Hong Kong: UK makes citizenship offer to residents - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-53246899 <comment><USER2> I live in Vancouver.

The pattern for many Hong Kong immigrants is to have the mother and children live in Canada while the father works in HK.The family doesn't declare the foreign income in Canada.

So they enjoy the benefits of a low tax HK income. And they get all the nice things that go with living in high tax Canada while not contributing to it -free healthcare, subsided University, safe communities, clean environment, low income benefits.

It's so common it has a name, satalite family/astronaut dad.

This isn't a good deal for Canada and Canadians.

[https://vancouversun.com/news/staff-blogs/the-unsettled- live...](https://vancouversun.com/news/staff-blogs/the-unsettled-lives-of- wealthy-transnational-migrants/)

<comment><USER3> > mother and children live in Canada while the father works in HK.The family > doesn't declare the foreign income in Canada.

Why would the father pay taxes in Canada when he lives and works in HK (or anywhere else) and (likely) is not a Canadian tax resident? It doesn't make any sense.

After all they pay local taxes in Canada while spending (GST, PST, property tax etc.)

<comment><USER4> Income tax is by far the largest and most progressive tax.

Sales taxes are small and regressive.

It's a monster difference.

<comment><USER3> How is the sales tax regressive when there is a fixed percentage?

Like the more I spent the less I pay in sales tax? I don't think so.

<comment><USER5> It is regressive when you consider the position of the buyer. People _need_ to buy large items, and low income people are disproportionately hurt by taxes on those items.

<comment><USER3> That doesn't mean it's regressive. It's just a demagogy.

Low income people buy less things and pay lower sales tax proportionally. Wealthy people spend more on luxurious goods and pay way higher tax in absolute numbers. Everyone is hurt the same.

On top of that, necessities (food, medication, books) are usually exempt from the sales tax.

<comment><USER6> The logic of calling a flat sales tax regressive is (I think) that poor people spend most of their income, while rich people save more, and thus pay a lower percentage of their income.

Agree that this isn't a great way to look at things. And that (as you say) there are often different rates of sales tax on potatoes vs yachts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> If I was China, I would love for the US and the UK to take the law-aware and dissident people off my hands.

<comment><USER8> Pretty soon the law-abiding and obedient people will become aware that life outside of authoritarianism is better and safer, and they will either run away or revolt.

<comment><USER9> Life in China is fine right now. They are living about 50x better off than their parents. They are educated.

The CCP is super clever and imbued a sort of nationalistic pride from birth. Instead of the US's more complicated dualistic individualism/patriotism combo, the Chinese people actually get some sort of pride for being a cog in the CCP machine.

It's a completely different paradigm and obviously super dangerous because it allows the people at the top who aren't elected to pull the strings on a machine of 1.4 billion people. If they run the system correctly, it can be much more "effective".

Democracy has lots of pressure outlets, and it is definitely much more healthy longterm. That's why I think it's the better system, even vs a well-run (and let's even assume benevolent) CCP.

<comment><USER10> It should be pointed out that life in Hong Kong is definitely not markedly better for young people than it was for their parents.

<comment><USER9> Yup, and exactly part of the reason they are protesting. Goes to show how much "relative" economic success is important to peoples' satisfaction of government.

Even in the US, that is the #1 issue in every Pres election. How's the economy? Aka do people with 401k's think that they are better off, and thus do they think they are doing better against their peers (their competition for finding a mate/maintaining their mate)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> 68% of conservative voters, 71% of labour voters, and 77% of libdem voters support this.

[https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles- reports/2020/0...](https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles- reports/2020/07/01/support-helping-british-passport-holders-hong-kong)

<comment><USER12> Surprising isn't it, given how much of a driving force EU immigration was in the Brexit debate.

<comment><USER13> It kind of depends, immigration wasn't a big part of it from talking with many business partners. Many just dont like the idea rules are being made in Brussels.

<comment><USER14> The claim that Turkey was soon going to join the EU (which isn't going to happen) and flood the country with Turkish immigrants was a major component of vote leave messaging: "Turkey/NHS/£350 million".

Edit: FYI Dominic Cummings actually blogged about the important of Turkey to their success:

[https://dominiccummings.com/2017/01/09/on-the- referendum-21-...](https://dominiccummings.com/2017/01/09/on-the- referendum-21-branching-histories-of-the-2016-referendum-and-the-frogs-before- the-storm-2/)

<comment><USER15> To be fair Angela Merkel flooded Germany with millions of immigrants from the middle East.

<comment><USER15> Here's a source if you need one: [https://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/europes- border-crisis/germ...](https://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/europes-border- crisis/germany-s-merkel-faces-political-crisis-over-migrant-policy-n883441)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> It's interesting to see how proactive a lot of developed countries are being with getting ready to welcome refugees from Hong Kong, especially compared to the Syrian crisis a few years ago.

<comment><USER17> UK offer is a 5-year timed right to stay, not even permanent residence.

<comment><USER12> 5 years continuous residence is typically the requirement to apply for permanent residence and ultimately citizenship.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> US has as well to some extent [1]. I hope the entire Anglosphere follows suit (CAN/AUS/NZ).

[1][https://www.wsj.com/articles/hong-kong-police-make-first- sec...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/hong-kong-police-make-first-security-law- arrest-as-thousands-protest-11593591072?mod=hp_lead_pos1)

<comment><USER19> Aus and NZ are still in futile COVID suppression mode, so they are unlikely to be taking in a million Hongkies any time soon.

I'm sure they'll get around to it though - it will reinflate their property markets which have sagged a bit this year.

<comment><USER20> Arrivals from overseas face mandatory quarantine, so I don't see how COVID is an obstacle.

I think the Australian government is worried about further deterioration in the Australia-China relationship. I think they'll do something if UK/US/Canada/NZ make the first move.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'm super curious to see how this will turn out for the UK. A lot of the comments here mention HK's relative high education, English proficiency and wealth.

If those are true: the upside will be easier settlement into the UK, maybe increased entrepreneurship. The downsides are: driving up local housing prices, increased competition for jobs.

If those are false, the UK may experience an influx of lower-wage labor and increased competition for blue-collar jobs. Possibly even increased crime (maybe Triads would move to the UK?)

I have a feeling anti-Asian/Chinese racism would spike in the UK. It has popular bipartisan support right now (another comment mentioned that) because anti-China/CCP sentiment is probably at an all-time high, but you can't take in thousands/millions of people in a short amount of time from a different culture without expecting an impact on your own.

tl;dr: How do I invest in British real estate?

<comment><USER22> > The downsides are: driving up local housing prices, increased competition > for jobs.

No, no.

Increasing housing prices are a long-standing policy in the UK (and many other Western countries, as evidenced by low credit rates and extra bonuses for mortgages) and a gift to many voters (whose personal wealth is tied to their homes), and would be a welcome boost in times of COVID.

If the UK was afraid of brain drain of London's financial elite (UK's big "export" is finance) because of Brexit just a year ago, vacuuming up HK's financial elite would be a welcome counterweight.

<comment><USER21> Nope, not buying those. Perhaps I should have defined "downside" with "for whom".

> Increasing housing prices are a long-standing policy in the UK (and many > other Western countries, as evidenced by low credit rates and extra bonuses > for mortgages) and a gift to many voters (whose personal wealth is tied to > their homes), and would be a welcome boost in times of COVID.

Would you apply that same argument to say, Vancouver? Would you say their increased housing prices is a welcome boost? The locals certainly don't think so.

> If the UK was afraid of brain drain of London's financial elite (UK's big > "export" is finance) because of Brexit just a year ago, vacuuming up HK's > financial elite would be a welcome counterweight.

My understanding is that the "brain drain" is because the finance jobs would move to somewhere in the EU (and the expertise would simply move with them). It's not like they're leaving because the UK doesn't pay well in that sector (e.g., Canada vs. the US in the tech, medical sectors).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> There was an idea floating around in 1989 to build a "New Hong Kong" in Scotland!

[https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/11920027.scotland- could-...](https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/11920027.scotland-could-be- site-of-new-hong-kong-says-study/)

Edit: I'm sure we could find a bit that was fairly similar to the scenery of Hong Kong, though not sure we can do much about the weather....

<comment><USER23> Great initiative, given that most of the immigrants are educated, experienced professionals, and have English as their second native language. Definitely, democratic progressive countries should compete for the right to host Hong Kongers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> > About 350,000 UK passport holders, and 2.6 million others eligible, will be > able to come to the UK for five years.

Hong kong has a population of over 7 mil so this is less than half. What's the criteria for this chance at a uk citizenship?

I found a good video about the special passports given to hong kong from the uk. It is a bit complicated but this video seems to summarise the important bits quite well.[1]

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jP9XB3JIa0o](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jP9XB3JIa0o)

<comment><USER25> The summary is that before the handover in 1997 everyone was offered a status called British National (Overseas). Anyone who accepted this offer retained their nationality after the handover, and anyone who didn't permanently lost their chance to be a BNO.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> The excellent Freedom of Movement blog is publishing great explainers on this.

[https://www.freemovement.org.uk/bno-visa-hong-kong- dominic-r...](https://www.freemovement.org.uk/bno-visa-hong-kong-dominic-r..).

tldr;

It applies to Hong Kongers who applied for British National (Overseas) Citizenship (BNO) before registration closed in 1997, and it can not be inherited. Many of the young HK protestors will therefore be ineligible for it.

BNO is an obscure post-Colonial status applicable to Hong Kongers which did not up till now grant long term residence to the UK.

BNOs who now want to take up the government's offer for long term residence in the UK will have to fork a significant up front fee. This makes it available only to wealthy BNOs. If the government wanted to they could have changed the law to allow them to skip much of this, but they haven't.

</comment><comment><USER27> No, only to a tiny subset of HK residents on a very arbitrary basis, specifically excluding anyone under 23 (so most protestors) and any child (so most people who don't want to literally abandon their kids).

<comment><USER28> BNOs can bring their children with them, the visa restrictions have also been lifted for dependants.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Hong Kong as a Special Economic Zone (SEZ) instead of a Special Administrative Region (SAR) would be an easy transition. Although I don't see it more appealing than other SEZ's Shanghai's Free Trade Zone or the entire Hainan Province.

But the consolidation of existing companies and operations in Hong Kong would still be pretty unique, its uniqueness still not that relevant. For regional price discovery it would be useful, like for some publicly traded companies or local futures markets.

<comment><USER30> HK has the inertia of having lots preexisting international HQs there. Any takers on how many of those will move out over the coming decades? > or < 50% of them?

<comment><USER29> Losing its special trading status with the US should already be the catalyst for that.

But the market based economies of China's Special Economic Zones should make Hong Kong as attractive as any other major financial center, instead of as a micro-state.

There are many international HQs in major financial centers under high tax regimes, whether it is Shanghai, New York City, London, Frankfurt.

I would say 30% move, so less than 50%. Incumbents in Hong Kong are already beneficiaries of the Communist Party in Beijing, otherwise corporate consensus in the LegCo would have matched the individual consensus already.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> A rare display of competent politicians in the UK

</comment><comment><USER32> The US needs to join the UK and be vocal in support of the Hong Kong people.

<comment><USER33> The US has been far more vocal already.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I would have said that returning Hong Kong back to China was one of the biggest mistakes the UK has made, but here we are in 2020.

It would have been better if they made it into an independent city state like Singapore.

<comment><USER35> If you don't return something at the end of a contract is that theft? or piracy?

Its not like the UK had a choice. We're you expecting them to go all Hawaii on the situation and just annex it?

<comment><USER36> The government they made the contract with didn't even exist anymore. The Qing Empire made that contract with the UK. Independence or just keeping HK in the UK both make at least as much sense as giving it to a country that didn't even exist when the contract was formed.

<comment><USER37> Then Honk Hong should have been given back to the Republic of China (Taiwan) which is the direct successor of the Qing empire, not the PRC. RPC is not a successor of Qing nor ROC since ROC still exists.

<comment><USER36> Honestly I think so too, but I doubt the UK government wanted to start a war with China.

<comment><USER37> Hum I was half trolling half serious, having skin in the game in favour of Taiwan. Interesting the game Wargame: Red Dragon has exactly a campaign about UK vs PRC over HK.

And I spoke that after having of talk with a Japanese people today and they fear they are the next on the list. I told them Japan at like 6th or 5th powerful army despite Article 9, + US alliance (that we all understand as half trustable only), so quite able to defend themselves. A lot of people in East Asian (HK, Vietnam, Philipines, Japan) fear China. This is what I got from talking with friends from this country. Everyone think there will be war at some point, only the time and starting place is unknown.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> This article lists some key provisions from the Chinese Communist Party's security law:

[https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia- china-52765838](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-52765838)

<comment><USER39> Some real kickers in here:

* Beijing will establish a new security office in Hong Kong, with its own law enforcement personnel - neither of which would come under the local authority's jurisdiction

* This office can send some cases to be tried in mainland China - but Beijing has said it will only have that power over a "tiny number" of cases

* Beijing will have power over how the law should be interpreted, not any Hong Kong judicial or policy body. If the law conflicts with any Hong Kong law, the Beijing law takes priority

<comment><USER38> Advocating for Hong Kong independence can also earn you a life sentence:

"Crimes of secession, subversion, terrorism and collusion with foreign forces are punishable by a maximum sentence of life in prison"

I'm not sure if criticizing Chairman Xi or the CCP would qualify as subversion.

<comment><USER40> Aren't there also similar laws like that in USA? People are being recommended life sentences for throwing a molotov at an __empty __police vehicle during these George Floyd protests and are being labeled as terrorists by Trump.

[https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/17/us/brooklyn-molotov- lawyers-p...](https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/17/us/brooklyn-molotov-lawyers- protests/index.html)

<comment><USER41> Good. I don't care if it's a police car or someone's personal car or an empty cardboard box. If you're throwing around molotov cocktails you should go to jail.

<comment><USER42> To be fair though, even if you think people should go to jail for that (and I don't think that's an unreasonable view), surely you'd agree that a life sentence is excessive?

<comment><USER41> A life sentence is excessive yes, but why are we trying to justify throwing molotiv cocktails in the first place? What happened to civility?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Isnt this the kind of thing that starts wars.

</comment><comment><USER23> I'm really happy the UK did not leave the former colony to suffer under the communist regime. Reminds me of the situation with Jews before WWII - if they were given the same kind of refuge by any country, Holocaust would hot had happened. Sometimes I dream, who'd have offered citizenship or at least refuge to residents of Russia, to escape our ongoing Soviet Union restoration.

</comment><comment><USER44> Nobody wants to leave Hong Kong. We're on the streets fighting for our home alongside people who love it just as much as we do. We have spent the past year gathering to sing, to celebrate, to mourn, and to fight for this place that we love. The past year has made it immensely clear how special a place Hong Kong is—even with the many things that can be improved.

This offer is appreciated and I believe that those who accept it as expedient will not be looked down upon by others. When you have the Sword of Damocles hanging over your head it is an exhausting existence. Many in the resistance will move overseas and continue their efforts.

From an economic standpoint, any emigration of Hong Kongers is likely to be beneficial to the places where they land. Those most likely to take this offer in the short term will coincide with those who are most materially wealthy. Given that the CCP has threatened to revoke the Chinese Nationality of those who accept an offer of this sort (and has been known to use family members as leverage), I do not expect that, as a sibling comment states, we would see people trying to use this as a tax avoidance scheme.

From a demographic standpoint, many of the people who will choose to leave are young. This is a significant benefit to many places in the world who have declining birth rates. The UK population pyramid, for example, would appear to benefit from immigration of a younger cohort. [1]

As to efficacy, there is a gap in coverage for those born shortly after the handover. It's unclear how many will fall into that gap but it does represent a cohort of people who tend more toward exclusively identifying as Hong Kongers. [2] People who qualify as dependents of BNO holders appear to be eligible so that gap may be approximately six years: July 1, 1997 - July 1, 2003. It also doesn't account for children of HK immigrants and I have no insight into those demographics and their opinions (possibly a significant number of mainland immigrants who identify as Chinese).

As a real gesture, instead of the words that have been spent accomplishing nothing for the past year, this is a welcome change. Hong Kongers are now hoping for 攬炒, "if we burn, you burn with us." But if nobody holds the CCP accountable it just becomes "we burn."

(I'm a US passport holder. I am a Hong Kong immigrant. My wife was born and raised in Hong Kong (土生土長香港人). I'm currently studying Cantonese full time at CUHK (中文大學). I have a 光復香港時代革命 flag hanging in my apartment. I wrote this quickly: there will be errors, glosses, and poorly expressed things. I do not speak for all Hong Kongers and their experiences, hopes, wishes, desires, and dreams.)

[1] [https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populati...](https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/populationestimates/articles/ukpopulationpyramidinteractive/2020-01-08)

[2] [https://www.hkupop.hku.hk/pori_table_chart/EthnicIdentity/Q0...](https://www.hkupop.hku.hk/pori_table_chart/EthnicIdentity/Q001_Hongkonger_byagegp/Q001_Hongkonger_byagegp_chart.html)

</comment><comment><USER45> "... the government to dissolve the people and elect another."

</comment><comment><USER46> Pity they did not extend the same courtesy to all the descendants of the "Windrush" immigration wave from the Caribbean but then they are just poor black folk.

</comment><comment><USER47> Wonder how many of the eligible people are TSMC employees or contractors? :)

<comment><USER48> You're thinking of a different country.

<comment><USER49> The CPP would like to have a word with you for referring to Taiwan as a "different country"

<comment><USER50> They need to stop strong-arming the rest of us into accepting their made-up- reality. They can live in fantasy land if they want, but they don't get to make me live in their fantasy.

<comment><USER51> Congratulations, you've just violated the brand-new HK National Security Law, which according to article 38 applies to everyone on Earth.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> Is this an attempt to fill immigration gaps after EU immigration collapses? I don't believe the government actually cares about anything that going on in HK.

<comment><USER53> I wouldn't be surprised if the government thought exactly that, but I don't think it would work - HKers are mostly urban and well-educated, especially the politicized groups that are worried by Chinese rule. It's unlikely they will happily accept to become an underclass.

Still, it is the decent thing to do. It also underlines once again this country has no real power or influence left in the superpower age. Before, we could at least try to get the EU to go to bat for our interests, and have a real impact. We have none of that now, which is probably part of the reason the Chinese accelerated the process.

<comment><USER54> > Before, we could at least try to get the EU to go to bat for our interests, > and have a real impact.

the same EU that rewrote its coronavirus report several times in fear of CCP repercussions?

[https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/24/world/europe/disinformati...](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/24/world/europe/disinformation- china-eu-coronavirus.html)

come on

<comment><USER55> They said "try". Rest of the EU might have said "no", but now the EU hasn't got any more reason to listen to the UK than to listen to, say, Australia's opinion about Hong Kong.

Then there is also the reduced power of the EU post-Brexit. Just because Brexit costs the UK influence doesn't mean it _doesn't_ cost the EU too — without the UK, the EU is only about 85% of the GDP of the other two big trade giants (the USA and China are each about equal to what the EU was with the UK).

<comment><USER56> But there's no reason that an independent UK and the EU cannot work together where their interests align, is there? The idea that it's all or nothing is nothing more than yet another canard put about by anti-Brexit protagonists.

<comment><USER55> _If_ their interests aligned. Without the UK having a seat at the table, they 'ain't going to align. That is literally the point of Brexit in the first place, for the UK to diverge from the EU, because without that the members of the current U.K. government would not have campaigned for it in the first place.

And that big flashing neon "if" is still true with a competent government, let alone the current lot which (as per recent news) is pouring money into a failed multinational project that cannot fit their requirements just to avoid the embarrassment of continuing to spend money on entirely successful multinational projects that happen to be EU-branded.

Also, what do ducks have to do with anything?

> yet another canard

<comment><USER56> Definition of canard

1a : a false or unfounded report or story especially : a fabricated report The report about a conspiracy proved to be a canard. b : a groundless rumor or belief the widespread canard that every lawyer is dishonest

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> Typical shoddy journalism. Bandies numbers about: '150.000', 'up to 3 million' , when talking about the numbers likely to qualify to come to UK but never actually tells us what the population of Hong Kong is in the first place. So is this everyone?... 50% of the population?... 25%?.. 10%?...

<comment><USER58> A quick Google would tell you the population of Hong Kong is 7,500,700 (2019 estimate).

<comment><USER59> The point is that from a journalistic point of view the number of people eligible for citizenship is meaningless without the context of either the population of Hong Kong or of the UK or perhaps the number of immigrants the UK typically sees from Hong Kong and other countries. It's very common in articles to see numbers that have no meaning without context. Either the context should be provided or the numbers should not be mentioned.

<comment><USER51> But even the Home Office doesn't know the exact number.

They know how many current BN(O) holders there are. But they don't know how many are eligible exactly -- they have the entire list of people who have received one, but that's over 20 years ago, and a lot could have happened to them since.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Animation and the Uncanny Valley - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/03/28/175635684/is-it-real-with-new-technology-has-activision-crossed-the-uncanny-valley

<comment><USER2> Nice to see how the appearance of characters in games become more and more realistic.</comment>


2017 California school test scores: Why are they flatlining? - <AUTHOR> http://www.mercurynews.com/2017/09/27/california-school-test-scores-why-are-they-flatlining/ <comment><USER3> "California isn't alone in its stagnating scores and in fact compares favorably with the 12 other states, plus the U.S. Virgin Islands, that administered the same tests last spring from the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium. Scores decreased in every state, and California's decline was about the smallest, retired educational testing specialist Douglas McRae said."

This is the most important sentence in the article. It points to a problem in the test itself - California's students didn't just get magically stupider.

Standardized testing isn't a particularly good way to gauge schools' ability to prepare students for college or for the 'real world.' Unfortunately, our K-12 public education system is broken and the politics of fixing it are even more broken, so this is what we get.

<comment><USER4> "This is the most important sentence in the article. It points to a problem in the test itself - California's students didn't just get magically stupider."

Yes. Having gone through public education in California the tests were treated as a total joke. They had no weight to your grades and there was zero incentive to do well. Often you wouldn't even get the results. In elementary school it was common for a teacher to say "When you have finished with this test, you can go to lunch" \-- well kids would just start filling in bubbles. These tests were also accompanied by a sheet to see if you have tried drugs or sex all anonymous. My entire 3rd grade class did heroin.

<comment><USER5> Easy solution: make the tests count for a significant chunk of the students' grades. Or at certain years, require a passing grade on the standardized tests to be promoted to the next grade.

<comment><USER6> If we're going to have an enforced one-size fits all national curriculum, we can do better than the one we reverse engineer from some stupid standardized test.

<comment><USER7> Can we?

<comment><USER6> If we can't, then we have no hope of succeeding with a one-size-fits-all national curriculum anyways, so either way the point is moot.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> When are we going to come out and admit that our schools are not providing our society with what it needs or wants?

For a large chunk of HN, schools served us relatively well.

But for a _huge_ chunk of the US, school is just a waste of time. At best, it's free childcare for parents. Preparing everyone to college is overkill (n.b. having a way for everyone who wants to go to college an affordable way to go to a good school is +++++EV... totally different issues).

Mandatory schooling should be for fundamentals in reading, communication (speaking and writing), and math -- if you want to get cheeky, teach them disciplinary approaches to history and science by using examples _that currently exist in their communities_. Most people don't need literature. Most people don't need algebra (or higher). Most people don't need history (esp. as it's currently taught). Most people don't need science (again, esp. not as it is currently taught). Why are we teaching these things on people who don't care about and will not use these potential skills? The resource sink is disgusting.

We could easily educate people to a functional level by 8th grade. Then let people join the real world if they want. Let them work rather than keep them in a glorified prison. If they at some point decide they want more schooling, give them easy access cheaply. This would be much cheaper than all the wasted high school resources we have now, and many of those resources could be funneled towards people who actually _want_ to learn at the secondary and tertiary levels, even if it's not on a classic timeline.

It's time for a rethink of education -- our current system is ridiculously bad.

<comment><USER9> I agree with the general sentiment that education needs to be overhauled but I feel that you undervalue literature and history. Hopefully someone comes along that is more qualified than I am to speak about this.

There must be better ways to teach algebra and higher math, science, history, literature, etc. But to say they are useless is bonkers to me. Especially at a time where menial jobs are at great risk due to outsourcing and automation. The solution has to be more and better education, not less. I don't know how you expect people who know basic math, reading, and writing to succeed.

<comment><USER10> > Especially at a time where menial jobs are at great risk due to outsourcing > and automation.

This is what is so frustrating to me. Tons of people on this site say "more people should be going to college because the lower class is getting screwed," but fail to acknowledge that an enormous chunk of the population is mentally unable to obtain a degree, and that higher degree attainment rates doesn't help the issue because it devalues the degree and makes it where young people basically must get a degree to get a good job, forcing an entire generation into massive amounts of debt before even starting their career.

Instead of expecting the half of the population with IQs lower than 100 to suddenly get an advanced degree and move to a large city, we need to do something about the negative effects that globalization and capital concentration have had on our nation. We need to make it so that quality of life for our lower class goes up as time goes on, not down.

<comment><USER9> Right. These people are getting hammered. We have to find a way to let them be productive at something that isn't simple enough to be done by machines or laborers in developing countries. College is not feasible for them, but neither is neutered education.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> One of the reasons - probably one of the biggest reasons - for continuously lower test scores in America is the quality of the care these children receive.

Over 40% of children in the US are born to unwed mothers, compared to 5% at the beginning of last century. About 70% of unwed childbirth is by black mothers, versus just 24% in 1965. The last two peaks of teenage pregnancy were 1991 and 2007 - so the children of teens have more children, whom are now 10 years old, with 26yr old parents, and whose grandparents are about 42yrs, with great grandparents about 70 years old.

The financial and social strain on such families is intense. It's also difficult to be the best parent you can be when you yourself are still not an adult. And it virtually guarantees poverty for these children. There is almost no reasonable assistance given to the families of these children - <USER2> like food, shelter, access to education, daycare, transportation.

Kids are getting left behind not by their school system, but a social system that has ignored them as part of a lower class of society that we'd rather starve and struggle than give assistance to.

If you don't believe this, go into a [public] school in Philly, Baltimore, New York, and ask about the grade level of reading comprehension of the kids, what their family life is like, and their economic status. You will see a trend in all three: "poor."

<comment><USER12> > There is almost no reasonable assistance given to the families of these > children - assistance like food, shelter, access to education, daycare, > transportation.

Yes, there is. You are arguing for more welfare, but welfare caused the problem in the first place:

[http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/viewSubCategory.asp?id=16...](http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/viewSubCategory.asp?id=1672)

<comment><USER13> Not too say that the website doesn't have anything useful to say, but is has some very extreme views like , "Muslim efforts to advance the hegemony of Islamic law in the United States by introducing it stealthily and incrementally into American society"

[http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/guideDesc.asp?catid=124&t...](http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/guideDesc.asp?catid=124&type=issue)

<comment><USER11> The website in question is produced by a conservative thinktank led by David Horowitz, who amongst other things, leads a blog called "Jihad Watch". As with most politically-aligned think tanks, the content is designed to convince someone of a particular argument or issue - in this case that "the left" is responsible for the systemic disenfranchisement of African Americans through welfare, rather than say, systemic racism and the gutting of real social welfare by conservatives.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Horowitz#Allegations_of_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Horowitz#Allegations_of_racism) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Horowitz#Criticizing_Isl...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Horowitz#Criticizing_Islamic_organizations)

(and yes, this is an ad hominem attack, I will reply to the previous commenter with why the article in question was stupid)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > But persistently low achievement rates of African-American, Latino, poor, > English-learner and disabled students, who together make up a majority of > the state's public-school students, fuel criticism of the educational status > quo.

Perhaps repealing the English only teaching requirement via prop 58 last year had something to do with harming English proficiency in underserved populations. Prop 227, which established the English only requirement (parents could opt out) seemed successful.

> "Hispanic test scores on a range of subjects have risen since Proposition > 227 became law."

[https://ballotpedia.org/California_Proposition_227,_the_%22E...](https://ballotpedia.org/California_Proposition_227,_the_%22English_in_Public_Schools%22_Initiative_\(1998\))

<comment><USER15> >Perhaps repealing the English only teaching requirement via prop 58 last year had something to do with harming English proficiency in underserved populations.

It wouldn't have affected any of these test scores. Prop 58 was approved Nov 2016 and took effect July 2017[1], whereas the 2017 tests cited in this article were taken 2/3 of the way into the school year[2], which puts it in Spring for a normal school year schedule and months before Prop 58 ever took effect. Any effects of Prop 58 on testing scores won't be seen until this school year when students take the tests in early 2018.

[1] [http://downloads.capta.org/leg/Prop58_Support_FullAnalysis.p...](http://downloads.capta.org/leg/Prop58_Support_FullAnalysis.pdf)

[2][https://www.cde.ca.gov/ta/tg/ai/assess1617testdates.asp](https://www.cde.ca.gov/ta/tg/ai/assess1617testdates.asp)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> It has everything to do with home life and environment. No classroom within the expected margins of quality can overcome a negative home life that does not value education and encourage student achievement.

Wealth and cultural/familial values are the major culprits.

<comment><USER17> Lack of wealth and lack of cultural/familial values more so than their overwhelming presence - though some might argue against the cultural part. When will American culture praise and reward academic acheivement in the way that some other cultures do?

<comment><USER10> I would argue that cultural influences do play a major role. Asian Americans on average make nearly $20k/yr more than whites. Almost 20% of billionaires are Jewish[1]. Those kinds of discrepancies don't come from nowhere, and absolutely show that upbringing and culture have a massive effect on future growth and goal attainment.

Now look at popular US culture nowadays. People are told they can be whatever they want to be, and losers are given participation trophies. Comfort and inclusion is seen as more important than competition and self-control. Our culture is changing massively, and it's showing in our test scores.

[1] [https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/36760/were-48-o...](https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/36760/were-48-of- american-billionaires-jewish- in-2014https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/36760/were-48-of-american- billionaires-jewish-in-2014)

<comment><USER18> Education is typically _very_ important in a Jewish household, STEM, medicine, law, and business are likewise very respected, along with musical talent. I'm Jewish, and I'd say the cultural norm ranged from supportive of the things I mentioned, to extremely demanding of them. I've noticed similar patterns from childhood well into adulthood in my Asian friends, whether they're Indian, Japanese, Chinese or Korean.

Drive matters. A family with expectations, and generations of educational aspirations matter, if you're trying to excel.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Treating learning as a process of moving information into children's minds and then checking it's quality via tests is an old, inefficient and misaligned with what we know about learning.

It is a broken approach which makes sense in the context of training factory workers while providing childcare for their worker parents. Works so-so for the bean counters at the tremendous cost of crushing ebmveryone else.

It is abysmal in the face of the pace at which the workforce moves and doesn't even come close to what today's kids actually need.

Tests are just one of the symptoms.

<comment><USER20> What would be a new, efficient approach?

<comment><USER19> Efficient from the standpoint of students?

I'd recommend looking into democratic schools. Focusing on empowering learning to learn, self determination, intrinsic motivation, leadership, public speaking, project-based learning.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Q: Why are they flatlining? A: Random variation.

But seriously, you shouldn't be allowed to announce a trend without giving some measure of historical volatility. Show me that this "flatline" is actually a major deviation from expected results (based on historical data).

Even a chart would demonstrate this visually. This is clearly just axe- grinding.

</comment><comment><USER22> The kids go to school to get homework from professionals trained in the art of teaching then the unqualified parent is the one that has to help the child do these homeworks. Now what is recommended is to sign up for the after school program where for a fee someone can help them with their homework.

How about they teach and do the work during school hours?

<comment><USER23> A large portion of students do not get parental help with homework. Their parents aren't around, or don't actively participate in their lives. And that certainly means they won't pay for after school tutoring. Those are the kids most in need of systemic reform, not those who have parents that value education, where their only problem is just the schools themselves sucking. They will almost always succeed as long as their parents support them (and given enough income more likely than not move them into charter school or some other option).

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> It's not too surprising considering the rising inequality in CA.

Wealth is the largest predictor of educational attainment.

[https://cepa.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/reardon%20whit...](https://cepa.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/reardon%20whither%20opportunity%20-%20chapter%205.pdf)

<comment><USER25> Yes, but wealth is also correlated with aptitude.

I'm not saying our system is perfect. Plenty of rich bozos.

On the other hand, in a perfect system, to me, it seems that the highest achievers would tend to both: 1. Succeed in school and 2. Acquire wealth.

<comment><USER6> We're referring in this case to the wealth of parents, not of students. Students have very little control over which parents they're assigned.

<comment><USER25> Most students have the combined genetic material of their parents. Genetics are a key influence on aptitude.

To be transparent, I personally benefited from public schools, and my parents were not wealthy (but they were graduates of public colleges).

I'm not arguing that only wealthy people should have access to quality education. I'm just saying that it's a weak argument to point out that success in school is linked with wealth.

<comment><USER26> >I'm just saying that it's a weak argument to point out that success in school is linked with wealth.

Would you like to say that the Earth is flat, disease is caused by an imbalance of humors, and Adam and Eve tamed dinosaurs for use in ancient rodeos while you're at it?

Because those would have more chance of being correct than what you're saying. Socioeconomic security correlates more strongly to educational outcomes than ANY other variable, including IQ.

<comment><USER27> This seems like kind of a low effort comment. Are you disputing any of these claims:

        * IQ or other measures of aptitude contribute to success in school
        * IQ/aptitude are heritable
        * IQ/aptitude contribute to success in life

Because those all seem sort of reasonable to me, and would explain the top comment of "wealth is the largest predictor of educational attainment", without some sort of nefarious inequality good school / bad school thing going on. I think that's what GP was getting at.

I think you're arguing about _magnitude_ of effect? That, while that's true, socioeconomic status effects educational attainment far more than natural aptitude? That also seems plausible to me, although not guaranteed to be correct. Do you have any sources on the relative effects of each contribution? I'd be curious to see.

<comment><USER6> SES and IQ are _not orthogonal_. In the limited studies we have, SES interventions generate durable IQ gains, gains substantially larger than the supposed gap between races. The grandparent comment is "not even wrong".

<comment><USER27> > interventions generate durable IQ gains

Oh, really? That's awesome. I was under the impression this wasn't possible. Do you have any resources on what the interventions were? I'm interested from a selfish parental perspective...

<comment><USER6> Start here and follow links:

[https://www.vox.com/the-big- idea/2017/5/18/15655638/charles-...](https://www.vox.com/the-big- idea/2017/5/18/15655638/charles-murray-race-iq-sam-harris-science-free-speech)

(This only _looks_ like a Vox article; it's actually an open letter from authoritative researchers Vox happens to be publishing.)

<comment><USER25> I read the Vox piece, and I don't find it logical. Do you think a fair summary is "nature has a larger impact on IQ than nurture?"

Note the article does concede that genetics impact IQ.

Somewhat related: I find it amusing when parents talk at length about how similar their children are to themselves and to past relatives -- and then pivot to essentially argue that every individual has equal capabilities.

<comment><USER6> You read a piece by Eric Turkheimer and Richard Nisbett and "didn't find it logical"?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I would really like to see results from testing that indicated progression. Since they test students in third through eighth grades and 11th grade, I think it would be more interesting to know of the students who scored in some range in 3rd grade last year, how did they do in 4th grade this year, and so on. You can sort of infer by looking at reports by grade level over time, but a lot of students don't stay at the same school, so it's hard to tell.

For students who test below proficient in one year, it's not necessarily reasonable to expect one year of schooling to enable them to test proficient in the next, even if the instruction is amazing. If the majority of the students are coming in unprepared, the overall proficiency % is going to be low, and it doesn't reflect on the quality if the school.

</comment><comment><USER29> Holy shitballs. This flatline is barely meaningful, and the number of HN members who want to treat this as an opportunity to soapbox some tangential agenda is nuts.

<comment><USER9> We already know that there's a problem with education - there are many, many signs. US citizens being manipulated by false information, open bigotry, declining livelihoods of the lower economic class, political unrest and populism, educational metrics being substantially lower than other countries for years, etc.

Whether this particular article is meaningful doesn't matter too much imo. It raises the issue. Plenty of discussion here doesn't focus on the supposed trend.

<comment><USER29> Firstly, let's just give you the benefit of the doubt that soapboxing about cliche, populist, non-tech/non-business topics is a good use of Hacker News. It's not, but I'll pretend for the sake of this conversation.

We have something of a standard here for how statements need to be supported, and "we already know" and "there are many many signs" falls far short of those standards, and is eerily reminiscent of Donald Trump's instead.

"US citizens being manipulated by false information." How is this different from any other time in history? Are we better? Are we worse? Is it even relevant? It's nearly tautological that it has happened, but how much does it happen? Can an educational system do anything about it? Is it worth it?

"open bigotry." Ok. Welcome to the world. If this is a sign of a declining educational system, then virtually no place anywhere in the history of the world has had a good educational system.

"declining livelihoods of the lower economic class." Really? Support this. And give evidence that "a problem with education" (again, supposedly fixable problem) is at least one of the causes.

"political unrest and populism." Do I even need to at this point?

"educational metrics being substantially lower than other countries for years." Oh my god, finally something that is commonly understood enough to warrant no citation. And something that is probably commonly understood to be linked to "a problem with education." But now, what are you adding with it?

So, you've failed to even make a valid argument with four of your points by not bothering to support them, and the fifth is so commonly known and pointless to reiterate that there is no reason to include it here. So, why, in your mind, does this conversation belong here when we could be talking about all the cool, innovative, and interesting topics that HN was designed to support?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> In my eyes, standardized tests are bad because they will always shine a bright light on differences between groups.

We don't like to admit it these days, but humans are not identical. We can accept some basic differences, such as skin tone. We get extremely uncomfortable extending that notion to cognitive skills. To be clear, I'm not singling out any group -- I'm not linking skin tone to cognitive skill in any way.

So, we bring in standardized tests to level the playing field. At first, those tests are deeply flawed and filled with bias, making them especially harmful.

Then, we iterate, and remove those testing flaws. And we trick ourselves into thinking that will solve the problem.

But, suppose we arrive at the _perfectly fair test._ Suppose the test is highly predictive of, say, success at a 4 year college.

Now, what do you do if that test habitually ranks some group lower than other groups? To me, it feels like we are right back at square one.

Personally, I would prefer to focus our energy on helping each other out. If one person, or group, is falling behind, you find a way to help, and also to integrate each group into the whole.

I know I'm oversimplifying -- I just think standardized testing is a fruitless exercise.

<comment><USER30> So, eliminate competition because it's unfair? That does not to me seem like a recipe for success on a global scale. If anything, the thing which has made the culture in the US uniquely attractive to so many people from all over the world is the fact that we revel in competition in a way most other societies do not. We love to compete, and are unabashed about keeping score.

Let's assume for a moment that we focus exclusively on helping everyone get ahead and eliminate standardized testing. What happens when people get out in the real world and get the shock they never had in school that they don't quite measure up? To prevent that would require a complete restructuring of society, it'd look wildly different. Among other things it wouldn't be possible with a capitalist economy by which the "best" products in the market are rewarded financially and competition is the basis of business.

Is that really the world you want to live in?

<comment><USER31> Even if they get a greater shock when entering "the real world", they would still be better prepared for it if they were more competent coming out of school. It's a red herring to say that we would need to further restructure society to get any benefit from helping youth better overcome the challenges of school.

I'd say that probably depends on what you expect from them. But I don't think it's unfair to say that probably more students are left behind because of teaching/learning disabilities than there are people who simply will never be able to cope with the subjects at hand (because of cognitive limitations).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Standardized testing encourages teaching how to take standardized tests, why does anyone think that's a good idea?

</comment><comment><USER33> Two notes:

1\. I don't see anything about the statistical significance, or the natural fluctuation of the results, i.e. the standard error. Presumably lots of students are measured, and you could argue that your standard error (proportional to 1/sqrt(N)) is tiny, but then, the questions are different every year, so you have some date-specific (not student-specific) error. In other words, just looking at previous years, how much do results vary? And is this year's flatline maybe just a result of measurement error? (In other words: Q: "Why are they flatlining?" A: No reason.)

EDIT to add: well, there is one sentence in the article:

> "not a significant change," spokeswoman Amber Farinha wrote in an email

2\. It's a

> computer adaptive test — meaning as the test progresses, questions become > harder or easier depending on the student's answers

These have problems, in my view. I had a Spanish girl friend that studied for the GRE with me. The verbal section is largely a long vocabulary test, so we studied quite a bit (from the entertaining Princeton Review _Word Smart_ book). Now, often she would know the "complicated" word being explained, as it had Latin roots and was the same in Spanish. However, she wouldn't know the "easy" explanation. (For example, "to lament" (ah, easy, like "lamentablemente, lamentar") was explained as "to mourn" (what?), "arboreal" is "arbóreo" (well, "tree dweller" is easy, too, but you get the idea).)

Bottom line: we did several (actual old) practice exams, timed, and she would consistently score in a certain percentile range (with some variation, of course). Those were good old-fashioned paper tests, though.

However, when she did the actual (adaptive) GRE, she scored much worse than in the practice exams, several standard deviations away. (And before you blame it on nervousness due to real test conditions, note that there was a significant drop only in the verbal part, not analytic or quantitative.)

This appears to me a problem with the testing methodology: when she initially got something wrong, the CAT would give her "easier" questions, preponderantly words with Germanic roots, which she would also get wrong. The "hard" questions involving words with Latin roots, that she'd probably have gotten right, were never displayed to her.

She got into a good school anyway, so it didn't really matter. But in my view, the claim that the CAT is just as good as the longer paper based test is predicated on assuming that test subjects come from the same population. I really wonder whether speakers of Romance languages where systematically disadvantaged by the switch from paper to CAT, and whether ETS (the producer of GRE) did any systematic study on that.

(Note that it is conceivable that some Hispanophones got questions right at the beginning, and then got "harder" questions easier for them, thus getting better results than in the paper based test. If that is the case, it's conceivable that the average scores of both the Anglo- and Hispanophone group lines up with the non-adaptive and adaptive test, but Hispanophones suddenly show a much bigger variance in the adaptive test. Questions questions.)

</comment><comment><USER34> These don't include private schools, right?

<comment><USER3> There's some passing information about charter schools in the article.

<comment><USER35> Heads up that many charter schools are public. Rocketship (mentioned in the article) is a network of public charter schools that serves primarily low income students, and that's true of many charter schools in the state and across the country.

<comment><USER36> Success Academy is public, my son is there they are in the absolute top when it comes to math score.

SA was started in Harlem and specialize in taking kids out of bad environments (their homes) and influence them to make an effort.

It's a pretty hardcore school (7.45am - 4.0pm ish) but it definitely works well.

<comment><USER37> 7:45 to 4 is hardcore? I thought that was normal?! What are non-hardcore school hours?

<comment><USER36> 8.20 to 2-3ish then homework and sometimes they have soccer practice, chess, art etc. So they have long days in school.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Not being good at Math is not that big of deal but not being proficient at your own native language seems inexcusable.

<comment><USER39> Is English the native language for most of California?

<comment><USER5> Yes. Most of the hispanics whose families arrived in California before the English speakers arrived have long since become native English speakers. As with most second-generation or later immigrants.

Though I have heard tales of Californians being native speakers of Lisp, this is probably just a rumor.

<comment><USER40> > Most of the hispanics whose families arrived in California before the > English speakers arrived have long since become native English speakers.

That's true of most Californios, sure, but they are, by far, a minority of California Hispanics, who are mostly from families that immigrated much more recently.

<comment><USER5> If you had read my comment past the first sentence, you would see that the second addressed your the larger population too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> HN title is editorialized inappropriately from source (and focus shifted to absolute results rather than trends and discussion of the reasons behind the trends, which include questions about the validity of the tests.) The source title is "2017 California school test scores: Why are they flatlining?"

<comment><USER3> Agree that the title should be edited.

Still, the question of "why are the schools in and around Silicon Valley doing so poorly?" is worth discussing. We [residents of supposedly the most innovative region on the planet] should be able to solve these problems, and yet we either are unable to or haven't tried very hard.

<comment><USER40> > Still, the question of "why are the schools in and around Silicon Valley > doing so poorly?" is worth discussing.

It probably is but California is, by population or number of schools, mostly "in and around Los Angeles", not "in and around Silicon Valley."

<comment><USER3> The data that the article highlights is from the Bay Area, though.

<comment><USER40> It picks numbers from four Bay Area counties, but not really the four anyone would pick if they were concerned with "in and around Silicon Valley" (particularly, Contra Costa is included but not San Francisco.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> What is California's score if you get remove all the test scores of illegal immigrants. I'm sure that they drastically drop the scores.

Being an ESL student would make school significantly harder. And would also explain he low English skills. And given that most illegals are manual labor and not high skilled jobs, the kids don't have parents who can help their kids with maths.

<comment><USER42> We can do without this kind of inflammatory conjecture on Hacker News. The bar for civility and substantiveness goes up when approaching controversial issues. It's not about whichever position you take—it's about being thoughtful enough to afford a reasonable follow-up discussion.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Get the computers out of the classroom.

<comment><USER44> This is the kind of comment that truly derails education. It's reactionary and doesn't have a real objective.

<comment> chroem- The wealthiest members of our society are on one hand sending their children to expensive private schools, specifically to avoid exposing them to computers in the classroom, while on the other hand lobbying for increased usage of computing in public education to support their businesses. This is a completely valid concern, and you are dismissing it without reason.

<comment><USER45> This is a completely insane assertion. Private schools have computers in the classroom more frequently to private schools. I challenge you to find any evidence of anyone choosing a private schools because there aren't computers in the classroom.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Responsive design tools - <AUTHOR> http://www.creativebloq.com/responsive-design-tools-8134180

<comment><USER2> If bootstrap and foundation are too heavy for your liking, I prefer Skeleton. Responsive columns, rudimentary basic styling, and not much else.

[http://www.getskeleton.com/](http://www.getskeleton.com/)

<comment><USER3> Started using it a few weeks ago. Loving it.

I don't want all the stuff that comes with bootstrap - I'm comfortable designing from scratch, I really just want a functioning groundwork for a responsive layout. Skeleton is perfect for that.

<comment><USER4> Fwiw it's easy to remove everything from Bootstrap you don't want, they modularize all that stuff into separate .js and .less files. Just clone the repo, find the _concat_ , _less_ , and _uglify_ tasks in the Gruntfile, comment out the modules you don't want, then build it with 'grunt dist`. Simple, and you get a ready-made build system to use with your own project.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> On the responsive performance side of things, I've been building a tool to help track build differences and load performance across different viewport widths. Demo for The Guardian here... [http://speedcurve.com/demo/](http://speedcurve.com/demo/)

</comment><comment><USER6> I'd also recommend Froont: [http://www.froont.com](http://www.froont.com)

</comment><comment><USER7> If you just prefer a very lightweight grid system on top of Compass, maybe Susy is for you: [http://susy.oddbird.net/](http://susy.oddbird.net/)

</comment><comment><USER8> Currently I´am testing [https://rukzuk.com/en/](https://rukzuk.com/en/)</comment>


Great Firewall Founder Gets a Boot Upside the Head - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/great_firewall_founder_gets_a_boot_upside_the_head.php

<comment><USER2> can we say that he was harmonized? Yes we can!</comment>


How the Big Data trend enhances HealthCare Innovation. - <AUTHOR> http://blog.symcat.com/post/34166897057/how-the-big-data-trend-enhances-healthcare-innovation#.UIa6c2l25G4

<comment><USER2> Good read. Are your blog posts weekly?</comment>


Google's data navy - <AUTHOR> http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/09/07/googles-search-goes-out-to-sea/

<comment><USER3> _Perhaps even more intriguing to some, Google has theorized about powering these ocean data centers with energy gained just from water splashing against the side of the barges._

This would probably just exactly generate enough power to run a few fans - <USER2> high wind that is.

<comment><USER4> Yah, I also though that part was pretty unrealistic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I can see Google filing all these patents on wacky ideas that they never intend to build, just so Microsoft goes nuts saying "me too! me too!" and wastes money trying to implement what it thinks Google is doing.</comment>


Deis, DevOps and the Future of Open PaaS - <AUTHOR> http://deis.io/deis-devops-and-the-future-of-open-paas/ <comment><USER2> Building things on top of docker seems like the fun, exciting thing to do these days and the promise of it is really cool. I certainly have wanted a private heroku that is not a bear to install.

In my ideal world, you could start with a single machine on say Digital Ocean for $5/mo. and that machine could host any number of apps, heroku style, for me until it runs out of resources. It should then be easy to move apps to a 2nd or 3rd or whatever server if I chose not to just bump up the resources on that first one. If an app needs to run multiple servers, it should handle that as well. Having reasonably fine grained control on how many machines things like a database or memcache layer was on would be nice.

In short, I would like something like heroku without all the extra costs of heroku. Cloud 66 comes reasonably close, but I'd like to not pay the extra service overhead. I'd rather just pay for the infrastructure. Something open source that handles this in a reasonable way would be great, but I don't know that Deis is going to be the answer.

<comment><AUTHOR> We do have plans for a hosted version of Deis -- similar to Cloud 66 -- that eases the spin-up of the PaaS controller/brains.. and lets ops folks take it from there, scale their application fabric, hand it off to developers, etc. I'd love to hear thoughts about how folks want that to work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> On which IaaS this runs? Openstack? Also, gitosis seems very much yesterday.

<comment><AUTHOR> You can run Deis on anything including bare metal by constructing the application fabric manually. We have _automated_ provisioning for EC2 and Rackspace public cloud, with more on the way.</comment></comment>


RIP tr.im (So that's how it ends) - <AUTHOR> http://blog.tr.im/ <comment><USER2> As a point of strategy, let's hope that the tr.im founders knew they were taking a big gamble, because this was pretty obvious from the beginning.

With no clear business model except for a hope that someone buys them out, it was just a lottery ticket.

A business like a URL shortener is a particularly dangerous one, since if you succeed your costs skyrocket quickly yet you still have no business model. This forces people quickly to either sell or shut down. Even worse, you're likely to succeed at getting users since everyone knows what it is and needs one, tricking you into thinking you're succeeding when all you're doing is bleeding money.

If you're starting a business doing something that everyone loves and there are already 10 of them but you have no business model, you should probably stop right away unless you have some serious capital, preferably external capital.

There's gotta be at least another couple dozen of these failure coming in the future....

</comment><comment><USER3> Sad to know that someone probably poured a lot of heart into this and now it goes down the tubes.

However, be ye warned: This is what happens when you base everything on somebody else, whether it's Twitter, Facebook, Google or whomever. They can crush you in an instant, and often it's just because you're too insignificant to matter to them.

<comment><USER4> Don't forget to include Apple in that group...

<comment><USER5> How does Apple belong to that group? They (also) sell hardware and people pay for them. Unlike url shorteners or twitter etc..

<comment><USER6> Apple iphone store economics? They have developers in the hundreds of thousands, basing your business on it and pretending they care is mostly the same thing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> hm. I wonder.. how much of why they want to shut down is the hosting costs? it seems like the perfect sort of business for a "Host me for the publicity" deal. I'd be more than happy to give them hosting just for the bragging rights, and I'm sure many of my competitors would also be interested.

</comment><comment><USER8> This is lame. And it's such a weakness of URL shorteners.

<comment><USER9> 100% correct. I don't use url shortners if I can help it, as it's introducing yet another point of failiure in internet hyperlinks.

Who wants to bet that in a year or two there'll be another few url shortening services down the drain, and _millions_ more broken links out there on the net.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Interesting that they are also stopping development on Nambu as a part of this: [http://blog.tr.im/post/159489555/tr-im-to- december-31-2009#c...](http://blog.tr.im/post/159489555/tr-im-to- december-31-2009#comment-14533542)

I do hope they open source it. That client had the most potential from the native Mac ones that I've tried.

</comment><comment><USER10> Quite interesting that there are more than a few people interesting in purchasing it on the comments for that post (and the previous post). I wonder how much money they're looking for and why they wouldn't sell it now even after they've made "quiet" efforts to sell it earlier?

</comment><comment><USER11> I'll give them credit for how they are communicating and hope for the best to them. I'm sure the developers there gained and learned something in all this. Unfortunately though, if they were to get bought now, they will look like hypocrites.

</comment><comment><USER12> <http://mashable.com/2009/08/10/shorturl-savior/> Bit.ly is willing to host their urls starting as of tomorrow. tr.im has not yet responded.</comment>


InvoiceNet: Neural network to extract information from invoice documents - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/naiveHobo/InvoiceNet <comment><USER2> Fantastic work! I will be testing it out for sure.

Coincidentally I'm just about to begin a project intending to use the Form Recognizer service in Azure:

[https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/cognitive- service...](https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/cognitive- services/form-recognizer/)

I will definitely do a side-by-side comparison with InvoiceNet.

Xero also has a related service: [https://www.xero.com/au/features-and- tools/accounting-softwa...](https://www.xero.com/au/features-and- tools/accounting-software/expenses/)

<comment><USER3> Have a look at Odoo, you can test our engine here: [https://www.odoo.com/page/invoice- automation](https://www.odoo.com/page/invoice-automation)

We will open our API next week at last.

<comment><USER4> You are going to make the API available or the whole library

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This really needs a dataset to go with it. Preferably one from different countries and with different currencies and tax identification number styles.

Invoice recognition is a tricky subject, the companies that specialize in this field have spent a large amount of time and money on the problem, it would be great to see some kind of benchmark vs the commercial services.

<comment><USER6> >> This really needs a dataset to go with it.

Addressed in the disclaimer section. :)

<comment><USER5> Yes. Let me outline some of the challenges in this field: invoice information extraction is a subset of forms parsing, which is for many companies a hellishly difficult problem to deal with. The more companies are automated the more such information will be presented in a way that is machine readable, which means you will only have to do field matching rather than actually reading the field. OCR is anything but perfect resulting in errors creeping into digitized forms requiring human review. This relegates most of these solutions to aids for a human reviewer rather than a zero touch process. Finally, when working with international customers and suppliers you will have to be able to concurrently deal with a lot of different kinds of forms and languages which may require a step prior to the forms extraction that will decide what language the form is in and what kind of form it is.

For each form type that you intend to extract data from you will need a substantial training database. The good news is as you use it you build up more data but for legal reasons you may not be able to use that data to train on.

So that's why it really needs a dataset. One way to get one is to generate it based on a real dataset. I think that stands a much higher chance of happening than that some company will ship their - highly confidential - invoice stack to an unknown entity to make it world readable. That would likely cause that company serious problems and their legal department would never sign off on it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> What could an invoice app do to make this easy?

For example, what if I embed the invoice data in a JSON file in a PDF? Could that make it easier for the user?

I really don't know much about PDF, but from what little I just read after checking it is possible to do that.

<comment><USER3> The invoicing standard in France and Germany (factur-x) embed the XML inside the PDF, which is very convenient.

Here is a python lib that does it: [https://pypi.org/project/factur-x/](https://pypi.org/project/factur-x/)

Odoo, an open source invoicing software, produces factur-x invoices systematically (whatever the country): very convenient as it's parsed automatically.

<comment><USER8> Invoices in Sweden have a design created for easy OCR-scanning. I prefer this way because it means that there can be no discrepancy between what I see and what the machine sees.

Another benefit is that it's really easy to recognize an invoice at a glance, and you know exactly where all the info is.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Really excited to try this out. I work in document capture and the products that the company I work for offers have absolute garbage "machine learning" capabilities. If this works well it could save us a lot of time building out our complex rules for extracting Invoice data.

</comment><comment><USER10> If you want to do this in-house, I've some libs I can share to extract pdf's to json/structured data

js [https://www.npmjs.com/package/pdf2json](https://www.npmjs.com/package/pdf2json)

py [https://py-pdf-parser.readthedocs.io/en/latest/](https://py-pdf- parser.readthedocs.io/en/latest/) or [https://pypi.org/project/pdfminer/](https://pypi.org/project/pdfminer/)

php [https://pdfparser.org/documentation](https://pdfparser.org/documentation)

</comment><comment><USER11> Would be nice to get some benchmarks on this e.g. vs [https://aws.amazon.com/textract/](https://aws.amazon.com/textract/) etc

<comment><USER12> And Azures form processing module

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm curious, how do you prevent overfitting, where the model will simply learn the exact formats of the training data? Then it will not generalize to a format it has never seen before?

Unless the training data is an extremely diverse set of invoices, maybe randomly generated?

<comment><USER14> Look at the loss and val_loss numbers in the sample image, it's way overfitting.

<comment><USER15> That's exactly the first thing pop up to my mind also.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Very curious to test it and compare it with other solutions.

FWIW, one can test the AI of Odoo here: [https://www.odoo.com/page/invoice- automation](https://www.odoo.com/page/invoice-automation)

</comment><comment><USER16> I think the by far coolest part about this, is that you dont need to tag your dataset on a token basis. Could be interesting to see results by using the graph convolution approach by Liu et al. as opposed to just feeding raw images.

</comment><comment><USER17> Is there a public data set with invoice photos? The best I can find is use Google photo search. (I'm searching since about eight years). For proper training and experimentation we would need a couple of thousand

</comment><comment><USER18> Im curious what hosted software does really good invoice recognition? (eg roger.ai)

<comment><USER19> UiPath has free community models (hosted in cloud) for invoice and receipt processing. They integrate with RPA workflows or can be used as JSON APIs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> This would be a great tool to use in-house for speeding up certain processes.</comment>


Of10podcast: Featuring prominent minorities in tech - <AUTHOR> http://of10podcast.com

<comment><AUTHOR> Hosted by co-founder/ceo at Classana Will Lucas, the podcast features Y Combinator partner Michael Seibel, Erin Teague Director of Product at Yahoo, Makinde Adeagbo Engineering Manager at Pinterest, Charles Hudson VC at SoftTech VC, Semil Shah of Haystack Fund, and many others.

On iTunes: [https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/of10podcast/id954437305](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/of10podcast/id954437305)</comment>


Stop paying for marketing Here is how you can market your company for free. - <AUTHOR> http://www.quicksprout.com/2009/08/13/how-to-market-your-company-for-free/ <comment> onreact-com Good post, misleading headline. You have to pay someone to do all the things described in that post unless you want to invest a substantial amount of time to learn the trade yourself.

Btw. Neil Patel is one of the most well known search and social marketers.

<comment><USER2> I disagree. I think you can learn a lot of those things and do it yourself.

<comment> onreact-com Of course but it takes time and effort. In case you already run a business it's cheaper to hire someone than to learn it from scratch.</comment></comment></comment>


FCC declines to punish Sinclair for its 'must-run' segments and scripts - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2018/04/12/fcc-declines-to-punish-sinclair-for-its-must-run-segments-and-scripts/ <comment><USER2> The FCC does have the authority to revoke licenses based on content, but it's rare for them to do so.

However, this entire situation is ultimately a consequence of revoking the FCC fairness doctrine. ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_fairness_doctrine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_fairness_doctrine))

For example, a news station did have their license revoked by taking a strong stance against civil rights, and violated the fairness doctrine. ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WLBT#Opposition_to_civil_right...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WLBT#Opposition_to_civil_rights))

<comment><USER3> The fairness doctrine was hardly ever envoked. Attempting to apply it to a situation like this would not be constitutional. The fairness doctrine was found constitutional when it required a rebuttal to a direct personal attack during an era when there were only 3 stations. But this situation is different.

It was never applied to a sitation where a network required "must run" content. At best, the fairness doctrine would require at least some dissenting opinion on the issue. The Supreme Court, in upholding the fairness doctrine, said it should never be used to limit speech. That's what critics want to do here, punish Sinclair for running content.

Arguably, the fairness doctrine is no longer constitutional at all. The court's reasoning relied on there being limited channels. That is no longer true. Even on broadcast, there are 20 channels available. If democrats don't like Sinclair, they can go start their own network. When you consider all the other sorts of media available, its just not credible to argue that there is a legitmate concern that people cannot be both sides of an issue.

<comment><USER4> >The fairness doctrine was hardly ever envoked.

I (a layperson) don't really follow this. It sounds to me like "while the rules were in effect, they were rarely broken".

>an era when there were only 3 stations. But this situation is different.

Lots of station numbers, run by just a handful of owners:

[http://www.neatorama.com/2008/07/07/who-owns-what-on- televis...](http://www.neatorama.com/2008/07/07/who-owns-what-on-television/)

<comment><USER5> OP's point was that Fairness Doctrine was never a hard and fast rule because the FCC was hesitant to actually enforce it due to free speech concerns. Broadcasters were generally willing to cooperate, but they got lots of wiggle room. Plus it was vague and easily sidestepped.

I worry it could do more harm than good nowadays if reinstated. Suddenly anti- vaxxers and people who think climate change is a hoax would have to be given more coverage, for example.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> move-on-by I can see why the FCC might be hesitant to get involved with these segments and scripts. However, the Sinclair merger should unequivocally be rejected. This business pattern only becomes an issue once you get monopolies and oligopolies. We need competition and variety in our news sources. Oligopolies are extremely dangerous to our democracy.

<comment><USER6> It would be very hard to view them as a monopoly in any case if you consider all the other media sources they compete with.

I can't think of the last time I saw broadcast local news.

<comment><USER3> Any justification for censoring Sinclair would apply 100 fold to Google or Facebook.

Its just not constitutional to ban Sinclair for running pro GOP content.

<comment><USER7> Sinclair has a government-granted monopoly on the frequencies on which they broadcast. Google and Facebook offer service accessible over the (almost entirely) capacity-unconstrained Internet medium.

<comment><USER3> And a movie theatre has a government granted monopoly on a piece of land on which they show movies. Doesn't mean you can't just build another one next door.

Facebook has an actual monolopy on an entire market.

<comment><USER8> TV broadcast frequencies are a far scarcer resource than land.

<comment><USER9> And yet, there are more TV stations than movie theatres in many towns.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Call me crazy but it's time for a legal definition of news (vs editorial) and then have that definition forced. If false advertising is a faux pas then news that's not attempting to be objective and forthright should be labeled.

Most of the so called news / journalism isn't news / journalism any more than Aspartame is sugar. If you can't call Aspartame sugar then consuming content should be forced to be as transparent.

<comment><USER11> While I agree, I think I'd be saddened by what it would suss out: that people don't really want news.

The sad part would be that even after this, people would still look to the Hannitys, the Maddows, the Carlsons, the Lemons of the world for their news. I understand the reasoning behind it (zero effort way of processing news). Where it does become dangerous is if someone turns a non-news/fake news item into a talking point to deceive the viewer into thinking it is legitimate like the content based on real news items.

I guess the beginning of the end was to allow channels specific to "news" to propagate. In an ever growing fight for ratings, something if we're being honest that shouldn't be a news team's goal, they've had to at best fluff the news or at worst make it controversial for ratings sake. I like CNN and feel them to be fairly "even", but even I have to question the "Boy Who Cried Wolf" nature of constant BREAKING NEWS items that are on their site at any given time and I would imagine is pretty frequent on social media (at least, anything I see shared from CNN seems to have breaking: at the beginning).

Maybe the local news showing national/international news format would be best, but with some kind of regulation to prevent them from politicizing it. Now what _that_ would be defined by, I'm not sure. It probably wouldn't be heavy in ratings though.

<comment><USER12> I think putting the Hannitys and Carlsons on the same level as the Maddows and the Lemons implies a false equivalency. Everyone has an agenda, yeah, but one of those groups is deliberately misleading its viewers.

<comment><USER10> Um. They're all pretty deliberate. They're all gainfully employed based on one key KPI: ad revenue. They have a target market. They have a narrative. And they work that to the tune of ka-ching, ka-ching, ka-ching.

Death by cancer is still death whether it's Red State death or Blue State death. That's about as equal as it gets.

None of the four you listed quality as news or journalism. One another day we can discuss what they really are, but news and journalists they are not.

<comment><USER12> What qualifies as news or journalism?

<comment><USER11> From what I've seen, and I could be wrong, David Muir seems to deliver in a way that doesn't seem heavy in bias. Admittedly, I don't watch ABC a lot so I don't see a ton of him, but his content seems pretty impartial.

<comment><USER10> Perfect example. He's nothing more than a talking head. He's reading a script off a teleprompter. He's there - and Katie Couric isn't - because he tests well and the rating are strong.

That doesn't make him a journalist. Nor does it make what falls from his lips news.

<comment><USER11> Will have to agree to disagree on that one. And I think he's there and Couric isn't is due to Couric at a certain point trying the Barbara Walters track pivoting into the talk show side of things.

But I think him being fairly interchangeable with another journalist is an indicator that his role isn't personality driven like the previously mentioned: he's there to deliver the news and that's essentially it. I think his Gaza Strip/Haiti/etc. work qualifies him as a journalist and from what I've seen of him, has delivered factual news (with varying levels of importance, but realistically, it is unlikely to have hard hitting items daily).

<comment><USER10> If you have links to the segments mentioned I'd like to watch. Tia

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> FCC doesnt seem like it's protecting consumers. I think if I were POTUS I'd be using this section of its mandate.

"Communications during emergencies and crisis must be available for public safety, health, defense, and emergency personnel, as well as all consumers in need. The Nation's critical communications infrastructure must be reliable, interoperable, redundant, and rapidly restorable."

The honest thing is that the FCC has already shown itself to be a problem by allowing the media mergers and aquisitions in the first place, and the people who made those decisions should be held to account as far as the statue of limitations allows, but also should the institution (preferably by congress).

I'm starting to get really tired of "independent" government agencies being at the heart of root problems.

<comment><USER14> Were you under the impression that an Ajit Pai-led FCC would be intent on protecting consumers?

<comment><USER15> I don't think anyone was under that impression. But there are literally no solutions to the Ajut problem that any of us can contribute to.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Torn here. On the one hand, I hate the "must run" items, yet on the other hand, I see this as being a slippery slope if they were to punish as that'd be dictating to a company what is allowed on their stations.

Having said that, two things:

1) I'm glad it was exposed and wish it were highlighted more than it was. This gives viewers the ability to discern how valuable they find the content to know that scripts were dictated to their newspeople.

2) I'm hoping, though doubtful, that this prevents Sinclair from buying up other small market stations as they've shown their hand as to what they'd do with a monopoly.

<comment><USER16> The problem here that I see is one of "false advertising" If you present yourself as "News", that has certain connotations. Publishing this forced run content without disclaiming that it is not independently sourced journalism IMO violates those connotations

<comment><USER17> All news is subject to editors/publishers making decisions about what is included, excluded, omitted, broadcast-ed, etc., for political or commercial reasons.

It has always been this way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I don't get what the issue is here. I have seen this message on my local television stations. What is missing from the YouTube video is an invitation at the end of that message for viewers to contact the station with any concerns about bias in its own reporting. In fact that is the entire point of the script, and it has been cutoff of the YouTube video, presumably because it appears to be more controversial that way. Oh, the irony!

So a large media company recognized the problem of bias in the media, which could become a business problem if it affects confidence in their news reporting, and invited people to contact them if they noticed this problem creeping into the individual news stations' reports. Where is the controversy here?

<comment><USER19> Do you really believe Sinclair doesn't have the manpower to watch their own programming to check for any 'biases'?

And if you believe they are somehow incapable of noticing biases: how would they adjudicate any complaints they get?

That request for comments is either a McGuffin needed to have a reason for the preceding rant slamming all other media outlets.

Or it's a ploy to get local stations in line with Sinclair's corporate agenda, by asking their viewers to rat them out to headquarters.

<comment><USER18> Umm...wut? Would you not agree that bias is in the media is a major issue today, and that it may cause a significant percentage of viewers to abandon a given station or website if they see too much of it? Before the 2016 election, I regularly watched CNN and visited its website. Now it's such a den of partiality and clickbait headlines that I have relegated it to HuffPo status and cannot trust anything I read there, so I simply don't go there. I'd imagine there are others that feel this way too.

So if I'm a media company and I see complaints about my stations or a decline in news viewership, I'm going to take steps to stop it from happening. Companies often don't know that they have problems until customers express their opinions about them, and so Sinclair is trying to keep an open dialogue with their viewers. Since when is asking customers how they feel about your service a bad thing?

<comment><USER19> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_balance](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_balance)

<comment><USER18> So you're saying that media is not biased, that in fact all of the people saying that there is a bias are trying to portray a "false balance"? Have you looked at the CNN homepage recently? If you u don't see bias there, there's no point in continuing to discuss this with you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> This assault on the journalistic integrity of local news must stop! Before you know it they'll have so many must-runs that I'll never find out if my toaster really is going to kill me.

<comment><USER21> I have on good authority that everyone who owns or uses a toaster, will in fact die.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Alternative headline: FCC declines to violate the First Amendment of the US Constitution.

<comment><USER22> Broadcast licenses are granted on the basis of serving the public interest.

With great power comes great responsibility.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> It's disturbing the number of people here calling for and defending the need for a Ministry of Truth.

</comment><comment><USER24> "This is extremely dangerous to our democracy."[1]

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gEDkMTO0mSI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gEDkMTO0mSI)

</comment><comment><USER25> Very weird that a consolidated media company would force its viewpoint to be propagated. This is very unlike the rest of the media and a genuinely new phenomenon. /s

(2012) [http://www.businessinsider.com/these-6-corporations- control-...](http://www.businessinsider.com/these-6-corporations- control-90-of-the-media-in-america-2012-6)

If you think that these companies aren't pushing a viewpoint you got another thing coming. Hint: It's pro-capitalist, pro-imperialist, anti-worker, and anti-political dissenters.

</comment><comment><USER26> I support the decision, Pai even did something similar when Trump went on one his tirades about taking licenses from the large news companies. He even quoted the Democratic Senator Markey is this reply.

Sinclair can easily lose its trust with its viewers let alone its own talent and that can effect change. There is already scripted news out there that presents facts in a similar manner. It all comes down to, who is upset by it?

if Washington politicians are the ones upset then I am not concerned. They already exert such control over the media by simply coercing news to play nice or lose access that we should always be worried when they want to stifle any speech.

</comment><comment><USER27> Right wing media has pointed out the same 'creepy talking point synchronicity' happening in the larger mainstream media for many years. Just like with Cambridge Analytica, certain behavior is only raised by the media as a scandal when amateurs try to the same thing the big boys have been doing for years/decades.

<comment><USER28> Really? Which news outlets had dozens of news anchors read, word for word, the same script that was given to them by their owners and played as if it was a local independent news story?

It's unprecedented. It's not about which politics the story supports, it's about the media and public being manipulated. Ajit Pai's response shows he either doesn't understand that or wants everyone else to think it's about something else.

<comment><USER27> Remember Journolist[0]? The views of the major news stations and papers have been heavily aligned in one direction for several decades now. Journolist was hard evidence that they colluded in delivering talking points not just among one brand but multiple brands at the same time. Like I said, Sinclair are amatuers to what has, and we have to assume is, going on with most other outlets.

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

<comment><USER29> You're confusing the issue. The issue here isn't a bunch of stations being aligned; the issue is the parent company mandating a word-for-word reading of a script that furthers the parent company's interest.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I'm not sure why there is all of th controversy. This is not new.</comment>


Running the Browser in the Cloud - <AUTHOR> https://ungleich.ch/u/blog/how-to-run-your-browser-in-the-cloud/ <comment><USER2> > Automatically closes inactive tabs and makes it easy to get them back Too > many tabs? Do you have a tab addiction? Tab Wrangler closes tabs that > haven't been used recently.

[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tab- wrangler/egnjh...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tab- wrangler/egnjhciaieeiiohknchakcodbpgjnchh?hl=en)

</comment><comment><USER3> I like the idea. I think this would solve my battery issues as well, because with high cpu usage comes low battery life. I also wonder if a phone is enough to have a smooth session. Imagine carrying only a phone and a keyboard around and having access to a full powered desktop/browser.

</comment><comment><USER4> Just use Puffin [https://www.puffin.com/](https://www.puffin.com/)

</comment><comment><USER5> Or, just use proper applications instead of shitty webapps.</comment>


Ron Conway in a heated debate with Chamath Palihapitiya - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/video/heated-debate-over-san-francisco-infrastructure-kOdutJNzQkirLwDobQLY0Q.html

<comment><USER2> CP has a point.</comment>


Ask HN: Your favorite everyday shoes? - <AUTHOR> I am doing some research on, what kind of shoes/sneakers tech community wear and if there is any pattern across price/style/function/brand. Would really appreciate your support. <comment><USER2> I wear Dr Martens 1461 smooth cherry red shoes. (I change the laces to flat black). I've had these for 7 years, and I wear them nearly every day. I expect them to last at least another 3 years. (I'm quite rough with my shoes).

My next pair is going to be 1461 ForLife oxblood.

[http://www.drmartens.com/uk/p/originals-shoes- smooth-1461](http://www.drmartens.com/uk/p/originals-shoes-smooth-1461)

[http://www.drmartens.com/uk/p/originals-shoes-smooth- hardlif...](http://www.drmartens.com/uk/p/originals-shoes-smooth- hardlife-1461-forlife)

</comment><comment><USER3> Van's all black low tops: [https://vans.com/shop/authentic-pro-black- black](https://vans.com/shop/authentic-pro-black-black)

</comment><comment><USER4> I love the classic low top converse.

</comment><comment><USER5> Adidas NMD´s, the material used for the sole feels amazing and the soft fit is extremely comfortable, only downside in my opinion is the relatively high cost.

[https://sneakernews.com/2016/12/29/adidas-nmd-xr1-triple- bla...](https://sneakernews.com/2016/12/29/adidas-nmd-xr1-triple- black-r2-pattern/)

</comment><comment><USER6> Office dress code has a no sneakers clause, so I have a pair of used Allen Edmonds I got on ebay for pretty cheap that I leave there. Out of the office, I've been rocking Adidas Campus for a few years now.

Disclaimer: I'm probably not a representative of "the tech community" who's opinion you seek, but the office dress code and leather oxfords probably gave that away.

</comment><comment><USER7> Right now orange Vans Authentic Pro LX (these: [http://imgur.com/a/8VEm1](http://imgur.com/a/8VEm1)), but it kind of changes; last summer I spent almost every day in white Converse low tops and later a pair of the Ecco "Soft" series High Tops (can't remember which ones).

</comment><comment><USER8> If you can get away with it, Xero Shoes: Z-Trail is a perfect "shoe" if the weather is over 50f. Although I completely understand that they are not for everyone, everyday. But I highly recommend anyone needing a pair of durable/simple sandals take a look.

Just be sure to read the sizing chart!

</comment><comment><USER9> I work from home, so slippers. A long time ago, I used work for a small dev/design shop where slippers were mandatory.

For when I leave the house, Chucks are my choice.

</comment><comment><USER10> I wear either cheap walmart moccasins, cheap walmart flipflops, or Labonville chainsaw boots.

The first two are effectively disposable, and the boots are virtually indestructible. All are comfortable.

</comment><comment><USER11> I wear foam flip flops at a standing desk, for comfort. Don't know the name but they're cheap ones I've had for at least 15 years.

</comment><comment><USER12> My last three pairs were Merrell's. I'm more loyal to my local shoe store than the shoe brand and that's what they carry for walking shoes.

</comment><comment><USER13> Mostly sneakers and similar, of whatever brand and price that happen to fit my size 50 (~15 US?) foot.

Current ones are by Merrell, model name too worn off to read.

</comment><comment><USER14> Kirkland mens athletic shoes with superfeet green insoles

</comment><comment><USER15> Whatever is cheap, they all look the same to me.

</comment><comment><USER16> I wear mostly Vans authentic for over 10 years.

</comment><comment><USER17> Summer: Vans Era (black)

Winter: Vans Atwood (black)</comment>