The Indian and his insatiable appetite for the college degree - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/design-startups/dc7566b63159 <comment><USER5> The fact that a formal engineering/MBA education isn't a prerequisite for business success is almost a tautology now, especially among software startups. So there is nothing new here.

There are some half-truths though:

> For some reasons, Indians just can't deal with the fact that someone without > pedigree can get somewhere in life.

\- Airtel, India's largest telecom company, was started by Sunil Mittal, armed with just a Bachelor of Arts degree from a second-rung university.

\- Reliance Industries, India's largest private conglomerate, was started by Dhirubhai Ambani, had no college degree.

\- The Zee TV group, one of India's largest media and entertainment conglomerates, was started by Subhash Chandra, who dropped out of school after class 12.

\- There are many more multi-billion dollar enterprises like Adani and Sobha, that were founded by entrepreneurs without college degrees.

\- Quickheal, India's largest anti-virus company, was founded by Kailash Katkar, never studied after school.

\- Maxx Mobile, one of the leading low-cost phone makers in India was founded by Ajay Agarwal, a class 9 dropout.

I could go on.

By insisting that Indians "just can't deal with entrepreneurs without pedigree", the author is at best being disingenuous, or at worst slaying a straw man only to elevate his own achievements.

Finally, the stereotyping in the linkbait title, "The Indian and his insatiable..." doesn't help. As others have already pointed out, people (not just Indians, but around the world) make career/education choices in response to the financial/cultural environment around them.

To the average middle-class parents who grew up dealing with scarcity, low incomes, corruption and limited opportunities, the "multi-national job" represents stability, meritocracy, global opportunities and a respectable income.

There really is no reason to belittle them for their choices.

<comment><USER6> I would hardly say that he is belittling people in the situation you describe. What he is attempting to discourage is the mentality that sticks to the dogmatic cultural position even in the face of a) historical data indicating that academic pedigree isn't a rock-solid predictor of success, and b) local data indicating a higher than average likelihood of success for the individual in question.

This is a specific example of a problem that every culture faces, which is cultural memes that have taken on the form of divine wisdom. Not everyone will be Mittal or Gates, in fact that population is a statistically non-existent one; that doesn't mean that dropping out of college to run a startup is the worst idea for any given person. Any culture shutting off that opportunity regardless of the specific case will cost itself in lost opportunities.

And as an aside on the specific content, I am not Indian, but reading this I couldn't help but remember my Indian friends' impressions of their aunts and uncles admonishing them for doing something insane like getting an advanced economic degree when they could have been a doctor or engineer.

<comment><USER7> >>academic pedigree isn't a rock-solid predictor of success

Definition of success is extremely difficult to be given here.

I will give you a small example. Literacy is a big problem in India. Unfortunately since you can't read or write, your access to information is limited. This puts things like news papers and magazines outside your reach. Access to any kind of information will be weak(Access to information is the most thing for a person in the modern world)- You won't be able to make well informed decisions about anything, your knowledge of current affairs will be weak. Ultimately such a mass of people won't be able to make it big.

This is why basic education should be compulsory. Also these days knowledge of the English language is extremely important to do any work with people of other nations. English is not our native language or mother tongue. So we learn it only in schools.

<comment><USER6> Clearly neither me nor OP is arguing against basic education. Nor that college or advanced degrees are a good thing, so please get rid of that straw man fast.

Additionally, the discussion on the authors post was primarily about those who have developed some capability to "do" either outside the conventional school system or at a particularly early point. This clearly limits the applicability of the discussion to those who have in some fashion achieved access to information and processed it well. This likely rules out illiterate people, non-English speakers (specifically in Tech) and many others from the discussion. I am not saying that their exclusion from information is a good thing, clearly it is not. However, taking the median Indian and saying that the best move in their situation should be encouraged universally is clearly wrong, as is doing so in any culture/country, and I interpreted the article to only be complaining about the dogmatic attachment to that "best path" even in the face of demonstrated success.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Firstly being entrepreneur and going to college are not orthogonal goals.

Secondly for any poor person in India, without any funding or support. No infrastructure, no exposure and having to fight a historic burden of poverty in the family. Not getting a college education means, the guy will eventually end up working at a tailor's shop or a garage or driver. Working whole life only to hope his son breaks of the cycle of poverty in the next generation.

Contrary to whatever you might think, you can't hard-work your way out of all problems all the time, I know that from personal experience. For a rich person a big financial failure means, a good decent chance to start up again. For a lower middle class person such a failure means, the end of life. Full Stop! Because the debts will drown you till you reach your grave.

The fact is for any lower middle/class and poor person. Getting a decent education is the easiest way to get a job, and then use that money to bootstrap their projects or start up.

You might not learn anything in a college, or a degree might not prep you up for prime time rock star development shops. But it will get you a job, buy you some financial freedom. And then you will have good enough time to iteratively learn and bootstrap your own business.

And beyond all, not everyone's family can write them a check to start something their teens or at any age. Most people live so hand to mouth, without a monthly salary they are pretty much bust!

Before criticizing some one please take into note the fact, they don't enjoy the same privileges and benefits as your do.

<comment><USER8> >> Getting a decent "education" is the easiest way to get a job

The traditional education system WAS the easiest way to get a job. Nowadays, it is the easiest way NOT to get a job.

Step 1: Download the 10 books x 4 (years) = 40 books of the average university degree. Step 2: Unless it's mathematics, it is just literature. Read it. Step 3: Sit the 10 x 4 exams at an online college.

In most developed countries, you have just managed NOT to spend 100 000 USD and NOT to waste 4 years of your life. All of this sounds useless, and it probably is equally useless, but at least it is not as time-consuming nor as expensive as the traditional alternative.

<comment><USER9> you have clearly never lived in india. you absolutely need a college degree to be even considered for most decent jobs.

<comment><USER10> He didn't say you should not get a college degree, he said you can get a (legitimate) degree in less time and for much, much less money if you study by yourself and only go to an actual brick-and-mortar college to take the final tests.

<comment><USER11> Going to school or college is much more than just passing the tests. The human interaction, the relationships you form, the ideas you will be exposed to, the things you will learn to avoid... There's value in the education process that goes well beyond the final certificate.

<comment><USER10> Sure - but you can probably get similar experiences in other ways as well, again for much less money.

<comment><USER11> Yes, you can always think up some way to get the same benefit, but the point is that for most people, going to college is a good way to get a well-rounded education that involves being exposed to a range of ideas and people. Can a dedicated person figure out a cheaper alternative? Possibly, but that's beside the point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This isn't specific to Indian culture. There are several cultures that will emphasize college degrees over entrepreneurship. I know this is hard to understand from a fairly successful entrepreneur's perspective but the cold hard truth is that most entrepreneurs fail. This is what causes the whole 'it's safer to get a college degree' mentality.

I've been an entrepreneur (fairly successful) since I was 13. Yet my folks said I should get a college degree. I did get an engineering degree while 'entrepreneuring' at the same time. Does my degree help me in any direct way ? Nope. But there are several indirect benefits that a degree can get you first amongst which are that in general people think you are capable and well educated. I don't personally subscribe to this thought process but hey, we have to live in this world with everyone else, right ? My degree has opened doors for me and made some people take me more seriously. It has had zero practical contribution towards my endeavors but sometimes opening a door is all it takes. Not only people but even governments sometimes want certain degrees for certain categories of work permits (even if it's totally irrelevant to your work but a degree helps you). Then of course you have the benefits of an alumni network, etc etc. but those are really what you make of them because you can network otherwise as well. But a degree is a formal qualification - treated as such by society and the government. Does it mean you know more ? Probably not. Do people in general think you do ? Probably yes.

I'd still say that in the world today, a college degree matters a lot depending on who you are talking to. It won't matter if you're talking to me but there are a lot of people out there who care about whether you have one or not.

</comment><comment><USER13> > Indians just can't deal with the fact that someone without pedigree can get > somewhere in life.

I am not Indian, nor have I spent time in India, so I hope I am right in thinking that this speaks to present growing pains in Indian tech culture. I say growing pains because I think, and hope, that this valuation of pedigree over merit is coming to an end, as it is already at an end in parts of the U.S.

There are, if I may say so, a lot of bad Indian programmers. They're bad not because they're Indian, of course, but because they don't really _want_ to be programmers. It's a career option. Engineering and business are things you study in school because they're where money and prestige are. But studying in school and _learning_ are entirely different things.

> The only way your son is ever going to succeed being an entrepreneur is by > getting himself an MBA.

I want to believe that this, though it be the present, is not the future of Indian tech entrepreneurship.

<comment><USER14> _There are, if I may say so, a lot of bad Indian programmers. They're bad not because they're Indian, of course, but because they don't really want to be programmers._

I observed long ago that (in my Silicon Valley experience) white American programmers were always good programmers, because white Americans only become programmers if they really want to be programmers. The same cannot always be said of other nationalities and ethnic groups.

At least, that's been true until now. The glamorization of programming and the advent of 10-week programming cram courses may change things.

<comment><USER15> You're likely going to get some knee-jerk flak from people who misunderstand what you're trying to say, but from experience (I'm ethnic Sinhalese), I can say that this can be attributed to what exactly constitutes "programming" in those cultures (this transcends race and nationality BTW).

If by "programming", you mean putting together a website and the like, then yes, there is a _huge_ swath of people who are semi-qualified to do anything else, but get drafted to do more anyway. If by "programming", you mean problem solving and innovation where writing code is actually one of the last things to be done, then most people will consider that to be a smaller subset.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> So my family is from Bangladesh. My aunt and uncle moved to Toronto. My cousin wants to study business and get an MBA, but his parents want him to study electrical engineering. I didn't get it, until I realized its all about risk aversion. An engineering degree is a secure path to the middle class. A business degree isn't, and entrerpeneurship certainly isn't. The business degree might have a higher potential reward, but middle of the class engineers still get jobs.

<comment><USER17> I find it fascinating that engineering is now seen as a secure path to middle class.

When I was in college, construction was a secure path to middle class, and engineering was something reserved for folks who wanted to make 300k, but work 80 hours a week, a decidedly not-middle-class work ethic.

<comment><USER16> There are two distinctions here: between America and India/Bangladesh, and between then and now. Construction or industrial work in South Asia was never a secure path to the middle class. Education has long been the way forward in those countries. In the U.S., skilled blue collar work was considered a path to the middle class, but those days are long behind us.

Today, in the U.S. engineering presents a secure alternative to liberal arts degrees and living with one's parents, just it has historically presented an alternative to manual labor in South Asia.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I agree it's perfectly possible to get somewhere as an entrepreneur without a college degree. But it's hardly detrimental to have one either.

And I'm kind of sick of the US-centric view that all college degrees cost $100,000+ -- many high quality degrees in other western countries cost as little as 10-20% of this figure (and often are paid for in a deferred payment scheme). As with so many things (like healthcare) it's just another area the US seems to have gone insane with.

<comment><USER19> > And I'm kind of sick of the US-centric view that all college degrees cost > $100,000+ -- many high quality degrees in other western countries cost as > little as 10-20% of this figure

It doesn't seem out of line to me. The average high school graduate in Canada will earn about $30,000 per year during the typical age one goes to university. Assuming a degree takes four years, that is a cost of $120,000 right there, ignoring any other fees that may be associated with enrolment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Just like you even I wanted to dropout and start something I wanted or wished to do. My parents aren't too conservative. But my dad told me something which I believe is very true - "Getting a degree is highly rewarding. If tomorrow your business crashes, you'd at least have a degree to back you up with a job. Degree is for your secure future not to please the society around you". No doubt this is true. And as my dad said, its more for you than anyone else. But again its more than that, getting a degree pays more than just societal status and a more savvy future. That being said, I personally want to know each and every specific topic in full depth. And I believe that can only happen with a proper mentor over me and like-minded peers around me. In other words, in a "university". Plus college helps you with many other things in "life" and not just academically. But then it depends on what you want to do and accordingly it matters if a degree is worth it or not.

I hope students (especially) take this post in the right gesture. Dropping out is not the best solution always. Doesn't work for everyone. Its not cool to dropout because Zuck, Gates and Jobs did. You "have to have" a strong reason why university isnt the best option for you.

+1 otherwise for the post. Good to know you had the support you needed. Doesn't happen with everyone. All the best ;)

</comment><comment><USER21> I see college as a learning place. A place where you learn about everything but study topics. College is the place where I met my co-founder.

It is really a great place where you can meet new talented people, learn how to work in a team. Its a place where you can have fights, fall and learn again.

It is the place where you learn to present your Idea by presenting it among your friends first. They can help if you lack something. This kind of things are usually not very easy in the outside world. Because the outside world is busy competing with you.

You meet so many types of people that you learn to categories the people. What kind of people are A Grade and what kind are B grade. This helps you to when you will start hiring.

You say going to college is not worth it. Well another big problem with our thinking is that we think that college is just to learn the "courses". Well its not. Its a lot more than that. I am also a student in one of the most reputable colleges in India, but the way I think, learning is just a state of mind, place doesn't matter. I myself use to think that i have wasted my 4 years learning computer science, that I could have learnt all this in just a year and a half, but today as I am trying to build my startup, I understand that this all connect dots. Even I am not interested in grades at all, but i never stop working on my startup.

So, As I see it, college is like a big sand ground, where you can fall, again and again, and learn to fight. And all this without hurting yourself.

<comment><USER22> you said "one of the most reputable colleges in India"... and your statements stand true for those kinda colleges... Let me remind you - those are few - very few.... for all the other colleges - I agree with the author - <USER2> "other" kinda colleges are in huge numbers - they produce quantity without quality and as a result many people see India's out-of-college talent "unusable" ... and they result into bad programmers/(engineers/lawyers/doctors/whatever-profession)... and they also result into bad teachers - and the loop goes on...

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I think people underestimate the systemic restrictions placed on the Indian Middle Class, and fail to realise the connection to a larger problem India faces, viz. drastic shortage.

You want to become a doctor? Too bad you don't have an MBBS. We don't care whether you decided to become one only during college, and are willing to spend a few extra years catching up.

Except for diplomas (by which I mean qualifications like CA, which you theoretically could get without attending classes at a college) doesn't place a prerequisite on having a degree. Every master's program I have come across requires a bachelor's degree. Some are more flexible, admitting degrees outside the relevant fields. But most are not.

The reason is pretty simple : In a country like India where anything good suffers a big shortage, people generally prefer to stick to rules, creating many false negatives. This is because no one wants to take up liability in case a false negative crops up. "I followed all the regulations and suggestions," they say.

So anything that involves an expected, and common path ends up needing college degrees as prerequisites. For the Middle Class which cannot afford to wait out a few years, they have no choice but to toe the line. Only if you have any capital (and in India, connections) to begin with, can you expect to change the system. (The author here is a businessman in the crudest sense : not a very conventional career path in a lot of families).

My parents generation mostly got their jobs before the liberalisation of the economy in 1991. In those days, a lot of people dreamed of government jobs : stable, decent paying, and allows you to slack off. In spite of globalisation, we cannot expect their mindset to change a lot after they've fought so badly for jobs, right? This old mindset comes into play when they suggest us to go to college : they've seen decades of public sector employment, this new path (entrepreneurship) seems new, and they honestly believe they are trying to help you. There is no ill-will here.

I do agree one can still earn a good living without college in India too. But I feel what I said has a considerable effect in societal status of middle class people (most of whom are not extraordinary), and this in turn makes people want the college degree.

</comment><comment><USER22> First they got me to go to a college - I really dint want to go - wanted to start "something on my own" \- pretty weak argument - I din't have any idea. Then they insisted to go to a Master - bcoz you need to get above the crowd - and I got into one of the best institutes - that made it even harder to dropout even when I knew after 6 months that I was wasting time

Then I jumped into entrepreneurship - And they insisted that I should get a job to get a hands-on experience. I gave up after 8 months - to their preferences - but this is when I started seeing success, but couldn't prove it to them. They didn't see it as "lasting"

Today, even at this moment, I can feel "the burden of giving up" because most people around me "insisted" on doing something I dint want to do. Ultimately, I am to blame.

10 years later - I am pretty successful in my career, with a job. My job is not "secure" as they mentioned. Its not satisfying and frequently frustrating. I know no "other job" can fix that ... I want to take the jump into entrepreneurship again - and I am doing whatever I can. And many times I wish I could undo that mistake I made 10 years back. It is seriously less riskier and easier to start young rather than doing it after you are a husband/father/etc.

As far as Education is concerned - That is important. But Degree! - I know most universities in India will give you degrees that don't speak for your talent/skill. It just shows that you passed your exams - and if you have extra money - some universities will give you a degree without you reading a single line.

</comment><comment><USER24> I have been pondering about this for a while and have developed a hypothesis as to why Indian parents (and those from similar nations) tend to overvalue college degrees.

It is mostly due to the parents having low self-esteem. It comes down to the following two facts:

(1) While there are plenty of exceptionally capable young individuals like OP who have been proving everyone wrong, it usually takes a lot of parental skill and know-how to produce a wunderkind with social skills necessary to navigate the adult world in a foreign country.

(2) Parents who are recent immigrants (especially from poorer nations or from nations with significant cultural differences from the host nation) do not see themselves as capable of providing that know-how. Note that I did not say they can't provide it -- just that they do not see themselves as capable to (it turns out that more often than not they underestimate themselves).

Therefore, if you are a parent in a similar situation, it (often wrongly) appears to you that the only way your children stand a fighting chance is if you they spend as much time in school as possible. Then, of course, is the social pressure from family friends.

</comment><comment><USER11> >>But, something he said really shocked me. It goes like this — "Oh, my sister's kid is just like you. He's got a $10,000 grant to go build a business and he's in the 10th grade. My sister asked me what she should do. I told her to ask him to focus on finishing his college first before doing anything else."

I don't find this particularly shocking. Without knowing the particulars of this kid, it sounds like pretty sane advice to a 16 year old - finish your education. School, strangely enough, gives people a lot of free time too, probably more than a full-time job does. It's possible to get an education, and dabble in entrepreneurship, and find friends who gel with you enough to make you might want to take on as partners. Someone with the aptitude for entrepreneurship will likely find a way to do all that while getting an education, but it's not irresponsible for a parent or guardian to encourage kids to focus on their education -- Just because some kids turn out to be successful dropout-entrepreneurs doesn't mean that dropping out at the first opportunity is a well-defined path to success.

</comment><comment><USER25> Speaking as Pakistani in his early twenties, I can confirm that I get asked many of the same questions. I have a B.S. in Computer Science right now, but frequently get asked "When are you getting your MBA?" by family members. I hate how the question always implies that I will undoubtedly be pursuing one.

</comment><comment><USER26> Since many of the comments here seem to miss the op's point:

He is saying that Indians seem to _think_ that you need a degree to be successful, and discount the entrepreneur category by itself. He clearly thinks this is untrue and a counterproductive attitude, but there it is.

He is probably bringing it up because it is hard enough to be an entrepreneur without people constantly telling you that you will fail for one arbitrary reason or another.

By the way, this holds pretty much true in the United States -- most middle- and upper-class people think you need a degree to succeed.

But the entrepreneur category is probably given more respect. E.g. my friend's daughter is postponing college to work on her startup - she mostly getting very positive reinforcement all around.

</comment><comment><USER27> Caste system it is all about qualification. Only trader community can trade. Only priest community can pray. Now hereditary qualification a has given way a little bit to official qualifications. Qualifications gets precedence over skill.

</comment><comment><USER28> I really dislike articles that generalize based on race, religion, sex, etc. It's inappropriate and says nothing about individuals (all of whom are unique).

When you're researching a large nation with more than a billion people, you'll find a lot of people who have degrees and a lot of people who do not and a lot of people who like chewing gum and (again) a lot of people who do not.

The only thing the results should tell you is that there are a lot of people there. They say nothing about the average individual.

<comment><USER14> While individuals are different, valid and useful generalizations do exist. Growing up (and living in) Indian culture is different from growing up and living in the US, which is different from Japan, from Germany, etc.

I assume you are in the US. If you met an Indian person and evaluated his relationships and belief systems based on your American standards, you'd get a very misleading picture. You need to understand cultural context.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I have regrets on going to college when in 2001 I was a good coder and running a successful/profitable gaming oriented website/community. I was heavily discouraged from that path and it set me back a bit, when I got back into coding in 2005 I felt like a dinosaur. College was neat though.

<comment><USER12> Why didn't you continue running your website while in college ? I did that and it worked out okay for me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Really loved the article Ashwin. So true. Specially the para:

For some reasons, Indians just can't deal with the fact that someone without pedigree can get somewhere in life. It's unbelievable that you can be a good programmer, successful businessman or great marketer without an {insert random college degree here}.

</comment><comment><USER31> This is pretty much the way of the world, not just in India. The 'safe' route is to get a technical degree, work for a large corporation, and hopefully retire some day. Can't blame parents for wanting to shield their children from risk and potential failure...

</comment><comment><USER32> Well, you were lucky your parents let you skip out on college. I was kind of forced to do engineering. Even when I got into a rather crappy college (I had started working for a start-up which never took off rather than study for entrance exams). But hey, whatever.

</comment><comment><USER33> All entrepreneurs are not successful..Not just India but every where middle class families force their children to study well and do a corporate job rather jump to the place where success is less than 20%..

<comment><USER34> 20%? In a country as business friendly as the USA, only 10% of businesses last over 5 years. India is a rougher business environment so I would assume the rate of success is way below 20% (probably 5%)

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Not sure about education, but Indian developers tend to be very proud of their job titles. I had to formally become 'senior super developer' so they would not look down on me.

</comment><comment><USER36> Indian here but on the other side of this. Got MS, MBA, and currently thinking about Doctorate. May or may-not do a startup.

</comment><comment><USER37> Where there is a will , there is a way!!1

</comment><comment><USER38> From Think on These Things (aka This Matter of Culture), by Jiddu Krishnamurti - [http://books.google.it/books?id=IsldnzHkxpsC&lpg=PP1&dq=thin...](http://books.google.it/books?id=IsldnzHkxpsC&lpg=PP1&dq=think%20on%20these%20things&pg=PA1#v=onepage&q&f=false)

Chapter 1 - The Function of Education \</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>-

I WONDER IF we have ever asked ourselves what education means. Why do we go to school, why do we learn various subjects, why do we pass examinations and compete with each other for better grades? What does this so-called education mean, and what is it all about? This is really a very important question, not only for the students, but also for the parents, for the teachers, and for everyone who loves this earth. Why do we go through the struggle to be educated? Is it merely in order to pass some examinations and get a job? Or is it the function of education to prepare us while we are young to understand the whole process of life? Having a job and earning one's livelihood is necessary but is that all? Are we being educated only for that? Surely, life is not merely a job, an occupation; life is something extraordinarily wide and profound, it is a great mystery, a vast realm in which we function as human beings. If we merely prepare ourselves to earn a livelihood, we shall miss the whole point of life; and to understand life is much more important than merely to prepare for examinations and become very proficient in mathematics, physics, or what you will.

So, whether we are teachers or students, is it not important to ask ourselves why we are educating or being educated? And what does life mean? Is not life an extraordinary thing? The birds, the flowers, the flourishing trees, the heavens, the stars, the rivers and the fish therein - all this is life. Life is the poor and the rich; life is the constant battle between groups, races and nations; life is meditation; life is what we call religion, and it is also the subtle, hidden things of the mind - the envies, the ambitions, the passions, the fears, fulfilments and anxieties. All this and much more is life. But we generally prepare ourselves to understand only one small corner of it. We pass certain examinations, find a job, get married, have children, and then become more and more like machines. We remain fearful, anxious, frightened of life. So, is it the function of education to help us understand the whole process of life, or is it merely to prepare us for a vocation, for the best job we can get?

What is going to happen to all of us when we grow to be men and women? Have you ever asked yourselves what you are going to do when you grow up? In all likelihood you will get married, and before you know where you are you will be mothers and fathers; and you will then be tied to a job, or to the kitchen, in which you will gradually wither away. Is that all that your life is going to be? Have you ever asked yourselves this question? Should you not ask it? If your family is wealthy you may have a fairly good position already assured, your father may give you a comfortable job, or you may get richly married; but there also you will decay, deteriorate. Do you see?

Surely, education has no meaning unless it helps you to understand the vast expanse of life with all its subtleties, with its extraordinary beauty, its sorrows and joys. You may earn degrees, you may have a series of letters after your name and land a very good job; but then what? What is the point of it all if in the process your mind becomes dull, weary, stupid? So, while you are young, must you not seek to find out what life is all about? And is it not the true function of education to cultivate in you the intelligence which will try to find the answer to all these problems? Do you know what intelligence is? It is the capacity, surely, to think freely without fear, without a formula, so that you begin to discover for yourself what is real, what is true; but if you are frightened you will never be intelligent. Any form of ambition, spiritual or mundane, breeds anxiety, fear; therefore ambition does not help to bring about a mind that is clear, simple, direct, and hence intelligent.

You know, it is really very important while you are young to live in an environment in which there is no fear. Most of us, as we grow older, become frightened; we are afraid of living, afraid of losing a job, afraid of tradition, afraid of what the neighbours, or what the wife or husband would say, afraid of death. Most of us have fear in one form or another; and where there is fear there is no intelligence. And is it not possible for all of us, while we are young, to be in an environment where there is no fear but rather an atmosphere of freedom freedom, not just to do what we like, but to understand the whole process of living? Life is really very beautiful, it is not this ugly thing that we have made of it; and you can appreciate its richness, its depth, its extraordinary loveliness only when you revolt against everything - against organized religion, against tradition, against the present rotten society - so that you as a human being find out for yourself what is true. Not to imitate but to discover - that is education, is it not? It is very easy to conform to what your society or your parents and teachers tell you. That is a safe and easy way of existing; but that is not living, because in it there is fear, decay, death. To live is to find out for yourself what is true, and you can do this only when there is freedom, when there is continuous revolution inwardly, within yourself.

But you are not encouraged to do this; no one tells you to question, to find out for yourself what God is, because if you were to rebel you would become a danger to all that is false. Your parents and society want you to live safely, and you also want to live safely. Living safely generally means living in imitation and therefore in fear. Surely, the function of education is to help each one of us to live freely and without fear, is it not? And to create an atmosphere in which there is no fear requires a great deal of thinking on your part as well as on the part of the teacher, the educator.

Do you know what this means - what an extraordinary thing it would be to create an atmosphere in which there is no fear? And we must create it, because we see that the world is caught up in endless wars; it is guided by politicians who are always seeking power; it is a world of lawyers, policemen and soldiers, of ambitious men and women all wanting position and all fighting each other to get it. Then there are the so-called saints, the religious gurus with their followers; they also want power, position, here or in the next life. It is a mad world, completely confused, in which the communist is fighting the capitalist, the socialist is resisting both, and everybody is against somebody, struggling to arrive at a safe place, a position of power or comfort. The world is torn by conflicting beliefs, by caste and class distinctions, by separative nationalities, by every form of stupidity and cruelty - and this is the world you are being educated to fit into. You are encouraged to fit into the framework of this disastrous society; your parents want you to do that, and you also want to fit in.

Now, is it the function of education merely to help you to conform to the pattern of this rotten social order, or is it to give you freedom - <USER3> freedom to grow and create a different society, a new world? We want to have this freedom, not in the future, but now, otherwise we may all be destroyed. We must create immediately an atmosphere of freedom so that you can live and find out for yourselves what is true, so that you become intelligent, so that you are able to face the world and understand it, not just conform to it, so that inwardly, deeply, psychologically you are in constant revolt; because it is only those who are in constant revolt that discover what is true, not the man who conforms, who follows some tradition. It is only when you are constantly inquiring, constantly observing, constantly learning, that you find truth, God, or love; and you cannot inquire, observe, learn, you cannot be deeply aware, if you are afraid. So the function of education, surely, is to eradicate, inwardly as well as outwardly, this fear that destroys human thought, human relationship and love.

<comment><USER38> ...continued: Questioner: If all individuals were in revolt, don't you think there would be chaos in the world?

Krishnamurti: Listen to the question first, because it is very important to understand the question and not just wait for an answer. The question is: if all individuals were in revolt, would not the world be in chaos? But is the present society in such perfect order that chaos would result if everyone revolted against it? Is there not chaos now? is everything beautiful, uncorrupted? Is everyone living happily, fully, richly? Is man not against man? Is there not ambition, ruthless competition? So the world is already in chaos, that is the first thing to realize. Don't take it for granted that this is an orderly society; don't mesmerize yourself with words. Whether here in Europe, in America or Russia, the world is in a process of decay. If you see the decay, you have a challenge: you are challenged to find a way of solving this urgent problem. And how you respond to the challenge is important, is it not? If you respond as a Hindu or a Buddhist, a Christian or a communist, then your response is very limited - which is no response at all. You can respond fully, adequately only if there is no fear in you, only if you don't think as a Hindu, a communist or a capitalist, but as a total human being who is trying to solve this problem; and you cannot solve it unless you yourself are in revolt against the whole thing, against the ambitious acquisitiveness on which society is based. When you yourself are not ambitious, not acquisitive, not clinging to your own security - only then can you respond to the challenge and create a new world.

Questioner: To revolt, to learn, to love - are these three separate processes, or are they simultaneous?

Krishnamurti: Of course they are not three separate processes; it is a unitary process. You see, it is very important to find out what the question means. This question is based on theory, not on experience; it is merely verbal, intellectual, therefore it has no validity. A man who is fearless, who is really in revolt, struggling to find out what it means to learn, to love - such a man does not ask if it is one process or three. We are so clever with words, and we think that by offering explanations we have solved the problem. Do you know what it means to learn? When you are really learning you are learning throughout your life and there is no one special teacher to learn from. Then everything teaches you - a dead leaf, a bird in flight, a smell, a tear, the rich and the poor, those who are crying, the smile of a woman, the haughtiness of a man. You learn from everything, therefore there is no guide, no philosopher, no guru. Life itself is your teacher, and you are in a state of constant learning.

Questioner: It is true that society is based on acquisitiveness and ambition; but if we had no ambition would we not decay?

Krishnamurti: This is really a very important question, and it needs great attention. Do you know what attention is? Let us find out. In a class room, when you stare out of the window or pull somebody's hair, the teacher tells you to pay attention. Which means what? That you are not interested in what you are studying and so the teacher compels you to pay attention - which is not attention at all. Attention comes when you are deeply interested in something, for then you love to find out all about it; then your whole mind, your whole being is there. Similarly, the moment you see that this question - if we had no ambition, would we not decay? - is really very important, you are interested and want to find out the truth of the matter. Now, is not the ambitious man destroying himself? That is the first thing to find out, not to ask whether ambition is right or wrong. Look around you, observe all the people who are ambitious. What happens when you are ambitious? You are thinking about yourself, are you not? You are cruel, you push other people aside because you are trying to fulfil your ambition, trying to become a big man, thereby creating in society the conflict between those who are succeeding and those who are falling behind. There is a constant battle between you and the others who are also after what you want; and is this conflict productive of creative living? Do you understand, or is this too difficult? Are you ambitious when you love to do something for its own sake? When you are doing something with your whole being, not because you want to get somewhere, or have more profit, or greater results, but simply because you love to do it - in that there is no ambition, is there? In that there is no competition; you are not struggling with anyone for first place. And should not education help you to find out what you really love to do so that from the beginning to the end of your life you are working at something which you feel is worth while and which for you has deep significance? Otherwise, for the rest of your days, you will be miserable. Not knowing what you really want to do, your mind falls into a routine in which there is only boredom, decay and death. That is why it is very important to find out while you are young what it is you really love to do; and this is the only way to create a new society.

Questioner: In India, as in most other countries, education is being controlled by the government. Under such circumstances is it possible to carry out an experiment of the kind you describe?

Krishnamurti: If there were no government help, would it be possible for a school of this kind to survive? That is what this gentleman is asking. He sees everything throughout the world becoming more and more controlled by governments, by politicians, by people in authority who want to shape our minds and hearts, who want us to think in a certain way. Whether in Russia or in any other country, the tendency is towards government control of education; and this gentleman asks whether it is possible for a school of the kind I am talking about to come into being without government aid. Now, what do you say? You know, if you think something is important, really worth while, you give your heart to it irrespective of governments and the edicts of society - <USER4> then it will succeed. But most of us do not give our hearts to anything, and that it why we put this sort of question. If you and I feel vitally that a new world can be brought into being, when each one of us is in complete revolt inwardly, psychologically, spiritually - then we shall give our hearts, our minds, our bodies towards creating a school where there is no such thing as fear with all its implications. Sir, anything truly revolutionary is created by a few who see what is true and are willing to live according to that truth; but to discover what is true demands freedom from tradition, which means freedom from all fears.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> University is not a way to give people jobs. It is a way to prevent people from getting jobs. These universities have a problem now. They were not capable of preventing the poster from getting a job in computing, game platforms and other such enterpreneurial fields, because there is no "Medical association of game programmers" demanding that you first waste a decade of your life. They cannot control the internet and prevent people from leading their own lives as they please. So, now they are frustrated ...

</comment><comment><USER14> At 22, he must have his B.Tech. Pretending to not have gone ... is this some hipster/ironic brand-building shtick?

<comment><USER15> Your unwillingness to accept reality doesn't make reality any less real.

Plenty of talented people who have been fortunate enough to have parents that didn't trample their dreams (and potential) have gone one to become successful in their own right without the aid of a degree.

<comment><USER14> Obviously my humor is wasted on HN.

<comment><USER15> I apologize if I came off as rude and a bit dense, but it seems you've been on HN long enough to realize, it's a far cry from Reddit (despite frequent mentions to the contrary) and humor is verboten unless it's written in MATLAB.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Five days with Pebble - <AUTHOR> http://danilocampos.com/2013/02/five-days-with-pebble/ <comment><USER2> WHERE IS THE SDK? Why will nobody answer this question?

I received my Pebble 10 days ago. I was an early back of a black Pebble. So far I have really loved my Pebble, but it is begging for apps. The Pebble team said during the Kickstarter for their 2m stretch goal that they would release the SDK before the watch. Still no SDK, and not even so much as a mention since they started shipping. Obviously, as with almost all Kickstarter projects (including Pebble), there are delays. That is fine.

But why will nobody from the Pebble team comment on the release or what is going on? I have sent emails, posted on the forums, signed up for mailing lists, posted kickstarter comments, and lurked in IRC (and now commented on HN) to try to figure out what the deal with the SDK is. NOBODY KNOWS or nobody will talk about it.

There are rumblings that some people, possibly "hacker special" backers, have already been given access to an SDK. I'm not sure if this is true, but it shouldn't prevent the Pebble team from making an announcement about what is going on with the SDK.

I'm not trying to put Pebble down or trying to degrade what Pebble is in any way. I own an inPulse and I backed Pebble the second I found out about it. I hope for nothing but success for Pebble and think they could do amazing things. I think they could do even more amazing things if they let developers start making Pebble even better.

PEBBLE TEAM, if you are reading this...PLEASSSEEEE just tell us what/when to expect!

<comment><AUTHOR> Maybe I'm biased given my background as an iOS guy, but...

I'm just happy they got the hardware out and it's working pretty damn well. I want to write code for this new platform more than anyone.

But they're a hardware startup! And they're shipping their hardware! That shit is impossible, and frankly, worth prioritizing over any other goal. Getting an SDK right takes time. It took Apple a year for the iPhone, and they had enormous resources and a comparatively luxuriously-appointed platform.

How much RAM do you think a little guy like the Pebble is working with?

So I can imagine there be dragons in Pebble SDK town. They're going to get there. But be realistic and cut some slack here. As a fellow backer, I'm looking at all of this as having gone infinitely better than expected. Maybe you want a bit more communication on this subject, and that's fair, but keep some perspective.

Creating the future takes time.

All their incentives are aligned with yours. The better the dev ecosystem for this platform, the more money they get to make over time. It's gonna be fine.

<comment><USER3> Good communication 101 in my books says they should write a statement about it, especially since they've indicated that it should be out before the watch. Or atleast comment on the questions.

I think people want pebble to succeed and there is lot of love for the product. And telling about the dragons and delays creating the SDK would just improve the image of fair and open culture they have.

I can imagine they've had a crazy year but an hour spent on commenting this would be time well spent in my oppinion.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm at 4 days with my Pebble.

It's great. It's subtle, it looks nice and I like having a watch.

My only two caveats, I had to give a presentation the other day and it went off during my presentation. Sure, I was the only one who noticed, but it threw me through a loop for a second. A "Watch mode only" switch would be nice.

The other is the watch strap. I ordered a leather strap which I think will make the watch look an order of magnitude better.

edit:

oh. I would also like notifications I clear on the watch to clear on my smartphone.

<comment><USER5> Could you not just disable Bluetooth on your phone for situations like that? Just curious if there's a downside.

Would love a Pebble but haven't ordered yet so I'm going to wait until they catch up on the backlog.

<comment><USER4> yea, I had another presentation today and that's what I did. Nowhere near as convenient though.

I'd like a software switch in the menus for the current version and the next version to have a physical switch.

<comment><USER6> There's a software switch in Pebble to disable notifications. Settings -> Display -> Notifications On/Off

<comment><USER4> _Looks at profile_... must know what he is talking about.

That's fantastic. In the future though, a physical switch seems like a good idea.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I, too, love my Pebble, if only for the convenience of getting text and call notifications on my wrist.

I'm surprised at how poorly thought-out the UI is, and particularly surprised at how little control I have over it, at least out of the box.

For the moment, there's no way to invert the screen color, no way to view text or call history (even to the point of seeing a notification if you accidentally press the wrong button and dismiss it), not even a battery life indicator that I've been able to find.

Eventually, as developers start getting apps on the Pebble, and as Pebble themselves work on the UI, I have faith it will improve. As the author says, this is what it's like in early adopter land.

One thing the Pebble has convinced me of is that smart watches will be a popular product category in the near future. There's just too much potential, and even my very basic, very early-stage Pebble has already become one of my favorite gadgets.

<comment><USER8> If smart watches take off, it will be when Apple releases theirs.

<comment><USER9> Technology has taken off in the past without Apples influences (netbooks, IPTV, I'd even argue that smartphones and MP3 players too - though Apple did lead the charge in their re-invention which further popularised them).

Plus it seems a little presumptuous to make such a definitive statement when given Apple's watch is only a rumour and how unreliable Apple rumours are at the best of times.

<comment><USER10> Netbooks? How'd that work out for the industry?

<comment><USER9> Rather well actually. It's funny how short some peoples memories are, but netbooks were very well received.

Popular enough that Intel rushed through some low powered x86 designs for fear of ARM taking off.

Popular enough that Microsoft rushed through changes to Windows XP (both in terms of software code and licensing) for fear of Linux taking off.

In fact they were so successful that complaints were often made against Apple for having no such device (this of course was before the MacBook Air and iPad. Neither of which are netbooks -obviously- but between the two they covered enough of the form factor to keep most of the complainer quiet).

Granted the demand for netbooks have since fizzled out, but they were hugely successful at the time and did the start of the popularisation of users switching away from heavy "powerhouse" hardware to more portable devices for lighter work loads. Credit for which belongs largely to ASUS and the EeePC, which was basically the first consumer netbook - though similar hardware was being built by the _One Laptop Per Child_ scheme - amongst others.

It's also worth noting that ASUS never sued Acer and other OEMs over pathetic design patents over netbooks. And how Diamond Multimedia never sued Apple over portable music players (one could argue the original iPod shared a lot of similarities with the Rio PMP00[1]).

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rio_PMP300>

<comment><USER11> It's not short memory, Apple blogs have been waging a campaign against netbooks since their heyday, just like they wage campaigns against phones bigger than 4 inches and tablets smaller than 10", TV boxes with support for keyboards, styluses, royalty-free video codecs etc. etc. Basically if Apple isn't in the market (yet) then it needs to be torn down, otherwise Apple looks bad.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I've got an inPulse watch^h^h^h^h^hpaperweight. If you want to see the effect of the Langolier spammers go over and look at inPulse's website <http://www.getinpulse.com/hack/forum/> (not recommended). You can also see folks crying in the corner for any information at all. They never followed through and made it work with 64bit versions of Windows, the Linux support was sub par at best, mostly unusable. Just checking they at least have finally turned off the page where they would let you order one.

To say this left a 'bad taste' would be an understatement.

<comment><USER13> "Langolier spammers"? Never heard that term.

<comment><USER12> Stephen King novel "The Langoliers" (made into a bad TV movie) see <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Langoliers>

They are creatures that come and eat up the world after time has moved past, dead web sites (and dead forum sites in particular) get 'eaten' by spammers in much the same way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I have one, and this is accurate. The only benefit is being able to see notifications on the wrist without having to take the phone out of my pocket. That being said, it is a huge and amazing benefit. I hate watches, and feel they have no purpose, but now it does.

The thing is I think this article understated the horribleness of the notification bug that is supposedly Apple's fault. It's a huge pain in the ass. The only feature that matters on the Pebble is seeing notifications on the watch. Sometimes my phone buzzes and the Pebble does not. Unless the Pebble gets 100% of the notifications reliably, it becomes a frustration instead of a boon.

If that is fixed, then oh yes. If it's not fixed soon, I'll be trading pebble for the rumored Apple watch. Heck, I might do that anyway. But still.

<comment><USER15> As the guys from The Bugle (a satirical podcast) said while describing this product: "we've definitely come a long way when there's a need to develop a complete new piece of expensive hardware just to avoid _having to take your phone from your pocket_. Meanwhile, no solution to the global hunger problem."

As much as I nerdgasm at how cool this device is, I have to wonder if, as a species, we haven't 'jumped the shark'.

<comment><USER9> Where do you draw the line between necessity and greed?

Do I need a 40" TV? Not really, 14" is big enough to watch, it's just less enjoyable. But then TV is purely there for enjoyment anyway, so perhaps just owning one is jumping the shark when one could equally read the news online.

This watch might be excessive, but then so are the phones that this connects to (how many people actually _need_ a smart phone? Even for corporate use, 'dumb' feature phones can send and receive e-mails). And it's greatest use is to check notifications when driving (I don't _need_ to drive, I could get the train) or chatting to friends down the pub (I don't _need_ to drink).

Plus lets not forget that progress and technology is generally invented for 1 of 3 reasons:

1) to kill each other

2) to cut costs in companies (usually resulting in job losses as technology replaces human beings)

3) to make our lives more luxurious.

Personally I'd rather see more 'pointless' smart watches than job losses and smart bombs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm constantly missing calls/texts when I'm on the move/walking about with my phone in my pant pockets - can't feel the buzz, especially during winter season. Having a buzz on my wrist seems like a neat solution and w/o having to fish for my phone constantly.

It's definitely going to require some practice to fight the urge to simply glance at my watch (than fishing out the phone) when engaged with something/someone else.

</comment><comment><USER17> Enjoyed the read, thanks for sharing. The 'decorum' bit made me chuckle, though - checking your watch while someone's talking is hardly the height of etiquette!

I'm not too familiar with Pebble's interactions and content display - can you really just glance at it after your pocket buzzes, or is there any cycling through display modes to see notifications? If notifications take over display, how long do they persist? What default content gets hidden to show the notification? Or does it work a completely different way?

I'm looking forward to playing with one myself but for now am reduced to eager fanboi questions...

<comment><AUTHOR> So, when a notification hits your phone, the Pebble immediately buzzes and lights its screen, displaying the content of that notification. It'll sit there for three minutes, then go back to whatever you were doing.

So if you were in the Music controller, you would hit the Pebble's back button to dismiss the notification and you'd see your current track again. If you were on a watch app, you'll see the watch.

Fair point about manners! The fact that the device rather noticeably lights up gives you a bit of cover though.

<comment><USER18> As someone who already dreads smartphones coming out at lunch or dinner outings with friends, I already hate the idea of people's wrists lighting up and distracting from conversation. :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Believe me, this is better. The curiosity urge is what gets the phone pulled out of the pocket. From there, it's very low friction to decide to open it up and start screwing around. Separating the two acts has, for me, been an improvement.

<comment><USER19> ...or you could just set custom notification tones and vibrate patterns/intensity levels for specific apps/contacts/labels/anything (on android)

<comment><AUTHOR> It's not the same as reading, though. I've done that in the past and it worked out like this:

"Oh, I know exactly who is texting me. They are a high priority person in my life. Let's make sure they're okay...

Aaand it's a cat gif."

The text display is the game-changer here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> "Sometimes I want to give the people I'm with my undivided attention. That means the phone stays firmly in my pocket. And as long as no calls or notifications come in, that's fine. But once my pocket starts buzzing, my mind can start to run wild with curiosity. Is someone in trouble, or did a dumb tweet get faved by someone? That game can erode attention after awhile. With the Pebble, I can discreetly glance at my wrist without breaking the flow of conversation."

In what way is this giving someone your undivided attention? You're just slightly modifying the division of your attention and making it easier to hide that you're thinking about something else.

Personally I find a better solution is to either be honest and put your phone on the desk and explain to people that you might be getting a call you need to take, or put it somewhere you can't see, hear or feel it and genuinely disengage.

Not saying I don't like the Pebble, I do, just that I don't think this is a great use case for it.

<comment><USER21> It gets your mind off of the thing without getting your phone out of your pocket ... one glare at your watch and you know if it's worth interrupting your conversation or not. If not, it's just a 2 second interruption at max which should not interfere with your "undivided attention" to the person you are speaking with.

This is at least how my "attention" works :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I'm really enjoying my Pebble as well. Screening text/calls on my wrist is a lot nicer than I thought it with be. I'm excited to see what kind of apps the developer community is going to come up with now that they have Pebble's in hand.

</comment><comment><USER23> I'm not as happy with mine feature-wise but glad I participated. Build quality-wise it is pretty bad. I've already lost a button and reported it to them. I think of it as taking a cold shower before jumping in the iWatch hot tub.

<comment><USER24> Should sell yours to this guy: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5216938>

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Loving my Pebble, especially with Light Flow Plus and Pebble Notifier however, I am really hoping for the IFTTT channel to come out soon, although I heard from rumor that IFTTT isn't playing ball, but I don't know for sure.

<comment><USER6> Right now you can get ifttt alerts sent to pebble via SMS (iOS) or email/SMS (Android). It's 100% in our court to get the final part hooked up, absolutely nothing to do with ifttt!

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I'm loving notifications on my wrist, but there are a few rough edges. The worst is that dismissing a notification on your phone does not dismiss it on the watch and vice versa. Messages you received and already read on your phone/computer will remain on the watch face, obscuring the time. This forces you to constantly interact with the watch in addition to your phone/computer.

Other problems: There's no generic support for Android notifications, so only a few apps work, not including Google Now or G+. Google Talk notifications are nice but vibrate the watch too often.

</comment><comment><USER27> Thanks for the overview of your experience. I'm eagerly waiting for mine to ship. How did the shipping process work? I.e. did it just show up on your doorstep one day or did the Pebble account site tell you when it shipped? I keep checking my account every few days but there's no sign other than I've done all I can do for now. Trying to figure out what the rest of my wait will be like. :-)

<comment><AUTHOR> I checked my mailbox and BOOM, there it was. I got a shipping notification the next day, which was cute. But in SF, I'm less than an hour's drive from their fulfillment center, so others will probably be better prepared.

<comment><USER28> I had the same experience in central Missouri, so… probably not. I'm totally okay with them being able to ship faster than sending e-mails, though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Sounds like this would be a great match with my LTE iPad mini (I keep it in my pocket). But I'll probably still wait until Apple releases their version. Even then, not sure if I'll get it because I prefer to have one device... at least until they start to sync Notification (Interruption?) Center.

</comment><comment><USER30> I think I'll pass--I instinctively check my phone too much as it is, I really don't need another device to feed my dopamine addiction. Reminds me of an old Calvin and Hobbes strip--if we wanted technology to make our lives more convenient, we'd make computers slower, not faster.

</comment><comment><USER31> Ugh, I should have ordered during the Kickstarter. I was literally at the billing info page when I decided to wait until some reviews came out.

I was bought one as a gift, and still haven't received a billing notification yet. :(

</comment><comment><USER32> For those with Pebbles, does it have any impact on the battery life of the phone? How's the battery life of Pebble itself?

<comment><USER2> I've had my Pebble for 10 days. I charged it once when I got it and once since then, it died on me for the first time while I was wearing it today. I would say the battery life on is great especially compared to the inPulse and definitely usable.

I've noticed the battery usage varies a lot. depending on watchfaces, how your notifications are set / how many notifications you get on a daily basis. But my sparse charging since I got it has proven that the battery should easily stand up to 3 or 4 days of use between charges. This was more than enough to satisfy me after the crummy battery life I experience with inPulse.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> This looks incredibly, incredibly useful. These guys are going to go FAR with this. I just pre-ordered one. Can't wait!

<comment><USER34> Although things are subjective, it looks pretty ugly and flimsy. I'll sit this out until they can be as durable as a simple Casio watch or G-shock.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> "Sometimes I want to give the people I'm with my undivided attention."

and now I can pretend I am.

</comment><comment><USER36> Apple is about to eat their lunch.</comment>


Why We Scrapped 3.5 Months of Development - <AUTHOR> http://flowtown.com/blog/why-we-scrapped-3-5-months-of-development

<comment><AUTHOR> I am very happy to see more companies sharing stories about pivoting in response to customer behavior and feedback. Especially when they are moving closer to _real pain_.</comment>


Show HN: Advanced Web Applications Using Symfony - <AUTHOR> https://advancedwebappsbook.com/?source=hackernews

<comment><USER2> Late November of this year and it's 40% done? How's this going to work out?

<comment><AUTHOR> Author here. Several ways: the first half of the book was much more difficult to write as I was finding my voice and writing about non-Symfony tech (you can read the first two chapters on the website).

Additionally, I run my own software company so I can dedicate a full day to writing if I want (I've been writing in the evenings only).

Finally, if I don't feel I can make the date then I will let everyone on the pre-order list know and they can opt to have their pre-order canceled (no money exchanges hands until the book is published).

Thanks for the question!</comment></comment>


25 years of Turbo Pascal releases (about 20 versions from 1 to now) - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.codegear.com/davidi/2008/11/17/39142

<comment><USER2> Somehow I thought that Pascal is long time dead.

> Delphi 2009 - August 29, 2008 - Generics, Anonymous Methods, Ribbon > Controls, UniCode VCL/RTL/String type, DataSnap 2009</comment>


How to Enable Bash on Windows 10 with the latest update - <AUTHOR> http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2016/08/enable-bash-windows-10-anniversary-update <comment><USER2> One of the commenters on that article said:

"just for the pleasure, anyone want to try a simple

rm -rf --no-preserve-root /"

I don't have a Windows 10 computer, so I can't test this myself. I would love to know what happens though. Does this subsystem have Windows' typical self- preservation mindset, or is it full-on UNIX style?

<comment><USER3> I had the same doubt</comment></comment>


Uber is going to be hit and better experience in Pakistan than India - <AUTHOR> https://www.uber.com/careers/list/13310/ <comment><AUTHOR> Let's sum up.

1\. Taxi drivers here are charging 10x than they should, therefore no one use them. everyone uses rickshaw, but that's really bothersome

2\. The number of female employees are booming, and it's almost head to head., not 50% though, but exceptionally high these days. and they dont' drive scooty as in India, due to social norms here.

3\. Normally, drivers being a muslim country or due to local norms are very nice to women, unlike India where even rape cases were reported.</comment>


The Snorkel gene: Key to Increasing World-Wide Rice Production? - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/25/science/25obsnorkel.html?_r=1&hpw

<comment><USER2> Sounds like more of a threat to wetlands and other frequently-flooded areas that are not being used for agriculture right now. Every advance that brings formerly marginal areas into production means another ecosystem under pressure.</comment>


NASA Curiosity Mars Rover Will Spend First Weekend Installing New Software - <AUTHOR> http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/msl/news/msl20120810.html <comment><USER2> "Updating your rover is almost complete. You must restart your rover for the updates to take effect. Do you want to restart your rover now?"

Am I the only one having a very nervous moment when the update's applied?

<comment><USER3> Previous missions had problems with that one [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirit_rover#Sol_18_.28January_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirit_rover#Sol_18_.28January_21.2C_2004.29_flash_memory_management_anomaly)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Amusing, considering I was bashed last night with repeated "you can't patch it once it's on Mars".

<comment><USER5> Voyager 2 was at the edge of the solar system when JPL diagnosed and corrected a single bit error that caused it to return garbage data.

<http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2010-151>

<comment><USER4> That is beyond amazing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I am fairly amazed that they need to do this because of what looks like space constraints. I wouldn't have thought that programming code would take significant space and the potential for screw ups just seems way too high to my mind.

I hope they get it right...

<comment><USER7> Not to be rude, but it sounds like you're just unfamiliar with standard procedure.

"We designed the mission from the start to be able to upgrade the software as needed for different phases of the mission,"

>I wouldn't have thought that programming code would take significant space

It doesn't. I bet it takes just as much space as you imagine it does. The rover just have _that little_ space to work with. These aren't last year's FPS gaming rigs with hundreds of gigs on SSD available. These are hardened, turn- of-the-millennium embedded computers.

>the potential for screw ups just seems way too high

Both Voyager and Pioneer spacecraft have been sent software updates, without fault. MSL was designed from the get-go to have software updates mid-mission.

<comment><USER8> > Both Voyager and Pioneer spacecraft have been sent software updates, without > fault. MSL was designed from the get-go to have software updates mid- > mission.

OK, but the Viking 1 lander on Mars was lost due to human error during a software update.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viking_program#Mission_end>

That's not to say software updates don't make sense, but you can't just justify them with "MSL was designed to do it and it's been done successfully before." Rather, you have to weigh the benefits and risk as usual. Luckily, I have confidence this was carefully though about and that the right decision has been made.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I find the idea of a bricked Curiosity horribly depressing. Let's make sure to wait a FULL FIVE MINUTES before rebooting, ok guys?

<comment><USER10> Or 14.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I was wondering what kind of security they have on the upgrade system. Presumably the software packages are signed. No hacker on Earth wouldn't like to be able to say they'd cracked a system on Mars.

But then I thought, "Who actually has the hardware to broadcast to Mars in the first place?".

<comment><USER12> See the discussion in this other thread: <http://news.ycombinator.org/item?id=4368242>

<comment><USER3> I've never realized there was a .org domain before. Thought something weird happened because I was logged in this site and when I tried to vote in your link I couldn't!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Looks like an example of progeny mimicking creator.

"You're someplace you've never been, seeing and experiencing things almost no one else gets to, and you spend your weekend fiddling with computers."

That's OK. We have all done it, and hopefully the outcome will be slightly better than "Crap, I hosed up my RAID array and now this random obscure OS build I installed is completely broken."

</comment><comment><USER14> Is the new software already on curiosity and it just needs to be installed or are they transmitting the new software from earth?

<comment><USER15> The update was transferred to the rover during the cruise stage.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Am I the only one thats afraid of a fuckup happening and the rover becoming bricked before it actually moved!?

<comment><USER17> I'm _fairly_ sure that completely separating system boot functionality and software reprogramming functionality was one of the first requirements of the rover software update subsystem!

Sticking the bootloader in a ROM is a fairly secure way to accomplish this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Scary! What if they brick it?

<comment><USER19> There is plenty of redundancy to deal with this sort of thing and they've done lots of on the fly updating of various robot probes including on 40y/o Voyager 2 which had a flipped bit in its memory.</comment></comment>


How Many Hours Should a Startup Employee Work? - <AUTHOR> http://www.instigatorblog.com/how-many-hours-should-a-startup-employee-work/2010/08/26/

<comment><USER2> As many as agreed on during the signing.

In my case, the company said it was a regular 8-hour day but I was expected to put in time during 'emergencies'. I agreed, and for the most part, that's how it went.

Occasionally they would schedule time on a Saturday, but they almost always gave me time off to compensate. When they didn't, something else was done.

And occasionally, I would put in a little extra time to finish off something I was working on.

On the other hand, other employees have put in massive overtime and generally worked themselves into quitting. Management put pressure on them to do so, but didn't force them. (I'm proof there wasn't force, since I'm still here.)

The key to working at a startup is understanding that they need flexibility first and foremost. Their problems are going to happen at odd times and there won't be many people to fix them. Of course, as I noted above, the company has to be flexible back, or it doesn't work.

</comment><comment><USER3> I work at a start up and I treat my job like a 9-5. It depends on what you do during those hours that matter.</comment>


Changes in Lego Toys Show Disturbing Trend, Say Researchers - <AUTHOR> http://bigthink.com/paul-ratner/violence-in-lego-toy-sets-significantly-rose-over-time-say-researchers <comment><USER2> This is not a new phenomenon. My glory days of Lego were in the early-mid 90s, and literally every set that my friends and I were interested in were either explicitly martial or violent in a GTA-esque, drive-fast-and-crash-into-stuff way. Catapults. Castles. Dragons. Knights. Space fighters. Giant robots. Drag racers and police cars, in realish life or in space. Factions of undersea divers with monstrous submersibles at war over glittering crystals. Pirate ships, with cannons and crocodiles and angry natives, etc. Every good Lego theme set up at least two factions which were at least implicitly at odds, if not explicitly at war.

This is the shit that sells to little boys - Legos are just better army men. Ironically, the pacifistic stuff tends to sell better with the AFOLs, as witnessed by the resurgence of the line of modular town buildings, and architecture sets explicitly marketed at adults.

The more disturbing trend with Lego is the continuing rise of licensed themes that has completely gutted their product lineup. Star Wars has been a cash cow for them, but has meant that that is it for space-themed Lego sets for around 15 years now. Likewise, two of the other of the four classic System themes, Pirates and Castle, have been on ice for years, due to overlap with Tolkien and Jack Sparrow-related licensed themes.

They seemed to be trying a little harder three or four years ago, but I've not seen anything really exciting the past few years.

<comment><USER3> Didn't their patent on the bricks expire or something?

I had the feeling, that other companies entering their marked forced them to this licensed stuff to stand out

<comment><USER2> That did happen, although selling your soul for Disney money is not exactly the best choice when you have a reputation for quality over the foreign, no- name imposters. Ultimately, they've got the distribution channels and the reputation, so it will take more years of mediocrity to lose that lead, but I worry, because I remember how excellent they used to be.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The real bad trend is the use of more and more single use pieces instead of building stuff from the common set.

<comment><USER5> I lamented watching new sets. Then I heard my father lament over the same thing. Odd.

weird parallel : new legos are like new games, every thing is more realist but lost the "limited" old one charm.

ps: some twitter magic [https://twitter.com/LegoSpaceBot/status/749731872507367425](https://twitter.com/LegoSpaceBot/status/749731872507367425)

<comment><USER6> I was an AFOL but stopped cold turkey because of this reason. Vote with my dollars and all that. Lego can keep their one-time special pieces.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The pregnant implication is that if (a) we're entertaining ourselves with violent themes, then (b) we ourselves become more violent.

As to (a), engaging in martial play or entertainment is hardly a disturbing new trend. It's not just videogames or plastic army men, even most sports are an allegory for battlefield conflicts. Some of humanity's most classic and enduring literature, including pieces from various continents, are meditations on exactly this topic.

As to (b), if anything, the supposed renaissance of violent entertainment has actually accompanied one of the least violent centuries on record.

Let people play however they want. Teach kids values that benefit humanity. These two ideals are not inconsistent.

</comment><comment><USER8> These sorts of pieces always remind me of something: When my nephew was around 2 or 3, his mother insisted that she'd never buy him any toy guns (LEGOs, pop guns, or anything). When he'd visit us, he always somehow dug out the old pop gun toys we had buried away. A year later, I visited her and she'd entirely caved. I asked her about it, and she said she gave up when she realized he was just using sticks or anything else he could think of simulate one while he continued playing cops and robbers and all the "violent" games little kids play.

</comment><comment><USER9> Bigthink is not a credible source of information IMO

</comment><comment><USER10> The price LEGO had to pay for going down the lucrative movie franchise / merchandise road... btw, is the main audience still kids?

</comment><comment><USER11> tl;dr - researchers are a scared of increasing trend of 'violent' Lego toys mostly because of movie sets - Star Wars, Lord of the Ring, etc.

<comment><USER12> And here's me, more concerned by movie set Lego and what it does to creativity.

<comment><USER13> Same. The nice thing about older Lego sets was that they were more-or-less generic; while I did have a few Star Wars and Indiana Jones themed sets while I was growing up, having access to things like deep sea and generic space sets seemed to discourage faithfulness to the source material.

Nowadays, though, I feel like the kids I see playing with Legos are discouraged from mixing and matching among kits, which is unfortunate; mixing and matching to create something better than the sum of the parts was always a big part of the fun of Legos.

<comment><USER2> Funny enough, that is one of the core messages of the Lego Movie, that it is okay to be creative and mix and match things, as opposed to the collector's impulse to keep everything mint.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


A real MMO Asteroids - <AUTHOR>

Do you remember that april fools joke a while back (http://seb.ly/demos/MMOsteroids.html)...
I loved it, and it got me thinking... what it would take to make a real MMO asteroids?
This is my attempt: http://mmoasteroids.wildbunny.co.uk/
The client is flash and the server is c#, although it used to be node.js.
Its very early and probably wont stand up to that many users, but its quite fun :)
Let me know what you think!
Cheers, Paul. <comment> simba-hiiipower Not to be crude, but if you want me to be honest about what I think, I think it shouldn't be in Flash. Then I could try it now and tell you what I think about the game itself...

I'd just say, in general, that when you see a mounting trend away from a platform (or anything really), and you're looking to launch something new, it'd probably be best not to launch on that platform. I mean, even Microsoft (renowned for its briskness in responding to change...) is shifting away from Flash by not supporting it in the Metro version of IE10 in Windows 8. I (and really, not trying to rail on you here) just don't understand why people keep developing new content utilizing Flash..?</comment>


PHP MySQL Insert Class - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/jgrygowski/mysql-insert

<comment><USER2> Follow the PHP-FIG standards: [http://www.php-fig.org/](http://www.php- fig.org/)

Never use mysql_connect() or any other functions from the outdated MySQL driver. Use PDO.

Use prepared statements. And transactions.

<comment><USER2> Oh, and read this: [http://www.phptherightway.com](http://www.phptherightway.com)</comment></comment>


Show HN: Civilian – a full-stack RESTful Java web framework - <AUTHOR> http://www.civilian-framework.org/

<comment><USER2> I thought we had all finally settled on JAX-RS, which (along with recent Servlet versions) means that writing RESTful web services in Java is almost as easy and lack-of-boilerplatey as Ruby/Python/anything else you can think of. There's still a question of wrapping it up nicely, but Dropwizard and even Spring will do a nice job of that, these days (and I'm sure there are others). I just can't see myself writing to a totally different (non-standard) set of APIs when we finally have a standard that works really well.

<comment><USER3> Couldn't agree more with this. IMO Dropwizard (with help from JAX-RS) has greatly simplified the process of spinning up a basic REST web service: embedded Jetty by default, Jersey support, Logback (talk about simplifying the world of mess known as Java logging), Jackson-based JSON support, etc. Not to mention (despite my many gripes with Maven) being able to simply build this thing as a fat JAR and go.

This new framework, Civilian, on the other hand seems to be going back to over-complicating everything: requires servlet container by default, a shiny new templating language, HTML forms processing, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Perhaps it would be helpful if someone from the Civilian team point out the motivation for building this full-stack framework and its particular value prop in contrast to DropWizard/Spring?

</comment><comment><USER5> Just a heads up: on mobile (Nexus 4 Chrome to be exact) the hamburger menu on the website doesn't work.

<comment><USER6> Doesn't work on Chrome 38 on Win7 x64 desktop either with the window squished up.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks for pointing this out. The boostrap.js is not included in the page, thought this was not needed, but forgot about the hamburger menu.</comment></comment></comment>


The Merchandising of Virtue - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/incerto/the-merchandising-of-virtue-b548762658f0 <comment><USER2> The excerpt starts off by conflating virtue with opinions and ideas as a whole, then embracing the tu quoque fallacy wholeheartedly and running with it. The conclusions shown merely happen to be a bit more agreeable to HN readers. A simple concept swap makes an early comment risible, "It is immoral to be in opposition of Soviet Communism and not live in a hut isolated from it."

Also, the title is definitely editorial by the poster versus the original "The Merchandising of Virtue."

<comment><USER3> It's a little bit bizarre that Taleb continues to be lionized by anyone, let alone the HN crowd, given how terrible a public intellectual he is.

<comment><USER4> Define "terrible public intellectual".

<comment><USER3> One who is more liable to throw a tantrum and call you a shill than engage in meaningful debate with his critics.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Tavakoli[0] has been surprisingly quiet on Taleb recently.

[0]: Nassim "Black Swan" Taleb Busted For Exaggerating Returns, [http://www.businessinsider.com/wait-before-you-invest-in- nas...](http://www.businessinsider.com/wait-before-you-invest-in-nassim- talebs-new-fund-2009-6?IR=T&r=US&IR=T)

</comment><comment><USER6> All else being equal, not advertising your virtue would seem like right thing to do. Though, from more utilitarian perspective, if you actually care about about cause and want to make a difference, this could be wrong decision to make.

In effective altruism circle it is quite common to argue to be public about your charitable activities, lets it will inspire others to do the same, and there seems to be sufficient evidence to say that it indeed works.

BTW, I hope that someday economist will stop spreading barter myth. Yes, it is nice thought experiment conjured by Adam Smith, but if you actually look what anthropology and ethnography has to say about it, you will see it is completely baseless claim [0].

[0] Barter and Economic Disintegration, Caroline Humprhey - "No example of a barter economy, pure and simple, has ever been described, let alone the emergence from it of money; all available ethnography suggests that there never has been such a thing."

</comment><comment><USER7> I generally assume that the more one engages in virtue signaling the more they are trying to compensate for their self-perceived hypocrisy.

</comment><comment><USER8> Title is currently editorialized. Article tile is, The Merchandising of Virtue.</comment>


How does a parasite create zombie-like behavior? - <AUTHOR> https://experiment.com/projects/how-does-a-parasite-create-zombie-like-behavior/results <comment><USER3> This is how it starts: "I became fascinated by fungi when I was a student, and so I decided to do a PhD in fungal genetics. By the end of my PhD I learned through watching BBC's Planet Earth that certain fungi are able to manipulate insect behavior followed by the growth of beautiful fruiting bodies, leaving behind a rather morbid piece of natural art. The concept of a microbe being able to manipulate an animal's brain just blew my mind. Ever since, I've been working to make the "zombie ants" a model system to study the concept of parasitic behavioral manipulation in detail."

She's patient zero.

<comment><USER4> I figured she was going to become a supervillain.

But maybe I've just been watching too much Venture Brothers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> If you want to lose sleep: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vMG- LWyNcAs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vMG-LWyNcAs)

"The caterpillar, instead of building its cocoon to guard itself at night, wraps it around the larval wasps (which previously tore their way out of its body), and will continue to defend them until it starves to death.

The biggest danger for these parasitic wasps is being injected with another species of parasitic wasp".

EDIT: Wow, what a cool site - crowdfunding experiments!

<comment><USER6> Man I want to un-see that! What a horrible way to go

<comment><USER7> Free pest control; more cabbages for us.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Did anyone notice the rest of the site?

It seems surprising that this entire project was done with $4,500 of crowdfunding. That seems very cheap. I wonder how much of the project funding came from elsewhere.

[https://experiment.com/projects/how-does-a-parasite- create-z...](https://experiment.com/projects/how-does-a-parasite-create- zombie-like-behavior/results#supported_by)

<comment><USER9> Depends on how you count. A quick scan of the paper and my fairly fresh knowledge of academic sequencing prices suggests you could do the sequencing for around $3k, with reagents (assuming you don't count the cost of unused reagents). Add in airfare, room, and board to collect the ants and fungus and you're there.

Not included: equipment, lab space, stipend (figure 6 months of one grad student, which is astonishingly fast, and that's already $12-15k), and tuition. If you were proposing the same thing to a funding agency like the NIH or NSF, you're looking at ~$60-100k, which still doesn't include a lot of the equipment. I would guess this project was pitched to crowdfunders as "I'm doing all these other experiments, but would also like to do sequencing".

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> The Leucochloridium paradoxum infects snails, making their eyes look like caterpillars, catching birds attention and thus spreading through them.

More info: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leucochloridium_paradoxum](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leucochloridium_paradoxum)

<comment><USER11> Christ, that's scary. If us mammals ever get something similar we'll have a zombie apocalypse going on...

<comment><USER12> We do get something similar: toxoplasmosis.

Parasite makes mice lose fear of cats permanently: [http://www.nature.com/news/parasite-makes-mice-lose-fear- of-...](http://www.nature.com/news/parasite-makes-mice-lose-fear-of-cats- permanently-1.13777)

Fatal attraction in rats infected with Toxoplasma gondii: [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1690701/](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1690701/)

Effects of Toxoplasma on Human Behavior: [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2526142/](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2526142/)

<comment><USER7> Please do not spread this false ideas. As other diseases toxoplamosis damage nerves in human foetus, either kills or make permanent damages in the nerves. But this is not the same as "converting adult people in remote-controlled robots", there is not a single proof of such evil plan, or that the parasite does this on purpose.

<comment><USER12> The papers I referred to have not been retracted, and there have been other studies which back their conclusions. So they aren't false ideas.

The changes described are the result of people being infected after birth, and not the result of damage to foetal nerves.

I'm not sure how a protozoan could be said to do anything "on purpose". What it does to rats is, however, clearly adaptive behaviour which enhances its chances to complete its life-cycle. This doesn't work when people are infected, as we are are a dead-end host, but it's thought it affects human behaviour via a mechanism similar to the one which works well in rats.

The behaviour of people infected is in no way similar to that of B-movie zombies, I'll grant you that.

<comment><USER7> It should be noted that Cattell's Sixteen Personality Factor Model has been greatly criticized by many researchers because of the inability of replication

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Isn't this the fungus that's the inspration for the Last of Us videogame?

<comment><USER14> The fungus in her abstract is a type of cordyceps.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I haven't come across this crowdfunding platform for research before and I absolutely love it. I suspect quite a few of my pennies will be going here.

<comment><USER16> It was formerly known as Microryza, but changed name about 2 years ago to better reflect the broader scope of their goal. My former roommate used to work for them, very cool project.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Another very well presented albiet brief introduction on this topic is this Ed Yong TED Talk [https://www.ted.com/talks/ed_yong_suicidal_wasps_zombie_roac...](https://www.ted.com/talks/ed_yong_suicidal_wasps_zombie_roaches_and_other_tales_of_parasites?language=en)

<comment><USER18> That talks is awesome thanks for it

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Scientific content aside, I really think the web is a far superior medium for delivering technical papers. It allows for videos and interactive data exploration. I wish more scientists would publish this way.

</comment><comment><USER20> +1. Fascinating topic, very nicely presented.

I didn't know this platform exists.

</comment><comment><USER21> Somewhat related. "The girl with all the gifts", which is on this subject was a great read. Emotional, thought provoking in a sea of horrible zombie related writing/TV.

</comment><comment><USER4> Charlie Stross asked about interesting parasites on his blog, recently - <USER2> comments section may be relevant, and of interest: [http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog- static/2015/11/a-small-...](http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog- static/2015/11/a-small-research-question.html)

</comment><comment><USER22> This is a beautiful way to present scientific study, much more so than traditional methods! I'd love to see this trend of clarity and storytelling continue for more studies and experimental efforts.

</comment><comment><USER23> tl;dr ant escapes. Bites human. So it begins; the end.

P.S: It's just a joke!

<comment><USER14> did you play the last of us? don't joke about this stuff man.</comment></comment>


Why Leicester is pronounced "Lester" - <AUTHOR> https://www.leicestermercury.co.uk/news/leicester-news/why-is-leicester-pronounced-lester-722275 <comment><USER2> Leicester is good but my my favourite is 'Southwark': [https://pronunciationstudio.com/how-to-pronounce- southwark-b...](https://pronunciationstudio.com/how-to-pronounce-southwark- borough-london/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Wow. I had NO idea. Sign me, "born and raised in Milwaukee"

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I learned that Worcester (yes the same a the sauce) is (should be) indistinguishable from Wooster, reading P.G. Wodehouse, in his "Jeeves" stories there is one in which the main character Bertie Wooster says somethign to that effect.

</comment><comment><USER4> Then there's 'Cholmondeley' and 'Featherstonehaugh', as well.

</comment><comment><USER5> Clickbait. The article never bothers to talk about the "why."

<comment><AUTHOR> >So if you're ready for an English lesson here's where the pronunciation comes from.

The abbreviated way of pronouncing the places name ending in "-cester" can be seen in the Shakespearean era.

This word, spelled ceaster in the Old English language, comes from the Latin castra (camp), originally meant a Roman encampment in ancient Britain.

So why does "-cester" has a "-ster" pronunciation?

It is believed that the "-ster" pronunciation developed in the early 18th century.

William Johnston's 'A Pronouncing and Spelling Dictionary' (1764) notes that 'c' is not pronounced in words such as Leicester, Gloucester and Worcester, which makes them two syllable words.

However the English remember 'ceaster' as a toponymic suffix which is adapted variously as -cester (Leicester), -caster (Lancaster), -chester (Manchester).</comment></comment>


5 ways Kindle Fire beats the iPad - <AUTHOR> http://www.extremetech.com/computing/97737-5-ways-the-kindle-fire-beats-the-ipad

<comment><USER2> Kudos for having the decency to not lead with the image on page 2!</comment>


TypeScript 3.4 RC with incremental builds and globalThis - <AUTHOR> https://devblogs.microsoft.com/typescript/announcing-typescript-3-4-rc/ <comment><AUTHOR> It's interesting they added globalThis which only works when the browser does support it. Didn't they build every festure before so it csn be compiled for older browsers too?</comment>


Hong Kong rents set to fall as protests curb housing demand - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-08-21/hong-kong-protest-impact-spreads-with-rents-projected-to-decline <comment><USER2> This sounds like a great opportunity to buy real estate. These protests won't last forever and it will be business as usual within 6 months.</comment>


The Strange Loop in Deep Learning - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/intuitionmachine/the-strange-loop-in-deep-learning-38aa7caf6d7d <comment><USER2> Jürgen Schmidhuber had an interesting comment on the Strange Loop in his AMA: [https://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/2xcyrl/i_a...](https://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/2xcyrl/i_am_j%C3%BCrgen_schmidhuber_ama/)

As we interact with the world to achieve goals, we are constructing internal models of the world, predicting and thus partially compressing the data history we are observing. If the predictor/compressor is a biological or artificial recurrent neural network (RNN), it will automatically create feature hierarchies, lower level neurons corresponding to simple feature detectors similar to those found in human brains, higher layer neurons typically corresponding to more abstract features, but fine-grained where necessary. Like any good compressor, the RNN will learn to identify shared regularities among different already existing internal data structures, and generate prototype encodings (across neuron populations) or symbols for frequently occurring observation sub-sequences, to shrink the storage space needed for the whole (we see this in our artificial RNNs all the time). Self- symbols may be viewed as a by-product of this, since there is one thing that is involved in all actions and sensory inputs of the agent, namely, the agent itself. To efficiently encode the entire data history through predictive coding, it will profit from creating some sort of internal prototype symbol or code (e. g. a neural activity pattern) representing itself [1,2]. Whenever this representation becomes activated above a certain threshold, say, by activating the corresponding neurons through new incoming sensory inputs or an internal 'search light' or otherwise, the agent could be called self-aware. No need to see this as a mysterious process — it is just a natural by-product of partially compressing the observation history by efficiently encoding frequent observations.</comment>