Does "finding co-founders" ever work? - <AUTHOR>

Recently Paul Graham confirmed what I had already suspected; that it is personal relationships that keeps startups going through the difficult times.<p>So what about the people who advertise they are seeking co-founders, and the public events where that is supposedly the goal? Does this ever work? Have any startups founded this way gone on to success? <comment><USER2> I found a cofounder on The Cofounder Wishlist Spreadsheet. We decided to meet at a Starbucks in Manhattan and eventually worked on a project. I didn't have anything specific in mind when we met up, just to talk and see what he was working on. We ended up working on a project together. It never went anywhere, but we're still friends and may collaborate in the future.

In terms of events - I find that many "find a cofounder" events are lopsided with 90% "business people" either looking for free labor (i.e. "willing to you pay in equity") or a "CTO". I try to avoid these events.

</comment><comment><USER3> One thing I have learned from previous start-ups I've worked on is that choosing your partners carefully is extremely important. You really need to have worked with them before and trust them completely (trust both their honesty, and their competence). A bad co-founder can ruin even the most successful venture.

Right now I'm working on my venture alone because I just moved out to the bay area and don't know anyone out here whom I have worked with before. Sure, doing it alone is tough, but I'd rather do it alone than have a co-founder I wasn't sure about.

Are you thinking about starting something alone / searching for a co-founder? Feel free to shoot me an email if you wan perspectives on doing it alone. Good luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not thinking about doing this myself. The very idea of looking for co- founders among strangers seems absolutely bonkers to me.

I am just interested that there appears to be a mini-industry springing up to serve people that have this fantasy. It suggests to me that we now have a new set of cultural myths about entrepreneurship, to some extent created by this very website.

Consider how many fortunes are made selling the old image of entrepreneurship. Books with titles like "Millionaire's Mind". They make the elementary mistake of assuming that if one emulates the characteristics of successful people (or organizations), this will lead to one's own success.

For example, Jim Collins has made his entire career out of telling people how to emulate successful organizations. He observes that great (or greatly profitable) organizations, like Microsoft, have all set themselves what he calls a Big Hairy Audacious Goal, such as "A computer on every desk and in every home". And pretty soon the accounting departments at fourth-rate retailers are taking weekend retreats to ask themselves what their "BHAG" is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> OP, if you are asking this b/c you are wanting to find a co-founder yourself, I'll offer this advice: be wary of anyone who says (1) they did find a co- founder through these types of techniques, and (2) who has been with that person for less than one year (or possibly two). I've seen guys who say that they have a startup and then find a co-founder but both are still working full-time on their jobs while trying to get the startup ready part time. That doesn't count to me - if I was looking for a co-founder, I'd want concrete answers from people who had spent 60+ hours a week together for a year or longer.

</comment><comment><USER5> Looking for a co-founder is usually a waste of time. If you are flying solo, hire someone good and cheap.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, according to the iron triangle, that also means slow. ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> yes. next question?

<comment><AUTHOR> Citation needed.

<comment><USER6> I founded a startup with two guys who were looking for a cofounder. And we are doing just fine. You need a complementary team, but it's very rare that tech guys hang out with business guys. So most often the only choice is to go and search.</comment></comment></comment>


Bitcoin's mempool (work on open-source problem) - <AUTHOR> https://judica.org/blog/mempool/ <comment><USER2> Please use the title from the page on HN.

<comment><AUTHOR> i apologize, what do you mean?

<comment><USER2> HN submissions should use the same title as the submitted page, unless it's misleading or clickbait (cf. [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)). E.g. here "The Urgency of Rearchitecting Bitcoin's Mempool"

<comment><AUTHOR> understood ! will make sure next time. thanks for explaining that.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Scala daddy wraps his Java baby in Red Hat-ness - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/05/12/typesafe/ <comment><USER2> Previous discussion on HN:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2540594></comment>


Ask HN: Is Stackoverflow running out of questions and answers? - <AUTHOR> I think I'm observing a trend whereby you can't get basic questions answered anymore. At this point, most SO Q &A are duplications on some level, so it seems many things go unanswered, are downvoted, or closed. Is this healthy for the SO network? <comment><USER2> It sounds like what you're mainly describing is that it's hard to ask a question _that isn 't already answered on the site._ (You can't close as a dupe unless the duplicate has answers.) From a "helping the most people learn" perspective, this sounds like a champagne problem: There's so many answers that it's hard to find something to ask that's not already covered.

From a community perspective, we _do_ want all devs to be able to get involved in the site, so it's not ideal if the solution set is actually so comprehensive that it raises the bar for getting involved.

But I'm not too worried. SO still gets over ten thousand questions _per day,_ which gives devs who want to contribute to the programming community a ton of opportunities to share answers and help. Plus, and new languages like swift leave a lot of blue ocean for asking new questions.

Don't get me wrong, our two biggest product priorities are focused on how we can make it easier for new users to get involved, and how we can ensure that more active users continue to feel appreciated and find it rewarding to share their knowledge on SO, where so many others can benefit from it. There's plenty more we can do on both fronts, but I'm not too worried that we're running out of ways for devs to contribute if they want to.

Disclosure: I work at Stack Exchange. I love Stack Exchange. I am not an unbiased observer of Stack Exchange. My mom says I and my company are special, and I believe her.

<comment><USER3> stop bullshiting please. Your site is racist as hell. I am from India and just because my name is Indian my questions are downvoted.

Then I created profile with american ( Christan ) name and same question have got 50+ upvotes.

Fact is that many of American scumbags , who in reality do nothing at their jobs and just show up for $$ between 8 to 4 have been dominating site for at least two years.

Another problem is ,every new question which your stupid moderators don't agree with are closed without regard irrespective of value of the question.

Its one thing to occasionally close the question but its another when you call every question poster stupid, opinion-based and especially judge based on nationality.

I have kept proof of how same people and their tone change when I post with american name.

My honest feedback is if you want to maintain the site quality stop judging question posters.

<comment><USER4> > stop bullshiting please

Comments like this are not ok on Hacker News. Please review the site rules:

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

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

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> No, Stack Overflow is just getting more popular. A lot of beginner programmers want to know how to send a JavaScript variable to a PHP script. This has been solved years ago on Stack Overflow, so it will get closed. This is just an example.

</comment><comment><USER6> It is fun when you google stuff, get SO results, and then see that it was "closed due to duplication." Particularly when it is the top Google result with no clarification what it is a "duplication" of or similar.

<comment><USER7> If a SO question is closed as a duplicate, there's a big banner at the top of it saying what it's a duplicate of.

See [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/27002661/c-sorting- arrays](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/27002661/c-sorting-arrays) for example - that grey box at the top shows the answer it was marked as a duplicate of.

<comment><USER8> And isn't it awesome that we have no way to fight back, with the argument that "the old question is irrelevant because it's too old". Sometimes things change and old answers become VERY BAD

For instance any question that suggests a Python programmer use PIL instead of Pillow. And for another example any recommendation that a Python programmer 'easy_install' something, pip is now the recommended tool and easy_install is depreciated.

<comment><USER7> So add comments (or updated answers) on the original questions/answers. Those are the ones with the search engine juice anyhow!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> So long as the existing answers can be gradually refined and improved.

The other problem is when questions are sort of the same but not quite.

[http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/207397/what- word-...](http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/207397/what-word-means- the-feeling-of-discomfort-caused-by-watching-peoples-ineptitud)

[http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/12350/what-is- the...](http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/12350/what-is-the-word-for- the-emotion-i-feel-when-i-see-someone-being-humiliated)</comment>


I no longer use my iPad - <AUTHOR> http://omarabid.com/i-no-longer-use-my-ipad/ <comment><USER2> I bought an iPad mini 3, and the novelty wore off after about a month. I wish my iPad was capable of functioning as a laptop instead of a mobile television. The conclusion to buy a surface makes sense, and I will probably do the same.

</comment><comment><USER3> I read that post on my iPad. My iPhone 6 and laptop are sitting idle on the table.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'd buy a Continuum-enabled x86 Atom phablet (whenever Intel decides to catch up).</comment>


The Manifesto of the Futurist Programmers (1991) - <AUTHOR> http://www.graficaobscura.com/future/futman.html <comment><USER2> Date: 1991

Related _Futurist Progammers Notes_ : [http://www.graficaobscura.com/future/futnotes.html](http://www.graficaobscura.com/future/futnotes.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> Puts burning books into a whole new perspective.

</comment><comment><USER4> TLDR?</comment>


Ask HN: Who Earns a Living of Betting? - <AUTHOR> Specifically advantage betting in soccer,NBA etc.<p>How did you get started? Do you do it full-time? What's your experience during corona? <comment><USER2> I know a few, 1- Young guy, full time online poker playing 6+ games at a time and uses software to assist, based in Australia, bought his house outright a few years ago. 2- Retired guy who bets on local club matches, has encyclopedic knowledge of local clubs and is banned from placing bets by bookie chains. Pays people to go place his bets. Also plays poker. 3- Used to manually arbitrage Betfair but it took a lot of effort, was worth a few hundred euro per month as a hobby. Betfair has an API so might be worth looking at to see if you can find a gap.

</comment><comment><USER3> Not myself, but I know someone who was making a living from sports betting a few years back. It's not that different from "gambling" in the stock market. The same principles apply. You need some kind of egde, which often is 1. Data or 2. Market Access, less often the statistical model. Better data beats better models, and modeling is commoditized these days. Also, you need a pretty decent bankroll so that you can handle the volatility.

It's an interesting space, but don't expect to be profitable without investing 1-2 years of your time into building good models, infrastructure and data access. This already assumes you have that kind of freedom/capital and are able to stick with it through tough times. Also, edges can be fleeting, so it's a constant race against time and other players to find new opportunities. A bit similar to online poker. It was possible to be highly profitable with online poker 5-10 years ago, but over the last few years it has become very hard to impossible to beat the odds, so a lot of poker people have moved on to gambling on other things, sports betting included.

<comment><USER4> > It's not that different from "gambling" in the stock market.

Would you say that there's a difference in the number of skilled / unskilled market participants in the stock market and in the betting markets? E.g. majority of market participants in the stock market are skilled institutional investors vs. majority of market participants in the betting market are casual bettors?

<comment><USER3> I think stock market is a vague term. It depends on what "market" you're trading in. If you're trading highly liquid stocks with large market caps you'll be in against large hedge funds employing hundreds of people. If you're trading less liquid stocks, small caps, complex derivatives, or other smaller markets, you may have less competition and it'll be easier to find an edge.

I'd say the same is true for betting. Your competition will vary depending on the market size and liquidity. Small unknown markets are typically not worth going after for large teams of highly-paid individuals. For example, you probably won't find as much competition betting on eSports events than betting on horses [0] (in jurisdictions where it's legal). So yeah, I think you're right that the professional competition in betting is probably a lot less than in the stock market.

Finding a market with the right characteristics is IMO the most important thing. If you're an individual, you ideally want to find small unknown and relatively illiquid markets where you can make enough money for yourself, but where it's not worth for large players to get into.

[0] [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-05-03/the- gambl...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-05-03/the-gambler-who- cracked-the-horse-racing-code)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I worked with someone who did in the late 2000-2010 and and then for a company that did (supporting circa 100 employees).

I can't say too much as I was on the dev side of things not the stats modelling. But at a minimum you'd need a good statistical model, high quality data and a way to get great odds on your bets. If you can make the money using just Betfair (etc.) that is better because bookies are going to ban you if you are making smart bets so it's chicken/egg. You also need a big bankroll, for that inevitable stream of bad luck. And lots of little bets are of course better than small number of big bets that could wipe you out. I'm mostly here to say yes it's possible and can be very lucrative.

No corona experience.

</comment><comment><USER6> No experience myself but you might be interested in this subreddit: [https://www.reddit.com/r/algobetting/](https://www.reddit.com/r/algobetting/)

</comment><comment><USER7> I had been betting professionally for 11 years. Started a product owner job at a bookmaker this january. Already considering going pro again.

Things were harder during corona but not impossible.</comment>


Why I'm Not Looking to Hire Computer-Science Majors - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/why-im-not-looking-to-hire-computer-science-majors-1440804753 <comment><USER2> For a split second, I misread the name of the author of the article as "David Gelernter"[1] a professor of computer science at Yale who perhaps is so famous that he needs no introduction here, but on a closer reading I see that the author is Daniel Gelernter,[2] who I think must be David Gelernter's son.[3] The author Daniel is part of three generations in the Gelernter family who have thought deeply about computer science and its implications for society, so I am all for reading the article closely and grappling with its argument, and I am grateful for the submission of this article (which a friend just told me about on Facebook) here on Hacker News.

The thrust of Daniel Gelernter's argument here is that there is a shortage of programmers with a certain kind of skill set suitable for working in startups, because large businesses that grew up as successful startups have bid up the price of programmers with those skill sets. "Part of the problem is that startups have to compete with hegemons like Google and Facebook that offer extraordinary salaries for the best talent." My oldest son began working at Google a month ago, so for the last couple months family conversation has included discussion of Google's hiring process and how working for Google compares to working for other startups (my son's previous employment). The programmer job market has a lot of interesting features, but one of those features is indeed a fairly high premium on software engineers who have a love of coding (who are self-motivated, whether or not the job market rewards the motivation, in learning more and more about coding every day) and who have good problem-solving skills, a business orientation to doing work that meets customer needs and builds a profitable company, and good written and oral communication skills. There is a severe shortage at all levels of employment of software engineers who meet those other requirements.

The author's other comment to note is "The thing I don't look for in a developer is a degree in computer science." It's empirically true that young people can get great jobs as software engineers at the most selective employers even if they don't have degrees in computer science--as long as they can handle a tough series of technical interviews. I've seen it done. Many other commenters on Hacker News have noted that software engineering, more than most occupations in the United States, has processes for finding people with actual technical skill irrespective of whether those people have college degrees. If you are looking for work, having a college degree may provide many benefits (among those the ability to gain a visa to move to another country where you would rather live), but the main thing to gain is the knowledge and experience that helps you solve actual problems in industry with code that works. Some people gain that knowledge and experience through a computer science degree program (or at least DURING a computer science degree program), but others gain it through other channels, and the smartest companies look for worker performance more than they look for degrees.

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

[2] [https://www.linkedin.com/pub/daniel- gelernter/11/a57/251](https://www.linkedin.com/pub/daniel- gelernter/11/a57/251)

[3] [http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB100014240527023032815045792222...](http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702303281504579222280324072554)

<comment><USER3> I would add that having stripped out the domain specific part prior to these words of your's:

" _[... people] who have good problem-solving skills, a business orientation to doing work that meets customer needs and builds a profitable company, and good written and oral communication skills._ "

Your following sentence is also true with the modification I've made in brackets:

" _There is a severe shortage at all levels of employment of [people] who meet those other requirements._ "

With programming skills or not, people with these characteristics have always been rare. We can gather lots of them for a while for massive nation efforts like the Manhattan Project (something I've been studying in detail for the last few months), but in normal times all organizations, from Google to just another startup, have trouble finding these people who will make or break their ventures.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Yet another example of someone mixing the concepts of scientist, engineer, and technician in the computing world.

You wouldn't hire a food scientist to control and feed the machines that produce the bread in an industrial bakery, or even to design and build that production line. Producing code is not as closely related as one might think to the science that leads to the algorithms and design patterns that underscore the languages and frameworks that enable the tools and techniques ultimately used by those who produce code.

The sooner all concerned (me, you, academics, entrepreneurs, employers) settle on a suitable terminology for what it is that computer scientists, software engineers, and developers need to learn to do what they do, the sooner we can get past this type of article.

<comment><USER5> Absolutely. This is what I posted on the other copy of this article:

The problem is that even if you understand those concepts well, you're not necessarily able to apply them after most programs. If your startup is in the business of crating new algorithms to solve various problems, that's one thing, but what most want is someone who knows what existing algorithm should be used to solve a problem in the best (or at least an acceptable) way, and do so in a manner that's both expandable and maintainable. Ideally, they're looking for a craftsman, not a scientist. These roles can occasionally be found in the same person, but it's extremely rare in my experience.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> > _A junior developer fresh out of college can expect to earn around $10,000 > monthly, plus benefits, a $100,000 signing bonus and $200,000 in stock > options._

Maybe I'm out of touch with the realities of the world, being an ancient 31-year old PHP/Java developer who's never written a line of something cool like Go in his life, but an expectation of $10k post-tax right out of college doesn't seem like a realistic expectation for every graduate.

<comment><USER7> In the midwest, a dev with no professional experience straight out of college can expect to earn around $3,450 monthly (post-tax), plus benefits, no signing bonus, and no stock options.

<comment><USER8> It's really pretty irrational (in terms of pay, career progression) to be a dev in the Midwest. Even if you don't like Bay Area cost of living there's Portland, Seattle, Boston, etc. the only reasons I can think of to stay would be a serious desire to own a suburban home or to live near your parents.

<comment><USER9> Is it really? Bankrate.com's cost-of-living calculator tells me the equivalent income in San Francisco if you're moving from Columbus, Ohio earning $110K is $213K. That would be an approximate salary of a senior developer. And these are jobs where 40 hrs is the norm, in addition to medical, dental, disability, life insurance, 401k match, and bonus.

<comment><USER8> Personally, if I were to choose the Midwest, it'd be Chicago.

Glassdoor has an average software engineer in Chicago making $75k. Bankrate says the equivalent income in SF would be $113k, and Glassdoor has median salary in SF as $103k.

$10k is a lot of money to be sure, and you are paying a premium for SF, but it's not always so dramatic.

Employers seem to be pretty good at adjusting salaries by geography according to cost of living. You can't really "win" unless you can convince someone to pay you a Bay Area salary to live in the Midwest. And maybe you can, but if they're smart and the market is efficient, it won't last long.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Of course not. He doesn't need some computer science majors. He has a little app which allows you to search your mailbox.[1] Well, actually he doesn't have an app. The site says "Coming next spring". You can "preorder" the app. So he's pre-announced a product to be written by people he hasn't hired yet.

And, of course, it's "cloud based". It sucks up all your email into their servers, where they get to look at it. Privacy policy? What privacy policy?

[1] [http://dittach.com/](http://dittach.com/)

</comment><comment><USER11> Wow what a ridiculous article. For starters, only an extremely small slice of fresh-out-of-college developers would get a 120k salary and 300k in bonus and options. This is still absurdly high, if it's even true (and not exaggerated for the purpose of getting an article into the WSJ). I've noticed a sharp uptick in CS grads, and it seems starting salaries are actually nosing downwards. Or at least that's the case here in Boston.

This article is nonsense, and whoever the author is, I guarantee you he has no idea what he's doing.

<comment><USER2> _whoever the author is_

The article identifies who the author is. He is the leader of a startup. People who recognize his name know that he is the son of a very famous computer scientist (and the grandson of another computer scientist).

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> For those that don't want to register, just delete the [http://url](http://url) and then search for the rest. Click the link from Google or whatever and the page will load without the register popup.

SEO baby.

<comment><USER13> Another neat trick to bypass this particular type of silliness is to install refcontrol ([https://addons.mozilla.org/en- us/firefox/addon/refcontrol/](https://addons.mozilla.org/en- us/firefox/addon/refcontrol/)), it allows you to control the Referer header. Set the referer for wsj.com to [https://google.com](https://google.com), goodbye paywall.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> It's interesting how the author laments that CS graduates are not up to date with the latest technologies, while admitting himself that the technologies "change every 10 minutes". By this logic, students starting a CS education should have no idea what they just signed up for, since the up to date courses desired by industry do not even exist yet - heck, the technology does not exist yet.

That said, I personally know several academics who argue that it is simply not a university's responsibility to follow the demands of industry. While a bit extreme, I see the point they are trying to make.

<comment><USER15> Why do you think that position to be extreme? (serious question)

<comment><USER14> Because many of the topics covered in a typical CS curriculum have direct applicability in industry. For instance, many courses in the area of software engineering make it a goal to try to simulate the "real life" conditions of a software project (e.g. working in a team, having stakeholders with different needs). So it would be hypocritical to then claim to not pay attention to what industry says it needs.

Of course, this should not mean that whatever industry asks for is law - sometimes they simply get it wrong (it is usually not very difficult to realize when), which is exactly the point where universities can help by not educating students to repeat the same mistakes. Something like saving companies from themselves, I guess.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> College/University software tracks are very poor in teaching you how to develop SaaS type programs. A bachelor's for CompSci will introduce you to different types of programming, the majority of which you will never use in professional development.

There is a real disconnect between the skills taught in college to the skills needed in the work environment. If you're going to college to learn coding so you can get a job, then you're being done a disservice by being taught things you'll never need.

I wonder how effective these "hacker" schools are. The ones I investigated didn't seem interested in best practices, it was a real focus on getting code on the screen. That can be a hugely damaging mindset working on large, complicated software.

</comment><comment><USER17> The fact that he first dismisses coding bootcamps and then concludes by describing what sounds like a bootcamp as the solution, makes his entire argument hard to take seriously.

</comment><comment><USER18> What the author is saying rings true. I've been interested in electronics since I was in Kindergarten. I worked as a EE without a BSEE for 30 years after working as an Electronics Technician right out of high school. I did get a Bachelors in Computer Science at 10 years in with the help of tuition assistance from the company I was working for at the time.

I enjoy building hardware using microcontrollers and FPGA's. and have several open source projects on Github.

Companies put too much emphasis on credentials, and not enough emphasis on recruiting and mentoring people who build electronics and programming for fun. It is these people who build things which change the world.

</comment><comment><USER19> A computer science degree in "iPhone or Android development" isn't a degree in computer science. I've work with people ranging from self-taught dropout coders to CS and CompE PhDs, and I would say that the very best of the bunch had solid backgrounds in computing fundamentals and theory. Personally I favor CompE's with a love of both coding and embedded. Working within a constrained environment close to or at the bare metal gives people an understanding of how real computer architectures and software interact, how code will perform, and how to write simple clean code that executes on features without succumbing to enterprise-grade bloat. If you can find a candidate like this, snap them up and give them a leadership position.

<comment><USER20> I was unaware that there was such a thing as a "CS degree in iPhone or Android development", and if there is - it's a horrible misappropriation of the term "CS".

On a related note I strongly believe that taking a 12-week course or a bootcamp in [ _insert latest flavor of the day here_ ] does not allow you to call yourself a software engineer or a computer scientist. Anecdotally, I've noticed a marked increase in that attitude (and another term I intensely dislike - IT) since moving to New York. This attitude grossly misrepresents what it means to be a software engineer or a computer scientist, which is much more about an approach to analyzing and solving problems using a combination of experience and first principles in face of tradeoffs, than using specific tools or languages.

Rant over.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I think he's making the common mistake University is not there to teach specific skills but to teach you the broad elements of a field.

That's why other engineering disciplines have CPD and it takes several years to get to full chartered status.

<comment><USER22> I think this is an AND, not an XOR. Someone graduating with a degree in a technical discipline should have both up-to-the-minute skills in that discipline and also a sophisticated understanding of the theory of the field.

If you have only the former, you are a technician, who understands what to do and how but without a deep understanding of why. (And there are plenty of programs that turn out such people in the software field, typically through two-year degrees in community colleges.)

If you have only the latter, you are a theorist with a deep sophisticated understanding of hard problems in your field, but without the skills to build much of anything right now. You known the why, but not the how. But if that's really what you want, try a degree in math or maybe physics.

Technical undergraduate degrees are supposed to bridge this gap by teaching both the how and the why, producing people who both understand the subtleties and can do real work right now. That's really useful, which is why these graduates are so sought-after. A university that neglects either side of this span is producing people who are a whole lot less useful, and that's what Gelertner is pushing back against in his article.

<comment><USER4> _Someone graduating with a degree in a technical discipline should have both up-to-the-minute skills in that discipline and also a sophisticated understanding of the theory of the field._

This falls apart at graduation + n years, unless you accept that up-to-the- minute skills must be maintained and regathered as the minutes progress.

If it's possible for an educated mind to continue to keep up-to-date, then one must accept that an educated mind, freshly graduated with a sophisticated understanding of the field can, and probably should, pick up the up-to-the- minute skills as part of the on-the-job training any new graduate acquires.

There's always a ramp-up in any new role, especially so for someone who's never worked professionally before. Given a choice, I'd rather aim for an education providing the depth, and the up-to-the-minute ramp-up happening on the job rather than the other way around, because I've _never_ seen a developer's day job provide any significant theoretical depth beyond what is required to get the job done. If you don't learn how compilers and operating systems and low-level memory management and design patterns and concurrency and big-O notation work before you hit the workforce, you're not very likely to pick all those up at work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> So the germ of a good idea in the article is that there's a distinction between Computer Science and the techniques used in the actual production of software (call it Software Engineering, but obviously that's an overused term).

I think you can make a very solid argument that universities would do well to offer a Software Engineering track alongside CS, one that focuses less on formal mathematical analyses of algorithms and reticulating splines, and more on practical concerns of software teams -- different approaches to the SDLC, ways to work in a team, how to evolve existing code without breaking things.

But the argument he actually makes -- that universities should be teaching "iPhone or Android development" and spend multiple semesters on that... yeah, no. If you want a trade school that's narrowly focused on teaching people a job skill that's in demand this very second, I'd argue you're misguided, but whatever; either way, it's not what universities do and shouldn't be. The point of a university is to teach you things that won't be worthless a few years after you graduate.

</comment><comment><USER24> "A serious alternative to the $100,000 four-year college degree wouldn't even need to be accredited—it would merely need to teach students the skills that startups are desperate for, and that universities couldn't care less about."

\- because everyone should be training to work for a startup?

\- why not hire passionate people and train them if university trains them badly? Sounds like people are trying to find perfect developers and of course the competition for those is huge.

</comment><comment><USER25> CS and SD aren't the same subject, though it would be great if CS degrees had a "intro to software development" class required in the first year or two.

It would teach things such things as the SDLC, waterfall/agile, a dvcs, code maintainability, a documentation system, working with others, writing tests, qa, project management, etc, etc.

</comment><comment><USER26> Computer Science teaches useful stuff that helps with problem solving. It's not useful APIs or revision control. Those things you can learn on your first job.

</comment><comment><USER27> The article is paywalled and i can't read it.

<comment><USER28> You can read it by googling the title of the article and clicking on Google's link to it.

<comment><USER29> Google doesn't seem to bring up any results for the article when trying either:

* site:wsj.com Why I'm Not Looking to Hire Computer-Science Majors

* Why I'm Not Looking to Hire Computer-Science Majors

I was able to find it copied on a unrelated site. Or at least, I assume it's the same article, but I have no idea of knowing.

<comment><USER28> Did you find the one at kamusnias.info? That's an exact copy of the WSJ article.

I'm not sure why you couldn't get it through Google, since searching for the title works OK for me - it shows up as the featured "In the news" link at the very top of the results page. You can also try searching via news.google.com; that should also get you through the paywall.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Does HN censor some topics by removing them from the list of posts? - <AUTHOR> Case in point: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21626321
It was rising at the time with a lot of discussion before it disappeared from the list of posts.
I cannot see it on any page. The only way to access it is via a direct link or the search:
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastWeek&page=0&prefix=false&query=instagram&sort=byPopularity&type=story
but now I guess they'll remove it from there too. Why? <comment><USER2> From the guidelines:

"On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.

Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off- topic."

The thing is that this "sex vs free speech" topic has been going on for a long time. There are plenty of other sites to discuss it.

It is also the kind of thing that people would be unnaturally attracted to, and yet is low quality content - it has sex, and also seems to be about challenging human rights.

I think it's good that this kind of thing is buried quickly, because more news of this type are not very interesting.

</comment><comment><USER3> I noticed this too, it vanished from New Posts right after I viewed it, thought it was deleted until you posted this...

</comment><comment><USER4> HN has a penalty for post with more comments than upvotes. I guess it was the main cause of the drop in the rank of that post.

<comment><USER5> I've always thought that was a ridiculous metric, since it's entirely possible for a thread to have more comments than votes without being a flamewar, and for bad comments to be upvoted. Implicitly, it penalizes users who choose to comment rather than upvote (which is probably the majority,) which is penalizing engagement.

Maybe there's data backing the validity of it up though, I don't know.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> If you want a good website, you need good users, and if you want good users, you have to limit content that attracts bad users.</comment>


Net neutrality is a "Taliban-like issue", says Europe's top digital policymaker - <AUTHOR> https://juliareda.eu/2015/03/oettinger-net-neutrality-taliban-like/ <comment><USER2> He is so completely full of shit and blatantly trying to use rhetoric to justify the fact that he's going to vote for corporate interests that bought and paid for him. I can't help but get angry about this.

What's that fallacy called where you fabricate a problem where there isn't one?

Net neutrality advocates have never, _ever_ wanted to limit what you're allowed to pay for as a consumer, and are pretty much unanimously in favor of distinguishing between paying customers to adjust connection speeds and uptime.

If a hospital wants to pay $5000/month for a direct, guaranteed connection to their doctors, they are free to do that. It's no different from paying for a faster or slower connection.

<comment><USER3> "Net neutrality advocates have never, ever wanted to limit what you're allowed to pay for as a consumer."

I'd like to pay $3/month for my Netflix traffic to not count towards any caps. Is that allowed?

Now, can I ask my ISP to just bill Netflix, who (with more customers than any US fixed-wire ISP) can negotiate something less than $3/month?

<comment><USER4> When you buy power to toast some bread, do you pay a different dollar-per-watt rate, depending on whether your toaster was made by the same company that owns the power plant?

The problem with allowing special arrangements it that companies can--and do-- use them in anticompetitive and manipulative ways.

<comment><USER3> Because net paths can be congested, there can be many different ways at different costs to deliver the same bits, and different net applications have different sensitivities to lag/loss, the electrons/bits analogy isn't very applicable.

Let ISPs try to abuse their momentary position. They're newish businesses in a rapidly-changing market and technological environment. Not one of them has the same "single provider at any cost" monopoly that phone companies had when the Title II telecom regulatory regime was designed.

Some of the companies they might try to shake down – Google, Apple, and others – have the capital to route around them with better services.

<comment><USER5> >They're newish businesses in a rapidly-changing market and technological environment. Not one of them has the same "single provider at any cost" monopoly that phone companies had when the Title II telecom regulatory regime was designed.

On the contrary, almost _all_ of them have that monopoly, oftentimes to the point where they've negotiated with exclusivity arrangements with municipalities. This means that even if Google, Apple, Netflix, etc. are willing and able to to lay down their own infrastructure, they're prevented from doing so by the government. If that doesn't make ISPs deserving of Title II regulation, I don't know what does.

<comment><USER3> You seem to be counting only cable companies and the highest-end services to imply a 'monopoly' over internet service where none exists.

Other sets of wires into the home exist and are capable of delivering high- speed internet. (Most notably: legacy copper wires offering DSL.) More wires can be run, just like cable TV was. It'll be even easier now than the cable buildouts of the 60s-80s; the world is richer, awash in capital, with better tools.

Wireless also keeps getting better and is now competitive with wired for most daily internet needs – email, web, VOIP, audio streaming, light video, gaming – all except for bulk HD video. (Just like people have 'cord cut' their cable TV to rely on net entertainment, others are 'wire cutting' their fixed-line internet service, and relying solely on their wireless internet, from one of 3+ providers.) So speaking for the US, most people have 6+ options to get core internet service. That's no "ISP monopoly".

We agree that locally-franchised monopolies over certain wireline services are a problem, where they exist. (OTOH, some localities have enabled multiple cable companies and other competitive wireline services, like Google Fiber.) Those localities with bad policies should undo their mistakes, as they see neighbors and peer-localities having made much better choices. But those scattered problem communities are no reason to compel a specific national service formula on all ISPs everywhere, even where there is competition.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This doesn't even make sense. So, if the kids in the back are playing games and the providers pay more to have access than the cars networked safety feature - we're in a worse off place.

Also, I'm not so sure there are any issues with capacity and more is being added daily. Capacity for networked devices is not like making capacity for ambulances (not his analogy but essentially his point) and firetrucks.

The second a government or any entity starts to decide what is first class, second class and n-class information and thus priority, the internet goes from a place of equality and freedom to a fascist place controlled by those who have dominion.

<comment><USER7> Whatever the upside or downside of net neutrality may be, the fact is that net neutrality laws are specifically and only about regulating the choices made by routing software. You are claiming that the government _not_ regulating routing software on an extremely fine grained level is somehow "facism". You are as ridiculous as the politician in this article.

In fact, net neutrality favors large monopolistic ISPs, while possibly making them slightly easier to bear. It forces information transmission to be a commodity, ensuring that only large monopolistic commodity providers can survive. It makes it impossible for any newcomers to take market share with innovation by making innovation illegal.

Locally based networks providing fast access to their subscribers and filling in the slow times with other traffic? Illegal.

Decentralized mesh networks allowing people to "mine" cryptocurrency with a transmitter on their roof? Illegal.

Those are just two of the business models made illegal by net neutrality. I'm sure there are many more that I can't think of right now.

<comment><USER8> I think you got it backwards -- net neutrality is about making sure anyone can create a new protocol and be hooked to an ISP to serve their content through the Internet.

> Locally based networks providing fast access to their subscribers and > filling in the slow times with other traffic? Illegal.

As an ISP subscriber, why would I want something other than what I decided on ?

> Decentralized mesh networks allowing people to "mine" cryptocurrency with a > transmitter on their roof? Illegal.

I don't see what's illegal here. If you have a transmitter on your roof you are your own ISP. It is perfectly fine to not allow a kind of traffic if you're your own ISP.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This guy, Günther Oettinger, has been against net neutrality from the beginning, and he's now in charge of setting the net neutrality agenda. He was also the one the newspapers lobbied so he would campaign against Google and force it to pay money to newspapers in Germany.

Worse yet, he even said that ISPs should be able to _lock-in customers for longer periods of time_ so they can "recover their investments", or something.

[https://gigaom.com/2014/11/07/let-isps-lock-their- customers-...](https://gigaom.com/2014/11/07/let-isps-lock-their-customers- into-longer-contracts-new-eu-digital-economy-chief-suggests/)

The EU Commission should stop pretending that net neutrality is getting killed by national governments. They have an inside man doing the exact same thing there.

Oh, and he'll also be responsible for drafting the new EU-wide copyright laws. So yeah...the next couple of years are going to be very interesting.

Julia Reda had a talk at the latest CCC on the upcoming copyright law:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wL_Wxu6x1HU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wL_Wxu6x1HU)

</comment><comment><USER10> I notice that he does not at any point explain in any way why net neutrality as an "issue" (whatever that means) is "Taliban-like" (whatever that means).

He's not even trying to be believable. Not even trying to make a serious argument. He therefore deserves scorn.

<comment><USER11> In fairness this is only a brief translated extract from a 35-minute panel discussion. My German's pretty weak, so it's I can't tell if if there's any additional context, but I don't think it's a good idea to draw firm conclusions based on selective quoting.

I'm not impressed with him, but nor am I very impressed with the non- substantive response of demanding lists of every product, installation, and system - a bullshit non-argument when the discussion is clearly about trying to come up with a framework that protects both sets of interests. Perhaps the Commissioner's attitude stems from a failure of the Pirate party to persuasively articulate their case? I haven't followed the debate in Germany, but I'm often struck by the way that political arguments can end up with people talking past each other and dogmatically repeating their own ideological standpoints without really engaging each other. Simply repeating 'the internet does not work that way' isn't a good negotiating strategy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Server hosting companies like OVH maintain their own lines or earmarked- guaranteed bandwidth shared-lines (I imagine the intercontinental ones) between their data centers. It may not be practical for hospitals and other real time needs based organizations to maintain their own physical limes, but isn't this the point where such an organization directly makes a business contract with a near backbone provider like level3?

If you need guarantees, I really doubt civilian or home consumer ISPs will fill the need.

If congestion is a problem so packets are unfavorably delayed or dropped, shouldn't that mean those which need greater guarantees provision their communication assets accordingly?

Traders in Chicago and New York are coming up with their own solutions, be it more direct and dedicated fiber optic lines or even direct to direct chained microwave line-of-sight towers. Net neutrality or not, they need greater guarantees than offered to home consumers or small businesses, and I doubt most ISPs can provide such guarantees with our infrastructure.

<comment><USER13> Guaranteed bandwidth shared lines are a violation of net neutrality. Tell me how this differs from having a Priority Lane that's reserved for Comcast's real-time video streams. Tell lawmakers how to write laws that differentiate them, even when cable companies are playing word and classification games.

Net Neutrality is a far more complex issue than Title II regulation in the US. Title II is a good first step, but will bring with it many problems, that we'll soon have to deal with.

<comment><USER14> > Guaranteed bandwidth shared lines are a violation of net neutrality. Tell me > how this differs from having a Priority Lane that's reserved for Comcast's > real-time video streams. Tell lawmakers how to write laws that differentiate > them, even when cable companies are playing word and classification games.

The solution for this is quite simple. The customer can buy whatever performance and quality of service they like, but it applies to _all_ the customer's traffic, to any transit peer up to and through the peering point.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> It's pretty offensive that people are using 'Taliban' and 'Isis' as throwaway rhetoric to collect political points.

Unless the people in question are throwing gay people from buildings or killing girls for attending school, then no, it's not a Taliban like issue.

<comment><USER16> If supporting net neutrality is Taliban-like, his remarks are decidedly nazi- like - industry first, freedom is for fools, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> The most lazy and obvious attempt to get net neutrality and terrorism in the same breath.

Not only is it his job to obscure and twist reality, but he's not even good at it! Not sure how much self-worth I'd ascribe myself if I were him.

</comment><comment><USER18> Oettinger's rhetoric is ridiculous hyperbole. Taliban? Huh? Its a shame because he is making what I consider to be a reasonable point: there are use- cases where traffic prioritization makes sense.

<comment><USER19> All his examples require guarantees, not just priority. All of these examples are therefore unsuitable for a packet switched network.

Whoever needs such services should get a fixed line (real or virtual) that needs to be implemented at a lower layer than anything that the net neutrality debate is all about.

And for automotive communication, the "fixed line" problem is a physical one, since wireless communication is by definition a shared medium. Better just make cars not depend on guaranteed connectivity in the first place.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> If I understand his point he is saying, Let's slow down the trivial things like Youtube and games to make real time road assistance better.

How is this related? And I don't see the Taliban connection.

<comment><USER21> He's trying to argue that net neutrality would mean a child watching youtube could slow down another user's content, like a hospital. This is silly and shows he knows nothing about current technology. The current system allows customers to pay for guaranteed speeds from their ISP. The net neutrality issue involves the ISP charging content providers to delivery content to their customers who are already paying.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Ah, Goodwin's Law updated for the 21st century.

</comment><comment><USER23> Seems like this EU gov't isn't as "pro-freedom" or "pro-internet" as the previous one (?) was. And I don't want to believe that's just because Viviane Reding is gone from it.</comment>


Microsoft Bob Gets the Last Laugh - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/s/story/the-adventures-of-microsoft-bob-metaphor-design-84e411784894 <comment><USER2> I never used Bob, it was just a little bit before my time[0]. But I thought the general idea to represent the computer's facilities in terms of real-world objects is not a bad idea if your target audience are casual non-techie users. It's the piece of software everyone loves to mock, because it is such an easy target.

The colors in those screenshots are _awful_ , though.

[0] My first PC ran Windows 95, and for all the badness that came along with it, it still was big improvement on Windows 3.x

</comment><comment><USER3> In my head I can hear my hard disk chattering just from looking at those graphics.</comment>


The secret of Finland's stellar schools - <AUTHOR> http://theweek.com/article/index/249613/the-secret-of-finlands-stellar-schools <comment><USER2> This is an excellent article, but may I suggest an alternative theory: the lack of emphasis on education in the U.S., at least historically, has been a sign of the strength of the U.S. economy, not a weakness of the culture. From World War II until the 1990's, Europe's economy was stagnant, while the American economy was dynamic.

From 1975 to 1985, Finland's annual GDP growth rate averaged from 0-2%, peaking at 4%. The U.S's averaged around 5%, peaking near 15% and nearing 10% several years. You can use this site to compare: [http://www.tradingeconomics.com/finland/gdp- growth](http://www.tradingeconomics.com/finland/gdp-growth).

Fast economic growth means that education isn't as necessary to differentiate yourself and get a good job.

<comment><USER3> > This is an excellent article, but may I suggest an alternative theory: the > lack of emphasis on education in the U.S., at least historically, has been a > sign of the strength of the U.S. economy, not a weakness of the culture.

A better theory might be a synthesis of those: it has been a sign of a weakness of the culture _produced by_ the long-term strength of the economy (and which, itself, produces a prospective long-term weakness that threatens to counteract the long-term strength that produced it.)

<comment><USER4> This. A bunch of meatheads who don't feel compelled to be part of their kids education because they managed to buy homes and get solid jobs at 18 with a HS diploma is the legacy we need to correct. Fleeing to private schools or the best suburban districts has been the plan for a long time, which is nice for those who can afford it.

<comment><USER5> Meh. I think the "meatheads=people with only HS diplomas" equation is facile. If you're speaking specifically about blue-collar workers, it's still pretty insulting, but you could probably make a better case with that differentiation up front.

Practically speaking, there is nothing sacrosanct about a college degree. It is the educational system, with its bureaucratic filtering mechanisms, elitism, and status-consciousness that has turned it into a humanist sacrament. Education need not be formal for it to be both valuable to the student and the society he/she lives in.

<comment><USER3> I think by "meatheads" GP means people who undervalue education on the basis of "I succeeded without much of it" (failing to understand the contribution of a particular social context to that success) and thereby promote a culture which undermines the context which allowed them to succeed. (The specifical example he gave was people _with only_ a HS diploma, not people _without_ one, but I think that example was, in any case, illustrative of the problem, not an exhaustive equivalence; nor do I think "blue collar workers" is the right generalization from the example.)

There's plenty of people (blue collar and otherwise) that succeeded with only (or even without) a HS diploma that _don 't_ undervalue education, and they don't meet GP's description of the meatheads he is talking about.

<comment><USER6> Well it's not like American education teaches people about social context and how much it matters.

That would be _Communist_.

<comment><USER7> What does this even mean? Is this a Markov criticism, or do you really think US public schools don't teach kids about "social contexts"? From what I can tell, as the parent of a high schooler and a middle schooler, social contexts and algebra problems are the core of the curricula.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> There is another very glaring difference between the Finnish and American educational system that the article ignores - there are no private schools in Finland. Everyone in Finland, no matter how wealthy or politically connected, sends their kids to the same schools. It shouldn't be surprising that powerful people in Finland care so deeply about the quality of their public school teachers when those teachers are responsible their own children's education. In America, nearly all of the upper class send their children to private schools, so why would our congresspeople/senators/grovernors/mayors/etc. care about public schools when their own kids don't go there?

<comment><USER9> In my opinion a more important effect of this is that the upper class children with better role models do not become role models for the other children.

<comment><USER10> In my opinion a more important effect of this is that the lower class children do not become role models for the other children.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I did my junior high ("lukio") in one of these schools that also double as teacher graduate training ground. There's one thing in the article which I feel bares a mention.

 _" For one full year of her master's program, Stara got to train in one of the best public schools in the country. She had three teacher mentors there, and she watched their classes closely. When she taught her own classes, her mentors and fellow student teachers took notes."_

There's one very important bit missing: the _students_ also give their own feedback. In writing.

I didn't understand how valuable this is while I was still in the school, but have begun to appreciate it in later age. These schools the teacher graduates are mentored in are among the elite in Finland. So not only are the mentoring teachers some of the best in country, _the students are too_.

And believe me, in the ripe age of 16-18, we're a cruel bunch. Feedback from that kind of target audience, on what works or doesn't, and why... That's valuable. Even to the current staff.

The best feedback we got in turn was that some of the other graduates had actually changed their teaching plans. And the mentoring teachers were _proud_ of that!

</comment><comment><USER12> These "news" of giving Finland's school system praise seem to surface all the time and every time they do, they are also big headlines in Finnish yellow press news, glorified to a massive extent "C'MON, WE CAN DO IT!". I'm a 25 year old finnish man, my only education is grade school, I've been to high school twice, both times resulting in my dropping out, because I just haven't had a clue what to do. This isn't rare, most of the people I know have no education . Even companies such as Rovio have made a program of recruiting specifically people who've fallen off the education system, teaching them from ground up what to do for the task they are hired for. Not even going to talk about youth employment in general.

Every time I read these news, I become sad, like there's some hidden secret that's never been told to me.

My assumption is that news reporters or whatever are taken to few elite schools, so, pretty basic journalism.

<comment><USER13> I'm sorry, what was your point again? Tens of thousands graduate from high school every single year in Finland. From all kinds of backgrounds. If you didn't graduate, are you sure the system is to blame?

<comment><USER12> My point is that these news and/or articles are bullshit propaganda and their sole purpose is reassign the blame of the decline of American or whatever education system elsewhere. Whatever the ulterior motive is.

And no, the system isn't the only thing to blame, if I would've gone to the summer long paid coaching courses, I'm sure I would've done a lot better.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> If you compare Finland to Massachusetts, which is a more reasonable comparison, it does not look quite as stellar. Conversely if you compare Massachusetts to all Europe including the south and east then Europe looks pretty bad.

</comment><comment><USER15> The secret of Finland's stellar schools is Finns[1], combines with an immigration policy that borders on xenophobia. Why do Finnish students score better than Swedish students?

[1] [http://www.vdare.com/articles/pisa-scores-show-demography- is...](http://www.vdare.com/articles/pisa-scores-show-demography-is-destiny- in-education-too-but-washington-doesnt-want-you-to-k)

<comment><USER16> This blog [1] claims, and the reference 11 therein (or directly [2]) shows, that the Swedish-speaking Finns score lower than Finnish-speaking Finns. It pretty much cannot be explained by socio-economic status, as Swedish-speaking Finns have higher socio-economic status than Finnish-speaking Finns. So the blog conjectures that it might be related to the languages.

[1] [http://finnish-and-pisa.blogspot.fi/](http://finnish-and- pisa.blogspot.fi/) [2] [http://ktl.jyu.fi/img/portal/8317/PISA_2003_screen.pdf](http://ktl.jyu.fi/img/portal/8317/PISA_2003_screen.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> > _In Finland, all education schools were selective. Getting into a teacher- > training program there was as prestigious as getting into medical school in > the United States._

Immediate implication: teachers are actually paid well over there. The job is actually desirable and respected.

> _At the education college, Bethel discovered that he didn 't have to major > in math to become a high school math teacher. So he didn't. Nationwide, less > than half of American high school math teachers majored in math. Almost a > third did not even minor in math._

Quick note: I've a degree in Physics. They pumped so much math into us all in college, I could easily teach high-school math. Easily.

<comment><USER18> Easily?

<comment><USER19> I presume he means he has the mathematical aptitude to teach high-school math, which (at least in my area) maxes out at trig in most schools and Calc 1 in the bigger ones.

To teach as an adjunct, that's about all you need to teach. If you want to be good at it, some genuine compassion for your students will help there. If you want to be awesome at it, you'll typically need the above plus some training in the proper ways to educate, motivate, etc.

Source: married to a college math teacher.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Small tidbit of info: In Finland students don't pay for studying. Instead, the government pays money to the students for studying. I've heard this is not the case in US.

</comment><comment><USER21> Let's throw a cold splash of reality onto the treasured fairy tale about Finland's "stellar schools." What do the data say? One place to look is at the standardized assessment tests designed to (among other things) make international comparisons. The National Center for Education Statistics relies largely on three: the Program for International Assessment (PISA), the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), and the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS). For brevity, let's pick math using PIRLS, which is also nice because it breaks out some U.S. states separately. Cherry-picking the data, consider these scores for 8th-grade math students in 2011.

Finland: 514

U.S. White, not Hispanic: 530

Massachusetts: 561

Massachusetts Black, not Hispanic: 516

Massachusetts Hispanic: 507

"Stellar" Finland's 8th graders are bested in math by America's white 8th graders overall, by Massachusetts 8th graders overall by a wide margin, and by Massachusetts black 8th graders, and Massachusetts's Hispanic 8th graders come close. Why choose Massachusetts? Partly, because I'm cherry-picking one of our best-performing states. But I think that's defensible because it also closely matches Finland demographically. The U.S. has 300+ million people, Finland only 5+ million; Massachusetts has 6+ million, and it approaches Finland in terms of racial homogeneity.

Now, before anyone gets excited, I am NOT making a racial argument, saying that white kids are somehow "better." However, it is an unfortunate, incontrovertible fact that in the U.S., white and Asian kids outperform Black and Hispanic kids currently. We can argue about why that might be and long for the day when it's no longer true, but while we've made great strides and hope to make more in the future, we're not there yet. Given that, comparing tiny Finland with its greater ethnic and socioeconomic homogeneity to enormous and diverse America (with, by the way, 400+ years of institutionalized racism) is intellectually dishonest.

I am also not claiming these few data points to be definitive. There are other tests (PISA and PIRLS), other subjects (language and science), other grades, a patchwork of yearly coverage, and other measures. Certainly, on some Finland does come out on top. On others, the U.S. does.

I am also not criticizing Finland or saying we have nothing to learn from them. No doubt, they have some wonderful teachers, delightful kids, and some important lessons for the rest of the world. But we also have some wonderful teachers, delightful kids, and given our unique challenges we're actually doing quite well (though we can and will do better).

What I am claiming is that there is a myth about Finland's educational prowess that gets told and retold, that is much too simplistic, that evaporates when confronted with actual data, that probably serves the interests of certain "educational reformers", and that is not a helpful part of an informed, rational debate about education policy in the U.S.

<comment><USER22> Do you have source on this, since I cannot recall any standardized assesments which would have been done nation wide in Finland on 8th grade.

<comment><USER21> Unfortunately, the best I can do is provide a link to the TIMSS Data Explorer (click the link for "TIMSS IDE"):

[http://nces.ed.gov/surveys/international/ide/](http://nces.ed.gov/surveys/international/ide/)

After agreeing to the terms, you can choose:

1\. Subject matter (I chose math)

2\. Grade (I chose 8th)

3\. Jurisdiction (U.S., Finland, Massachusetts, etc.)

4\. Variable (ethnicity, income, etc.)

5\. Years (not every year has data for every variable)

Not every combination of year, jurisdiction, and variable has data (e.g., Finland doesn't seem to disaggregate by race).

When I built the report for Finland, it included a caveat about issues that "interfere with proper trend analysis", presumably by year, so I avoided that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Finland also doesn't have any homework for its students. There's a very nice Infographic which offers an in-depth look about Finland's educational system.

[http://www.onlineclasses.org/resources/no-homework-in- finlan...](http://www.onlineclasses.org/resources/no-homework-in-finland/)

Edit - It seems they have "less HW" and not "no HW".

<comment><USER12> Finland does have homework and it is a part of getting your grades (ie. don't do homework, you'll fail). I wonder what their source is.

<comment><USER23> Thank you for your correction. It seems they have "less homework" and not "no homework".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Maybe also because other professions in the private sector don't pay so much better, compared to US.

<comment><USER25> Probably fairer to instead say _" Maybe because teachers aren't paid so much worse than other professions in the private sector"_. This emphasizes that high private sector salaries are not the problem, rather low teacher salaries are.

<comment><USER26> what evidence is there that teachers are underpaid in the US when you look at total compensation?

<comment><USER25> Have you ever talked with a young teacher? Ask them how they're doing on paying back those student loans.

<comment><USER13> Is that evidence?

<comment><USER25> _My edit that didn 't go through for some reason:_

We're not talking about total compensation, we're talking about salary.

Have you ever talked with a young teacher? Ask them how they're doing on paying back those student loans. Several people I went to highschool^ with are currently working as teachers (several more are still _looking_ for teaching jobs. The surplus of people looking to get into education certainly doesn't help...). While I had my student loans paid off quite some time ago, they are still floundering. Although they love 'their kids', more than one has confided in me that they don't know what the hell they were thinking.

Salary, specifically how it will enable them to pay back their loans, is the sort of thing that young people in university consider when they are decided whether they want to go into industry or education. Total compensation doesn't really enter the equation at that stage.

When the best and the brightest can get starting offers with a salary two or three times as high as starting teacher salaries, that is going to take a toll in the grand scheme of things. You'll still have a few very bright chaps (such as my highschool friends) who swallow the bullet and go into education anyway, but you cannot expect that to be typical.

^ We still talk a few times a year, and they are all closer with each other than any of them are with me. Incidentally, nobody I know from my (rather over-priced) private university has gone into education...

 _End previous comment._

The point that you should get here is that total compensation does not pay student loans. _Salary_ is the relevant number when you are trying to convince students straight out of school with student loans to come work for you. Starting teacher salary is undeniably _remarkably_ low.

Or to answer your question directly and succinctly: My comment _is not evidence_ of low total compensation, nor was it meant to be taken as such.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Could the secret to Finland's excellent schools be...Finland's excellent students?

<comment><USER27> Having spent the better part of my life in various Finnish schools, I would say "no". It's nothing like in many Asian countries where students are either strongly motivated or strongly pushed by their parents to do well in school.

But perhaps it's this relative lack of individual ambition that allows the system as a whole to perform well? I.e. the Finnish school system delivers a high mean with fewer of the excellent outliers. (Personally I think that's a reasonable goal for an educational system because measuring students doesn't work all that well, so it would be dangerous to optimize for exceptional performance on a broken metric.)

<comment><USER10> I'm confused. If you're saying that Finns do well in school even though nobody forces them to, then they would seem to fit the definition of excellent students to a tee.

<comment><USER22> It's worth noting that the students in the article have already expressed some level of interest towards school. Unless they wouldn't be in 'lukio'.

The other part consists of students who are normally thought to be worse in school. In contrary to their lukio peers, they do not have matriculation examination and therefore do not contribute to the statistics shown on the article.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> What works for a tiny Scandinavian country that's ethnically homogenous, has a strong culture and is geographically isolated, might just work for ANYONE.

Or, not.</comment>


Join our Women in Tech initiative - <AUTHOR> https://stayintech.com <comment><AUTHOR> Over 40% of women leave tech mid-career. Our goal is to decrease that number and help companies increase diversity of their workforce.

<comment><USER2> Have you done research to understand why they leave? Is it a trend that is observed only in tech or can it be found in other fields?</comment></comment>


5 ways to break past the San Francisco echo-chamber - <AUTHOR> http://andrewchen.typepad.com/andrew_chens_blog/2007/12/youre-not-avera.html

<comment><USER2> There seems to be a common assumption that building things for people in SF is a mistake. Targeting early adopters is not bad -- almost by definition, your first users will be early adopters.

The important question is: Is this something that can grow to include the larger population, or will it remain forever niche? If it's something that will eventually spread to the rest of the world, then living in the SF "echo- chamber" is actually a big advantage -- you get a clearer view of the future. This also one of the reasons why many innovations come out of universities -- they also have a "future world" aspect to them (for example, I was using the web in 1994, but "regular" people had never heard of it and had no use for it).

Unfortunately, answering that question is very difficult. Early cell phones provide a wonderful example of this -- the market predictions were off by orders of magnitude.

<comment><USER3> I thought this article was about your important question.

When it comes to hitting a wall after the early adopters, the first thing I think of is photo sharing. Wouldn't you think that would be one of the most widely-used services? Yet on Quantcast flickr shows 1/10 the monthly unique visitors of yahoo.com. In the top 100, only flickr, photobucket, and (arguably) facebook are photo-sharing sites. Shouldn't photo sharing have a wider appeal than blogging?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> There should be a "techcrunch" that reviews sites with numbers/features that speak for themselves instead of the bull* publicity process that now occurs.

<comment><USER5> This already exists: it's called the print media. It's easy to write about startups once they have numbers. The catch is, they may not have meaningful numbers for months.

What makes Techcrunch unique is how early it judges startups: often the very day they launch. At that point there are no numbers, only features, and features don't speak for themselves. Considering how hard it is to judge startups that early, it's surprising Techcrunch isn't wrong more often.

<comment><USER4> wrong.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think that part of the issue is that there are many problems that technology can solve, that aren't really faced by people in San Francisco.

For instance, my family back East is into scrapbooking and crafting. I never really thought about it much, though. But, after reading one of Andrew's posts, I started looking into it. From the Craft Trade association's website, crafting is a 30-40 Billion dollar industry. That's almost the same size as the movie industry.

That is a huge market that your average 20 year old male founder living in San Fran just isn't going to think about. That's the context that Andrew is talking about. There are precious few people in fly-over country that have heard of twitter, but there are millions of women in the South and Midwest who get together on weekends and scrapbook. That's the echo-chamber.

</comment><comment><USER7> Ha, I'd heard of just about everyone at the top of the Quantcast list, which, btw, is highly suspect. I clicked on four sites I hadn't heard of, and two of them were porn.

</comment><comment><USER8> I know people who are in various parts of the world and generally disinterested in technology and the internet. I frequently ask them questions to see what they've heard of and what they haven't. It's informal and unscientific, but it definitely helps me get some idea of what the view is like from the outside.

</comment><comment><USER3> I would call these ways to understand that you need to break past the echo chamber. They might open your eyes to the idea that people are different. To actually break past the echo chamber you need extensive interaction with other people.</comment>


Ask HN: 17 inch Linux Laptops? - <AUTHOR> I know the question about new laptops that run Linux comes up regularly, but the answers are often in the 13" to 15" range (Dell XPS).
17 inchers are less common no matter what the OS, so I think this question is somewhat new.
I am looking at brands like the System 76 Kudu because I need portability, not graphics or gaming performance. And in my case portability means reasonable weight - not Apple sacrificing ports thinness in a mobile workstation.
Additionally I would prefer to run Fedora or another RHEL based distro, as all of my production systems are on CentOS.
Any with experience here that would recommend System 76 or another brand? <comment><USER2> Use [http://www.notebookcheck.net/Search.8222.0.html](http://www.notebookcheck.net/Search.8222.0.html) to search by weight, screen size, etc.

The one closest to what you want is probably the Acer Aspire E5-722 series. Not a gaming machine, not expensive, and not too heavy. [http://www.acer.com/ac/en/EE/content/model/NX.MY0EL.002](http://www.acer.com/ac/en/EE/content/model/NX.MY0EL.002)

You're going to have to install Linux yourself.

<comment><AUTHOR> > You're going to have to install Linux yourself.

I would'nt have it any other way, as long as video and network driver support is part of the common and current distros.</comment></comment>


TLS Landscape - <AUTHOR> https://securityblog.redhat.com/2014/09/10/tls-landscape/

<comment><USER2> Should use ChaCha20-Poly1305 instead of AES-GCM. It's several times faster in software (important for the 98+ percent low-performance non-ARMv8 mobile devices out there).

[https://www.imperialviolet.org/2013/10/07/chacha20.html](https://www.imperialviolet.org/2013/10/07/chacha20.html)

As for the PFS ciphers, unfortunately they must use the "unsafe" (and slow) P-256 curve, until more browsers adopt Curve25519.</comment>


Massless particle with promise for next-generation electronics discovered - <AUTHOR> http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S43/64/59M11/index.xml <comment><USER2> Someone should perhaps point out, that the article talks about quasiparticles. Quasiparticles are a bit similar to the particle aspect of a quantum mechanical wave. So for example deformations of the lattice of an crystal are sound waves, but it is also possible to look at the deformations as a field and then quantize the field. Excitations of this field look suspiciously similar to a particle, as in they are produced by the same mathematical formalism. The particles associated with excitations of the electro-magnetic field are photons, and the particles associated with excitations of this deformation field are called phonons. The difference is, that the electro magnetic field is a fundamental aspect of nature, while the deformation field only describes deformations of a given crystal and therefore photons are fundamental particles, while phonons are quasi particles.

Something similar happens in this discovery, there is some aspect of the dynamic in the crystal that can be described as a Weyl spinor. But that does not mean, that a new fundamental particle is discovered, it just means that a new dynamic in a crystal is observed. ( Which is of course cool in its own right, and probably technologically more relevant than a new fundamental particle.)

<comment><USER3> Thanks, great summary. To translate to non-physicists: It quacks like a particle, it walks like a particle but it's not really a particle. Like counting stones or apples, the both can be understood in terms of similar arithmetic. Same here, only more maths. And, those properties that were observed, may come in handy.

<comment><USER4> But what is a "real" particle anyway?

<comment><USER5> "real" particles are those that can leave the holodeck ([1]) "quasi-particles" vanish at the doorstep :)

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

PS: replace "holodeck" with "tantalum arsenide crystal" to yield a less off- topic comment.

<comment><USER6> Thank you for this explanation.

But hey, speaking of TNG... Can't you just stick on of those fancy crystals in your computer?

Wait, computers made out of crystals? Did that just happen? :)

<comment><USER7> Computers are already made out of fancy crystals. But these new crystals would be even fancier than the old ones.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> There was some other discussion on HN about this discovery four days ago[0], based on the press release from the competing MIT team. Both papers were published in the same issue of Science[1,2] (preprints[3,4]).

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9899369](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9899369)

[1] [http://www.sciencemag.org/content/early/2015/07/15/science.a...](http://www.sciencemag.org/content/early/2015/07/15/science.aaa9273.abstract?sid=31d8c875-11ca-4da8-aeeb-32719f4e4395)

[2] [http://www.sciencemag.org/content/early/2015/07/15/science.a...](http://www.sciencemag.org/content/early/2015/07/15/science.aaa9297.abstract?sid=31d8c875-11ca-4da8-aeeb-32719f4e4395)

[3] [http://arxiv.org/abs/1502.03438](http://arxiv.org/abs/1502.03438)

[4] [http://arxiv.org/abs/1503.02630v1](http://arxiv.org/abs/1503.02630v1) (h/t @selimthegrim)

</comment><comment><USER9> Can anyone ascertain how much those claims are press release hype?

<comment><USER5> I only skimmed the article, but claiming discovery of a "new particle" seems extremly bogus. According to wikipedia [1], the cited paper merely demonstrates the finding of a quasi-particle [3] that behaves like a Weyl Fermion.

Claiming to have found a new particle in that case is like claiming that magnetic monopoles actually exist based on these findings [2].

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spinor#Terminology_in_physics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spinor#Terminology_in_physics)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spin_ice#cite_note- MonopoleRev...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spin_ice#cite_note- MonopoleReview-3)

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Neat stuff. Hopefully we get some use out of them. Meanwhile, optical computing field is coming along nicely from the time when I read press releases about it similar to this one. Maybe we'll something great (eg better CPU's) out of it if not this. :)</comment>


The Great Colorado Weed Experiment - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/03/opinion/sunday/high-time-the-great-colorado-weed-experiment.html <comment><USER2> Since cannabis is on the path to full legalization, should we also legalize LSD, Ecstasy and Mushrooms for the same reasons? Particularly since they cause less harm than cannabis: [http://m.imgur.com/Pz1NIEQ](http://m.imgur.com/Pz1NIEQ)

Source: [http://www.sg.unimaas.nl/_OLD/oudelezingen/dddsd.pdf](http://www.sg.unimaas.nl/_OLD/oudelezingen/dddsd.pdf)

<comment><USER3> Mushrooms, sure, but synthetics I'd say no unless there was a means to produce a quantity and quality of LSD or X akin to seeing the alcohol content written on a bottle of beer.

LSD in particular is no joke, you're relying on word of mouth re: quality and quantity (if they even know, 75, 150, or in some cases 300 micrograms per tab for blotter), and even then you can't be sure it's LSD or some other cheaper- to-produce substance until you yourself try it.

I think the less harm factor referenced in the imgur link has a lot to do with frequency of use. Nobody in their right mind trips everyday for years on end, while many heads break out the bong, pipe, papers, etc. daily.

<comment><USER4> " synthetics I'd say no unless there was a means to produce a quantity and quality of LSD or X akin to seeing the alcohol content written on a bottle of beer."

Trivial for your modern pharmaceutical organization. Also, LSD in particular has a huge ratio between it's normal dose and it's LD-50 - I did a bit of searching, and I couldn't actually find a case of someone having overdosed to the point of dying of LSD, so it's unclear to me what the LD50 is - but it's big - having a 10x overdose of LSD isn't going to kill you.

This is unlike caffeine of course, where I've personally had friends hospitalized for caffeine overdose, and there are certainly records of people having died from too much caffeine. People have died from drinking too much water as well.

Anyways, the entire idea behind legalization of things like LSD, THC, MDMA, Heroin, etc... is that you normalize the dosage, and reduce the number of fatalities resulting from poor quality control.

<comment><USER3> > having a 10x overdose of LSD isn't going to kill you

Toxicity is meaningless in the face of losing your mind; you may not physically die in the above scenario, but rest assured you will be absolutely out of your fucking tree for quite some time, if not hospitalized.

Compare that to eating too many ganja brownies, drinking too much alcohol, etc. Yes, you _could_ die, but if you don't you'll be out of sorts for a couple of days and then more or less back to normal.

<comment><USER4> Too much alcohol certain can, and frequently does, kill people.

Doing 10x overdose of MDMA has a not insignificant chance of killing you.

Doing 10x overdose of Heroin will likely kill you.

Never having tried LSD, I can't comment on what the psychological effects of 10 hits of LSD will be, but given that Erowid suggests starting with a dosage of 25 ug, and that the optimal dosage is between 50 and 200 ug, it's not clear to me that 250 ug (a 10x over the base dose) will really be that big a deal (beyond how big a deal LSD normally is). Perhaps you are referring to 10x of your optimal dose (i.e. if normally you take 200 ug, suddenly taking 2000 ug)

Regardless, I think it's a bit of a stretch to suggest that, "Toxicity is meaningless in the face of losing your mind" \- I had some pot brownies once, and went to a very twisted universe. At the time it was pretty scary for the better part of an hour, I just curled up into a tiny ball, but I look back fondly on the experience.

I don't know anybody who has ever done drugs, and thought that "toxicity is meaningless in the face of losing your mind." Some people do drug just _to_ lose their mind.

<comment><USER3> Hmmm, I may have misunderstood what the OP meant by 10X overdose. If he meant "just" 10 hits of typical street acid (75ug) for most that would be way, way too much, but far from what I was understanding (overdose to me equating to something like 1,000ug, an amount very few would ever take).

re: losing your mind, sure, THC can trigger all manner of darkness, have been on my knees a couple of times praying to get me through it -- hallucinogens can bring the good _and_ the bad ;-)

re: people doing drugs to lose their mind, right, keep in mind the context (10X overdose = 10,000ug). There's losing your mind, and then there's lost your mind.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> We might think that smoking can be bad for individuals, and decriminalization is good for society at the same time. However, a seven month time period is not enough to read the experiment on many the variables claimed in the article (blight, drop outs, etc.)

<comment><USER6> Did you read the part about California? "Medical" marijuana has been legal here since 1996. As the article says,

 _Many call it de facto legalization, because medical marijuana ID cards are laughably easy to get. While California's experience shows the downsides of ineffectual laws and lax enforcement, it has not turned the state into a story of rampant addiction, crime or community upheaval. Support for full legalization there has grown as dire predictions of disaster, made over two decades, have not been borne out._

<comment><USER7> A person can strongly want drugs to be legalised, and still be concerned about potential problems from drugs.

It's possible that cannabis has a causative connection to some psychotic illnesses. It seems reasonable that cannabis can trigger underlying illness, or exacerbate existing illness. So while I am strongly in favour of legalising drugs I am still concerned about possible harms from cannabis.

Researching this is difficult. Partly because cannabis is illegal and thus recruiting subjects is fraught with ethical difficulties, but also because we need very many years to research. EDIT: 1996 isn't even 20 years ago.

<comment><USER6> > A person can strongly want drugs to be legalised, and still be concerned > about potential problems from drugs.

Agreed. I'm sure there will be some problems from legal marijuana, though I don't see any sign they'll be nearly as bad as the problems caused by prohibition. In the case of other drugs which we might consider legalizing eventually, this might be more debatable.

> 1996 isn't even 20 years ago.

It's within 10% of 20 years ago, and anyway, it's a lot more than seven months ago. Not sure what your point is here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> at-fates-hands Just to play devils advocate here:

It sounds great, except for the fact there's a kind of product gentrification going on.

[http://www.thecannabist.co/2014/07/30/colorado-marijuana- bla...](http://www.thecannabist.co/2014/07/30/colorado-marijuana-black-market- pot-illegal-marijuana-growing/17245/)

"In this light, taxation is seen as a blunt instrument of exclusion, driving precisely the groups most prosecuted in the war on drug further into the arms of the black market where they remain at risk for arrest or robbery. In one Denver dispensary, a $30 purchase of one-eighth of the Trinity strain of cannabis includes $7.38 in state and local taxes — a near 33 percent rate. As Larisa Bolivar, one of the city's most well-known proponents of decriminalizing marijuana nationally and opening a true free market, puts it: That seven bucks buys someone lunch.

"It's simple," she says. "A high tax rate drives black market growth. It's an incentive for risky behavior.""

<comment><USER8> Cigarettes are highly taxed and there doesn't seem too be much of a black market for them.

Edit: Looks like I was wrong, but the black market is buying legal cigarettes and driving them across state lines which is a bit different from growing your own tobacco.

<comment><USER9> There's definitely counterfeiting of cigarettes too, and obviously the safety of unregulated, falsely-labelled black-market counterfeits is not assured.

<comment><USER10> That's funny, because the safety of regulated, arguably truthfully-labeled mainstream brands cannot be assured, either.

<comment><USER9> This is naturally true; however, there is at least no rat poison in them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Finally, a positive example of states rights that rational people can argue for.

<comment><USER12> I think the problem is the people who shout about state's rights are easily linked to racist loons. The rational ones think things like alcohol, marijuana, etc should be state-level issues. :P

The Federal Government shouldn't regulate any good or service that doesn't cross state borders.

<comment><USER13> >The Federal Government shouldn't regulate any good or service that doesn't cross state borders.

Black people truly prosper when excluded from the local economy. Makes them feel like Real Mercans.

Wait, no! That other thing.

<comment><USER12> Do you understand the difference between deciding if people can smoke weed and discrimination? :/

I'm talking about whether or not the sale of a good or service is legal. An example of a service that is legal in some places and not others would be prostitution if you want an example.

There is a huge fucking difference between "Colorado can sell weed" and "Colorado can discriminate against people of color". You seem very, very confused on the difference between "people" and "a category of goods".

Shall I call you are a racist for equating black people with goods and services then?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Taking Data Visualization from Eye Candy to Efficiency - <AUTHOR> http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/09/150922-data-points-visualization-eye-candy-efficiency/ <comment><USER2> My personal problem with these types of charts that they attempt to present the "raw" data and expect me to sift through it to find the interesting stuff. It is my understanding that originally bar charts and their like we're used to illustrate visually a specific point from a set of data. This no longer seems to be the case these days. Instead we get an article about "mass migrations of people across the globe" and a visual dump of all the data, like I'm expected to find the interesting story in all this! Why not write about specifics and illustrate that with a traditional chart?

I have similar issues with admin systems or management dashboards (having had to write loads of them over the years). I've found that executive users would much rather see a bar chart even if the bar chart doesn't display data of any significance, than see numbers. They would much rather see a partial non-story be displayed if it meant the visual display and layout of the dashboard was consistent than see two significant numbers. For example, imagine a dashboard that shows performance figures for sales. I've often been asked to show what is usually a static screen layout of bar charts etc that doesn't tell the user anything import rather than show 2 or 3 stand out figures I.e. Sales are down over last month in a big red call-out vs a bar chart that shows all sales figures for all regions compared to last month which requires the user to determine if the overall sales are down on last month.

There seems to be a large disconnect between the purpose of the visual display of quantative data and the action required or message being delivered. I actually put a lot of this down to excel; I've seem countless spreadsheets contain a graph that tells you nothing of significance because the person writing the spreadsheet doesn't understand that there are values of significance in their data. It's like the expect the graph to tell them the story (whilst this is true in some circumstances, I've only really seen this work when the data is obviously significant. Countless times I've see than overall trends can be missed because the use of data is incorrect, and then the wrong type of chart is used to display the data "to look nice in the report")

Anyway that's my main beef with these types of visualisations; they always come across as a kind of "there is far too much data here for us to sift through and find anything of importance so to examine. Let's create a tool that lets th user do the work". Unfair? Probably. Busy? Definitely. Pretty? Absolutely. Useful? Debatable.

<comment><USER3> I think part of the problem is, when you're working on the data so closely you lose the outsider perspective and things which you think jump out and are relatively easily divulged actually require a deeper understanding only obtained from an in depth analysis. I guess it's a bit of a catch 22.</comment></comment>