45000 years ago in Ethiopia humans built a paint workshop; used it for millennia - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/05/for-4500-years-stone-age-humans-returned-to-this-mysterious-cave/ <comment><USER2> It is an incredibly long time, but places like Ounjougo in Mali have been inhabited for hundred of thousand years by several species of humans: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ounjougou](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ounjougou)

An explanation lies in the fact that in those ancient times there was little numbers of humans, sometimes less than 20,000 (on the whole earth) so it is not surprizing they inhabited the same places over and over. They had no manpower to even build a village. That would come much later with neolithics when population will explode in numbers, but perhaps not in quality of life.

<comment><USER3> > they inhabited the same places over and over

It must be jarring for a new cohort of humans to come across artifacts invented and developed by predecessor that they can't understand.

Our archival-based approach to history is a complete opposite, but I wonder if the relics of the past helped influence the future generations of ancient human.

<comment><USER4> > It must be jarring for a new cohort of humans to come across artifacts > invented and developed by predecessor that they can't understand.

As others have pointed out your position is a modern one; the "wonders of the ancients" is a several thousand year old perspective. And in fact for a good chunk of recent European history (last couple of millennia) the prevailing view was one of declinism when compared to the Romans of the late Republic and early empire.

But we don't know if the users of this cave had that jarring experience. 4500 years is a long time but it's quite possible -- likely even -- that there was continuous use, so it was "just part of the landscape" with knowledge accreting and being passed on.

The reason I say "likely" is that presumably the color technology evolved over some period of time, and if the users died off and the cave was later rediscovered after a gap, the new discoverers would have to re-invent a bunch of the tech somewhat from scratch (although results and possibly raw materials would be right there to provide hints).

It's interesting to speculate what kind of speech and culture they might have had.

<comment><USER5> Technology development was unbelievably slow back then, so re-inventing tech, which seems like a routine thing to do to us, was next to unimaginable back then. We see exactly the same artifices made exactly the same way over stretches of eover a million years (the Acheulian had axe). In that era lost technology was simply gone for all intents and purposes at a community level. This site lies in the Middle Palaeolithic era which lasted about 300 thousand years.

<comment><USER4> Even with good communication that remained true until very recently: read the debates on the constitutional roots of the US patent system and it was an explicit "bribe" that you received a government-guaranteed monopoly in exchange for explaining how to make your invention. Otherwise the information could easily be lost. Obviously that's not how the system works today

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> There are other sites that served similar functions for ancient peoples over long periods of time. I recently learned about one of them in the Blue Hills just south of Boston; it was a quarry used by native people for thousands of years to make stone tools such as spears and axes:

 _Wampatuk hill, one of the many that make up the ridges of the Blue Hills, is made entirely out of a material called rhyolite. Essentially this hill represents a portion of the lava column located within the volcano that solidified so quickly that it's silica (or glass)- rich magma turned into a crystalline fine grained blue rock with tiny flecks of quartz. It is the natural blue color of the stones of the Blue Hills that gave the area its name, and it is this one particular type of blue stone that brought Native people from the surrounding area to Wampatuk to mine and work its natural stone. The entire area surrounding the hill consists of massive boulders and outcrops of blue hills rhyolite, each one slightly different, and each one a type of stone that I have found turned into tools that we excavate on archaeological sites throughout the area. These range from the deep blue-black stones east and south of Wampatuk to the oddly speckled material you find on Wampatuk itself. This hill was a Mecca of stone tool production.

As you walk the Sawcut Notch path along the northern boundary of the park, you will pass great dome and little dome. These two small hills are made out of Braintree slate and Massachusett hornfels. Keep an eye open for scoop-like marks in the stone where thousands of years before a Massachusett Native person was standing exactly where you are striking the slate to remove portions of it to turn into tools. Turn around and behind you will be small mounds of stone fragments.

These mounds are not natural deposits, but heaps of stone waste, each the result of stone striking stone working raw slate down to a spear preform or perhaps a stone adz. These are all viewable from the path and artifacts lie within the path itself. ...

... The natural hillside was not in fact natural, it was, and IS, a quarry of truly monumental proportions. The terraces I had walked were not simply erosional, but were in fact carved into the raw rock by Massachusett Native people quarrying stone from the hillside for thousands of years, and the mounds and pathways I had been climbing over were mountains of stone debris consisting of Millions upon millions of stone flakes each individually struck by human hands._

[http://friendsofthebluehills.org/keynote/](http://friendsofthebluehills.org/keynote/)

<comment><USER7> Exact same thing at Morrow Mountain in North Carolina. It was a quarry used by natives for thousands of years to obtain Rhyolite for tools and weapons. Apparently Rhyolite was a big deal everywhere. Who knew? It feels as if I'm missing out on some sort of universal human experience of making sharp stuff out of Rhyolite.

<comment><USER8> People overlooking Native American sites because they were on too large of a scale and assuming they're natural formations is kind of a cliche at this point - the mounds left behind by the uncreatively named mound builders are another example.

<comment><USER9> It amazes me how few know about the mounds. I look through a lot of the books from 1840's that detail them all in Oh/Mi/IL/etc.

Link with cool descriptions and maps etc of those in Ohio. I located some on modern maps that you can still see and that havent been disturbed in a long long time.

[https://archive.org/details/descriptionsofan00whit](https://archive.org/details/descriptionsofan00whit)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> They made paint here for 4500 years.

People have been programming computers for 70.

That is a terrifying thought.

</comment><comment><USER11> Funny that the main researcher on this study on ochre would be called Rosso (red in Italian).

</comment><comment><USER12> How many things we don't know from that age! I heard Indus Valley Civilization used to domesticate animals and had a network of sewage system in place. Pretty cool for 3000 BC.

</comment><comment><USER13> 4,500 years _

</comment><comment><USER14> Good thing paintings are so tasty.

</comment><comment><USER15> " _Then they treated the powder by heating it or mixing it with other ingredients to create the world 's first paint_"

Nitpick. "The world's first _known_ paint". Future-proof and more to my taste.

<comment><USER16> You should comment on the article, unlikely that the author is going to read the comments here.</comment></comment>


China cracks cheap lithium production in electric car breakthrough - <AUTHOR> https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3010200/china-cracks-cheap-lithium-production-electric-car-breakthrough <comment><USER2> This is not nearly as important as you might think. That's because lithium is only a very small part of the cost of a lithium-ion battery. Most of it is production expenses. These have been dropping steadily (the price of li-ion batteries went down 35% in the last year alone) due to improved design, more efficient manufacturing technologies, and economies of scale.</comment>


HipChat Will Grant Employers Access To 1-to-1 Chat History - <AUTHOR> http://blog.hipchat.com/2014/04/25/hey-were-changing-our-terms-of-service/ <comment><USER2> I sent the following email to HipChat:

As an employer, and account holder, I am not a fan of this feature.

My team must feel free to use our internal communication tools to have private, perhaps critical, conversations between each other without worrying about me, or other members of management, from reviewing them.

If the tools cannot be trusted, employee will not use them. If they don't use, they'll revert to other methods of communication, which will consume their attention.

This should be an option, and one whose affect is in plain view of users.

Lacking such an option, or clear disclosure, I will be canceling our account, as well as reviewing my companies use of other Atlasssian tools.

Please reconsider this feature, or at least, reconsider its implementation.

Thank you.

<comment><USER3> I don't get your concern _at all_.

We run local e-mail and IM servers; the only thing that protects user communications on company owned infrastructure is our company _policy_. How is this any different?

What I find far more alarming -- and quite hypocritical from SaaS users seemingly suddenly concerned with privacy -- is that when I communicate with companies and individuals that use SaaS providers like Google Apps, the party with which I'm communicating implicitly shares my private correspondence with a SaaS company that engages in massive cross-internet data collection.

By comparison, employers having access to data that flows over employer-owned infrastructure is barely worth mentioning, has been the status quo for decades, and I'm absolutely stunned that _anyone_ is shocked by this.

<comment><USER2> You honestly don't see the difference between the amount of interest a third- party software company would have in the private conversations of a team than the amount a person's immediate manager might have in them?

Second, simply because something is "status quo" does not mean it's OK.

As this is my company, I can chose to run it in a way that doesn't make me feel like an asshole.

<comment><USER3> You're being disingenuous; it's the status quo because having the _ability_ to monitor user communications is the default and inherent legal and technical nature of conveying communications over company owned infrastructure.

If you don't want to "be an asshole", set a clear company policy and move on.

Having been in the position of _needing_ to access historical e-mail records while investigating CFO malfeasance and fraud, I'd say its downright irresponsible to not have the ability and policy necessary to monitor and review communications in extenuating circumstances.

<comment><USER4> You're looking at it from the perspective of malfeasance/fraud. The other poster is looking at it from teamwork/management.

They're not being "disingenuous". Ironically, speaking of trust/management, criticizing people's personal motivations like that is precisely one thing I'm taught _not_ to do, for effective, healthy teamwork. (Whereas, if I must investigate antagonistically, like if a boss is harassing employees, I must assume the possibility.)

<comment><USER3> No, I'm looking at it from the perspective of simple rationality: SaaS does not mystically change the technical and legal nature of administrative access to communications over company controlled infrastructure.

As for criticizing motivations, disingenuity was the more polite assumption compared to the alternative: that he is ignorant of the legal, technical, and historical context to the degree that he actually believes HipChat's changes are unique or novel or questionable in any way.

Entities in a technologically privileged position are limited only by policy. The fact that he accepts that truth simply by relying on SaaS demonstrates the significant incongruity of logic at question here.

<comment><USER2> It's hilarious that you're implying it's hard to understand that the guy with the server password has can read everything. I mean, really?

The entire point of my protest to this change is specifically to stop either myself, or any member of management team from having a "technologically privilege position".

Your arguments about SaaS are irrelevant and juvenile. Just cause Atlasssian, or any SaaS provider, has access doesn't mean I, or my management team, should.

Saying "well we run our email server in house so we just solve this problem with a policy" is fine.

<comment><USER3> So you're OK with SaaS being protected by policy, but not the behavior of your own company's executive staff and delegated administrators?

Hardly seems irrelevant to me, and the free pass you give to SaaS is nonsensical and hypocritical.

<comment><USER2> You're either being purposeful dense or you have an agenda.

<comment><USER3> Whereas you appear to be simply dense given your inability to see the hilarious hypocrisy of surrendering the privacy of yourself and others to SaaS vendor policies while calling them to task for giving you the equivalent privilege of policy choice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> At least it isn't retroactive.

I suppose workers need to assume any communication system that is provided by the company may be read at any time by management.

The bummer about this is probably many people use private communications expecting them to stay that way. They don't realize companies like Hipchat do not have architecture to support data impermanence or encryption between parties.

Nor do these companies go out of their way to highlight this, as people probably did not understand the distinction until recently.

<comment><USER6> "I suppose workers need to assume"

We use hipchat at work. I've been assuming since day one my employer can read everything I write. They are _paying_ for it after all.

<comment><USER7> > They are _paying_ for it after all.

They pay for the toilets too, but that doesn't mean they have surveillance access to everything you do in the bathroom.

Not saying that there might not be a good argument that they ought to have read access to company chats, but it certainly doesn't follow from the fact that they pay for it.

<comment><USER8> > They pay for the toilets too, but that doesn't mean they have surveillance > access to everything you do in the bathroom.

It's only a matter of time before they drug test every flush. As Eric Schmidt said, "if you don't want your urine tested, maybe you shouldn't drink water at work."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Hipchat should have stuck gone the opposite, and made their policy explicitly: "1-to-1 is private".

Mimic the real workplace, I have a 1-1 meeting with someone, it isn't recorded (usually).

It's annoying, because it puts up barriers to communication, people talk differently when they know they are being recorded.

I hope they implement this as an option (like they do room history).

EDIT: Thinking more, it should be an option, and when enabled/disabled, all users should receive an email explaining the change. (If you are reading bitbucket devs, do it! Please!)

</comment><comment><USER10> This is a pain point for me because HipChat's permissions granularity is really bad: my organization gives everybody admin access so we can configure API tokens, emoticons, etc. Things we want to do pretty often. Now, we'll have to restrict everybody to a normal user and have a single administrator do these very normal operations.

<comment><USER11> Talk to HipChat, that sounds like something they might be able to change in their service. Perhaps have a super-admin or user groups or something that give intermediate permissions.

Your circumstances don't sound like they would be rare.

<comment><USER12> They definitely aren't rare. We have the same pain where I work. We just end up having a limited number of HC admins and make them do all our API requests.

It'd be nice if you could take a conversation off the record. Is it inconceivable that HipChat may be used for human resource like discussions? I see some risks with this, and not sure I agree.

However, I do understand why they would do this. Bummer.

<comment><USER13> HR-level discussions should be documented at all times, so that seems like a poor example to use here.

I truly feel that if the chat platform is being provided by the employer, then they have every right to disallow you from taking conversations offline.

The problem really lies with Atlassian for not offering better permissions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The forced arbitration seems a bit odious... general mills just got dinged for that and had to apologize...I wonder if the same thing will happen here. For those who don't know, forced arb basically gives them carte blanche to harm you and have the case handled by their "friends" instead of the justice system.

<comment><USER9> Will it work?

Surely I can still take them to court and argue the forced arbitration is part of my grievance. IANAL but surely one can argue that removing the judicial system from anything is illegal?

<comment><USER15> >I can still take them to court

Of course you can take them to court, however, do you have enough money to sustain the effort?

Forced Arb. clauses mean little for large corporations (who have the legal muscle to either reach a settlement or win a battle of legal attrition), however they absolutely screw "the little guy" who has zero choice but to follow the contract.

<comment><USER16> Courts will often order arbitration in civil cases anyway, moving to a trial only if the arbitration fails.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Hey everyone - Garret from HipChat here.

I'm sorry for the way we presented this information. We definitely should have explained these changes more clearly, because they do NOT mean that admins can browse your 1-1 chats. Our blog has been updated with a better explanation: [http://blog.hipchat.com/2014/04/25/hey-were-changing-our- ter...](http://blog.hipchat.com/2014/04/25/hey-were-changing-our-terms-of- service/)

If you still have questions or concerns, feel free to email me directly (address in profile here) and I can answer them or put you in touch with someone who can.

<comment><USER18> "Under the Atlassian Privacy Policy, HipChat administrators will have the right to access all information in the HipChat account they manage, including 1-to-1 chat history and files shared in those 1-to-1 chats."

I'm still reading this as admins have access to our 1-1 chats...

<comment><USER17> If you've signed a policy with your employer giving them access to data in the services they pay for, we will have access to provide them, just like they can with the email account they provide you (if they do). They won't be casually browsing your chats, as that is not a feature we provide.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> We trust our employees. I don't feel the need to access personal communications between employees.

We also give some oef our senior guys admin access so they can manage other users - I don't particularly want them to read my private communications with other employees either.

I love Atlassian (go aussies!) and Slack is expensive. Bummed.

<comment><USER20> We use Slack at my company (switched to it from Kato) and we're very happy with it.

<comment><USER21> Were non technical staff able to grok it? I recently went with HipChat over Slack mainly because Slack just seemed too confusing, but now I'm kind of regretting it.

It took _me_ a minute or two to figure out how to change rooms in the Slack Android app (it has menus that slide from the left AND the right).

<comment><USER20> Nobody I know has found it confusing, it's a mix of technical faculty. I've only used the desktop app.

<comment><USER22> You mean the website-in-an-app-looking-frame right?

<comment><USER21> At least the OS X version installs and runs mostly like a regular app. The Windows one requires installation through Chrome.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Somewhat tangential to this story, but we recently moved our team over from HipChat to Slack [1]. I initially thought that we'd miss the sheer number of integrations HipChat offers, but Slack seems to cover almost all of the ones we use regularly and some HipChat doesn't yet offer, like Asana.

[1]: [https://slack.com/](https://slack.com/)

<comment><USER24> Our team tried out Slack, but the Mac app isn't native, just a rather weak wrapper around the normal web page. And the web experience just isn't as good as HipChat.

Also, no in-app voice/video integration that I could find. HipChat's one-on- one video is great, although waht I really wish for is conferencing built in. Google Hangouts is just too annoying to set up (first it pesters me about signing up for Google Plus, which I don't want, then it shows a blank screen with a "start a hangout" button, then it opens a GH video _in a separate window_ , which is just stupid), and doesn't have a desktop app.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I guess that's one way to lose your customer base. We have a team of 50 that will be switching to another platform shortly. Good bye HipChat...

<comment><USER3> Why do you care? If you ran the chat server locally, you'd have the ability to snoop already.

Atlassian themselves could snoop on your traffic; the only thing stopping them is their terms of service. All you have to do to protect your employees is publish clear guidelines on when and how your company will access employee communications on company-owned infrastructure -- bingo, problem solved.

<comment><USER25> Because this isn't communist Russia/China. There is a certain level of implied freedom and privacy here in America. That's why I fucking care.

<comment><USER26> If the company is paying for the chat service, it's the company's chat, and the company owns the logs. It's no different than a work email address/inbox.

<comment><USER27> And if I'm running the company, I don't want my employees to have to go through loopholes to chat privately. The company owns the water cooler too but putting a mic into it is not ethical behavior.

<comment><USER3> So set a policy that you won't read their messages. There's nothing new here.

It's nothing but a policy that prevents your SaaS provider from reading your data in the first place.

<comment><USER27> Employees don't generally have to worry about their SaaS provider having an impact on their performance review, paycheck, or continued employment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Well, it was great while it lasted.

I'm working on compiling a list of alternatives right now, and will edit this comment in the next few minutes.

Edit:

[https://github.com/cjbarber/hipchat- alternatives](https://github.com/cjbarber/hipchat-alternatives)

</comment><comment><USER29> I don't see much positive coming from this.

At a previous company a round of firings were commenced with evidence contributed from HipChat logs... That was followed by a rash of everyone using the XMPP interface so they could encrypt their chats- I thought that was a bit much but now their paranoia has been proven wise...

<comment><USER21> People were typing incriminating things in a _chatroom_ on your company's HipChat server?

I could believe that they were surprised management decided to track what they were saying, but I can't believe anyone thought HipChat would protect chatroom logs against the account administrator.

<comment><USER29> That's what we were told at an all hands meeting to squelch the morale decline after a handful of people were sent packing... That they were being poisonous in a group room and it backed up allegations about their behavior.

I was surprised at the same foolishness. But it's inline with the story we were told about their rather cavalier attitude about coming to work inebriated and abusing substances on company time. I didn't know any of them at take the information at face value- the message was don't come to work high and you won't get fired. The takeaway was don't brag about your activities on the company HipChat...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> All they had to write was "It's been two years since HipChat joined the Atlassian family"... the rest is obvious. IMHO Atlassian is a company focused on helping enterprises control users of their software, not help them. JIRA's maddening UX is Exhibit A.

<comment><USER31> How is JIRA's UX maddening? It's so highly configurable that it really depends on how it is set up, and what the patterns of use are within your organisation.

<comment><USER32> I would argue that "maddening" is an understatement. JIRA' ui tries to do so much and allows such granular customization that it takes an age of expertise in the tool to simply properly configure it to your organization. In fact, one of my college buddies job's is exactly that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Really disappointing move. If you don't trust your developers, maybe you shouldn't have hired them in the first place.

Our team loves HipChat, and they will probably end up feeling the opposite because of this. Please provide a way for us not to activate that "feature".

<comment><USER34> > If you don't trust your developers, maybe you shouldn't have hired them in > the first place.

Companies are basically required by law to store all the communications of their employees, it has nothing to do with trust. I forget the entire reason, but basically Bill Clinton cut some crazy deal with radical feminists in order to get reelected whereby he signed some sexual harassment law that basically required employers to monitor all employee communications. Jeffrey Rosen has a book about it called The Unwanted Gaze.

<comment><USER35> > Bill Clinton cut some crazy deal with radical feminists in order to get > reelected

I had no idea that radical feminists, or indeed feminists in general, had such immense power that they could affect an election where the incumbent won by 9%.

<comment><USER34> They don't. That was only one of dozens of such deals with various organizations. The Adam Curtis documentary Century of the Self goes into some of the others.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I'd expect an organization who pays for the service should have access to their data in it. If you fear the change, you really fear the people who are or will someday become a service administrator. If you fear that, perhaps you should consider if you're really happy where you are. I'd suspect you either have trust issues with your corporate or IT management, or you work at a place that moves too slow for IT to have anything better to do than troll through private chats.

In many cases, IT can already do a lot of other things like span your port, read your e-mail, shadow your terminal, capture all printer output, etc. But in practice, this kind of permission is usually used when someone is stuck and an employee unreachable or out on vacation, or an employee is terminated and you need some critical piece of information they might have in their chat history.

<comment><USER19> I pay for the service for my company. I trust my employees. I don't want them to think I'm snooping on their personal conversations between each other.

<comment><USER3> You also control the routers, the email server, any other form of digital communications, and possibly even the software in their desktop.

What's the difference? Just because an employer _can_ snoop -- and might be legally _obligated_ to snoop -- doesn't mean your company can't have a clear policy regarding when and how you will exercise that ability inherent in owning infrastructure.

<comment><USER19> Well most of the team is remote and we use Google Apps which doesn't allow email access (as far as I can tell, at least not without changing passwords and a few other tricks).

There is a difference between having a feature which allows someone to view your private chat logs (something Google Apps doesn't have) and what it sounds like HipChat are implementing - though maybe they're going to make it just as difficult?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> This seems like an appropriate time to remind everyone that your work email belongs to your boss, not to you. Don't send private emails from your work account. Likewise, your work laptop isn't yours, it's your employers. Don't do personal work on it.

My team tested out HipChat, and it's rad, but I had trouble convincing anyone it was worth the cost over terrible Lync, which we already have, despite it's complete lack of stability on the Mac. We're now secretly using Slack, and enjoying it pretty well. The "native" client is also really nice, bringing just enough native experience to a web view.

</comment><comment><USER38> This is garbage. We have over 250 people using Hipchat and we use the 1:1 as the way to vent outside of the rooms that we're also part of. Better? I'm an admin and I'm so pissed that they decided to change a feature that I sung praises of for so long. Just like another company tool, we'll start to use another outlet to "really" communicate to each other while the HipChat rooms will be relegated to PMs and business owners fishing for updates.

</comment><comment><USER39> I don't know if you can blame Atlassian for being "anti user" here. In some businesses and government settings data retention is a regulatory requirement. It's not ideal. It doesn't fit human patterns of communication. There are obvious back-channels. So systems like that catch only the dumbest violators. But Atlassian probably has customers who are required to specify communication systems that can be monitored.

<comment><USER40> eg section 802 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libor_scandal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libor_scandal) shows the value of logging private IM in a financial context.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> I wish there were more companies that were more worried about doing the right thing than serving their paying customers. Especially when those customers are businesses who want to snoop on their employees, or ad agencies that want to sort through your mail.

I'm tired of constantly being screwed over by any company that I'm not paying directly.

</comment><comment><USER19> The only question I have is: how good are the emoticons on Slack.com?

<comment><USER42> Full emoji support and users can upload custom emoticons. It's full of win!

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> While this is probably helpful in some situations, my expectation is that like monitoring interwebs traffic, most tech companies don't care and won't bother.

This is really only something that probably matters if company has to take legal action and needs the CYA.

<comment><USER21> Probably true, but I think a lot of Atlassian customers (maybe most) aren't tech companies, but tech departments within big enterprises. I think most big companies actually do have web and email monitoring in place.

<comment><USER43> Agreed they have monitoring in place, but I'm curious how many actively review it on a day to day basis.

I know my company has web monitoring in place, because we got a note about people using their cell phones to access raunchy sites while on corp-wifi.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Does anyone know if Google has a similar policy for GMail or Google Hangouts/Google Talk?

<comment><USER45> With Google Apps for Domains you can take over an email address, for example after you fire someone. Nothing prevents you from seeing old emails.

<comment><USER46> Even if they're deleted?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Slack tho.

</comment><comment><USER48> I wonder if they will implement a "off the record" feature similar to Google Chat. Even if the company has access to private chats, some legal departments recommend their employees not use chats or emails for certain correspondence.

</comment><comment><USER49> The binding arbitration clause is predatory and an unfortunate addition to their terms.

</comment><comment><USER50> The title reads as though HipChat are releasing _previous_ chat history to administrators although the ToS clearly states that this is not retrospective and only _future_ 1-to-1 conversations will be impacted by this.

<comment><AUTHOR> I tried my best not to word the title in a misleading way. Sorry if it still mislead you, though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> We use Flowdock. We're happy with it and it's actually quite fun (custom emojis are a blast). I would never consider using a chat client with this limitation and strongly consider not working for anyone who does.

</comment><comment><USER52> Does this applies even if no chat history is being saved?

</comment><comment><USER53> Will have to give hall.com another serious look...</comment>


C Implementation of NTRUEncrypt - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/tbuktu/libntru

<comment><USER2> This looks really cool. Is NTRU at the point now where decryption works 100% ?

<comment><AUTHOR> Technically no, but the failure probability is about the same as someone randomly guessing a private key:

[http://crypto.stackexchange.com/questions/621/does-ntru- decr...](http://crypto.stackexchange.com/questions/621/does-ntru-decrypt- correctly-now/654#654)</comment></comment>


A full meal of Soylent can now be delivered to your door for $1 - <AUTHOR> https://soylent.com/blogs/news/a-full-meal-of-soylent-can-now-be-delivered-to-your-door-for-1 <comment><USER2> No, it can't. You can get 100 for €100. In addition, the check-out talks of shipping costs. I didn't check whether those might be zero for 'normal' addresses.

</comment><comment><USER3> Note that this is not for the liquid Soylent drink, but for the powdered version of Soylent.</comment>


Is the Answer to Phone Addiction a Worse Phone? - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/12/technology/grayscale-phone.html <comment><USER2> > "After going to grayscale, I'm not a different person all of a sudden, but I > feel more in control of my phone, which now looks like a tool rather than a > toy."

Unfortunately, I do not think by turning the display settings to grayscale will change people's behavior. In order to break an addictive habit there has to be some change.

It may be hard to think about, but what they should be measuring is how much use someone is getting by using there phone. How often do you need to check x website, versus responding to your phone for emails.

It has to be a Catch-22 for the apple's and google's of the world that are dependent on consumers consuming content on the devices while making sure that the consumption remains healthy.

Reminds me of this story (Netflix checks in on Redditor after sudden bout of binge-watching)[[https://www.techly.com.au/2017/12/14/netflix-checks- redditor...](https://www.techly.com.au/2017/12/14/netflix-checks-redditor- sudden-bout-binge-watching/)]</comment>


Ask HN: Thinking of leaving my startup - <AUTHOR>

The situation: I'm currently working for a startup, $startup, in which I have a small, but nontrivial amount of stock (~ 1%, of which 40% is vested). I work for their Indian subsidiary, but have been wanting to move to California for a while now. I have recently got a pretty good offer from a large company, $co, in the Bay Area.
The dilemma: - $co is somewhere I've always wanted to work at. I know that I will definitely enjoy both the work and the environment a lot more than I do in my current position.
- When $startup heard I was leaving, they offered to move me to their California office immediately, match and exceed $co's offer. This in and of itself would not get me to stay (they've been underpaying me and dragging their feet over my transfer, and the work environment is pretty bad), but
- The founder is doing his best to convince me that we have a significant probability of being acquired within the next 12 months, at which point having walked away from my unvested stock will prove to be a huge mistake, essentially throwing away my last 5 years of 60+ hour weeks. Particularly since I vest fully on acquisition, I could in theory stay the year at no real financial loss, and then go look for another job whatever happens.
I'm particularly interested in hearing from people who've been in a similar situation (though all advice is of course welcome). On the one hand, if I turn $co down, I might or might not ever get an offer from them again. In terms of my long-term career goals, they're definitely somewhere I'd love to work at. On the other hand, if we really are within a year of being acquired (and this is not a combination of optimism and salesmanship), the stock value represents more money than I'd make in the next decade. On the gripping hand, this is castles in the air, weighed against what is essentially a dream job.
So, thoughts? Advice? War stories? <comment><USER2> There are a lot of cliches which I think apply to your problem - "live for the moment" and "a bird in the hand ..." come to mind immediately.

Stock options are great leverage for the company and worthless to the employee in cases such as yours.

If you want to be in California and working for $co will make you happy, take it. Once you're here you can always find another $startup.

<comment><AUTHOR> yeah, very true. coming to the conclusion that a dream job is worth more than the potential millions to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> What is the least salary you would take to work at $co and for how long would you work there at that salary?

What probability do you put on $startup being acquired?

What is the least salary $startup could pay you to be satisfied with working there without the prospect of an acquisition?

<comment><AUTHOR> that's the rub - i'd be perfectly happy working at $co for what they've offered me, and getting a regular annual raise, and i wouldn't stay at $startup at all, without the prospect of an acquisition, even though they're (now) offering me a good bit more than $co.

the probability of being acquired is essentially the carrot, and the founder talks as though it's practically a certainty, but he's the overoptimistic sort. the problem is that i pretty much have no insight into the business/financial aspect of things, and therefore have no real way of judging the probabilities myself.

i'm actually not very motivated by money, but when the numbers get high enough they have a way of distorting reality around them.

<comment><USER3> We may not be motivated by money, but we all have our price. Would you happily stay at $startup for $200K a year with a 0% chance of acquisition? How about $100K with a 50% chance of acquisition?

Put some numbers to it and you might find you already know the answer.

<comment><USER3> n= the number of years you'd work at $co

$requiredCoSalary = the least amount per year you'd need to work at $co (negative if you'd pay to work there)

$offeredCoSalary = their offer

$requiredStartupSalary = the amount they'd have to pay to keep you if there was no acquisition on the table

$offeredStartupSalary = ...

E(ROI)=probability of acquisition times the $ of acquisition

If [n _($offeredCoSalary-$requiredCoSalary)]-[n_ ($requiredStartupSalary-$offeredStartupSalary)]>E(ROI) then take the $co job.

(Sorry for formatting - typed on phone)

<comment><AUTHOR> interesting way to look at it - forces me to make a realistic estimate of E(ROI)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> __followup __: i've decided to accept the offer from $co and move on with my life. feeling a lot happier now that i've made the decision!

<comment><USER3> Best of luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The big question is why are you only 40% vested after 5 years? You should have been fully vested a year ago.

<comment><AUTHOR> i was, we had to revest all founder's stock as a condition of the latest round of investment

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Would you rather have money, or be happy?

<comment><AUTHOR> in the long term, definitely be happy. the dilemma is if i wait a year, i could potentially have money _and_ be happy.

<comment><USER5> You don't sound _miserable_ where you are, but if you have your sights and long-term personal and professional goals set elsewhere, why delay the opportunity and risk being in a place you want to be for a few more bucks?

There's always going to be more money.

There isn't always going to be the perfect job on a silver platter.

<comment><AUTHOR> yeah, that pretty much sums up my emotional response to the whole situation. i'm trying not to be too impulsive about this because of the sheer amounts involved (though as a friend of mine puts it, i've multiplied a real number by an imaginary one and am dazzled by the result)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why objects usually use less memory than arrays in PHP - <AUTHOR> https://gist.github.com/nikic/5015323

<comment><USER2> Look at the size of those objects and hashtables! 96 bytes per array entry (plus the size of the actual value!) Utterly shocking and baffling implementation choices.</comment>


John Doerr:  Ten Ways Not To Lose Your Shirt - <AUTHOR> http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/10/john-doerr-ten-ways-not-to-lose-your-shirt

<comment><USER2> I found the video well worth watching, communicated to me much better than the bullet list. Some great points, esp "everything is renegotiable in this environment".

Re: _(4) Defer unnecessary expenses_ Alternatives to MS Office have been good enough[1] for a while, but there has been no impetus to switch. Now there is...

[1] e.g. I've started using OpenOffice 2.0, and it's great. I'm sure it lacks some features of the latest MS Office suite... but honestly, Word 1.0 pretty much had the features I needed. The video mentions Google Docs, and a co. that uses it for everything.

</comment><comment><USER3> I wouldn't be happy if my employer wanted to renegotiate my contract, I think this is better advice for your company's contract with other companies.

<comment><USER4> I would be very careful of this "everything is negotiable" model. Maintaining trust and a reputation for fair dealing inside your firm and with other firms is crucial to getting through an extended downturn.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Paid random email inbox generator service? - <AUTHOR> Hey HN,
Is there a service out there that allows you to get a random email inbox with high privacy guarantees that you can decide when to destroy? Something that would allow you to oversee many such inboxes, e.g. if you wanted to have one for each service you sign up for.
I know there are services like Guerrilla Mail out there, but given that they're free and of not particularly clear privacy stance, I'd rather go with a paid product that I can count more on.
Thanks! <comment><USER2> Mailinator has a similar service: [https://www.mailinator.com/pricingmatrix.jsp](https://www.mailinator.com/pricingmatrix.jsp)

</comment><comment><USER3> [https://scryptmail.com/](https://scryptmail.com/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah, thanks! Looks like Hushmail and ProtonMail are good alternatives as well. Any idea if one is somehow better than the other?</comment></comment>


Ask HN: OCD about idle times for long hours? - <AUTHOR>

Has anybody else ever felt pressured to stay online on an IM system by a manager or cofounder? I work for a large company and my manager stays green for a long time ago after and seems to message me when I go idle. I am becoming exhausted from the anxiety of having to always be online. <comment><AUTHOR> Am I wrong to let this bother me? Should I just ignore messages in the evening?

On a salary, when does the work day really end? I get in around 7:00 AM to our office and those guys aren't even out of bed before 10 AM. So I go home and then it's like 1 am and guy is reporting bugs on the site via campfire that were already added to the bug tracker by him.

</comment><comment><USER2> I had a similar thing. Wasn't really that bothered by it, but you _can_ set up skype to not ever set you to idle.</comment>


Ask HN: Looking for advice how to detect if person is at desk - <AUTHOR> Hi, I'm trying to find the best product that I could use in my office to come up with idea how we utilize our desks.
Long story short - we rent desks within bigger open space. It's not really cheap so we would like to find out if we are not using our space as efficiently as we could. I know you could use simple solution like PiR sensors but if somebody is not moving for long enough period of time then PiR will not catch it.
I am wondering if you are using something in your office that helps you to establish if you need all desks you rent. <comment><USER2> If what your _really_ care about is desk utilization, ask the people who use the desk to tell you.

If what you _actually_ want to do, is track when people are at their desks, you are picking a poor metric if you think it correlates to productivity. Great idea for telling the employee that you don't trust them though.

<comment><AUTHOR> We do not assign desks to people, I think "hot desk" would better explain how we use them as our devs are free to work from home if they feel like it. In the same time there is a group of people who do like to come to the office. Also some people pop in early in the morning, leave their bag and check email only to spend rest of the day on meetings with customers.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I found this company: [https://www.pointgrab.com/](https://www.pointgrab.com/) and they seem to be good. The only possible problem is that they use camera, I am unsure how will this work with GDPR and also if people will accept the fact of camera pointed at them.

</comment><comment><USER3> what about OpenCV/DLib and a basic face detector?

You can combine it with PIR eventually

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey, thanks for suggestion :-) I know it will sound a bit lazy but I am looking for off-the-shelf product that would simply tell me what is the % of time our desks are used so we can reduce (or increase) their number.

<comment><USER3> I don't think it exists, but really it takes you less than 2 hours of code to figure out what to do, if you're already in C++ or Python. These Frameworks expose C++ and Python API</comment></comment></comment>


Facebook Vs. Startups - <AUTHOR>

Hi guys,
I've been following news on ycombinator for sometime the crowd on here is quite intelligent so I had something that I would like everyones opinion on.
Is it still possible for a social network startup to make an entry in to facebooks realm? (I always believe that it is not possible for one company to completely monopolize a business) I refer to facebook realm as a universal social network type thing rather than other websites like badoo, myspace (current state), hi5 etc...
If so what would you imagine this social network being able to do and how it should look like, what strategies should use, image and ideal people behind it (major tech guys, university students etc... to get the attention required)
Many people are going to say it's not possible, but let's assume it is even for those people who don't believe in it being so.
Everyone promote this thread, let's get everyones feedback so we can all benefit from the information, I appreciate your responses. <comment><AUTHOR> This is the technology industry which means that you can't stand around for a long period of time without expecting or preparing for another entry. There are other startups coming in the scene addressing this issue of "privacy" and "open source" etc... With time Google and Microsoft will follow as well as VCs looking for potential candidates... MySpace could have re-designed their interface and added relevant features to stay competitive rather than switching their focus which was their main down turn. Ex. Microsoft buys yahoo to compete with google... no success.. Microsoft creates bing (sort of like a copy of google) and takes a good share of the market.

Facebook "basically" gave users what myspace and friendster had + some more in a very nice and easy to use format (even though both companies had largely taken over the market based on our expectations at the time - p.s. expectations change). Is that what a startup can do in this area to potentially "viral" and gain AT THE LEAST 100,000 members? Ex. StudioVZ, Chinese facebook copy etc...

Expectations of a market take over can now be defined as 500 mill members and in 2004 and on myspace was considered at the top of its game etc... you guys probably see what im getting at. But 2004 and now is a huge difference with access to computers, technology and cell phones being extremely convenient so is 500 mill a REALLY BIG NUMBER or Can it get even BIGGER in the future?

</comment><comment><USER2> No takers yet on your question?

If you're starting from scratch, the cards are stacked against you - why spend your time and resources competing in a saturated market? It would be far better to focus on another product idea, and that's probably the best advice you'll get.

Not to be a pessimist though - a truly unique idea that will compete with Facebook will improve access, or improve content. They probably have you beaten on access and can outspend just about anyone, so you'll have to focus on content by choosing a small sub-section of society, and making a very tailored product that appeals to them.

Random examples: a product that appeals just to Subway store owners, or something just for rodeo clowns. What about a companion product for the One Laptop Per Child project directed at markets where Facebook is less developed? Pen + Paper + Imagination = good ideas.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think it's possible. They'd be facing a very uphill battle to get enough market penetration on a one-to-many level; meaning: it's not enough to get someone to sign up to your new social network. You need to get their friends too.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> any thoughts?</comment>


Ask HN: Configuration Management in 2016, how are you doing it? - <AUTHOR> With Docker getting more and more space and the docker ecosystem being so good with docker machine, docker engine, docker compose and docker swarm. Can Docker replace entirely CM tools?<p>Looks like using ansible + docker for a small app is a completely overkill and mess, everything can be solely managed with the docker tools. <comment><USER2> It's not like Docker is the ultimate tool. Docker, as far as I know, has very messed up networking, which is not apparent until you need anything non- standard. Also, Docker is not as debuggable as a regular service started by initscript. It's not going to replace bare metal servers, virtualized servers, or even containers, on top of which it is built.

Considering these, there will always be a place for configuration management tools, like CFEngine and its derivatives, or for orchestration tools, especially the ones that are not tied to a specific way of running things. I don't think Docker on its own can do much good in a heterogenic environment, and most of the big environments that lasted some time are heterogenic.

</comment><comment><USER3> Ansible and CloudFormation here.

Cfn has many more drawbacks than I'd like, but there will always be edge cases and new features not supported by the transpiled alternatives, and some form of cfn is really the only way to go for small/early AWS deployments.

Ansible is, of course, just awesome ;)

</comment><comment><USER4> No docker in my shop... though we do manage almost everything with Ansible. All our apps are java-VM based, so a few playbooks to install Linux and OpenJDK and a few startup scripts is about all we need.</comment>


Khan Academy: the bad - <AUTHOR> http://inperc.com/blog2/2011/04/10/khan-academy-the-bad/

<comment><USER2> _"First, Khan has never lectured."_ _"Second, Khan has never taught."_

Odd, because I'm pretty damned sure that through his _lectures_ , he has _taught_ me a good deal of basic chemistry.

Results are the only thing that matters. If and only if people find Khan's material valuable, it will become popular. Guess what? It's pretty damned popular.

<comment><USER3> Exactly.

Also:

      > What do you expect from a good lecture? Depth,
      > insight, introspective. It shouldn't be just
      > regurgitated material from a textbook and it
      > shouldn't be a "how-to" manual on tape.

Is it possible that students don't feel the same way? For my part, the fact that the courses get down to it and don't _over complicate_ things makes it better.

If the courses were filled with "insights" and other off topic things I'd find myself fast forwarding all the time.

I think this is a prime example of how having no domain knowledge actually can help a lot and free you from years of this-is-how-it's-always-been-done.

<comment><USER2> It could be that students don't in fact place the same value in those things. _However_ , in my humble experience, the Khan videos are actually much better at providing those things than most of the lecturers I have ever had.

Sure he doesn't go off on tangents about work he did as a grad student in some tenuously related topic two decades ago, but I consider that a win and unrelated to _"Depth, insight, introspective"_

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> "First, Khan has never lectured." "Second, Khan has never taught."

This is such BS. When I came to the US on an assistantship, I was assigned to TA an intro to programming course. The problems were: a) I didn't have an undergrad degree in computer science, having taken only 1 course in programming (officially), b) I had never taught, c) my degree was from India, and here I was in a different education system in a different country.

But you know what? I got rave reviews from students.

It doesn't matter whether you've taught or not. What matters is how well you can explain the subject at hand, and how passionate and patient you are.

<comment><USER5> This was exactly what came to my mind too. No professors that I know of were taught how to lecture, they just got thrown in and did it. When I've TA'd, I've totally winged it. What Khan does is no different, but at least he does it with charisma.

<comment><AUTHOR> I remember winging teaching as a TA. After 10+ years I know I stunk, no offense.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> When reading this article, the thing that came to mind was his TED talk ([http://www.ted.com/talks/salman_khan_let_s_use_video_to_rein...](http://www.ted.com/talks/salman_khan_let_s_use_video_to_reinvent_education.html))

I think Salman Khan's biggest point in the talk seems to address this guy's complaint. He's not aiming to replace the teacher, he's aiming to replace the lecture. Students go home, watch his videos at whatever pace suits them, and then they go to school and have the _really important_ interaction with the teacher and other students, which can also happen at the student's desired pace.

<comment><USER7> I agree, and I thought of that too when reading the article. In some sense, it doesn't matter if Khan is just underlining and emphasizing the same word that the student doesn't understand over and over again, because the goal is for the student to still have that really important interaction with the teacher where that stuff is clarified.

But I think the implicit point in the article is that using Khan Academy in a school classroom is just one use case and that Khan Academy should still be useful for people who want to use it but don't have a teacher to talk to the next day about questions. And that's a difficult issue; while changing the education system is American public schools is amazing and all, the real humanitarian benefits to the site is that it can bring education to people who don't have access to other forms of education, and I have to agree that, as is, it doesn't handle that case spectacularly. I trust that it is on their minds and planned at some point, though (maybe though a better Q&A interface or something).

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The OP seems to forget that the goal of the Khan Academy is not just to produce videos. Of course there's no feedback with a one-way video lesson.

If you watch his (excellent) TED talk [1], you'll see that his organization isn't just about video lectures, but rather an all-encompassing suite of tools that allows students to learn at their own pace, repeat lessons that they didn't understand at first, and provides teachers with analytics to target their attention towards those students who need help.

[1] <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gM95HHI4gLk>

<comment><USER7> This is very important. The article ends on the note of "they're not even looking to hire educators; they're hiring _software developers_ " as if that's an extremely poignant accusation of the misdirection of the Academy, but the stuff that Khan shows in the TED talk, which is what they need the developers for, is the real potential for the site.

<comment><USER9> You could as easily say that it's a poignant accusation of the misdirection of educators.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> When you go to a process critique rather than argue results that's the sign of a weak criticism. The article is more concerned about how he does what he does rather than what he accomplishes. Khan has a system of which the videos are just one part. Teachers are a key part of his program, they are just freed to tackle more salient aspects of teaching, like helping kids get over problems. It's an open source business model. The source is free, use it if you wish, but for service, there could be a fee. Teachers could actually be paid to teach and mentor instead of lecturing and giving tests. It's a successful model elsewhere and worth trying in education. Teachers and others can produce the content and then anyone else can charge a fee for teaching using the infrastructure. There's no reason the lectures can't improve over time, but you have to start somewhere, and he did. And the other parts of the system are still very valid. Inversion of lecture and help time, a test until success testing model, go at your pace, short modules that build on each other, a dashboard helping teachers track progress and proactively solve problems. Why is that a bad approach?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's not a bad approach. However, the lectures are the only results I can see right now. I criticize the results that I see. And you don't refute my points. You just see "the sign of weak criticism".

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The advantage of the Khan Academy is that the teaching method:

\- Shows how the work was done in a step by step manner

\- Cuts the subjects up into short, easily digestible chunks

(note that both of these could be attributed to the medium, as screencasts require showing nearly everything unless you want to edit heavily, and YouTube has a length limitation)

The poster's points are valid - Khan's videos exist pretty much in a vaccum, and having no active feedback means that people who don't get a concept are sunk.

That said, there are solutions - I could imagine a teacher assigning "Watch videos 1-3 on subject X" to a class, then in the class sessions students would have to demonstrate competency and could get help.

I don't know anyone who thinks that Khan's work is the end-all solution to teaching problems.

<comment><USER2> _"I could imagine a teacher assigning "Watch videos 1-3 on subject X" to a class, then in the class sessions students would have to demonstrate competency and could get help."_

In fact, this is _exactly_ how Khan advocates that his site be integrated into existing education.

<comment><USER12> I've done this and it didn't work. It was a disaster. Students weren't willing to watch the videos. They weren't willing to do even this small amount of work.

My experience is that they prefer the lecture/test format. It allows them to slack off. A couple of days before the test they will study. The prefer to go through this cycle 4 or 5 times a semester than to continually have to work.

<comment><USER13> I've observed that students often aren't willing to do even a small amount of work in some classes, take every opportunity to slack off, and study a few days before the test in some classes, while in other classes those same students are engaged; work hard, enthusiastically, and willingly; and in general are model learners.

I have no explanation for the split personality these students show. Theories, anyone?

<comment><USER14> I've been thinking about that on and off for years, and I think the most important factor is the teacher's apparent level of respect for the students. In the classes where the students actually worked, the common thread I noticed was that the teachers of those classes visibly _expected_ the students to work hard and do their best. And vice versa: the teachers who were the most obsessive about controlling their classes were also the ones who got the least cooperation in this from the students. (I think the causation goes both ways here.)

So if I were teaching, say, a math class, and I wanted to use Sal Khan's videos for the lecture content, here's what I would want to do:

1\. Have less class time. They're watching videos outside of class, so it all balances out, and makes the videos seem like a more legitimate part of the class.

2\. Let the students know that, if they just cram before tests and don't watch the videos, they'll probably flunk. Contrariwise, if they keep up with the work, they should do just fine, and if they're having trouble, I'm happy to help.

3\. Keep grading standards high enough that the preceding statement is true.

4\. Have the first test be difficult but not weighted heavily, as an official kick in the pants to stir laggards from their lethargy.

I think this would go a long way toward creating the right mind-set in students, if it's matched with the corresponding respect from the teacher.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> tl;dr

Salman Khan is not an insider, and therefore I reject his attempts at disruptive innovation.

<comment><USER16> $0.25 says the author thinks Mr. Khan should go through a (worthless, IMO) teacher training program.

<comment><AUTHOR> Wrong. Mr. Khan needs experience teaching real students. Oh yeah, and a PhD in every field he wants to "disrupt". Just kidding.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I think that Khan Academy is based on the idea that the curriculum schools currently follow and the way the curriculum is taught is not ideal. So, in that regard, the fact that Salman Khan has no experience in a formal teaching environment could actually be an advantage. Also, I think that Khan receives a significant amount of feedback in the form of Youtube comments, including questions regarding the subject matter he has discussed in a video, so he can actually interact with students.

</comment><comment><USER18> I dont think the poster has valid points really, at the khan academy a student can follow in his or hers own pace, when they want as they want. That is not something that can be done in a lecture room.

Also in a lecture room you cant participate in the lecture 40 times so you really understand... unless you record the lecture, but in the khan academy.. if you need to watch a video 300 times.. goahead

<comment><USER19> I failed the first tine I took a class on scheme. A the second time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> "The Khan Academy has a few good things that make the service useful. Unfortunately, the good things about it don't outweigh the bad ones."

Umm - Millions of people are learning. I'd say the good >>> the bad.

</comment><comment><USER21> As videos on the internet, Khan is actually fine. The videos are largely informative, and I like watching them. But classroom implementations are a whole different ballgame.

If you want to actually improve the education kids are getting, there are a huge number of moving parts you have to address. In this sense, as a classroom implementation tool, Khan is just getting started. There's nothing to judge yet!

I've spoken with them a bit, and they're still trying to decide on the direction they want to take, how much they want to get involved in what they call "change management" in the classroom, i.e. making sure the tool gets used effectively. In my opinion, this is essential, but it takes manpower, and that's not something they can offer for free.

Of course, that requires having an understanding of how such a tool should be used, and as has been said, they're not teachers. The importance of them not having any classroom educational expertise is that they don't actually have a clear idea of how the tool would be used effectively. I work as an on-site PD specialist for Reasoning Mind, my job is to help teachers use this kind of technology. Khan learned a lot from their pilot in Los Altos, but they weren't being used as the primary curriculum there.

They're looking to be a full curriculum, what they call a "textbook replacement system". Doing that kind of thing effectively in communities that aren't as well-off (economically and teacher-quality-wise) as Los Altos is really, really hard. It takes a huge amount of work on the "change mgmt" side, high quality material, a ton of training for the teachers in the new classroom paradigm. This isn't the first foray into 100% differentiated classrooms, it's just the first one to go viral.

In sum, take a step back guys. Give them a chance to grow into a mature organization.

</comment><comment><USER22> The first two points seem completely vacuous to me.

Khan has never lectured? So what? I know plenty of people who have lectured every day for decades and they're still no good at it. It doesn't seem like (professional) experience lecturing is necessary to be an effective teacher.

Khan has never taught, so he hasn't needed to deal with the difficulties of the classroom? Yes, and to think that's a problem is to deny the premise of The Khan Academy - that if people are allowed to learn autonomously, the problems of the classroom go away. That argument basically reduces to "No, they don't". That's hardly reasoned.

For me the greatest benefit of The Khan Academy is the fact that Khan is a great teacher. We know there are teachers who are more engaging and stimulating than their peers and we know there's very few of them. I see The Khan Academy as an exercise in scaling great teaching. The institutional effects are very interesting and important, but secondary to me.

</comment><comment><USER23> As many other readers here I disagree with that statement as it stands. Saying that a new idea is not valid because it is not like the old idea is wrong in itself.

But when I look behind this little logical error, I find a quite valuable analysis. Before I really thought K.A. might be the "university killer". Now I see it more as opening up the spectrum of ways, we can teach and learn.

</comment><comment><USER24> While I think Peter Saveliev's immediate conclusions regarding Khan are incorrect, I do wonder: will Khan be bringing on more instructors to record videos outside his fields of expertise?

The Academy has already started a revolution in education. Wouldn't it benefit from more/better instructors, better production values, etc?

Also, I'd love to see Khan Academy-sponsored videos on the humanities. Of course, I'm not sure how liberal arts content could fit into the automated testing of the new exercise dashboard.

<comment><USER25> This is a filtering/sorting problem. There is a lot of people and companies working on this. It is good having something to be filtered/sorted

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Another critic of Khan Academy:

<http://andrewducker.livejournal.com/2332277.html>

</comment><comment><USER27> This entire post makes no sense. It's like the author says that Khan Academy is bad, because it doesn't copy the usual lecture format completely. It's different, boo.

And then there's the part where he doesn't realize that Khan Academy is supplemental, and not a replacement.

</comment><comment><USER28> I think (I'm a mathematician and I have lectured and taught in the University) the poster has valid points... but will be trashed in the comments (here and elsewhere).

<comment><USER29> The poster may have valid points but the post is useless. Anyone can sit back and say a maker didn't do it right. I actually don't think his points are all that good.

<comment><AUTHOR> You didn't follow any of the links, did you?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Sorry, I couldn't get past the word "tuturing". It is, after all, a critique on Khan's educational abilities. So embarrassing!

<comment><AUTHOR> Always spell-check! Thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I always understood Khan Academy as complementary to conventional classes.

To cover all topics of high school and college curricula doesn't necessarily mean supplanting high school and college or redefining education. If that is the case, I think the OP has a point. I don't think it is the case, though. No reason to worry.

<comment><USER14> It's complementary to _some parts_ of conventional classes. It directly competes with the part of conventional classes that consists of monologue- style lectures paced too fast or too slow for most of the students.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> > If the student in the "audience" is struggling, he is free to turn the video > off and try something else.

That's what his guided exercises are for <http://www.khanacademy.org/exercises?exid=linear_equations_1>

</comment><comment><USER33> I might not be the best solution in the long-term, but it's certainly a start in the right direction.

Teaching is roughly the same as it was 50 years ago. We're yet to harness the power of computational revolution and Khan Academy shows the way.

</comment><comment><USER34> No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame.

</comment><comment><USER35> Yeah. Tell that to my kids who are learning Algebra from Sal, and are learning it quite well.

</comment><comment><USER36> As a student, I'm particular interested in learning the basics of any given domain. With the basics, I'm given enough knowledge to go out and explore that particular domain - this is how I learn and Khan Academy is AWESOME for this method.

</comment><comment><USER37> Khan Academy doesn't have to be bad for the thing you are doing to be good.

</comment><comment><USER38> I think the article misses the big point of Kahn's enterprise - finding an alternative model for delivering education which can scale well.

It isn't meant to replace a top quality teacher at a highly selective institution teaching an elite group of students. It's intended to make decent education available on a large scale and accessible to learners in highly diverse and non-traditional situations, e.g. home schoolers, adult learners, and intellectually gifted individuals.

It still suffers from many of the issues that the factory model has because it is still the factory model - just different and hopefully improved.</comment>


Cache Control Immutable – A Year Later - <AUTHOR> https://discuss.httparchive.org/t/cache-control-immutable-a-year-later/1195 <comment><USER2> I'll probably be excited about this directive for a long time. I'm still excited about stale-if-error and stale-while-revalidate though it's taking a long time for support to go all the way out to the browser.

</comment><comment><USER3> Neat. I'm reminded of the way GWT uses quirky file names to enable them to treat files as immutable and 'cacheable forever'.

If you update your GWT page/app, then (with just one small exception to get things off the ground, as far as I can see) you get new files, enabling good caching.

[https://support.google.com/code/answer/77858?hl=en](https://support.google.com/code/answer/77858?hl=en)</comment>


China Recruits Thousands of Spies Using LinkedIn - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/behind-the-great-wall/china-recruits-thousands-of-spies-using-linkedin-370671c24b84 <comment><USER2> NY Times article from 3 days ago, 140+ points:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20816027](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20816027)</comment>


Ask HN: Do you have wrist or hand injuries? - brian-armstrong I'm curious how prevalent wrist and hand injuries are amongst programmers. I haven't come across good statistics on this, and it seems like it could be a moderate professional risk. It's hard to tell who has hand/wrist pain but doesn't talk about or just ignore it, who's had corrective surgery, etc.<p>Also, do you use preventative measures like ergonomic keyboards and mice? <comment><AUTHOR> I'm more concerned about constant keyboard use exacerbating existing injuries. I don't have any _caused_ by computer use, but all my fingers are double jointed and have a tendency to get hyperextended and hurt doing other things, such as playing american football (though I have injured my hand doing something as trivial as tucking a bedsheet in), so I'm carful about what keyboards I used since the tap-tap-tap all day will hurt otherwise.

</comment><comment><USER2> I've been a computer user since age 3. I only started developing RSI when I began computing as a profession.

Within the first year I experienced prominent wrist pain, primarily in the mouse hand. I had to deal with many applications across three 1920x1200 monitors.

Things that helped:

> I used a Wacom Bamboo tablet for several months to completely replace the > mouse. I became pretty skilled at using it and it helped a lot with the RSI. > It was a good experience and it's nice hardware for the cost, too.

> I bought a pair of wrist braces from Amazon. I used them while working and > while sleeping. They provided excellent pain relief by keeping my wrists > fixed and stable.

> A mechanical keyboard. I've bought and used several, but an old Das Keyboard > with MX brown switches remains my favorite and most comfortable keyboard. > I'm sure an ergonomic variety would be even better but I'm comfortable with > the standard QWERTY.

> I gradually increased my mouse sensitivity. This was one of the most > important changes, as my hand no longer needed to travel as far to > accomplish the same tasks. My window configuration was already pretty > optimal for me.

My RSI resolved within a year or so. I stopped using the braces and Wacom tablet but keep them on hand just in case.

I haven't had any problems since.</comment>


Patent suit filed in New Jersey targets Yahoo - <AUTHOR> http://www.nj.com/business/index.ssf/2015/11/patent_suit_filed_in_nj_targets_yahoo_report_says.html <comment><AUTHOR> I couldn't find better source that was free or didn't require an account.

Here's the "648" patent: [http://www.google.com/patents/US8285648](http://www.google.com/patents/US8285648)</comment>


One of Apple's founders backed out after a few weeks, and was for the best. How can a team understand when a smaller team might be a stronger one? - <AUTHOR> http://extras.denverpost.com/books/chap0411h.htm <comment><AUTHOR> To get things off the bat- Apple was put together under a poor corporate structure: If they had been a S-corp or LLC, he wouldn't have worried about personal liability.

That said, Given that he had wanted to play it safe, when the Steves wanted to push, it ended up being a good move that he left..

What's the best way to decide when a founder, or board member should step down?

I think we all agree that there should be lines in the Shares contract that try to deal with it- Giving the other founders the right of first refusal on their shares, and the like..

But how do you make that call? How do you start to decide "Maybe Bob isn't 100% on board for this."</comment>