Uber's self-driving car unit was burning $20M a month - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2019/03/12/ubers-self-driving-car-unit-was-burning-20-million-a-month/ <comment><USER2> Uber's self-driving car killed a person because it had it's emergency braking system disabled due to too many false positives [1]

That's all that ever needs to be said about Uber's self driving system, the company should be disbanded and whomever the highest-level person in the company knew vehicles were operating in such a way should be imprisoned.

1: [https://techcrunch.com/2018/05/24/uber-in-fatal-crash- detect...](https://techcrunch.com/2018/05/24/uber-in-fatal-crash-detected- pedestrian-but-had-emergency-braking-disabled/)

<comment><USER3> Uber's self-driving car killed a person because its driver was playing on his phone rather than doing his job.

<comment><USER4> In a sense, I want to agree. That was a big no-no on her part.

But ... for a project like this, it's the kind of thing they should have planned for and could have easily worked around.

First of all, Uber's setup was to have one person do both the analytics monitoring and safety roles. That's ridiculous. The safety person needs to focus on that alone.

Second, for any boring job, it's _expected_ that people will tend to mentally check out, and you should design it so that a single checkout doesn't cascade to death. They could have had a periodic "press this button to prove you're paying attention", or limited the employee from bringing any device except a limited one with no distractions.

So yeah, she shouldn't have been watching a movie, but Uber shouldn't have had better safeguards for the inevitable attention drift.

<comment><USER5> Yep. My local YMCA requires lifeguards to switch every 15 minutes.

<comment><USER4> Smirking at how YMCA has better safeguards for attention drift around pool safety than Uber does around road safety.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> W-Stool I wonder if truly autonomous vehicles turn out to be another "so near but so far" experiences like nuclear fusion - when I was a kid, electricity courtesy of nuclear fusion reactors would be "too cheap to meter". Seems like ever since the industry keeps saying "We're nearly there - we just need to build a bigger one". I truly wonder if self-driving cars might turn out to be the same kind of thing.

<comment><USER6> The difference is that nuclear fusion is "all or nothing", while self driving technology has a lot of real world benefits even if we never get to fully autonomous vehicles.

<comment><USER7> Yes, "uncanny valley" aside. But one of those benefits is not having a driverless taxi. It's assistive driving technology that can make driving your car easier and safer.

<comment> W-Stool I think you are right. Rented a new vehicle recently on a trip and it had blind spot detectors - it would tell you when a vehicle was in one of the traditional blind spots. I thought this was great, easy to understand and thus trust.

<comment><USER8> It is actually possible to completely remove the blind spot in the lane next to you.

[http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~gdguo/driving/BlindSpot.htm](http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~gdguo/driving/BlindSpot.htm)

People don't like to do this because then they can't see the side of their own car in the mirror.

Perhaps that should be added to driving tests. You shouldn't get a license if you don't know how to make the car safe to drive in.

<comment><USER8> Someone downvoted me, and I'm not sure why. Am I incorrect by saying it's possible to completely remove the blindspot? It has been in ever car I've owned, rented, or borrowed.

Am I wrong in stating it's because people want to see the side of their car? It was for me when I first started driving and for everyone else I've asked.

Is it because of my belief that people should only be licensed to drive if they can do so safely?

If I'm wrong, please give me the opportunity to learn what you believe is right. I'm open to improving myself, and recognize that I am not, nor ever will be 100% right in everything.

<comment><USER9> I didn't downvote you, but I can guess why you might have been downvoted. Your comment is a) off-topic in a thread about automation, and b) presumptuous to the point of arrogance in assuming that your preferred way of aligning the mirrors is the one true safe way.

Many people might reasonably believe that the traditional alignment we were taught, with the look-over-the-shoulder to check the blind spot that we were also traditionally taught, is safe. It comes across as aggressive when you suggest no-one should be allowed a license without converting to your new method.

<comment><USER8> Thank you. I agree it's off-topic, I'm sorry.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It has been a long journey but I think I'm finally becoming a self-driving skeptic. And those cars driving around out in Arizona right now might as well be driving around in the Matrix---nowhere near a general purpose solution.

</comment><comment><USER11> I feel like we are going to look back at Uber in like 10 years as the 'golden age' of startups. Where money was no object and it only mattered how much you 'produced' on your way to an IPO.

In 20 years we will have the Wolf of SV movie about Uber.

<comment><USER12> > In 20 years we will have the Wolf of SV movie about Uber.

Is this not Sillicon Valley already, the TV Show?

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Since Uber is about to ipo I have been hearing people question, "How can people highly value a company that is losing so much money???"

The reason is (the potential for) self driving cars. Once/if there is mature self driving tech, they can eliminate the cost of having to pay human drivers. When you consider Uber in that light, as long as they don't run out of money before self driving maturity, then their high valuation makes sense.

This may seem obvious to some but this fact has been entirely absent from every conversation I have heard about the valuation of uber's IPO ( looking at you Marketplace's "Make Me Smart" ;). It seems like it is taboo to point out that Uber needs to eventually eliminate all their human drivers from the equation.

<comment><AUTHOR> What I don't understand is why people think Uber will have a competitive advantage vs Waymo et al. once self-driving cars are adopted.

Without a moat, there will be little to no long-term profits.

<comment><USER13> Because people are used to their brand and app? Good point.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Thats it?</comment>


Show HN: I built an Android live wallpaper with Scala – now it's free - <AUTHOR> https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.spifftastic.ascension2 <comment><USER2> Great work nilium. I always wanna try one of these but I worry about battery life - how does everyone find these live wallpapers affect the performance of their batteries?

<comment><USER3> I've never found they affect my battery life noticeably but I don't spend much time staring at my home screen[1]. Maybe some people do but my home screen is for quick access to information and launching off point for other apps so it doesn't get all that much screen time (and the live wallpaper isn't just running in the background).

1\. Ok, that's a lie. When that live wallpaper that has an AI Super Mario that plays never ending levels came out I spent a lot of time looking at it and showing it to people. My Motorola Droid's battery didn't stand a chance.

<comment><AUTHOR> I admit to doing the same thing with the Super Mario live wallpaper, and with a Droid 1. It ruined my battery, but it was worth it. I remember being able to turn on some switch that'd get it to display the path it was taking through a level, which was really cool to me. I miss that live wallpaper — the Droid less so (even though it's sitting on my desk because it's the only thing I have running Android 2.x).

Besides that, my argument is that if a you spend a lot of time in your launcher, it might affect battery life in a somewhat noticeable way. Typical usage should have you in another app most of the time, but that's speculation on my part. I could imagine folks using their launchers a whole lot if they were packed with widgets that did more than just display things, but I've never had a lot of luck finding widgets I liked. Ultimately, if you or anyone else is concerned about squeezing every possible minute out of your battery, your best bet might be to have a solid black static wallpaper. Mostly comes down to priorities.

Edit: [http://android.ccpcreations.com/mariolive](http://android.ccpcreations.com/mariolive) ⇐ I think that might be the same live wallpaper from back then? Can't verify it right now, and I'm wary of installing foreign APKs these days, so exercise caution.

<comment><USER4> I believe that is the author who originally posted it in xda. Yup, here's the thread[1] and the market link has an ID that matches CCP creations

[1] [http://forum.xda- developers.com/showthread.php?t=710647](http://forum.xda- developers.com/showthread.php?t=710647)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm writing Android app as well, using Scala. Do you have sbt script and/or ProGuard config that you can share?

<comment><USER6> If you don't need the sbt build system for your project, it's pretty simple to get started. Here's my guide (and some code examples) for using just proguard + Intellij. Using sbt isn't difficult to set up either, though I consider it a bit overkill for smaller projects/scripting.

[https://github.com/yareally/android-scala-intellij-no-sbt- pl...](https://github.com/yareally/android-scala-intellij-no-sbt-plugin)

<comment><USER5> Hi man, I'm already using your tutorial. I would like to personally say this: Thank you!

I spent weeks trying to get sbt to play nice. I finally said, the hell with that, and I never been happier.

<comment><USER6> Glad to hear it simplified things for you :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Thank you for making this compatible with Android 4.1.2. Because of bluetooth issues, I switched my Xperia T back from 4.3 to 4.1.2, and I've been missing all the cool 4.3 Xperia wallpapers. I'm running "Glitch" Config with "Blueshift" Gradient, all other settings defaulted. Gonna stare at it for a few hours.

<comment><AUTHOR> This actually made me aware of a bug in the last release that I just released a patch for, so that was fun. I guess nobody ever reported (or encountered? seems unlikely though) the issue until I got a crash report for it today.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> dude this is so cool. So scala can compile to the jvm right?

<comment><USER6> On Android, Scala gets compiled to dex bytecode just the same as Java. Scala has slightly more overhead though from making lots of small objects, but the tradeoff is worth it if you prefer not using Java.

I stick to using Java Collections (and the special ones Android provides[1]) most of the time to avoid excess overhead, but it still results in much more concise code than what I would write in Java. One of most compelling reasons to use Scala though is it's much easier to deal with asynchronous processing (via actors, futures, async/await[2]) than the messes you end up with using AsyncTask + callbacks with Java.

[1] [http://developer.android.com/reference/android/support/v4/ut...](http://developer.android.com/reference/android/support/v4/util/package- summary.html)

[2] [http://docs.scala-lang.org/sips/pending/async.html](http://docs.scala- lang.org/sips/pending/async.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> > Scala has slightly more overhead though from making lots of small objects

This is definitely true, though it's possible to write code that avoids it. It just ends up being slightly uglier Scala. The renderer in Ascension, for example, is all fairly bare-bones Java-like Scala because I have to be careful about how certain code is generated (i.e., prefer a while loop or tail recursion to a for comprehension or .foreach). So, it's possible to get performant code, it just ends up being more like Java usually.

In the UI code, you can get away with a little more depending on where it is. If it's inside an adapter, it pays to avoid the heavier tools Scala gives you. If it's responding to a button press, you probably don't need to worry as much. The GC will run a little more often, but the GC in Android has improved a fair bit over time.

I'll second the Java collections recommendation though — as much as I like the immutable collections provided by Scala (and I do use a few of them), they're much free-er with their allocations than Java and Android's. I haven't tried anything with actors on Android yet, though, so I can't comment on that. I just use AsyncTask as carefully as possible right now, but I really need to get familiar with an alternative to that. I'd like to try actors, plus I'd also like to get into using something like RxJava/Scala, but I haven't had anything come up where I could afford to experiment with it. Also need to see how Akka fares on Android, but same problem as RxJ/S.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I've had my Nexus 5 since it came out and haven't changed the background from stock... This is the first one I've seen that has gotten me excited. It's so versatile.

Thanks a lot! Good work!

</comment><comment><USER10> This is very nice looking, although the initial settings were too fast and made it a bit distracting. I've stuck with the default live wallpaper that came with my Nexus 4 until now.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I agree on the speed, though it's kind of set in stone for the most part since that was the default when I first released the app. I'd love to go in and make a mess of the project by rewriting things and changing all the defaults, but now that I have a small amount of users, it sort of behooves me not to do what I'd do with my other personal projects.

That also makes it difficult to introduce new features since I can't just switch them on and I don't really want to pester users about it. Not entirely sure how to handle that yet, but I've been focusing on other personal projects and job hunting. Worrying about adding stuff to Ascension hasn't been a huge concern. It does what I want, so I haven't found anything else I'd like to add to it just yet.

<comment><USER11> Could you have "Classic" (current) and "Remixed" (tweaked) versions of the current presets?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Looks nice, although I wonder how to configure it? There's an app that appeared, but when I click it I get an 'app not installed' error / toast message.

</comment><comment><USER13> This is pretty impressive work--thanks for sharing!

</comment><comment><USER14> Huh, it doesn't support my device, do you have screen size requirements?

edit: never mind, you block galaxy nexus for performance reasons.

awwww :(

</comment><comment><USER15> Thanks. I'm using your Orion config with random widths. The smoother gradient transitions are especially nice.

</comment><comment><USER16> Is it open-source?

<comment><AUTHOR> Not at the moment. Still undecided on that.

<comment><USER17> Why not? Might get more people using Scala for Android development.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's code I've invested a lot of time in, but was never written with the idea that other people would see it, so 75% worried at how horrifying the code might be and 25% worried that someone might make a build and push a clone out with malware attached.

<comment><USER18> To allay your fears about the 75%: that's what code review is for. Lots of eyes make the problematic code go away. :)

I'd be more than happy to help de-spaghetti the code if it was available.

<comment><AUTHOR> Currently working on another patch to fix some newfound crashes while prepping the code for open sourcing. License headers and all that.

Plan for now is to release it under the GPL version 2 or 3 to hopefully compel people to make their modifications available (plus there's not much use for a lenient license here -- it's not a library, though some of the code could be moved to one later). This might take a day or so, so I expect this post to disappear into complete obscurity before I'm done. Might create a new HN submission for that just to let people know. At any rate, my net access is down so I have to write this on my phone, meaning any release is going to wait on my ISP to determine what's up and how to resolve the issue.

So, open source is planned, I'll just suck it up as I usually do when I release every other project of mine. Re: malware, I've decided it's not my responsibility to protect people from the malicious few. I'll let Google do that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This makes for a sweet wallpaper! Nicely done.

</comment><comment><USER20> will the app truly not run on a galaxy nexus or is minSdk set too high?

<comment><AUTHOR> I currently don't allow installation on the Galaxy Nexus because for some reason the live wallpaper has severe performance issues on Galaxy Nexus devices. I've never been able to figure out what the problem is, since it's obviously not hardware — older devices run it fine. My best guesses are that I'm doing something out of the ordinary in GL ES that I haven't noticed or that there are either driver issues (not necessarily buggy drivers) or those specific devices have something off about their GL interfaces. It's hard to say without having a device on hand for it, which I don't. I'm mostly leaning toward it being an issue with how I use GL.

Because of the issues, I decided it was better to just block the device entirely rather than have people suffer through the performance issues with the Galaxy Nexus.

<comment><USER21> Gah, first time I did android it was live wallpaper, client got me a samsung, which just happened to not come with live wallpaper functionality, what a faf !

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> that's actually nice wallpaper, thank you!</comment>


The Early History of Usenet - <AUTHOR> https://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb/blog/control/tag_index.html#TH_Usenet_history <comment><USER2> Check out Aether[1] and Notabug[2] for some spiritual successors btw.

[1]: [https://github.com/nehbit/aether](https://github.com/nehbit/aether)

[2]: [https://github.com/notabugio/notabug](https://github.com/notabugio/notabug)

</comment><comment><USER3> I knew that the decentralized structure of Usenet was born from necessity, but I didn't realize how hard it was just to get a modem back then.

Can decentralized services work on the modern Internet? Even setting aside how spam and illegal content destroyed Usenet as a discussion medium, in its late stages it became a playground for kooks and trolls at the expense of legitimate posting. Killfiles didn't work as the bad actors could easily change names and email addresses; get them thrown off one server and they'd just sign up on another one. The only way to ban someone from a newsgroup and make it stick is with a court order - and that happened at least once.

Another post from the same blog details why the troll problem was technologically impossible to solve: [https://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb/blog/2018-02/2018-02-23.htm...](https://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb/blog/2018-02/2018-02-23.html)

<comment><USER4> Reddit has some similar troll problems, and there are a bunch of bots people have written to manipulate subreddits to nuke trolls. It's a much easier problem for them, though, because Reddit itself is centralized. So a bot action takes place immediately instead of over many hours.

The first time I can recall anyone tried widespread cancels in Usenet was Clarinet, and it didn't work very well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm always a little surprised to be reminded that Usenet still exists.

<comment><USER6> It still exists, and some groups do continue to have discussions.

For access to the textual groups, you can use Eternal September ([https://www.eternal-september.org/](https://www.eternal-september.org/)) or AIOE ([https://news.aioe.org/](https://news.aioe.org/)) with a newsreader ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Usenet_newsreaders](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Usenet_newsreaders)) to see what discussions are continuing to happen.

<comment><USER7> Sorry I have to chime in, because there is also my very own nntp server with also a web interface for people who don't want to download a client: [https://in.memory.of.e.tern.al/comp.misc/](https://in.memory.of.e.tern.al/comp.misc/)

There are still some people there, and talking about stuff. It's very much like hacker news, but with much less people :)</comment></comment></comment>


Recurrent Neural Network Tutorial for Artists (2017) - <AUTHOR> http://blog.otoro.net/2017/01/01/recurrent-neural-network-artist/ <comment><USER2> Some other resources:

The github repo for their JS handwriting prediction library:

[https://github.com/hardmaru/rnn-tutorial](https://github.com/hardmaru/rnn- tutorial)

Experiments in Handwriting with a Neural Network:

[https://distill.pub/2016/handwriting/](https://distill.pub/2016/handwriting/)

Related work, Draw Together with a Neural Network:

[https://magenta.tensorflow.org/sketch-rnn- demo](https://magenta.tensorflow.org/sketch-rnn-demo)

Previous HN discussion:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14372628](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14372628)

<comment><USER3> also related, this blog post

[https://research.googleblog.com/2017/04/teaching-machines- to...](https://research.googleblog.com/2017/04/teaching-machines-to-draw.html)

prev discussion

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14114706](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14114706)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> hardmaru! David, I am a big admirer of your work.

I am a PhD student and currently writing a blog post on how Deep Learning can be used in combination with vector graphics.

Do you have any ideas / remarks on this? What are the general options of applying Deep Learning to vector graphics (as input and/or output)?

<comment><USER5> I'm not OP, but my take on this is that it would be quite difficult to design a DNN working directly with vector graphics. I'd say you should rasterize your image before inputting it to the network. Same with outputs. CNNs would definitely struggle with continuous images. This is from what I personally know, and I did not bother to google before writing this, so I might also be very wrong.

<comment><USER4> Hi jefft255,

I think you are totally right. As far as I understand, CNNs rely on the correlation of neighbouring pixels. And so directly applying them to vector graphics won't work.

However, vectorisation has massive downsides as well.

I will try to summarise it in some article. This had nerd-sniped my brain and so I need to write it down. Even if I have no solution for the problem yet.

Happy to send you a link to the draft once I have it so you can comment.

<comment><USER6> In my pretty untrained opinion, it feels like something that outputs vector images might well be trained using reinforcement learning, since it seems like the problem can be well modeled with a policy: "given what I want to produce and what I've produced so far, the next vector object I want to draw is x"</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Investors Say "Count Me In" To Plancast - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/03/08/plancast-funding/ <comment><USER2> Agreed, it's a great concept and nice execution.

Suggestion: If any of the devs see this thread, it'd be great to have privacy settings, so (optionally) only approved folks could see your travel plans.

Edit: After RTFA, I see that "...And after the SXSW madness, the plan is to implement more privacy features, we're told."

Cool.

<comment><USER3> You are not alone in your desire for better privacy controls. Here's kind of what our roadmap has been/will be:

The last few weeks have been focused on the iPhone app and API. I'm guessing the next few weeks will be focused on keeping the site up (it's already gone down once today because of traffic) and working on the overall speed of the site (that's what I'm working on right now).

But after that, Privacy is the next major item on our todo list.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> yay! i'm also thrilled about the new logo.

<comment><USER3> I know right? I wanted to be manly about it but that little Penguin just melted my heart.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Though I am working as a competitor in the same segment of the market. I am glad that they secured fund and working on the new product.

Let's all make something that people want.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Congrats to Jaymon (<http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=Jaymon>) and Mark for building a kick-ass service!

</comment><comment><USER6> i havent really started using plancast yet (theres not enough of a community in miami trying it). I will say, it's one of those things that is useful, has a point, and really could crossover (unlike foursquare imho). I'm very very bullish on the product. congrats on the funding!</comment>


Landing-Page lead conversions using WhatsApp - <AUTHOR> https://whatsmany.com/increase-the-conversion-of-your-landing-pages-with-whatsapp/ <comment><USER2> IMHO since in US FB messenger is more popular than Whatsapp, it makes more sense to communicate with leads there. Plus setting up chat bots for messenger is super easy.</comment>


9-year-old hangs with PopCap, creates iOS game via Make A Wish Foundation - <AUTHOR> http://www.tuaw.com/2011/05/04/9-year-old-hangs-with-popcap-creates-ios-game-via-make-a-wish-f/ <comment><USER2> Making a video game is pretty neat and all, but I think Electron Boy wins the best wish ever prize (they hand out prizes for that, right?):

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FCIskbu-OM>

[http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2011740342_e...](http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2011740342_electronboy30m.html)

Both Electron Boy and the Pop Cap kid seem to be from Seattle. The Make A Wish Seattle office is really hitting it out of the park (as much as an organisation that always hits it out of the park can do, if you know what I mean).

</comment><comment><USER3> This is a great story; I wish there was more of this. Obviously Pop Cap has something to gain from this story-- goodwill at least, since they mentioned proceeds will go to Make A Wish. Too often around here we're flooded with the "out for yourself" mentality, which I suppose rightly fits in with the entrepreneurial nature. This is a nice break from that.

<comment><USER4> _Too often around here we're flooded with the "out for yourself" mentality, which I suppose rightly fits in with the entrepreneurial nature._

I don't think this is the case at all. There is nothing in the spirit of hackerdom where "I got mine" is the standard mentality. In fact it flies in the face of OSS development where people are interested in doing something because they thought it was cool and wanted to share it. Or they found a solution to a problem everyone is having and felt that the best thing to do with it is to give it away.

Saying that someone has gained something by doing charity is a very Randian point of view. Maybe PopCap thought it make them look good. Maybe they thought it would make them feel good on the inside. Or maybe they felt like doing because some kid asked and they thought, "oh, what the hell".

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Phew, for a second there, I thought the 9 year old made an iOS game himself.</comment>


Most unhappy people are unhappy for the exact same reason - <AUTHOR> https://qz.com/1190151/why-am-i-unhappy-a-new-study-explains-americas-unhappiness-epidemic/ <comment><USER2> A little bit of HN a day will make you happy. Too much HN a day will make you sad.</comment>


Why online communities on media sites seem doomed to fail - <AUTHOR> http://martinbelam.com/2015/i-tell-you/ <comment><USER2> tl;dr why "don't read the comments" is a cliche. Good one.</comment>


A Little Football Phone That Sold a Million Magazines - <AUTHOR> http://www.rollingstone.com/sports/features/the-funky-little-football-phone-that-sold-a-million-magazines-20151028 <comment><USER2> I haven't seen many of this sort of offer of late. The last one I had was for a free offer of 2 xbox 360 games for a 12 month subscription to a snowboarding magazine. I signed up just for the games, Dead island and Assassins Creed 3 were the games and the subscription was approx £30.

I imagine the acquisition cost is much higher these days and customer retention a lot more difficult.</comment>


Yandex Browser : beautiful, minimalistic and made by Russia's Google  - <AUTHOR> https://browser.yandex.com/

<comment><USER2> > Closed-source russian web-browser

That's only slightly less unacceptable than a closed-source american web- browser.

</comment><comment><USER3> Anyone know which rendering engine this uses?

<comment><USER4> Yandex browser is based on the projects Blink, Chromium, Opera Turboand other software. License Agreement.</comment></comment>


Seattle, the New Center of a Tech Boom - <AUTHOR> http://mobile.nytimes.com/blogs/bits/2014/06/11/seattle-the-new-center-of-a-tech-boom/ <comment><USER2> I'm getting so tired of every city claiming a Tech Boom, headlines like "[City X] is the next Silicon Valley", etc. All these articles are isomorphic ("here, check out this bunch of hip, trendy developers with an app that you haven't even heard of who live in our city"). This is insufferable. Here is a short list of cities on which I have read articles in the past 6 months claiming that they are the next Silicon Valley or something to that effect:

-NYC

-Berlin

-Ljubljana

-Chicago

-Detroit

-San Diego

-LA

-Toronto

-Dubai

-Tel Aviv

-Nairobi

...

This isn't news. Yes, believe it or not, most cities with a few hundred thousand people in them have a tech scene! (Especially the ones with a University housing a major CS department --- like Seattle!) Yes, it is 2014 --- the tech scene is mostly booming wherever you look, especially on a sufficiently long-term perspective. Really, articles of this sort are usually just self-serving advertisement for the city in question.

The truth is, of course, that the tech scene in most of these cities is _not really_ booming in the sense of the word. Developing strongly is often a better way to put it, and the growth rate is often non-linear (probably more toward the logarithmic side of things) because founders of successful companies have a tendency to move to the Bay Area.

<comment><USER3> And then there's poor, neglected Boston. No media coverage about being the next SV. No Silicon derived nicknames (instead there's Rt. 128, Kendall Square, and Fort Point). Sometimes, thanks to the lack of media coverage, Boston/Cambridge gets left off the list of tech scenes altogether, despite having whole areas dominated by startups and the second largest amount of VC after SF/SV.

I wonder if Boston is doomed to be a cautionary tale about what happens when a culture of B2B startups (Digital, Wang, etc.) produces VCs who don't have enough vision to fund companies like Facebook or TaskRabbit.

<comment><USER4> Boston is a beautiful city with amazing seasons and probably the single greatest concentration of smart people in the world. It's also, at least historically, the spiritual capital of Lisp (thanks to MIT). All taken together, I'm a huge fan of the place.

Unfortunately, my experience with Boston companies (I've interviewed with a few, and had the misfortune of being reverse-acquired by one) is that they're not progressive. One hiring manager told me (this was a couple years ago, I think I was 27 or 28 at the time) that I was too old to be a programmer (wat?) but too young to be a manager. Another tried to give me a position with "junior" in the title-- this was in mid-2013, so I had 7 years of experience. (I know that titles are bullshit, but if they're going to exist, I'll take an inflated one rather than a deflated one.)

Boston is a beautiful, under-appreciated place. Its climate is ideal (cold, snowy winters, perfect springs and falls, mild summers). I like the people a lot. But I see a culture where there is too much deference to authority and too little "fuck it, let's do it anyway". While the Valley is too youth- obsessed and flighty and sociopathic, New England seems to take the other extreme: too seniority-bound and stodgy and prone to following rules. The ideal, for tech, is somewhere between the two.

<comment><USER5> I'm curious if there's another Boston and New England :-) The Boston where I lived 10+ years had a lousy weather where you can't survive without an air conditioner during summers because it's so humid. Moving to Seattle/Redmond was a good idea in more than one way :-)

Doing a startup in Boston is definitely no fun. That's true.

<comment><USER6> Everybody has their own preferences and all but I don't personally consider

>(cold, snowy winters,

as an ideal climate. My Dad's side of my family is from Boston, so while I've never lived there, I have been there from time to time (usually in the summer) and they didn't seem that mild to me. Must like the Summers I was used to in the Midwest (which is [just] one reason I left the Midwest).

<comment><USER5> Even the snow isn't that great :-) You get really nice snow one day. It starts melting the next day and the day after it gets really cold and everything turns into ice. Not great conditions for snowboarding/skiing...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7>
        "Others note that Washington State has tougher noncompete
        clauses in its labor laws than does California, which can
        give established firms some peace of mind about setting up
        shop in Seattle but frustrate venture capitalists by
        making it harder for people to walk out of one company and
        start a competitor."

That right there is enough to give any engineer pause about going to work for a company in Seattle.

Anna-Lee Saxenian's work in the dated, but still relevant "Regional Advantage: Culture and Competition in Silicon Valley and Route 128" goes into a fair amount of detail how the non-compete environment on Route 128 ended up undermining the Boston area relative to the Bay area.

99% of companies are simply not set up to allow success of new ideas related to the core business, but not actually the core business. Non-competes basically cause ideas to die because most companies are excellent at stifling execution on non-core projects.

</comment><comment><USER8> Is the climate as bad as they say in Seattle? Would living (a few hours?) away right on the pacific coast be an improvement in climate?

(By the way, what's the best way to compare climates in different US cities all at once?)

<comment><USER9> > _Is the climate as bad as they say in Seattle?_

Seriously, it's really nice here. No mosquitos (I'm from central Canada), no tornadoes, no hurricanes, no hail, no snow.

The "it always rains" thing is just a seattle meme.

I guess you could say that Seattle doesn't have distinctive weather character, but that's not really a problem, or a bad thing.

<comment><USER10> How about "you only see the sun for two weeks out of the year"? That's arguably much more important since it tends to lead to depression in a lot of people.

<comment><USER11> As a kid, it never bothered me. When I moved back as an adult though, it was surprisingly bad - and for my Iowan wife, it was really hard. The trick is the same one they use in Toronto in the middle of winter - plan a yearly trip somewhere sunny! There's a reason so many people living in Seattle have fractional timeshare ownerships in Hawaii.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> But what do we do about that...

... things turn out to be not well balanced (a fact... for whatever reason)

You can make millions in a guys only world in SV (doesn't the lack of private life suck? The lack of a balanced ;) peer group?).

And on the other side (outside SV) startups just do not work out that well (and in the long run likely bowing to SV). Now IT is an important future industry... and it's creation is NOT well distributed.

Like the gold rush (which happened for some reason also in California)

</comment><comment><USER13> If you're coming from SF and are used to the quality of the restaurants in a foodie city, Seattle is mostly just presentation.

</comment><comment><USER5> Seattle has a potential, but it's not a boom until we see more VC/angel activity, which is a good indicator.

It has a pretty good tech scene. Most startups are still consumer oriented though, so Jared Wray, CTO from CenturyLink, is wrong :-)

</comment><comment><USER14> The tech boom is everywhere. Some cities have more visibility but I think it's going in some fashion in most major cities or metro areas.

</comment><comment><USER15> "Seattle Freeze" #neverforget

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_Freeze](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_Freeze)

[http://qr.ae/sDfQ9](http://qr.ae/sDfQ9)

Its a real thing. All my friends in Seattle ended up being people who moved there from somewhere else - like myself. I noticed this trend well before I learned about the mythical term "Seattle freeze". Crazy world.

<comment><USER11> As a native Washingtonian, born and raised in the Puget Sound region, can I suggest a theory? The Seattle Freeze was imported in the late 1980s as the region gentrified. As we moved from a blue collar economy (logging, building airplanes, etc) to a white collar economy (software, biotech), and especially as we experienced significant population growth as transplants moved in rapidly to be part of those new industries, _that_ was when the freeze set in. Yes, there is a lot to be said for the nordic influence and the fact that Seattle is isolated culturally from the rest of the country, but it was the mass influx of cultural outsiders that generated the distrust at the root of the freeze.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Didn't I read about the Tech Boom in Los Angeles last week?

</comment><comment><USER4> Seattle can definitely do very well. It's one of the most beautiful places on the planet, it has a lot of talent, and it's still relatively affordable. Let's hope that, if it grows, it doesn't fuck everything up the way San Francisco and its progress-hating NIMBYs did.

 _"The galactic players are here, and they are creating lots of little companies. The only thing driving anyone away from here is the weather."_

I'm surprised people are saying this. Seattle weather is gloomy by California standards, but it's actually not that bad. If you're from the northeast, you won't notice much of a difference, except for the winters being slightly warmer and the summers being cooler. (Summer is actually a nice season, not a humid hell, in Seattle.) Sure, it's cloudy a lot (55-60% in the summer, 80-85% in the winter) and it rains, a little bit, most days. But heavy rain that prevents you from doing things outside is very rare. If you're into running or biking, you probably prefer 50- to 70-degree cloudy days anyway, which makes Seattle ideal.

 _Others note that Washington State has tougher noncompete clauses in its labor laws than does California, which can give established firms some peace of mind about setting up shop in Seattle but frustrate venture capitalists by making it harder for people to walk out of one company and start a competitor._

This is something it will need to change. Whether you want non-competes and employer-friendly ownership laws over side projects depends on whether you're courting hedge funds or tech. (Hedge funds are more of a meritocracy than VC, which means that it's easier for a guy with no connections to run with a proven idea and get a hedge fund.) If you're going for the hedge funds, keep the non-competes in play. If you want tech, then eschew non-competes and give the benefit of the doubt, on ownership, to the employee. (California gets this right in a major way.) However, the hedge funds don't want to be in Seattle, because it's not near any of the major exchanges. Tech loves Seattle. So Seattle should play for tech and kill the non-competes, because the hedge funds aren't about to move there no matter what it does.

I'll say one thing, based on very limited data. Seattle's an amazing, beautiful city and, unconstrained, would be one of the top places I'd choose to live. What has concerned me is (based on _very_ limited data; it could be that I just talked to crappy companies) that the creeping non-progressivism of technology employers (back-channel references, aversion to people with "too many" jobs, closed allocation) seems to be meeting less resistance there than I'd like. The sense I got from a recruiter (who may be completely biased) is that workers don't fight back hard enough to have nice things. I said to him, "I'm in my 30s now and only want to work on interesting projects, because I'm old enough to know that I will die someday." He said that if I said something that direct in an interview, that alone would sink me. (In New York, people are more accepting of directness. That a smart person will bolt if given boring work is a given. I like that.) Of course, that can change in a matter of months. Seattle has an incredible number of smart people, and a beautiful environment, and I think anything's possible there. But (if I'm right that Seattle's scene is more conservative and corporate) it's something that will have to evolve if it wants a leading tech scene.

<comment><USER17> > It's one of the most beautiful places on the planet,

When people say this, do they literally mean _one of the most beautiful places on Earth_ , or do they really mean _really beautiful_? This might be an obtuse question, but the literal interpretation of it feels a bit... well.

<comment><USER18> Both? IMO the old-growth forests of the Pacific Northwest (which, granted, is much larger than just Seattle) is the sort of sight/sound/smell one should experience in their lifetime.

Having lived in dry, brown California, and now in concrete jungle Manhattan, a hike in the hills of the PNW sounds positively divine right now.

<comment><USER17> Such arrogance

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> What Tech Boom?</comment>


L.A. school district ditches iPad curriculum - <AUTHOR> http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-ipad-curriculum-refund-20150415-story.html <comment><USER2> I'm currently working at a school district in Lancaster, PA.

We have gone with Linux laptops for all of our students. Even more, we've given them root access.

We chose this because of exactly the points that many people are bringing up in these comments.

What does the iPad offer to the pedagogical process? Not really that much outside of the sanitary iOS enviroment. Are they teaching kids about programming or computer skills? Probably not.

However, with a laptop (and root access), students are able to, and encouraged to play around and experiment.

Yes, we have some students that don't care about it at all, but there are others that have created some genuinely interesting projects. We've actually modified and used one of their projects to help support the linux laptop deployment.

More info: [http://www.pennmanor.net/techblog/?cat=69](http://www.pennmanor.net/techblog/?cat=69)

My boss did an amazing TEDx talk regarding the subject: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8Co37GO2Fc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8Co37GO2Fc)

<comment><USER3> Have you had to deal with accessibility for disabled students (e.g. blind, low-vision, or mobility impaired) yet? As I understand it, assistive technologies on desktop Linux are much less mature than on Windows or Mac. And AFAIK, the only desktop environments that are accessible to blind users in particular are GNOME and Unity.

<comment><USER2> I'm not certain.

Although I work in the district, I'm typically stationed at buildings other than where the current 1-to-1 deployment is happening; so I miss out on a lot of the day to day details.

That being said; the computers run stock-ish Ubuntu 14.04 with Unity. The students are able to install whatever accessibility tools they wish.

<comment><USER3> Maybe you guys should challenge one of your student apprentices to use one of the laptops with their eyes closed (or with the screen turned off if that's feasible), try to get through tasks that a student typically has to do, and fix any problems that come up, even if that involves contributing to the relevant open-source projects. The Orca screen reader is written in Python and supports application-specific scripting. The process could be quite educational.

<comment><USER4> I just want to say that contributing can sound daunting, but its honestly as simple as proof reading docs or filing bugs. No coding required.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Public discussion of education is always hampered by the fact that people not professionals in it have no sense of how complicated it is. Some students are genuises, some are cognitively low. Some students have personality disorders. Some students will soak up everything they see. Others don't care. Some students need to be a medical treatments at various times during the week. Some pray five times a day. Some are so stoned they cannot hold a pencil. Some really only care about what they need to do in this class in order to to play basketball.

When a vendor comes in and says, "We know how to solve your problems," there is reason to be doubtful.

I'm not saying that such efforts have no promise, but there typically needs to be a long growth period during which the tools have to be adapted, sometimes radically. In this complicated a sphere, bottom-up may well work better than top-down.

<comment><USER6> Are you an education professional? I'm not, but I wonder why we don't go back to the model of segregating students by ability/need. It seems like the trend today is to "mainstream" everyone into a common classroom, so you have high achievers, low ability, as well as genuinely abnormal (mentally retarded, severe behavorial problems, etc.) all together. I see no way that can be effective for any of them because you will not be able to provide the style of instruction that each of these constituencies need.

<comment><USER7> I am a teacher.

Ability/need isn't a scalar quantity and real students don't distribute themselves in a way that can be described by a couple of parameters.

I don't know what the answers are either but I think we need to be very explicit about any assumptions underpinning proposed models. I also agree with the 'bottom up' part of the gf comment.

Now, what discrete 'styles of instruction' are there do you think?

<comment><USER8> When I was in elementary school, we had different classes that were segregated by ability. We had different subjects with different teachers and different students, and students were moved to different classes as their abilities changed. So if I were good at reading I could be in the more advanced reading class, but if I were bad at math I would be in the lower math class. If I improved at math I would be moved to a more challenging math class.

Is this no longer the case? This was 3rd-6th grade, I don't remember much before those grades.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Aside from how Pearson performed, I'm rather surprised that they choose to buy so many iPads.

What does the iPad offer to the pedagogical process? Are they teaching kids about programming or computer skills? Probably not.

Did they expect Pearson to produce an entire curriculum just for the iPad? Why not a website instead, which is so much more easily accessed and maintained? Did these schools want to be "technological" for the sake of it?

And for general student tasks, is the iPad really a good fit? As opposed to a conventional computer running Microsoft Office or a browser with Google Drive? And that computer could do other things too?

<comment><USER10> > _Did they expect Pearson to produce an entire curriculum just for the iPad?_

More or less, yes: "Under the contract, Pearson was to provide English and math curriculum."

> _Why not a website instead_

The article says "Deasy had said the technology effort was a civil rights imperative designed to provide low-income students with devices available to their wealthier peers." It's easy for you and me to assume that every man, woman, and child in America has easy access to the web, but it's not necessarily so. Giving a tablet to every single student does seem like a reasonable way to level the playing field. In theory, it would be more portable, simpler to use and maintain, and less abusable than, say, a laptop.

It's unfortunate that things broke down along the way. This could have been a really good idea, if it was implemented properly.

<comment><USER11> If you want to level the playing field then giving out devices that are effectively only useful for consuming content is not the way to go.

<comment><USER10> There's a lot of reasons why the plan didn't work out, but your objection seems more like a knee-jerk anti-Apple catchphrase. An iPad with the proper software (which these obviously did not have) is quite capable of presenting indexed, hyperlinked course material, distributing schedules and assignments, helping students communicate with the teacher and each other, and so forth.

If you want to argue that there are better ways to do all these things, that's fine, but the "only good for consuming content" thing is awfully shallow.

<comment><USER11> It's not just about Apple (though they did a lot to start the trend), I'd have the same objection if it was an Android/Windows/whatever tablet.

I suppose it depends on what your goal is. If it is to give people a device to use for reading texts then I suppose it's fine. If you want people to reply, or to provide a level playing field outside of school then what I said still applies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> They've just kept Apple on the hit list because they know they had more money than brains to attempt to purchase an iPad for each student. If they want to add more technology to the classroom, hire some programmers to build educational software with a committee of teachers. Make it a webapp so the district can use whatever array of hardware they already own.

This was just a school district looking to waste money as far as I can tell. "Deasy had said the technology effort was a civil rights imperative designed to provide low-income students with devices available to their wealthier peers."

And what a civil rights effort. Slow clap.

If you want to do something to help equalize them with their wealthier peers, buy them all Learn Python the Hard Way. Which would satisfy their need to waste money, because that book is free online.

<comment><USER13> Contrary to popular belief everyone REALLY doesn't need to be a programmer.

<comment><USER14> Nope, but everyone doesn't need to be a mathematician, biologist, geologist, historian, or any of the other primary subjects in school either. I think that in 2015 it's hard to argue that a basic grasp of computers / software won't have at least as big of an effect on your quality of life after graduation as being able to work quadratic equations by hand, without reference.

<comment><USER15> I've personally been pretty irked by the whole "EVERYONE SHOULD LEARN TO CODE ASAP" narrative being pushed basically everywhere recently, but I agree with you here.

Sticking something like python onto the school curriculum would only be a good thing. The vast majority who do it won't become programmers, just as the vast majority who sit math don't become mathematicians, etc. but it would give kids a fun and interesting way to learn logic, create things on the computer for themselves, etc.

They have problems unique to them that they may be able to spin up little desktop apps or similar to solve, which could then go on to inspire them to become entrepreneurs, tech product creators, etc.

Regardless, there would be absolutely no harm in making it available to them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is almost 100% about Pearson. The article even has this gem buried toward the end:

 _Although the threatened legal action applies to Apple and Pearson, the district also sent letters Tuesday to two other companies: Lenovo, a device maker, and Arey Jones, a computer distributor. These companies also have included the Pearson product on some devices purchased by L.A. Unified._

So, they had problems with non-Apple devices as well?

There's also this statement:

 _Pearson could offer only a partial curriculum during the first year of the license, which was permitted under the agreement. Teachers and principals never widely embraced the product._

Okay, so the product they bought wasn't embraced. And there aren't any real reasons given other than a vague: _"Any given class typically experiences one problem or more daily. "_

What does that even mean?

<comment><USER17> _"Any given class typically experiences one problem or more daily. "_

It means there is a complex system that isn't reliable enough for its target usage and the end users have no way of pressuring for its improvement.

<comment><USER16> My issue with the statement is two fold:

1) "Any given" really isn't the same as "every". It's vague and ambiguous, and generally means it happens often, but is not a useful measure of incidence. 2) A deployment of this number of devices + custom software will have problems, that has to be accepted. One problem, without knowing what it is, really isn't enough to say the thing is a failure. In fact, it's not even close. Is the problem that someone has to restart their iPad? That the content freezes? The content is inaccessible? The content is incomplete? The Wi-Fi goes down? The teacher's materials aren't working? We really have no idea, and that kind of comment in this kind of story is adversarial and unnecessary.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I've always been skeptical that computers would make learning effortless. It's like expecting that driving a car would make one better at running marathons. Learning requires effort, one way or another, just like exercise.

</comment><comment><USER19> I can't stand when writers artificially lengthen the article and only after the first half get actually to the point:

> _"Only two schools of 69 in the Instructional Technology Initiative ... use > Pearson regularly," according to an internal March report from project > director Bernadette Lucas. "Any given class typically experiences one > problem or more daily. Teachers report that the students enjoy the > interactive content — when it's available. When it's not, teachers and > students try to roll with the interruptions to teaching and learning as best > they can."_

</comment><comment><USER20> I don't know the history of this deal, but I'm entirely unsurprised that this didn't work out. Digital tools are just not up to snuff. Experiments like this are worth doing, but not with an entire school district. And jumping in when there's no actual curriculum yet is completely irresponsible. Blaming Pearson and Apple is disingenuous of the district. Of course salespeople are going to lie and overpromise. Anyone who's spent any time in any business knows this. The administrators and board members who agreed to this deal are the ones who are responsible. That $768 for each iPad and software could have bought a lot of books and classroom supplies for these kids that would have enriched their lives a lot more. The overhead of supporting all these new devices likely drained a lot of operational money from other areas as well. And there's absolutely zero evidence that tablets or computers are better ways to teach kids than traditional methods. Turning over all the responsibility for educating our children to a corporation with a magic solution sounds like a brilliant plan because we want to believe there's an easy way to solve the problem, but there's not one, and this is so much snake oil, and the people in charge should be wise to this stuff by now.

<comment><USER21> Our school district does this regularly with non-digitized curricula- drops a couple $100K, threatens teachers with penalties if they don't teach 'to fidelity', gives it about a year, scores don't magically skyrocket, teachers start abandoning the curriculum (they're still responsible for the scores), then it ends up in the resource room and the process starts again. It's ridiculous how often school districts keep buying magic beans, then blame the teachers when they don't work out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> >The district selected Pearson based only on samples of curriculum — nothing more was available.

So they bought hardware to run software that didn't exist.

<comment><USER23> Pearson is horrible, but the educational software field itself is just as horrible. In 2000 I worked for a small startup that created online courseware. Our roots were as a spinoff from a Federal grant to a big name university. Our task was to commercialize the courses the university had developed, and to develop additional courses.

Granted that technology in 2000 was not as advanced as today, but the pedagogy behind online/computer based courses was still in its infancy. It would take us 6 months to develop a basic Biology course, using programmers, SMEs, editors, and graphic artists. We turned out what was a pretty good course all things considered.

Where the real problem lay was the selling/marketing process. School districts are by nature conservative, and new ideas/technology that threaten established teaching methods are viewed with a gimlet eye.

Textbook publishers had a lock on the market and didn't want to give up any ground to an intruder. Teachers were afraid of being replaced by computers, leading to widespread skepticism of distance learning. And the technological competence of teachers and administrators at the time was bad; they had too much other things to worry about than to understand the difference between Java and Javascript.

So to me, it doesn't seem like a lot has changed in 15 years. The established vendors want to protect their market, the buyers, though pushed to embrace technology don't know how to use it well, and the students are left holding a bag of shit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I've been running a coding/tech club in a K-5 school and find the iPads work very well for younger students (K-2). Most are uncomfortable with trackpads and lack typing skills. The iPad is very intuitive and productive for them. I'm currently working through a short curriculum for K-2 using the Scratch Jr. app. Grades 3-5 use 11" Macbooks running the full Scratch application.

The iPad's are a great way to prepare younger students for "real" computing. I would not recommend tablets as a primary computing device beyond 2nd grade as "creation" capabilities are limited; the iPad turns into a media consumption device at that age.

</comment><comment><USER25> > She said although there have been challenges in carrying out "a large-scale > implementation of new technologies ... we stand by the quality of our > performance."

New? What's new about it? It's a computer with stuff on it.

</comment><comment><USER26> tl;dr There wouldn't have been enough eyes on this article if it correctly stated the issue is with Pearson and not the iPad or Apple.

</comment><comment><USER27> The thing is no one is going to rob a kid for a $150 chromebook, some parts of LA are not so friendly and a kid walking home with $1000 in hardware is not just in danger of losing the ipad but of being injured or killed in the robbery. Ultimately chromeos does a much better job, and gives kids a platform to learn javascript which is the language of the future anyways. Nobody is going to risk prison for a chromebook but robbery for apple gear is not uncommon.

</comment><comment><USER28> LAUSD parent here. At our school, we have been successfully using iPads for instruction in certain grades. MacBooks and Airs in higher grades. The software used is pretty much the stock iPad selection, reinforced with some pedagogical offerings through web SaaS products. In Kindergarten, my daughter made a Ken Burns-style presentation using iMovie, researched building a parachute with a gondola to compete in the egg drop competition (her and her partner's egg broke), and has been drilled in numerous ways on spelling, counting, addition and subtraction. I am unsure how tech is applied in other grades, but I have seen the movie making and egg drop competition themes at the other grade levels, so I assume there is some iterative rigor year over year. By 4th grade, I expect my daughter to be participating in curriculum sourced from the Hour of Code program.

In my view, Director Deasy's persecution is politically-motivated. The choice to go Apple was the result of successes in various Magnet and Lab Schools, conducted prior to the service agreement with Apple. Multiple vendors were evaluated during the Magnet / Lab development process. There was no opportunity in the process to put it out for three bids during the actual procurement process, because the other vendors were eliminated prior to procurement.

Our technology program is funded by our PTO, which is a becoming a common trend in many public schools. It's much easier for our PTO to raise $80K/yr for tech (we raise more than that, to fund other programs) than it is for LAUSD to indemnify the purchase or lease of tech on a district-wide basis. We will likely continue to choose Apple products, with the primary motivation for that decision coming from the instructors, and secondarily, the build quality being able to stand up to student use at school and home.

</comment><comment><USER29> "Pearson defended its product."

This is a company whose business model is being disrupted and whose life will be getting a lot worse if they don't recognize that students (particularly college students) will no longer be cash cows they can milk via textbook/curriculum sales.

</comment><comment><USER30> I want to know more about the 800MM on "improving" Internet access. that seems absurdly high, even for one of the top three school districts in the nation (by size)

<comment><USER31> I work in a k12 ed tech company.

In most schools I've seen, by the time the internet gets to the users device, the quality of service is astonishingly bad. Even in schools that purport to have a big pipe coming in.

Low bandwidth per user, bad access points, frequency clashing, broken switches, aggressive content filtering and firewalls all add up to making it really hard for a student to stream even one educational video from youtube.

5 students in the same class, forget it!

<comment><USER32> We have none of those issues. We block Youtube because when opened students don't stream "educational" videos. They sit in the library watching sports, anime, and inappropriate content.

Aggressive filtering, unfortunately, is a necessary evil because students are kids who, en mass, are irresponsible and make dumb choices.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> In a 1996 Wired interview, Steve Jobs was asked whether technology could help education in the US. I think his answer was spot on.

> Could technology help by improving education?

I used to think that technology could help education. I've probably spearheaded giving away more computer equipment to schools than anybody else on the planet. But I've had to come to the inevitable conclusion that the problem is not one that technology can hope to solve. What's wrong with education cannot be fixed with technology. No amount of technology will make a dent.

It's a political problem. The problems are sociopolitical. The problems are unions. You plot the growth of the NEA [National Education Association] and the dropping of SAT scores, and they're inversely proportional. The problems are unions in the schools. The problem is bureaucracy. I'm one of these people who believes the best thing we could ever do is go to the full voucher system.

I have a 17-year-old daughter who went to a private school for a few years before high school. This private school is the best school I've seen in my life. It was judged one of the 100 best schools in America. It was phenomenal. The tuition was $5,500 a year, which is a lot of money for most parents. But the teachers were paid less than public school teachers - so it's not about money at the teacher level. I asked the state treasurer that year what California pays on average to send kids to school, and I believe it was $4,400. While there are not many parents who could come up with $5,500 a year, there are many who could come up with $1,000 a year.

If we gave vouchers to parents for $4,400 a year, schools would be starting right and left. People would get out of college and say, "Let's start a school." You could have a track at Stanford within the MBA program on how to be the businessperson of a school. And that MBA would get together with somebody else, and they'd start schools. And you'd have these young, idealistic people starting schools, working for pennies.

They'd do it because they'd be able to set the curriculum. When you have kids you think, What exactly do I want them to learn? Most of the stuff they study in school is completely useless. But some incredibly valuable things you don't learn until you're older - yet you could learn them when you're younger. And you start to think, What would I do if I set a curriculum for a school?

God, how exciting that could be! But you can't do it today. You'd be crazy to work in a school today. You don't get to do what you want. You don't get to pick your books, your curriculum. You get to teach one narrow specialization. Who would ever want to do that?

These are the solutions to our problems in education. Unfortunately, technology isn't it. You're not going to solve the problems by putting all knowledge onto CD-ROMs. We can put a Web site in every school - none of this is bad. It's bad only if it lulls us into thinking we're doing something to solve the problem with education.

Lincoln did not have a Web site at the log cabin where his parents home- schooled him, and he turned out pretty interesting. Historical precedent shows that we can turn out amazing human beings without technology. Precedent also shows that we can turn out very uninteresting human beings with technology.

It's not as simple as you think when you're in your 20s - that technology's going to change the world. In some ways it will, in some ways it won't.

[http://archive.wired.com/wired/archive/4.02/jobs_pr.html](http://archive.wired.com/wired/archive/4.02/jobs_pr.html)

</comment><comment><USER34> More like seeks refund from Pearson? The body of the article directly contradicts the headline. I'm hope that FBI investigation turns up some dirt, Pearson is a name that comes up too often in public education, and seems like universally negative reactions. How do such shit companies manage to gain such a stranglehold, particularly when it comes to government contracts? Across 50 states and the innumerable local governments which enter into these contracts, is it literally graft all the way through?

Clever seems like the one breath of fresh air into the system. Maybe they will get into actual curriculum development in the future.

<comment><USER35> The misleading title involving Apple is really just to get more eyeballs.

<comment><USER36> The article says clearly that Pearson was a subcontractor to Apple. Seems that Apple was leading the deal. Not sure how the schools would even take this up with Pearson. If Pearson really is a subcontractor, the real party to have a beef with is Apple.</comment></comment></comment>


Ted Talks to help you understand racism in America - <AUTHOR> https://www.ted.com/playlists/250/talks_to_help_you_understand_r <comment><USER2> Talking about "USA" as "America" is something that they should look at some point in the future :)

I'm from America too, but South America and it's kinda offensive that everyone refers to "USA" as "America".</comment>


Biotech firm Grail conducting large study for early breast cancer detection - <AUTHOR> https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Biotech-firm-Grail-conducting-large-study-for-13510156.php <comment><USER2> Liquid biopsy is an exciting field but to call the current results "promising" seems like a stretch to me. The entire point of doing screening is catching early stage cancers. For these cancers, liquid biopsies miss far more than imaging in every study I've seen (even early non peer reviewed results). For this reason there is as of yet no evidence that drawing a blood sample can be a first step before imaging for the high risk populations where screening is done today. You still need to do imaging for those.

However, it seems like an interesting avenue for increasing the size of the screening population but then false positives become a serious problem within a low risk population.

<comment><USER3> This is definitely a get all of the data and see what sticks type of analysis. There should be some early evidence from a smaller sample set using cluster analysis that is suggestive that mutations can be classified and are predictive. Tons of issues to resolve. I would think that some biostatisticians should be able estimate the false positive rate from a theoretical basis.

<comment><USER2> My point is that there have already been a lot of results showing liquid biopsy misses a lot of the cancers in high risk populations. At this point theoretical estimates seem inferior as evidence than what we know so far from actually measuring.

At some point in the future we may understand more about what markers to look for in the blood and this may change but as of yet there are no "promising" results. Maybe I'm nitpicking but the concept of liquid biopsy is exciting and I hope it's something that humanity figures out how to do!

<comment><USER3> Do you have a reference I could check out? My point was this is looking at sequencing all of the cell free DNA and seeing post hoc if any of that data is predictive of some cancer developing. There are a wide number of issues taking that approach including it not being viable at all. Still it is an interesting data set. And as you state there are other biomarkers that may be more useful that still fall under the category of a liquid biopsy.. what we really mean here is something non-invasive like a blood draw.

I was interested in the FP rate theoretically just cause it would be interesting to understanding the screening watchful waiting type approach vs what we have now.

<comment><USER2> 43% of Stage I cancers detected, 33% of breast cancers detected and called "the best result so far" by this one science blogger (for breast imaging these numbers are usually around 90):

[https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2018/01/22/a-...](https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2018/01/22/a-hard- look-at-liquid-biopsies)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Fun fact: Grail (or, Marius at Grail) wrote their own scientific workflow engine in Go, with a focus on AWS as execution platform:

[https://github.com/grailbio/reflow](https://github.com/grailbio/reflow)

Fo anyone interested, we reviewed it including a comparison to other Go based wf tools (the number is obviously growing):

[http://gopherdata.io/post/more_go_based_workflow_tools_in_bi...](http://gopherdata.io/post/more_go_based_workflow_tools_in_bioinformatics/)

</comment><comment><USER5> This is awesome. Biopsies today are incredibly invasive and painful. Anything that makes things less painful, safer, and cheaper is great -- means more ppl can use it and more ppl will get screened.

</comment><comment><USER6> Do they also look at life factors to see if there are features that correlate with breast cancer incidence? E.g. like how smoking correlates with lung cancer.

<comment><USER7> It would seem like from a public health perspective, this is the more important thing to research.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I read this as Gmail at first.

<comment><USER9> I bet gmail could actually predict breast cancer quite well if it was let loose on it.

[https://www.breastcancer.org/risk/factors](https://www.breastcancer.org/risk/factors)

Your email knows how much you do of many of those things.

<comment><USER10> Maybe 10 years ago today it would be Facebook.

That said I always wondered if HID devices and mobile phones could be used to detect early symptoms of Parkinson's and other neural or neuromuscular syndroms.</comment></comment></comment>


How I bypassed Apple App Store Reviewer. - <AUTHOR> http://tensaistudio.blogspot.com/2012/05/how-i-bypassed-apple-app-store-reviewer.html#disqus_thread

<comment><USER2> Why you would want to advertise this to the rest of the world is beyond me. You will get blacklisted. Soon.</comment>


Nepal private schools mandate Mandarin after China's sponsorship - <AUTHOR> https://m.timesofindia.com/world/south-asia/nepal-schools-make-mandarin-compulsory-after-china-offers-to-pay-teachers-salaries/amp_articleshow/69799114.cms <comment><USER2> It is a good thing. So many Chinese tourists go to Nepal, and students can learn and do business with China, it will boost Nepal economy greatly. Nepals are going to Middle East for jobs now, because English is what they learn. English is mandatory in Chinese public and private school for ages.

</comment><comment><USER3> Looks like India's foreign policy is not that good after all.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm surprised they're mandating Mandarin rather than just starting with changing the views of students towards China.

</comment><comment><USER5> You can lead a horse to water ...

Learning Mandarin is not easy, expect resistance from the students.

</comment><comment><USER6> Learning to speak mandarin is not difficult and arguably the grammar is simpler than in English. Learning to read and write is difficult because of the quantity but characters are highly structured. It's interesting and I don't see what there should be any "resistance" from the students.

Nepal has a border with China, it does seem like a good idea to teach Chinese in schools. Like it makes sense for China to promote this.

The state of the media when this anecdote from a remote country makes headlines all over the place... With the usual suggestions of sinister motives.</comment>


Google's Driverless Cars Are Learning How to Avoid Cows - <AUTHOR> http://www.popsci.com/google-making-sure-its-driverless-cars-wont-crash-cows-0?x1U6sZfjbgGK5iPz.16

<comment><USER2> Frictionless spherical cows or actual cows?

</comment><comment><USER3> They are just now learning how to avoid something as obvious as cows? How long is it going to take to learn to drive when the roads are all covered in snow then?</comment>


Scientists "Herd" Cells In New Approach To Tissue Engineering - <AUTHOR> http://newscenter.berkeley.edu/2014/03/11/herding-cells-new-approach-to-tissue-engineering/

<comment><AUTHOR> The mentioned paper, "Galvanotactic control of collective cell migration in epithelial monolayers," published in "Nature Materials" is unfortunately pay- walled and I haven't found any other copies:

[http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nmat3891](http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nmat3891)

[http://www.nature.com/nmat/journal/v13/n4/full/nmat3891.html](http://www.nature.com/nmat/journal/v13/n4/full/nmat3891.html)</comment>


End of Life of an App - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@ryanscherf/end-of-life-of-an-app-ab41940c03be

<comment><USER2> I'd be happy to answer any questions if you have them.</comment>


Building a Lisp to Javascript compiler - <AUTHOR> http://honza.ca/2013/05/building-a-lisp-to-javascript-compiler

<comment><USER2> "So, I decided to implement a simple version of Clojure that compiles to Javascript and can be run on top of nodejs."

Did you know that Clojurescript can run on node.js? <https://github.com/michaelsbradleyjr/node-clojurescript>

Cool project though!

<comment><USER3> The compilation step completely defeats the point of rapid prototyping in Node.js. I'm really used to just modifying my .coffee files to get the resulting .js files compiled instantly and transparently to me.

Closure does a great job in static analysis. It's not obvious, but Clojure's library is HUGE and has to be pruned of unused resources.

On the other hand, it's not very convenient for the developer because Closure's job takes a LONG time. I guess this is where this project comes in.

<comment><USER2> I'm working on a clojurescript project right now that compiles to 80K lines of javascript (using the most basic compilation level during development). In my actual workflow I've found that the compilation takes under 250ms each time. I have it auto-compiling every time I save the file using the lein cljsbuild plugin and it's near instant as far as I'm concerned.

<comment><USER4> Do you mind giving a quick rundown of how you set up your environment, or at least a point in the right direction?

<comment><USER2> The most barebones version is very simple: lein has a plugin called lein- cljsbuild. In your project.clj there is a way to specify the directories this program needs to watch for file changes. lein cljsbuild has an option "auto" which activates the directory watcher and automatically recompiles the cljs files when one of them changes.

This long-running program keeps the same jvm running for all the compiles, and lets you iterate more quickly.

<comment><USER5> How are you finding the ClojureScript REPL? I wanted to play around with it, but gave up after finding out how much trouble it is to get running. I was hoping it would be as simple as Clojure's `lein repl`.

<comment><USER2> It's a bit harder to set up but it's very much worth it once you have it running. I use clojure.browser.repl

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Much more relevant is Wat[1], a lisp-like JSON based language by Manuel Simoni, with continuations, dynamic binding, macros and all the other lisp goodies.

[1] - <https://github.com/manuel/wat-js>

</comment><comment><USER7> Another cool project in the same vein is Parenscript (<http://common- lisp.net/project/parenscript/tutorial.html>)</comment>


Being tired isn't a badge of honor – Signal v. Noise - <AUTHOR> https://m.signalvnoise.com/being-tired-isn-t-a-badge-of-honor-fa6d4c8cff4e#.vxglxiv8y <comment><USER3> This hits home with me. I live where I work (~15 min bicycle ride each way, 10 if I'm fast). I could also walk. I love this life; I haven't owned a car in five years.

The past month, I've been assigned to work 17 miles out. My commute went from a pleasant 15 minutes one way to 1 hour and 15 minutes one way on sidewalks and shitty to no bicycle infrastructure in the suburbs. I take a bus for a portion of it.

This change has disrupted my whole life; I now truly know what people mean by the term "the daily grind". You wake up, do your routine, go to work, do work, come home, and go to sleep. Repeat. Every day. It's depressing. It seeps into your whole life outside of work and affects your well being.

After spending the last few years living and working within the radius of a few miles, after two days of working 17 miles away, I loathe it. The enjoyable work turns sour and it's hard to do your best.

I truly don't understand how people spend their days like this. I really feel for those who don't own a car and don't live close to their place of work. Some of the people on the bus work two jobs; just imagine spending that much time commuting and working just to get by.

<comment><USER4> My office is close to my home (35-40 minutes by either bike or car because traffic is heavy) and I actually look forward to the days I drive. That drive gives me 35 minutes to enjoy my coffee and listen to an audio book or podcast. It's a peaceful time of the day.

I live in the 'burbs now and I don't think I could ever go back to high- density living. When I was in my 20's, the energy of the city was electrifying. In my 40's, the peace of the neighborhood is calming. I love having community pools and tennis and basketball courts. I like having maintained trails for walking my dog. I love having a big garden. I like my neighbors and my gigabit internet.

I'm just waiting for self-driving cars to be available so that I can move further out of the city.

<comment><USER3> This is an aspect I haven't felt (yet). Ask me in several years how I feel again. ;P I'm in my 20s, so the city's energy is what I love.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I had the 'benefit' of coming in to a low pressure job early in my career sitting next to colleagues in a high pressure situation. Seeing the cognitive decline worsen day after day convinced me very early on that working all those hours provided only downside, not upside, and in the ensuing decade nothing dissuaded me of that. I'm not even convinced that the 40 hours i work myself is itself not too much. Less hours worked means you can't power through but have to replace endurance with wits, which leads to much better decision- making. Of course, sometimes there is no substitute for hard sustained work, but if you're too tired to see the substitutes, then many problems end up needing that hard workload to solve.

<comment><USER6> Not only that - you lose sight of the larger problems that need solving, but don't get to solve for too long that it becomes forgotten.

I've worked some 30-35 hour weeks at my current job, but work has been super happy with my productivity that it isn't an issue (plus I do a lot of open source work outside the job, so work still benefits from that) - <USER2> I still participate in some prolonged hours due to major deadlines, but those deadlines are malleable and not prioritized over product team work-life balance.

It is a refreshing contrast with the typical startup here in the Bay Area

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> As an employee I used to subscribe to the no sleep model, deluding myself into believing that I was being productive.

The truth is that I was probably being productive, but the reality is that I was being productive toward destructive ends. I learned a lesson and, unlike _every_ other developer where I work, I stick to it. If I'm doing overtime it is because of exceptional circumstances. My company has learned to respect that - I'd wager that many would.

Just the other night I had a meeting with my brother about some design issues around an API (usability and guidance toward strong patterns for 3rd party devs). We have very similar brains (thought patterns and overall intellect) but unlike me he still overworks himself. Once I grasped the problems, the solutions were strikingly obvious to my well-rested mind. He'd been struggling for at least a week.

I wish we could have some more science done on this stuff (specifically relating to tech). I have a huge amount of experience-based evidence pointing toward the factuality of this article, but anecdotes and personal experience are not how you sway decision makers.

<comment><USER8> >I wish we could have some more science done on this stuff (specifically relating to tech). I have a huge amount of experience-based evidence pointing toward the factuality of this article, but anecdotes and personal experience are not how you sway decision makers.

There is a lot of science out there. Henry Ford was one of the first major employers to figure out that when his employees had higher productivity when their work hours were reduced from 9 hours a day to 8. The interesting thing is that _total_ productivity is increased (as well as productivity per hour) by working fewer hours. Working long hours long-term is highly detrminental.

[https://cs.stanford.edu/people/eroberts/cs181/projects/crunc...](https://cs.stanford.edu/people/eroberts/cs181/projects/crunchmode/econ- hours-productivity.html)

<comment><USER9> There's also been a recent study in the GameDev space called "The Games Outcomes Project" which specifically looked at crunch: [http://gamasutra.com/blogs/PaulTozour/20141216/232023/The_Ga...](http://gamasutra.com/blogs/PaulTozour/20141216/232023/The_Game_Outcomes_Project_Part_1_The_Best_and_the_Rest.php)

Spoilers: It destroys productivity and teams.

<comment><USER7> I really appreciate these links, they can seriously help out my team mates. Thank you. I'd be genuinely grateful for any more.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think this kind of writing is very important, because it's not just a trend in start-ups. There's a similar badge of honour of 'working long hours' at established companies.

I'm watching with interest experiments happening in nordic countries about how actually working less could be beneficial, although as the article points out it's too early to draw conclusive findings[1].

[1][http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-34677949](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-34677949)

<comment><USER11> Yes, I can confirm that at after observing this behavior at many Big companies. Right now, two floors down, there is a team working 10-14 hour days including weekends for over 8 months. Needless to say that any if not all decisions by now are just sleep deprived panic reactions to a mountain of technical debt. Default reaction to every setback is to add more PMs, hours etc. It is a gargantuan mess, 100s of millions of dollars worth of pure crap really. Ultimately that cost is beared by society as a whole. Sometimes when I walk past them I am quite confident humanity is doomed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> From 10 years ago:

[http://www.apa.org/monitor/jan06/onit.aspx](http://www.apa.org/monitor/jan06/onit.aspx)

        "Bill Gates has been quoted saying that his
        programmers can program for 72 hours straight,"
        Stickgold says. "And I say: yeah, but their product
        is Windows."

This topic will be with us forever.

</comment><comment><USER13> There has been a few occasions in the past where I've taken a sick day because I got less than 4 hours sleep. I'd sent an email to whomever is my manager for the project and go back to bed. Then there have been times where I just powered through anyway, drank coffee and lots of water and took some pseudoephedrine... and felt horrible for days afterwards.

Taking a sick-day is definitely preferred.

(this only works if you have a safety-net where employees are guaranteed more than a week of leave for illness, compassionate or carers. Hard to imagine not having that protection.)

<comment><USER14> Once you have kids, that doesn't really work any more. The number of nights where a screaming kid prevents you from sleeping is going to be larger than the number of sick days you have :\

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Freakonomics re-posted their "Econommics of Sleep" 2-part podcast. They look at sleep and how sleep varies across different demographics. One interesting point they made was that the "I don't need sleep" concept may have been popularized in the 80s or 90s with celebrities and politicians making these statements.

[http://freakonomics.com/podcast/economics-sleep- part-1-freak...](http://freakonomics.com/podcast/economics-sleep- part-1-freakonomics-radio-rebroadcast/) [http://freakonomics.com/2015/07/09/the-economics-of-sleep- pa...](http://freakonomics.com/2015/07/09/the-economics-of-sleep-part-1-full- transcript/)

</comment><comment><USER16> There's working hard to make yourself richer, then there's working hard to make someone else richer.

Know the difference and get to the former as soon as you can in your working life.

<comment><USER8> Even working for yourself, there is still a physiological limit. You might be less prone to burnout working for yourself, but you still can't work 20 hour days and expect to be productive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Investment bankers wear it with a badge of honor, but who cares it's only money... the scary one is when doctors brag about it! Especially the ones in med school or just out of school. Peoples lives or quality of lives depend on them making correct decisions.

With a small business, I understand why there can be lack of sleep - you don't have the resources to hire more, but stuff has to get done. But with IBs/Doctors, why can't the Managing Directors/Head of Depts just hire more, but pay less (with shorter shifts)?

</comment><comment><USER18> You need to be able to reset to zero.

Think about it... as you tire, the quality of your work declines. That's obvious. Taken far enough, you can become counterproductive, making so many expensive mistakes that you'd have gotten more done by not working at all. But rest resets our bodies and energy, right? But what if you don't get enough rest to reset? Then you're starting the next day still carrying the debt of yesterday's overwork. You're not as productive as you should be.

</comment><comment><USER19> Prolonged lack of sleep can also lead to brain diseases since our brain needs sleep to clear out toxins. Especially true for people prone to epilepsy; they need that sleep to avoid unwanted seizures.

</comment><comment><USER20> A lot of what the post talks about is applicable to me.

There will always be lots of very interesting things to do and some things you are forced to do, such as academic work or job related. I think at some point you have to take a step back and take a look at what is it that you are spending your life doing.

So recently I had made a list of all the things I wanted to learn and have a working knowledge of: Ruby on Rails, Git and Mercurial, WebRTC, Go, Android development. iOS development, Shell scripting, Python, R, machine learning, server adminstration, Angular JS. Yes it sounds crazy probably because it is crazy. Then I reached a point where I was pushing myself to learn new technologies at an unsustainable pace. And the excuse was always "today is the last day I'll need to get by on 3 hours of sleep". Then I finally got to the point where I was completely exhausted and that forced me to take a step back and learn what was absolutely important to me (for my startup) and stop trying to learn/understand every single interesting language, framework or platform I come across (thanks partly to my HN addiction).

Regarding the discussion about commuting to and from work, it's a real drain on employees, employer and the environment as well (pollution). This might not be applicable to most types of jobs, but living far away from cities and working remotely are something worth exploring. I say this from first hand experience, living in the country side, close to beautiful farms, flowing rivers and with access to hills with trails, and working on my personal projects and constantly in touch with the outside world through the internet, I never feel like I am missing out much on city life. It's probably the best of both worlds.

I think eventually, the preference of living in densely populated cities will give way to leading a more peaceful life and yet continue doing creative work in smaller, less dense establishments. Hopefully a reverse urbanisation.

</comment><comment><USER21> I've had success taking sleep even further. It seems that humans are polyphasic sleepers, just like most other mammals. I've found that I get tired after lunch, and benefit greatly from a 30-60 minute nap. The trick to getting the most out of polyphasic sleep is having a bedroom conducive to quality sleep - it should be cool, very dark, and very quiet. I use some opaque shades (shift shades) to block the light from the windows, and either a white noise machine or fan to ensure I'm relatively undisturbed by sounds outside my room.

<comment><USER8> For me, just doing something else is usually enough to help me recharge (if I'm not sleep deprived). Watching TV, going for a walk or bike ride, reading, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> The timing of this article is funny for me. I just got back from 5 days in Cancun celebrating a special occasion with my wife. Working smart, not hard is even more crucial at startups given how few resources you actually have to make progress.

I wrote my own similar thoughts here: [https://softwarebymiles.com/startups- vacation-c1c9d4ceb7ff#....](https://softwarebymiles.com/startups- vacation-c1c9d4ceb7ff#.508bhclib)

</comment><comment><USER23> I'd add, for those that have to depend on alarm clocks, please sleep earlier or figure out your circadian rhythm ('biological clock') so you don't get jolted out of deep sleep by a horrible loud noise each day.

I'm fortunate enough to wake up naturally however I hear foghorn ringtones echoing from my housemates rooms most mornings and that's just a terrible way to start your day.

Leads to a grogginess that's hard to shake.

<comment><USER24> Unfortunately, my natural circadian rhythm isn't set early enough to be able to do any of this stuff if I take a job with 'normal' working hours. The earliest I can manage to wake up consistently without an alarm is around 9am, but it is much better if I'm waking at 10 or 11. I'm not a child - i'm in my late 30's and have never 'grown out' of it. I can sleep the same amount of hours, one earlier in the night (and waking earlier) and one delayed, and always feel groggy waking up at 6 or 7am. Sometimes I simply don't hear alarms, even with good sleeping habits, and early waking times increase my chances of 'sleep drunkeness' and confused wakenings - sometimes I can barely manage to take a shower unless I give myself 15-20 minutes after waking for my mind to catch up.

I have generally tried to take jobs that work around this, but it hasn't always been possible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> This reads very, very similar to a post I wrote (and also made it to the front page of HN) a couple of years ago:

[http://blog.netizencorp.com/2014/03/30/working- rediculously-...](http://blog.netizencorp.com/2014/03/30/working-rediculously- long-hours-is-a-sign-that-something-is-wrong/)

</comment><comment><USER26> Reads okay, but far from agreeing with this personal point of view. And i think it lacks a lot of proof for some statements e.g.

'It works through matters you can't address during the day.'

I'm curious how you assume this or what papers you read that makes you think this.

Being tired can certainly be a badge of honour. It's where for example you continued to get things DONE... and others simply say, tomorrow another day, i don't care what happens after 5PM. It's called responsibility. Though this obviously doesn't apply to everybody in the same way.

also please read:

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

<comment><USER27> >> _I 'm curious how you assume this or what papers you read that makes you think this._

Purely anecdotal, but it happened to me zillions of times that I got completely stuck at a problem at work, only to solve it within a few minutes the next day. I've yet to come across a single developer who doesn't acknowledge that kind of experience is very common. I see it regularly, the longer coworkers trudge along trying to get something done after 10 hours of work, the more problems and crap they produce.

I'm not sure why you need more 'proof' that working long hours kills productivity and creativity, and rest (sleep) replenishes it. It seems completely natural, both from experience and from an evolutionary perspective.

<comment><USER26> Well studies show that lack of sleep doesn't at all kill creativity (and that could lead to productivity too).

Also negative experiences create a more clear memory of the event then a positive one. So it's even possible you only remember the times you couldn't come up with the idea that same day vs not having memories of the times you did came up with solution that same day (because, you didn't have to wait till the next day to fix it, which didn't create such a strong memory of that annoying moment).

<comment><USER27> And other studies show the opposite... Interestingly, the Wikipedia article you linked yourself references multiple that show sleep deprivation is bad for creativity and productivity. But like I said, I don't need research or other 'proof', the proof is my own experience, which is purely empirical but totally consistent. Do you honestly believe being tired does not affect your performance in mental tasks?

<comment><USER26> Well it lists 2 pro studies and 1 against, and it's only more then fair to link both sides/proof. But i think this matter is very person specific; and certainly not as black/white as told. Can't find any studies on this that have been done on twins or triplets, for me that would have been more interesting then subjective personal experience(s).

Some people perform better under hard deadlines and pressure, others can't cope with pressure at all. I would not be surprised if same applies to people performing with a lack of rest/sleep.

Though I never said or meant to give the idea that it doesn't have any effect, nor if it always have the same affect. I merely wanted to point out there are quite a few cases, situations where i think being tired does warrant a badge of honour. And that going that extra mile, even when super tired, where others give up is (very) honourable.

And calling it a day, and accepting you can't find a solution that working day, is not very honourable (in my humble opinion). And yes there is more to life then work, but that's not the point i try to make. :)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>