A lucky little fish solves iron deficiency among women in Cambodia - <AUTHOR> http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2011/11/12/canadians_lucky_iron_fish_saves_lives_in_cambodia.html

<comment><USER2> Before any more "How silly, he had to make the iron look appealing to get people to do something healthy" comments arise, I invite readers to consider how many of you have paid $15 or more for a BPA-free glass/stainless steel/double-walled plastic reusable water bottle. Did you really need that over a simple plastic water bottle? Or a cup? My guess would be no. But you did it because you're trying to get yourself to drink more water, and perhaps that requires getting a vessel that looks or feels aesthetically pleasing to use habitually.

Disclaimer: I bought an Ello glass bottle from Target less than 48 hours ago for this very purpose--to make myself drink more water. I don't consider shaping iron into the shape of a fish all that different.

<comment><USER3> Or put a completely different way: Why would the people of Cambodia trust their government if they came out and said you should put some iron stuff in your pots?

This would be from one of the few governments on earth that are less trustworthy than the average american one. Perception-wise or in reality, does it matter? Anyway, this is an angle americans should be able to identify with. :)

<comment><USER4> We've got lots of hard proven facts on a lot of topics, like vaccinations. People still don't get their kids vaccinated, and then we get outbreaks where kids die from the measles.

Perception can easily outweigh facts for a lot of people. If we could find a way to trick people into vaccinating their kids we would use it.

The attitude of "they're just stupid people who don't know better" is kind of disgusting when we've got college and university educated people exhibiting the exact same behaviour. Who's dumber? The person that doesn't know better or the person who _should_ know better, because I think it's the latter.

So to all the people who think these are just stupid people. If the US government had exterminated 70 million Americans three decades ago, would you be giving your kids a single vaccine? Or would you expect it to be part of another genocide campaign?

<comment><USER5> _The attitude of "they're just stupid people who don't know better" is kind of disgusting when we've got college and university educated people exhibiting the exact same behaviour._

I have no trouble saying that college and university educated people who choose to not vaccinate their kids are stupid people.

<comment><USER6> Intelligent and stupid, it's a very dangerous combination.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> You can support the project at their website. [http://www.luckyironfish.com/](http://www.luckyironfish.com/)

<comment><USER8> Thanks for the link, I put in $45. Shipping the fish to supporters was a great idea, because we can show them to friends, and promote the project.

This is the kind of project that I wish more researchers and activists would do, as it has the potential to improve the lives of a large number of individuals in a meaningful way, as well as giving other people who are far away the means to help.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm confused. (It easily happens). How does adding an iron (Fe) object to a cooking pot increase intake of iron ions (Fe 2+). Note that I am saying Fe(2+) intake. As I understand it, haemoglobin has an Fe(2+) ion trapped in it's structure. This is required for the uptake of oxygen molecules (O2) from the lungs, carrying it in the blood stream and releasing it at sites where there is an oxygen deficit. This is a long way of saying that Fe (2+) is utilised by the body, not Fe. If this is unclear, think in terms of sodium. We use sodium ions (Na+) not sodium atoms (Na). We put NaCl on our food, not Na. Na is very reactive and would react violently with our moist skin. We know that once it loses its electron to chlorine, a similarly highly reactive element, and becomes Na+ (in combination with Cl-) it is in an unreactive form and is used by the body for propagation of impulses along nerves. Back to Fe (2+). I guess that talking about Fe is just an imprecise way of talking about our need for Fe2+. The question then in my mind is "How does the Fe added to the cooking pot become Fe(2+)?" Does it just become oxidised to iron oxide (FeO,Fe2O3, Fe3O4?). I am trying to think what would a soluble form of Fe2+. Wikipedia lists these as insoluble. Perhaps salt is required in the cooking pot and iron chloride Fe2+ Cl2- is formed. But I cannot see Fe winning in a charity tustle with sodium for the donation of it's electrons to chlorine. Maybe, the formation of iron oxides are an interim step. Who knows?

<comment><USER10> Acids from what you cook in the iron pot leech out the Fe2+ needed. E.g. throw in a tomato, lemon, ...

<comment><USER9> Thanks. More power to balsamic vinegar!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> What are the local cooking pots made of? Steel and cast iron would be the cheapest, and I assume leach iron into the food. I also imagine that the surface area of the pot is much larger than that of this "lucky fish".

A quick search found this, which appears to be cast iron:

[http://www.pbase.com/bmcmorrow/image/28438185](http://www.pbase.com/bmcmorrow/image/28438185)

<comment><USER11> OK, I searched a bit and found an article from 2011, which appears to be the original source (free access [1]). It appears that aluminum is the most common material from which local pots were made.

[1] [http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-3156.2011....](http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-3156.2011.02878.x/pdf)

<comment><USER12> Correct, it is hard to find anything other than aluminum pots here.

<comment><USER13> In rural Asia, cast iron tends to be--relative to flimsy aluminum--too expensive, too heavy (a large percentage of those doing the cooking weigh less than 100lbs/45kg), and too poor at conducting heat and too good at absorbing it (thermal inertia), meaning that more cooking fuel is required to cook small meals in cast iron pots than in aluminum.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> And now you know why so many people believe in luck or talismans.

Next time you come across such things don't ridicule them, or the people that believe in them.

<comment><USER15> It wasn't until it was spun as a lucky charm that they actually deigned to use it properly. The pre-existing superstition was only a delivery method for the solution, not a result of it.

<comment><USER14> Only for the first year, after that cause and belief will be swapped, and people will believe the fish is lucky because of the iron fish.

Give it a generation and people might not even remember that the living fish was ever considered lucky (or why).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm getting a 404 Not Found

Here's the google cache version for anyone else:

[https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:SfJuFH...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:SfJuFHxKLswJ:www.thestar.com/news/gta/2011/11/12/canadians_lucky_iron_fish_saves_lives_in_cambodia.html+&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)

</comment><comment><USER17> > A disease of poverty, iron deficiency affects 3.5 billion people in the > world.

> They found a local scrap metal worker who could make them for $1.50 each

Paging Bill Gates... A one-off payment (these would last forever, right?) of a few billion would solve this problem... everywhere and forever?

<comment><USER18> They can't last "forever" because if they did there wouldn't be any increased iron in people's diet!

<comment><USER19> At $1.50/ea I feel like humanity can afford to replace them like once every 800 years.

<comment><USER20> From [http://www.luckyironfish.com](http://www.luckyironfish.com):

"One Lucky Iron Fish can provide an entire family with up to 75% of their daily iron intake for up to 5 years".

So we'll need to replace them a bit more often than that (not that I'm saying it's not a good cause).

<comment><USER19> Back of napkin math says we need approx 8mg/adult/day, say we're cooking for a family of 4, we'd need 32mg of iron leached from the fish per day. I'll guess from the picture that the fish weighs about 3/4 of a pound as pure iron, or 453593mg, so it should last about 38 years at that rate. So I was off by a bit. :) Surface area would obviously reduce as it dissolved and the rate of leaching iron would underserve the family before it really began to look unfamiliar, so you'd not want to completely dissolve it. 5 years is definitely overly cautious, it should easily last 2-4x that long, but gives them a good excuse to reinforce the reasoning of the fish when a replacement is provided.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> It solves the problem and looks cute, while costing next to nothing. This is good design.

</comment><comment><USER22> Better print on it: "Not for human consumption" in Khmer and/or a crossed-out icon of a person dangling a lucky fish into their mouth.

</comment><comment><USER23> Is his MSc. or PHd. thesis on the iron fish online?

<comment><USER24> I found three papers on the topic authored or coauthored by Charles:

Iron content of Cambodian foods when prepared in cooking pots containing an iron ingot [http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-3156.2011....](http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-3156.2011.02878.x/full)

Iron-deficiency anaemia in rural Cambodia: community trial of a novel iron supplementation technique [http://eurpub.oxfordjournals.org/content/21/1/43](http://eurpub.oxfordjournals.org/content/21/1/43)

Women's nutrient intakes and food-related knowledge in rural Kandal province, Cambodia. [http://apjcn.nhri.org.tw/server/APJCN/23/2/263.pdf](http://apjcn.nhri.org.tw/server/APJCN/23/2/263.pdf)

(I'm not logged in, so it should be public, I hope)

<comment><USER25> That second link leads to a paper containing this:

 _Results: Blood iron levels were higher in women in the iron fish plus follow-up at 3 months compared with controls, but this was not maintained. At 6 months, haemoglobin and serum iron had fallen in all groups and the proportion of anaemic women had increased.

Conclusions: This study shows that the iron ingot was effective in the short but not longer-term against IDA. Though a novel treatment option, further research is warranted to determine bioavailability of leached iron and whether or not the surface area is large enough for sufficient iron leaching._

(The third paper does not seem to mention the iron fish.)

Does this mean that the whole thing is another bogus gimmick which only survives because it's a cute thing which first-worlders like to throw money at?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> How is the iron from the fish absorbed exactly? Do trace amounts just fall off from the fish when rubbed against the cookware?

</comment><comment><USER27> interesting. does cooking with cast iron also help increase iron levels? Or is the increase insignificant?

<comment><USER28> It helps, but it mentions in the article that they didn't want to switch to cast iron cookware because they are heavy and expensive.

<comment><USER11> What do they use then?

<comment><USER28> Aluminum or steel I would imagine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I got this for my wife for our 6th anniversary. Iron!

</comment><comment><USER30> How is rust dealt with?

</comment><comment><USER31> Nutritionists HATE it!

</comment><comment><USER15> It's pretty incredible that so much effort was even necessary. The solution was there at the start - put a chunk of iron in the pot - but despite the known and obvious health benefits and miniscule amount of effort, the population simply rejected it.

<comment><USER32> I've spent a great deal of effort trying to convince people around me to do things that are clearly healthy in the short and long-term… Eat vegetables, drink enough water, avoid artificial colors, preservatives and sweeteners, exercise proper precautions in workshops. It's futile.

I agree it's frustrating that people won't simply believe facts about how to fix their health problems when presented to them, and then are happy to embrace superstitious symbols instead of logic. But I'm not surprised, considering how many people I know who complain about the common symptoms of dehydration daily but refuse to believe that what they need to do is just drink some water... But are happy to take an Excederin with Coca Cola to mask their dehydration headache.

<comment><USER33> Ok, so what is the issue with:

> artificial colors, preservatives and sweeteners

I understand that they are a signal that what you are about to consume has been processed, and is likely unhealthy on balance; do you see an inherent problem with these ingredients?

<comment><USER32> That one isn't the greatest example of what I was trying to say. While I avoid additives I don't really often suggest to other people that they do.

My perspective is that additives are nutritionally neutral at best, and many may be mildly harmful. So, given the choice I don't consume them. If I'm shopping I would prefer something like butter vs Blue Bonnet margarine. I don't feel convinced of the safety of chemicals like Yellow #5, and if I need for my food to be fluorescent yellow for some reason, would prefer turmeric. I consider whole foods to be better tested over time for human health than a semi-synthetic concoction.

As you say, generally the presence of synthetic colors and presevatives tells me the manufacturer has the wrong priorities (cost and surface presentation vs flavor, freshness or nutrition).

An example of food I shun is the typical grocery store tortilla. Most are loaded with presevatives so they can last on the shelves for months, which gives them a bitter taste. When I compare one of those brands, with 10-15 ingredients, most of which aren't technically food, to what I'd call normal tortilla with 4 ingredients, all of which are something someone would have in their own kitchen, and it's clear the simple tortilla wins in every way but shelf life. Since I consume my tortillas within a couple of days and am willing to keep them in the refrigerator, presevatives enhancing shelf life benefits the manufacturer and distributors, but fails to benefit me in terms of flavor and possible negative nutritional effects.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> mmmh... Aluminium in excess inhibes enzymes, can cause colic, lost of memory, desorientation, kidney damage and even is claimed to cause dementia at long term.

So (unless this fish can float?) I understand that you are also scratching the bottom of the pan with the iron chunk and this should release a lot of more AL than before because this metal is soft.

I wonder what are the efects of using the fish in the aluminium intake of these people. They did some research about it?.

Maybe a better solution could be to make pans with some iron embedded (ring?, bottom?, cover?) but not mobile pieces.

</comment><comment><USER17> The body is very good at conserving iron and unfortunately not very good at dealing with iron overload.

It says that the device can provide up to 75% of iron requirements, but under what conditions could it start to give >100%?

<comment><USER4> That's a very misleading statement, the body is able to significantly reduce the amount of iron absorption through the intestines.

Non-genetic related iron overload is rarely heard of outside of dietary supplement overuse, predominantly children eating iron fortified supplements.

For an ordinary person to eat too much iron, you would have to have an exceptionally bizarre diet, especially if you're overdosing on iron via elemental iron.

The upper tolerable limit for a daily intake of iron is 45mg. To get this via sirloin steak, you would have to eat _three and a half pounds a day!_ Or 3700 calories of steak _per day._

Given that heme-iron is the most readily absorbed by the body, and that guidelines suggest vegetarians consume 1.8 times the RDI, which would suggest an 80mg upper tolerable limit for non-heme iron.

So lets take Broccoli, everyone knows that's iron rich. 2.1mg per medium stalk (1/3lb), which would amount to 7 lbs of Broccoli a day.

Please, don't state bullshit like it's a fact.

<comment><USER17> Food examples are great and all, but the article is about an _iron block_ that you cook food with. Per your numbers, one would only need to consume 80mg+ per day (of the elemental) to start getting into trouble territory.

My concern is over how cooking conditions (or other factors) may affect how much iron leaches out into the food, which would cause iron overload if high enough, just like those iron fortified supplements.

I never stated that the body can't adjust the amount of iron absorbed.

I stated that iron overload, which is when one's body already has too much iron accumulated, is not well handled by the body. This is true, because the body is very poor at _excreting_ iron in response to excessive iron levels, because iron is conserved very well (unlike, say, Vitamin C).

<comment><USER35> People have cooked in cast iron pots for thousands of years.

It's not a problem.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


$8,000-per-gallon printer ink leads to antitrust lawsuit - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20071218-hp-and-staples-accused-of-colluding-on-printer-ink-prices.html <comment><USER2> That's also the price of orange juice at Whole Foods.</comment>


Origins of the police - <AUTHOR> https://worxintheory.wordpress.com/2014/12/07/origins-of-the-police/ <comment><USER2> I heard that the British developed the police as we know it today, as a response to private security forces. Read up on "thief-takers", celebrity thief-taker Jonathan Wild and the Macdaniel affair. That scandal was too big to ignore, and public security was finally put under the auspices of the government.

Somehow Libertarian circles manage to ignore this history lesson and expect that this time around private police and the attendant power imbalance won't lead to entrenched corruption.

<comment><USER3> We already have private police forces. (security guards, police in private communities, etc.) On a different note, we also have privatized prisons. With re prisons people tend to not like them because of the incentive to keep people locked up. I don't see how privatized police forces would escape the same kind of criticism.

<comment><USER4> _All_ types of prison systems have that incentive. Just because government prisons are non-profit entities doesn't mean the people running them don't make out like bandits. I've read that the California prison guard union is politically _very_ powerful.

Private police, though ... in an era where early death is relatively uncommon vs. omnipresent, what's their incentive to take risks beyond what they're paid for? That what can be problematic, there's many reasons self-help is outlawed, but in the examples you give there's no immediately obvious problem.

<comment><USER3> I think the issue with regard to privatized prisons (and perhaps would-be privatized police) is that there's a profit motive. A need to keep profits up. Whereas public prisons can take the hit --ie. the losses are incurred by state coffers. A private corp can't take that economic hit as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If I'm reading the thesis correctly the modern state top to bottom monopoly on mechanisms of enforcement of common law is a consequence of population growth as it applies to two things, (1) crowd control and (2) attitudes towards methods of crowd control.

But there seem to be holes. Unruly armies of tens of thousands have existed since antiquity as insurrections, unrest due to demands for change, and borderline rebellions. The ruling classes of the Roman empire had to deal with this sort of thing on a regular basis. The size of the mob is not a new thing.

I think the change between old and new enforcement of common law has a lot more to do with technology, specifically the development of firearms and their ability to enable a small armed group to defeat a large unarmed group. That changed the whole nature of insurrection and civil disorder. You'll see that the advent of the police came right around the time at which firearms moved beyond the crude, slow weapons of the Napoleonic era. I don't think that is a coincidence.

<comment><USER6> You raise a good point about Rome. The patron/client model seemed to keep the social peace for quite a while. Not unlike the social welfare system that is described in the article. Additionally, I think the development of firearms and cheap/easy to use weapons actually had the opposite effect that you propose.

Specifically, the development of firearms led to a profound expansion of the democratization of violence. This is the meaning of the quote, "God made Man but Sam Colt made them equal."

Indeed, it wasn't the high technology that was important but how that technology reduced the need to invest our only truly scarce resource, time, in order to kill.

Pick up a gun, of almost any kind and in minutes you will be able to kill a similarly armed opponent. Now try the same thing with a bow and arrow or a sword (or more commonly a spear).

<comment><USER7> _Pick up a gun, of almost any kind and in minutes you will be able to kill a similarly armed opponent. Now try the same thing with a bow and arrow or a sword (or more commonly a spear)._

I guess I understand this sentiment, but as someone who has shot many rounds, many arrows, and also played kendo for years, it just seems wrong. Guns are more powerful than the other weapons, but that extra power doesn't mean one can't shoot and miss. (It also doesn't mean one can't intend _not_ to harm oneself or others, and then fail in that intention, but if you don't own or use firearms you don't need to worry about that.)

If you have a gun, you can kill on a whim. If you're skilled with a gun, you can kill on a whim, reliably. It is just like a bow and arrows, in that respect.

If you have a melee weapon, you can kill if you really mean to do so. If you're skilled with a melee weapon, you can kill if you really mean to do so, reliably.

<comment><USER8> The real power is in how easy it is to 'activate' the weapon.

A gun requires, what, a few dozen PSI on a trigger that most anyone can activate and the power you get out of it is the same regardless of who (or what) activated the trigger.

A bow and arrow requires some knowledge about how to use it and enough strength and coordination to fire it. Same with a sword, except you also have to be within feet of the target.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is an interesting, if fairly, Marxist, view. I wonder though if there is much thought given to the restructuring and unification of the ruling classes which happened during the Reformation in much of Europe (where instead of a hodge-podge of independent cities, lords, royalty, and church men often both cooperating and at odds, one ended up with a supremacy developing in the hands of factory owners, coupled with a very sympathetic and now highly developed absolute monarchy). In other words, one thing that made Capitalism quite a bit worse than Feudalism (Marx being blind to this fact) was that power was far more consolidated in the former, and so the lower classes had fewer options in navigating the power relationships.

What is the alternative to this sort of inequality? I would argue that open source begins to show a way, insofar as effectively the worker as individual owns the means of production (owns, meaning here, "has the right to utilize or direct utilization of"). This sort of commons development has been shown successful in many other areas, including manufacturing (google "Emilia- Romagna Manufacturing").

It isn't Capitalism if everyone is a Capitalist (i.e. has the capital to start his or her own business).

<comment><USER10> _' I would argue that open source begins to show a way, insofar as effectively the worker as individual owns the means of production (owns, meaning here, "has the right to utilize or direct utilization of").'_

I would recommend reading up on the Cooperative movement, if you haven't.

 _' google "Emilia-Romagna Manufacturing"'_

I did, but I'm not sure I'm getting relevant results. Could you expand on this?

<comment><USER9> I am familiar with the Cooperative movement.

Regarding manufacturing in the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy, it tends to be based on the same sorts of informal collectives that open source utilizes, but in heavy manufacturing with many small shops working together on specific projects to compete with large manufacturing firms.

The model is very successful there and it allows for large numbers of small businesses to take on big businesses by working cooperatively.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Another view I've seen recently, it covers the same time period as the parent article.

[http://historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/willmodpol.html](http://historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/willmodpol.html)

</comment><comment><USER12> A worthy contribution to this conversation would be Michel Foucault's Discipline and Punish.

While it mostly focuses on the history of the Western penal system it also discusses the history of punishment and torture.

It's a dense book but the first few pages alone are riveting enough to inspire one to continue.</comment>


Session: An open-source private messenger that doesn't need your phone number - <AUTHOR> https://itsfoss.com/session-messenger/ <comment><USER2> Signal without phone numbers built on blockchain technology and with its own crypto currency? I think I'll stick to Signal.

<comment><USER3> Signal depends on play services on android. I keep reading here that signal is secure and we should all switch to that, but I just can't get over the fact that it works only if you effectively give root to google on your phone. I can not take Signal seriously when it tells me it is secure, but has that requirement.

<comment><USER4> My device runs Android without Google Play Services. Signal has often presented a feature to use its own HTTP WebSocket notification services after I freshly upgrade my phone by re-installing an upgraded ROM. It's not specific to any release of Signal, it just happens when it doesn't detect Google Play Services. There is a process to correct this and make it use microG which is much easier on battery life. microG still connects to Google's notification services, but there is no Google malware on the device. From what I can tell, Signal only uses Google's services to "wake up" the connection to Signal to check for new messages.

<comment><USER5> I might give Android another try seeing iPhones have also started growing faster than my palm. But I don't see any sanely sized phones for which there's a zero friction google-free Android migration available with at least 3-4 years of support.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Blockchain paper: [https://loki.network/wp- content/uploads/2020/02/Whitepaper.p...](https://loki.network/wp- content/uploads/2020/02/Whitepaper.pdf)

So it's a fork of Monero that gives rewards out to "service nodes" periodically for not being ejected from the network. stores data. A service node also have a "stake" that's lost if the node ejected. The service nodes together form a "swarm" that routes messages and stores data and occasionally does various tests to eject bad nodes.

IDK, doesn't seem that bad. I'm sure because of the complexity there's some emergent bad behavior that will crop up, but the cryptocurrency is separate from the message platform - there's no cost to send messages, it's a separate proof-of-work Blake2b hash. So at worst the chain will fork and you'll have to update the app again.

</comment><comment><USER7> OK, so the messaging app is a fork of Signal that uses arbitrary IDs instead of phone numbers. That alone is a huge win for me.

But what I find most interesting is its built-in anonymity. Like Tor, it uses an onion routing network where only entry nodes see users' IP addresses. Users are anonymous from the swarms that cache messages, and also from other users. Except of course for the ID, both that's not tied to anything in meatspace.

Edit: The onion routing network is Loki, which I gather is a fork of ZeroNet.

</comment><comment><USER8> Wire (wire.com) doesn't require phone numbers either. I've been using it for the last year or so to communicate with my family, and its usability for non- technical users is very good, including top notch audio and video.

It syncs across all my devices (iPhone, iPad and laptops, Mac and Linux), and I can quickly do full-text search over large amounts of data and docs we've exchanged over time.

It's full OSS, including the clients. I don't know why it's not more widely used.

<comment><USER5> I can tell you why I stopped using it. It was clear after a few months that features, layout, and UX wasn't being developed keeping individual users in mind. Later the CEO stated that they are not at all their concerns.

And compared to Signal, WhatsApp, and Telegram their call quality was horrendous so not many of my contacts stayed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I tried the app a couple of weeks ago after hearing about it elsewhere. It looks interesting but as someone just looking to use a potential app, it really put me off with these two "conversations" that you can't delete, remove yourself from or permanently mute/ignore:

\- "Session Updates" \- I assume this is news about the app itself, like new features. However the messages here all refer to "Loki Messenger" rather than "Session".

\- "Loki News" \- Has weekly updates about "Loki". When I first installed the app I had no idea what "Loki" was or why I should care.

Messages to these trigger notifications and everything else a message would normally do. They're confusing and annoying and the first thing you see when you finish the onboarding process.

<comment><USER7> You can delete the "Loki News" contact, but not the "Session Updates" one. Although I don't have a problem with either, it would be good if users could opt out.

They _are_ messages. I'm guessing that's because Session has no other connectivity except through the Loki network. I do recall reading that the app only talks to the Loki entry node. And if that's true, it would be a _very good feature_.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Holy crap. I'd left my iPad on cellular data so no pihole... what an absolute state this site is!

[https://i.imgsir.com/Qw3y.png](https://i.imgsir.com/Qw3y.png)

As for the software

>it will simply generate a random (unique) Session ID.

>It'll look something like this: 05652245af9a8bfee4f5a8138fd5c……..

>So, you just have to share your Session ID with the contact you want to add

Sorry but I truly believe this is DOA for this reason. Y'all blockchain nerds ever heard of usernames?

<comment><USER7> Huh? I just opened it in a virgin Firefox install, and see no ads.

And re IDs, there's Zooko's triangle.

<comment><USER7> Sorry, I was referring to [https://getsession.org/](https://getsession.org/) and not TFA.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Threema, a well-proven app, already convers the use case of no phone number. Instead, each user has his or her unique id.

[https://threema.ch/](https://threema.ch/)

<comment><USER12> Not free. Huge privacy concern imo (who pays for it? who uses it? no visible way to pay with cryptocurrency)

<comment><USER11> Who pays? Well, as it's not free, the users pay for it. And you can buy it in the Apple/Google App Store, or if you really wish, with Bitcoin in the Threema Store.

Regarding the privacy concerns: the end to end encryption can be validated by yourself if you wish. Meta data is reduced to a minimum, see their FAQ.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Then there is that adoption share thing to fix and it's all going to be great /s

</comment><comment> m-p-3 Seriously, I wish Signal could detach itself from a phone number and make it optional.

Sure, that'd make contact discovery worse but I could live with that shortfall if it increased my privacy.

</comment><comment><USER14> b637b5107b6b7abfd1153ea042b5e9fe474acb5d9cf35 is me if anyone wants to test it out.

</comment><comment><USER15> Any love for Riot?

</comment><comment><USER16> I stopped reading after I saw "blockchain".

<comment><USER7> It's a private blockchain.</comment></comment>


Launching your project to the world? Try these sites to get the word out - <AUTHOR> I know these type of lists exist elsewhere. But I wanted to list some of the sites that I know where you can quite easily submit your project to get the word out initially. <comment><AUTHOR> [http://news.ycombinator.com](http://news.ycombinator.com) \- (duh), post with Show HN, easy submission, will get listed on [http://showinghn.com/](http://showinghn.com/) and [http://hnshowcase.com](http://hnshowcase.com) as well.

[http://betali.st](http://betali.st) \- quite well known, moderated, gets a decent amount of traffic if you get featured, not too many form fields to fill out.

[http://www.kickoffboost.com](http://www.kickoffboost.com) \- moderated, and relatively new, easy submission

[http://www.reddit.com/r/sideproject](http://www.reddit.com/r/sideproject) \- moderated, easy submission

[https://www.sideprojectors.com](https://www.sideprojectors.com) \- relatively new, easy submission

[http://thestartuppitch.com](http://thestartuppitch.com) \- moderated, has quite a few more form fields to fill out than others

[http://www.erlibird.com/startups](http://www.erlibird.com/startups) \- paid $149, last time checked out

[http://forrst.com](http://forrst.com) \- Easy submission, used to be a great community for feedback - not sure now

[http://www.bootstrappist.com](http://www.bootstrappist.com) \- a mailing list of bootstrapped projects - has quite a few subscribers I think.

[http://angel.co](http://angel.co) \- Angelist, of course - new startups gets tweeted via various accounts

[http://crunchbase.com](http://crunchbase.com) \- Crunchbase - similar to Angelist

<comment><USER2> I like your marketing approach - post a list and include your project [https://www.sideprojectors.com](https://www.sideprojectors.com) right in the middle. Wouldn't it be fair to disclose such a thing?

<comment><USER3> Why? OP gave you a list and a fairly non bias summary for each. Besides, using their site is completely optional and based on volunteerism. If you think it was of poor character, don't use their site.

Is mentioning they run the site necessary? Absolutely not IMO.

<comment><USER4> "biased". The word you want is "non-biased".

I literally* don't understand how people mess this up. If you were talking about a list of projects that had not yet been submitted to one of those lists, would you say they are "non-submit"? No, obviously you would say "non- submitted". If you were talking about books that had been printed by a publisher, would you say they are "publish"? No, you would say "published", because it's a past participle, and that is how we say past participles in English. This is not a prescriptive/descriptive thing: every English speaker over the age of 5 talks this way. But for some reason "bias", a completely normal verb, causes people to throw out everything they know about English.

So, stop it.

/rant

* Yes, literally.

<comment><USER5> Just to help you literally understand:

People get this wrong because with many accents (most American regions among them) the "ed" in "biased" is almost silent when spoken aloud at conversational tempo.

<comment><USER6> That is perhaps an excuse for people whose lips move when they are reading.

<comment><USER7> I consider lip-movement during reading a mental disorder. It means your cerebral cortex is connected to your motor cortex in a flawed way. It's a significant 'brain wiring' issue, and would severely limit how fast one can read as well. It's not as bad as "mouth breathers" but close.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Better advice would be better to find out where your customers are and go there.

So, yeah, go ahead and post to HN but _only_ if your target market is actually on HN otherwise you'll get a lot of tyre-kickers and no actual customers.

Addendum: if you don't know how to reach your customers. Stop what you're doing and find out

<comment><USER9> Indeed. I wonder how many people actually read these websites where lots of people spam a link to their new "startup" and where the content is nothing else than just a collection of links. I think the answer is: no one.

<comment><USER10> Usually aimed at an audience of one: the googlebot

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I've got a new book project, "Learn Ruby on Rails" that I'm launching with a Kickstarter campaign (the book is nearly complete).

Should I post it as "Show HN" or just submit the link?

[edit: removed the link because I don't want to be spammy]

<comment><USER12> Please don't hesitate to post links to your own work. You're putting serious effort into providing value to the community. How else will we know about it?

Here's the link:

[http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/909377477/learn-ruby- on-...](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/909377477/learn-ruby-on-rails)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> It's funny with ShowHN - I know it can be quite useful, but I'm so paranoid to do it. It's a one time shot (I don't want to spam it over again), and if you don't get any feedback, your shot is lost.

<comment><USER14> I don't think it's a one time shot, unless you get banned.

<comment><USER15> HN recognizes if a link has been posted before so if you submit your homepage once that's it.

I've run two Show HN posts for my new project ([https://wecombinate.com](https://wecombinate.com)) and had zero replies or even visits from both. It seems you need to have a group of people upvote early on otherwise you'll disappear very quickly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Here is one more comprehensive list.. [http://www.quora.com/What-other- services-besides-betali-st-a...](http://www.quora.com/What-other-services- besides-betali-st-and-startupli-st-are-there-to-promote-startups)

</comment><comment><USER17> While these sources are great, this is not a good approach to getting traction. The type of attention you'll capture won't be of high quality, unless of course these outlets cater to your target market.

Like others have said, you're better off focusing your time and energy finding out where your prospects go for their information and entertainment. TC and the like will give you a big surge in traffic initially, but it won't be the traffic you want, and it'll die off quickly.

Now, a _truly_ great resource for those launching side projects would be a list of sites/magazines broken down my major target market -- eg. pregnant mothers, hackers, foodies, athletes, etc.

</comment><comment><USER18> We're launching _Blogvio_ ([http://www.blogvio.com](http://www.blogvio.com)) tomorrow, after 10 months of work.

We submitted the project to the following websites:

1\. CrunchBase [http://www.crunchbase.com/company/blogvio](http://www.crunchbase.com/company/blogvio)

2\. Angel List [https://www.angel.co/blogvio](https://www.angel.co/blogvio)

3\. [http://www.betali.st/](http://www.betali.st/) 39$ - [http://betali.st/startups/blogvio](http://betali.st/startups/blogvio)

4\. [http://www.romanianstartups.com/](http://www.romanianstartups.com/)

5\. [http://www.startupli.st/](http://www.startupli.st/)

6\. [http://www.kickoffboost.com/](http://www.kickoffboost.com/)

7\. [http://www.geekopedia.me/startupsubmit/](http://www.geekopedia.me/startupsubmit/)

8\. [http://www.killerstartups.com/](http://www.killerstartups.com/)

9\. [http://www.startupbird.com/](http://www.startupbird.com/)

10\. [http://www.ratemystartup.com/](http://www.ratemystartup.com/)

11\. [http://www.new-startups.com/](http://www.new-startups.com/)

12\. [http://www.nextbigwhat.com/](http://www.nextbigwhat.com/)

13\. [http://www.leanstack.io/](http://www.leanstack.io/)

14\. [http://www.launchingnext.com/](http://www.launchingnext.com/)

15\. [http://www.startupproject.org/](http://www.startupproject.org/)

16\. [http://www.erlibird.com/](http://www.erlibird.com/) \- they ask 199$.

17\. [http://www.thestartuppitch.com/](http://www.thestartuppitch.com/)

18\. [http://www.startuplift.com/](http://www.startuplift.com/)

19\. [http://www.feedmyapp.com/submit/](http://www.feedmyapp.com/submit/) ([http://feedmyapp.com/p/a/blogvio/28928](http://feedmyapp.com/p/a/blogvio/28928))

20\. [http://www.siliconallee.com/contact](http://www.siliconallee.com/contact)

21\. [http://www.f6s.com/](http://www.f6s.com/)

22\. [http://www.paggu.com/](http://www.paggu.com/)

23\. [http://www.aboutyourstartup.com/](http://www.aboutyourstartup.com/) ([http://aboutyourstartup.com/?s=blogvio](http://aboutyourstartup.com/?s=blogvio))

24\. [http://www.eu-startups.com/directory/](http://www.eu- startups.com/directory/)

25\. [http://www.go2web20.net/](http://www.go2web20.net/)

26\. [http://www.101bestwebsites.com/](http://www.101bestwebsites.com/)

27\. [http://www.vator.tv/](http://www.vator.tv/)

28\. [http://www.springwise.com/](http://www.springwise.com/)

29\. [http://www.techpluto.com](http://www.techpluto.com)

30\. [http://www.cee-startups.com/](http://www.cee-startups.com/)

31\. [http://www.appuseful.com/](http://www.appuseful.com/)

32\. [http://www.startupwizz.com/](http://www.startupwizz.com/)

33\. [http://www.startuptunes.com/](http://www.startuptunes.com/) \- [http://directory.startuptunes.com/b/Blogvio](http://directory.startuptunes.com/b/Blogvio)

34\. [http://www.venturebeatprofiles.com/](http://www.venturebeatprofiles.com/)

35\. [http://www.techhunger.com/](http://www.techhunger.com/)

36\. [https://www.gust.com](https://www.gust.com) \- [https://gust.com/c/blogvio](https://gust.com/c/blogvio)

37\. [http://www.cee-startups.com/](http://www.cee-startups.com/)

We plan to submit it here as well:

38\. [http://www.startupbook.co](http://www.startupbook.co)

39\. [http://www.launch.it/contact_form/1/0/contact](http://www.launch.it/contact_form/1/0/contact)

40\. [http://www.netted.net/contact-us/](http://www.netted.net/contact-us/)

41\. [http://www.minisprout.com/about/](http://www.minisprout.com/about/)

42\. [http://www.makeuseof.com/contact- team/](http://www.makeuseof.com/contact-team/)

43\. [http://www.venturevillage.eu/about- us/contact/](http://www.venturevillage.eu/about-us/contact/)

44\. [http://www.appvita.com/](http://www.appvita.com/)

45\. [http://www.webdevtwopointzero.com/](http://www.webdevtwopointzero.com/)

46\. [http://www.dzineblog.com/](http://www.dzineblog.com/)

47\. [http://www.rev2.org/](http://www.rev2.org/)

48\. [http://www.techattitude.com/contact](http://www.techattitude.com/contact)

49\. [http://www.eastist.com/](http://www.eastist.com/)

50\. [http://www.siliconallee.com/](http://www.siliconallee.com/)

51\. [http://www.en.startit.rs/](http://www.en.startit.rs/)

52\. [http://www.en.startupbusiness.it/](http://www.en.startupbusiness.it/)

53\. [http://www.blogs.wsj.com/tech-europe/](http://www.blogs.wsj.com/tech- europe/)

54\. [http://www.rudebaguette.com/](http://www.rudebaguette.com/)

55\. [http://www.venturevillage.eu/](http://www.venturevillage.eu/)

56\. [http://www.en.webrazzi.com/about/](http://www.en.webrazzi.com/about/)

57\. [http://www.sociableblog.com/contact- us/](http://www.sociableblog.com/contact-us/)

Be warned, we still think press plays a major role as a distribution channel, compared to these sites that will only bring you beta users, in the hundreds. :)

<comment><USER2> It'd be cool to see your press list and more important which of these sites have any real benefits.

<comment><USER18> Will definitely post more after launch, including this press list. We should be covered by a big player tomorrow. :-)

I'd say you need to hit the road really hard, and try to approach entities to which your product would provide real value.

For example we also found partnerships to be a great distribution channel. We approach them by showing how much value our product can bring to their service (e.g. [http://andreipotorac.roon.io/from-blogvio-with- love](http://andreipotorac.roon.io/from-blogvio-with-love) \- this is the real deal). So far it worked great with the ones we approached! This means thousands of potential users so far!

On the other hand, we help them with user acquisition since we're a platform that integrates well with publishing tools.

So:

1\. Partnerships

2\. Press

3\. Sites above

This is the order you should use when building you distribution strategy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Have you tried [http://www.LaunchSky.com](http://www.LaunchSky.com)?

19$ to pitch the idea or launch to a crowd of entrepreneurs -- you get stats, feedback, and emails -- and it's rumored that promo codes for free or super cheap submissions are as simple as emailing email@example.com :)

Full disclosure: I'm on of the guys behind LaunchSky, but we've seen a few startups use LaunchSky.com to launch their project and iterate on it, not just get feedback on an idea that doesn't exist yet.

</comment><comment><USER20> Pardon my ignorance but I see most of the suggested links from tech news/blog sites. But unless your customers are entrepreneurs and tech readers, shouldn't you launch where your customers are ? (which could be any aggregation website from farming, medicine or any other subject matter)

</comment><comment><USER21> If it's any kind of audio/music/instrument project, you can post it to one of the groups on: [http://www.reddit.com/user/diydsp/m/digi_instruments](http://www.reddit.com/user/diydsp/m/digi_instruments)

</comment><comment><USER22> Also check out [http://started.in](http://started.in) \- they are aggregating startups by location.

If you want to help gather more startups, I hear they are expanding rapidly and could certainly use your help.

</comment><comment><USER23> Hey - thanks! I did a bunch of these, and it was a great way to get started with [http://www.merchantprotector.net](http://www.merchantprotector.net)

I liked sideprojectors.com quite a lot too, thank you!

</comment><comment><USER14> And, if you are on the other side of the fence and shutting it down, please post your site here:

[http://www.reddit.com/r/shutdown](http://www.reddit.com/r/shutdown)

</comment><comment><USER24> If you're doing SaaS and are at least in public beta, please submit it to [https://starthq.com/apps/submit](https://starthq.com/apps/submit)

</comment><comment><USER25> If your product has an API, you can submit it to an API directory - [http://www.apiforthat.com/](http://www.apiforthat.com/)

(Disclaimer: I run the site)

</comment><comment><USER26> Is this list focuses on "commercial projects"? I would like also to know websites to promote your open-source initiative (like openhatch.org)

</comment><comment><USER27> I'm founder of [http://thetechblock.com](http://thetechblock.com). We're always happy to help too.

</comment><comment><USER28> Also check out [http://www.reddit.com/r/SideProject/](http://www.reddit.com/r/SideProject/)

<comment><USER29> That is a great resource! Also check out [http://breakpoint.io](http://breakpoint.io) \- show your side project to the world! [http://sideprojects.web3canvas.com/](http://sideprojects.web3canvas.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> [http://redferret.net](http://redferret.net) \- regular reviews of established and new web apps.

</comment><comment><USER31> How about Designer News? [http://news.layervault.com](http://news.layervault.com)

</comment><comment><USER32> awesome, will post [http://www.konfect.com](http://www.konfect.com) soon

</comment><comment><USER33> [http://www.octopus.org](http://www.octopus.org) \- Marketing apps only

</comment><comment><USER34> [http://startupli.st/](http://startupli.st/)

</comment><comment><USER35> Great question and links. I'v been waiting to see someone ask this.

</comment><comment><USER36> It would also be helpful to post to other posts with lists

</comment><comment><USER37> Its okay, how you did that. Much appreciated.

</comment><comment><USER38> Is there one just for bitcoin sites?

</comment><comment><USER39> http:\\\givemefootie.com Up to date football news

</comment><comment><USER7> Thanks for the links. I needed this help promoting my site product!</comment>


Apple ID Expiration Phishing Scam – Your Apple ID Is Due to Expire - <AUTHOR> http://www.ifans.net/apple-id-expiration-phishing-scam-apple-id-due-expire/ <comment><USER2> Isn't that one going around last year? Is it back?</comment>


Winning the Internet - <AUTHOR> https://pudding.cool/projects/newsletter/ <comment><USER2> Looks useful, but if ever a site needed to be viewed in elinks or eww …</comment>


Ask HN: Great online reference books? - <AUTHOR>

I just discovered Why's (Poignant) Guide to Ruby today, and it utterly fascinates me. I know I'm extremely late to the game on that one, but I've still never read a guide that's made me that enthusiastic about a language.<p>Are there any reference books that you absolutely love? I'm language-neutral: beyond the basic web languages (HTML, CSS, JavaScript/Java, PHP) I'm not familiar enough with any language to really love any one over others. Just: what if any online reference books do you love? <comment><USER2> <http://www.diveintopython.org/> and <http://swaroopch.info/text/Byte_of_Python:Main_Page> are great, i also like the PLT Scheme's documentation <http://docs.plt-scheme.org/></comment>


Tamil Bell - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamil_bell <comment><USER2> The Tamils originally wrote on dried palm leaves with a sharp scribe. So, if you didn't want to tear the leaf, you had to avoid straight lines and dots. That's why there are so many curves in the script.

Also, one of the meanings of my first name "Mani" is literally "Bell".

Source: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamil_script](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamil_script) Also: I'm Tamil.

<comment><USER3> Interesting! I always thought "Mani" mean't "Gems". At least in Sanskrit Mani is a Bead/Gem.

<comment><USER4> It means both :) . It can take on either meaning based on the context.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Out-of-place artifacts[1] are cool. A really interesting one is the Tecaxic- Calixtlahuaca head[2], a part of a terracotta figurine that was found in a pre-Columbian site in Mexico that is speculated to have Roman origin.

Learning more about this is actually kind of hard. Unfortunately, there seems to be a lot of pseudoarchaeology concerning pre-Columbian transoceanic contact.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Out-of- place_artifact](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Out-of-place_artifact)

[2] [http://www.unm.edu/~rhristov/calixtlahuaca.html](http://www.unm.edu/~rhristov/calixtlahuaca.html)

<comment><USER6> One of my favourites (being Norwegian an'all) is the Maine Penny [1].

IMHO the most likely explanation is that it is either a modern-day hoax (that is, planted at the dig site) or a result of native American trading (After all, the fact that there were Norse settlements in Newfoundland is not in doubt - so conceivably, someone got the coin there and carried it south, that someone not being Norse)

It would be fun if a Norse settlement in the US could be proven, though. We'd be happy to incorporate you as a county of good ol' Norway.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maine_penny](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maine_penny)

<comment><USER7> The first Puritan settlers of Massachusetts were from Lincolnshire, and the people of that region were still called Jutes in the 1600s.

So we already are an extension of Jutland, complete with morose temperaments and bad cooking.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > Translated, it says "Muhayideen Baksh's ship's bell".

I like language, and this inscription makes me wonder. Why write on a bell that it's a bell? I'd be less surprised if the bell had said "Muhayideen Baksh's ship".

I mean, I get that school buildings say "School" because otherwise it's really just a building. But a bell? Isn't that a bit like writing "Headmaster's Office Door" on the headmaster's office door?

I wonder whether maybe it was just an artsy kind of joke. A bit like how in import stores you can buys forks that say "FORK" on the handle.

I now imagine the crew on that ship looking up to the bell every once in a while, grinning, thinking "that Baksh fella is a tough one but at least he has some sense of humor".

<comment><USER9> Anecdotal reason: I'm Indian, and we have some high quality (and possibly expensive) utensils that have been passed down for a couple of generations. They have all have my grandad's name etched on them somewhere, as a means of identification.

<comment><USER10> That's not the issue. They're asking why the word "bell" is on there, not the person's name. The person's name makes perfect sense, at least to us English speakers. The "bell" part doesn't; it would be look your expensive utensils each having inscribed on them, "Ravi's fork" or "Ravi's spoon". You can look at it and tell it's a fork or spoon, so why would you write that piece of obvious information on there?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Theres ambiguous separation between the words on the picture.

It reads phonetically as "MugayatheenPak Udaya Kappal Mani". The translation is spot on.

Source: I'm a native speaker from Tamil Nadu.

<comment><USER12> So am I. I was surprised when it said some of the characters were in Old/Archaic Tamil but I could read the characters fairly clearly.

<comment><USER13> Also, I noticed the actual inscription on top is pronouncing something else that i cannot understand. Only the bottom inscription (translation) is comprehensible for me. I think the bell has only the top section sentence inscribed in it. Can you comprehend the top one?

<comment><USER14> I thought the top one simply has a slightly different writing style.(For ex: the thi in muhaiyatheen).. Apart from that there does seem some grammar/or other rule/mistake.. I can see 'udaiya' (or something lke it) twice. once joined with 'buks' and once before bell... Which is unusual, and makes me wonder if it was written by someone not familiar with the language..

<comment><USER14> Check that.. .After going through that grantha script([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grantha_alphabet#/media/File:G...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grantha_alphabet#/media/File:Grantha_Vowels.svg)) someone posted here.. I think the 'thi' difference can be from grantha script influence... But that 'udaiya' repeated for both name and ship is very interesting...almost like trying to be very explicit...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> You might find this interesting:

"Australia experienced a wave of migration from India about 4,000 years ago, a genetic study suggests."

[http://www.bbc.com/news/science- environment-21016700](http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-21016700)

</comment><comment><USER16> Interesting. There has to be more evidence of other nations discovering Australia and New Zealand before the ones mentioned in our history books.

Nearer to me, the Tiwi islands just off the coast of North Australia have unearthed jade figurines and artifacts that seem to originate from China or another Asian country, which date back to before the time of Captain Cook.

Update: Article on early Chinese explorers reaching Australia a long time before Dutch or English explorers - [http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2002/11/24/1037697982893.h...](http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2002/11/24/1037697982893.html)

<comment><USER17> Edited.

Was Australia a part of Indian subcontinent back then?

<comment><USER18> Actually continental drift explains a variety of phenomena that have been falsely attributed to human exploration: English is spoken in New York, for example, because the british isles used to be connected to New England. Even the names reflect this: when the landmasses separated Queen Victoria proudly viewed them as a geological projection of the British sphere of influence and christened her new islands "New England" "New York", "New Hampshire" etc.

<comment><USER19> Dunno if trolling or actually serious...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The name of the ship's owner (mohayideen) is Arabic, transliterated into Tamil script. There is a well known history of the Arab trade network throughout Southeast Asia but it's fascinating that this artifact represents a fusion of Arab and Tamil culture.

It makes me ponder whether the owner of the ship was himself cross cultural.

The Arab presence in Southern India actually predates the advent of Islam, so even it's possible (though not likely) that this artifact hails from before that time.

EDIT: TFA notes that the script is datable to 500 years old so it is probably not pre-Islamic.

<comment><USER21> Very good point. There was also significant foreign trade between Egypt, Arabia, and India/Pakistan going back at least 4000 years, so your conjecture makes a lot of sense.

Edit: I followed the footnote to vol 1 of the NZ Journal of Science where the suggest a Portuguese origin, presumably because of Portuguese saying prowess. In fact of course Tamil Nadu was an initial colonization point of many European invaders, all of whom by definition were sailing nations.

In fact who's to say that the bell didn't arrive within the century preceding Colenso's seeing it?

<comment><USER20> I would just add that Tamils were a sailing nation with trade links in Southeast Asia well before European colonization - as is clearly evident in their cultural influence on and from Southeast Asia [1]

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamil_inscriptions_in_the_Mala...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamil_inscriptions_in_the_Malay_world)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> As a Tamil, I am surprised by so many such things that I come across about our ancestors. No wonder we take a lot of pride in our culture, sometimes to the extreme.

<comment><USER23> You may be interested to know that the word 'Coromandel' is a anglicized corruption of the 'Chola mandalam'. The Cholas had a sea empire that stretched all the way up to Vietnam. You probably know that there are Hindu temples in Thailand, Cambodia and Indonesia. Wherever the Cholas landed they set up a temple with a local caretaker who later grew in power.

<comment><USER24> >You may be interested to know that the word 'Coromandel' is a anglicized corruption of the 'Chola mandalam'.

Interesting. I've heard a different version when I studied in South India, that Coromandel [1] is the anglicized version of karu manal (mannal?) meaning black sand - because there are beaches in the Coromandel Coast that have black (and also red and other color) sand. E.g. At Kanyakumari a.k.a Cape Comorin, the southernmost tip of India, you could buy small plastic bags with multi- colored sand as a souvenir. I remember at least black, normal light brown, red and purple colors.

[[1] Update: The Wikipedia article says what you say about the name Coromandel:

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

Similarly, catamaran, I've heard, is from kattu maram - tied tree (trunks). Very stable boats, and that principle is now adopted in modern high-tech catamarans too. [2]

Once when on a school picnic on that coast, I asked for and got a ride on a catamaran of the local fishermen. We went out quite a way to sea, for maybe half an hour or more. I was sitting on one of the logs in the front, with my legs nearly up to the waist, in the sea. Could feel the water rushing past my legs. Good fun.

[2]:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catamaran#History](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catamaran#History)

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Here's the picture: [http://www.teara.govt.nz/en/photograph/1135/the-tamil- bell](http://www.teara.govt.nz/en/photograph/1135/the-tamil-bell)

</comment><comment><USER13> Fascinating. I'm from Tamilnadu (where Tamil is spoken in southern most part of India) and so far we have only heard of early day explorations so far as current singapore, malaysia, cambodia etc. This news is really interesting.

<comment><USER26> Same here.. and even the script is easily readable too.. compared to some of the old works of Tamil, found in old temples.

Tamil is over 2000 years old and it is fascinating to see how the script has changed from back then to now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> A lot of people express their surprise about "other nations discovering AU, NZ, US" etc.

You do understand homo sapiens did not evolve separately on these different continents/lands right?

The actual discovery was when the first homo sapien settled in US, AU, NZ etc.... Of course some cultures managed to travel to these lands long before our history records tells us. Native Americans are not a separate species of homo sapiens, they did not evolve there separately.

<comment><USER28> Yes, but we're not talking about that here. We're talking about the interconnectivity of the ancient world. That's something completely different.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Here is the bell in the Te Papa Tongarewa collection: [http://collections.tepapa.govt.nz/Object/213397](http://collections.tepapa.govt.nz/Object/213397)

</comment><comment><USER30> This is not implausible. Maritime Southeast Asia had trading relationships [1] with aboriginal Australians in the northern coast of Australia. It is not too surprising (still very interesting) if a ship every now and then made it to New Zealand or further. The main difference between them and the European Colonial Age is that most ships did not return. Note that there was a long Indian 'colonial age' in Southeast Asia, though it was more cultural and trade exchange with naval influence rather than remote hegemony. Likewise the Western Coast of India had maritime activity with the civilizations of Middle East, Europe, and Africa, from as long ago as the Indus Civilization. The point is that coastal Indians were reasonably adept sailors and maritime trade played a major role in South Indian and Western Indian civilization(s) and culture(s). Over several thousand years, it is not too unlikely that a few ships made their way to Australia, etc.

[1] [http://blogs.bl.uk/untoldlives/2012/05/australian- aborigines...](http://blogs.bl.uk/untoldlives/2012/05/australian-aborigines- and-makassan-trepangers.html)

</comment><comment><USER31> here's some interesting speculation on this topic: [https://westhunt.wordpress.com/2013/01/15/a-three-hour- tour/](https://westhunt.wordpress.com/2013/01/15/a-three-hour-tour/)

Basically there's genetic (Y chromosome) and linguistic evidence suggesting an infusion of Indian immigration (~5000 years ago so maybe a distinct event from this). One plausible explanation is that some Dravidian seafarers crash-landed in Australia and got absorbed by the local population. From their perspective it probably would have felt like sinking into savagery.

<comment><USER32> > From their perspective it probably would have felt like sinking into > savagery.

This sentence is incongruous with the rest of your post. Why would you think such a thing?

<comment><USER31> The sentiment is lifted directly from the linked post.

It's hard to argue with given the subcontinent had agricultural, seafaring populations while Australian populations never made it past Paleolithic hunter-gathering.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamil_language](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamil_language)

</comment><comment><USER34> I think this discussion is sadly lacking a fair bit of Szukalski.

If you don't know him, he's a total weirdo. But, like so many totalitarian weirdoes, he was also a bit of a genius.

Of the mad variety. Mad, but nevertheless interesting.

So, one of his mad genius ideas is that the world has endured a number of cyclic catastrophic events, every 65k years or so, which completely obliterates civilisation and culture and replaces it with naught but refugees and a relatively clean slate. On account of The Deluge.

If you imagine that the Earth, 65k years (or so) ago might've had an Advanced Civilisation, Szukalski is gonna be right alongside, albeit way ahead of you.

One of the things he proposes is that the survivors of The Deluge have inter- mixed, around the globe, and you can see it in ancient art - common themes, originally expressed from a root culture (the 'mother tongue' of the prior civilisation), which eventually degrades over time as entropy - and the shifting oceans of The Deluge - separate us all.

Anyway, Szukalski had some things to say about sea-faring survivors whose language echoes through the ages. If you want a bit of a "Weird Art" kick, because the Tamil Bell is indeed weird art, then take a look at Szukalski. The Protong Lives!

</comment><comment><USER21> What I would like to know is _how_ Colenso got the bell. Did he purchase it, simply take it, or offer a better replacement?

Neither the Wikipedia nor a broader web search addresses this. And Colenso's own wikipedia page doesn't even mention the bell!

</comment><comment><USER35> Trincomalee would be a good base, second biggest harbor in the world. Cool to see something Sri Lanka related on HN

</comment><comment><USER36> While we're on the topic of interesting artifacts on Wikipedia, this is pretty cool:

Voynich manuscript – Undeciphered book from the 15th century

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

</comment><comment><USER37> _with a sharp scribe_

That sounds incredibly unwieldy.

<comment><USER13> More details on this context - the sharp scribe is wielded deftly so that they can write freely in the dried palm leaves. The sharp scribe is called "ezhuthaani" (where zhu is a special L sound) which literally means writing nail. The dried palm leaves are commonly referred as "olai suvadi" which literally means dry leaf book.

PS: The word Tamil itself should be pronounced "Tamizh" where zh is a special "La" sound, unique to Tamil language.

<comment><USER37> I think you mean something like 'stylus'. A scribe is a person.

<comment><USER38> A word can have more than one meanings. From [https://www.google.com/search?q=define%3Ascribe&oq=define%3A...](https://www.google.com/search?q=define%3Ascribe&oq=define%3Ascribe)

3\. a pointed instrument used for making marks on wood, bricks, etc., to guide a saw or in signwriting.

<comment><USER37> _A word can have more than one meanings_

Lies spread by Satanist band.

 _3\. a pointed instrument used for making [...]_

Communist dictionary.

<comment><USER38> \- You make a snide comment

\- Someone misinterprets it as an honest mistake and tries to explain things

\- You take on a condescending tone attempting to ^educate^ this obviously clueless person who doesn't know what word they ought to be using

\- Someone patiently points out that it is you who is wrong

\- You now use humour and pretend to be dismissive (instead of either not saying anything or acknowledging that yes, you did learn something new).

Bravo! Now everyone knows just how witty and smart you can be!

<comment><USER37> Nah. Everyone already knew.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Proud moment for a Tamizhan on HN !

<comment><USER40> _/\\_

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Am I missing some context here? How is this related to HN?

<comment><USER16> Science. Exploration. Discovery. Stretching the limits. Challenging common belief patterns... - all things that intelligent people, and those with a creative bent enjoy discussing among like minded colleagues.</comment></comment>


Uncluttered benefits of learning people's names - <AUTHOR> http://unclutterer.com/2011/01/13/uncluttered-benefits-of-learning-peoples-names/

<comment><USER2> Straight out of How to Win Friends and Influence People.

</comment><comment><USER3> How is that uncluttering? Filling your head with names of people you don't need to know is definitely clutter.

<comment><USER4> Often people think that clutter is about stuff when really, it boils down process and priorities. In that regard, getting rid of unnecessary stress is one of the goals of uncluttering your life.

Also, it isn't about filling your head with useless data -- it's about improving the quality of your interactions with people, making life easier and better for both parties.

Or, to consider from a crass perspective, humans are wired for reciprocity (viz Cialdini's "Influence"), so as the article points out, you'll get more favors, preferential treatment, and marketing opportunities from people who feel they have a connection with you.

<comment><USER3> It could very well be beneficial to you. But it doesn't make your life less complex. The more social interactions you have, the more complicated your life becomes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > _A quarter of a cow, instead of a whole cow_

Now _that_ is minimalism.</comment>


Harvard Rated Asian-American Applicants Lower on Personality Traits: Lawsuit - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/15/us/harvard-asian-enrollment-applicants.html <comment><USER2> I can't help but think that college admissions based solely on test scores (as done in India, Russia, maybe China?), and nothing else, might be the least unfair way to judge applicants.

Every admission system is unfair in some way but tests are a yardstick everyone understands and can optimize for. In India they publicly post the list of admitted students and their marks. Richer students may benefit from higher-quality test coaching but a) that happens today anyway and b) the Internet will ensure rapid dissemination of test-prep strategies for cheap or free

The other downside is it might give you a more, for lack of a better word, boring student body at the higher levels. Fewer non-academic interests and achievements because every bit of spare time in high school was spent on studying.

I thought the American system sounded better when I was a high-schooler in India with not good but not great marks ("surely _they 'd_ recognize my specialness despite my lower scores, even if these hidebound colleges in India won't!") but it does leave more room for implicit bias.

<comment><USER3> Single-gate protocols reward investment in gate-deception.

<comment><USER2> Multi-gate protocols increase amount of gate-deception investment required, making it harder only for economically- or socially-disadvantaged students to subvert them.

With a single-gate protocol gate-deception investments have diminishing returns, which could (I'm not an expert) put participants on a more level playing field.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> "Alumni interviewers give Asian-Americans personal ratings comparable to those of whites. But the admissions office gives them the worst scores of any racial group, often without even meeting them, according to Prof. Arcidiacono."

I can't imagine the feeling of working so hard through elementary school, middle school, and high school to get into an Ivy League school, only for an admissions panel to declare me "low in personality" or too introverted.

Harvard's admission criteria seem heavily based on outdated stereotypes of what makes an individual successful. I question if Ivy League schools are choosing the best applicants and by extension, how much prestige Ivy League degrees really deserve.

<comment><USER5> America: "we only want highly skilled, highly educated immigrants."

Also America: "these immigrants' children are too skilled and educated, and it's upsetting our racial quotas. We have to discriminate against them."

America - you can work here, but don't dare dream that your children will be treated equally if you're from Asia. Of course, if you're from Europe your children will be lumped into the white demographic. If you're from Africa, your children may even benefit from affirmative action meant for the descendants of American slaves. Yay racial profiling!

<comment><USER6> Harvard: there's more diversity between the races than within them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I read an article a while back that compared admissions process to a bouncer in a nightclub. Was the best description of why things are done as they are.

As a hazy summary - the prestigious institutions try to have a mix of different types of people - rich people bring resources, well connected families bring influence & contacts, people with high test scores bring hard work and intelligence, achievers in arts/sports/activities bring hard work and desire to win, alumni children bring culture, loyalty and resources. Its no coincidence that there are different routes in for these different types of people.

Its the unique mix that makes places like Harvard great. There are other schools that choose people with highest test scores - that is a different approach. Harvard has no obligation to do this. Given the track record of alumni to achieve, the Harvard approach seems to work much better if you consider routes to powerful & high achieving jobs to be the main outcome.

<comment><USER8> Yes, yes, just look at the world today, built by Harvard graduates. It is the best of all possible worlds, isn't it?

<comment><USER9> The world is built by Harvard graduates? Who?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> These sorts of subjective judgements can drive you crazy. My father (who was asian-american) had a civilian job with the United States government and a part time job with the United States navy. His civilian job, which was in the most corrupt branch of the executive branch, rated him as a poor performer personality wise and as having "no leadership potential". Nobody got the message, really since after this he took a temporary leave of absence and activated his us navy job as full time - as a captain (O6), the team he led delivered the first fully digitized, network inventory system which saved the navy on the order of billions of dollars. When he got back to his civilian job those negative reviews kept coming and he was denied promotions on those bases.

<comment><USER11> Why didn't he leave to the private sector?

<comment><USER10> It's not a thing (some people) do when you've got a nice pension coming with value that gets higher the longer you stay.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The "character and fitness" criteria has been instituted by Harvard in 1920s for a very simple purpose - to solve the "Jewish problem", i.e. too many Jews getting into Harvard. After Harvard's President A. Lawrence Lowell's proposal of outright Jewish quota met significant resistance, they had to find some way to keep the Jews out while not having outright ban. So they had "geographic diversity" and "character" criteria. And it did wonders - Jewish admission percentage fell to the coveted 15% that was the original quota target. Now the same old weapon is being deployed against the new "too many people of your kind here" target.

[http://www.businessinsider.com/the-ivy-leagues-history-of- di...](http://www.businessinsider.com/the-ivy-leagues-history-of- discriminating-against-jews-2014-12)

</comment><comment><USER13> From the horse's mouth:

      "We could fill our class twice over with valedictorians," Harvard President
      Drew Gilpin Faust told an audience at the Aspen Ideas Festival, sponsored
      by the Aspen Institute and The Atlantic, on Monday. That means admissions
      officers rely on intangibles like interesting essays or particularly unusual
      recommendations to decide who comprises the 5.9 percent of applicants who
      get in.

      Faust's top tip for raising a Harvard man or woman: "Make your children
      interesting!"

      For parents and students alike, that's both good news and bad news. The bad
      news is that of course it's much easier to say that than to actually make it
      happen, though Faust recommended encouraging children to follow their
      passions as a way to develop an interesting personality. It's much easier to
      complete a checklist, however daunting, than to actually be interesting.[1]

[1] How to Get Into Harvard

[https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/06/how- to...](https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/06/how-to-get-into- harvard/373726/)

<comment><USER14> Except being a URM (under represented minority) individual is one of the most beneficial factors for admission at elite colleges.

The statistics clearly show this.

<comment><USER15> The "statistics" don't show any such thing.

You do have to admire the intense racial resentment at work here. There's no evidence at all that these Asian Americans aren't boring cookie-cutter kids when compared to the broader pool of applicants. The headline literally reads 'Harvard admissions have a broader perspective than Alumni interviewers' ... duh. But this non-story is enough to summon up all sorts of wild accusations and intense paranoia that somehow, somewhere the blacks are being given an unfair advantage.

<comment><USER14> Of course they do. Consider this research:

[https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/04/09/new- research-...](https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/04/09/new-research-how- elite-colleges-make-admissions-decisions)

Among elite Universities that initially do a holistic review of applicants to narrow down the applicant pool, URM status is viewed as the most important factor for an applicant by 42% of the universities, equal to the number of schools that view "exceptional talent" as the most important factor. Being a URM is basically equivalent to being an "exceptionally talented" non-URM in the eyes of many elite colleges' admissions boards.

Look up average SAT scores of different ethnic groups admitted to elite colleges as well. The disparity is glaring.

Now, we can argue that giving URM's a leg up in admissions is justified. I'm willing to have that discussion. But let's be realistic about the facts here.

<comment><USER15> > Look up average SAT scores of different ethnic groups admitted to elite > colleges as well. The disparity is glaring.

Yes, everybody appeals to SAT scores. SAT scores are easily gamed. That's why more and more colleges are deprioritizing or abandoning them completely.

What American colleges are increasingly uninterested in are excellent test- takers. Nobody is persuaded that students who are able to grind out excellent numbers (usually with the help of an army of private tutors) will actually add anything new to the university. This "anti-number bias" as I've heard it called is just that -- an anti-number bias. There's absolutely no evidence that minorities are gaining some extraordinary advantage from this process.

> But let's be realistic about the facts here.

There are no "facts" here. This story and your link introduce nothing new. You're making a circular argument: "Going by the SAT scores which colleges are discounting more and more the best test takers are being discounted more and more." Duh.

<comment><USER16> "Research suggests that the SAT, widely used in college admissions, is primarily a measure of g. A correlation of .82 has been found between g scores computed from an IQ test battery and SAT scores. In a study of 165,000 students at 41 U.S. colleges, SAT scores were found to be correlated at .47 with first-year college grade-point average after correcting for range restriction in SAT scores (the correlation rises to .55 when course difficulty is held constant, i.e., if all students attended the same set of classes). [1][2]"

[1] Sackett et al. 2008

[2] Frey & Detterman 2003

<comment><USER17> >g scores computed from an IQ test battery and SAT scores.

That's the problem IQ tests can be gamed as well. There's ample research showing you can study to improve your score on IQ tests.

<comment><USER16> And yet...

"Psychometricians generally regard IQ tests as having high statistical reliability.[9][56] A high reliability implies that – although test-takers may have varying scores when taking the same test on differing occasions, and although they may have varying scores when taking different IQ tests at the same age – the scores generally agree with one another and across time."

"Clinical psychologists generally regard IQ scores as having sufficient statistical validity for many clinical purposes.[22][57][58] In a survey of 661 randomly sampled psychologists and educational researchers, published in 1988, Mark Snyderman and Stanley Rothman reported a general consensus supporting the validity of IQ testing. "On the whole, scholars with any expertise in the area of intelligence and intelligence testing (defined very broadly) share a common view of the most important components of intelligence, and are convinced that it can be measured with some degree of accuracy.""

<comment><USER17> None of what you cited has anything to do with sustained practice.

IQ tests are generally accurate across a large population because very few people are practicing them, not because practice doesn't improve scores.

If you provided widespread incentive for people to practice IQ tests like colleges do for the SAT, they would cease to be an accurate measure of intelligence.

<comment><USER16> You admit IQ tests are generally accurate, and I showed that SAT scores are strongly correlated with IQ. Thus SAT scores are also generally accurate. So what's your point?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This case is important because many elite American colleges have quietly copied Harvard's 15% cap on Asian students.

</comment><comment><USER19> I wonder if HN news algo reads my mind. In another news thread, I just pulled out the fact that Xiaomi electronics makes overwhelmingly superior gadgetry, yet can't break through the stigma of Asian "uncoolness"

Situation for them is pretty much as it was with Toyota in its first decade in US, and them being greatly puzzled why Americans were so bent on buying Buicks over "twice as cheap, and twice as better" Corollas, and had total nil appetite for the supreme Corona.

To authors of comments in line of "being a minority is actually a boon, statistics wise" I can say this: on the other side of "social invisibility" lies life of being "trophy" talent/socialite acquaintance/romantic partner, and, the most dreaded one, the life of diversity hire.

<comment><USER20> Xiaomi created a stigma for themselves, by shamelessly copying Apple in everything including presentation style. [1] So I can't really take them seriously (doesn't help that I don't like Apple either).

[1] [https://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/05/business/global/in- china-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/05/business/global/in-china-an- empire-built-by-aping-apple.html?_r=0)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> The entire tech industry would not exist if we judged people based on this:

In its admissions process, Harvard scores applicants in five categories — "academic," "extracurricular," "athletic," "personal" and "overall." They are ranked from 1 to 6, with 1 being the best.

</comment><comment><USER22> Well, why discriminate on US citizenship for that matter, if academic merit is the main criterion. Americans of any kind would be less than 10% of the student body.

Harvard does not claim to be a purely academic meritocracy.

</comment><comment><USER23> Just thinking out loud, but I would posit that high grades/scores and "personality scores" tend to be negatively correlated, regardless of race/or within a particular race (just as i would hazard that academics and athletic achievement are often negatively correlated). e.g. the kids with highest gpa's in a school are often not the most outgoing.

Has anyone tried to control for this?

</comment><comment><USER24> RadioLab ran an interesting episode about the person behind this lawsuit and other lawsuits against affirmative action in schools. His activism a double edged sword. [https://www.wnycstudios.org/story/more-perfect- plaintiffs/](https://www.wnycstudios.org/story/more-perfect-plaintiffs/)

</comment><comment><USER25> Meanwhile uchicago decides to ditch sat [http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/ct- univers...](http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/ct-university- chicago-sat-act-20180614-story,amp.html#click=https://t.co/rlHyJ6uZFB)

<comment><USER26> That doesn't mean they are doing anything in a less evidence-based manner. They may have simply devised a superior empirical instrument; of course, if they have done so, then it ought be demonstrable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I guess the more woolly selection criteria are there so that racial discrimination can be conducted, otherwise the student population would be overwhelmingly asian with a large white minority?

<comment><USER5> Nah it would be more like UC Berkeley, which is forbidden from using racial quotas by California law. Still less than half Asian.

In fact the Asian numbers at Berkeley are probably inflated due to Asian students being discriminated against elsewhere (like Harvard) and going to Berkeley instead, so if _all_ the universities stopped discriminating, the numbers would average out to lower than Berkeley's current demographic.

<comment><USER28> Also - Asian Americans comprise a larger percentage of California's population.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> It is time to phase out Affirmative Action, it not only hurt high achieving minorities but also those minorities that it is supposed to help.

There are so many times where I have heard indirect comments that so and so got in only because he is the right minority. I see there is a lot resent among those who say they would have made it if it wasn't for AA.

Trump is direct result of this resentment, and it will only get worse if we don't address this issue.

</comment><comment><USER30> There's a similar issue going on at the NYC elite public schools like Stuyvesant and Bronx Science. Mayor De Blasio is pushing to drop the entrance exams for those schools pretty much for the exact same reason. This guy discusses it in this Youtube video: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QixRuK68lk4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QixRuK68lk4)

</comment><comment><USER31> Why does a university have a personality test?

<comment><USER32> The best way I've been able to find to think about this is the fundamental axiom of geopolitics, which is basically tribalism defined mathematically. People want to work with and help others who are closer to them, who they feel are neighbors, brothers. This gets more and more true the more money and resources you have.

While you and I are more tribally identified with Asian Americans, America's upper crust considers them a threat. An elite university is a gateway into the upper crust, so it makes tribal sense for them to limit their access on grounds that to everyone else looks blatantly racist but doesn't really _feel_ that way to them.

If I had to wager a guess, I imagine that the upper crust justifies this morally by saying that without Harvard and other elite schools, _no_ Asians would get to climb that ladder. And also to note that not even the paragons of democracy, the Greeks, were immune to tribal identification and social stratification and racist policies to enforce them. Sparta was especially egregious in this regard.

From Harvard's perspective, in order to maintain their prestigious reputation, they _have_ to cater to the tribal whims of the upper class, even if they don't want to. Otherwise Harvard, well, wouldn't be Harvard anymore, the prestige will move on to other universities that are willing to play ball. Remember, it's not us that determines Harvard's prestige status, it's the elites. Expect Harvard to dream up an endless array of subjective metrics that pay lip service to inclusivity while in practice serving exclusive goals.

I believe that if we succeed in forcing an inclusivity agenda onto the Ivy League, then it'll just cause the elites to make even more ultra-exclusive educational institutions and send their kids there, revoking not just Harvard's, but the whole Ivy Leagues' cool card. While this will democratize Harvard, it will ultimately increase stratification and inequality.

Tragedy of the commons writ large.

<comment><USER33> If Harvard admission criteria leave out the best applicants to other colleges, and they go on to create powerful companies like Google in large number, will Harvard's prestige decrease despite continued support from the elites?

Doing well in tech entrepreneurship needs brilliance more than great personality and political connections (they should be above a level but you don't need a very high level of them).

Politics is still the surest route to power but billionaires are also powerful and have longer influence. If next generation moguls are educated elsewhere, the colleges with more merit based criteria should emerge as more elite.

<comment><USER32> People that can become successful despite the school they go to are classic social climbers and obviously the school they go to would benefit from having those social climbers go there. But the relative benefit to the organization of one successful alum is miniscule compared to the benefit that the school has on _every single matriculant_.

A university's entire goal is to empower _anyone_ to succeed. That's the whole reason they exist. If Harvard's reputation as a gateway to elite society is lost, society doesn't gain another one elsewhere. It's just lost. People that could succeed without college will still succeed. It's all those people that _couldn 't_ have succeeded without college, that went to college and gained the benefit of having an education there, that will lose that opportunity.

Imagine a world in which Harvard is only slightly better than Georgia State. That's what's at stake here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> What Harvard is trying to do is admit the people who will be national and global leaders 30 years from now, not the people who will get the best grades at Harvard. Since the country's future leaders won't be 60% Asian it doesn't make sense for their class to be either.

<comment><USER35> > the country's future leaders won't be 60% Asian

huh? what? what scientific reason do you have for believing such a thing?

<comment><USER34> It's not a scientific reason, it's historical reasons. Look at the history of the US. 30 years from now it isn't going to be a country run by its 5% Asian population.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> There may be racial differences in personality, but it is implausible that as the proportion of Asians in the high-achieving student population rises, their personalities get just worse enough that the fraction of Asian students at Harvard stays about the same. Harvard admits this when it says that what brings the Asian fraction down to 18% is "demographic".

Elite universities are often accusing the broader society of racism, when in fact they are some of the most blatant perpetrators of racial discrimination.

<comment><USER36> What always gets lost in this debate though is the fact that grades and SAT scores aren't especially meaningful or important. Given that we've had Asians and Jews freaking out all week and making dogwhistle attacks against blacks/hispanics because of the Stuy admissions issue, the fact that these so- called metrics aren't inherently any better or more fair than a personality test or whatever somehow always gets lost in the mix.

That's not to say that schools should discriminate against Asians, they shouldn't, but people also shouldn't hold up tests and GPA as some sort of beacon of fairness and meritocracy.

<comment><USER10> Why do you assume that Asians are only good at posting test scores and grades?

Those scores are being talked about because of all the criteria they are the measurable ones, so you can use them as a baseline. Asian Americans do extracurricular activities just like everyone else does.

<comment><USER36> > Why do you assume that Asians are only good at posting test scores and > grades?

Not something I said or implied. I was purely talking about the responses to the NYC admissions thing on Facebook, the NYC subreddit, etc.

> Those scores are being talked about because of all the criteria they are the > measurable ones

They're not measurable, they just have numbers attached to them. You can attach numbers to a personality test just as easily.

<comment><USER37> Two people solving a maths problem draw upon a system of acquired knowledge that is uncorrelated with their gender, age, ethnicity and sexual orientation. If they get identical answers, they are graded identically.

>You can attach numbers to a personality test just as easily.

Please, do propose this novel test. Shouldn't take you too long..

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> This is newspeak for "Asians do not score well on parameters that don't matter in real life".

Asian student community is remarkably focused on real results instead of pointless activism and social justice wars. Partly the reason they are high achievers in real life where as most kids who "do well on personality traits" turn out to be losers.

<comment><USER39> > "parameters that don't matter in real life"

Asian Americans are the least likely group in the US to be promoted to management. [https://hbr.org/2018/05/asian-americans-are-the-least- likely...](https://hbr.org/2018/05/asian-americans-are-the-least-likely-group- in-the-u-s-to-be-promoted-to-management)

<comment><USER38> This has more to do with age and Chinese Exclusion Act. Most of the Indian/Chinese people are young and not in the age group where they will become CEOs. You will see a rapid increase in Indian/Chinese CEOs in next 10 years. As second generation Indians and Chinese would reach the age group of CEOs.

Asians are dominating US colleges they will dominate US executives by 2040.

Of course some of them might go back to India and China.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> >"[Harvard] lashed out at the founder of Students for Fair Admissions, Edward Blum, accusing him of using Harvard in an effort to orchestrate a challenge to race-conscious admissions that would go to the Supreme Court."

I feel that in 100 years we will look back on quotes like this and shake our heads at institutions like Harvard actually defending "race conscious admissions".

Reward people that do well and hold them up as examples for other people to follow.

Racial discrimination must end.

<comment><USER40> >Reward groups that do well

And what does that mean? Using GPA or standardized test scores as the _only_ criteria? If I have 10 people in the 99th percentile of test scores but I only have 5 seats, do I _really_ think the upper 5 who beat the lower 5 by a handful of points are the "best" fit, or are there other factors that might influence my decision?

To me, these is like taking NFL players only based on their raw sprint and lift stats...yah, it's important...but it's in no way a firm indicator of "best".

<comment><USER14> There are many ways to judge someone aside from "race", whatever race really means anyway. Race should have nothing to do with it. It shouldn't be part of the equation.

That's the point. We don't have to restrict ourselves to test scores and GPA.

Just don't be racist.</comment></comment></comment>


Learning Swift: Building an App from Start to Finish - <AUTHOR> http://www.airpair.com/swift/complete-guide-to-swift

<comment><USER2> I'm interested to see what Swift adoption will look like in the App Store going forward (now that it's at 1.0 [1]) especially on iOS vs. OS X. I wonder if it will be a glacial Carbon -> Cocoa style shift, or move faster thanks to the now-much-larger install base.

1\. [https://developer.apple.com/swift/blog/?id=14](https://developer.apple.com/swift/blog/?id=14)

<comment><USER3> Swift is going to gain quick adoption. Why wouldn't developers move to a more modern language? The fact that you can easily integrate Swift with ObjC means it's easy to start. All the pre-release blogging is a good sign. I've gathered almost 100 links. I've got more that I'll add after my vacation. [http://www.h4labs.com/dev/ios/swift.html](http://www.h4labs.com/dev/ios/swift.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I looked into Objective C a bit last year but couldn't wrap my head around a lot of conventions. Swift on the other hand I'm looking forward to. That tutorial looks like it'll help :)

</comment><comment><USER5> Interesting to see the migration process of an app from Objective C to Swift. I didn't know that an app can include both codebases at once.

<comment><USER3> It was covered in the main WWDC video. There's an Apple iBook. You can find the book on Apple's site.

[https://developer.apple.com/swift/resources/](https://developer.apple.com/swift/resources/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Badass tutorial. :)

</comment><comment><USER7> nice tutorial! been looking forward to getting started with some Swift</comment>


37signals is to Rails as X to Django - <AUTHOR>

Find X. <comment><USER2> What about Lawrence Journal world site because it was with site that Django was born

<comment><AUTHOR> ljworld.com, lawrence.com - very nice but I thing this are not Django killer apps. Do we still wait for one?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> <http://www.lawrence.com/>

</comment><comment><USER4> Pwnce ? Not anymore though...

</comment><comment><USER5> everyblock ?

<comment><AUTHOR> That's the first thought. Something more "useful" (application rather than media site).</comment></comment>