"Tsundoku," the Japanese Word for the New Books That Pile Up on Our Shelves - <AUTHOR> http://www.openculture.com/2014/07/tsundoku-should-enter-the-english-language.html <comment><USER2> I wish my "Tsundoku" could have been an investment that could generate some passive income. But alas my copy of "Sams Teach Yourself Visual Basic in 24 hours" circa 1995 (or so), is still untouched. Just never got the necessary 24 hours to learn it. Maybe I can sell it by the tonnage sometime.

I thought that going the Kindle and digital media route would have saved me from adding to my "Tsundoku", but I am back in collection mode again.

There is something about a physical book that the Kindle reading experience could never recreate. In fact I find myself spending almost twice the money because I want both formats.

<comment><USER3> One main advantage of the Kindle is that my tsundoku is now not as visible to my wife. No more raised eyebrows at the latest Amazon box to appear on the doorstep.

Still have to be sure that she doesn't look too closely at the credit card statement, though...

<comment><USER2> Oh yes, the raised eyebrows and the disapproving looks. I have mastered the art of unboxing and recycling the amazon packaging within a few seconds of it reaching the front door. One must learn to manage under adverse conditions.

<comment><USER4> Wow I must be lucky. Every order of mine brings welcome encouragement coupled with optimism. Of course I will shortly be conquering the world with my newfound knowledge. No questions asked when the first chapter gets read excitedly and then shelved for eternity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Sadly I use my brower tabs as my Tsundoku... I keep them open for months and even years.

<comment><USER6> I have 100 tabs open right now across 12 windows... I think I have a problem.

<comment><USER7> Ok, you made me count. I have exactly 50(!) windows open, and the three first windows I checked had 34, 7, and 15 tabs. I know at least two of the windows have about 100 tabs each. Altogether, I estimate maybe 700-800 tabs?

I wish I were joking.

<comment><USER8> There's an addon for Firefox that does the job for you. It's depressing for people like us, but if you still want to get an accurate count, the name is simply "Open Tab Count". Proceed with caution... :|

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> My wife notes that now there needs to be a similar word for electronics/gadgets acquired but never really used (probably a lot of them through Kickstarter).

<comment><USER10> My wife calls them "DGs" for dust gathers, although it would sound more zen if it was the Japanese equivalent.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Wonder what's the word for games bought but never played. ;)

<comment><USER12> Or generically how about a word to describe a customer that buys your stuff, but never opens it?

I have been thinking of kickstarting a board game where there will be 500 boxes, 499 contain blank stuff, 1 contains the stuff with the printing materials etc. As long as you leave your copy shrink wrapped yours might be the really valuable one.

<comment><USER13> I like it - the metagame is basically a distributed prisoners dilemma around notional future value. You should call the game 'blockchain'

<comment><USER13> (Actually, I just realized that a far more accurate analogy arises if you were to call the game 'CDO'. Now I'm depressed.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I used to worry over having unread books around, but now I prefer a library of unread books from which I can browse and pick. A library of books already read is just for show, or just takes up space if you are not referencing them or re-reading them. Tsundoku is the way you should keep your library, but preferably not on the floor and nightstands. Guilty:)

</comment><comment><USER15> I teach CS at a Japanese school and I used this word to explain what is a stack. (For queues, I used the word "tokoroten")

</comment><comment><USER16> I've been building a web app to manage this, among other things. As of right now, I have 184 things in the pile. Books, Steam Games, (most from Humble Bundles) movies. I figure if I go through one every two days, it'll take me a year to go through the current list. Every time I load the page, it gives me a random item on the list.

Books aren't that big of a time investment when you realize that very few of them are really worth reading all of. I don't feel any qualms about putting one down halfway through. Once I feel like reading more would be masochistic, I click 'finished' and then find something else to do with my time.

</comment><comment><USER17> I've always called it the backlog. Don't think we need a loanword for it.

<comment><USER18> Yes, it's much better to have a list of things you want to learn than a list of things you learned in the past.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Since I am assuming readers will look at this page, can someone explain to me how to hold a book without pain? I didn't read too much as a kid and I wonder if I just didn't build up the right muscles, but now, I like to read big books, but my forearm and fingers start to hurt from holding it. I have looked up different ways to hold books, but I haven't found anything yet that I like.

This is what I like the ipad for. I don't like the idea of the ipad, but reading in the dark and pain free in hard to beat.

<comment><USER20> Sorry if this comes across the wrong way, but have you tried building your grip/forearm strength up? It's an easy muscle group to activate.

However I'm not sure many muscles are good at being tensed for extended periods. I've always just shifted around the way I hold the book every few minutes.

<comment><USER21> +1. Building a little bit of hand/arm strength also isn't a bad idea for a computer profession, to help reduce the risk of RSI.

Are you trying to support the book completely with your hands? I do a lot of reading while laying down with the book on my stomach or sitting with the book on a table or propped up on my knees. The only time I'm holding the book in the air is when I'm walking or cycling.

<comment><USER22> I used to suffer from various small pains, even a Quake2 induced pain in the dorsal side of the hand, and they stopped when I started to use a bike and lift weights.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I go through reading phases where I blow through book after book voraciously, but somehow my Tsundoku increases simultaneously. Then I go off reading for a while and, when I come back on, I ignore my Tsundoku and start reading entirely different books instead. Just as there are Steam games I'll eventually play and games I've bought but will probably never play, I have Tsundoku that have been around for a very long time and will probably remain as such forevermore. It almost seems like we need a word to describe books that, at one point, seemed like a good idea to buy but which we'll never realistically get around to reading.

I'd also like a word for books that I just can't get through, for no good reason. I think I've started reading Hemingway's "For Whom the Bell Tolls" half a dozen times but this book inevitably puts me off reading for a while.

<comment><USER24> Moving to a different country prompted me to sort through my tsundoku.

Unfortunately, I only removed about 5 books — ones I'd started, but didn't like and wouldn't finish. I could probably use your new word there.

The rest fitted in a medium-sized box, so didn't seem worth agonizing about when (a) the cost to add that to the shipment was marginal (b) I wasn't paying anyway.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I have a lot of 'abandoned' readings, but I always at least read the first chapter, skim over it, and check for some summaries. I think it's good when reading a non-fiction book to always skim over the whole book first and have a clear goal/motivation. I don't read much fiction lately, but I assume lack of time is the main factor, except some exceptional books that have the effect of tv shows, where you can't wait to read what happens next and suddenly you find the time at the expense of other activities, e.g. reading until 3 am.

</comment><comment><USER26> So .. enlighten me, Japanese-speakers .. would the word for "Apps I bought from the App Store but never use" be something like .. "Tsunappu" .. or, something? Because I have, literally, hundreds of those ..

<comment><USER27> Yeah, it would probably "Tsumiappuri" (積みアップリ).

<comment><USER26> Thanks for that .. I guess I've got a name for it now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Word for online courses you bought but never learned?

</comment><comment><USER29> The curators of public libraries, at least, should learn better than to accumulate 800 page treatises on HTML, CSS and Java.

</comment><comment><USER30> aka steam library

</comment><comment><USER31> once again im impressed by the expressiveness of the japanese language:) Since i have almost all my books at my kindle at least i dont have to dust them regulary:D

<comment><USER32> Japanese is a really nice language. The grammar for plain speech is so consistent that I'm always tempted to try to write it down in BNF. The other nice thing about it is that it is economical. A noun by itself is a grammatically correct sentence. Copula and verbs are optional. Any sentence ending in a verb (or copula, as long as you change "da" to "na") can be used to modify a noun. It makes it so simple to say complex things. Finally, things that you would use tone of voice for in English can be expressed with particles at the end of the sentence. This allows you to be really expressive in Japanese.

If anyone is interested in learning Japanese, I have some advice:

\- Do not learn polite forms until you master plain forms. Japanese is built on plain forms and polite forms are an extension of that. If you learn polite forms first, you are going to get wildly confused because everything you assume about the grammar will be wrong. People think they must learn polite forms in order to get along. Just do what all my Japanese high school students did: add "desu" to the end of all your sentences ;-). It is totally wrong and you will sound like an uneducated, hillbilly moron, but people will appreciate your effort ;-)

\- Read [http://www.guidetojapanese.org/learn/grammar](http://www.guidetojapanese.org/learn/grammar) I don't think there is a better grammar guide out there. Memorize all the example sentences (if you use flash cards or Anki, then drill from English to Japanese only).

\- Learn hiragana and kanji (hiragana first). Pick up katakana over time (it's not really very important). Hiragana and katakana are phonetic alphabets. Once you know hiragana you can read children's books with "furigana" (the pronunciation of kanji is written beside the kanji in hiragana). Kanji are the chinese characters.

\- Do not avoid learning kanji. One thing that I discovered as I was learning Japanese is that I could learn vocabulary along with the kanji faster than I could learn the vocabulary alone. Kanji is a fantastic mnemonic and is constructed in a comprehensible way. "Remembering the kanji" by James Heisig is a great technique for learning kanji. I don't like his choice of keywords, though (some are arguably just wrong). I recommend reading the first section of the book and then deriving your own keywords. As it turns out, the publisher of the book offers the first section as a free PDF download: [http://nirc.nanzan-u.ac.jp/en/files/2012/12/RK-1-6th- edition...](http://nirc.nanzan-u.ac.jp/en/files/2012/12/RK-1-6th-edition- sample.pdf)

\- Read manga as a way to learn conversational Japanese. Probably this is the best thing I ever did. Yes there are characters with weird expressions (datte ba yo!) or incredibly impolite expressions (ending every sentence with yagaru), but I _really_ doubt you will fail to pick those up ;-) Obviously don't use them in real conversations if you don't want to shock people. Generally speaking the expressions -- and especially the contractions -- are the way normal people speak in Japan. You won't get this in a text book.

\- Don't read textbooks (except for Tae Kim's, linked above).

\- For introductory vocabulary, the JLPT vocabulary lists up to and including N3 are excellent. Don't bother past there because it is loaded down with vocabulary that you are unlikely to use, at the expense of vocabulary that you will definitely need in every day conversations. After you memorize N3 vocabulary, just get all your vocabulary from normal reading. By all means, if you just enjoy memorizing vocabulary lists, feel free to do N2 and N1 vocabulary lists -- it won't hurt you. I just think that it is an inefficient use of time.

Hope that helps anyone who is getting started ;-)

<comment><USER33> I hate commenting on the internet, especially since it's going to go against almost every idea that the original commenter posted. That aside, here is my advice for studying Japanese. This is purely my opinion and one method that I've been using.

\- Try to evaluate where you want to 'end up' with your fluency. If you want a full time job in a business environment then I highly recommend learning polite forms of verbs first. The more that your practice this form, the more comfortable it'll be to use. If you want to talk casually to friends and family, then learning just the plain form is ok. If you want the slow, long, methodical approach to learning Japanese and achieve a much greater fluency, learn the plain form _and_ the negative form at the same time along with the polite form. I highly advise against using the plain form with people you've met for the first time or are dealing with in a business setting. It's very off-putting since it feels like you're talking like a child. I recommend learning the plain form and the negative form at the same time because of the structure of Japanese verbs. Learning both of these forms at the same time will give you an immediate hint as to how all of the other verb inflections should appear. This will become apparent when you're learning conditional, potential, volition and passive verbs.

\- Tae Kim's guide is good for understanding many concepts quickly but the website I prefer the most is Imabi.net[1]. It contains more content and is constantly being updated and edited to improve its content.

\- Learning katakana right after hiragana is vital if you want to live in Japan. Also, try to associate only the sound with the character, not a mnemonic. Use that time to focus on your pronunciation. Many borrowed words from other languages use katakana and learning katakana at the beginning will help you remember those words faster. For example, a common word used in Japanese is トレーニング. It sounds awfully close to "training" and since it's in katakana, it gives you a hint as to what the word might mean. While katakana words are not 100% borrowed words, it certainly appears to be above 80%. Related to this, do not learn romaji as a way of writing characters.

\- I agree, do not avoid learning kanji. Always learn kanji with vocabulary. I don't recommend Heisig's book if you're taking the long, methodical approach I mentioned earlier. It includes a lot of mnemonics that I don't think actually contribute to the actual kanji's reading. Plus, if you _do_ go through the entire series, then you'll still be behind in your kanji learning. There are a lot of words that you still don't know the meaning to! For example, 八百屋 and 海老 don't mean 800 shops and ocean's old. They mean produce market and shrimp respectively. My recommendation is to learn vocabulary and the kanji readings for that vocabulary.

\- I don't read manga, personally, but another way to learn conversational Japanese is by watching television shows and mimicking them! (On the other hand, I don't recommend mimicking anime.) If you like manga, then go for it! Just go for your favourite entertainment medium. If you're learning conversational Japanese, then try to find a serious language partner. Find someone who is a native Japanese speaker trying to learn your native language. Allocate 1 hour or a half hour to go over Japanese and another equal block of time in your native language. Native English speakers will have the easiest time searching for a language partner but don't give up if your native language isn't English.

\- Textbooks are good for certain circumstances. I believe textbooks are good for the long, slow methodical approach. It keeps you focused and gives you goals to work towards. If you don't like textbooks, then pick up a non-fiction book and try reading! It'll force you to pause, give thought to the meaning of the sentence and look up words/grammar. The non-fiction book method will probably take longer than a textbook though, especially if you're just starting out. Fiction books will be extremely difficult because they will sometimes make up words that won't appear in dictionaries.

\- I actually prefer large lists of vocabulary. I get the greatest benefit from lists of nouns since I pick those up the fastest. As the original commenter pointed out, this is definitely not for everyone. Reading books or manga will give a more entertaining method for learning new words. It'll even give you the more nuanced meaning of words. The right and wrong places to use them, etc. Check out the Tatoeba[2] project as well for example sentences using the words you're learning.

For any language you're learning, try to use the language as you're learning it. Try to come up with new sentences based on what you've learned. Try to talk to people using the new verbs you learned. Try using Lang-8[3] for writing.

Japanese is really difficult because although I've been studying it for a year and a half now, I still don't feel like I'm 'fluent'. I can give you examples of things that I've been able to achieve using Japanese but I definitely wouldn't call myself fluent. Using the CEFR, I would probably put myself between B1 and B2 for certain circumstances and maybe between A2 and B1 for other circumstances. Learning Japanese will take time, don't give up.

[1] [http://www.imabi.net/](http://www.imabi.net/)

[2] [http://tatoeba.org/](http://tatoeba.org/)

[3] [http://lang-8.com/](http://lang-8.com/)

<comment><USER34> For what it's worth, I studied Japanese for 3 years as part of a college minor but never felt fluent. Television and movies are great learning tools, because you learn the rhythm and cadence to Japanese, which is much faster than you might expect if you only read it, and even faster than in conversation (as conversation partners will consciously or subconsciously slow down to accommodate you).</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Google Voice for iPhone Released - <AUTHOR> http://googlevoiceblog.blogspot.com/2010/11/google-voice-for-iphone.html <comment><USER2> I'm struck that it appears to do very little local caching. In that sense it feels like a highly polished web app, always at the mercy of an available network.

Also, it's iPhone-only. Following the direct download link from an iPod or iPad yields an error. Guess I'm sticking with Boxcar for iPad push notifications.

<comment><USER3> The "no caching" effect is much less pronounced with fast app switching. Are you on iOS 3.x?

Also, in my experience, there are often weird consistency errors in the App Store when something new is rolling out. (I could only see it on my Mac for a while before it appeared on my phone.) Try again in an hour.

<comment><USER2> I'm on 4.1. I noticed the caching behavior after seeing that the text and voicemail views start with no data loaded, even after viewing the inbox. Forcing the app to exit zeroed out all three views.

Loading data is pretty fast on wifi, and the app is certainly nice to look at, but not taking any advantage of local persistence seems to push the web- centric worldview a step too far.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Google Voice is kind of the wrong product for the wrong time. It improves voice telephone calls exactly at a time when that's no longer very interesting.

The only semi-interesting thing would be cheap international calls - but I have Skype for this already.

Voice mail, I don't use. If it was improved like with GV - I'd still not use it. SMS, I have plenty of free texts, never exceed my limit - though I wonder how they get away with making them free, given that carriers make lots of money with that.

One number to rule them all - that would be cool - except if it's controlled by one company which will eventually seek to monetize. Those chefs and massage services cost money... I don't, by the way, see how being available on the phone to anyone at any time, no matter what number they call and no matter where I am - as a feature. More like a bug. I am already easily reachable on my phone, via SMS, via emails. I don't need to be any _more_ available.

Anything that I'm missing? Why would I want GV?

<comment><USER5> For me, Google Voice's features allow me more granular control over my availability, and reduce the total time my telephone takes by letting me skim textual versions of voicemails, direct calls hither and thither, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> If searching in the appstore, "google voice" didnt bring up anything but "googlevoice" worked

<comment><AUTHOR> It was on the second page of results for me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This long-awaited arrival throws quite the wrench into the Android v. iOS platform wars.

Google was obviously already on the iPhone (with search, its popular native app, gmail, etc.), but Google Voice is clearly different in that in competes with the core functions of the phone.

What do you guys think the impact of this will be? Could Google use this as a Trojan horse to hook people on GV then try to upsell them to an Android device with better GV integration? Or will it not matter?

<comment><USER2> For an upsell to work, you'd first have to believe that people buy iPhones primarily to make phone calls. Then you'd have to believe that these phone- centric individuals are tolerant of the voice latency in GV calls. I don't see it.

<comment><USER8> There is no voice lag in GV that I've noticed, I think it works more like call-forwarding than voip.

<comment><USER2> I'd love to find some rigorous way to measure it, but (as of six months or so ago) when I sat with two phones, held down a button, and waited for a tone to come out the other end, the delay was observably longer with a GV-to-GV call than with a GV-to-cell call, which took longer than cell-to-cell.

I find myself saying "no, go ahead" or talking over the other person far more often with GV than not. It's certainly usable, but I avoid GV if the call quality really matters.

<comment><USER8> It definitely takes longer for calls to connect and I think it may drop calls more frequently when using it on a cell (although it has improved greatly in that regard from about a year ago). I recently started using it through gmail and have been told the calls sound much better. Not sure what it all means.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Doesn't seem to be available for iPod Touch even though many of the features would work fine on it.

<comment><USER10> It appears number portability and iPod Touch support is not on their priority list. I have no clue why. With those two features, personally, I would be free from cell phone carriers.

<comment><USER11> It does essentially give you number portability.

1\. Set up Google Voice to forward your GV # to your cell phone.

2\. Install the Google Voice app to get push notifications for SMS messages sent to your GV #.

3\. Give out your GV # instead of your cell phone number.

4\. Change the forwarding rules at will -- you can even use the same number for multiple phones.

<comment><USER2> Number portability in this context means the ability to use an existing number with new service, not the ability to use a new number which points back at your existing number.

Google's been on the record for several years as hoping to support this in the future.

[http://www.google.com/support/voice/bin/answer.py?hl=en&...](http://www.google.com/support/voice/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=115102)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is great - but you still have to be in the app to make a phone call (doesn't integrate with the native iPhone phone app well). Does anyone know if the Android version has tighter integration?

I'd like to not have to remember to launch the app to return a call and use the native SMS app to send from my GV number. Is this possible with the Android version?

<comment><USER13> The Android version of Google Voice integrates with the native dialer and SMS apps.

<comment><USER12> Tks - that might be enough reason to switch to Android actually.

<comment><USER14> Note that this doesn't mean GV on Android is using VOIP or anything along those lines. It simply dials one of the GV numbers for you and then connects you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Europe is such a tiny market, why would they even consider trying something like this out here :)

 _sniff_ _sniff_

Do I have to make a sacrifice to some modern deity or something to see this on our side of the pond? Oh pretty please Goog? :)

<comment><USER16> I have to wonder if this will ever make it to Australia before we stop using the POTS.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Overall the polish of the app seems a little lacking but the fact that push notifications are finally available makes it the service itself actually usable on an iPhone. I'm not amazed but certainly a happier person than I was yesterday.

</comment><comment><USER17> It's ironic that Apple might have changed their app store rules to allow a Google product (GV) into the app store in order to counter another Google product (Android)

<comment><USER18> My understanding is that this change in policy was directly in response to pressure from the EU and FTC probes.

<comment><USER19> It's interesting the extent to which apple is pre-emptively trying to avoid anti-trust actions by allowing apps like opera and gv and backpedaling on ad network competition. I assume that's because they see it as a real possibility that an EU remedy could be something like forcing them to natively support competing app stores. That would be a huge blow to apple revenue.

<comment><USER20> are you suggesting they make a notable amount of direct money off the app store?

Or are you suggesting the more indirect: more app stores->less confidence, more confusion, less sales->less device sales->less revenue

<comment><USER19> Thanks for correcting me in a polite way - I see that analysts place app store profits at only about 1% of apple's gross profits since the store opened. Huge was obviously a poor choice of words, but still the numbers are compelling - $189M in gross profit on ~$1.3B gross revenue (assuming the $1B paid out * 1.3) - 14.5% margins even while including operating costs associated with free apps. One can also assume that the 1% contribution to profit is a growing figure since it includes the entire time the app store has been open but sales have been increasing steadily. While apple calls it "a bit over break-even", that has always been the line with itunes as well yet there are various pieces of evidence that suggest that is somewhat of a fib.

I think you make an even better point than I was thinking of though. Apple clearly values the tight control they have over applications highly. Whatever their motivations there - ux, security, platform lock in, vertical integration, control over competitors - they surely believe that ceding that control would have a negative effect on their bottom line.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Finally... Sweet GV push notifications... :D

</comment><comment><USER22> There are some rough edges (like the SMS sending screen, yuck) but what I'm impressed by is how performant the app is on my old-ass 3G. It seems to open faster than the SMS or Dialer apps do. Probably 'cause it was developed back when the 3G was cutting-edge!

</comment><comment><USER23> GV Mobile+ still has a lot of features that this official google app doesn't match, like the ability to paste phone numbers into the dial pad and ability to rout numbers via Skype.

<comment><USER24> Now that they have an official app, maybe they'll iterate fast to catch up to GV Mobile's features.

<comment><USER25> On the other hand, if Apple really didn't want to allow the app, and only did so to satisfy regulators, they can do their best to slow and stall on every change that Google submits.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> According to John Gruber it still uses your AT&T minutes for domestic calls. That should be a turnoff for most. <http://twitter.com/#!/gruber/status/4619690240376832>

<comment><USER27> Google Voice isn't, and has never been, a VoIP service. Phone calls made through the iPhone app or Android app have always used the phone's minutes.

<comment><AUTHOR> It wasn't until they added the ability to make calls from the browser in Gmail using your Google Voice number. So they're not a full-blown VoIP service, but they have some VoIP features now.

<comment><USER27> I think that's technically considered part of GMail/Google Talk. Google Voice just provides a facility to route the call to GMail/Google Talk.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> <http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/google-voice/id318698524> <\-- Direct link, gogogo, before it's gone ;)

<comment><USER29> I don't think it's available in a limited quantity. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Is this all native? Parts of it feels like javascript.

<comment><USER31> How do you feel JavaScript???!

<comment><USER32> Easily: poor scrolling, slow, shadows at the end of the web views (that the iPhone SDK forces in there (!)), etc. It's fairly easy to tell on an iPhone if something is JavaScript or not, it's one of the reasons I don't use anything that's been near PhoneGap or whatever.</comment></comment></comment>


Why schools are failing our boys - mycroft-holmes http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/parenting/wp/2015/02/19/why-schools-are-failing-our-boys/ <comment><AUTHOR> There are lots of reasons.

First of all, any organization that has men working with young children will eventually face accusations of pedophilia regardless of the reality. Also men seem less interested in day care and early childhood education so children see nothing but women teachers until high school.

Just like blacks who have nothing but white teachers conclude that education is a "white thing", boys will conclude it is a girl thing.

When I coached Kindergarten soccer (which is a lot of fun; I'll leave large- field soccer to the Europeans, but the game on a small field is exciting) I shaved my beard because I learned that it would scare some kids because they'd never seen anybody with a beard.

There's also the problem that people mistake an obedient child for a "good child". There was this book

[http://www.amazon.com/Snapping-Americas-Epidemic- Personality...](http://www.amazon.com/Snapping-Americas-Epidemic-Personality- Edition/dp/0964765004)

which seemed so puzzled that people would "change" quickly when they fall into cults but the real thing is parents thought these kids had it together because they would do what they are told and when you put them in a new environment they do what L. Ron Hubbard tells them to do (i.e. no "change" at all)

My son isn't in the habit of obedient and if somebody isn't pushing on him somewhat he will do nothing at all in a classroom with 20 kids. I talked with my superintendent about this at a PTA meeting and he told me I should sit back and let the experts deal with this. (Just before this he told the mother of a "special" child that he welcomes her as a partner in his education; that's because the state can set a fire under his ass)

That's why my son is homeschooled.

<comment><USER2> Uh oh.

Your post sounds a little...extreme. Schools aren't evil. Bear in mind the effect your values are really having on your son. Keep in mind, too, the great social development he's missing out on.

<comment> guard-of-terra "Schools aren't evil"

They often are. For a great deal of students, it's a place of unhappiness. I'm on the geeky side, and when I ask my friends (girls more often than not) whether they liked school, they universally tell me it wasn't good for them.

So you can't say that. You want that to be true; that is supposed to be true; but it is not.

<comment><USER3> Going to the dentist isn't fun, but it's necessary.

If you visit often enough and listen to what they say, it should become a little easier as you go along.

<comment><USER4> Try going to the dentist every day, for 6 hours per day, for twelve years straight.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Articles titled 'Why schools are failing ...' annoy me intensely. They're almost always written by a parent with a struggling or gifted child who has almost no actual experience of the education system, other than that they attended a school twenty years ago.

Modern education is run with a 'one shoe fits all' approach. We try to cater for boys, girls, those with learning difficulties, those that are gifted, those from impoverished households, those that are affluent, and in general every sector of society that are dumped in our classrooms.

I stand in front of 30 different students, 5 times a day and try my best to educate them all to the best of my ability, and do you know what? Sometimes I don't succeed. It pains me, but some kids slip through the cracks and don't get the education they deserve. I try my best, but there are practicalities that need to be considered.

If you want an education system that caters for all students, regardless of academic ability and socio-economic background then you need to realise that this does not come cheaply. Stick me in a classroom with 10 students instead of 30 and I'll have more time to spend with each one, be better able to take into account their personal education needs, be able to tailor my lessons to individuals rather than focusing on what will suit the majority. Also realise that you'll need to employ three times as many teachers and that the your taxes will need to be substantially increased.

On some level, our modern education system (and previous education systems) fails everyone, to a lesser or greater degree, and few students leave school having reached their full potential. If society wants this to change then the answer is to stop treating schools as a free baby-sitting service, allowing both parents to go out to work and contribute to a nation's GDP, and start treating schools as an investment in a nation's future.

<comment><USER6> What annoys me is when it is treated as a money issue. The US spends more per student than any other country, and among the most as a % of GDP (7.3%) well above the average of industrialized countries of 6.3% -- there are countries that spend more (Denmark, 8%) but not in absolute terms, only as a % of GDP. We spend upwards of $15,000+ per student per year and still can't get the job done.

This pervasive myth that it is a "not enough money in the system" does a great disservice to everyone involved and means we never discuss the REAL issue. There is tons of money, but the systematic problems are immune to money -- we could double spending and it wouldn't fix the issues. Parents don't care, teachers are protected by a powerful union so they don't care... student are treated as "must move" assets, standardized testing is held up as the be all, end all of measuring progress.

Instead of continuing to throw money down a blackhole that seems to not generate better outcomes, maybe it is time to rethink our approach... or admit that schools are tiny people prisons and useful filters and have very little to do with educating children, and more to do with segmenting and ranking them (which is useful, but can be done far more cheaply).

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> There are also plenty of boys and girls who don't have this problem. I was a bit of a trouble maker in elementary and middle school - enough to get a call home from the teacher once or twice a year - but I always did my work and gave a damn about my performance.

I don't understand this parent. "I let my son play minecraft in the morning before school" \- so your son is slacking off in school, but you're still giving him everything he wants? He's your son. He needs to be shown that sometimes, you have to suck it up and work, even when you don't want to. That's a tough lesson to teach an 8 year old, but it's something that parents should enforce early. Eventually, their kid will see that hard work and self control will pay off. Here's a novel idea - don't let your kid play minecraft until he starts doing better in school.

That being said, I do think physical activity should be more common. If it's rainy or cold out, kids should be able to go to their school's gym for an extra PE class - or maybe be able to play minecraft on the school computers. Boys and girls needs to be able to do something like this throughout the day. Article like this will hopefully make schools rethink some things - but until change actually happens, this mom needs to take control instead of just throwing her hands up and telling her son "it's not your fault. now go play minecraft."

<comment><USER8> I agree with what you say. Kids should learn to follow rules even when they don't like them. Society cannot function if everybody does only the things they like. Schools should focus on building solid character in kids and teaching them responsibility and hard-work not coddle them and let them play all the time. Personally, I think asian kids achieve more things because their culture enforces discipline, hard-work and obedience from a young age.

<comment><USER9> >> I think asian kids achieve more things because their culture enforces discipline, hard-work and obedience from a young age.

What do they achieve more of? I keep hearing how the US needs to change education to be more like other countries so they can compete on tests, but why change when you're winning on innovation? Or do we attribute that to something else?

<comment><USER8> I am just going to give you one example. At least 11 out of the last 15 spelling bee champions are of asian descent[1]. I don't know about changing the education system. I actually don't agree with the author of the original article but to answer your question, the innovation that US is so proud of has major contribution from Aisans also and is not something you can attribute entirely to Americans. The reason there is so much innovation could also be due to the fact that US is a developed county with abundant resources and most asian countries are not. When you don't have to worry about pollution, population, food etc, the mind gets freed up to think about innovation and creativity.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Scripps_National_Spelli...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Scripps_National_Spelling_Bee_champions)

<comment><USER10> I used to do the spelling bee thing. I did ok, would generally make it from my school -> local -> regional, but not beyond that. That's because I was good at spelling from all my reading, but I didn't study for the bee at all.

Now, the kids who did really well at the spelling bee, they didn't have time to read. Their moms were making them spend 3 hours a night with the little spelling bee booklet, learning how to spell every possible word that could be asked, and forcing themselves into the rhythm: "'Rote'. May I have the language of origin? 'Rote'. Can you use the word in a sentence? 'Rote'. May I have the definition? 'Rote'. R-O-T-E". (Hilariously, I once watched a girl do the whole routine over the word "talons", even getting "the eagle had sharp talons" as the sentence, then spelling T-A-L-E-N-T-S. Her mom made a fuss over microphone placement and got her back into the round)

Is this a worthwhile thing to do? What useful things does this method teach? Spelling is extremely good, but like I said I'm pretty good at spelling because I read a lot. Maybe I could have been the Spelling Bee Champion if instead of reading, I'd memorized the entire word list. Then I would be extremely good at spelling "prestidigitation", that's for sure.

<comment><USER8> Spelling bee was just an example of what people achieve with persistent effort. I understand the use of the said skill is debatable. The key is that most asian families enforce rules on kids and the kids do well in their life. Asian families set higher expectations and do not pander to their kid's childish desire to play minecraft or chop wood.

[http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning- mix/wp/2014/04/08...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning- mix/wp/2014/04/08/forget-tiger-moms-asian-american-students-succeed-because- its-expected-say-scholars/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> "Simply put, girls have better educational outcomes when taught by women, and boys are better off when taught by men"

[http://cepa.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/ednext20064_68....](http://cepa.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/ednext20064_68.pdf)

Pay teachers better and aim for 50% male teachers and consider going back to all boys schools and all girls schools with plenty of rules to ensure that both are treated fairly.

<comment><USER12> I used to work for a school system that experimented with gendered classrooms. While it would be a mistake to extrapolate too much from our experience, those became the most successful classrooms at the elementary school in question. The boys did particularly well.

Naturally the ACLU would rather fight to ban the practice outright than risk additional research _possibly_ showing that this is a productive approach, at the expense of the preferred gender politics narrative.

<comment><USER13> I thought you were being melodramatic about the ACLU, but nope, not at all:

[https://www.aclu.org/blog/womens-rights/sometimes-it-only- ta...](https://www.aclu.org/blog/womens-rights/sometimes-it-only-takes-hour- get-picture-single-sex-program-wont-fly)

I am all about gender equally but that seems crazy to me. As long as girls and boys receive the same standard of education then why should it matter? Seems like PC taken too far.

<comment><USER12> Same here, and sorry if that seemed hyperbolic. It's just extremely frustrating to me as someone who sees (most of) the ACLU's work as extremely important, and who has donated to them in the past.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It's not failing boys, it's failing every child. I never had an issue with this, quite frankly classroom clowns were kind of rare at least when it came to actually disrupting the whole class. However

> He hasn't been allowed outside at school all week

That never happened. We went outside, we played, we were able to expend our childhood energy. They are children, they do need somewhere and somehow to expend their energy.

<comment><USER15> I'm sure there were weeks where I didn't get outside during school hours, but between PE in the gym (when cold/wet/whatever), music lessons, chorus, GT programs, and other enrichment, I was rarely stuck in the same room and same seat for more than a few hours at a time.

If schools have changed in the last 25 years such that none of that out-of- classroom enrichment occurs, then yeah, we're failing out kids.

<comment><USER16> There's still a good amount of out-of-classroom enrichment, however here in Georgia we've had a rather nasty cold snap that has prevented kids from going outside (county-wide requirement). How teachers respond to this extra time in the classroom is obviously up to them, but I know of one who had her kids do Zumba for the duration of recess instead of just using it for more instruction.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Replace "boy" or "son" with child and the only paragraph in the article which reads differently is this

>Statistically speaking, boys now lag behind girls on every single academic measure; they also get in trouble and drop out of school much more frequently than girls. There are fewer boys in college than girls, and far more lost 20-something boys than 20-something girls.

It certainly seems like schools are failing boys but I'm not sure that this particular failure has anything to do with it.

</comment><comment><USER18> > Re-entry after winter break has not been easy for him. The rules and > restrictions of school – Sit Still. Be Quiet. Do What You Are Told, Nothing > More, Nothing Less. – have been grating on him, and it shows.

> The lack of movement and rigid restrictions associated with modern schooling > are killing my son's soul.

As an asian, I can't muster a lot of sympathy for this line of reasoning. Nobody would accuse asian countries of catering to girls rather than boys, but the schooling over there is even more "sit down, shut up, and do your work" than it is here in the U.S.

<comment><USER19> Regardless, I don't see how that conflicts with what the author wrote.

> The lack of movement and rigid restrictions associated with modern schooling > are killing my son's soul.

I think you can say that regardless of where the same style of schooling is practiced and regardless of the gender.

Rules are fine. They teach discipline. Rules that are created to make large groups of children manageable are not fine. Children aren't cattle and require personal attention and a rule set that matches their character.

<comment><USER8> >Rules that are created to make large groups of children manageable are not fine. Children aren't cattle and require personal attention and a rule set that matches their character.

That can only happen at home. Catering to needs of every child individually at school is not easily doable. One child's need may be disruptive to another or the entire class. Expecting teachers to pander to such needs is plain wrong. In a class, the teacher should focus on teaching basic skills. enforcing some rules that makes this easier is fine in my books. If your child needs special attention, hire a private tutor, home school or send them to piano/fencing class or whatever it is that interests him/her.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> yeah, what could possibly go wrong with locking a bunch of 8 year old boys in a room, telling them they can't talk to each other, forcing them to do mind- numbing things they don't want to do, and depriving them of nearly all adult male contact?

it's a system that's been hijacked by do-gooders doing anything but good.

</comment><comment><USER21> Schools are failing our daughters as well.

My daughter complains that the 'boys are stinky and loud' and that's why she doesn't go into computer lab more often. She says that the majority of the boys in the lab are 'playing games' and are 'obnoxious'. If you've ever been in a computer lab with a bunch of middle schoolers, you will undoubtedly agree with her statements.

Simple solution? Build a partition down the middle of the computer lab and make one side for the girls and one for the boys.

<comment><USER22> Why separate by gender instead of environment. For example, have a subdued side and an energetic side? While there may be more girls on the subdued side (like a classic library environment) and more boys on the energetic side (like a busy internet cafe environment), it wouldn't enforce gender stereotypes but would provide all students both options.

<comment><USER21> I like the idea of setting the mood in the space to attract different types of users. Good suggestion!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Anyone else spot that the kid likes fire?

Every male I know went through a 'firebug' phase as a kid. A young boy playing with fire is imho as natural as a dog wanting to chase squirrels. There was a time when those of us who understood fire survived while other froze. Those who could start and maintain a fire in adverse conditions were once respected individuals, even professionals. Today they are misbehaving young boys, a small percentage of which are even declared dangerous.

Not allowing young boys to play with fire is akin to not allowing them to exercise. A boy waking up early to tend the communal fire is expressing an evolved behaviour that probably predates language itself.

</comment><comment><USER24> Woe woe. How is this a "boys" thing? The author has some valuable opinions worth considering but the positing of them is absurd. Re-read that article with this question in mind ("wait, this is a boy issue?") and I think you might also find the authors oblivion equally disturbing.

There is reason to consider the gender gap in education but this article, with "Little House on the Prairie" as its sole reference, fails to bring anything of value for that argument. There is also reason to question why some education systems devalue labor... but attaching this to a "boys" thing? <face_palm>

</comment><comment><USER25> Because they are, very deliberately, not tailoring education to meet their needs.

</comment><comment><USER26> The resources that are available geared specifically toward the improvement of education have been allocated more towards girls and less towards boys than they were in the past. As a result, the academic performce of girls has improved relative to boys.

</comment><comment><USER27> > _He hasn't been allowed outside at school all week; it's too cold_

This is not the first time I read this, so it must be true, but it's the craziest idea ever. Not allowing kids to play outside (not _making them_ go outside, regardless of the weather) is criminal.

I'm not sure this has anything to do with boys vs. girls though; I have 3 kids, two boys and a girl, and while the three of them love to play outside the one who likes it the most is the girl.

She's 6 and will very happily spend a whole afternoon jumping on a trampoline under light rain, as she did yesterday with no harm to herself or her health.

<comment><USER28> In some places in the world, including where the author is from, it was dangerously cold this week. Here in Chicago the temperature was around -5F (-20C) all week, which is dangerously cold for anyone outside in prolonged periods without proper attire.

<comment><USER29> But not _allowing_ someone to go out, with proper attire, is still weird.

(Over here, the rule's that it's mandatory to go out for breaks, except if temperature is below -15C (+5F). Everyone has proper attire.)

<comment><USER28> > Everyone has proper attire.

I think that's probably a big component of the policy, I regularly see kids on the train or out walking to school without proper attire to be outside in the bitter cold.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Had a (rebel) teacher that used to claim putting 16 year old boys in a class room is a waste of time. Given the amount of paper planes I constructed in class at that age I'm inclined to agree. Still turned into a successfull professional though so I guess something went right.

</comment><comment><USER31> I was lucky enough to be sent to a male boarding school. Seeing the state of public and most private school systems in my region, and the lack of male representation among teachers, I will most definitely be sending my sons to similar all male or military boarding schools.

<comment><USER32> Please do not just "send" your sons to military boarding schools. I currently go to an academy and a part of the life here really puts me in a slump.

<comment><USER31> My experiences in military boarding school were positive. Difficult and character-building, but positive. I doubt any school experience could be 'slump free' all the time. In any case I hope you can find the good in the experience.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> A friend of mine posted her daughter's homework, which had a math problem like "What is 17 - 9?" then "Explain." Her daughter wrote something like "because it is". Which is all the damn explanation that should require. The friend did admit that her daughter later added an explanation. (To be fair, I think they were looking for something like "because 9 + 8 = 17" which isn't entirely unreasonable.)

This is a pattern I have seen more, and I think is part of Common Core more generally. It makes some sense, but it also feels like they are aping good education. Yes, it is important that students have more than one way to approach a problem, that they understand the truth of the answer and not just the mechanism to produce it, and it is good if a child can work at articulating their thought processes. But, acknowledging that, the Common Core response is: add some more questions requiring the student to do those things. It's not supportive.

Now, back to boys and girls. These vague requirements, these attempts to induce "critical thinking", are not well defined, and the only demonstrable result is whether you can please the teacher. (IMHO in a better approach a student would use multi-step thinking, construct and answer their own problems, and ultimately produce a result that could be externally and objectively validated, ideally supporting iterative development and adding complexity.) Boys are not very good at pleasing teachers, certainly not nearly as good as girls are. A boy would be less likely to amend his answer to satisfy the absurd question, less likely to try to read the teacher's mind to figure out what output the teacher was trying to get. A boy is less likely to match the girl on language skills at some of those ages, and then can't even excel at something that isn't language based, like math. Everything becomes an essay question, and if you aren't good at essays not only won't you be graded well, you may not enjoy the work itself. And the harder you are pushed towards performing the more you will be pushed towards your weakness (the flaw that is keeping you from being graded well); this may improve your grades at that moment, but at the cost of long term learning.

Kids have a lot of time to learn what they need to know. So much time... when people talk about lengthening school days and years, it makes me think about expecting people to work late to increase output. It's not smart. But worse it reveals a lack of value being placed on the time already spent. But if you let a child learn what is right for them to learn, when it is right to learn it, there's so much time for them to become eventually well rounded.

It sucks for girls too. They cope better, they are better equipped to conform. They are also cursed with that ability to conform. The bad results for boys often involve obvious external measures, like failing, disciplinary measures, testing poorly, struggling after school. The bad results for girls are often more internal, a fragile identity, not nurturing their own autonomy, feeding on external rather than internal validation.

This is why as a parent I opt out of public education.

</comment><comment><USER34> _sarcasm on_ Are you serious that kids are supposed to play outside in school? After all, they could injure themselves. And then the parents (or their medical insurance, who wants another insurance to pay, if possible) sue the school and the teacher for six-figures. And the parents of the kid too, if possible! Oh, and the kid too, 8 years old and $100k in debt already! _sarcasm off_

And I'm not sure if that what I just said is fiction or has happened often enough. If I were a teacher, I'd just stick the kids in a classroom to limit my liability.

I was happy to have enjoyed a childhood in which playing outside was normal. I'm not sure if I'd let my kid outside if I had one. Not in a climate where my 8-year-or-whatever-young old son might get a sex offender entry for the rest of his life because he played doctor games with a little girl in kindergarten or whatever. Too many incidents of this sort happened, and I don't want to have a kid in this legal climate.

</comment><comment><USER35> Not enough male teachers at the primary level?</comment>


How TikTok and ByteDance could be using – and abusing – user data - <AUTHOR> https://www.businessinsider.com/how-tiktok-and-bytedance-could-be-using-abusing-user-data-2020-8 <comment><USER2> > Samantha Hoffman and Fergus Ryan, both experts on China at the Australian > Strategic Policy Institute

As a patriotic Australian I'd like to give you all a friendly reminder about ASPI. While presenting themselves as an independent think tank for the Asia Pacific region they are anything but.

This organisation that pumps out news articles more than papers are entirely funded by companies and departments that need ever more war and security theatre to feed their budgets. Some of their biggest donors include Raytheon, BAE, Northrup Gunnman and the US department of state, not to mention the Australian department of defense. Ironically we only found out about the foreign funding due to electoral interference laws originally aimed at the Chinese, no one knew about this US funding until they were forced to disclose it.

How "independent" does that sound as a source for expert advice on a scale of one to ten?

For an organisation that supposedly has Australia's best interest at heart they somehow manage to constantly get everything wrong from Saddamm's imaginary weapons of mass destruction to our decades long involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan, the rise of ISIS, the terrible materiel purchases that were billions more than they should be and protecting a man who proudly commits and boasts about extrajudicial murder in the Philippines.

Australian politicians across a wide political spectrum have voiced deep concerns about their influence and funding sources.

Does this sound like a group of people that really care about advancing Australia, or something else is at work?

I'm all for protecting data from overzealous evil companies, but you'll be waiting a very long time for these _independent_ national security specialists to say a single thing about the forty other apps on Australian phones sending sensitive data across the globe every minute.

[https://www.michaelwest.com.au/independent-think-tank- aspi-b...](https://www.michaelwest.com.au/independent-think-tank-aspi-behind- push-for-more-defence-spending-rakes-in-advisory-fees/)

[https://johnmenadue.com/john-menadue-australian-strategic- po...](https://johnmenadue.com/john-menadue-australian-strategic-policy- institute-by-their-fruits-you-will-know-them/)

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm all for protecting user data, but this article does an extremely poor job demonstrating why the app is a security risk besides saying that it's a Chinese company, which we know.

<comment><USER4> As the article says, it's not about what they are collecting. It's about what they would do with that information and who they would ban.

Yes the US government does collect information, but at least to some extent they can be held accountable by it's citizens. No one can hold the CCP accountable and they can use these companies as a proxy to enforce Chinese censorship in other countries. (See Zoom banning US accounts made by Chinese protestors)

So I think you see the ban as a technological security risk, which, relative to most other big tech, it's not. It's a national security risk to the US and India.

<comment><USER5> I find it strange that people still defend the U.S. in a post-Snowden world.

> held accountable

How exactly? For all we know the CIA is still doing it's thing. As for U.S. companies spying on people, I am sure fines have taught them not to. /s

Censorship is bad but it's TikTok, it's not like the censored parties would lose sleep over it. Same with Zoom, the plethora of alternatives make it a non-issue in my opinion.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> As a Chinese, I'm really tired of seeing such news being pushed to the frontpage of HN. Sure, the data big companies are collecting nowadays are concerning. But it's not specific to Chinese companies. Well, people may say they don't trust the Chinese government. How is the US government better? Has Snowden been forgotten already?

Endlessly selective criticism towards China make us think if people from other countries are just inclined to think that the CCP is evil, and so is China. As a result, everything that is connected to China is (especially) bad.

<comment><USER7> As an American I somewhat agree with your sentiment in that Google is probably just as bad as ByteDance. However, I think we see about the same amount of flak against Google on this website so I don't agree with your point about it being specific to China.

Also, I believe the CCP is certainly evil based on reports of numerous human rights violations. The USA is also on the whole evil, but I would say to a much lesser degree.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Sommeone needs to build a app which is sort of VM Player in a mobile device, where you can install the app inside and we choose the location or country where this VM can be hosted. Just so you know nobody tracks location.

I couldn't be the only one with this idea.

</comment><comment><USER9> Don't think China can complain too much when the west bans Chinese companies for any reason. They have been doing it for years in China.

I wish we could target the platforms that give apps access to this info. Can we please develop a non-google (ad company) platform?</comment>


Declared vs. duck-ish typing in Rust - <AUTHOR> http://smallcultfollowing.com/babysteps/blog/2012/04/10/declared-vs-duckish-typing/

<comment><AUTHOR> Submitted because I've never seen any precedents for duckish (ducky?) typing in static languages before. Curious if people with more extensive systems programming backgrounds have any opinions.

Wikipedia says that Boo and C# allow you to add annotations in order to make type checking more dynamic, but (from what I can tell) the purpose of this discussion for Rust is to make duck typing require _less_ boilerplate than the statically-typed alternative, if the programmer so desires.</comment>


Rappid: visual languages toolkit - online docs - <AUTHOR> http://jointjs.com/rappid/docs

<comment><USER2> This tool looks interesting, but from reading the site it's not clear which parts of the system are licensed under the MPL 2.0 (via the License link) and which parts are commercial software and need to be purchased. You should also clarify what the commercial support covers and that it's optional.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the suggestion. The JointJS core library, basically anything except of what is described here: [http://jointjs.com/rappid/docs](http://jointjs.com/rappid/docs) (in other words, anything that is downloadable here: [http://jointjs.com/download](http://jointjs.com/download)) is licensed under the MPL v2 license. The rest is licensed under our own, commercial, license. Commercial support is indeed optional and covers bug fixes, general advise, help, online troubleshooting and more. We also do custom developments that are priced individually, depending on the project.</comment></comment>


Losers exist. Don't hire them - <AUTHOR> http://pandodaily.com/2012/12/05/losers-exist-dont-hire-them/ <comment><USER2> Oh yay. Another "if you don't do things my way (which I never back up with anything more than hand-waving - I don't even have actual anecdotes), you're doing it wrong" blog post.

Whew, what a mouthful.

Seriously. Even if we don't play the "anecdotes != data" game, this guy makes a _lot_ of large, sweeping claims without even using personal experience to back it up. There's no "this one time I ignored my own advice and ended up getting burned" - no, the _entire_ post is a giant exercise in supposition.

Perhaps more interesting is the fact that the entire rest of his team loved the candidate, and _all_ of their opinions were immediately forfeit because the boss didn't like him. What does this say about the level of confidence and trust that one has in his team when you're so willing to discount their judgment _entirely_?

But by all means, keep these posts coming, they are forming a valuable mental list of people to not work for.

<comment><USER3> _Perhaps more interesting is the fact that the entire rest of his team loved the candidate, and all of their opinions were immediately forfeit because the boss didn't like him. What does this say about the level of confidence and trust that one has in his team when you're so willing to discount their judgment entirely?_

I didn't pick this up on the first read, but, yep, there it is, plain as day. Hilarious. A whole team of people interviewed this guy for the role, votes to hire, and then he asks what century of English writing the guy likes best and _woosh_ done.

So at the very least you'd think, this guy should be the _first_ interview anyone gets, because if you're not going to pass the "favorite era of English literature" or "favorite aspect of Sino-Indian relations" or "most preferred basket-weaving maneuver" question, you might as well not waste the time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The author of this article is a jerk. He calls someone a loser because he or she may not be a good fit for a job. This is not someone you'd want to have as a boss.

A good manager would write a more compassionate and empathetic article with the same takeaways, and without the inflammatory tone.

<comment><USER5> You beat me to the punch. This article says more about the author than it does about the candidate.

Obviously, the candidate didn't want to talk about his English major, but the author kept hammering away from every angle anyway. Then, when the author doesn't get any meaty info on the English studies (AKA doesn't get his way), he takes his ball and goes home.

He tries to rationalize his way out of passing on the candidate, that the actual sales team enthusiastically approved: _we eventually did find someone for that position, with a lot less relevant experience. But she learned the job in about six weeks, and her upside enabled her to take on a lot of the unforeseen — and valuable — tasks that the previous candidate would have stumbled around._

<comment><USER6> _Obviously, the candidate didn't want to talk about his English major, but the author kept hammering away from every angle anyway._

Setting aside that the questions are obviously just designed to smoke out whether you're a human being or a meat robot: it's a sales position (account management is still sales). If you can't effectively shift a determined person off of something you don't want to talk about--for whatever reason--you are probably not somebody who a company wants in a sales/customer-facing role.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I don't get this author's reasoning here. Maybe the candidate partied all through school but got his career together after graduating. Maybe the candidate went through school and never really figured out what he wanted to do in life until after he graduated. Maybe three years into college the candidate realized he actually hated English but got the degree because he wanted to graduate in four years. The list goes on...

Just because someone didn't really do much with their life 5 years ago does not mean they're a useless loser today.

I noticed that the author is a "failed investment banker." Maybe there wouldn't be much the author could say about that job either - filling out spreadsheets and formatting Powerpoints are _totally_ fascinating activities.

</comment><comment><USER8> It sounds like he's trying to connect a candidate's well-roundedness and interpersonal fit with job ability. The last sentence says it all:

> But if a candidate can't even tell you why they liked their last job, or > what they got out of their college experience, or any of the million other > questions that speak to their basic _humanness_ … Then no amount of > experience will make them valuable.

That's his thesis I think, but he defends it very poorly.

> As it turned out, we eventually did find someone for that position, with a > lot less relevant experience. But she learned the job in about six weeks, > and her upside enabled her to take on a lot of the unforeseen — and valuable > — tasks that the previous candidate would have stumbled around.

How do you know this? The other guy couldn't name his favorite book therefore he couldn't do the job? What past experiences do you have to back this up?

> A person who has no hobbies, and can't even exaggerate one, almost certainly > lacks the ambition to make your company valuable. They are probably a loser.

Again, why? I don't consider no hobbies == no ambition to be self-evident. One common aspects of CEOs is that their ambition for running a company pushes out everything else from their life (for better or for worse). Having no life could speak of _too much_ ambition.

It just sounds like he's trying to justify cliquishness with vague correlations to being a good worker. "Loser" to him amounts to, "a person I do not like for my own personal reasons."

</comment><comment><USER9> Here is a sure-fire way to weed-out potential winners: base your judgement on some dumb interview questions or metrics.

I have failed many interviews. But anyone who I have ever worked for has praised the hell out of my work. Interviews have never been a good way of finding ideal candidates. The best way, IMHO:

Give the interviewee one week's worth of work as an "internship". If they care about working for you, they will do it. It gives them a chance to prove themselves, and you a chance to really evaluate how well they can do the job.

<comment><USER10> There is a reason why interviews don't work.

Because what you know is never a true indicator of what you can do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I've always felt like the best way to hire is to think in terms of teams instead of in terms of people. If you team is lacking communication skills, hire someone who have good communication skills, ignoring most other traits such as intelligence. If your team has great communication but is lacking in problem solving ability, then you should focus on hiring a really smart person, ignoring their communication skills. For this reason, I by default disagree with any article that decrees a certain trait that is "un-hirable"

The best team I was every on was a team that was basically hired randomly. The boss had tons of money (rich daddy was investor) and needed to hire 10+ devs pronto. Some people on the team were idiots, some were brilliant, some were communicative, some weren't, etc. No one was perfect individually, but we were all perfect as a whole.

</comment><comment><USER12> The author of this article is a loser. (But I give him props for acknowledging in his author profile,

<http://pandodaily.com/author/goldbergbryan/>

"Previously, he was a failed investment banker." AFTER EDIT: and remember, he introduced the word "loser" into the thread by how he chose the title for his blog post.) Maybe he'll be a winner in the future, and I wish him well, but I wouldn't advise following his hiring procedures. He has hiring authority at a business corporation, but he hasn't done even elementary research on company hiring procedures. He writes, "But then it was time for him to interview with me. I didn't ask him very many questions about sales, advertising operations, invoicing, collections, or any of the handful of other tactical skills we wanted. I just grilled him on the bottom fourth of his resume — you know, the one about hobbies and college."

And he thinks that by doing that he is identifying winners, even as he is proud of his ignorance of about a century of research on company hiring procedures. There are many discussions here on HN about company hiring procedures. From participants in earlier discussions I have learned about many useful references on the subject, which I have gathered here in a FAQ file. The review article by Frank L. Schmidt and John E. Hunter, "The Validity and Utility of Selection Models in Personnel Psychology: Practical and Theoretical Implications of 85 Years of Research Findings," Psychological Bulletin, Vol. 124, No. 2, 262-274

[http://mavweb.mnsu.edu/howard/Schmidt%20and%20Hunter%201998%...](http://mavweb.mnsu.edu/howard/Schmidt%20and%20Hunter%201998%20Validity%20and%20Utility%20Psychological%20Bulletin.pdf)

sums up, current to 1998, a meta-analysis of much of the HUGE peer-reviewed professional literature on the industrial and organizational psychology devoted to business hiring procedures. There are many kinds of hiring criteria, such as in-person interviews, telephone interviews, resume reviews for job experience, checks for academic credentials, personality tests, and so on. There is much published study research on how job applicants perform after they are hired in a wide variety of occupations.

[http://www.siop.org/workplace/employment%20testing/testtypes...](http://www.siop.org/workplace/employment%20testing/testtypes.aspx)

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: If you are hiring for any kind of job in the United States, prefer a work-sample test as your hiring procedure. If you are hiring in most other parts of the world, use a work-sample test in combination with a general mental ability test.

The overall summary of the industrial psychology research in reliable secondary sources is that two kinds of job screening procedures work reasonably well. One is a general mental ability (GMA) test (an IQ-like test, such as the Wonderlic personnel screening test). Another is a work-sample test, where the applicant does an actual task or group of tasks like what the applicant will do on the job if hired. (But the calculated validity of each of the two best kinds of procedures, standing alone, is only 0.54 for work sample tests and 0.51 for general mental ability tests.) Each of these kinds of tests has about the same validity in screening applicants for jobs, with the general mental ability test better predicting success for applicants who will be trained into a new job. Neither is perfect (both miss some good performers on the job, and select some bad performers on the job), but both are better than any other single-factor hiring procedure that has been tested in rigorous research, across a wide variety of occupations. So if you are hiring for your company, it's a good idea to think about how to build a work-sample test into all of your hiring processes.

Because of a Supreme Court decision in the United States (the decision does not apply in other countries, which have different statutes about employment), it is legally risky to give job applicants general mental ability tests such as a straight-up IQ test (as was commonplace in my parents' generation) as a routine part of hiring procedures. The Griggs v. Duke Power, 401 U.S. 424 (1971) case

[http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=8655598674229196...](http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=8655598674229196978&q=Griggs+Duke+Power&hl=en&as_sdt=2,24)

interpreted a federal statute about employment discrimination and held that a general intelligence test used in hiring that could have a "disparate impact" on applicants of some protected classes must "bear a demonstrable relationship to successful performance of the jobs for which it was used." In other words, a company that wants to use a test like the Wonderlic, or like the SAT, or like the current WAIS or Stanford-Binet IQ tests, in a hiring procedure had best conduct a specific validation study of the test related to performance on the job in question. Some companies do the validation study, and use IQ-like tests in hiring. Other companies use IQ-like tests in hiring and hope that no one sues (which is not what I would advise any company). Note that a brain- teaser-type test used in a hiring procedure could be challenged as illegal if it can be shown to have disparate impact on some job applicants. A company defending a brain-teaser test for hiring would have to defend it by showing it is supported by a validation study demonstrating that the test is related to successful performance on the job. Such validation studies can be quite expensive. (Companies outside the United States are regulated by different laws. One other big difference between the United States and other countries is the relative ease with which workers may be fired in the United States, allowing companies to correct hiring mistakes by terminating the employment of the workers they hired mistakenly. The more legal protections a worker has from being fired, the more reluctant companies will be about hiring in the first place.)

The social background to the legal environment in the United States is explained in many books about hiring procedures

[http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=SRv- GZkw6...](http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=SRv- GZkw6TEC&oi=fnd&pg=PA271&dq=Validity+and+Utility+of+Selection+Models+in+Personnel+Psychology&ots=iCXkgXrlOV&sig=ctblj9SW2Dth7TceaFSNIdVMoEw#v=onepage&q=Validity%20and%20Utility%20of%20Selection%20Models%20in%20Personnel%20Psychology&f=false)

[http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=SRv- GZkw6...](http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=SRv- GZkw6TEC&oi=fnd&pg=PA95&dq=Validity+and+Utility+of+Selection+Models+in+Personnel+Psychology&ots=iCXkgXrnMW&sig=LKLi- deKtnP20VYZo9x0jfvqzLI#v=onepage&q=Validity%20and%20Utility%20of%20Selection%20Models%20in%20Personnel%20Psychology&f=false)

Some of the social background appears to be changing in the most recent few decades, with the prospect for further changes.

<http://intl-pss.sagepub.com/content/17/10/913.full>

[http://www.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/fryer/files/Fryer_R...](http://www.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/fryer/files/Fryer_Racial_Inequality.pdf)

[http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=frfUB3GWl...](http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=frfUB3GWlMYC&oi=fnd&pg=PA9&dq=Validity+and+Utility+of+Selection+Models+in+Personnel+Psychology+%22predictive+validity%22+Duke+Power&ots=5O9Hx_E1vY&sig=g-zERWztBWq3h4guEuv9VVkTh8I#v=onepage&q=Validity%20and%20Utility%20of%20Selection%20Models%20in%20Personnel%20Psychology%20%22predictive%20validity%22%20Duke%20Power&f=false)

Previous discussion on HN pointed out that the Schmidt & Hunter (1998) article showed that multi-factor procedures work better than single-factor procedures, a summary of that article we can find in the current professional literature, for example "Reasons for being selective when choosing personnel selection procedures" (2010) by Cornelius J. König, Ute-Christine Klehe, Matthias Berchtold, and Martin Kleinmann:

"Choosing personnel selection procedures could be so simple: Grab your copy of Schmidt and Hunter (1998) and read their Table 1 (again). This should remind you to use a general mental ability (GMA) test in combination with an integrity test, a structured interview, a work sample test, and/or a conscientiousness measure."

[http://geb.uni- giessen.de/geb/volltexte/2012/8532/pdf/prepri...](http://geb.uni- giessen.de/geb/volltexte/2012/8532/pdf/preprint_j.1468_2389.2010.00485.x.pdf)

But the 2010 article notes, looking at actual practice of companies around the world, "However, this idea does not seem to capture what is actually happening in organizations, as practitioners worldwide often use procedures with low predictive validity and regularly ignore procedures that are more valid (e.g., Di Milia, 2004; Lievens & De Paepe, 2004; Ryan, McFarland, Baron, & Page, 1999; Scholarios & Lockyer, 1999; Schuler, Hell, Trapmann, Schaar, & Boramir, 2007; Taylor, Keelty, & McDonnell, 2002). For example, the highly valid work sample tests are hardly used in the US, and the potentially rather useless procedure of graphology (Dean, 1992; Neter & Ben-Shakhar, 1989) is applied somewhere between occasionally and often in France (Ryan et al., 1999). In Germany, the use of GMA tests is reported to be low and to be decreasing (i.e., only 30% of the companies surveyed by Schuler et al., 2007, now use them)."

Integrity tests have limited validity standing alone, but appear to have significant incremental validity when added to a general mental ability test or work-sample test.

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

[http://apps.opm.gov/ADT/Content.aspx?page=3-06&JScript=1](http://apps.opm.gov/ADT/Content.aspx?page=3-06&JScript=1)

<http://www.princeton.edu/~ota/disk2/1990/9042/9042.PDF>

[http://www.hotelschool.cornell.edu/research/chr/pubs/reports...](http://www.hotelschool.cornell.edu/research/chr/pubs/reports/abstract-14602.html)

Winners exist. Learn from them.

<comment><USER13> Author is definitely a winner. He founded Bleacher Report. Disclaimer: I work there.

It's fine to disagree, but it's a pretty lame attack him based on a selected portion of his bio.

<comment><USER3> _But it's a pretty lame attack him based on a selected portion of his bio._

This comment is like 10,000 spoons, when all you need is one spoon.

<comment><USER14> The lyric is actually "when all you need is a knife" --- but that might have been intentional on your part, Thomas?

<comment><USER3> I like to strike my little blow against how little irony is actually in that song.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> It's quite true. Losers exist. Don't work for them.

</comment><comment><USER16> Maybe he didn't like English Literature - his passion was film, or programming, or architecture and he discovered it later (and he couldn't change his major then). Or his college had lousy Film teachers or didn't offer any programming/architecture classes so he decided to go with English even though he didn't like it. Or maybe he partied all college, and then graduated and found more about the "real" world and got his act together.

I agree (in general) with wanting employees that aren't single-minded and have no hobby/passion outside of their work, but in this particular case I absolutely disagree with author's decision (based on his article).

</comment><comment><USER17> Idiot assholes hiring people based on 'clever' interview techniques exist. Don't work for them.

<comment><USER18> <http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html>

<comment><USER17> u r a self-important dilettante!!!!!!!!!!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The word "Loser" might be a bit off putting, but if you can get past that, the approach the author of the article describes is a good way of getting to the core of the person you're interviewing.

<comment><USER20> Not really the core of the person, it's more like the FizzBuzz to verify that they have some kind of basic personality and the ability to talk about things.

That's fine, but hardly groundbreaking. I haven't done many job interviews in my life, but the kind of questions he suggests seem common enough.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> The author might have a point. The world is filled with automatons, without passion or even mensurable interests. He might be right in not hiring the candidate, but we cannot know if he was, in fact, a 'loser' (by some definition of 'loser').

It might be the case that the candidate actually didn't find academy very enjoyable and spent all day drinking instead. Which most do, at some point. In that case, he could've been too shy to admit it, or did admit it and the author was too obtuse to change the subject.

See, we are dealing with his perception. If the candidate could write his angle, then we could try to infer something. It might even be the case that the candidate (with lots of experience) found the interview to be meaningless and boring and wanted to leave.

And generic answers are a nice way to end a conversation.

</comment><comment><USER22> Let me get this straight. The author asserts the following:

 _Lesser managers will try to stump candidates with horrible brain teasers along the lines of "Describe a time you got into a bad situation and resolved it effectively?" — or crap like that._

What hard-hitting, incisive questions does the author ask instead?

 _Which of your previous jobs did you enjoy the most?_

 _What do you think of our web site?_

 _Tell me about your hobbies..._

You've got to be kidding me. These are all soft-ball questions. What amazes me is that the author's company already has a hiring process in place. But he feels justified in abandoning this process at the end when an interviewee doesn't provide correct responses to an arbitrary list of soft-ball questions.

</comment><comment><USER23> Ok, I read it, I _knew_ it was link bait going in, and felt it tweak "Those Buttons" that such things do. I'd like that 5 minutes of my life back.

TL;DR summary I got from it was "I use these questions to decide if I'll enjoy working with someone, and I don't hire them if I don't like their answers." and interspersed with a bit of aspersions on people who aren't good at "small talk."

One of the interesting things that is oft overlooked in the angst of hiring is actually the angst of firing. Really. I mean the only reason you want to be super super careful about hiring someone is because if they don't work out then you've wasted that time. But if you can lower the cost of hiring enough, and make firing pretty straight forward, then the economics can change.

One summer I worked for McDonalds (the fast food chain) for all of four weeks, two in a 'training store' and then two in my assigned store. I was fired pretty quickly. During my training (hamburger flipping) the store manager explained that (at the time) McDonalds would hire anyone with a pulse and no criminal record. They would then train them briefly, and watch them closely, and decide early on if they wanted to keep them around.

My "problem" was that the store had an algorithm for queuing up burgers which, from my perspective at the grill, was broken. Our store had way more people who ordered Quarter Pounders (one 4 oz patty) than BigMacs (two 2 oz patties). The algorithm though said you had to 'start' twice as many 2 oz patties as 4 oz patties just before the lunch rush. We always were throwing out 2oz patties (you can't sell them after they've been on the warmer too long). So I started cutting back on the 2oz patties I started. Big mistake :-). Got "the talk" which was "We hire people to do things the way we want them done, you may not agree with how things are done but if you want to keep working here you have to do what we say." Silly me (it was only my second 'real' job) I kept trying to find ways to optimize the system and not get caught. At the two week point my manager recognized that I was a 'trouble maker' and couldn't follow instructions. End of my career right there.

Now the moral of the story isn't to make fun of McDonalds but to point out that they made acquiring good "fits" for the company straight forward by building a lighter weight hire/fire process than most places have. Folks I know who have worked at Microsoft suggested they had systems which did something similar, hiring at temps, then converting to full time. This made it easier to fire people who were temps in the first place. Google kinda of did that with their 'slotting' process.

</comment><comment><USER24> There's some good and bad stuff in this post.

The good part:

"[these questions] can help identify winners even amongst the nervous, "I don't interview well" types of people who may warm up and shine on the job. And I've hired a lot of great people who don't interview especially well. But when I jump into the above questions, they are able to speak eloquently to how dynamic and thoughtful they are as people."

So yeah this is a technique that's worked for him to help "find winners" that he otherwise wouldn't have.

The bad part is, rather obviously, the assumption that anyone that doesn't pass his test is a loser:

"her upside enabled her to take on a lot of the unforeseen — and valuable — tasks that the previous candidate would have stumbled around."

This is a serious case of choice supportive bias and because it's the focus of the article people are justifiably piling on the author. No you don't know that person is a loser. If it was that easy to find losers the billions of dollars used in hiring would have found this out already.

</comment><comment><USER25> What if this guy was shy or a bit of an introvert? I know if I were in that situation I may not have all the "correct" answers, especially if I were in a room with someone like the author. If you make me feel wanted or interesting I can talk about anything, if you make me uncomfortable and sound like a jerk? Especially in a job interview, you can believe I'd be nervous and may not have all the best answers. As far as hobbies go, I like auto racing, but other than that all my time is devoted to startuping and freelance work, which I love dearly. Books? Last one I read was How to Win Friends and Influence People and other than that, I can't remember the last one I've read. All that to say, maybe this guy didn't click with the author, but doesn't give you the right to call him a loser. That's just bullshit.

</comment><comment><USER26> "There's a Beck song about people like that."

 _(this is song two on the album / this is the album right here / burn the album)

tonight the city is full of morgues / and all the toilets are overflowing / there's shopping malls coming out of the walls / as we walk out among the manure

that's why / I pay no mind / I pay no mind / I pay no mind

give the finger to the rock 'n' roll singer / as he's dancing upon your paycheck / the sales climb high through the garbage-pail sky / like a giant dildo crushing the sun

that's why / I pay no mind / sleep in slime / I just got signed

so get out your lead-pipe pipe dreams / get out your ten-foot flags / the insects are huge and the poison's all been used / and the drugs won't kill your day job...honey

that's why / I pay no mind / I pay no mind / I pay no mind

that's why / i pay no mind [x7]_

</comment><comment><USER27> "As it turned out, we eventually did find someone for that position, with a lot less relevant experience. But she learned the job in about six weeks, and her upside enabled her to take on a lot of the unforeseen — and valuable — tasks that the previous candidate would have stumbled around."

Could you tell me a bit about your hobby of predicting the future, Mr Goldberg?

Who would you say are your top 5 clairvoyants?

</comment><comment><USER28> Liking solitaire doesn't make someone a loser.

</comment><comment><USER29> This article came across as offensive. Honestly if a company is actively classifying people as losers, it's not really the type of company I'd like to work at. A better hiring policy might be 'hire amazing people' and then look for the amazing in people. This approach is so negative and off-putting.

</comment><comment><USER30> I find this video quite relevant for this particular candidate, <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2L_cGjQSR80>

</comment><comment><USER31> Not a very insightful read. Again, not sure why so many votes for this post. But differences exist.

</comment><comment><USER32> I thought this article was informative. It's good info for anyone not wanting to work for a tool.

</comment><comment><USER33> So who should hire the "losers", then?

The creative, ambitious, energetic people have a lot of leadership potential and can do great work if motivated properly, but also fall down on the undignified grunt work that's at least half of what most companies need to have done (or think they need).

If you're hiring for a company like Valve that expects people to work at a high creative level, then these interview questions are good, because you need to select the people who will do well in a high-autonomy environment. If you're just looking to get grunt work done without complaint, you're probably better off favoring a person with a bland personality who can get the job done.

Much of the trouble that companies create for themselves is in hiring the most appealing people and then putting them on mediocre work.</comment>


Gifted kids see advanced school programs cut - <AUTHOR> http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/05/02/MN2N1D26NV.DTL

<comment><USER2> "'We have countries like India, Singapore, China, and they realize the future productivity of their country is an investment in their intellectual and creative resources,' said gifted education expert Joseph Renzulli."

Yeah, but those countries concentrate on making sure that the average and below average pupils have rather better and more challenging curricula than most pupils in the United States.</comment>


Tell HN: San Francisco Amazon Mechanical Turk Meetup - <AUTHOR>

We are having a meetup for people using Amazon's Mechanical Turk at our office in San Francisco June 10th.  People directly using Mechanical Turk for interesting applications are especially encouraged to come.  We're going to have the Amazon VP of Mechanical Turk on hand for Q/A and we have a great lineup of interesting people talking about what they're up to.<p>Please RSVP here: http://www.meetup.com/Amazon-Mechanical-Turk-Crowdsourcing-Work-Meetup-Group.  My company is Dolores Labs (blog.doloreslabs.com) and we've built an application on top of Turk to manage data quality. <comment><USER2> Dolores Labs has great blog posts on some data mining and visualization experiments, definitely worth checking out: <http://blog.doloreslabs.com/>

Glad to see they're hosting a MTurk meetup. I'd love to attend, but it conflicts with another event.

</comment><comment><USER3> this should be a lot of fun. they have a great space and i heard they have a whole line-up of awesome, top-notch people coming. not one to miss.

</comment><comment><USER4> Love the Turk!</comment>


Unroll.me scans your complete mail data and has a tremendous security hole - <AUTHOR> http://startup-stuttgart.de/unroll-me-complete-mail-data-tremendous-security-hole/ Yesterday, I had a short discussion with Kathleen, my co-founder, about the tool and I pointed out the scale of data mining unroll.me is running and the implications for privacy and data security. As I wanted to know how these unroll mails look like, Kathleen forwarded one to me. And then – boom! I could access _her_ whole unroll.me account by just clicking on the rollup mail she forwarded! No need to log in anywhere, I just could access her subscriptions, doing whatever I  wanted to with her data. THIS. IS. A. TREMENDOUS. SECURITY. HOLE! <comment><USER2> In my (not actually humble at all) opinion, Unroll.me is a security hole by itself. "Oh yeah, I'll willingly give all of my e-mail data to a third party, what could possibly go wrong?" Although this article is fascinating news, it sounds like "in addition to the hole created by iceberg impact, Titanic also has open portholes above the waterline".

(Before you start pointing out that my e-mail provider has my data - I'm sort of aware of that, and find it as a necessary evil to keep my e-mails flowing; it doesn't follow that I should therefore give access to anyone and everyone)

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm not sure if this is actually a problem? You wouldn't share your password- recovery e-mail with anyone either?

I guess it's not the best thing to do (and not telling you to not share that mail), but a tremendous security hole? Are the login-tokens they use in the URL guessable? It not, I think that might be a little bit exaggerated...

<comment><USER2> "Summary of some mostly uninteresting e-mails" doesn't _quite_ feel as important or sensitive as "Password recovery e-mail". Very unintuitive, very surprising.</comment></comment>


30hz Brain Stimulation Reduces Dyslexia Deficits - <AUTHOR> https://neurosciencenews.com/dyslexia-brain-stimulation-16988/ <comment><USER2> Wouldn't it be interesting if the refresh rate of hollywood movies (~24 Hz) is somehow connected to how well our brains like that frequency...

</comment><comment><USER3> I wonder if cranking up a bass amp to back-massaging levels and playing open B notes (30.8Hz) on a 5 (or 6) string bass guitar also helps :D

<comment><AUTHOR> We will test that with a tactile speaker, for multisensory effects.

Hmm, could also align the refresh rate of the screen -- make a comparison between say 25, 30, 40 and 50hz...</comment></comment>


What Would Happen If Mortgage Brokers Disappeared? - <AUTHOR> https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/insights/what-would-happen-if-mortgage-brokers-disappeared <comment><USER2> Startup project anyone?</comment>