John Romero Shares PC "Super Mario Bros. 3" Demo Video - <AUTHOR> http://gamasutra.com/view/news/261822/John_Romero_shares_PC_Super_Mario_Bros_3_demo_vid.php <comment><USER2> Wow, I imagined this only as couple of screens plus game mechanics, it's way more impressive than that.

It seems appropriate to bring up Masters of Doom here - I would recommend reading it if you are at all interested in Carmack, Romero, gamedev, programming, startups... so basically all HN users. It's a great book.

<comment><USER3> Masters of Doom is a fantastic book. I highly recommend it. I don't think there's really a book out there that follows the life and exploits of a great programmer like Carmack in so much detail.

<comment><USER4> I highly recommend the book as well. I consumed it by audiobook while driving. A great experience.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuU_ure7tF4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuU_ure7tF4)

"The computer, it contained worlds."

Which is incidentally the exact same thing I have been saying to people when asked why I was so into computers as a kid.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Note that this demo ran at 35fps (intended for a 70Hz CRT), but the videos are 30fps or 60fps, and 35 is not an integer multiple of 30 or 60. This means the frame timing in the video is uneven (even before playback timing problems). Motion quality isn't as good as the 60fps original game, but it's not as bad as it looks in the video.

</comment><comment><USER6> > Nintendo declined the partership, and the project was reborn as an original > title -- Commander Keen -- which debuted 25 years ago today.

Looked it up:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CyTDI2ATb6k](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CyTDI2ATb6k)

is it just me or it seems to be light years behind super mario bros 3? In term of fluidity, fun, graphics, level design... I haven't played it but it looks like it wouldn't stands well nowadays while the former is still playable and enjoyable.

<comment><USER7> It's not just you. The Keen games were fun, but I'd always prefer to play Mario as a kid. I wouldn't be all that surprised to learn that part of the reason Nintendo declined the partnership offer was because id's SMB3 engine wasn't actually very faithful to the original game -- for all that its jump timing and ground friction are quirky and occasionally weird, they are also very distinctive, and it's obvious from the video that id either didn't understand that or didn't understand why it was important.

<comment><USER8> All that could easily be fixed and was mostly a result of the rushed job and them not having access to source material to work with. I think the only reason Nintendo declined is because they didn't want Nintendo games on non- Nintendo systems.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's a very impressive demo, but it's also a testimony to the sad state of PC graphics (and sound) hardware back in the day. Consider that _years_ earlier I was playing stuff like this[1] and this[2] on my home computer.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mLZoYUgilkI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mLZoYUgilkI)

[2] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-U6HUaAONI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-U6HUaAONI)

<comment><USER10> The demo is from 1990. According to wikipedia the Amiga games you linked were released in 1990 and 1989. How did you play them _years_ earlier?

<comment><USER9> Fair enough, there were plenty of nice looking Amiga games from earlier. How about Menace[1] and Baal[2] (I loved Psygnosis)?

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXBpMCVicic](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXBpMCVicic)

[2] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DcTBrIdkqDE&list=PLx15a59XJM...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DcTBrIdkqDE&list=PLx15a59XJMIYo_l8z9RXJPum1dFC0dMUd)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> If Nintendo had accepted it, and it was a massive hit like it was guaranteed to be (come on), we might have official versions of Pokemon and Smash Brothers on the PC now. When a butterfly flaps its wings in Tibet...

<comment><USER12> But we might not have Doom.

<comment><USER11> I can see that, considering Nintendo's puritan stance on violence etc.

<comment><USER13> It's true that Nintendo had a puritan attitude, but I would note Doom was ported to the SNES, with blood, gore and inverted crosses; the port was released in September 1995: [http://doom.wikia.com/wiki/Super_NES](http://doom.wikia.com/wiki/Super_NES)

<comment><USER11> The SNES had a pretty bad history of censorship, eg. Mortal Kombat and Wolfenstein 3D, which were both playable but kind of pointless (no blood and censored fatalities in MK, no blood, dogs, or Nazi symbols in Wolfenstein). They relented somewhat after the introduction of ESRB ratings in 1994.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It's fascinating to see this thing for the first time, but now it is understandable why Nintendo was not interested.

It is a good demo to show that (relatively) smooth scrolling can be achieved on such a low-end machine not designed for gaming, but as far as gameplay goes the resemblance to the Mario series stops below the surface. The physics that make the Super Mario Brothers games simultaneously unique, fun and challenging are more specifically defined than "2D Newtonian jump physics and you can jump on guys".

In addition, some of the background graphics are very well done conversions (clearly done by just looking at the original without actual access to the data) while the character sprites are surprisingly messy. What's going on with Mario's face? You'd think the Mario sprites would be the most important aspect of the presentation!

I don't want to be overly critical of something like this and it's really great to finally get a look at it, but it clearly took a lot of time so it's just odd to see certain details overlooked in what was to be a proposal demo to a big company like Nintendo.

<comment><USER15> Also Nintendo likes selling SNESs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Seems quite far off from the NES version's quality and game physics. I realize it was just a demo though, pretty cool video clip of gaming history. Who knows what could have been if Nintendo supported PC for their games.

</comment><comment><USER17> It's interesting that Nintendo shot this down but later ok'd crappy games like Mario is Missing on the PC. This looks like it could have been a lot of fun with a little polish.

<comment><USER18> They actually OK'd Super Mario Special, which is even worse: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0HQOKmAPRA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0HQOKmAPRA). However, this was 1986, so I'm assuming that they felt burned by the PC platform after that trainwreck and so didn't really entertain id's offer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Is that algorithm documented anywhere?

<comment><USER20> [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptive_tile_refresh](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptive_tile_refresh)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> The Keen series was pretty solid. CK 4 is one of the better games I remember playing on the PC back in the day. I only played CK1 and CK4 as those were the free ones in the shareware model iirc, maybe I should revisit the series :)

<comment><USER22> Keen is available on Steam nowadays for not too expensive (I think $5).

Keen Dreams is excluded from the bundle IIRC, but that's abandonware by now and has been opensourced on Github.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Tangentially related I would recommend everyone to check out some Speed runs of the mario games. It is astonishing what people pull of, hacking in it's purest sense.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/speedrun/](https://www.reddit.com/r/speedrun/) is a good source for it, but every mario game ever has been speedrun and it's easy found on youtube.

<comment><USER24> Some tool-assisted "speedruns" now have significantly more elements of hacking, in that they involve analyzing the game code to find bugs, predict random number generators, or look for exploits. For instance: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uep1H_NvZS0#t=32m](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uep1H_NvZS0#t=32m)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Amazing! Wow very cool seeing the sprites / screens that inspired the real game. I would play this game for hours, days at a time. I skipped so much school playing this game. One of my god friends almost got expelled from skipping so much school for this game.

Edit: kind of funny how bad the player was at this game. If you ff to the end of the game he can barely make it from block to block and dies 3 times in the span of 200px.

<comment><USER26> > Wow very cool seeing the sprites / screens that inspired the real game.

Wait, what? Are you under the impression that this demo inspired Mario 3 in some way?

The controls look awkward and floaty, so I doubt skill has much to do with it. It's a fairly superficial copy of Mario 3 without the attention to detail in making sure the controls are both fun and really precise. Which, to be fair, in 1990 only Nintendo and Sega could pull off with much finesse (others were good at one or the other, but not so much both). Jumps like that were only fun in Mario games because of that balance.

<comment><USER25> oh nevermind then, still interesting</comment></comment></comment>


CityPockets Keeps Track of All Your Online Coupons in One Place - <AUTHOR> http://lifehacker.com/5799015/citypockets-keeps-track-of-all-your-online-coupons-in-one-place

<comment><AUTHOR> I really like using this site because it has allowed me to manage my vouchers easier and the new marketplace is awesome</comment>


"Hit or Miss? The Effect of Assassinations on Institutions and War" - <AUTHOR> https://web.archive.org/web/20140523062908/http://ipl.econ.duke.edu/bread/papers/working/150.pdf

<comment><AUTHOR> Excerpts: [https://plus.google.com/103530621949492999968/posts/fB26RKUZ...](https://plus.google.com/103530621949492999968/posts/fB26RKUZd1B)</comment>


Ask HN: Who's offering free ideas consulting? - <AUTHOR>

20 minutes of feedback. I saw user `abstractbill` offering this and I thought it would be nice to know about people who are willing to help potential startups in this way.<p>I'll be the first. I might be useful if you have an idea that is aiming to make developer life easier, because I'm constantly looking for ways to work better and faster. Hit me at vojto (at) me (dot) com. <comment><USER2> I've done this for a few folks on here.

I'm can provide a detailed feedback report or just chat and share my ideas.

I'm my user name on Gmail.com

</comment><comment><USER3> I do this. See my HN profile or <http://lion.co.uk>.</comment>


Geometric Folding Algorithms: Linkages, Origami, Polyhedra - <AUTHOR> http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-computer-science/6-849-geometric-folding-algorithms-linkages-origami-polyhedra-fall-2012/index.htm <comment><USER2> I've been working my way through this. It's fascinating and accessible, and, at least when the lectures were recorded a few years ago, full of open problems.

This page has a better version with more resources (lectures, classes, synced slides and notes): [http://courses.csail.mit.edu/6.849/fall12/lectures/](http://courses.csail.mit.edu/6.849/fall12/lectures/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Erik Demaine rocks. I loved his papers proving various classic Nintendo games NP-hard.

<comment><USER4> The man is seriously goofy too. He made videos about demonstrating equivalence classes by rolling his father into a cube. And that was for an honorary title in some math circle.

<comment><USER5> Could you please post the URL?

<comment><USER4> Here you go [https://youtu.be/WlO80TOMK7Y?t=3000](https://youtu.be/WlO80TOMK7Y?t=3000)

<comment><USER5> Thanks!:-)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


French Universities Cancel Subscriptions to Springer Journals - <AUTHOR> https://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/52208/title/French-Universities-Cancel-Subscriptions-to-Springer-Journals/ <comment><USER2> The alternative business model that the world is moving to is Open Access. The difference being that instead of paying to access the journal or paper, the researcher or institution that wishes to publish pays up front to have the paper published.

Open Access has its own problems, such as predatory journals, where researchers who don't know better or who are desperate to publish are more or less lied to as to the reach and validity of a journal. It has become an area ripe for a new kind of scammers. This has prompted efforts such as Think, Check, Submit[1].

There's also the problem with raising the funds to publish something as Open Access. It's not always the case that the researcher actually has the means to pay for Open Access.

Nevertheless, Open Access is clearly the way where the research community is headed, and we're going to see a steady growth in percentage of research published as such over the next decade or so. But it does come with its own set of problems to solve.

1: [https://thinkchecksubmit.org/](https://thinkchecksubmit.org/)

<comment><USER3> I'm going to be honest. IMHO publishing a paper should be like doing a PR on github and there is no reason it shouldn't be.

You do your research, read the "PR" i.e. submission guidelines and submit it, - sure let the committer and reviewers be anonymized until the PR has been accepted - then just pull it into a "Repo" aka journal and be done.

How can this process cost tons of money?

<comment><USER4> How would you incentivize peer review with your approach?

<comment><USER5> Do you think Springer pays for reviewing? No publisher does. It's all voluntary work by the same people who write the papers. It's the modern day slavery.

<comment><USER4> The parent comment implied that reviewers would be anonymized with this Github-based approach unless the PR was approved, which seems like it would lead to more acceptances so that the reviewers could get credit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> What has always underpinned this flawed and collapsing business is that successfully published works in "prestigious journals" are a form of private property to the authors. A series of such publications can result in tenure or lifetime job security and prestige for the author. The PRESENT VALUE of cash flows associated with such publications is a number of million dollars in advanced societies, and no cash investment was required on the part of the beneficiary. And the publishing fees are paid by someone else. So the researchers went along with the system which only began to crack due to two factors: (1) Developing economies needed the information but couldn't afford it at absurd prices (2) Commercial application began to eclipse government and defense as a research driver.

<comment><USER7> Your post lacks crucial detail. I worked in a scientific journal and am familiar with the pipeline of article creation. Can you elaborate on who "someone else" is that is paying the publishing fees? These are often derived from grants authors have received. Furthermore, where is your evidence that commercial applications have eclipsed government/defense as research drivers? The vast majority of the studies I reviewed in the scientific journal were not directly related to commercial applications, but were most often funded by government organizations of one kind or another (CDC, NIH, defense, tech innovation funds, etc. from various countries). Your comment just doesn't square with my experience in the industry.

<comment><USER8> As a government/defense researcher, there is definitely more money available from industry sponsors. When I go to internal conferences with my bretheren, their salary is paid for, they have interesting problems, and no money or political will to organize basic processes, like a common infrastructure.

Meanwhile, my project, a collaboration with industry, has literally anything we need and more.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Best move would be to institutionally forbid, or disincentive somehow, publication in non open access journals.

<comment><USER7> Look at the UK's regulations. If UK govt money goes into a research project, it must be open access. They are, to my knowledge, the only country which uses this policy.

<comment><USER10> That is actually true in the US as well with NIH funded research [1] (the majority of biomedical research). HOWEVER, the research need only be opened after a time-embargo (generally a year). Additionally larger universities like the University of California system also 'require' open access publication [2] - however waivers to that requirement are often sought and easily granted.

In both cases, the policies (NIH in 2009, UC system in 2013) were shots across the bows of the large publishers, and permit a gradual easing of the culture without just blowing it up. So long as the eventual goal of all open-access is met in a relatively timely fashion, I think the strategy of slowly cinching down the rule is a reasonable compromise.

[1] [https://publicaccess.nih.gov/policy.htm](https://publicaccess.nih.gov/policy.htm)

[2] [https://osc.universityofcalifornia.edu/open-access- policy/in...](https://osc.universityofcalifornia.edu/open-access- policy/index.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> In related news, the academic publishing problem is still unsolved. There is no standard model to fund the resource intensive process of peer review in the open access journals and their role as a gatekeeper for scientific relevance, advancement and funding.

<comment><USER12> Do you really need peer review? Isn't number of citations a form of peer review? Of course you sort of need to assign a reputation to these citations.

<comment><USER13> You absolutely need peer review. You'd be stunned at some of the rejected submissions

<comment> barry-cotter Absolute crap will be roundly ignored with or without peer review. Science and the Humanities worked fine before peer review and if it's dropped they'll work fine again. If Grigori Perelman puts another paper on arxiv that's groundbreaking people will look at it without benefit of peer review, just like the last one.

<comment><USER14> > Absolute crap will be roundly ignored with or without peer review.

Things might be ignored, but only after a person has already wasted their time looking at it and determining it is crap.

It was harder for cranks to publish back when journals were purely physical and a crank would have to come up with the printing costs himself. Now that anyone can publish for free on the internet, peer review is even more important for establishing what content out there is worth paying attention to and which is not.

<comment> barry-cotter You neglect the costs of submission, revision, resubmisssion etc. which are borne by the authors. Even if we assume that all involved are pure of heart and no one is deliberately delaying publication of their rivals' work submission to publication in economics is on the order of two years. This is insane so the actual intellectual conversation has moved to working papers with final publication being in a journal being as much for archival and career progression metrics as anything else. I believe the situation in much of computer science is similar, with conference papers serving as the workaround for the fact that pre publication peer review is unbearably slow, not working papers.

Peer review happens anyway, but faster, and in public, without the insanity of revise and resubmit.

Journals are not where the action is in Economics or Computer Science. It works for them. Why not for everybody?

<comment><USER14> > You neglect the costs of submission, revision, resubmisssion etc. which are > borne by the authors.

I neglect those because journals in my own field are both free to publish in and, more often than not, open-access. I do understand that not everyone is so fortunate, however.

<comment> barry-cotter I'm talking about time, not money. Because those costs absolutely are borne by the authors. Insofar as peer review hinders the free dissemination of ideas it also hurts the scientific community and those who depend on its research.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> No one has mentioned the heroic work of Sci-Hub yet, so here's an obligatory link: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16332139](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16332139)

</comment><comment><USER16> Meanwhile, German universities are teaming up for joint negotiations with journal publishers. Their first target is Elsevier. My university came close to losing access to Elsevier journals as a part of this move.

<comment><USER17> I work at a small non-profit anthropological database. Our primary target is academia. We can only employ a small team of developers (2) and 12-13 total staff. About a decade ago Germany negotiated with us our only perpetual access license for all of their universities.

Consortia memberships in the US and Canada are not uncommon either. However, Germany possess our only perpetual license.

A lot of us desire open access, however, we are not sure how we would fund ourselves. Our subscription rates are generally very low. Especially compared to these large journals.

<comment><USER18> Could you get a grant or two?

<comment><USER17> >Could you get a grant or two? \--

Re:open-access? Perhaps. I should note that this area is not my expertise. However, what to do when the grant runs out?

Even so most of our revenue comes from the subscription. A grant may pay for hosting, but what about the time of the developers. Or those working on the publication side. We are already on a near skeleton crew. Especially compared to what we had here in the 1940-80s.

<comment><USER18> _However, what to do when the grant runs out?_

Well, you get another. Lots of non-profits run only on grants.

Have you thought about applying for EU grants? Open Access is one of the goals on Horizon 2020, the €80B EU program[1], but even after that there's no shortage of EU cash being dumped on anything even barely related to "innovation".

[1] [https://ec.europa.eu/programmes/horizon2020/sites/horizon202...](https://ec.europa.eu/programmes/horizon2020/sites/horizon2020/files/FactSheet_Open_Access.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Science: journals are too expensive! they should be cheaper!

HN: Just do it yourself! It is easy! You already do the hard part! Yay!

- _\- -_ \- -*- At the same time.

Poster: this is how you run your small db

HN: Oursource your databases! Outsource your apps! Oursource your auth! Outsource your mail! It is difficult!

<comment><USER20> I don't see the paradox?

<comment><USER19> People who say outsource everything to techies are the people who tell scientists to insource their journals.

<comment><USER20> Aren't they saying scientists can now insource their journals because everything but the labor they are already doing has been outsourced to software?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I've been reading these comments because I'm always seeking ideas for how to distribute peer review and provide signals about paper quality. How could we leverage the Internet and a large group of authors and papers to show readers which papers thrown online are of citable quality? Surely there's something we can do beyond counting page views.

<comment><USER22> I have not given this much thought or did any research. It is just an idea that popped into my head reading this thread. Why not just replicate the open source software model? Author opens a git repository on a github like repository. Reviewer can comment on the content repository. Article versions are stored and changes are stored for future reference. Even research data can be stored in same repository. Reviewers can build up a reputation by reviewing articles. Articles can even be forked or referenced. Articles with the most references and reviewed by reviewers with a good reputation can thus rise to the "top". Technically everything is in place. Or I am too much of a technical optimist?

<comment><USER21> As a programmer, it's hard not to wish we had git-for-publishing, git-for- Photoshop, git-for-homework, etc. it's just such a powerful system! I think the steep learning curve is the reason it hasn't already caught on beyond where it's absolutely essential in software engineering. Maybe that means we need a more approachable git. It would also mean getting people onto the platform. Maybe a platform that already has the users could gradually introduce a version control system piece by piece.

<comment><USER23> FWIW, I've already got git-for-homework, git-for-academic-articles, git-for- slide-decks, git-for-lesson-planning, and probably a few other things. I'd be curious to see what passes for version control in fields other than software/CS, but I don't think I've heard of any such thing in use. I don't even hear "git is too complicated" \-- people don't seem to talk about (anything I recognize as) version control at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Good thing when rent-seekers are countered. It doesn't happen enough.

</comment><comment><USER25> Related discussion on the Publishing Reform Forum: [https://gitlab.com/publishing- reform/discussion/issues/38](https://gitlab.com/publishing- reform/discussion/issues/38)

Please help us by expressing your opinion and public support on the forum. There is still a lot of work needed to convince the journals' editors.

</comment><comment><USER26> Here's an interesting and relevant project, scoap3. It tries to convert high quality journals to open access with an interesting model.

[1] [https://scoap3.org/](https://scoap3.org/)

Disclosure: I work at the same section as scoap3 team, at CERN.

</comment><comment><USER27> Interesting that the publishers are still allowing the universities access (at least for now) while the universities refuse the publisher's wishes.

<comment><USER28> Because if the Universities truly leave, the publishers are screwed. This is cycle of feudalisation or corporatization, unchecked power created an imbalance, but that imbalance threatens the power holder because their power is only symbiotic, not absolute.

Publishers need Universities to both _consume_ the product and _create_ the product. If they cut them off, it will only force the inevitable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Elsevier and Springer are European companies. I wonder if the EU countries could just nationalize them.

</comment><comment><USER30> My hope is that the ethos of FAIR* data sharing principles spreads and researchers finally replace the current commercial aspect of publications with an endowment funded system.

* [https://www.monash.edu/ands/working-with-data/fairdata](https://www.monash.edu/ands/working-with-data/fairdata)

<comment><USER31> >replace the current commercial aspect of publications with an endowment funded system

The research itself is funded by the tax payer. The peer review is funded by the tax payer. What endowment funding is needed to replace whatever Springer is actually providing?

This whole mess is solvable with a single law. Just have the EU or the US legislate that any tax payer funded research (including research with external grants but done by researchers in public universities) needs to be available free of charge for download to any citizen. The whole "sector" would unravel pretty quickly after that as it should. Charging the tax payer, through huge contracts like this one being renegotiated in France, huge sums for access to the very research the tax payer has already paid for to be done in the first place is a complete travesty.</comment></comment>


Saharan Village Is Home to Thousands of Ancient Texts - <AUTHOR> https://mymodernmet.com/chinguetti-mauritania-desert-libraries <comment><USER2> This article says almost nothing and then just has a lot of stock photos. This one linked from it is much better: [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/jul/27/mauritania- her...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/jul/27/mauritania-heritage- books-libraries)

<comment><USER3> If you search the web for Chinguetti you can find better material.

In particular this article discusses much more of the history and context, [http://worldlibraries.dom.edu/index.php/worldlib/article/vie...](http://worldlibraries.dom.edu/index.php/worldlib/article/view/159/114)

Also try a video search, [https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Chinguetti](https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Chinguetti)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's odd that the article states that they're "fighting against the desert elements to preserve their texts"... which doesn't really make sense since the desert is one of the best places to preserve old paper. Unless the "elements" is a reference to the geopolitical situation.

<comment><USER5> Sufficiently old books are more likely to be vellum or similar, which will indeed decay if sufficiently dry.

<comment><USER6> You mean sufficiently recent books. Old books in the Sahara Desert are unlikely to be vellum; they're much more likely to be papyrus.

<comment><USER3> Do you have evidence for that or are you just speculating?

We are talking about books from no earlier than the 10th century. Apparently the oldest book in the city is a Quran written on gazelle skin, [https://en.qantara.de/content/cultural-heritage- endangered-i...](https://en.qantara.de/content/cultural-heritage-endangered- in-mauritania-the-koran-on-gazelle-skin)

But there's at least one 11th century book written on Chinese paper, [https://www.ancient-origins.net/ancient-places- africa/tradit...](https://www.ancient-origins.net/ancient-places- africa/tradition-destruction-lost-libraries-chinguetti-009651)

Edit: here we go [http://worldlibraries.dom.edu/index.php/worldlib/article/vie...](http://worldlibraries.dom.edu/index.php/worldlib/article/view/159/114)

> _Paper in particular became as valuable as salt or slaves (the two top > commodities of the trans–Saharan trade), especially after the eleventh > century, when it replaced parchment, and even more after the introduction of > Italian paper in the thirteenth, which significantly raised the standards of > quality for this type of material. Paper was more practical to use but also > more difficult to recycle since, unlike parchment, it could not be scraped > and overwritten; besides, it came from farther away than parchment, salt or > slaves (all North or West African commodities), and it was more perishable > than any of them._

<comment><USER6> So... I said early books are unlikely to be vellum, and you're saying you don't want to talk about early books?

<comment><USER3> The material used in the Kingdom of Kush or at the Library of Alexandria (or whatever) is 100% irrelevant to this discussion.

It seems unlikely to me that there was ever any significant number of papyrus books in the western end of the Sahara desert, since as far as I understand the papyrus plant doesn't grow anywhere within 2500 miles.

Some kind of parchment would be the obvious local material to use.

But apparently there started to be trade in paper (another non-local material) starting about 1000 years ago.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Some additional, non-stock library photos from a few days I spent passing through Chingutti in 2013, for context: [https://flic.kr/s/aHsmGcnZEY](https://flic.kr/s/aHsmGcnZEY)

</comment><comment><USER5> TFA points to Kottke, which in turn references this Twitter thread, which is superior to the original article: [https://twitter.com/incunabula/status/1156460080327360517](https://twitter.com/incunabula/status/1156460080327360517)

Atlas Obscura also has a few excellent photographs: [https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/the-libraries-of- chingue...](https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/the-libraries-of-chinguetti- chinguetti-mauritania)

</comment><comment> munk-a I am so confused by this article... are all the images just rando stock photos that someone thought would be relevant? It really detracts from the actual meat of the article to have them there.

<comment><USER5> I passed through Chingutti about six years ago and believe I recognize the librarian. That's certainly Mauritanian garb. Let me see if I've got pictures available online; will reply here in a bit if so.

<comment><USER5> Also posted this at the top of comment hierarchy. [https://flic.kr/s/aHsmGcnZEY](https://flic.kr/s/aHsmGcnZEY) Pretty sure that's the same librarian; I'm squinting and mentally adding six years.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The article was interesting for me to read—I wish they made it clearer how these books are treated to protect them.

I also found it interesting that all the photos were stock photos but, crucially, I didn't realize it until the end of the article despite being prominently declared beneath each photo. They seem to give the impression of being linked to the article but are in fact entirely unrelated(?)

</comment><comment><USER8> Reminds me of a talk I went to by a Benedictine monk who has spent time traveling the world digitizing texts that are at risk, especially when they're threatened by religious persecution or war. Really fascinating talk, perhaps the closest thing I've seen to a real-life Indiana Jones[1].

If you're curious about what kind of a digital life these texts could have, I'll shamelessly plug a project I've worked on for Coptic texts[2]. OCRing a document (or more commonly for Coptic, at least for now, hand-transcribing it) is often just the beginning of the ideal digital edition: there are all kinds of things humanists want, including Uniform Resource Names (URNs), linguistic annotations (POS tags, syntactic trees), orthographic normalization (i.e., bringing spelling conventions in line with modern editorial standards), and so on.

[1] I think this is him: [https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2017/03/13/columba- stewart-m...](https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2017/03/13/columba-stewart- manuscripts)

[2] Example document, a kind of parable about early church fathers from a body of works, the Apophthegmata Patrum: [http://data.copticscriptorium.org/texts/ap/ap096n281bread/an...](http://data.copticscriptorium.org/texts/ap/ap096n281bread/analytic)

</comment><comment><USER9> This is a great article about the ancient manuscripts in Mauritania - [https://elpais.com/elpais/2016/10/01/eps/1475273119_147527.h...](https://elpais.com/elpais/2016/10/01/eps/1475273119_147527.html)

</comment><comment><USER10> I do not find it odd that Chinguetti is on the only road to the Richat Structure, which is one of the strangest places I've ever seen from satellite photos.

</comment><comment><USER11> It just looks so hot.

</comment><comment> munk-a When it comes to preserving antiquity I don't really care about family heritage crap. If the libraries are hesitant to release the books to be copied for preservation because they may be damaged - I understand... if they don't want them copied because then nobody needs to go all the way to the town to read them then... eh, I'm cool with their rights being disrespected.

<comment> radford-neal Are you really so sure that confiscating historical treasures that have been preserved by a family for generations will have good results? Have you considered that this will encourage other people with treasures to sell them on the black market before they are confiscated? Have you considered that those stealing the treasures may not be all that concerned with preserving them? Have you considered that the treasures might be destroyed as people fight over them?

Maybe it would be better to help these families develop better preservation methods and security.

<comment> munk-a I disagree, I don't see a family as an inherently secure method for transfer - how many libraries don't exist because one of the generations along the way had a gambler that sold off all the books to cover a debt?

I also didn't mean to suggest that the families be deprive of the content or even the originals they are preserving, I was only advocating for this information to be copied and preserved digitally. The article is sadly lacking on what sorts of preservation difficulties these families are running across, I assumed it would mostly be material degeneration which is quite destructive but thankfully can be side-stepped by copying.

I also don't think anything should be confiscated, these families should retain the originals - but copies should be made.</comment></comment></comment>


Read first pages of novels, and reveal the author and title if you're hooked - <AUTHOR> http://www.recommendmeabook.com/ <comment><USER2> It's interesting to think what might happen if something like this became really popular. I'd imagine many novels might start adding super oddball stuff in the first page, just to stand out from the crowd and pique peoples' curiosity. Kind of the literary equivalent to clickbait headlines.

<comment><USER3> I think this might already happen. This is just anecdata but I often get turned off from books by overwrought first page(s). Eventually someone convines me to go back and the rest of the novel is good.

I'd love to hear an author's perspective on this, if any of them notice it. My guess is that they stew on opening passages for years before writing, causing them to get a little neurotic about them, then eventually they settle down and write in a way that comes more naturally to them for the rest of the book.

<comment><USER4> In pretty much any writing medium (novels, screenplays, short stories, etc), standard advice involves hooking the reader within the first paragraph or so. This is partly why "in medias res" tends to be such a popular opening technique - it drops the reader straight into the action, which is theoretically more interesting than "She woke up, got dressed, and went downstairs for her daily breakfast of toast and juice...". However, starting in medias res has itself become something of a cliche, to the point where you have to really know what you're doing to be able to use it effectively.

What I think a lot of novice writers, and people giving advice to novice writers, often miss is that "hooking" your reader doesn't mean immediately assualting them with action. All it means is raising a question the reader wants to know the answer to.

For example, "The Wizard Hunters" opens with the line "It was nine o'clock at night and Tremaine was trying to find a way to kill herself that would bring in a verdict of natural causes in court, when someone banged on the door." Not much action - Tremaine is sitting in a dusty library reading books - but that line raises two immediate questions: 1, why is Tremaine trying to kill herself in a way that would be ruled "natural causes", and 2, who's banging on the door at 9pm?

Similarly, "Black Sun Rising", the first book of the Coldfire Trilogy, opens with the line "She wondered why she was afraid to go home." Again, the line raises multiple questions, inviting the reader to keep reading to learn the answers.

<comment><USER5> My forever favorite opening line to a novel remains "We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold"

How can you _not_ want to keep reading after that? While at the same time it's still at the beginning, not assaulting you with action, etc

<comment><USER6> God bless Hunter.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I kept hearing raving reviews of "The Name of the Wind". I started reading it and got a couple of chapters in and had no interest in continuing. I mentioned this to my brother and he told me that I had to keep going. So I figured I'd read a bit more and see if there was anything to the book. I just finished it on Saturday and I have to say it is easily one of the best books I have ever read. But, if I had just read the first pages of the book I never would have been hooked.

<comment><USER8> I felt pretty much the same way when reading it. "The Name of the Wind" is rather unusual as a novel because those first chapters are pretty fundamentally different than the rest of the novel. Not just in terms of plot, but I think also the general tone and style. I don't actually have a count, but I think it's a good 50-100 pages before the novel falls into its rhythm. It's not that the beginning is bad (in my opinion, obviously) it's just that there's a lot to set up and he does so without using a bunch of exposition.

<comment><USER9> That's really interesting. The first few pages come pretty close to poetry in my opinion.

For me its those interludes that raise TNOTW into a class above the normal Harry Potter Copycat Formula that is so popular now.

I never even considered the possibility that, those bits would be putting people off. It's pretty clear that its those sections were Patrick Ruthfuss strives for perfection, that is taking so long to complete the series. He can churn out pages, once he gets "into the rythm" of more common storytelling.

<comment><USER8> I should add that I like the other interludes, and now when I re-read that first part I enjoy it. It's just the initial reading of the set up, introducing Chronicler, the stuff with the scrael, etc. I didn't know where Ruthfuss was taking this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm currently hooked to this free book "Stories on the Go: 101 Very Short Stories by 101 Authors" [https://www.amazon.com/Stories-Go-Very-Short-Authors- ebook/d...](https://www.amazon.com/Stories-Go-Very-Short-Authors- ebook/dp/B00R1GECO6)

Each story is <1000 words (5-10mins), from a distinct author, and if you like the writing style, you can buy more books from the author.

<comment><USER11> Reminds me of "100 Great Science Fiction Short Short Stories" edited by Asimov. The format works really well for hard sci-fi, gets straight to the point. Some of them have stuck with me for decades.

<comment><USER12> I've looked up "Microcosmic God" several times because I can't seem to remember the title. But the story was particularly memorable. It wasn't in this Asimov anthology but it was published in the SF Hall of Fame.

A quick search reveals that someone has a copy of the text freely (but perhaps not legitimately) available.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> It's funny that most of these that I read start off with a very annoying, cliched "writer" tone.

I've always had the impression that authors just can't help buy try to prove how clever they are in the first paragraph at the expense of making the story compelling. It's like everyone has delusions that the book they're writing is going to be the next Moby Dick, so that beginning must be _literary_ dammit.

<comment><USER14> I don't know which specific novels you're referring to, but the first sentence/paragraph/chapter of a novel often need to have a different tone from the rest. The opening of a novel sets the scene and sets the tone and raises expectations for the rest of the story in a way that a strictly narrative opening wouldn't. In other words, these "literary"-style openings are no more and no less clichéd than any other.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> This promoted me to write a first page of a new book idea. Was trying to write just the first page that would have gotten me curious enough to want more.

I'd love if there was a similar website but instead of existing books it will have new book ideas. Authors will just write the first page and by votes (or donations) get encouraged to write more. Like Reddit's writing prompts but more organized. Maybe it will be my next weekend project...

<comment><USER16> There are a number of sites where people post serial fiction as it's written, chapter by chapter, and many popular web serials began with opening chapters of around 500-2000 words (2-8 pages). These sites usually offer writers validation in the form of likes or star ratings, a view counter, and comments from readers (who will often respond with short affirming messages like "looking forward to chapter 2" or speculation about where the story might be headed).

Royal Road is one of the newer and faster-growing sites, notable for being the biggest home of free LitRPG stories. Archive of Our Own (AO3) is a site mainly for fan works, though there are a number of people posting original fiction there. AO3 is currently a closed site with a queue to get in (most stories can be read by anyone, but an account is required to post), there's usually a waiting period of around 10 days after you submit your email address to the waiting list.

There are also some forum-style sites like Sufficient Velocity (and its progenitor Spacebattles), where the forum software allows authors to "threadmark" certain posts in a thread and label them as chapters to separate them from the posts that are discussions/comments. Readers can choose between "Reader mode" (which just displays the posts that have been labeled as chapters by the original poster) or a regular forum mode (where they can see all of the comments from other posters between chapters). Although this forum- based approach might make it feel like it's less optimized for sharing stories (as opposed to sites that are tailored specifically to that purpose), I've found that the forum setting makes people much more likely to comment on stories. While these forum-based websites might not have the biggest audiences, they certainly seem to have the most _engaged_ audiences, which I think makes them more valuable if you're looking to validate a story idea.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Great idea. I noticed that the right arrow key works great for quickly skipping a book I don't like, but if I accidentally push it there's no way to go back (back button and left arrow key don't work at all)

</comment><comment><USER18> Interesting.

Some novels have powerful first pages and even opening paragraphs. However, one distinction (of many) between the novel and the short story is that the short story must hook your attention from the first paragraph, whereas a novel has the time and space to grow on you.

I'm not sure this will work for novels. As an example, I got the first page of a book which talked about a middle-aged man and his relationship with a prostitute. I was surprised to find out the book was Coetzee's "Disgrace" \-- a book I've read and which I do not associate at all with a middle-aged man and his affection for a prostitute. I really don't think you can decide whether you'll like a novel -- or even find out its main themes -- in the first few pages.

I think this approach can successfully work for short stories, though. Short stories have no time to waste; they must both engage the reader _and_ their themes in the first few paragraphs.

...but then again, do you really need a recommendation to read a short story? You might just as well read it and get it over with :)

</comment><comment><USER19> That may not work for all (I want to say most) of literature. Many books I like are pretty dry. These books are theme based and not story based where you don't really care how the story ends, but are more interested in the deep conversations between characters which are spread throughout the book which may not show up in the first few pages. The author uses the first few pages to describe the settings and make you more comfortable with the times and the environment the book is based on. You may not really be interested in those parts but subconsciously they help you out throughout the book and lead to a more immersive experience. This is what separates films from movies too. I'm sure even fast paced fiction (say thriller) writers would take their time in setting up a universe for the reader. You don't really remember the details described in each line but the approximate picture is enough to get you 'into the zone'.

</comment><comment><USER20> If you live in SF, go to the Booksmith on Haight street and look up on the walls on the left side of the store. They have the first line of many famous novels, printed without context. I was shocked at how many I knew, even though if it had been posed to me in reverse (How does {book x} begin?) I would have had no idea.

I'm not even a very attentive reader, but I guess some of these really great opening lines will stick with you forever.

Two of my favorites:

      * "Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice."

      *  "I've been cordially invited to join the visceral realists. I accepted, of course. There was no initiation ceremony. It was better that way."

</comment><comment><USER21> I would follow Marshall MacLuhan's advice. Open a book on page 69, read it. If you like what you read, buy it.

Also: "Open the book to page ninety-nine and read, and the quality of the whole will be revealed to you." \-- Ford Madox Ford

<comment><USER22> My father's rule is to only read by opening books (new, old, known, unknown, already read, halfway read) randomly and just plowing through that random part of the book. I don't think I would personally enjoy that constant destructuration but it help get a global vision of many books fast.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Like all other shortcuts for judging a book this one has plenty of issues. However I like that it _disentangles_ a few of those issues. Instead of judging a book by the author, cover, title and then the first page you can focus in on just one of those heuristics.

Also if you can control yourself and avoid revealing the author/title of books you don't like you won't bias yourself when you get recommendations from friends!

</comment><comment><USER24> How did you do this site ? Did you download a big torrent of ebooks and extracted the first chapter/words of them ?

Interesting though ;-)

</comment><comment><USER25> This is actually how I select books in a book shop. I admit I was ruined by all things tech with very limited attention span. In fact I only read the first paragraph over about a dozen books on the website and finally decided on one which turned out to be The hitchhacker's guide to the galaxy.

My suggestion here is not necessarily putting out the first page but a page the author feels most representative of the story/view/idea. Personally I would either draw to a unique plot or some really smooth/beautiful verse. In both scenarios, I don't think the first page may necessarily be representative enough, leaving me the shame of missing a damn good book.

Love the idea though! Thank you.

</comment><comment><USER26> Reminds me of the (I believe now defunct) Page99Test site. Similar concept but you read page 99 ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Page_99_test](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Page_99_test)) instead.

</comment><comment><USER27> Would be great to be able to categorize pages by genre.

</comment><comment><USER28> Very cool! I find myself skipping the vast majority of books on kindle because the blurbs make them sound awful to me, but I admit I'd probably also have skipped a lot of books I really liked had I judged them that way. Also this seems like a good way to find books I wouldn't normally consider sampling just because of laziness and prejudice on my part.

</comment><comment><USER29> "It was a dark and stormy night. A door slammed. A woman screamed. A shot rang out. Meanwhile, back on the ranch..."

</comment><comment><USER30> The site fails to work with cookies disabled. Most sites that require cookies at least display an error message.

</comment><comment><USER31> Use this in conjunction with the Library Extension so that when you click the Amazon link, you find out whether it's also in your local public library!

[https://www.libraryextension.com](https://www.libraryextension.com)

</comment><comment><USER29> "Call me Ishmael."

Ok, I'm hooked!

</comment><comment><USER32> Some really good books can be quite a struggle to read until you get past the first 100 pages. I even found Anathem by Neal Stephenson to be a struggle until I got past 200 pages, but after that it was so worth it.

</comment><comment><USER33> Open inspector in Chrome, find the #generated div, deactivate text-align: justify.

Much better.

</comment><comment><USER34> "We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold."

Forget the first page... All you really need is the first sentence.

<comment><USER35> That is just too iconic not to know.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Very cool. How's it work? Affiliate links to amazon, sure- is amazon serving the first couple pages as well? Great project.

</comment><comment><USER37> This is a great idea, but for some reason it feels like a contest after I could guess 6 out of the first 10 correctly.

</comment><comment><USER38> How is this done? Where do you get the books and their first pages? I am wondering if Amazon API gives book preview also.

<comment><USER39> It's curated from author/publisher submissions, link is top center:

[http://www.recommendmeabook.com/submit](http://www.recommendmeabook.com/submit)

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Pretty nifty, but I would like it to actually recommend based on my tastes. Like combine this and Goodreads.

<comment><USER41> But that would also be a limitation, since you'd never explore _new_ things ;)

<comment><USER40> You can still find new things that way. I get all kinds of recommendations on Netflix that I wouldn't have found on my own, but they still have high odds I will like them. And then not have to read through a dozen that are of no interest before you finally find a good one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Much easier on the eyes if the colors are inverted

</comment><comment><USER43> This is cool and worked well for me on mobile!

</comment><comment><USER44> I'm hooked. Your app works. kudos.

</comment><comment><USER45> Now this is a good idea!

</comment><comment><USER46> Great idea. No HTTPS?

<comment><USER47> I feel ignorant about this. Why would this site need HTTPS?

<comment><USER48> Put concisely, so nobody can inject content in-transit.

<comment><USER49> Use an ISP that you can trust.

<comment><USER50> For most of us in the US, that isn't an option. Also, your ISP isn't the only point of attack for injections.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> Tindr for books?

<comment><USER52> Ooooh: Bindr. I like it.</comment></comment>


Fossjobs: A website for free and open-source software jobs - <AUTHOR> https://www.fossjobs.net/ <comment><USER2> The first link I clicked on (the UK section[1]) was listed entire with jobs dated _2015_. Even assuming some of those companies still have openings, seeing results that old immediately discourages me from investigating further on your resource. So it might be worth hiding expired positions from a UX perspective.

[1] [https://www.fossjobs.net/jobs-in/United- Kingdom/](https://www.fossjobs.net/jobs-in/United-Kingdom/)

edit: The 2nd link I click on had jobs ranging from 2014 to 2012. I respect the effort you're putting into this curated list but displaying jobs _that_ old is a little silly.

<comment><USER3> Indeed. I clicked the US link and the newest post is from August 2016. And that's the only one from 2016. The next newest is from August 2015 and they quickly get much older than that as you move down the list.

I guess the one benefit is seeing a list of potential employers of FOSS developers even if it means researching current possibilities elsewhere...

<comment><USER4> As I write your post is 7 hours old. I saw 4 posted in the US for 2017 so perhaps being on HN is getting them some attention. But yes, there were things from 2012.

<comment><USER3> That's great! As mentioned my initial take away was at least it was a good place to start researching companies that actually have FOSS positions available whose focus is on contributions and not just using/understanding FOSS.

After my comment I read more and it looks like they want more contributions and, I agree, being on HN probably helped!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The market for FOSS programmers will grow in Europe. A report has just been published that says "open source is important for the future of the European software industry." [1]

In the UK, Government Digital Service already has a strict policy that software it writes should be open.

Being able to write FOSS in your day job is a wonderful boon . Especially in government it will help offset the lower salaries of the public sector.

[1] [https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/community/osor/news/ec-study- rec...](https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/community/osor/news/ec-study-recommends- policies-emphasise-open-source)

<comment> jon-wood I wonder how much of an incentive writing open source at somewhere like GDS actually is. While its certainly nice to develop in the open how much of what you write is actually useful in future jobs?

<comment><USER6> If I could work on GPL'ed software, I'd do it just for the sake of the political argument (yes, I'm that far :-) )

<comment><USER7> Me too. (yes me too)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Congrats, there seem to be interesting offerings and employers on fossjobs.net. What are the criteria to be listed on fossjobs.net? Right now, I'm also seeing some admin/devops jobs that are only related to F/OSS insofar as eg. Linux is being used, but won't contribute to anything distributable under F/OSS licenses.

<comment><USER9> (Hi! This is Moritz, who currently maintains the fossjobs site)

It's hard to define clear criteria.

We do want to avoid jobs where people just "use" FOSS. The focus is definitely paid positions where you /contribute/ to FOSS in some way. Besides obvious developer positions, that might be administrative or sysop jobs at FOSS projects/orgs or other non-profit environments, more than sysop jobs at random web startups.

<comment><USER10> Since you're currently maintaining the site, you might want to consider splitting "Serbia and Montenegro" into two separate countries, since they've been independent from each other for over a decade now.

<comment><USER9> Done. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It would be interesting to have an option to pay for desired new features in existing projects. You could call it "bid for code" or something: people who need a certain feature in an open-source project would commit to paying some amount of money for it. Other people interested in the same feature could also join. A bit similar to a kickstarter, but for feature requests. Developers would choose what to work on, depending on how much money is being offered.

Is there something like this out there already? This could be a feature in this site or a completely new site if someone wants to take on this idea. Github should offer this option!

<comment><USER12> Do you mean something like Bountysource? [https://www.bountysource.com/](https://www.bountysource.com/)

<comment><USER11> Oh, that's nice, thank you. And it looks like they already have some integration with github: [http://blog.bountysource.com/post/48954271533/improved- githu...](http://blog.bountysource.com/post/48954271533/improved-github- integration-automatically-update)

<comment><USER13> Codemill also has github integration but it's not very actively used.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Great idea!

The following text could be improved though (looks as if it is suggesting to recommend a fake job to a friend):

"Is this job ad fake? Report it! or Recommend to a friend"

<comment><USER15> It weeds out the competition.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Wow this is great! I've grown tired of the typical agency world of billable hours and conversions. Looking forward to seeing more jobs posted across the gamut of IT.

Also happy to see this working without javascript or unnecessary marketing tags. It's refreshing.

</comment><comment><USER17> I guess the Red Hat job openings are not FOSS enough?

;-) (disclaimer: I work at Red Hat, happy to hook site maintainer up with our team to coordinate)

<comment><USER18> Is it possible to work at Red Hat without using any proprietary software, let alone write any?

<comment><USER19> It's not possible to work ANYWHERE without using proprietary software, running on patended hardware, coming partially from China.

<comment><USER18> Hardware and patents are both unrelated to my question.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> [https://www.twitter.com/fossjobs_net](https://www.twitter.com/fossjobs_net)

[https://www.facebook.com/fossjobs.net/](https://www.facebook.com/fossjobs.net/)

</comment><comment><USER20> What a great resource! I used weworkremotely.com to find my current job. A combination of the two would be perfect for me, but I see that many of the jobs are already remote. I'm also pleased to see the term "Programmer" used instead of "Software Engineer." I always identify myself as the former.

<comment><USER21> I identify as the latter; "programmer" narrows your job title down to someone that writes code, while the latter opens up the full scala involved in software development. Most time is spent not on writing code, but talking about it - this is even more true in a lot of OS projects I've seen, where there can be very long mailing list discussions about changing small pieces of code. And besides that, there's also things like server administration, datacenter automation, data modelling, analytics configuration and statistics processing, knowledge sharing / transfer (blogs, conferences if that's your thing), etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I worked on a FOSS project. Part of the Kuali consortia, making software for higher education.

I took the job to learn how these kinds of projects work. Specifically, the governance model. Well, _it didn 't_.

I wish I understood why.

Writing about open sourcing Solaris, I think it was btilly who said that others had the _right_ to fork, but not the _power_.

That describes Kuali perfectly. We consortia members couldn't do anything to help ourselves improve things, like simple bug fixes, without it being a major production. Very disempowering, pretty much the opposite of why I wanted to work on FOSS.

We need academic style comparative analysis of FOSS governance models, funding models, project methodologies, etc. Learn from our mistakes, help people in the future.

<comment><USER23> I figure any percieved inertia in Kuali is a reflection of it's constituents. If all consortia members' IT dept are on an annual upgrade cycle over summer break, there's little incentive to push out daily bug fixes.

Plus, I'm guessing Indiana University has outsized influence on the shape of the project, since they founded it.

> We need academic style comparative analysis of FOSS governance models, > funding models, project methodologies, etc. Learn from our mistakes, help > people in the future.

I have a book here on my desk: "The business and Economics of Linux and Open Source" by Martin Fink. It's from 2002, and could use an update clearly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> A site like this would be nice, but it would need a steady team of volunteers to source job listings.

I suspect most job openings and offers are launched on country-specific websites and systems, many which probably (even intentionally) are locked in and lack a public API.

Right now, checking Norway, there are zero listing. That may be true (I wouldn't know), but from that alone I'm guessing this site does not know how to source jobs from the "typical" Norwegian employment sites.

So who are going to bother to volunteer for a site which lands everyone else a job but themselves? It seems like a hard thing to get right.

<comment><USER9> Well, what about me? I _am_ volunteering, and a couple of others CC @fossjobs.net on Twitter whenever they come across a job offer.

Yes, you are right, this site depends on volunteers. So what? Wikipedia does as well. Why would anyone contribute their knowledge to something that does not help them? Well, maybe it will one day.

We don't have to start a debate about why anyone would volunteer anything, but I find your reasoning pretty self-centered. Also, you're arguing as if this was a mere proposal for a job site that lists FOSS jobs. No, it's not. Is is an actual site that lists FOSS jobs, and it works.

And don't forget about FOSS companies/NGOs who are looking for talent. Some of them actually like to post their job listings at our site, and do so with a very self-centered desire: To fill a position, potentially with less noise than using one of the other platforms. Why would FOSS developers want to look at all the depressing proprietary jobs on other platforms? :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Fortunately the site does use FOSS software itself: [https://www.fossjobs.net/about/](https://www.fossjobs.net/about/)

</comment><comment><USER26> Some of the jobs listed on the site date from 2013 - it seems as though some housekeeping is required.

<comment><USER9> No. Of course it makes little sense to apply to old jobs, but one of the goals here is to demonstrate that there _are_ actually paid jobs in FOSS. We keep old job listings around on purpose, also because it helps to find interesting organizations which you can then get in touch with.

<comment><USER27> On the other hand, if the number of jobs in _recent time_ has to be padded with job openings in ancient history, is there really a substainable number of paid jobs in FOSS?

<comment><USER9> How does this matter? What do you mean by "sustainable"? One job is a job. Two jobs is two jobs.

<comment><USER23> Sustainable as in "I can make a career of this" or "if this particular project wanes, I can always hop over to one of the many other projects."

If you pad your listings, people will assume you need to because there _aren't_ many such jobs. Moreso over time as the ratio of filled listings to active recruitment grows -- if all visitors ever see are jobs that no longer accept applications, they will not come away with a positive outlook on the field.

<comment><USER9> Again: We am not "padding" anything. The site exists since 2012, and we keep old job listings around, as an archive and to help find interesting potential employers that may have jobs apart of what is listed. There's an open ticket about "fading them out" a little to make it even more obvious. There's plenty of recent jobs listed, so your point about "only ever seeing jobs that no longer accept applications" is moot. Also, subscribe to the RSS feed (or Twitter/Facebook), and "all you will ever see will be fresh, open positions".

It's like arguing that a news site should delete yesterday's news instead of keeping an archive, because "you're only interested in today".

As for your "sustainability" and "career building", I disagree there too, but that's for a different conversation.

<comment><USER28> > There's an open ticket about "fading them out" a little to make it even more > obvious.

As someone who recently was job hunting and come across another site with this problem: absolutely do this. You get the bonus of instantly showing the user which jobs are current, so they don't notice only after wasting time and then jump to the assumption the site is dead. You show users that you take the up- to-dateness of the data seriously. And lastly you get to keep the archive around, which I agree with you is a good thing to do.

> There's plenty of recent jobs listed, so your point about "only ever seeing > jobs that no longer accept applications" is moot.

Not for me there's not. I'm in the UK and it's all 2 years old.

(Good idea tho, hope it continues well!)

<comment><USER9> Plenty of recent jobs are open to remote workers, which includes UK.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Nice, just posted a job! Hope they verify my email soon :]

</comment><comment><USER30> What I'm trying to do with [http://letsopensource.com](http://letsopensource.com) is similar except offer structured incentives for developers that contribute to FOSS.

</comment><comment><USER31> Bug: seraching for partime jobs take to [https://www.fossjobs.net/page- unavailable/](https://www.fossjobs.net/page-unavailable/). ie. [https://www.fossjobs.net/jobs-in//parttime/](https://www.fossjobs.net/jobs- in//parttime/) takes to [https://www.fossjobs.net/page- unavailable/](https://www.fossjobs.net/page-unavailable/)

<comment><USER32> Might be best to report it at [https://github.com/fossjobs/fossjobs/issues](https://github.com/fossjobs/fossjobs/issues) :)

<comment><USER9> That's probably [https://github.com/fossjobs/fossjobs/issues/9](https://github.com/fossjobs/fossjobs/issues/9) :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> You mentioned open hardware in an answer to another comment, but I see no obvious category for a hardware developer in the menu! "Programmer" or "designer" do not quite fit the bill.

<comment><USER9> What category would you suggest to add? If it's about actual development, I think "Programmer" will do just fine. I am a bit reluctant to add a new category specifically for this.

<comment><USER33> I'd suggest "Hardware".

It is niche, but without it, it really does not send any signals that Open Hardware jobs are welcome. A hardware designer definitely is not a "Programmer".

(Edited for clarity)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Added to [https://github.com/wfhio/awesome-job- boards](https://github.com/wfhio/awesome-job-boards) !

</comment><comment><USER35> There is also [https://www.fsf.org/resources/jobs](https://www.fsf.org/resources/jobs)

<comment><USER9> ... which can be a great resource to find jobs appropriate also for fossjobs.net.

but: "usual price $250/30 days"

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> At the bottom of each job offer, the site asks "Is this job fake?" and then offers "Report it!" or "Recommend to a friend" options.

I certainly hope people aren't recommending fake jobs to their friends! That's a funny UX issue.

</comment><comment> bjelkeman-again Thanks, we will be trying that out for our openings in the developer team.

</comment><comment><USER37> The markup syntax to post jobs is referred as "textile" (which I don't know -- is it a flavor of markdown?) and the help page for it points to [http://www.textism.com/tools/textile/](http://www.textism.com/tools/textile/) which in turns redirect to the quite unrelated page [http://www.booked.net/textism.html](http://www.booked.net/textism.html)

Would you please fix the dead link? Great job board otherwise, I was about to post a job (I work at SUSE, almost everything we do is FOSS).

<comment><USER38> That's not an unrelated page; it describes Textile's syntax in a column on the right and lets you try it interactively.

(No, it's not a flavour of Markdown.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> See also: [https://www.fsf.org/resources/jobs](https://www.fsf.org/resources/jobs)

</comment><comment><USER40> When they say 'full time' in the job description, how many hours do they expect us to spend time on those projects?

<comment><USER9> If you find a job that looks interesting, it's always a good idea to get in touch and find out the details and how much it is up for negotiations. Quite often there's details in the description, and if not, I would expect full time to mean something around 40 hours per week. It helps to look at the cultural background and where the organization is based. Especially benefits (vacation days, sick days, health insurance) vary quite much between different countries.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Wow, this is the coolest idea. I am going to find and collect all the resources to get prepared for a remote work Foss job.

</comment><comment><USER42> Where did you get your initial feed of job offers? I can see offers that are 4 years old

<comment><USER9> It's simple, and you can help: I am adding jobs that I come across or that people submit. It's a collaborative action. Job listings from 2012 were added in 2012. It's not a new site. Of course we don't add old expired jobs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> This is such a great concept for a job-seeking site; kudos!

</comment><comment><USER44> (from a job posting I saw)

"So where do you work?"

"Uhhh. Cockroach Labs"

</comment><comment><USER45> I'll be using this for my next job, thanks!

</comment><comment><USER46> Will FOSS jobs will post job openings in India?

<comment><USER9> Hi!

A lot of the jobs on fossjobs.net are remote work. In fact, you can directly see the job's location on the job listing. It's definitely worthwhile reaching out to the project to ask.

And of course we would list openings in India, as we would list foss jobs in any place. If you hear of any, please let us know! The easiest way to do that is to cc @fossjobs_net on Twitter.

<comment><USER31> Thankyou, Thankyou so so much. Now i can work overtime without feeling bad about spending my time making some bad people rich.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> would any of those be useful for someone who's relocated to somewhere with a lower cost of living?

</comment><comment><USER48> Just posted an ad. Great page!

</comment><comment><USER49> the link support under JOB CATEGORIES is too broad

</comment><comment><USER50> Removed.

<comment><USER9> Patches welcome. This is a hobby side project, and it does its job. (pun intended)

<comment><USER34> Help us hack on Tramcar ([https://github.com/wfhio/tramcar](https://github.com/wfhio/tramcar)). It's still very early days, but we'd love to see others starting use and contribute to this software! :)</comment></comment></comment>


Google Chrome impacted by new Magellan 2.0 vulnerabilities - <AUTHOR> https://www.zdnet.com/article/google-chrome-impacted-by-new-magellan-2-0-vulnerabilities/ <comment><USER2> If you cant upgrade to patched version create userjs script with

window.openDatabase = undefined;

this will globally disable websql. Of course Google took care of this 'user permission to install own code' leak and ... removed User script directory support in 2011! :| Nowadays you need to either install Tampermonkey (and enable advanced mode/instant injection which is a hack in itself because Chrome has several year old not fixed extension execution bugs) or write your very own custom `run_at` `document_start` extension injecting that one liner to achieve something as basic as ability to turn __of __a browser feature.

</comment><comment><USER3> It might be the time to use something else, with less privacy violation

<comment><USER2> Its not even strictly privacy violation, but carelessness. Google would never enable something like this(raw calling someone elses unvalidated library) internally, yet its a wild west when it comes to browsers running on user computers. How did we get to the point where browser will happily leak available C drive free space with one stupid navigator.storage.estimate() call.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Will you buy a smartphone without camera, GPS and sensors? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> I still use a point-and-shoot (I don't really like the highly-advanced camera on my Galaxy S5 because the interface is poor).

GPS is difficult, because navigation is so much better when you pull up-to- date maps from the internet - old standalone sat nav units go out of date very quickly, as do printed maps. But at the same time, I don't want the companies behind it to have free rein of my location data to spam me with adverts.

The rest of the sensors aren't that useful - the light sensor is a nice convenience to dim the screen, but Apple introduced the concept over 10 years ago and most laptop manufacturers still handle brightness manually, so swiping the control panel down on a phone and sliding for brightness isn't a big deal. The rotation sensor annoys me, especially if I pick up a device while I'm lying in bed, so I have the screen orientation locked. Other sensors like the health-based heart rate sensor on my S5 are neat, but totally optional.

In short, yes, no (mostly) and yes.

<comment><USER3> > GPS is difficult [...]

How about dedicated GPS receiver connected with bluetooth? I used to carry one, it worked well.

<comment><USER4> That'd be my option as well, but more as a workaround for a device that I really wanted otherwise but didn't have GPS for some reason and not as "that's the setup I want". If I were to carry a GPS tracker anyways sometimes (e.g. when I don't have a phone with me), then it might be different.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Nope.

I use the camera all the freaking time. As in, more than I use the phone function. For me, it is one of the more handy functions of the phone. I no longer keep a camera on me at all times.

GPS? Yeah, I kind of rely on it from time to time to find places I've never been before. In addition, I have a very poor sense of direction, made worse by moving to a northern latitude and from a fairly flat place to a mountainous one. I also use it when on vacation.

Things like rotation sensors I would rather have with me. I could probably live without some because I don't realize they are there or how they help.

</comment><comment><USER6> without-camera: maybe without-GPS: yes without-sensors: (without knowing exactly what "sensors" are) I think yes. But I may be using a "sensor" that I don't know about

The camera is nice for quick snapshots of moments, and when someone else's camera has died, it's nice to be able to take over. But all-in-all I don't use the camera that much. GPS: having turn-by-turn directions is nice, but I can read a map and its nice to understand where you're going before just relying on something telling you to "turn left now"...

There are a ton of sensors in phones now-a-days, so I'm not sure which ones are in use to provide some features that I may really like. Therefore, I'd have to see on this one. My initial reaction is that I don't really use many of them, but this may be a false assumption.

</comment><comment><USER7> I considered dumbing down my phone recently after my last one broke. Opted for a cheap android as i wanted a podcast player, and a camera to photograph kids

One thing i want is a cover for my camera lenses - i hate that cases dont have this by default. Also i could live without the front camera

why no GPS?

<comment><AUTHOR> Some cheapest SoCs still don't have GPS receivers

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Currently not, large part of why I have a smartphone is to not carry a bag full of different devices.

</comment><comment><USER8> Nope, those are the two features of my phone that I actually _want_ to use (camera and mapping) because they're useful to have on hand but not time sinks. I would love to buy one that didn't support web browsing or games, though!

</comment><comment><USER9> It depends largely on the price. Although I occasionally use the camera, I tend to use my dedicated camera more. I have the location turned off. Since my phone is getting old, I've thought of reverting to a dumb phone, so I might.

</comment><comment><USER10> Definitely not but I would certainly buy a phone that isn't running background processes all the time or doesn't have to be connected or pinging the internet all the time.

</comment><comment><USER11> Yes.

Have a point and shoot for decent pictures, my current phone's camera is pants.

Handy as maps are I wonder what privacy I'm giving up using them.

I don't use sensors.

I've actually considered recently getting a dumb phone.

</comment><comment><USER12> The 2 apps I use the most on my mobile phone are the Camera app and Google Map. In today's and age I would not spend money on a Startac Motorola or a Nokia phone.

</comment><comment><USER13> Will it have wifi? Then an app can still estimate my position using SSID and cell tower location.

Could a hardware button disabling all sensors be an option?

<comment><AUTHOR> >Will it have wifi?

Certainly

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> mmmh it's pretty hard to responde. Sensors?? Yes i could live without, camera ..mmmhhh may be (it better to have 10 good photo than 10000000 of low quality, in terms of frame photo). ..in the gps ..no i could live without even if sometimes it's very useful even only to plot a run or a walking

</comment><comment><USER15> The absolute minimum I need for a smartphone is GPS and mobile data. I'd rather drop wifi or even SMS first.

</comment><comment><USER16> Camera and GPS are must haves. I have no interest in keeping track of two more devices.

</comment><comment><USER17> No. Those are probably the 3 things I use the most.

</comment><comment><USER18> If the price will be low enough - i might consider.

</comment><comment><USER19> Isn't that a feature phone?</comment>


Want to Remember Everything You'll Ever Learn? Surrender to This Algorithm - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/medtech/health/magazine/16-05/ff_wozniak <comment><USER2> I will make a shameless, shameless plug.. (disgusting)

I have been working on a simpler spaced repetition system (the Leitner System relies on a simple yes/no response) implemented as a wepapp: <http://flashcarddb.com>

The article mentions the popularity of spaced repititon software in Poland. And sure enough a large number of my incoming users are from Poland and a few other European countries that are familiar with the concepts.

Another open source Supermemo alternative is Mnemosyne.

I have thought of adding the option of a more complicated rating system for grading answers but most new users tend to be relatively new to the idea of spaced repetition. So, for now, I am keeping it relatively simple.

<comment><USER3> (edit) Sorry. I misread your post. Here's the rest of my original comment:

I've been using SuperMemo off and on for the last ten years. It is by no means an elegant or user friendly app. However, there is a lot of science behind it and it's worth checking out by anyone interested in memory. Readers of yc should have no problem with it.

Another point worth mentioning is that Wozniak has shared his knowledge with the world. He publishes each algorithm and explains it in detail. He also writes extensively about memory and learning and it's all available on his website. He also provides free downloads of older versions of the app.

<comment><USER2> Dude, I meant my reference was a shameless plug. _I_ was doing the plugging. Sorry if that was unclear!

I couldn't agree more with your points about Wozniak and Supermemo. Wozniak, Leitner and others were my inspirations. I used their systems while studying myself.

(Edited the original to make it more unambiguous!)

<comment><USER3> Likewise. Sorry about that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Strange - I was on the verge of discovering this for myself for my own language site. I'm already storing the data, but hadn't started with the number crunching yet.

On another note - isn't it scandalous how inefficient education is? Cramming all those mind-numbing details in your brain the night before an exam, and then forgetting 70% of them after a couple of months. Ridiculous and wasteful.

<comment><USER5> That would be remarkably good retention. I guess it's way worse than that on average, at least for stuff crammed once with no more interest than passing an exam.

Back to the main point: yes, school is very inefficient, but I think the problem of student apathy and disinterest for the subject matter is in more urgent need of fixing than retention itself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Spaced repetition is killer. It seems to take the work out of remembering things, leaving nothing but determination. I've been using <http://kanji.koohii.com> for awhile, which is an excellent implementation of the technique for remembering the meaning of Japanese characters using a particular method book. A niche site, to be sure, but an excellent implementation overall.

I also recommend <http://ichi2.net/anki/>, which has a Japanese focus but is by no means exclusive to it.

<comment><USER7> This is good for me; I'm studying for the JLPT 1, and writing a simple web application to assist in vocabulary drills. The application is part of my final project, so I'm not stopping development, but I'll definitely look into adding some of these timing methods into the system.

Also, just to let you know, I've found that studying kanji on their own is generally a waste of time; without context, they tend to lose their meaning quickly. Even if you ask Japanese people to explain kanji, they usually do so by referencing compounds in which that character is present.

<comment><USER6> Second reply: another interesting use of spaced repetition, in a somewhat different context, is the AJATT method: <http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com>. It uses complete sentences as the cues, thus ensuring valid context all the time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Wozniak is an interesting and respectable guy; I have the feeling that he tries to remember everything, or something close to it. This strategy works well for declarative memories, but does not generalize with the same efficiency for other memories.

SuperMemo is an ingenious program with a rotten UI. I have been looking for better ways to do this and would be interested in speaking with anybody else with similar interests.

<comment><USER9> Maybe this technique could apply to other kinds of memories when combined with lifelogging. I could video tape all the time and then choose certain portions of video to retain in memory by review.

<comment><USER8> Absolutely.

However, a video taped portion of your life contains memories encoded in many different modalities (as opposed to, say, information on flashcards, which is, for the most part, factual). This mixture of memories makes an algorithm specifically designed for a certain type of memory a suboptimal one. That's not to say it's not useful, but there is a lot of improvement to make in this area (and I would very much like to be a part of it! :-) )

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Pimsleur language CDs use this technique; I believe they call it "graduated recall" or some such. It's been very effective for me. Of course, it's not fine-tuned for the individual, but it's still pretty good.

</comment><comment><USER11> On the surface this appears to be one of the best things ever posted here. I'd like to see some other references.

The article says the forgetting point is different for everyone, and is different for different sorts of info. Does the software somehow find the right point? Or is the variance not enough to worry about?

<comment><USER8> The software finds the right point. The variance is _also_ not enough to worry about. Over time, you get an approximation, which is not perfect, and I would go as far as to say that it will never be. Nevertheless, the approximations are good.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The inventor of the ideas behind SuperMemo has a fascinating site in which he explains how he uses the same principles to organize his life. <http://www.supermemo.com/english/contents.htm>

For instance, he states that "lifetime minimum cost of remembering a single well-formulated piece of knowledge can easily be estimated to fall into the range from 30 seconds to 5 minutes (minimum cost is the cost that is achieved using the optimally spaced repetition schedule). This estimation can be used in cost-benefit analysis in deciding which mission-critical pieces of knowledge should be subject to learning based on spaced repetition."

</comment><comment><USER13> I love this article and wish there was more like it--thanks for posting.

I also wish Piotr Wozniak would write a book (even though he'd probably consider it a waste of time). Work like his is so important, and positive, and humanitarian. Even if he's just doing what he enjoys, I believe we're all the better for it.

</comment><comment><USER14> Those 7 pages cannot be necessary. Could someone sum it up in a paragraph with wikipedia references?

<comment><USER8> Solve this problem automatically, and you have a viable startup!

<comment><USER15> While we're waiting, zapreader (<http://zapreader.com>) solves half the problem.

<comment><USER16> Also check out dictator, a more robust form of zapreader, but not for browsing. I think it helps me read alot faster.

<comment><USER15> Neat, I've been looking for something like that. Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> (on reading..)stopping the instant his mind begins to drift or his comprehension falls too low and then moving on to the next item in the queue.

brilliant idea in itself. (bought a copy at $19)

</comment><comment><USER18> The logic behind this, "acquire a piece of knowledge, then don't forget it" is similar to the description one of my university professors gave for learning how to fly: "fall over and don't hit the ground."

I suspect that physics may remain a limiting factor for the professor's suggestion, but SuperNote is an intriguing application. I believe the Pimsleur language courses use a similar method of 'staggered reminding' to encourage your retention of knowledge.

<comment><USER19> In case you were curious of the source of that comment, it's from "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy".

"There is an art, it says, or rather, a knack to flying. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss. Pick a nice day, [The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy] suggests, and try it."

Douglas Adams was awesome.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> fascinating article. wonder if it also applies to correcting wrong memorization \-- ie to break a mental habit, space it out according to this formula.

<comment><USER8> As opposed to creating one stimulus-response association, correcting a wrong association would involve two (or more processes). One, reinforcing the correct association; two, not enforcing (or inhibiting) the wrong association.

Reinforcing the right one can be spaced, but breaking the habit is harder. One study involving OCD patients achieved this via a staged process. I forgot the details, but essentially, you train yourself to use your bad habit as a cue for another behavior, which diverts yourself from the result of your bad habit. Something like, if I wanted to stop washing my hands obsessively, I would put a message on the faucet that said "take a walk!" Then, every time I get the urge, I would take a walk, etc. It's obviously not this simple, but that should illustrate how reshaping old behavior is different from creating new ones.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Isn't this really good for route learning? Which outside of a limited few situations (vocab, exams) is the most useless type of learning there is?

<comment><USER22> Given that the vocabulary (by a loose definition of "vocabulary") of any new skill is a significant portion of the barrier to becoming proficient, I would say that making that aspect a solved problem would be a miraculous improvement in learning efficiency.

For example, learning a new programming language (once you know how to program in general) is at least 50% vocabulary. It's learning the keywords and syntax, library functions, etc. Likewise for most kinds of skills. Sailing is largely knowing the names, the knots, and the laws (plus practice). Driving is laws, and a few basic automotive concepts. Law is lots and lots of cases. Medicine is lots and lots of anatomy. All of these things are memorization, and that memorization is a barrier to expertise.

Memorization is clearly _not_ the most useless type of learning. It's core to almost every skill.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Touched on slightly before, with no answers - however, I feel that the question as to different peoples memory retention is a valid one. I know myself that being Dyspraxic, I have quite a low retention rate when it comes to short term memory. Could be of use to set a base level of memory retention and then use that to define the length of time between repetitions?

</comment><comment><USER24> Free and free alternative - <http://www.mnemosyne-proj.org/principles.php>

Comparative review - [http://www.nihongoperapera.com/spaced-repetition-memory- soft...](http://www.nihongoperapera.com/spaced-repetition-memory- software.html)

</comment><comment><USER25> It will put America and silicon valley to shame if this guy can't get some capital to take this to a web-based system with a better interface. This deserves to be used and available.

</comment><comment><USER26> Is there a Mac version?

<comment><USER2> "Genius" is an excellent Mac flashcard program with spaced repetition.

[http://lifehacker.com/software/featured-mac- download/memoriz...](http://lifehacker.com/software/featured-mac- download/memorize-anything-with-genius-315064.php)

<http://web.mac.com/jrc/Genius/>

A lot of Mac people sing its praises.

<comment><USER27> Should I be suspicious of those glowing reviews, given as the article says, "[the] problem here, from the psychologists' perspective, is that the user's sense of achievement is exactly what we should most distrust"?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Thanks for sharing, very interesting article.

</comment><comment><USER25> update: here is the online version! <http://www.supermemo.net>

</comment><comment><USER29> does Rosetta stone employ something similar?

<comment><USER30> Nope. The article specifically states that Rosetta Stone violates most of the principles the learning research has shown.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> i don't know... the algorithm killed jeeves

<comment><USER31> whoo... tough crowd :)

<comment><USER32> I would venture that most of us visit for insight, not repartee.

<comment><USER3> Touché</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Armed Men Take Position at Two Airports in Crimea - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/01/world/europe/ukraine.html?hp

<comment><AUTHOR> Britain is at war in Afghanistan and Russia is in conflict with the Crimea... it's like the 1800's all over again!</comment>