Ask HN: Have any side projects from Show HN gone big? - <AUTHOR> Any side projects from Show HN went big in terms of users, revenue or open source etc... <comment><USER2> I did not put "Show HN" in the title when I posted Redis here, but an HN post was the first announcement I did.

<comment><USER3> You probably get this a lot, but I'm going to say it anyway - Thank you for redis, it's an amazing bit of software and I use it in virtually every project.

Not only is it useful, but the source code is pure poetry to read.

Thank you again

<comment><USER2> Wow I like your POV about things. Ok seriously, thanks a lot, it's great to do something that can be useful. Thanks for using it.

<comment><USER4> Just to pile on the praise, I've learned more about the C language reading Redis' source code than I've learned from two books, a university course, and dozens of blog posts combined. Keep doing what you're doing, it is an inspiration.

<comment><USER2> OMG that's awesome. And a bit surprising since Redis internals could be much much better, if we only could care a bit less about memory / CPU / copy-on- write issues, and... a bit more time :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I was working as a corporate lawyer, and I posted a Show HN [1] before going to lunch one day. I came back and it was at #1, and it stayed there for over 12 hours. This led to a feature in Fast Company [2] and press in over 20 different languages. After winning a couple startup competitions, I quit my day job and now do BeeLine Reader [3] full-time.

We have 70k users on our first-party tools, plus many more on our licensed products. Our tech is licensed by the CA Public Libraries, CNET, Bookshare, and others. Our funding comes from the Intel Edu Accelerator (ICAP) as well as various awards for education and social-impact entrepreneurship [4].

I really appreciate the feedback from the community, which helped me understand what the market opportunity was and what our customer segments are (didn't realize how big edu would be).

1: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6335784](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6335784)

2: [http://www.fastcodesign.com/3018118/can-colored-text-turn- yo...](http://www.fastcodesign.com/3018118/can-colored-text-turn-you-into-an- online-speed-reader)

3: [http://www.beelinereader.com](http://www.beelinereader.com)

4: see [https://stanfordbases.wordpress.com/tag/beeline- reader/](https://stanfordbases.wordpress.com/tag/beeline-reader/) and [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2T9g4uy60oc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2T9g4uy60oc)

[updated to add press and award links]

<comment><USER6> 1\. Took the test. 2. Was impressed 3. Thought to test for a while 4. Installed Chrome plugin 5. Opened facebook for some random reason 6. Page flickering!? Facebook bug? 7. Scrolled 2 times 8. Got smashed in the face by a full-page ad from Beelinereader 9. Removed plugin and will probably never install again

You really caught me. This is something I could pay for after trying out for a while. Do yourself a favour for christmas and investigate if there is any other way than smashing just recently onboarded users with an ad to raise the awareness of the fact that this is not free.

Thanks though, really, impressive tech.

<comment><USER5> We're in the middle of completely replacing our UI/UX. Last month we finally got our preferences in the right place (within the B icon instead of in a gear that floats on top of every page), and we're re-doing the onboarding. Now that we've figured out how to get things popping down from the B icon, we won't be taking up the full page anymore.

And just FYI, we don't bombard users with messages all the time—you saw the instructions and upgrade option, and there is only one other message we show this way, which is after the 30-day free trial expires. We know our UI sucks on this, which is why we don't use it to send messages or upsell all the time. Appreciate the feedback, and hope you'll try us again on Chrome, iOS, or Android (which is free, BTW).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> DropBox: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863)

<comment><USER8> Amazing. This comment must compare to the famous Slashdot takedown of the iPod.

"For a Linux user, you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem. "

(Not meant as criticism; we're all horribly naive in hindsight.)

<comment><USER9> It's not amazing at all :) I still struggle to find a reason why should I use dropbox over ftp or any other file repository service. I guess marketing and creating artificial buzz played big role in their success.

<comment><USER10> I get that many techies can live without Dropbox and it's ilk (myself included), but _NOBODY_ should ever be advocating FTP. It's insure (no encryption - unless you're talking about FTP(E)S, but that introduces it's own issues), it's broken by design (no clear client/server relationship which can cause issues for NATing and filewalls (particularly if running with TLS), output specs depend on the host OS (eg directory listings), no automatic way of differentiating between text and binary data so modern FTP clients have to guess from file extensions (picking the wrong mode will break your files)). ?FTP is outdated - from a bygone era we no longer compute in and thus by modern standard it's become horrible in every conceivable way.

Thankfully we have SFTP which natively supports chroot (not all FTP servers do), key-based logins (more secure) as well as passwords, compression, and no fuzzy callback ports like in FTP. Also sshfs is pretty handy too.

If one needs "anonymous FTP" then you can also throw HTTPS into the list of better solutions: TLS encryption, compression, smarter handling of MIME types, and again no stupid fuzzy callback ports.

I don't often say things this strongly, but _FTP should die_.

<comment><USER11> FTP needs no defending -- it was really useful in 1979, but times have changed (e.g. I suspect every machine on the Internet uses an 8-bit byte). One point you wrote surprised me though:

> no clear client/server relationship which can cause issues for NATing and > filewalls (particularly if running with TLS)

Really, crocks like NAT and stateful firewalls should die. Layers 4 and below are inherently peer-peer -- the net should not treat endpoints differently (i.e. should not privilege some over others). That simply encourages a "client" or "consumer" mentality in both the technical and social senses.

<comment><USER12> The thing is while NAT is horrible for what you're saying, it probably did more to improve security than anything else, which wasn't it's primary goal.

I remember what the internet was like when ADSL/cable models first came along. Everyone was getting pwned none stop. Any RCE could easily be applied by scanning a consumers DSL/cable IP pool and you'd be able to hit a very high %age of them.

NAT totally stopped this.

<comment><USER10> It was the firewalling that stopped those attacks. Granted you could argue that the firewalls only came popular in households because routers were shipped to address a need for NATing but pragmatically we really should have been installing firewalls on our PCs in the pre-router days of the internet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Somewhat related, it wasn't Show HN but _show YC_ that turned my side-project into a business. YC's Application has the question "what have you hacked that wasn't a computer". That question compelled me to create a hack that converted a cheap ($10 in some cases) bluetooth headset into a garage door opener compatible with any smartphone. It didn't even require an App. I posted a Youtube video and then submitted my eventually rejected YC application. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6cAtso2tzMo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6cAtso2tzMo)

So many people watched that video they started asking me to sell the fully assembled project. Soon a polite C & D -ish letter from Samsung forced me to stop selling until I made my own hardware which I did in November of 2014.

5 years later I still have growth and sales. Next year I hope to make an enterprise version that would allow shipping companies to leave packages in your garage when you aren't home. I'll be sure to post that on Show HN. Regardless I owe YC a lot of gratitude as just the process of applying changed my life.

<comment><USER14> > _... would allow shipping companies to leave packages in your garage when > you aren 't home._

I wouldn't expect them to actually do that. Between the girlfriend and myself, we get a lot of packages. They usually leave them by the garage door because it's easier / closer. We've told them before they can leave them inside the (unlocked) garage but the general response is "we can't".

<comment><USER13> Agreed. I'll focus on smaller delivery companies and services at first that have a direct relationship with their customers.

Long term it isn't clear how to initiate a relationship with the largest shippers. It's possible I'll spend years calling into those accounts with nothing to show for it.

<comment><USER15> I've usually found it more effective to go to a tradeshow where they might show up. They're usually in an exploring and deal making mentality at the shows, and usually at least one senior person is present. A lot of deals get started at tradeshows.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This isn't exactly a software project, but I posted in a "What are you working on?" thread three years ago about my book, _Statistics Done Wrong_ : [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6619796](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6619796)

Someone posted it on the front page soon after: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6675843](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6675843)

Now it's a book published by No Starch, has sold 25,000 copies, and has been translated into German, Korean, and Chinese: [https://www.statisticsdonewrong.com/](https://www.statisticsdonewrong.com/)

I doubt I would have finished as soon as I did without that initial attention to spur me on, and wouldn't have been able to wrangle up as much attention without that chance post on HN blowing up and bringing me visitors. (It ended up posted on Boing Boing, Metafilter, and various other places too.)

Now I'm a year or two from finishing a PhD in statistics and wondering if there's another book I need to write, or perhaps a second edition -- doing actual statistical work with real scientists makes the points in my book even more clear to me, and the need even clearer.

<comment><USER17> Looks like a great book! I think I'll have to buy a copy.

It's interesting that you found the attention the HN post brought helped you focus and finish the book.

Lately, I've been trying to pay more attention to the Show HN section of the site, giving upvotes to interesting projects and commenting or asking questions where I can.

I think that lots of us here could improve the HN community by giving more attention to Show HN posts, even for projects that seem easy or mundane to those of us who have been developers for a while.

The simpler projects might be the ones where encouragement helps the most. Without that kind of encouragement from more experienced developers 7 years ago, I probably wouldn't have a software career right now at all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I did a Show HN for Resumonk back in 2012: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3934370](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3934370)

I was in college then and found making a well-formatted resume a huge pain when I was applying for internships. I met my Co-Founder also via that particular post and went full time on it after passing out of college.

We are bootstrapped, pay ourselves well and work remotely. Not sure if that qualifies as a 'big' success, but we receive these kind of comments from our users that make us super happy - [https://www.resumonk.com/testimonials](https://www.resumonk.com/testimonials)

Related discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12030863](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12030863)

</comment><comment><USER19> I did a Show HN for Roll20 right after launching: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4532754](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4532754)

We now have almost 2 million users and a small team working on it full-time. I definitely originally thought it would only be a side project...

<comment><USER20> I just sent that link to a dozen people and am already trying to get my scattered-over-the-globe circle of high school friends to agree to a reunion of our Shadowrun group.

Hadn't heard of your site so far. Cannot believe it. Thank you so much!

<comment><USER21> Aw maaaan... I really hope one day I actually get to play a (pen-and-paper) game of Shadowrun. I can't believe it's been so long and it's still never happened X-)

<comment><USER20> Most comic book and games stores have boards where you can search for groups. Craigslist maybe too? It's not such an uncommon hobby and if you find no group to join you could always start your own!

Go for it. It's such fun.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Moqups: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4222992](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4222992)

We're still bootstrapped and fairly small (< 25 employees including the founders). We've grown organically to about 1 million users since then. The feedback we've got on our submission back then gave us enough courage to go from just a pet side-project to a full time business, so Big Thanks HN! That day was one of the happiest days in the history of our business.

<comment><USER23> We really like using Moqups here. We've architected, wireframed, and sold some big projects because of it. :)

<comment><USER22> Thanks for letting us know! We're happy to hear that.

We've changed the product quite a bit in response to the huge projects that our users create on our design platform. Nevertheless, we've also faced quite a few engineering issues in respect to browser performance and real time backend data synchronization.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> CoffeeScript: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1014080](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1014080)

<comment><USER25> I'm so happy the good bits of CoffeeScript are now part of vanilla JavaScript and we no longer need compilers for frontend work.

Oh wait ...

<comment><USER26> We never did and CoffeeScript had no good parts.

<comment><USER27> Destructuring assignment, arrow functions, shorthand variable syntax in object literals are some examples of good Coffee Script features that made it into ES6

<comment><USER28> Who is using CoffeeScripts these days apart from github ? I like CoffeeScript but I am sad it did not get the momentum.

<comment><USER29> I am a backend developer working in Ruby. As a senior programmer I sometimes have to help juniors on the frontend side. When I need to write frontend JS, I still often write Coffeescript, compile it and copy paste the resulting JS as "my code". I haven't had the time to look in ES6 and newer JS technologies, but at least I know that the JS I provide follows most good practices.

<comment><USER28> I'd like to reply to both of you. I like CoffeeScript mainly because it's so similar to Ruby and convenient to use. I have not thought about using the "raw generated js". How does it work for you ?

What if you would choose to work with something like React or Ember ?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Not shure about your definition of big but [https://www.ghostnoteapp.com](https://www.ghostnoteapp.com) is doing pretty well. Living in NY with a family being the sole provider it doesent work, but had we moved somewhere less expensive it probably could and i am growing both rev, userbase and product

Here is the original Show HN.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9145007](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9145007)

</comment><comment><USER31> I posted an Ask HN to review my side project PCPartPicker about six years ago. Got great feedback and things grew from there. I went full-time, had to hire employees, etc. Not big like Dropbox, but we made it over the hump self-funded and without taking investment.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1883123](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1883123)

<comment><USER32> Thanks for building this fantastic site, I use it all the time! What's your business model?

<comment><USER31> Glad you like it! We make money through affiliate deals with the retailers we list.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Webflow: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5407499](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5407499) Gitlab: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4428278](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4428278)

<comment><USER34> Yep, I posted about Webflow's submission in a similar thread a while back: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12032849](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12032849)

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Not a show hn, but 2048 went pretty big. I don't know if this was the starting point or not; [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7373566](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7373566)

<comment><USER36> Obligatory mention that 2048 is just a variation of Threes. [http://asherv.com/threes/](http://asherv.com/threes/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Product Hunt: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7144815](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7144815)

</comment><comment><USER38> Gumroad: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2406614](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2406614)

<comment><USER39> So you pivoted from link-shortening to actual content, interesting.

In my industry (reselling) a lot of people use gumroad to sell information, anything from product leads to guides to bulk lists for scanning (for online arbitrage) to chrome extensions. I did it myself briefly and made around $250, but I'm sure people are making a lot more than that.

It's just an incredibly useful tool even for technical people who could set up a store, still saves time.

Edit: the SSL cert on [https://help.gumroad.com](https://help.gumroad.com) is expired for 3 months. You should fix that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> [http://greaterskies.com](http://greaterskies.com), back in 2011 ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3066684](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3066684)), personalized high-resolution maps of the sky as seen from a place and at a time.

Amazing how time passes. It's been more than 10 years since I started, and it is still my side project and not big by HN standards. But it is making now many times over what I make in my day job as an engineer in Cambridge, and it's been featured in The Guardian Christmas gift list this year.

</comment><comment><USER41> Codecademy:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2901156](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2901156)

</comment><comment><USER42> Fairly certain that Segment ([https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/segment- io#/entity](https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/segment-io#/entity)) debuted on HN. The original business was failing, but they decided to give it a last shot and posted their open-sourced code from v1.

You can hear Peter talk about it with Aaron Harris here: [https://soundcloud.com/akharris/startup-school-radio- episode...](https://soundcloud.com/akharris/startup-school-radio- episode-39-segment-founder-peter-reinhardt-mattermark-ceo-danielle-morrill)

</comment><comment><USER43> In 2011 I did a Show HN for a project called StorageRoom ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2616041](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2616041)) and got some interesting feedback.

Five years, a name change and a complete rewrite later Contentful ([https://www.contentful.com](https://www.contentful.com)) has raised a Series B (total funding close to $20m), got ~100 employees and customers ranging from Jack in the Box, over Nike to Urban Outfitters.

It's been a wild ride, and it doesn't look like it's going to be over anytime soon :)

</comment><comment><USER44> Nomadlist: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8107222](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8107222)

</comment><comment><USER45> Cloudcraft: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10722942](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10722942)

Show HN was the first place I posted about it, almost exactly one year ago. Today it is doing very well, used by companies large and small to visualize their AWS environments.

</comment><comment><USER46> Don't know what your definition of 'big' is, but my open source project webhook got some attention after posting Show HN: [https://github.com/adnanh/webhook](https://github.com/adnanh/webhook)

Anything >0 is better than 0... :-)

</comment><comment><USER47> Countly started as a hobby like 4 years ago and it was open source (still is, most parts). Now it tracks more than 11K Android apps according to Mobbo.com, which makes Countly #7 the most used mobile analytics platform. Team is still small (<15), bootstrapped and added a lot more features on top till then. Roughly 1900 stars pn Github. Not bad ;)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4969254](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4969254)

</comment><comment><USER48> Instapainting.com. And I've been showing HN ever since.

</comment><comment><USER49> I launched SideProjectBook.com on HN. It ended up netting ~$15K that month, not sure if that is considered "big."

<comment><USER50> I do like how SideProjectBook.com uses gumroad.com (which is 3 posts above this one at the time of writing) to sell the book. It's like a family in here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> Don't know if we count as big yet, but we're doing very very well: [https://www.tinfoilsecurity.com](https://www.tinfoilsecurity.com)

<comment><USER52> I really don't like the onboarding process so far.

\- Typed in a URL to get a free scan

\- Needed to create an account

\- Needed to confirm my email

\- Needed to verify my site ownership

\- Got a mail that my site is "borderline insecure". When I click on the link, I'm redirected to the "create an account view"

\- Created a new account that opened in a half cropped Iframe displaying some error message I can't read.

This is where I finally gave up.

<comment><USER53> It says that "Your website is BORDERLINE UNSAFE" after a while even if you leave the account form blank and just keep the page opened in a background tab.

Better yet, it probably does that for any URL – see c8g's comment about Google, i've tried HN and a few of my own sites, all with the same results. Even tried to give it it's own address, but it "is not permitted".

So I thought that maybe it just displays that message after some timeout without doing any actual checks, bit like these sketchy fake antivirus sites. But nope – when i point it to a subdomain with access_log enabled, i see it actually makes a bunch of requests. So maybe they just have such high standards that the entire web is "borderline unsafe" from their point of view.

<comment><USER51> The scan we run from the homepage is a rudimentary scan that only scans for client-side vulnerabilities, since we can't scan for server-side issues until you've verified ownership. As a result, we can't give you a clean bill of health until you've run a full scan, which is why you see that. If you verify ownership, you'll see any issues we found and be able to run a full scan which can give you a clean bill of health if it doesn't find anything.

<comment><USER54> I'm not using your app but I assume it's not as clear as your comment based on upthread posts. You might want to modify the app to show both client and server side results with server saying "unknown: must verify ownership first." That would eliminate the confusion.

<comment><USER51> This is good feedback. Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> CertSimple was announced with a 'Show HN' post ( [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9210908](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9210908) ) that led to its first paying customer. We did around 12K GBP in revenue last month and have Travis CI, CrowdCube, and Motley Fool as customers.

</comment><comment><USER56> Virwire: [https://virwire.com](https://virwire.com)

Did a Show HN a few months ago, got very little 'comment' attention but still got a ton of new mobile users who have grown into a solid base. This was the only promotion to date.

Small bootstrapped team, Virwire is PoC of crowd curated news for millennials.

</comment><comment><USER57> StatusPage.io - [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5401470](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5401470)

</comment><comment><USER58> itch.io: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5445029](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5445029)

I don't know where the big cutoff is, but it's been going strong for the past 3.5 years. There are just under 50k games on it now [https://itch.io](https://itch.io)

</comment><comment><USER59> [https://bento.io](https://bento.io)

</comment><comment><USER60> Yes, we immediately got picked up by an SF accelerator, then I was able to raise a seed round from billionaire investors Tim Draper and Marc Benioff of Salesforce. Then hired a team, got an MVP out to developers and gained a ton of traction, and now we're about to launch our stable/production-ready release!

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9076558](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9076558) For our Open Source Firebase: [http://gun.js.org/](http://gun.js.org/) !</comment>


Samoa arrests vaccination critic amid deadly measles crisis - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-50682881 <comment><USER2> For Americans, I recommend reading about the _actual_ free speech standard in the US (Brandenburg v. Ohio). While "Fire in a crowded theater" appears, it's in a concurrence, and actually used to suggest that the standard created in the decision may even go _too far_.

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

<comment><USER3> The term comes from _Schenk v. United States_ , and was used to argue that it wasn't unconstitutional to imprison a communist activist for printing and handing out flyers arguing that people shouldn't turn themselves in if they were to be drafted.

From a modern perspective what Schenk did appears incredibly tame, and I believe nearly anyone using the phrase today would find the central holding of the case absurd; I don't think any reasonable person nowadays believes asking people not to cooperate with the government in wartime should be illegal.

 _Brandenburg v. Ohio_ partially overturned _Schenk_ , and while I agree reading about it is worthwhile unfortunately US law is sufficiently complicated that no one case exists that can be read to fully understand the current law around free speech in the US. I'd instead recommend the ACLU's position paper: [https://www.aclu.org/other/freedom-expression-aclu- position-...](https://www.aclu.org/other/freedom-expression-aclu-position- paper) . Note that while they make a very good case for what the law is, not every court in the country would agree with them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The issue here is should individuals be responsible for the consequences of actions of others given their speech.

I think the classical answer is No. I think it's anti enlightenment thinking to punish people for their discourse.

[https://youtu.be/myo7uSM91bc](https://youtu.be/myo7uSM91bc)

<comment><USER5> I'm pretty sure that even in the midst of the Enlightenment, speech which directly encouraged violence, did harm or spread fraudulent ideas which led to death could be punished.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> One wonders when we might see the same thing happen in regards to the emerging climate emergency.

<comment><USER7> [EDIT: removed some mild irony.]

Is free speech really what's holding back significant action to combat global warming? Isn't it possible that speech restrictions could have a negative effect on public support for such significant action?

<comment><USER8> I am not sure if this sort of language and comments are encouraged on HN. Are we advocating arrest of individuals we disagree with ? Is this the new silicon valley mob with hi-tech pitchforks ?

<comment><USER9> Slippery slopes. There are certain "theories" that irk me so that I'd be okay with them being arrested (almost). Flat earth believers are the top of the list.

<comment><USER10> That seems excessive. Flat earthers are a tiny minority and almost completely harmless as far as I know.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Seems appropriate given the current emergency.

<comment><USER12> On the other hand, in the US freedom of speech would likely protect this person. And there are strong arguments in favor of absolutist versions of freedom of speech.

<comment><USER13> I find it interesting how people on HN are decidedly non-Utilitarian. I don't know, but for some reason I expected software engineers to be utilitarian. Not exactly sure why

<comment><USER14> Not everyone, in any given community, are located at the same place on the rationality spectrum.

Not everyone, in the HN community, is a software engineer.

<comment><USER10> Is Utilitarianism associated with rationality?

(Quick reference to "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" before I forget the name again.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is relevant to social media: [https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/nov/07/fireho...](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/nov/07/firehosing- the-systemic-strategy-that-anti-vaxxers-are-using-to-spread-misinformation)

A local legislator backed some vaccination legislation here in Oregon, and she cannot post _anything_ to social media without a horde of people from that crazy death cult popping up to rant and screech.

<comment><USER8> It is in appropriate to call other individuals "death cult" or crazy. This does not lead to a constructive discussion on HN and leads to needless flamewars.

<comment><USER16> Their behavior is leading directly to more deaths.

How is that not crazy / death cult?

<comment><USER17> Actually it leads indirectly. But there's "vaccines cause autism" people and then there's "a vaccine killed my first baby and I don't want to give that vaccine to my second baby" people. Not to mention the "holy cow the USA has an intense vaccination schedule compared to other countries'" people.

The "beep boop vaccinate everybody" attitude is popular because it makes people feel smarter and morally superior to others.

<comment><USER16> How many people are there where a vaccine actually killed their baby?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> What is the needed percentage of people that need to be vaccinated, for there to be herd immunity? And, what is the efficacy of the vaccine for Samoans?

That is if you need 80% immunized for herd immunity and 95% of the immunized group develop antibodies, then you need more than 80% to be immunized.

</comment><comment><USER19> These arrests are anti-free-speech and therefore anti-freedom. This is a classic short-sighted decision that opens the door for widening definitions of crises, emergencies, etc. to justify any action or shut down opposing views.

While these arrests have a clear and problematic free speech issue, I also think societies should be careful to preserve bodily autonomy in instances like this. People have a right to decide what goes or doesn't go in their own or their children's bodies. They get to decide what risks they are willing to take or not willing to take. Bodily autonomy is also an important part of the argument to preserve a woman's right to choose (abortion rights).

Lastly - are people really factually wrong to distrust vaccines or the medical world in general? Note that this article mentions how nurses administered vaccines incorrectly previously (by mixing the vaccine with muscle relaxants), which is what set off public suspicion in the first place. That's the type of unexpected risk vector that spooks people and causes them to see risk even in highly-safe treatments, since some dangerous flaw can surprise patients out of nowhere. The medical world is full of stories of malpractice, orthogonal to the safety/efficacy of individual medicines. So it is totally understandable for people to sound the alarm and warn others.

I also want to point out that there are various legitimate stories or issues for people to view vaccines with speculation/distrust:

1\. Experimental vaccines administered in unsanctioned trials (2018: [https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/recipients-of- exp...](https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/recipients-of-experimental- herpes-vaccine-file-lawsuit-29953))

2\. WHO and FDA approve controversial vaccine despite serious safety issues, and then eventually reverse approval (2019: [https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2019/05/03/7190377...](https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2019/05/03/719037789/botched- vaccine-launch-has-deadly-repercussions))

3\. Note that even tenured vaccines _do_ have a non-zero risk rate. See safety data at [https://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/vaccines/mmr- vaccine.html](https://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/vaccines/mmr-vaccine.html) for the MMR vaccine specifically.

Talking about those issues openly and with precision (characterizing risks/tradeoffs transparently) is an important part of building public trust, getting things right, holding various parties accountable, and ultimately avoiding epidemics.

</comment><comment><USER20> > Samoa declared a state of emergency, and made vaccinations compulsory.

As long as reasonable exceptions are made for children who can't get vaccinated due to medical conditions, and it's ensured that they get vaccines from reputed sources, I see nothing wrong with this.

</comment><comment><USER21> As someone who has a kid who is still too young to get certain vaccines (including Measles), I am terrified of going to crowded places.

Seriously, unvaccinated people represent a threat to my son. This is not like being a flat-earther where you spread misinformation but you don't really harm people in a meaningful way. By spreading anti-vaxx information you are indirectly killing babies, children and adults. It is in the interest of society to stop you from doing harm.

</comment><comment><USER22> I don't know if anyone read the details, but the reason there's concern is two babies died from receiving measles vaccines in 2018: [https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-50625680](https://www.bbc.com/news/world- asia-50625680)

"Samoa's low vaccination rates are in part due to the deaths in 2018 of two children given a wrongly-mixed vaccine."

I think most rational people who are questioning the safety of vaccines are not the Jenny McCarthy autism fearists, it's parents who are worried about vaccine safety from situations like this where two babies died. If it was your baby and you were doing the right thing by vaccinating and your baby died, how would you feel about vaccines after that? What if that baby that died was a relative? Your neighbor next door? Your coworkers baby? You might question the safety of vaccines after that.

The parents are already feeling bad about putting their trust in pharmaceutical companies, are they nuts to stay away from vaccines now?

I think many people take the side of "anti-vaxxers are the worst people in the world!" for granted because they've never had a relative or someone close to them die from a vaccine.

If vaccines are supposed to be safe, then why did this happen? Mistakes happen, but would you gamble that risk after having someone close to you dying from a vaccination?

<comment><USER23> Those children didn't die from a vaccine, and you're fundamentally wrong to imply that they did. They died because of human error administering a vaccine. If you put some vaccine into a bullet and then shoot someone in the face with it, they died because they got shot in the face, not because vaccines are dangerous.

Of course things can go wrong in medicine, but that's not related to vaccines. If this is the kind of concern you have, you should never allow any doctor to put a needle in you, because it might be contaminated with something. You also shouldn't take any medications prescribed by a doctor because the pharmacist might mix them up with something. You certainly shouldn't ever have surgery, because the surgeon might misread the chart and perform the wrong procedure. Of course errors are possible in medicine, but that doesn't mean that needles/medications/surgery are inherently dangerous, it just means that human error happens. If you choose to never use healthcare for that reason, then you're wildly irrational (which is fine, just don't harm children because of your wild irrationality).

<comment><USER24> I hear what you are saying in the first paragraph. But it doesn't logically support what you state in your second paragraph. I can question the medications that I am prescribed and choose to take them or not. I can decide to get the surgery or I can decide not to or I can get another opinion. It doesnt have to be an all or nothing decision.

Edited to add: The issue in this story is that someone is spreading false information and people are acting on it and people are dying. Truly sad.</comment></comment></comment>


The Debate Over Neighborhood Zoning Could Hold Up Fast 5G Wireless for Years - <AUTHOR> https://www.fastcompany.com/40468468/the-debate-over-neighborhood-zoning-could-hold-up-fast-5g-wireless-for-years-to-come <comment><USER2> My neighborhood Nextdoor is full of NIMBY on this topic. Apparently electrosensitivity afflicts some 90-95% of people who have the free time to go to city council meetings at 3pm on weekdays. Shungite pendants have been recommended to fend off the illnesses caused by radiation. Even the local school does not have wifi because some local bozo said his kids were "injured" by EM fields, not just any fields but specifically ISM wavelengths that are tuned to disrupt our precious cells.

I'd be frankly surprised if urban America ever gets 5G service while this kind of ignorance holds sway.

<comment><USER3> Technology and "progress" are never without problems or externalities. And residents of MBY are the ones who deserve the right of self-determination regarding said BY. Including evaluating whether they are going to get proportionally enough benefit from a project to justify the costs they will inevitably bear from having it situated there. They have a right to be suspicious of EM radiation, or even downright superstitious. But what about the mere fact that it's simply an ugly-ass tower? Maybe they're just fine with 4G or even 3G service and they're like "no thanks." So your challenge is, how do you present the value proposition in any non-condescending and convincing way? If you don't agree with their reasons, fine, but then it's up to you to make an honest go of persuading them, and if they still don't go for it, oh well. Maybe try building it in your own BY. But the arrogance represented by your viewpoint is not going to win any battles or friends. "Oh my mistake, thank you so much for educating me!" is what nobody will say ever. They can be arrogant too, just as easily. And stubborn.

<comment><USER4> The problem with the term NIMBY is that it isn't really about anyone's back yard. It's about people who live somewhere trying to control what happens on nearby property.

You are trying to have it both ways by talking about both externalities and "self-determination regarding said BY". The latter makes if you are only "saying respect property" rights: let people have as many voodoo charms and do as crystal-power-empathetic-gardening as they like.

But if you say that their complaints can override the rights of others because of externalities, then there must be a rational case about about those externalities. Harm from radio waves doesn't have much rational case behind it.

<comment><USER3> "Back yard" is a figure of speech, just like it is in the acronym. The people of X should determine what happens in X, where X can be <land parcel>, <neighborhood>, <city>, <state> or <nation>. However as you can imagine, there are going to be conflicts between what the people of a larger entity want vs. what the people of a smaller contained entity want. The interests of the people of <state> might conflict with the interests of the people of <land parcel> for example. So it gets murky fast.

I happen to think we should try to err in favor of the smaller entity. Which takes care of a couple of problems: It satisfies property rights as you're saying. And it prevents a small entity from forcing its will on another comparably small entity by appealing to the larger entity that contains them both, which it sounds like you're also concerned about.

But the impact scope needs to be properly defined. Erring in favor of the smaller entity means you define the scope as small as possible. But to remain fair, go no smaller. For one of these towers, the scope of impact is probably <neighborhood>. That's how wide its transmit/receive radius will be (smaller than today's towers), and that's probably also how far you'll have to go until that particular tower isn't visible (which isn't a rational argument by the way, but an aesthetic one, probably lost on anyone born after 1990 and accustomed to seeing shitty towers everywhere).

My point wasn't the merits of any particular argument; I only brought that up to shock someone into realizing people can have contrary opinions, including for no good reason, and if you want to persuade them you have to meet them where they are, just like if you were selling a product to a customer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The important issue here is what exactly do they mean by Fast 5G. In many cases what they mean is femtocells using the very same frequency range as existing consumer wifi routers. The instant one of these femtocells starts operating around wifi the routers in the area will drop thoroughput drastically (ie, 80%+) due to their channel usage sensing.

Lets be clear: this is attempt to use capture and use public spectrum by pushing things like home/building wifi out and forcing everything through centralized telecom.

<comment><USER6> So, no change then? Since those "home wifi" connections come through a centrally owned comms network.

<comment><USER5> It's a big change. Telco-provided wireless internet connections are not actually real internet connections. Half the time you don't even get a real routable IP address and nearly 100% of the time you don't get ports or even the ability to forward them. And that's not even mentioning the horrible data transfer limits and traffic shaping.

Whereas home connections are real, have real IPs, and have full ports that you control and generally have at least a few hundred GB of data transfer with no traffic shaping.

<comment><USER7> So... back to Ethernet?

<comment><USER8> NIMBY!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm split. 5G is great but is also being used in a political game re the definition of broadband. ISPs in my area (western canada) are using the existence of faster wireless to claim they are offering broadband to rural addresses via wireless rather than build out proper infrastructure. The stagnation of cable/DSL broadband speeds and basic availability is having serious economic impact. Areas without cable/DSL service are becoming retirement homes devoid of young people as anyone wanting to actually use the internet must shovel money into expensive mobile accounts. 5G's improvements might just continue this pattern.

<comment> Yumz- Why is this a bad thing? I don't understand why you think every rural backwater needs to be subsidized to the tune of billions by the productive regions of the world. We should be looking to returning 95%+ of land to nature as we urbanize more and more.

I wish more companies and governments would do what the ISPs are doing. Why am I paying for post offices in rural America? Why am I paying to subsidize electricity transportation to rural America?

<comment><USER10> So the people living there aren't left behind too much. It is in your best interest to retain some social cohesion.

<comment><USER11> Okay, but why do we have to foster that social cohesion in the most expensive way possible? Why demand that connectivity in these rural areas be by wireline instead of much cheaper wireless? Okay, people need access. Let's get it done as cheaply and with as little market distortion as possible. The thing that does that is wireless.

<comment><USER12> No one will be starting an internet company in a location where there is only mobile internet.

>lets get it done as cheaply and with as little market distortion as possible.

Why do people act like they're paying for personally? This was already agreed upon by communication companies when they were allowed to monopolize much higher ROI urban markets. The whole point was that the high ROI markets would fund the development of the rest of the infrastructure.

Sandbagging the bandwidth of the rural markets is creating an information void that ends up sandbagging support for research and development in other areas.

<comment><USER11> We don't need people to start internet companies in areas that are no longer viable. And yes, you are paying for those rural subsidies personally. Literally, through a tax on your telecommunications bill each month. Also, the original idea was to give telecom companies monopolies to allow them to use above-market returns to subsidize rural areas. This was a terrible idea and gave us the entrenched incumbents we have today. In the 1990s, Congress realized this was terrible and got rid of that arrangement, shifting to explicit cross subsidization. But service and build out requirements continue to stifle development of competition. You can't, as a new entrant, do stuff like pursue a profitable niche (startup 101 advice). And a special tax is levied on your product, as if it were something harmful like cigarettes.

There is no free lunch! If you force urban areas to cross-subsidize rural ones, either directly or indirectly, you'll get lower quality service at higher prices in urban area.

Look at the regulatory regimes in places like Sweden. They don't have build out requirements or cross subsidies. To the extent the government wants connectivity in rural places, it doesn't distort the market by having high-ROI places cross-subsidize it. It pays for it directly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> These towers are popping up all over San Francisco. Another one got installed a few doors up a couple of weeks ago.

They're hard to notice as they're generally quite well disguised. Usually just an extended bulge on top of a light pole. If it's a wooden pole, they'll paint it so it blends in.

According to the local articles there is actually little recourse for locals in objecting: [http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2015/10/31/san-francisco- re...](http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2015/10/31/san-francisco-residents- battle-wireless-companies-cell-tower-building-boom-super-bowl-fifty/) (warning - several annoying autoplay videos).

Update: just walked past one [https://photos.app.goo.gl/I8MWfox0eB6G7ztD2](https://photos.app.goo.gl/I8MWfox0eB6G7ztD2)

<comment><USER14> Huh thanks for the photo. You're not wrong about it blending in well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I wonder at what point we'll start seeing people simply stop paying for in- home internet via WiFi in favor of relying solely on their mobile data package, in the same way that people stopped paying for corded phone lines and are starting to stop paying for cable television. For some reason I'm frightened at the prospect... is it because I trust my ISP more than my wireless carrier?

<comment><USER16> I've been doing this for the last 5 years. These days, we average about a 1 TB / month on 4G LTE. Somehow, we've avoided carrier throttling. Although we live in a rural area, so there is little congestion anyway. A single hotspot is sufficient for all our home internet devices. If you're going to do this, it's important to have a (preferably grandfathered) unlimited data plan.

<comment><USER17> Which carrier is this? Verizon has promised to kick anyone going over 200GB/month off completely. [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the- switch/wp/2017/01/11...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the- switch/wp/2017/01/11/these-cellphone-carriers-are-about-to-make-life-harder- for-grandfathered-unlimited-data-users/)

I am being pressured by my significant other to give up my two grandfathered lines since it works out to $60/line + $80 for the plan every month, and they now offer other "unlimited" options.

<comment><USER18> > I am being pressured by my significant other to give up my two grandfathered > lines since it works out to $60/line + $80 for the plan every month, and > they now offer other "unlimited" options.

Can I ask why you're _not_ giving it up? That price sounds really high.

<comment><USER16> There are a number of advantages to the grandfathered unlimited plans that are kinda complicated. Basically, there are fewer restrictions on the kind of devices you can use the SIM cards in, and the scenarios where they can throttle you are different. Some plans also include subsidized device upgrades every two years.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> True Story:

I worked on cellular buildouts in Seattle - we had a site in the City of Seattle proper to do a upgrade on the equipment there - its a relatively painless process (swap out hardware at bottom, new antennas, add tower top radios, replace coax on tower with hybrid cables with DC and Fiber in them), yet it took three years to get permits issued. In Federal Way there was another site of similar configuration (Monopole, same gear in both locations), it took less than 30 days to get the permit issued.

If you want to know why your network is so slow, and why cellular service can be expensive - thats why. Endless process, neighbors complaining about towers (radiation, unsightliness, noise, opposed to construction traffic for a week), and the people needed to shove the paperwork along.

</comment><comment><USER20> It would be really helpful to know what concrete actions to take to my City Council, if I want this to happen. Is there model legislation I can point at? What about my city's current processes is helpful or harmful to adding 5G? How can I find ISP's interested in making this happen in my town?

<comment><USER21> This is an area I have experience and expertise in. Look at Master License Agreements in Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, Charlotte. Some states also have uniform legislation snaking its way through the various bodies, including Virginia, Ohio, Washington, Minnesota, Colorado, Florida, and California. Some is driven by ALEC and/or the wireless carriers, so it may be aggressively pro- deployment (to the detriment of local cities), but it's at least somewhere to look. If you're interested, PM me and I can share some materials on this, or at least discuss further.

<comment><USER22> There is no PM functionality on Hacker News, and I don't see contact information in your profile.

<comment><USER23> Based on comment history I assume firstname.lastname@example.com gets to him.

<comment><USER24> That domain is expired: [http://whois.domaintools.com/docketdaily.com](http://whois.domaintools.com/docketdaily.com)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I haven't followed 5G planning/predictions in a few years, but the last big deal I recall in this area was having the 5G included in the home broadband offerings. In other words, the current U-Verse/FiOS modem/router would also have a 5G microcell in it.

That would help with some of these issues as it relates to pole access and such.

</comment><comment><USER26> Verizon bought Straight Path for some billions so you are going to get 5g no matter if you like it or not.</comment>


GTK drops Autotools in favor of Meson - <AUTHOR> https://mail.gnome.org/archives/gtk-devel-list/2017-August/msg00028.html <comment><USER2> Excellent -- Meson is so much clearer than the alternatives. It has the advantages of Bazel and similar (Pants, Buck), but seems more geared toward smaller projects, which is great for those of us not using a mono-repo.

</comment><comment><USER3> That's unexpectedly. Meson is not so popular build system (and appeared not so long ago), but looks interesting. Autotools is pure horror, Cmake uses almost the same approach as Autotools, Blaze derivatives Bazel and Buck are only suitable for specific uses, Gyp is little known outside Chromium and was created for it. So maybe Meson is sound choice.

<comment><USER4> For some reason Meson seems to be quite the fad in the Freedesktop sphere.

Systemd is adopting it, Xorg as well apparently, and now GTK.

Only issue i foresee is that now i need a working Python3 to get things bootstrapped...

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> We started using Meson on one of my projects and it's rather nice imo. I wouldn't use it for every class of project but it's well suited to something like GTK+.</comment>


Not all young people are 'digital natives' - <AUTHOR> https://theconversation.com/not-all-young-people-are-digital-natives-inequality-hugely-limits-experiences-of-technology-133102 <comment><USER2> I changed my business recently to a situation where I deal with alot of millenial aged college graduates. For all the talk of this generation "growing up with the internet", I am consistently surprised by how poor their non social media skills are. Things like copying files from a thumbdrive to a computer, filling out a spreadsheet, adding a header or footer to a document - sometimes it is quite shocking.

I graduated from High School in 1994 and had some computer classes leading up to that. I learned how to type a letter in wordperfect. I learned how to save it to my floppy disk. I learned how to use a spreadsheet to make a budget.

What has happened that we don't teach these basic things any more? Social media is important as a medium but basic job skills are really being left to the employer to teach.

Of course, it could be the kind of young person I am contracting. But they are finance majors, political majors, and so on.

<comment><USER3> I'm a high school teacher, so focusing on a younger age group that your demographic, but they absolutely _don 't_ teach kids these things. The only class we have with a computer is a typing class that lasts 12 weeks where they essentially play games online (the teacher is also a nutjob; anti-vaxer and flat-earther!)

These kids type their entire papers on their phones and save it via Google Drive. It's not surprising they really don't know how to do anything with computers.

<comment><USER4> They don't use google docs?

<comment><USER5> Drive and docs are tied together.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > But our social and media users are a group marked by narrow and limited > digital media use and a lack of data literacy. They are likely to come from > some of the poorest households in the country.

I see this when I open Youtube in a private Window. My feed is full of videos about movies, software engineering, history, ... I just do not get what the most popular videos are about.

With TV there was a similar drift toward low quality content. But, there was a limit how low it could go and at prime time they needed to cater to everybody, including the middle class.

With Youtube and social media, you can live in your own bubble of low quality content. Facebook is just the same but much worse.

Many young people are as close to be digital natives as I am of being an airplane pilot for flying frequently.

<comment><USER7> By what measure are you determining what YouTube content low quality and what is not?

I just opened it up in incognito mode (IP located in California) and I see the first 5 as: \- Eminem music video \- Gordon Ramsey \- Jimmy Kimmel \- 4 levels of onion rings \- A couple building a shipping container home

Nothing about these seems low-quality at all. Is it just because it's not that educational like software engineering and history?

<comment><USER8> I am not sure if incognito will help you avoid Geo and other non-cookie based personalization

<comment><USER9> I don't think there is non-cookie based personalization, just geo localization. Removing cookies makes this obvious: there isn't even a crumb of my recommended videos.

Which makes sense because a list of trending content is a bit nonsensical without a region in mind, e.g. language.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I teach at a community college in the USA. Maybe 10 percent of them are what I would consider computer literate. 80% can get by but the other 10% are very computer illiterate.

On reddit I will sometimes see memes about tech illiterate professors but they only think that because they don't see the rest of their classmates try to use tech in front of them.

I had typed up a list of things that I see students struggle with when they try to use computers but I don't want to make it seem like I am sitting around "look at these kids these days!" because in reality in a class or say 20 there will only be 1-2 that really struggle with computers.

\-- Of course this will make it a real shit show with all the schools at all levels going to "elearning" to deal with the Coronovirus.

<comment><USER11> I teach cybersecurity for middle school kids and organize events, I'd say the same, approximately 1% is actually competent.

Though, I think one of the biggest obstacles for a regular student is their utter lack of knowledge how to actually use a keyboard, teaching that the shift key exists is new knowledge for so many. Thankfully it can be rapidly improved with very little teaching, and things like coding actually become much easier when they make fewer typos and waste less time typing.

Telling middle school teachers that instead of Word, spend four lessons at the beginning actually teaching the tools they're using, is usually received with a lot of negativity, it's somehow considered outdated to learn how to type.

<comment><USER10> totally agree with the lack of experience with keyboards. The shift thing reminded me of a student last semester who I saw working and put the caps lock on to type a short acronym like APCA or something.

<comment><USER5> Huh? Both ways of typing that are completely fine. Especially since the 'correct' way of using the opposite-hand shift key is probably the worst way to type an acronym by a significant margin, since it requires so much shuffling back and forth while coordinating chorded keys.

<comment><USER11> Holding shift doesn't require any shuffling back and forth?

<comment><USER5> Using the _opposite-hand_ shift key, when pressing letters that go back and forth between sides, requires awkward shuffling.

<comment><USER11> You use your pinkies and there's barely any movement.

<comment><USER5> Just as much movement as hitting any other key. Plus slightly more because you have to keep it held during the next key. It's really easy to do, but it's still more than double the effort of hitting a single letter, and when you're hitting many keys per second that makes a difference.

Shift, letter, unshift is great for a single capital letter, but if you're doing that several times in a row then capslock is a lot simpler. As is holding a single shift, if you're used to it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I was friends with someone who had a couple of kids who were obsessed with video games. For me as a kid, that naturally led to some sort of hacking. If something didn't work, I would try to investigate or fix it.

For them, it was playing games while constantly talking to their friends, and if not that, watching videos on YouTube of other kids playing games.

One of them, a 13-year old boy, was upset that his laptop screen didn't work. He had been complaining to his mother for months about it. I pointed out to him that his laptop had an external monitor port and that he could plug it in to something else and it worked fine. He had never investigated this possibility. I also took the laptop and cleaned it out viruses and spyware... Something like 42 different packages were removed.

Basically if something didn't work, they would just give up and say that it was "broken".

</comment><comment><USER13> I saw a teacher somewhere say that he had noticed that kids increasingly have trouble understanding how file paths work in computers. It's something I think is very intuitive and key to use a computer, but I guess when you're only used to smartphones you rarely if ever have to think about files and folders.

This is exactly why the Raspberry Pi was created, to enable kids to get computer experience in a world full of locked down phones and tablets.

<comment><USER14> I blame Apple for people not knowing about paths. An acquaintance always used windows and then switched to Mac. She usually had her stuff neatly organized, but a year later, there was zero organization any more, she was just using the finder. If search is good enough, you don't need organization. Folders and files are hierarchical categorization, you don't need that if you can access everything by search.

<comment><USER15> For security purposes and everything it's probably better to abstract away the idea of files and wall off apps like on mobile, and usability wise this is probably making tech more accessible to users to have super efficient search. They might not know how to use a file manager, but they still know how to use their computer

<comment><USER14> Yeah, it's absolutely fine for casual consumers, but similarly to cars, you're going to be _really_ lost if something on one of those multiple layers of abstractions malfunctions.

People will have to accept paying for computer repairs like they do for car repairs. Moving everything into the cloud won't help; Google will be weird and generally has no support, so you'll need somebody to figure out why those docs aren't visible in drive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This link is about inequality in the U.K., but what's even more interesting to me is the massive number of people that don't _use the Internet at all._ Only about half of the world population is online and there are dozens of countries where only 20-30% of the population has "accessed the Internet in the last 12 months from any device, including mobile phones."

\- DRC (8.62% of 81,339,988 people are online)

\- Nigeria (27.68% of 190,886,311)

\- Indonesia (32.29% of 263,991,379)

\- Pakistan (36.18% of 220,892,340)

We truly are only at the beginning.

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

<comment><USER17> The United States has a shocking number of people who are not on the internet, as well.

The company I work for deals primarily in healthcare for the poor, and even though we have a fleet of web sites, social media accounts, and a text messaging program, we have to also send everything out on paper in order to make sure we reach as many people as possible. And since we're in healthcare, we don't get to be all SV Bubble about it and say, "Well, they should just go buy some money and get a smartphone."

My company requires that all departments have some amount of hands-on with our customers, including us button pushers, often in their homes and neighborhoods.

It's amazing the number of people I've met who have no computer, no internet connection, not even a cell phone of their own. Often a single flip phone will be shared by all the members of a family. Sometimes, a single flip phone will be shared by four or five families living next to one another.

<comment><USER18> Similar space here. Don't discount SMS as a delivery channel, it hits a surprising number of folks, including those without a fixed address.

<comment><USER19> I mean, I'm a professional software developer (among other things), and when I'm commuting in highly populated areas on regional trains, the quality of Canada's telecommunications networks, the most expensive in the world to subscribers, is so extremely poor that SMS is the most reliable way to reach me during that time. It is pure luck that my workplace isn't in a deadzone for LTE or even 3G strong enough even to refresh Hacker News.

SMS is absolutely necessary for me, I still have a basic GSM phone for phone calls and SMS because it is more reliable than current stuff and has a month of standby time.

<comment><USER18> It's also one of the cheapest channels, and having worked with transient and Medicaid populations it has become essential.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I don't understand how this is surprising. We have reached a point where devices and software are working well enough to not worry about how they work. The same happened with cars and probably a lot of appliances. Some decades ago you needed to know how they work so you could repair them. Nowadays not many people have even the foggiest idea how a car works. They just use it.

<comment><USER9> I've seen HNers assert that everyone should learn to code or know how a computer works which I think is just a level of hubris because they themselves happen to care about those things. Or confuse it with something particularly positive about themselves.

Meanwhile, there are plenty of things those same people don't care about knowing, like how an engine might work, how their girlfriend of five years puts on makeup despite her doing it daily, how electrical/water/gas works in their house, the history of civilization, how their government works, etc.

Life is a crap sandwich in so many ways that I don't think these expectations are fair until we're immortal with infinite leisure time.

<comment><USER21> I'm of the opinion that everyone should learn to code, but not because the coding is universally useful. Rather, it's because learning to code is the best way I know to learn to be okay with failure. Shit breaks, you try again.

<comment><USER22> I think just living teaches you that lesson.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Classic blog post from 2013 on this subject.

[http://www.coding2learn.org/blog/2013/07/29/kids-cant-use- co...](http://www.coding2learn.org/blog/2013/07/29/kids-cant-use-computers/)

</comment><comment><USER24> Whether someone is a "digital native" or not has everything to do with whether they're 1) interested in creating something, and 2) what they're interested in creating.

I may think they're really missing out on everything that a computer/the internet can do, but there are plenty of people really into cars that feel the same way about me driving a 23 year old vehicle.

</comment><comment><USER25> The thing I've noticed about the younger generation is that they are better at consuming tech intuitively, but mostly have no idea what makes it work. They seem to be able to use technology almost instinctively, but if they have to troubleshoot or create anything they don't know where to start.

You have to design UI for 'digital natives' to be just as user friendly as you would for baby boomers that didn't see their first computer until after they were grown. Both of them would be equally lost if you plopped them down at a terminal with nothing but a blinking cursor. This is generalizing, of course, there are exceptions.

Anecdotally the only thing that separates a 9 year old and a 60 year old is that the 60 year old won't want to touch a computer because they are afraid they will break something and the 9 year old will mash away until they get where they want to go. Neither knows or cares how or why it works.

<comment><USER26> TV and radio was the same way. My grandfather knew how to replace tubes and test circuits. I knew about adjusting antennas.

My son's technical knowledge of TV is charging the remote, rebooting the router and reseating connectors.

<comment><USER27> That actually seems pretty good, especially since if you aren't using an over the air antenna there isn't much else you can do with modern flat screen TVs.

<comment><USER26> I agree! As things get mature, there's no need to tinker.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> This is mostly my experience. I'm 18 and a lot of the people that go to my school only know how to use social media, and come to me when they need tech help. My closer friends are more tech literate, but they still come running to me when they need help with something more complicated. I supposed I should be happy that they even have interest in getting help. Most would just give up.

</comment><comment><USER29> As someone who grew up tinkering with computers I can relate but then I remember the perception of my elders towards my generation. I remember all the things I couldn't do or didn't pick up on that my family (and extended relatives on the homestead) could do. They could so easily fix and build everything and anything around the house and farm. Everyone was just so incredibly handy.

</comment><comment><USER30> And not all slightly older people meet the expectations of tech use for that slightly older generation. I think it's not uncommon for HN, but I have a minimal social media presence, and am rarely an early adopter-- more like a stage-2 adopter once something is proven, and very much not on board with social media adding anything positive to my life. So-called digital natives are, I think, becoming increasingly skeptical as well, in a grass-roots phase of limiting contact to closer, well-known friends/acquaintances. Not yet a majority, no, but the beginning of what has the potential to be a trend.

</comment><comment><USER31> My siblings are 10+ years younger than me, and have very little technical savvy, despite holding advanced hard science degrees, whereas such things are of my profession. I think part of the difference was growing up in an era where I could break things easily, and would have to understand and investigate them in order to fix them. More modernly, this sort of understanding isn't needed, so unless you have a burning curiosity, there isn't an ambient technical nourishment that is required to imbibe. No eLan Vital, as it were.

</comment><comment><USER32> In recent days I've been starting to feel this idea of "digital natives" is a silly one. There's no such thing as a "reading native" or "math native" – these are skills and concepts we learn in school because society at large has decided they are important enough to warrant the investment.

On the other hand, there's no standard curriculum or expectation around computers and software (afaik). We have this expectation that people will learn how to use things by osmosis or will be taught by the thing itself, perhaps because some kinds of software are extremely good at this (primarily games) and some types are easy enough to get started and have a motivation (eg. social) that they can "pull" users through their difficulties (or they can ask friends). People jump to conclusions - "if the kids can do that, they can do everything" \- which is clearly not the case. My knowledge of Excel won't help me with Snapchat which won't help me with Blender - and the difficulty difference between commonly used consumer apps and work apps can be significant.

The issue is that outside of the easy spaces, learning about computers is boring, difficult, doesn't have obvious usefulness, provides largely useless feedback, is often wildly unintuitive compared to how things work in the real world, and tends to require a baseline of knowledge most people won't have the interest to develop. This isn't surprising - the same applies to many subjects we learn in school. Most people will have no more interest learning common computer abstractions and mechanisms than memorizing their times tables or writing essays with an opening, body, and conclusion or looking up words they don't know in a dictionary.

In short, computing is something that should be actively taught in schools. Typing is a basic skill that should probably be taught in elementary, when children are learning to write (or shortly after). UI abstractions like files, folders, windows, searching should probably follow. Word processing should be covered before middle school, other productivity software during, along with more complex abstractions (clipboard, storage, paths, permissions, networks, accounts/passwords/security, scams, where to get help). Introductory programming should be taught as well.

None of this is to say that the average student should be a capable programmer after completing K-12. But I think that almost everyone should know enough to draw reasonable conclusions about systems and problems they encounter without outside help, if for no other reason than to avoid being exploited by scams, ransomware, ads, and whatever new attack vectors show up in the coming years.

</comment><comment><USER33> [http://www.coding2learn.org/blog/2013/07/29/kids-cant-use- co...](http://www.coding2learn.org/blog/2013/07/29/kids-cant-use-computers/)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6186730](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6186730)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13506283](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13506283)

Just posting because I was reminded of this

</comment><comment><USER34> the tech community (i.e. us) celebrated the mobile "revolution" and simple (i.e. dumbed down) UIs for more than a decade. You reap what you sow though, you have kids growing up not knowing what a file is. This is no testament to the success of the mobile and dumb-down revolution either: people use their phones more, but the only action they know is scroll and like, so it s not like the UX empowered people, it just steered all their energy to consuming. There is less and less features everywhere, and we are now celebrating new emojis. We are essentially creating a new inequality with the "dumbit down" revolution which pushes people to walled gardens and single-function apps to avoid the pain of learning elementary configuration.

In more concrete terms, Apple is probably the first preacher of hiding complexity behind a mask, and then almost everyone followed, even those that shouldnt (e.g. linux, windows). Gone are the logical, consistent , hierarchical UIs like windows 95, now windows doesnt even have a start menu and you need a search bar to navigate the control panel. Of course people will never learn about a directory tree if they never see one, but those concepts are key and undestanding them simplifies the understanding of just about anything.

</comment><comment><USER35> My kids were unfortunately indoctrinated by chromebooks and iPads in our public school system. Using real computers to do things is way too complicated and frustrating for them. Most kids are just like them - they're great using very limited technology for very specific things. The rest of computing is a mystery to them. They type on keyboards at less than 30WPM. At their age, I was doing 50 or so - a requirement for the typing class to 'meet expectations'.

</comment><comment><USER36> Well clearly. Almost everyone alive today is an "electricity native", but it's only a very small minority that can safely install wiring and the like. Everyone else just interacts with the consumerized version of it where everything interesting but potentially dangerous has been abstracted away. There is no reason to believe that younger people are more savvy about the workings of digital technology just because they grew up with consumerized versions of it.

<comment><USER37> It's worse today than it was in the 90s and early 2000s. Back then the web was an indie experience. If you wanted your own blog, you had to host it. Or if there was a platform you could use, it let you customize the HTML and CSS. An entire cottage industry of websites hosting code snippets sprung up, and all the kids were using HTML and tweaking it.

If you wanted a video game forum, you needed to host it. You had to learn how Linux servers worked, what MySQL was and how tables and migrations functioned, and might even need to write a little PHP on the side.

When I was a teenager, I had a PHP website that did game matchmaking, lightweight article publishing, and custom (non-phpBB) forums. I put this under Subversion source control and let several of the members that were code literate contribute. We built a lot of stuff and had a whole thing going. Multiple websites. And then we stood up an IRC server, which gave way to bots and log ingestion and archival.

We ran a MediaWiki instance ([http://strategywiki.org](http://strategywiki.org)), we knew the folks that wrote the Gamecube LAN adapter tunnel.

When it came time for college, I was way ahead of the curve. I blew through all of the upper level courses before my electives, and I was a TA in my freshman year. (Second semester!) This let me take a lot more biology and chemistry classes (something I wasn't previously skilled with, but had a deep interest in learning).

This isn't as widespread anymore since there are platforms that do everything. Even though the learning curve has dropped and the barrier to entry is lower than ever, the barriers of interest and necessity have been raised.

Kids don't need to hack around as much, and it's sad.

<comment><USER38> I think you are overestimating the total number of kids that did the things you did.

A higher percentage of kids that were on the internet had the skills you are talking about, but they weren't a higher percentage of the overall population.

For example, there might have been 5% of young teens doing what you were doing, and that might have made up half of the internet users... now, it is still 5% of the total population, but that is now only 1/18th of the total internet population of that age range.

<comment><USER9> Seriously. I think their comment is good example of patting themselves on the back for their interests while being completely wrong about reality.

I happened to run my own phpbb/vbulletin forums as a kid and I can confidently say I was the only kid even close to doing that in my high school. I also didn't need to know anything to do it except press buttons on CPanel and phpmyadmin, things I didn't really understand. And I was scared to tell other guys at school about this stuff because I'd be an instant loser. Even in uni I rarely met anyone with those interests.

Meanwhile, these days, it's completely cool to spin up your own Discord server for your friends. It's totally mainstream to be into that sort of thing. Even gaming is cool now. And there's more kids these days doing more of what the grandparent post glamorizes because it's more accessible than ever.

I'd be surprised if grandparent commenter was even working off any real experience with modern kids and instead just wanted to glamorize their own nostalgia. I mean, surely modern kids aren't as cool as he was.

<comment><USER37> > surely modern kids aren't as cool as he was.

Surely.

I don't get why you folks have to be so rude. It diminishes your argument. I was with you until you had to poke fun at me. I'm a human being capable of making mistakes and reevaluating my ground truths. Why be like that?

> patting themselves on the back

While there's a lot of nostalgia in my anecdote, it's mostly spurred on by my dislike of platformization and centralization. I think they produce many negative externalities.

But thanks, now I'll clam up and stop talking about my personal experience.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I saw a report one day, where they interviewed many young people (<25) about their tech usage.

Most only used a smartphone and many of them only knew about well known apps like FB, IG, SC and WA, etc.

They were "natives" in their apps, but most of them didn't know much besides that.

Which is probably what you would expect and its probably still better than the mindless TV junkies from before.

</comment><comment><USER40> "Data thinking", "data doing" and "data participation" struck me as an unintuitive way to categorise digital literacy, especially as the example for "doing" seems to fit more squarely under critical thinking: "being able to identify and highlight the source of information others share".

</comment><comment><USER41> The sooner we dispell the notion that all people are equally capable at everything, the sooner we can get back to prioritizing merit and see it return to the country. It will take decades. The virus has exposed the incompetence that pervades the nation.

Articles like this are only surprising because some two generations of propaganda has convinced young Americans that everyone deserves a trophy and we can all be Einsteins and Armstrongs if we just set our minds to it.

But this is moreso a structural, institutional issue. This mindset has resulted in the conflation of equality of outcome with equality of opportunity as we take for granted that everyone is equally capable in the west. So now instead we throw money and man hours and bad policy at our lowest achievers in a sort of crabs in a bucket mentality, I stead of prioritizing resources for those who are more likely to benefit society in broad strokes - scientists who cure disease, for example - and as a result our native students are being thoroughly outcompeted by other nations.

This has resulted in a net reduction of the standard of living for all Americans. And is probably one reason for inequality and general unhappiness.

<comment><USER42> _Articles like this are only surprising because some two generations of propaganda has convinced young Americans that everyone deserves a trophy and we can all be Einsteins and Armstrongs if we just set our minds to it._

The article is about how economic class and educational inequality prevents everyone from having meaningful technical experiences that lead to technical literacy. I think you're missing the point by a mile or so.

<comment><USER41> >The article is about how economic class and educational inequality prevents everyone from having meaningful technical experiences that lead to technical literacy

No. That's exactly what I'm arguing is wrong. We're putting the cart before the horse. The internet is ubiquitous, even if you're poor at this point - it's in your schools, it's in free libraries, and entry level smartphones are cheap enough that all but the poorest can afford them if it's a priority.

The problem is none of that. It's that not everyone is technically competent - and no amount of education or money will fix that. Intelligence is a high dimensional spectrum and technical details regarding computers are out of reach for a sizable proportion of the population. This is exacerbated by poverty and/or poor education, but those are at most half of the problem.

<comment> crooked-v > We're putting the cart before the horse.

If you want to accurately act on 'inherent intelligence' you need to correct for external factors first, or else you'll just get a slice of the bell curve based on how rich/poor people are.

<comment><USER41> I'm not arguing against that. What I'm saying is that we have been drastically overcorrecting for too long because we refuse to collectively acknowledge the reality of intelligence as a distribution and allocate resources that maximally benefit _society_.

<comment> crooked-v > drastically overcorrecting

If anything, we've been undercorrecting. A simple example would be the many studies that show that IQ in children measureably increases in the years following a move from a poor area to a rich area, even if the child's family's income doesn't change.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Mutter – IRC client for iOS written in Swift - <AUTHOR> http://www.mutterirc.com <comment><AUTHOR> Most importantly, if you have a newer iPad, it works flawlessly with Split View and Slide Over.</comment>


When Not to Choose the Best NLP Model - <AUTHOR> https://blog.floydhub.com/when-the-best-nlp-model-is-not-the-best-choice/ <comment><USER2> To me it looks like they are all awful. None of them were trained with your specific task in mind so it is garbage in, garbage out.</comment>


Evaluating NASA's Futuristic EM Drive - <AUTHOR> http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2015/04/evaluating-nasas-futuristic-em-drive/

<comment><USER2> I'm mystified that NASA falls for this pseudoscience and falls for things like the bad-science of arsenic bacteria and Martian bacteria.

Why aren't there any adults in charge who can put a stop to this before NASA embarrasses itself?

<comment><USER3> They tested it twice, it worked twice. Maybe we can drop the pseudo prefix soon. That would be great, isn't it?

We thought before that heavier than air things can't fly, but the damn experimenters didn't listen and actually built something that did fly.</comment></comment>


HTTPS and your online security - happy-go-lucky https://blog.mozilla.org/internetcitizen/2017/04/21/https-protect/ <comment><AUTHOR> Interesting</comment>


Google's tenth messaging service will "unify" Gmail, Drive, Hangouts Chat - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/01/report-google-planning-tenth-messaging-app-this-ones-another-slack-clone <comment><USER2> Classic case of 'find a big project to justify our headcount and get promos for our eng/prod.' At least they have the money to burn on this Sisyphean goal of theirs.

</comment><comment><USER3> here we go again</comment>


Show HN: GifSwipe – Tinder for Gifs - <AUTHOR> https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/gifswipe/id955095561?ls=1&mt=8

<comment><USER2> @spenceryen what's the backstory? How did you come up with this idea?

<comment><AUTHOR> I started thinking of tinder for ideas... And I like funny gifs haha

<comment><USER2> Liked this cool app. i have added this product on our site :)</comment></comment></comment>


Put down the compiler until you learn why they're not buying - <AUTHOR> http://blog.asmartbear.com/put-down-the-compiler-until-you-learn-why-theyre-not-buying.html

<comment><USER2> The article is rather good, but appears to have overloaded the server. (I have been there, done that, and gotten the T-shirt.)

Tip for you if this happens: if its on a blog with any traction whatsoever, at least one person has signed up to read it with Google Reader, and their spider probably got in before the server burst into flames (it did in this case). If you add the blog's URL to your Google Reader account, Google will serve the RSS content to you out of their cache.

<comment><USER3> Thanks, yes it's a new server and it got smashed. :-(

Back up now, cheers.

<comment><USER4> Upvoted, now that I can finally see it. ;)

It would be nice if we could move this submission back up the page. It deserves a read.</comment></comment></comment>