Chinese authorities install app on phones of people entering Xinjiang - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/02/technology/china-xinjiang-app.html <comment><USER2> Probable dupe of [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20335816](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20335816) (vice)

<comment><USER3> The Vice article is a round-up of a number of others, like this one from the NYT.

<comment><USER4> As far as I can tell it copies text directly from this article (and thus probably from others as well) without attribution. Also, it mentions that the investigation was done by other organizations, but doesn't provide any links. That's scummier than usual, so I think we'll merge that thread into this one. The HN guidelines call for original sources anyway.

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

Edit: I got this wrong—this article was produced by one of those organizations. Please see below.

<comment><USER5> > Also, it mentions that the investigation was done by other organizations, > but doesn't provide any links.

The New York Times is guilty of the same. Each of the articles mentions that this is a collaboration with other publications, but doesn't link to the other ones. There's not really a single original source.

<comment><USER4> You're right, and I completely missed that. Sorry! Will try to correct.

Edit: ok, I've merged the comments back into [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20335816](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20335816) and made this one the dupe instead. Thanks for watching out for the quality of HN! Especially when we screwed up.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Post your Friendfeed ID here - <AUTHOR>

http://friendfeed.com/kfischer is mine, feel free to follow me<p>I'd also like some more people to follow, so post here. <comment><USER2> I made a little app to to help people find people to follow

<http://livebloglist.com/>

Here is a list of other people interested in new.yc:

[http://livebloglist.com/list/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnews.ycombina...](http://livebloglist.com/list/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnews.ycombinator.com)

<comment><USER3> Pretty cool, but there's lots of dupes in the result.

Would be great if I could put in my FF username and it would filter out the people I'm already friends with.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> <http://friendfeed.com/engtech>

<http://friendfeed.com/ruby>

Here's a tool I wrote for importing your Twitter contacts into friendfeed: [http://internetducttape.com/2008/04/21/import-twitter-to- fri...](http://internetducttape.com/2008/04/21/import-twitter-to-friendfeed/)

Here's a ton of greasemonkey scripts I've written for Friend Feed:

<http://internetducttape.com/tools/#friendfeed>

</comment><comment><USER4> <http://friendfeed.com/mhartl>

The only service aggregated by FriendFeed that I currently use regularly is Twitter, so you might as well go to

<http://twitter.com/michaelhartl>

<comment><USER4> Update: now it's <http://twitter.com/mhartl>

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This post has singlehandedly killed my productivity for the entire day.

<comment><AUTHOR> I do what I can.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> <http://friendfeed.com/immad>

</comment><comment><USER7> <http://friendfeed.com/paul>

<comment><AUTHOR> Feature request: news.yc support!

<comment><USER7> I would like that too. We just need per-user feeds from news.yc. Patrick has actually written the code, but I think that perhaps PG is concerned about the extra load.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> <http://friendfeed.com/randomutterings>

</comment><comment><USER9> <http://friendfeed.com/glenstansberry>

</comment><comment><USER10> <http://friendfeed.com/joshuagourneau>

</comment><comment><USER11> <http://friendfeed.com/philcrissman>

</comment><comment><USER12> <http://friendfeed.com/jaredhanson>

</comment><comment><USER13> <http://friendfeed.com/codesurgeon>

</comment><comment><USER14> <http://friendfeed.com/cryptovenom>

</comment><comment><USER15> <http://friendfeed.com/truebosko>

</comment><comment><USER16> <http://friendfeed.com/msnoulten>

</comment><comment><USER17> <http://friendfeed.com/mwmanning>

</comment><comment><USER18> <http://friendfeed.com/nilobject>

</comment><comment><USER19> <http://friendfeed.com/maheshcr>

</comment><comment><USER20> <http://friendfeed.com/garrytan>

</comment><comment><USER21> <http://friendfeed.com/jrockway>

</comment><comment><USER22> <http://friendfeed.com/sthayden>

</comment><comment><USER23> <http://friendfeed.com/justindz>

</comment><comment><USER24> <http://friendfeed.com/rksprst>

</comment><comment><USER25> <http://friendfeed.com/mariorz>

</comment><comment><USER26> <http://friendfeed.com/mdemare>

</comment><comment><USER27> <http://friendfeed.com/pierrel>

</comment><comment><USER28> <http://friendfeed.com/brlewis>

</comment><comment><USER29> <http://friendfeed.com/jraines>

</comment><comment><USER30> <http://friendfeed.com/aditya>

</comment><comment><USER31> <http://friendfeed.com/gabor>

</comment><comment><USER32> <http://friendfeed.com/emkay>

</comment><comment><USER33> <http://friendfeed.com/jason>

</comment><comment><USER5> <http://friendfeed.com/pfeff>

</comment><comment><USER34> <http://friendfeed.com/trev>

</comment><comment><USER35> <http://friendfeed.com/icey>

</comment><comment><USER36> <http://friendfeed.com/bill>

</comment><comment><USER37> <http://friendfeed.com/rjb>

</comment><comment><USER38> <http://friendfeed.com/adk>

</comment><comment><USER39> Great idea! <http://friendfeed.com/talkeinan> Feel free to follow me as well...

</comment><comment><USER40> <http://friendfeed.com/mikedesjardins>

</comment><comment><USER41> <http://friendfeed.com/ettorepasquini>

</comment><comment><USER42> <http://friendfeed.com/dustineichler>

</comment><comment><USER43> <http://friendfeed.com/entelarust>

</comment><comment><USER44> <http://friendfeed.com/anwamehtar>

</comment><comment><USER45> <http://friendfeed.com/sdpurtill>

</comment><comment><USER46> <http://friendfeed.com/kschrader>

</comment><comment><USER47> <http://friendfeed.com/madsimian>

</comment><comment><USER48> <http://friendfeed.com/juzmcmuz>

</comment><comment><USER49> <http://friendfeed.com/hooande>

</comment><comment><USER50> <http://friendfeed.com/dodeja>

</comment><comment><USER51> <https://friendfeed.com/yegg>

</comment><comment><USER52> <http://friendfeed.com/nadim>

</comment><comment><USER53> <http://friendfeed.com/awt>

</comment><comment><USER54> <http://friendfeed.com/uglychart>

</comment><comment><USER55> <http://friendfeed.com/nikpay>

</comment><comment><USER56> <http://friendfeed.com/theproductguy></comment>


Ask HN: Are Soylent-like meal replacement shakes safe? - <AUTHOR> The recent discussions around Soylent and meal replacement shakes in general has me intrigued and excited. I bought a canister of Ultimate Meal to give this a shot for a few days.
My girlfriend, in her typical skeptical fashion, brought up that since meal replacement shakes aren't typically FDA regulated what guarantees do I have that what the company says is in it is actually in it? It's a damn good question.
It's hard to find studies on any of this that is t solely about weight loss. Any suggestions?
Edit: typo <comment><USER2> safe as in "you are not going to die tomorrow", probably yes. safe as in "healthy for your long-term health", definitively no.

We already made this mistake in the past. After the discovery of the macros (protein, carbs and fats) some people thought that those were enough to keep you alive and healthy. They then produced some infant formulas and some kids died.

Now we also know the existence of some micro nutrients (vits, minerals, etc) and we are stupid enough to think the same.

Is coffee just caffeine ? A coffee bean contains more than one thousand active compounds.

Soylent is to real food what caffeine is to coffee

edit:typo

<comment><USER3> well said.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Can you clarify why you are doing this meal replacement?

Are you trying to lose weight, therefore using the replacement shake so you dont consume more food than you should?

Do you just not have time to make a lunch, so this is easier?

Does going out or food in general not taste how you think it should anymore?

I ask because over the last few years I struggled with weight. I was up to 230, then down to 196, then back to 216 and now to 200. For me, I just love food.

I have been juice fasting for breakfast, lunch and afternoon snack and eating a sensible dinner and this has made all the difference. It was hard to start doing this. It is very hard to do a complete juice fast as we are groomed to eat.

There is a good documentary: "Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead" by Joe Cross. Netflix has it. It is funny and informative.

I know this may not be what you are looking for, just trying to offer another prospective from my own experience.

</comment><comment><USER5> Soylent-like meal replacements are _safe_ but they aren't necessarily _healthy_. Safe has a specific meaning in the food/drug world in that it means the product will not kill or harm you if used as directed.

Meal-replacement shakes can also be also effective if used properly for specific purposes (i.e, weight loss, muscle gain, etc.).

You are probably trying to see if they are healthy. Food is too complex to be reduced to a simple shake. But for some people, like those with diabetes or Cronin's disease, meal replacement shakes can be healthier than the alternatives.

</comment><comment><USER6> Here is a more informed article on soylent worth checking out:

<http://examine.com/blog/soylent-is-made-from-hype/>

</comment><comment><USER7> Dietary supplements are not regulated by the FDA as drugs but they are still subject to food labeling requirements.

What guarantees do you have that your ground beef isn't actually horse?

<comment><USER5> Random audits and inspections of the meat sold in grocery stores or at various points in the supply chain by multiple auditing/inspecting entities, tort law remedies for fraudulent misrepresentation, and FTC sanctions for the same.</comment></comment>


Rails SeedMigrations: Like schema migrations, but for your data - <AUTHOR> http://engineering.harrys.com/2014/06/09/seed-migrations.html

<comment><USER2> We used a db/seeds.rb file mainly for fake data to get our development environments going until there is real user data to work with. Can you use SeedMigrations to have a set of dev seeds vs prod seeds?

<comment><USER3> We didn't design the gem to handle "dev" data, the idea was really to handle "real" data, such as Product in our case. Though if you feel like there would be a use case for dev seeds, I would be happy to discuss that with you (either here/twitter/mail etc ...)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Hey, one of the engineers who built this over here, happy to answer any questions you have.

<comment><USER4> I currently just use regular Rails migrations for this. In fact, I've executed each of the examples you provided using database migrations. You mentioned not wanting to use the console or a one-off script, but why would I want to switch over to SeedMigrations from regular ActiveRecord migrations?

<comment><AUTHOR> Another one of the engineers here. While using ActiveRecord migrations will work for production systems, when setting up development or test systems using rake db:schema:load will not actually insert those records. Since rake db:schema:load is simply loading the current schema from schema.rb, you will still have to add those records into seeds.

<comment><USER5> As an alternative approach; we take a similar view to the grandparent, but run a full set of migrations instead of just copying the schema.

It actually works quite well. The tradeoff being that it may take a little longer, but we're typically talking tenths of a second.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> What is the difference between this and say the seed-fu gem? Is having historical data the main advantage, so you can do rollbacks and such?

<comment><AUTHOR> While I haven't personally used seed-fu, it seems to solve a different problem. There are two main problems we're trying to solve here:

\- Having the seeds.rb file mirror the records you need from production. You wouldn't want to to register your User model, since you don't want all your production users. You would want to register a model like Product.

\- Being able to easily migrate data on our production systems. Being able to easily migrate (and rollback if something goes wrong) is key to having predictable deploys (for us at least).

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is so useful, thanks! Can it get existing data from the database? Or does it only translate the seeds.rb file? I've been using [https://github.com/rroblak/seed_dump](https://github.com/rroblak/seed_dump) in the past.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's key to migrate seeds on a "clean" database. Any models you register will be exported from the database into the seeds file, so we usually rake db:reset before running rake seed:migrate on development systems. We actually built this gem almost a year into our current system, so our first bootstrap of this loaded all the records from our production database for the models we needed (products, shipping types, etc.), which gave us a clean seeds file to use on development and test systems.</comment></comment>


What does it feel like to lose a lot of money quickly? - <AUTHOR> https://www.quora.com/What-does-it-feel-like-to-lose-a-lot-of-money-quickly?share=1 <comment><USER2> Ironically, the sponsored ad under the question is for bitcoins</comment>


Sonic boom: why clubs are cranking up the quality instead of the volume - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/music/2016/jan/07/spiritland-brilliant-corners-london-audiophile-bars <comment><USER2> I never placed $10,000+ audiophile-grade sound systems in the context of a business before. Suddenly they make sense.</comment>


Brain, refactored - <AUTHOR> https://www.murrayc.com/permalink/2018/12/07/brain-refactored/ <comment><USER2> Congrats this is an amazing achievement for you/anyone!

Any chance you could add more timeline annotations to the story? I'd love to see how long some of this took so I can see what sort of time commitment this was.</comment>


How Big Can Quantum Weirdness Get? - <AUTHOR> http://motherboard.vice.com/read/how-big-can-classical-weirdness-get

<comment><USER2> O'Connell et. al. showed you can put an entire macroscopic mechanical resonator in a superposition. How is macrorealism even a thing?</comment>


Coursera's Functional Programming - Cheating Discovered - <AUTHOR> http://pastebin.com/XnPL0P0u <comment><USER2> I'm of the opinion that the value of Coursera's courses comes from the learning opportunity, not the certification. I think they should simply allow cheating and not issue certificates. Alternatively, allow cheating and continue to issue certificates while letting employers decide the true value of the certificates.

The point of Coursera (to me) isn't to pad my resume, it's to learn from courses not always offered at my university.

<comment><USER3> Just wondering - would you put a certificate from Coursera on your resume? I raised this question a while ago in here : [http://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/2074/showing- co...](http://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/2074/showing-coursera- certificates-on-a-cv-resume)

Also - _cases will be handled on an individual basis_ \- I guess it's not a standard sized class. There is a few hundred people signed up at least. Putting up a free course in functional programming seems like a lot of work. On top of that, trying to find people who are cheating and handling them more or less individually is a bit of a time waste in my opinion.

<comment><USER4> As an employer, I take continuing education of any sort as a positive sign when looking at resumes. Software development is a Red Queen field; one has to keep up.

However, I do take most certifications as mild negative signs. E.g., SCJP, CSM, PMP. A lot of for-profit certifications are worthless. A notable exception are some of the Cisco certs, which really put people through their paces. Which makes sense, as Cisco benefits more from having expensive Cisco products work well than from certification revenue.

It'll be interesting to see what bucket Coursera certs fall into. They need to jump on the cheating thing right quick, though.

<comment><USER5> Considering that the Coursera certificates require you to take a class (usually taught by experts in the respective field) as opposed to cramming for a certification exam, I'd say it's a good bit more valuable.

I took the first AI class last Fall, and if you've never been exposed to the material, it was a very good survey of Artificial Intelligence.

<comment><USER4> I agree, just as long as the certificate actually means you've taken the course and done the work. If one can cheat one's way through the homework and then just cram for the final, the Coursera certs would end up being of low value. I hope not, though. I'd love to have a good way to tell the continuous learners from the people who get stuck.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Universities put a lot of time and effort into managing cheating, and we surely only scratch the surface. This is soul-crushing, no-fun, give-up-and- work-at-Google kind of work for professors. Everyone hates it.

The decision we have to make is the level of resources to put in. We've tried emphasizing the honor code and putting resources into teaching quality. This leads to endemic cheating. We've tried cracking down very hard on detection, and this leads to massive work for the instructors, lots of busted students and a general "meh" from the administration. Finding the right balance is really tough.

I don't get it - it never occurred to me to cheat as an undergrad. But then I had UK-style end of year finals instead of homework-heavy classes and constant grading, and I was never optimizing GPA from class to class. There are problems with mega-finals for some students, but they sure make cheating hard.

The online services can't possibly defeat cheating. The main defence they can have is proctored exams at physical locations, which kills some of the online advantage, and even then they have the ID problem. The Open University has worked out how to deal with this pretty well but it's not cheap. The new online services can and should be different to this, and focus on the massive ultra-low-cost learning opportunities. It's going to be interesting to see if they come up with something really new, and not just distance-ed 3.0.

<comment><USER7> I don't really understand the cheating itself either. But I do think the cheating and never being caught as an ignoramus reveals the larger problem (with all education, in fact more offline.)

I think the bottom line is that a year after you "ace" a <3 month course you can't be caught because you can't be expected to remember all that much. You may be more suspect; but there are also plenty of innocent suspects.

A hierarchy of classes that truly builds works, but they are rare. Really, we need spaced repetition for as long as necessary to master the material, not a virtual version of a broken semester design. Then there is no point in cheating.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Actually, this is valuable data.

As a potential employer, I care more about the candidate's ethics (or lack thereof) than their ability. I could always teach them, but I could never trust them.

Coursera should just publicly identify cheaters so I can cross check against resumes or certifications. Problem solved.

<comment><USER9> It's possible students (ignorantly) made their work public because they were proud of their accomplishments. I've done that once or twice under the assumption the course would change for other classes, if only slightly.

That being said, the onus is on the student to make sure they aren't submitting someone's work as their own. I'm not really sure if they understood what they were doing was serious (as in if Coursera was just a bunch of robot drones and they didn't give it much credibility). I know this incident legitimizes Coursera (and it's certificates of completion) in my eyes.

Really I believe all they need to say is, "Look, we really put a lot of work into this to make a good experience for people. We'd appreciate it if you took your answers offline and help make Coursera a respectable name in learning by submitting original work". The whole "We'll start expelling!" doesn't really strike a chord with me. I've been expelled before [not from coursera] for really dumb reasons.

# ALSO, they should take their Honor code out of the ToS. Put it somewhere that people READ!

<comment><USER10> They definitely showed the honor code the first time I went into this class as well as a different class I took on modeling.

I think the expelling is totally fine. Martin and his team put a lot of time into this, developing the course and the tools to automate grading and if someone is going to put this up publicly and not take it down they should just boot them from the course.

I don't understand why anyone would actually turn in the same work, though. It's not like a completion certificate from this class will get you closer to a degree or anything. I'm sure there must be some reason and I hope it's more than just "I wanted a 10/10 for me to see!". I suppose that an employer might tell someone "learn Scala and get that certificate and get a 10/10 on every assignment" but I somehow doubt it.

<comment><USER9> Quick follow up... They might have changed the system since I took a class last, I don't know. So I decided to sign up for a class and BAM!

There it is, really obvious too.

[https://twitter.com/blaines/status/255762571704020992/photo/...](https://twitter.com/blaines/status/255762571704020992/photo/1/large)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Cheating without consequences hurts everyone taking the class. I'm disappointed to see so many comments implying it's fine to just let that go.

My thought on this comes from a good chunk of direct experience: I've taught a number of courses to undergrads at NYU, as well as having about 5 summers of teaching experience in programming and cryptography at summer camps including CTY.

Imagine all students are given a button that says "give me an A," and they can press it if they choose, or do all the course work and possibly get a worse grade. Even if you chose to do the work because you were self-motived, you'd still be tempted to press the A button to guarantee a good grade.

That's an exaggeration, but the point is the same. The easier it is to get _any_ kind of validation without real work, the harder it is to learn.

It is harder to stay motivated, and the feedback received becomes less meaningful. It is even disappointing to simply know many of your fellow students probably cheated without consequences.

I do believe in seeing answers after doing the work, but it is just common sense to avoid posting them before things are due, and to support clear communications between the instructors and students about the details of posting answers.

<comment><USER12> I cannot believe that this opinion is so prevalent.

First of all, cheating is really easy on Coursera without having to appeal to public solutions posted by somebody else. You can get _private_ help without anybody knowing anything about it and you can do so in a really efficient way, since there's absolutely nobody watching you.

Coursera courses are for people willing to learn something, providing certificates was stupid in the first place, poisoning the well for everybody that's there for the right reasons. The topics are not exactly PhD-level, you can probably find 80% of all the answers you need by doing stupid Google searches and even if we were talking about PhD dissertations, cheating is still possible, the only difference being the difficulty threshold.

That cheating is so easy on Coursera, " _give me an A_ " is precisely what's going on for people that are there, not for the learning experience, but for an A.

Which is why the value in these courses is only for personal growth and personal gratification. I would never look at such certificates on a resume, because such certificates are even less valuable (from a market perspective) than a piece of toilet paper, because at least a piece of toilet paper is useful for something while at work. And no, interest in subjects such as "Scala" is not enough, because such proxies for performance can be easily discovered and hence gamed.

Also, the gratification comes from _knowing_ that you worked and that you passed the tests. The certificate only holds personal value if this condition is met.

And in the context of Coursera, that certificate does not make sense anyway. If you follow the forums, you'll get a lot of people asking if they can still join the course with late submissions, providing reasons for why they are late in the hope that staff will make exceptions (they've taken long trips, the dog ate their homework, etc...) - which is just a mindbogglingly dumb thing to do.

<comment><USER13> > That cheating is so easy on Coursera, "give me an A" is precisely what's > going on for people that are there, not for the learning experience, but for > an A.

Maybe the 'A' or nice cert is there for some people, but no one that I know personally cheats for the grades on coursera. OTOH, all 7 of them are currently well employed software engineers, so maybe the incentive to cheat just isn't there for them in particular. Until the signal gets gamed, I think it will be useful for hiring. Further, it's pretty verifiable if the interviewer has also taken the course. What did you think about the programming assignment about X for course Y, how did you do Z? Throw in fake X for real Y if you are particularly suspicious. If you've cheated through it, it's gonna be obvious.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I have to wonder if those posting solutions on github are actually doing it in an effort to cheat. I made a similar mistake recently with a project I completed in my computer architecture course. When the professor contacted me about it, it seemed obvious. But at the time, all I was thinking about was "yay, public code!" Obviously, I took it down right away. I wonder how many people are doing the same thing. Cheating a Coursera course just doesn't make much sense.

<comment><USER15> If it's your work, you own the copyright, and it's totally within your rights to make it publicly available.

<comment><USER16> Sure, but if it's against school policy, the school has the right to expel you. Coursera is not taking the public code down, the owner is, at the coercion of the school. The student is making a value decision: continue the course or take my code down. If you can't play by the rules, you can't be in the game.

I think there's a unique opportunity for GitHub here. They could give an educational license to verified students in college/high-school/on-line schools. For the duration of their class, they can have as many private repos as they like. When the semester ends, you've got a week to grab your code before it goes public, like a free account. First, it would get students used to GitHub and they would clammer for it in the workplace because they love it so much; Second, it would position GH as a great supporter of education.

<comment><USER17> BitBucket offers free private repos.

<https://bitbucket.org/plans>

Edit- Apparently BitBucket launched a new version of their site only moments after sharing this link. Looks great!

<comment><USER18> Thats what I have been using for this course. Bit bucket lets me have unlimited private repos. ( woot bitbucket )

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> If it's this easy to "cheat" on these assignments, then maybe the professors should sit down and think about how to properly craft assignments. It's clear to me that traditional assignment grading will not work in an online/anonymous environment - appealing to a code of honor will not help if they want the certificate of completion to actually hold meaning.

I don't have any actual suggestions other then when I was in school the assignments were worth about 10-15% of our final grade because of this very reason (shared solutions). Actual knowledge was tested in other ways: presentations, quizzes, exams, etc.

Revoking the completion certificate for everyone else is NOT a way to build trust with the community at large - use those large academic brains and come up with a better solution.

<comment><USER20> actually, when I took the first "not-quite-coursera" classes (ML and DB) they did quizzes in a smarter way[0], using a larger set of questions per quiz than the stuff you'd get in a single attempt.

So each attempt, even from the same student, would get a slightly different set of questions, and the dumbest attempts at cheating were discouraged[1].

I don't see why this couldn't be done for the programming assingments.

For example, the first assignment in this functional programming was "functional sets": empty set, singleton, contains, union, intersect, filter. It would have been trivial to add a few more (unionAll, containsAll, difference etc) and select a subset for each student, or something like that.

[0] alas, they don't seem to do this anymore.

[1] also, a "random answer + replay with proper solution" approach wouldn't work.

<comment> think-large Another solution would be to employ an alogrithm that checks your solution against past solutions. It would work much like what professors employ when they submit Reports to an online repository.

If someone it stupid enough not to even change variable names then they'd be caught easily. While with Millions of solutions it would be easy to get some replication, most of the time there wouldn't be any and this is when manual intervention by a person could be triggered.

This in conjuntion with your solution would work pretty well especially if someone submitted a wrong answer for another question that they haven't seen.

<comment><USER21> Here's another possible solution.

Use an algorithm to cross-check homework submissions, checking for structural copying. If a high correlation is found, as with human intervention, you suspect cheating but cannot prove it.

So, only for the potential cheating students, issue an extra quiz at some scheduled time, and discard the homework score. These quizzes should be all issued in parallel batches and last an hour or so, so solutions can't possibly be copied among cheaters. Make sure the quiz is actually harder than the homework, conceptually.

In other words, rather than trying to punish potential cheaters, just keep testing them until you're sure they're not cheating. This is better IMO than producing a 10x size problem set and selecting random subsets, because the number of suspected cheaters will probably be a small-ish percentage. Therefore, rather than having to write a ton of etra test material for _everyone_ , you only have to write a few extra quizzes for a subset of the class.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> The certificates, IMHO, are meaningless in the context of these online courses. Considering this, I find the measure exaggerated.

I use github as a central place to store almost everything I write outside work, so it comes pretty natural for me to version code for problems I've been working on there.

Disclaimer: I'm not involved in the Scala course, so I don't know how the actual assigments were structured.

<comment><USER23> The certificates will have value as long as they remain evidence of honest completion of the course. To say they are worthless is kind of short-sighted. Considering the number of tech resumes in the typical hiring manager's inbox that contain a laundry-list of programming languages in the skills section and not even a single project or course to prove the knowledge of the candidate, I'd say there is a fairly large domain for these certificates.

Given two resumes, one with a big bullet list of unverified skills, and one with a bullet list of some completed coursera courses, which would you choose?

Obviously coursera will not be replacing real college any time soon, but it can definitely serve a role in verifying at least cursory knowledge of basic skills.

<comment><USER24> > Given two resumes, one with a big bullet list of unverified skills, and one > with a bullet list of some completed coursera courses, which would you > choose?

I would accept neither as evidence of anything other than the skills a candidate advertises.

IOW, I trust "I know Scala" on a resume exactly as much as "I know Scala and completed a Coursera course on it".

<comment><USER25> Well if nothing else it gives a portable measure of ability. Like instead of having to saying I'm an expert in Scala and the meaning of that being largely arbitrary; you've got a syllabus of stuff they claim to know (which you still need to verify it it matters).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I'm taking a different Coursera course right now. I completed the first homework assignment on my own, but I would have loved to see how other people solved the problem. I definitely felt like I had some ugly hacks in my solution. Posting solutions online would be a great way for me to learn.

I'd recommend that they get rid of the certificate. There is no way to prove that 1) the person who took the course is who they say they are, and 2) they didn't cheat. Copying and pasting from a solution online is only one way to cheat. You could also have a friend finish the assignment. Maybe some day we can get past the point where education is simply a list of achievements, and more about who you have become as a person.

</comment><comment><USER27> "I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke" people to enroll in a free online course that (presumably) nobody forced them to take and then submit homework done by someone else.

Rather than trying to fight cheating (which is impossible), Coursera should emphasize the point that these courses are not resume busters but for learning.

<comment><USER28> Well, it seems that Coursera business model is either issuing meaningful certificates, or offering other companies potential hires (the latter being what I've understood of Udacity business model). In both cases, the certificate is supposed to mean something.

I've taken several Coursera classes, but I don't mention them in my resume and I only care about the certificates as an incentive to complete the course, but from the very nature on how these classes are graded, it would be very difficult to prevent cheating (or sharing), barring having the exams taken in real-life locations (something that Udacity optionaly provides for some of its courses if I recall correctly).

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> You have to expect that they kinds of programmers this course would attract will want stick the code they've put hours outside of work into in some kind of source repository.

With the ubiquity of free (public only) github accounts, I'm not entirely sure what else they expected might happen.

<comment><USER30> The most recent assignment was only like 10 lines of code to write. Although fairly challenging, it wasn't something worth putting on github.

</comment></comment><comment> think-large I think that something a lot of people who read this are forgetting (and please correct me if I'm wrong) is that most of us have 4 year degrees and/or jobs in Software Engineering (or at least Engineering).

These courses are meant to be a segue into free courses offered online that people can use in lue of a 200k four year degree. While this form of education isn't there yet, it's use builds the reputation of these online courses.

If cheating runs rampant in the courses (more so than in person classes) it has a chance to negate the reputation of these sites. This could set back "free" education for years.

While I don't think that Cheaters should have an affect on what we can learn and take away from these classes, but it will have an affect on how much employers (like edw519) trust the courses. If they don't trust the online classes, then people who don't have a formal education won't be able to use these freely offered classes to raise their earning power.

It's sad how much a few bad apples can spoil.

</comment><comment><USER31> One of the hints for assignment 2 is:

"Most of the solutions for this assignment can be written as one-liners. If you have more, you probably need to rethink your solution. In other words, this assignment needs more thinking (whiteboard, pen and paper) than coding ;-)."

Is it not entirely possible that they're getting some false positives?

<comment><USER32> Very unlikely, similar code? yes, exact duplicate? there are so many ways to solve it, that statistically it's not that likely, and if so, it will be on 1 answer, not all of them.

<comment><USER33> If you have, for example

        class Rational(x: Int, y: Int) {
          def numer = x
          def denom = Y
        }

and then homework is to implement

        def less(that: Rational) = ???

then you're gonna get 15 000 people answering with

        def less(that: Rational) = numer * that.denom < that.numer * denom

and another 15 000 with

        def less(that: Rational) =
          numer * that.denom < that.numer * denom

and maybe a couple thousand with something like

        def less(that: Rational) = numer*that.denom < that.numer*denom

(This example was taken from Scala course lectures, but some of the homework problems are as short as this.)

<comment><USER32> yes, but none of them are that trivial... and if they were, then cheating wouldn't make much sense. e.g. the coin change algorithm, I'm sure the distribution of answers was quite unique for anyone who tried solving it alone. same for even simple things like the pascal triangle.

But it's a moot argument as we need to do a real research (or ask coursera / Martin Odersky for the data, which I'm sure HN community will be happy to run some data mining on)

<comment><USER34> Actually I think some (many?) of the answers to the functional sets homework are that trivial in the sense that they're as short (or shorter) the the examples in the parent post. The only longer function was, I think, the one for which they provided a template implementation. So I think even that one would generate false positives somewhat easily.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> The fact that people publicly posting their work would get expelled disappoints me. During the Machine Learning class on Coursera, I did all of the programming exercises myself. After submitting the assignments and getting 100% scores, I would browse other people's GitHub repositories to see how they completed the assignment, which taught me more about both Octave syntax and machine learning and helped me to vectorize some of the more tricky algorithms (use Octave's native matrix operations rather than slower for loops).

The people who submit exact copies of assignments they find online should absolutely be penalized. To expel those who publish their work seems overly harsh.

<comment><USER36> " For those students for whom it's been discovered have uploaded similar or duplicate solutions, cases will be handled on an individual basis. Though beware, that cheating in any capacity not be tolerated. "

This seems like pretty clear language. I doubt people who accidently used a public repo will be punished for it.

<comment><USER35> I was referring to the section that stated, "We have identified several individual students with solutions publicly posted (github included) who will be expelled from the course in the coming days if these solutions remain public." People who use a public repo to share their work will be expelled.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> It's to be expected there will be cheating. Even in normal brick and mortar school s there were always cheaters. Hell, even the tour de france got turned into a dopers ball. So yes, this is a bummer and all the naysayers of these free opensource online classes now just have more ammo. But as someone who's life has not allowed them the path to Stanford/Upenn/University of Toronto, etc, I am putting in the work and bothering to actually learn and extremely grateful for the opportunity. So bummer, sure, but shame on the cheaters.

</comment><comment><USER38> A lot of comments here are suggesting that the staff should allow the violations of the academic honesty rules and deal with matters by some other means.

It's my understanding that, in this case, this is not possible. There are real students at EPFL who are using the Coursera system to take this very same course for credit. If some random resume-padder creates a public repository on github for doing the homework, then a simple google search by an actual student at EPFL could easily find it.

I don't see how they have any choice but to bring the hammer down.

</comment><comment><USER39> I personally did not enjoy the threat of expulsion in my inbox this morning. As, like probably many other, but the code up on Github because, well this is just what I do with code.

I've signed up for this class because I was interested in learning something. Cheating would obviously not teach me anything, so why even take the class in the first place?

The Coursera certification currently holds no or little value. Maybe if they gain enough traction, someday, having many coursera certificates could have some value when applying for a job. This is not currently the case. I understand that they want to be in the position at some point in the future and that if they don't enforce these rules now, doing so later will be hard. Nevertheless, threatening to ban users in not a winning move for any startup.

A better solution would be to offer an alternative to Github, maybe even a partnership with Github. If they hosted their own git repository and used that as the submission system, they users could get source control, as well as a simple mean of distributing assignments.

This felt like a poor PR move from coursera.

<comment><USER40> > I personally did not enjoy the threat of expulsion in my inbox this morning. > As, like probably many other, but the code up on Github because, well this > is just what I do with code.

Then you're violating the conduct. They ask tons of times to not share your code, including on GH. So you should either use a private GH repo or host it elsewhere, privately.

Don't whine about not liking the "threat of expulsion" when it's perfectly clear that you shouldn't be doing that.

They shouldn't have to offer that, anyone who wants a private repo for free can use bitbucket, for instance.

<comment><USER41> The issue isn't that the school isn't within their rights to do this. It's that they're putting an unnecessary limitation on good students, forcing them to help fight the cheaters. There's nothing inherently wrong with putting up my answers to homework on GH. The onus should be on students to not cheat; it feels kind of scummy to force students who have no desire to cheat to take down their code in a sad attempt to fight cheaters.

<comment><USER42> I guess I'm a little bit curious as to why it is so important code like this ends up on your Github account? It is pretty simple, relatively useless outside of the course, and thousands of other people are writing very similar code - I'm not sure I see the value in hosting your solution on github.

Perhaps in a perfect world, you could publicly post all of your homework and whoever is administering the course would be able to detect someone using your code for their homework - that is incredibly difficult in the best of circumstances, and in this case, effectively impossible. Doing something about low-hanging fruit - publicly available answers to the questions - seems like a reasonable mitigation step.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I would think it would be better to let the course go on, and mail the certificates and give each one a unique identifier. Then make an annotation at cousera of which students were caught cheating. Then give employers the ability to check if a certificate is from an honest student or one who was caught cheating. Everyone wins.

</comment><comment><USER43> When discussing online courses, a recurring theme is that of the "value" of online certifications, versus "real life" certifications. By taking action against cheaters, Coursera is trying to preserve the value of their certification. I wonder how it will affect it.

Do people really care about online certifications anyway?

For me, the main advantage of the weekly assignments, is that it stops me from procrastinating, like I might if I were to learn by myself with a book... I don't really care about the certification itself. I guess I can add it to my resume, like the SCJP, but I don't think employers will care much.

<comment><USER29> I'm entirely self taught at Scala and never did Java, so I'm doing it just to test myself to see how much I missed and how much I understand already. Certification is almost entirely worthless as a CV aid... it gives an indicator that you are willing to put in effort out of hours for self improvement, but it's value vs a well tended github account / a programming test is negligible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> I see several comments on this submission relate the issue of cheating in a Coursera course to the issue of presenting a false credential to an employer when seeking a job. People seeking jobs as programmers had better be ready to do a programming sample under conditions controlled by the hiring company to prevent cheating. The reason to be ready for that is that work-sample tests are the best validated procedure for hiring workers for jobs in general, and any company that takes a scientific approach to hiring will make work-sample tests a big part of its hiring procedures.

The long story about why companies should use work-sample tests to hire job applicants, including programmers, can be found in the online FAQ I post from time to time here on HN, last posted five days ago.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4613543>

Of course, because some (many?) people cheat, work-sample tests work best if the companies using them make sure that cheating is not possible during the test. If you want to get a job at a company that doesn't hire cheats or fakers, be ready to show what you know in a work-sample test.

</comment><comment><USER45> Well, obviously cheating is bad. And obviously breaking an ethics code is bad. I think an issue with what's going on here is that, in this case, there are conflicting natures between education and programming.

To be a good programmer, you need to be efficient. Writing 100% unique code is not efficient. It's not even good. It's bad. Good developers research solutions to solved problems. Good solutions have been used and tested by dozens, if not hundreds, of other developers in just as many different use- cases.

So, as a DEVELOPER, it's GOOD to research and find an existing solution to your problem. It's even good to go on places like Stack Overflow and post your problem and let someone else solve it for you.

But, as a STUDENT, doing these things is BAD. Taking credit for someone else's work isn't good. And letting other people do your work for you is cheating.

So, how do you resolve being a STUDENT DEVELOPER? Do you follow practices that would make you a bad developer? Or do you follow practices that would make you a bad student?

What I see is a complication in proving that the student understands the concepts they need to understand for the course. If you just go out and copy other people's code, but never take the time to understand it, then the course is worthless. Remember that the knowledge and understanding gained is the purpose of the course. Assignments, quizzes, whatever - these are just measurement tools, they are not the purpose behind the course.

I feel that we probably just need a different way to determine whether or not a student understands the concepts of the course. Is there a way to determine a student's understanding or comprehension outside of assignments, tests, and quizzes? Something that isn't replicable student to student?

</comment><comment><USER46> I'm taking this course, and have no idea what the motivation for the cheaters was. But, it would be nice to have some sort of forum where you could discuss your answers after you had successfully completed the homework. I know my code is correct, but I think I would learn even more by seeing other people's solutions. Something like the forums on the Project Euler site would be fantastic.

</comment><comment><USER47> Well, this seems like one of those social problems where a technical solution might be available.

1) Figure out the number of students taking course n.

2) For the first assignment, figure out the number of questions m you want.

3) Make a question bank of size M.

4) Satisfy the constraint n < (M-m)!

5) You now can uniquely identify uploaders via the set of answers they upload.

If you're willing to kick people out of the class and mark them as cheaters, you can now do so without worrying they're trying to frame someone else.

This can be refined--maybe make it so that the question bank is large enough that several people conspiring will be unable to randomly generate a sequence of questions that's been given to a real person, so they can't randomly screw people for shits and giggles. You could also make the questions differently phrased, making it harder to Google them. Depending on how many cheaters there are, you can also just make a question bank that's large enough that any given question is unlikely to have been uploaded by a cheater, though that rapidly blows up the size of the necessary question pool if you do have a significant proportion of cheaters.

<comment><USER48> The problem with question banks, at least in normal academia, is making sure everyone gets a question set of equal difficulty. If one person gets asked for an algorithm to find the length of a linked list and another gets asked for an algorithm to remove a node from an AVL tree, that's not fair on the second person.

You could experimentally calibrate the question bank, seeing which questions trip students up the most, but that requires asking the same questions a bunch of times to different students, which is exactly what using the question bank was supposed to avoid! And if you want to reuse the calibrated data every year, you'll have to ask the same questions every year, which we prefer to avoid. I suppose with a sufficiently large student population an effective calibration might be possible - maybe Coursera will be the ones to do it!

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> One thing I remember my tutors saying time and again, "It's really hard to think up good questions and assignments.".

</comment><comment><USER50> Shame on the cheaters, but I don't see how they're hurting anyone but themselves.

In the spirit of the Platonic ideal of the Academy it seems beneficial to freely share and exchange ideas.

<comment><USER51> I'm not sure I agree 100% with your police work there.

I am enrolled in the class, and when I got the e-mail, my first thought was "Great. Now I have to worry about whether or not my work will look too similar to someone else's, or to the solutions that have been posted."

Granted, my first submission for assignment #2 was a third of a point short of 10/10, so maybe I don't have anything to worry about.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> Searching Github for assignments is pretty easy, but I wonder how they'd be able to detect duplicates other then when every source is 100% equal to another student's.

</comment><comment><USER53> The most frightening thing about this is the number of people that want a black list of names. what's the next step? stoning them in public, making them wear a special hat?

The job of coursera is to provide access to learning and there it should stop. Coursera should not provide certificate of any kind, most people go there to learn not to become certified on anything, Cheaters will go way if there is no certificate since their purpose is not to learn.

</comment><comment><USER54> If they're going to issue certificates that people respect, they should do it like EdX is planning: paid formal testing at exam centers.

For connecting top students with recruiters, they're already looking at contributions to forums as well as homework/test scores. It shouldn't be too hard to see who's really engaged with the material.

Getting uptight about people sharing work seems counterproductive and hopeless.

</comment><comment><USER55> I would have went the other way and forced _everyone_ to develop in public via github (or similar, in fact it wouldn't need to be private if Coursera had access to the git repository). I'd guess it would be more work to try and painstakingly recreate a unique and authentic looking sequence of commits than it would to just do it yourself, probably teach some good habits too.

<comment><USER56> Are your downvotes coming because of you specifically suggesting github or are they because of the underlying idea? I think the idea's good. I had a group projects in a coding-intensive course (not distance) this summer and one of our members procrastinated endlessly. He kept insisting he'd done work and we hadn't but he was new to version control and didn't realize that you can pull up commit logs. He quit the team when he saw them.

At the least, if someone contributes a ton of code for an assignment in one shot that's identical to somebody else, the professor could compare commit logs there too. Tons of code is out there on the internet and plagiarism is something that'll be tempting on the job under a deadline, too, with potentially more serious legal consequences.

I keep my code private until the class is over, then open-source it. I consider this stuff to be my resume.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> I wonder how many exact and similar copies there are. I can certainly imagine some honest overlap in the assignments (I'm taking the course).

</comment><comment><USER32> I think people who copied are not lying to anyone but themselves, if they can't even modify it a little so it won't be an exact copy, they won't survive as programmers anyway as no one will keep them.

the people who share? I'm sure most of them simply put in as they put any code they do on their GH account. which is by default public.

solution: people should use bitbucket, it has free private repos.

</comment><comment><USER58> So, what exactly is the point in cheating on these assignments? IIRC there is no academic credit available and all you receive is a non accredited certificate.

Surely the only point in doing the assignments in the first place is to satisfy yourself that you have understood and can apply the material?

<comment><USER59> Remember that the type of person who chooses to cheat on this type of assignment isn't exactly the sharpest crayon in the box.

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> I found it annoying when people were submitting answers to Stripe's CTF before the end date - just seemed to cheapen the experience - and would imagine for someone not cheating in the class that they might feel the same way.

(on a side note - did anyone get their CTF tshirt yet?)

</comment><comment><USER61> I wonder how much work it is to monitor the students, it must be hard to tell if there's cheating, assuming the published solution is well written and tought. If they have to look at past submissions to detect sudden peaks in grades it's got to be a burden.

</comment><comment><USER62> Coursera could offer an on site test ($) for the employer.

The perspective employee would login and take a test based on the courses that they have completed. The score would then be sent to employee and employeer and ranked along side others who have completed the course.

</comment><comment><USER32> I do this course to learn, and I enjoy trying to solve things on my own, cheating on this is cheating yourself. If I was in a point I need this to boost my resume, I would ask myself if I'm in the right profession.

</comment><comment><USER63> I get why they have a problem with this but it seems weird to punish the students for behaving like real world programmers. The entire FOSS movement could be written off as cheating with this mentality.

</comment><comment><USER64> >If we find that solutions continue to be posted, we will reconsider offering certificates of completi

Wait, so they didn't know this was going to happen?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I've just got this in my email. It really is sad.

</comment><comment><USER65> How about they expel those who used the solutions as well?

<comment><USER48> A lot of solutions end up looking similar, as the automated marking system requires certain method names and the questions often have answers that are only a line or two at this early stage of the class.

Early questions are things like: if membership of a set is a function mapping between an integer and a boolean, how would you define the membership of a singleton set? Modulo the spaces and variable names, every student's answer was probably the same!

So detecting who has copied their solution is probably difficult.

<comment><USER30> My thoughts too. I just don't see how there could be much variation in the first place, especially among more experienced participants who can easily find the most optimal way to write a given function.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> so people who have submitted copies will still get certificates?

that's kinda amusing. [edit: thanks for the reply (have an upvote); missed that. that's more reassuring.]

<comment><USER43> Doesn't seem so:

"For those students for whom it's been discovered have uploaded similar or duplicate solutions, cases will be handled on an individual basis. Though beware, that cheating in any capacity not be tolerated."

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> Get rid of the stupid "certifications".

</comment><comment><USER68> Thanks to some cheaters I just discovered Coursera. And you want to punish them now... uhm :)</comment>


Red Programming Language - <AUTHOR> http://www.red-lang.org/

<comment><AUTHOR> The README on github is probably the best way to find out what this language is about: <https://github.com/dockimbel/Red>

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Red isn't self-hosting yet, so you'll need a copy of REBOL/View to run it.</comment>


Richest on the Web - <AUTHOR> http://richestontheweb.com/ <comment><USER2> wow, interesting. reminds me of those pay for blocks of pixels sites... this site may make some cash and get some news then everyone will copy it and get nowhere because it is all about the idea and necessarily the implementation.

on a tech note, there is no SSL. It is run via stripe (which may mean my CC info never hits their server) but that doesn't mean they shouldn't use SSL.</comment>


Megaupload Search Warrant Requests Ignored Massive Non-Infringing Use - <AUTHOR> http://torrentfreak.com/megaupload-search-warrants-ignored-massive-non-infringing-use-121118/ <comment><USER2> Well, that is non-news, trivial and not interesting.

<comment><USER3> It's pretty well known that the warrants issued in New Zealand were invalid, but I don't think it's widely known how weak the US warrents were.

Here's an example of how far the government stretched the truth in order to get the warrant. According to Dotcom, in a previous investigation: "The FBI asked us for uploader information regarding 39 files and told us to keep their investigation confidential. We assisted and obviously didn't touch the uploader accounts or files because of the ongoing investigation,"

The US government then used the existence of those files 2 years later as part of the evidence for the warrant to seize all of Megaupload's servers. Megaupload was never told to delete the files, and was afraid doing so would interfere with an investigation.

<comment><USER4> The thing that makes your argument weak is that it's a quote from Kim Dotcom from an interview. I don't know, it might be true but the problem is, if it's not totally obvious already, that of course you'd expect Dotcom to defend his actions and claim innocence but he's a biased and unreliable source. The US and NZ governments, as much as they may have stretched the truth and been in the wrong in some areas, are still more credible than Kim Dotcom. As much as we would all like to go off on how corrupt and terrible and wrong the big bad government is, any reasonable person can't deny that Kim Dotcom is even less credible considering his history which includes a criminal record the long precedes MegaUpload and the fact that only the most naive and out of touch didn't know what was happening at MegaUpload.</comment></comment></comment>


Poker player bets $100k he can last 30 days in pitch black solitary confinement - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2019/jan/10/rich-alati-poker-player-bet-dark-room-isolation <comment><USER2> Dark retreat is a traditional practice in Tibetan Buddhism and Bön[0]. The usual guidance is that a dark retreat should be done only when the meditator has attained stability in the Natural State. Not many Westerners are in this zone, but seem able to benefit nonetheless [1],[2]. There are mental health risks[3], as in any other meditation practice. One claim is that sustained darkness stimulates the production of endogenous DMT.[4]

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

[1] 3-week Darkness Retreat in Guatemala. [https://imcb.dharmaseed.org/teacher/424/talk/51886/](https://imcb.dharmaseed.org/teacher/424/talk/51886/)

[2] Dawning of Clear Light: A Western Approach to Tibetan Dark Retreat Meditation (2003) [https://www.amazon.com/Dawning-Clear-Light-Approach- Meditati...](https://www.amazon.com/Dawning-Clear-Light-Approach- Meditation/dp/1571743758/)

[3] [https://www.mindful.org/willoughby-britton-the-messy- truth-a...](https://www.mindful.org/willoughby-britton-the-messy-truth-about- mindfulness/)

[4] [https://www.universal- tao.com/dark_room/enlightenment.html](https://www.universal- tao.com/dark_room/enlightenment.html)

<comment><USER3> Reminds me of this recent post to HN, about the unexpected risks of long term meditation.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18792327](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18792327)

<comment><USER4> traditionally, there are separate practices for laymen/householders and monks/ascetics. it looks like translating to modern western society is losing the distinction and is causing problems

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Reminds me of the Twilight Zone episode in a gentlemen's club where a member bets one annoying member can't go a year without speaking.

Guess I won't spoiler it but the guy has to make a pretty big decision in order to complete the bet - here - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Silence_(The_Twilight_Zone...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Silence_\(The_Twilight_Zone\))

</comment><comment><USER6> Gamblers do all kinds of wacky bets like this. If you are into these kinds of stories, get "The Man With the $100,000 Breasts: And Other Gambling Stories" by Michael Konick

[https://www.amazon.com/Man-100-000-Breasts- Gambling/dp/07679...](https://www.amazon.com/Man-100-000-Breasts- Gambling/dp/0767904451/)

Here's a short article about Brian Zembic and his $100,000 breasts as mentioned in the title:

[https://www.maxim.com/entertainment/man-100000-breasts- and-o...](https://www.maxim.com/entertainment/man-100000-breasts-and-other- bets-gone-wild-2015-11)

Brian also performed a bet where he tried to stay locked in a bathroom for 30 days to win $14,000.

</comment><comment><USER7> If I were to guess, my guess would be that preparation could make a big difference. Experience being alone. Experience with darkness/blindness. Good meditation "shape."

I'd take this bet.

<comment><USER8> For a $100k paycheck, I'd very quickly find a 30 day opening in my schedule. A month long retreat sounds pretty nice, actually. Preparation is definitely key to this challenge, though. You also weigh the possibility of damage to your psyche with this challenge, and there is a high likelihood of permanent changes to your personality. Then again, the sudden acquisition of $100k could also do damage/change.

<comment><USER9> I would take that bet in almost all cases. The only people I would consider even remotely able to accomplish 30 days in solitary darkness would be someone who has thoroughly prepared and practiced for decades.

<comment><USER8> How much can you actually cover? I've done solitary stretches over 30 days more than once and while I don't like confinement, it's tolerable. That much darkness is a big unknown, but I've always rather enjoyed the darkness. Perhaps the stint as an astronomer sufficiently prepared me for this challenge.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I once went on a tour through a lava tunnel in Iceland. Part of the tour was where the guide dimmed all the lights. The feeling of total darkness was quite strange. The guide said that if we would stay in this darkness for a month our eye muscles would atrophy and we would become blind.

I would expect Alati to at least feel a little physical effect from his stay in darkness.

<comment><USER11> Muscles atrophy but not that quickly?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This reminds me of the Peter Tripp stunt where he stayed awake for 8 days straight[1]. It sounds like a great idea but you never know what the side effects will be. I was in a sensory deprivation tank for an hour and I started seeing crazy things.

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

<comment><USER13> No, it doesn't, because it would deal irreversible damage for adults after 6 days of sleep deprivation.

<comment><USER14> One time I went through an extremely stressful period and didn't sleep more than an hour a night for 7 days until a doctor had mercy and gave me lorazepam. My muscles and joints started to degrade

<comment><USER13> My record was 242 hours without sleep when I was 12, me and my best friend challenged who could last longer, ended up in a draw. Last 3 days were in slow zombie mod, I couldn't walk more than 20 meters without taking a break.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> That was a really interesting story. At first I thought it would be tampering to have a voice come through a loudspeaker after 2 weeks of silent darkness with an offer cave, but I'm glad they resolved the bet without anyone getting hurt (you should read the article I don't want to spoil the end).

I'd watch the documentary they will make too.

</comment><comment><USER16> If someone wants to experience something similar, sensory deprivation tanks could be an interesting option. I'd argue that the lack of tactile deprivation in the experiment made a huge difference.

<comment><USER17> I only did the floating tank thing once and have to say: lack of distractions and ensured lack of disturbance is nice, but it doesn't change meditating much.

(and I actually might prefer distant street noise over salt crystallizing on your face and condensation running down your face)

edit: and I don't like the dark for it, because I immediately see or imagine shapes. but they are also just a mere distraction.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> After reading about solitary confinement I wanted to test myself by staying in the bathroom in my finished basement for a weekend. I'd have sunlight through a small window, a toilet, sink, and would have my wife bring me meals 2-3 times a day. I figured this was pretty similar to real solitary confinement with the main differences being I'd be sleeping on the floor and could leave at any time. Unfortunately she refused to participate so I never did it, but I'd like to think I could have easily competed it.

<comment><USER19> I think I've already done it as a student in my 9-square-meter room. Haha just kidding.

The truth is, spending a couple of days without hearing anyone's voice makes you feel out of place and depressed quite quickly, even though I don't mind being alone usually.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> For me, the craziest prop bet in recent memory was a $2M weight loss bet Ted Forrest won in ~2010 to go from 188 to 138 lbs in 2 months. It's been almost a decade so some of the most dramatic pics are hard to find but here's one of the ones I found: [http://www.flushdraw.net/wp- content/uploads/2014/09/forrest-...](http://www.flushdraw.net/wp- content/uploads/2014/09/forrest-282x300.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER21> This is fascinating. As a novice meditator, I lasted three days on a silent meditation retreat and it was perhaps the most psychologically taxing experience of my life. I can't imagine the mental strength this guy had and years of mental preparation necessary in order to make it through.

</comment><comment><USER22> What fascinates me about stuff like this is how troubling our own inner thoughts can be when we're left alone with them. In this case Alati talked about the importance of controlling his thoughts and preventing himself from spiraling into negativity. It's amazing how our own thoughts can take a toll on us and drive us insane when we're left alone with them with nothing to distract us. It makes me wonder how much they affect us in our day to day interactions.

It almost seems like a sign that something is wrong on a species wide scale when we need to constantly distract ourselves from our own thoughts to prevent being driven mad.

<comment><USER23> Could also be an evolutionary way to keep on our toes. "What's around the corner"

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I find it hard to imagine going 30 days without tripping bad, at which point any normal person would say stop. I bet against.

To me it's like giving away 100k and taking bath salts. Reminds me of the movie "Altered States".

</comment><comment><USER25> Heh, I've noticed that I seem to be more resistant to the the usual effects of solitary confinement and wondered if I could exploit that "superpower" to make money.

</comment><comment><USER26> Am I correct in that he wipes his arse in pitch darkness? That would be my main concern, not getting shit on myself. But I guess he had the bath to take care of that..

</comment><comment><USER27> This reminds me of the water torture myth-busters episode where Adam's ability to withstand it was only limited by the capacity of his bladder. It's not so much the confinement or the water that makes you go crazy, it's everything else.

</comment><comment><USER28> He might be alive but I imagine he might no longer be sane.

<comment><USER29> Thanks to my highly privileged information source, VSauce :D, I know that you start to have brain damage after 3 days

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Sounds great, unfortunately I can't afford the $100k.

</comment><comment><USER31> This sounds like something Dan Blizerian would do.</comment>


Inherited endocrine disease may have fueled Hatfield-McCoy feud (2007) - <AUTHOR> https://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/health/2007-04-05-hatfield-mccloy-disease_N.htm <comment> blaser-waffle Takeaway: crazy rednecks are crazy... because of hormone issues.</comment>


Google DeepMind Challenge Match: Lee Sedol vs. AlphaGo - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFr3K2DORc8 <comment><USER2> Is this the most important human-computer matchup of our lifetimes? Seems like it should be a bigger deal.</comment>


Online services our startup subscribes to - <AUTHOR> http://ye.gg/subscribe2 <comment><USER4> Here are some things we use at <http://realhq.com> — those also mentioned in the article are in _italics_ :

HOSTING

Rails Hosting: EngineYard

LAMP Hosting: HostGator

File Hosting: _AWS_

Video Hosting: Wistia

Code Hosting: _GitHub_

COLLABORATION

Email/Calendar/Docs: _Google Apps_

Project Management: Basecamp

Group Chat: Campfire

Wiki: Backpack

COMMUNICATION

Email Deliverability: SendGrid

Phone Magic: Twilio

Phone System: OpenVBX

MONITORING

Error Monitoring: Airbrake

App Monitoring: New Relic

Server Monitoring: Pingdom

ACCOUNTING

Receipts: Shoeboxed

Income: Freshbooks

Accounting: Outright

OTHER

Web Fonts: fonts.com

Web Fonts: Typekit

eSignatures: DocuSign

Forms: Wufoo

Advertising: Google AdWords

Our favorite products are probably Outright (dead simple), Twilio (enables tons of phone system magic), and AdWords (flexible, powerful, profitable). The two products we're actively working to replace are Backpack (with Workflowy or something similar) and Shoeboxed (we have yet to find an alternative). And we've outgrown Wufoo, but owe them much more than we've ever paid them in monthly charges.

<comment><USER5> Thanks for the great list. I took a look at Outright. The service may be useful, but this bugs me...

> You can use your FREE account forever - No trial or expiration date. Paid > accounts are just $9.95 per month. See details when you log in.

I know there's a catch, but I'm forced to create an account to find out about it. I'm either gonna use dummy info or just leave since I don't want another account until I understand what I'm signing up for.

I realize this is a tactic for getting me to try the service, but I don't like it. I ended up just leaving.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Here's what we use at <http://leanpub.com>

* Servers: AWS

* Code Hosting: GitHub

* Mail Sending: Postmark (<http://postmarkapp.com>)

* Monitoring: Scout (<http://scoutapp.com/>)

* Sharing files with our authors: Dropbox

* Error notification: AirBrake (<https://airbrakeapp.com/>)

* File Hosting: S3

* Mail: Google Apps

* Cartoon Animal Videos: Xtranormal (<http://www.xtranormal.com/>)

* Payments: PayPal

* Project Planning / Todos: Pivotal Tracker

</comment><comment><USER7> Because the list is so long, and a bunch of the cons mention cost, I'm going to flog my friend's company, Cloudability (<http://cloudability.com>). They help you track and control your cloud spending and they're an AWS solutions provider.

There are only three of us at Stayhound (<http://stayhound.com>), so our list is pretty short:

Mockflow for creating and sharing flows and wireframes

MailChimp

Google docs & calendar

Gmail IM

Google+ hangouts for team video conferencing

Trello for task management

Capsule CMS

Github

Google AppEngine

And we're in the process of considering a move to AWS.

<comment><USER8> Cloudability looks fantastic. How are they planning on charging? It looks completely free right now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I was curious about ServerDensity. Does anyone have experience with them? How easy is it to automate for deployment? Does it compare favorably with Munin and/or nagios?

<comment><USER10> I'm not sure about the automation of creating servers in the web interface (it gives you a key that you have to put in the configuration file) - <USER2> the service is easy though through a package manager.

The two things I think are great about ServerDensity over Munin (haven't used nagios) are the snapshots (you click on a point in the graph and it shows you the processes running, server load, network etc at that time) and the alerting (email, Android, iPhone push) which is great. Even custom plugins are easy to write/install and stick alerts on.

<comment><USER9> Awesome. Thanks for the heads up, especially about snapshots.

Signed up for the trial, and it looks like their auto-deploy script links are broken (support.serverdensity.com 502's). I'd like to see if there's a way to generate keys somehow, because it looks like it requires a unique per-server key. I suspect that is what their auto-deploy script does.

<comment><USER11> We're using Assistly for our support site and they've had a number of outages in the last few days.

Auto deployment is something we're working on improving but right now you can use auto copy[1], which bases new instance detection on the hostname, our auto deploy script[2] or our API[3] to add devices automatically.

[1] [http://support.serverdensity.com/customer/portal/articles/72...](http://support.serverdensity.com/customer/portal/articles/72261-auto- copy)

[2] [http://support.serverdensity.com/customer/portal/articles/72...](http://support.serverdensity.com/customer/portal/articles/72262-deploy- script)

[3] <http://developer.serverdensity.com/docs>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Just want to mention this because I never see it in lists like these, yet everyone I've recommended it to has been blown away.

Talkerapp: <http://talkerapp.com/> \- It's a free Web chat system (with a paid level for extra logging and file transfers). I believe it's open source too. I use it for some of my online courses and haven't had another Web chat system come close (although stylistically it's a bit like Campfire).

</comment><comment><USER13> Thanks for posting the list - more startups should do this.

<comment><USER14> Agreed. This is very useful.

I wonder if a startup version of usesthis.com would be a useful place to collect or reference posts like this.

<comment><USER15> Brilliant idea. Perhaps I might pursue this.

<comment><USER16> Now that I think about it, I've used usesthis.com for this very purpose - <USER3> get some anecdotal "votes" for particular categories of services. If this was listed out in an easier-to-read fashion, I personally would love that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Awesome thread. I recently made a post about startup costs and what services I use. I even provide a cost breakdown for each one, bringing my grand total monthly bill to $295.

Hopefully its useful to some. [http://x-pose.org/2011/10/the-cost-of-running- a-boot-strappe...](http://x-pose.org/2011/10/the-cost-of-running-a-boot- strapped-startup/)

</comment><comment><USER17> I notice a lot of those tools are for group collaboration -- I know there are many advantages to having a co-founder, but one of the advantages of being a single founder (AKA a developer working on an app they wish existed) is that I only have to collaborate with myself. Simplifies the toolkit quite a bit.

Here's what I'm using for <http://everyday.io> \--

Backend: App Engine / Python / Flask

Frontend: Bootstrap / jQuery / PhoneGap / HighCharts / Many microlibs

APIs: SendGrid, Facebook, SimpleGeo

Analytics: Woopra

Code hosting: Github + Dropbox (just in case!)

Email/Docs: Google Apps

Task tracking: Stickies + GDocs + Things (Haven't quite decided on one strategy yet.)

I've started blogging about tips I learn while using these technologies here, since some of them are kind of new and the knowledge base needs to be built up: <http://www.everyday.im/learning>

I remember seeing a grid of what YC companies used, atleast in terms of the backend. That was pretty interesting.

</comment><comment><USER18> Regarding EchoSign, can you explain the complaint that you cannot control the signing date? If that means what I take it to mean, OF COURSE YOU CAN'T. It would be antithetical to the idea of reliable electronic signatures to allow a party to evidence that they entered an agreement at any time other than the actual agreement date.

</comment><comment><USER19> Am I the only one who went through the "hate" to find out if there is something substantial worth considering? :)

<comment><USER16> Hehe I did the same thing. Hopefully, the services themselves did too, so they can consider revising their priority lists ;)

<comment><USER19> I have a feeling we'd get along ;-)

<comment><USER16> I love hearing complaints, because they often mask an opportunity ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Do you guys use a project management package? Basecamp, asana, pivotal etc?

(We don't use them either (yet), just wondering what you do instead?)

<comment><AUTHOR> We use Asana and are happy with it. It's free so I didn't include it (but maybe I should have).

<comment><USER20> I keep hearing asana... I like the keyboard shortcuts, so I'll probably go that way. Thanks!</comment></comment></comment>


Nintendo's first smartphone app is this surreal social network - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2016/3/17/11252794/miitomo-nintendo-app-release-hands-on <comment><USER2> This is _very_ Nintendo. They have always built the hardware first, and then designed the games around that second. The Super Famicom had advanced graphics (including Mode 7) and sound, and the games showcased that. Nintendo 64 had that amazing SGI MIPS cpu, and combined with an analog controller meant that they could make great 3D games. The Wii's motion tracking opened up a sucessful albeit small offering of games unique for the platform.

It's a little different this time around in that they didn't build the hardware. As noted in the article, they have no experience of not owning the entire system. What they have come up with is something that utilizes the social capabilities of the platform that they are playing on, and is worth being commended. I just hope whatever currency things they come up with steer clear of kompu-gachu[0] style mechanics.

You can criticize Nintendo for a lot of things, but they don't do cynical executions or cash grabs. Just doing a straight port of Mario onto a smartphone would be terrible, because the touch screen can't give as good an experience as a dedicated game controller can.

[0][http://www.japantimes.co.jp/life/2012/05/16/digital/japans-s...](http://www.japantimes.co.jp/life/2012/05/16/digital/japans- social-gaming-industry-hindered-by-governments-anti-gambling-move)</comment>