Toddlers who use touchscreens show attention differences - <AUTHOR> https://www.bath.ac.uk/announcements/toddlers-who-use-touchscreens-show-attention-differences/ <comment><USER2> So, per this page:

"The study followed them over the next 2.5 years, bringing them into the lab at 18 months and 3.5 years. At the 18-month and 3.5-year visits, toddlers took part in a computer task in which they were trained to search for a red apple amongst a varying number of either blue apples (easy search), or blue apples and red apple slices (difficult search). An eye tracker monitored their gaze and visually rewarded the child when they found the red apple, allowing them to perform the task even though they were too young to verbally describe what they were doing."

No discussion as to any other effect of screen use. Why did this need study? Humans who use a thing more often are better at working with thing?

Better studies on kids with screen time focuses on spatial development: [https://digitalcommons.liu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1...](https://digitalcommons.liu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1002&context=post_coundfpub)

"Greater daily digital usage was associated with lower visual spatial performance. Spending even small amounts of time daily with integrated technology was associated with lower WPPSI-IV overall intelligence test scores, and visual spatial scores. Those with the least amount of resources are at the most risk for lower visual spatial abilities"

<comment><USER3> Your "better" study is not an experiment and its conclusions are not supported by empirical evidence. If it were true that usage of touchscreens cause lower intelligence test scores, we would have seen this show up as a population-wide reduction in scores as touchscreens became widely available. No such effect can be observed. Instead, the children who were neglected with random household items to play with by themselves or TVs to watch by themselves are now neglected with touchscreens to play with by themselves, and studies such as yours misattribute the effects of childhood neglect to touchscreen usage.

I agree that this study doesn't measure anything useful, but in my circles, I have heard of and seen children younger than 2 years old learn to read by playing touchscreen games and children younger than 3 learn the names of states, capitals, and other trivia from playing touchscreen games. Achieving that is possible without touchscreens, but it would require an incredible amount of work from the caretaker.

<comment><USER4> > Your "better" study is not an experiment and its conclusions are not > supported by empirical evidence.

I think their method does count as a _natural experiment_ and as such does have empirical evidence. From the article:

"Preschoolers from a 2010 study (612 children) were compared to preschoolers from a 2014 study (492 children) because of the digital explosion into everyday life that occurred between the two time periods. Television viewing patterns have remained similar over time, but technological device usage has increased."

> If it were true that usage of touchscreens cause lower intelligence test > scores, we would have seen this show up as a population-wide reduction in > scores as touchscreens became widely available.

Exposure in formative years is vastly different than adult exposure. The affected cohort in the study is now only in middle school and population wide effects will have a lagged appearance.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> One interesting thing I noticed is my kids who have grown up with touchscreens think that everything is a touchscreen. One of them even tried to swipe one of those adverts that's made of a big flatscreen. What confuses them is that some flatscreens aren't touchscreens, eg my macbook, while most of the smaller screens like phones and tablets are.

Overall I'd say it's pretty hard to stay conservative about exposing them to screens. They're all over the place now, if I don't give them one they'll want mine. Plus their friends see them everywhere, too. I'm trying to at least steer the screen time towards useful things like math and coding, but it's not always easy.

I have this scary feeling that how you spent your screen time as a kid of this generation (current children) is going to be one of the major determinants of your life. You can use the relatively new power of having all the world's knowledge at your fingertips, or you can use your time looking at cat pictures. The difference is going to magnify the natural differences that occured in previous generations, as the kids who want to learn about stuff can teach themselves while there's never been a better way to waste time for kids who are inclined that way.

<comment><USER6> > One interesting thing I noticed is my kids who have grown up with > touchscreens think that everything is a touchscreen

I've talked to teachers who said that they've started seeing young children with picture books doing the zoom in/out pinching motion on pages.

<comment><USER7> Ouch... that's kind of bleakly sad. Reminds me of the video of a very inebriated old Polish man doing a breathalizer test who mistakenly takes a swig of the device (instead of blowing into it) and then promptly falling over. We are drunk on information.

<comment><USER8> _> Ouch... that's kind of bleakly sad._

Early versions of iOS were rife with skeuomorphism. Is it sad that iBooks displayed your books on a wooden shelf and played page-turn animations that look like paper, or is it just an application of existing skills and knowledge to a different technology?

Paper books are obsolete. Some people think that they aren't obsolete because they're using tiny low-res monitors or don't know how to use a document manager or haven't used an Apple Pencil, but digital text is just better. I don't care whether young people know what to do with a paper book, but I do care that they know how to interact effectively with text. I'm far more perturbed that schools waste countless person-hours teaching cursive handwriting, but most don't teach typing.

<comment><USER9> Partial damage to a paper book leaves the rest of it functional. Partial damage to a digital book leaves it unable to boot.

<comment><USER10> Partial damage to a paper book leaves you with a partially damaged book that costs as much time and money as a new one to replace.

Restoring/downloading a new copy of a partial damaged digital book takes less time than it took me to type up this reply.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is a shamefully clickbatey title from the University press office!

To quote the article, "...We are currently unable to conclude that the touchscreen use caused the differences in attention".

<comment><USER12> Well, maybe that's also a relieving result that use of tablet is not causing harm at this area, if not helped. Which I believed strongly as long as the material is carefully curated for education not just youtube Kids. Even science channel video is better than youtube kids.

<comment><USER11> The "not causing harm" being good is a very fair point!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is just a press release and I haven't read the full paper, but from this top-level summary it seems like it could also be construed as "toddlers who have a higher exposure to touchscreens are better at using touchscreens later on." This feels like it could just be a function of practice, or perhaps familiarity with computers (not sure whether they controlled for computer use - did the "non-touchscreen" kids use computing devices in general as much as the "touchscreen" kids?), not attention necessarily.

</comment><comment><USER14> The headline is a little misleading - from the article itself.

"Dr Ana Maria Portugal, main researcher on the project points out "We are currently unable to conclude that the touchscreen use caused the differences in attention as it may also be that children who are generally more attracted to bright, colourful features seek out touchscreen devices more than those who are not.""

</comment><comment><USER15> For this little gain, at what cost to the future growth of the kid? Attention span? Ability to focus on anything other than small screens? Social ability? This research should really address the pro/con for the kid in the long run rather than just benefit of finding target using their fingers.

<comment> the-pigeon The opposite can argued too.

That children who don't use tablets have shorter attention spans and worst social skills. The "natural is better" argument is not research based. Society has long preached that things like reading books is great for kids but it's entirely unnatural just like tablets.

Generally research in this area has been extremely biased against electronics. You also have to control for the type of activities they are doing on the tablet.

For example the mental stimulation when playing an educational Daniel Tiger game is completely different than watching a toy sales driven TV show like Transformers. Both can be done on a tablet though.

<comment><USER16> > Society has long preached that things like reading books is great for kids

Wasn't always the case, Plato felt it would dull your memory.

"They will cease to exercise memory because they rely on that which is written, calling things to remembrance no longer from within themselves, but by means of external marks."

<comment><USER17> Plato was probably right. As access to information has become ubiquitous, we increasingly don't need to rely on our memories. Ancient scholars would be able to recite long passages from memory. The printing press made that unnecessary if you could access a book. Now Google has made even books obsolete for some types of information. The internet is the world's memory.

What Plato missed was that our ability to do higher order reasoning and synthesis has grown by leaps with books and now the internet. That's a pretty good trade-off for losing some memory.

<comment> crooked-v 'Recite long passages from memory' is still entirely a thing when there's a practical reason (actors in stage plays) or somebody's just really into something (see people who can quote literally everything in several movies from memory). It's just no longer the first step that comes before anything else.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I was thinking "attention" as in "attention deficit", but this test was "find a red apple amongst blue apples". They're not sure if finding red apples amongst blue apples is beneficial though:

>> "What we need to know next is whether this attention difference is advantageous or detrimental to their everyday life."

<comment><USER19> I'm sure that if they found that touchscreen users are _worse_ at this task, they'd have little difficulty declaring this detrimental to their everyday life.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I personally know kids that don't eat their food unless they are in front of a screen (touch or not), because the only thing that captures their attention are colorful blobs. I find it very detrimental to the kids' mental growth because they don't observe things outside of a screen.

</comment><comment><USER21> "12-month-old infants who had different levels of touchscreen usage"

Why the fuck would you have infants with 'levels of touchscreen usage' at 12 month?

<comment><USER22> While we didn't just hand my son a device, the reality is he grabbed our phones at 1 year and played with it. Even in those quick grabs, it was intuitive enough to watch him play with pulling down the notification drawer or tapping on things. I would say that's minimal interaction but certainly a different level then someone who plops a 1 year old in front of an ipad or one that has no electronics in the home.

<comment><USER23> To elaborate on this, very young human beings have a fascinating aptitude for figuring things out. They aren't very good at it, or at least lack the motor skills to apply what they learn, but you can tell that there is a lot of cerebral activity happening as they try to puzzle things out. So when a puzzle presents itself, such as "why is mom staring at this glowing rectangle so much?" they will will want to try and find out why.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> One important thing to keep in mind with any headline like this: twin studies have consistently shown that family environment contributes a negligible component to the cross-sectional variation of long-term adult outcomes.

Consider any sort of child-rearing decision. In this case letting your toddler use an iPad or not. Is it within the realm of normal variation you'd find between families? In this case, yes: some families let kids have a lot of screen time, and some families strictly limit screen time.

Well then, it almost certainly will have essentially zero impact on long-term adult outcomes. It may have a transitory short-term impact. Analogously, reading to kids may lead to learning to read at an earlier age. But twin studies tell us that by adulthood, the effect regresses to the mean. I.e. reading to kids a lot won't give them higher reading comprehension when they grow up.

</comment><comment><USER25> > The study followed them over the next 2.5 years, bringing them into the lab > at 18 months and 3.5 years. At the 18-month and 3.5-year visits, toddlers > took part in a computer task in which they were trained to search for a red > apple amongst a varying number of either blue apples (easy search), or blue > apples and red apple slices (difficult search). An eye tracker monitored > their gaze and visually rewarded the child when they found the red apple, > allowing them to perform the task even though they were too young to > verbally describe what they were doing.

First off, this is brilliant use of eye tracking. I could see eye tracking being so useful for learning, such as tracking attention, knowing when to need a break, etc. Eye tracking is super useful in user testing - for example I was watching some user testing at a major corporation and we used eye tracking. We instructed the user to minimize the app and then open it again, and we noticed that when it was in the systray, people really got confused. It was really easy to see because we could see where their eyes were scanning. Using eye tracking for people who can't speak (for any reason, maybe physical or mental injury or disability, and here age / language barrier) could be huge.

The attention differences are certainly interesting, although I wonder how much of it might be training to use touchscreens, or the idea of a screen that it might change at any time, without related motion. This is completely unnatural, as you would normally think something will change when something walks over to it, or moves slightly. Fixed objects tend to fade more into the background of our mental landscape, which is the basis of a lot of sleight of hand. Like removing something when you can't see it. It'd be interesting to compare against something that doesn't change when you interact with it, like television screens. (is it the touch part, or the screen part?)

I also wonder how touchscreens are sometimes differently interpreted by animals, kind of like mirrors are. For example, some cats seem to think that the little toy apps are under them, or inside of them, or are just generally confused. It's really quite fascinating.

<comment><USER26> As the study notes:

'Dr Ana Maria Portugal, main researcher on the project points out "We are currently unable to conclude that the touchscreen use caused the differences in attention as it may also be that children who are generally more attracted to bright, colourful features seek out touchscreen devices more than those who are not."'

This is an important confounding factor. My opinion is that toddlers often spend time with media that are brighter and more colorful than the surrounding environment, e.g. animated videos for children or educational apps for young children. A better study would take that into account.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> The narrative around screen time seems to have been totally overthrown by the coronavirus. A year ago the health authorities were recommending limiting childrens' screen time. Now at a public school in California our children have _mandatory_ three hours of screen time per day.

It just goes to show that these recommendations are not really based on science. It's more like they are based on guesses by reasonable people when the science isn't really that confident one way or the other. My personal suspicion is that some forms of screen time, like video calls with family or educational apps, are good for kids. And some forms, like watching TV, are bad for them.

<comment><USER28> I don't think that's true. As a parent, all my decisions are made by balancing a host of factors. Pre covid I limited screens because they should be talking, reading, playing with other kids, being active, etc. with covid, many of those alternatives were taken away so I've had to be flexible in the short term to again balance everything so my kids can interact with other kids and get access to learning opportunities. Post covid, I'll do my best to limit screens again.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> > There has been growing concern that toddler touchscreen use may negatively > impact their developing attention but this fear is not based on empirical > evidence."

That isn't surprising to me: there are no inherent properties attached to a touch screen that would affect attention. _But_ there are plenty of fast paced games and videos that could, and those _tend_ to be viewed through touch screens. So I still wonder about that (though it's not all that different to watching too much TV, something people have discussed for decades now)

<comment><USER30> Adverts aside, TV shows usually require 10s of minutes of concentration on a connected subject thread (depends a lot on the programmes of course). Touchscreen activities are usually shorter with brief reactive interactions?

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> There's already a lot of discussions re: other aspects of screen time here, so I'd just like to touch on exactly what is on this study -- ability to search for things faster after "screen training". (like faster reflexes)

Before anyone takes this study and says "so screen time has positive influence" and gives it to their 1 year-old, I'd like to give an anecdote from my own experience. I grew up in the 80s and my family was one of the earliest to own an NES. According to my parents, I started playing the NES when I was 4 or 5. I have some of the fastest reflexes (when it comes to video games or similar activities) of any friends I know; and I played in fighting games tournaments in college. This is a genre of competitive games where millisecond-reflexes can determine the outcome of the game. (of course, I was a low tier tournament player and there are tons of world class players way better and faster than me)

I'd say my takeaway is that sure, maybe that kind of "screen training" helps with reflexes and attention, but you don't have to start _that_ early. If you start at 5 years old instead of 1 year old, you might just get as much of the benefits, without the down sides of vision problems etc. that comes with having screen time too early.

</comment><comment><USER32> Somewhat related, kindergartners cannot sit upright all day and do not have the wrist strength to learn writing anymore. Many 5 year olds cannot grasp a pencil with their thumb and forefingers. They hold it more like a three year old, in a full hand grasp. Also, by mid-day the children cannot sit up any longer and tend to slump over in the chairs, laying against the table. These are not sleep deprived teens, they're usually full of energy at that age. The teachers told us that the first few months of kinder include an exercise regimen of core and wrist strength building just so they can sit up and hold a pencil. For instance, one of the exercises is a modified "cat cow" position (familiar to yogis).

Screen time is leading to more than attention differences, it appears it leads to physiological differences as well.

</comment><comment><USER33> This made me think of studies that correlate growing up playing fast-paced video games, shooters specifically if I recall, with better driving down the road (drumroll).

This correlates with my own experience, especially as I transitioned to defensive driving in my mid 20s. I am always keenly aware of what nearby cars are doing, especially on the highway, and have become great at anticipating driver stupidity. Things like a slight steering wiggle before trying to cut across multiple lanes to make an exist. I've averted countless accidents with this heightened awareness.

And on the other hand, there were multiple kids in high school who would ended up having 2-3 accidents in their first year of driving. Obviously there are tons of factors involved but I like to think that my devotion to CS and TFC weren't a complete waste of time.

</comment><comment><USER34> I notice a common theme in the comments: We're tech people (some even want high engagements for _their_ apps) yet we're concerned of our kids' screen time. I'm in the same boat.

Maybe because we're from generation(s) where screen is unnatural (except TV) and we want our kids to have the same positive, "natural", experience like ours.

But I wonder a few generations forward, maybe the future parents will not have the same aversion like ours since they grew up with screens?

(Regardless of the answer, I'm _not_ letting my kids stare screens all day, even though that's what I do daily and how I earn my living)

<comment><USER35> I want to limit my child's screen time explicitly because my screen time was limitless, and I blew it doing dumb things and feeling more and more isolated rather than more heavily pursuing real life interests and interpersonal relationships. Excess screen time lost me a decade of guitar playing that I can never get back. I don't want my child to suffer the same crushing self realization at 25 years old.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> > "What we need to know next is whether this attention difference is > advantageous or detrimental to their everyday life."

I think they should find this out and then give the public a ring. Until then, feels like clickbait.

</comment><comment><USER37> I have an 20 month old and am planning to get him a tablet for long car rides, but that's it until he's a little older.

Most content kids consume on tablets is essentially junk food for the brain. Also, humans aren't meant to stare at screens all day long...the unknown impacts of extended screen use aren't worth it in exchange for a few lackluster benefits. Not to mention eliminating boredom from kids lives and therefore possibly cultivating a generation of extreme ADHD.

</comment><comment><USER38> There is an upside for kids 5 and older here.

My daughter has to take this standardized map test in Connecticut. It is all computer based. If you are not comfortable using the computer, you do not do well on the test.

The teacher uses this online problems site IXL to help them get use to answering the questions on the computer. This was also really helpful when everyone had to do school remotely.

Th

<comment><USER39> How does this work for young kids who can barely or can't read? Seems like it's a gateway to systemic bias.

<comment><USER38> For reading, my wife and I read to our daughter and worked on phonics using regular books.

There is really no shortcut for learning to read. You have to put in the time with your kids.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I haven't read the paper. But if the researchers were bringing in children regularly for testing involving eye tracking equipment, why not also test their ability to manipulate physical objects, recognize faces, and track faces? That all seems like low hanging fruit.

<comment><USER30> I often have this thought about research and usually assume that the answer is cost/resources.

Research seems poorly directed, like lots of ad hoc studies without cooperation and planning for how it will be used for the sector overall.

Not a research scientist; probably a very naive view. Maybe there's more higher level cooperation/symbiosis/planning/whatever than I perceive?

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Sorry, I had a lot of trouble focusing enough to read the article.

</comment><comment><USER42> I'm skeptical how insightful this study really is. They seem to have found that toddlers who have more screen time are better at using screens.

</comment><comment><USER43> Tangential question:

What is the effect of touchscreen usage by toddlers on their peripheral vision?

</comment><comment><USER44> Studies like these are pointless. Parents that give young kids touchscreens tend to not spend quality time with their kids to begin with.

<comment><USER26> It's important to understand causation. Engaged parents will still want to spend quality time with their children either way, but they will still want to know the impact. Even engaged parents let young children play with toys on their own from time to time. How are physical toys different than touchscreen "toys"?</comment></comment>


IHateCamelCase - <AUTHOR> http://www.yosefk.com/blog/ihatecamelcase.html

<comment><USER2> Lowercase i.

<comment><USER3> UpperCamelCase.

(Unless you're a real camel nazi, and don't recognize upper as valid.)

<http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?CamelCase></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Would you like a DM facility "in" HN? - <AUTHOR>

Every now and again someone says something on HN and I'd like to reply out-of-channel, but they haven't given their email address.  It would be convenient to have a service that lets me send a message to the directly without them having to leak their email address.
I envisage an opt-in service, where people register their email.  If I want to send them a DM I log in to the DM web site, enter their HN username, compose, and hit send. If the intended recipient is registered then the message is delivered from the central server to them via email.  They can reply similarly.
If they are not registered, the message is stored (for some time limit).  If they subsequently register, they can opt to have some or all messages delivered, or view them on the central site.
Would you use it? <comment><USER2> There is one in HN. It's just not enabled, except for questions about YC applications.

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting.

* Under what circumstances would you enable it?

* On a scale of -10 to 10, how much would you support an external facility such as outlined?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Wouldn't it being "opt-in" make it functionally the same as now? Where you can opt-in to including an email address in your profile? And for those worried about anonymity, it takes about 4 minutes to set up an anonymous email account and set it to forward to your primary inbox. I'd guess that most on HN have either an email that they are comfortable revealing publicly or an anonymous one.

<comment><AUTHOR> Just looking to reduce the friction. Clicking a link, typing in your email address, clicking "GO", it much easier than setting up an anonymous account. The facility could also allow one-click blocking of users, and can't be harvested. I have to change the email address in my profile reasonably often as it regularly gets harvested and transferred to spam lists.

<comment><USER4> DM messaging might open HN up to all sorts of attention it would rather not have.

Right now, (almost) all communication on it is public. If some three letter authority wants to know what's going on, they can just browse.

I'm not particularly defending the behaviour of three letter authorities. Rather, I'm pointing out one implication that comes to mind. (PG could talk to the Reddit people, for one -- our could he? -- to learn what their experience has been with DM's that exist under a similar platform model.)

As it stands, I see HN as a fairly minimal and absolute model of "opt in". If you want to be available for private messages, you get and display an email address. Or a URL. Or whatever. What that point of contact is and how it relates to your life, is up to you.

If you don't want to field private messages, for whatever reason, you just go with the status quo. No need to actively filter them out, nor to explain that no, you never read crazy_joes message or that at least you didn't take him/her seriously.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> No I would not like it.</comment>


How the CIA's Fake Vaccination Campaign Endangers Us All - <AUTHOR> https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-cia-fake-vaccination-campaign-endangers-us-all/ <comment><USER2> Details of the program: [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/jul/11/cia- fake-vacci...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/jul/11/cia-fake- vaccinations-osama-bin-ladens-dna)

The doctor was denied a lawyer and given a 33 year prison sentence. [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/may/23/doctor-bin- lad...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/may/23/doctor-bin-laden-cia- jail)

</comment><comment><USER3> Collateral damaged be damned, all for simple revenge. Thanks to U. S. actions, a generation will be skeptical of vaccines. Not exactly Nazi levels of evil, but at a minimum it gives credence to every "CIA conspiracy" out there.

But that's all old news, including TFA. What I want to know is, which heads rolled after this? Oh, none? Because we caught bin laden and "USA! USA! USA!"?

<comment><USER4> I don't think that was the reason. I think no heads rolled because heads can't roll for things like this. The CIA, at least the portion of it which conducts operations like this, has no oversight or ability to be punished whatsoever. They raise their own funding, maintain their own army, navy, and air force, and conduct operations internationally without the slightest but of input from the US government. In every way that matters except name, they are a fully autonomous international criminal cartel. We learned about the whole 'run their own army, navy, and air force and fund their own ops' stuff way back in the 80s when Oliver North testified before Congress (which is on YouTube buts its hours and hours of testimony)... and nothing was done. I don't think it's an exaggeration to refer to them as the single biggest threat to democracy that exists. They actively prop up dictators in order to prevent democratic movements from gaining control in many countries because they fear democratically elected leaders in those places might not be pro-American. At least I think that's why they do it. It might just be because the dictators give them a place where they can hide drugs or whatever.

<comment><USER5> That's just a (rather cynical) conspiracy theory.

While there are severe (and problematic) limits to judicial oversight of these programs, the CIA et al are subject to oversight by the executive (i. e. the presidency). While there were times in the past when the three-letter agencies had too much power to be effectively controlled (the J. Edgar Hoover era mostly), the possibility of a de facto coup is rather remote today.

Specifically, President Obama could have easily prosecuted the torturers. His decision not to do so was motivated by the long-standing custom of not using criminal prosecution against your predecessors.

More recently, just a handful of Republicans doing the right thing would have prevented Gina Haspel from becoming CIA chief, which would have been a rather encouraging message.

Yes, neither of those things happened. But the reason was spinelessness and political expediency, not fear of the "deep state".

<comment><USER4> De facto coup? I didn't say anything about anything remotely like that... How about when did Congress or the CIA in Washington, DC approve the purchase of the Predator drones run for years in Pakistan and Yemen before people got wind of it and they signed up with the military to make the program semi-legit? They didn't. They just decided to buy a bunch of drones and start tele-killing people on their own. They got ahold of the drones somehow, and went for it. Who in DC approved the fake vaccination program? No one did. Permission was never asked for.

I'm not afraid of a 'deep state' or anything of the sort. I think it's just a bunch of people who realized that they have carte blanche to do literally whatever they want, and that no government on the planet can or will bring them to task. So they do what they want. There's certainly still a legitimate portion of the agency, those at Langley and all who run normal intelligence operations, but they don't seem to have much connection and certainly no control over those operating however they please with no regard for law.

I don't actually know how they jive their multitude of active operations destroying democratic movements (which are not conspiracy theories, I'm only referring to the documented ones). I presume, very cynically I suppose, that they have concluded that democracy is a nice story to tell the naive civilian children, but that in harsh reality there has to be 'hard men' in the shadows making 'hard decisions' and putting boots on some throats to construct and protect the artificial bubble of happiness the US enjoys. I think, very not cynically, that they are absolutely and completely wrong on this mark and that they are profoundly immoral and destructive to the world in general, including the US in their misguided quest. Democracy is right and works ok enough. The alternatives are indefensible philosophically.

When I hear things like about the drone program, I never understand why there isn't more controversy. The CIA is a CIVILIAN organization. They are in no way military or affiliated with the military. They have no mandate to execute military operations or use military resources, equipment, or tactics. It would seem to me that they committed some sort of fundamental and very cardinal error there...

<comment><USER6> I don't know about most of your claims, but I do know about the drone program and you are so completely wrong about that it makes me question the rest of your unsourced statements.

The CIA's drone program had direct approval including explicit budget line items since the Clinton administration.

 _the consequent need for repairs prompted a budgetary row between the Air Force and CIA, with, in hindsight, the measly sum of $3 million dollars further delaying the project and prompting direct budget amendments from the Clinton White House in the summer of 2000._

The CIA's use of drones for assignations started with direct presidential approval: _The bureaucratic deadlock was broken on September 17, 2001 when Bush signed a finding that created a secret list of high-value targets that the CTC was authorized to kill_

[https://www.lawfareblog.com/origins-drone- program](https://www.lawfareblog.com/origins-drone-program)

<comment><USER6> I can't edit this now, but I'd be pretty interested in the reasoning behind the downvotes.

It's fine to be cynical about the CIA of course, but is it just that people don't like the CIA and so they downvote people pointing out actual completely sourced facts which make the CIA look just slightly less terrible?

Because I think the inability to reconcile history with what people's views are is a pretty interesting thing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Scientific American doesn't like dating articles, but this is clearly old, Obama-era.

And yeah, it's predictable blowback. Especially given the conspiracy theory that HIV was intentionally spread through vaccination programs.

<comment><USER8> FYI the date is in the "Rights & Permissions" link at the bottom of their articles. In this case it's dated May 1, 2013. The beginning of the article does note that the events happened ~2 years before the publishing date though.

<comment><USER7> OK, thanks.

But whatever, the title needs to include (2013).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I have mixed feelings. I feel like vaccinations are important and choosing to use that for cover is risky.

At the same time any covert operation someone will pose as someone they are not or use their role in a way ... covertly. If someone discovers this and decides to take action against everyone or every organization that also includes those roles.... I don't think that's the CIA's fault.

If a doctor intentionally chose to kill someone I knew, and I chose to kill doctors, that would not be ok and it would be my fault. Same goes with the Taliban and anyone else who behaves similarly.

<comment><USER10> It's against the Geneva Conventions to use hospitals as military bases, or to attack hospitals. The idea that no country should mix public health and military operations is mutually agreed on, and is to help keep war, for lack of a better word, "civilized".

If you start doubting that doctors are truly just trying to save lives, then the line between civilians and soldiers becomes so blurry that war can become even more horrible than it already is. Countries must hold firm that civilians doctors must not be ever construed as soldiers, for the safety of those doctors, and the people they treat.

<comment><USER11> And yet US "accidentally" bombs Doctors without Borders facilities.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> One of the issues with the vaccination debate (in my opinion anyway) is that there's no ability to have a decent discussion. Especially online on sites like Reddit and even here on HN, you either support vaccines or you are literally the worst person on the planet. It's a bit disappointing.

Edit: Ah there's the downvotes, new record, thanks for proving my point.

<comment><USER13> I noticed this to. Some vaccines are very risky, and there are really good reasons (backed by scientific evidence) to be concerned with risks. Just a while ago in Tahti, a family asked a nurse not to vaccinate their new born child. The nurse did it anyway, and the infant died within 3 minutes. A second family, minutes after, told the nurse also not to do it. The nurse did it anyway, and the second infant died. Apparently there were riots and the government had to come in a seize the vaccines (MMR).

I'm not antivax, I'm actually pro-vax but with caution. I am trying to sign up to take an experimental vaccine under trial II because I think it would help benefit society and I understand the risks. The previous vaccine put people in wheel chairs and I'm more then willing to take that risk to see if it is effective.

But you got people paying $39.99 for Internet and now all the sudden they think they can play Doctor on the Internet and have opinions about vaccines without any idea how they work or the real risks involved.

<comment><USER14> > Just a while ago in Tahti, a family asked a nurse not to vaccinate their new > born child. The nurse did it anyway, and the infant died within 3 minutes. A > second family, minutes after, told the nurse also not to do it. The nurse > did it anyway, and the second infant died. Apparently there were riots and > the government had to come in a seize the vaccines (MMR).

This seems to be a distorted retelling of events that happened earlier this month. [0] It was in Samoa, not Tahiti; from all accounts I am find only the second child's parents (two hours, not mere minutes, after the first) declined the vaccine, having heard about the first incident.

And there is little reason at this point to think this story about the MMR vaccine supports your point about risky vaccines; it is much more likely that it is about mishandling the vaccine at the particular facility. Because MMR is given all around the world, and cluster incidents like this happen at an extremely low rate (and are fairly consistently shown to be medical errors—such as injecting the wrong thing, e.g., by staff using something other than water as the diluent—and not problems with the vaccine itself.)

[0] [https://www.tvnz.co.nz/one-news/world/two-babies-die-in- samo...](https://www.tvnz.co.nz/one-news/world/two-babies-die-in-samoa- hospital-minutes-after-receiving-mmr-vaccinations-investigation-underway)

and see also:

[https://www.radionz.co.nz/international/pacific- news/362706/...](https://www.radionz.co.nz/international/pacific- news/362706/medical-error-likely-cause-of-samoa-baby-deaths-vaccinologist)

<comment><USER15> [https://edition.cnn.com/2018/07/10/health/samoa-mmr-baby- dea...](https://edition.cnn.com/2018/07/10/health/samoa-mmr-baby-deaths- intl/index.html) for anyone who wants a link.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Tesla with Autopilot hits cop car–driver admits he was watching a movie - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/cars/2020/08/movie-watching-tesla-driver-charged-after-autopilot-hits-cop-car/ <comment><USER2> These incidents should be treated as severely as drink driving

<comment><USER3> Agreed. And they should stop calling the feature "auto-pilot".

<comment><USER4> Tesla autopilot should be treated in the same way as it is in commercial airliners. If you happen to have a few hundred miles of open road without crossroads or infrastructure, go ahead and stretch your legs. They don't need to rename autopilot, people just need to stop thinking that it means self driving. It's pretty clear from the manufacturers perspective – keep your eyes on the road while you're driving.

<comment><USER3> Pilots know what "autopilot" means because they have a certification to be a pilot. In popular culture, "autopilot" has a stronger connotation than is technically correct. I don't think it's a coincidence that Tesla chose that name for their feature.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> So how do the statistics regarding Teslas running into things compare with those for other types of car running into things?

</comment><comment><USER6> Hopefully people become more responsible before a politician decides autopilot is too dangerous</comment>


One Month with the Steam Controller - <AUTHOR> http://steamed.kotaku.com/one-month-with-the-steam-controller-1736744572 <comment><USER2> """But like any new controller, the Steam controller has been hurled into a living room war with my Xbox and PlayStation controllers—which I've had for years—and the traditional mouse and keyboard setup, which is what cavemen used to headshot and teabag woolly mammoths."""

Ah the trusty keyboard and mouse.</comment>


Deloitte Thinks Diversity Groups Are Passé - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-07-19/deloitte-thinks-diversity-groups-are-pass <comment><USER2> It seems to me they're focusing on the wrong thing. See here:

 _"A lot of our leaders are still older white men, and they need to be part of the conversation and advocate for women. But they're not going to do that as much if they don't hear the stories and understand what that means."_

This doesn't necessitate adding white men to these groups but rather making sure that _leaders_ of all stripes interact with these groups.

<comment><USER3> I noticed that too. If the leaders are actually engaged and act on what they hear, this could be a real improvement.

But if it's just the usual we-care-but-not-enough-to-do-anything happy talk, I bet they'll see the same groups reform by the employees who found them valuable only unsanctioned this time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> They're both necessary. There should be diversity groups to ensure that people have a voice and then inclusion councils to make sure that they're heard by people who need to hear them most.</comment>


Southpark: "I should have never updated the iTuuuunes" [video] - <AUTHOR> http://www.southparkstudios.com/full-episodes/s15e01-humancentipad

<comment><USER2> Simpsons already did it.</comment>


The Great British Curry Crisis - <AUTHOR> http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/2165379e-b4b2-11e5-8358-9a82b43f6b2f.html#slide0 <comment><USER2> My sense is times have changed. People demand something whose main attraction is not just the price. My parents ran a Chinese restaurant for years, and there was barely any investment in the design of the place. Same old kitsch for decades. On top of that, Chinese, just like Indian, has a reputation for not being healthy, and health seems to have ticked up as a factor in people's choices.

When I was living in London a few years ago you could see things happening in the eating out business. Chains have shaken off the McDonald's feel. Heck, even McDonald's has shaken off the McDonald's feel. You can't have a cheaply designed restaurant anymore. Some goes for pubs, you want a nice fireplace and a menu that has fancy words for "fish" in it. The food may not be very different, but you can tell which restaurants people go to, and which ones are empty. The thing is, family places like my parents', they don't have the appetite to try a big redesign. Old school thinking generally means they tend to believe that taste is what matters.

Case in point. There's a great place next to Euston station that sells Nihari, a Pakistani shoulder-of-lamb that's slow cooked. I took my banker buddy there, and the look on his face was incredible. The walls were bare, the floors laminate, less pretty than a uni canteen. He wasn't impressed. I guess modern people go out to a restaurant not just to eat, but as a sort of status thing. Now not everyone is out at the Ivy all the time, but also you don't want to be eating where the non-professional class eats.

New blood is what's needed. Those young guys in the article, I think they have a good idea of modern design is.

<comment><USER3> > and a menu that has fancy words for "fish" in it.

I'm sure you're just exaggerating for effect, but that's kind of like saying "a menu with fancy words for meat in it".

<comment><USER4> May be a cultural aspect. A British pub grub staple is "Fish and Chips." In the kind of food-oriented gastropub the parent comment is alluding to, you'd see an explicit reference to the species, possibly even its provenance. E..g "Halibut & Chips", or "Line-caught Atlantic pollack served with hand-cut goose-fat Jersey Royal chips". It's really a 180 from no-nonsense pub menus, which are in themselves a recent innovation. (First pub I went to regularly your choice was a packet of crisps or a pickled onion from a dirty glass jar on the bar.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> All round feels like a bit of a ridiculous article, expect better from the FT. Not sure Indian restaurants have a particularly harder time than any other independant restaurants that fight for business and profit margins.

And some of the logic used/quoted is just... I mean, they start right off with someone complaining about how business is hard while casually mentioning that _" there are eight other curry houses on the street"_.

Then the line about Uber taking people away from wanting to cook Indian food... is possibly the most ridiculous complaint I've ever heard.

> _Non-Bangladeshis are also reluctant to work in the industry. Khan says he > did hire Eastern Europeans in the past, but they quickly moved on. "It is > not rocket science but they do not want to do it," he says._

Plenty of Eastern Europeans (and English people, and... etc.) work in restaurants in the UK. If they'll work in a McDonalds but won't work in your kitchen then I suspect the issue is with the kitchen not the Eastern Europeans.

The article's headline might be fair, but really badly justified in the writing.

</comment><comment><USER6> "This is an art and you need to be Indian to understand it properly".

Yes, and you need to be white and speak German to make a schnitzel. What a load of bollocks.

<comment><USER7> It's easy to underestimate just how much we're all affected by our own backgrounds and childhoods. Including some very fundamental things about how we think about food.

Just a silly example that I've encountered recently: if I say "popcorn", Americans will think butter and salt, while Europeans will think sugar.

Even recipes tend to assume certain skills. Of course it's _possible_ for someone to write in painstaking detail instructions about how to duplicate an authentic Indian curry, but in practice does that actually happen?

It's more or less impossible to get a good bagel outside of New York. It's just a piece of bread! And yet.

<comment><USER6> Funny you should mention bagels. New York bagels taste nothing like real bagels (which you can still buy in Cracow if you fancy a weekend visit[1]). They are what sliced toast bread is to a farmhouse loaf.

[1] be aware that the popular bagel shaped things sold on every street corner are a different thing, albeit with common ancestry

<comment><USER8> Are you confusing NY bagels with something else? A NY bagel has a shelf life of under a day. Buy one, eat it the next day, it's hard and awful. They are very rarely toasted.

<comment><USER5> He's saying they're like "sliced bread (for toasting)" i.e. cheap and plain, not that they are like toasted bread.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I had thought that the quality of curry-house meals was going downhill for years - then discovered that apparently most of them now use Patak's sauces instead of in-house recipes, which would explain a thing or two.

I suspect that it's largely driven by a lack of chefs - possibly as a result of social climbing across generations.

</comment><comment><USER10> A subtle line that I only picked up on re-reading:

 _" Fewer UK-born Bangladeshi women are returning to Bangladesh to find husbands to bring back, robbing the industry of another labour source."_

Leaving aside the gender and racial discrimination in hiring restaurant staff, the reason why this 'labour source' has been cut off is a deliberate act of government policy. Concerns about forced or coercively-arranged marriages have been growing, as concerns about immigration in general. Hence the introduction of the spousal visa: if a non-EU national marries a UK national and wants to immigrate, they have to prove that _their spouse_ earns over £18k, which is slightly above an average year's pay on minimum wage. If a family is traditional enough as to prevent their daughter from working outside the home, that also prevents them from importing a spouse.

<comment><USER11> Correct.

These minorities shout blue murder if they think that it can get them an advantage, yet persist with racist and discriminatory practices that they have imported themselves.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> _" Vindaloo first appeared in 1797 when Britain invaded Portuguese Goa; the dish is a mispronunciation of the Portuguese carne de vinho e alhos, or meat cooked with wine vinegar and garlic."_

Close. The Portuguese is "carne em vinha _de_ alhos", meaning meat marinated, then cooked, with wine and garlic. (cf. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carne_de_vinha_d%27alhos](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carne_de_vinha_d%27alhos) )

</comment><comment><USER13> I wish there was a mid-range Indian food chain on a par with Wagamamas (Japanese), Pizza Express or Nandos.

</comment><comment><USER14> > Khan even blames Uber, the taxi app company, for disrupting the curry trade: > "A lot of people in London have joined Uber . . . including chefs, tandoori > chefs, waiters, managers — even the owners of restaurants

>The price of a curry, treasured by the British public but always thought of as a cheap dinner, has barely changed in 20 years but costs are rising fast.

If the food was good it should be priced normally, not too cheap. If there was money to be made in this business, those chefs wouldn't be leaving for uber. Blaming uber while keeping prices same for 20 years!

Good food is always appreciated and I will always return to the place unless the quality deteriorates. Low balling is a problem in every field.

<comment><USER6> That line about prices not changing for 20 years sounds totally bogus to me. A quick trip to wayback machine shows over a 20% price increase over 8 years for my local curry house.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Masala Zone does a good job both food and decor wise.

</comment><comment><USER16> Reading "British curry" feels like reading "British carbonara"

<comment><USER17> I don't think anyone in the UK thinks that the curries served here are much like the ones served in India/Pakistan/Bangladesh - so calling them "British curries" seems reasonable to me.

My own personal definition of comfort food is a nice hot garlic chilli chicken and a Peshwari naan.

<comment><USER18> British curry eater here. I have a curry cookbook that identifies the regions of Birmingham where the dish was believed to have originated. The classic Balti is widely understood to have been developed to meet the tastes of the British</comment></comment></comment>


Discover Sports - <AUTHOR> http://playerify.com/blog/nowdiscover-sports-venues-and-sports-shops/

<comment><USER2> It's interesting that people are moving beyond e-commerce in India. With the sports fanaticism present and the increasing social media/online presence, this could be the next big thing among teens!

<comment><AUTHOR> Also, sports has never really been an imperative part of the lives of people. There are plenty of reasons for that. We want to change this status quo in Sports from the grass root level. Playerify is a humble effort from our side to achieve this!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is great! sports networking is really a pain in the ass, I dont know how many times I embarrassed myself asking kids to play me in.Thanks playerify team!

</comment><comment><USER4> Really awesome job by team playerify!!! Congrats guys !

</comment><comment><USER5> This is an awesome initiative. :)Good work, guys! :D

<comment><USER6> Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I want to use this for football! This is a fresh start indeed, to all the sports freaks out there, I think this is something new and exciting.

<comment><AUTHOR> Go ahead and create your Sports persona on Playerify! Feed backs and suggestions are most welcome.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's a great thing to be using this in India especially with the craze people have for cricket. Brilliant stuff! (y)

<comment><AUTHOR> Give it a try. Go ahead and create your sports persona and tell us what you feel about it! :)

<comment><USER8> Definitely. I'll let you know :) Cheers!</comment></comment></comment>


'Dark patterns' are steering many internet users into making bad decisions - <AUTHOR> https://www.latimes.com/business/lazarus/la-fi-lazarus-dark-patterns-consumer-consent-20190625-story.html <comment><USER3> I hate dark patterns and wish they didn't exist. But I'm not sure that putting the government in charge of policing them is a good idea.

There are some objective criteria that can be applied (don't have addons like trip insurance selected by default), but other things are more subjective than this.

Is legislation going to make this better without having unintended consequences that make life difficult for startups who aren't necessarily trying to be sneaky (the quoted language refers to things that are either intended to produce a certain result or have the effect of doing so — even if there was no intention).

I would also note that dark patterns even exist in the legal/governmental sphere. For example, the California Bar website, which lawyers use to pay their annual dues, has optional fees added on by default, and they obscure this fact by making it seem like the default is the barebones cost. It was only after a year or two of paying my fees that I realized how they had hidden these tacked-on fees.

Perhaps the testing ground for anti-dark patterns laws can be governmental websites like calbar.ca.gov!

<comment><USER4> >I hate dark patterns and wish they didn't exist. But I'm not sure that putting the government in charge of policing them is a good idea.

I think after about 30 years of deregulation and "I'm not sure that putting the government in charge of policing them is a good idea", it's time for the pendulum to swing the other way.

Yes that means there may be bad regulations and/or enforcement, but nothing is written in stone. Those things can be fixed as they come up.

Relevant: [https://twitter.com/camerondare/status/1143538064402157568](https://twitter.com/camerondare/status/1143538064402157568)

<comment><USER5> I'm always incredulous about legislation ala carte because lived experience has shown me that the "fix later" part of "legislate first fix later" so rarely happens because of all sorts of forces from political to social mixed with the passage of time.

But maybe I'm a bit bias in my incredulity residing in a state where legislative sessions happen every two years resulting in sometimes two year waits to come back and address a bit of policy that probably could have been deliberated on more in committee.

<comment><USER6> >But maybe I'm a bit bias

everyone is biased this or that way, what irks me about the "I don't like legislation" comments is that I rarely see a proposed equivalent alternative.

Because just praying that the dark patterns are going away is probably not going to work.

<comment><USER7> Not everything has an ideal solution. We can't just magically apply regulation, technology or markets and fix every problem.

Sometimes solutions create direct tradeoffs between freedom and security and we need to understand the valuing security can mean a loss of freedom - <USER2> PATRIOT act is a prime example.

The best solution is occasionally to just accept that there is no solution, that the tradeoffs aren't worth it and that we should just educate as best we can but accept these things as problems we can't avoid without significant costs.

<comment><USER8> > Not everything has an ideal solution. We can't just magically apply > regulation, technology or markets and fix every problem.

Doing nothing takes us from having "a less than ideal solution" to having "no solution at all".

I think we can try for sensible regulation that strikes a good balance between freedom and security while also acknowledging it might not be a perfect solution in every situation.

The patriot act is a terrible example to use because even before it passed it was clearly going too far in the wrong direction and people concerned with privacy and civil liberties were very vocal in opposing it. The flaws were obvious but included by design and so objections were simply ignored. It simply wasn't an example of government making a good faith effort at sound regulation. It was a blatant power grab which they manipulated frightened people into accepting while ignoring all other objections.

Some of these dark patters are essentially fraud and there absolutely should be a process for reporting them to a governing body for review.

<comment><USER7> > Doing nothing takes us from having "a less than ideal solution" to having > "no solution at all".

No, doing nothing takes us from having a completely harmful and destructive solution that's very difficult to change to having no solution at all.

Sometimes, you need to be willing to accept no solution at all is the least harmful choice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Target also has employed dark patterns at brick and mortar stores, something I wrote about [1]. Thankfully it seems they've toned this down a little bit in the past year.

1\. [https://link.medium.com/RpkO9xcxOX](https://link.medium.com/RpkO9xcxOX)

<comment><USER10> Brick and mortar stores have been using dark patterns for decades. The gauntlet at the cash register is designed to increase sales, especially to people shopping with kids.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> At least for starters, maybe this is a candidate for a browser extension? Where the guilty sites/pages can be compilated via crowdsourcing? If it can't be automated a la ad blockers then can't we work together to protect ourselves? Somehow?

<comment><USER12> A visual highlight _Warning: dark pattern detected. Tries to trick you do to BadThingX_ , with a link that allows for more information. And maybe also allows easy way to report the offense to relevant authorities (we have them in Norway at least).

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> The problem with a legislative solution is that this is a cat and mouse game. And the government tends to be a very slow cat. And that's assuming a law would be effective to begin with.

That said, there should be SOME incentive for fewer dark patterns.

</comment><comment><USER14> Personally I suspect one thing that would help for certain dark patterns would be definitions of affirmative consent - that the interface must default to its most barebones option and any adddd fees must be specifically checked by the user.

There would undoubtedly be loopholes like separate bundles and display order priorities - but those likely impose their own "expenses" through website interfaces being more encumbered.

It would add some compliance costs but such a limitation would be fair and not overreaching.

</comment><comment><USER15> There is a dark pattern I saw on a website that explained how hard it was to close an amazon account. They called the pattern the "Roach motel".

<comment><USER15> It was video on [https://www.darkpatterns.org/](https://www.darkpatterns.org/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> By far the biggest dark pattern on the web is javascript.

Enabling javscript in your browser (which is what almost all browsers do by default) opens you up to all sorts of tracking, hacking, spying, and advertising (which itself is a significant vector of malware, once again through javascript).

This is why I surf the web either through a browser that doesn't support javascript at all (like emacs-w3m), or in Firefox with the uMatrix extension set to deny javascript from all sites by default.

Unfortunately, the vast majority of users are neither computer-savvy enough to know how to do that, nor to even know how or why they're vulnerable, and probably wouldn't go to the trouble even if they knew how and cared. So they get hacked, and sometimes the rest of us pay the price for it through things like major data leaks of our personal information from organizations where employees browsed the web with javscript enabled.

<comment><USER17> I don't know what websites you are limited to visiting, but pretty much none of the ones I use on any regular basis would be functional without Javascript. Sorry, not a viable solution except for extremists.

<comment><USER16> You're using just such a site right now: HN runs fine without javascript -- except for voting, which I rarely do anyway.

Reddit runs fine without it (again with the exception of voting). Most news sites run fine or even better without javascript, as without it you're not subject to all the bloat that advertising heavy sites burden you with.

Recently there was some post on HN that linked to a Forbes article, and there were a bunch of complaints in the HN thread about how nightmarish the Forbes website was, with all the ads it foisted on the user. But in emacs-w3m, which does not understand javascript, the site was perfectly readable. There are plenty of other sites which implement anti-ad-blocking code via javascript which are completely bypassed by simply using a browser that doesn't run javascript.

Overall, I find that maybe 90% of the sites I visit run fine or well enough without javascript. Sometimes a website will have a legitimate need for the interaction or live updates that javascript facilitates (thout maybe some or all of that could be done via HTML 5.. I haven't done web development in decades, so I don't know, but I suspect it could), like finance sites which run stock tickers, or some art or games sites. I mostly don't use any of those, though, so very rarely run across a site I need that actually legitimately needs something like javascript.

Much more frequently I run in to sites that don't need javascript (because they're just delivering static content), but which choose to use javascript anyway -- either because it's more convenient for them, because a lot of web frameworks make use of it, and/or because they want to deliver ads and track their users through javascript. When I run across such sites, I either try to circumvent them somehow (maybe by manually reading the source and extracting the content), or when that fails I just avoid them. In the very rare cases when I can't avoid them, can't circumvent them, and absolutely need them, I'll grudgingly enable javascript. This case accounts for maybe 5% or less of my web use.

<comment><USER18> > HN runs fine without javascript -- except for voting, which I rarely do > anyway.

You can still sign in and vote with JS disabled on HN.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I don't know that people really have the foresight to value their privacy. I mean, when Apps switched to a granular permissions model where you had to explicitly agree to each permission you would grant it, did that really deter a bunch of users from the app? I'm not sure it did.

In my opinion, this shouldn't be about allowing users to.make better informed decisions. As a user, I don't want the burden to analyze, reason, evaluate and determine the right choices to protect myself everytime I engage with an app or website. I'd like a bill where the government or some other agency made that choice already and had good privacy choices enforced. At least as a default or a strong recommendation.

This is one scenario where I'd like to outsource the decision making, because I just don't have the time.

</comment><comment><USER20> It's fascinating to see the mainstream media pick it up now while this is old news in tech circles.

</comment><comment><USER21> I feel like fasting and intentionally buying nothing is the only way to fight back against a consumption driven society nowadays.

</comment><comment><USER22> Anyone know whats happening with Tristan Harris's Ledger of Harms? I thought that was a good idea. Like a bug tracker for social issues caused by tech.

</comment><comment><USER23> [http://archive.is/alEl8](http://archive.is/alEl8)

</comment><comment><USER24> And these laws need to include the following:

"Citizens may sue at up to $2000 plus incidental fees or costs carried due to dark patterns in a user interface. A lawsuit of this manner is not subject, and supersedes any prior agreements of 'Arbitration' or other means intending a deviation from a court."

<comment><USER25> How about "citizens may sue lawmakers for damages suffered under any law that is ruled unconstitutional"

<comment><USER26> Honestly, I never understood how forced arbitration is constitutional on the US. It seems completely contrary to entire spirit of your Constitution.

<comment><AUTHOR> It arises from the belief that parties should have the freedom to contract as they see fit. Of course, that's just the theoretical underpinning and it doesn't take into account situations where there exists a disproportionate imbalance in negotiating power.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


A Gentle Introduction to Rust - <AUTHOR> https://stevedonovan.github.io/rust-gentle-intro/readme.html#a-gentle-introduction-to-rust <comment><USER2> Speaking as someone who's poked around at the edges of Rust and always come away frustrated, the Rust world does need a "gentle introduction". But while this document seems to understand that need, it gets messy pretty fast.

First of all, the introduction is all over the place, and poorly structured. There first section asks "Why Learn a new Programming Language?" but never answers that question (beyond "it's good mental exercise"), and follows it up with a section labelled "Where Rust Shines" that instead vaguely compares its memory management approach to C, calls C a "cowboy language", lists some of Rust's design components (not really even principles, just aspects of the language), and then starts giving advice for how to learn a programming language in general? What?

Next is Hello World, and immediately "Rust is a curly-braces language with semicolons, C++-style comments and a main function - so far, so familiar." Well, to C++/Java/Javascript programmers, maybe it is familiar. That may well be a huge part of your intended audience, but this gloss of the basics is a big red flag about what assumptions might be made further on.

"The exclamation mark indicates that this is a macro call. For C++ programmers, this can be a turn-off, since they are used to seriously stupid C macros"

Whoa, there, cowboy! This is Hello World! Mentioning macros at all should probably be reserved for a little later, much less vaguely referencing the C preprocessor's bad repuation. Then the tangent about "OMG, you mean I have to type an exclamation point!?" is telling, though. At this point in a gentle introduction, you probably shouldn't be already alluding to the trash talking about the language.

We aren't even past the first example. Further down the page, there's some big talk about how Rust favors explicitness, immediately followed by a discussion of how all the types are implicit and how confusing that can be. No mention of how you would remember that `f64` is the default floating point type...

This is a worthy attempt and probably a good first draft. It's definitely a document that needs to exist, but in its current state, it's an gentle intro that only a disaffected C++ programmer could love. But please keep working on it--I need something like this.

<comment><USER3> I think you are a little unfair, expecting the guide to be towards complete beginners who would get confused by the language having curly braces or not...

Rust is not a first language, it's a systems programming language. For previous programmers, the guide looks pretty good to me.

<comment><USER4> > Rust is not a first language, it's a systems programming language.

Since when are sys prog langs not introductory languages anymore? I understand that using an dyn typed, interpreted, GCed lang is easier to get started with; but a whole (2) generation(s) of programmers has started with systems programming as their first experience, and I must say they seem well equipped for they jobs (maybe better so than those only exposed to Python/JS/Java/C# that leave higher educations nowadays).

I see it as two different educational strategies: easy first vs hard first. And even when easy first was not an option back in the days, it does not mean that hard first is a bad option nowadays.

A ref to this letter by Dijkstra may be on point (where he "discusses" the move from Scheme/Haskell to Python/Java in a university curriculum).

[https://chrisdone.com/posts/dijkstra-haskell- java](https://chrisdone.com/posts/dijkstra-haskell-java)

<comment><USER5> At my university course, we did C in the first year for all programming courses. THen onto C++ in year 2 onwards, but all the fundamentals were in C.

Now that same course goes straight to Java as the introductory language, alongside html / css and javascript.

Now any sort of low(er) level language is avoid until year 2 when they do a course on C / C++

Which seems ass backwards to me.

I also see some developers come into the industry now who have never done anything lower level than Java or javascript _at all_

<comment><USER6> Arguably, school curricula are driven by the industry's needs. People keep asking for Java and Javascript developers, so that's what they have students learn.

<comment><USER5> I guess my response to that would be, if you just go straight into Java then OK, you've made some Java developers... I think they will be poor developers who happen to know Java.

But if you teach them fundamentals of structuring software, compiler theory, how it all works at a lower level etc. _Then_ teach them Java, you will have good developers, who also happen to know Java.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Really enjoyed the section on error handling. I had read similar sections in the rust book, but something about this explanation really made things click for me! As much as I love Rust, I personally found it a little difficult to get used to the error handling coming from an language like JS which cares little about appropriate handling

</comment><comment><USER8> Parsing with `nom` seems like a pretty aggressive introduction to Rust :)

<comment><USER9> I got carried away with a personal enthusiasm. It happens :) `nom` is marvelous, but the hard bit with combinatorial parsers is getting them to spew out good error messages. By default they are like Prolog - the answer is 'no'.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> What makes Rust still rather inaccessible for me is the difficulty in finding «functions I can apply to an argument of type X» and «functions that return a value of type Y» other than, "read every last bit of API doc about everything and memorize it".

<comment><USER11> That would be what Hoogle is for Haskell: [https://www.haskell.org/hoogle/](https://www.haskell.org/hoogle/)

Could you start by grepping API docs?

<comment><USER10> > grepping API docs

Of course, but that's still painfully slow and awkward. It's exactly the kind of repetitive crap we programmers are born to automate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> 4th post with this title from this author.

<comment><USER13> I would assume they really care about getting new Rust devs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> As a Go dev that learned programming via Zed Shaw's learn python the hard way, I have to say this tutorial made me want to learn rust. I've bookmarked for later, once I'm done learning dart/flutter.

Thanks Donovan

</comment><comment><USER15> Why does every single rust promoting article have to bash on c++?

They built a GC, good job. But, surely there is something else more worthy of typing about when hyping the language?

<comment><USER16> > Why does every single rust promoting article have to bash on c++?

Because it was built to be a C/C++ replacement.

> They built a GC, good job.

?

<comment><USER17> > Because it was built to be a C/C++ replacement.

That doesn't mean discussions including it have to bash C or C++. In fact, there is supposedly a very high standard in the official Rust community against bashing other languages.

Plenty of languages have completely replaced or circumvented C and C++ (i.e., out-competed them) in their respective niches without it being a heated two- minutes hate every time discussions come up.

<comment><USER9> I approve whole-heartedly of the "no zealotry" rule. (I seriously doubt that the Jehovah's Witnesses have achieved conversion rates commensurate with the effort expended.) That being said, C has problems, particularly the assumption of the "sufficiently smart programmer". Because I'm not smart enough, I appreciate the nagging of the Rust borrow checker, although to be honest it is a complete pain at first.</comment></comment></comment></comment>