Justice Dept. Revives Push to Mandate a Way to Unlock Phones - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/24/us/politics/unlock-phones-encryption.html <comment><USER2> _The debate receded when the Trump administration took office_

Comey was the key advocate in this during the Obama years. He spoke for years advocating backdoors... even after Trump took office. Here's an article from March 2017 when he advocated an international backdoor[0]. Here's one in May 2017 when he backed Feinsteins decrypt bill[1].

It receded because Comey was pushed out. And it took a while for Wray to come in and make it an issue again.

It's worth remembering that this is not some faceless government action. They're just people who are lobbying for the change. Remember to contact your representatives regularly to advocate your position on these issues.

0\. [https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20170327/10121437009/james...](https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20170327/10121437009/james- comeys-new-idea-international-encryption-backdoor-partnership.shtml)

1\. [https://techcrunch.com/2017/05/03/fbi-director-comey- backs-n...](https://techcrunch.com/2017/05/03/fbi-director-comey-backs-new- feinstein-push-for-decrypt-bill/)

<comment><USER3> The reason this story even exists is because this issue of "lawful access" is _not_ due to any individual personalities. It's clearly a priority at an institutional level, including the White House:

>Against that backdrop, law enforcement officials have revived talks inside the executive branch over whether to ask Congress to enact legislation mandating the access mechanisms. The Trump White House circulated a memo last month among security and economic agencies outlining ways to think about solving the problem, officials said.

<comment><USER2> Yes, I'm sure they have found allies and people that agree with them. That doesn't mean the debate is over or lost. If everyone in government agreed on this issue, they would have passed it years ago.

Obama's whitehouse was the reason the FBI never got very far on this issue. Even up until he left, all he could agree to was that it was an issue and solutions should be looked into. Obviously Trump is much more open to passing something on this than Obama was. But note Congress never put a bill on Obama's desk... even the floated Compliance with Court Orders Act of 2016 got little congressional support, and ended up never being introduced.

<comment><USER4> Obama's Whitehouse? You mean the one that had the NSA spy on all of us?

<comment><USER5> The NSA was spying on us before Obama took office.

<comment><USER6> And Obama didn't end it, and by all accounts expanded on it. Almost every anti-privacy action started by GWB was expanded under Obama. And Trump is why it probably never should have been allowed. The abuse of the Patriot Act in and of itself should be reason enough to fight anything similar, or expansive in the erosion of personal liberty.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I would really like to be a fly on the wall, when American diplomats are going to try to explain to its allies that them having a backdoor to all cellphones in the world is a good idea. Then capping it all of by coming up with a strategy of how to sell this idea to their electorate, which some places, have a very dim view of American privacy laws.

In addition if Google and Apple builds some backdoor into their products, any regime of any country which Google and Apple operates in will demand to get the same backdoor. How are they going to not give them that, they won't be able to.

I'm sure the Justice Department, and the FBI does not care about foreign implications of their wishes, but their are parts of the American government that has to. It is deeply naive to believe that something like this will fly on the international stage.

<comment><USER8> > any regime of any country which Google and Apple operates in will demand to > get the same backdoor

Exactly. So we end up with 1000s of people (many services from many countries) that have authorized access to your phone. This cannot be contained in any way. Not something to look forward to....

<comment><USER9> Any backdoor would probably be per-country so you have to pay attention to what country your phone is registered in.

<comment><USER10> Why do you think this? The manufacturer is obliged to maintain a backdoor, and give access on demand.

The US is a big enough market that they could force this to be built. Other countries will just write similar laws to get the same access to the same backdoors.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Trump's election should really have been the last nail in the coffin on this kind of stuff, at least in the US. Either you hate him (and thus don't want him or anyone like him in the future to have this kind of access), or you love him and don't want anyone who hates him to ever gain this kind of access. A polarizing political figure should erode trust in unrestrained state power unless you believe he's the last President ever.

<comment><USER12> > A polarizing political figure should erode trust in unrestrained state power > unless you believe he's the last President ever.

How big a percentage of the electorate would back canceling the next election cycle?

<comment><USER11> That to me seems like the biggest problem with parliamentary systems (which have many other advantages, especially for new parties, local constituencies, etc.). Unless there's a sovereign, or some other system, it's often left up to the sitting government to decide when elections will be called.

<comment><USER13> That's not true for most parliamentary systems. In fact it's only customary in the UK to arbitrarily call elections when poll numbers are up. But even in the UK, there is obviously a maximum term between elections. And calling elections without reason isn't actually possible anymore. Theresa May had to jump through some hoops to almost lose her majority last summer.

In the US, a president who leaves office before the expiration of their term is replaced by the Vice President (or the next in the line of succession if there is no Vice President). In Germany, a chancellor can only recalled by electing a replacement. If they resign or die, the President gets to make a few decision, and they will usually task the leader of the largest party to find themselves a majority. Only after two or three failures of that process would a President turn to early elections.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> If all the hacks, breaches and vulnerabilities from the past 5 years have taught us anything, it should be that security is hard enough to do without weaknesses intentionally baked in.

</comment><comment><USER15> I think that Apple's concessions to the Chinese government undermined the "moral high ground" that Tim Cook once stood upon.

</comment><comment><USER16> I'm going to bet that this law will come with a provision that says researchers that try to break or report bugs in whatever system they come up with could get jail time.

</comment><comment><USER17> So the Justice department wants Huawei to give a key to their American customer's phones to the Chinese government?

<comment><USER9> No? That doesn't follow.

<comment><USER10> It kind of does. I may have misinterpreted the article, but the proposal seems to be forcing hardware and software vendors into key-escrow schemes.

So the decryption key on your phone (or perhaps a key to the key, same thing AFAICT) would have to be stored by the manufacturer so that it could be accessed by various US government agencies.

If it's a Chinese company, that means the Chinese government would have access, too.

And if such a law and precedent was set by the US, the likely reaction from other countries would be to enact similar laws.

So, lots of people all over the world will be able decrypt your data, for lots of reasons.

<comment><USER9> One would hope that for phones sold in the US the keys would be escrowed somewhere that only the US could get to them. Likewise for other countries.

<comment><USER10> Ah, so no legal tests all. All keys straight to the government, for always-on, total surveillance for the entire population?

I personally wouldn't hope for that.

<comment><USER9> No, I didn't say that either.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Just to be clear, these guys are in favor of China, Russia, Iran and ISIS having back doors into devices used in the US for communication of potentially very privileged information.

Once backdoors are introduced, that is the outcome that will come of this.

</comment><comment><USER13> There's a lot of conspiracies and security absolutism in this thread. So while I agree that this policy is misguided, I think it's important for the community to address the actual issues raised, and not some strawmen about the government preparing to enslave all citizen etc.

Imagine you're a high-minded, fair, and absolutely law-abiding FBI officer charged with solving some white collar crime, like corruption or fraud.

You started some time in the 80s. The usual MO was to get a warrant and search someone's house and office. You'd find 60 to 100 binders full of letters, transaction records, and org charts for this criminal enterprise you're investigation.

Today, you find an iPhone and a smug banker telling you take it. "The new model is coming out anyway." Then, he orders a Vodka Soda from his butler and you slink out, iPhone in hand.

Just to be clear (again): I absolutely do not think that this scenario is reason enough to mandate backdoors. But I am similarly convinced that it happens, probably quite often. And that it would be rather frustrating to deal with.

It will be far easier to convince people if we start acknowledging what they already think to be true, to avoid hyperbole, and not to obscure our real motivation behind some rather ridiculous claims of technical impossibility[0[.

[0[: bitcoin already has 2-of-3 multisig, so 1-of-2 shouldn't really be impossible if anybody, you know, _tried_

</comment><comment><USER18> Why would the government push an backdoor that would expose their own citizens to more hacking? Almost seems like they're just trying to look tough on crime but won't actually do it.

</comment><comment><USER19> How do you have secure encryption with proprietary backdoors? Maybe this will wake people up to only using open source operating systems.

<comment><USER20> Any encryption scheme with a backdoor is insecure, by definition.

<comment><USER21> Not if you change the security definition.

Which they will. All they are asking for is some form of key escrow; which can (and has) been given a reasonable security definition.

The problem is that secure implementations of key escrow are much harder; and (given the amount of use the escrowed key will get), certainly going to be broken in practice.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> What do people think about "crypto crumple zones" (basically crypto that costs $1B to brute-force)? [https://www.usenix.org/node/208172](https://www.usenix.org/node/208172)

<comment><USER22> Okay --- I'll iterate the algorithm a thousand times. Now I'm back to respectable strength.

Besides, any selective "break glass" scheme is going to be vulnerable to arguments about the need for urgent access to prevent terror or something.

Either the population has access to strong crypto or it doesn't --- and technological prohibition never actually works. You may be able to make it easy to crack phones used by the naive, but you can't stop determined people writing and running software.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Why do we need this? If this has been such a huge problem for them over the last decade shouldn't we have seen a rise in crime rates because criminals are having an easier time getting away? Seems like it's been the opposite.

</comment><comment><USER6> The question I have for anyone pushing for this, is do you want a foreign gov't to have the same access? Because as soon as you require this in the US, that's exactly what will happen.

</comment><comment><USER24> I was hoping that it was going to be an article about how users should be able to unlock their own phones and get root access without any risk of bricking them.

</comment><comment><USER25> And here I thought it was to mandate unlocking the bootloader and radio bands, alas, power only works one way: to take away rights.

<comment><USER26> Haha, I was right there with you. Ah, those fleeting moments of naive optimism.

<comment><USER27> Well, various people want the government to do something to the "other," and these people just disagree about what they want the government to force people or groups of people (i.e. corporations) to do. Others just think we should stop letting the government force anything without substantial data that indicates an actual probable reduction of some negative behavior.

I think Apple has the will to fight this and I think a strong 4th amendment case can be made. Freedom of the people must be protected.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Apple, Amazon, Netflix and Google will need to work hard to distance themselves from Facebook in the public imagination. They're presently all "big tech" FAANGs. Until that happens, Silicon Valley's political priorities will suffer in D.C.

<comment><USER29> While the political priorities of telecoms, oil companies, the pharmaceutical cartel, and banking continue to set the political agenda. Sure, that makes sense. Let's ignore one of the larger sections of our economy and opt to punish the bad actors at the expense of the whole industry in this one sector alone.

<comment><USER28> Tech countered many political interests. With tech weakened, the interests they were defending have no defences.

We must reform money's role in our democracy, but basic political balances are intrinsic to the game. In retrospect, privacy advocates may have relied too heavily on the support of a single segment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> This is somewhat unrelated, but I really think 4-5 years terms for government anywhere in the world is way too long. You elect them, they break promises and pass all kinds of crazy laws, and still get to stay and keep doing damage for 5 years, after which they might even get elected again because most people won't remember what happened 5 years back.

It might not be feasible, but a way for citizens to send everyone home easily every 1-2 years if they screw up would be beneficial.

<comment><USER31> Short election term will lead to prevention of passing of ground-breaking laws that goes against majority demographic

<comment><USER30> Yes, exactly. If the majority doesn't agree with it, it shouldn't pass.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Wow. One of the people working on this is a former security guy at Intel. Makes me wonder if meltdown and specter were engineered into chips on purpose.

<comment><USER33> Meltdown and Spectre aren't backdoors or simple mistakes. They are the unforeseen consequences of speculative execution. Also, other companies' processors are affected too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I think some type of "lawful access" was inevitable. Law enforcement all over the world weren't going to just let the status quo fly.

If it's going to happen hopefully Apple can do some jujutsu and get GDPR in the US out of it as part of an omnibus bill [1].

[1] [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-24/apple- s-t...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-24/apple-s-tim-cook- calls-for-more-regulations-on-data-privacy)

<comment><USER16> Nothing is "inevitable". Laws are constructs of society, ultimately. Cutting hands for stealing, death penalty for smoking marijuana, forcing people to not use end-to-end encryption - it can all be undone by a vigilant and activist society.

If everyone has a self-defeatist "inevitable" attitude on the other hand...

<comment><USER3> Don't get me wrong, I hope Apple (and the rest of the tech industry) try to kill the baby in the crib. But it'd be sticking your head in the sand and intellectually dishonest to say that law enforcement doesn't have a legitimate interest in pursuing this and are just going to give up because some tech people say it shouldn't happen.

At least this way something of value is gained.

<comment><USER34> Law enforcement also has a legitimate interest in being able to walk into my house, examine and copy my stuff, and make sure I'm not doing anything against the law. They also have a legitimate interest in stopping me on the street at random and demanding my identity, proof of citizenship, a blood sample (to make sure I'm not doing any drugs that are against the law), and a list of the people that I've talked to today, and about what subjects.

Oh, that's not "legitimate"? I've seen serious proposals for those in the past few years, and not a few actual instances. All invoking the L-word.

What do people mean by "legitimate" then? Mostly, I see it as begging the question, an attempt to redefine and color the argument. Of _course_ their interests are "legitimate" \-- whose are not? Does passing a law make something legitimate? What about an unconstitutional law?

History has proven that capabilities like the ones proposed are always abused by power, and that compromised security systems grow more compromised over time.

My head is not in the sand.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I like the idea of focusing on the device problem rather than the transport problem.

I'm personally completely ok with the special devices specific unlock code suggested. It's not universal, and requires the government to go through the company first who at some level at least have a stake in me believing my device is secure.

The insentives seem to work and I still have reasonable security.

<comment><USER12> Security is pretty binary in this sense. It is either secure or it isn´t.</comment></comment>


Quadrocopters can now fly through thrown hoops, the end really is nigh (video) - <AUTHOR> http://www.engadget.com/2010/09/16/quadrocopters-can-now-fly-through-thrown-hoops-the-end-really-i/

<comment><USER2> That's just jaw-dropping.

Can't wait for these things to enter the mass market.

Just imagine the possibilities when they add some sort of "grabbing" device (robotic hand) and teach them to open doors, carry stuff from A to B, etc.

<comment><USER3> Leave your jaw on the floor, a quadrocopter will pick it up for you shortly.

[http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/13/revenge-of-the- quadrocopt...](http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/13/revenge-of-the- quadrocopters-now-they-move-in-packs-video/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Is there any information available about this project, I mean hardware, codebase etc.</comment>


Undiagnosed adult ADHD could cost UK billions a year, report finds - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/feb/15/undiagnosed-adult-adhd-could-cost-uk-billions-a-year-report-finds <comment><USER2> Obviously this can only be solved with more medication! Remind me to buy extra Pfizer stock.

Edit: fair enough. I do realize people who are seriously affected benefit from these medications. I did not mean to trivialize their struggle. However, i do think the sheer number of people currently receiving these relatively heavy medications is alarming. I think overdiagnosis is a serious problem with adhd.

<comment><USER3> My young daughter as ADD/ADHD. It is no joke. ADD/ADHD is an executive function deficit, with tremendous negative impact on one's ability to regulate behavior, resist distractions, plan and persist through a plan. You can imagine how devastating that can be as you age and more and more is expected of you in terms of self-management. Deep shame, anxiety and depression as a result are common. Medication helps, sometimes a lot, and the objections against it, to my knowledge, are not rooted in evidence.

<comment><USER4> There are people who credit evidence, and people who believe in common sense, and while most of the the "common sense" people can eventually get enough shit kicked out of them by reality to learn to accept evidence, I'm half-convinced there's something deep going on here. Maybe it's cultural, maybe it's even deeper.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> What happens when diagnosis? Seeking help (add your own scare quotes) will get you amphetamines with an expensive monthly 5 minute refill appointment.

<comment><USER6> There are options other than amphetamines, and many of them are tried first because they are cheaper and have less side effects.

Not to mention that therapy and just knowing about the problem can help too.

<comment><USER7> You mean other stimulants? LSD works quite well, but is problematic for other reasons (social stigma, prison rape, etc).

<comment><USER6> No, I mean non-stimulant options like Strattera and Clonidine, and a few others that I don't know off the top of my head. Also there has been some studies that show some antidepressants can have positive effects on people with ADHD.

And like I said, there is also therapy and lifestyle changes that can have a huge impact as well. I'd say that the benefits of my therapy and the medication are about even in terms of effectiveness of managing my ADHD.

<comment><USER3> Can you write a little about your therapy? How does it work?

<comment><USER6> It is a bit weird calling it therapy, it feels more like a "one-on-one class on how to deal with ADHD". They gave me a lot of tools to help with it, as well as provided a good base "structure" which was important when I was first starting (which was over a decade ago now!)

Tools like how I greatly benefit from a very strict schedule that needs many things packed tightly together at some points, but very big gaps in others, and I need to follow it to the t. Tools like knowing that exercise and eating right help quite a lot, tools like how to structure my days and put external reminders or blocks up that can keep me on track. Tools like being able to figure out that I work well in COMPLETE silence, or a very chaotic atmosphere, but not much in between. And information about things like "hyperfocus" which is an ironic symptom of ADHD for many people, and ways that I can kind of "trigger" it sometimes and use it to my advantage (while making sure I set alarms to make sure I don't keep working until 9PM because I forgot what time it was and the last time I looked at a clock was 3 in the afternoon...)

They are basically just people that have dealt with ADHD before, and can help me find what works best for myself. Also, just talking to someone about how something you tried (either medication or lifestyle change) worked can be really eye opening. You never really think on your own about how something you tried in your life really affected it, and just verbalizing that helped dial in medication amounts and show the effectiveness of lifestyle changes.

<comment><USER3> Thanks a lot. Any references you can share?

<comment><USER6> Not really sorry. I'd recommend if you are looking to search for a therapist in your area that has experience dealing with adults with ADHD (or children if you are looking for someone else, or I guess are a child yourself... you never know online!)

The important thing is to go to the appointments, which was tough at first, but after a bit the appointments were the "anchor" that I started learning how to schedule my life around, and then I was eventually able to schedule the appointments around my life.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> A bit off topic, but can someone investigate how much legalized gambling costs the UK per year? Every town has at least two or three bookmakers in it, filled with the poorest residents gambling away their already paltry wages.

And what about council tax? What kind of government charges extra taxes to the renting population?

As an American in the UK, I see regressive taxes like this, and then just shake my head when the MPs start asking why nobody is buying houses anymore.

<comment><AUTHOR> The regulator of gambling might have numbers: [https://twitter.com/GamRegGB](https://twitter.com/GamRegGB)

Here's their website about statistics:

[http://www.gamblingcommission.gov.uk/news-action-and- statist...](http://www.gamblingcommission.gov.uk/news-action-and- statistics/News-action-and-statistics.aspx)

[http://www.gamblingcommission.gov.uk/news-action-and- statist...](http://www.gamblingcommission.gov.uk/news-action-and- statistics/Statistics-and-research/Statistics-and-research.aspx)

I think it's a huge problem. I'm especially worried about gambling (and alchol) adverts that are shown to children.

> And what about council tax? What kind of government charges extra taxes to > the renting population?

Council tax goes to local councils and is used to fund (alongside money from central government):

[https://www.lovemoney.com/news/50941/where-does-council- tax-...](https://www.lovemoney.com/news/50941/where-does-council-tax-money-go)

        Road maintenance, repairs and street lighting
        Local transport services like buses
        Children's social care
        Support for elderly and vulnerable
        Supporting children's education
        Preventing homelessness through social housing
        Libraries, arts, museums, leisure and recreation services
        Maintaining parks and open spaces
        Waste collection, recycling and disposal
        Street cleaning and flood defences
        Administration of licences, permits and housing benefit
        Planning and building control
        Other services like coroners, courts, registrars, elections and tax collection
        Long term investment

Before council tax (a rate based on the value of the property) we briefly had a poll tax (a rate per person). Poll tax caused literal riots. So, while there are problems with council tax it's less hated than poll tax.

<comment><USER8> Thanks for the insightful comment. I'm little more than a tourist, you've been dealing with this far longer than me. :P

From the statistics page:

> 48% of people have gambled in the past four weeks

That is mind blowing. Yet only 0.5% of people 16+ England identify as "problem gamblers." That means that roughly 1% of all gamblers identify as "problem gamblers." Of course, it's gotta be pretty bad before you admit to yourself you have a problem.

A more telling statistic would be the amount of money lost per gambler per month as a percent of their income. But no gambler knows how much they lost this month; indeed, that's probably part of the problem. Perhaps the law should require bookies to track each person's winnings/losings and show them a big red number for how much they've lost at that bookie.</comment></comment></comment>


Nginx with dynamic upstreams - <AUTHOR> http://tenzer.dk/nginx-with-dynamic-upstreams/

<comment><USER2> I spent a long time fighting this battle with nginx. I eventually came to the conclusion that while it was technically possible, it just wasn't worth the trouble (and yes, I tried various alternatives such as Tengine and OpenResty).

What I settled on was the following:

Ngninx for SSL termination in front of an haproxy load balancer. I wrote a simple Python script (92 lines of code) that spits out a new haproxy configuration and gracefully reloads haproxy whenever the DNS changes. That has (after fixing a bug or two in my code) been FAR more reliable than any other solution to this problem we've tried.

Bonus: haproxy is a superior load balancer with better runtime metrics and health checking options than nginx.

<comment><USER3> What part of the battle couldn't you solve? Doesn't the author's setting of the resolver directive work for you, or is there something I'm missing?

Also, the author doesn't mention it, but you can also set a custom cache timeout with the valid=Xs option.

[http://nginx.org/en/docs/http/ngx_http_core_module.html#reso...](http://nginx.org/en/docs/http/ngx_http_core_module.html#resolver)

<comment><USER2> It was not that reliable for us. We still had unexplained occurrences of IP caching and it's easy to fat finger the configuration and lose the resolving functionality. Anyway, as I mentioned haproxy has _vastly_ superior load balancing capabilities. Nginx still has a lot of work to do to match haproxy in this area.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've been working with nginx quite a bit recently for use as a reverse proxy in a containerized environment and have become quite disenfranchised with it.

For some reason it's the most popular reverse proxy for this sort of stuff, however it's not particularly well suited for it. We have this issue. We also have the lack of active upstream checks and any sort of upstream status reports. Both are hidden behind the nginx Plus paywall which is absurdly expensive in a micro-architecture world. There are various patches, Patches!?, you can apply but the documentation isn't fantastic and this is an extra bit of hassle we don't really deserve..

I think the open internet deserves a better reverse proxy TBH.

<comment><USER5> Have you looked into HAProxy? Health checks, SSL termination and a reasonable configuration DSL: [https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/an- introduc...](https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/an-introduction- to-haproxy-and-load-balancing-concepts)

<comment><USER4> I am acutely aware of HAProxy however the rest of the team is, no surprise I'm sure, familiar with nginx. Likely I'll end up doing the usual nginx->haproxy->backend chain again. HAPROXY appears to have an enterprise now(it may have had forever I just have not noticed) but it appears to be much more focused on value-add support and stack validation than hiding simple-to- implement stuff behind a paywall and open-core. This is more of a frustration with nginx which could be so much more for us if:

* They were not purposely holding back features so they can be pay-walled

* Re-compiling were not necessary to add functionality

* More cohesive modification ecosystem

I know I said "reverse proxy" which HAProxy is cleary the more superior, but I didn't mean to limit my statement to reverse proxies. nginx does have a lot of other functionality people rely on..

<comment><AUTHOR> Dynamic modules are on the road map, according to this article: [http://www.infoworld.com/article/2951849/web- services/nginx-...](http://www.infoworld.com/article/2951849/web- services/nginx-to-hop-on-http-2-train.html).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Kong [1] (nginx + lua) is planning to have this feature for free. This is the issue open for support for dynamic upstream [2].

[1] [https://github.com/mashape/kong](https://github.com/mashape/kong)

[2] [https://github.com/Mashape/kong/issues/157](https://github.com/Mashape/kong/issues/157)

<comment><USER7> Unfortunately kong still has a hard dependency on Cassandra.

[https://github.com/Mashape/kong/issues/331](https://github.com/Mashape/kong/issues/331)

<comment><USER8> Before the end of the year Kong will support Postgres.

<comment><USER7> That is fantastic news!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Here's an implementation that uses nginx's X-accel-* headers to perform dynamic routing:

[https://github.com/bninja/rump](https://github.com/bninja/rump)

These are what the routing rules look like:

[https://github.com/bninja/rump/blob/master/test/fixtures/set...](https://github.com/bninja/rump/blob/master/test/fixtures/settings/include.conf)

</comment><comment><USER10> Am I wrong for thinking that failure to honor the TTL in the first place is a bug?

<comment><USER11> It's worse than a bug, it's a Really Bad Design (tm). Bugs are usually unintentional, but this is a deliberate reinvention of a wheel (IP address caching) that doesn't need to be reinvented.

But this is not just nginx's fault. It's also Bad Design on the part of AWS because switching IP addresses this way means you can't keep a TCP socket open to an ELB machine for more than 60 seconds at a time because you never know when the routing rug is going to be yanked out from under you. This makes ELB useless for anything involving a persistent connection. No websockets for you!

<comment><AUTHOR> Regarding how the ELB works, then I think the AWS engineers have a different idea on how to implement stuff. AWS is very much a dynamic platform and the engineers seem to have embraced this when they came up with this solution.

It doesn't necessarily mean you can't use websockets through an ELB, it just means that you would need to be able to handle reconnects, but that shouldn't be a new challenge for any system relying on connections being open for long. Also, the load balancer servers doesn't switch every 60 seconds, you can have connections running for a lot longer than that. I would also assume the load balancers keep handling connections for a while after they were taken out of the DNS rotation, in order to make sure DNS caches are updated before the IP addresses stops working.

<comment><USER12> AWS support has said that ELBs will continue to accept connections (and use the correct backend) for at least an hour after the CNAME stops resolving to a particular IP.

<comment><USER11> Ah, I didn't know that. That makes a big difference.

But there's still a significant hole here: is there any way to get notified that this has happened other than polling the DNS?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Thank you for this, it's a decent start for me personally. I was previously using the DNS director in Varnish 3.x to do this which was removed in 4.x. The longer time goes on the more risk it is to be running older software so this has been a great help.

Oddly enough I'd never really considered nginx for the job despite using it to reverse proxy elsewhere. Sometimes you just need a poke in the right direction :)

Now I just need to figure a way to specify *.internaldomain so that nginx resolves www.example.com.internaldomain - where www.example.com is grabbed from the requested Host: header

<comment><AUTHOR> It's good to hear it was of use to somebody :)

I know you can use a map in Nginx to do what you ask for, as long as you have a list of domains already: [http://nginx.org/en/docs/http/ngx_http_map_module.html#map](http://nginx.org/en/docs/http/ngx_http_map_module.html#map). I can only imagine it also being possible to make fully dynamic, I just don't have a clear way of doing it in mind right now.

<comment><USER14> Lua + Redis is a nice way to do this, I have a small project [https://github.com/spro/simon](https://github.com/spro/simon) that does dynamic routing and load balancing based on Hostname -> IP:Port sets in Redis. Adding a new route is as simple as:

      sadd backends:hnapi.dev 192.168.0.42:10555

<comment><AUTHOR> Neat! I want to get started on some Lua scripting as well, probably first to just get a bunch of metrics out of Nginx via StatsD. There's access to a whole bunch of numbers via Lua that you otherwise can't get out from the stub_status page.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Another way around the rewrite is to simply proxy_pass with the $uri: [https://gist.github.com/sansmischevia/cf425d5ffe09f824cb27](https://gist.github.com/sansmischevia/cf425d5ffe09f824cb27)

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure, that's also what I cover in the post. The latter part about rewriting is only relevant when you want to have the service behind an ELB to be located at something else than "/".

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Can you not assign static IPs to ELB instances? This might be a stupid question...ELB is one of the older AWS resources that I've never really touched since Nginx is so powerful & easy to set up.

<comment><AUTHOR> No, you can't. You can instead create your own EC2 server, give it a static IP (well, "Elastic IP") and then hope your own server doesn't go down. This is the reason why I prefer to use an ELB since I never seen stability issues with it.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do you sell performance? - <AUTHOR> I started a service agency that makes e-commerce sites significantly faster on desktop and mobile (Sometimes as fast as native apps). I have around 25 customers.
But when I approach new prospects, none of them care about their store's performance. I keep amazon and google's studies handy, but often the conversation ends before I can bring them up.
Highlighting revenue benefits of a fast site hasn't helped much either.
What would be a good way to educate prospects about importance of a fast e-commerce website?
If someone can point me in right direction, I'll be happy to pay for your time. <comment><USER2> A new study I found is [https://www.doubleclickbygoogle.com/articles/mobile- speed-ma...](https://www.doubleclickbygoogle.com/articles/mobile-speed- matters/) "53% of mobile site visits are abandoned if pages take longer than 3 seconds to load"

Maybe you can create a video showing how their pages take longer to load.

I dealt with a customer once who had broken Javascript (redirect) on the homepage which rendered the page just empty. Only Firefox browser affected. No amount of emails, screenshots, sending patches or CEO-to-CEO in-person meetings helped. Their logs showed little Firefox users so it wasn't a priority. Took over a year to fix. Some customers are resistant to feedback.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think for your customers the conversion rate counts. Do you have some customers where you can take the date and show the benefits of your service in terms of real profit examples?</comment>


Where do all the censored developers go? - <AUTHOR> https://danielpocock.com/where-do-censored-developers-go/ <comment><USER2> Instead of labeling things like

> 'the Post is no longer available to be seen because it contained inaccurate > information'

It should always read 'the Post contained inaccurate information X Y and Z, here are the original post.' Followed by the original post.

The organization who don't believe that people have the ability to judge for themselves should receive no respect from people who believe and cherish in their own ability to make decisions.</comment>


Cleaver – 30-second slideshows for hackers - <AUTHOR> http://jdan.github.io/cleaver/ <comment><USER3> Hi HN! Cool to see this posted here.

I made this in college because I would always make slides last minute before class presentations or talks at my school's CS club, and fiddling with google slides/powerpoint seemed like overkill. I hope you find it useful as I have over the years.

I've attempted to rewrite it 5 or 6 times based on whatever cool technology I was distracted with, but never merged anything upstream (Spectacle [https://github.com/FormidableLabs/spectacle](https://github.com/FormidableLabs/spectacle) is already a wonderful React solution).

A couple other folks maintain cleaver now (they're great), but lemme know if you have any questions!

<comment><USER4> I have to ask what this offers over a LaTeX/Beamer setup. I'm fairly happy using LaTeX for anything I'm sharing, but I'm curious about alternatives.

<comment><USER5> Sure, when throwing some slides together last minute the first thing that comes to mind is "LaTeX".

<comment><USER6> Maybe you might want to spend some time with LaTeX then. Honestly, it's one of the most useful things I learned in school.

<comment><USER7> I'm with ralmeida here; do you actually make super fast slides with LaTeX? That has definitely not been my experience.

<comment><USER6> Yeah after 1-2 presentations I built a template and just drop stuff into each slide I have defined. Then if I need more slides I copy the framework bit for a single slide. Super easy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Cool project.

Dropbox Paper recently added a similar feature called Presentation mode. It treats --- as slide breaks and intelligently does font sizing of headers, recognizes headers as "soft slides", etc. It takes very little to no effort to go from doc to minimal presentation.

[https://www.dropbox.com/help/paper/presentation- mode](https://www.dropbox.com/help/paper/presentation-mode)

<comment><USER9> That link is broken

<comment><USER8> Try this - [https://www.dropbox.com/help/9281](https://www.dropbox.com/help/9281)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I use Reveal.js for my presentations. The standard docs do have you putting all the slides in one big file, but I re-used slides between presentations so I created a little build systems with sets of slides, as well as individual slides, for different talk types:

[https://github.com/bigsense/presentations](https://github.com/bigsense/presentations)

<comment><USER8> Does it support any kind of Markdown import / include? For instance, the OS X app Marked lets you do this.

main.md:

        blah

        <<[another_file.md]

        blah

<comment><USER10> I believe it does. The full docs are pretty extensive:

        https://github.com/hakimel/reveal.js

IIRC, at the time you had to serve the presentation from a web server for the includes to work correctly (not sure if that's still the case). That combined with me needing to reuse slides and create sets led me down the path I did, but there are probably easier ways to do that now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This looks great. I love the simplicity on mobile and it has some nice touches (e.g. top progress bar).

I'm working on a project that needs something similar to this - embedded html presentations - but I'm faced with a problem I haven't found an easy solution to yet.

Markdown is great if there is just text or maybe only an image and text, but it falls down pretty hard with oddly shaped images or multiple images.

I'm considering making a js script to reformat things to look reasonable (e.g. Two column text + image with a tall image). Is there anything like this that exists currently?

</comment><comment><USER12> If you're interested in this, you may also like reveal.js, which backs slides.com:

[http://lab.hakim.se/reveal-js/](http://lab.hakim.se/reveal-js/)

(previous discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6450223](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6450223))

<comment><USER3> One of cleaver's maintainers wrote a "theme" which will render your cleaver document (just markdown with some dashes in it) into reveal.js!

[https://github.com/sudodoki/reveal-cleaver- theme](https://github.com/sudodoki/reveal-cleaver-theme)

I am unsure what the authoring experience for reveal.js is like in 2017, so perhaps it can already do this :)

EDIT: Looks like they do support markdown. [https://github.com/hakimel/reveal.js#markdown](https://github.com/hakimel/reveal.js#markdown)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> These kinds of tools have been around forever. There are probably literally hundreds of ways do do slides from plain text. An older one is MagicPoint[1].

Nicely done though.

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

<comment><USER14> Except this one works great on mobile. Most do not work very well on my iPhone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Shameless plug. I made a very similar tool a few time ago:

[https://github.com/yogsototh/mkdocs](https://github.com/yogsototh/mkdocs)

Mostly a very minimal script which use pandoc. From markdown generate presentations (html with reveal.js/pdf with beamer) and documents (html/pdf).

<comment><USER16> I have used mkdocs! Very cool. I actually used it to produce a newsletter. SO much easier to write the whole newsletter in md and push it to "site" which we then published via email.

Thanks for writing it. Slick, simple, and delivers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Based on the title, I genuinely thought this was a site that hosted 30 second slideshows for hackers. Something like "Learn X in Y time".

</comment><comment><USER18> I have a similar project, but for presenting org files inside of Emacs: [https://bitbucket.org/zck/zpresent.el](https://bitbucket.org/zck/zpresent.el) .

The benefit is that it's org files, so you have all your standard org features, like easily adding new items and reordering things. It also, unlike other org presentation modes, presents from inside Emacs.

</comment><comment><USER19> Another simple tool of this kind to try out is Marp [1]. It has a live preview, and slides are exported to PDF.

[1]: [https://yhatt.github.io/marp/](https://yhatt.github.io/marp/)

</comment><comment><USER20> Forgive me if it's obvious, but I'm new to programming and I'm trying to understand how this works.

I've been looking through the github repo for a while now and I can't find the code that is responsible for parsing the markdown syntax into the html tags which are rendered on the page. Can someone point me to where that logic is occuring?

<comment><USER21> Cleaver uses the marked library for markdown processing. The conversion happens in renderSlide:

[https://github.com/jdan/cleaver/blob/master/lib/index.js#L27...](https://github.com/jdan/cleaver/blob/master/lib/index.js#L274-L276)

      /**
       * Renders a slide.
       *
       * @param {string} content Markdown content to be rendered as a slide
       * @return {string} The formatted slide
       */
      Cleaver.prototype.renderSlide = function (content) {
        return marked(content);
      };

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Md slides day? Nice to see another option. I use Keynote/Powerpoint only if I absolutely have to nowadays (collaboration). The simplicity of plain text -> slides really speaks to me.

Here's another: [https://remarkjs.com/](https://remarkjs.com/)

There are even commercial apps, such as Deckset (macOS).

</comment><comment><USER23> I wrote something like this when I was in high school because I got tired of powerpoint being hard to work with across platforms (Linux...). I ended up using it for a couple class presentations, which I enjoyed because it forces you to focus on content vs. unnecessary style and it's just a URL to link to instead of a maybe-compatible .pptx.

HTML based, styled with CSS. Not quite markdown, but a parser would be quick to make, I guess? [https://github.com/thesephist/tesseract](https://github.com/thesephist/tesseract)

</comment><comment><USER24> Since it appears to be markdown slides day on HN, I am getting close to releasing a beta of Ultradeck ([https://ultradeck.co](https://ultradeck.co)). Currently the marketing site mentions that Ultradeck is a desktop app, but I have since pivoted and it will be a webapp. I am targeting a beta launch next month!

</comment><comment><USER16> I really like this. Have messed with the other forms of this approach over the years but this looks like the simplest. My need is to create a tool that makes easier for people to quickly throw together presentations from some boilerplate and some code, screenshots, links etc. This looks like 80% of what i need. For anything more sophisticated i would use mkdocs which i already use. BTW i prefer to use typora for my md editing. Its (so far) the nicest tool with which to work in md directly on windows. I use MOU on osx, and downloading macdown today.

</comment><comment><USER25> If you want a little more customizability, make sure to try [https://www.madoko.net/](https://www.madoko.net/)

</comment><comment><USER26> This is rad! I got so excited about reveal.js and webslides recently ([http://lab.hakim.se/reveal-js/#/](http://lab.hakim.se/reveal-js/#/) and [https://github.com/webslides/WebSlides](https://github.com/webslides/WebSlides)) but this is superior in my view because of Markdown.

<comment><USER3> For what it's worth reveal.js supports markdown ([https://github.com/hakimel/reveal.js#markdown](https://github.com/hakimel/reveal.js#markdown)) so be sure to give it another look

<comment><USER27> moreover, it's had a web-based editor for years now...

> [https://slides.com](https://slides.com)

i think it started out being free for everybody, but now a free account is available only for public slide-decks. (when it was free for everyone, i think all decks were public, so it's not as if they ripped back functionality.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Another option in this space:

[https://github.com/regebro/hovercraft](https://github.com/regebro/hovercraft)

Always liked hovercraft as it makes impress.js much more usable. Will have to properly kick the tires on Cleaver

<comment><USER29> Hovercraft doesn't seem to work on mobile.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> It's funny, another thing like this just showed up on /r/programming: [https://github.com/gitpitch/gitpitch](https://github.com/gitpitch/gitpitch)

</comment><comment><USER31> Neat, might give this a try next time I need to do a presentation.

Presently I use tex for this.

</comment><comment><USER32> Jupyter, does this, but better IMO. Not only you can create slide shows with markdown, but the code is executable and include code completion when your write it.

</comment><comment><USER33> This looks awesome! Clean and easy. I like it!!

</comment><comment><USER34> [http://platon.io/](http://platon.io/)

</comment><comment><USER35> put some keywords in the title, I'll never find that bookmark again...

</comment><comment><USER36> for some reason it is not working for me. I run "cleaver Desktop/{Name}/Presentation/testCleaver.md" but i can't see the basic.html output

</comment><comment><USER37> What has this got to do with hackers?

<comment><USER3> (a) It's markdown (b) I was 19 years old when I came up with that subtitle

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> I would try it but I am anti-node - <USER2>

<comment><USER39> What's your preferred alternative for tooling around JS and frontend development?

<comment><USER38> well this example has very little front end and shouldn't need much of a back end to sync data between systems that want to access it. If i were to build something like this i would go with a very limited stack - say only jquery and some js libraries in front end. The back end would be a couple of dozen lines of code that does nothing but use a sqlite instance to store the slideshow data. the front end would be local first and store its data in local storage.</comment></comment></comment>


Earth: a global map of wind, weather, and ocean conditions - <AUTHOR> https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/particulates/surface/level/overlay=pm10/orthographic=242.24,46.50,568/loc=-123.599,41.705 <comment><USER2> Not sure why this is noteworthy, there are much better site that are very similar.

Like say this one: [https://www.windy.com/](https://www.windy.com/)

Similar look/feel, but shows predictions as well as the current state. Also allows to pick between your forecast models.

<comment><USER3> Also [http://ventusky.com/](http://ventusky.com/) , which was the first service like this that I have seen, and was at the top of HN once.</comment></comment>


Launch conference hits $369k in prizes/convertible notes - <AUTHOR> http://www.launch.is/blog/double-boom-launch-hits-369k-in-prizes-thanks-to-mailchimps.html

<comment><AUTHOR> note: any YCombinator startups from the past two years who would like a free table and a pair of tickets can email me firstname.lastname@example.com and i will hook it up.</comment>


Generating original project names that sound good  - <AUTHOR> http://www.iptech-group.com/node/438

<comment><USER2> "names that sound good" - like iptech-group?

fancy functions, but no actual examples?

spending more than an hour for the name sounds like procrastination for bootstrappers

not that i don't do it too..

</comment><comment><USER3> I hope someone will implement it and join it with domain registration form so I will never see a project with from .io and .ly breed ;)</comment>


Talkspace CEO: won't support Facebook that incites 'racism, violence and lies' - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/01/talkspace-pulls-out-of-deal-with-facebook-over-violent-trump-posts.html <comment><USER2> Any reason why you have to publicly disclose why you are pulling out of a deal? Sure, you did something you believe in is right, but then going to press and telling them about your bravery sounds like a PR move.

</comment><comment><USER3> > pulling out of six-figure deal with Facebook

More figures are required in order for this to matter.

</comment><comment><USER4> makes one wonder why Facebook's employees support it.</comment>


The latest trend for tech interviews: Days of unpaid homework - <AUTHOR> https://work.qz.com/1254663/job-interviews-for-programmers-now-often-come-with-days-of-unpaid-homework/ <comment><USER2> Nope. You can kiss that garbage goodbye. I don't need your job bad enough to jump through those kind of hoops. Not even if you paid me to do it - I have a life, and I don't have time to do this on the side. And to use vacation days to do this... no. Just no.

This kind of "interviewing" is going to attract only those who are desperate enough to be willing to subject themselves to this abuse. That's not the top talent, and it never will be.

If you're looking for employees willing to be exploited, though, I suppose it might make sense...

</comment><comment><USER3> I like the idea of doing a code review with someone, and talking through an actual problem, as described in the article.

I've done the whiteboarding, and that was exhausting. I've done programming exercises where I wrote code to some spec, then talked it through with my interviewer; that was a little better.

My first job in 2008 involved about a 15-minute coding exercise, and talking to half a dozen people for about 15 minutes each, mostly just having conversations. That was a relatively nice interview, and a good team to work with for a number of years.</comment>


Share HN: My new business book comes out today - <AUTHOR>

I wrote a book, "The Personal MBA: Master the Art of Business," and it comes out today. The subtitle could very well have been "business for hackers."
Here's my launch blog post: http://personalmba.com/personal-mba-book-launch/
Here's the book website: http://book.personalmba.com
This book started as a personal side project. My goal was to isolate the most important business-related mental models, so I could use them to do more valuable work. By sharing what I learned in the process, I hope to dramatically decrease the time it takes you to master the essentials of business, so you can spend more time doing work that matters.
I also hope the book saves you a ton of money. Business school is insanely expensive, and requires you to give up your freedom and flexibility for decades. By learning the essentials for ~$20, you'll be able to skip the classroom in favor of starting your startup.
Hacker News has been a wonderfully supportive community for me over the years, and I'm grateful to everyone who contributes. I hope this book helps you make great things happen.
If you have any questions about the book, business education, or about trade publishing in general, I'd be happy to help. <comment><USER2> I'm definitely going to have to take time and truly study your book ... It's got tons of info. Best thing is, it makes so much more sense than most of my college business books. I've already used it to study for business reports. Thanks for all your hard work!

</comment><comment><USER3> Clickable:

Launch blog-post: <http://personalmba.com/personal-mba-book-launch/>

Book site: <http://book.personalmba.com>

</comment><comment><USER4> I thought about it, and eventually bought this book because of PJ Eby's recommendation; if I'd known the author had average HN karma over 4 I would've bought it about a week sooner.</comment>


Thrun pivots Udacity toward vocational education - <AUTHOR> http://cis471.blogspot.com/2013/11/thrun-pivots-udacity-toward-vocational.html <comment><USER2> The key quote from this article is right here:

"I think Thrun's elite background led him down a garden path. Any San Jose State professor who had taught an introduction to statistics could have told him that many (most?) of his students would not have basic arithmetic skills and would "hate math." They are not Stanford students."

Thrun is an elite academic. He has most likely never even attended a university that had to teach remedial math courses, let alone taken or taught one. Thus, by extension, he has likely never had to deal with students who had anything but excellent preparation for studying the material he was teaching.

I sat through most of Thrun's AI lectures and I felt that he and Norvig were questionable teachers. They are clearly brilliant men, and their excitement was contagious. They would be tremendous guest-lecturers in any CS course (the particle filter lectures were Thrun's best because he was so excited, but he spent most of his time gushing about how cool the ideas were). But as far as teaching a course to non-Stanford students without the help of an army of TAs, they were uninspired.

Compare Thrun's experience with the sentiments in this article about Miami University in Ohio: [http://www.propublica.org/article/on-country-club- campuses-a...](http://www.propublica.org/article/on-country-club-campuses-a- public-university-ex-president-shares-his-second)

The common vein is that education is fairly easy when the people you are educating are well-prepared and generally hail from the upper half of the socioeconomic spectrum.

Teaching poor kids, and kids who, for other reasons do not have adequate preparation is really something of a Sisyphean task. The problem is not in our schools, and it can't be fixed by fiddling with the curriculum or delivery method, it can only be truly fixed by fixing the underlying social problems, but that usually means talking about sticky issues like racism, sexism, ethno- centrism, and capitalism itself.

<comment><USER3> I'm sure I'll be downmodded for pointing this out, but your post also suggests why these disparities persist even after college.

Via a sisyphean effort, colleges manage to graduate a group of unintelligent and unmotivated students. But after graduation those students are still unintelligent and unmotivated, they simply had knowledge of calculus forced into their heads for long enough to pass an exam.

As an employer, I need employees who will show up and start building shit. Walmart and McDonald's have time for heroic efforts in extracting value from employees, I don't. This is part of the reason why github is such a great hiring tool - pushing good code all by yourself is a strong indicator that you are intelligent and motivated. Graduating college, not such a good indicator.

Interestingly, if colleges didn't engage in heroic efforts to get their students to graduate, college would be a much better hiring filter.

<comment><USER4> I personally find this comment to be incredibly condescending. It smacks of misplaced elitism.

It comes across as though you are a bad manager who simply doesn't know how to nurture your new employees and you are trying to blame them.

If you don't want to nurture young people straight out of college, most of whom have simply been told exactly what to do at each stage, don't hire them. Hire experienced professionals.

That's why they cost more.

<comment><USER3> I'm not trying to blame anyone and I have nothing against inexperienced people. I'm quite happy with the people I've managed in the past, most of whom have been fairly inexperienced. They were generally better employees than I was a manager [1].

There is a difference between nurturing and handholding. Nurturing is opening the door for them, handholding is pushing them through it.

A concrete example. I had a young college kid put in charge of a bunch of mechanical turks, most of whom were considerably older and more experienced than her. Her first few days of the job were rough - the older girls thought they deserved the job and gave her pushback and I was also unintentionally undermining her. Nurturing her involved asking what she needed, redirecting all work queries to her, and building a report to let her change the business process (she switched from time tracking to goal tracking).

Nurturing was simply telling her underlings "ask little boss lady" when they came to me and then going back to coding. That's exactly what she asked me to do. Handholding would have involved "hey everyone, I need you all to be nice to little boss lady and if you aren't I'm going to yell at you."

(Incidentally, if anyone needs a great manager in Mumbai, let me know. I think she's on the market.)

[1] I failed to protect the people below me from the people above me and I can't blame that on anyone else.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This isn't surprising, really. MOOCs disproportionately benefit those who already have the means, the background, and most importantly the drive to learn.

The greatest challenge of education is to nurture the desire for learning in students and for students to be in a situation in life (e.g. situation at home - income, safety, etc) in order to even have a chance at becoming motivated.

MOOCs address the problem of access. But access wasn't the main problem to begin with for the vast majority of students whom people like Thurn was trying to reach.

<comment><USER6> It's worse than that: MOOCs don't increase employability even to someone who has the "means, the background, and most importantly the drive to learn."

It's like reading a book: No one else give a shit.

I would add that for most jobs knowing more than the basics from a course, and often not even that, isn't useful.

<comment><USER7> Books got me a few jobs.

<comment><USER8> Indeed. I got a job offer merely on the basis of having worked through much of K & R.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I fiercely applaud Thrun's update on the uncomfortable evidence he gathered, and wish him the best in his pivot.

(It still seems to me that MOOC's might be done right with enough effort, like spending $100K per hour of nationwide-reproduced instruction the same we do as with TV, but I have not been keeping up with the literature here and perhaps I don't know how pessimistic I should be.)

<comment><USER10> A 40 minute TV show (scripted, non-reality) easily costs $1-3M to make.

I tried to produce some online learning videos recently. Doing it myself took 10 hours of post-production work to create 1 _minute_ of final content. After making 10 minutes of content (which took over a month), I had to stop for my own sanity. [Actually, this post reminded me to finally upload them. They're currently uploading to [http://www.youtube.com/user/learndofun](http://www.youtube.com/user/learndofun) if you're curious.]

For some educational material (especially intro content), you want well produced, easy to follow material. The higher up you go, you can just throw a camera in a room and people will be happy with things like [http://videolectures.net](http://videolectures.net).

<comment><USER11> Aren't khan academy videos pretty cheap to produce, but quite good( except for some pedagogical errors khan is doing because he isn't a teacher, but that's easily solvable) ?

<comment><USER12> > except for some pedagogical errors khan is doing

care to explain as I'm confused?

<comment><USER13> Khan's lectures are a bit extemporaneous in an attempt to be more conversational. Because of this, he often makes errors or explains topics sloppily.

It's not so egregious that it ruins the content, and it seems to fit his approach of fun, approachable lectures that will lead the student to explore the topic further with classmates, instructors, other internet resources.

<comment><USER14> Also, I wasn't to fond of using black background and bright colored squigly writing for learning calculus. I have ADHD and learning math and calculus has been such a huge challenge. But I found work done by patrickjmt[1] to be amazing. It's clear neat and concise, and was able to get through Single and Multivariable thanks to him. My girlfriend and my sister really loved the way he explained calculus as well.

[http://patrickjmt.com/](http://patrickjmt.com/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Isn't this just them trying to monetize online classes? I've read a few other articles that covered this topic and it seemed he was pivoting away from "education should be free" to wanting paid offerings. I know he has, along with others, complained about the limited number of people completing courses or passing them. I just feel like that's an excuse. I looked over a number over courses but didn't complete them because they were boring, lacked necessary prerequisites or had a poor user experience. I think it's a little early for giving up and I hope something takes free online education seriously enough to solve the problems. I'll also mention that not a single person I know outside of the tech industry has even heard of this stuff. You have to at least try a little before you quit, right?

<comment><USER16> When you learn for the sake of learning, rather than certification, there's little point in crossing all the t's and dotting all the i's, in entirely finishing a course. You take what you need from it, and move on. Lifelong learning precisely means that you mix education in more closely with the application of the information you have learnt. When I use these resources, I jump around from course to course because I am actively engaged in my education, trying to get exactly what I need to move on to the next step.

If MOOCs want people to follow the material point to point, from start to end, they will need to provide a level of certification which gives people a meaningful incentive to do so.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Did anyone take Thrun's basic stats course? Is it the same one that Udacity offered to the public? I'm bothered by this paragraph: "I think Thrun's elite background led him down a garden path. Any San Jose State professor who had taught an introduction to statistics could have told him that many (most?) of his students would not have basic arithmetic skills and would "hate math." They are not Stanford students."

San Jose State is a reputable university with many graduates doing well in the valley. The statement that "many of his students would not have basic arithmetic skills" sounds shocking.

<comment><USER18> At SJSU, 33% of the incoming freshmen need remedial math and 49% need remedial English. It's like that in most of the Cal State schools.

[http://www.calstate.edu/pa/clips2007/march/14march/unprep.sh...](http://www.calstate.edu/pa/clips2007/march/14march/unprep.shtml)

<comment><USER19> at every school in the world, there are kids that need help with math. Even at MIT there will be some kids that have been memorizing formulas... that's simply because that's how they've been taught for their entire life. Then they hit a wall and they're really in trouble.

Thrun can't teach kids that have, for a decade, been learning how to memorize crap. How many math teachers in high school and middle school can prove the pythagorean theorem? That should be the survey that we worry about.

Thrun should be making courses for fifth graders also if he wants to teach 20 year olds intro to stat.

<comment><USER17> Then the education system has a serious problem. Kids respond to incentives. Memorizing formulas would work only if students can get by homework and exams with rote memorization. We probably should learn from Russia/India/Korea/China, where it's almost impossible for students to pass STEM exams with mere memorization. Not that their exams are hard. It's just that their educators take effort to make sure the problems in their exams encourage intuitive understanding, original thinking, and creative problem solving. Ironically, US universities do exactly that in their classrooms. I wonder why high schools can't just do the same.

<comment><USER20> Umm.. India? I am from India and rote memorization of math formulas is very evident. I can not speak for other countries but you can pass all the exams till high school using rote using rote memorization and get 100 % too. Only exams like JEE and to an extent AIEEE actually test your ability to apply concepts and that's why they have the smallest selectivity ratio.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I do not see this as a problem with Thrun, but as a problem with the current educational system. If MOOC's carried a fraction of the "academic credibility" that college degrees did, Udacity would be a home run already. This will require a cultural shift, and companies like Udacity are sowing the seeds.

As Warren Buffet has said, the courses he took at Wharton barely differed in quality from the ones he took at Nebraska. Our culture is so obsessed with shallow accolades that it is slow to recognize a humongous opportunity right underneath its very nose.

There is absolutely no reason that MOOC's cannot teach many college-level courses as good as or better than their real life counterparts. Unfortunately, the motivation of students largely stems from the aforementioned shallow accolades.

As a filtering mechanism for professional skills, I think the current academic system has some flaws which MOOC addresses nicely, perhaps not as a complete replacement, but a powerful complement. But the reality is, academia should be used to filter academics, and in many industries, a degree represents nothing more than 4 years that could have been spent learning the actual profession and adding value to the economy.

<comment><USER22> > If MOOC's carried a fraction of the "academic credibility" that college > degrees did, Udacity would be a home run already.

It is unclear to me that any educational system that passes such a small percentage of students in Elem Stats would ever have a hope of gaining academic credibility. That's the playing field.

What an instructor at SJSU would do that Thrun is not going to do is lots of office hours, question-answering, and mentoring/being there. That's what it seems to require.

Personally I think it took a great deal of courage for Thrun to recognize that this is a game he is unlikely to win.

<comment><USER23> >It is unclear to me that any educational system that passes such a small percentage of students in Elem Stats would ever have a hope of gaining academic credibility.

Do you think that if they inflated their pass-rates that you'd find them credible?

There is too much focus on pass-rates[1]. I shouldn't have to point out to a person who implies having taken statistics that it is silly to compare selective institutions' pass-rates to the pass-rates of open-enrollment institutions. Add the benefits of "free" and "I don't have to leave my home/workplace/etc." as is the case with MOOCs, and you have the potential for greatly expanded enrollment. Why would you think that large enrollment growth would generate better pass rates?

[1] I'm an instructor at a two-year college / vocational college where some people seem to never shut up about pass rates. The State also seems to think that pass-rates == quality, and has set about incentive-izing programs with "good" pass-rates. Even worse, one local (large) employer insists upon "B" or above average for anyone it hires.

>Personally I think it took a great deal of courage for Thrun to recognize that this is a game he is unlikely to win.

Maybe he's not in it for the money, but to make genuine improvement.

<comment><USER22> > I'm an instructor at a two-year college / vocational college where some > people seem to never shut up about pass rates.

Yes, those people comprise the playing field.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> The article makes it sound like he gave up real quick. That he wrote class materials at a level above where the actual students were and instead of adjusting to their level for the next semester, he just threw up his hands in frustration.

Is there more to the story?

<comment><USER24> Yes. Read the original article ([http://www.fastcompany.com/3021473/udacity- sebastian-thrun-u...](http://www.fastcompany.com/3021473/udacity-sebastian- thrun-uphill-climb)) this is based on. It's much more informative.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I saw the link to it and didn't realize it was current, I thought it was just background on Udacity before this pivot. I probably should have submitted that link instead.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> As an academic I feel no schadenfreude at all. I feel somewhat sad.

This model will work eventually. It's mostly a matter of how the courses are structured and taught. I don't think it'll replace traditional universities but it should challenge the price structures and general lazy-bureaucracy attitude of many of them.

If you look at programming in particular I feel very good about all these online courses. It's easier than ever to teach yourself programming which is a net+ for society. I don't understand how more accessible education for everyone is ever a bad thing.

I don't think it's just education that's broken though. HR is also broken because they mostly look for the signature on the dotted line (oh look someone else has done the vetting for us) and tend to value certification over actual skill. Long term, I hope it'll be enough to list coursera etc. courses, books you read and a github link on your resume. IT should strive to be a leader in this shift because it's generally an industry where self-learners can do extremly well and have traditionally shown it's possible.

<comment><USER26> >Long term, I hope it'll be enough to list coursera etc. courses, books you read and a github link on your resume.

It sounds nice but problem with this is that you get so many people who join courses just to show off certificates and end up learning almost nothing. If you include books too, there will be popular posts like "books you should read and have on your CV!". This totally spoils the idea of reading and learning for its own sake which is what education should be all about.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Well, all this hype was so overblown and the anti-university jibber jabber has been at fever pitch for some time now. It's nice to see practical thinking rather than breathless "down with universities because Internet" pronouncements.

<comment><USER13> Because the university approach is working perfectly. No humongous debt or diminishing returns issues at all.

..The current university system is just as untenable. It's just established.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> The "secret sauce" of the MOOC is the on-line community of motivated learners. Can they make this work in industrial training...?

</comment><comment><USER29> It's a shame Udacity hasn't worked as well as Thrun hoped. I'm convinced that the failure of existing online courses has been primarily a problem of motivation, rather than an inherent pedagogical problem in online coursework. It's very hard to motivate yourself to consistently work on coursework if there are no deadlines and dropping the course just means you keep going with it sometime later. Still, I can't really explain why the SJSU courses failed as well; it sounds like students had actual deadlines, and were "required" to complete the courses to the same degree they're required to complete their regular courses. It's possible that the online tools to ask for help didn't work as well as in-person interaction, or that sitting in front of a computer doing things at random times is less motivating than actually attending lectures in person at regular times. There's one thing I'm certain of, however: it's a huge waste to have universities pay professors (who are selected for their research ability, not teaching skills) to repeatedly lecture the same material to small groups of people. A hybrid model might work best. Lectures could still be online (but possibly at fixed times to prevent procrastination), but they would be supplemented by in-person recitations, where students would meet in small groups with instructors and have the opportunity to ask questions or review particular topics, with the instructor as well as with peers. This model is still far more expensive and less accessible than online courses hoped to be, but it might actually work.

</comment><comment><USER30> I took the web dev course by the founder of Hipmunk and it was absolutely great!

This was going from "best thing ever" to "lousy idea" in light speed. That is the downside of big ideas if they haven't been validated early. Not only investment of time and resource, but psychological energy. This is really the story of all change. It it unlikely, extremely hard and often at the wrong time.

</comment><comment><USER31> This is an interesting shift, but feels less promising than the initial rhetoric. Vocational education in STEM fields delivered by for-profit institutions is already pretty well-trodden ground. ITT Tech, for example, is a large incumbent in this sector. Why should someone go with Udacity instead?

<comment><USER32> Price, access. But mostly price. One could start Udacity while in middle school and be bad ass before leaving high school. I doubt ITT Tech offers that. Highly motivated students will excel and be able to test out of classes they don't need to waste their time with.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> How is this an inverted classroom if the MOOCs don't have a component where students come in after each class and take a test showing they've mastered the lesson's material? If they don't pass then they have to get remedial correction 1 on 1. Just like in a regular class.

That's what motivates them and pushes them to work. After all habits are hard to form and break. Wanting to learn is not enough, putting in a regular effort to do so is a habit that needs to be coached. That's one of the main jobs of educators for under-motivated students (read: most no grad students). And sorely missing from Udacity.

CONCLUSION: Udacity's "experiment" blatantly omitted a crucial hidden variable.

</comment><comment><USER34> Pity. The only MOOC I have ever finished, and truly enjoyed, was Thrun's "Artificial Intelligence for Robotics". It was magnificent to get an easy to follow introduction into a deep academic field by someone who is so demonstrably accomplished.

I know that I'm just being selfish here, but I was hoping that Udacity will continue on that path. I would love to learn celestial mechanics from Belbruno, or neural networks from Hinton, or operation system design from Linus in the accesible Udacity style. It seems that won't happen any time soon, or ever.

<comment><USER35> Why is it so difficult to have the motivation to finish MOOC? That's the main problem with online education, and we need to figure out what is causing so many people to quit halfway.

<comment><USER36> Another thing may be that for many people half-way is good enough. I took the Udacity cryptography course and really enjoyed it. I never took the exam because I didn't see the point. Presumably I'd have been marked down as "failed." But I think that's only because their model for learning still includes "we're the ones who certify you." I'd like to see a model that says "here's the knowledge - go as far as you want."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I would be very curious to see numbers for udacity competitors.

I know I gave up every time I tried to do something on udacity while I completed most of the classes I took on coursera, and all the original stanford ones.

I blame this on the interaction between class style and myself being terrible at self management without deadlines.

I mean, I took the original Thrun AI class with a coursera-like model and I did it fine, while I don't know if I got to the 3rd lecture of Thrun's Stats 101.

<comment><USER18> There's an interactive chart here:

[http://www.katyjordan.com/MOOCproject.html](http://www.katyjordan.com/MOOCproject.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> The problem with this pivot that proper vocational education also requires a fair amount of mathematics and even more tricky for an online course a lot of hands on work.

I started on the professional apprentice track back in the day and our college had two entire blocks filed with machine tools and labs.

</comment><comment><USER13> I really wish Udacity would clarify their approach going forward. Will their classes become solely vocational, or will they continue to develop conventional courses? It's not either/or.

</comment><comment><USER33> Thrun should look at the Khan academy.

That said, Udacity can serve a different purpose. And after all, the computer courses there are vocational...

</comment><comment><USER39> Par for the course. Pioneers, as they say, are the ones with arrows on their backs. The "I told you so" crowd are cowards who would never stick their necks out to try anything new. That, or they have ulterior motives such as job security or income protection.

The truth is online education is here to stay and it will get better with time. It will, eventually, replace big chunks out of traditional education. Probably not all.

My son is currently going through MIT's 6.00.1x Intro to Computer Science and Programming on edX. He is 14 and in High School. Watching him progress from mechanically typing conditional statements to having his mind opened to computational thinking has been an amazing experience. Yes, this course is pushing him around and challenging him in big ways. It isn't easy.

From what I've seen, there are only two ways one could succeed with these kinds of courses: self motivation or external support (or both). In our case he has all of my support. I am actually taking the class alongside him so I can see what and how they are teaching in order to help him out.

Motivation is a huge factor. He is a member of the local FRC robotics team and was involved in FLL before that.

We work on every problem set in a collaborative manner, with me guiding rather than providing solutions as well as simply being there to expand on topics that are not covered to a great depth (pointers comes to mind). Lately I've been doing a lot more watching than guiding as he has definitely begun to think like a programmer and is solving most every problem without external help.

For me it's been an interesting review of topics I have not touched in years. Recursion, for example, is something I haven't touched in quite some time as I have not run into problems and systems that could justify the resources required when using these techniques. Playing with recursion in an academic setting and helping my son learn the concept was lots of fun.

I can absolutely see that a course such as 6.00.1x would be impossible to complete for a kid without the support of a parent. Not sure if that parent has to have domain knowledge or not. I can't be a good judge this because I obviously do and all of our conversations have taken advantage of this.

I can also see the difficulties in entering into some of these courses without the necessary preparation. Students who went through school by mechanically doing math without really understanding math tend to not do well on higher level courses regardless of whether these courses are online or in person.

There's also the case of the working engineer who might need to brush-up on skills before attempting a class. Using myself as an example, I have not used statistics in any formal way in a long time. If I wanted to take an online ML class I'd have to spend an amount of time reviewing statistics and probably a couple of other areas in Calculus.

In this sense this is where, perhaps, MOOC's do it wrong. Conventional live courses go through a qualification phase in order to ensure that the "herd" has reasonably uniform and adequate capabilities. The beauty of MOOC's is that anyone can jump in. And that's absolutely fantastic. What might be lacking is a departure from a linear model of teaching. Why can't I enroll in that ML class and, when and as required, take off in a branch and review statistics to then come back and "merge" into the main thread of the class. Perhaps this non-linear approach is what is missing.

All MOOC's are pretty much online versions of some kind of a traditional live class. Lectures, problems, homework, tests. All presented in a linear timescale and on a similarly linear schedule. A learning system that is truly after the acquisition of knowledge must work differently. It must take a highly interactive approach in which the teaching system is flexible enough to, effectively, deliver curriculum that is customized to the needs of each and every person.

This is a challenge. We have to be glad there are people like Thurn who are willing to stick their necks out, try, fail and try again. The critics are usually people who will never compromise their station in life to try and drive progress. They don't want arrows in their backs. Far easier to shoot them at pioneers, eventually you hit one or two of them and for a brief moment in time you might actually sound like you know what you are talking about. Reality, however, is quite different.

What I would tell Thurn is: Don't give up. Don't exit the segment. Try to figure out how to change the approach and make it work.</comment>