The Two Cultures - DanI-S http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Two_Cultures <comment><USER2> > "Once or twice I have been provoked and have asked the company how many of > them could describe the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The response was cold: > it was also negative. Yet I was asking something which is the scientific > equivalent of: Have you read a work of Shakespeare's?"

I'm not convinced that either of these is really important for a general education. I think educators fixate on romantic ideals of what is important to know while ignoring the subject matter that is relevant to ordinary life.

Where I grew up, the required high school curriculum includes a lot about ancient civilizations, creative writing, chemistry and physics, and algebra. It didn't teach how to write a persuasive proposal in a business context, string together a logically-sound argument, or form inferences from empirical data, and taught very little about contemporary politics or recent American or world history. It didn't teach how to mediate an interpersonal conflict at work, delegate a task, or effectively communicate an idea in a presentation.

I lament that I spent so much time "learning" in school and have so little to show for it. I know about different kinds of cloud formations, which extinct native American cultures lived where, the difference between the soil composition in different parts of the country, spectral lines in different gasses, etc. This is trivia.

I see the argument made by Snow as simply lamenting that there is under- emphasis on one particular set of romanticized unnecessary knowledge and over- emphasis on a different set. Most of physics, chemistry, etc, are neither directly relevant to your typical person nor readily digestible as being illustrative of more general principles that are relevant. A core educational curriculum would be better served teaching more fundamental concepts directly: scientific method, statistical methods, data analysis, etc.

<comment><USER3> I wish every high school made it mandatory for children to learn how to balance a checkbook and the implications of dept (time value of money).

<comment><USER4> Isn't this common sense?

<comment><USER5> In retrospect it certainly seems like common sense. In practice I've met a number of not-stupid people who do not follow any sort of methodical recording keeping in their che ckbook and who do not understand the actual cost of having credit card debt and incurring interest that remains unpaid over time.

I'm surprised when someone tells me that are keeping money in a checking or low-interest savings account rather than paying off credit card debt. For whatever reasons they believe this is a common-sensible thing to do.

<comment><USER6> _I 'm surprised when someone tells me that are keeping money in a checking or low-interest savings account rather than paying off credit card debt. For whatever reasons they believe this is a common-sensible thing to do._

Because the amount of money you "have" (for spending, emergencies, whatever) is what's in the checking account rather than that plus the remaining credit line on your card, and there's an element of fear/panic about running out (and I guess getting hit with overdraft fees). That fear/panic means that logic suddenly doesn't apply.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Feynman referred to this issue at the end of his second Messenger Lecture:

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kd0xTfdt6qw&list=PL71D034A47B...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kd0xTfdt6qw&list=PL71D034A47B46E643&feature=player_detailpage#t=3022)

Transcript:

.. To summarize, I would use the words of Jeans, who said that "the Great Architect seems to be a mathematician". To those who do not know mathematics it is difficult to get across a real feeling as to the beauty, the deepest beauty, of nature. C.P. Snow talked about two cultures. I really think that those two cultures separate people who have and people who have not had this experience of understanding mathematics well enough to appreciate nature once.

It is too bad that it has to be mathematics, and that mathematics is hard for some people. It is reputed - I do not know if it is true - that when one of the kings was trying to learn geometry from Euclid he complained that it was difficult. And Euclid said, "There is no royal road to geometry". And there is no royal road. Physicists cannot make a conversion to any other language. If you want to learn about nature, to appreciate nature, it is necessary to understand the language that she speaks in. She offers her information only in one form; we are not so unhumble as to demand that she change before we pay any attention.

All the intellectual arguments that you can make will not communicate to deaf ears what the experience of music really is. In the same way all the intellectual arguments in the world will not convey an understanding of nature to those of "the other culture". Philosophers may try to teach you by telling you qualitatively about nature. I am trying to describe her. But it is not getting across because it is impossible. Perhaps it is because their horizons are limited in the way that some people are able to imagine that the center of the universe is man...

</comment><comment><USER8> _" The number 2 is a very dangerous number: that is why the dialectic is a dangerous process. Attempts to divide anything into two ought to be regarded with much suspicion"_

</comment><comment><USER9> For a PDF version of the lecture, see here: [http://s-f- walker.org.uk/pubsebooks/2cultures/Rede-lecture-2...](http://s-f- walker.org.uk/pubsebooks/2cultures/Rede-lecture-2-cultures.pdf)

This is quite a gem. I'm surprised I haven't seen it before.

</comment><comment><USER10> Key point: for decades in the UK, school education forked at age 16 -- the point at which you specialized. Prior to age 16 you'd be studying for exams in 6-10 subjects: originally 'O' (ordinary) levels, then GCSEs. (School leaving age was 16.) If you wanted to continue and eventually go to university, you then went on to study for 2 years for 'A' (advanced) level exams -- roughly equivalent to year 1 or 2 at a US university. (British taught university degrees were typically 3 year courses.) However, this was intensive enough that typically you'd only take 3 or 4 'A' level subjects. This forced early specialization -- dropping either all science or all arts subjects.

(This system ran from the late 1940s through the 1990s, subject to fine- tuning. So, for example, in 1981-83 I was taking four 'A' level subjects: physics, chemistry, biology, and 'general studies' (a vague attempt to shoe- horn the entirety of the liberal arts field into one quarter of the student's time).)

</comment><comment><USER11> Much has been written about this article. For instance:

\</comment><comment></comment><comment>----

[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/5273453/Fifty-years- on...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/5273453/Fifty-years-on-CP-Snows- Two-Cultures-are-united-in-desperation.html)

Such was the intensity of debate that it might be supposed that these were age-old themes: but in fact, the idea of separating academic disciplines into groups known as science and humanities was no older than the 19th century. The term "scientist" was only coined in 1833, and it was not until 1882 that another Rede Lecturer, Matthew Arnold, discussed – under the title of "Literature and Science" – whether or not a classical education was still relevant in an age of great scientific and technical advance.

\</comment><comment></comment><comment>----

There are also many themes in this article that are specific to Britain in the 1950s:

\</comment><comment></comment><comment>----

Snow compared Britain unfavourably with the US and USSR, in terms of numbers of young people who remained in education to the age of 18 and above. The British system, he argued, forced children to specialise at an unusually early age, with snobbery dictating that the children would be pushed towards the "traditional culture" and the professions, rather than science and industry.

Arnold was responding – with infinitely more courtesy than Leavis – to an earlier lecture by T H Huxley, known as "Darwin's Bulldog" for his rumbustious defence of evolution, who argued that science was as valid an intellectual training as the classics.

It was not a popular opinion. As late as my own childhood in the Sixties, the bright boys were expected to read classics at Oxford, and the less bright steered towards the labs.

\</comment><comment></comment><comment>----

I think 2 things are worth remembering about any such debate:

1.) as a civilization becomes more advanced, the people in it tend to become more specialized. If you grew up in 1700, it was perhaps possible to read all of the classics, in literature (Homer) and medicine (Galen) and philosophy (Aristotle) and physics (Aristotle) and math (Euclid). But nowadays it is impossible to study every branch of knowledge to any meaningful depth.

2.) for all of the obvious disadvantages that come with specialization, there are also many advantages (indeed, that is why specialization exists). A modern potter has a fantastic array of choices regarding materials, which did not exist even 50 years ago. A historian today must pick a narrow speciality, as there are now many millions of documents to look through to be considered an expert -- indeed, I have a friend who has specialized in the American Civil War, and he once said "If you have only read 1,000 books about the American Civil War, then you are just an amateur." And in the old days the village blacksmith might have known how to make both a hoe and a horse hoof shoe but a modern mechanic needs to specialize regarding devices (cars? domestic machines? textile plants? telecommunications?) but then also pick a sub- specialty (if a car mechanic, then foreign or domestic? Perhaps a few particular brands).

There is an economic benefit to specialization. I worry that gets forgotten when this debate comes up.

<comment><USER12> Specialization is something I often wonder about. Consider the following analogy: the sum of human knowledge is represented by a giant circle (though not necessarily perfectly circular in shape). Anything inside the circle is that which is known; anything outside is unknown. You're born in the center, and as you learn, the set of what you know extends towards the edge. As you mentioned, at some point in time, you could know all of the circle; now you can only know some subset of it. If you're a scientist or whatnot, you actively move the edge outward.

My question is, will we ever reach a point where it takes so long to move from the center to the edge that we'll eventually stop making progress? In mathematics, it already takes considerable time to reach the knowledge boundary (30 years or so?) Will we reach a point where it takes greater than a lifetime? Or, is it possible to jump to the edge by skipping some foundational knowledge (could you do higher math without knowing, say, calculus, for example?) What are the risks of doing so? And ultimately, how does a complex society hang together when each person has (at most) knowledge of a tiny subset of available knowledge?

<comment><USER13> I'd argue that, as advances are made, it becomes easier to move faster through the circle. It's not that you're skipping foundation knowledge, but you're just learning one core piece. Instead of learning the area under an encyclopedia of curves, you learn integral calculus and you're done. Instead of memorizing thousands of rules involving the interaction of various charged objects, you learn Maxwell's four equations and you're done. Or, you could learn geometric calculus and then only need to learn one four-symbol equation. Instead of learning thousands of different circuits to accomplish thousands of different tasks, you learn one Turing machine.

Knowledge is constantly increasing, but we're also continually finding that a large amount of our previous knowledge was redundant. I once saw a great article, that I wish I could find again, list off a series of scientific laws that could all be derived from nothing but unit analysis. The circle grow larger, but our steps do as well.

<comment><USER14> Good point. There are algorithms for manipulating Roman numerals that used to be taught, but that no longer are. And really, little is lost.

People used to practice at long algebraic exercises (e.g., trig manipulations, or tricky integrals) that are no longer considered worthwhile. Just give it to Mathematica. It's like medium-sized linear systems -- sure, you could solve it manually, but nobody does, or even remembers all the shortcuts and tricks that used to be so important.

A brief and vivid essay on this is "Forget it" by the late Isaac Asimov: [http://readanybooks.net/ScienceFiction/Asimov37/27283.html](http://readanybooks.net/ScienceFiction/Asimov37/27283.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Mentioned in this article is "The Third Culture" by John Brockman of Edge.org. That book is worth a read, even nearing 20 years in publication. It introduces the ideas of several fascinating scientists (among them Dan Dennett and Lynn Margulis) whose work manages to transcend the stated "two cultures," bringing science to bear on what were traditionally seen as "humanist" problems and vice-versa. These are thinkers who've taken responsibility for bringing their ideas directly to the public, rather than waiting for writers, journalists and, ahem, "insight pornographers" (if you follow HN) to do it for them. I first read it after obtaining my English degree, and it felt like I'd been shot with a sudden antidote to a haze of intellectual nonsense. I wonder how well it contrasts against the current trend in glossy pop science, which I suspect may be the flip-side of the same coin.

<comment><USER16> The idea of a (re-)integration of the two sides of Snow's dichotomy (alongside a critique of the concept of "The Two Cultures") can be found in Herbert Marcuse's essays[1]. There, Marcuse talks about the sciences' funding by the military-industrial complex and the position of the humanities as a potentially regulating (e.g. ethical) moderator to curb an overbroad influence on the sciences by forces outside the disciplines (or system).

[1]: Herbert Marcuse: _Bemerkungen zu einer Neubestimmung der Kultur (Remarks on a Redefinition of Culture)_ , in: Daedalus. Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Winter 1965.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I think most of our problems come from the misuse and misunderstanding of two words: debate and dialectic. Western culture DEBATES every effing thing so much so that presidential candidates have a series of publicized DEBATES where they each defend their plan to lead a nation.

If we were instead taught to have DIALECTICS and frankly try and remove the word DEBATE from our dialogues, we could start to solve big problems as the author suggests. However everyone is darn convinced their knowledge is superior.

Of course the irony is that it appears scientists are (in general) more dogmatic then any other group.

</comment><comment><USER16> Well, thankfully that problem will soon be solved in England! The government has enacted a programme that should soon bear fruit, thanks to the introduction of "impact" and weighing publications in a new, innovative, carefully considered and consensual way. Soon, it will be the country of one culture (since only biased pundits would dare to say: the country of no culture), finally correcting the horrible mistakes of the past!

</comment><comment><USER18> There is also a follow-up "The Two Cultures of Mathematics" by Timothy Gowers. I found it a crystal clear explanation of the differences between the schools of "problem solving" and "theory building" \- and particularly of what really motivates "combinatorics".

[https://www.dpmms.cam.ac.uk/~wtg10/2cultures.pdf](https://www.dpmms.cam.ac.uk/~wtg10/2cultures.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER19> Personally I think something is either rational and evidence based (or at least _attempting_ to be) or it is not. I would posit that this divide seems apparent simply because scientists and humanities people are for some reason grouped together in the same institutions. Imagine if half of CERNS facility was given over to say, cheesemaking, I'm sure a similar dichotomy would be commented upon.

</comment><comment><USER20> "The third culture consists of those scientists and other thinkers in the empirical world who, through their work and expository writing, are taking the place of the traditional intellectual in rendering visible the deeper meanings of our lives, redefining who and what we are."

\-- [http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/](http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/)

</comment><comment><USER21> Very inspiring. I just wonder if it's just the tone of Wikipedia article or does this lecture really suggests that science > humanities?

<comment><USER16> Why do you think it was posted here, without comment, just as a simple wikipedia link? The whole point is that it is widely understood as the quintessential idea of the sciences finally overcoming the constraints enforced upon them by the obsolete humanities. The whole emphasis on the _modern_ and _technological_ development paints exactly that picture, tying the science/humanities dichotomy firmly into a progress narrative which necessarily means that the modern (sciences) will have to overcome (and thus leave behind) the old, i.e. the humanities.

<comment> DanI-S I posted the article. I don't feel that it makes sense to say that one side of the dichotomy is superior to the other. The main point is that the dichotomy is false.

<comment><USER22> Note that the recently identified "technical middle class" in British society [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_structure_of_the_United_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_structure_of_the_United_Kingdom#Technical_middle_class) seems to capture the science side of the dichotomy. The lack of cultural capital of the technical middle class is a problem for their status, in traditional terms, whereas lack of scientific knowledge in other social groupings is not.

As Flanders and Swann put it, "One of the great problems in the world today is undoubtedly this problem of not being able to talk to scientists, because we don't understand science. They can't talk to us because they don't understand anything else, poor dears." [http://www.nyanko.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/fas/anotherhat_first....](http://www.nyanko.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/fas/anotherhat_first.html)

<comment><USER23> I was taught Latin, badly, at a British boarding school for, but never mastered it and was 'demoted' to the woodworking class after a year. I also spent my free time in the computer room learning to program on a Commodore Pet (I still remember the number 32768 primarily because it's the start of the video memory page; vital if you're going to poke ascii values into the display page). In later life I was made to feel ignorant by my inability with Latin, and my ability to speak C,C++,Pascal, Basic and Assembler was largely ignored or derided, even when needed. I've always found my knowledge of woodworking and programming massively more useful (and therefore valuable) than a decent grasp of a dead language, but my more 'cultured' friends disagreed and condescended. Now, however, I'm beginning to perceive a level of discomfort amongst my more 'cultured' friends, that while an understanding of Latin is absolutely required for an intellectual life, an understanding of javascript might be needed to. Be interesting to see where this goes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> "The third culture consists of those scientists and other thinkers in the empirical world who, through their work and expository writing, are taking the place of the traditional intellectual in rendering visible the deeper meanings of our lives, redefining who and what we are."

[http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/](http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/)

</comment><comment><USER25> 1992 Neil Postman [http://youtu.be/KbAPtGYiRvg](http://youtu.be/KbAPtGYiRvg) Introduction "In 1959, Sir Charles Snow published The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution..." [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technopoly](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technopoly)

SOS

</comment><comment><USER26> Read Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance for an enjoyable (500pg) way to explore these "two cultures".

</comment><comment><USER27> In my life a see a large assymetry between the cultures. A fiar number of scientists/engineers I know are good in the arts, theater, music etc. I dont se as many humanities types as familar with science. I observed this MIT, Harvar,and Stanford where I have degrees and took courses.

</comment><comment><USER28> This seems to ignore a rather important the a rather important third culture: the free-market capitalist. Why was this not mentioned? It is certainly an important one insofar as western culture is concerned, and has risen to become far more important and influential than the other two.

<comment><USER29> I don't think capitalists are a separate category in and of themselves - <AUTHOR> invariably belong in one camp or the other.

Elon Musk is a scientist. Andy Warhol is an artist. Both are known for savvy and shrewd capitalistic exploitation of their talents.

A capitalist who is neither scientist nor artist is not much of a capitalist at all, for he/she has nothing upon which to capitalize. All business, at the end of the day, is the exploitation of an art or a science to fulfill a need.

<comment><USER28> Mitch McConnell. Michael Bloomberg. The Koch brothers. Vladimir Putin. The NSA.

There are many, many political actors which shape Western culture that this essay does not account for.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Snow's _Two Cultures_ was something I loudly cheered when I first read about its points and for years afterward.

But now the book and the OP strike me as not well considered.

Net, the 'humanities' have a role much more important than is commonly or easily described. It took me a while to understand this point.

Sure, as an insecure a young nerd facing the world, both nature and society, I wanted 'control' of my life, in particular, 'security', and for those wanted the power of 'truth' and didn't want to settle for anything less solid than, say, plane geometry or, in a pinch, mathematical physics. Of course then only some of this could I articulate.

So, something like 'The Song of Hiawatha' with "By the shores of Gitche Gumee, By the shining Big-Sea-Water ..." seemed to me as mostly nonsense and gibberish and at best maybe something lightly entertaining but nothing like the 'truth' for the power I was seeking. And maybe I was correct, but I'm reluctant to return to that poem to be more sure!

Eventually I concluded that (1) there is a lot about the world, where I was trying to get control and security, that was too complicated and subtle for mathematics and/or mathematical physics to do me any good and (2) that part of the world was so important to my life that, even though I didn't have solid tools to address it, I still had to handle it in some sense.

Maybe 'The Song of Hiawatha' wouldn't help me handle those complexities, but eventually I discovered that some parts of the humanities could to at least a useful extent.

Generally my central criticism of the humanities was that, in strong contrast with mathematics and mathematical physics, and, really, most of engineering, technology, medical science, medicine, and even law, the humanities (1) did not make clear just what they were claiming was true and (2) for any claims nearly never provided convincing evidence. While these remain valid criticisms, amazingly in places the humanities can be important nevertheless.

Still, I was often torqued at the humanities: E.g., in, say, the English departments, a common claim was that English literature had a lot of good knowledge of people and would help readers understand people. I concluded, and still do, that _maybe a little_.

Once I discovered the E. Fromm, _The Art of Loving_ , awash in real practical expertise, well considered and formulated, about people, I concluded that Fromm was a good example of progress on information for understanding people. For more on love specifically, actually some of the relevant articles on Wikipedia seem quite good -- at least in places they have explained some of what I figured out more or less independently, at enormous cost, and added a lot more.

So, it is possible to get some understanding of people, but for this purpose I would mostly set aside English literature as too thin and/or even misleading.

For understanding people, I'd say that the most important contribution of English literature to understanding people is that some people like English literature.

The crack in my scorn that got me started with the humanities classical music. A brilliant person once said, "Music doesn't mean anything.". Well, maybe, maybe not, but it still can be useful for someone wanting to understand people or even themselves, amazingly.

Classical music was able to 'reach' me in part because there were usually few or no words to take literally and, thus, argue with.

Well, it turns out that classical music has something of a _language_ , especially about human emotions. If want to understand people, the biggest chapter is human emotions.

Classical music is an example of a common definition of _art_ as in _the communications, interpretation of human experience, emotion_. Well, it can be easy enough to find parts of classical music that are quite effective meeting this definition of art. So, here there is some progress in understanding humans.

One description of much of the media is _vicarious, escapist, fantasy, emotional experience entertainment_ which sounds next to worthless for the audience and, maybe, is, but we can reduce this description to _vicarious emotional experience_ and, then, learn about people by feeling their emotions \-- and art has a lot of this and, thus, can help a person understand people.

For some value for the audience, good art is supposed to be _universal_ and, then, often a person in the audience can see where the art is describing things much as in their life from which that person can conclude, "I'm not the only one who has encountered such a thing. That thing is not unique to me. Whatever I did to make that thing happen, others did the same, and maybe some of the main causes are not really from me.".

E.g., a few weeks ago I did a search for a girl I knew and fell in love with in high school. Yup, the Internet showed me a scan of a high school annual with her picture as a Homecoming Queen candidate. To me she was always the prettiest human female I ever saw in person or otherwise. Then many of those days with her, decades ago, came back to me as if they were last week. She was my first love and, apparently, burned into my brain -- I can no more forget her than I can forget my own name.

Well, we were young: We saw each other for 18 months and started when she was just 12 and in the seventh grade and I was 14 and in the ninth grade.

I was a nerd, socially awkward, and not good at understanding the emotions of a young woman, and we were both afraid of rejection. So we were to afraid to communicate clearly and accumulated quite a list of false beliefs about each other that had us making mistakes in our relationship. At one point, some of her mistakes got me to draw some seriously wrong conclusions, and I walked away from her. I don't think that there was anything seriously wrong, and everything wrong was based just on mis-communications, My heart was broken, and I later discovered that so was hers.

Then there's Wagner's opera _Lohengrin_ , first performed in 1850, about a knight, Lohengrin, of the Holy Grail who marries sweet Elsa. Yes, the Wagner "Bridal Chorus" or "Wedding March" music is from their marriage in that opera. Elsa is misled by an evil witch, makes a mistake, and Lohengrin is forced to walk away from his new bride.

So, _Lohengrin_ told me that I was not the first guy to walk away from the young woman he loved and that such things go back to at least 1850.

Also, Lohengrin and I made similar mistakes: We asked too much of the understanding of our women and should have had arranged a less 'brittle' situation.

Nerd guys: Listen up here and learn.

As good art communicates emotions about the human experience, members of the audience can begin to learn more about other people.

The best art, in the humanities, can be astoundingly effective in communicating about humans; we don't want to be without the results; and technical fields are so far no substitutes.

Took me a while to see these points.

<comment><USER31> > we don't want to be without the results; and technical fields are so far no > substitutes.

True enough, for now. Once our understanding of human psychiatry is more complete, a much more accurate model will hopefully be possible. Of course getting a true understanding of another's mental state at any point in time to simulate the model forward to predict their next behavior will be the hard part. Even doing such forward prediction with the (compared to biological brains) toy computers we have today is already almost impossible if one wants absolute certainty.[1]

Of course one can view all artistic observations of human behaviors so far as a sort of an indirect empirical guide to human behavioral patterns.

Although it is often to the frequent irritation of those of us not blessed with a natural abundance of social skills that those who have the understanding allowing them to write down such observations are also often unable to understand that others do not possess their same social talents and that therefore many unspoken assumptions need to indeed be spoken up of.

[1] Computers are of course 100% predictable, short of a true random # generator plugged into the side, but there is a large gulf of difference between "theoretically doable" and "here is a state frozen 8GB 3.2GHZ desktop PC, tell me what is going to happen next without booting it up."

<comment><USER30> Yup.

> many unspoken assumptions

Yup. And had I known that, been able, in verbal, emotional, psychological, and social skills, to have acted on it, and done so at all well, then as soon as that girl I knew in high school, starting when she was 12, was out of high school and I was out of college, we would have gotten married and my life would have been much different and quite likely much better.

Side point: High school first love is not necessarily just a joke, just an unwelcome threat of too much _emotional involvement_ , an unmarried pregnancy, or something just to be thrown away. In particular, a lot of high school girls will get married at the traditional time, in June after their high school graduation, so that from age 12 to marriage she is short of time to learn about young men, find some good catches, pick one, build a relationship, after trashing a few, _go steady_ , and get engaged, all in time for her high school graduation.

To nerd boys talking to girls: Don't just play _Anatomy 101 Hands on Lab_ , contact comfort cuddling, caring about her and protecting her, _joining_ your life with hers, etc. and in addition be sufficiently articulate and clear with, right, a natural language, e.g., English, to eliminate "many unspoken assumptions". Else your communications can be poor leading to _misunderstandings_ , that is, she can accumulate a list of things about you that are wildly false, and similarly for you about her. Then after a few weeks of you two acting on those misunderstandings, your relationship can be in real trouble. That's what that girl and I did; there was actually nothing really wrong, but the misunderstandings ruined our relationship.

Realize some emotions she likely has: First being a girl, her emotions are likely more intense than yours. E.g., she has emotions about pregnancy, if she gets pregnant some really strong, good emotions if she wants to be pregnant and some really strong, bad emotions if she doesn't. Second, learn to read her emotions in her facial expressions. Sorry, guys, even if you are a normal male and not a nerd, from birth she is an astoundingly talented and devoted reader of facial expressions while you are thinking about the posts in the crib, how the latch mechanism works, how to escape to get to the toy firetruck on the floor (not really a joke), and how to control it via C++ code. She does a lot of communicating with facial expressions. Third, with her strong emotions, and because she is a girl and generally more vulnerable to "the hostile forces of nature and society" than you are, she tends to be afraid. Indeed, serious _anxiety disease_ is much more common for human females (maybe 4:1) than in males. So, one thing you should do, and that you might get hugs, kisses, and more for, is to help her with her fears, i.e., provide her with some _emotional security_. The relationship is not all about hands on lab. Fourth, one thing she is afraid of is being rejected by you. If you are a mean guy, then you may be able to exploit this to your (likely only short term) advantage and manipulate her to be intimidated, subordinate, subservient, subjugated, etc. (you don't really want that, do you?). If you are a nicer guy, then you will give her some of the highly coveted _emotional security_ of letting her know you are not about to reject her -- right, she might take advantage of this, feel _entitled_ , take you for _granted_ , and abuse your effort. To know, read her emotions. Fifth, to help her with the emotions closer to your relationship, use the famous three little words, "I love you", sometimes a lot. And, "say it with flowers" or some such things. Else she can be afraid that you are drifting away from her. Sixth, realize that she's a mammal (not just a joke about her bust line) and, like all baby mammals (even though she is not exactly still a baby) she does not (emphasize this with flashing letters and some huge font size) want to feel alone -- for her to feel alone can be just terrifying to her. Indeed, one reason for cell phones is so that girls can continue to gossip while _mobile_ , and they gossip (may I have the envelope please) so that they don't feel alone, so that they feel acceptance and approval from membership in a group that they get by bringing the group juicy tidbits of gossip (read some D. Tannen, long at Georgetown) -- built one of a heck of cell phone and smart phone industry. Seventh, when everything does _hit the fan_ , slow down, calm down, back down, relax, count slowly to 20, maybe type in all your thoughts and review them 24 hours later, maybe even days later, etc., and see how to correct the situation. In all of this, be highly aware of her emotions. Did I mention the importance of her emotions? Maybe use some _reflective listening_ techniques ("What I heard you explain was ...; is this about right?") also intended for good parenting of children and likely also useful if you are CEO of a startup.

There's more. Maybe I will get a blog and post a more complete and better organized presentation.

But for this thread, at least for now, some parts of the humanities can be crucial for understanding people.</comment></comment></comment>


Hacker, Verizon duel over customer record claims - <AUTHOR> http://zdnet.com/exclusive-hacker-nabs-3m-verizon-customer-records-7000009151/

<comment><USER2> The number makes sense for FiOS customers:

[http://www.dallasnews.com/business/headlines/20101008-If- Ver...](http://www.dallasnews.com/business/headlines/20101008-If-Verizon-s- FiOS-service-isn-6196.ece)

</comment><comment><USER3> So.. sorta like the cheeky seagull that nabs crisps?</comment>


Swedish post-term pregnancy research study stopped after six babies die - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/oct/28/post-term-pregnancy-research-cancelled-babies-die-sweden <comment><USER2> Interesting. It is generally accepted that babies are born premature because the size of our brain grew faster than what evolution would permit the width of pelvis. As we became bi pedal, and walking upright, narrow pelvis had an evolutionary advantage.

It would be interesting to know the babies died. Is it due to anatomical design or is it evolution? Larger mammals have longer gestational..like elephants and whales.</comment>


Horrific software demo turns out to be a gag - <AUTHOR> http://www.lumalin.com/lumalin_films/last_lecture.php

<comment><USER2> Help me to understand. Why is this interesting, useful, funny, informative, or of any positive value whatsoever?

No doubt the original was posted so we could all sympathise with a demo gone bad, and this is to balance that, but the whole thing just seems so cimpletely pointless. In fact, it's wasted time for a bunch of people - and to what end?</comment>


Plate tectonics not needed to sustain life - <AUTHOR> https://phys.org/news/2018-07-plate-tectonics-sustain-life.html <comment><USER2> Based on some unverifiable computer models.

I think I'm just going to start flagging all the science stories that are press releases about someone's unverifiable computer models.

<comment><USER3> It is indeed a press release so that's not great, but why wouldn't their model be verifiable? We know the applicable laws of physics, someone else can code up a simulation and verify the results.

<comment><USER4> A simulation is a prediction, not a verification. Verification would be going out to a load of planets and seeing if they look the way the simulations say.

<comment><USER2> In fact there's been several news stories about extraterrestrial planets over the past few years, since we're finding more of them now. But the ones we hear about focus on things like "can they support life". There is nothing per se wrong with playing with the math and playing with models and trying to get a sense of the space of possibilities.

Where I get crabby is when the whole process is condensed down to the level the title is at: "Plate tectonics not needed to sustain life". No. The level of confidence expressed in those words is _utterly_ unjustified. We have perhaps a trace more than absolutely no idea. That trace is scientifically valid and I do not begrudge some planetary scientists fiddling around. But we must not place excessive confidence in the results.

The inability to practically proof the correctness of a computer model does not mean it is scientifically valid to then just assume they are correct!

To put it in local terms, that's exactly as valid as expecting a programmer to just type a few thousand lines of code into an editor, compile, and deploy to production with no further testing required. Because, in a fairly real way, this isn't even a metaphor, this is _precisely_ what making such concrete predictions off of an unproofed computer model is doing. Being unable to test the correctness of the code does not therefore render it correct. I am reminded of the classic quote "On two occasions I have been asked, — "Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?" In one case a member of the Upper, and in the other a member of the Lower, House put this question. I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." by Babbage. I am not able to apprehend the confusion of ideas that produces this concept that if we can't test the model, we are justified in assuming it is correct. To my understanding of science, exactly and precisely the opposite is true.

(Incidentally, I _also_ consider the phrase "Plate tectonics are necessary to support life" to be completely unjustified! Our one sample of life-supporting planet has plate tectonics. Our own solar system is at least suggestive of the possibility that plate tectonics across a long time period may be rare, but no more than "suggestive" without a lot more data. Given the very-slowly- increasing evidence that life may be rare in the cosmos, it is suggestive that rare characteristics of our planet and the rare characteristic of "life" may be connected. We have some plausible-sounding theories as to why plate tectonics may be helpful. But we can not say absolutely "they are necessary for life" by any means.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I was not aware that Earth was the only planet to have confirmed tectonics. That seems really weird. I wonder what the percentage winds up being between planets with and without tectonics.

<comment><USER6> If you have a rotating spherical body with a (sufficiently) heterogeneous fluid composition, it seems like you'll get plate tectonics. When you realize it's just a fluid with convection currents and the surface of the fluid "freezing", you realize it should be relatively common for across planets for a portion of their existence.

ps - if any actual physicists out there are reading, I've been curious about the case of Mars and if tectonics there could have been halted by whatever caused the hemispheric dichotomony for a long time, in case there's any good reading/research on that out there to pass along...

<comment><USER7> "Plate tectonics" means something a bit more specific than "convection currents with the surface of the fluid freezing". In particular, it implies 1) relatively large stable plates, 2) organized regions where crust is created/destroyed, and 3) large horizontal movement of those plates relative to each other.

Prior to ~2 billion years ago, Earth didn't have plate tectonics. You had large vertical motion (not horizontal), and creation+destruction of crust, but no organized centers where this was occurring. In other words, you didn't have large plates and what plates there were did not move long distances horizontally.

As another example, Venus has tectonic activity (it's periodically resurfaced and has volcanoes), but it doesn't have plate tectonics. You see regions of compression and extension, but no subduction zones and spreading ridges.

It's likely that what we call plate tectonics requires abundant water, at least on "rocky" planets. Hydrous phases of silicate minerals are required for the very weak faults and localized weak mantle required to have subduction. Without subduction, you don't have plate tectonics.

<comment><USER8> > Prior to ~2 billion years ago, Earth didn't have plate tectonics. You had > large vertical motion, and creation+destruction of crust, but no organized > centers where this was occurring. In other words, you didn't have plates.

Well that would be great evidence that you don't need plate tectonics to sustain life. ;-)

<comment><USER7> Yeah, the exact start of plate tectonics on Earth is very hard to pin down, but it's almost definitely after the start of life.

On the other hand, even when Earth didn't have plate tectonics, it probably never had a stagnant lid, which is what this article is modeling.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is 1:1 identical with the press release from the Penn State University. Maybe link to the original?

[https://news.psu.edu/story/529527/2018/07/30/research/plate-...](https://news.psu.edu/story/529527/2018/07/30/research/plate- tectonics-not-needed-sustain-life)

</comment><comment><USER10> Revolving around a sun and rotating at the same time needed?</comment>


A symbol of British democracy, "The Queen shows us who isn't boss" - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-27693589 <comment><USER3> It's a great article and the insight into the symbolism of the event is fascinating.

I always wondered what the guy banging on the door of the houses of Parliament with the huge ceremonial stick was all about when I was a kid.

Nevertheless, so long as power is concentrated in an utterly unaccountable and inaccessible elite we'll never know if it is indicative of the true state of affairs, an elaborate coverup or somewhere in-between the two.

Where I come from to question the British Monarchy is not only unpopular, it's potentially offensive to the section of the community that considers themselves British. Compounding that, republicanism is a dirty word with violent connotations. Change is unlikely to come from this particular part of the world.

Yet with the Irish Republic right down the road we have context on what a Republic really means. One looks at the picture of President Higgins standing in line for an ATM [1] and makes a decision right away. It either fills you with pride or with scorn.

It looks like there's a nascent movement towards Republicanism over in the UK but it'll be a long time coming.

1: [https://twitter.com/AwningsIreland/status/448436785220452352...](https://twitter.com/AwningsIreland/status/448436785220452352/photo/1)

<comment><USER4> The thing is Republicanism won't actually solve the problem you mention, of the core group of powerful MPs being overwhelmingly representative of the elite. If anything it will swing things further under their control.

The monarchy aren't that rich or powerful at all by modern standards. The true wealth is in random parts of the aristocracy that owns massive parts of west London, but again merely turning into a republic is not going to result in that being redistributed any more palatably than it is today.

It is a dated institution, and it is a bit odd to have people born into such a thing, but it really isn't that actively harmful, and certainly less harmful than a headlong rush into a worse alternative when it appears to be slowly diminishing into irrelevance without the need of any external stimulus.

<comment><USER3> "The monarchy aren't that rich or powerful at all by modern standards."

"it really isn't that actively harmful"

How can you be sure?

<comment><USER5> In the list of "things actively harmful to the UK", bad behaviour and lobbying by multinational companies and the financial services industry is fairly near the top, while all the Royals except Charles are smart enough to stay away from political issues most of the time.

An actual dispute about Royal Assent on a piece of popular legislation would end in favour of Parliament fairly quickly.

<comment><USER3> Depends on your perspective I guess.

You know about the corporate lobbying. I don't think any of us have the slightest idea what influence the Royals have over the wonks, men in grey suits and senior members of the Government.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The monarchy and the wider UK constitution is like the ultimate legacy system. Extremely hard to change because it has all grown organically and has tentacles and interdependencies everywhere. And there's no authoritative documentation (ie written constitution), just a whole lot of observations about how it has always worked in the past [1].

Its worth reading about the duties of the "Queen's Remembrancer" [2], who is a real person right now. All the bizarre stuff about knives and nails and horseshoes and tablecloths has been going on, year after year, for over 800 years. Like some kind of autonomous system that nobody knows how to shut down any more.

So I find the British constitution quite fascinating, in the same way that some really old software from the early sixties but still in use somehow, would be fascinating. Unless you power the whole thing down (revolution) all you can really do is change it slowly. I sometimes wonder if thats the point of it.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_the_United_King...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_the_United_Kingdom)

[2] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen's_Remembrancer](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen's_Remembrancer)

<comment><USER5> That _is_ the point of it; we're pretty much the only European country not to have had a violent change of government (revolution or invasion) since 1700. The establishment has been very good at mixing pragmatism with the usual imposition and violence, allowing enough reform to quell dissent and retreating from untenable positions. It's also very much been run for the benefit of a liberal trade-based upper middle class rather than a very narrow power base that would be prone to collapse.

<comment><USER7> But go back just 50 years and there were shenanigans aplenty - and the years before weren't the peaceful settled picture we often have in mind.

France was far more stable than England for several centuries before 1789.

(You're right of course. But 1700 is a convenient cut off date, and belies the fact that pragmatism in the mix was a direct result of just how horrible was the interregnum.)

<comment><USER8> 1700 is more than a convenient cutoff date - it's around that time when England ceased to exist as an independent state, and Great Britain as we know it started to take shape.

Nitpick: I reckon most of the time people on HN say "England" they actually mean "Great Britain" or "United Kingdom"

<comment><USER7> Act of Union, 1707.

England is what I meant.

From a political and governance perspective, Great Britain started to take shape in 1660 and took an even greater leap forward in 1689.

So 1700 - and even 1707 - is pretty arbitrary.

England had a bloody and violent 17th C., which it exported to Scotland and especially to Ireland. The political and governance result of that violence was to strengthen parliament and weaken the monarchy, laying the ground for the pretty stable time that came later.

England - and later GB and the UK - didn't escape the violence that shook much of Europe in the 18th C, it went first, did it earlier.

It's disingenuous for someone to claim an extra century of calm and peace whilst ignoring the chaos and violence of the century before.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The mention of the civil war is the cue to where all this comes from. As usual after a civil war, what emerged was not a democracy but a military dictatorship. The UK was a Protestant theocracy for a while. This was sufficiently awful that there was no substantial opposition to the return of the monarchy after the death of Cromwell; however 20 years later a combination of desire for parliamentary power and anti-Catholicism resulted in deposing the monarch and replacing him with a _different_ monarch imported from Holland, who would be under the control of parliamentarians.

Unpicking the constitutional settlement opens several extremely controversial cans of worms. For example, the role of religion in the UK; authority over the armed forces; land ownership reform; the House of Lords; the electoral system in general; devolution; and the strangeness of the Crown dependencies (channel islands, Isle of Man, etc).

There _are_ people who are violently loyal to the monarchy, as well as a wide spread of society who are affectionate towards the Royal Family.

<comment><USER9> _There are people who are violently loyal to the monarchy_

The stress on "are" makes it sound like this would be considered a difficult to believe position. For my own part as a happy Royalist, if some bizarre and unfortunate circumstance came down to us being forced into another Royals vs parliament civil war, I'd be on the Royal side in a heartbeat.

<comment><USER10> As an American with little knowledge of British politics this is a bit surprising. Do you mind going into the reasons that lead you to be on the Royal side?

<comment><USER9> xanderstrike did a really good job of explaining a part of it. The monarch is our true head of state and the Royal Family our 'family of state', if you will. For all their problems, the Royal Family provides a real sense of continuity for Britishness and, to a lesser extent, an important sense of separateness from politics (usually) and what I consider critical 'reserve powers' to protect us from potential extraordinary political events (it's hard to speculate, but I doubt George V would have allowed a Hitler-esque figure to dismantle the political apparatus of the UK in the way Hitler did in Germany under von Hindenburg).

I must confess I recognize I am slightly biased as our current monarch is such a _good_ one. I might not have been so keen on the institution in Richard III's time ;-) Politicians come and go and prime minsters are lucky to stay around for 10 years, but Queen Elizabeth II has been the figurehead of my country for 62 years and has essentially devoted her life in service of it. I have a lot of respect for her as an individual.

There are a variety of lesser, miscellaneous reasons too. I see no specific need to change, the Royal Family provides a net profit to the country financially, having an army allied to the country rather than its current political system is best, they don't have a significant impact on democratic procedure in ideal times, they provide a long-term narrative and stability, and more besides.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> artumi-richard I actually feel sad for the lot of them. It's not like they went looking for fame, it was thrust upon them. I, for one, would hate the continuous travel, smile, nod, shake hand, smile, move on.

Prince George's future is all laid out, he has zero incentive and zero opportunity to make something worthwhile by himself. He will never be "just another one of the team", at least, not for long.

I wouldn't wish Prince George's life for my sons.

<comment><USER11> Just like his useless father who's only contribution to society has been to, er, pilot a search and rescue helicopter...

<comment> artumi-richard Oh, I'm not saying he won't contribute, just that his choices are extremely limited, to a degree I would not want for my son.

Being a part of military actually should be seen as a limitation rather than William going his own way. Since the soldiers pledge their loyalty to the crown it is deemed appropriate that a potential future monarch should serve in the military. They get to choose which bit, and perhaps when, but they probably never had a choice about joining up. Then the Royals only tend to spend a couple of years. Harry is the keenest as he joined infantry. But his fame brought him back from action early because he was a prized target.

Also Wikipedia now says Harry's now in project management: "On 17 January 2014, the Ministry of Defence announced that Harry had completed his attachment to 3 Regiment Army Air Corps and will take up a staff officer role at the position of SO3 (Defence Engagement) in HQ London District. His responsibilities will include helping to co-ordinate significant projects and commemorative events involving the Army in London."

I would expect this is not what he would have chosen had he been born Harry Smith.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> "which to this day contains no sailors because they are still in disgrace for their mutiny at Spithead in 1797. "

Quite Right.

<comment><USER13> Ironic, as Spithead produced sweeping changes which paved the way for a decent standard of living and treatment for people at all levels in the Navy. It was, by any reasonable measure, a good thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I see the monarchy as a technical debt from experimenting with government models. We ended up something similar to a presidency but also left withe a symbolic head of state.

Because cost of removing the technical debt is bigger than the cost of living with it, we just ignore it.

<comment><USER15> For what it's worth, the UK government currently makes a healthy profit from the Royal Family.

[http://relentlesslife.wordpress.com/2012/04/15/the-true- cost...](http://relentlesslife.wordpress.com/2012/04/15/the-true-cost-of-the- royal-family-explained/)

In video form: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhyYgnhhKFw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhyYgnhhKFw)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> That's a nice spin in the headline, but a homeless person could equally well fulfil the requirements.

In reality the Queen is a symbol of the glorious colonial times.

<comment><USER17> Not really. I think the monarchy pre-dates any colonies Britain/England had.

<comment><USER18> It's still a nostalgic symbol of the days when "the sun never sets on the British Empire". Nobody is nostalgic for the days when England was a tiny backwater whose only claim to fame was bothering the French.

<comment><USER17> It's a nostalgic symbol of 2,000+ years of history.

<comment><USER19> It's a nostalgic symbol of the _myth_ of 2,000 years of history. (Although I think in practical terms the earliest anyone even remotely sensible would date the history is the Anglo-Saxon colonisation, ~1500 years ago.)

The idea that there is a continuous history even of the English over this time is utterly risible - let alone the British, 'Britain' as a thing being - <USER2> the GGGGP says - the product of the imperial era more than anything else (act of union 1707, last Jacobite rising 1745; treaty of Utrecht, which cemented British supremacy, 1714; rapid colonial expansion thereafter).

The more pressing problem with the monarchy is the 'royal prerogative', which has the effect of turning 'Call Me Dave' Cameron into a de facto president.

As a believer in the exclusive democratic legitimacy of the legislature, I do not believe in monarchs - born or elected.

<comment><USER20> The history of Britain dates back to the Caesar's half-arsed invasion, surely. The history of the various British peoples seems pretty continuous from Anglo Saxon times onwards. I don't understand why citing particular 18th century treaties is meant to contradict that.

Are you suggesting that you would prefer Cameron as a de jure President?

<comment><USER17> Or even Ed Milliband?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "The Queen reigns, but she does not rule." \- Walter Bagehot

</comment><comment><USER21> > The Queen reads a speech that is written by someone else, namely the > government. They make her repeat excruciating political slogans. Her > representative in the Palace of Westminster - we aficionados call him Black > Rod - has the doors of the House of Commons slammed in his face to remind > the monarch who is boss.

This part is very eloquently captured in the political thriller trilogy by BBC - "House of Cards" (UK version 1990) [0]. The part I am referring to is the second part of the trilogy and is titled "To Play the King" aired in 1993 [1].

[0] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Cards_(UK_TV_series)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Cards_\(UK_TV_series\)) [1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_Play_the_King](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_Play_the_King)

</comment><comment><USER22> You can ask the King of France how well absolute monarchy works out in the long run.

<comment><USER23> Or the Tzar of Russia ...

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Stupid waste of time and money. We should abolish the damn monarchy once and for all, let them get a job like the government tells everybody else they must do.

Unfortunately I choose to migrate from one constitutional monarchy to another, which seems to have just as much fun with all the ceremonies, days off and drunken patriotism as back home. _Peer Netherlands_

<comment><USER25> If the UK had President Cameron (god help us all) then we'd still have a similarly long speech, with a similar number of people in a similar place every year - much like the State of the Nation address in the USA. It's a function of Government to state what they plan in the upcoming year so debate about it can begin.

We'd also have to protect President Dave as much as the Queen now; I saw an article a few years back stating that President Hollande directly costs the French as much than the Queen does in security, expenses and so on.

The pomp and ceremony displayed in the Queen's Speech are just traditional flourishes to what would always be an expensive meeting in an expensive government year.

<comment><USER26> In a way -- and I say this as an American -- I perceive that one possible advantage of the British monarchy (with its particular form and historical context) is that by concentrating the ceremonial roles of chief of state in a different person than the head of government -- and divorcing the former from the political process in a way which you don't have in systems that have the separation but choose both through conventional political means -- you divorce, to a degree, tribal patriotism and support for the nation from support from the current political leadership, and simultaneously remove the distancing (from the rest of society) effect that the ceremonial functions of chief of state has from the functional head of government.

Its not something I would want to replicate in form here (and it wouldn't work anyway -- to the extent it works in the UK it does because of historical context, not because of the form alone), and I'm not saying that Britons _shouldn 't_ adopt a Republic, but I think that its worth considering what benefits the monarchy provides (even if they are outweighed by the costs) and whether any replacement system can retain or replicate them by alternate means while mitigating the costs (and maybe it can't, and the best net is to sacrifice the benefits to eliminate the costs.)

<comment><USER27> That's a great point. You don't get the "I support our president because I'm a patriot" crap.

The other advantage is in breaking up gridlock. I kind of wanted a Queen during the government shutdown last year, so she could dissolve Congress and allow us to vote the lot of them out. I bet you they'd be a lot less likely to do things like that if they knew there could be a sudden election, right when public support is at its lowest.

See: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Australian_constitutional_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Australian_constitutional_crisis)

<comment><USER28> But you do get haplotype worship.

I think there is a cultural disconnect on both sides here. As a yank I think it is absolutely preposterous that Australian, British, Canadian, Dominican, etc citizens and members of the military _must_ swear or affirm an oath of allegiance to some lady, "her heirs and successors according to law" simply because of who her daddy was. But that is because I am not intimately acquainted with all of the symbolism and tradition.

Similarly, I think that subjects of the commonwealth miss out on an understanding of the symbolism and tradition behind the "support the president" quote.[^1] The support in this case is not about the individual but about the office of PotUS. The support of the office is an acceptance and affirmation of the outcome of a free an fair election and in no small part a complete and total rejection of the chains of haplotype worship. In the US oath of allegiance citizens swear or affirm allegiance to the Constitution and instead of swearing or affirming allegiance, individuals must renounce and abjure any allegiance to princes, sovereigns, etc.

[^1]: I say "I think I understand the sentiment" but I have never heard of it phrased that way (and Google only gives three results yours being one of them.

<comment><USER27> I agree that it's weird to swear allegiance to some person who inherited their spot. I didn't say I wanted a queen!

I do, however, see the wisdom in a non-political head of state. It can help break gridlock and disassociate patriotism from politics. (w.r.t the "I support our president" thing, I was specifically thinking of this crap: [1].)

I just don't think anyone's found the right option for the head of state. Inheritance is bad, a sinecure for elderly politician is bad, a popular election would obviate the non-political part of it. I almost want it to be a career civil servant, like a career diplomat. The Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs is, I believe, the highest non-appointed person in State. Something like that.

[1]: [http://www.cnn.com/2003/SHOWBIZ/Music/09/03/cnna.spears/](http://www.cnn.com/2003/SHOWBIZ/Music/09/03/cnna.spears/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Is there any sovereign who can still rule like king Geoffrey?

<comment><USER30> If you are asking if there are monarchs with real power, then yes there are several. In the middle east you have countries like Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE. There are even several in Europe; Vatican City, Monaco, Liechtenstein.

You could even argue that the reserve powers of the British monarch are indeed great, although, if they ever tried to exercise them in there own right there would probably be a constitutional crisis, and without broad public support they would not prevail.

<comment><USER31> > You could even argue that the reserve powers of the British monarch are > indeed great, although, if they ever tried to exercise them in there own > right there would probably be a constitutional crisis, and without broad > public support they would not prevail.

And by extension... with broad public support they would prevail and execute the will of the people in a time of crisis and with the full support of the military. Which, perversely, effectively places the reserve powers of the Monarch and the might of the military in the hands of the people at exactly the time the people would need them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I don't know about British democracy with David Cameron in power. There's democracy and then there's "democracy".

<comment><USER33> It's no different to when Bliar or Brown were in power. Brown never actually won an election, he took over from Bliar after he stepped down. How's that for democracy?

<comment><USER34> That's how democracy in Britain works. You vote for a party, not a person. The party is free to make changes to the internal structure as they see fit.

<comment><USER35> Well, not to undermine the gist of your point (which I agree with) but instead of voting for a party per se, you actually vote for a local Member of Parliament, who can be a member of a party or not, and is free to switch party whenever they like as they sees fit.

<comment><USER34> Sorry, yes of course! It's the switching of parties that I always forget is possible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> The article reads to me like a crock of shait & a whole lot of naval gazing. Why is this even on HN? Or perhaps that's my somewhat biased non-british view of more useless crap left over from ages gone by, that nobody but the Brits really give a shit about.

<comment><USER37> Well, besides the fact that Elizabeth II is queen of a number of independent and sovereign countries around the world, I don't think anyone would expect a non-Brit (or non-Canadian, non-Australian, etc) person to care about the way we choose to govern ourselves. Also it doesn't really matter to us what you think about it either.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Probably due to my setup with NoScript and RequestPolicy, the page kept reloading. Disabling Javascript for bbc.co.uk enabled it to load without problem.

<comment><USER39> This comment is the epitome of a Hacker News comment. I expected no less when coming to read the comments.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> And this is where we get the nickname 'pom' from, which is short for 'pompous' and usually associated with other appengages, i.e. 'bastard' and so on.

Pomp and ceremony, with little substance, seems to be an essence of many a puppet state.

<comment><USER41> The point here is that there is a tremendous amount of substance.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What to advance as a researcher? - <AUTHOR> Hello everyone. I am graduating from college and about to become a research engineer at a pretty well known company. I expect to do research/support work on machine learning there. What does the research engineer career look like for a person without a PHD? What should I do to become a better researcher? Thank you. <comment><USER2> Are you publishing papers? You specifically mention not having a PhD as if you might be concerned about that, so if that makes you anxious you could build up a reputation by publishing and then nobody will ask if you have a PhD or not when you're looking for your next job after this one. Good papers will trump credentials.</comment>


Zoom accidentally sent meeting host transcript of coworkers private chat - <AUTHOR> https://slate.com/human-interest/2020/04/dear-prudence-coworkers-private-dm-zoom-mocking-weight.html <comment><USER2> Oh haha, this has to be that Zoom feature where you save meeting transcripts and where host<->anyone transcripts are available to anyone who can view transcripts. Always found it weird that that was an automatic setting instead of a manual one. I get the use-case but defaulting to it is probably confusing.

Either FatShamer1 or FatShamer2 must have been the host and victim must have been a person with access to transcripts (which is every participant in case of the default Zoom cloud settings?). If neither FS1 nor FS2 were host then this wouldn't have happened.

<comment><USER3> Looks like this is documented here [https://support.zoom.us/hc/en- us/articles/203650445-In-Meeti...](https://support.zoom.us/hc/en- us/articles/203650445-In-Meeting-Chat)

<comment><USER4> "Note: Private messages between participants are not viewable by the host."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Yikes. While I think it's indicative of poor character to say unconstructive, cruel things about someone to their face or behind their back, I don't know if I believe they should be punished when there was a reasonable expectation that the target could never receive these remarks. Still, maybe it's for the best that cruel people sometimes lose in unfair ways.

<comment><USER6> There is more at play here in my opinion, that points to why HR definitely should be involved. The behavior exhibited is clearly that of a toxic person to have on staff. If that is how an employee talks about colleagues, it's only fair that any chance to catch the behavior will be dealt with swiftly. Remember, this is just the only time it was caught. And for all parties involved it is best that it gets dealt with.

<comment><USER7> Totally agree with t0mmel here. You're trying to build a team, in task as well as in spirit. You can't do that with one of the team members running around un-building the team.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> If we do Zoom bug reporting, after you receive the confirmation email, you click the button in the email and a webpage loads asking if you enroll for a school or not. You normally have two check-boxes to answer Yes or No. On mobile, those check-boxes are not visible and you can not click anything (Yes, No or Continue).

</comment><comment><USER8> A joke about a fat person being fat.</comment>


Why Yahoo's Decision Might Not Be So Wrong - <AUTHOR> http://brennenbyrne.com/post/43992740383/why-yahoos-decision-might-not-be-so-wrong

<comment><USER2> Case study: At my last employer, we had a two remote workers and a project manager. Our entire team knew they were doing very little work, especially knowing one of the remote employees was maintaining a household with 4 children, and getting paid quite a bit more. One had the gall to ask us how to access source control very late in a project. Morale was clearly affected by those who had to come in every day and work their set 7.5 hours and had to make a case to stay home for the cable guy.

To make things fair, we really wish this blanket policy at Yahoo was put in effect, axed all remote arrangements, and reevaluate their remote arrangements on a case-by-case basis and bring fairness back without individually discriminating.

The reports of 'Yahoo is all against telecommuting' do not tell the entire story and are taking advantage of sensationalist headlining. Telecommuting works when everyone has a certain level of discipline, as it's far too easy to take advantage of and end up being complacent. Places do exist that essentially issue paychecks just because you're an employee in the system. I wouldn't be surprised to know far too many Miltons from Office Space are out there.

<comment><USER3> Case study: At my last employer, we had a guy who worked on-site and still had the gall to ask us how to access source control very late in a project. Being a moron who isn't held accountable doesn't get solved because you're not remote.

<comment><USER2> Allow me to clarify; there were no commits to source control on the very project we were working on. That was proof to us that no work was being done, unless there's one massive pending check-in waiting to happen, which would violate our team's internal standards.

<comment><USER3> In this case it was the same - I had complained several times that this individual had contributed absolutely nothing to the project, and this was proof. He asked how to access source control, and then while showing me what he was trying to access source control for it was apparent he didn't even know which operating system we were running on. He had written no code, and had never even successfully run the software. My point is that if people are going to tolerate useless employees, it can happen on-site just as easily as off- site.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I guess I have a bit of a bias here as I'm a remote worker in another company (almost entirely staffed of remote workers), but the initial news mentions that a lot of these people are customer support folks.

I'm sorry, but there's almost no reason to have customer support folks on site. It usually also costs the employer considerably more money to have them on-site. I can't say this with any certainty for Yahoo, but this move is commonly done with remote support workers as a stealth layoff. One of my coworkers has had this done to him three times already (by Mcafee, Microsoft and others). I've seen financial companies do it by relocating their IT support from NY/NJ to places like small-town central Ohio (I'm looking at you, JPMC).

The idea here being that it would cost Yahoo less to have some estimated percentage of people work out of the office versus having to pay the increased unemployment insurance rate based on the number of claims they'd have after a mass layoff. That and they can layoff a bunch of people without it being announced as a layoff.

Companies that hire remote staff have a tendency to attract people whom for medical/disability reasons cannot work in an office -- they're the real losers here.

Yahoo hasn't announced any financial relocation support for anyone moving to work from the office. I find that pretty telling here.

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm certain this won't hurt Yahoo! We all love remote working, myself included, but it's not for everyone. And if yer trying to turn a company around, perhaps having everyone under the same roofs is a good idea.

I'd wager remote working returns later on in the Yahoo! story, and that the folks working from home right now are just being shoved overboard for lack of productivity.

I mean, if a Guido or a Gosling shows up and wants to work at Yahoo!, but wants to be remote, I'd bet they make an exception.

Right now, Yahoo! people are probably used to hiding their lack of productivity, rather than producing cool software. It tends to happen in dying orgs. Getting everyone together for a while might help!

And frankly, I don't worry about Marissa at all: she has one HUGE advantage over every other CEO in the world: she understands how software is built, and what is required of the people who build it. I don't think any other CEO in the world understands that kinda stuff.

<comment><USER6> While I agree with the rest of your post

> I don't think any other CEO in the world understands that kinda stuff.

Larry, Zuck, and Tom Preston-Warner, among others would likely take issue with that last sentence ;)

<comment><USER7> Not only that, the assumption people seem to make around here that many if any CEO's at large companies set low-level policy like this is highly questionable. You can have an exceptional understanding of development _and_ be a good CEO, but if setting development standards or processes is not supposed to be part of your responsibilities (very likely), attempting to do so means you're not doing your job and stepping on the toes of the people who are supposed to be doing this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> If they were getting 25% less done, and had the data, they should have referenced that.

My guess is that given that Marissa is so data driven (to a fault - eg. the thousand shades of blue on the Google ad links as an example) that if she had had this data she would have shared it.

No, its obvious to me that this was a "we did it like this at Google and Google was successful" move without data.

<comment><USER9> _No, its obvious to me that this was a "we did it like this at Google and Google was successful" move without data_

Gourmet chefs in the company restaurant, free massages and 25% pay raises for everyone? Fair deal (if working at the office is practically an option).

<comment><USER10> The massages were not free. They were $80/hour plus tip. Or you could sometimes find 2-hour user studies to participate in that would give you a massage coupon, but it still required a $20 tip.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I like this response, its basically saying "don't assume anything".

How much experience does everyone have of remote working? My experience outside of tech is that it gets used to enable daytime shopping, social activities and other such.

In the industry I've not seen the practice abused, but then it is also rarely offered, usually under the guise of naive security concerns...

I would love to work from home... then I could move somewhere cheaper. Its a fantastic luxury, and it won't attract the best in the same way that not being a tech giant will anyway... ;)

<comment><USER9> I've done it several times. It always was for geographical considerations - I'm not able to relocate for personal reasons. If you can relocate or are living in a relatively poor area, the financial consequences can be very attractive, I've had colleagues from eastern block countries in that situation. For me that part is a wash - but instead it allows to work for companies I personally consider more interesting and better fit to my skills, compared to the locally available jobs.

You can indeed shift some activities that normally happen after work (and the two you mentioned are very typical) to moments during the workday, when such venues are much more quiet. This saves you time. In my case (and current job) it is also more interesting to work late in the evenings because I have to coordinate with a team in the Valley, which is far away from me timezone-wise.

The time you save commuting is 100% won, either for your personal use or to work more for your employer/customers. This can be very substantial.

Offering remote work isn't as easy a saying everyone can go home. You need management that understands what the employees are doing and can judge their output. You need infrastructure such as a secure chat and _reliable_ videoconferencing. The latter is for some reason very hard to get right. You also need a good mindset that doesn't treat remotes as the exception, so you need either teams that are substantially remote, or managers that are remote.

If you're working remotely, you need to deal with things such as potentially being lonely (I have friends on IRC, which are essential to keep me sane, other people go to co-working spaces or go grab coffee, etc), the risk of slipping sleep/work cycles, and good separation of work/home time (this is tricky, but my social life seems to be OK :P).

I've found IRC just as conductive to getting into the company atmosphere as an office. It depends on the employer though. At least on IRC you don't risk sharing the office with the most boring people in the company. You can also regularly have real-life team meetings. My experience is that during those nothing gets done (exactly like working in an office j/k) but you can get to know your teammates a teeny bit better.

Productivity-wise, the advantage of working from home is that you can keep on going if you're on a roll. You'll have bad days too, just like you can have bad days at the office.

So: the downsides is that the company needs to invest a bit in this, and have a setup that's workable (enough people remote!) with a management and IT that can cope with this, and that it doesn't work as well for everyone.

The upsides: you have much more latitude in hiring people, and you win the commuting time.

<comment><USER4> There are wins for the companies, too.

When I worked for a midtown NY hedge fund, they made sure to remind us on a regular basis that just giving us a desk with a computer and power cost the company $2000/month.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The only thing we know for sure at this point is that Mayer sucks at PR when it comes to the tech community.

Which is worrying. If Yahoo really wants to attract top talent again, at the very least they would have spun this better. Now there is only a leaked (surprise) internal memo and a complete lack of control over the story, which means they either don't give a damn or they had no clue.

Neither explanation speaks in favor of Yahoo, even though the decision itself might be a perfectly good one.

For most of us Yahoo just earned extra points in the "places to avoid working for" column. Not because of the decision to call in remote workers, but because they apparently don't understand what it looks like to those people they actually want to attract.

</comment><comment><USER13> The article makes a point that the decision to take away remote working privileges is probably based on data that Yahoo had about their remote working employees. He's suggesting that remote working wasn't working for them, so they nixed it.

But this is the issue I take with the article and the action from Yahoo - remote working isn't a "it does/doesn't work for them/us" type of thing. Remote working either does or does not work, and you are either doing it correctly or doing it incorrectly. Since there is evidence out there that shows that remote working can be just as effective as in-office working (and, in many cases, more effective), I'm left to assume that Yahoo was just doing it wrong.

I do not believe that the concept of remote fluctuates in its performance so greatly - the concept is sound. It's the implementation that is flawed - implementation at companies like Yahoo. There are ways to do it right, and there are ways to do it wrong; Yahoo chose the latter.

So, now the problem is this: when you find that your company has been failing at something, do you try to fix it or do you choose to cut it? Many things that Yahoo has been failing at, in terms of business, have not been cut. Instead, they're trying to fix them. When it comes to benefits for the employees, however, they're more than willing to cut those benefits.

In my mind, the correct action isn't to cut the remote working program, but to find what you're doing wrong and fix it. Cutting the program is only going to demoralize employees and make the company seem less desirable to future talent.

</comment><comment><USER14> I liked the part about "The truth is that decisions like this one get made based on data".

</comment><comment><USER15> There are many employees that are as productive working from home, as they are in the office. It does depend on the employee's ability to manage their time, as well as the management structure to manage their workload and collaborate with the team. Our company has half of their employees in the office, and half that work from home. The employees working from home are as productive as the employees in the office but they work on projects together with the team in the office and we have weekly meetings that touch base with the team. On the other hand I can see how in a large organization you may have employees that manage to get away with doing the minimum amount of work from home and it is obvious to the employees in the office that they do not work as many hours as those in the office. Factor in commute times, you can easily have in office employees spending twice as many hours away from home with commute and work than the home employees. This is a serious drain to morale and overall productivity

</comment><comment><USER16> One of my previous companies did business with Yahoo. Every single Monday and Friday was a "working remote" day for the dozen or so contacts I worked with.

If I had to guess this policy is less about the full time remote employees as it is removing excuses for the 40%+ of Yahoos on the 3-days-week schedule.

</comment><comment><USER17> "or the ousting of Mayer which he sees as eminent" - I think you mean imminent.

<comment><USER14> He may see Mayer as eminent, too. But maybe that would be more properly "whom he sees as eminent".

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I am confused why Brennen spent so much time to say so little.

Of course we don't know the exact reasoning behind the decision nor whether they have metrics to back it up. That is obvious and is the always present caveat whenever there is a discussion about a decision that people weren't directly involved in making. So we are always left to make judgements from outside the box.

So unless Brennen knows something specific he isn't sharing I am going to continue believing that either (a) this is a dumb decision which shows a lack of understanding about how software development works or (b) this is a smart way to reduce headcount without reducing morale.</comment>


How not to test that mysqld is alive - <AUTHOR> http://code.openark.org/blog/mysql/how-not-to-test-that-mysqld-is-alive

<comment><USER2> 'ps ax | grep [m]ysqld' (The regex '[f]oo' will match 'foo' but not itself.)

<comment><USER3> That's one of my favorite shell techniques.

Still, I think they're doing it wrong. For keeping daemons alive I rely on <http://cr.yp.to/daemontools.html> .

<comment><USER4> This is the correct answer -- when you fork the process yourself, you don't have to guess about it dying, you get SIGCHLD and can handle it accordingly.

If you use daemontools, this code is already written for you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Sounds very hacktastical to count the entries as a way to know if the service is alive.

If I found someone doing this on one of my production database machines, I think I'd have to dig out the paintball gun and start chasing them around, especially if the person run around with the title of sysadmin. (I'd cut a slight bit of slack if they were a webdev.)

</comment><comment><USER6> I wonder why they didn't try the command a few times first from the shell.

Anyone who's ever done 'ps | grep' will have noticed that the grep sometimes appears, sometimes doesn't.

Course you could do 'ps | grep | grep -v grep'

<comment><USER7> If it restarted every few hours and the test executed once a minute, then the bug would appear only once in a hundred executions. It's a good post, I think I could have made the same mistake easily.

<comment><USER6> It takes me about 10 runs to get a line of output without the grep. Sometimes less. Try it :)

EDIT:

test.sh:

      for i in {1..1000}
      do
      ps | grep grep | wc -l
      done

./test.sh | sort | uniq -c

      13    0
      987   1

Which would indeed suggest 1.3%. Likely dependent on how quickly you're running it, if it's in memory already etc etc

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> You should check out monit ( <http://mmonit.com/monit/> ). It does, as the name implies, monitoring of processes.

</comment><comment><USER9> Unmentioned is that there could easily be other 'mysqld' processes running on your box, even without someone screwing with you -- a lot of commercial apps bundle their own copy, even on the desktop (like Acrobat 8 Pro).

</comment><comment><USER10> Had they just run

      /etc/init.d/mysql start

instead of "restart," their script would have worked fine. The spurious starts when mysqld was already started would have been ignored.

</comment><comment><USER11> _And best way, that will set your mind at ease even if you're worried that "mysql is running but not responding; it is stuck": connect to MySQL and issue SELECT 1, SELECT NOW(), SELECT something._

Fortunately this is easy:

      $ echo "select now();" | mysql
      now()
      2009-10-05 19:24:22

</comment><comment><USER12> Use "mysqladmin"

run: mysqladmin ping

output: mysqld is alive

</comment><comment><USER13> Informative. I wasn't aware of the fact that all of the processes would be started simultaneously, but in retrospect it makes sense.

</comment><comment><USER14> The pgrep command mentioned in the article was new to me and does the job with a single program. Had it on my debian preinstalled.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pgrep>

</comment><comment><USER15> While the future is uncertain re: Oracle, Solaris's SMF takes care of this problem automatically.</comment>


Ajit Pai jokes with Verizon exec about him being a "puppet" FCC chair - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/12/ajit-pai-jokes-about-being-a-brainwashed-verizon-puppet-at-the-fcc/ <comment><AUTHOR> The corporate control of government is in play in the broad light.</comment>


Blippy cofounder: "It's a lot less bad than it looks" - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2010/04/23/blippy-responds-to-credit-card-leak-its-a-lot-less-bad-than-it-looks/ <comment><USER2> Which could be paraphrased to "the more I look away the less bad it seems." The bug was leaking raw (uncensored) data- so it would be hard to determine how bad it was or to bound how bad it could have been.

</comment><comment><USER3> That's why startups should keep the "beta" label on their products as long as possible...it completely releases you from liability for anything that goes wrong.</comment>


I'm sorry, but designer sucks. - <AUTHOR> http://pothibo.com/post/2739992696/ux-ui-etc-designer-sucks

<comment><USER2> There is a very good reason why designers tend not to explain the specific details of design "suckage" but simply exclaim "it sucks." "It sucks" means that the design has to be thrown out, and one should generally start from scratch. What you're looking for, on the other hand, is an explanation that goes something like this "ok, this part of your design is pretty good, but this one is the really sucky part, and it is sucky because you did so and so, and you only need to change this to so and so and you're good." What you're looking for, in other words, is way to incrementally improve upon an existing design, which is the way engineering and software development is often done. Designers don't think like this. Designers frown upon incremental improvement, since it would imply (1) That design rules are being codified -- which is first of all hard since language used to describe the emotional associations this or that design evokes simply may not exist, and second of all may not be desirable since codification often means banalisation; (2) That design is not holistic -- which means it has some similarity to the dreaded case of a design by a committee ("ok, you do this part, I will do this part, and she will work on that part"), the end result of which is, as we all know, a camel, not a horse.

The best design is always holistic, which means that (1) _one and only one person_ either completely designs everything or closely supervises the entire process, and (2) it is impossible to redesign any single part of the product without redesigning most if not all of the other remaining parts.

Therefore, in design, it is either "it sucks balls; start over" or "this is groovy; rock on."

</comment><comment><USER3> Sounds like the author just has a chip on their shoulder because of some bad experiences.

Certainly not all UX/Designers behave like this. It's a bit much to say they all suck. I've dealt with a lot of dick-head programmers as well, but I don't issue blanket statements about them all sucking; it's just not true. I try not to let my experiences jade me too much, lest I miss some interesting or important things.</comment>


Data on where co-founders met, 10-second survey - <AUTHOR> https://sectorscape.typeform.com/to/U5lQOM

<comment><AUTHOR> I thought it might be fun to collect a bit of data on where co-founders met, and to share the findings with the HN community (inspired by Sam Altman's YC study)!</comment>


Cool Visualisation: Browser share over the last decade - <AUTHOR> http://www.michaelvandaniker.com/labs/browserVisualization/

<comment><USER2> Previous discussion here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=990136>

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Tip: you can click on the legend to show/hide various browsers.

Bonus: Chart just firefox and IEs --- the image looks like the FireFox logo :) <http://imgur.com/mldh8.png>

</comment><comment><USER3> It's a bar graph with a distort applied to it.

The side effect of that is that it improperly scales the newer data vs. the older data, conflating graphic design and data representation (introducing bogus data).

<comment><USER4> Yes, it's suposed to look like the Firefox logo.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Is it just me or does it look an awful lot like the firefox logo?

<comment><USER3> I see it.

Interesting ... I wonder if that's an intentional Easter egg?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> There's the blog post that goes along with the visualization [1] (although the server appears to be pretty slow right now). It's not so much about the data, but how the graphing framework itself works. Pretty interesting stuff.

[1] [http://michaelvandaniker.com/blog/2009/10/31/visualizing- his...](http://michaelvandaniker.com/blog/2009/10/31/visualizing-historic- browser-statistics-with-axiis/)

</comment><comment><USER7> This data is also based on visitors to w3schools.com, which certainly isn't a typical demographic of US or world visitors.

</comment><comment><USER8> It goes to show how stubborn IE6 is at dying. Corporate lock-in for the win! <http://reason.com/archives/1996/06/01/typing-errors>

</comment><comment><USER9> Cool Visualization indeed. Completely useless, but cool.

</comment><comment><USER10> And still none of those browsers can display this visualisation without a plugin.

</comment><comment><USER11> If you hover over a given line, it gives month, year, and percentage.</comment>