Is Microsoft ditching .NET in favor of JS? - <AUTHOR> http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/A-quick-look-at-Windows-8 <comment><USER2> Crazy thought here... what if at their dev conference they show Silverlight compiling to HTML/JS.

The first thought from a lot of devs might be "oh no, you can't break the html/js abstraction -- this is ASP.NET all over again". I'd argue its completely different. ASP.NET tried to abstract/create server side state. And with this tons of issues crept into the abstraction. With clientside technology, these abstractions are what we've always done, whether macro assemblers, C compilers, JVMs, Lisp interpreters. I've long argued that JS should be abstracted (and honestly I'd prefer a bytecode, but that's a seperate story) -- here's to hoping they've done it (and of course languages like CoffeeScript and Script# have gone a long ways towards it already).

</comment><comment><USER3> No its 1993 all over again - Windows 95 (announced at the developer's conference in LA that year) was going to be the OS that used a browser as a significant portion of the UI...

This stuff keeps coming around.

One does wonder why MS think they can outdo Google Chrome OS and HP/Palm WebOS at this though - still a native API for JavaScript is a cool idea although I wonder how that fits in with the "sand tray" security model.

<comment><USER4> This is a bit incorrect - browsers weren't a big thing in 1993, and the development of Windows 95 happened in a world where browsers were only becoming "a big deal" in the background. (Hell, The Microsoft Network that came bundled with Windows 95 was essentially meant to be a competitor to the Internet.) It wasn't until a service pack or two into Windows 95's life that IE started to be bundled, and it wasn't until IE 4 in 1997 that Active Desktop appeared.

But, yes, the main interface to the Windows desktop being rendered via IE has been a long-term and recurring thing for Microsoft.

<comment><USER3> You are correct in pointing out that it was Windows 98 that brought the Internet Browser to the foreground of Windows. The big error was embedding the browser into the OS - and Windows users paid for that architectural mistake many time over.</comment></comment></comment>


Senators insist that 25Mbps is more bandwidth than anyone could need - <AUTHOR> https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160122/05203433402/senators-whine-about-fccs-25-mbps-broadband-standard-insist-nobody-needs-that-much-bandwidth.shtml <comment><AUTHOR> This reddit thread discusses the donations these senators have received from telecoms companies:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/42nia3/senators...](https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/42nia3/senators_whine_about_fccs_25_mbps_broadband/czbrmym)

</comment><comment><USER2> For a second there I thought this was a news article about Australia.</comment>


My startup is looking for some help. Was previously on TechCrunch. - <AUTHOR>

Here to share a small story about a startup I created a year or so ago.
http://ebackers.com | http://techcrunch.com/2011/01/17/ebackers/
The idea is to help people who work on the internet connect and make requests for anything web-related. The site got a flood of traffic when I submitted it to TechCrunch last year. Then I went off to school and got busy with other things and pretty much lost interest in it.
The site has been sitting here as I've been involved in newer projects. Would definitely be interested to see if anyone here wants to partner up to bring this back to life. Lot of potential. No registration, very simple UI. Mailing list has 100+ subscribers. <comment><USER2> Could you change the title to be more relevant? The TechCrunch article was over a year ago, and the title as it stands ( _My startup was featured on TechCrunch_ ) is a little misleading (I expected to read about a startup that was _recently_ featured on TC).

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure - done.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Clickable

site: <http://ebackers.com>

TC story: <http://techcrunch.com/2011/01/17/ebackers/>

</comment><comment><USER3> Site has a very simple and nice UI. Would be interested to see if we could bring it back to life. Worried how we can differentiate it from all the outsourcing sites.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Also dug up a video I made for it: <http://vimeo.com/18109889></comment>


Show HN: My WWDC-inspired project. A Markdown editor for Lion - <AUTHOR> http://kswizz.com/post/8624456381/macchiato

<comment><USER2> There's some great market research being done for you in the comments! It looks like some of your primary competitors are:

1\. Emdee: $Unknown, <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=foE-dXgTHoU> (Not yet fully released)

2\. Markdown Editor: Free, <http://keshiki.net/markdown-editor/> (Source code available, but no license specified)

3\. Marked: $2.99, <http://markedapp.com/> (Previewer, not an editor)

4\. Byword: $9.99, <http://bywordapp.com/>

5\. iA Writer: $17.99, <http://www.iawriter.com/>

6\. WriteRoom: $24.99, <http://hogbaysoftware.com/products/writeroom>

<comment><USER3> Hey cool. Someone else actually knows about My Markdown Editor! I wrote #2. It's got some issues, and according to some feedback, it doesn't work on Lion (I haven't updated yet, so I can't test.)

As for licence, I should really add a note to that page. I guess BSD/MIT will do. Or GPL if you so desire :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> > The internals of the app uses NSRegularExpression

I tried to implement my version of this idea[1] with regular expressions too, using OgreKit. I ran into all sorts of problems with corner cases, especially with nesting of block-level elements (lists/blockquotes/code). I wanted to switch over to a parser-based implementation, but at the time all the existing parsers were setup to emit HTML, so getting character-offsets out of the parser wasn't possible without hacking the parser to death.

There's been some good discussion on the Markdown list[2] recently about these sorts of things, a really interesting example is PEG Markdown Highlight[3], which is exactly what I wanted to do with my app, but I was too busy (read: lazy) to get around to.

[1]: <http://keshiki.net/markdown-editor/>

[2]: <http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/markdown-discuss>

[3]: Project: <http://hasseg.org/peg-markdown-highlight/> Discussion: [http://six.pairlist.net/pipermail/markdown- discuss/2011-June...](http://six.pairlist.net/pipermail/markdown- discuss/2011-June/002129.html)

<comment><USER4> > I wanted to switch over to a parser-based implementation, but at the time > all the existing parsers were setup to emit HTML, so getting character- > offsets out of the parser wasn't possible without hacking the parser to > death.

You might want to try libupskirt [1], library github uses.

[1] <http://fossil.instinctive.eu/libupskirt/index>

<comment><USER3> Cool, thanks. I haven't looked deeply into it, but from a quick glance it seems to want to transform the input.

For my use case I need a parse tree, with specific byte (well, character really) offsets. For example, I need to know _where_ the link started, not that there is now a a link with text T and href H.

My program (and Macchiato I assume) doesn't actually transform the source to an output format, we add attributes to the source text (similar to RTF).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Woah, this made front-page!

I realize the price is kind of prohibitive to just check out. I wish the App Store would let me give a massive discount coupon for HN readers. Turns out that for the niche market I'm targeting, this is just about the right price, though.

I'm working on making a downloadable trial version. However, for the time being I have some extra promo codes I can give out. First come first served:

H4JTKTFN3FHL RR6AA6696WJK 9F4NFPN3LEFJ F36LEP9T7JMH NTNWAFJ6K9A6 HXRA4TT6WWFN H4HEEWXHXNEF 3RMYERRJXKWW 64AK4K67XPJ3 LPPTJT9PKKR7

I'm open to all feedback! Thanks!

<comment><USER5> __Woot __I got one of them!

I'm composing this reply inside of Macchiato. Honestly, I think it's a pretty decent idea, although it might have a hard time to displace Vim, which I alway have tend to have open.

Something that it might easily displace is composing my blog posts, the fact that fullscreen mode knocks out my secondary monitor is probably a good idea, and keeps me focused on the task on hand—writing the blog posts.

On that note, I've switched to full screen. The animation to full screen wasn't the smoothest, and doesn't have the same feel that Apple applications scale up. In addition, while the slight gradient works in a small window, blowing that up to the fullscreen doesn't work very well, and I feel like I looking straight into the middle of the sun.

I realize that you're attempting to be fairly minimalist with your application, but I think that a less-strain theme for fullscreen would be a very good improvement.

I've noticed that while backspacing, especially when typing in a blockquote, the cursor doesn't line up with text you're editing. Small display issue, no biggie.

Another thing that I would think very cool for fullscreen writing applications is to display text with TeX-like text justification, so you don't end up with very staggered paragraphs in the middle of your screen. Probably well outside the scope of your application, but thought for other HN-ers.

I think that's all feedback I can come up with right now. I'll continue to try out the app, and look forward to what updates you have up your sleeve.

EDIT #1: Fixing some grammar. Trying to get the elements right ;)

EDIT #2: Apparently I can't make new comments anymore. Since I comment rarely, I assume this was some change as part of HN's vote-less comments change. May I make a theme request? Yes? Great! I really like the Solarized[1] theme, and think it would be a great addition.

In addition, I think callahad had a really great review on this same thread. I agree with #5 in particular, being able to switch off the preview, should I come about the need, would be really nice, mostly for the same reason callahad mentions. And #7, too.

One last agreement with callahad:

> Hopefully this is helpful and not discouraging! I didn't want to take the > promo code without leaving you with some feedback.

[1]: <http://ethanschoonover.com/solarized>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback!

Themes are coming up. I'm gonna have a handful of color palets and typographic themes to pick from.

Took note of everything else. Will be working hard on making the app better in updates!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> $20 is a hard "check out."

It looks cool though

<comment><USER7> Yes I think it should sit at the $5 mark.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Think it's going to be tough to compete on price with: <http://markedapp.com/>

</comment><comment><USER9> While the stylized text is a nice touch it does seem to be on the upper end of the market in terms of price at $19.99. Would be nice if you included some of the features of Byword on top of what you have.

Also, for those mentioning Marked as a competitor I must point out that Marked is actually solely a previewer, not an editor.

</comment><comment><USER10> Congrats on launching! It looks cool. I applaud your audacity by pricing it at $20, but that's pretty steep when there are already other markdown focused text editors (marked, iA writer, etc) for much cheaper.

</comment><comment><USER11> I really like the web page. I can't comment on the app, because there's no way to try it without shelling out $20.

</comment><comment><USER12> Byword is like 5 bucks. Not sure how this is going to compete, honestly.

</comment><comment><USER13> Wondering how this will stack up to emdee.app (still in development).

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=foE-dXgTHoU>

<comment><AUTHOR> The most significant design decision (and something that I think is a major feature over Emdee and Marked (mentioned in another comment) is that there is no distinction between preview and editing modes / views. Your code is stylized as the Markdown it represents, and that's the fundamental idea behind Macchiato.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Too expensive

</comment><comment><USER15> Why is your app's squeeze page so big? It's over 3MB, mostly being weighed down by a 2.46MB background image (because it's a photo and you used PNG, you could cut it down by an order of magnitude by using JPEG). I'm glad I wasn't on 3G...

</comment><comment><USER16> I am using Markdownlive, it support instant preview (mit-license, need to compile using xcode) <https://github.com/rentzsch/markdownlive>

</comment><comment><USER17> Nice work. Would be great if unordered and ordered lists were stylized.

<comment><AUTHOR> They are, to a small extent. They look like plain text, but if an item wraps across lines, the indent level is preserved. Note: blockquotes and code blocks should do the same thing, but it hasn't been implemented yet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> $20, are you crazy? Vim is the best choice.</comment>


My lazy American students - <AUTHOR> http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2009/12/21/my_lazy_american_students/ <comment><USER2> Long story alert; bear with me. I got my hair cut today, and as usual they had the tv on. There was a game where contestants were asked questions such as (actual question from the show), What color is a banana? (The contestants look to be 20s to me, but I'm old, so who knows.)

Contestants were dropping like flies. Here's what they couldn't answer: (1) What is H20? (answer given, with a quizzical tone, "Blackjack? 21?"), (2) Who is the current Vice President? and (3) In what state is New Orleans located?

The winner had to answer a final question. It was "Who was the second President of the United States?" She couldn't answer it.

The owner of the shop is a recent (last 10 years) immigrant from a former Soviet Block country (can't remember which one). He says laughing, "God bless American education." (Full disclosure: I am a high school teacher. I just bite my tongue.)

The punch line: all three win prizes. Don't believe me? This is why I love the internet in 2009. I have the video: [http://ellen.warnerbros.com/videos/?autoplay=false&media...](http://ellen.warnerbros.com/videos/?autoplay=false&mediaKey=38aa338e-edc2-47f4-88cc- fcff2b95a0c6)

What does all this prove? Nothing. Just like that editorial. The problem with that article, like most of the articles of that genre, is that it's entirely anecdotal. (The author cites some statistics about missing basic knowledge, but it's a red herring. Basic knowledge is irrelevant to her argument which has to do with effort and work ethic.)

I've come to believe that this is just one of those things. Teachers complain about their students - a lot. Imagine that. No newspaper with a brain on their staff should accept an editorial (on this topic) from a teacher immediately after the end of term - ever.

</comment><comment><USER3> This seems partially explained by selection bias -- the slackers from "India, China, and Latin America" don't come to America for college at the same rates as American slackers do. However, this doesn't explain the actual statistics she gives.

<comment><USER4> I grew up in Taiwan, so I think I can shed some light on this. IMHO "the average" Taiwanese student will work harder than the average American student, but not by a supremely gross margin as this article would imply.

The bottom-barrel students never end up in American colleges, after all.

The chief difference is cultural - in Asia intellectualism is celebrated and demanded. Parents don't push their kids to football, they push them to academic achievement. Not being able to make it into college isn't worn as a badge of honor, it's downright shameful. I have personally known people who've shipped their kids away from home to some backwater third-rate academy, just so they can hide the fact that the kid couldn't get into any school locally.

Beyond parental pressure, peer pressure also largely pushes people to academic achievement. Having high marks won't get you beat up - in fact it commands respect (within reason). Having poor marks likewise isn't cool like it is here, but is similarly embarrassing.

Keep in mind though, that this has some consequences that academics who opine about the lack of American work ethic consistently fail to mention:

\- Appreciation and participation in the arts, both as a college study, and as extracurriculars, is ridiculously low. People who study the humanities are looked down upon, I even know one guy who got disowned for it.

\- Social integration takes a backseat, often to disastrous results later. In Taiwan is it not irregular for a middle school child (age 12 or so) to be at some form of school for 14 hours a day. There's literally only spare time to eat and sleep (and sometimes not even). Socialization is minimal, and add this onto the culture of living with your parents well into your 20s, it produces some seriously socially inept people.

Japan is already dealing with these consequences - look up "hikkikomori" if you're interested.

<comment><USER5> Great post, I'd also mention...

It take a certain to 'laziness' to solve a problem elegantly rather than through grinding effort.

This kind of laziness, the kind of laziness that great programmers laud, can require a bit of effort. It's the kind of effort mathematicians go through when they look at problem for five minutes before saying "it's trivial".

The America that built Silicone Valley sometimes had this right balance between effort and "laziness". Present America certainly seems to have taken a wrong turn.

<comment><USER6> I would say that you speak of 'cleverness' instead of laziness. If I look at a problem that looks like a ton of tedious work, it is eminently useful to spend time just thinking about the solution.

If anything, its an appreciation for elegance.

But maybe its just laziness as you say. If a solution looks like a grind, I will spend just as much time trying to find an elegant solution (probably more) because I don't want to just grind out the solution.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> To offer a contrarian view, I have two friends from India this semester who got caught for plagiarizing in their English class. This is just _this_ semester.

I won't make any big judgement calls about international students based on observing my few friends. But hey, it does make me believe that international students are less aware of the consequences of things like plagiarizing. I think they are a little behind on it. For American students, we went through the "dumb phase" of plagiarizing in 6th grade when I remember 90% of my class using the same one source for an assignment forcing the teacher to give an hour long lecture on plagiarizing. She also canceled that assignment. International students, unfortunately, don't seem to have gotten that lesson before coming here. Really unfair for them -- but a win for American education(rare as that may be).

<comment><USER8> Based on your experience of two friends from _India_ , you started believing that _international_ students are less aware of the consequences of plagiarizing. Your point is nonsensical on so many levels.

First, since when did 'two friends from India' begin reflecting the attitudes of millions of students all over the world ( _international_ ), only a fraction of which end up in the US in the first place.

Second, how can you conclude that they were _unaware_ of the consequences of plagiarizing. Maybe they were aware of the consequences, but decided to take a chance anyway.

It seems to be that you are subtly implying that the American education system inculcates some sense of ethics (discouraging things like plagiarism) in the students, which for some inexplicable reason the education system of these _international_ students doesn't. That IMHO is bigoted.

<comment><USER9> While I agree with your sentiments on a lack of proper data, there is another hypothesis for foreign students, _perhaps_ having a higher rate of cheating. One that is not bigoted at all, and applies equally well to a subset of north american students.

Some cultures, India, China, perhaps others, currently place immense value on education. This brings with it immense pressure. While that can lead to a good work ethic, perhaps the immense pressure can also lead to a higher likelihood of cheating. It's not that these students underestimate the risk of getting caught, but more that they may be _more_ afraid of the reaction of their family or peers back home if they fail.

Getting good grades is not exclusively a result of hard work. Often it can be genuinely challenging. For some international students, failing can mean a loss of scholar ship and thus having to leave back home. For students in China, for example, this may mean a loss of freedom, and certainly a big loss of social rank back home.

North American students studying here may occasionally have a lot of pressure from home, but they never risk being denied citizenship, or being relegated to low paying jobs for the rest of their life with no chance of improving.

In some graduate programs, this fact is occasionally taken advantage of by unethical professors, who can get away with treating their international students poorly.

<comment><USER7> _perhaps having a higher rate of cheating_

I had a professor from France this semester. He went on a tirade about how we should cover our papers and not cheat. The whole class(all Americans) seemed pretty lost and could not relate to his lecture on cheating. I see a similar response when mainly foreign professors ask students to switch seats and spread around the room on exam days.

My French professor said when he went to college in the US, he had moments where the professor left the class and my professor(then a student) would look around him hoping folks would "cooperate"(in funny French accent). I'm not sure how much of that was said as a joke but I think the sentiment has at least some truth to it.

I can definitely tell you that while I was in India and my initial few years in the US, I was under immense pressure to perform. That is also when I would be most inclined to do not-so-ethical things. Then over time the pressure goes away and the incentive to cheat does not seem greater than just doing the work or accepting a poor grade.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> One thing I still can't understand is how so many people are okay asking for an extension on something. I can't believe how many of my peers ask for extensions on papers and programming assignments. It's unreal. School might not be as high a priority as my startup right now, but I never turn in anything late. I think tardiness is the worst kind of habit to have.

<comment><USER11> At my college, the professors explicitly told us to always ask for extensions if we needed it, provided it was a few days to a week in advance. It is a form of time management to know ahead of time that you have 60 hours worth of work due in the next 48 hours, and talking to the professor builds communication skills and the good habit of giving feedback to your superiors.

If you're talking about asking for an extension 10 minutes before the deadline (or 10 minutes after), that's a whole different kettle of fish.

<comment><USER10> I can understand that. What bothers me though is the attitude that it is okay to ask for extensions on a regular basis.

Perhaps this has more to do with the role college plays in American society. I believe that college has become more of a high school extension than anything, and so maybe it is wrong to blame students who treat it as such. I doubt they would be slacking off in grad school (but I can't be sure!)

<comment><USER12> It's OK to ask. You may not _get_ the extension, but given the amount of unannounced lateness teachers often see, asking for an extension in advance with a "how can we work this out" attitude looks like an attempt to be responsible. Contrast with an attitude of starting things the day they're due and then acting surprised when you can't finish a multi-week project in one day.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> > Of course, it would be wrong to suggest that all American students are the > same.

...

> Success is all about time management, and in a globalizing economy, > Americans' inability to stay focused and work hard could prove to be a > serious problem.

<sigh>

<comment><USER2> And you know what's _really_ sad about how poorly argued the editorial is? The author is a teacher of Rhetoric and History and based on her description of her students, I bet she teaches freshman composition or the like. (If that doesn't ring any bells, many colleges require incoming students - all or nearly all - to take a semester or a year of critical reading and writing courses in their first year. It's basically remedial education by another name.)

<comment><AUTHOR> My favorite comment about this same article elsewhere in cyberspace: "I don't know whether to say if she's bad at rhetoric because her argument is so poor or if she's good at rhetoric because she got printed in a major newspaper."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Nice. Now there's this. I went from an American high school to a Dutch university (admittedly a decade and a half ago, but still) and was shocked to discover that Dutch students as a matter of principle refuse to put in any effort that will push them beyond the barest minimum above a passing grade whereas the Americans I was used to at least tried to shoot for, say, a C, and if they were especially ambitious, a B or even a B+.

(that said, at the "American high school" I went to there were also a large number of Indian, Taiwanese and Korean kids and, like the article suggests, they made it a matter of principle to never receive less than an A+ in any course they took - although, that said, they rarely enrolled in courses where their chances of receiving such grades were in peril: very few Taiwanese and Koreans took history or English literature, for example)

<comment><USER15> Completely agree. I moved from an American university to a Dutch one. Grades in the Netherlands are out of 10 (see [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_grading_in_the_Netherl...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_grading_in_the_Netherlands)); Nobody bothers to take more than a 6, most end up with a 5.5.

I get weird looks when I tell classmates I'm aiming for a 9 or a 10 (almost equivalent to an A or A+ in US universities)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Maybe not complete bullshit but an exaggeration in my opinion. Just because a student comes from China or another India or wherever does not necessarily mean they are amazing workers.

For instance one semester I was lab partners in an electronics lab with a Chinese student. Initially he did good work but as the semester continued he did less and less, until the second to last lab where he did none at all. Since I worked straight through the night on the lab, I let the lab director know that my partner had done very little work on the lab, he spoke to my partner and my partner put in more effort on the final lab.

I give this anecdote merely to point out that not every Chinese student is perfect, in the same way that not every American student is lazy. In my opinion there are many other factors at play other than cultural background of the student, perhaps the most important being the subject. I believe my partner did not engage in the labs because he was not that interested in the subject but rather felt pressured to pursue it by his engineering parents.

In the same way many students attend college in America but do not have concrete goals or ambitions on what they want to study. They are pressured by all kinds of things to go to college right away, and many do not realize until the end of their time as an undergraduate what they truly want to study.

Therefore can we please stop making generalizations about student performance based on these types of things and instead of saying "you must be a good student you are X" look at the reason why good students are good students.

</comment><comment><USER17> Counterpoint: In my experience as a CS TA, international students are far more likely to cheat on problem sets than American students.

<comment><USER18> As an American student I've observed or heard of both international and local students cheating. It really pissed me off when students would come to exams with psychiatrists' notes about a sudden onset of ADHD. Or abuse the sympathy of the teacher to get more time. Crib sheets only occurred in lower level classes where it's hard to observe. At the higher levels it becomes obvious who knows what.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> It's funny, a Czech Graduate Student friend of mine always says that Americans work too hard and focus too much on materialistic things. (For the record, this guy is a genius and is advised by two guys, the inventor of RAID and the Dean of CMU's School of Computer Science).

Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

As an American student, I'd have to say I'm pretty pleased with the way things are.

</comment><comment><USER20> UK students are worried of working hard. Western figureheads are often the child protegy, the uneducated polymath. 'Hard workers' are failures -- not geniune. We all strive (the right term?) to be the drop-out who can turn up on the exam morning and pull 100%.

'Hard worker' is an offensive term.

It's a cultural problem.

</comment><comment><USER21> Too many generalisations and over-simplification. A single swallow does not make a spring.

As an aside, this concept of Asian Intellectualism to me has always sounded hollow. My experience has been that Asian students especially Indian students tend to favour learning-by-rote over critical thinking which requires large amounts of time spent memorising things versus understanding them. The school and university exams in India tend to emphasise that as well.

</comment><comment><USER22> So why hasn't this professor just been honest with her students and told them they are wasting their money? Oh! yeah, that would mean should would be out of a job. Better to just let the students get deeper and deeper into debt.

Hint to her, she's part of the problem.

</comment><comment><USER23> This article was entirely alien to me. Why should I care about the work of people who don't even care about it themselves?

Then I thought I'd recast the situation into a more familiar setting. Apologies to OP. Make sure you read her version first. Does my version seem any stranger to you?

 _It was the kind of pitch I hate.

"I'll do better," my software vendor told me, leaning forward in his chair. "I know I've gotten behind this phase, but I'm going to turn things around. Would it be OK if I finished all your uncompleted requirements by Monday?"

I sat silent for a moment. "Yes. But it's important that you catch up completely this weekend, so that you're not just perpetually behind."

A few weeks later, I would conduct a nearly identical conversation with two other vendors. And, again, there would be no tangible result: No make-up software. No change in effort. No improvement in time management.

By the time entrepreneurs are in the marketplace, habits can be tough to change. If you're used to playing video games like "Modern Warfare" or "Halo" all night, how do you fit in four hours of customer revisions? Or rest up for a demo?

Building start-ups in this market, especially one with a large international population, has given me a stark - and unwelcome - illustration of how Americans' work ethic often pales in comparison with their peers from overseas.

My failing entrepreneurs this semester are almost exclusively American, while my entrepreneurs from India, China, and Latin America have - despite language barriers - generally written solid software, excelled on prototypes, and become valuable business partners.

One woman from Shanghai became a fixture at Super Happy Dev House, embraced our coworking center, and incessantly e-mailed me questions about her evolving website. Her javascript is still mediocre: she frequently puts ";" everywhere (as in "x = y;y = z;z = a;") and confuses global variables with local variables. But that didn't stop her from doing rewrite after rewrite, tirelessly trying to improve both syntax and performance.

Chinese entrepreneurs have consistently impressed me with their work ethic, though I have seen similar habits in entrepreneurs from India, Thailand, Brazil, and Venezuela. Often, they've done little server-side coding in their home companies, and they frequently struggle to understand my specifications. But their respect for customers - and for business itself - is palpable. The entrepreneurs listen intently to everything I say, whether on-line or at code reviews, and try to engage in the process.

Too many 18-year-old American entrepreneurs, meanwhile, text one another under their workstations (certain they are sly enough to go unnoticed), check e-mail, decline to take notes, and appear tired and disengaged.

Of course, it would be wrong to suggest that all American entrepreneurs are the same. I've engaged many who were hardworking, talented, and deeply impressive. They listened intently, engaged customer dialogues, and never shied away from code rewrites. At their best, American entrepreneurs marry knowledge and innovation, resulting in some astoundingly creative web apps.

But creativity without knowledge - a common phenomenon - is just not enough.

Too many American entrepreneurs simply lack the basics. In 2002, an O'Reilly survey found that most 18- to 24-year-olds could not find regular expressions, data base access, or sorting algorithms in a PDF document, ranking them behind counterparts in Sweden, Great Britain, Canada, Italy, Japan, France, and Germany. And in 2007 the American Institutes for Research reported that eighth graders in even our best-performing states - like Massachusetts - scored below peers in Singapore, South Korea, and Japan, while entrepreneurs in our worst- performing states - like Mississippi - were on par with eighth graders in Slovakia, Romania, and Russia.

We've got a knowledge gap, spurred by a work-ethic gap.

Which brings me to another code-challenged entrepreneur, who once sprinted across the office to talk to me.

"I'm really sorry I missed your targets," he said. "Do you have time to talk?"

"I have a meeting in a couple of minutes," I said. "But you can walk with me."

"OK," he said. "I really enjoy your challenge, and I think I can do better. How can I improve my site?"

I looked at him sideways. "Well, you might start with writing some code."

"Yeah," he grinned, looking at his shoes. "Sorry about that. There's always stuff going on in my office late in the day. I have to learn to be better about time management."

Of course, he had it exactly right. Success is all about time management, and in a globalizing economy, Americans' inability to stay focused and work hard could prove to be a serious problem.

Nowhere, sadly, is this clearer than in the marketplace._

<comment><USER24> I'm not sure what your point is.</comment></comment>


How to generate a good salt – unofficial sources of Polish voting system - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/wybory2014/Kalkulator1/blob/master/Kalkulator1/Certificate.cs#L257

<comment><USER2> Is there any reason to think this isn't sanitized (or desalinated, if you like)?</comment>


Practical AngularJS Examples - <AUTHOR> http://tutorialzine.com/2013/08/learn-angularjs-5-examples/

<comment><USER2> Anyone got a post on how to structure big angular apps ?

i've been struggling a bit with menu bars : it seems to me that you can't prevent copy/pasting the menu bars on each of your screens if you want to keep meaningfull URLs (as the routing component only maps a url to a single controller).

<comment><USER3> I used this [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/12592472/how-to- highlight...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/12592472/how-to-highlight-a- current-menu-item-in-angularjs)

Works fine, as long as your URL scheme structured enough. Toss me your email, and I can give you the controller and the tmeplate code with link to the live site. I would have copy-pasted here but don't want to turn HN into stackoverflow.

<comment><AUTHOR> Do you mind creating a gist? It would help anyone reading this and you could just post a link.

<comment><USER3> [https://gist.github.com/kapilpandit/6404978](https://gist.github.com/kapilpandit/6404978)

Disclaimer: I am no frontend/javascript developer. Just getting by.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Sidenote: the code editor used to live-preview/edit how examples work is great; does anyone know of any similar OS projects?

Post author (Martin Angelov) said that he built it himself on Ace, however it doesn't seem to be OS.

<comment><USER4> Ace _is_ open source: [http://github.com/ajaxorg/ace](http://github.com/ajaxorg/ace)

<comment><AUTHOR> I said that he built that editor _on_ Ace. I'm using it and I know it's OS.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't understand why a custom filter is needed in "4\. Instant Search". I thought "<li ng-repeat="i in items | filter:searchString">" did the same thing.

<comment><USER6> I'm guessing that he wanted to show how to write your own modifiable filter with a simple example

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I found these to be excellent resources when I started with angular almost a year ago.

[http://www.yearofmoo.com/2012/08/use-angularjs-to-power- your...](http://www.yearofmoo.com/2012/08/use-angularjs-to-power-your-web- application.html)

[http://www.yearofmoo.com/2012/10/more-angularjs-magic-to- sup...](http://www.yearofmoo.com/2012/10/more-angularjs-magic-to-supercharge- your-webapp.html)

</comment><comment><USER8> I really like this since the source code is well documented and explains everything right in the code.

Not like todomvc which is supposed to be for beginners yet have almost no comments...

[https://github.com/tastejs/todomvc/blob/gh- pages/architectur...](https://github.com/tastejs/todomvc/blob/gh- pages/architecture-examples/angularjs/js/controllers/todoCtrl.js)

<comment><USER9> your right, they should prolly focus more on commenting there stuff then making an example in every obscure framework possible

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> In case someone missed this, [http://www.egghead.io/](http://www.egghead.io/) All angular basics pretty well explained

<comment><USER11> I recently viewed a few of their videos and I find them too short, seemingly lacking. It might depend on the audience though. In my case, a little theory and architectural overview works better, and the official docs cover this well enough.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> >ng-show will show an element if the value in the quotes is truthful,

What's the definition of truthful?

<comment><USER13> [http://docs.nodejitsu.com/articles/javascript- conventions/wh...](http://docs.nodejitsu.com/articles/javascript- conventions/what-are-truthy-and-falsy-values)</comment></comment>


Stats of punctuation used in novels - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@neuroecology/punctuation-in-novels-8f316d542ec4#.sj4fc7yi0 <comment><USER2> The absence of quotation marks around dialog in _Blood Meridian_ is perhaps worth mentioning. I remember finding it a little odd at first, but it clearly worked itself out and I found I preferred it. I found it gets at something important about the relation between author and reader and the context of fiction.</comment>


Polygon Shredder - <AUTHOR> https://www.clicktorelease.com/code/polygon-shredder/ <comment><USER2> Cool stuff. We have been having fun with this demo yesterday on Twitter.

Some more variations we came up with:

[http://alteredqualia.com/tmp/solitaire/](http://alteredqualia.com/tmp/solitaire/)

[http://alteredqualia.com/tmp/cash/](http://alteredqualia.com/tmp/cash/)

[http://alteredqualia.com/tmp/mario/](http://alteredqualia.com/tmp/mario/)

[http://alteredqualia.com/tmp/meeseeks/](http://alteredqualia.com/tmp/meeseeks/)

[http://zz85.github.io/explorer-crasher/](http://zz85.github.io/explorer- crasher/)

[http://zz85.github.io/explorer- crasher/fur.html](http://zz85.github.io/explorer-crasher/fur.html)

<comment><USER3> and a fun bunch of variations those were :D

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> When i opened the page, this started from my playlist and it makes an excellent soundtrack: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_hWIgEqibU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_hWIgEqibU)

Also, choosing an odd number of polys to be rendered creates frankenpolys: [https://www.clicktorelease.com/code/polygon- shredder/#33](https://www.clicktorelease.com/code/polygon-shredder/#33)

<comment><USER3> It is a nice track! I wanted to do something with audio, stretching the cubes, changing their scale, and emitting different number of particles based on some audio analysis. The next experiment ^_^

About the frakenpolys: the hash info doesn't directly say the number of cubes to generate, but the side of the texture that hold the position. So if it is 256, it's a 256x256 RGBA Float32Array, 65536 particles that are then rendered as cubes. For odd numbers, or simply numbers that are not power of two, it doesn't work (well, it works, but the access to different vertices is all garbled and you get all those franken-noodle-cubes)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> > "I'm sorry, no fallback for no working WebGL. Also, support for mibile > coming soon (?)"

I thought Firefox supported WebGL. That's sad. So basically, this is Chromium- desktop-only.

<comment><USER3> Should work on Chrome, Firefox, Safari, IE, Opera, Edge... any that supports WebGL with OES_standard_derivatives (so basically 99% of browsers according to [http://webglstats.com/](http://webglstats.com/))

What version of Firefox, OS, GPU, etc. are you using?

<comment><USER6> Not working for me either, running Firefox dev edition, version 46 on Windows 10.

<comment><USER3> Firefox beta/Aurora/DeveloperEdition... all but stable have a regression on WebGL and reporting missing extensions support, like OES_texture_float. Most of the three.js recent content will probably not work on them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> TIL I learned my laptop has a fan.

[for cooling off CPU taxed with rendering confetti]

<comment><USER3> You laptop has a fan, but it was probably spinning to cool down the GPU. This effect is 99.9% running on your graphics card; once everything is setup by the CPU, it's all running in shaders and video memory. Still hot, but just wanted to make clear where the power is being used.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is neat! And a caveat: the "INSANE" mode caused my 2010 MBP to lock up.

<comment><USER3> Hence the "insane", it means 2048x2048 base particles. That's over 25 million triangles (or 75 million vertices) per pass, and it's done twice (color and shadow mapping). Also the curl noise is pretty expensive, and 2048x2048 is quite a lot of operations. I think the browser locks before being able to allocate all necessary info, and if it does, probably the GPU can't keep up. Not everyone's card can push that much, but I've seen people getting to 4096!

<comment><USER9> Hard locked my old Mac Mini. Had to reboot. Not your fault, but maybe add some limits.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> My WebGL- and math-fu suck :( I would not have been able to make anything like this.

<comment><USER11> That shouldn't stop you. three.js makes webGL _really_ easy to write, and most of the maths can be borrowed from other code. You can do some pretty awesome stuff with only a basic knowledge of JS. It's very rewarding to give it a try. My math-fu sucks but I've still been able to make fun things like [http://library.ooer.com/2015/11/15/Cube- Ocean/](http://library.ooer.com/2015/11/15/Cube-Ocean/)

<comment><USER10> I didn't mean they were non-existant, just that it was nowhere near up to this level.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> My mem usage jumped from 5.3GB to 7.5GB on insane. I have a 980ti which doesn't seem to do a clean 60fps sadly.

This is great work, looking forward to your write-up!

</comment><comment><USER13> Impressive, and the moon was a nice, stylish touch :).

</comment><comment><USER14> [NSFCpu]</comment>


Nick Bostrom on Superintelligence - <AUTHOR> http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2014/12/nick_bostrom_on.html

<comment><USER2> So in the vein of: "the future is already here, just not evenly distributed.." Where is this superintelligence being built now? Where do the people here think the first superintelligence come from?

<comment><USER3> _Where do the people here think the first superintelligence come from?_

This question is actually the topic of my masters research which will be published Summer of '15.

The top probability estimates are as follows in order of our likelihood:

1\. Private for-profit company

2\. State (Government/Military) laboratory

3\. University laboratory

4\. Open source project

5\. Lone Wolf developer

These are based largely on where incentives for AGI implementation lie, where funding is most available and where activity is occurring.

<comment><USER2> Great answer! Thank you. Since you seem to really have thought about this: what would be the way we would have to know that Superintelligence had been achieved?

I can imagine a situation where someone suspects that one of these projects listed above is "superintelligent". What would be the test of that?

<comment><USER3> _what would be the way we would have to know that Superintelligence had been achieved?_

The AGI community hasn't agreed on a test or metric, however the best answer I have found in a study is the work of José Hernández-Orallo and his "Anytime intelligence test" [1]. Practically though, I personally think we will know once enough people are convinced, a kind of "know it when I see it" [2] situation.

[1] [http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0004370210...](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0004370210001554) [2] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_know_it_when_I_see_it](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_know_it_when_I_see_it)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Just listened to this on my way in to work. I was intrigued by the point that was made by the host that the real world is complex, and that increasing intelligence has diminishing returns. Making something a million times more intelligent than humans may only make it twice as effective. Something I hadn't thought of before.</comment>


Wimbledon cancelled due to coronavirus – where does that leave tennis in 2020? - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/sport/tennis/52104196 <comment><USER2> This is the one good thing to come out of this pandemic. I don't have to see or hear the BBC banging on about bloody Wimbledon for weeks this year, ahh what a relief!</comment>


Advanced secondary DNS for the technically inclined - <AUTHOR> https://dyn.com/blog/advanced-secondary-dns-for-the-technically-inclined/ <comment><USER2> Advanced features, huh? All of these "cloud DNS providers" are really proud of all the non-standard fuckery they're capable of doing but AXFR from a server or two that I specify? Nope, sorry, can't do that.

As far as DNS goes, that's the only feature I've been wanting for years now: two large anycasted DNS providers (e.g. Amazon Route 53 and Google Cloud DNS) that can slave off of my hidden masters... but that's apparently too much to ask.

Credit where it's due: Hurricane Electric has been providing that service -- absolutely free -- for years now; cf. [https://dns.he.net](https://dns.he.net).

<comment><USER3> Both Dyn and Akamai support this, and have done for years.

They are also 2 very large, anycasted DNS providers.

Its the basis of the OpenStack DNS project's support for both platforms.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Nameserver Documentation everywhere talks about selecting the fastest nameserver for most queries, but that's mostly internet myth at this point. RTT banding was removed from bind back in 2011. Unbound claims to support it but the band is 400ms.

On our biggest CC tld of a little over 3 million RRs our Unicast nameserver in the US receives the same number of queries as our Netnod anycast nameserver (70+ nodes worldwide).

</comment><comment><USER5> fyi, this post needs (2016) added to the title.</comment>


Third HEVC Patent Pool Launches with Ericsson, Panasonic, Qualcomm, Sharp and Sony - <AUTHOR> http://blog.streamingmedia.com/2017/05/velos-media-hevc-patent-pool.html <comment><AUTHOR> The positive thing about HEVC's royalty licensing mess is that it will drive the adoption of royalty-free video formats like VP9 ([http://www.webmproject.org/](http://www.webmproject.org/)) and AV1 ([http://aomedia.org/](http://aomedia.org/)). Video on the web will finally be royalty-free just as web protocols and web document and image formats are royalty-free.</comment>


Ask HN: Do Valley VC's ever lose money? - <AUTHOR> I imagine this scenario: a new Valley startup is formed (STARTR). A Valley venture capital firm (FUNDR) funds them with 10$ million. STARTR proceeds by spending the 10$ million on various products/services, such as engineering, food, furniture, hardware, offices, SaaS & software, transportation, etc. All of these products/services are likely provided by other Valley startups or businesses, as that is one of the points of being located in a hub as a new startup.
FUNDR, which is a smart VC firm that diversifies their portfolio, likely has investments in most if not all of these product/service providers that STARTR buys from. Of course, FUNDR incentives STARTR to spend their money on specific products/services by offering STARTR discouns provided through "their connections". FUNDR's investment in STARTR is therefore only moved around their own portfolio and is never lost. Or, in worst case, part of the investment ends up in FUNDR's partner or rival firms, which probably face the same situation where at some point the opposite happens to them and that part of the investment is returned to FUNDR by the same reasoning.
If STARTR fails then FUNDR has not actually lost anything, their investment has only been moved to other companies in their portfolio. If STARTR succeeds then more money starts flowing in to the eco-system, from foreign customers and foreign investors, which are used to buy even more products/services from FUNDR's portfolio companies (and cashed out via stocks obviously). As for engineering salaries; that part of the investment is paid off 2x-10x through the successful ventures where money is generated from abroad. FUNDR ends up always getting richer; it's either break-even or win for FUNDR in the long run.
Is this a likely scenario of how things work? If so, is this also the reason why Valley valuations of startups are so outrageous because VC's very well understand this kind of eco-system? <comment><USER2> VC's loose money all the time, in fact the majority of VC funds loose money or have very poor returns.

Problem with your analysis is that vast majority of fund raising rounds go to salaries, and converting operating spending into equity value is very challenging and not a "efficient" transformation.

Also the ecosystem out here is quite large, with each fund being just a small fraction of companies being funded.

That being said, it is a widely held belief that something like what you described inflated the dot com bubble</comment>


Why Facts Don't Change Our Minds (2017) - <AUTHOR> https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/02/27/why-facts-dont-change-our-minds <comment><USER2> We have this weird fetish these last few years with asserting in broad language that people don't change their minds, don't respond to evidence, dig their heels in further when presented with evidence that contradicts their preconceived opinions, etc. It's all over pop psychology and the headlines.

Bugs the heck out of me, because if the language they use is literally true, then no one would ever be convinced to change their minds ever. And yet, we do.

It's true that perhaps _some_ or _many_ people never change their minds, or that all people might be _apt_ to behave that way when they're not focusing their attention, but that's wildly different language then the headlines use.

This article is obviously guilty as well - "Why Facts Don't Change Our Minds". Like, ever? The content of the article doesn't back up the headline, but the headline is what people remember.

Even some of the content is probably guilty. In the Stanford capital punishment study, is it really true that _each and every individual_ in the study responded as they describe? Because that's how the article is written.

And the problem is it gives people more excuse to give up - to not engage with someone who is wrong, or to dismiss someone who is right (that they think is wrong). Because, studies!

The real lesson is the opposite - that we have to study and learn critical thinking, and practice, as a discipline, changing our minds when the evidence or reasoning warrants it. Just because it's hard doesn't mean it's impossible, and in fact the ability to do so is part of what makes us an evolved species - or more generally, our ability to surpass our instincts and evolved traits.

Show me some experiments that demonstrate what conditions need to be in place, in order for people to change their minds after they've proven to be resistant. (Hint: psychological safety and lack of time pressure.) That's what'll be valuable. I'm tired of all these other studies that just say we don't.

<comment><USER3> Well, most of the time the "Why Facts Don't Change Our Minds" question could actually be rephrased as "Why Don't Everybody Agree with the Left?" I just skimmed the article, but the mention of Steve Bannon at end is an indication that the article probably belongs to that trend. This turns the issue into the political ground, not the scientific one. Thus, the word "fact" is used as an appeal to authority when its actually an ideological discussion that is at stake. Some facts are carefully ignored or dismissed when not fitting the narrator world's view (in either sides), so it would be better to acknowledge that it's opinions that are discussed, and that their are not absolutely right.

<comment><USER4> How about "why don't facts change people's minds about global warming"?

or "why don't facts change people's minds about gun control?" (this is an issue with both the left, they are both wrong about many aspects of gun issues!)

These are just two cases that came to mind, where I have friends/family who I talk to about it, and I can explain some facts in great detail that I'm familiar with, and in that moment they will seem to change their mind a little bit. But a couple months later they are right back to their old thinking. Maybe people tend to forget the stuff they would rather not believe.

<comment><USER5> > How about "why don't facts change people's minds about global warming"?

I have always thought it was either the lack of the ability to understand the facts, or the shear unwillingness to actually look at the facts.

<comment><USER6> What about the way the information is often presented to the average person as a justification for policy change. How often does the average person encounter information about global warming devoid of an attempt to change policy in relation to the information? That alone would cause reason for a person doubt the authenticity of the information since the source is seen as biased. Add in how badly news organizations butcher the actual science, and there is plenty of room for doubt that then can be exploited by those who specifically seek to do so.

<comment><USER7> Hmmm, interesting perspective. However, forget about the denialist fringe for a moment. The majority of people do understand that climate change is bad, and most feel paralyzed into inaction by all the doom-and-gloom messaging – _welp, looks like we 're all screwed, now let me get back to what I was doing_.

Few understand that climate change is still very much a solvable problem, and that our success crucially depends on building the political will for new policies around carbon pricing and land use — and that, in turn, hinges on creating an understanding for the scales at which such policies must and can enact change. The current mainstream discourse, on the other hand, is half fatalistic cynicism, and half turn-off-the-lights-and-reuse-your-plastic-bags blather.

Ergo, talking about policy change is important, no?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I say that's a good thing. It's a good thing that beliefs have inertia, and it makes sense. Think of the years of patterns of thinking and neural connections that have formed in your brain. Are you expected to read something and change that in an instant? Imagine when Darwin's Theory of Evolution came out, assuming it had perfect evidence for it, do we expect everybody to instantly change their beliefs? And sometimes what we say facts are poor research, see ongoing replication crisis in psychology, social science, nutrition etc. The time it takes to change a mind is a long complicated process which is justified. A world where people's minds are easily changed by facts would be a world of fads.

<comment><USER9> One of my favorite points in favor of facts, debate, and persuasion is the observation that you almost never see someone _change_ their mind, but you can find legions of people who _have_ changed their minds.

There are a host of reasons we don't respond to facts with "oh, I guess I'll abandon all my deeply-held beliefs immediately!" Everything from "that's an embarrassing loss of face" to "I'd like to fact-check you before I accept that, but it's rude to say I doubt you" to "brains don't work that way, it's physically impossible to discard a whole belief on demand" factors in. And I agree, this is hardly a bad thing. Taking time to change our minds is a safety feature. Not only are facts sometimes false, or falsified, or misleading, but most of us aren't great at knowing what's relevant when.

On almost any topic, there is _someone_ who could argue me into an embarrassing defeat, or at least an awkward stalemate of "we can't both be right". This is true for most people about all things, and all people about most things. I am overwhelmingly confident that young-earth creationism is wrong, but I've seen its adherents speak; I have a lot of arguments they can't answer, but they have a lot of arguments I can't answer either. I don't know enough about the geology of Mount Ararat to explain why some arcane point about flood sedimentology is wrong, but the correct response to that is not for me to agree that the Earth is 5,000 years old. And that's for a fringe theory that I'm uncommonly well-qualified to rebut - the problem only gets worse when we move to a lay viewer looking at any serious debate.

People today may unprecedented access to facts, but that didn't give us the time or memory or training to evaluate every possible issue from the bare facts up. Everyone who's ever cast a vote is, on a great many issues, working from heuristics and expert opinions and best guesses. With only one lifetime to learn things, that's not avoidable. I'm sometimes alarmed by how harshly people will resist looking into new facts and evidence, but the idea that people should promptly respond to compelling-sounding facts by changing their minds doesn't strike me as a workable one.

<comment><USER8> After reading a bit of evolutionary psychology, I realized to my astonishment that humans have evolved to survive, and not to be perfectly rational. Rational so much so its useful. I'm actually convinced that extreme rationality has evolutionary disadvantages. When you realize the universe has no meaning, does it motivate you and your species to keep breeding and take risks? As Schopenhauer said, if you truly considered all the costs associated with having kids before having them, no rational being would ever have kids! No person thinking clearly would ever trade 10-15 minutes of feeling good for a lifetime of costs and responsibilities. Then there's tribalism and ingroup and outgroup psychology which dictates much of what we see. These are survival mechanisms meant for living in small tribes, malfunctioning in a globally connected civilization. I would suggest yuval harrari's recent article on how humans are hackable and how that completely demolishes our concepts of liberal democracy , free market etc which assumes rational actors behaving in their self-interest.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> My problem with the studies described at the beginning is with this conclusion:

 _Even after the evidence "for their beliefs has been totally refuted, people fail to make appropriate revisions in those beliefs," the researchers noted._

My understanding, from the descriptions in the article, was that it was not the beliefs were _refuted_, it was just that what they were told originally was not true. The subjects had no reason to believe the latter assertion above the former.

<comment><USER10> It is also important to note that facts, in the true sense of the word, represent single observations of a phenomenon, while beliefs are more about models that reflect relationships between observable phenomena and a way to model and predict behavior.

Thus it's easy to understand that a single observation, particularly one which is given at face value, is not enough to scrap whole models.

To provide an example, should we scrap the whole notion of gravity accelerating all dropped objects uniformly independent of mass if someone observes a feather taking more time to fall than a canonball? I mean,that's a fact. Anyone ca see it and reproduce the same behavior. So, should everyone just abandon the notion of gravity acritically because of a single fact was presented?

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> For some reason this made me think of the problems with side effects in programming. If we can read and write willy-nilly, it's very difficult to figure out why the data is the way it is, and we can't undo/rewind unless we planned for it all along.

When our minds are mulling over some piece of information, whether it's true or not, it will have side effects on other thoughts, opinions and emotions. If we're confronted with a revised set of facts later, there is no way to rewind all those side effects.

</comment><comment><USER12> Discussed at the time: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13810764](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13810764)

</comment><comment><USER13> They sure change my mind. I'm just not always convinced what people are saying are facts. At best they are the current best explanation and at worst only opinions.

<comment><USER14> At one end of the spectrum of what constitutes a fact is Richard Feynman's definition, which was anything he'd replicated himself in a lab. He considered everything else he knew to be based on faith (in people, in organizations, in whatever made the claim, but which he held in high enough esteem to actually believe.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Both this and the previous discussion show that HN readers believe facts (or information) can and do change peoples' minds. The way I understand the article (and the books it refers to) it suggests that social factors have a stronger effect on opinions than facts. I find this hypothesis plausible when I look at the polarized discussions I see playing out at the societal level, as well as interactions with other people individually. And maybe, rather than refute it, the HN reaction to the article is further evidence for the mechanism the article describes?

Edit: typo

</comment><comment><USER16> Belief is not generally fact based. Going strictly with the facts is an incredibly disciplined thing. Feynman used to play games to keep himself sharp, to avoid fooling himself because as he said, the easiest person to fool is yourself.

With people in general the belief comes first and then you backfill with supporting evidence and argument.

Also we tend to pull our beliefs into our identity. Then a challenge to our beliefs is a challenge to our identity, and very hard to swallow. So it is also difficult but important to keep yourself from identifying yourself by your beliefs.

</comment><comment><USER17> Humans are overwhelmingly emotional creatures. We are a bunch of monkeys with only a fragment of real awareness of why we are doing X and Y.

Human brains judge another persons whole life in milliseconds (we all do it, can't help that), but then struggle with what is quite simple math. That should tell you something about what we are.

My advice is don't ever forget that logic is only the smallest part. Demeanor and a strong image is much more important than it should be, simply presenting a "fact" is not enough.

</comment><comment><USER18> We should talk about complexity and complication here.

Complex is the opposite of simple. If there is 50 equal elements communicating between them there we have a complex system.

This is important because a thousand ants behave totally different from an isolated ant.

You just can't study an ant and expect to understand the nest or anthill.

Psychologists try to make it all the time and it is totally wrong: They studied isolated rats in order to understand addiction to drugs and they did not understood that they are social animals which travel 20miles-30kms each day.

So they jailed the rats in a cage, because it was easier to study them that way, and extracted conclusions that were totally bogus for human beings. Those conclusions were the basis for the US war on drugs.

Here they do the same. They make a very simple experiment, and extract conclusions about the whole system. In Africa, when humans whatever,more fiction than science.

It is ok to make fiction and speculation, but you should always differentiate what we really know with high degree of confidence from what we do not.

</comment><comment><USER19> The study Mercier and some European colleagues did together which is mention in this article seems very similar to The Choice Blindness study.

[https://www.wired.com/2010/08/choice- blindness/](https://www.wired.com/2010/08/choice-blindness/)

[http://www.lucs.lu.se/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Choice- Blin...](http://www.lucs.lu.se/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Choice-Blindness- summary.pdf)

The latest paper which is incredible interesting from that study [http://www.lucs.lu.se/wp- content/uploads/2018/08/Strandberg-...](http://www.lucs.lu.se/wp- content/uploads/2018/08/Strandberg-Siv%C3%A9n-Hall-Johansson-P%C3%A4rnamets- False-Beliefs-and-Confabulation-Can-Lead-to-Lasting-Changes-in-Political- Attitudes-2018.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER20> This is a tangent.

How much/long does a study like this cost/take? Is it possible/useful to scale this?

From reading into some of the replicability discussion, I've gotten curious about social science generally. What's an expirement like this trying to prove/demonstrate. The journalistic narrative likes the easy "X debunked." I imagine researchers have a more nuanced perspective.

I guess what im asking is what does the larger effort look like? Do these studies eventually add up to a larger understanding of how we _do_ form opinions, where facts _do_ change our minds....

Replicability is one thing. How about generalisability?

<comment><USER21> The replication rate is social science studies is very poor. And an even larger problem is that the studies themselves do not actually test what they aim to test, often because they simply cannot. For instance do video games cause violence? The only way you could realistically test this would be to have one group somehow prevented from playing video games for their entire life, or at least up to a certain age, and another group obligated to play video games in a similar fashion, and then some control group presumably free to do as they saw fit. And then follow these individuals for decades and see what happens.

That's not really possible. So instead the experiments that are made are toy experiments, but when you're not really testing what you're trying to measure, it becomes impossible to prove anything, and possible to show anything. For instance could you design a toy experiment that might indicate video games cause violence? Of course. Could you design a toy experiment that might indicate video games don't cause violence? Of course. The experiments are meaningless.

As an example of the problem, 'emotional intelligence' in work is all the rage right now. Yet the keystone study that sparked it is really just quite bad. The author had people split off into groups and perform a variety of tasks such as, literally, planning a shopping list. Using some method of determining who made the best shopping list, the author then determined that the groups who had the highest average IQ did not perform the best, whereas their 'emotional intelligence' as measured by an, again literally, "reading the mind in the eyes test" mapped better to performance - so therefore, it's not merit alone that judges performance but some emotional intelligence, at least as measured by "reading the mind in the eyes" that does. That's just broken logic. At the bare minimum IQ != specific task merit. The most logical way to perform that experiment would be to have created teams of those that performed individually best on any given task to work together against those that did not score so well on merit, but did well on the "reading the mind in the eyes test". Of course she did not do this, the bare minimum to even begin approaching this question, since the result would not be what she wanted. And negative results don't get published. Yet now there have been likely hundreds of articles and spin off studies taking that study's unjustified conclusion as a granted.

So no, there is absolutely no big picture progress in the social sciences.

<comment><USER22> I think there is a way. Facebook/Google have all data to perform studies like that. Problem is that current University system is broken. You are forced to publish short success stories instead doing actual research.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Don't facts need to be contextualized in a larger belief framework to be useful? "Sun rises in the East" is a fact that is compatible with a heliocentric and geocentric view of the world. So that fact on its own is useless in explaining the world. In politics, your ideology will guide your interpretation. If you have a particular view on, say, immigration, you will highlight certain facts, suppress or dismiss inconvenient facts, and in general interpret all facts through your ideological lens.

</comment><comment><USER24> If anyone would like to explore the topic a bit further try "The Influential Mind" by Tali Sharot. It was on FT's short list for best of 2017. It's a quick easy read. Gladwell-esque. The difference iis, she is an actual scientest who works in that field. Tho' perhaps that makes her bias? ;)

[https://www.amazon.com/Influential-Mind-Reveals-Change- Other...](https://www.amazon.com/Influential-Mind-Reveals-Change- Others/dp/1627792651)

</comment><comment><USER25> The article is basically saying that if we're told we're right, then we're told we're wrong, we will still believe we're right even though we're presented with a contrary fact? The test group aren't asked their answers in response to being told a fact - its more of a psychological game in my opinion

</comment><comment><USER26> > _In 1975, researchers at Stanford invited a group of undergraduates to take > part in a study ... A few years later, a new set of Stanford students was > recruited for a related study._

We have to wonder if _Stanford undergraduate student_ generalises to the whole population.

It doesn't require much stretching of the imagination to see that _circa 1975 Stanford undergraduates_ , as a cohort, may score below average on objective measures of _humbleness_.

<comment><USER27> Does it really rely on 1975 Stanford undergrads, though? For example, I think Dan Kahan (Yale's Cultural Cognition Project at [http://www.culturalcognition.net/blog/](http://www.culturalcognition.net/blog/)) usually says about the same thing about facts and changing minds.

<comment><USER26> The first discussion in your link talks about peoples bias for wanting to remove plastic from the ocean remote from the source, rather than at the source.

Surely it's obvious that preventing plastic entering the ocean at the _source_ does nothing to remove the plastic that's already there.

Maybe I should read more of this blog, but that doesn't inspire confidence.

<comment><USER27> I think you should, if you scroll back a couple of years, there's plenty of discussion of published research on science communication, which might be more interesting to you.

<comment><USER26> Cool, thanks, I'll have a gander.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> This is why cache invalidation is important.

</comment><comment><USER14> But what is considered a fact? Richard Feynman only considered a thing a fact if he'd replicated the results himself. Everything else he took on faith.

When the FDA said you should limit fat intake, that was considered a fact and only nuts would disagree, but that is now considered a much trickier statement. When the FDA says the flu vaccine is safe, that is a fact and only nuts would disagree, but that is not considered a questionable statement. But it isn't hard for a nut to use the first to confuse the latter.

</comment><comment><USER29> This is very long and complicated, but I'll try to write a quick comment.

Many people know from experience how hard it's to convince anyone to change what they say, the way they behave, etc, from facts alone. I say "behave", because it's very important to realize the difference between "rationally accepting" and "caring about a truth or fact", more to that later.

We also know that people can change their minds quite easily when they are exposed to pretty much anything for enough time, with enough repetition. Even when we know something is false, the repetition of a certain discourse can have a noticeable effect on us. When you pair that with other types of external pressures, it becomes even more egregious.

The key point is that we can't easily change how people feels while being respectful with that people and trying to make them change through words only. We are irrational, and we all have different priorities. Even if I accept a fact, it might not be something important to me, even if I rationally say it is, so I won't change the way I act, and it won't matter that much. Otherwise, I might say that I don't accept something just because I don't feel that way, even if I have to discard and ignore (unconsciously) the facts. What "I feel "is more relevant than the facts that I "don't really (want) to understand". As tobr puts very well in another comment too, all these feelings and ideas have a long term effect: "When our minds are mulling over some piece of information, whether it's true or not, it will have side effects on other thoughts, opinions and emotions. If we're confronted with a revised set of facts later, there is no way to rewind all those side effects."

I thought it was interesting to write about all this, not only because it really helps a lot understand why facts might or might not help much changing the way people behaves, but it also helps us understand better how to actually make people change their minds. Words might be very effective for those that are already in a similar line of thought, but in other cases we might want to try changing the way people feels about something instead, by trying to making them live, in first person, the contradictions in their own beliefs (unfortunately, for many technical issues, you can't do that without becoming a teacher (and that assuming the other person trusts you enough to let you teach something), but then it's not surprising that people can't trust facts that depend on knowledge they don't have, it's only natural). And all this also help us understand that even though we might accept many rational truths, we all have different priorities, so the ones we end up acting upon deserve some consideration. Sometimes you are so focused on your own causes that don't understand how others don't share it, when it's simply that they have their own ones too, not necessarily that they don't rationally accept and understand what you are doing. And there are a billion worthy causes. For some people it might be about saving the world. Others focus only on their kids. We can do a lot to manage better that collision between rationality and irrationality, between facts and feelings, because both are critical to us as human beings.

<comment><USER30> > We also know that people can change their minds quite easily when they are > exposed to pretty much anything for enough time, with enough repetition. > Even when we know something is false, the repetition of a certain discourse > can have a noticeable effect on us. When you pair that with other types of > external pressures, it becomes even more egregious.

After decades people still believe that global warming is a hoax and vaccines cause autism, despite mountains of oft-repeated evidence that this is not the case.

<comment><USER29> well, not the evidence they are frequently exposed to.

but of course there are many other factors. I already talked about the problem with more technical arguments, but nowadays in many cases we have this aversion to science and mistrust for anything that might come from it. also, many people are mostly exposed to what they think and feel, because when someone else tells them something they don't believe in, they don't hear that, they just repeat their own discourse again for themselves. so they are exposed to that. and in case it was a bit confusing, I didn't say that "people _will always_ change their minds [...]", there are a lot of factors. but that we can very easily doubt ourselves when information comes predominantly from only one direction? for sure. and that direction doesn't necessarily need to be "science" or "media". we are just bad at detecting where the relevant information comes from for a person.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Michael Huemer has written extensively on the topic of why people are irrational about politics [0]. I recommend this brief talk [1] which goes over some of the key ideas. Fundamentally, it's a problem of incentives: There is little or no incentive for people to be rational about their political beliefs, and there is frequently an incentive to be _irrational_ about them. In particular:

 _The theory of Rational Irrationality holds that people often choose—rationally—to adopt irrational beliefs because the costs of rational beliefs exceed their benefits. To understand this, one has to distinguish two senses of the word "rational": Instrumental rationality (or "means-end rationality") consists in choosing the correct means to attain one's actual goals, given one's actual beliefs. This is the kind of rationality that economists generally assume in explaining human behavior. Epistemic rationality consists, roughly, in forming beliefs in truth-conducive ways—accepting beliefs that are well-supported by evidence, avoiding logical fallacies, avoiding contradictions, revising one's beliefs in the light of new evidence against them, and so on. This is the kind of rationality that books on logic and critical thinking aim to instill.

The theory of Rational Irrationality holds that it is often instrumentally rational to be epistemically irrational.

The theory of Rational Irrationality makes two main assumptions. First, individuals have non-epistemic belief preferences (otherwise known as "biases"). That is, there are certain things that people want to believe, for reasons independent of the truth of those propositions or of how well- supported they are by the evidence. Second, individuals can exercise some control over their beliefs. Given the first assumption, there is a "cost" to thinking rationally—namely, that one may not get to believe the things one wants to believe. Given the second assumption (and given that individuals are usually instrumentally rational), most people will accept this cost only if they receive greater benefits from thinking rationally. But since individuals receive almost none of the benefit from being epistemically rational about political issues, we can predict that people will often choose to be epistemically irrational about political issues._

[0] [http://www.owl232.net/papers/irrationality.htm](http://www.owl232.net/papers/irrationality.htm)

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JYL5VUe5NQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JYL5VUe5NQ)

</comment><comment><USER32> I still think they do.

<comment><USER33> Ι see what you did there, you Russell.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I just now (30 minutes ago) changed my mind about something based on a fact, and it wasn't even something that someone pointed out to me. I just realized on my own that I had been wrong:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18111870](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18111870)

I wonder if this fact will change anyone's mind about the idea that facts never change anyone's mind.

<comment><USER30> Why such a mindlessly literal interpretation of an title clearly not intended to be literal?

<comment><USER35> well, it's a time-honored tradition of we geeks on the internet. it helps us feel clever. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> People are free to believe what they want. The problem with science is that it cannot change, so it can appear as a problem in politics, people feel science is a prison you cannot criticize.

Also there are good reasons why science is not in control of our lives.

What's worse is that people will also speak in the name of the science of economics to advocate about any kind of policy or tax break.

<comment><USER37> > The problem with science is that it cannot change

Maybe science can't change, but our collective understanding of it changes (hopefully gets better) almost all the time.

<comment><USER36> I guess people don't realize how science illiterate people can be. That's the issue I guess. If you don't understand science, you cannot trust it.</comment></comment></comment>


BuyCott - <AUTHOR> http://buycott.com <comment><USER2> I feel like, taken to it's natural conclusion, everything you buy will eventually be tied to a boycott, because that's pretty much how things are.</comment>


How to be Remarkable - <AUTHOR> http://www.rajeshsetty.com/2012/09/08/how-to-be-remarkable/

<comment><USER2> I find quite ironic that a submission with such a title did'nt receive a single vote on HN.</comment>


Internet Explorer Security Bug: How to Protect Yourself - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2014/04/28/internet-explorer-bug-how-to-protect/

<comment><USER2> OOO OOOO I know the answer to this, is it erm... Stop using a shitty browser?</comment>


The Need for New Technology will Keep the Tech Industry Afloat - <AUTHOR> http://blog.bincsearch.com/?p=450

<comment><USER2> This post goes on about how we're addicted to gadgets, new technologies, and how we love to buy cellphones, but there's something at a far lower level than that which means "technology" will always thrive.

 _Technology directly drives economic growth._ Indeed, other than "resources" it's the _main_ driver of economic growth. Whether it was the invention of the plough that led to significantly more efficient planting, through to the invention of the combine harvester to more efficiently collect food, technological inventions of all sorts have created our economy as it is.

Given this, it's certainly possible for us to "innovate" or "invent" ourselves out of the current crisis. What about those $1/watt solar panels that were talked about lately? Once in mass production, power at that price could revolutionize the world, significantly improve the environment, and give us close-to-free energy in places where it wasn't possible before.

It's not just the big inventions though. Even if you develop a piece of software that adds significant value (by reducing costs or otherwise) to businesses, you've helped the economy.. not just by earning yourself some money, but by making other companies more efficient and more profitable.

Technology isn't just iPods and cellphones that we throw money at.. it's one of the most significant levers we have to push our economy up with.</comment>