Brave New World banned from High School curriculum - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.seattleweekly.com/dailyweekly/2010/11/brave_new_world_banned_from_cu.php <comment><USER2> The Enlightenment was premised on the broad idea that people were rational and that, once education became widespread, reason would eventually stamp out superstition and other evils and would cause humanity to want to promote and defend liberty. This thinking broadly underlies the idea that we are continuing to progress as a species and will ultimately learn to solve the problems that historically have beset us.

This sort of episode should serve to remind us that passion and prejudice are ever at-the-ready to spring up and override reason.

On the side of reason:

1\. You have a classic work of literature that is _widely_ recognized as an important indictment of totalitarian societies, something that young people in a free society should presumably regard as a staple of their learning.

2\. You have a significant historical work that is a product of its times, which sound learning should suggest ought to be taken on its own terms, notwithstanding that society has changed since then in what it regards as acceptable cultural references. Again, even if regressive, one would think those raised in a free society would encourage its study, if nothing else than to understand why the older cultural references existed and why people accepted and later rejected them (if that is indeed what happened).

3\. You have reasonable arguments that the references to "savages," taken in context, were not intended to be demeaning at all but were essentially a literary device used to promote the themes of the work. Again, in a free society, one would think these would be topics that ought to be debated as part of coming to grips with a classic work.

On the side of passion and prejudice:

1\. You have public school systems that are charged with developing strong young minds and yet willingly succumb to the premise that some forms of expression ought to be censored or circumscribed at the whims of pressure groups in the community.

2\. You have serious subjects being resolved by supposedly responsible public officials at the level of pure emotion.

3\. You have what amounts to open demagoguery holding sway over that which scholars would widely if not unanimously oppose.

The stunning thing here is how one-sided this all was, with cravenly officials scarcely even putting up resistance. The next thing you know, they will be banning books that use the word "niggardly." Based on the logic on display here, that is surely next in line.

<comment><USER3> _The next thing you know, they will be banning books that use the word "niggardly."_

Worth pointing out, because when I saw this word while reading Hermann Hesse's Steppenwolf recently I did a double-take, that niggardly has absolutely nothing to do with "niggers".

Niggardly means "miserly" or "stingy". It is based on "niggard", not "nigger", which means the same - a miser, a stingy person. The roots of this word are:

 _Derived from the Old Norse verb nigla, meaning "to fuss about small matters". Cognate to the English word "niggle", which retains the original Norse meaning._

<http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/niggard> has further information:

 _This word, along with its adverbial form niggardly, should be used with caution. Owing to the sound similarity to the highly inflammatory racial epithet nigger, these words can cause unnecessary confusion and unintentional offense. The word is not related to the word nigger (a corruption of the Spanish word negro, meaning "black"), though someone unfamiliar with the word niggardly might take offense due to the phonetic similarity between the words._

Talk about an unhelpful coincidence. I wonder how many words fall out of disuse not because of their meaning but because of their phonetic similarity to words considered offensive.

<comment><USER4> I guess the philosopher Kant would have had some problems with his name in English. (In German Kant just sounds very similar to the name for edge Kante, and not female anatomy.)

But I guess you get around that impasse by just pronouncing it wrong. (German pronunciation: [ɪˈmaːnu̯eːl ˈkant])

<comment><USER5> I've had philosophical discussions with Germans that ended abruptly because one party suddenly exclaimed 'Kant!'

<comment><USER4> Could be me. I'm not a friend of Kant's philosophy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > _What Sense-Wilson and her daughter seem to be having trouble grasping is > that the "savages" in the book are only called "savages" because the > mainstream society which they aren't a part of is so perverted. In reality, > Huxley's savages are indeed the heroes…_

Indeed. The "savage" reads Shakespeare, which no one else in the book does anymore, for example.

It's just like people wanting to ban Huck Finn because it uses the word "nigger," without realizing the friendship between Huck and Jim shows just how silly racism actually is, or how the novel basically satirizes slave ownership by making Huck explicitly contemplate the "immorality" of helping a slave escape.

<comment><USER7> It seems to me that in case such as this the ones who ban the book haven't really read it. Anyone who reads "Brave New World" and actually thinks about it will see its true message, and anyone who reads "Huck Finn" and actually thinks about it won't find its use of the word "nigger" objectionable.

The problem is that it is easier to jump to a conclusion than it is to stop and think.

<comment><USER8> > The problem is that it is easier to jump to a conclusion than it is to stop > and think.

I think the problem is that our society gives in to stupid people if they scream loud enough. There always has been and always will be fools in the world. People who don't think, don't read and jump to anger as their first reaction.

The difference here is the fool got her way because a school board full of people not wanting to cause trouble backed down rather than confront her.

<comment><USER9> I think you've nailed it. Bill Maher asked the media '[C]ould you please stop pitting the ignorant vs. the educated and framing it as a "debate."' Acknowledging ignorant views and handling those who hold them with kids gloves is just another of many possible paths to Idiocracy.

<comment><USER10> Careful.

One of the cornerstones of democracy is that the ignorant will chose who also governs the educated if they are numerous enough.

<comment><USER11> s/cornerstones of/major bugs in/ There. Fixed that for you.

<comment><USER12> No. It is one of the cornerstones. Democracy is about being treated as equal _according to the law_ . Anyone who thought that was a bug and tried to "fix it" ended up bringing authoritarianism, slavery and less liberty.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> It is a bit more nuanced. As pointed out by the appeal record ([http://www.seattleschools.org/area/board/10-11agendas/111710...](http://www.seattleschools.org/area/board/10-11agendas/111710agenda/appealrecord.pdf)) there were three required non-fiction books for the 10th grade list: BNW, Othello, and Lord of the Flies. Apparently all three make reference to native or indigenous people as "savages".

And then apparently in one lecture they promoted an inaccurate view as to why we have reservations.

It's kind of like the Huck Finn example. If you read that book and it says the n-word -- that's one thing. But if the other two required books also say it, then it begins to get a little odd. I think people would reasonably begin to ask, "you couldn't find one book that didn't say nigger/savage in it?"

Although her attacks on the text itself were misplaced and uncalled for.

<comment><USER13> Here's a story from a local blog that goes into greater detail.

[http://saveseattleschools.blogspot.com/2010/11/brave-new- wor...](http://saveseattleschools.blogspot.com/2010/11/brave-new-world- indeed.html)

<comment><USER14> That blog post (and the comments at the end) sure give a really different impression of the event than the article.

<comment><USER13> Our news media is a narrative driven media. They find their narrative and build the story around that. Details, subtleties, and complexities get shoved under the rug.

For example, look at the health care debate. Headline news for over a year. Here's a quiz, ask 10 people to name 3 concrete aspects of Health Care reform. I tried an not one person game me 3. A few gave me two. The mode was zero concrete aspects.

The narrative never was the bill itself. What everyone did know was that Obama and the Dems won and the Republicans lost, and it it costs a lot of money. For a year of coverage, this was the only narrative. Win/Lose + costs money.

A lot of people wonder if the decline of newspapers means that things like city council meetings don't get coverage. I've discovered that you often get better coverage from reading a couple of blogs -- and there almost certainly will be better targeted blogs than you get from your major city paper.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> It's not exactly banned, but just removed from their curriculum. It will still be found in the school's library.

<comment><USER16> Defacto ban.

<comment><USER17> I'm not sure why this is being voted down... maybe because there isn't anything to back it up. But, I do think in a way it is a defacto ban. There will be some kids who seek out this book, but chances are those are not the kids that need to read this book. When you take important literature out of the classroom, you are preventing the kids who would at least pick up the main ideas from getting at those main ideas.

<comment><USER18> Edit: Just realized a key difference, I'm used to the GCSE reading lists not the US-style 'Required' Reading list. I remember getting Terry Pratchett novels in my reading list.

A defacto ban is "We're removing it from our reading list, removing it from our library... but we not discouraging our students from reading the book". Removing it from a reading list isn't a defacto ban, it's modernization. If the kids at a specific school don't seem to respond well to a text, _PULL IT_. I don't care what text, even if it's one of my own beloveds just _PULL IT_ and put in something the children will read and will learn from.

Brave New World is a classic, beyond perhaps, but if kids today aren't learning from it then so long. For every new book that goes on the list, an old one is going to come off of it. I'd much rather see kids get something like Monstrous Regiment by Terry Pratchett that they'll respond to. Fuck, give them Harry Potter or a goddamn Halo novel if the kids will actually _read_ it.

<comment><USER19> > If the kids at a specific school don't seem to respond well to a text, PULL > IT.

That seems like a very weird understanding of education to me. The whole point of the exercise is getting children to read something they might otherwise miss. If students oppose a book's content - very good, you have a debate running, and you can clearly learn from that (e.g., Huxley's use of the term savages does not dehumanize them, quite the contrary).

Education is not about taking the easy path to something, it's about taking the hard path, and learning on the way.

<comment><USER10> > Huxley's use of the term savages does not dehumanize them, quite the > contrary

I would go as far and explain those parents who are so afraid of it, that it's just a word that means something for the "civilized" characters of the book that's very different than it means to us or them.

And that "civilized" is also just a word.

Meaning is in the brain of the reader. A book is only dehydrated knowledge. You have to add a brain to it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> "the text lacks literary value"

Oh boy... Why not ban Fahrenheit 451 and 1984 while we are at it. And let's burn all copies too.

What kind of spineless school principal is this?

<comment><USER20> I wish I could get 1984 banned. Far too many believe that saying "it's just like 1984!" somehow makes it a valid argument against something.

Really I just want a required class in formal logic for everyone.

<comment><USER21> Same thing with "It's just like Hitler!", "It's not what the founding father's wanted!", etc.

I many times support the formal logic requirement.

<comment><USER22> "It's not what the Founding Fathers wanted" is not generally an issue of logic. If something is flagrantly against the values they espoused, then whether or not that thing should be opposed is simply a matter of your values. If it's not entirely clear whether they would have supported something but there could be reasonable arguments either way, then it's a matter of opinion. In neither case is it an example of faulty logic.

<comment><USER21> I could explain what I'm referring to, but then, why do so when wikipedia does it so well?

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I realize the 'ban' is because of the Native American/savages angle, but now that the book comes up I'd like to ask: I read Brave New World expecting a dystopic society, but failed to understand why the world that is described is dystopic. Huxley seems to go out of his way to ascribe all sorts of pejorative attributes to the society in the book, to the point where the promiscuous sex lives of the inhabitants are presented so prominently that I got the feeling he did this mostly to instigate the (presumably morally much more strict) early 20th century reader against it. Still, he described a world where the vast majority of people were happy, actually happy and content with their lives, and managed to live those lives without much hardship or grief.

Now maybe if one takes the position that hardship and grief are somehow morally virtuous (a position that is surprisingly common and that I as, I think, a rational person have a very hard time understanding, especially since the reasons for it are very seldom given in coherent theories) there is merit to this argument. But even then I still fail to see why the 'savages' in the book, or the protagonist, are somehow morally better than the other people.

So if anyone has read the book and wants to explain why they feel the world described in there is bad, I'd be very interested to hear why they think so.

(I'm leaving aside some what I think are minor issues, like the apparent destructive qualities of soma addictions - that was one of those other points I felt Huxley just put in there to get his point across, the technical deficiencies of the drug are irrelevant to the moral position he's (presumably) arguing).

<comment><USER24> You don't find it dystopic because the Brave New World so frighteningly resembles ours. The people on the article actually behaves like the idiot mainstream inhabitants of the Brave New World.

That you don't even find it dystopic is probably another sign that it's actually the parody of the world we're living it; superficial, commercial, filled with porn and vulgarity, reality TV and shitty music, individualistic and thoughtless. We don't even need a Thought Police to enforce proper thinking.

<comment><USER23> You're ascribing all sorts of moral judgments to this world but don't make a case for why any of these things are bad, if they manage to make people feel (truly) content and happy. What's wrong with reality TV, Lady Gaga and advertisements if that's what people like? Do you honestly thing people would be better off if they didn't have those things and only had a Chopin record to put on at night? Maybe I'm reading your comment wrong but the pseudo- intellectual snobbery, not backed up with anything but an general contempt for anything that is mainstream, irks me. I guess in the same way the Brave New World did.

(that said, calling the society of Brave New World to be similar to ours is hyperbole, and I'd pretty sure that it's not why I feel the way I do about the book. Don't forget that the 1930's had their own 'shitty music and vulgarity', in the form of jazz and skirts that showed ankles. It's so easy to make an extremely generalized case for why Brave New World resembles any society; hell I figure that some grumpy inhabitants of Pompei would make the same argument about their city 2000 years ago.).

<comment><USER24> _> You're ascribing all sorts of moral judgments to this world but don't make a case for why any of these things are bad, if they manage to make people feel (truly) content and happy._

Most probably sheep are perfectly happy in their pen. Being perfectly happy because you don't think about why you live and what you may be good for isn't in my opinion a good way to be happy. My opinion is that human being should aim higher than living an happy cattle life. These are personal values, but I think that some values are better than others, and that general relativism isn't good.

And about the intellectual snobbery : I _am_ a proud intellectual snob. Intellectual snobs know better, that's why I chose to be one :)

<comment><USER23> "...a good way to be happy..." ... "...should aim higher than living an happy cattle life..."

I'm not sure. Some other posters also brought up a similar argument. I'm not convinced that there is a moral ordering or ways to be happy, as long as the criteria are constrained to internal ones (i.e., as long as the criteria don't affect others - a society of 9 male rapists and one woman is presumably one where 90% of the population is happy, but that doesn't make it a just or right society)

I don't agree that hardship and/or grief are required for great achievements. On the contrary, I think that most achievements are done by people who are already in the 5th layer of Maslow's hierarchy. It's subjective what 'great achievement' is, but in the trend of this site, let's take some big software companies; were Bill Gates, Steve Jobs or Mark Zuckerberg living in mud huts, going to sleep every night feeling hungry? I don't know the details about any of them, but it seems from a cursory Wikipedia glance that all of them grew up in environments where the 'happy cattle life' was the norm, and it was some other internal motivation that drove them to create and not a desire to get away from hardship.

Also, note that I didn't say 'intellectual snobbery', but 'pseudo-intellectual snobbery'. Being a rebel for rebellion's sake, agitating against everything that is mainstream, is not intellectualism, it's mostly a trait of wannabe students and hipsters who are still in their formative years and derive their self image from contrasting themselves with the rest of society. Now actual intellectual thought can also be contrary to mainstream thinking of course, but it needs to be backed up with solid reasoning from data, axioms etc. and not with 'most people are stupid, so what most people are thinking is wrong' (even leaving apart that by definition it's impossible for most people to be stupid, unless one sets the benchmark for stupidity at an arbitrarily high level, at which point it's just definition again).

<comment><USER24> _> I'm not convinced that there is a moral ordering or ways to be happy, as long as the criteria are constrained to internal ones ..._

This is an interesting and debatable matter. I'm probably not really convinced too :)

 _> I don't agree that hardship and/or grief are required for great achievements._

Neither do I, but I don't seem to have implied it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> My family moved from China to Canada during my high school years. It was Brave New World (along with Animal Farm) that really opened up my eyes what a Communist world I was raised in.

Yes, Huxley could be cruel on his depicting of the native stereotypes (like most elitists during his days). But besides stereotypes, I think it's equally important to educate kids about ideologies -- and the big social and political systems we live in -- with that in mind few literature titles could come even close to Brave New World.

</comment><comment><USER26> Why do I feel like I'm being indirectly trolled? I mean, this woman can't be serious about this, right? Sad. Seriously, seriously sad...

</comment><comment><USER27> I was assigned to read Brave New World in high school. I had already read it at home, as it was in the collection of books my parents had in our house when I was growing up. The term "savages" occurs in the book to make a comment about the persons speaking the term, not to make a comment about the persons described as savages.

The best book I was assigned to read in high school was The Chosen by Chaim Potok. I later read most of Potok's other books on my own. A few years ago I reread The Chosen--that is a very fine book for a reader of any age.

</comment><comment><USER28> > _The school eventually agreed, promising to remove the book from students' > required reading list and releasing a statement apologizing that the > "cultural insensitivity embedded in this book makes it an inappropriate > choice as a central text in our 10th grade curriculum._ "

Anyone who played a part in releasing the statement should be fired for failure to understand the concept of a free society.

The rational for government supported education is that a democracy needs educated citizens to survive. The people involved obviously don't grasp that.

<comment><USER29> >The people involved obviously don't grasp that.

Or maybe they've just read and understood _Brave New World_ all too well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> If test tube people that the deserving ones and natural born people are the savages, what does that make the poorly educated self righteous kid and the retarded mother?

At least it had nothing to do with the fact that natural born people need to have sex to do so, but I'm sure it'll happen eventually.

</comment><comment><USER31> Ironically, I'm reading the book now ...

"You can't consume much if you sit still and read books."

<comment><USER32> I.e. You can't consume much while in the act of consuming?

<comment><USER10> It takes a couple days for me to "consume" US$5 of books. It takes me a couple seconds to spend the same amount of money during lunch.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> This reminds me of the case in a University of Michigan museum where a Native American woman and her son got those little dioramas of native people removed. Apparently after seeing them, her son asked how he could be Native American if Native Americans were dead (because only dead cultures are depicted in the museum).

So this woman, a graduate student, bullied the museum into removing the dioramas.

</comment><comment><USER34> The book is about sterile, future society. "Savages" is completely relative. We'd all be considered savages by BNW standards.

If that school focused more on educating and less on banning it, the student might have understood the context of the book.

<comment><USER35> It's not even relative: it's ironic. The term is used ignorantly by the people outside the reservation. The 'Savage' cares for his mother and reads Shakespeare, something that people outside the reservation don't do any more.

It's clear that Huxley does not regard the 'Savage' as being savage.

<comment><USER36> But we can't have those nuances in our multicultural brave new world! It's the person being offended who decides what's offensive (so long as they belong to a protected group). Four legs good! Two legs bad!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> When I read "Brave New World" just last year again. The terms "savage" and "reservation" never once conjured an image of American Indians. Instead I more or less saw the sort of savages one might see in "sanctuary" in the film "logan's run."

Of course in this world it's much easier to be offended than to tolerate. #legalism and #liability is the death of us.

</comment><comment><USER38> Why do people think they have a right not to be offended? They don't.

</comment><comment><USER39> This is ridiculous. They also shouldn't teach history because you know someone might be offended the same way.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hehe. I eagerly await the first German to be offended by the Allies winning WWII. Should be fun to watch. :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Brave New World was banned from my 6th grade class. (or, at least, the teacher was told in no uncertain terms to not continue reading it out loud to the class)

</comment><comment><USER41> Does anyone else find the best books are usually banned? I've heard of this book, and meant to buy it; now I've bought it. This is great PR for the book.

</comment><comment><USER42> I don't think that removing it from the curriculum is a bad thing. But not for the reasons suggested by the article.

BNW isn't a great piece of literature, imo. I understand it's place in literary history, but it's aged badly, and pretty clunky because of that. The themes are certainly important, and will continue to be retold, I'm sure.

There's great modern literature and contemporary YA fiction that is far more entertaining and tackles equally difficult moral issues.

</comment><comment><USER43> best comment on the article:

"Brave New World takes place in London... I'm left wondering how many Native American reservations are near London, England."

<comment><USER44> But it doesn't take place entirely in London.

The reservation is in New Mexico. Two of the characters go on a trip there and meet a white man that lives among the native americans, but is not fully accepted by them.

TThe above is just another comment by someone that does not appear to have read the book.

<comment><USER43> Now that you mention that, I remember the book a bit better. I personally need to re-read it. It was so long ago and although I liked the book a lot, the experience was spoilt by English Lit class.

Catch22 is another I remember only vaguely but need to reread.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Ironic too is the fact that the book was banned at "Nathan Hale High School." Leave it to literary fools to name a high school for a man who, while depicted as a hero, was uncovered as a spy after confiding that very fact in the people on which he was spying. Nathan Hale was a fool, and so are this school's administrators.

</comment><comment><USER46> A supreme irony, since on the same HN page this link appears concerning a letter written about Aldous Huxley's "most beautiful death" on November 22, 1963:- [http://www.lettersofnote.com/2010/03/most-beautiful- death.ht...](http://www.lettersofnote.com/2010/03/most-beautiful-death.html)

</comment><comment><USER47> If I buy Brave New World as a result of reading this article, is that ironic? What if it's the Kindle edition? Meta-ironic?

</comment><comment><USER48> I guess this makes us HN readers savages!

</comment><comment><USER49> Yet they are all still watching "South Park"?

</comment><comment><USER50> hehe savages, what will they do next

</comment><comment><USER36> "the text lacks literary value"

No, but the mother lacks human value.</comment>


Ask HN: Pseudocode for the Bitcoin Mining Algorithm? - <AUTHOR>

I get the general gist of what problem must be solved for bitcoin mining, namely wanting to find a nonce that pairs with your data to result in a hash with x leading zeros where x is the current difficulty level.
However, I'm having trouble finding the exact algorithm, which uses double SHA-256 encryption, etc.
Can someone give or point me to the full pseudo code for the mining algorithm? <comment><USER2> The source code is here: [https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/blob/master/src/miner.cpp](https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/blob/master/src/miner.cpp)

Basically, the ScanHash_CryptoPP(..) function does the actual hashing, and is called by the BitcoinMiner(..) function, which checks if the returned hash has the appropriate number of 0 bits.</comment>


Ask HN: How many of you have ereaders? - <AUTHOR>

I've been seriously thinking about getting an ereader sometime soon. I do a lot of reading, and with the amount of material freely available on the web, I sometimes end up reading on my laptop. But I'm starting to get frustrated with that.<p>So I'm interested in hearing your experiences with ereaders. How usuable are they for  technical books (like nonfiction) and nonfiction books. And do you find any of the extra features useful (such as keyboard/ wireless internet)? <comment><USER2> Got a kindle. Not in love. Waiting for iTab.</comment>


Google is bleeding cash trying to take on Amazon in the smart home - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2018/4/23/17272748/alphabet-google-q1-2018-earnings-nest-smart-home-amazon-competition <comment><USER2> Already posted 2 hours earlier, 20+ points:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16908303](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16908303)</comment>


A Skype founder on biomonitors, existential risk and simulated realities - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324412604578513472554236916.html

<comment><AUTHOR> In case you can't view the article, here is the full txt: Article by ALEXANDRA WOLFE

"As we try to talk by Skype, Jaan Tallinn is fading in and out on my computer screen. Sitting in his living room in Estonia, he is having trouble with his connection, which may seem ironic for a co-founder of Skype, the wildly successful video chat service. But these particular technical difficulties are not Mr. Tallinn's problem these days. Since Skype was sold for $2.6 billion in 2005, making him tens of millions of dollars, he has moved on to bigger issues—like extending the span of a healthy human life and saving the species. And those are just this spring's initiatives.

When the screen finally clears up, Mr. Tallinn comes into view. A youthful 41-years-old, with short blond bangs and fair skin, he could be a poster boy for his latest venture, MetaMed, which promises customers personalized health- care research and analysis of their medical conditions.

Health care is a relatively new focus for Mr. Tallinn, who has been interested in computer science and technology since he was 10. Born in Estonia to an architect mother and a father who directs for film and TV, he didn't get access to a computer until he was 14, when the father of one of his schoolmates selected a group of them to work in his office. There he met the friends who would eventually join him in developing Kazaa, the file-sharing application turned music-subscription service, in 2000 and then Skype in 2002.

He launched MetaMed last March after a $500,000 investment from PayPal co- founder Peter Thiel. So far, the New York-based company has about a dozen employees and 20 clients, half of them friends who are trying it pro bono. The idea emerged from another of Mr. Tallinn's goals: "surviving as a species this century." He has also been developing a new nonprofit called the Cambridge Project for Existential Risk with two academics.

What risks worry him? "The first one is artificial intelligence," he says. "The second is the things that technological progress might create that we're unaware of right now."

He has just read an early draft of a book by his friend Max Tegmark, a physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, arguing that the only reason nuclear bombs can't be made from instructions downloaded from the Internet is that the laws of physics luckily make it hard to do. "There's no guarantee that wouldn't be possible," he says, referring to homemade nuclear bombs.

His third fear is biological risk. "There could be synthetic viruses that evolution doesn't even know how to create," says Mr. Tallinn. For all practical purposes, he suggests, evolution stopped with the advent of gene technology. "The future of the planet depends much more on technology than evolution," he adds.

Having five children with his wife of 16 years has made many of these ideas more concrete for Mr. Tallinn. "When somebody goes all abstract on me ... saying things like, 'Perhaps humanity doesn't deserve to survive,' I say, 'Look, do you have kids? Do you realize you're talking about the death of your kids or my kids?" Mr. Tallinn says he's always glad to hear when technology developers have children because it makes them think in the long-term.

Glancing away from the screen to the trees outside his house, Mr. Tallinn laments that most people don't take these longer-term risks seriously.

"In general, it seems to me that people in society are bad at dealing with things that have never happened and overreact to things that have happened and happened recently," he says. As he notes, more people die slipping in the shower than in plane crashes, train accidents and terrorist attacks combined. "Since 9/11, more Americans have been killed by falling furniture than by terrorists," says Mr. Tallinn.

And these, in his view, may not be humankind's only blind spots. Mr. Tallinn is open to the possibility that our lives and consciousness are all part of a computer simulation. "As our computers and technology get better at making virtual worlds, it's reasonable to expect them to be able to create virtual worlds that are indistinguishable from the real one," he says. "So if you're in a single-history universe, with one real one and many simulations, the chances of being in the simulation are higher than the real thing."

If we are indeed living in a simulation, should we behave differently? "What we should do depends on what kind of evidence we have that we are in a simulation ... and then the critical question is why the simulation is being run." Mr. Tallinn won't say whether or not he believes we are in the real world or a computerized fake. "Once you're in a simulation you don't even know—it could be that it's not even you."

At the moment, Mr. Tallinn's virtual presence is getting fuzzy again, and his image finally fades from my screen. Calling back with his video turned off, he assures me that he is no pessimist. He looks forward to self-driving cars, which "might completely change the logistics of civilization." he says. With MetaMed, he's excited by the prospect of more advanced biomonitors. And then there's the possibility of cheap gene sequencing.

As Mr. Tallinn sees it, his career, from Skype to MetaMed to the Cambridge Project for Existential Risk, has followed a progressive arc. He recalls how he introduced himself at a recent party: "First I saved about one million human relationships," with Skype, but it "doesn't make sense to save human relationships if you don't make sure [people] live longer, and then make sure they don't get destroyed."

</comment><comment><USER2> "Having five children..."

Somehow overpopulation didn't make his list of existential risks? Seems like a glaring hypocrisy for someone who claims to have an interest in saving the species.

<comment><USER3> Overpopulation is not an existential risk: it does not kill the entire human race or permanently curtail/destroy potential. Overpopulation sucks and can cause serious problem for those affected, but it does not threaten all of humanity and to some extent solves itself - you can't go beyond the Malthusian equilibrium.

Not only is overpopulation not an existential risk, it's not even really a risk: look up the demographic transition.

<comment><USER2> I think it's a very serious issue. Clearly the population will balance itself at some point, whether by education/moderation or mass-starvation. However, I believe we have a finite window of opportunity to make a number of critical scientific and social advancements in order to continue our species' progress in the next few centuries and beyond. This window is defined primarily by the availability of materials and energy which are necessary to support technological development at our current scientific frontiers. Increasing population, especially in the developed world, consumes resources faster and thus shortens the span before many critical materials become scarce. Better extraction and synthesis will likely become available in the future, but first we need to get there.

I am not arguing that we shouldn't have children at all, but responsibly limiting our population seems like a critical supporting factor in any qualitative advancement we want to make as a species. This is especially true since much of the world doesn't seem likely to do the same any time soon.

<comment><USER4> I think you make some good observations, but I'd wager if you think these statements through a while longer, you'll adjust your position. Jaan (a single high fitness human) having multiple children doesn't connect directly to the real issue of overpopulation. The carrying capacity of the earth (with efficient use of vertical space) is orders of magnitude large than our current population. Survival-necessary resources are not scarce. Depletion of scarce resources causes serious economic and societal impact, but can you name one irreplaceable scarce resource? We're almost out of oil but tech will transition to alternatives soon. I worry about byproducts of overpopulation, like multiple antibiotic resistance bacteria and calcified local optima in social systems.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Setting up useful analytics for web & mobile products - <AUTHOR> http://keithschacht.com/understanding-your-customers/

<comment><USER2> Damnit, Keith. I wanted to submit this article and promote it, but now I'm afraid you've missed the HN success window.

Anyhow, I just read this and it's honestly the best article about customer acquisition and retention I've ever read, I think. I wish I wrote it. ;)

One small detail: your effective cost of customer acquisition is eCAC = CAC _(1-k) where k is your viral coefficient_.

In the article Keith only carries the discount forward one generation, but each generation begets another so it winds up being a geometric series.

So if k = 0.5 the discount on your CAC is 50%, not 33%. One spot check for this is that if k = 1 then eCAC should be 0.

*: This assume you can (1) accurately measure your viral coefficient and (2) the viral coefficient is the same for all users, regardless of how they were acquired. In the real world neither of these is generally true.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for pointing this out, I've corrected this article. Yea I didn't do much in the way of promoting it on HN but thought I might as well put it out there.</comment>


Cook My Meat: heat diffusion through meat over time - <AUTHOR> http://up.csail.mit.edu/science-of-cooking/ <comment><USER2> I'm one of the 3 MIT students (now MIT alumnae) who coded this over 5 years ago now. It's popped up around the Internet again in the past year or so, which is neat but also a little cringey, because it forces me to look at code I wrote when I was a lot newer to programming than I am now.

One person commented about a better simulator that they'd developed, which I am certain exists. This simulator was developed for an EdX class called the Science of Cooking. Although we tested it and found it to be largely accurate (in one of the more delicious code testing sessions I've ever attended), it was designed primarily to illustrate the various reactions that occur at the molecular level, rather than to provide actual cooking guidance.

Also, it seems that some of you are having problems where the program crashes your browser. Unfortunately, that's not entirely avoidable as the whole application is client-side javascript, and does some moderately complex calculations for heat diffusion. Obviously this would not be the approach I would take if I were to rewrite the program today...

If anyone wants to take a look at the source code, here is the original git repo: [https://github.com/laurabreiman/science-of- cooking](https://github.com/laurabreiman/science-of-cooking). Cheers everyone!

<comment><USER3> Great work! I had a similar idea a decade ago when I wrote a calculator to solve for perfect cheesecake. The idea was to have thick New York style cheesecake with perfect texture top to bottom yet have caramelized top and bottom (no water bath cheating!)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> We built a somewhat better thermodynamic model into the Pantelligent iOS and Android apps -- i.e. user would select 1" thick steak, medium, and then we'd use the real temperature signal to adjust the cooking time.

The key fact this simulation is missing is that the outermost layer of the food quickly becomes dehydrated, at which point its thermal conductivity drops dramatically. This is good! It allows for much more uniform internal temperatures.

Edit: we did a lot of thermal simulation using my CircuitLab simulation engine ([https://www.circuitlab.com/](https://www.circuitlab.com/)) -- circuit models for thermal simulation are common, where voltage represents temperature, and current represents heat flow. The simulation engine allows for arbitrary behavioral elements like algebraically-defined resistors, which lets you model this "outer layer dries out" behavior quickly.

<comment><USER5> Is Pantelligent not available anymore? I was actually just looking for it as a possible xmas gift a couple weeks ago.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm impressed but disappointed the "reverse sear" is missing. If you haven't tried, it, it's a pretty amazing way to cook a steak and it scales up to lots of steaks at the same time.

It's awesome

[1] [https://www.seriouseats.com/2017/03/how-to-reverse-sear- best...](https://www.seriouseats.com/2017/03/how-to-reverse-sear-best-way-to- cook-steak.html)

<comment><USER7> Just make your own. Or click "as text" and paste this in:

      3cm Steak starts at 23°C
      110°C and 110°C for 2:00
      23°C and 230°C for 0:15
      230°C and 23°C for 0:15
      23°C and 23°C for 20:00

<comment><USER8> 2 minutes of cooking for reverse sear? In practice, a 3cm steak would probably need 20-25 minutes at 100C before sear. This model seems way off at this temp range, but seems closer for sous vide.

<comment><USER7> Yeah I just flipped the sear then cook low and then adjusted it to medium rare. It seemed short to me too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Once, Nathan Myhrvold spoke at Google about Modernist Cuisine and I asked him how to make the ultimate BBQ ribs (he won some competition). He said "sous vide, liquid nitrogen, then deep fry". Glad to see this site includes sous vide + liquid nitrogen.

<comment><USER10> For ribs I follow a modified 321 method, 3:30 on, 1:30 in tinfoil on, 1 unwrapped. Sauce them 10-20 minutes before they are done just to carmelize it a bit.

They are still tender but with A bit of toothiness left.

<comment><USER9> you're describing classic ribs (not sous vide, liquid N, or deep frying), right?

It's funny you mentioned that because the other point Mhyrvold and I discussed was using aluminum foil to tightly wrap the ribs during cooking- eliminating the water vapor that forms around the meat, which contributed to barbeque stall. Should speed up cooking without negatively affecting the results by 2-3 hours.

<comment><USER10> I was describing my method of BBQ in response to the gp. deep frying sous vide, liquid n or whatever other method is not bbq. Just like grilling is not BBQ. The style has a fairly specific meaning. If your ribs don't sweat three times in the process over six hours, you are doing it wrong.

Foiling them locks in the moisture. It absolutely doesn't eliminate it.

6 hours, low and slow. Or its not passable as BBQ

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Cooking the meat is cool. But, being someone of french gastronomical culture, I to to lean to Fernand Point saying : "Du beurre ! Donnez-moi du beurre ! Toujours du beurre !"

(basically, butter, butter, butter).

There was a recipe from G. Ramsay where it show to first sear the steak in oil, then, finish it with a bit of butter. It adds flavor and prevent the butter to burn.

I also tend to use my finger to test if a steak is fine. I'm no expert, but it works 80% of the time (to get a good steak). Now I must admit that sous-vide gives a lot more control and helps to reach the medium cook on a much wider part of the meat.

<comment><USER12> I threw away the finger technique, and now I use an instant thermal probe. Works 100% of the time.

+1 for the beurre, but don't forget to buy more for the sauce! It's all about the sauce.

<comment><USER11> Yeah but the finger makes you look like the real deal :-)

Another thing with that technique : rest the meat long enough. Makes a huge difference (not necessary with sous-vide/low temperature I think)

And contrary to what I've read, good precision cooker and vacuum machine (dunno how to call it in English) can be quite pricey. A few hundreds euro down here, so not cheap at all.

<comment><USER13> For ~$100, you can get a sous vide machine that attaches to most pots and a set of reusable zipper bags with a valve built in and hand pump for vacuum sealing. I highly recommend trying it out as the steak and fish I have tried cooking so far all come out very tasty and well cooked.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It's not clear to me what they're using for the surface heat transfer coefficient, which I think would be different for a skillet vs sous vide. (Or even, in their case, Side 1 = skillet vs side 2 = air.) But I only have a cursory knowledge of the physics involved.

For the sous vide case, I've tried implementing Douglas Baldwin's model on Observable. It seems to match the "SousVideDash" results, but this is my first foray into solving PDEs, so use with caution.

[https://beta.observablehq.com/@dunhamsteve/sous-vide- calcula...](https://beta.observablehq.com/@dunhamsteve/sous-vide-calculator)

If anyone here does know the physics / math, I'd like more details on the $\beta$ "geometric factor" that Baldwin uses. I couldn't find mention of it in books and wonder if it is something you derive (say transforming coordinate systems) or something determined experimentally.

<comment><USER15> Fluid dynamicist here. The $\beta$ notation appears to be a convenient way to write the Laplacian assuming that the temperature is homogeneous in the angular direction. The values are exact for certain coordinate systems.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laplace_operator#Three_dimensi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laplace_operator#Three_dimensions)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> My go to site when cooking thicker than normal steaks via Sous-vide

<comment><USER17> Sous-vide is just amazing isn't it? I won't cook steak any other way since I got my circulator. I have never tried the liquid nitrogen though!

<comment><USER18> I've had a Sous-vide setup for years and will use it for just about everything, except steaks. No matter what I try I cannot get results anywhere near as good as I get with a simple reverse sear.

<comment><USER17> Oh interesting... I have tried both and had the opposite experience. A steak Sous-vide to rare and then finished on an ultra hot cast iron skillet with oil, butter, fresh herbs comes out better and more consistent than the reverse sear. How long are you leaving your steaks in the water? Are you putting oil, butter, or any aromatics into the sealed bag?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This model needs density, moisture content, and temperature gradient at initial cook.

Prob a second model for bone-in cuts.

</comment><comment><USER20> I'm looking for a recipe that maximizes the term Net Meat Score = [(browning+med rare) - (medium+well)] while also enforcing steak=3cm, Rare=0%, Raw=0, Char=0, and steak starting at either 0C or 23C. Note that you have to let the meat rest for 10+ minutes to really let it finish (the default settings cut it off to early).

The best I have gotten under normal conditions is: Net Meat Score of 40, by doing:

Steak starts at 0C, 3:20 @190C , flip, 1:40 @190C. Yields 17% brown, 23% well, 7% medium and 53% med rare.

Chose 190C because olive oil. Interested if anyone has found something better.

<comment><USER21> Sous vide with no sear maximizes that: 24 hours at 57C on both sides. It yields 100% medium rare.

<comment><USER20> Fair, but I was looking for a crust :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Would be interesting to see sous vide and torches incorporated into this.

I usually "sous vide" at a lower temp and then finish with a weed burning torch (aka flame thrower). I find using a large and very hot flame is necessary to get that crisp outside without overcooking it. The handheld chef torches don't get enough searing to cooking ratio.

Fat and connective tissue is another factor that makes things interesting. What's the best technique to soften up the fat and connective tissue without denaturing the protein?

<comment><USER23> [https://www.amazon.com/Searzall-Torch-Attachment-Small- Stain...](https://www.amazon.com/Searzall-Torch-Attachment-Small- Stainless/dp/B00L2P0KNO)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> My question is how to brown/caramelize meat with only an induction cooktop?

After I put my chicken, I just see all the water come out and the chicken starts boiling in the pan :(

<comment><USER19> What is the cut? You might be buying brined chicken (salt solution).

If it was previously frozen, and not thawed out this might be the problem.

Maybe you are "crowding" the pan? When you put too much protein in the pan too close together, the meat steams instead of searing. It needs space for the moisture to air out.

Or you might have lots of surface moisture. Based on your scant description, I'm guessing this might be your issue.

Regardless, try this next time:

\- line a flat plate with paper towels

\- take your protein out of the packaging, and pat dry on all sides with other paper towels

\- place protein on the lined plate

\- turn over and replace towels after 12 or so hours. to avoid this, and the lining, you can put the protein on a rack with a towel underneath so air can circulate under the meat

\- put back in your fridge overnight on lowest shelf, uncovered (fridge is a very dry environment)

\- next day, surface should be very dry

\- take protein out 45 minutes before cooking it

\- super hot pan + high smoke point oil + don't crowd it + dry protein surface == nicely seared

note: super hot + nonstick is toxic. use cast iron, or stainless that works with induction. induction should get hot enough to sear at 500-700 degrees

<comment><USER25> salted liberally + open rack in the fridge for about a day gives you both dry surface and well seasoned. sometimes called a "dry brine"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> It breaks when you switch to Fahrenheit and use the sous vide + liquid nitrogen recipe. It autoconverts -200°C to -328°F which then errors "too low" (for some reason?)

<comment><USER27> I got the same error

I wonder if it's because "-273 C = 0 kelvin = absolute zero" which was coded as a simple check on the field > -273 without units

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Does this work for sous vide and reverse sear? Water's thermal conductivity is 1/10th of iron and much smaller for air(oven).

</comment><comment><USER29> If you put a thick steak (like 50 cm) it freezes Firefox for like 4 seconds, while Chrome freezes for 1 second. Real world benchmarks :D

<comment><USER30> Bill: check out the new optimizations I added to our JS engine!

Sally: Yeah, but did you check for regressions in the thick steak benchmark?</comment></comment>


Anti-virus founder says he wants to return to US, settle down to 'normal life' - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/anti-virus-founder-says-he-wants-to-return-to-us-settle-down-to-normal-life/2012/12/09/7fd99c60-4274-11e2-8c8f-fbebf7ccab4e_story.html?tid=socialss <comment><USER2> He could be the first person who _wants_ to be extradited to the US!</comment>


Mental Mountains - <AUTHOR> https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/11/26/mental-mountains/ <comment><USER2> Don't miss the review of all therapy books ever that's linked at the end of part I. For one thing, it's hilarious, and for another, the context it adds is pretty helpful.

</comment><comment><USER3> For the HN-reading 22-year-old out there who is trying to climb out of that first unspeakably horrible episode of mental illness, and as part of that, trying to grok what psychiatry really is: at this point in history, models (theoretical or other) are great and can drive progress in psychiatry, but don't for one minute believe any hype like this, from the reviewed book's Amazon page:

"Ticic and Hulley equip readers to carry out focused, empathic therapy using the process found by researchers to induce memory reconsolidation, the recently discovered and only known process for actually unlocking emotional memory at the synaptic level."

Just, no. It's not even worth refuting. What happens at the synaptic level, and what happens at the emotional level, the _experience_ of emotions? We are not meaningfully closer to bridging that gap than we ever have been. Despite great advances in brain science, that sort of talk still belongs in philosophy, not science or medicine.

This is not to say that UTeB or EIEIO or whatever model doesn't hold promise for those of us with lived experience of mental illness. The evidence base for talk therapy continues to evolve. Just ignore any kind of "unlocking secrets" talk. We aren't there yet. We aren't close. But on the web pages that sell books, we are always on the verge of...

<comment><USER4> Thanks for this comment- do you think you could reach out to me? Contact information is on my about, thanks

<comment><USER3> Hi Malp. What is the reason for your inquiry?

<comment><USER4> Your comment resonated with me and I was curious to see if you had any other insight that you might be able to share- however, the comments section of an HN post seemed too public for the subject matter.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Wait, does this imply that ruminating and getting blackout drunk could be an effective form of therapy?

<comment><USER6> It would certainly explain its popularity as a coping mechanism!

To be a little bit more forthright -- I'm not sure the fundamentally dissociative pharmacological pathways that alcohol stimulates are close enough to the psychedelic ones that SA talks about later on in the post to be fungible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> >> The predictive model output the anxiety, using reasoning like "if you talk, people will hate you, and the prospect of being hated should make you anxious – therefore, anxiety", but not any of the intermediate steps.

That really makes it sound like poor Richard was some kind of robot with an AI that used some kind of machine learning algorithm to build models etc.

It sounds a bit silly to be honest, like taking an analogy ("the human mind builds a model of the world"), mashing it up with some currently trendy terminology ("machine learning model") and then running with the result until it's stretched out to an absurd extent and you can't tell what the words mean anymore.

</comment><comment><USER8> Very interesting read, well explained and somehow 'feels right'. I didn't think psychotherapy could work until it was explained to me this way.

<comment><USER9> These books almost always give that experience. It's great, until you realize they're all contradictory...

<comment><USER10> In fact, this blog has a warning to exactly that effect, posted a few days ago, and linked from this post.

[https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/11/20/book-review-all- therap...](https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/11/20/book-review-all-therapy- books/)

<comment><USER9> Yep, I read that. It's good that he gave the warning, but anyone who doesn't follow the blog might still be fooled.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> In two words, cognitive dissonance

<comment><USER12> But why, and how not to?</comment></comment>


$100K in 4 months: A niche app's path to App Store success - <AUTHOR> http://blog.endloop.ca/blog/2010/08/12/100k-in-4-months-a-niche-apps-path-to-app-store-success/

<comment><USER2> > the 30 second video I uploaded to YouTube got over 50K views within the > first week

I'm astounded everyone doesn't do this. It's free, and far more compelling than the handful of screenshots Apple allows.

<comment><USER3> I suspect that these 50K views were a direct result of " _I also tweeted at Robert Scoble to check it out which he did and retweeted the video to his followers_ ".

<comment><AUTHOR> I like to think it was my awesome highspeed editing ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> A great idea, a reasonable pricing and a bit luck. You found the recipe.</comment>


Android 5.0 is coming up next, possibly at Google I/O - <AUTHOR>

Google has a habit of teasing people with the clock on their Android ads.
The time denotes the Android version. Right now, the latest Android ad shows 5:00
https://twitter.com/google/status/476786466790440960
Previous Android ads show the time to coincide with the version release.
> What's new? Well here we see Android 4.4 KitKat, that is backed up by the time on the clock, 4:40. Whenever Google launch a new OS version they make sure the clock matches up. 4:30 for 4.3, and 4:20 for 4.2 (you get where I'm going with this).
http://www.isozial.so/2013/10/nexus-5-leaked-onto-play-store-starts.html
Google has had a history of doing this, as we can see with the following images:
http://imgur.com/a/TwIhP
Android 5.0 is next. Get hype! <comment><AUTHOR> Further indication that the clock may lead to a new Android version:

>Google Plus user Derek Ross has noted that in the recently released promotional video for the new Gmail, the clock on the Nexus 4 being used to show off the revamped Android app shows a time of 4:30. 4.3, 4:30? Purely coincidence, right? Not so fast.

>According to Ross, this follows a similar pattern of previous Android releases. By looking at promotional materials for other Nexus devices, you'll find that the Nexus S, Galaxy Nexus, Nexus 7, Nexus 4 and Nexus 10 were all featured in promo shots where the time on their clocks corresponded to the version of Android they were launched with, or running at the time.

>GottaBeMobile did some digging on these claims, and found a video of the Nexus S showing a time of 2:30, a Nexus 7 at 4:10 and a picture of the Galaxy Nexus at 4:00. If you head over to Google Play right now, all of the renders of the Nexus 4 and 10 show a time of 4:20. It looks to be that way for the Nexus 7 as well.

[http://androidandme.com/2013/05/news/connect-the-dots-man- is...](http://androidandme.com/2013/05/news/connect-the-dots-man-is-google- teasing-android-4-3-in-promotional-gmail-video/)</comment>


Google invites are open, if anyone requires any, place in your email ids - <AUTHOR>

Google invites are open, if anyone requires any, place in your email ids.  All should have a valid google profile which should be public <comment><USER2> If this is still available - thanks. Switched to public. beesonatorx gmail com

Thanks.

</comment><comment><USER3> Hey. I'd love to try thanks! hpeikemo gmail com

</comment><comment><USER4> Please send me one to: suurvarik gmail com

</comment><comment><USER5> Me too, thanks! eokuma1988 gmail com

</comment><comment><USER6> cloudstackmobile at gmail.com

thx

</comment><comment><USER7> me too zpatrik gmail com thanks</comment>


Why We Should Teach Python instead of Racket - <AUTHOR> https://acbart.github.io/ihateracket.com/ <comment><USER3> Full disclosure - I took 3 classes in Racket: Intro to CS, Programming Languages, and Compilers.

> Racket is not a very popular language in teaching communities

This list of schools with introductory Racket classes isn't accurate, because the author did not look beyond the naming of the courses on the Github page. My school was missed.

> Students are unlikely to have had prior experience with Racket

This is good because it means students from varying backgrounds of programming experience start from a level playing field.

> Racket's aesthetic beauty has limited relevance to CS1

Computer Science is first and foremost an ivory tower and students are (imo) better off being confronted with this fact up front. Software Engineering is probably better taught with a more practical language.

> Students do not use Racket again later in their degree

At my school the Programming Languages core curriculum all used Racket. A good percentage of students funneled into at least the first PL-core class as part of their requirements. The class was very popular.

> Students do not like Racket

Sorry, but I don't think we should base our decisions on what Intro students like/dislike. People hate leaving their comfort zone - that doesn't mean they shouldn't be pushed out of it.

> The Design Recipe Is Not Well-Evidenced

Valid criticisms. On the other hand, no evidence is presented that other languages are better.

<comment><USER4> > At my school the Programming Languages core curriculum all used Racket. A > good percentage of students funneled into at least the first PL-core class > as part of their requirements. The class was very popular.

Although the article didn't cover it, I think it's important that in the industry, students will be able to find a job/internship that uses Python more than Racket. If both languages achieve the goal of introducing students to CS, why not use something that could benefit students more?

<comment><USER5> The question is "will teaching python actually benefit students more"?

Having learned Python well before any of the Lisps, today I find it a cumbersome language that doesn't really offer anything above others, and while useful, in an academic setting I'd relegate it to a secondary status of language specific to certain courses that use tooling related to it. I'd probably forgo teaching it at that, as the experience of learning a language on your own (and Python got pretty good materials included for that) is pretty important, and can be supported by one or two workshops to help students struggling with it.

Remember, learning Computing Science at an University is not a vocational course like a bootcamp, that churns out people more or less prepared for churning basic, simple code (not to disparage the students of those, but Bootcamps are by nature simplified). That's not what going to university for a CS degree is for, and every institution that assumed such mindset had their course quality plummet.

<comment><USER4> > The question is "will teaching python actually benefit students more"?

Is there an argument against it? I ask in genuine curiosity. I am aware that it is not statically-typed and abstract away some of the important concepts in computer science.

What language do you think is more suited? Do keep in mind some of the intro CS classes are also used to warm up non-CS majors to what CS looks like.

The biggest advantage I think it offers is the lowering of barrier to entry. It ignites excitement and removes obstacles to start understanding cs logic so as to say.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I write Python, amongst other things, professionally and have been playing with Racket in the sidelines. I recently started a new project and decided to take the plunge and write it entirely in Racket, so I can actually learn it better: its (extensive) standard library, idioms, quirks, etc. in a real (rather than toy) engineering setting.

Now I love Racket. Whether it's Racket, or Scheme, or Racket facilitating Scheme, it doesn't matter, I haven't had so much fun coding for a long long time! Of course my job isn't concerned about my enjoyment (at least not primarily), but it turned out to be no harder to code the project than it would have been in Python.

I'm heavily biased towards functional style and I appreciate that this is completely anecdotal, but I'd urge people to jump in :) It took me about a week to become productive in the language and, to be honest, most of that was getting over S-expression syntax and correctly pairing deeply nested parentheses. The documentation alone is a thing to behold! While it's true that the community is smaller than Python's, it's friendly and eager to help; say on StackOverflow, r/Racket or IRC.

I hope I can continue writing it professionally and can convince others in my team to adopt it.

<comment><USER7> Ive been programming for 20 years and recently started playing in racket and all my faded enthusiasm sprung back and got excited about programming again. Is it that its a new thing to me and we like new shiny things? Well, I find thats not the case. To me it feels that I can express ideas/idioms much much easier within Racket/scheme and after a few weeks i started enjoying the parens quite a bit. I've also been playing with htdp libraries and it's been quite fun, simple and effective. My new personal projects are going to be in Racket now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Python is a terrible choice as a first language. Idiomatic python is just glue code that obfuscates the underlying algorithms.

Object oriented programming (implementation inheritance) is increasingly regarded as an antipattern, and it encourages that too.

The massive performance penalty of writing logic in python vs calling out to external libraries mostly forces developers to program by lego-brick assembling external modules instead of reasoning about algorithm design.

There's no concept of types, either, and instead of attempting to detect programming errors early on, it leaves them to runtime.

It's not surprising that Java and also C/C++ are more popular than python for introductory CS courses.

(I could see using python as an intro course for non-CS majors, fwiw.)

<comment><USER9> Object oriented programming is an antipattern?

Can you explain this? I am not a CS major, but I find using classes quite useful.

<comment><USER10> I suggest searching google for "problems with object oriented programming". There have been countless discussions, articles and videos.

Examples: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QM1iUe6IofM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QM1iUe6IofM) [https://medium.com/machine-words/the-rise-and-fall-of- object...](https://medium.com/machine-words/the-rise-and-fall-of-object- oriented-programming-d67078f970e2) [https://medium.com/@cscalfani/goodbye- object-oriented-progra...](https://medium.com/@cscalfani/goodbye-object- oriented-programming-a59cda4c0e53)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> >>>> Specific, formal survey question (T/F style): "Please Indicate if you like and are comfortable with each of the following languages:"

Java: 93% C/C++: 74% Python: 38% JavaScript: 21% Racket: 7%

This is absolutely hilarious. Students are comfortable with C/C++ and Java the most. I guess they haven't seen segmentation faults and null pointer exceptions enough in production ruining businesses yet.

It is kind of funny how almost all of my peers who studied CS ended up wanting to work on ML languages (F#, OCaml, Haskell, etc.) after spending 10+ years with Java, C, C++ or C#. At the time they were learning Prolog and SML they did not like it much. This survey should be done after some time spent on deploying production ready applications for living and see how it will change.

</comment><comment><USER12> This entire post utterly strains credulity. It has the vibe of a bad Facebook post that your relatives shares that makes you groan.

Halfway through I find myself doubting not merely the authors thesis but wondering if it's meant to poke fun or entertain.

Can statements like

>The hardest thing to capture in this site is the trauma in some students' eyes.

> I have also seen first-hand the trauma that it has caused students.

possibly be meant seriously?

Was racket the wrong tool to teach programming or did it eat their dog and set fire to their dorm?

I picture Michael Keaton appearing after Geena Davis says c++ c++ c++ saying wait until they get a load of me.

Everything has a certain amount of cognitive overhead. Perceptively python and racket both have fairly low overhead and quick feedback and ought to be in the same ballpark insofar as learning basics.

I wonder if discontent as described derives from dissimilarity with existing material.

A person with some knowledge but not much may be disproportionately dissatisfied with not being able to use such. Speculating that the best students have no problem, the worst students blame the instructor or the materials, the bottom middling who know a little python or Javascript are frustrated that they cannot benefit from existing skills.

Students perception of value of instruction may be a useful metric for the school insofar as attracting students but one questions if the students are the best qualified at the start of their education to access the value of individual components of their education.

</comment><comment><USER13> "Which programming language" to start with is something people can have strong opinions on. (e.g. I could understand people saying C is a great language to start with, or that C is a terrible language to start with).

There are always going to be reasons why any language will be bad as a first language to learn. I'm sure there will be reasons why a language would be a good one to learn.

Python is a nice language to start with. I think Racket is a nice language to start with, too.

The intro to programming course I took was loosely based off of SICP. (My batch was the last taught using Scheme; the next was taught the same material using a subset of JavaScript).

As an example of something nicer about Racket than Python: There was a nice 'simplicity' to the material. A list is either empty, or some item followed by a list. Computing stuff either deals with a base case, or deals with a recursive case. Almost all the functions we used (car, cdr, map, accumulate, member, etc.) could be implemented with what we'd learned. -- This feels more analogous to seeing how the proof works rather than learning just a bunch of formulae.

</comment><comment><USER14> Being in lock-down mode, I thought it would be a good time to finish reading (and doing) the "Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs" that I started many years ago and abandoned. Ever since I read Paul Graham's essays on Lisp, I dreamed that I'd like to be able do build domain specific languages "when I grow up". Life always gets in the way, but I now decided to give Lisp another chance.

And now this. Hm, should I abandon SICP again? Maybe the guy is right that beyond all the grand philosophizing of the amazing power of Lisp there's little substance. On the other hand, I also know the website I'm posting this comment on is built on Lisp. I'm torn.

<comment><USER15> That's not what he's saying at all. He's saying that it may not be the right language for an intro CS course for typical freshmen. One can argue back and forth about that. But if you want to learn deeper concepts about programming that go beyond a typical intro to CS class, SCIP is a great book and Scheme a great language, and I'm sure the author of this article would agree 100%.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think most people here are commenting as graduates/professional so I thought I would chime in.

As a student, I love being taught in Python for introductory CS classes. I have been a course assistant as well.

The language is easy to pick and has great/easy applications that doesn't require learning another additional language.

(I am not opposed to learning another and carry the sentiment that you can relatively pick up another language.)

The second part is important to me as a student because I can quickly use it in my web programming projects, in my data-related projects and for scripting purposes as well(I admit I rarely do this).

</comment><comment><USER16> Great read. I'm a senior studying comp sci at University of Delaware, and I couldn't agree more! We learned Racket freshmen year - and I can confidently say that Racket had no perceivable advantage to my computer science education over any other language. In fact, the course introduced python towards the end of the semester which made it more of a headache since we had to take a final exam in both syntaxes. It would've been better to have used python from the start.

</comment><comment><USER17> Note: the title is overstated, this is actually a pretty good discussion of Racket and not just the kind of bashing you would think from a title "I hate Racket".

</comment><comment><USER10> We did CS courses in C and C++ 22 years ago. I recently did an MsC program at the same University and most courses are being done using Java. But for assignments teachers allow any programming language - if the task permits - <USER2> I did mine in C#. Some colleagues used Java, one guy used Python.

<comment><USER4> How did they handle grading?

<comment><USER18> Not the commenter you were replying to, but at my uni it's usually feature based. Basically, you are evaluated on whether your code accomplished the task and not code quality.

I've never heard of people having that choice in intro classes though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Could not agree more. Top schools like MIT gave up on their silly dedication to obscure languages in introductory programming classes and switched to Python. It seems like there was a generation of professors who decided there was a "correct" way to teach computer science and it involved languages completely isolated from the mainstream industry. It's like teaching someone grammar by forcing them to use Esperanto because it's "The Best" language (according to tenured professor who doesn't give a shit about their students).

All Turing complete languages can execute any program. The fundamentals of programming exist in all languages. Teach students using languages with the absolute minimal friction so they aren't spooked in their first exposure to programming.

Academia has scared away an untold number of aspiring students with their nonsense languages. Such a damn waste of talent. The absolute worst programmers in terms of craftsmen-ship are academics - if you want to see some truly WTF code look at what underpins research papers.

<comment><USER20> That's ridiculous. It's computer _science_ , not computer programming technician. You teach with the tool that most clearly distills the principles of what you're trying to teach. Racket and Scheme arguably do that much better than Python.

In fact, Racket 15 years ago still has more cutting edge features than Python has _to this day_. There is simply no language that provides the breadth of features available in Racket, and I don't even use it.

> Academia has scared away an untold number of aspiring students with their > nonsense languages

A programmer that's scared or intimidated by learning a new language does not belong in this industry. You might as well say that we should coddle civil engineering students that are scared of computers. If _this_ is a barrier you can't surmount, consider another career.

<comment><USER21> I thought the person that you're replying to made a very good point about Esperanto. Why do we teach linguistics with messy real-world languages instead of conlangs that most clearly distill the principles we want to teach?

<comment><USER22> One of the chief concerns in introductory linguistics programs is introducing students to the great typological diversity of the world's languages. There are a number of different ways in which languages can inflect (or not), structure word order, derive new words from existing vocabulary, etc. Conlangs, however, tend to choose a very limited set of approaches, for example agglutinative inflection is popular because creators feel it makes the language easier to learn. Just as some North American departments have been mocked for doing all their theoretical work purely on the basis of English (or other European languages), using a conlang would make students miss out on the full range of human linguistic expression.

All human languages have at least some irregularities, and the way in which speakers deal with those irregularities is an interesting series of phenomena in itself, but most conlangs aim to be fully regular. A similar situation holds for phonology in which most languages have a developed system of allophony and sandhi, but conlangs typically don't aim to represent those phenomena at all.

<comment><USER21> Right. And doesn't that apply to programming languages too? Aren't the ways that Python is irregular to support real-world needs (the Zen of Python even says "Practicality beats purity") worth CS students studying?

<comment><USER23> No, because this is computer science and not software engineering. The best introductory language is the one that allows to express the concepts that are presented in the cleanest way possible. If you want "real-world needs" then drop out and work for a software company. The purpose of universities is not to cater to the needs of industry - to pump out code monkeys.

<comment><USER21> Just to make sure I understand you correctly - you're arguing that it is not the place of universities to address real-world needs? History and economics faculty should have nothing to offer to politicians? Biologists in universities should study model organisms, leaving the study of humans to the medical industry, and biology degree programs should not pump out health monkeys? Law professors should discuss specially-constructed legal systems that are not used by real-world jurisdictions so that concepts can be presented in the cleanest way possible? Music programs should avoid teaching actual Bach chorales because his real-world music sometimes included parallel fifths?

<comment><USER23> I didn't say anything about areas whose research focus coincides with 'real- world needs', I specifically talked about programming languages and concepts. And no, universities should not teach micro services, enterprise Java code, or the latest frontend frameworks. But yeah, keep twisting my words around.

<comment><USER21> Sorry, I'm still not sure I understand. You're saying that computer science is one of the specific areas whose research focus does not and should not coincide with "real-world needs," in contrast to history, economics, biology, law, and music? Or am I misunderstanding you badly?

What other fields of study are like computer science in that they shouldn't be about real-world needs? For a given discipline, how do you tell which of the two categories it falls into?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


China Will Close 1,000 Coal Mines as Industry Continues to Sputter - <AUTHOR> http://www.desmogblog.com/2016/02/23/china-will-close-1-000-coal-mines-industry-continues-sputter <comment><USER2> This is great news, at least better than proposing a giant vent system.</comment>


Introducing High CPU Droplets - <AUTHOR> https://blog.digitalocean.com/introducing-high-cpu-droplets/ <comment><USER2> Oddly, just yesterday I published an article about multicore CPU performance of some providers (including DigitalOcean) and they now have made my tests almost obsolete. Luckily, my tests were with $20 VPSes so the still have some credibility.

But I'm curious how oversold would the new droplets be. DO had the most deviation in the providers that I checked. Would think that at least for a while, there should not be much overselling on CPU.

</comment><comment><USER3> Interesting, but is there a way to upgrade existing droplets?

<comment><USER2> Does not seem so (checked with a new droplet), which makes sense. The high CPU droplets have only 20GB of storage which would make any standard droplet, except the $5, inconvenient to resize automatically (if not impossible or very dangerous).</comment></comment>


The Mixed Track Record of Machine Learning Algorithms - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-10-09/the-big-problem-with-machine-learning-algorithms <comment><USER2> A good ML system has to be architect-ed to exploit known structure of the task that is being attempted.

CNN's exploit spatial locality and LSTMs exploit temporal locality. The SOTA models are architect-ed with even stronger assumptions about the nature of the task. Methods like Neural Networks, Random Forests and SVMs when used as unconstrained universal function approximators for unstructured data only learn some non-linear polynomial/ exponential/logarithmic combination of data itself, without much nuance.

It is critical to help a model out by constraining the space of models it searches over to find the right answer. I think, unless we figure out a way to constrain architectures to exploit specific traits of task they are trying to solve, (universal function approximator type) ML won't succeed in the same way that it has in vision / language.

As it of now, the alternative is to use PGMs where the model is fully interpretable as a graph structured combination of explicitly parameterized random variables. PGMs work well with low data and give really good uncertainty estimates, to evaluate the quality of a model. PGMs of course suffer from the problem where they are excruciatingly slow for large datasets and require require a decent amount of prior knowledge about the problem to explicitly define the type of graph structure / random variables we are going to be using.

I think ML is most certainly capable of solving this problem, but the community is probably waiting for another break through along the lines of AlexNet/LSTMs before that it the case.

</comment><comment><USER3> > "Machine learning algorithms will always identify a pattern, even if there > is none," he says.

I think that's perfectly said. Humans are prone to the same thing, but we've developed better coping mechanisms.

<comment><USER4> It's a bit foolish though, because "regression" will always identify a pattern too, or many other simplistic models.

In ML, techniques to avoid overfitting or reporting spurious relationships are a first-order, 101 topic, especially among the type of ML engineer a hedge fund might hire (they are not hiring data science hacks).

On the flip side, I worked in a quant finance firm before that mostly did factor investing with some twists, and the overall statistical rigor was embarrassing. Even with simple regressions, nobody was asking basic robustness questions, p-hacking was daily life, directly comparing t-stats from different univariate model fits was considered "advanced feature selection."

If a firm is goimg to do bad stats, they don't need machine learning for that.

<comment><USER3> I guess what I'm trying to say is that algorithms can't tell whether they're fooling themselves. Someone has to apply the 101 techniques for testing fit, etc. Humans at least have the opportunity, though, as you point out, they don't always take it.

<comment><USER5> Maybe it's just me, but to me it seems like 99%+ of humans don't check whether they're fooling themselves, even when using statistics.

Have you ever known anyone to check if the central limit theorem applies before taking an average ? I mean, we did it once when learning what it was and why you might want to check, but ...

The problem with statistics is that they _in theory_ don't work in the real world. For instance, if you check a statistical variable, great. Now you fix something in the real world and recheck your variable. _BZZT_ wrong ! You can't measure a variable after you've tried to influence it, because obviously you're not measuring the same thing anymore. So there is (potentially) no relationship whatsoever between the measurement after the change and the measurement before. So ... statistics CANNOT correctly be used to improve things in the real world.

But ... have you ever known anyone to use statistics any other way ? Also: we don't actually have anything better.

The thing is ... it mostly works in practice, though you can come up with examples where it doesn't.

And of course you can do things _very_ wrong, as you're just adding, multiplying and so on. That works on any set of numbers.

The thing about machine learning is that a well designed machine learning algorithm contains far less details about the problem than a statistical model. So people far less versed in the problem being analyzed can improve things more using machine learning than by using statistics. But the potential maximum improvement you could ever hope to make, statistics is going to be higher. Compare a second-degree regression to and LSTM for a time series. ASSUMING the statistical model works at all, it'll beat the crap out of the LSTM. But the LSTM will sort-of succeed in nearly all cases. So if the variable fits the information you stuck into your statistical model there's no beating that model (in this case that the data is generated by a second-degree process with a not-too-close-to-zero determinant)

Issue for the future is that all interesting problems are beyond the comprehension of any human, so ... machine learning will win. This means humans can't make statistical models for them either. It'll win, not because it is always the best solution, but because for so many problems you might as well say for all problems we will never find anything remotely optimal or understand enough to even figure out how to apply statistics to it.

<comment><USER3> > Issue for the future is that all interesting problems are beyond the > comprehension of any human, so ... machine learning will win.

I agree that there's a set of problems that are both beyond human comprehension and interesting to humans. Specifying them, measuring the results of algorithms to solve them, and paying for the results will probably have to remain within human analytical capability, or you wind up with Skynet (unlikely), or some analog to the 'gray goo' problem, where machines are optimizing with unintended consequences.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "Machine learning algorithms will always identify a pattern, even if there is none"

Is this partly a problem with interpretation? Let's say I do a binary (supervised) classification with an algorithm that is also capable of assessing probabilities. If I generate a data set consisting of a randomized bag of words, and randomly assign them to 0 and 1 categories, and run it through a supervised ML classifier, then yeah, everything in the test set will get assigned to _something_.

But if you look at the probability estimates resulting from the ML, you'd almost certainly see something that indicates a high degree of randomness in the assignments (various techniques such as cross validation, or probabilities that indicate a high degree of uncertainty for almost all of the predictions).

I'm not sure this is a problem with the algorithm itself, because the output from many of these algorithms does indicate low predictive value.

<comment><USER7> Check out this classic paper on deep learning with randomized labels: [https://arxiv.org/abs/1611.03530](https://arxiv.org/abs/1611.03530)

Spoiler: the neutral net thinks it's doing a really good job!

<comment><USER6> Thank you for the link. I'll read this paper. I'm hoping to reply but the thread may be stale by the time I do. Right now, my thoughts are: if it is easily fitting, what are the assignment probabilities? Are we getting 90%+, or is it fitting easily, but to much lower probabilities. Also, is there a big difference between neural nets and other algorithms like RF?

The paper certainly does appear to address the question of categorizing completely randomized input:

From the abstract

"...our experiments establish that state-of-the-art convolutional networks for image classification trained with stochastic gradient methods easily fit a ran- dom labeling of the training data. This phenomenon is qualitatively unaffected by explicit regularization, and occurs even if we replace the true images by com- pletely unstructured random noise.

<comment><USER6> I'm going off a first pass through the paper, but it appears that what this paper shows is that the training error can be 0 on an entirely randomized data set, but the generalization error - the difference between the error on the _test_ set and the _training_ set, does increase dramatically as label corruption increases.

My understanding is that cross validation does multiple combinations of splitting the input data into test and training sets... so if cross validation measures the generalization error, wouldn't this catch the low predictive value resulting from randomization of labels or input?

I'm not saying the paper doesn't have value, but I think it's more about the fact that neural nets can obtain a _training_ error of zero on randomized data, not a _testing_ error (or generalization error, which represents the difference between training error and testing error, as far as I can tell).

To be clear, I'm not an expert, and this is just what I gleaned from a first pass over the paper.

<comment><USER7> All true. The interesting thing here is that the neural network has /no idea/ that it sucks at generalization, though. Yes, we can do extra work to calibrate outputs, but it would be much better to have some idea of uncertainty from the network itself.

(Added as edit) also keep in mind that datasets themselves often fail to generalize - overriding to a particular set makes for domain error when moving to slightly different data. Cross validation won't help wit that, but more "self aware" algorithms might.

<comment><USER6> But... isn't that the entire point of splitting your initial training data into a training set and a separate testing set? Why is it better to have an idea of uncertainty from the model itself when you can get the generalization error through cross validation, or by setting aside a testing set?

It's interesting to see that a neural net will reach a training error of zero on randomized data, and it's a worthwhile contribution to the literature to demonstrate this, test it, and measure it... but the outcome here doesn't surprise me. From experience I know that random forests will also show nearly 100% accuracy on a training set but show far lower accuracy for a testing set, so while I think it's great to measure it, the conclusion in this paper is not surprising.

In no way is that a knock on the paper, people weren't surprised that Fermat's last theorem turned out to be true, but that doesn't make the proof any less of an accomplishment!

<comment><USER7> First, because the dataset itself might be biased in subtle ways, in which case your cross validation won't help. This happens All. The. Time. For example, your training set for speech recognition might use a nice microphone uniformly, and everything goes to hell once you deploy to cell phones, because the microphones have different characteristics.

Or, in the case of financial markets, the future might not look like the past. And the present might not look like the past... So you get datasets that are very time-specific, and thus prone to overfitting to local conditions and/or noise.

Secondly, you can absolutely overfit your cross validation set, same as p-hacking. Run experiments until you have a slight positive, statistically significant result, then tell your managers you've got some crazy new sliver of alpha. And then when it hits really new data, it falls to pieces, because repeated experiments on noise will eventually produce a statistically significant result.

It's like the old saw about freshmen who don't know that they don't know... Our current ML models tend to be like freshmen, or freshmen with bandaids...

<comment><USER6> I'm certainly convinced that sampling from a narrow dataset can lead to problems down the line. You don't remove possible bias in your data by randomly setting aside a testing set and using it for cross validation. It's an important practice, but yes, I agree that you can end up over training on structures that exist in both the testing and training set, since they're drawn from the same, narrow source.

As another example, you might train a model to identify positive and negative movie reviews (a pretty common example in intro tutorials). Your original data set might just be views by Roger Ebert. Your model, based on a training set, thinks it's at 100% accuracy. Cross validation on the test set reveals it's at 85%. Not bad! Then you apply it to reviews for 100 film critics. It's down to 70%. Then you apply it to random reviews left anonymously on the internet by 1000s of people. It drops all the way down to 55%.

That's a good argument in favor of a robust data set, drawn from multiple independent sources.

However, here's where I'm not convinced. How would a low training error based on a narrow data set be any less misleading than a low cross validation error based on a narrow training and testing set? If you aren't drawing from a robust data source, it seems the problem would be just as bad either way.

<comment><USER7> Very true! But part of knowing that you don't know is recognizing when you're in unfamiliar territory. Being able to say "this example doesn't look like what I've seen before, and therefore I'm not as sure of my response." Algorithms which can express uncertainty /should be/ more robust to domain errors.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Most of those replies sound like: "we are experts, we know better" and stating badly outdated facts that probably passed through marketing department on the way to those experts. I hope no progressive person wants to work for them, but rather to compete with them to drive them out of business, a typical pattern repeating whenever somebody gets too cocky about their abilities.

</comment><comment><USER9> Why are we seeing so many stories from bloomberg.com? What tier is bloomberg's credibility and their sources'? What part of technology, or business is their journalism known for? I am new to US, but I think my questions are not senseless. Thanks.

</comment><comment><USER10> I find this article moot. They are basically saying that applying a blank ML stamp can yield unsatisfying results on your data. That ought to be obvious and seems unnecessarily repetitive.</comment>


ClickHouse and MySQL – Better Together - <AUTHOR> https://www.percona.com/blog/2020/02/03/clickhouse-and-mysql-better-together/ <comment><USER2> There has been ClickHouse MySQL Access through ProxySQL for years. It is great it is now available out of the box! [https://www.proxysql.com/blog/clickhouse- and-proxysql-querie...](https://www.proxysql.com/blog/clickhouse-and-proxysql- queries-rewrite)

<comment><USER3> Not really the same, is it? And proxysql has the very same limitations it had since day one which makes it useless to me: ClickHouse and proxysql must be in the same host and ClickHouse must not have any authentication. Or has anything changed lately?</comment></comment>


Show HN: Wifilist – Find the best wifi around you, let us help - <AUTHOR> http://wifilist.co

<comment><USER2> Not a bad idea but if you want a better response you might want to link to a demo page - I don't have anything around me so I can't really see what it should look like.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is fun. [http://i.imgur.com/ILo0eiE.gif](http://i.imgur.com/ILo0eiE.gif)</comment>


How to Remove Your IP from the Gmail Blacklist - <AUTHOR> https://www.rackaid.com/blog/gmail-blacklist-removal/ <comment><USER2>
       &amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;br data-mce-bogus="1"&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;

What command is it?

<comment><USER3> What's better than running htmlEncode? Running it seven times!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Most people should probably just use a third-party email service provider so they don't have to worry about issues like this. Deliverability is a pain to manage if you don't have to.

I didn't know about the existence of Google Postmaster Tools[0] so that was a cool discovery :)

[0] [https://postmaster.google.com/](https://postmaster.google.com/)

<comment><USER5> Most cloud providers (e.g. Google [1] and Amazon) as well as ISPs block outgoing traffic on TCP port 25 (SMTP) so it's actually fairly hard to run your own SMTP server to begin with.

[1]: [https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/tutorials/sending- mail...](https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/tutorials/sending-mail/)

<comment><USER4> True, but many people will try to do it anyway. Amazon will allow you to send email on request. They just have a form you need to fill out.

<comment><USER5> Given their concern for ranking of their IP space, they'll be watching you with fifty eyeballs after granting you access.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


First web automation company in Singapore – automate your repetitive tasks - <AUTHOR> https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6307444265995862016 <comment><AUTHOR> Hi HN folks, I'm from Singapore and starting a company specialising in web automation.

Web automation basically reproduces manual interactions you have with websites so that the computer can do it repeatedly for you. Common use cases are automating manual workflows to improve business productivity, gathering data for business intelligence, and web testing for agile development.

Rates are competitive at $18, €15, S$24 for a simple automation project. The automation can be quickly developed off-site or live on a call / video. More details in the link. Competitors are welcome to post here to share their services or tips, and help bring the web automation domain forward.

My goal is to offer another option to the RPA (robotic process automation) industry practice which takes a top-down approach. Too much bloat in the production and delivery process which gets passed on as high costs to customers (and arguably over-promised expectations). That makes it only possible for very large companies to enjoy benefits of RPA.</comment>