Where Boys OutperformGirls in Math: Rich, Whiteand Suburban Districts - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/06/13/upshot/100000005950701.app.html <comment><USER2> I have a hard time with these studies because they obviously had an agenda before they started.

Rural areas likely do not have as much communication with friends and the income to support a tech lifestyle.

While you grow up in the suburbs, you see your friends get the latest video games, you spend more time online. One day you decide you want to 'hack' and 10 years later you are making apps and websites.

There seemed to be a culture among my friends that math/tech was extremely important. I know my sister had very little interest, they'd play outside with my both male and female neighbors who none ended up being good at math/tech.

<comment><USER3> To be fair, this is an area where it is impossible not to have an agenda. Both being pro-status-quo or pro-something-here-should-change are relatively radical in the eyes of the other, and there isn't a lot of middle ground.

Ideally, more money would be sunk into raising the statistical literacy of everybody. Then we can all talk sensibly about the statistics involved here and take it for granted that Simpson's Paradox is being considered in all studies involving gender :P.

<comment><USER4> The way the article's written, it's putting much more emphasis on the slight and sporadic outperformance of boys in math, rather than on the much stronger and more consistend outperformance of girls in language. _That 's_ the problem with the agenda, IMO.

Edit: as _mlthoughts2018_ points out, the title could as well be:

 _" Boys, increasingly abandoned in English class, turn to math as a domain in which they can be rewarded for success-- especially in rich, white suburbs."_

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I can't find it now, but I seem to remember a study that showed that boys dominated both ends of the "bell curve" when it came to academic achievement: the top achievers were boys, but the lowest performers were, too. The author here doesn't seem to be particularly interested in averages, which would make for a fairer comparison.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, I was also missing some measures and discussion of _absolute_ performance (both girls vs boys, and rich vs poor).

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Alternative title: "Where Girls Outperform Boys in Math: Low Income, African- American districts"

<comment><USER7> Why does it matter?

<comment><USER8> Not the top level commenter, but my take on that would be that you can tell a lot of different stories with the same data

Maybe if it was framed this way, we might be looking into solutions to help struggling boys in lower income areas

Not that one is more or less valid than another, just that different framings of data can lead researchers to different conclusions/solutions

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Wow, pretty interesting to see my school district as one of the closest 15 to the bottom right corner. Looking back though, I can definitely see it. Most of the kids in my AP computer science class were boys and I now see way more guys from my high school in STEM jobs then girls.

In my opinion, the biggest cause was due to gender stereotypes. We weren't the actual school based on for the movie mean girls (although lots of people joked that we were), but it had a very similar vibe in that math was not seen as being cool for girls to do and popularity was definitely a major focus for a lot of people.

Edit: reading further into the actual paper, the first possible reason they site are gender stereotypes. It's a pretty interesting read. I would at least skim if it if you are at all curios and it's a shame that this article seems to have been shadow hidden from the front page despite having 25 points in an hour: [https://cepa.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/wp18-13-v20180...](https://cepa.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/wp18-13-v201806_0.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER10> "Instilling children early with motivation and confidence to do well in school is crucial, researchers say. When students reach high school and have more choice in the classes they take, the gender gaps in achievement grow even larger."

Interestingly, it doesn't appear to be the gender gap in math that grows larger, but instead the gap in writing and language.

</comment><comment><USER11> The correct title should be: Boys that live in rich, white and suburban districts outperform girls in standardized test scores.

</comment><comment><USER12> It borders on dangerous lack of journalistic responsibility to write a story like this which does not even mention the effect size observed.

The closest statement I can find to something like mentioning an actual effect size is this:

> "In the Montgomery Township district in New Jersey, for example, the median > household income is $180,000 and the students are about 60 percent white and > 30 percent Asian-American. Boys and girls both perform well, but boys score > almost half a grade level ahead of girls in math. Compare that with Detroit, > where the median household earns $27,000 and students are about 85 percent > black. It's one of the districts in which girls outperform boys in math."

'Boys score almost half a grade level ahead' \-- ahh so much imprecise terminology that we can't know what it even means, let alone if this example was representative or cherry-picked.

I'm not talking about holding a popular newspaper to some unrealistic standard, like giving us informative plots of the spread (uncertainty) of results or minor description of the methodology or anything. I wish, but there's no way.

I'm saying they aren't even throwing any numbers into the clickbait. The takeaway from this article is _purely_ subjective, because we don't know what ' grade level' or 'almost' or 'better' mean in any of the description. What does "5 months of grade level" mean, and how does it vary by state or district, etc?

Normally there's at least something like, "Boys did X% better on SAT math sections between 2010-2016" or something, and you can look at X% and decide whether it looks huge and meaningful or looks small enough that it might be spurious or have no meaningful effects in students' lives down the road or something.

These just seem like made up numbers in units of months or "grade level". How do I know what it means? Given that the blue point cloud is roughly around the 0 line, and I don't know how much "1 unit" "means" on the vertical axis, I seems like there's no conclusion to draw.

 _In fact_ the most salient effect size mention is _about girls_ and _about language arts_ :

> "In no district do boys, on average, do as well or better than girls in > English and language arts. In the average district, girls perform about > three-quarters of a grade level ahead of boys."

Maybe the title should be something like,

"Boys, increasingly abandoned in English class, turn to math as a domain in which they can be rewarded for success-- especially in rich, white suburbs."

(The point is, it's just as consistent with the utter lack of detail of the article.)

<comment><USER9> > 'Boys score almost half a grade level ahead' \-- ahh so much imprecise > terminology that we can't know what it even means, let alone if this example > was representative or cherry-picked.

Well the paper is linked in the third sentence if your curios and want to get all the details [0]. Newspapers generally try to keep it simple for the average person. From the paper: "We estimate the mean math and ELA test scores for male and female students for each of roughly ten thousand U.S. school districts in grades three through eight from the 2008-09 to 2014-15 school years. These data enable us to estimate male-female testscores gaps, as well as changes in the gaps over grades and cohorts within districts, providing adescription of gender differences in academic performance at an unprecedented level of detail.

[0]: [https://cepa.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/wp18-13-v20180...](https://cepa.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/wp18-13-v201806_0.pdf)

<comment><USER12> Why does the paper being linked have a bearing on this?

The point is that even in a popular article or cursory summary, you at least need the context of an effect size with interpretable units.

If you have to follow a link to the paper _even for that_ then the article itself would have to be worded in an entirely neutral way (as in, not indicating that the data supports any particular conclusion).

Any non-neutral presentation (like saying the data supports any type of conclusion about boys' math performance in rich, white suburbs) will create subjective impressions about what the result means (which can be fine, so long as an effect size and interpretable units are attached).

People seem to disagree with my comment because the study (among others) was hyperlinked in the Times article. This strikes me as entirely missing the point of my comment.

<comment><USER9> Because this is a newspaper, not a scientific journal or peer review and newspapers are generally written for the average reader who probably does not want nor even understand all of those details.

<comment><USER12> But a basic notion of effect size and units are often included in popular news coverage of statistics. That's a basic expectation, involving zero nuance or statistical rigor.

"This is a newspaper" is a reason why they might leave off details about methodology, metrics of uncertainty, etc. _Not_ a reason why they would make an _entirely_ unqualified claim attached to no notion of the effect size.

Essentially you're saying we should hold the New York Times to the same reporting standards as some clickbait site that fuels confirmation bias with sensational headlines, and not expect large world-spanning newspapers to have even the _slightest_ of better practices than that.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


HolyJit – Generic Purpose Just-In-Time Compiler for Rust - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/nbp/holyjit <comment><USER2> A recent discussion, [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15514926](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15514926)</comment>


Google's latest bet on the future of music is called Kobalt - <AUTHOR> http://qz.com/349855/googles-latest-fascinating-bet-on-the-future-of-music-is-called-kobalt/

<comment><USER2> Interesting that the author claims that Kobalt "operates in a corner of the music business not normally considered to have much growth potential."

Anybody who knows the music business knows that publishing is the solid rock in the sea of chaos and change.

If I was investing in music publishing, Kobalt is the very first company I would approach - they are taking a modern approach to it, while a lot of others (Sony/ATV I'm looking at you) have a ways to go to get out of the paper-driven old school thinking.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is an investment by Google Ventures.

<comment><USER4> Yes, this.

I find it sad and discouraging that too many journalists and editors are too lazy and perhaps too condescending to bother making the distinction between companies and their investment arms, as if somehow the distinction was irrelevant or audiences too stupid or jaded to know or care for the difference.

Poor, lazy journalism slides easily into clickbaitiness.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Should my new website support IE 8 users? - <AUTHOR>

The conventional wisdom is if 10% of your users are on a particular browser, you should probably support that browser. The problem, however, is that if you build an HTML5/CSS3 Responsive website from scratch you inevitably end up spending a great deal of time putting in hacks just to get things working somewhat similar in IE 8 (which doesn't support a large number of the new standards coming out now). To give an example, I spent over 5 hours yesterday working on a silly image overlay issue because of the weird way that IE 8 handles z-index. If you have the resources, of course it makes sense to build in some type of support for such a large number of users, but if you at a small startup where there is very little time for anything shouldn't you focus on the 90%? I know BaseCamp is doing this with their latest version, but is it crazy to force the use of alternative browsers? Is the huge effort needed to make things easy for that 10% worth it? <comment><USER2> I think it all comes down to personal preferences and no you never HAVE TO make stuff work for older, broken browsers. It is perfectly legitimate to ask users to use a different browsers if they are on an old browser.

The best way to decide wether to spend time debugging or just screw it would to be ask yourself a couple of questions.

How much of the user base will be using old browsers? Think if your user base is mostly geeks / people at home or non-technichal / people using school or work computers (with locked-down policies for downloading software)

Can you spend less time on older browsers and make it gracefully degrade without losing functionality? If your website looks less beatiful on an older browser but the functionality still works, you can put a warning stating that the website will look better if the user changes browser, but that no functionality is changed.

Can you postpone this debugging to later? Maybe you should focus on launching your product first and once you're mostly satisfied with what you have, your spend time debugging old browsers. This way, you can release quickly for the majority of people that would use your service.

<comment><AUTHOR> Some great suggestions. I am thinking that I will postpone the debugging and just put some sort of message for IE 8 and older browser users for now. Since I am just starting out, it shouldn't be that big of a deal and I can figure out a solution for the older browser people later. Thanks for the feedback.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> If you don't want the users, ask them to switch browsers. If you want mainstream computer users then support IE8 because it isn't going away any time soon.

In my opinion, users will probably lead to more revenue than whatever you are doing with z-index.

</comment><comment><USER4> Keep in mind that Windows XP users can't upgrade to IE9, they're stuck on IE8 or an alternative.

There are still a lot of Windows XP machines out there.

</comment><comment><USER5> What it comes down to:

Is the cost of Supporting IE 8 greater then the revenue an extra X% of users will generate.

Obviously this comes down to:

1) How much will it cost to support older browsers.

2) How many users do you have/what percentage use older browsers

3) Actual and expected monetization per user

Also bear in mind that users of different browsers may monetize at different rates.

<comment><AUTHOR> Some good points and I guess the answer is that I have no idea because this is a new product that doesn't have any current users or history to pull from.

Also, one thing I just realized. With your comment and similar ones it seems like there is an assumption that users on IE 8 won't actually switch to another browser in order to access the site. I wonder what types of incentives would have to be in place to get someone to upgrade/change their browser.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> If you do decide to support it, I have found these helpful <http://css3pie.com/> <http://code.google.com/p/explorercanvas/>

<comment><AUTHOR> Very cool. I am definitely going to check out CSS3 Pie if I go down that route. Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Do you have any analytics? Standard demographics are ~20-30% IE>9 users.

If those users aren't in your target market, I wouldn't worry, but if they are I wouldn't ignore them.

</comment><comment><USER8> One of our computers at work still has ie6. Maybe you should support 7 and 6 as well!</comment>


If You Wanna Be A Phone Company, You Can't Go Dead - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/04/13/if-you-wanna-be-a-phone-company-you-cant-go-dead/ <comment><USER2> Here's a prime example of why I'm going to wait and see whether Google takes its customers seriously before lavishing significant amounts of time and attention on building a Google App that's completely hostage to their infrastructure.

Half a day of downtime. No explanation on the blog. Nothing you can do but wait and hope. I mean, my $7.95 web host didn't always have great customer service, but I had the option to _leave_ , with less than a day of work.

Yeah, I realize that GrandCentral is an acquisition. Maybe their infrastructure isn't up to the "Google standard" -- they wrote it in PHP, or something. Maybe they've been Dodgeballed. Maybe Google Apps will be run by a better manager from a different division with a much bigger customer service budget. Maybe. But I'm sure that Google has more incentive to keep GrandCentral up -- or at least answer questions about it -- than they would have for my lousy Google App.

</comment><comment><USER3> What almost concerns me more is the fact that GrandCentral has barely been updated since Google acquired them.

I took it as a vote of confidence that they'd be around for a while when Google bought them, but I've been starting to wonder lately if they've been Dodgeballed...

<comment><USER4> If you look at google acquisitions they usually integrate the ones that deal with Adsense pretty quickly. The mobile acquisitions really have yet to pan out. I wouldn't be surprised if this is more or less the story with GC. Google is desperately trying to become a mobile player, but it's unfamiliar territory and probably a money loser at the moment. It's like they're acquiring these companies with shotgun style without really planning out their future integration.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I use GrandCentral as the phone equivalent of a throwaway email address -- it's great as a number to give out to people who you don't want to give your actual phone number. But I wouldn't trust it for anything more -- today isn't the first time I've had issues with it.

</comment><comment><USER6> Shoulda used Erlang! :P

<comment><USER7> Maybe a better title would have been "If you want to be a phone company, you can't go dead without being restarted by your supervisor" ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> For once, I agree with Arrington's linkbait-worthy tone.

Grandcentral is kind of more important of a service than others, and downtime is unacceptable.

</comment><comment><USER9> GrandCentral's CTO: "I knew DreamHost's rates were too good to be true..." :P

</comment><comment><USER10> "failure is not an option" its a fact of life. Things happen, it sucks but its how lessons are learned</comment>


Too many passwords - <AUTHOR> http://blog.tetrack.com/2009/02/too-many-passwords/

<comment><USER2> 1Password solves the problem pretty darn well for me.</comment>


Red Hat acquires Ansible, the open source IT automation company - <AUTHOR> http://www.ansible.com/blog/red-hat <comment><USER2> Front page: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10397496](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10397496)</comment>


The Eve V Is the USB-C Surface Pro That Microsoft Won't Make – The Verge - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2017/5/29/15709040/eve-v-hands-on-preview-surface-pro-usb-c-microsoft-computex <comment><USER2> This is how you do your Surface Pro next time MS. Include the pen and the keyboard in your pricing.</comment>


Into the Grey Zone - <AUTHOR> http://www.newstatesman.com/culture/books/2017/08/grey-zone-can-one-really-be-conscious-while-coma <comment><USER2> Consciousness is a very interesting epiphenomenon. It piques intellectual interest across the board, from first year psychology students, to Nobel Laureates like Francis Crick [1]. I still cringe whenever I remember the time I boldly announced to my would-be undergrad thesis advisor "I want to study the origins of consciousness!" Thankfully she was wonderful advisor with a knack for cultivating more practical research interests, and within weeks I was decapitating rats in the name of science.

I've been studying biological neural networks (bNN) for about ten to fifteen years, and artificial neural networks (aNN) for the past four or five (aNN were something I first learned about in Kutner circa 2005[2], oblivious to their future utility in machine learning). It's been interesting to observe how fast the field of machine learning has progressed aNN theory and application. IMO it has basically caught up to neurobiology - not so much as a body of knowledge but in the elucidation of the key components that allow NN to acquire and retrieve information (the modulation of synaptic weights, and efficient functions to update these weights). Machines are now smarter than ever, and have the capacity for adaptive behavior. A triumphant feat, no doubt.

But within all that progress, we still have no fucking clue what consciousness is about. We don't have a roadmap to get there. We don't know where it resides in the brain (somewhere distributed among cortex presumably). And we don't have a solid strategy for ML attempts at AI consciousness. The best we can offer is: "just keep building these things more powerful and more parallel and maybe it will eventually pop out". Who knows, maybe it will. But it probably doesn't work like that. For all we know consciousness may be a dirty trick, or nothing at all. Sure, we can think about thinking; it's a handy tool developed by billions of eukaryotic cells working together, to keep themselves alive (or at least to proliferate their shared dna).

1\. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Astonishing_Hypothesis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Astonishing_Hypothesis) 2\. [https://mysite.science.uottawa.ca/rkulik/mat3378/mat3378-tex...](https://mysite.science.uottawa.ca/rkulik/mat3378/mat3378-textbook.pdf)

<comment><USER3> It is a topic that fascinates me. Would you have a more extensive read list to recommend (graduate textbook level)?

Note: Without decapitating rats, if possible...

<comment><USER2> I think you might enjoy "In Search of Memory" by Nobel Laureate Eric Kandel (pdf linked below). He provides an entertaining and informative narrative documenting the history of neuroscience (a history Kandel himself heavily influenced). Kandel also wrote 'Principles of Neural Science', a 1400 page tome that some regard as the neuroscience bible. If you are more interested in the latest happenings, run a google scholar search for articles by Huganir, R.Nicoll, or R.Malinow (Malinow had an interesting paper recently called 'Engineering a Memory'). Or if you are interested in neuro methods look up whats been done in the Karl Deisseroth lab.

[http://evolbiol.ru/docs/docs/large_files/kandel.pdf](http://evolbiol.ru/docs/docs/large_files/kandel.pdf)

<comment><USER3> Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think you chose the wrong half of the original title.</comment>


Forking the iPhone - <AUTHOR> https://mondaynote.com/forking-the-iphone-c18945c8388b <comment><USER2> The title is misleading.

I clicked on it, thinking it was some kind of homebrew/OSS development on iPhone but it first goes into excruciating details about Apple financials before arriving at the "fork".

The "fork", as per my understanding, being the new logic and battery design.

</comment><comment><USER3> The author:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean- Louis_Gass%C3%A9e](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Louis_Gass%C3%A9e)</comment>


Ask HN: Today's Google doodle "Garden Gnomes" using 50% CPU when displayed? - <AUTHOR> Today's (10/06/2018) Google homepage doodle called "Celebrating Garden Gnomes" (https://www.google.com/doodles/celebrating-garden-gnomes) seems to be using about 50 to 70% CPU just when displayed on the homepage. I mean not clicked, not activated, just displaying the homepage. I experience the same behavior on latest Chrome, Firefox and Safari on macOS.
When the tab is not active (or closed), the CPU goes back to normal.
Does anyone else experience this?
50% percent CPU is extremely huge for a webpage, plus considering that it's a page we all use a lot, and by all I mean millions of people, plus considering that we didn't do anything to start it (I would be ok if the game/animation itself, when clicked, uses some resources, but this is just standby mode here).
How can we stop this craziness? Isn't anyone at Google thinking about the impact? <comment><USER2> It looks kind of lazy from the doodle creators since they could hide the whole functionality (canvas) behind e.g. a gif so it wouldn't use too much resources without activation.

*edit tested giphy.com's frontpage and it uses less CPU+GPU combined than that google frontpage

</comment><comment><USER3> Doesn't for me, not even close.

But when am I ever on the Google homepage? This is probably the first time in months.

</comment><comment><USER4> Google stopped caring about search a long time ago. Nobody at Google gets promotions for 'keeping search good', only for adding unwanted features. So more and more unwanted features keep coming from all directions, and Google's core products keep getting worse and worse.

A similar thing happened to Microsoft back around the time of Windows Vista (and similarly poor mismanagement by management at the time), so we already know where this train is going.

</comment><comment><USER5> Qwant, Startpage, DuckDuckGo.... You are not limited to google. If they are annoying you, leave.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm trying to switch to DuckDuckGo today

<comment><USER6> I did it any highly recommend. Still 1 in 5 requests need to go through "!g" but the benefit of not seeing AMP is worth it!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Already made the switch. I can say this, you need to be persistent and ignore the urge to go back to google while are using DDG.

</comment><comment><USER8> 30% on a single core and I have many cores. Kind of too much for a page, but nothing to worry about.</comment>


How to access iPhone/iPod Touch from Ubuntu - <AUTHOR> http://www.ubuntugeek.com/how-to-connect-iphoneipod-touch-using-usbin-karmicjauntyintrepidhardy.html <comment><USER2> A few people are still having problems. But it worked on my iPhone 3G first gen. Thanks Matt Colyer and devs.

From the dev site:

 _the iPhone uses a proprietary database format to store song information and playlists, simply copying extra music to the iPhone's filesystem without updating this database will not work. `libgpod (svn)` and `gtkpod` can be used to update and re-sign the song database and make new music show up on players using firmware versions up to 1.3._

[http://matt.colyer.name/projects/iphone- linux/index.php?titl...](http://matt.colyer.name/projects/iphone- linux/index.php?title=Main_Page)

</comment><comment><USER3> I did this for two years, got tired of it breaking on each firmware update, and bought an HTC Hero.

How to access an Android device from Ubuntu:

1\. Plug it in.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, I went the other route and bought a Mac mini, also for iPhone development. The Apple user conversion plan works great:

iPod -> iPhone -> Mac mini or Macbook</comment></comment>


Show HN: Lys – Simple HTML Templating for Python - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/mdamien/lys <comment><AUTHOR> Author here, there's already also a very interesting discussion on reddit: [https://www.reddit.com/r/Python/comments/51bk60/lys_simple_h...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Python/comments/51bk60/lys_simple_html_templating_for_python/)</comment>


Facebook has just invited me to interview and now I'm pissed off - <AUTHOR> http://dw.svbtle.com/facebook-has-just-invited-me-to-interview-and-now-im-pissed-off A lot of people are dreaming about working for one those top companies: Google, Facebook, Apple. Here is a public response to an invitation from Facebook - it seems the Social Network has lost all of it's senses and humanity if it looks for new slaves, not team members. <comment><USER3> This seems like a very childish response to me. Perhaps it would have been better to simply decline the offer and list your reasons, rather than berating the recruiter.

As it currently appears, the argument is not even very clearly thought out. You just kind of yell at them about slavery and feudalism, which imho doesn't have any relation to the puzzle you were asked to solve.

I agree that I wouldn't have done it, but then again, I don't want to work for Facebook.

<comment><AUTHOR> If it would be a real time interview - for sure. But after sending CV I just got that mail with task. Let me underline it - they never TALKED to me. They asked if I want to send them CV - and right after I got this. I don't have any problems with recruiter - I'm more than sure it could be a great person - <USER2> if the company gives her such a workflow - it's, from my point of view, is scary at the least.

<comment><USER4> Facebook is an odd company. When I applied they sent me a page of information about how all the people saying the work environment was bad are wrong. Oddly defensive and sensitive. I live in New Zealand not near SV was unaware of any bad press until they send me a page of defensive articles unprompted.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Slavery, Factory Sweatshops?

You have a chance of a job at a household name company (who can afford to be selective) , probably with cushy salary and benefits.

8-10 hours worth of work isn't a great deal, especially if they give you a few weeks. Even a person working a full time job should be able to squeeze that in by temporarily reducing hours spent watching TV.

It's not like facebook even get any benefit from you performing this work for them.

<comment><USER6> > _You have a chance of a job at a household name company (who can afford to > be selective)_

There are many such companies out there and the better ones will talk to you politely first, look at previous work you've done and then perhaps invite you over for a couple of interviews (including some code puzzles). I was once flown from Europe to Florida before any code puzzles, got to see the whole company, talk to founders (the company was a subsidiary of a household name in games) and technical directors before sitting down for some tests. It was a great experience and I felt very bad for turning down the job offer because they treated me so well ...

Google and Facebook I'd avoid from what I've heard (no firsthand experience though), they seem to hire talent just to keep it away from the competition.

<comment><USER5> With the number of applications that they must get there's no way they can afford to talk to everyone, let alone fly them out.

Therefore they need some way to filter people quickly. Would it be better to do this purely on the basis of resume? Forcing people to invest time making sure they have the correct mixture of buzzwords or would you rather spend that time demonstrating that you can actually code?

<comment><USER6> > _Therefore they need some way to filter people quickly._

This really depends on whether they chose particular people to contact directly or whether those applicants contacted the company.

Sure, the 1000s of applications these companies get every month must be filtered quickly, but if someone was selected for a "cold call" by the employer (presumably based on some research), then handing him menial tasks upfront is a terrible idea and unacceptable for the probably more skilled people typically contacted this way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> _In case you missed it somehow - we live in a society that abandoned slavery, feudalism and even factory sweatshops more than a few years ago._

Facebook isn't requiring him to do this. They are asking him to if he wants to get further in the candidate process. Clearly a bad approach by the recruiter (perhaps a mistake?), but to liken this to slavery is a reach. Just withdrawal candidacy since you weren't very interested anyway.

<comment><AUTHOR> If recruiters from the company well known for free hackers culture are doing this today - I would assume that less open companies could start free working month practices tomorrow.

It seems like it was a mistake and miscommunication. I could not expect Facebook to make such mistakes, but rather change policies. Thankfully I was wrong.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> 10 hours. It's the time I have spent last week for some open-source coding. I was happy to give my time for free to those projects I supported. It's about 10 hours that I have spent with a friend of mine who visited me from other city this week.

I can't imagine spending this time for someone I don't know, someone who never ever bother to talk to me but demanded them.

Few years ago I have spent few _days_ of work planning project with people with whom I had interview - just because I started to like them in 10 minutes of the interview. I ended up working for them for the next few years and some of them are still my close friends.

I could ignore the offer, decline it (as I did) and live on. But if nobody will tell those guys in fat cat corporations that they are wrong - they will continue to think and treat people as "resources", not persons.

You could be ok with that - they do have great salaries, career opportunities etc. But accepting this treatment as a norm is unthought to me. It's not about ego, it's about some tiny respect of a human being for a human being.

<comment><USER8> I seriously doubt that the problem here is that Facebook is trying to make you a cog in their wheel (at least not with respect to the coding puzzle). Rather, I think it's just because they feel that requiring this work will lead to better candidates. If you don't like doing this, vote with your feet and just tell them "Thanks but no thanks". If enough people do that, they'll probably stop offering those kinds of questions.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm afraid that Facebook will make a precedent that will turn 10 hours free coding in a standard, moreover - _before_ even a phone interview.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I had a completely different experience. I've been in contact with Facebook about potentially working there (Engineering Side) and I would describe my experience as pleasant, respectful, and interesting. I've learned a lot about how Facebook approaches problem solving in their environment, and I'm impressed. From an Engineering perspective, I'm equally impressed with their architecture and the solutions they've built. Not sure if the OP is asking for advice, but I'll give you some; If you want something in life, you have to go for it. Sometimes this means you have to sacrifice something and/or work a little harder. If you can't put in 10 hours for the opportunity to work there, what kind of contribution will you make to their organization? Will you take an initiative to find problems and solve them? Or will you complain about having to do things, and bring a negative attitude? I don't know the answer (and I'm not implying anything), but one can only imagine the picture you've painted with that response. I've been working 10 years to position myself for these types of opportunities. 10 hours is like a drop in the bucket.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for sharing your experience. I have heard a lot of good things about Facebook before - and my totally opposite experience was one of the reason for exaggerated reaction.

I agree that there are jobs where I would love to spend days, weeks and months of free coding and other efforts - all just to get them. But I have very different expectations of pre-interview process - when I saw it was 'do all this and mb we ll talk to you' thing.

Again - and I think post's update should explain it - what happened to me was an exception. I would just never expect to get such an exception from Facebook.

<comment><USER9> Understood. Hiring is a two way street, it needs to work for both sides. It's unfortunate how this turned out. But hey, everything happens for a reason right? Maybe it was not meant to be because something else awesome is right around the corner. If you are actively looking, I hope you find something that makes you happy! Take it easy.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> sounds like a Great Filter that author's ego didn't fit through (not that i'm in anyway critical of the author, as until we're back in 2003 labor market or i start to feel [undesired] impact of my age on my opportunities, my ego doesn't feel like trying to squeeze through even coarser filters), it is just that moral/ethical/emotional appeals (slavery/etc..) don't work in market.

</comment><comment><USER11> Sorry, but what a self-important buffoon. Slavery? What "value" does FB get from his solution to the puzzle, how is it "work"?!

And by the way, there is nothing at all special about getting an email like this from Facebook, Google, or any of a dozen other firms. They all have industrial-grade recruiting machines and this initial stage is like a trawler scooping up half the ocean. If you post on technical forum or mailing list, or have a LinkedIn profile, it would be more unique _not_ to have been approached.

</comment><comment><USER12> I don't get it. What benefit are they deriving from the puzzle being completed? It doesn't even compare to regular work in that way, let alone sweatshops, assembly lines, whatever.

A lot of people would go to a lot further lengths to work at a place like Facebook, that's for sure. The holier-than-thou attitude here is so aggravating, for many reasons.

</comment><comment><USER8> I don't really like the author's attitude. But there is some truth to it: Working 8-10 hours to get a job at Facebook is crap. I'm a professional with a job and a life. I already have to do phone interviews and in-person interviews, and now you want me to spend 8-10 hours working on a puzzle?

<comment><USER13> > and now you want me to spend 8-10 hours working on a puzzle?

Perhaps the kind of applicants Facebook are looking for are those that do want to spend 8-10 hours on a puzzle.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> So, uh... don't do the puzzle? I don't really see the problem here.

I really doubt this puzzle constitutes "work" (in the sense of being beneficial for Facebook's bottom line). This seems analogous to an audition to me.

</comment><comment><USER15> HR at a large company is not like HR at a small company. Broad strokes have to be taken to make the process manageable at scale while being somewhat fair. Generally speaking, the phone screen comes after any pre-requisite criteria are checked (such as programming competence). Phone screens aren't very useful from an interviewing standpoint anyways; most simply exist to weed out candidates that are non-adjusted or have interests that lie entirely elsewhere (e.g., I only want to work here before I go back for my M.S. in CS in 6 months). They are more for the benefit of the interviewee if the company isn't a household brand; I think you probably already know most things you need to know about Facebook.

</comment><comment><USER16> This post comes off kind of douchey. Sympathies evaporated once you started mentioning slavery. Factory workers in South East Asia might have a slightly different opinion on what constitutes slavery.

You could've had some fun with the challenge. E.g. Write a piece of code that draws a massive middle finger on the screen. That would've been a cooler response!

Here's how I responded to a small company that was trying to make me jump through (unnecessary) hoops: [http://www.andrewdyster.com/how-to-fill-out- selection-criter...](http://www.andrewdyster.com/how-to-fill-out-selection- criteria-form.html)

(These guys were a small 3-4 man operation, not a mega corp. My way of telling them to stop acting like dicks.)

<comment><USER17> That response is awesome!

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I agree with your stance on the subject. It's out of line for them to pass over the puzzle like that. Kudos for standing up.

On the other hand, your actual response, with all the slave talk, was pretty juvenile.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. Yeah, I understand how it seems to be childish, but I couldn't expect this behavior and approach from Facebook, known for it's great open culture. It rather reminded me too strongly about my employer (tiny tech sales company from 10 years ago) who ended up loosing all his tech department - 5 guys just left the office one day and never got back.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> The way to handle this is probably just to send them an invoice for their requested 8 hours of work, advising them that your standard terms for assignments of this size are 50% in advance against a final payment of $200 US per hour.

</comment><comment><USER20> I don't mind doing a puzzle to get a job in a good company as I already did. If you think you shouldn't do the puzzle but you still were interested on working for Facebook, you could have said: I don't have the time to solve the puzzle however I have more than 10 hours of contribution on my github, I still wanna work for Facebook, what's the next step?

</comment><comment><USER21> I'm semi seriously contemplating doing 2-4 weeks of work to get up to speed with a weird technology because if I did that I might find it easy to pitch myself to someone who isn't actively hiring. Probably not a smart move, but perhaps a very interesting move.

Opportunities have costs. They also have benefits. One evaluates and decides.

Shrug.

<comment><AUTHOR> Voluntarily - it's awesome. I'm trying to code out of office as much as possible - doing toy projects or checking on interesting open-source code. The problem, from my point of view, is that they think it's acceptable to demand those hours without even talking to a real person, but rather as a trivial part of pre-evaluation. It's ugly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Recruiters from those companies are quite spammy and out of control.

</comment><comment><USER13> If you're not interested then politely decline. If you're interested then you have an amazing opportunity many dream of. No one is asking you to work for free...

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> An update was published after Facebook's representative contacted me. Let's hope I was the only guy who was treated in such an ugly way.

</comment><comment><USER23> When I was applying to college they told me that not only did I have to fill out an application, write an essay and pay a fee, but I had to spend several hours taking an aptitude test, which I had to study for for several weeks beforehand. Slavery!</comment>


Ask HN: What's Wrong with Me? - <AUTHOR> In college I studied ME and graduated with a C average.  I struggled.
After college, I taught myself programming.  I started with web - PHP, JS, etc.  Landed a job, and eventually learned backend Java.  Did that for a few years, and then jumped into Android Dev.  Been doing full stack web/android/backend now for ~9 years.
I lost my job (company downsizing) 2 months ago and I'm in the biggest rut of my life.  I FEEL DUMB.
Every job nowadays requires solving algorithms.  So I set out as a goal, to get better at algorithms.  My progress has been absolutely dismal.  After 1 month of trying to solve problems on leetcode.com, while taking a coursera course ... I am NO BETTER at solving these problems.
Every problem seems different from the last.  Even if I can find the 'common thread' ... the solution is still generally quite different enough that I can't solve it completely.  It seems I'm a "C Average" person, and that's just how it's going to be for the rest of my life.
My memory sucks.  I forget solutions within hours of learning them.
Every day I sit down to study.  I struggle.  I get frustrated.  The frustration causes me to get distracted, and want to quit.  An entire day goes by and I will have only struggled through 2 problems.  TWO PROBLEMS in 1 day.
Please, HN, what can I do?  I'm desperate at this point to not keep sucking at this.  I need to see improvement, but it's just not happening. <comment><USER3> _An entire day goes by and I will have only struggled through 2 problems. TWO PROBLEMS in 1 day._

There's nothing bad about that, especially if you haven't spent half your life focusing on those leetcode type problems. Consider that a typical undergraduate "data structures and algorithms" course runs for a whole semester and doesn't actually (usually) cover that many individual algorithms. You might study one DS / algorithm in one lecture session and then have a few days to spend working on homework involving it.

 _I forget solutions within hours of learning them._

Fine. You don't really memorize the specific solutions to these things. You internalize the concepts to where you can recreate the solution when you need it. You don't have to remember _all_ of the details, just enough. And that takes practice.

 _After 1 month of trying to solve problems on leetcode.com, while taking a coursera course ... I am NO BETTER at solving these problems._

A month really isn't that long to spend on this stuff. Give it six months, and if you don't see any improvement, then maybe that tells you something meaningful. But right now, this seems like the equivalent of going to the gym for a couple of weeks and then complaining that you aren't a world class power-lifter yet. It takes time to achieve results.

 _I need to see improvement, but it 's just not happening._

Two things:

1\. I'd encourage you to give yourself more time (but keep working hard)

2\. Your entire premise might be wrong. Not all jobs require doing leetcode/hackerrank style problems. Now if you're in the SV area, and you're focused on working for trendy startups it might seem that way. But jobs in other areas (the East Coast of the US is where I'm most familiar) don't always, especially if you're willing to work for a company doing something a bit mundane, like retailing auto parts, or life insurance, or something.

<comment><AUTHOR> Maybe I am being too critical of myself. It's certainly a trait of myself that I'm familiar with.

The problem is often that I don't know what's an acceptable expectation of myself. I've tried to be reasonable when it comes to approaching the study of algorithms, but maybe I've missed the mark?

Two problems in 1 day seems like pretty dismal progress, especially when I'm not exactly memorizing / absorbing these problems as well as I'd like to. Most of that day, is spent distracted out of frustration that I didn't / couldn't solve the first, or second problem, and had to resort to the solution.

I know that there are jobs out there which don't do this style of interviewing, but I have noticed that most of the companies doing interesting work, that pay really well, do. I kind of rationalize it like this: If I'm going to work a job (shit, I'd rather not)... Then it damn well better be maximized for interesting work, and pay:

Job = Max(jobs,[Interesting,Pay]);

<comment><USER3> Fair enough. I'd also rather not work a traditional job, but I take a slightly different approach... I try to go for a $DAYJOB that's as boring and stress- free as possible, while paying enough to pay the bills, and then use my side- project as my outlet for doing stuff I find actually interesting. But I understand that that approach isn't for everyone.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I can't offer any advice to your situation beyond trying to avoid being discouraged. There's a balance to confidence; too much or too little can be offputting, and it seems like you're hitting a low point that might make things harder for yourself.

I would suggest not hanging yourself with your academic performance though. Some people work better with different methods of learning for example, and not all teachers recognize them, particularly if they learn differently - <USER2> doesn't necessarily make you dumber. In retrospect, you should ask yourself what specifically caused you to be a C average student.

<comment><AUTHOR> > In retrospect, you should ask yourself what specifically caused you to be a > C average student.

I appreciate your response.

I'm 32 now, and I've had a long time to think about this question. Here's what I think is the answer:

I lack the focus over time which is required to build a deep knowledge or skill.

In other words, I get bored or frustrated quickly. Once bored, or frustrated, learning tapers off VERY quickly. I'm not a child prodigy, so learning anything takes focussed effort over time. The second it gets hard, or boring, my ability to stay on task diminishes rapidly.

It's not as simple as "grin and bear it", trust me I've tried. In college that's all I did. Grin, and bear the struggle. That's no way to learn. I need to be able to sit, fail, learn, sit, fail, learn, succeed, over and over and over. But for every sit, fail ... a frustration builds. Even the slightest frustration / anger, saps you of focus.

If it's not frustration/anger from struggling that derails me... It's sheer boredom. I can sit and read a boring book, for example. But after a few pages, I'll straight up forget what I was even reading. It's like my brain just goes offline whenever I encounter something boring. I have to stop, and re-read whatever it was I was reading.

That's truly what it comes down to. I can't sustain focus on something long enough (hours, days, weeks) to become really good at it.

For what it's worth - I've been prescribed and have taken adderal. It's a miracle for focus, but I HATE how it makes me feel. My heart rate jumps 10-15 bpm (from ~50 resting, to 60, or 65). I FEEL my heart beating harder, which is not pleasant. Then, hours later once the drug has worn off, I feel down... Depressed, and still my heart feels 'heavy'. Oh and that's on a "small" dose (5-10mg). I can't take the stuff.

<comment><USER5> What do you do after you get bored? My Achilles heel has always been too much internet and distractions, and actively removing those has helped increase concentration.

Not specifically related, but I personally find that having too many options for what to do generally makes me hop between things too much. I have a theme for every day of the week, and I don't allow myself to work on anything under a theme for another day. MWF are three courses respectively, TH is backend for a side project, weekend is frontend for a side project.

<comment><AUTHOR> > What do you do after you get bored?

Anything else.

I'm not sure it matters. The boredom is the problem, not having options.

You could lock me in a room with nothing to do but read a book about thermodynamics, or study algorithms, and as soon as my interest starts to fade... my progress slows DRAMATICALLY.

What am I doing in this locked room, other than reading?? I don't know, probably just staring at the wall thinking about something else. Then realizing I'm wasting time. Start reading again... Lose track, get bored.... Stare at the wall and think about something else... Realize I'm distracted, start reading again... rinse, repeat.

Will get through an entire chapter, and barely remember what I actually read.

<comment><USER3> Have you tried the Pomodoro technique[1] by any chance? If not, it might be worth a shot.

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Have you considered working with a tutor? Have you had any evaluations to determine if ADHD, processing speed (the human kind) or other issues play a role? A tutor would be able to tell you if your expectations are too high. An evaluation would be able to tell you if you need to adjust your learning methods.

</comment><comment><USER7> > TWO PROBLEMS in 1 day

One of the dirty little secrets of studying CS and math is that truly understanding 2 problems of the kind you've never seen before in 1 day is OK and expected. Hell, sometimes mere understanding of one single solution to a problem can take a week or longer. Most anyone who does better has either studied the (adjacent) material before or just trudging along half- understanding this bit and that piece hoping that sometime in the future it might all come together. And that's exactly what happens after you stick with it for awhile (often several years). Your job is to understand the thought process and philosophy of math. It's usually called "math maturity". Math/CS people reuse the same tips and tricks over and over again under many different guises and after a while you'll start seeing this repetition and even start using them yourself. It's very similar to how you learned your own native tongue. Luckily, math folk have methods to rein in this madness.

Check out [0]. It's free and teaches you some basics of structured thought. Then check out [1], [2], [3] to expand on what you've learned.

One really good unpretentious algo book that shows you how to do problems is [4].

[0] BOOK OF PROOF by Richard Hammach

[https://www.people.vcu.edu/~rhammack/BookOfProof/](https://www.people.vcu.edu/~rhammack/BookOfProof/)

[1] Discrete Mathematics with Applications by Susanna Epp

[https://www.amazon.com/Discrete-Mathematics-Applications- Sus...](https://www.amazon.com/Discrete-Mathematics-Applications-Susanna- Epp/dp/1337694193/ref=dp_ob_title_bk#reader_1337694193)

[2] Pure Mathematics for Beginners by Steve Warner

[https://www.amazon.com/Pure-Mathematics-Beginners- Rigorous-I...](https://www.amazon.com/Pure-Mathematics-Beginners-Rigorous- Introduction/dp/0999811754/ref=sr_1_16?keywords=math+steve+warner&qid=1570065886&s=books&sr=1-16)

[3] Mathematical Proofs by Gary Chartrand et al

[https://www.amazon.com/Mathematical-Proofs-Transition- Advanc...](https://www.amazon.com/Mathematical-Proofs-Transition-Advanced- Mathematics/dp/0134746759/ref=sr_1_3?crid=2U4Q1U11MF8SQ&keywords=transition+to+advanced+mathematics&qid=1570065962&s=books&sprefix=transition+to+a%2Cstripbooks%2C206&sr=1-3)

[4] Data Structures and Algorithms: Concepts, Techniques and Applications by G.A.V. Pai

[https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0070699577/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b...](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0070699577/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o09_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1)

Good Luck and don't f*ck it up!

<comment><AUTHOR> I appreciate the thoughtful post, with links. Definitely one of the feelings I've had as I've approached these algorithms is that I MUST certainly be lacking in either experience, or a way of thinking, or both.

I'm certainly lacking in the experience boat. But, I've figured the "way of thinking" is likely that I am not thinking in an algorithmic / math fashion. I don't "see" the solutions in the same way that someone with a mind for math would. Instead I just see the brute force, "obvious" solution.

I'll definitely take a look at these resources.</comment></comment>


The Unsustainable College Textbook Bubble - <AUTHOR> http://www.benzinga.com/10/09/461324/the-unsustainable-college-textbook-bubble

<comment><USER2> Does anyone know much about how this industry works? Is it true that schools receive a kickback from the publisher when they require their textbook for a class?

Interesting (scary) note. In 1970 there were over 30 college textbook publishers, as opposed to around 5 now ([http://www.dispatch.com/live/contentbe/dispatch/2007/08/05/2...](http://www.dispatch.com/live/contentbe/dispatch/2007/08/05/20070805-D1-01.html)).</comment>


Church Committee - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_Committee <comment> java-man A lesson not learned.</comment>


Elon Musk: The World's Raddest Man - <AUTHOR> http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/05/elon-musk-the-worlds-raddest-man.html

<comment><USER2> One of the aspects of Elon's work that I think is brilliant is his ability to craft business strategies that are achievable given his current resources and then build on top of his success. The zip2 -> x.com -> paypal -> spacex -> tesla story is really well told here.</comment>


The mistakes I did in my blog posts - <AUTHOR> https://anweshadas.in/the-mistakes-i-did-in-my-blog-posts/ <comment><USER2> Sorry, I found this kind of amusing:

> There were plenty grammatical mistakes.

Seriously though, it's nice to hear you've improved here. Indeed, I think the big takeaway here is that previously you were writing for print (where long, meandering articles are the norm and formal language is almost expected) and now you're writing for the web (where people want short, easier to understand pieces they can read in whatever free time they have available).

Good luck with your future blog posts!</comment>


Show HN: An alarm clock you have to smile at - <AUTHOR> https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/rise-shine-smiling-alarm-clock/id831209924?ls=1&mt=8

<comment><USER2> 23.6Mb alarm clock!</comment>


Ask HN: New to freelancing how do clients send you passwords? - <AUTHOR> As freelancers how do your clients usually send you passwords? My clients have been emailing them to me and it feels weird. <comment><USER2> A lot of times my clients did not have IT staff and were not running any sort of password managers so it was interesting.

So two things I had them do routinely are below, though some would still just send me an email with username/password in it (always felt dirty).

Best overall option, have them create a user account for you with a temporary password on whatever service you need access to. That is safe to send via email then you immediately change it. Then when you are done with their project they can just remove you.

If it is for a service that they can't create more user accounts, I would have them email me the user name, and either tell me the password over a phone call (choice 1), or text me the password on my cell phone. While still not the most ideal, it would minimize some of the exposure of just having a username/password in a single email.

I also advised all clients to change the username and password often and especially when I was complete with the project. I told them they should do that in reference to any company or freelancer they use.

All this for the 95% chance that you will still receive passwords like "password1", or their company name with some date appended etc. Point being any middle schooler could probably guess the password. I'd usually always send an email about password security in these cases as a helpful service but also a little bit of a CYA in case anything ever happened. So I could point to them that I warned them to change weak passwords.</comment>


Not All Facts Are Equal - <AUTHOR> https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/mi5-files-fake-news-prevent-programme-newspapers-patrick-cockburn-a8389581.html <comment><USER2> This confusion is rampant in the business world. Some people prefer to bamboozle and be bamboozled by case studies, some people prefer to bamboozle and be bamboozled by pie charts. Powerpoint is a common medium for both. However, despite their differences, they share their audience - people who can't do a good analysis and have no idea what one would look like. Inevitably, if this realization ever sinks in it will have to be worded in a way that doesn't make it sound like there's anything wrong with the people who don't know what they're doing. Now that journalists have started to phrase it in a way that makes it sound like the "facts," are at fault, I think it has a good chance of becoming accepted.

<comment> mAEStro-paNDa This is an excellent point. Although, I think as far as (most) journalism goes, it's less about "facts" in general than it is defending an authority/legitimacy that was previously accepted (generally) but is now being put into question.

It seems the author is pointing out how the tendencies that lead people to consider something as "fact" haven't changed despite the mechanism of communication improving in capability/efficiency.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This part is true:

"In practice, this data-driven approach never worked and campaigns that relied on it, like Hillary Clinton's presidential bid in 2016, have usually ended in failure."

I think that a statistically significant set of detailed case studies is superior to a massive mountain of data where each data point is just an approximation of what it is supposed to measure (e.g. answers to a handful of questions, or some metric).

Perhaps anecdotes, in large enough numbers, are data.

<comment><USER4> All you have to do is ask Google - did inequality increase under 8 years of Obama?

Look at the results that pop up. You will see articles filled with charts and data that tell two totally different stories. Every other link will dutifully fall on one side or the other.

How is the average American going to figure out what the truth is?

<comment><USER5> >How is the average American going to figure out what the truth is?

Basic education that was provided for free in middle and high school?

<comment><USER4> Do you think that's working?

Once you take this position, and from the outcomes we see all around us, its very easy to reach a conclusion that the edu system is failing as a large part of the population can't parse what they are being fed. And that includes highly educated people btw. Cause they land up on either side on any issue you pick.

But that's just wrong.

People constantly expect the education system to solve the problem (of info overload - so many facts that not all facts are equal as the article does a good job explaining). The education system was never designed to solve info overload.

And social media/news media/Google are designed to overload everyone.

We need a bridging of the two systems.

Google/social media/news media has to understand they are constantly serving second graders tenth grade problems. And pretending there won't be any consewuences.

The education system is atlest able to signal to a second grader he is in second grade and here is a path to tenth grade with feedback constantly being provided to ensure he stays on track if he wants to get to tenth grade.

These signals don't exist on the internet of 2018 or are drowned out by 2000 other signals.

Most people are busy, distracted, coping with their own life problems and with the minimum attention they have to spare are told to pick facts from a large buffet table. The tech world has reinvent what signals it's providing alongside those facts.

Cause the highly simplistic current signals of upvotes/view counts/likes/retweets etc are not enough.

<comment><USER5> >its very easy to reach a conclusion that the edu system is failing as a large part of the population can't parse what they are being fed.

I think the problem is deeper than any education system could reasonably be expected to fix.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think the headline is great, the article not so much.

I learned about the inequality of facts while processing accident claims. Accident claims are a little like a court case where a single judge determines a verdict. That verdict determines whether or not a check is cut to cover the claim.

In any claim, you will see strong facts, weak facts, and even red flags that can indicate it is fraudulent. With reading it, you need to make one of four decisions:

1\. Pay the claim.

2\. Deny the claim.

3\. Request more information.

4\. Refer to the fraud department for review.

Any given claim can have indicators to pay and contradictory indicators to deny. The decision to pay or deny hinges not only on how many such indicators there are, but on the strength of each of them. Kind of like DNA evidence will outweigh hearsay in a court case.

Some facts are stronger than others. This is true even if you take out the element of politics.

</comment><comment><USER7> I feel like literature can often have this problem too; the information density has become less thoughtful since there is so much data to quote and people spend less time just sitting and thinking. It is easy to quote data; it is much harder and more time consuming to connect the data yourself and come up with something meaningful to guide your life.

"Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?" \- TS Eliot

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> The author has a long track record of being one of the most careful and factual journalists in the English-speaking world. His reporting on the wars in the Middle East has been consistently some of the most informative, and unlike most of his colleagues he has put his body on the line by being physically present there. So an article like the OP is more worth listening to than it might seem.

<comment><USER8> I always read carefully when I see this authors byline. If he did not quite often tell uncomfortable truths, he would probably be much more well known. As it is, he does not make the mainstream media very often.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> FYI, the author, Patrick Cockburn, has a last name pronounced "co-burn".

</comment><comment><USER10> Obligatory relevant xkcd:

[https://xkcd.com/882/](https://xkcd.com/882/)

And if you think this only applies to statistics, you need to think about the problem being described here a bit more.

</comment><comment><USER11> I think the title of this piece is right (if a bit banal and obvious), but the op-ed is rambling and not at all convincing.

</comment><comment><USER12> The facts that support one's narrative are the most important.

Mainstream media 101

<comment><USER13> I agree that all mainstream media, no matter if it's on the right, the left, center, government owned or not -- it's all full of bias to push the narrative each organization cares about.

Maybe 5% of the news reported is worth paying attention to, the rest may as well be garbage.

<comment><USER14> They put the narrative people want to read about. Have you seen what's on the clickbaity ads ? That's what people click on ! Most people want garbage.

<comment><USER13> Very true. I internally weep for humanity every time I use a browser without ad block.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Where to invest money? - <AUTHOR>

I am earning some extra money that I wish to invest for 3 years. I want to add more on a monthly basis. Can HN suggest best place to watch my money grow? <comment><USER3> Right now CDs are not a great option. Very low yielding.

I would suggest spending a few hours every week studying the stock market so that you can at least understand things that are going on, fluctuations that take place etc. I also recommend (my father pays for) Stock Market Mentor. He is a really brilliant guy and although his service is expensive it will be made up for by the knowledge you gain. That knowledge (both relevant to actually picking stocks AND learning to pick your own) will stay with you forever when you have even more money to invest.

I would suggest spending a few months listening to him and doing your own research. Find some stocks you like (or sectors) and follow them. You could test the waters with ETFs because a lot of the stimulus money will be entering the market soon. Right now the market is quite low by historic levels - <USER2> doesn't necessarily mean it will go up, but the chances are better.

The market is extremely volatile now. Just be careful..invest in LEARNING and then test things out. Good luck

</comment><comment><USER4> Three years is a considerable short term investment period, for which I would target low-risk assets. How much money are we talking about?

Without knowing more, I would say a 3-year Certificate of Deposit (CD) or bond funds are your best bet.

</comment><comment><USER5> If you can risk the money then buy stocks. Take a look at Apple in particular.</comment>


DNA Ancestry for All – The Scientist Magazine - <AUTHOR> http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/40460/title/DNA-Ancestry-for-All/ <comment><AUTHOR> I have been very curious recently about DND testing ancestry. I think it is amazing to know our origins, wanted to share my interest.</comment>


USA and USSR planned to nuke the moon out of existence - <AUTHOR> https://nypost.com/2017/05/01/usa-and-ussr-planned-to-nuke-the-moon-out-of-existence/ <comment><USER2> Clickbait title, not by the poster, but by the author themselves. No, they were not going to 'evaporate the moon'. Just set a nuke off on it.</comment>


Facebook Remains Stubbornly Proud Of Position On Holocaust Denial - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/05/12/facebook-remains-stubbornly-proud-of-position-on-holocaust-denial/ <comment><USER2> Glad to hear it. This is a silly debate. Let them have their Facebook group, their twitter hashtag, their IRC channel, whatever. If you think they're idiots then simply don't click links that take you to their content.

<comment><USER3> Because everyone on the internet is capable of making a rational judgment about the lies these groups are spreading.

Young, impressionable minds (kids) can't form their own opinions and deduct logical conclusions based upon presented facts; they will simply believe what they read, and they shouldn't be reading that.

<comment><USER4> Think of the children!

Sorry, but when his excuse comes out the debate is over. The children will be fine, just like they have been fine for all of human history. They survived as slaves, through depression and wars, and every other thing history has thrown at them. A random group on facebook posting about a revisionist stance that almost 99.99% of people know to be insane isn't going to hurt "kids". I'm glad facebook is allowing free speech on their platform. As many have stated, this is a private entity and it is within its rights to pull the content. I'm glad they are not. I would prefer my child to see this and see how horrible these people are then pretend they don't exist.

<comment><USER3> I commend you for how you'd handle the situation with your child, however every situation will not unfold with a caring parents explaining to their kids how wrong these "bad men" are.

It's not just kids who shouldn't be reading this material, it's all kinds of impressionable people who don't compare facts before forming opinions. It's hard to argue that this kind of hate speech will benefit more people than it will hurt.

<comment><USER5> I fear there is just no reasonable way you can protect such people from, eventually, being brainwashed or deluded by someone in some way (mostly it's religions that do it).

Im not saying that is an excuse not to ban the groups: but as a reason FOR banning the groups it is ignoring the elephant in the room :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If you do not support a person's right to express an opinion that you abhor you do not support free speech at all.

While I disagree with their decision to prohibit photographs of nipples, doing so is unfortunately quite prudent lest US politicians decide to meddle.

<comment><USER7> There is a difference between supporting free speech and supporting it on a particular platform. The First Amendment doesn't give me the right to force the _NYT_ to say what I want. Similarly, it doesn't require FB to post stuff it disagrees with; they're completely within their rights to censor this stuff.

<comment><USER8> "censor"

A private citizen or company may choose not to broadcast whatever it likes, for whatever reason. This is not "censorship" except in the broadest and most meaningless possible sense.

I agree with you, but to call it "censorship" is to cede part of the argument.

<comment><USER9> There's an important difference you're glossing over. If I post a photgraph to Facebook and Facebook takes it down, that's censorship. If I don't post the photograph in the first place, that's not censorship. That doesn't mean it's a violation of free speech or the first amendment, but we shouldn't redefine words like "censorship" just to gloss over all these issues.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> "No, the problem is that Holocaust deniers make their arguments for one simple purpose - they want to finish what was started and wipe Jews off the planet."

This is far from true. "Holocaust deniers" very often turn out to be "The holocaust was more than just killing Jews, so stop making it just about them. A lot of the figures about those killed are inflated. The Holocaust needs to be stop being used a trump card for getting everything from Hate Speech Laws codified to a free pass for Israel to wall in the Palestinians and bomb densely populated areas."

Now I tacitly accept the figures for those killed in the Holocaust (6 million Jews, 5 million gypsies, gays and others) because it isn't an important issue for me.

But trying to call holocaust deniers closeted genocidal maniacs is pretty absurd.

<comment><USER11> With all due respect that is quite delusional. (I couldn't figure out a more respectful way to say that, sorry)

President of Iran is my case in point. Need I say more?

<comment><USER12> Sorry, what's delusional? The abuse of the Holocaust to negotiate preferential treatment for Jews is real. My case in point is this:

[http://www.claimscon.org/index.asp?url=hardship/leningrad_si...](http://www.claimscon.org/index.asp?url=hardship/leningrad_siege)

"In an historic breakthrough, the Claims Conference has negotiated one-time payments from Germany for certain Jewish victims of the Nazi siege of Leningrad."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is a post about why Facebook should remove anti-semitic groups. He doesn't cover the case of a group that is not anti-semitic, but does deny the Holocaust. Since his argument is "Holocaust denial correlates strongly with anti-semitism, thus Holocaust denial must be banned," can be simplified to "Anti-semitism must be banned" with, in the worst case, no loss of accuracy, and, in the best case, a reduced rate of false positives.

<comment><USER13> I sure hope you finish your mental masturbation before the elephant in the room sits on you.

<comment><USER7> Can you clarify?

<comment><USER13> "He doesn't cover the case of a group that is not anti-semitic, but does deny the Holocaust."

Mental masturbation: Applying logic in a theoretical realm without regard to the real world or the human condition.

Elephant in the room: By definition, the outlier you cite _cannot exist_ , since the sole purpose of "Holocaust denial" is to rub salt into Jewish wounds.

I have been on this forum forever, have discussed many issues with many of you, and _never_ comment on these types of threads, which frankly do not belong on hn. But since you turned this into a logic play, I took the bait (for which I'm already sorry.)

I also see that the ho-hums have arrived and have started to vote me down without providing comments, a perfectly expected outcome.

You are churning logic which, based upon my axioms, is illogical. I understand that you may not agree with my axioms, rendering your treatment of the logic as plasible.

Please understand that, either way, it doesn't matter. Saying that "Holocaust denial" != "anti-semitism" is not a speed bump; it's a show stopper. For many sensible people, you have effectively disqualified yourself from further logical discussion.

I look forward to discussing business & programming with you and all the others in future threads. This is my last posting in this thread (and hopefully all others like it).

<comment><USER7> Thank you for explaining. Now, what I don't understand is how you'd cover such a case -- a historian who honestly says "Looking at the record, I think the conventional story of the Holocaust overestimates the death toll, and misunderstands the motivations." At least one former denier (can't recall his name right now) is Jewish; the guy who blogs at <http://hooverhog.typepad.com/> is a Holocaust denier (among other unusual beliefs) and has also made references to having a Jewish girlfriend, which I think goes beyond even the usual "some of my best friends are..." argument.

Exploring edge cases is generally not mental masturbation. In this situation, there's a genuinely weird argument: "Holocaust denial is synonymous with anti- semitism, and anti-semitism is bad, thus Holocaust denial is bad." If all Holocaust deniers are anti-semites, then this makes as much sense as saying "Anti-semites are more likely to dislike people who celebrate Passover, thus groups opposed to celebrating Passover must be banned." Why the extra mental gymnastics? Why is Holocaust denial even a factor?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Ah, the inevitable descent into a flamewar.

I would expect such indulgence for our primal trollish instincts from reddit. But HN?

Let us debate emacs vs vi, or the failure of the Boost library, or rakudo vs parrot!

Hell, let us fight to the death over Star Wars vs. Star Trek.

<comment><USER14> > I would expect such indulgence for our primal trollish instincts from > reddit. But HN?

I resisted the reddit comparison but I'm glad someone else mentioned it. Furthermore, I'm unconvinced that this is the type of submission that should be appearing on HN's front page.

<comment><USER15> Then flag it. That's what that's for.

I don't happen to agree, though.

<comment><USER14> I didn't say I'm convinced that it doesn't belong on the front page, I'm said that I'm unconvinced that it does.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is the right decision by Facebook. I don't agree with that group, but you can't just go around bowing to everyone X group that's offended/insulted by Y topic.

If they do, when do you draw the line? If a group of "A" people say that the "B" religion groups are offensive/insulting/wrong, and how they committed crimes in ages before, do you ban "A"'s groups? What about the other side, you ban "B"'s group since the other side is wrong/insulted/offended?

Free speech is there for a reason, to protect those with unpopular views. The views may be wrong/insulting/offensive/whatever, but their still their views. The holocaust denial group is indeed in the wrong and I don't agree with them, but they still have the right to express their views.

</comment><comment><USER17> Of course they're proud. They realize they're on the right side: the first amendment's side.

You do NOT have the right to squelch speech simply because it's unpopular, controversial, or distasteful. If Facebook pulls these groups, it should be because of market pressure (advertising boycots and so forth), not some government mandate. That's going in the WRONG direction. What's so hard to understand about that?

</comment><comment><USER18> This is a very tough call on Facebook's part. Their primary purpose is to serve as a facilitator, not as a moderator of people's opinions. At the same time, this is a pretty clear case of religious/racial hate speech.

Leave it to TechCrunch to ignore every nuance of the issue and make a catchy headline out of it. If anything I find TechCrunch's demagogy more offensive than Facebook's official line on this subject.

<comment><USER19> Hate speech is speech. If you favor free speech, you favor free hate speech. I don't get what's such a tough call about it, aside from the business/legal implications of Facebook operating in countries which restrict speech.

<comment><USER20> The right to free speech does not equate to the right to free facebook accounts.

Facebook is not the government. They can ban any users they want for saying things they don't like, without impinging on our right to free speech.

<comment><USER19> Oh, certainly Facebook has the right to turn the Holocaust-deniers away. But that implies that they do not support free speech -- at least not enough to support it materially. That's the call that's being made -- whether Facebook supports free speech on Facebook. I wouldn't have hard time with this call.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I disagree with what you say but I will defend to death your right to say it.

<comment><USER22> An unbalanced opinion, based on a soundbite that is repeated over and over again by people that should first think through what it would mean if put into practice. You would not defend my right to publically, repeatedly, defamate you or your products, would you? For that exact reason there are laws against that. If I repeated over and over again you were a pedophile and spread false evidence to that effect, don't you think I would be able to convince people? And don't I need to convince only a few 'right' people to make your life hell?

<comment><USER9> Disagreement about historical fact is not defamation. If I want to say Ataturk or Hitler or Andrew Jackson are variously guilty or innocent of genocide that is my right.

In fact, I really don't see how it's defamation to claim that someone is _innocent_ of genocide.

<comment><USER22> It's defamation to call an Auschwitz survivor a liar. More general, it's defamatory to implicitly say that all those people that know the facts are liars.

<comment><USER23> It's defamation if it's known to be false and spoken maliciously. Moreover, to be actionable, defamation has to actually cause damage. You're making assumptions here that won't survive your argument.

<comment><USER22> The fact that you cannot get someone sentenced for defamation does not mean his words weren't defamatory. If a murder is committed in a crowd of fifty and they all deny knowing who the murderer is, making justice impossible, then one of them is still a murderer.

Imagine a holocaust surviver with a business. Imagine a client that is convinced by a lying holocaust denier. Business owner loses client.

In more general terms, lies cause damage in indirect ways. That you cannot prove such a thing in an individual case does not mean no damage is done. The aggregated effect of holocaust deniers convincing a few more people that the Jews are a lying bunch necessarily causes damage.

<comment><USER23> "Imagine a client that is convinced by a lying holocaust denier".

Can I imagine him with antennae, too?

You haven't addressed my point, and you're repeating points you've made elsewhere in this thread. You're making the same assumptions (that deniers are malicious "liars", and not simply morons), and informing us only that you're afraid of certain kinds of speech.

<comment><USER22> Antennae would be very fashionable in Milan this time of the year :).

Was your point that 'defamation' has a strict meaning in law and that I was wrong in suggesting that these deniers are guilty of defamation in that strict sense? In that case, that is probably true, I'll trust you on that.

My previous comment was intended to explain that I did not mean it in such a strict sense. My argument was not that it is wrong _because_ it is that exact offense that is punishable by law. The fact that we have laws covering parts of that behaviour merely illustrates that we consider it wrong. But that only parts of the behaviour are covered does not mean that the other parts are not considered wrong. Some behaviour is not outlawed because it is not feasible to formulate proper laws to cover the behaviour: even in countries where holocaust denial is forbidden, most cases of holocaust denial cannot possibly be prosecuted.

As an aside, in my book, a 'liar' does not necessarily have malicious intent. He may just be ignorant: morons and liars are not mutually exclusive.

Finally, seeing what demagogues have been capable of: yes, the power of words is scary. Fear is a bad counsellor, but still a warning to be heeded after the fear has passed over you and through you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Freedom of speech is a fundamental right of all human beings. Freedom to hate is also their right. Otherwise who decides what is right to say and what is not right - at some point in history, it would have been illegal to have a group advocating miscenegation.

Hiding the groups does not change the beliefs.

</comment><comment><USER25> The only time I really hear about these groups is when there is a controversy over censoring them. Seems to be by far the best way for them to get their message out.

</comment><comment><USER26> Going against the holocaust crazy and Jewish haters will hurt Facebook more than just allowing free speech.

These fools are just seeking the opportunity of using censorship from Facebook to their advantage.

Good call Facebook, let the haters roar in their little hole, no more free PR.

<comment><USER27> I'm sure Facebook has been letting them roar in their little hole for some time. It's techcrunch that's reopening the issue, which I don't quite understand. Facebook is a rather small snapshot of the real world - a real world where hundreds of thousands of Holocaust deniers exist. Removing this insignificant subset from Facebook wouldn't do anything. I think Mike needs to just settle with the realization that people with these opinions exist, and will always exist, and have always existed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> It is a real shame that such an horrific event has become simply a football concerning the merits of Free Speech

</comment><comment><USER29> This isn't only a free speech issue. Nazis are using social networking sites to recruit, organize and build political strength.

In the current economic climate, the threat of white supremacist idiots being able to pull their shit together is something to take seriously.

<comment><USER23> There's a distinction to be drawn between espousing a worldview and organizing direct action. We don't know what Facebook would do if confronted with evidence that a violent group was organizing and energizing itself through their service. All we have are people drawing lines of varying thicknesses and curvatures between ideas, actors, and projections.

<comment><USER29> Many right-wing extremist groups organize on Facebook. They organize camping trips, rallies, birthday parties, and sometimes they even organize illegal direct action.

I don't know if Facebook should step in or not because the profiles of these groups are a goldmine of information about their activities. What I do believe however is that any decision to let them continue existing on Facebook should not be made on the basis of respecting their free speech or assembly rights.

<comment><USER23> You clearly know more about this than I do. So, people tell Facebook, "these people are organizing an attack on a grocer like in Romper Stomper", and Facebook leaves them there?

<comment><USER29> Mainly they use Facebook for organizing perfectly legal events, as well as keeping in touch with other Nazis.

Regarding illegal activity, incitement would be a better way to describe what I've seen than blatant organizing.

The loose cannons among them (of which there are plenty) also have a propensity to use social networking sites for self-incrimination. Here's a guy that uploaded pictures to Facebook of himself Nazi saluting in front of worlds-lamest-hate-crime:

[http://anti-racistcanada.blogspot.com/2009/02/meet-richard-m...](http://anti- racistcanada.blogspot.com/2009/02/meet-richard-martin.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> When it comes to living in a society, I believe in degrees of free speech rather than absolute free speech. Sometimes tempered opinions lead to improved social harmony. I don't see a problem in this case though, especially considering the dozens of "hate" groups on Facebook.</comment>


Google Chrome 4 now natively supports Greasemonkey user scripts - <AUTHOR> http://blog.chromium.org/2010/02/40000-more-extensions.html <comment><USER2> I've been a big firefox fan since phoenix, but already moved to chrome for only one reason:

Fastest...browser...evar

<comment><USER3> Likewise, on both points. It hasn't got the polish of Firefox, and the extension ecosystem is a little rough, and I miss the intelligent URL completion from the Awesomebar, but Chrome wins in speed and stability, and those were enough to move me away from Firefox for all but a few sites.

Speed is important.

<comment><USER4> Hasn't got what polish of Firefox? Firefox is buggy and has a kludgy UI. Chrome is way more polished.

<comment><USER5> Selecting multiple blocks of text. Scrolling with the mouse wheel. / for quick find (and ' for links).

edit: I wonder if this is similar to the difference between Windows and Mac. Windows might be inconsistent in the small things (e.g. button padding), but it gets the large things right. Mac gets the small things right but the large things horribly, horribly wrong. Chrome seems to get the small things right too (e.g. tab animations), but overall Firefox does much better.

<comment><USER6> Thanks, I didn't know about ' for links.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The best part about this announcement is that Google Chrome won't be treating user scripts as second-class extensions. Greasemonkey scripts will be treated like real extensions. The ease of creating Greasemonkey scripts plus the visibility of real extensions in the browser takes Google Chrome a huge step closer to Firefox.

</comment><comment><USER8> I have a Greasemonkey script in FF ([http://defcraft.blogspot.com/2009/02/greasemonkey-search- hel...](http://defcraft.blogspot.com/2009/02/greasemonkey-search-helper.html)) that'll google for the current selection in a background tab when ALT-G is pressed. And it uses GM_openInTab API call.

Its equivalent in Chrome seems to be chrome.tabs.create. But when I tried that, I get this error: "chrome.tabs is not supported in content scripts". It seems that these "content scripts" aren't as powerful as extensions ([http://code.google.com/chrome/extensions/content_scripts.htm...](http://code.google.com/chrome/extensions/content_scripts.html)). Am I missing something here?

<comment><USER9> Yes. Chrome has different ways of extending the browser.

One is content scripts - which don't have access to certain parts of the Chrome api like opening tabs.

However, each extension can have what they call a background page. This is just an html page which is loaded in the background and there can be exactly one for every extension.

So you should be able to have your content script communicate with the background page (there is a mechanism for this) and let the background page open the tab.

For this, you'll have to write a fully-fledged extension though. The greasemonkey scripts probably don't generate a background page when they get converted into an extension at install-time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Is the Chromium UserScripts page[1] out of date? Or are these still issues?

      Chromium does not support @require, @resource,
      unsafeWindow, GM_registerMenuCommand, GM_setValue, or
      GM_getValue.

A lot of scripts that I come across use `unsafeWindow`, `GM_setValue` and `GM_getValue.` It seems to be updated (since the last time I looked at it), since I believe it used to say that @exclude was _not_ implemented, and now I don't even see a mention of it on the page (though I don't think I've come across a script that used @exclude).

[1]: [http://dev.chromium.org/developers/design-documents/user- scr...](http://dev.chromium.org/developers/design-documents/user-scripts)

[UPDATE] This should shine _some_ light on the topic: [http://www.greasespot.net/2009/11/greasemonkey-api- usage.htm...](http://www.greasespot.net/2009/11/greasemonkey-api-usage.html)

<comment><USER11> None of my personal scripts (which all use @require or unsafeWindow) work on this. I've been meaning to convert them to Chrome extensions anyway, though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I only wish Chrome would add a second search box, like IE and FF do. I have never figured out how to get the keyword for another search engine (Wikipedia) to work satisfactorily in Chrome's combination url/search entry area.

<comment><USER13> Works for me. In preferences, manage search engines. All or most of the search engines you've used in the past should be there. Edit the keyword to the keyword of your choice (for Wikipedia I use "wp"). In the omni bar, type "wp", space, query, enter. Alternatively you can use a tab instead of a space and this makes it more obvious that you are searching.

<comment><USER12> OK, so I update my search preferences to make "wp" the Wikipedia key word. (I think, ok, maybe "w" was too short or something.)

Close the browser. Reopen. Check the options again. (Still there.) Type wp (so far so good, the Chrome hints drop-down looks like I'm going to hit Wikipedia) space, "San Francisco" (no quotes) ... and oops, the hints have changed to "Google Search" (as soon as I type the first character.

<comment><USER13> That's puzzling. Don't know if it will help, but for reference I'm running the dev channel build on OS X.

<comment><USER12> I'm running 126.96.36.199 (36714) on Win 7 64-bit right now (where I get a slightly different problem than I described), but my description is from the latest build on 32-bit Win 7.

Hey I realize most of you guys like the single omni-box, (I consider it a waste of real estate), but at least make the second FireFox/IE type search box optional. Let the user decide.

<comment><USER13> I have no problems making it optional, as long as many similar options don't add bloat over time. But to fix your problem you might want to run either the beta channel or dev channel builds.

Dev channel: <http://www.google.com/chrome/eula.html?extra=devchannel> Beta channel: <http://www.google.com/chrome/eula.html?extra=betachannel>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I really do WANT to use Chrome, but there are so many Firefox extensions I just can't do without. One step closer though.

<comment><USER15> They'll never have Tree Style Tabs I imagine, so I'm stuck forever with Firefox for that extension.

Not that I mind Firefox, but Chrome gets to do a reboot and start again without carrying legacy support/etc with it.

Early versions of Firefox felt "lighter" than IE to me for that reason.

<comment><USER3> Remember when Firefox was the lightweight web browser? Of course it was called Phoenix back then, and later Firebird. It was refreshing.

<comment><USER16> Firefox was never a lightweight browser. It was fairly minimalist, especially compared with what came before it, but those things were just switched off or hidden, not removed, because that would have been a lot more work.

It's probably only got more "lightweight" with time as they've had more opportunity and funding to optimise and actually remove things they don't use.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Does Chrome support scrolling to where you were on the page when you hit the back button yet? That was what made me switch back to firefox.

<comment><USER4> It always has for me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> this is exactly what's going to make me switch from firefox to chromium

</comment><comment><USER19> Does not anyone else get really let down every time they read a Chrome submission that doesn't announce that Firebug has been ported over?

I've started using Chrome for my day to day browsing, but I'll never be able to wholeheartedly switch until Firebug arrives.

<comment><USER20> Chrome comes with the element inspector built in which replicates a lot of the functionality of Firebug.

<comment><USER21> The element inspector is handy, but personally I would also need JavaScript step through debugging like Firebug provides.

<comment><USER22> Have you actually _tried_ WebKit's developer tools lately?

It has a great DOM inspector (allows editing), network/script/rendering timeline, step-through debugger, profiler, cookie and local database inspector, and Chrome even has a heap analysis tool (see which objects are allocated).

It's far better than Firebug, at least for JavaScript developers, IMO.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I always thought Google had a browser for the masses in mind with Chrome. Something that is easy to use, stable and fast: a good alternative for IE.

User scripts are something for power users, who will always prefer Firefox. Won't this create the risk that average users will accept installing all kinds of scripts without much regard for security implications? User scripts are a powerful yet low-threshold tool which could easily lend itself to purposes such as identity theft.

<comment><USER24> > power users, who will always prefer Firefox

Why do you say that? Chrome has extension support, I'm not sure what unique feature Firefox will have left shortly.

<comment><USER25> Chrome extensions are OK, but they're severely limited compared to what you can pull off with FF extensions: <http://conkeror.org> used to be implemented using only the FF extension mechanism. Chromium extensions cannot alter built- in UI elements, so you're stuck with the standard WIMP UI. It's the only thing keeping me on the Gecko platform.

<comment><USER26> Out of curiosity, would this prevent a chrome equivalent of the SQLite manager?</comment></comment></comment></comment>