What Americans Keep Ignoring About Finland's School Success - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/12/what-americans-keep-ignoring-about-finlands-school-success/250564/#.Tv4NA-e7HkY.mailto <comment><USER2> It's important to remember that the Finns implemented their new system for _moral_ , rather than competitive reasons. Their resulting academic performance was a pleasant side-effect. This is a critical distinction that even this article seems to gloss over.

I went to the best private high school in my state. Before that, I attended an elementary school whose tuition cost more than many people pay for a college education. My parents were by no means rich, but were willing to spend a significant portion of their yearly income on the education of their only child.

I have also worked in schools of the other kind. The ones with metal detectors. The ones where the administration's main preoccupation is not which college their students will get into, but whether their students will graduate high school at all.

Arguments that competition between schools and school systems is necessary in order to maintain academic quality do not impress me. The quality of a child's education should not be determined by how much money a parent is willing to or is capable of paying. I am quite willing to let children to be buffeted by the inequalities of capitalism in every other aspect of their lives (except, perhaps, healthcare), but our current system is not only ineffective and inefficient, it is _immoral_.

<comment><USER3> You write, in comparing "our" (presumably US) system to the Finns that our system is not only ineffective and inefficient, it is _immoral_.

Are you saying that non-internationalist socialism is inherently moral while individual property rights and exchange are not? That morally speaking someone's education should not be determined by who their parents are, but should be determined by the nation to which their parents are subject? Would you like to give a hint why?

The notion that individual economic rights are void while national economic rights are valid is delicious for people whose most valuable asset is their inherited citizenship or their power in nationalist institutions, so over the last century or so enormous effort has been expended in trying to justify this notion. However, the state of the art in such moral justifications does not impress me. Is there a particular justification that you are not embarrassed to be associated with?

The old internationalist socialism was screwed up in various vital ways, but at least I can understand how an idealist could be attracted to it. In this particular policy question, I can see how an idealist would attracted to the idea of opening an educational program to everyone in the world. But you seem to see clear moral superiority in a system which is open only to those who inherited Finnish citizenship.

As socialist ideas spread in practical politics, internationalist ideas were almost completely abandoned. (See e.g. how large transfer payments within nations are compared to how large foreign aid is, or how interested people are in Gini coefficients within nations compared to globally.) This doesn't stop modern noninternationalist socialists from regularly appealing to the old internationalist rhetoric for justification, but that's dishonest. (It's also circumstantial evidence for how weak the moral arguments for noninternalist socialism are, or more precisely, how the ones which aren't hopelessly weak tend to be strong enough to "justify" various of the horrors of the twentieth century, or various older nastiness like heriditary aristocracy or slavery. Classical liberalism and universalist socialism differ in whether "positive rights" and equality of outcome are better than ordinary negative rights and equality under the law, but justifications for both tend to appeal to a general idea of equal rights of all humans. To justify noninternationalist socialism of the usual heritable citizenship sort, you have to break that and find a way to justify hereditary privilege.)

Note also that essentially all those moral arguments for national economic rights are subject to various classic moral questions against how to get individual economic rights quite right. E.g., it is a classic difficult question how to assign individual property rights initially in a morally satisfying way. This question doesn't get any easier when it comes to assigning property rights to individual noninternalist socialist nations in a morally satisfying way. (And to it is added the new question of how individual people are to be assigned to such nations in a morally satisfying way.)

There are defensible _practical_ justifications for the conclusion that individual people shouldn't have individual economic rights but that individual nations should, in particular the observation that strongly collectivist nations punched above their weight in some of the wars of the 20th century. (There are also arguments based on the supposed inefficiency of a free market, but those have fared so poorly in reality that most people no longer advance them, at least without couching them in calculated vagueness or doublespeak.) But you seem to be appealing not to some empirical practical justification, but to some abstract moral justification, and I am unable to guess which you might have in mind.

<comment><USER2> My use of the word "immoral" was meant to be within the context of a single society, not with the world at large. My argument is that current US society has created a de-facto class system where a significant percentage of the population is forced to go to schools that are so bad that they're barely better than not going to school at all. Here, "forced" means that one's parents either can't afford to send you to a good private school or move to a location with good public schools, or is unwilling to do so.

Students at these schools are, through no fault of their own, largely disenfranchised from participating in society in anything but a menial manner. The ideal image of the guy who didn't even go to high school but went on to found a corporate empire is fading - the people who are founding the empires nowadays tend to have had at least a little college schooling, much less a high school diploma.

Meanwhile, the positions of wealth and respect in our society are reserved for the relatively small portion of society who get a good education (exception: professional athletes & music stars). I classify this system as _immoral_ , as it involves one part of a society preying upon another part, and then using its advantage to ensure continued advantage in the future. I would not shed a single tear if such groups lost the economic right to continue doing so.

More practically, however, it's hard to spend any amount of time in an average public high school (yes, there are some very good ones, but I'm talking about the average here) and not come to the conclusion that something is very, very wrong with the education system in this country. The sad fact is that a really bad school can seriously damage the rest of a child's life. Some few might escape the damage and go on to do great things, but most will carry the mark until they die, working in a series of soulless shitty jobs that they neither enjoy nor respect.

<comment><USER4> "forced" and "unwilling to do so" seem at odds to me.

[edit] I don't get the downvote, but this discussion is getting so emotional for so many, I guess I should have expected it. My point is, I agree with his point, up until he starts redefining words to mean completely opposite what they normally mean. Forced being used to describe "too poor to move" - fine, but being used to describe "don't want to", that's just tailoring language to fit your preconceived notion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Assuming there's something here, which is a bit of a stretch for me, let's ask the obvious question: where else has this been tried? Did it work? Better still, how do we know we're being equal enough?

This is not Marxist by any means, but I have to use Marxism as an example. The problem with Marxism is that whenever it doesn't work, people say it wasn't tried enough. In the examples where it does work, there's always some special attribute or thing that causes it to, like a very small sample size. Yes it works in some cases and at some scale, but it never really works in a practical way. It's just a cluster of feelings about fairness in search of an practical application. This is, by definition, a "loose analogy". Finland has schools. So do we. Finland does all these things to make their schools better. So should we?

I love Finland, and I admire the Fins I've worked with. But I think we can play this game of "If we were only like Europe" only so much without actually having to apply some critical thinking skills. We are not like Europe -- as much as we'd like to be. I've been reading articles that claim we can improve various parts of society if we were only like some European country my entire life. If I didn't know better, I'd think a lot of academics spend time in Europe and become Europhiles the rest of their lives, much to the rest of our detriment. Seems like no matter how hard we try at these things, we can never be like European country X. There's probably a good reason for that. My best guess is that this has something to do with culture, but I'm not sure. If you want a country of Fins, perhaps you should consider moving to Finland?

So yes, maybe there's something here, but I have no idea what it is. Does the author suggest outlawing private schools? Perhaps indoctrinating our national culture with pithy slogans like "accountability is what's left when you take responsibility away"? Tighter control over immigration so the culture is more cohesive? Greater oil revenues? Decrease our population to 1/70th of its current size? More alcohol consumption? What is there that's here that we can take away and use today aside from a general admiration of how nice Finland is?

<comment><USER6> Is public school teacher a desireable profession in the US? Is it anywhere near the level of prestige associated with lawyers or doctors? How is the pay? This is one of they key differences that's repeated in nearly every one of the numerous articles I've read about the Finnish school system, and it's the one single thing US really could do a lot about.

<comment><USER7> US teachers get crap pay.

<comment><USER8> That is a myth. You may believe they should be paid more, but when you account for the amount of hours the work and benefits their total compensation is very competitive with private sector jobs that require similar levels of education.

<comment><USER7> "Account for"? The pay reflects the requirements. I never claimed crap pay was a cause. But it is clear it demonstrates that the American system does not prioritize quality in teaching positions.

<comment><USER8> >"Account for"?

Yes teachers work around 190 days per year and in my area (metro Atlanta), they start off at $40k+ and around $50k with a Masters degree.

They are guaranteed raises so that they can easily get up to $60k (in today's money--more if they have graduate degree) by the time they retire, and after 30 years they can retire with 60% pay (most of them can retire in their very early 50s instead of 60+ like the rest of us). They get more time off than nearly any other profession.

Based on salary alone the average teacher makes 57% more than the overall state average salary, and when you add in their benefits package it goes up even higher.

With cost of living in my area that is definitely not "crap" pay.

<comment><USER7> You misunderstood my quote marks. I don't care if you account for hours worked, the net pay in the end doesn't seem to attract the quality you need in teachers, nor give them the respect they deserve. Also, your numbers seem suspect. The median pay for teachers is around $40,000 in the US. _Median_ , not starting.

<http://www.payscale.com/research/US/All_K-12_Teachers/Salary>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The article claims Finland focuses on equality, and that immigration hasn't had much effect on aggregate education outcomes yet.

 _Immigrants tended to concentrate in certain areas, causing some schools to become much more mixed than others, yet there has not been much change in the remarkable lack of variation between Finnish schools in the PISA surveys across the same period._

This is only because there are still very few immigrants in Finland. In actuality, immigrants to Finland score about 50 points lower on Pisa than Finnish natives (about double the gap in the US).

(For comparison, the gap between Americans of European descent and non- immigrant Finns in Pisa scores is 22 pts, and the gap between European Americans and Greeks (the lowest performing European nation) is 46 pts. )

[http://super-economy.blogspot.com/2010/12/amazing-truth- abou...](http://super-economy.blogspot.com/2010/12/amazing-truth-about-pisa- scores-usa.html)

<comment><USER10> Excellent observation. The Pisa study data shows one conclusion about education in America: Different racial groups perform at different levels. We are succeeding with some minority groups and failing with others. Whites in America test higher than Finns in Finland. Where we are failing is in educating our African American kids. The entire article relies on people not reading the data from the Pisa study, and for those who have read the data to ignore what it shows, from some misplaced desire not to seem racist.

<comment><USER11> A really interesting finding in studies of homeschooled kids is that blacks and whites do pretty much the same, whereas in school blacks do much worse. This is also completely decorrelated from whether the parent teachers have any background in education, how much they spend, or even whether they have college degrees. I see this as evidence that outcomes are not because of intrinsic genetic factors but because of systematic bias within institutional education. Bias is unlikely to be intentional, but it likely does exist and has significant influence on results.

<comment><USER12> That follows the studies in cited in Freakanomics showing it's the parental involvement which is the real factor. If the parent cares about education the child is much more likely to end up well educated.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Regardless of whether you think it is moral to abolish private educational institutions, there's good reason to look at other aspects of the Finnish education model rather than this one single point.

Finland does not use multiple choice exams and has literacy standards that are clear and simple. Contrast this to the U.S. model, where literacy standards are a byzantine mess, and are often completely disconnected from a student's inability to _read_ and _write_.

Mike Schmoker has addressed this in his excellent book _Focus_ , where he writes:

"[Finnish] success, according to observers, is a result of how much time students spend actually reading during the school day. They found one Finnish student who, upon returning from a year in U.S. schools, had to repeat an entire grade. This is because in the United States, instead of reading and writing, she and her fellow students spent their time preparing for multiple- choice tests or working on "projects" where students were instructed to do things like "glue this to this poster for an hour"..."

I teach in a charter school. We have mandated standards requiring us to assign students X numbers of hours of reading/writing per semester. Students who leave our school and then re-enroll in later years are often entire _grades_ behind, and have often not been assigned _any writing or reading of any kind_ during their time in the "mainstream" public school district.

I suppose my argument isn't so much that private schools are/aren't a good and moral thing, but rather that there are many far less controversial methods of improving the U.S. school system than abolishing private education.

</comment><comment><USER14> The article mentions another difference between the Finland and the US that is equally extreme and probably more directly related to results:

"teacher training programs are among the most selective professional schools in the country"

<comment><USER15> That is exactly what I thought when I read the article. Nobody seems to be mentioning the high status for teachers, high pay and selective intake.

Given that the teachers interact with the students more than anything else, and most people would agree that better teachers produce better students, the chances of this making material impacts on the educational outcomes seems quite obvious to me at least. After all, we're just talking about a variation on the old 'pay peanuts get monkeys' meme.

I'm sure if the average teaching salary doubled, the positions would be more sought after by young graduates. And if the positions were more sought after, there would be more competition and thus less problems with teacher performance.

<comment><USER16> I remember it being mentioned the last time Finland's success was discussed:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2917303>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1249852>

(in an interview I linked):

"Asked the key to success, (Finnish ambassador) Seppo Tunturi did not hesitate to answer: "The educator is highly appreciated by society. Young people see it as a profession with a future. "Statistics show that 10% of the top high school students choose this route. (Uruguayan university rector) Grünberg said this is a feature shared by other high quality educational systems, including South Korea, where teaching attracts 5% of the top high school graduates. "In other countries they would be brain surgeons or lawyers, but they are teachers or teachers in Finland," said the rector."

"In addition, training is very demanding. It takes a college degree (4 years) and an Masters in education (2 years). In 2010, more than 6,600 applicants competed for 660 seats to prepare as primary school teachers."

<http://rigofa2011.blogdiario.com/1292241206/> (in Spanish)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> One interesting thing about student performance in the US is that on the average it's not that bad early on (e.g. in grade school) but then takes a sharp dive. It is amazing to me what such comparison articles do not take into account: the toxic, sports-based culture in American highschools.

As a foreigner, when I encountered how sports culture derives high school and, in continuation, college student mindset. In high school, athletes and cheerleaders pretty much rule. Every high school in all countries have popular, good looking kids but the the esteem these kids have in the US, I think, is unheard of in other places.

<comment><USER18> I don't really think it's limited to high school and college. The average Joe Sixpack American is likely more concerned with his nearest professional football team's performance than any other singular element of his life. I was born and raised in the northeast US, played sports in high school and college, but still have not come to terms with how obsessed most people seem to be with sports (both their kids' sports and professional sports). I did receive social benefits from sports for quite some time, but I was never able to understand it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> "The Scandinavian country is an education superpower because it values equality more than excellence. "

This is absolute complete nonsense... America does worse than Finland because America is racially diverse... and Finalnd is the most "bigoted" of all the Scandinavian countries. America's education system is just fine... actually it is excellant.

Just look at the 2009 PISA scores. American Whites do better than all other "white countries" except for Finland. America Asians do better than all other Asian countries except for the elite part of China(Shanghai). American blacks do better than all other black countries. American Hispanics do better than all other Hispanic countries.

[http://www.vdare.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/fullsize...](http://www.vdare.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/fullsize/images/James_Fulford/121910_ss001c.png)

<comment> brown9-2 Is this your idea of excellence? Every individual race in America scoring better than the "original" countries they came from dozens or hundreds of years ago?

What about the disparity of scores between the races, or income levels, within America? Is this of no concern?

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I'll have to check the published literature for what it says about reading instruction in Finnish. Finland has a minority of native speakers of Swedish (not a closely cognate language). Finnish (Suomi) and Swedish are co-official as national languages in Finland.

[http://www.kwintessential.co.uk/resources/global- etiquette/f...](http://www.kwintessential.co.uk/resources/global- etiquette/finland-country-profile.html)

Finnish, by far the majority language, has an alphabetic writing system that is recently reformed enough that it has very consistent sound-symbol correspondences.

<http://www.omniglot.com/writing/finnish.htm>

The late John DeFrancis

[http://www.amazon.com/Visible-Speech-Diverse-Interactions- Co...](http://www.amazon.com/Visible-Speech-Diverse-Interactions- Comparisons/dp/0824812077)

and current researcher and author Stanislas Dehaene

[http://www.amazon.com/Reading-Brain-New-Science- Read/dp/0143...](http://www.amazon.com/Reading-Brain-New-Science- Read/dp/0143118056/)

develop historical and international comparisons, backed up by brain imaging in Dehaene's book, to make the argument that initial reading instruction should at its best focus students' attention to sound-symbol correspondences in the written language taught in primary reading instruction.

But initial reading instruction in the United States specifically and in English-speaking countries in general is only half-heartedly done that way,

<http://learninfreedom.org/readseri.html>

<http://www.mackinac.org/5365>

<http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3024599/>

and when school pupils in English-speaking countries struggle to learn to read independently, they are also likely to struggle to learn other subjects thoroughly.

The best current information I have suggests that initial reading instruction in Finland, whether in Finnish or in Swedish, is better done than much reading instruction in the English-speaking world, and that advantage may account for much of the national advantage Finland enjoys (and partially explain why immigrant families who use Finnish as a second language are the bottom group found in national-level sample testing of Finland for international surveys).

<comment><USER21> I agree that there's probably some credibility to arguments that English students underperform because of difficulties in learning to read an unusually inconsistent written language.

That said, Finns themselves tend to learn speak and read English rather well as a second language by the time they leave school; a practical necessity for international business or travel but not very easy considering the lack of cognates shared between the languages. And despite its consistent orthography Finnish has enough other sources of complexity to be rated as a fiendishly difficult language to pick up as a second language.

On the subject of phonics, it sounds like UK primary education is due to head in the opposite direction to US with compulsory phonics instruction for youngsters, including the hugely controversial recommendation for standardised tests on the ability to pronounce made-up words. I doubt we'll be overtaking Finland any time soon though.

<comment><USER22> Not only do everyone learn English as a second language, most students also study a third language like German, Spanish or French for five or six years. Which is not to say that everybody becomes a fluent speaker in that language, but it is the norm to make an effort.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Whenever a successful act is presented to Americans they tend to throw out the same generic defense we used to see on technology forums all the time: "That's good for them, but that won't scale for us!"

</comment><comment><USER24> Are other countries really doing that much better than the United States? It seems like most of the worlds top Universities are in the US and filled with students mostly from, the US.

Sure, they may score better on the tests for comparing students across the world, but it seems like the same people saying this are the same ones complaining about standardized testing in the US.

<comment><USER25> They are top universities in only two aspects: they provide connections and -- particularly some, like Harvard and Stanford -- the ecosystem for making success later in life. In terms of pure education, most US universities are far below many others elsewhere.

<comment><USER26> > In terms of pure education, most US universities are far below many others > elsewhere.

Is there any empirical evidence supporting this assertion?

If you look at Business School rankings, for example, US Universities are 5 of the top 10. Source: [http://rankings.ft.com/businessschoolrankings/global-mba- ran...](http://rankings.ft.com/businessschoolrankings/global-mba- rankings-2011)

Quacquarelli Symonds University Rankings also have US Universities rated quite high [http://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings/world- uni...](http://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings/world-university- rankings)

7 of the top 10 for CS are US: [http://www.topuniversities.com/university- rankings/world-uni...](http://www.topuniversities.com/university- rankings/world-university-rankings/2011/subject-rankings/engineering/computer- science)

6 of the top 10 for Medicine: [http://www.topuniversities.com/university- rankings/world-uni...](http://www.topuniversities.com/university- rankings/world-university-rankings/2011/subject-rankings/life- sciences/medicine)

6 of the top 10 for Philosophy: [http://www.topuniversities.com/university- rankings/world-uni...](http://www.topuniversities.com/university- rankings/world-university-rankings/2011/subject-rankings/arts- humanities/philosophy)

<comment><USER27> Oh get out of here with your facts, everyone "knows" how bad the US education system is.

Part of the deal is the US is not at all like most other countries, I've mentioned we provide public schooling for all children, which some countries don't. The US is also very large and diverse. Texas, for instance, is generally quite low on the public educations scores for public schools overall, but some of the best schools in the entire US, regardless of public or private, are public schools in Texas! You just have to live in the right school district, which almost always mean you live in the right family with a lot of money.

[http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/features/2011/americas...](http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/features/2011/americas- best-high-schools.html)

I'm not sure about the #1 and #2 schools, but further down, Highland Park in Dallas and Westwood and Westlake in Austin are all public schools.

I think it is almost impossible to have a good talk about education on HN, because we are essentially part of the 1% as far as abilities go, and most of us probably got along fine in school with any effort (or even no effort). So the bias tends to be against education. However, I've now had a son who is dyslexic, and the lack of good options even for people with money is dissapointing. The US school system is still very good for the top of the class, it's the bottom that gets let down. At any school system of any size that I've encountered (and I haven't been to very poor inner-city school), opportunities for the smart kids are always there. It's the rest of the kids that are going to struggle, and those that can't find the motivation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Out of curiosity, did the PISA study compare the level of parental involvement in a child's education between the countries? This NYT, [http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/20/opinion/sunday/friedman- ho...](http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/20/opinion/sunday/friedman-how-about- better-parents.html) , article has a link to PISA conclusions about parental involvement from a 2009 study and shows that children with involved parents tend to do better academically.

While we're dealing with complex cultural systems with thousands of moving parts, reforming the education system to improve parental involvement might yield significant gains. As it stands now, the system offers little to no incentive for parents to actively get involved with their kid's education. You place the kid(s) on the bus at 7 in the morning and don't see 'em again until 3-4pm or later if they do after school activities. No incentive to get involved at the school during the day or afterwards. As a personal anecdote, I've met several people who view public education as nothing more than day care, kids in at 7, free time until 4pm or later with no involvement outside of "mandatory" meetings.

</comment><comment><USER29> One thing that many commentators seem to ignore is what exactly the PISA tests measure. For example, the PISA math problems (<http://www.pisa.oecd.org/dataoecd/38/51/33707192.pdf>) are very specifically meant to assess how well students can solve pretty easy problems that could occur in their lives and where basic math literacy is needed, and the PISA exam is given to a random sample of all students. Contrast this with the International Mathematical Olympiad (results at <http://www.imo- official.org/country_team_r.aspx?code=FIN>) which measures how well the very best students do on very hard problems.

It should not be surprising that an education system emphasizing social equality instead of individual excellence performs well when you measure how well the average student does on an easy problem. It just shows that Finland's and PISA's values align well with each other.

</comment><comment><USER30> I can't find it, but there was a great post on HN awhile back about how Finland doesn't really know _what_ makes its schools so successful. Thus, articles like this pull some facet out of the hat as the key differentiator.

There was a good comment, suggesting that instead of modeling who has the highest test scores, instead model who is most successful at climbing the ranks of PISA. That's probably a better way of figuring out what contributes to success, because there are fewer independent variables.

</comment><comment><USER20> Previous submission:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3405988>

</comment><comment><USER31> Here's more to cross unknown factors out: a very interesting article on how the Finnish language itself affects schooling and has significance in PISA results.

Finland and Estonia share similar lingual roots and they both rank relatively great, even if Estonia is a lot poorer country than Finland. Yet, the Swedish speaking people in Finland fare relatively worse than Finnish speaking people, even if the schooling system is exactly the same.

<http://finnish-and-pisa.blogspot.com/>

</comment><comment><USER32> \- No standardized tests (except one) \- Individualized grading by teachers \- Less homework and days of school \- More emphasis on creative play \- etc.

No, I don't think "equality" is the main thing we Anericans are overlooking. _We're overlooking freedom._ Trust in people and children to be curious and learn, and let them be free enough to do it. So many of the big bureaucracies put in place here in the US to "help" education just legislate the shit out of schools and regulate everything. Yikes.

<comment><USER32> And before I here anything about "Anerican" I'm using my phone so I can't go back and adjust the typo...

<comment><USER33> I didn't even notice until you mentioned it. That said, what kind of phone are you using? If you were using a decent American phone rather than a crappy Finnish phone I bet you would be able to ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> What Americans are really ignoring is the idea that maybe someone can "hack" education for the better.

Numbers and anecdotes aside, we all know in our guts a few things that are beneficial to education: studying more, decreased distractions, (parental) encouragement, high standards for technical subjects, and nurturing of creativity. Every parent wants these things for their children.

The system in Finland has some of these things, but who cares why they have them? You could copy some aspect of Finland and hope you get Finland's results. You could copy some aspect of China and hope you get China's results.

We are trying to have the government build a model to explain WHY China's students study more or to explain WHY Finnish students have less distractions in the classroom. Are you confident about the government's ability to model this? I'm not sure I'd trust the world's best statisticians to figure it out.

The main point is that while everyone thinks they're an expert on how to get the above mentioned qualities into a school, simply finding a school that has them and then sending your child to it is a REALLY, REALLY easy way to get your child a good education. However, under the current system, _you are discouraged from sending your child to said school_.

Suppose your friend used a government chalkboard for a relational database. He's really upset about its performance. He hears about Oracle's fast databases, so he adds an index etc to his chalkboard, since queries with an index are faster. Maybe his chalkboard will catch up, and maybe it won't. MySQL is down the street offering what he really wants (a cheap, fast database) but he doesn't want to use it. He's worried that using MySQL will cause a decline in the quality of the chalkboards and leave all his neighbors with a piece of cardboard instead. He would rather spend his time mimicking Oracle until his chalkboard gets fast, and trying to figure out WHY Oracle is fast.

Shouldn't he just let the innovative minds behind MySQL sell (or give away) what they've built, and just know that their product has all of the features he wants? If it doesn't have what he wants, then he can use his chalkboard.

Are we all really afraid of that? An educational process is technology too, even if it's not software. This community is in love with software that solves problems, but is very cautious of schools that can solve problems.

</comment><comment><USER35> Sal from Khan Academy said it best: "I would make the US Education system more American (promoting creativity, ownership of learning, and independence) and less Prussian (moving together in an assembly line)."

</comment><comment><USER36> Has anyone here had any experience hiring or working with grads of Finnish schools? How about Master's/PhD level grads?

I'm curious how an employer or co-worker would view the quality of their school's end product.

<comment><USER37> I employ a few Finns, but also lack the comparison to other cultures to be able to tell. An interesting factor is that most Finnish men have also been through military service sometime after high school.

<comment><USER38> Yes. Military service is compulsory in Finland. About 80% of males undergo military service. The rest is either exempt for various reasons (medical) or opt for a "civil" service in which one is essentially employed somewhere for 12 months with pay coming from the government.

As 80% is quite a high number, most is indeed correct here. Thus you will find that regardless of one's education or background, it is safe to assume he also has military training. (Myself, a Finn, I have a Master of Science in mathematics and also a 2nd lieutenant in the Finnish Air Force.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> There is actually a very strong structural argument for why public goods such as education and health, should be distributed equally:

If those in power have to use the same system as those they hold power over, then they have a strong incentive and self interest to ensure that those public goods are of a high standard.

This is not to say that public goods must be delivered by the state, but rather there should no difference in opportunity of access (such as the Finnish private schools that don't charge tuition).

</comment><comment><USER40> I think that in the UK our school system's failure to set a standard of consistently adequate reading and writing skills for school leavers is a partial cause of many of our problems.

I would estimate that close to 50% of our population are functionally illiterate , by that I mean they are unable to put something into written (or typed) words that can be easily parsed by the human brain with a non ambiguous meaning. Look at the comments section of any British tabloid website for evidence of this.

This then causes employers to make a university degree a pre-requisite for many jobs that may not actually require one. If somebody has been able to pass a degree course which requires essay writing then they are probably able to send a professional email without looking like an idiot.

This then causes the government to create targets like "50% of Britains should attend university" which of course feeds a spiral of debt that may not have needed to exist if the standard of secondary education was high enough.

Personally I learned to read and write mainly by reading fiction books and computer manuals followed by writing text based games (added bonus of learning BASIC and C).

I think many things are best learned not by directly focusing on them but by creating paths of learning that subconsciously teach "supporting" skills.

</comment><comment><USER41> How about "because it's full of Finns"?

</comment><comment><USER42> The author ignores the power and idiocy of public unions in public education. Anyone interested in this topic should really watch the movie "Waiting for Superman".

<comment><USER43> All teachers in Finland are unionized.

<comment><USER42> Have you seen "Waiting for Superman"? Is what you saw in that documentary the same in Finland?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Oh the Irony.....

You lost me on the quote above the picture:

"The Scandinavian country is an education superpower because it values equality more than excellence."

<comment><USER45> I could see how that line would tempt people to check-out of the article (and I can't blame you). But I think there's a reality to it we should pay attention to.

In a previous HN thread regarding this topic I asked why countries like Finland haven't overtaken the U.S. as far as success. Given their education system has been touted as dramatically better than ours for at least 20 years.

One of the replies I got was that these countries generate more well-rounded individuals and that's why these countries tend to do better on happiness surveys and such. And maybe that's true.

Maybe it's time to accept the reality that not all people want the same thing. That Americans have been taught to strive for excellence and that inevitably leaves others behind. While Finland values equality over all and is willing to sacrifice a certain amount of societal wealth so as to not have kids who think they need to work day and night to succeed.

<comment><USER11> Finland's entire population is 5.36 million, close to the population of Minnesota and a bit more than half of Los Angeles county's population of 9.86 million.

Finland does have a lot of inventions and technology they export.

For example, the majority of web servers in existence in the world, underlying the entire world economy run an operating system originally created by a Finn.

Nokia was also a major player and innovator in cell phone and one of the first truly widespread portable information managers.

Minnesota has 3M corporation of course.

Comparing Finland to the US is not a reasonable comparison. Comparing Finland to Minnesota might be justifiable though.

<comment><USER45> You discredit your point with your examples. It doesn't take a huge population to create most of the world's success. The U.S. population is dwarfed by that of China yet very few people would argue China is more innovative than the U.S.

Don't get me wrong, Linus Trovalds and Nokia are great examples. But they aren't enough to make Finland a bed of innovation.

<comment><USER46> > The U.S. population is dwarfed by that of China yet very few people would > argue China is more innovative than the U.S.

Not yet.

Apparently the province of Shanghai has already surpassed the Finnish educational success with their 23 million inhabitants. I have no doubt the Chinese are not trying to replicate that system as much as they can.

Though I would still prefer the Finnish system with 5-6h school days for my children, there is no reason to believe bigger systems would not be scalable for improvement.

And as far as I know, the US system used to be way more competitive back in the day. And we also have to think whether the educational depression is a state or a trend... (<http://youtu.be/NXIR9ve0JU0>)

> Don't get me wrong, Linus Trovalds and Nokia are great examples. But they > aren't enough to make Finland a bed of innovation.

Not yet.

The entire country pretty much started industrializing a generation ago. A few big corporations in forestry and some high-tech is what brought us from the stone-age. But such establishments tend to shackle a fair amount of brain in such a small economy.

Given the record, I'm fairly optimistic of what will happen with all the brain freeing up from Nokia. It was a valued company hiring around as much people only in Finland (pop. 5m) than companies like Google hold globally. (pop. 7b)

<comment><USER37> _The entire country pretty much started industrializing a generation ago._

Not to mention that the bilateral trade with Soviet Union (that employed much of the country until late 80s) didn't really promote innovation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Maybe there's too much homework, too many hours in class, and not enough physical movement / play in U.S. education. And it's probably true that teachers at some especially bad schools have given up entirely.

However, I got tired of reading U.S. educational-silver-bullet fantasy writing a long time ago.

</comment><comment><USER48> Regarding the quote on Finnish not having a word for "accountability": <http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=3678>

<comment><USER49> Some of the comments on there make a good argument for the idea. Interesting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> This is my quote of the day:

> Accountability is something that is left when responsibility has been > subtracted.

</comment><comment><USER51> Personally, I think this one sentence from the article has a lot to do with why US schools are less than good: [In Finland] "If a teacher is bad, it is the principal's responsibility to notice and deal with it."

In the US, if a teacher is bad and the school is public, not much can be done. They certainly won't be fired.

Private schools, on the other hand, have more freedom in this regard.

I think the article made a lot of good points regarding creative play and avoidance of heavy standardized testing.

<comment><USER52> It's really difficult to fire a teacher in Finland too. Practically impossible if the teacher in question doesn't do violence to kids or come to work drunk.

<comment><USER53> It is not easy to lay off a public servant in Finland, but I think it is mainly so because of the procedure required. Several written warnings need be given that state the reason in plain text. Too often it just takes too much balls from the principal to write down "n. n. does not perform his/hers duties as a teacher in the required way because: ...". And a public servant can be fired because of inappropriate behavior in his/hers free time.</comment></comment></comment>


What Panera Had to Change to Make Its Menu 'Clean' - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/what-panera-had-to-change-to-make-its-menu-clean-1487646541 <comment><USER2> As long as their breakfasts abd breakfast pastrys are still tasty, I'm fine with this.</comment>


Show HN: A "living" Linux process with no memory - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/izabera/zeromaps <comment><USER2> I've now seen a similar case multiple times in the wild - if a process has a thread in uninterruptible sleep (e.g., blocked on a bad disk or a stuck network filesystem) and you kill it, the process dies, but the kernel waits forever for that thread before informing the parent process. The parent doesn't get SIGCHLD, and wait() doesn't return. (So, for example, your favorite init/supervisor won't restart the process or even realize the process has died and raise an alert.) If the thread wasn't the first thread, then the process looks like it's gone and stops having most information in /proc/$pid, but it's still got the thread in /proc/$pid/tasks/.

I've taken to calling such a process a "lich," because it's not quite a zombie - the parent can reap a zombie by calling wait(), but the lich has used magic to avoid true death.

<comment><USER3> Can/do supervisors poll for this situation? Seems like that should be possible.

<comment><USER4> Also curious why the kernel can't abandon the thread since the process is dead anyway; set a bit in kernel space so on the walk back from the syscall it bails out instead of trying to return to userspace.

That doesn't solve the kernel thread being stuck forever problem. I'm not sure what the fix is there... is it bad drivers with no timeout mechanism? I don't know how they'd do that unless the kernel IO is all async anyway. Just tearing down the kernel thread seems likely to leave the locks abandoned in bad states.

<comment><USER5> The kernel can't abandon that thread entirely, but it could "detach" it from the process it was part of and arrange for it to clean itself up and disappear if ever it wakes. And so the parent process could get told of the child's death.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > Why? I don't know. I thought it was funny

This is the profit.

While job searching I went on an interview where I got asked why I did a side gig listed on my resumee. "For friend or for money?" It was neither and I said "I don't know, because programming is fun?"

I got hired.

<comment><USER7> > I got hired.

So, for money.

<comment><USER8> Not all of the outcomes of our actions give evidence for the motivations for our actions.

<comment><USER9> Especially given how rarely our desired outcomes match our original motivations... We try to achieve one thing, but often end up achieving something else!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> [https://lwn.net/Articles/288056/](https://lwn.net/Articles/288056/)

Excerpt:

"There are advantages and disadvantages to each type of sleep. Interruptible sleeps enable faster response to signals, but they make the programming harder. Kernel code which uses interruptible sleeps must always check to see whether it woke up as a result of a signal, and, if so, clean up whatever it was doing and return -EINTR back to user space.

The user-space side, too, must realize that a system call was interrupted and respond accordingly; _not all user-space programmers are known for their diligence in this regard._

Making a sleep uninterruptible eliminates these problems, but at the cost of being, well, uninterruptible. If the expected wakeup event does not materialize, _the process will wait forever and there is usually nothing that anybody can do about it short of rebooting the system._

This is the source of the dreaded, unkillable process which is shown to be in the "D" state by ps.

Given the highly obnoxious nature of unkillable processes, one would think that interruptible sleeps should be used whenever possible. The problem with that idea is that, in many cases, the introduction of interruptible sleeps is likely to lead to application bugs.

As recently noted by _Alan Cox:_

 _Unix tradition (and thus almost all applications) believe file store writes to be non signal interruptible. It would not be safe or practical to change that guarantee._ "

That's the _whyness_ to all of this...

<comment><USER11> [https://eklitzke.org/uninterruptible- sleep](https://eklitzke.org/uninterruptible-sleep)

> If the process is in uninterruptible sleep then the process can't be > interrupted, which will cause the strace process itself to hang forever. > Remarkably, it appears that the ptrace(2) system call is itself > uninterruptible, which means that if this happens you may not be able to > kill the strace process!

Everything about this is broken and makes no sense. The Night Watch is as relevant as ever. ([https://www.usenix.org/system/files/1311_05-08_mickens.pdf](https://www.usenix.org/system/files/1311_05-08_mickens.pdf))

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Did anybody try to run it? Python part of this PoC depends on python2 module "fuse", which in turn depends on "gunpowder", "a library to facilitate machine learning on large, multi-dimensional images". What is even going on here?

      $ pip2 install fuse
      Collecting fuse
        Downloading https://files.pythonhosted.org/packages/c3/f6/82777531d0dd0fa1d1b509258873f4b48e1ec702dcf0258214fafb474895/fuse-0.1.3.tar.gz
      ERROR: Packages installed from PyPI cannot depend on packages which are not also hosted on PyPI.
      fuse depends on gunpowder@ git+https://github.com/funkey/gunpowder@721718b6569b47a2f5d5d6633c76c85f779e25c7

<comment><USER13> I think you want [https://pypi.org/project/fuse- python/](https://pypi.org/project/fuse-python/) instead. That python packages can and often do have different names than their corresponding distributables is ... not great.

<comment><USER14> I agree that it's terrible, though it can be nice in cases where a package ends up forked— for example allowing Pillow to be a drop-in replacement for PIL.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> ...and thus pure consciousness was born.

<comment><USER16> My new meditation strategy is to visualize myself as a process with no memory waiting in uninterruptible sleep.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> As someone who doesn't understand much of what's going on here, what resources would you suggest I study to improve?

<comment><USER18> A more pragmatic book is The Linux Programming Interface, by Michael Kerrisk. It is Linux-specific though, but that's probably fine.

Uninterruptible process sleep is covered in section 22.3. Threads, in chapters 29–33. Signals, chapters 20–22. The proc file system in section 12.1. Memory mappings, chapters 49–50.

<comment><USER19> The version I have covers kernel 2.6. Is that new enough to still be useful?

<comment><USER20> Useful yes, complete no.

Uninterruptible sleep, signals, memory mappings etc have not changed fundamentally.

Namespaces and cgroups are new concepts in Linux, they won't be covered. IIRC user namespaces appeared in 3.14. New cgroup hierarchy got somehow usable much later than that.

The new concepts are needed for containers. Not at all relevant for the original article here.

<comment><USER20> Actually he is still maintaining a list of changes since the book has come out. [http://man7.org/tlpi/api_changes/index.html](http://man7.org/tlpi/api_changes/index.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> Arch-TK Really neat!

Not sure why people care what it's written in. I'm pretty sure people wouldn't complain if this was a blog post written in english rather than a program written in C and python2.

</comment><comment><USER21> Can it be done without fuse?

Fuse is restricted; probably for reasons like this.

<comment><USER22> Ha. It isn't. User namespaces allow you to do this attack: I have a reproduction here: [https://github.com/sargun/fuse- example](https://github.com/sargun/fuse-example)

Basically, what's happening is that the FUSE daemon which is the one handling the FUSE requests has /dev/fuse open. There is a thread in that FUSE daemon. let's call the FUSE daemon P10, and the thread P11.

P10 wires up a FUSE filesystem on /tmp, it opens /dev/fuse with FD5 P11 enacts an uninterruptible (blocking operation) on /tmp/foo, called OP1, and /tmp/foo is FD6. P10 reads the operation (OP1) from /dev/fuse, so now OP1 is in userspace \----The Pid 1 of the namespace is killed--

P10 just terminated, and cannot make progress. It will never respond to OP1. FD5 and FD6 remain open, because P11 is in uninterruptible sleep. P11 is in an uninterruptible disk sleep waiting for OP1 to respond, and the fuse connection never aborts.

FUSE abortion doesn't kick in because the FD of `/dev/fuse` that P10 originally opened as the FUSE daemon under FD5 will not be closed until all threads as part of the process are terminated. The mount namespace wont be torn down until P11 is torn down. P11 will never be torn down because it's waiting for someone to do something.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I am not sure if uninterruptable sleep is considered "living", but fun experiment.

</comment><comment><USER24> Can't think of any way to profit from this. Just reboot your box.

<comment><USER25> That's the '???' part of it, I would assume.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> how does the FUSE filesystem interact with the c program running? I don't see the C program attempting to r/w to that x directory

<comment><USER27> [https://github.com/izabera/zeromaps/blob/85ffcf82f7eb8365ebf...](https://github.com/izabera/zeromaps/blob/85ffcf82f7eb8365ebffea755f475d97d6d1d889/zeromaps.c#L9)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Can this be implemented in Go?

<comment><USER29> I think so, but probably not reliably and/or for the long term.

In terms of the actual unmap call, the payload is in the munmap call, which is a syscall, and if you do have to set up the registers for that call, Go does have its assembler support which should be able to do that for you. You should be able to write Go source code that would perform that call, although you're going to be poking into some corners of Go most programmers never have to get into. You can also get to fuse, which in my experience is great at producing uninterruptible sleeps even when you're _not_ trying to do it on purpose....

However, in terms of reliability and the long term, you have the problem that you're not the only thread in the program the way a C program can count on that, and if any of those other threads wake up and their memory is missing, it'll probably result in the process dying. You can do a couple things to try to avoid that a little, like pinning yourself to an OS thread and running the program in one CPU mode, but especially on the latest version of Go where they've implemented true pre-emption, you can't keep the runtime from running by just hogging the execution thread anymore.

So I suspect that as long as you win the race to unmap everything before the runtime wakes up (which may also require you to call sysmap through the assembly code directly, rather than using the syscall libraries as I'm pretty sure those notify the scheduler of what you're doing), you may be able to _briefly_ be a process with no RAM mapped, but in human terms it won't be long before the runtime wakes up to do something, anything, and crash the process as a result. There's no way to avoid that in Go. You won't be able to have a process just sitting there indefinitely with no mapped RAM that you can admire and treasure and hand off to your children as part of their inheritance.

<comment><USER27> > you have the problem that you're not the only thread in the program the way > a C program can count on that

Note that if you link against libc I think it would be legal for it to create a thread behind your back, so even in this case you're not quite safe.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> why do we need to JIT the munmap code? Can we not just call munmap(2)

<comment><USER30> The call to munmap() requires both a stack (which will be unmapped at some point) and the code from libc (which will be unmapped at some time).

The program gets a list of all the allocated pages first, then creates one more for the JIT code (and a copy of the list) which is unmapped as the last thing it does. There really is no other way of doing it.</comment></comment>


Why is Tweetbot for Mac $20? - <AUTHOR> http://tapbots.com/blog/news/tweetbot-mac/ <comment><USER2> There have been many discussions here on Hacker News about the risks inherent in building your product—and hence livelihood—on top of someone else's platform, over which you have no control. Unfortunately for Tweetbot, this sort of complaint will possibly strike a chord with the almost negligible minority that would read a tech blog, and of those, an even smaller and more negligible minority will actually complain to Twitter.

Twitter is putting these guys out of business, and it's completely in their (Twitter's) right to do so. Playing the blame game may feel good but it won't solve anything; the hard work these guys put in is likely going to quickly stop being a viable source of revenue, and there's nothing they can do about it. I can't think of anything to say about it other than it's a real damned shame.

<comment><USER3> This, and other actions like it, are only going to drive more people to the underground bot/warez economy wherein terms of use and official API channels don't apply. unfortunately in that world many of the tools also compromise user security as well.

Unless Twitter, and other widely adopted platform providers, find a balance between corporate interests and supporting users interacting with their services in the ways that they prefer to do so, we will see more and more people obtaining Tweet-bots and Friend-adders, from illegitimate sources which bypass API's altogether.

<comment><USER4> Except that there's no reason it has to be underground. For a long time, instant messaging services tried to block third party clients, but I've never heard of them trying to take legal action. The Twitter TOS claims that "you have to use the Twitter API if you want to reproduce, modify, create derivative works", but that's copyright language, and Twitter does not own the copyright to tweets; only individual tweeters would have standing to sue for copyright infringement (see the recent Craigslist controversy), and I'm not sure such a claim would be valid anyway. There's the CFAA, but... anyway, I'm not a lawyer, but I'd be surprised if Twitter made a first by suing the makers of an unofficial client. In the meantime, dunno if Apple would let it into the App Store, but they could freely sell their client from their home page.

Well, that's my dream. tent.io is nice, but it's not going to replace Twitter anytime soon, and I actively dislike app.net. But we're past the age when third party clients can be effectively blocked by technical means, and I want to see their return.

<comment><USER5> Of course, Twitter _can_ prevent the use of any of their trademarks, making branding difficult, to say the least. Sure, you could make an unofficial Twitter client without any problems, but Twitter might be able to take legal action if you state anywhere that it's a "Twitter client."

Plus, these cat-and-mouse games require a user base that is fairly quick to update; if Twitter blocks one avenue (and they will try desperately to do so if one of these clients gains a decent number of users), an update for the client is likely necessary. I would think the easier way would be for users to get their own API keys and secrets and enter them into the app.

<comment><USER4> Well, that would be straight-up tortious interference. But I feel like now that clients have moved on to higher-level protocols, and exist on so many platforms, Twitter would have a hard time blocking use of API keys extracted from the official apps. If I have time, I'll retrieve them myself...

<comment><USER5> Technically, if those keys could be extracted (I'm no expert on that), that would be the easier option, as Twitter cannot really afford to revoke those without massive headaches on their end. You likely couldn't distribute those keys, but I have no idea if automatic extraction at install time would be fair game on a large scale.

<comment><USER4> Actually, keys are not copyrightable, so the only obstacle I know of to distributing them is the DMCA - which I think doesn't apply here, since the key does not circumvent an access or copy control measure (it doesn't bypass the requirement to log in or anything like that, and Twitter.app has no technical measures to prevent you from copying tweets).

<comment><USER5> My bad with the copyright, although it looks like Twitter leaves themselves nice leeway to kill at least your personal account for it, as it is forbidden to "access or search..the Services by any means other than through our currently available, published interfaces that are provided by Twitter (and only pursuant to those terms and conditions)"[1], which I would read to exclude the (slightly-modified, I believe) access Twitter's own apps get.

[1]: <https://twitter.com/tos>, Section 8

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Why is it $20?

Because it's worth that much. I didn't even give it any thought – I just hit the purchase button the moment I read I could.

They shouldn't have written this with the sheepish, question-marked headline. They don't need to apologize or feel bashful, though I get why they would. It's a great desktop app. It costs what it costs. Anyone who doesn't like that is just leaving more tokens for the rest of us.

<comment><USER7> I interpreted this as largely a protest in the hopes of getting Twitter's token policy changed. It seems very odd that they can get 100,000 tokens for free but can't pay for more.

<comment><USER6> That's reasonable. And I agree it's odd. Why should Twitter care if 20% of their userbase is on third party clients with an experience that's not on- brand, if those clients pay a per-user fee?

One explanation: not all users are created equal. It could be that the 20% who use third party clients are more/most engaged. Lassoing them back into the fold could have some strategic benefit.

<comment><USER8> Twitter can't enforce a "consistent experience" on third party clients, meaning they can't be sure that promoted tweets, accounts, and other forms of generally unwanted advertising will show up in timelines that aren't rendered with Twitter's own code.

<comment><USER9> They can revoke access for clients that don't comply with the display guidelines. They probably don't want to be in the business of policing 3rd parties like that, but they have the power if they want to use it.

<comment><USER10> Yes. Additionally, blocking access past 100k also stops one client from being the-tail-that-wags-the-dog too. Imagine a dispute where Twitter faced blocking the chosen mode of access to a significant percentage of users, or caving to the client owner.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Quickly skimming through the comments turned to be somewhat informative. Note that some are partial quotes from larger comments.

The ones that I found more interesting are:

\- "The same price as my operating system. Later guys, it's been fun."

While I understand his/her reasoning I disagree because it's a very deceiving comparison.

\- "I love tweetbot, and I know tapbots won't care, but I can't afford to buy $20 for something that performs one function, which I can already get on my phone, and the same basic data from other clients and even twitter.com."

I wouldn't go as far to say that it performs just one function but I can understand what (s)he means.

\- "The worst thing the App Store did was to devalue software. I write it for a living, I know the time and energy that goes in to building a good piece of software, and asking to be paid for that work is not evil."

\- "I'd pay $100 for Tweetbot for Mac. Anyone who whines about $20 has clearly never written a piece of software."

\- "Don't get me wrong, I bought it. I'am a software developer too, so I know how much work you had to put into it. But still, it's too much. Especially in Poland, where I live. Especially if you compare it to other Twitter clients, or software in MAS in general. Especially, if you consider that the future of the software is not safe (because of Twitter limitations)."

I guess we, developers, are always more understanding when it comes to the amount of effort required to create great software. However, you can apply that same stament to many other professions (shoemakers and shoes, etc)

EDIT: Formatting

<comment><USER12> I don't think the "I'll pay anything" guys make valid points. Most people do not judge the reasonability of a price on the amount of work that is put into a product. (Nor should they.)

When one purchases something, they ought to evaluate the value of a product solely on the utility that they gain from that product and how that compares to the utility and price of similar products. Tweetbot is working against the precedent set by other apps in this regard. It yields near-negligible utility over free alternatives and competes in an ecosystem dominated by free apps. (If anything, it yields less utility over others, because once the token threshold is met, it will in all likelihood become abandon-ware.) Thus the value of Tweetbot— and of software in general— goes down.

The work put in by the developers has no weight in determining the price. The market's tolerance, perception of value, and willingness to pay is the only factor. Even if I spend 10,000 hours making a great latte, it's unreasonable that I charge $1m for it because my competitors are selling a similar product at $4 and the increase in utility of my latte versus theirs is likely not enough to warrant the increase in cost to the consumer. Their logic is flawed and is totally incongruous with the most fundamental concepts of economics. Commerce is a quid pro quo, not a charitable donation.

I don't, however, believe that such a high price is a knock against TapBots. They are permitted to charge whatever they like. You really can't fault them for price-gouging: Everyone loves money. The desire to get more of it is something that is not only reasonable, but is lauded in a capitalist economy. I find it doubtful that many people think ill of TapBots for their pricing. Rather, the issue lies in the fact that their app does relatively little yet has an incredibly inflated and anomalous price that deviates from the norm. The motives are reasonable, but the price isn't.

As for me, I won't be buying TweetBot. It's more money than I can reasonably afford. Even if it weren't, it's price simply outpaces it's value to such an extent as to be unjustifiable.

<comment><USER11> >When one purchases something, they ought to evaluate the value of a product solely on the utility that they gain from that product and how that compares to the utility and price of similar products.

I wouldn't say is that simple. I think it depends on WHO is buying WHAT. For example, if I'm buying a pillow...yes, I'll buy the cheapest one available. If I were buying a watch, no. I'd be more than happy to pay over $10,000 for a watch (insane ah? if I could just convince the wife...) Why? because a different set of criteria come into play and the utilitarian aspect (telling time) loses importance (heck a $5 Casio can be more accurate sometimes). Things like the engineering behind the construction of the watch, the history of the brand, the materials used, etc, become purchasing decisions factors. The point is that for some it's worth $20 or more because it's either beautiful, stable, etc, or they might just like Tapbot as a company.

>Tweetbot is working against the precedent set by other apps in this regard. It yields near-negligible utility over free alternatives and competes in an ecosystem dominated by free apps. (If anything, it yields less utility over others, because once the token threshold is met, it will in all likelihood become abandon-ware.) Thus the value of Tweetbot— and of software in general— goes down. >The work put in by the developers has no weight in determining the price. The market's tolerance, perception of value, and willingness to pay is the only factor. Even if I spend 10,000 hours making a great latte, it's unreasonable that I charge $1m for it because my competitors are selling a similar product at $4 and the increase in utility of my latte versus theirs is likely not enough to warrant the increase in cost to the consumer. Their logic is flawed and is totally incongruous with the most fundamental concepts of economics. Commerce is a quid pro quo, not a charitable donation.

And yet...I'm confident and I really hope they sell enough copies to make a good profit out of a great product.

>You really can't fault them for price-gouging: Everyone loves money.

I truly disagree with this statement. It's not about greed. Come on, they even took the time to explain to their users why they had charge more than they had initially planned.

>As for me, I won't be buying TweetBot. It's more money than I can reasonably afford. Even if it weren't, it's price simply outpaces it's value to such an extent as to be unjustifiable.

Look, you wrote it more clearly than me: it's about "perception of value". Some users think it's fairly priced, others that it's too high, and some that they could even charge more.

By the way, I won't buy it either...too expensive...for me ;)

<comment><USER12> Fair enough. The notoriety or devotion to the brand and other "soft" benefits also have weight on the utility of a product. The traits like material used and engineering are encompassed within the utility. If an app runs better, it's worth more. If it looks better, it's worth more. So yes, people will value TB for Mac differently. But that doesn't defend the initial sentiment. Those guys did not argue something akin to "I like the Tapbots Guys and the aesthetic of the product has value, so I will pay more." In fact, they argued close to the opposite. Regardless of the value people get (which is going to vary by person), they assert that the product is worth that much to everyone because of the effort that went in to it. They were actually indignant that people did not see $20 worth of value in the app. I don't believe that perception of value is absolute.

In regards to the defense of the price, I don't think the fact that they are resource-constrained changes the endgame: they want to make money. Conceivably, TapBots wants to accrue a large amount of money over the lifetime of TweetBot. This artificial constraint changes their ability to earn money because the number of sales is limited and life of the product is shortened. So, they charge more to compensate for Twitter's absurd policies. That does not change their motives, it just changes their strategy. They're not being coerced by Twitter to sell it for $20. They could sell it for $10 or $15, and could likely make a profit, but it would be substantially less than if they were to sell it for more. It's all in pursuit of money. Like I said, this isn't bad. I admire people who are capable of creating such rabid fans and defenders, and who can get away selling an app at far above the market average.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Tweetbot seems really awesome and I realize they explain why it is worth the $20, but I still think it's too pricey. And I don't think that because of Tweetbot, I think that because of Twitter. I'm more worried with all the sporadic changes Twitter is making lately that they could somehow do something to make Tweetbot useless. Maybe by not allowing 3rd party apps or something. Who knows? And because of that, I don't want to risk wasting $20. It's sort of like how people felt with the "Elevation Dock" on the iPhone. They got it for their iPhone 4's and then it basically became just a paperweight when the 5 came out ( _I realize they made a crumby adapter to make it work with the iPhone 5_ ).

I guess, all in all, it just bums me out that awesome products (like Tweetbot) could potentially have a great product like this ruined by 1 small decision Twitter makes. And I just don't think I want to waste $20 on that bet (especially when the Twitter site UI/UX isn't THAT bad to use).

 _/2 cents_

<comment><USER14> Even if the app is only around and viable for a year, if you use it every day, is it really so hard to justify spending $20 on it?

I'm really glad we have companies like Tapbots, Panic, etc., pushing against the "race to the bottom" trend with app prices that we've seen lately. Good apps are HARD to do, and there's no reason they shouldn't command a price commensurate with the effort involved.

<comment><USER13> > _Even if the app is only around and viable for a year, if you use it every > day, is it really so hard to justify spending $20 on it?_

That's exactly what I'm worried about. It COULD be a year (and in that case, yes, it would be worth it), but no one can guarantee that. It could be tomorrow for all we know. And that is why I say it's a gamble I don't really want to take on a social networking app (no matter how nice the UI/UX is).

It's worth more to me to just use the browser Twitter app (has a few flaws but isn't THAT bad) for free then take a huge risk with $20.

<comment><USER15> > That's exactly what I'm worried about. It COULD be a year (and in that case, > yes, it would be worth it), but no one can guarantee that. It could be > tomorrow for all we know.

If they stopped supporting it tomorrow, it wouldn't disappear from your device. The earliest it would possibly break would be in the next major OS upgrade.

Y'know, in about a year.

The idea that a measly _$20_ is too much to pay for months of engineering and design work up to now, let alone going forward, is utterly absurd.

I'd expect it from Joe Random Entitled-Guy, but I'd expect a higher standard from HN, where presumably the sentiment is that devs ought to be able to subsist above the poverty line.

<comment><USER13> > _If they stopped supporting it tomorrow, it wouldn't disappear from your > device. The earliest it would possibly break would be in the next major OS > upgrade._

That's not true at all. Twitter could revoke their API access or something that could break it tomorrow. Yes the actual app may still be on my device but nothing says it will actually still be able to work. That is all in Twitter's hands.

> _The idea that a measly $20 is too much to pay for months of engineering and > design work up to now, let alone going forward, is utterly absurd._

That is their decision to make this bet. If I were to spend years and years making the perfect toaster and I charge $1,000 for it (to pay for the engineering and design work), you're saying it's _absurd_ NOT to buy it? It's actually the opposite. It's absurd to assume that just because someone puts engineering and design into a product, that it automatically makes the product worth _X_ price.

<comment><USER15> > If I were to spend years and years making the perfect toaster and I charge > $1,000 for it (to pay for the engineering and design work), you're saying > it's absurd NOT to buy it?

It's never absurd to choose not to buy anything. But your analogy gets in the way of what is absurd. We're not talking about charging $1000 dollars (the same price as a nice laptop, a middling DSLR, or a crappy used car) for a toaster.

We're talking about $20 (the same price as a delivered pizza, a middling steak, and less than two tickets for an hour and a half movie) for a polished piece of software.

What's _absurd_ is asserting that that's _too much_ to ask for the product of months of engineering and design work. You certainly don't have to buy it! It's totally ok if it's not worth $20 of your money, to you.

But asserting that the authors ought to _value their work_ less than a _pizza_ , that they're doing something _wrong_ by asking a not-unreasonable pizza- money price for it, is entitled, race-to-the-bottom mentality crap.

Engineers are expensive, iOS engineers doubly so. This meme that their work is worth less than a candy bar, let alone a pizza, is a toxic devaluation of the worth of every engineer working in the software field

coda: They're currently _both_ the #2 paid app and #2 top-grossing app in the App Store, so the demand is certainly there at $20. Devaluing their work by launching at less would have accomplished nothing but leaving money on the table.

<comment><USER12> Value is determined not by the amount of work put into it, but by the precedent set by the market. So long as there are free and sub-$3 clients, $20 is anomalous.

What gets me most about arguments like these is that you are pulling numbers out of thin air. You assert that $.99 is too little for an app, but provide no context nor any evidence to support that. Give me a number that demonstrates the monetary value to the consumer of an hour of development. You can't.

Insofar as there is no absolute value of development time— and, therefore, of apps— the only way to gauge value is based on market precedent. If everyone else is charging $2 for their apps, yeah, $20 is too much.

<comment><USER15> > Value is determined not by the amount of work put into it, but by the > precedent set by the market.

directly contradicts:

> If everyone else is charging $2 for their apps, yeah, $20 is too much.

Let this sink in: Tweetbot for has been out for less than 24 hours. It is _already_ #2 in sales _and_ #2 in Mac App Store revenue.

The market _completely disagrees with your latter statement_.

What you're seeing here isn't that $20 is too much given that everyone else is selling at $2.

Rather, what you're seeing is that _everyone else_ , operating under the received "wisdom" that apps are worth less than a cup of coffee, are leaving absolutely staggering amounts of money on the table by being afraid to ignore the nonsense and ask for real value in return for their work.

<comment><USER16> > Let this sink in: Tweetbot for has been out for less than 24 hours. It is > already #2 in sales and #2 in Mac App Store revenue.

To be fair, Tweetbot only has to sell 1/10 as many copies as those $2 apps in order to beat them at the sales ranking.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Funnily enough I wonder if they would have gotten more flack if they had just auctioned off the 100,000 licenses and see what the market would handle? I suspect they may have gotten more than $20 each and there would be less complaining as it's a totally transparent process.

<comment><USER18> This probably makes more sense and they wouldn't have needed to give up a 30% cut to Apple.

Right now, I don't see how they will be able to continue to update the app once they hit 100,000 users whilst preventing the app from being purchased by new users via the Mac App Store. In order to offer updates via the MAS, your app needs to be available to sale to new customers.

<comment><USER19> They could just raise the price to $1000 once they get close to the token limit.

<comment><USER20> Or just make it free, since it's no longer useful for new users.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I thought it would be at the $9.99 price point, like Sparrow was. I am surprised by it being $20, but I understand given the limitations and will purchase it.

What happens to the tokens when people pirate this app? Does it count towards their limit?

<comment><USER15> > What happens to the tokens when people pirate this app? Does it count > towards their limit?

Yeah. There's no way for Twitter to tell them apart.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> So, they aim for max 1.4 million in revenue (100k x $20 - 30% for apple, minus an unknown amount for beta testers) for the lifetime of the app. How many people have worked on it?

It does show the limited upside of twitter apps under the new rules(yes, 1.4 million is still a lot of money, but no home run for a company).

<comment><USER23> They have a limit over 100k (2x their current user base) IIRC, since they already have 100k+ users on Tweetbot.

<comment><USER24> Tokens are per-application. So they do not have "a limit over 100k", they have a limit of 100k on "Tweetbot for Mac". Which is a completely separate limit than the one for Tweetbot on iOS.

<comment><USER23> In a blog post they said, "Our user cap for Tweetbot for Mac is also large and we don't expect any problems given the smaller market", which sounds like it's the double-user cap, not 100k.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Am I the only one smiling at seeing the equivalent of limited-edition software in the year 2012?

Twitter is weird.

<comment><USER26> I'm glad I'm not alone in thinking this is beyond absurd.

Really, now. It's on the level of: _PAYING_ for _ELECTRONIC "BOOK"_ _"RENTALS"_

Think about that. Royalties, intellectual property, and blah blah blah aside...

They insist on implying that you're "renting" electronic signals. They don't want you to think in terms of paying an ISP for a connection (service), and then the transmission (bandwidth), AND THEN THE CONTENT (the "book") ON TOP OF ALL THAT. You could just KEEP the "book" forever, with virtualized backups if you really wanted to. And can't we just dispose of the "book" euphemisms too? What you're really paying for is a brokered decryption of information. Gee, thanks for brightening up that reality with all the duckspeak, marketing.

It's just bits. Induced magnetic fields on a metal platter. Energized wires in an integrated circuit.

I mean I guess you could take the view that we all "rent" beer, in a certain wry sense. But that's like when inmates rationalize that _everyone's_ in a "prison" somehow, or when prostitutes rationalize that _all_ house-wives are essentially "prostitutes" with a different name.

Seriously. Paying for a Twitter interface?

You can just use the website.

For free.

$20 is like 4 hours of work for someone who're making minimum wage.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I thought the 100,000 limit was just the limit for free tokens - "you have to talk to us". I mean, if Twitter is willing to sell tokens at $2 each, then Tapbot can sell this app forever giving Twitter their cut.

I also find it ironic that the app maker has to ask beta testers to revoke access to free up tokens for others.

<comment><USER28> >I thought the 100,000 limit was just the limit for free tokens - "you have to talk to us".

That's what twitter's API announcement says. It seems really disrespectful of tapbot to be unwilling to pay twitter anything when they're charging their users $20. If this is the app maker's attitude toward the service they are building their business on top of, i can understand why twitter wants to crack down on their API consumers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> They say their plan is to both release it for profit and continue to support it, all under the constraint of a limited number of user tokens provided to them by Twitter.

I wonder if they considered a subscription option instead of a one time payment. A lower subscription price (say a dollar a month) might have sounded good to users psychologically, kept a revenue stream going for the stated future development, and offered the potential for recapture of user tokens as users drop out of their ecosystem over time for whatever reason, which they could then convert to revenue again.

I really have to imagine that they at least considered it, -I'd love to know why they decided against it.

<comment><USER30> Twitter does not allow the keyholder to revoke tokens; only individual users can do that. It would be impossible for Tapbots to reclaim unused/unpaid tokens. (Which is why they beg users of the alpha to dissociate Tweetbot in their control panel if they don't plan on buying the app.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I _really_ want to buy it, and I don't even mind $20 that much but given that they've got so few tokens I'm actually going to leave it for someone who uses Twitter on the desktop way more than I would. I think it's a reasonable price given the situation.

<comment><USER32> Can you imagine if _everyone_ felt the exact same way you do? I suggest you buy it if you _really_ want to.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Twitter does not want to provide the opportunity to empower 3rd parties to become so large that they have to acquire them.

After tweet deck, this has become the driving principal. If twitter restricts platform usage, then they don't have to worry about that happening again.

That is the answer.

</comment><comment><USER34> I would happily pay $20 for Tweetbot. It's a great app: well designed, easy to use, intuitive.

</comment><comment><USER35> The irony of this is ever since I got tweetbot for my ipad, I stoped using twitter on my Mac.

</comment><comment><USER36> I'm interested to see that developers aren't trusting Twitter when they said if you got close to your token limit you'd be able to apply to them to raise the limit.

On reflection, given their recent behaviour as a company I can understand that.

</comment><comment><USER37> Once upon a time you didn't have to justify your pricing. Thanks App Store.

<comment><USER38> Why is the pricing of this an App Store issue?

I prefer Yorufukurou over over the other clients I have tried, and its free on the App Store or the developer's site.

<comment><USER39> Because the App Store devalued the price of software. $0.99 was not normal before 2008. You can't build and maintain great software on $0.99.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> The limited number of tokens argument for inflated price doesn't make sense for standalone apps. It is very much possible that people get their own developer tokens from twitter. Perhaps, you could provide a lower price tier for such cases.

<comment><USER19> Developers aren't their target audience.

<comment><USER40> You'll find plenty of them when you come to HN to talk about your product.

<comment><USER41> What does that prove? I doubt you'd get any meaningful number of people on HN willing to roll their own tokens to make it worthwhile lowering the price.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Lost Images Come To Life A Century After Antarctic Expedition - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/12/30/258432566/lost-images-come-to-life-a-century-after-antarctic-expedition

<comment><USER2> I'd have thought that the most famous words of anyone on the Scott expedition would have been the last words of Captain Lawrence Oates (at least according to Scott):

"I am just going outside and may be some time."

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

</comment><comment><USER3> there's a great book about this expedition - a must read!

[http://www.amazon.com/Endurance-Shackletons-Incredible- Alfre...](http://www.amazon.com/Endurance-Shackletons-Incredible-Alfred- Lansing/dp/078670621X)

<comment><USER4> Another great book about this expedition is Shackleton's own _South_.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I imagine they are more retrievable than a memory stick in a frozen camera would be after that period, although who knows.</comment>