. Sometimes I feel like I "should" be doing more, but whenever I try to push myself harder I just end up expending a lot of energy spinning my wheels. I worry that something unforeseen and external could pop up and disrupt my current situation, or at least make it unmaintainable. I guess that's life though - adapt and enjoy.

<comment><USER6> _I worry that something unforeseen and external could pop up and disrupt my current situation_

When the situation changes, I'll live as the situation has changed.

I know one day it will happen, that is why _now is the time_ to live life _as it is now_ , or later I'll regret why I didn't take the time to enjoy what I have now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I can't help but feel like this is the inevitable conclusion for a society that's obsessed with working and financial success. It could be an interesting premise to explore.

When a number of employers and the government don't value ensuring a healthy work/life balance, or even employee's health, how do you keep that same behavior out of the minds of people running school systems and classrooms? How do you ensure you create a school environment where children and adolescents don't experience burn out when the working world they are prepped for embraces and/or encourages it?

It seems to me that the more we ask employees to work long hours or in crunch mode, the more we're asking our children to do the same... just indirectly.

<comment><USER9> The reason the system wants you to work hard is because they get a share of your labour for every part you are successful above subsistence.

They get this through debt issuance, primarily via land prices. Fiat money costs absolutely zero to produce, they give it out freely and in return you pledge to give part of your labour for 30 years.

If land prices were far lower we'd all be working 3 or 4 days a week. Employers wouldn't have enough workers. They'd be paying you most of the value you produce as they bid for you against other firms. And you might not work for them because you no longer have to spend most of your labour on banker tribute for the right to exist.

 __Land value tax __is the answer. It would replace income tax, removing the regressive tax on labour and punishing economic rentiers.

I hope for the sake of my kids we can win this one.

[http://www.henrygeorge.org/pcontents.htm](http://www.henrygeorge.org/pcontents.htm)

When people hear about LVT their immediate reaction is "another tax". Realise that it would replace income tax (or at least significantly reduce it at the lower end) and also it would reduce the massive tax via land price ramping.

Right now the banks are getting our tax instead of it being ploughed back into the state, via debt issuance. And producing _nothing_ of value for it.

<comment><USER10> The land thing is crazy. Buying at the right time means you get paid to live in your house. Then when you sell, they charge you capital gains so you can't buy the same house back with the money you just got.

The other thing that's crazy is how ridiculously cheap the same stuff is in countries with lower land prices, like South East Asia. A nice apartment with a pool on the beach is 1/10 the price of San Francisco. The food is cheaper, services are cheaper, etc ,etc. Meanwhile, people living in South Eat Asia running online businesses can make the same amount of money in the American economy. The manufacturing thing is even more mind blowing. The cost to manufacture in a developed country vs China is on the order of 20x cheaper. When Big Box stores like Ikea open in China they struggle because they can't charge western premiums for the stuff they're selling because of domestic competition and they have to lower prices by 50%[1]. That would be totally impossible in a developed countries!

Someone should go through the whole cost structure of a developing country manufacturing operation and figure out the reason they are so cheap. My hunch is it would come down to incredibly cheap food, provided by incredibly cheap land prices forming a foundation for incredibly cheap everything else. Garlic growers in the California central valley say that the price that the Garlic gets delivered packed and shipped at the grocery store from China is less than what it costs them to grow it before harvesting.[2]

[1].[http://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/1300942/ikea-last- cra...](http://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/1300942/ikea-last-cracks-china- market-success-has-meant-adapting-local-ways?page=all) [2].[http://www.wbur.org/npr/11613477](http://www.wbur.org/npr/11613477)

<comment><USER9> Prices are set by credit. When productivity rises in these countries significantly above subsistence level the bankers will come in to claim the productivity gains.

You can't steal from people on the breadline. Once they are above this you can by selling their own futures back to them (and dismantling the future for their kids).

Prices are set by credit. It's the banks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> xkcd-sucks Based on experiences with highschool reunions and with hard-drug dealers, I feel like children whose lives are "optimized for success" often end up pissing away their "potential," while the second-tier/nice-but-dull children end up having personally fulfilling, materially successful lives. Probably this observation reflects nothing more than a bunch of named fallacies.

<comment><USER11> I had to become a failure in the eyes of my parents before I ever started to succeed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> It is not just the drive for success; it is the entire culture in general. The system is built to reduce happiness, because a happy and content person has less impetus to contribute to the economy. This is actually very intentional; see for example Alan Greenspan's speech to Congress: when he was questioned about job insecurity among the population, he replied that it was a good thing because it made people work harder.

On the other hand, the ideal person for the economy (on average, forgetting outliers like inventors) is a psychopath with a penchant for conspicuous consumption. Such a person is geographically mobile, able to dedicate his life to attaining wealth and power, and is also incapable of happiness. The normal among us, unfortunately, have to try live up to that ideal. Therefore, you see people spending very little time with their families, trying to earn more and more just to satisfy their need to consume. That is stressful! This is a form of mental sickness.

YES. The system we live in is sick.

</comment><comment><USER13> Well, gee, I don't know! What part of "sit in this room for 8 hours a day until we cut the umbilical cord, then get a job and contribute to society so that you can afford to live and maybe retire one day. because otherwise you are human garbage." sounds like it supports mental health? How many people will quickly blame social media, or _adults paying too much attention to children 's emotional needs_ for ruining our children when it's our toxic social structures that are doing it?

Oh, oh! I know. These kids are just _too coddled_ these days. If they would just grow _thicker skin_ they wouldn't be so _severely depressed and constantly anxious_. It's not as if what ails society hurts the most vulnerable and malleable of us first and most.

The way society treats children like raw materials pushed through a factory until they can be extruded as adults is horrifying.

<comment><USER14> >What part of "sit in this room for 8 hours a day until we cut the umbilical cord, then get a job and contribute to society so that you can afford to live and maybe retire one day. because otherwise you are human garbage."

I think the expectation that "people should be good to me just because I was born" lies at the root of much distress. Reality can be harsh: if you don't have anything to offer them, most people don't care much about you.

Maybe this is a terrible failing on the part of society, but from a pragmatic perspective it's much easier to change one's viewpoint than to change society. It can be surprisingly liberating to not expect anything from the world.

<comment><USER13> > I think the expectation that "people should be good to me just because I was > born" lies at the root of much distress. Reality can be harsh: if you don't > have anything to offer them, most people don't care much about you.

I think your first sentence is either logically vacuous or a sneaky way to disregard someone's emotions: Either you are stating that "feeling mistreated is the same as existing and feeling mistreated" or your clause "just because I was born" is putting words in this abstract person's mouth: "I feel mistreated but I am unjustified in feeling mistreated."

Like, your ideas are logically consistent: If you don't feel mistreated then you don't feel mistreated. If you can just stop feeling mistreated then you will be liberated from feeling mistreated. It completely sidesteps the issue: People feel mistreated for a reason.

Why not apply this logic to everything? "Just because I was born, people shouldn't saw off my leg at the knee". The gall of such entitlement! If only one adjusted to the viewpoint that their leg should be sawed off at the knee, they would have a much easier time! Does it sound absurd because I am exaggerating? I'm not really exaggerating that much: depression and anxiety can hurt so much that they drive people to _kill themselves_. How could such illness be anything but agonizing?

You call it reality, but it is not indifferent and impersonal like disease or a storm that sweeps one's home away: We are talking about people. People are intelligible to people. People are answerable people. People interacting with people changes the way people interact with people.

<comment><USER14> >Like, your ideas are logically consistent: If you don't feel mistreated then you don't feel mistreated. If you can just stop feeling mistreated then you will be liberated from feeling mistreated. It completely sidesteps the issue: People feel mistreated for a reason.

Feeling mistreated isn't a feeling; feeling bad is a feeling. We feel bad when we perceive something we interpret as bad happening to us. If we didn't perceive that action as bad, as "mistreating", then we wouldn't feel bad about it.

This is hardly a new idea; philosophical traditions like Buddhism and Stoicism are bad around the idea what what causes suffering is our perceptions of the world, and by changing how we perceive things (making fewer value judgements) we can increase our happiness with the world.

>You call it reality, but it is not indifferent and impersonal like disease or a storm that sweeps one's home away: We are talking about people. People are intelligible to people. People are answerable people. People interacting with people changes the way people interact with people.

It doesn't matter whether it's a natural disaster or people causing the issue: the point is that if it's not something that can easily be changed, getting emotional about changing it won't lead to a happy state of mind.

>Why not apply this logic to everything? "Just because I was born, people shouldn't saw off my leg at the knee". The gall of such entitlement.

If someone saws your leg off at the knee and there's nothing you can do about it, you'll have a less miserable time if you just accept it and move on than if you remain bitter about it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I've been reading these sorts of articles for nearly 10 or 11 years now, and it's always been from the same people - the NBC, NPR, NYTimes reading upper- middle class LAC graduates who send their kids to top universities. These sorts of attitudes were unheard of when I was in middle and elementary school, and existed but shunned in my high school. Granted, I did not go to the most competitive high school in the state, but I do often wonder how well these sorts of articles actually translate to the vast majority of students and families who go to places like NC State, where you do not need any real extracurricular involvement to get in.

</comment><comment><USER16> The word "Asian" does not appear in the article.

The subtext is that the elite is concerned that traditional selection measures like grades & test scores have become totally game-able via a combination of sheer hourly input & collusion / cheating amongst certain subpopulations. This causes their kids to be outcompeted for very limited slots at elite institutions (even more limited due to massive subsidies to push people into the higher ed system, general population growth, and a desire to limit enrolment to preserve the social capital benefits of truly elite institutions).

Naturally there is pressure for those measures to be changed. Whether their characterisation of what's happening is correct is debatable, but that's where a good amount the pressure comes from.

<comment><USER13> > We think of this as a problem only of the urban and suburban elite, but in > traveling the country to report on this issue, I have seen that this stress > has a powerful effect on children across the socioeconomic spectrum.

I didn't read your subtext in the article. I'm not convinced it accounts for very much. Also, Asian Americans make up 5% of the population. What do you think "Asian" has to do with the topic of this text?

<comment><USER16> If it were explicit, it wouldn't be "sub" text. You really do need to know a bit of context about the state of high school & higher ed admissions before the phenomenon they talk about makes sense. The NYT is kind of notorious for running editorials that only make sense as far as why they would be running, and at this particular time, if you have these pieces of information.

Stanford is 1/4 Asian, plus another 9% "international". UC Berkeley is about 40%, plus another 10% international. And as I said, it's about competition for the elite slots at those and similar places. Look at, eg, the student body composition at very "hardcore", high stress schools like Thomas Jefferson HS, or Gunn HS (recent subject of [http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Why-are- Palo-Alto-s-ki...](http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Why-are-Palo-Alto-s- kids-killing-themselves-6270854.php) ).

The parents of students in that kind of environment are the intended target of this editorial. It provides them with a coordination point.

<comment><USER17> I'm not sure what you're trying to imply, speaking of subtext. Are you saying that Asians ("certain subpopulations") actually are helping each other cheat? Or just that the elites think Asians are cheating? And, in either case, the elites want to address the problem of Asian working harder than their kids by encouraging all kids, presumably including their own, to work less?

Either way, I don't see an argument against the article's main thrust, namely "working children into depression, anxiety, and burnout is bad."

<comment><USER18> the answer to your questions:

yes, yes, and yes.

but there is one more factor:

Asians have way higher IQs than whites.

<comment><USER17> Okay. So your root argument is...completely incoherent? Whatever works for you, I guess.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'm late to the discussion, but my kids go/went to Irvington.

What the article does not mention, which I feel is material to the content, is that 70% of the students at Irvington are Asian, and most of those have immigrant parents. The majority of those parents work in technical fields and have advanced degrees in science and technology. This is material in my opinion, because the demographics of Irvington do not represent the demographics of the US, which readers may not realize.

</comment><comment><USER20> Notions of "success" often include no consideration whatsoever of happiness or general contentment with life.

We moved to one of the top ISDs in Texas years ago, ended up pulling our kids out and home-schooling. It was a hyper competitive, near-toxic environment. No thanks.

I have found the recipe for well-being to be pretty simple: good health, work I enjoy, good relationships, community, time to be quiet. Don't need much else, imo.

</comment><comment><USER21> I wonder if this is as causal as people might think.

The Scandinavian countries are known for their extremely lax culture especially when it comes to child education, yet same discussions are present there.

Being poor is also making you sick. I wonder if it's more to do with our interpretation of sickness than with any actual change. I would still expect our kids to grow older than we ever where, but sure it doesn't mean they will be happy.

</comment><comment><USER22> Success can mean different things to different people. Nowadays, most of us just implicitly default to career as being the source of success. We should be encouraging students to practice more self-reflection on their personal values and what it means to be successful. Maybe it's rare that a high school student would have that level of self-awareness, but I think relaxing the workload is only a stop gap solution.

There will always be ways for students to stress and work hard to get a leg up in the admission process. I think much of the stress is not from the workload, but from comparison with peers. Most of us are taught not to compare ourselves to others, but in todays competitive world, how can you not? I think if we help students spend genuine time in meditation and reflecting on what's meaningful to them, it would greatly help reduce social comparison and consequently stress. Of course, a course like this would be difficult to standardize...

</comment><comment><USER23> "hours of nightly homework, daily sports practice and band rehearsal..."

Maybe adults should stop telling teenagers that their performance in these things matters that much? Sports / Music are great if you enjoy them, and learning the high school curriculum is important, but outside of the top 1%, there's little reason to compete in these tournaments.

<comment><USER24> The theory is that participation in sports and music will be the crucial factor that gets those teenagers admitted to elite colleges. There's some truth to that, but probably not quite as much as many parents seem to think.

<comment><USER25> There is a common misconception that elite schools want "well rounded" students. In fact they want well rounded _student bodies_ , composed of extremely lopsided students who excel in individual domains. It is far better for your child to be a world-class swimmer, for example, than for her to be a participant in swimming, tennis, student government, the school newspaper, etc. Parents urge their kids to take up as many extracurriculars as possible in the hopes of creating the impression of well-roundedness. Students resent it, but they bear the burden because they believe their parents know what they're talking about.

Add to this the unfortunate reality that not everyone gets to be world-class at something. What do you do if you don't excel at any one thing? Work your ass off to _create the impression_ of excelling at as many things as possible. It's a shitty treadmill to run.

But what's the alternative? Excellent grades are a given; they are basically table stakes. So above and beyond great grades, you need _some_ sort of extracurricular presence to burnish your college applications. But your chances of admission are basically a crapshoot at that point, so you pile on the extracurriculars in an attempt to get more darts to throw at the board.

<comment><USER26> I couldn't have said it better myself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> It makes adults sick doesn't it? Why not children?

I wonder what a society without that "drive for success" would look like. My first thought, maybe a little sad, is if everyone else didn't have that drive I might actually succeed.

<comment><USER28> Your sad thought is interesting because it suggests that children are being overworked in zero-sum games, ultimately gaining nothing, because all the other children are overworked too.

<comment><USER29> Similar to Prisoner's dilemma. We each can either over-work our kids or not. If nobody over-works their kids, everyone wins (nobody has an advantage, we create a better, less competitive society). If you over-work your kid and I don't, then my kid loses and your kid wins. If I over-work my kid and you don't, then my kid wins and your kid loses. Therefore, everyone chooses to over-work their kids, and everyone loses (nobody has a relative advantage, yet everyone's over-worked, over-competitive, and stressed to the limit).

<comment><USER30> Except this is not a zero-sum game. Some of the waste created by this machine of competitiveness is our constantly improving standard of living. In fact, I'd say that this sentiment(that all your hard work and stress leads to nothing) pretty much exemplifies the middle class. The kids from poor families don't want to stay at the same relative advantage, they want to do better than you so they can lift themselves out of poverty. Perhaps what you're sensing is the pressure from a large poor class trying to improve their living conditions by competing with the middle class. C'est la vie.

<comment><USER28> I find it hard to believe that forcing kids into violin lessons because it will help them get into college has any kind of positive externalities.

I think that those kind of unproductive signaling games are done more by the middle and upper classes, always running as fast as they can to stay in the same place.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I am not a doctor but I suspect that it has a lot to do with our physical limitations.

I think a big impacting factor from the adjustments made to the program is the fact they created study groups.

Many students are socially isolated, that is by itself something that creates anxiety and depression. Being in a competitive environment without social supports doesn't help.

Human beings are social animals, we need physical touch and proximity to survive. Even just having a conversation with friends and family is something that generally relaxes people. Sure, it may not always be the case but if you ask me, human beings have evolved in a way that we have become very dependent on eachother's physical presence for our mental/physical well being.

</comment><comment><USER32> HA.

How could school not be stressful.

Same rooms. Every Day. Same kids. Same motivations. Same tapping-of-the-foot. Same stagnation. Same restlessness. Same mockery. Same shame.

'Stupid fucking faggot retard loser fatty useless cunt.'

Try living with that cacophonous litany for 8 hours daily and not coming out a little fucked.

Absolutely a first world problem but I would have 100% more enjoyed an apprenticeship or something similar.

I hated myself all throughout high-school. Hated. Cogitated on my own self termination regularly.

Today, working on my own, I feel so much better; not having to actively think about the various groups I have to conform to or rules I have to follow... Extremely liberating.

I just want to freelance, actively contribute, subsist, and die.

I'm not a piece of shit for wanting that.

<comment><USER33> > Absolutely a first world problem

I don't understand this statement.

Doesn't this mean it's a problem every developing nation will eventually face?

Wouldn't it be nice to have already figured out a solution by then?

<comment><USER32> Yeah it would be great to have nuclear fusion figured out as well wouldn't it...?

What was your point here?

<comment><USER34> Probably that dismissing real problems with the pejorative "first world problem" is counterproductive, especially when we do it to ourselves.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I'm a little late to this discussion, but i'm a senior at irvington right now, and this article is bs. No teacher gives only 20 min of homework a night, and all of my non-ap teachers have still given me homework on the weekends this year.

</comment><comment><USER36> I'd take all this as less of an opportunity to complain about our own growth, and more of an opportunity for everyone who has or will choose to procreate to think deeply about raising your own children, and to do better for them than has been done for yourself.

</comment><comment><USER37> To quote Mark Twain "I would not let school interfare with my education" (pun intended)

</comment><comment><USER38> I wonder how this conflicts with the fact that the difficulty of studies especially in exact science in primary education has been steadily declining even math teachers have difficulties solving highschool math problems from the 70s these days.

<comment><USER28> The excessive breadth comes at the expense of depth.

<comment><USER38> Well the use of scientific and even graphical calculators didn't help for sure. No one memorized cosin tables anymore and it's not like it was hard. Sure it allows you to give out problems to students with wierd angles but working at 15 deg incriments and giving harder problems like they did in the past is far better in my mind. I did some tutoring for high school and college students like 10 years ago, even grade a students that picked the hardest math difficulty (you can choose 3 difficulties the hardest is pretty much a requirement for math oriented degrees later in uni) didn't knew what a logarithm was beyond a key on their calculator, same goes for other basic functions like factorials. They were petty much parroting and operating a calculator rather than doing math.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Yes.</comment>