Magnet Ban Cleared - <AUTHOR> http://zenmagnets.com/magnet-ban-cleared-game-on/?mc_cid=c367632cce&mc_eid=398b89c080 <comment><USER2> Note: you're making a mistake if you read this story and think "well, at least the system basically works, and the right decision was finally made". The maker of ZenMagnets was tirelessly and _bizarrely_ passionate about overturning this ruling. For every entrepreneur that struggles through a hurdle like this, a dozen more wisely choose to silently forgo developing a similar a product.

<comment><USER3> For every entrepreneur that struggles through a hurdle like this, how many personal injuries and environmental harms are avoided? You make it sound like regulation exists for no reason or has no upside, but that's a very money- centric POV. From a _human_ POV it's often just as well that some of those startups didn't get off the ground. How many cases of food poisoning or malnutrition were avoided because a dozen Soylent-alikes were - rightly! - told their products were unfit for human consumption?

<comment><USER4> You're committing a critical fallacy here, you're making it sound like this has to be a "virtually non-existent regulation" situation or a circumstance like Zen Magnets went through.

The CPSC and related regulators CAN regulate dangerous stuff without making idiotic wars on toy magnets that undermine their entire existence. Seriously. They can fulfill their entire function, standards of error for mistakes included, without EVER committing such heinously overregulatory acts as this - in fact, it's important to their continued existence that they DO NOT overregulate this badly (because when they do, their opponents gain substantial ammunition to eventually disband/defang them).

<comment><USER5> They aren't toy magnets, which is part of the problem: people have internalized that these are toys, which leads to hazardous situations. An educational campaign is surely something that needs to happen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm glad these are available for adults but the danger to children and pets is very real.

A kid eats a magnet waits a while then eats another one. The magnets are strong enough to find each other through the intestinal walls. The result is pretty horrifying, so be careful with strong magnetic toys.

<comment><USER7> No doubt the injuries are horrifying, but so are fireworks-related burns and gunshot wounds. It's hard to imagine a world where neodymium magnets should be more regulated than fireworks and firearms, but that's the world we lived in before the 10th circuit vacated the CPSC's regulatory overreach.

<comment><USER8> Those examples are obviously dangerous while magnets are not. A parent is going to leave their 2 year old playing with a loaded gun, but they might leave them to play with a bunch of magnets without realizing the danger.

<comment><USER9> Every box of neodymium magnets I've ever bought has a big warning on it saying 'DANGER - do not swallow' with an explanation of why. It's not the manufacturer's fault if some people refuse to pay attention to clearly stated warnings. It's those parents which are putting their children at risk, not the manufacturers.

 _Those examples are obviously dangerous while magnets are not. A parent is [not] going to leave their 2 year old playing with a loaded gun [...]_

I amended your quote as you seem to have omitted a word by mistake. However, I have to disagree - lots of small children die or shoot others every year because the parents _do_ allow them to play with a loaded gun. Sure they don't hand them a gun and say 'have fun Timmy,' but it's quite common for people to leave the gun accessible to children who then play with it. I don't recall how many kids die this way each year but it's far from zero. Given the wide popularity of guns, I'd think a lot more 2 year olds get shot than die or suffer injury from eating magnets.

[http://www.gunviolencearchive.org/reports/child-injured- kill...](http://www.gunviolencearchive.org/reports/child-injured-killed) has pretty up-to-date raw data for anyone interested in analyzing this.

<comment><USER8> You are right I omitted a word there, but it is too late to edit my post.

>they don't hand them a gun and say 'have fun Timmy,'

That is the distinction. These things are marketed as toys. The expectation is that they will be played with and probably by kids.

Regarding the warnings, almost every kids toy has these type of warnings. It is easy to get desensitized to them. A parent should still be aware of them, but it also means that in practice these type of warnings might not be enough to stop potential problems.

And for the record, I'm not saying these should be outlawed or anything. Just that the comparison to guns and fireworks or using those as a justification for a lack of regulation is silly due to the marketing and perceived danger of all three products.

<comment><USER9> _almost every kids toy has these type of warnings. It is easy to get desensitized to them_

I agree and think it's a mistake to put on so many warnings that tired parents, or stupid parents, or parents who can't read English well, or whoever, become so overwhelmed by the warning information that they just ignore it. But it's also a mistake to say 'well people don't pay attention to warnings so we'd better just take the product off the market.' That's just an absurd over-reaction.

'You can have fun with this' =/= 'Safe for kids to use unsupervised.' Or more bluntly 'fun' =/= 'carefree.' Lots of enjoyable things are also dangerous. At some point liability accrues to the person who willingly engages in the dangerous activity; manufacturers should clearly inform consumers about the existence of risk but should not be expected to actively insulate them from it under every circumstance.

 _And for the record, I 'm not saying these should be outlawed or anything. Just that the comparison to guns and fireworks or using those as a justification for a lack of regulation is silly due to the marketing and perceived danger of all three products._

I don't think so. Guns and fireworks are often marketed irresponsibly from what I've seen, and while responsibility is a matter of opinion it's easy to find advertising materials suggesting that guns and fireworks can be employed for fun, so I hope you'd agree that that's a fact. It's definitely a fact that while in pursuit of said fun, people do stupid shit with guns and fireworks on a regular basis - every year a few people kill them,selves on the 4th of July doing some idiotic firework stunt, and the toll from gun accidents is higher again.

So look, while I agree that magnets are not as obviously dangerous as guns or fireworks in that they don't involve explosions, they're still dangerous and anyone over the age of about 12 who doesn't appreciate this is rather ignorant. When the magnets are sold with a large warning saying 'this is dangerous because you could die' and people choose to ignore than, then they're being _willfully_ ignorant.

I don't understand the compulsion to make excuses for willful ignorance. Most households have several dangerous chemicals in a cupboard under the kitchen sink and it's well understood that you shouldn't let kids drink drain cleaner etc. etc. Why are parents expected to exercise reasonable judgement where firearms, incendiaries, chemicals and so on are concerned but the same level of warning isn't considered sufficient for some other products? It's a self- defeating position.

<comment><USER10> Simple.

In America, you're not expected or even allowed to be completely responsible for your child's safety. You're told what to do and what not to do (no matter your own educated experience)... the state knows best, don't you know?

<comment><USER9> I don't think these kind of simplistic characterizations are the least bit helpful. This particular regulatory outcome is atypical, and furthermore you're ignoring the rather significant body of tort law and its impact on theories of legal liability, even though the state is rarely a party to product liability lawsuits.

More and more, every time I hear the word 'simple' it's followed by some irrational bullshit. It's becoming my least favorite word.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Interesting blog post on the psychology surrounding the ban/regulation of buckyballs, NYC soda size limits:

The Nanny State Didn't Show Up, You Hired It [http://web.archive.org/web/20150315003211/http://thelastpsyc...](http://web.archive.org/web/20150315003211/http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2012/09/the_nanny_state_didnt_show_up.html)

</comment><comment><USER12> Seems to be having issues. Google cache: [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:p6SCH51...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:p6SCH51MG- EJ:zenmagnets.com/magnet-ban-cleared-game-on/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk)

</comment><comment><USER13> This was an amazingly stupid action on the CPSC's part to begin with. Are magnets often considered a "toy"? Yes. Can magnets actually cause harm? Yes. But this is true of almost anything in our world.

There are a lot more dangerous things that are a lot less regulated than a wholesale ban. The CPSC needs, apparently, a much strong leash put on it. We need a government, not a nanny state.

<comment><USER14> Much like how Kinder Eggs are banned in the US but not Canada (and many other countries). Besides firearms, the US is in many ways as regulation and control obsessed as many state-heavy European countries - probably much more so given the size and capitalization of the various governments and agencies, plus the breadth of industry there - despite having the image of being a place of liberty and freedom.

One of the problems is the hysteria of the press whenever anything close to bad happens. It's created a culture of hyper critical control systems over defaulting to trusting the common sense of individuals, the ability of information to disseminate to educate peoplel (warning labels, stories of people getting hurt educating people on what not to do, etc), and the ability of parents.

<comment><USER15> I read through the archives of some Russian world traveller's extensive photo blog a couple years back, and I remember him commenting more than once that one of the most striking things about the US is how many posted regulations and notices there are compared to other countries. None but a couple other countries (I think Australia was one) were similar to the US in that regard.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The idea that the agency banning the magnet balls is ignoring much more dangerous issues such as pools or balloons is interesting - I can think of many examples of disproportionate government enforcement. For example, huge sentencing for computer crimes that under the right circumstances can be more punitive than what a child molester or violent assaulter could expect, or the entirety of the insane war on drugs. I'd be curious to see what kind of "balancing" could be done on the legal system.

<comment><USER17> I'm in no way supporting the complete ban by the CSPC, but I also think it's unfair to compare a toy that was on the market for a relatively short period of time with relatively small market penetration to a balloon which you can find in most American homes (with children) at some point during a given year. That's like comparing the number of railgun deaths per year to the number of handgun deaths. You can't be killed by something you never had access to in the first place.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I thought that Buckyballs were a cool novelty when I received them as a gift a few years ago (and it seems like Zen Magnets makes pretty much the same thing). Once I opened and played with them once, they just weren't that interesting anymore, where I thought they'd feel more like Legos. Kudos to them for winning, but I probably won't buy another new set.

<comment><USER19> If you want magnet toys that feel more like legos, check out magformers, magnatiles or tegu.

I think magformers are the best toy we own.

<comment><USER20> My 4 year old loves her magformers sets, she's still at that age where she needs a lot of assistance with them, but she likes building "houses" and other structures to use with her small figurines.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Kinder surprises still banned though?

<comment><USER22> It costs money to fight it, but Zen Magnets will probably make a killing because of this. Maybe the Kinder surprise company will be more interested in fighting the ban now.

<comment><USER23> I think the Kinder-surprise company[0] has a lot more money than the magnet- surprise company, and my first guess would be that they don't think the liability risk is worth the effort.

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Posts about him fighting on tirelessly. I look to them like the NewEgg of Patent trolls. He stood up and fought back a group that seldom has cases turn on them.

Good for him!

</comment><comment><USER25> I honestly had no idea this was even an issue. I purchased some outrageously strong magnets from Lee Valley for some wood working projects.

You don't want to get them stuck between your fingers, but besides keeping them away from visa cards and rotating hard drives, I didn't think much more about the potential dangers. Thank goodness the negligence of my government didn't cause me all manner of danger (kidding).

<comment><USER26> Strong magnets are incredibly dangerous; about as dangerous as a table saw I'd say. You can know what you're doing but still get hurt. All it takes is one stray nail under the table to put a damper on your ability to grab a cup in the future.

I bought tiny neodymiums at a store once. They're about 3/4 the size of a dime. You have to pry them off the fridge, they can hang pictures on the wall if a nail is hiding behind, and I _have_ hurt myself with them before. It's easy, and happens before you can blink.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Wow, they claimed that they reduced their prices by 10%. What I'm seeing on the website is a 100% price increase. Talk about price gouging, and what a way to be reintroduced to the general market!

2015 Zen Booster Set: 216 Zen Magnets. 6 Spares, .5mm PVC Card and Velvet Sack.

Was: $32.98

Now: $65.96

<comment><USER28> Those are the prices from when they were selling the NOS and buybacks. This is how they stayed in business through the court rulings. They couldn't import new stock so they were selling what they had warehoused pre-ban and what they could buyback from previous customers.

The 2017 prices are published (I'm guessing the ban doesn't end immediately) and they are indeed 10% cheaper.

[edit] I'm not affiliated with zen magnets in any way, but I bought their largest set available pre-ban and have been following their progress on this ever since. They are an extremely reputable company and I highly recommend them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Your logic is the 'but think of the children!' fallacy. Please re-examine and re-submit.

<comment><USER30> We detached this subthread from [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13056942](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13056942) and marked it off-topic.</comment></comment>


Unroll.me to close to EU users saying it can't comply with GDPR - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2018/05/05/unroll-me-to-close-to-eu-users-saying-it-cant-comply-with-gdpr/ <comment><USER3> Hadn't heard of unroll.me prior to this, but it looks like nothing of value was lost. GDPR doing its job and it hasn't even come into (en)force(ment) yet!

Do they do anything that a quick grep for "Unsubscribe" can't? I guess the digests are somewhat niche

<comment><USER4> Sorry, but GDPR came into force in 2016.

<comment><USER5> That's when they passed the bill I think, but as the article says:

> [...] is to stop serving users in Europe ahead of a new data protection > enforcement regime incoming under GDPR, which applies from May 25.

<comment><USER4> Nope, GDPR was adopted in 2016. It just hasn't been enforced for the last two years in order to give companies time to transition.

<comment><USER6> It hasn't been enforced because the law itself says it shall apply from the 25th of may 2018 (art.99 par. 2).

So no, the GDPR is not in force yet.

<comment><USER4> [https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=OJ:...](https://eur- lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=OJ:L:2016:119:FULL&from=EN)

> This Regulation shall enter into force on the twentieth day following that > of its publication in the Official Journal of the European Union.

"This Regulation" referring to the General Data Protection Regulation. The date on the journal is 4 May 2016, so GDPR entered into force on 20 May 2016.

<comment><USER7> To quote the whole thing:

      Article 99

      Entry into force and application

      1.   This Regulation shall enter into force on the twentieth day following that
      of its publication in the Official Journal of the European Union.

      2.   It shall apply from 25 May 2018.

      This Regulation shall be binding in its entirety and directly
      applicable in all Member States.

      Done at Brussels, 27 April 2016.

I guess you're arguing about a fine point and being downvoted for pedantry, then?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I am increasingly tempted to VPN everything through Europe, and maintain a token postal address there.

<comment><USER9> I don't mean this sarcastically, but why? It sounds like this impacts users that willingly signed up for this service. Why would you VPN/forward mail through Europe to be locked out of services that you signed up for?

<comment><USER10> Because a company being unable to comply with GDPR is a red flag for how they treat user data. GDPR is written in such a way that you as a company are given freedom to use data if its for business reasons. But you need you need to keep track of it.

Enhanced data protections are a good reason to (by default) be a European.

<comment><USER11> Same with the cookiewall, by the way: if you need a cookie wall, that means you do more than aggregated statistics such as building profiles of individuals. Even if you have accounts, you don't need a cookie wall for a login system. Only if you do tracking. People see it as "govt doesn't understand tech again" but I think in reality, it's the people that completely missed the point here.

<comment><USER12> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=loVjrNFJAik](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=loVjrNFJAik)

The form on the ICO's website is still exactly as absurd today as it was 6 years ago.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm waiting to see what happens in the class action (COOPER v. SLICE TECHNOLOGIES, INC., [https://www.leagle.com/decision/infdco20170920f18](https://www.leagle.com/decision/infdco20170920f18)).

"UnrollMe does not adequately disclose its true business model to users. Instead, UnrollMe disguises itself as an email-management service to mislead users to sign up for the service so that it (and Slice) can access their data."

</comment><comment><USER14> I prodded unroll.me a couple of years ago about their data retention policy. Their answer was sketchy so I ended up not using the service. Unroll.me users irreversibly hand over all of their emails to an unknown entity -- it's crazy to subscribe.

Original thread: [https://twitter.com/elahd/status/575692415132135425](https://twitter.com/elahd/status/575692415132135425)

DMs: [http://imgur.com/H0UABYa](http://imgur.com/H0UABYa)

</comment><comment><USER15> Good, this way we can filter shitty services that don't care about my data but only care about using me as a product when I'm not looking.

<comment><USER16> I'm sure there are still many services operating as "complying" that do in fact only care about the data they can extract from you, eg. Facebook.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> >Put on your best unsurprised face: Unroll.me, a company that has, for years, used the premise of 'free' but not very useful 'email management' services to gain access to people's email inboxes in order to data-mine the contents for competitive intelligence — and controversially flog the gleaned commercial insights to the likes of Uber — is to stop serving users in Europe ahead of a new data protection enforcement regime incoming under GDPR, which applies from May 25. [...]

>"We may share personal information we collect with our parent company, other affiliated companies, and trusted business partners. We also will share personal information with service providers that perform services on our behalf. Our non-affiliated business partners and service providers are not authorized by us to use or disclose the information except as necessary to perform services on our behalf or comply with legal requirements".

If that's going to be the sort of business that the GDPR makes unprofitable and unworkable then I'm very proud to be a European citizen.

<comment><USER18> _If that 's going to be the sort of business that the GDPR makes unprofitable and unworkable then I'm very proud to be a European citizen. _

This _is_ the sort of business that GDPR makes unprofitable and unworkable - but unfortunately it's not the _only_ sort. Normal, everyday services - <USER2> that you might use and enjoy - will also have to close to EU traffic simply to avoid the liability.

At my company, we do nothing nefarious with user data. We have a combined total of a few million visitors per month across a handful of sites. After consultation with experts, we had to make the decision to either spend high six/low seven figures to _hopefully_ comply and buy special liability insurance that would help pay any fines (this law is subject to unique interpretations in 28 distinct countries, so nobody can actually know what "full" compliance is), or simply block EU traffic. We chose the latter, and many thousands of other sites that have no intention of doing anything nefarious with your data will as well.

<comment><USER11> I've heard this sentiment being expressed by at least one person in all of these threads, but you're one of the first that actually mentions having consulted with a lawyer. The thing I keep asking is: what is new? I have yet to hear anything non-trivial which a company suddenly has to do, which wasn't required by any EU country before.

The only new thing seems to be higher fines and aligning laws in all EU countries, rather than having different implementations of roughly the same thing. But if you don't comply with GDPR, odds are that you should never have been able to do business with a lot of European countries. To the best of my knowledge, you should have geoblocked the Netherlands long ago (the only country I know the laws well enough of, to say that there is truly only a small difference between the 2002 WBP and the new GDPR) if you have to close to the EU for GDPR.

<comment><USER18> The biggest 2 issues (at least for non-EU companies) are the extraterritorial reach, and the absurd maximum fines that can indeed be assessed for a first, single violation. Whether or not that is the public's understanding of the law, that is how it is written, and when it comes to enforcement, the letter of the law is the only thing that matters.

So we have a foreign government (to us) that has asserted authority to reach beyond its borders and into our pockets with an absurdly complex regulation, where a single violation would financially destroy the company. Since I don't have $20 million to give to them, and the families of my employees depend on their income for things like food and housing, I have to either carry expensive liability insurance to protect against that, or block EU traffic. For us, and I suspect most other sites on the planet, that's an easy decision to make. I'll take a 5%-10% hit in revenue from the loss of EU traffic and be able to sleep at night knowing that someone in a country I've never been to isn't out there filing documents that have the ability to destroy my and my employees' livelihoods.

I won't go into the minutiae of why it's so easy to violate and why most of the experts we have spoken to agree that being compliant is an uncertain endeavor at best, even if you want to comply, because that would be a very long winded comment. But if you do a Google search, you'll see the gist of the problems.

<comment><USER19> If you don't have offices in the EU, and you don't keep your money in any accounts controlled by EU banks, then why not just refuse to pay the fines?

Might be a good opportunity to make some contacts in the Trump administration too, who will be interested in asserting US sovereignty.

<comment><USER20> And then also say goodbye to any chance of European expansion, ever.

That's a big risk, given the size of Europe and the fact that it the US is your current target demographic, it's not a far stretch to think Europe might be, too.

<comment><USER21> > And then also say goodbye to any chance of European expansion, ever.

Blocking the EU effectively means the same thing, though, because it's announcing to everybody that you're ignoring that market and leaving the door open for companies who can copy your business model but are willing to respect user's privacy. Not to mention the reputation damage from snubbing their privacy laws. The door's still technically open, but it's going to be much more difficult.

I also wonder if this kind of announcement will backfire a bit for these companies. When I see a "We're dropping the EU over GDPR," article, I don't think about how bad the GDPR must be, but instead I wonder what shady activities these companies are doing that makes them unable to comply, and that makes me avoid them.

The general public are pretty clueless on these things (look at the surprise around Facebook lately), but I do feel it'll cost them some users.

<comment><USER22> I don't think big companies will back out of the EU at all. In fact, they now have a big more of a competitive advantage because they have the money and time needed to get GDPR right over a smaller company. And transparency about how they use data will isolate less users, now that they already built their name. I think it will affect smaller companies more whose new innovative product will be tested on the US market first before demand is recognized and then adapted to the EU. Of course it really depends on the regulatory reach of this law.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Judging from the other comments I guess I'm in the vast minority, but I think the fine structure is really bad for small businesses. I'm not a GDPR fan.

<comment><USER24> I think you're making the mistake of thinking the fines mentioned are the minimum fines, when they're the maximum possible fines for the worst repeat deliberate violations.

EU regulators tend not to apply fines for companies making simple mistakes. They do want the companies to come back into compliance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I feel like we're living in the golden age of free personal financial apps - shocking to me how much we care when it comes to protecting our likes but so careless we are to giving third parties logins to our online banking and all balance and transactional data that comes with it

</comment><comment><USER26> I'm no GDPR expert, but wouldn't it apply to data of European citizens even if they're not the customer? Since unroll.me slurps up email, don't they still have to comply with all the rules for data because presumably some of that email data originates from the EU?

<comment><USER27> No, because they're pulling out of the EU market there is no judiciary oversight from the EU of their business, so the rules simply don't apply.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> If there's one good thing that's coming out of stories like this, it's that I (as a non-EU citizen) can avoid companies like this that clearly don't care enough about being good stewards of my personal data.

<comment><USER29> Yes, GDPR really is a force for good.

It is also a bit of a bugger to prepare for (I own a small UK based IT business) but it is a good thing in my opinion.

There are ~0.5 billion EU citizens and GDP is roughly 22% of the world. So it has some clout. The EU as a whole has decided that people's data is important and have come up with some rules about the same. Bear in mind the EU is a very diverse place and getting 28 states to agree on something is akin to cat herding.

I am still in shock about it. I am also very happy about it but it is only a start. Getting FB and Co into line will take a lot longer as will the world getting a decently diversified and mutually compatible, healthy social presence environment working.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Unroll.me's ToS was one of the first I checked in detail and it shocked me how invasive it is. I noped the f* out before I granted access to all my mail.

</comment><comment><USER31> That's great! I hope more companies like these follow their footsteps.

<comment><USER32> I hope so too. Countries that try to regulate Internet don't deserve Internet. I wish more websites had the balls to not give in to every ridiculous law passed around the globe (e.g. Github removing perfectly normal files because Roskomnadzor asked them too [1]).

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_of_GitHub#Russia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_of_GitHub#Russia)

<comment><USER33> This is a basic protection that should have been passed a long time ago, don't try to frame it as "censorship", it was created to give you control over your own personal information.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Everytime you see news of a company" not being able to operate due to" or "shutting down because of" GDPR, the _only_ actual reason is "our business model is unsolicited unrestricted access to, processing of, and selling of personal data."

So sad to see these businesses go (not)

<comment><USER35> Or they are not actually doing anything shady, but the revenue coming in from the EU is not sufficient to justify the increased costs and liabilities.

<comment><USER36> Do you have an example of this? I totally believe this is possible, but every thing I've seen _in practice_ has matched GP's description.

<comment><USER35> There was at least one that landed on the front page this week.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16954306](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16954306)

<comment><USER36> Thanks. Interesting that some folks in the comments say "actually, this site was abusing your data to make money" \- but I don't have a good sense of whether a similar site that didn't use Amazon ads, and either took a small membership fee or was run out of the founder's pocket as a side project, would have things to worry about from GDPR.

On the flip side, does anyone know of side projects or community projects that have said "We chatted with a European lawyer, who said we don't have anything to worry about, and we'll keep doing our thing"? I know Debian is having that chat ([https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel- announce/2018/04/msg00...](https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel- announce/2018/04/msg00012.html) \- and there are some privacy things I think Debian _should_ change, like not keeping people's support emails from years ago public) but I'm curious about projects that are smaller in scope and are basically not trying to hold personal data at all.

<comment><USER37> There also was some online game that did the same, I doubt they had a lot of user data.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I'm curious to know how they enforce the limit on EU users

<comment><USER4> Whatever they are thinking of, I can guarantee that it doesn't work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Score one for GDPR. Between this and the umpteen services forced to purge my address unless I "resubscribe" (when of course I never subscribed in the first place), it has already achieved concrete results. If only the EU could also fix the mess with cookies and VAT, we could say we're finally entering an era of decent lawmaking over the digital space.

</comment><comment><USER40> I suspect this strategy will fail. I'm currently using a VPN with an exit in Germany. But through some sort of geolocation glitch, it's being identified as UAE. So unroll.me doesn't display the warning for EU residents.

Given the chaos around IPv4 assignments, I doubt that only VPN services are affected.

</comment><comment><USER41> So they don't think privacy matters?

<comment><USER5> Selling your privacy / data is 100% of their business. The service they provide is 'free' as in a 'free toolbar' that then steals data off your system.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> That's amazing. I hope more and more companies will forbid the entrance of european users. If at the moment you put your feet on my company you're already making unreasonable demands the most decent thing to do is to put you out and refuse to serve you.

I hope GDPR defenders will understand that if more and more companies adopt this strategy.

</comment><comment><USER43> It won't be missed

</comment><comment><USER44> Excellent. The GDPR is working as intended. Let's see how many other unscrupulous actors will try to pin the blame for their own malicious behavior on the new legislation.

<comment><USER5> Just like Uber circumventing labour laws to beat taxi firms. "EU not good for innovation".

Ehm, no. These laws represent how we want (our data) to be treated. If you're business model can't exist within that legal realm than your business model is one we don't want.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> This is fantastic news, if a company can't behave responsibly with user data, it deserves to go bankrupt. It's like a restaurant saying it can't comply with health regulations. Absolutely unacceptable. If the business model is to exploit and sell personal information, then the world is better off without that company.

<comment><USER45> The only thing I am sad about with this news: Unroll.me is still able to function in the United States.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> So, everyone seems to be celebrating the blow stricken against this seemingly unscrupulous company. Fair enough.

But doesn't anybody else think this has at least some worrying optics of censorship?

Are we going to end up with another great firewall around Europe? And are you sure that only companies which enjoy a consensus as evil will be clawing the outside?

Won't the internet interpret this as damage and route around it?

<comment><USER47> _But doesn 't anybody thinks this has at least some worrying optics of censorship?_

No. No more than I think being able to sell fake medicine is a censorship.

<comment><USER46> I just don't have a great deal of confidence in my own ability to tell the difference between an arbiter who is making good judgments about which medicines are real and someone who is censoring a competitor by adjudicating their medicine as "fake."

In fact, I think I have better instincts about detecting fake medicine than I do about detecting the fake arbiter.

<comment><USER48> Since I like torturing metaphors, let's say that the GDPR was instead a law prohibiting the sale of fake medicine.

What happened in this case is that the Unroll me pill manufacturer announced that they'd not be selling their pills in the EU anymore due to the GDPR.

So, though your concerns remain valid in the general case, in this particular case there could be no shifty arbiter. Unroll me self-assessed and decided that their own pills are fake.

<comment><USER46> In this case, you're probably right.

...but what if you were selling a medicine that you knew worked, that you really believed in, but that you knew was going to be labeled fake by an arbiter in the employ of your competitor (and I think it's not unfair to say that the FDA is, at times, exactly this)?

Might you decide not to spend the money to attempt to achieve compliance?

Don't you think that some well-meaning organizations, knowing that they have powerful, well-connected beasts who wish failure for them, might opt to just stay out of Europe (either initially or always) instead of facing the costs of assuring compliance?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Bill Gates: "I never said '640K should be enough for anybody'" (1996) - <AUTHOR> https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/alt.folklore.computers/mpjS-h4jpD8/9DW_VQVLzpkJ <comment><USER2> This has always annoyed the piss out of me. It wouldn't have been Bill's or Microsoft's call to make, in the first place. The hardware memory map is not set by software.

The 640K limitation derives from the 1MB address space of the IBM PC, and as the name implies, IBM did the hardware design. They did it around a particular Intel chip, which had a 1MB address space. IBM could've put in hardware support for bank switching (as some EMS/XMS add-in cards later did), they could've used a chip with more than 20 address lines, they could've done a lot of things.

But they didn't. IBM wasn't designing a mainframe-killer, they were designing a personal computer. It was competing with 16k and 64k 8-bit machines, and the first IBM PCs shipped with 64k and later 128k of RAM. Using the top 384K for peripherals and allocating 640K for programs must've seemed insanely generous at the time. But whoever made that decision, it was on the hardware side, not anyone at Microsoft.

<comment><USER3> _But whoever made that decision, it was on the hardware side, not anyone at Microsoft._

Bill Gates' famous comment isn't really a decision though. As it's usually cited it's just an opinion - '640Kb should be enough for anyone' means "I don't think any programs will need more than that!". If someone at IBM decided that there should be 640Kb of available RAM for programs it's _believable_ that Bill might have simply been agreeing with them.

The main thing that's annoying about the quote is that it's trotted out as an example of how Bill was wrong, as if being wrong is something terrible that he should be ashamed of decades later. That's nonsense. Being wrong is fine so long as you change your mind when you understand that you are wrong.

<comment><USER4> At one of the Microsoft company meetings in the middle to late 2000s (I recall it was at Safeco Field) he claimed that when IBM was developing the PC he tried to convince them to use an MC68000 instead of the 8088. He said going with the 8088 set the industry back ten years. Assuming he wasn't making the story up, it's hard to imagine him making that quote or even agreeing with it.

<comment><USER5> > He said going with the 8088 set the industry back ten years.

That's what it always felt like as an Amiga user. Not before DOOM there was much I liked on the PC.

Release Amiga 1000: July '85 Release DOOM: December '94

<comment><USER4> Similar story with me. I got an Amiga 1000 and did a fair bit of assembly coding on it, then ended up writing some 16-bit x86 assembly for school later on. Being used to having sixteen 32-bit registers, then all the sudden having to use AX, BX, CX, and DX (and don't forget they all have slightly different purposes!) was like being brutally shoved back into the 80's.

<comment><USER6> Well, history has shown neither RISC nor CISC as actually a better choice, since both models more or less converged to a sort of hybrid design years ago.

<comment><USER7> And what this has to do with Amiga?

<comment><USER6> At a simplistic level, the difference between RISC and CISC processor design boils down to having many registers and reduced instructions, or few registers and extra specialized instructions.

What was being described is going to programming from a RISC-like design processor to a CISC-like design processor, and how they felt constrained after doing so. It likely does feel more constraining (I don't really remember how I felt about it back when I did it, but I also went the other direction, and only in the context of classwork), but in the end, most people are programming a level removed from that anyways.

There used to be quite a lot of arguments about what design was better (IMO mostly fueled by Macs running a RISC processor and Windows running a CISC processor, at least until Apple switched to x86). I find it slightly comical that both designs ended up in a fairly similar place though (with RISC processors adding extra instructions, and CISC processors adding more registers, even if mostly just logical registers).

<comment><USER7> All of them: IBM PC, Amiga and classic Mac were using CISC CPUs...

<comment><USER6> You're right that the Amiga was CISC, I was mistaken there.

The Classic Mac was as well, but PowerPC based macs were RISC, which is what I was recalling in my followup.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> A somewhat more extensive research of that quote:

[https://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/09/08/640k-enough/](https://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/09/08/640k-enough/)

<comment><USER9> Perhaps the most damning quote: _" I have to say that in 1981, making those decisions, I felt like I was providing enough freedom for 10 years. That is, a move from 64k to 640k felt like something that would last a great deal of time. Well, it didn't..."_ -Bill Gates

While he didn't use the exact words of the title quote, there are multiple sources which indicate he was indeed surprised at how fast applications grew in memory requirements/usage. Thus, I rate it as "partly true".

At lot of it was probably caused by the switch from hand-crafted low-level code to libraries and compilers, which usually take up more RAM for comparable features. While such tools sometimes can produce compact code, it's often not considered economical by publishers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Linus Torvalds on the other hand did indeed say "Anybody who needs more than 64Mb/task - tough cookies" on the original Linux announcement email chain.

<comment><USER11> Well Linus also said his kernel won't be big and professional like GNU's.

<comment><USER12> Which it isn't. :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> "Modern operating systems can now take advantage of that seemingly vast potential memory. But even 32 bits of address space won't prove adequate as time goes on."

But 64 bits should be enough for anybody.

<comment><USER14> Moving beyond a 64-bit architecture will allow manipulation of memory address spaces that are larger than 16 Exabytes. Even high-end servers today do not contain more than 1TB of physical memory. It would take several decades if not more for memory densities to become high enough to begin to reach the boundary that 64-bit addressing limits computers.

So yes, highly likely for a little while..

<comment><USER15> Current x86 architectures only use 48 bits for addressing. That's still enough to address ~280TB of RAM. I expect that to change before upgrading to 128-bit pointers.

<comment><USER16> 128 bits are nearly enough to address every atom in the Universe. Such pointers are mostly a waste of memory space.

> I expect that to change before upgrading to 128-bit pointers.

Or the joke was wasted on me. Did you mean it will never be feasible?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Slightly off-topic, but it's cool to see David Mikkelson posting in that Usenet group as "Snopes," as that's where he first used the name, even before launching the urban myth-busting site in the '90s.

<comment><USER18> I had no idea Snopes was that old; that was my takeaway from this as well. We've always assumed it wasn't an actual quote from Gates, but I only knew Snopes as the website.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Wow... in a post denying that the comment never happened a lot of people here still take it as a fact.

Now, what do you guy think about the "Al Gore said he invented the internet"?

Ah, the wonders of a post-truth world...

</comment><comment><USER20> 3MB of RAM should be enough for anybody to get a ticket out of the Sprawl.

<comment><USER21> Gibson's prose has a short shelf life. That's why he doesn't write future-set stories anymore.

In the film of _Johnny Mnemonic_ , the screenplay of which was penned by Gibson himself, Johnny must act as a courier for 320 GB by using a brain implant -- in 2025. It's 2018 in the real world, and data smugglers today would probably get farther by swallowing toy balloons with two or three microSD cards in them than by going the whole invasive wipe-your-childhood- memories brain implant route (if such a route were available).

<comment><USER22> Not true that Gibson's prose has a short shelf life. Neuromancer is in my view a timeless masterpiece, and Gibson's most recent book is set in the future.

<comment><USER23> Well, Neuromancer's first line doesn't make sense any more :-P

That said, it's one of my favourite books.

<comment><USER24> I realize you say this somewhat in jest, but I want to respond to this because the first sentence of of William Gibson's _Neuromancer_ is paradoxically both timeless and time bound.

> The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.

That first sentence characterizes the novel's diegetic (in-narrative) setting by giving the sky a property of an alternate medium (television). Unlike gentler rhetorical assertions such as simile, the declaration that the sky possessed a property of television suggests that the setting--like the intra- diegetic setting of the (Morrocan) beach in which an unnamed adversarial AI imprisons Case--is also a media construct in which the reader is imprisoned.

In other words, the media topology structuring the novel's outermost narrative is a recursive formation of one medium inside another medium and this structure is timeless. It's merely recursion.

However, fully understanding the literary (as opposed to narrative) significance of such a structuration depends upon knowing what television was and why any of its channels might be "dead" as opposed to "live".

A useful point of comparison can be found in William Shakespeare's _As You Like It_ (II.VII.139-143)

      All the world's a stage,
      And all the men and women merely players;
      They have their exits and their entrances,
      And one man in his time plays many parts,
      His acts being seven ages. [. . .]

The significance is timeless, drawing power from the assertion that life is in fact lived on a stage. On the other hand, the description is also time bound (as well as culturally circumscribed) depending as it does on the greatly diminished (since Elizabethan England) medium of live performance.

EDIT: Fix predicate in first sentence. Formatting. Change "at" to "a" in penultimate sentence.

<comment><USER25> I think the point is that my children will likely never know what a television tuned to a dead channel looks like. I've almost forgotten, myself.

I say that as someone that finds that line rather nice.

<comment><USER26> You reminded me of a post JWZ made a while back with a TV in his bar. It's neat how these things can be embedded into our collective experince.

(Copy and paste the link, referrer shenanigans.) [https://www.jwz.org/blog/2012/01/snow-crash- simulated/](https://www.jwz.org/blog/2012/01/snow-crash-simulated/)

<comment><USER25> I didn't realize newer televisions simulated the static. That is rather amusing, in many ways.

Also, thanks for mentioning the copy/paste referrer nonsense. Didn't realize they blocked referred links from here and was curious what the reference was for a time. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> pure-awesome I find it quite funny that there's a parallel discussion as to whether or not everything in a modern circuit board is implemented with NAND gates.

</comment><comment><USER27> While today, 16GB of ram and 1TB of storage will soon not be enough for a modest computer.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wirth%27s_law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wirth%27s_law)

Although I'm sure hardware companies will find a way to promote deep learning techniques into home computers, which will obviously require more and more transistors.

<comment><USER28> Today in 2018 you need 16GB. Back in 1998 it was 16MB and 20 years before that it was 16KB.

That should tell you how much you'll need in 2038.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Out of curiosity how did this chain end up on google groups? Where was the original and how was google able to ingest it?

Thanks!

<comment><USER2> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Groups#Deja_News](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Groups#Deja_News)

<comment><USER29> Thank you!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> This reply down the thread wins it for me:

> I always thought he was talking about his monthly bonus, not computer > memory...

Ha!

<comment><USER31> soon after that, it became his daily bonus...

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> [https://books.google.it/books?id=2C4EAAAAMBAJ&q=%22nobody+wo...](https://books.google.it/books?id=2C4EAAAAMBAJ&q=%22nobody+would%22&redir_esc=y&hl=en#v=snippet&q=%22nobody%20would%22&f=false)

the fact that a direct quote doesn't exist doesn't mean that it wasn't the sentiment at the time.

<comment><USER33> The fact that it was the sentiment at the time is one thing, but it doesn't make attributing a quote to someone who didn't say it right or correct, even if it goes in the way of the general sentiment, even if that someone did agree with said sentiment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Doesn't matter. We all know there is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home.

<comment><USER13> No one actually wanted a computer in their home.

They did want an interactive TV set.

<comment><USER34> Oh, that explains why there's no market for more than five computers in the world.

<comment><USER35> That's an accurate description for certain values of the term 'computer'

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I think Gates overestimated [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swappiness](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swappiness)

</comment><comment><USER37> Hah. Reading this is quite amusing. Tricksters and pranksters were just as prevalent on the internet back then as they are now.

<comment><USER38> "Tricksters and pranksters" AKA good old fashioned trolling. It's a shame the modern definition of "troll" seems to have warped to include those who tell people to kill themselves on social media etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Having watched a 4K movie, I can confidently say 640K should be enough for anybody.

<comment><USER40> Well, let's be scientific about this. If Bill Gates is willing to write me a check for 640K, I'll be happy to test his theory for him. ;-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Yeah, I don't think it's a literal quote, unless it was in a very specific context.

It was making fun of the 640K limitation of MS-DOS, and the implicit reasoning behind that hard limit.

</comment><comment><USER42> Of course, this reminds me of the OS/2 2.0 fiasco.

</comment><comment><USER43> I have 16384000K of ram and I could use more. However, my use case might be different from someone browsing the web.

:-)

</comment><comment><USER28> Sure, Bill. Of course you didn't say something like that as it would make you sound totally clueless to future generations. You wouldn't want a howler of a mistake like that to be your calling card, would you? So, yeah, of course you didn't say it.</comment>


Tool for Political Activism - <AUTHOR> http://www.matthewtwhuang.com/2017/01/political-activism-tool.html <comment><AUTHOR> I would love to hear people's thoughts and potentially work with people to make this a reality.</comment>


The Evolving Role of News on Twitter and Facebook - <AUTHOR> http://www.journalism.org/2015/07/14/the-evolving-role-of-news-on-twitter-and-facebook/ <comment><USER3> While I don't argue with the veracity of the information here, I do despair at what it says.

For a start, I doubt the Twitter news feature will inject much-needed editorial quality into the unfiltered blast of rumours, half truths and lies that surround most current news events on Twitter. This is even more so if there is a political nature to the news.

But the deeper question here is 'why are people so addicted to news'?

There is a subset of people - obviously journalists included - who think that if they don't know every breaking event, somehow they are uninformed, ignorant, backward, all the rest of the insults.

But the reality of the situation is that the 24 hour news firehose - <USER2> Twitter and Facebook are jostling to be a part of - is really just the same series of flashing lights and distractions used to keep Las Vegas patrons inside the building.

Most news doesn't matter. Most breaking news doesn't matter.

If something is important, you'll find out. Allowing a breaking-news junkie to inform you brightens their day.

More important is that people get into a low information diet. There are a lot of people talking about how much sugar is consumed these days - junk calories best taken in small doses. Most news is like sugar - junk information best take in small doses.

I have mostly switched Twitter off these days. I am ruthless at excluding news (and especially political news) from my Facebook feed - call me old fashioned, but I'm really only interested in what my friends are up to. I am disinclined to consume their heart-rendering stories of cats up trees, jibes at their political hate-figure or tongue-baths of their political love-figure. None of that helps me to be happier or more productive.

News : like sugar for the brain.

<comment><USER4> As a contrast, I consistently get actionable information that influences major decisions from my curated Twitter feed.

<comment><USER5> But do you take action on the initial report, or wait for the facts to become established?

For most significant events that do not directly impact the first-person ( i.e. not hyper-local ) I would suggest that it is strategically better to wait for a week or a month before taking any action based on the event.

In that case there's no immediate benefit to knowing about news as it breaks. In fact it could be a negative influence because it distracts from other, more important, action.

<comment><USER6> I definitely wonder whether there'll be a backlash to the firehose/breaking news phenomenon at some point, with people turning back to analytical mags and newspapers once a week or so!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The algorithms that drive what news we see on Twitter and Facebook (and Google for that matter) don't take into account the quality of the information we're confronted with. They're more based on popularity than anything else.

We're working on a platform (inquary.com) that will allow users to rate, research, and assess news and other information items based upon their Information Quality scores, specifically their accuracy, trustworthiness, comprehensiveness, and objectivity.

I'm always looking for feedback. If you have comments about what you'd like to see from such a platform, I'd love to hear from you here or at inquary.com.

For the record, I won't bore people with too much information here but there is a lot of data about how much people want accurate, objective news, as well as how surprisingly capable the public, in the aggregate, is at assessing such things.

Happy to talk more if people are interested.

</comment><comment><USER6> Weird that the article didn't mention the change to the FB algorithm for the news feed this year. That had a major impact on news orgs.</comment>


Uganda is shutting down schools funded by Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates - <AUTHOR> http://edition.cnn.com/2016/11/25/africa/uganda-schools-zuckerberg-gates/index.html <comment><USER2> Before getting too wrapped-up in the public-private argument, consider the fact that CNN, as usual, did not interview a single student of the private schools or the public schools. They had only one quote from a parent, and they probably scraped it off of BIA's website. I would be shocked and amazed if they bothered to track down a parent and ask questions.

As usual, CNN served as a mouthpiece to NGOs/bureaucrats/lobbyists/etc. who have absolutely no skin in the game as far as educational outputs go. It's not left-wing bias or right-wing bias so much as an aversion to the time and expense involved in actual reporting.

<comment><USER3> All journalism is like this now, and I don't blame them.

When people block their ads (proudly I might ad), and refuse to pay, they don't have the money to do any actual reporting. Add on to that the fact that just repeating a tweet and speculating on it attracts the crowds who don't block ads, and you get what we have now.

The masses only want a headline, and the rest won't pay for anything else anyway.

<comment><USER4> Counterpoint:

Time Warner, CNN'S parent, profits are on the rise.

[http://fortune.com/2016/08/03/time-warner-beats-profit- estim...](http://fortune.com/2016/08/03/time-warner-beats-profit-estimates/)

<comment><USER3> But that doesn't change anything. If profits are on the rise, obviously what they are currently doing is working.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> >"It's very indecent because they are looking at poor people as a profitable market." \--Camilla Croso

I don't understand this reasoning. When there is competition, which there is here, profit means the customers are getting value from the service. They aren't being coerced into buying anything. It's not like BIA has a monopoly and the poor have no choice in the matter.

<comment><USER6> Yea, it's very interesting to see how dogmatic people are.

For example, "adding that privatization of education goes against human rights principles" seems to be entirely unsubstantiated to me. If private schools can offer a superior education at a lower cost than public schools, what human rights have been violated? Arguably it's against human rights to _ban_ such schools when they're educating students.

<comment><USER7> It's been pointed out that there's a world of difference between a private school and a for-profit school.

A for-profit school has an obligation to its shareholders to maximize profits. If it can make more profits by providing an inferior product at inflated prices, and convince consumers it buy it - then it basically _has_ to do that, or they are defrauding their shareholders. Otherwise the shareholders should pull there money and invest it elsewhere.

Private schools, by contrast, have an obligation to remain solvent, but also a broader mission to educate people, promote learning, make the world a better place and so on.

The word "privatization" in this context implies BIA is pursuing the for- profit model. By contrast a charter school in the US, or religious school, may be either for-profit or private and not-for-profit.

<comment><USER8> > A for-profit school has an obligation to its shareholders to maximize > profits.

No, it doesn't. A for-profit corporation has an obligation to serve it's shareholders interests faithfully, but that is not, generally, a narrow obligation to profit maximization.

<comment><USER7> Tell that to Carl Icahn. Management that puts public good over return on investment is likely to be replaced. The interest of shareholders are generally construed as maximizing return.

<comment><USER8> Carl Icahn's position, of course, matters if Icahn is a major shareholder of the firm in question; less so otherwise.

<comment><USER7> My guess is that maximizing ROI is also popular among investors not named Carl Icahn. I don't think I've ever worked for a company where the investors said "we want you to make money, and also accomplish socially relevant goal XXXX" where decided to sacrifice any part of "making money" for the sake of XXXX.

<comment><USER6> I've worked with plenty of investors who had goals which went beyond purely making money. There's even a legal movement to formally tie corporations to non-profit motivations (see benefit corporations).

Thinking about non-profit vs for-profit as a strict dichotomy is unhelpful. There are plenty of investors who shy away from particular for-profit investments and prefer other ones for entirely non-financial reasons.

<comment><USER7> Sounds like a good idea, provided it's more a more specific and verifiable commitment than Google's vacuous "don't be evil".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > "You can't call it an education that Bridge is offering," Croso said. > "You > have technology -- like tablets -- often standing in place of teachers and > you have very scripted classes that tell the teachers exactly what to do and > when -- so you don't have any sort of autonomy and you can't improvise."

Sounds kind of like the American education system to me... and honestly I'm not completely sure you could call the American system of education really an education anymore. More just studying for the tests.

</comment><comment><USER10> Seems so familiar to the anti school choice movement in the states. Arguing that poor kids must be forced to go to substandard public schools, under the guise of protecting the kids, while really wanting to treat education as a guaranteed money source for political actors and the teachers' union.

<comment><USER11> School choice means competition among schools. Which leads to winner and losers. So you will get bad schools. The only way to avoid this is, to have only good schools, nation wide. So that the best school is the one in your district.

<comment><USER12> > School choice means competition among schools. Which leads to winner and > losers.

This doesn't follow at all. Consider e.g. a company that sells different flavors of spaghetti sauce ([https://www.ted.com/talks/malcolm_gladwell_on_spaghetti_sauc...](https://www.ted.com/talks/malcolm_gladwell_on_spaghetti_sauce)). The flavors are competing, but only on a per-person basis; overall the flavors are optimized to satisfy everyone's (different) preferences.

It's quite easy to imagine a similar concept in education, where people learn better from a particular teaching style or are better served by a particular curriculum. There's no obvious reason to expect that one "good" school would be sufficient for everyone's needs; the ideal situation would instead be that one could choose from several schools, of which at least one is "good".

<comment><USER11> But spaghetti sauce can be switched for your next meal if it taste bad. A school not so much, if attended a bad school for a while you might not be able to catch up on a good school, or you have to start over again, or they don't even let you into the better school.

I remember the case of private school in Germany, which failed to prepare their pupils for the final exam of the state and all students failed. After that it turned out their curriculum was wrong. The pupils paid the price for the failure of the school. The school closed and the pupils had to repeat the year.

<comment><USER7> People switch schools all the time. It's a non-argument. This is like saying, what if you eat bad spaghetti sauce once, and then your taste is ruined and you can never enjoy good spaghetti sauce again? Guess we better end spaghetti sauce choice, can't risk it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The rationale for shutting them down looks sound to me -- for-profit schools that don't meet standards, and are run by unqualified teachers.

<comment><USER14> Unfortunately there is massive, systemic corruption within the government of Uganda, and many E. African governments. While they could be right about the poor quality of BIA education, it's equally likely that BIA simply hasn't paid the right people for freedom to operate.

<comment><USER15> Bill Gates' flagship HS in the U.S., which he wanted to model every other high school after, was also shut down for largely they same reasons... By the time it shut down, the graduation rate had dropped to less than 30%.

<comment><USER16> Can you provide a link to the story on this? There must be more to this -- or surely some learnings. Thanks.

<comment><USER15> Diane Ravitch writes about it here:

[https://www.amazon.com/Death-Great-American-School- System/dp...](https://www.amazon.com/Death-Great-American-School- System/dp/0465025579)

The school was called Manual High School. If you just search for "Manual" within the book on Amazon you can see at least parts of the story, around page 207.

<comment><USER16> Thanks. I had assumed tech problems. Sounds like many management issues and infighting, from reading this: [http://www.denverpost.com/2006/05/05/manuals- slow-death/](http://www.denverpost.com/2006/05/05/manuals-slow-death/)

Excerpts:

\- "The Gates Foundation really screwed up by giving the grant to DPS before finding an intermediary to hold anyone accountable," said Van Schoales, who administered the grant for the Children's Campaign.

\- As more than $1 million in private funds was sunk into teacher and principal training and technical support, three feuding principals hoarded textbooks and called police on each other's students.

\- The Gates Foundation now, after stories like Manual, rarely works with individual schools – preferring to collaborate with entire districts on school reform

<comment><USER15> It was actually mostly to do with school size. Once they got the high school down to the much smaller size they thought would be ideal, students no longer were able to participate in any of the classes or extracurriculars they wanted. So most of the students quickly came to hate school, became completely checked out, and eventually just dropped out entirely.

He still hasn't paid any sort of reparations to these students, despite completely destroying their lifetime employment prospects by using them as a science experiment to stroke his own ego.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> _Critics allege that BIA 's education methods are not transparent, and that their approach is standardized and scripted._

Uh, make up your mind. Either it is not transparent, or it is standardized and scripted (which means it should be very easy to obtain complete insight).

</comment><comment><USER18> > Namusobya from ISER said she believes BIA causes segregation between the > poor and rich. She said in government-run schools every child is treated > equally, but BIA's model only targets the poor.

Not sure that I'm seeing the problem here... since when are the rich jealous of the poors' education?

And here is the bit where Gates/Zuck benefit (possibly now, certainly in the future):

> You have technology -- like tablets -- often standing in place of > teachers...

Gates/Zuck [could] make more money selling tech to these schools (probably not through tuition, though, because it's only $6/month).

[I see the benefits being long-term edu foothold, not short-term profiteering]

Edit: Added edits in [].

<comment><USER19> Doubtful. I'm not fan of Gates or Zuckerberg, but they can invest their money with a much higher return than is likely to be achieved in the Ugandan private education industry.

Even people who generally do the wrong thing can do the right thing sometimes - and Gates in particular has demonstrated this. Sure, contributing to reducing malaria deaths means more potential windows users, but it's a bit of a tenuous link.

<comment><USER18> Are you saying that you do not see the massive opportunity that is establishing a foothold in school systems in developing countries?

More specifically, Facebook owns Oculus which puts them in one of the best positions to replace schools/teachers with technology/VR.

<comment><USER20> "Are you saying that you do not see the massive opportunity that is establishing a foothold in school systems in developing countries?"

This is conspiratorial.

These are not 'for profit' schools in any classical sense of the term.

It's basically just an education charity.

They get parents to pay a little bit to offset costs.

That's it.

There's no 'plan' other than to get the poorest kids a decent education.

The government is pissed because it exposes their failure.

Imagine if a Swedish NGO started providing 'basic education' for 'near free' in New Orleans? It would be rather embarrassing to America, no?

This is not uncommon. Sometimes when nations have natural disasters they refuse to accept aid because they don't want to admit they 'need it' or to accept their developing nation status etc..

<comment><USER7> _Imagine if a Swedish NGO started providing 'basic education' for 'near free' in New Orleans? It would be rather embarrassing to America, no?_

That's an interesting thought experiment. I think a lot of people would be receptive because there's a perception that public schools are failing a large segment of Americans (probably because they are). There would be curiosity about whether "Swedish educational models" could help. And there would be nativists protesting that this is an attempt to indoctrinate children with socialism and the New World Order. Almost certainly the teacher's union would be against it.

Probably not so different from the dynamic in Uganda.

<comment><USER20> American public schools are not failing - the students are.

Americans spend more / capita, and more absolute $ than anywhere on earth. All kids have access to decent schools. Teachers care a lot.

But when kids murder each other, don't show up, their parents don't care, nobody pays attention or values work, kids are passed even though they are illiterate ... well ... it's really not the schools.

Take decent students and put them in the same schools and you get good results.

Not blaming the students directly, other than to say they are functions of their families and communities.

Anyhow - this whole argument about this charity is missing the point - it's basically just a charity doing very good work, and the local semi-corrupt government officials are pissed off - that's it.

This is not an issue of reporting, or 'American Imperialism' or 'do-gooder white people not understanding culture' etc. etc.

This is actually just crazy Africa.

<comment><USER7> _kids are passed even though they are illiterate ... well ... it 's really not the schools._

Surely the school is to blame if they're passing kids who are illiterate.

 _it 's basically just a charity doing very good work_

Can you provide any references that BIA is in fact doing very good work? Glowing reviews seem to be thin on the ground.

 _This is actually just crazy Africa._

It's also crazy Belgium and crazy Candada saying BIA is up to no good as I posted earlier - [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer- sheet/wp/2016/06/...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer- sheet/wp/2016/06/09/the-weird-story-of-the-arrest-of-a-canadian-education- researcher-in-uganda)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's not just Uganda. Education International (Brussels) tried to investigate the school and BIA had their representative arrested. Kenya has complained to the World Bank about their funding of for-profit schools to the exclusion of free public education.

[http://qz.com/760823/uganda-is-closing-a-for-profit- school-c...](http://qz.com/760823/uganda-is-closing-a-for-profit-school-chain- backed-by-zuckerburg-gates-and-the-world-bank/)

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer- sheet/wp/2016/06/...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer- sheet/wp/2016/06/09/the-weird-story-of-the-arrest-of-a-canadian-education- researcher-in-uganda)

</comment><comment><USER21> Before anyone judges Bill and Mark, you need to understand something about African "courts."

This bizarre story happened in a fairly developed town called Ikorodu in Lagos, Nigeria a few years ago.

A major busy road was filled with deep, large potholes. Every year, the local government would award contracts to fix the road but nothing would get done.

The owner of a gas station decided to fix the road with his own money. He bought the materials needed for the repair and stashed them by the road.

However, before he could start, he received a notice to stop work along with a court summon. The court ruled that he had no right to repair the road. And that he (could) should give the money to the local government so that they would undertake the repair.

Lest you think this was a black swan, the same scenario happened later in the industrial district of the area.

The road (a federal road) was awful. Residents insulted the companies (PZ, UAC, Dangote...) for making money but not fixing the road. The companies therefore banded together to fix the road but the exact same nonsense happened.

In conclusion, take this news with a bag of salt.

(edited: fixed typos, changed white swan to black swan)

<comment><USER22> While I completely believe this story, makes no sense to talk about "African courts" in general. AFAIK Uganda and Nigeria are countries far from each other, with different forms of government and even different ethnic groups.

<comment><USER23> There are certain similarities in culture across the sub Saharan countries though. Dunno if you've been there?

<comment><USER24> > There are certain similarities in culture across the sub Saharan countries > though. Dunno if you've been there?

Yes, I've been there and this your assertion is simply not true, unless by "similarities in culture" you mean they are all human. Heck, there's ridiculous variety of culture in the same country - South Africa has 11 official languages, if we are to take language as a proxy for culture.

<comment><USER25> I've been there as well, and to deny that Sub-Saharian African governments are rife with corruption is simply dishonest on your part.

<comment><USER24> I did not make that argument - I was talking debunking the "shared culture" idea and rejecting the lack of nuance. Corruption is not cultural - east and west Berlin had different levels of corruption due to something other than culture.

If you think all sub-Saharan African governments have the same levels of corruption, you're plain wrong. As an illustration: (in no particular order) Nigeria, Botswana, Kenya, Rwanda, Zimbabwe have corruption levels that range from "it's expected in every official interaction" to "you (civilian) will wind up in jail if you bring up the idea of a bribe". So there's nothing that's inherently African or cultural about it.

<comment><USER26> Here's corruption index map: [https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b4/Transpar...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b4/Transparency_international_2015.png)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> >While BIA has not yet evaluated the performance of their children in Uganda, in Kenya BIA found that is students "outperform their peers in public schools in basic literacy and reading."

I have a hard time believing that the quality of education and sanitation is really worse in these schools than in the state run schools.

Looks to me like the story here is Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg try to start up schools for Ugandan Children and other NGOs, wary of competition, lobby the government to shut them down.

</comment><comment><USER27> [http://www.bridgeinternationalacademies.com/wp- content/uploa...](http://www.bridgeinternationalacademies.com/wp- content/uploads/2016/11/Clarification-on-Bridge-Uganda-Press- Release-16.11.16-1.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER28> Why waste money on something that you can't control? Better help smart people to immigrate to the country which will care about them.

</comment><comment><USER29> Uganda in particular and africa in general has always been a black hole for investment. Any money not squandered will be stolen, make no mistake.

</comment><comment><USER30> So in other words, they didn't pay off the right people? Or maybe someone else paid more?

Or who knows, maybe this goes beyond simple corruption, and Uganda has made some other alliances, and wants US based NGOs out.

</comment><comment><USER31> Sad for the poor Ugandan kids.

This sentence caught my attention:

>>Uganda's High Court ruled the 63 Bridge International Academies provided unsanitary learning conditions, used unqualified teachers and were not properly licensed. However, many parents have protested and rejected the decision to close its doors.

The key point here is "lincensed": totalitarian (or banana republics) and corrupt regimes have this convenient way of "licensing" to throw away anyone they don't like. These schools must learn to properly "buy" the licenses and sanitation certificates by appropriately pleasing the authorities.

Disclaimer: I don't have high opinion of both Mr. MZ and Mr. BG when it comes to philanthropy given their (more so of MZ, through the internet.org) greedy and overall dishonest behaviour regarding their users, but this effort of theirs seems laudable.

<comment><USER32> Quick point to add for you, Zuck has far more control over vendor lockin and hostility towards his users than Gates does at this point.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Paying taxes would be a better social counter-part for their huge profit. Uganda government is right, imo. Let them manage education, not foreign corporations.

</comment><comment><USER34> _The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the entire surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connexions everywhere._

<comment><USER20> Take your conspiracy theories elsewhere.</comment></comment>


Huawei has trademarked its 'Hongmeng' operating system - <AUTHOR> https://news.cgtn.com/news/3d3d414d7a41544f34457a6333566d54/index.html <comment><USER2> I guess not so many people here have direct experience of the world before the end of the USSR and the cold war. Basically there was very little exchange of goods between the two blocks and their two leader countries made constantly clear that they had thousands of nuclear weapons pointed to all the countries in the other block and were ready to wipe them out if they were attacked [1]

The level of confrontation now is nowhere close to that but that has been the usual state of the world for a longer time than the current open and free Internet and commerce. If we are heading into that direction (if!) all the major players (USA, China, Russia) will build some walls again and pull the strings of their allies. It's both a defensive strategy and an offensive one and it's going to reduce the flow of goods, people and information. Technology stacks will be rewritten and operated locally as barriers are raised. Factories will have to be rebuilt in the west. I wonder if the EU can survive being pulled in three different ways or each country will go its way toward the party that suits them best.

We can look at the 1946-1989 cold war as an experiment to predict how this is going to play out. The winner was who was able to create more wealth for the people in its block. Nuclear weapons were (and are) a strong enough deterrent to make a real full scale war impossible. Be prepared to hear more about them in the next years. However there were many wars fought by proxy, or against proxies.

Tangentially, you might be interested in learning about the origin of the words First, Second and Third World [2], which somewhat changed in meaning since their origin in 1952. They where USA + allies, USSR + allies, all the others. They were not about being rich or poor. Maybe we'll end up with more than three worlds this time or (I hope) business as usual.

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

[2] [https://text.npr.org/s.php?sId=372684438](https://text.npr.org/s.php?sId=372684438)

<comment><USER3> And I can imagine that current "nuclear" is "tech". Each party will develop cyber warfare in a form of hacker groups, tools, AI, autopilot drones, etc.

<comment><USER2> Yes, but they won't lead to mutually assured distruction. Only nuclear weapon can do that so far: ensure that whoever pushes the button die in the counterstrike.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> > This comes as Google cut off Huawei devices from its Android OS following a > U.S. order banning the sale of American software and components to the > company

I don't understand what is the point of this. Sure, government/companies doesn't have to buy anything from Huawei but why they are not even allowed to sell Android to others?

<comment><USER5> Because thats not enough. Huawei has been stealing IP, is a part of the party and has been caught spying for them, for example in thr Netherlands.

They do not play by the rules, which is why they became a big competitor in the market. Treat them like a normal company, and you will have a chinese state company monopolist eventually.

See Boeing and Airbus, where state intervention was a fraction of what Huawei gets.

Finally, foreign companies are not free to do business in China, why should chinese companies be free to do so here?

Edit: to give an example. Firms in China rarely license correctly for domestic sales, merely for export. No other nominally developed country with so many manufacturers would get away with that. Imagine Germany not licensing for cars they sell in Europe.

So what now? Huawei has lost access to many licenses, such as cpu, memory, sd cards and whatnot. Do you think they will stop making phones? No. They will ignore it, and grt backed by the CCP. In China, this will have no impact.

What SHOULD happen as a reaction is to ban Huawei entirely, and come after other Chinese ccp backed companies next. Because if you ignore the rules of the market, you should not participate in it.

<comment><USER6> They have not been caught spying for the party and they are not part of government. These are outright lies.

Please don't fall for the transparent disinformation spread by some media, and unfortunately by some commenters on HN.

<comment><USER5> Is it? [https://www.reuters.com/article/us-netherlands-huawei- tech-i...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-netherlands-huawei-tech- idUSKCN1SM0UY)

Also, board members and execs are CCP members, and functionally the company is controlled and supported by the CCP.

<comment><USER7> _Alleged_ backdoor. There are a lot of _allegations_ against Huawei but not a lot (if any) concrete evidence.

<comment><USER5> The issue is that we have to make a decision under uncertainty. And fast.

Context matters as well. Look how China treats its citizens, and those abroad who critique the CCP. Look how it has no ethical issue to control and spy upon every Chinese person within its borders. It has no state philosophy that would forbid it. Why would you think they would not spy abroad? And again, CCP members controlling Huawei is a fact.

Look how the doctrine of ip theft has been pushed even in past plans like china 2020, and how often unlicensed and nearly identical products and tech showed up after being stolen by someone. And Chinese politicians masterfully promising betterment and market access to EU politicians and giving nothing in the end.

There will never be a smoking gun. But to say its based on lies without evidence is, i think, misleading.

For years all this has been happening. And the damage to non Chinese tech and industry has been huge.

That is why it needs to be up to every country to choose whether to make deals with Huawei and the CCP or not. Judge the evidence, and circumstances.

If you wait too long, the consequences are clear. The US has decided it has seen enough, and Huawei is not a sincere market participant.

THEN, you have to take strong measures. If there is ip theft. If there even is spying, THEN you can not fight it by half measures. It doesnt work. Huawei denies and goes their merry way until it is untouchable.

Its a game of chance, not certainty.

<comment><USER8> > The issue is that we have to make a decision under uncertainty. And fast.

I'm sorry, this sounds like "WMDs in Iraq" all over again.

> For years all this has been happening. And the damage to non Chinese tech > and industry has been huge.

Not really, it was a conscious decision by most Western companies to go and produce in China. Fully aware that they will (voluntarily and via ip theft) transfer knowledge, they still chose to do it because the profit margins were so enormous. The Chinese actually hacking and siphoning off IP is relatively new, something that previously was the NSA's monopoly.

> If there even is spying, THEN you can not fight it by half measures.

Are you suggesting the EU should go into a full out trade war with the US to convince them to stop the spying?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Let china continue to block mostly everything except theirs and other countries continue to accept that arrangement, it is fair to china only.

Otherwise the default should be you block ours we block yours.

Free trade for all. Not just free trade for chinese product.

<comment><USER10> As far as I am aware the likes of Apple are still selling in China and even companies that are blocked etc. it's different vs the U.S. ban, which also affects Huawei in the EU etc.

I am an EU citizen and if I want to buy Huawei products, I don't want the U.S. to tell me not to, especially since you seem to conveniently forget that the U.S. has led many interventionist wars in order to forcibly open markets in other countries to its goods, so you don't have much moral ground to stand on here.

Additionally, the U.S. is also imposing tariffs on the EU and being abusive around the world, (Iran etc.) in general. The world is watching and American credibility is being eroded with moves like these, that's for sure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Hongmeng has been slow R&D project. Suddenly the new mobile OS is must have. I'm not surprised if Huawei goes to a shopping spree and buys several mobile OS and mobile UI companies at once.

Buying both Jolla (Sailfish OS) and Qt Group (QTCOM.HE) would be peanuts for Huawei.

<comment><USER11> I just realized that ARM has stopped working with HiSilicon (Huawei subsidiary). HiSilicon used mainly ARM ISA and ARM's microarchitectures. ARM (Softbank subsidiary) loses big customer.

What wil Huawei/HiSilicon do next? Jump head first to RISC-V or adopt MIPS variant. Who will they by to get there faster?

<comment><USER12> China has a MIPS chip in the wings called the Loongson. Got a lappy with one, works nice.

<comment><USER13> Which lappy? Where did you get it? I want one too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > It will also be compatible with all Android apps and Web apps and come with > its "App Gallery," according to Yu.

So likely just a Android fork/rebrand.

<comment><USER15> That's awesome. I hope that all asian phone manufacturers like xiaomi, sony, samsung, and others get together and make an alternative to ios and android. They are big, and they can pull it of. Android apps compatibility is a big plus. Finally some movement in the market.

<comment><USER16> Yeah, Samsung, Sony, and Huawei getting together to build the os to crush android...

Japan, China, and Korea. Three countries that love eachother. /s

<comment><USER17> Korean here, people don't like the countries itself, (we literally hate Japan), but doesn't have much feelings to companies or usual people. (We buy Sony products, talk with Japanese people, study in Japan or work in Japan companies...etc) Similar with China. It's something different... and I'm pretty sure if there is a reason the 3 companies (but I'm not sure if Sony has a significant mindshare in the Android market... isn't Japan's phone market Apple + Samsung + < 10%?̊̈) make an Android-compatible OS, they would, and we also would use it.

<comment><USER18> The more I think about it the more feasible it actually seem. Sony doesn't have a market share that's proportional to their technology at the moment but they can actually occupy the high-end lines in this new ecosystem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The name is a reference to ancient classics [1]. I've also seen some excited posts (e.g. [2]) mentioning that Huawei also trademarked a bunch of mythological beasts from the Classic of Mountains and Seas [3].

Based on the reactions I've seen, that was a good move to capture patriotic sentiments. On the other hand, I'm not sure how many patriotic Chinese were buying foreign phones, so they may end up only gaining market share from other Chinese competitors.

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

[2] [https://m.sohu.com/a/316263123_526461/](https://m.sohu.com/a/316263123_526461/)

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

</comment><comment><USER20> This thing is dead before even leaving China. Who on the west would want to buy a phone they can't use to watch Netflix, Hulu, HBO? Because if Huawei lost licenses to Android, what makes them think DRM technology providers will, which mostly are US based. And they sure can build their own DRM stack, but good luck on selling it to Disney or Comcast.

Also, apps compatible with Android. Please, don't make me laugh. You're so naive. Android works because you can monetize apps. If you can't monetize them, you don't build them. Free apps are monetized with ads, which are completely embedded into Google systems (yes, you could use others, good luck with that). Paid apps are monetized by Google Wallet, so another thing Huawei has to build. And believe me, I sure as hell won't trust the Chinese government (AKA Huawei) to handle my money.

</comment><comment><USER21> If Hongmeng accepts web app to be packaged and deployed on Smartphone, then it'll be a new story.

<comment><USER22> You can package your mobile websites today using tools like Apache Cordova.

But good luck getting consumers interested. Because you can spot a website based app a mile away and they are universally awful.</comment></comment>


Chat app synchronization on background in IOS - <AUTHOR> http://stackoverflow.com/q/21078847/1515075

<comment><USER2> "Note: the app will be running in an environment where _there is no Internet_. Hence _push notification will not work_ here."

Emphasis original.

The author did not say they have no _network_ connection, they said they have no _Internet_ connection. The two are not synonyms. This makes perfect sense. It is factually wrong to laugh at that.

Now, it is possible that shiplu.mokadd.im is using the terms synonymously, but the text of the question leads me to believe that it is entirely possible that a local network resource is being used over Wifi and that he understands this quite well.

<comment><USER3> Yes, that part could have been explained a little better, but it seems fairly clear that the person is developing a chat app to run on a local area network. There are a couple ways to do that. One is bluetooth, which has a very limited range. Another is radio signals, which I've never heard of anyone using in an iPhone app (but then again, I don't know much). Another is Wifi direct, which I've heard is very insecure, but again I don't know. It has the advantage of not requiring a central router/server.

Would someone who knows more than me care to flesh out any of these points, since I clearly don't have much information and would like to know more?</comment></comment>


Ask HN: As a recent CS grad, what am I doing wrong?  - <AUTHOR>

Hello everyone,
I recently graduated with my Bachelors. I have been going through the interview process.
Yesterday, I had an interview with one of the big software companies. (Not going to name) The interviewer asked me one of the regular programming questions which I completely blanked out on. At the end of the interview, I felt that he was very insulting to me (I am unsure if this is normal). He told me that he could not figure out where to place me and that I should go get a Masters. He also said that my skill set was too broad and not focused enough. Granted my GPA has suffered last year to lower than the average. I have been very involved in projects ever since I can remember. I even founded a research project which I wrote a proposal for and got academic funding towards.
I did mess up his question. But what else did I do that was wrong?
I will take one of his advice. To find something to focus towards. I want to start contributing to open source projects in the hopes of finding something I can be passionate about. Could I get suggestions on how to begin? I am very new to this.
Thank you for reading my rant. I have been reading articles from here for a while now. You people are truly amazing.
Thank you!
I am lost in transition <comment><USER2> Don't be discouraged by the comment. It is not normal but I have heard the big 5 software companies tend to be arrogant during interviewing.

It sounds like you simply weren't technically prepared and qualified for the position. That is correctable!

1) Interview prep. Here are the 4 standard books to prepare for programming interviews at big companies like Apple, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Amazon.

\- Programming Interviews Exposed \- Cracking the Coding Interview \- Elements of Programming Interviews \- Ace the Programming Interview

2) Open Source - Get involved today! Pick a big open source project like Mozilla. Big projects have great resources and programs to get new people involved. For example Mozilla has mentored bugs where the mentor helps you along from environment setup to submitting the code.

3) Hobby Projects - Pick a technology/platform/framework that interests you. Read up on basic tutorials and setup the development environment. Get the server running. Get the code to compile. Take small steps. Ask for help. You can find answers to basic questions on stackoverflow etc.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you so much!

I am looking through Mozilla's mentored bugs. THIS IS AMAZING!

Thank you!!!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Keep interviewing. You'll run into jerks everywhere, even after you land the job. Key is to never, ever give up.

<comment><USER4> I second this, Never ever give up. Not today, tomorrow or ever. Its the moment you give up you lose. Keep on pushing.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! The both of you!

I will never give up.</comment></comment></comment>