Can good teaching be taught? - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/09/06/magazine/student-performance-atlanta-teaching.html <comment><USER2> I've been teaching for over 20 years, and I've loved it. One of my biggest frustrations over the years, though, has been this notion that good teaching can't be taught. There's this notion that you have to be born a teacher, which is ridiculous. Certainly talent has a role in the profession, as it does in any profession, but there's a whole lot that can be taught.

Here's a few ideas that can be taught:

\- Relationships are important. Students learn best from people they trust, and you can do things in a school and in a classroom that develop trust between students and their peers, and staff.

\- Formative assessment is critical to growth. Formative assessment is assessment for the purpose of growth and learning, not for the purpose of grading. It's written and verbal feedback.

\- When conflict arises, restorative approaches are more effective than punitive approaches. Restorative approaches look at what happened, why it happened, what harm was caused, and what can be done to address the actual harm that was caused. Restorative approaches are not weak if they are done well.

\- Classroom management is important, but if you go at it by being too controlling you won't be a good teacher. A healthy amount of interaction is more effective than a silent classroom where everyone is afraid to talk.

\- There's no place for zeroes in a grade book. A zero doesn't represent a student's learning, and it throws off all other measures of learning.

I could go on, but the bigger point is that there are many techniques and ideas that can be taught and modeled in the school and in the classroom. I think many student teachers get pulled into old, ineffective ways of teaching because of how it's modeled to them. They're taught many good approaches to teaching, but their ed school teachers just lecture at them. They're told to use well-researched, effective techniques, but then they're paired up with a mentor teacher who only uses an old-school lecture style, an overly strict approach to grading and assessment, and a punitive approach to discipline.

<comment><USER3> Another item that I think it vitally important but often overlooked: put yourself in the mindset of your audience, particularly with respect to vocabulary. For every word you choose, ask yourself: does the person I'm speaking to know what this word means? It's really easy to lose sight of this because _you_ (obviously) know what the word means, and so it's easy to assume that your audience does too. But they may not, and if they don't, then as soon as you say the word, you will lose them because you'll be going on but they'll be back on that word thinking, "What the heck does that mean?" This is particularly important in STEM education.

Grant Sanderson (3blue1brown) is a master at this. He will go out of his way to coin and define new vocabulary in order to sound less intimidating. My favorite example is his invention of "squishification" as a synonym for eccentricity when talking about ellipses. It's a much better word because it's friendlier, it doesn't have semantic baggage related to weird mental states associated with it, and no one can ever forget what it means.

<comment><USER4> > invention of "squishification" as a synonym for eccentricity

I wish I could find a community with which to work on innovation like this. Instead, people largely work in isolation, without the benefits of collaboration. So for instance, I thought "squishification" didn't have quite the right emphasis - process rather than property - and wondered if something like "squishedness" might have been better. Perhaps a new ImproveThisExplanation subreddit, sort of a cross between ELI5, "What If?", and AskAScientist...???

<comment><USER5> I'd be very interested in such a community if it existed. I'd go as far as creating/hosting/maintaining such a place if needed.

<comment><USER3> I suggest starting with a Google Group. That's trivial to set up. I'd be interested in participating too.

<comment><USER4> I wonder what success looks like?

Here's another use case to add to "squishification". Some weeks back, I was exploring how temperature is taught, preK-12. I noticed that mention of 'Sun heats Earth' was wide-spread, but that 'Earth is cooled by the deep-space sky' was almost never mentioned. Half of the energy balance was ignored. So explanatory leverage is left on the table - "Why are nights cold? Especially with clear sky? Especially in the desert? Why are mountains snow-capped? Why is winter colder?" etc. It doesn't seem inaccessible - "Between bright hot Sun, too hot, and dark cold deep-space sky, too cold, Earth spins, mixing too hot, and too cold, into not too bad." Like a person huddled next to a campfire or heater, turning around to warm their back. Spacecraft "barbeque roll" thermal management. Earth's surface as thermal mass for peak smoothing.

Maturing the idea to that point, and then finding and fleshing out opportunities for leverage, benefits from a diversity of expertise. Physics, teaching (various ages), engineering, planetary geology, etc.

So I wonder if it would be useful to think in terms of not just discussion, but also of leveraging existing communities? Orchestration, federation, cross pollination. So bits about radiative cooling rates could go to PhysicsForums.com; about 'why the sky is cold' to /r/AskScienceDiscussion; about 'nice videos of spacecraft doing bbq rolls' to /r/spacex; about teaching aspects to... sigh, it's a mess of mailing lists and blogs and... well, maybe prototypes to teacherspayteachers?; and so on. All pointing back to someplace able to coordinate the input.

Thoughts?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It is hard to see how many children could possibly succeed:

> Most of all, Gunner worried about her students, most of whom lived in four > low-income apartment complexes, which saw a lot of transiency. Thirty-seven > percent of the school's students arrived or left midyear. The day before, a > family showed up looking to enroll and was so poor that both the adults and > children were barefoot and hoping for a free school lunch as much as > classroom seats. When a school-board member asked Gunner at a district event > early in the year what she needed as a new principal, Gunner immediately > said a washer and dryer, so she could wash the clothes that many students > wore day after day. Many students had experienced trauma — the violent death > of a loved one or homelessness or physical, sexual or verbal abuse — and > arrived in the mornings in emotional distress, easily dissolving into tears > or erupting in fury. Over long weekends, students sometimes went untended or > had little to eat, which made returning to school both welcome and > difficult. Yet the school had only one full-time social worker and a > counselor for more than 450 children.

<comment><USER7> Exactly. It's not about the teachers.

My sister was an award winning teacher when she was at a good school. Now that she teachers on the edge of a reserve she has suddenly become "low performing".

Take 50 ideal teachers who have all the best training and have learned all the best techniques, and put them in a low scoring school. The test scores of the school will not improve. Most of the teachers will be focused on surviving until they can transfer elsewhere.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This article seems more like a profile than actually addressing the question raised in the headline. It is an interesting profile and I would guess that it is enlightening for people that haven't taught high school.

To answer the headline's question, as a former high school teacher and current college professor, I know that while a lot of teaching is about learning how to teach, I did have a leg up on a lot of my grad school cohort because I had a BS in English Education and had taken a number of education courses. That gave me some (admittedly limited) background in educational psychology and pedagogy that my peers who had never taught did not have.

However, there is a big gap between theory and practice and I think I learned the most about teaching by trying things and seeing what worked and what didn't. The most important thing is to resist the temptation to get lazy and just keep teaching the same things and the same way semester after semester and year after year.

</comment><comment><USER9> I'm both a CS professor and former ski instructor (in Europe). As I was reading this thread, I realized that I've never had a single lesson on how to teach CS, and besides my students, nobody has ever gave me any feedback on my teaching. On the other hand, to become a ski instructor, I went on a rather extensive training with a lot of emphasis on pedagogy.

<comment><USER10> No one has ever gave you feedback on your teaching because you've never surveyed your students.

<comment><USER11> Not the OP, but when I was teaching, surveying my students was a technique that a colleague introduced to me. It was probably the best thing I ever did. I handed out a small sheet of paper to all the students at the beginning of class with some multiple choice questions and a space for general comments and asked for it back at the end. They didn't have to fill it in. I just told them if they get bored in class, just jot down whatever. Usually I think about 20% of the forms were filled in any class, but the info on them was really amazing. Since I did it _every_ class, the students soon got used to it. Kills a lot of trees, though :-)

In defence of the OP, though, students can seem _some_ parts of the teaching process. They can't see all of it and they definitely do not have the experience to provide good advice. Looking at surveys, you've potentially got good data, but you need to translate that into good action. What a student imagines will work and what will _actually_ work is often very, very different. This is why you need help from experienced teachers.

I was lucky to work in a situation where I did "team teaching" a lot -- two teachers in the same class room. It's incredible what you can learn in that situation -- either just watching the other teacher handle a situation, or getting feedback on what you are doing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I've had a number of different people tell me I should become a teacher, that I'm really good at explaining things, and I'm still skeptical of the impact of teaching in general. I don't know how we're supposed to measure it. Controlling for the individual variation of the students themselves is a non- trivial problem. The best schools tend to be highly selective in their admissions and the worst students seem mostly unteachable.

I challenge anyone to take the best teacher they've ever met and put them in charge of a class full of students from the first percentile of test scores.

<comment><USER13> Not everything can be quantified, and I think it's a dangerous line of thinking to equate impact with measurability. Particularly in education, the focus on standardized testing has had real negative impact in the fuzzier areas like critical thinking and the joy of learning. Of course I can't quantify this, but that doesn't mean it's not true.

I get that standardized tests are necessary to some extent, but I would not equate the things that led me to do well on them as the most impactful events of my education. One-on-one human interaction and empathy has been what elevated me past the hoop-jumping to a higher level of agency and self- motivated productivity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> There are good teachers and bad teachers.

Government tries to make bad teachers good teachers by an ever increasing administrative burden. This does not make bad teachers good teachers but burns out good teachers.

<comment><USER15> Administrative burden has become a problem at my school. Teaching has become a small part of my actual job. Now I run an entire beaurocracy within one person.

For example, we have to submit attendance multiple times a class. Apparently our attendance system isn' good enough and we also have to submit attendance through different google forms and on paper. We can't do anything without documenting it. I spend more time documenting than doing the things I am documenting. We can't meet with other teachers to lesson plan unless we draw up an agenda, a list of goals for the meeting, and take minutes of what we discussed and then submit it to admin.

<comment><USER14> "We can't meet with other teachers to lesson plan unless"

When I worked as a teacher I had to create a curriculum, monthly plans, weekly plans and lesson plans. The "lesson plan" was a multiple page bullshit orgy. I worked for two years in one of the best schools in the US. They had no "lesson plans" (yet, the best teachers).

If you go to teach a lesson you should be prepared and have a plan. A good teacher is also able to immediately cancel the plan and just to a review. You may have planed to teach a new complex science topic but the kids walk in from a math test into your class room and are "dead". I have seen the worst teachers sticking to their "lesson plans".

I miss the kids. But the administrative bullshit will prevent that I ever teach again.

<comment><USER15> "I miss the kids. But the administrative bullshit will prevent that I ever teach again."

Yeah it's not the students that make my job difficult, it's the administrators.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> It depends on what you mean by "good".

In the US nuclear navy, instructors are taught many things that make them better instructors: peppering the crowd with questions, active listening, elimination of crutch words (um, uh, like, etc), changing volume levels when speaking, practicing in front of peers who's purpose is to immunize the speaker against bad crowds (pen clicking, sleeping, tapping, talking, etc).

They are better. Does this make them good?

Pull learning is better than push learning in basically every case. Most people recall teachers that _inspired_ them to learn, not the ones with good oration skills. Objectively, what results in "better" learning?

<comment><USER17> The teachers I remember the best are the ones who lectured well. I learned more from them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> _Third were the teachers "who can but won't," in Gunner's phrase; these teachers had the capacity to become more effective educators but appeared to have no interest in doing so. They were already set in their pedagogical ways or didn't think change at the school was necessary or possible or didn't want to put in more effort._

There is a fairly simple solution here. Rather than improving the skills of people who aren't interested in improving, just fire them.

<comment><USER19> This is addressed in the article; turn over in these schools is a huge problem, especially mid-year, where students dealing with lots of instability in their lives suddenly have another major change. There's no guarantee that the replacing teacher will be any better: indeed, given the stress and low pay, it seems a decent chance you'll end up in the same place you started.

Furthermore, firing a third-to-half of the teachers (even during the off season) will create a pretty trash work environment, where /everyone/ is fearing for their jobs.

I thought the principal in the article did a great job of managing the issue. She made it clear that she was building a new culture of higher expectations. When confronted with the higher expectations, low-performing teachers can try to get with it (which is a win), or quit, as many did.

<comment><AUTHOR> > given the stress and low pay, it seems a decent chance you'll end up in the > same place you started.

Perhaps a solution would be to increase class size and increase teacher pay. Singapore has one of the highest student achievement levels in the world with an average class size of 36 students [1]

[1] [https://www.economist.com/leaders/2018/08/30/what-other- coun...](https://www.economist.com/leaders/2018/08/30/what-other-countries- can-learn-from-singapores-schools)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> This title brings to mind the Paradox of the Court. A famous rhetoritician/lawyer in Greece taught his craft to a student. The student never paid his bill, claiming the teacher sucked. The teacher sued the student for the fee. The student represented himself.

The teacher pointed out that if the student wins, he must pay up as it would be proof he had learned the craft of lawyering. And, if the student lost, then he should have to pay as well.

The student argued the opposite: regardless of the verdict, he shouldn't have to pay for similar (but opposite) reasons.

In short, if s teacher cannot teach one how to teach, then the teacher was by definition not a good teacher.

</comment><comment><USER21> This is a ridiculous question. Of course teaching, like any other skill, can be taught. I'm sure there are differing aptitudes among people, but unless you think that "good" _anything_ can't be taught, it's hard to see why teaching would be this snowflake skill that's unlike any other...

</comment><comment><USER22> Another challenge in education is that every area has different problems, and needs different solutions. In Utah, for example, our problem is teachers sticking with the job. There is a trend of young women graduating school, teaching for a bit until they get married, having kids, and walking out of the classroom having taught sometimes as little as only one year. On an individual level, I respect the choice to leave a job that isn't right for you, but its does leave us with an abundance of young inexperienced educators.

</comment><comment><USER23> If you want to be a good teacher, first, you have to manage the classroom. This is important if you are coming to teaching from a non-teaching background like software development.

Having had experiences dabbling in teaching in actual classrooms, the most difficult part for me was my weak classroom management skills. I am always in awe at my teacher friends who command the classroom, sometimes without saying a word or very little.

<comment><USER24> Can you give some examples?

<comment><USER23> Like tormeh said, it is really about situational awareness.

The best teachers I've seen have a constant vigilance and constant banter. Not complete military drill control like Mastery Charter Schools but not chaos. Somewhere in between. And, yes, they all called out the student by name. They, as tormeh said, knew each student's weaknesses and strengths intimately. Tough love.

One example: One great teacher I know would go up to the whiteboard/blackboard, turning his back to the class, and, if he sensed "mutiny" in the making, he would randomly call out one of his student's names and ask them a question. He also said he had eyes in the back of his head, and I think the students believed that in the sense that he knew when they were trying to mess around.

My own example:

Teaching 10-12 girls CS which required laptop usage. It was really hard to stop girls from messing around on Facebook when I was on the other side of the "U" table, working the rounds. A better teacher would have managed that situation.

As an aside, this is why programs like ScriptEd work so well. They give "training wheels" to people who would like to teach CS to kids. ScriptEd has a system where everyone gets a chance to teach in front of the classroom. When you are not teaching, you are learning from the side/back of the room.

<comment><USER25> My 2 cents - the classes that had the least (if any) mutiny were classes like woodworking, where everyone came in, and got to working on whatever their task was. I built a chair, made some shovel handles etc.

When people are actually doing something, these problems don't exist.

The skill of keeping people from going crazy through intimidation/fear tactics seems like a necessary skill, only because the school system is structured like a detention center, rather than a place to help people learn and discover themselves.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I'd say as much as having a nice/interesting personality can be taught.

Because most of what constitutes good teaching is in fact the teacher being passionate about the subject and having an approach that reflects it. I don't think it can be replaced by someone that just goes through the same motions.

That said, better teaching (that what teachers in average do) can surely be taught.

</comment><comment><USER27> I'm sure it can, but it takes longer and works differently than we like to believe.

Empathy, sensitivity -- the ability to connect to other people on their level and feel what kind of nudges they need to evolve.

But of course you can't expect that to happen if you treat teachers like garbage and stuff them in sterile rooms with 30 over stimulated kids.

</comment><comment><USER28> Hattie's effect size list is a good place to start if you're interested in what teaching practices leads to better learning results: [https://visible- learning.org/hattie-ranking-influences-effec...](https://visible- learning.org/hattie-ranking-influences-effect-sizes-learning-achievement/)

I few others I'd recommend:

\- How Learning Works: Seven Research-Based Principles by Ambrose, Bridges, DiPietro, Lovett, & Norman

\- How People Learn by Bransford, Brown, Cocking, & Pellegrino

\- Learning How to Learn by Barbara Oakley

\- Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise by Ericsson and Pool

Discloser: I wrote [https://sgef.cc/tldrideas](https://sgef.cc/tldrideas) and am building Sagefy, a learning platform

<comment><USER29> Thank you for the resource links/recommendations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Teaching is also a talent. Much like in singing or dancing there are people who excel in teaching, because they not only use the correct methods, but also manage to improve them, or adapt to circumstances when necessary. Very few people are capable of that, and you cannot train that.

The problem is that there are teachers who do not want to teach at all. And those who want to teach are rare, and those excelling at teaching are as rare as people like Richard Feynman.

</comment><comment><USER31> As a former middle school teacher who escaped into programming, I think the problems of teaching are systemic to the education system itself. Teaching to a test is short-sighted and a phenomenal waste of effort and money.

Some rare teachers can use a combination of persuasion, charisma, fear, and group dynamics to be very successful at teaching to a test. They can make students jump through the hoops, remembering just enough to get it all out before summer hits and they forget it all again.

The current model of education is a "push" model, where the skill of the teacher is the defining measure, and the goal is temporary memorization of facts.

Instead we need to move to a "pull" model, where students learn to love learning, and through this teach themselves fact checking, research, critical thinking, and civic responsibility. I believe this is the obvious next step for a world where any fact is freely available inside one's pocket or library. I do not believe this is possible with grouping by age or with lecture and test based classes.

The Sudbury school is one such attempt, and it apparently is quite effective. We need to start moving all our schools this way!

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudbury_school](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudbury_school)

</comment><comment><USER32> This reminds of this good read: [https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2016/01/what-c...](https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2016/01/what- classrooms-can-learn-from-magic/425100/).

</comment><comment><USER33> Can anyone think of an article or book that explains how to be a good teacher (in the classroom, military, etc.)?

<comment><USER34> Article, no. Graduate degree programs, yes.

<comment><USER35> I say the graduate degree programs are _highly_ variable. I'm currently in one for a MAT, and it's really just mostly busywork that's useless. My classes are either all geared towards elementary/middle school or, the one that is on secondary schools, the teacher hasn't taught in a public school for about a decade, and has never taught in the state that most of us are based in, or in a rural area.

I'm sure there are some good ones, yes. I feel like the in-person one near me here would be better, since they can tailor to our needs, but it's also _much_ more expensive. And still doesn't deal with the fact that a lot of the professors aren't in the classroom, or are in more privileged schools. It's the same issue I have with a lot of the professional development stuff you see, too.

<comment><USER34> The number-one-most-powerful tool that I can recommend in teacher development is getting mentored by a Master Teacher once you are in your own classroom (ie, not student teaching). The good news is that you will likely get exposure to many/most of the big ideas in any graduate program. However, it's very difficult to integrate those big ideas into your own classroom without a guide. Having somebody regularly observe your work and hold you accountable for your choices can make an enormous difference in outcomes (and often very rapidly). If a formal mentorship program is not available, then I would recommend seeking out an informal one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> yes but you have to have the personality for teaching

<comment><USER37> Personality can't be taught?

<comment><USER38> You can't teach someone to care. Teachers that don't care deeply can't push through all the barriers to succeed.

<comment><USER37> Why can't you teach someone to care? Why can't you explain to someone why exactly you care and help them to understand and accept your reasoning?

As an example,there are lots of health care workers that get into it for the money and start caring about patients(and vice versa).

I for example care,I would love the process of teaching but I would be terrible at everything else.

To be a good teacher,the biggest requirement imo is to be a good student. Much like how you need to be a good worker before you become a manager and how you need to be a good soldier before you give orders to other soldiers.

I just think "can't" is too strong of a claim that demands a clear and logical rationale to back it up.

<comment><USER38> I concur that teachers should be good students, as well as your analogy that managers should be good workers. In both cases it's necessary but not sufficient.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Sure it can. Here's the formula:

Good teaching = subject mastery + good public speaking + good classroom management + lessons designed with a low floor and high ceiling (allowing for a wide range of zones of proximal development)

<comment><USER39> Your great teacher formula assumes one way communication where students are talked to but ignored. That is suspect.

<comment><USER34> That's actually completely the opposite. Low Floor High Ceiling lessons are the antithesis of monologues. Here's a primer:[0] [0][https://nrich.maths.org/7701](https://nrich.maths.org/7701)

<comment><USER39> Still, there is nothing about ability to listen or interpret human children - no expectatin about understanding of brain development (that is not just difficulty, there is way more to it) nor how their emotions affect their behavior. Nor ability to figure out which particular thing it is they don't get and need to be told to move on.

I can't recall good teacher thet would not had that.

<comment><USER34> What you describe falls under the good classroom management skill set. Maximizing student engagement and time on task requires some familiarity with concepts in child development, educational psychology, emotional intelligence and group dynamics. I'd also sprinkle in a little conflict resolution training for extra credit.

<comment><USER39> No it does not falls there. Not at all. Engaged studen on task does not imply what I wrote about.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I feel like in the future, there needs to be a move away from teacher based education to some sort autodidactism. The current models waste so much time.

<comment><USER41> The hard truth is not everyone can do that. The current models are broken, but something like them is necessary. I think what you really reach for here is Teachers as mentors when the door is open. We used to allow for that. We don't very much today.

<comment><USER35> I honestly think the best way might be the method advocated by Sal Kahn. [1] Basically, instead of students going over a lesson in class then taking home work to do to master it, they reverse that. They watch the lesson at home the night before, answer a few questions as an "exit slip" and then sleep on it. The next day they go to class and work on problems/ask questions with the teacher present to help them.

While it does have its issues, such as making sure students actually watch the videos, I think this is the best approach for certain subjects, especially math. It allows the students to do the problems where they can get feedback and guidance, instead of struggling with something they're failing to comprehend, which just leads to demotivating them. It also allows them some time to come up with questions related to the topic that might further their learning. There will likely be abuse from students who don't pay attention, and there are plenty of other issues (internet access being a huge one), but I could see some hope in this method.

[1] [https://blog.blackboard.com/why-salman-khan-thinks- students-...](https://blog.blackboard.com/why-salman-khan-thinks-students- should-do-their-homework-in-class/) is a nice write-up about it.

<comment><USER10> That method is far superior to the current method but teachers don't like it because it takes "resources" away from the teacher. That's the argument I've heard on other forums when discussing the flipping the classroom method. The teachers say that it is better if they explain the material in the classroom and answer questions immediately. So expect to get quite a bit of push back on the flipping the classroom method. That's the reality. I've noticed that there are quite a few teachers that are basically fearful of some new technology or method popping up that replaces them. Education has become far too political from what I've seen.

<comment><USER35> Yeah, I've heard that argument as well, but I think it fails. As a math teacher myself, I would love it if kids would go read about the lecture at home and then we could work problems the next day. I try to do that anyway, but it's difficult when I've got a lot of material to cover and can't give them a day to practice after every lecture. Not to mention that a lot of kids don't know what they don't understand until they attempt to do it

<comment><USER41> Those attempts do three very important things:

Clarify poor understanding.

Result in awesome (for them) questions. They will be the ones they need, and often the more aggressive people will ask want type questions, seeking. All high value.

Educator will be challenged more deeply and broadly over time as they see better questions over time. New ones require effort, and that brings both greater mastery of the topic and how best to frame it up for people about to jump in and start understanding.

Should educators analyze those questions, they can augment all this by a quick "chalk talk" prep session to help all this along, stimulate more and better thinking.

This has been standard for me in various education roles over the years. It is rough the first few iterations, then very rewarding for all involved after that.

Turns out people, and their diverse backgounds and experiences will both approach things in surprising ways, as well as think in diverse, at times, equally surprising ways.

Understanding that better, as well as having some broad experience seen over time, very seriously improved my ability to identify with a given student and have a more accurate mental map of where they are. I can then seek to fill in gaps, or entertain extensions (their seeking) as time and their desire permit.

Worth it. Not the easiest way, but is my goto every time.

<comment><USER35> I completely agree. I try to do it as well, but my biggest issue with it ends up being time constraints and the teacher I mentioned in another post who wants us to all be doing the same thing on the same day (said teacher also prides herself on how fast she covers the material... Kids don't like it as she never reviews or spends more than a day on any topic)

<comment><USER41> Just revisited this. There should be topics and time.

How that time gets used is really driven by students. They get there, or they do not.

And, doing all this is expensive human time. They really want, need and should get there.

One thing I get to do, as my role is rarely formal education, is prepare 200 percent topic agendas. Prep as if I have Feynmans in the room. Look out! Here they come. :D

(And I am always hoping, because when that happens I myself am definitely going to learn something. Often pain in the ass learning, but it keeps my blood pumping, leaving nothing but getting after my own understanding.)

Then, assign priorities.

Basics get done no matter what. I do not want fails. Just quietly drop extras.

From there, I am highly likely to be golden. Usually, someone asks something new. Good. I got the prep done solid, so I research that one, add to the library of stuff I have ready.

Then, I coach them, they tackle stuff, wash, rinse repeat. I will, depending on material, also show a solution or few, again depending. Discuss, on to the next.

Over time, I get super good at whatever it is, and students can generally max out, getting all they can.

When I can, I set a chunk of the time aside as open time. People can fill a gap with that. Or explore, seek. Whatever. I am there to assist and challenge as they need.

This is a challenging way to do the work, but it works well. Often, I am doing this for people who just took jobs, or who have some requirement. Fails are painful. That is why I do it this way.

Just some context for my comments above.

There is a bonus. Once I have prepped and delivered a few times, I can often do the course by rote. My own mastery ends up solid, and I've got a ton of context, accumulated one student at a time, to work from when identifying where people new to me are, and what they are likely to need. Those go into the chalk talk, which almost always has custom bits tuned for the group at hand.

And that is tools, not solutions. They do that, picking up the reference material, exercizes, and the bits from the coaching talk.

Competency tends to come reasonably quickly. Then we do fun stuff, entertain any seeking, special needs, wants as time allows.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> "Computer" used to be a job description. That bundle of roles no longer exists. The roles have been partially automated, and moved elsewhere. Jobs that use spreadsheets for instance.

Surgery once did far more harm than good. Then took killing people for granted. Now it's discovering checklists, and teams, and crew resource management. Surgeons are discovering their roles of skilled technician and team manager conflict. Medical error is still a major cause of mortality. For a given condition, there's a very very broad spread of institutional competence. The best, are learning organizations with an intense focus on continuous process improvement and on not failing each and every one of their patients. The worst... don't wash their hands going from bathroom to ICU.

Instructors at first-tier universities describe incoming introductory science students as expecting to be "spoon fed" \- lacking both the skills and willingness to wrestling with a body of knowledge to extract understanding. With wealth, they've had such "good teachers", they haven't needed to. Consider a country with a focus on memorize-and-regurgitate - even more so than the USA. When a school fails to teach memorization, it's at least easy to recognize the failure. But what might equitable and effective science education look like? If every freshman class resembled incoming Ivy, a question might then be: "ok, we've nailed equity... now when are we going to make a start on effective?" Chemistry education research describes pre-college chemistry education content as "incoherent", leaving both students and teachers deeply steeped in misconceptions. With science education at least, we're currently failing badly and pervasively.

Tech is coming. VR/AR, hybrid human-computer teams, ML, spoken dialog system, etc, etc.

"Classroom teacher" is bundle of roles of breathtaking difficulty and scope. As with surgeon, those roles are now being specialized and rebundled. Like barber surgeon, it was a bundling that required accepting that we would pervasively fail our patients. Perhaps decades from now, we'll end up with something like a "classroom teacher", but with a vastly greater support system. Or perhaps people will forget that "classroom teacher" was once a job description.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> There seems to be a strong divide on whether excellent teaching can make a significant difference to poor kids. Typically this mirrors the left-right political divide.

To quote from the article:

 _" While teacher effectiveness may be the most salient in-school factor contributing to student academic outcomes, it contributes a relatively small slice — no more than 14 percent, according to a recent RAND Corporation analysis of teacher effectiveness — to the overall picture. A far bigger wedge is influenced by out-of-school variables over which teachers have little control: family educational background, the effects of poverty or segregation on children, exposure to stress from gun violence or abuse and how often students change schools, owing to homelessness or other upheavals."

"Teaching does matter, and it can improve. But there is little evidence — at least to date — that it can counter the effects on children of attending neighborhood schools that remain racially and economically isolated."_

I find this attitude difficult to reconcile with other things I've read about teaching poor and minority kids. For example, here is a summary of a few studies as reported in Teaching as Leadership [1]:

 _" The schools that are highly effective produce results that almost entirely overcome the effects of student background"_ [2]

 _" Having a top-quartile teacher rather than a bottom-quartile teacher four years in a row would be enough to close the black-white test score gap"_ [3]

 _" Differences in this magnitude -- 50 percentile points in just three years -- are stunning. For an individual child, it means the difference between a 'remedial' label and placement in the accelerated or even gifted track. And the difference between entry into a selective college and a lifetime of low- paying, menial work"_ [4]

Many charter schools use a lottery to determine which students are enrolled, and many studies have taken advantage of such 'natural experiments'. This paper [5] represents a good overview of such studies. It seems that _some_ charter schools can have significant effects on learning. In a Boston study, _" Abdulkadiroglu et al. (2011)...find very large average effects: charter school attendance increases state-level English/language arts and math performance test scores by 0.2 and 0.35 standard deviations per year respectively. Given that that the achievement gap between black and white students in Massachusetts is about 0.7 to 0.8 standard deviations, these estimates suggest that three years of charter school attendance for blacks would eliminate the black-white performance gap."_

However, the same paper also says that at KIPP charter schools, " _School hours are extended typically to between 7:30AM and 5:00PM and include occasional Saturdays and summer weeks, and tutoring is also offered during these times._ " so I wonder to what degree the 'value added' by top charter schools comes simply from teaching more.

[1] [https://www.amazon.com/Teaching-As-Leadership-Effective- Achi...](https://www.amazon.com/Teaching-As-Leadership-Effective- Achievement/dp/0470432861)

[2] Marzano, R. J. What Works in Schools: Translating Research into Action. Alexandria, Va.: ASCD, 2003, p. 7

[3] Kane, T., Gordon, R. and Staiger, D. Identifying Effective Teachers Useing Performance on the Job Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 2004, p. 8

[4] Peske, H. and Haycock, K. Teaching Inequality: How Poor and Minority Students Are Short-Changed on Teacher Quality: A Report and Recommendations by the Education Trust. Washington, D.C.: Education Trust, 2006, p. 11

[5] [http://www.umass.edu/preferen/You%20Must%20Read%20This/JEPCh...](http://www.umass.edu/preferen/You%20Must%20Read%20This/JEPChabrier2016.pdf)

<comment><USER42> Thank you for this.

I homeschooled my twice exceptional sons for years and did some volunteer work with an educational organization to support that.

I pulled my sons out of school in part because they didn't want to work with me or my sons. One son was a straight A student whose writing was below grade level. Rather than acknowledge that he had a disability, they pointed to his gifted status and chalked up this one weak area to _laziness._ Meanwhile, the teacher was unwilling to meet me for a couple of minutes at the end of the day to help me help him stay on track.

There are many wonderful and dedicated teachers. But they aren't all wonderful and dedicated (among other things).

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> It's a lot easier than many people believe: you give them a good script, and a year or two of training in how to deliver it.

</comment><comment><USER44> While there is an art/talent to it, there are a lot of basics that _are not followed_ by a lot of teachers.

Like ENUNCIATING. Like not putting students on the spot or saying "this is wrong, what is the matter with you" when given a wrong answer.

Balancing strictness with the level and audience.

Balancing between getting to a point and explaining some other details that might be important.

Trying to find a best way of explaining some concepts, maybe explaining it differently to different students.

Usually the higher the study level the worse the professors/instructor are at pedagogy.

<comment><USER19> While there is an art/talent to it, there are a lot of basics that are /not followed/ by a lot of shitposters.

Like READING THE ARTICLE. Like not assuming that one has all of the answers (or even all of the questions) for a complex, thorny problem.

<comment><USER2> That wasn't a shitpost. I've spent my life teaching, and a good part of my work has been trying to undo the damage done by teachers who say things like "this is wrong, what's the matter with you".

I became a teacher because I love math and science. When I was in college I noticed how many people hate those two subjects. When I started asking around and trying to figure out why so many people hate these subjects, it almost always came back to how they were taught.

Some people are resilient enough to hear things like this and let it slide. But many young people who spend a year or more with a teacher who tells them there's something wrong with them are significantly affected by that experience.

<comment><USER19> The article is about a pretty herculean effort to improve the level of teaching in a particular low-performing school. The post was effectively "teachers would be better if they were better teachers" which doesn't engage at all with the content of the article, or the central question of /how/ one might take on the problem of improving teaching quality.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> a good teacher is a good motivator. it's simple as that.</comment>


Remove.bg – A service to remove the background of any photo - August-Garcia https://remove.bg <comment><AUTHOR> Good marketing too, having made it to the front page here several times in several weeks :)

</comment><comment><USER2> Previously featured on Show HN: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18697601](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18697601),

Really useful project, I think.

</comment><comment><USER3> We do the same as Mobile apps:

iOS: [https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/cut-copy-paste- photos/id1126...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/cut-copy-paste- photos/id1126958019?mt=8)

Android: [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.km.cutpast...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.km.cutpaste.util)

We use Image Segmentation with Deep Learning. Our Hair extraction is not as good as theirs. We support Pets, Furniture, Vehicles Etc though.

</comment><comment><USER4> This is really cool but pricing for commercial images seems high. At work we use pixelz.com which is an API for human image processing. They clear cut/resize/rotate and recolor for around $0.60 per image. Results are fantastic, we have around 1 in 1000 images that have to be sent for reprocessing.

The only advantage I could see to using this is the instant turn around.

Edit: I was looking at the one off pricing. It looks like subscriptions are really good value.

<comment><USER5> That's 10 times the price of this service.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Somewhat important to note, I think:

> The user may use the platform, which is available at remove.bg, exclusively > for non-commercial purposes. This means that all results of the platform (in > the following: the platform) may only be used for private purposes. Any use > for (direct or indirect) commercial purposes is excluded.

<comment><USER7> Pricing seems fair though. I'd pay 1.99 for an image I needed to use this for commercial use. To do this manually might take a tad longer and may not come out as nice. I haven't tried it yet but if it's anything like the examples seems great.

<comment><USER8> I agree, the single image pricing seems very fair. You could easily try it using the non commercial service to check your happy with the outcome and simply pay the 1.99 to license the image for one off use. Not forcing you to sign up for a monthly plan or pay for multiple images at once as the lowest tier is very smart in my opinion.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I find it interesting that the first image they choose to show on their page to represent their product has an obvious flaw in it. For me, the image of the woman in black overalls with a grey tshirt underneath is the first to show. If you look under her right armpit, you can see that the grey lake is still there and not the expected grey-and-white checkerboard. Maybe they're just trying to be honest about the limitations of their product, but I assume this was an accidental oversight. Obviously this is a part of the image that could be easily fixed by (computer-aided) hand, but it might make more sense as a third or fourth image if that is the point.

<comment><USER10> The image on the front page changes all the time, so I am not sure which you are talking about.

<comment><USER11> Here's the image: [https://www.remove.bg/images/samples/combined/s1.jpg](https://www.remove.bg/images/samples/combined/s1.jpg)

<comment><USER12> They do mention higher res output here Even higher quality with 4000 × 2500 pixels, or any other dimensions with up to 10 megapixels.

[https://www.remove.bg/pricing](https://www.remove.bg/pricing)

Image [https://www.remove.bg/assets/comparison- hd-9b9708387758e42f0...](https://www.remove.bg/assets/comparison- hd-9b9708387758e42f0a6b41f5ffb4c550a5ca6a2f20bc565aa2bfccf81f1d9a1a.jpg)

<comment><USER13> What does that have to do with the flaw in the image on the home page?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Tried it on a family picture right in front of the castle of Disney's Magic Kingdom, my family posing and tons of people walking around. The result is incredible, this is really great!

</comment><comment><USER15> How well does it work with hair? Hair is notoriously hard to select well in Photoshop for most retouchers, so it would be amazing if the automation somehow became better than professional humans doing the editing. There are a ton of manual techniques out there for extraction, none of them work incredibly well out of the box depending on the background you're working with.

I found this class on hair retouching to be great btw, goes pretty in depth on the latest techniques used in commercial-grade work: [https://proedu.com/collections/available- tutorials/products/...](https://proedu.com/collections/available- tutorials/products/how-to-retouch-hair-in-photoshop-with-sef-mccullough- advanced-commercial-techniques)

<comment><USER16> Just try it! It's free and quick.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> This looks phenomenal to me, and I recommended it to a few photographer friends of mine. They all felt the same way: yes this is super cool, but 10 MP is far too low to use in any professional capacity (in particular when dealing with photographs that would eventually be made into prints). It's cool for social media and stuff, but not anything they'd be able to sell, and thus not something they would pay for.

Currently the list of people I know who would pay for something like this is identical to the list of people I know who would require higher resolutions for it to be useful.

</comment><comment><USER18> I tried out several different pictures and got pretty good accuracy... That's impressive!

Biggest problem encountered was over correction with some foreground image part removed

<comment><USER19> popping in the resulting image back into photoshop and layer masking the foreground back with the original image seems to be a quick fix

seems like this could save a lot of time.

<comment><USER10> IO tried a pretty complex group picture, and it did great, except for a couple of spots...a lot of time saved.

<comment><USER20> You can also press the edit button then remove/restore parts that it missed.. super handy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Magic Wand tool in Macromedia/Adobe Fireworks could do something like this quickly years ago.

Is this really a big problem still today?

I'm not an avid photo editor these days.

<comment><USER22> The magic wand tool (or really any of the "modern" extraction tools in Photoshop) can't handle hair the way they claim to do in those examples. If this is truly done with non-manual work, it's incredibly impressive.

<comment><USER23> Did you try it? I put in an image and got back a result way too fast for someone to have done it manually.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Incredibly useful tool. Very good domain name. Instant value delivered with free plan. Technology looks great: took 5 seconds to get the output.

All the best.

</comment><comment><USER25> Nice!

But when I click Edit to change the background color, then hit Save, the pop- up window says "blob:" in the URL and that Safari Can't Open The Page (that's with the pop-ups allowed option). If I go back to the initial results page, it still shows the checkered background.

</comment><comment><USER26> Any clue at all how much processing this takes? I don't doubt you could build a salable product out of that that worked in real time, even if it took a big rackmount box of FPGAs.

<comment><USER10> You can upload an image. It spits it out in seconds.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I have seen veteran videographers praise this tool. I can't wait until we get more of these tools for optimizing photos/videos.

</comment><comment><USER28> This is so nostalgic, looking at this makes me remember the days when i manually used to remove backgrounds from photos with Photoshop.

</comment><comment><USER29> Impressive if that treatment with the hair is realistic as shown.

<comment><USER30> Some tests:

Easy: [https://i.redd.it/dwi7jrmrwri21.jpg](https://i.redd.it/dwi7jrmrwri21.jpg) -> [https://i.imgur.com/bQZXrAJ.png](https://i.imgur.com/bQZXrAJ.png) (Okay, but doesn't mask shadows around the feet correctly)

Medium: [https://500px.com/photo/195143459/ximena-by-agata- serge](https://500px.com/photo/195143459/ximena-by-agata-serge) -> [https://i.imgur.com/kUdcvFo.png](https://i.imgur.com/kUdcvFo.png) (Okay; it could have taken out a bit more background in some semitransparent sections of hair)

Hard: [https://i.redd.it/i7fn0fy89ma21.jpg](https://i.redd.it/i7fn0fy89ma21.jpg) -> [https://i.imgur.com/WGM67XL.png](https://i.imgur.com/WGM67XL.png) (Fooled with some false-positives, but still a good try)

Certainly not perfect, but definitely usable.

<comment><USER31> Weirdly I've found it works a lot better on real photos and less well on CG or doctored photos.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> okay HN so what doesn't it work on?

<comment><USER32> I tried a few cartoon images. Realistic styles (most of Avatar: The Last Airbender, most of Ghost in the Shell) work well. Semi-deformed styles (Avatar gag faces, Samurai Jack, The Simpsons) usually didn't work or resulted in artifacting. Non-human cartoons (Spongebob, Adventure Time) never worked.

Some photographs which had low contrast between subject and background were not as cleanly cut out. It was good enough that I wouldbe able to import the mask as a starting point and clean up the edges manually.

Photographs in which faces were obscured where handled surprisingly well!

Would love to see this as a native feature of an image editor.

<comment><USER33> Yeah, make a (PS/other image editors) plugin that shove it into the API and return the mask that you can correct when needed, that seems the way to go.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Is this just a high-res implementation of Deeplab?

</comment><comment><USER35> i fucking love this

</comment><comment><USER36> Not very interesting if not open source

</comment><comment><USER37> This is pretty cool. What's the guestimate on number of jobs killed?

</comment><comment><USER38> "No persons found: At the moment remove.bg only works for photos with at least one person in them. Sorry – please select an appropriate image."

Might it be harvesting images for facial recognition?

<comment><USER39> It's another way to say their models only segment human subjects at the monent.</comment></comment>


A cool way to generate hipe about your product - <AUTHOR> http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/320-preview-7-highrise-plays-well-with-email <comment><USER2> What's the cool way, "be 37 signals" ?</comment>


DirecTV offers streaming service – end of cable? - <AUTHOR> https://directvnow.com <comment><USER2> What is the TV list you get access to?</comment>


Ask HN: What advice would you give a young technical cofounder in a "CTO" role? - <AUTHOR>

What have you experienced CTOs or technical managers learned that only comes with years and years of experience?<p>I ask because I keep hearing young technical cofounders call themselves CTOs, and I think about how much we don't know (I'm fairly young too). <comment><USER2> Be humble and remember you do not always have the right answer. Listen to advice from everyone and learn when to take some of it with a grain of salt. Question every piece of information from every source, including your own gut feelings. If you can learn to challenge the boss on financials, listen to your subordinates on their recommendations, and be weary of your own misconceptions, you will do just fine.

Best of luck!

</comment><comment><USER3> if you are clever with HN search, you will find a thread written almost a year back where a CTO talked about being sidelined by a VP-Engineering.

The best thing I learned from that was, as a CTO you have to "measure everything and control the conversation"

EDIT: got that for ya - <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=509571>

</comment><comment><USER4> In a startup it's essential that every "hat" has a corresponding head it's on. Being a startup, it's likely that many heads will have many hats; to mix metaphors just make sure all the bases are covered.

Drilling down, as "CTO" I'd consider myself responsible for making sure of all the following (needless to say, this isn't an exaustive list):

Business continuity: if you're the only one diligent enough to make sure you're backups are happening and work, do it (in the bad old days that meant running the tape backup every day). Never be too proud to sweep the floor.

As CTO, you're responsible for "what": the architecture and consistency of your systems. Visit the Joel Test and do it in reverse.

Depending on the people below you, you can leave a lot of the "how" to them, ideally you'll mostly supervise there. Ideally they'll come to consensus on contentious issues, beware of playing the role of a tiebreaker.

Ah, yes, the people: learn how to recruit well. There's lots of good advice to be found there (e.g. go to the Ask the Headhunter site and use it in reverse). For specific advice, I'll note that one of my best bosses would never hire someone who he had doubts about. In a startup, it's generally the case that a wrong hire is worse than no hire at all.

Sales, marketing, manufacturing (if that's an issue) and technical coherence. Make sure everyone is on the same page. That's one of the things that killed Symbolics, e.g. they spent a lot of money on a factory that couldn't make what engineering was designing, not that marketing was promoting what engineering was designing or the reverse.

Make sure there's a product manager for each product, his job is among other things to help make sure the above is happening.

Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER5> Stop being worried about having a "title" and do the job and you will pick up as much experience as you can. If other people want to call you a CTO, let them, but it's just a name.

Founders who give themselves the important buzz word titles is a false positive to productivity. Like joining a gym and not working out. You get instant gratification just from joining.

</comment><comment><USER6> Buckle up. It's going to be a bumpy ride.

</comment><comment><USER7> Mgrs manage... most of the time they dun do technical shit! more importantly is that u, not other. u being a CTO wat can u do to make things fast with IT.</comment>


'Go to Definition' in Vim for Python using Ctags, Done Right - <AUTHOR> http://tartley.com/?p=1277

<comment><USER2> Does anyone know an efficient way to have vim update the ctags file as you work? I find myself always forgetting to update the tags.</comment>


Ask HN: Is Android TV already a dead platform? - <AUTHOR>

To anyone in the know, is Android TV a dead platform? It certainly seems that way.
From stock apps that haven't been updated in forever (you _still_ cannot subscribe to channels from the YouTube app, for example) to the fact that the featured games and apps haven't really changed in months, what's the landscape looking like?
Is it a platform worth writing apps for? <comment><USER2> I would say so. Pretty much the only Android worth paying attention to is the phone and tablet version.

The market hasn't responded very well to Android TV or Android Wear (wanna guess what the reception's gonna be for Android Auto?). I would think that Google would be very interested in keeping it alive regardless of market response but then again you'd say that about Google Plus.

That said Chromecast is still alive so if your app can support that it's probably worth the effort.

<comment><AUTHOR> Such a shame. I've no app at the moment but am looking at my options.

The Nexus Player is 99% perfect as a TV box, but it makes no sense the things it misses; like YouTube subscribing. Why would Google cut such a feature from their app?

I have none of the network issues that others complain about and I'm not interested in pulling my phone out of my pocket, unlocking it then waiting for an app to load just so I can Chromecast something to the TV.

I think Google made a big mistake making the app selection so curated. Well it probably would be okay, if they were actually going to curate it on a regular basis and present now content.</comment></comment>


Prediction: Facebook Will Surpass Google In Advertising Revenues - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/06/05/facebook-will-surpass-google/

<comment><USER2> I see no G vs. FB charts or actual data about Google's revenue. This just sounds like complete hyperbole.

<comment><USER3> Google display advert revenue this year (aka YouTube, Doubleclick, etc.) will hit around $2.75 billion while Facebook will likely hit $3.5 billion.

Google's search ad business is safe, but Google's content network could face a major challenge if Facebook launches a competitor. As most people leave Facebook logged in, Facebook could do much more accurate ad targeting as well as avoiding the huge fraud problems that Google faces.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> They target pretty different components of the advertising industry. For example, I kind of doubt Coca-Cola spends a lot of money on Google ads (nobody uses Google to find a Coke). On the other hand, Facebook could be a great tool for promoting the Coke brand. It's much more analogous to traditional TV advertising.

</comment><comment><USER3> Article missed the important proviso "in display advertising" (Facebook are likely to overtake Google in this space this year), but they're nowhere near Google in terms of CTR or revenue for search ads.

<comment><USER5> It seems like that Google still has they high paying ad market while facebook has a chunk of the low paying ad market.

<comment><USER6> That may be a problem. That was what happened to US auto industry before it got pwned by asians.

<comment><USER7> A problem for who? How does this parallel the auto industry situation at all?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Google had topline revenues of $8.58 last quarter. Ahem. Facebook is thinking of making $4 Billion in revenues this year. So Facebook would have to make roughly 10X in revenues.

Anyone can say anything on Techcrunch. This article has no facts.

</comment><comment><USER9> Oh.. I tried to predict that almost an year back :P <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1474763>

</comment><comment><USER10> People log into Facebook to see their friends' drunken photos from last night.

People browse to Google to find information - which lends itself naturally to ads about products and services.

<comment><USER11> Right, but then people stay logged into Facebook throughout the day while navigating the rest of the web (and spend an increasingly greater amount of time on Facebook itself).

I have no idea if Facebook ad revenue will surpass Google's (and neither does this article), but the way Facebook ads work seems much more in line with traditional advertising (Google seems like an exception, but a good and potentially paradigm-changing exception).</comment></comment>


XMPP: Swiss Army Knife for the Internet of Things - <AUTHOR> https://blog.securitycompass.com/xmpp-swiss-army-knife-for-internet-of-things-iot-9eff783c44ba#.6fzzosfqh <comment><USER2> For IoT XMPP is utterly wrong. Yes, some planes use it for a message bus. But that was silly then as it is now.

most IoT application have to worry about both power and network efficiency. XMPP is neither light nor concise.

For example, I'm building a sensor network that needs to report a range of sensors every n seconds. I _could_ use XMPP, but first I'd have to figure out how to make a decent XML parser in < 2kb or ram. Let alone a full IP stack. The cheap radio I have has an MTU of 60 bytes.

None of this is going to fly, for what is effectively: Node Address: 1: 56.456 2: -6704 3: 80

If we ignore the <node><sensor><value> boiler plate that will instantly blow our packet budget, lets look at how the values are represented as: ascii. so sensor 1 which was a 4byte float is now a 6 byte varchar.

We are of course ignoring the address which is going to be at least 16 bytes.

We haven't even touched on the server requirements either. Can you name a decent XMPP server? I can't they are all finicky and nasty.

So, no XMPP is not the swiss army knife of IoT, because its too large, too power hungry and just a massive pain in the arse.

Anything that uses ascii representations of numbers is probably a bad fit for IoT

<comment><USER3> Your argument only shows how wide the field of "IoT" is. For embedded sensor networks, your arguments apply without restriction.

However, for things like "smart lightbulbs" or other devices connected to the cloud (not that I would endorse such things), where you need a scalable infrastructure for secure bidirectional communication between nodes deployed somewhere and your frontend application, XMPP provides a solid base.

Besides, embedded nodes are getting more and more powerful (consider the ESP8266, which runs IPv4 and TLS and could easily handle XMPP), and it provides huge benefits to have a common end-to-end protocol that is not based on periodic polling like HTTP.

<comment><USER2> The ESP* sucks power, which means bigger PSU, or in the case of lightbulbs, no config support when the light switch is off. Making a PSU that is both small and efficient for both low current draw and high is rather hard.

Protocol design is trivial for something like a light bulb, compared to the cost of designing the device, and making the scalable backend (and no XMPP is no shortcut for that.

I know how wide the IoT field is. I also know the sheer volume of shite that is being produced. Most of the Wifi products will die a horrid death. replaced by something better and more suitable to low power usage.

Failing that something more secure, after a rash of home fires caused by a terribly insecure system that was able to be turned off and on again repeatedly until it caught fire.

<comment><USER4> Would you suppose it will be something like bluetooth keyboards getting replaced by a usb dongle that talks to your keyboard using some other radio protocol that isn't bluetooth?

<comment><USER2> There is nothing inherently wrong with bluetooth. So long as you are prepared to put work in over the top to handle security.

Bluetooth LE has a reasonable power profile, and the advantage of being about to interop with lots of other things.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Now I love XMPP and before that I was even building website support apps with IRC. But it seems strange now in 2016 to be looking at XMPP for the new IoT wave because there are plenty of other interesting protocols available.

AVS from Wire Swiss for example.

Websockets that is being used by slack, signal and maybe more.

Maybe fresh eyes, fresh code is a positive thing if we're going to move forward. Instead of using XML. ;)

<comment><USER6> What's wrong with XML? It's more human-writable than json, more flexible, less quirky than yaml (which I even cannot write without constantly looking into specification). Binary protocols are not better too, in age of lightbulbs running linux.

<comment><USER7> >>> What's wrong with XML? It's more human-writable than json

wait, what?

<comment><USER8> XML is more readable to people that learned XML first (like me). The younger crowd reads JSON better then XML. Just a matter of perspective. The only argument for XML is that you see the closing tags to know where the element ends. However, I avoid using XML for anything these days.

<comment><USER9> They're not the same.

Both YAML and JSON map to data structures in your program; scalars, sequences and mappings.

XML on the other hand maps to.. a DOM! You've still got to normalize that into what your program expects. SAX is not any better.

Everytime I land in a project using XML I know I'll spend orders of magnitude more time dealing with data than if the project had used YAML or JSON.

<comment><USER10> What if you need DOM-like data, like formatted text? And "formatted" may mean something relatively simple, like a a basic math formula or even a subscript?

<comment><USER9> Store it as a plain string. Most GUI libraries I know of will accept that type only for their rich text controls anyways.

If I need to work on the data I'll parse it into a data structure. Then I get something like ["Hello " [:b "World!"]] where I can leverage the existing functions operating on data in order to manipulate it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> We use XMPP + OTR internally @Infoxchange and it's been really fantastic for us.

It's cross platform (although the Windows clients aren't that pretty to be honest, but we don't have many machines running Windows anymore), it's reliable, we can run it on site and ensure that secure chats are not logged (i.e. 1 on 1 chats aren't logged, rooms are just for history when someone joins), it integrates with monitoring / alerting and general operational notifications such as alerts or notifications from Nagios, GitLab CI builds, Application releases, Errors discovered in logs, Changes to oncall rosters, 'interesting' stats from load balancers, global notifications, secure file transfers and the list goes on.

One thing I keep meaning to get around to implementing for everyone is a web interface for say people that are volunteering / on a temporary device etc...

</comment><comment><USER12> If you really want to figure out which messaging protocols are being used for "IoT" deployments, looks at the leading IoT device management services providers: AWS IoT and Azure IoT Hub.

AWS IoT uses MQTT and HTTP (over WebSocket).

Azure allows customers to choose between MQTT, AMQP, and HTTP, but suggests that its users choose AMQP as a good general-purpose protocol.

HTTP is usually used for devices/machines with external power supplies that are sending high volumes of relatively complex data. MQTT/AMQP are generally used for nodes/sensors with internal power supplies that are sending low volumes of telemetry data.

Neither service supports XMPP natively which should give you a good indication of how suitable it is for IoT applications.

<comment><USER13> What measure do you use to determine that AWS and Azure are the leading IoT providers? (Genuinely curious.) I know that they're large infrastructure players who are doing IoT, but are they also leaders in the IoT space?

<comment><USER12> Revenue share of the overall "IoT Services" market, which includes connectivity, remote monitoring & control, storage, and data analytics services.

Pub/sub protocols like XMPP, AMQP, MQTT are generally used in solutions that are sold into the remote monitoring & control services market.

There is not "IoT market" though, so it's impossible to say who is a leader in the IoT space in general. It depends on the technology category. Eg NXP/Freescale is a leader in the IoT processor space, Wind River/Green Hills are leaders in the IoT OS space (RTOS), Amazon/MS are leaders in the IoT services space.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I wondered how common XMPP was for IoT, my IR Hub (Hub for IR + RF remote) for my TV/Media center speaks XMPP and thanks to some people who reverse engineered it I was able to drop in a library and start sending it commands pretty easily.

<comment><USER3> It also looks like XMPP is used in some home alarm systems [0]. Unfortunaltey, the developers there did too many things wrong, not only security-wise but also in how they used XMPP [1].

[0] [http://www.heise.de/ct/artikel/Home-security-systems- hacked-...](http://www.heise.de/ct/artikel/Home-security-systems-hacked- with-1234-password-3248831.html)

[1] [http://geekplace.eu/flow/posts/drafts/xmpp-iot- antipatterns....](http://geekplace.eu/flow/posts/drafts/xmpp-iot- antipatterns.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Getting sensors, data and actuators to work for ONE usecase has always been easy. just use what you need.

The problem is still how you get these different company systems (silos) to cooperate. "how can you securely give the inside temperature from your alarm's smoke detector and feed it to the heating system to act upon". These services are provided from two different IoT companies.

Here XMPP is the simple and perfect match. Any device in any company can talk to any other device in any other company just as easy as you send email to some one you know in another company.

These companies can solve and hide there internal legacy systems with x500,modbus,coap, binary junk or whatever they need but when you pass the company xmpp server you pack it in a nice letter for others to easily understand what you are saying. With encryption and certificates. And you don't talk to servers/endpoints you don't do business with.

How can NEST homes talk to openHAB? Zigbee legacy with new coap things? And how can they all participate in a smart city ?

<comment><USER16> And then everything sends a different payload in their XMPP messages, and everything is broken again. XMPP is a possible part of a solution, but not _the_ solution alone.

<comment><USER15> Thats why the XMPP [http://www.xmpp.org/extensions/](http://www.xmpp.org/extensions/) is there defining the payload. reading values [http://www.xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0323.html](http://www.xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0323.html) writing values [http://www.xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0325.html](http://www.xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0325.html)

No there will always be several solutions interacting for different usecases, XMPP fits very well in some.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Also, MQTT.

<comment><USER18> MQTT suffers from not having a real RPC system. Eventually with pub/sub you're going to end up with a "request ID" that is copied in replies, and at that point you've just invented a really shitty RPC system.

Better to use one that was designed from the start for RPC (and that also supports streaming/push/pubsub as you'll want that too). I recommend gRPC (if your IoT think is beefy enough to support HTTP2), or something lighter like CapnProto's RPC.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Any good Python XMPP library you guys may know ?

<comment><USER20> Twisted with Wokkel ([https://github.com/ralphm/wokkel](https://github.com/ralphm/wokkel)). It looks unmaintained, but a Python 3 port is on its way, and we are using it actively

SleekXMPP ([http://sleekxmpp.com/](http://sleekxmpp.com/))

and it's asynchronous fork Slixmpp ([https://pypi.python.org/pypi/slixmpp/1.1](https://pypi.python.org/pypi/slixmpp/1.1))

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Do you know about the TR-069 standard?

</comment><comment><USER22> Use it right. It's not a message bus. XMPP is a chat protocol. Message delivery is not guaranteed.

<comment><USER23> Same old, same old: _Core_ XMPP doesn't provide guaranteed delivery, but Extensions do, and today XMPP is more or less unusable without Extensions. I'm talking about XEP-0184 ([https://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0184.html](https://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0184.html)) which is pretty much used in all maintained clients and servers. Note that XEP-0184 provides end-to-end delivery receipts; if you're only interested in hop-to-hop delivery, you're going want XEP-0198. I believe this one is a bit less widespread though.

<comment><USER24> For guaranteed delivery you really want XEP-0198 ([http://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0198.html](http://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0198.html)) which effectively provides TCP like ack's and session management at the wire protocol level. It's fairly straight forward to implement, and works really well for both chat and message bus style applications where acks are required.

<comment><USER23> I think it really depends about what we mean by "guaranteed delivery". If you are more interested in the infrastructure and consider each piece as a different part then yeah, hop-to-hop reliability is important to you and you want XEP-0198. That's like "guaranted delivery of a packet". If however you are more interested in the application that sits on top of the infrastructure, then what you really care about is whether the recipient did receive your message: that's XEP-0184. That's more like "guaranted delivery of a message".

Of course both are complementary (and to me both should be implemented)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why We Choose Profit - <AUTHOR> https://m.signalvnoise.com/why-we-choose-profit-e511efc4dcb9#.2ywqscd9u <comment><USER5> I know this going to sound grumpy, but...

I agree with a lot of this and enjoyed reading their book in which they outline their philosophy on business and management.

But how many times are they going to scream and blog about this? It gets old. I get it, you're profitable and you think it's a good thing. But they've repeated this over and over and they sometimes go overboard in trying to pit themselves against VCs and the perceived waste of the SV tech culture.. Some of it is fair. Some of it just feels like marketing on their part...a way to write more blog posts by pitting themselves against an enemy.

Companies that are profitable and doing well don't need to constantly blog about their profitability. Just my two cents.

<comment><USER6> It's called content marketing. How do you think they have remained profitable?

<comment><USER5> Haha touché. I guess I just wanted to point that out...

<comment><USER6> Tbh, I am very impressed by their perseverance. As you say it was novel in the beginning years but it's tiring now. But they have kept going at it and not let themselves get tired. They have also motivated their employees to build a brand for themselves. Something to learn here...

<comment><USER7> What's really novel about it is their employees are not here manipulating our flow of news, that's the opposite of how most startups' blogs get to our front page more than once.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Take _that_ , strawman!

Seriously, nobody "eschews profit for potential". If I give you the choice between a dollar today and two dollars tomorrow, you aren't "eschewing profit" if you choose the latter: you are weighing the potential gain (an extra dollar) against the potential risk (I can't/don't pay you) and deciding that the reward outweighs the risk.

Or you can rationally decide that the risk outweighs the reward. Whatever. Optimizing current income isn't "right". Optimizing terminal value isn't "wrong". Nor vice versa. They are just different choices. Rational disagreements over risks and returns are how markets form.

Now, if the author wants to say that many companies are too optimistic about their actual future potential and therefore aren't doing the right risk/return calculation, I won't disagree. But this is where boards and investors (theoretically) serve to impose that reality check on the inherent optimism of most entrepreneurs.

<comment><USER6> Well, What if I for sure give you 1000 bucks today OR I may give you 2000 tomorrow. Which would you pick?

What if you had this choice for 30 days straight?

<comment><USER9> It would depend on how the "OR" is determined, so you can assess the risk?

<comment><USER6> I think that's the point of the post. If risk is hard/impossible to assess which would you take?

<comment><USER9> Well, you would still have certain data points to make a decision from. If you've been part of an industry for a while you'll start understanding it.

Second, if you already have a ton of money, you might take on the additional risk to get 2x instead of 1x. Say you have $20mm in the bank, generating 10% a year, then getting a $10mm payout instead of a $5mm is probably worth it, since an extra $5mm won't change your life.

If however, you have $100k in the bank, then you should probably take the $5mm.

<comment><USER8> Exactly. Two people can face at the same choice with the same facts and same assumptions and come to different conclusions because of their individual risk preferences. Neither is necessarily wrong.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Some are saying this is nothing new, that they've repeated this already - <USER2> I saw this evolve from a set of tweets around market fit - and the reaction some people had to the idea.

Is it new? yes and no. It's basecamp - basecamp has been basecamp; they're just getting better at explaining who they are and why.

is it worth saying? absolutely. I have talked with a lot of founders who don't even think about profitability. But without profit, you have no market fit. You might be up in the air, but gravity pulls all objects down.

Basecamp has always represented a voice of sanity in an industry plagued by hype and fads. Maybe you are sick of hearing them, but for others (such as myself) they are a lighthouse in a storm.

Also, this _is_ great marketing, because its not an ad. Its actual, meaningful content. 1/3 of the article isn't why basecamp is the facebook of project management. Its respectful.

</comment><comment><USER11> Counter-example: Slack chose growth and they swallowed up a multi-billion- dollar opportunity that 37signals (now Basecamp) rightfully could have owned.

Slack employs over 700 people now (compared to 51 people at Basecamp) even though they're a decade younger.

<comment><USER12> DHH and Jason Fried have several vacation homes and sports cars and actual hard cash. The founders of Slack have golden tickets with somebody else's name on most of them.

I guess it all boils down to what's important to you.

<comment><USER9> I'd much rather (co-)own 37signals than an equity stake in any venture funded business, including Slack.

Who seriously loves working crazy hours? Make $20m and invest that well, that's all you need to live a full, free and happy life with your family. Enjoy work, but don't live to work.

<comment><USER11> Luckily, ambitious people don't think like this. They'd rather make a huge impact on society (think companies like Google and Tesla) than retire comfortably once they can afford fancy toys.

<comment><USER13> Google and Tesla are only possible because their founders actually got control over the money and were able to deploy it to their ends. Yes, their rise was VC-fueled, but that's not the only way to go about it.

At some point, you have to be rational. Yes, in theory you could make enough money to reshape the world in your own image. In real life, people need balance and they need limits, and they need to learn to be content with what they can get within those limits, however much that is.

Elon Musk is now a two-time divorcee. Brin is a divorcee. I don't actually know Page's marital status and don't care enough to look it up.

Google and Tesla's impact is primarily technical, not social; the social impacts are not insignificant, but they're incidental to the technology, and though they like to think they are, Google et al are not in control of how that technology is used. In fact, the effects of these technical innovations appear contradictory to what are likely to be considered the tech industry's dominant values (see: election of Donald Trump).

Google and Tesla are important companies, but perhaps their founders could indeed use a little more balance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> More companies would choose profitable course if the tax regime were different. How (U.S.) taxes work, you are heavily incentivized to build "profitless" companies and sell them to make profit in the form of capital gains.

If you build a company over 10 years and make zero profit, then sell it for $100M, you pay $15-20M in long-term capital gain taxes.

On the other hand, if you build a company and take $100M profits over 10 years, you pay $35M in corporate income taxes. And it's worse than it seems too, because you pay those taxes as you go, instead of waiting for growth to compound and paying taxes at the end of the cycle.

The VC industry exists basically because of the tax regime, as do a variety of other credit sources. This same tax regime also disadvantages boot-strapped companies, which is sort of a sad side effect if you ask me. If you have the capital to avoid profit-taking, you get richly rewarded for it.

I'd like to see tax reforms to avoid this set up, where small boot-strapped businesses can retain earnings in order to fund their growth, without paying corporate taxes, or having to resort to borrowing so they can spend down their "profits."

<comment><USER15> Try Estonia. 0% corporate income tax, 20% on dividends, Something like 30% employment tax on employees within Estonia.

So register your business in Estonia, operate outside where you can grow as much as you want without being taxed, then take dividends when you're ready. Estonia has an e-residency program which lets foreign citizens form businesses within Estonia easily.

<comment><USER16> This ideology is what gets people in trouble with the tax authorities of their resident country... talk to an accountant and watch them laugh you out the door.

<comment><USER15> Why? The company would be formally Estonian. You'd pay your 20% on any dividends to Estonia, then whatever tax your country of residence demands.

I'm not advocating tax fraud in any way shape or form. I'm saying Estonia will allow you to setup an Estonian business, and has a business friendly tax structure.

It won't help you with your personal taxation when you bring your money back as dividends/salary. But it will help you if you choose to reinvest it in the business.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> On some level I'm surprised this approach isn't more common. With diminishing marginal utility of wealth, a small chance of making millions has a much higher expected value than an almost zero chance of making billions. Plus, even if the billions were worth proportionally more, we actually tend to _under_ weight high risk/high reward scenarios compared to a perfect expected value maximizer. E.g. you wouldn't pay much to get a 1/10,000 shot at unimaginable bliss, even if the expected value math works out.

I'm guessing part of it is that at some point, say under a 5% chance, we stop calculating altogether and it just becomes "so you're saying there's a chance!" If you have a 1% chance of making something as big as Basecamp and a 0.001% chance of starting Facebook, they both feel about the same, so might as well shoot for the moon.

<comment><USER18> This approach is more common. It's called starting and running a small business (that maybe someday grows naturally into a big business). Small businesses are way more prevalent than startups, even in tech. Small business loans are orders of magnitude more voluminous than VC and Angel investments.

However, remember that we're in a VC funded forum right now, so we're in a bubble where the growth-over-profits is portrayed as equal or preferred to simple slow growth profit.

I'd highly recommend checking out your local small business owners' group or meetupss. They are just as smart as you are, but just never got sucked into this bubble here.

<comment><USER17> I suppose I did mean more common _within our circles_ \--the corner of the culture that reads Hacker News. I'm from Western Mass, which has way more small software businesses than startups, so I'm not sheltered from the idea.

I think you're right there's a certain groupthink that goes into it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Basecamp is one of the few bright beacons in the tech industry. They walk the walk.

I often turn to SvN whenever I need a quick morale boost or injection of reality.

<comment><USER20> In the _entire_ tech industry? You're not looking hard enough, Basecamp is doing well but so are 100s of other companies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> There is nothing wrong with taking a distribution from a company; investors/founders need a payout.

while I agree with much of the content, I do disagree with this statement: "Companies that keep reinvesting keep adding risk to their companies."

I can't agree with this assertion. Companies that keep reinvesting their profits are doing it to finance future growth. Obviously, future growth implies a degree of risk. But you could argue that by reinvesting profits, you are de-risking the future by building capability to satisfy a demand and the proof of demand is the profit generated.

<comment><USER22> If you put the money in your own pocket it is yours. If you use it to reinvest in the company it can be lost. Clearly this is risk.

You call it reinvesting, and any form of investing comes with risk. I think you are missing the point here, he is not saying it is never smart just that it adds risk which is clearly true.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Great philosophy, bootstrap a profitable company and keep maintaining that bootstrapping way of doing business. I am reading Nassim Taleb's book AntiFragile, and am in the process of judging both organizations and personal strategies on the fragile/antifragile curve. BaseCamp is antifragile and that is a good thing.

</comment><comment><USER24> A couple of questions on the financial terms (words) Jason used in the OP:

>Unlike companies that reinvest all or most of the money back into the company every year, we take money (profit) out every year in the form of distributions (we're an LLC)

What does that - "distributions" \- mean? That they take the profit and share it between the owners / partners of the company annually?

>We're still an LLC at Basecamp. The simplest pass-through structure you can have at our size.

What does a pass-through structure mean?

Update: Thanks for the answers, guys.

<comment><USER25> A distribution is the paying out of profits to owners of a business. Distributions must be paid in proportion to ownership share: if you own 50% of a company you must be paid exactly 50% of all distributions.

Distributions are not subject to payroll tax, which is a nice benefit of them.

Pass-through entities mean that the tax liability for the entity "passes through" to the owners of the company, so the company proper does not have a tax liability, rather the owners do.

When I am God Emperor, all company dividends will be deductible against corporate taxes, to encourage companies to return profits to the owners in the form of dividends. This would better align the c-suite and "owners" in a sustainable, cashflow based relationship, much closer to the LLC model. It would also make stock ownership more attractive for poor people, since the income would be taxed at a lower rate for them than for rich people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I agree whole-heartedly with the article and how they do things, but this is just recycling their same old shtick for marketing purposes. Nothing new from them here.

<comment><USER22> I agree with everything you say, but I almost feel like SV needs to read this once a month just to make sure it is not forgotten.

Not arguing this should be the only business model, but an option that is considered.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> >> "Our books are so silly simple, our operating agreement hasn't changed in a decade."

Both Carlos Segura and Ernest Kim were original founders of 37signals. [1]

I wonder if they both get some type of profit distribution even though they haven't been involved in the business in years.

[1] [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basecamp_(company)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basecamp_\(company\))

<comment><USER25> If they are owners of the LLC they must be paid out distributions in exactly the percentage that they own the company.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Why We Choose Profit?

Becau$e ... money i$ a terrible thing to waste!

But seriously, before I've even read the article you can tell that the author may feel (or told to feel) bad from making a profit.

I would say that being profitable is not a bad thing at all. Someone (or somebody) created a tool, or a service that helps people out. There's a demand for such service. People are willing to spend money on it. There's no problem there.

It take effort to innovate (and to run things that help people out). The best way to keep the quality of things high is to... make money to pay for people and things to make your service the best it can be.

Nothing wrong with that.

</comment><comment><USER29> There are cheaper alternatives to basecamp people

[https://freedcamp.com/](https://freedcamp.com/)

</comment><comment><USER30> im sure VCs would love a company that's already profitable too. But now that you are there's no need for venture capital.

<comment><USER31> They absolutely wouldn't, and it makes sense for them not to. VCs make their money by funding the Facebooks and Googles of the world, not the Basecamps.

From the perspective of the founder, Basecamp seems pretty great - <USER3> millions of dollars in profit a year, ability to live a comfortable lifestyle without waiting for an exit.

From the perspective of a VC, it's a mess. Their fund isn't set up or really interested in dealing with dividends, they're built around the idea of an exit. Furthermore, given 100 companies, they'd much rather have 1 Google and 99 failed companies than 50 Basecamps and 50 failed companies. So adding risk by re-investing is always in the investor's interest. Finally, they have no leverage in a profitable company. The company doesn't need them anymore - <USER4> benefit quite a bit from holding the pursestrings.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Refreshing to see the kamikaze growth style encouraged by VC slowly unraveling.

We make $1 for every $0 we spend is far better than $1 for every $2 spent _anyday_.

There's _nothing_ financially secure about being in the pockets of someone who wants you to grow at zero net profit rate.

I just can't fathom Founders who think that somehow they are in the clear because they are now making 7 digit revenues but _negative net profit_.

Pocketing your annual salary month to month, now that's FU money. You get to keep it and no underperforming VC breathing down your neck to blow up in order to make up the losses generated by the remaining 299 variants of Uber, AirBNB, Tinder and Ethereum.</comment>


Alyne – RegTech Platform for Cyber Security, Risk Management and Compliance - <AUTHOR> https://www.alyne.com <comment><USER2> Which particular regulations are the compliance features targeting?</comment>