Why we're working our young people too hard - <AUTHOR> http://lkd.cc/post/12863887617/were-working-our-young-people-too-hard <comment><USER2> This article finally revealed to me the mathematical structure of curriculum optimization. It's a _bias/variance tradeoff_.

If you've done statistics, you know that B/V tradeoffs are more or less an unavoidable feature of optimization or learning. If you go in with less clear goals, you depend on learning on the fly to find the best solution which means your performance varies a lot depending on environmental conditions. If you go in with very clear goals, it's likely that people will cluster around them tightly, but if you're _wrong_ with your bias, you'll be surely fucked.

How do you beat B/V tradeoffs? You put in more effort, more experience, better sharing of information. You select your biases very carefully such that they are less clear but cannot possibly be wrong. You constrain your variance such that it is less harmful to your task.

Finally, there's the idea of consistency and convergence rates. Consistency means that if any person spends _enough_ time and effort they will eventually overcome both bias and variance and find the best solution. Rate of convergence is how much time and effort it takes to get reasonably close. Consistency and fast convergence are highly valuable properties, obviously, but both are easy to hurt and destroy, especially through biasing.

</comment><comment><USER3> >" _... = Better future workforce_ "

Any educational system where that is the goal is going to be fucked from the beginning...at least for anybody who agrees with Dewey's idea that the goal of education is to make better people.

A country that considers itself made up of consumers and workers rather than citizens, invites crap like SOPA, PATRIOT, and the TSA's shoe fetish.

<comment><USER4> The goal of a country is to continue improving the quality of life of its citizens. Grouping working and consuming in that is totally bogus. Working (theoretically) produces things which should, all in all, improve the quality of life. Consuming is totally different and an essentially broken way to promote growth.

<comment><USER5> Of course, not working is a much quicker way to increase most people's quality of life.

<comment><USER6> I disagree entirely, for two reasons: 1) Working is all about becoming a part of society, of contributing, of belonging. Few people can take a prolonged period of not contributing without some level of depression.

2) The overall quality of life of people is determined by the application of time and labor saving devices, as well as by technical enhancements to lifestyle and health. There is no higher improvement of quality of life than low infant mortality and longer lifespans. All of these things are delivered by a society that embraces specialisation as a way of increasing productivity by everyone.

Sure, you'll get no argument from me that pointless consumerism backed up by debt-based spending is not the path forwards, but that is an entirely different proposition to stopping working altogether. Only the committed hobo will get satisfaction from a life like that.

<comment><USER7> > There is no higher improvement of quality of life than low infant mortality > and longer lifespans.

Really? You'd trade off absolutely anything to increase those metrics?

<comment><USER6> Obviously these are things that are harder to improve in a Western society, so the big gains are in developed countries. My original comment was probably slipping towards rhetoric-ville, but the point still stands - maximising the chance your child will make it's 5th birthday and that you and your family will live as long as possible definitely trumps most things.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> So many times I have complained about the horrors of Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel and Microsoft Access and Turbo Pascal and Typing Mario (does anybody even know what that is anymore?). Education is a complete mess. There's a particular sentence that I think needs more emphasis:

"I noticed a recurring theme. Hackers would bring up anecdotes of playing around with BBC Micros in their spare time, learning C in their spare time or building basic command-line games in their spare time."

How do they think they are helping us children by stuffing us with hours upon hours of mindless work, following instructions on textbooks almost verbatim, whether it's Computer Science or Math or Chemistry or Literature? Students are only allowed to interpret a literary work as the teachers see fit, only allowed to play with chemicals on paper in their own imagination, only given dull Math problems and a few certain "tricks" to solve them, and, yes, of course, only allowed to complete computer projects that involve Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, or Access. I don't hate you, Bill Gates, but your office suite is killing me. There has to be change. Only the best of the best will be able teach him/herself the basics of IT while survivng high school (and K12 and higher education in general); the rest will just lose interests even though they have tremendous capabilities. Not to mention how it gets lonely once in a while.

<comment><USER9> _How do they think they are helping us children by stuffing us with hours upon hours of mindless work, following instructions on textbooks almost verbatim, whether it's Computer Science or Math or Chemistry or Literature?_ This is because it is too hard to grade otherwise. I agree with you, it stinks, but the first step to solving a problem is understanding it. We "need" these types of assignments to gauge the progress of the students. Maybe the instrument is wrong, but all things considered, it's the best we have. Ideally we'd have more teachers to reduce class size & these teachers will have the skills to make children explore. Instead, we have standardized tests that only really measure how well you can prepare for standardized test.

<comment><USER10> The politicians who fund our schools demand results so they can get elected/re-elected. The numbers they need can only be obtained through standardized, modular testing. It's a vicious cycle.

There are schools that eschew the standardized, rote methods of learning. But they produce people like Cory Doctorow, who is a writer/speaker/etc. and doesn't produce anything terribly useful. Well, except for thoughts, books, etc. - things that do not follow measurable standards. But certainly no iPhones, yet.

We will have to flip the whole teaching scheme on it's head in order to sort this out, and it will be painful. Teachers will have to be valued more than engineers and politicians (since the teachers produce little engineers and politicians) and we'll actually have to trust them to know enough and do their job. Possibly even pay them more.

Until then, it's square pegs in round holes all around.

NOTE: I am not Cory Doctorow nor would I even know him if he laid a hard, sharp thought on me in a crowded room. But he did go to a liberal school in Canada.

<comment><USER11> > The politicians who fund our schools demand results so they can get > elected/re-elected.

You write "demand results" like it's a bad thing.

It isn't. If we're not getting "results", why bother?

Of course, which results we're talking about matter. I'll pay for some results but not others.

> The numbers they need can only be obtained through standardized, modular > testing.

Not true.

We tried the alternative, namely "trust the teachers". We got crap results.

That said, a kid who can read a crappy standardized test is better off than a kid who can't. I mention that because we have hundreds of thousands of kids who can't read.

If you can't measure it, how do you know whether you're doing it?

<comment><USER12> He should've written "demand statistics", that would make his point more clear. Did you not get that from what he was writing?

Also, when did we get "crap results" with "trust the teachers"? Was there some point in the past where we were using standardized tests, abandoned it in favor of 'trust the teachers' and watched them turn out a bunch of lazy hippies?

<comment><USER11> > He should've written "demand statistics", that would make his point more > clear.

That's a different point. Since there is no shortage of folks complaining about demand results, it's reasonable to assume that he meant what he wrote.

Besides, why is demand statistics wrong? Why don't you think that we should know how well (or not) things are going?

> Also, when did we get "crap results" with "trust the teachers"?

Trust the teachers is what we did before the current testing mania.

> Was there some point in the past where we were using standardized tests

Huh?

> abandoned it in favor of 'trust the teachers' and watched them turn out a > bunch of lazy hippies?

Trust the teachers seemed to work for quite a while. Then we noticed that it wasn't working.

Are you claiming that US education worked better right before the testing mania?

<comment><USER12> I'm claiming that you can't just say "oh we had some big downturn in educational quality so we're adding tests to insure that teachers do their job right".

Some amount of quantitative results measuring makes sense in any situation. But remember, whatever you measure, that's what you get more of. Kloc, issue tickets, or standardized test scores. I'd say in all cases it's important to leave a lot of leeway for professional judgment along with the thing you're measuring.

<comment><USER11> > I'm claiming that you can't just say "oh we had some big downturn in > educational quality so we're adding tests to insure that teachers do their > job right".

Why can't we say that? We did have a big downturn in education quality. If we don't know whether teachers are doing their job right, why should we pay them?

> But remember, whatever you measure, that's what you get more of.

Absolutely.

Why the assumption that the majority of education is untestable?

> I'd say in all cases it's important to leave a lot of leeway for > professional judgment along with the thing you're measuring.

Which reminds me - why the assumption that teachers are professionals? Yes, they're paid, but traditional professionals are liable.

What have teachers done to earn leeway?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This article is working ME too hard in order to read a dark grey font on a darker grey background

<comment><USER14> Oddly, I liked it, but that's probably due to my bias for coding with a dark background.

I highly recommend installing one of the many instapaper/readability extensions -- god knows with my ever-aging eyes I'm hitting that '~' key more and more often.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> It's often hard to see a bright side of something as broken as the US educational system, and perhaps I'm just a weird kid, but the mindless bureaucratic nature of school actually caused me to seek out more interesting subjects and read more books whenever possible because school never left me "satisfied."

I used all of my high school "elective" blocks to attend a specialty school to study CIT (graduated high school A+ and NET+ certified!) and spent all of my free time doing IT consulting and building websites for clients. It taught me a TON, but I'm almost positive that if school was mentally fulfilling each day I probably would have just gone home and watched TV and socialized like everyone else.

It is strange, though, that while most most of the messages and predictions of dystopian/Cyberpunk novels and films tend to be vastly over-exaggerated, the underlying principals and ideas seem to have come true. One of the nearly universal themes tends to be an extremely bureaucratic and systematic world and when you compare most aspects of 21st century life to 50 years ago, it's a little frightening.

<comment><USER16> While consulting and building websites is a fine thing, it is not the _only_ thing.

Moreover: You literally have the rest of your life to do paying work. Unless the alternative to going to work as a kid is hardship or hunger (which would be an even _more_ regrettable problem) I see no sense in rushing into the workforce.

It would be nice if your school had been interesting enough to capture your attention with one of the hundreds of other subjects of possible study. One, perhaps, that is mind-expanding and awesome but which doesn't pay. Math and science. Art and music. History and philosophy. Languages and literature. Machine shop and robotics lab. Studying these things is what school is for. Building stuff for clients is what the remaining five or six decades of your working life are for.

I find it heartbreaking that the most interesting thing you found to do in your school days was to get a NET+ certification. Obviously, everyone's tastes are different, and details matter, but my first-order reaction is to regard that as a terrible failure of your environment.

<comment><USER15> Well like I said, I found lots of subjects interesting because they weren't ruined for me by school. I'm only taking a few classes in college now, yet I find myself spending every free moment in the school's library because I feel free to learn on my own terms now.

So I guess to clarify, what I meant in my first comment was that school sucking helped me learn the one of most important skills around: self education.

In the past few years I've become interested in several subjects that I wouldn't have enjoyed in a classroom setting. My recent interests have been philosophy (specifically Stoic and Epicurean), tea, Javascript and Node.js, Redis and MongoDB, Japanese art and aesthetics, investing/finance, Guitar, and classical music.

I hated learning Visual Basic, for example, because my teacher was aweful. That's what you risk when you put your education in the hands of others. When you teach yourself a subject, the only person you have to blame is yourself if you don't learn it well.

<comment><USER16> Okay, I feel much better for you now. ;)

But I managed to simultaneously enjoy school a lot _and_ learn to self- educate. These things aren't mutually exclusive by any means. All good education is self-education, and a good school is one that operates with this principle in mind: The teachers and the environment should _amplify_ your self-educational tendencies, not thwart them.

Mind you, you'll never find a _whole_ school, of any size, that works that well. (Especially in high school, and especially these days, when my understanding is that school is more regimented than ever.) You have to find the special corners.

You should take classes that help you. One rule is simply to study any subject that has a good teacher, no matter what it is: Ask around, find the teachers that are any good, and learn from _them_. Another rule, which I suggest often around here, is to take classes that incorporate resources that you won't find on your own. Guitars are easy to find on your own. Entire student symphony orchestras or choirs are harder to find, and fully-equipped semiconductor wafer fabs are the hardest of all to assemble in your garage, unless you're Bill Gates.

<comment><USER15> Ah I do see your point now. Knowledge is easy to acquire nowadays, but the resources to pursue the knowledge further, to experiment, and materialize it into something useful are much harder to find outside of a classroom.

Also, I really appreciate your tips on how to get the most out of my college experience.

<comment><USER17> The number one tip for learning lots of cool stuff at university: you don't have to be enrolled in a course to attend it. The tutors generally don't give a shit who you are or if you're meant to be there. Just turn up to whatever you want, it's fine.

EDIT: Oh yeah, and make friends with someone who has access to the Film Studies department's DVD collection. That, or hang around the door with an RFiD scanner. If you lack one of these, make your own.

EDIT2: By the way, I take no responsibility if the administrators at your educational institution are crazy and you get in trouble as a result of anything you may have read here.

<comment><USER15> Haha that's awesome. I'm definitely going to try dropping into some classes (I kinda like breaking rules).

<comment><USER18> Here's some money saving tips then. Most universities don't charge extra for taking crazy numbers of units as an undergrad, so rather than just drop in why not take 30 units a semester. A lot of undergrad survey courses have multiple choice exams and don't represent significant additional workload, but can be fun, the psych classes are also a place that will have pretty girls you don't find in engineering.

Dorms and school cafeteria food are expensive. But living off campus means commute time and parking expenses. Two options are to secretly rent a couch from someone living on campus, and to find a location on campus to stash a bedroll and just live there. Where I went to school there were carefully camouflaged dugouts in a canyon behind the physics building where there were about a dozen students living incognito for free.

<comment><USER17> People at my university used to live in the woods, in tents. Some were known to construct multi-storey treehouses. Says a lot about the institution I attended. (It says it was full of hippies, rather than that it was expensive.)

Can't you just live on campus and cook your own food rather than eating at the cafeteria? Or are you forced to pay for the cafeteria as part of the package? I'm unfamiliar with the american system.

 _> Where I went to school there were carefully camouflaged dugouts in a canyon behind the physics building where there were about a dozen students living incognito for free._

That sounds _awesome._ This probably isn't correct, but when you say camoflaged dugouts, I'm thinking of an elaborate system of WWI style trenches, or perhaps that Al Queada cave complex that Dick Cheney saw in a fever dream. In my mind, it's like some kind of survivalist-nerd version of a frat house.

I doubt I would have been able to resist the temptation to forget my classes and concentrate on expanding my _invisible canyon-based physics fortress._ Who amongst us can honestly say that it has never been their dream to inhabit a secret underground base with a team of renegades?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I don't think the blame can be necessarily be placed entirely on the school systems though. I find that I have to fight my own urges to over schedule my kids' free time. I am also way more involved in my kids' lives than my parents were, for better and sometimes for worse.

I think it's important for parents to make sure that their kids have some time to do nothing, get bored, and find their own mischief and passions. It's a tough balancing act.

<comment><USER20> My parents had a very laissez-faire approach to involvement in our lives. They'd have some family activities from time to time, but for the most part it was up to us to find things to do. We'd disappear in the morning and so long as we were back by dinner (mandatory family time), all was well.

Sometimes I'd go check out what my father was doing in his workshop, and he'd show me how to use the tools or teach me the theories behind whatever he was working on (construction, metal work, electronics, magnetism, etc). It was up to me to decide if I was interested enough to try my own hand at it, and there was no fallout if I decided after starting that I wasn't interested after all.

As a result, we've grown up to be independent thinkers. We don't depend on other people to give our lives meaning or to give us structure. And most importantly, we're all very creative.

Kids will find things to be interested in so long as you don't smother them or stunt their independence.

<comment><USER21> anecdotes are not data. you have no idea of the correlation between your upbringing and your creativity and independence. twin studies disagree with you.

<comment><USER22> An anecdote about one's own life is not just an anecdote...it's personal experience. And personal experience offers a perspective that no amount of data can. We are discussing how to nurture creativity and productive skills, after all, and inherent in that goal there is a severe measurement problem that severely limits any data-driven approach.

The twin studies I'm aware of basically say that you can expose twins to identical circumstances and they will still turn out different. I'm not sure how that contradicts his main point though.

<comment><USER23> I assumed he meant that two twins growing up under completely different circumstances will still turn out to be the same. Which then implies to me that success is already determined before birth. If true, working our young people hard or not working them won't have any profound affect on their lives.

Incidentally, my upbringing sounds a lot like kstenerud's. My brother and myself sound much like he and his siblings. Another anecdote, sure, but still an intriguing point of view.

<comment><USER24> Mine as well. Also an anecdote, but we had the same results. I'm definitely planning on raising my kids the same way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I was sucking it big time on a video game once, and my friend turned to me and said "Don't try harder; try _better_."

We should be working young people better.

<comment><USER26> It's interesting how subtle yet important that difference is.

<comment><USER27> I don't get the difference. Can someone please explain? Seriously, I'm not kidding.

<comment><USER28> To extend the video game analogy, one activity that some video gamers have made a sport of is "speed running," or trying to completely a single-player game in as little time as possible. Sites like <http://speeddemosarchive.com/> host videos, and people compete to get the lowest time.

There are two ways that one typically goes about improving on the existing record. The first is to look at the video posted by the current record holder, dissect the run, and find all of the small mistakes that the current record- holder made. Shave off a few seconds here, a few seconds there, and by the end of your run you've beaten a game in 4 hours and 57 minutes instead of 5 hours. That's playing harder.

The other way to break existing records is to start completely from scratch, map out the game and figure out if there's a different route to take that the previous runner didn't. Maybe it's doing the levels in a different order so you spend less time walking across the world map. Maybe you spend an extra 10 minutes picking up a stronger sword that allows you to save 20 minutes over the course of the game because you're killing enemies faster. These are the kinds of improvements that lead to people turning a 5 hour game into a 4 hour game. That's playing better, not harder.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Several factors are important here:

Degeneration of K-12 education. College freshmen have to spend significant effort (up to 1-2 years on average I'd guess) just getting caught up to levels of basic mastery of reading, writing, logic, and mathematics that they should have had as a HS graduate.

Increasing concentration on volume of "material" rather than on level of mastery.

As the college loan bubble and the increasing reliance on a college degree as a necessary credential for most white collar work colleges have shifted towards becoming degree mills. More and more students are valuing the credential more than the knowledge, and they are pumping huge amounts of money into the system sustaining those values. This necessarily warps the institutions of higher education. And as they struggle with ways to soak up massive influxes of tuition without throwing their integrity out the window (or losing their accreditation) they've increasingly fallen back on volume and intensity of course work in lieu of demonstration of mastery of knowledge.

</comment><comment><USER30> Nobody wants to admit that the concept of "school" itself was designed to church out assembly line slaves.

It's not a surprise that when the system is designed to turn humans into robots... that's what you get.

Anyone who comes out of school with useful skills does it despite school, not because of school.

John Taylor Gatto figured this out years ago.

<comment><USER31> Perhaps nobody wants to admit it because few are that stupidly paranoid.

For one, schools predate assembly lines. For another, if that is what schools were designed to do then they are remarkably poor at it. The ruling cabal who you seem to think is trying to push us all into servitude would surely have noticed and remedied the situation YEARS ago. Finally, you did read enough of the article to realise it was about the UK? What this Gatto person thinks is irrelevant.

<comment><USER23> He does have a point. A high school teacher friend of mine and I were discussing how certain aspects of school, like scheduled class time, project deadlines, etc. were intended to prepare the students for the workplace.

As an adult who makes my own choices, I only work when I want to work, and I only meet deadlines which I set on my own accord. I imagine, given the context of this site, that a lot in the HN crowd are the same way. However, when you get out into the real world, most people do follow the same schedule and obey the same rules that were ingrained into them in school.

A lot of people do not even realize that they have choice. I have actually met people who look down upon me for not following the same 9-5 schedule that everyone else does, like it matters or something. I imagine that attitude comes from their upbringing by having it pushed upon them by educators.

I wouldn't go as far to say that the only reason for school is to shape people into obedient workers, but that element is definitely present.

<comment><USER30> If you cancelled all schools right now, no one would stop learning useful and applicable skills.

But many many people would stop being obedient.

The bait of school is the opportunity to learn, something every human inherantly loves. The opportunity to learn and access to knowledge is just the sugar that is used to get you to swallow the medicine: the medicine is your obedience training.

When people graduate from high school, often the only thing they have to show for it is their obedience and conformity. If they are good readers, they probably read a lot outside the curriculum. If they are good at math, they probably did a lot of math outside the curriculum. etc.

One thing from the curriculum which they did thoroughly learn, however, is how to obey, how to conform, how to navigate bureaucracy, how to play social pecking order games, when to bully, when to submit.

Conspicuously absent from the gifts of the curriculum is anything related to what used to be called a liberal education or an enlightened scientific education. These things are always learned despite curriculums, and those who achieve a true scientific or artistic education usually have the air of a rebel or hacker, someone who eschews their lessons, who breaks out of the mold, who skips their homework in favour of reading poetry or hacking their graphics calculator.

At school, true learning is always a form of rebellion.

<comment><USER32> How many people do you imagine do maths outside of school?

<comment><USER30> <http://www.maa.org/devlin/LockhartsLament.pdf>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Education is broken. Everyone is different, and meant to excel at one thing they do well to make a difference, yet the standardized education forces people to be indifferent. It also keeps you locked in an idealized world of grades and exams delaying your chance to become street-smart for a mere 15 years. We then end up with people in their 30s having their first born children, whereas the biological clock for this kicks at teen ages.

<comment><USER34> > Everyone is different, and meant to excel at one thing they do well to make > a difference

And that one thing is genetically wired? As in their DNA was just 'Ballet Dancing' inclined?

The only reason people excel at something, is because they practice it.

<comment><USER33> They are not genetically wired but definitely inclined.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I'm lucky enough to attend a high school where freshman are required to take the equivalent of AP Computer Science, and those who wish to can go on to take CS classes taught by teachers with PhDs from MIT and Yale - you'd be hard pressed to find a better curriculum.

Despite the environment, there are very few students with a "hacker" mentality- maybe ten or so, a number not drastically higher than what you'd expect to find anywhere else. Plenty of kids choose to take the upper level (from a high school perspective) classes, and have no trouble understanding recursion, pointers, or any of the traditional hangups, but it's a much smaller number who would ever consider working on a project that wasn't assigned by a teacher. For everyone else, even among these incredibly bright students, programming is seen as the work you have to sludge through in order to guarantee a cushy $120k job.

For this small percentage of self-motivated students, the free time proposed in the original post would be a godsend, used more productively than any sort of schoolwork. For most everyone else, however, regardless of intelligence, CS education, or resources available, this time would be thrown away to TV or video games, with a net productivity less than an hour spent doing the most menial busywork under the dullest of teachers. I think many of us on Hacker News, surrounded by peers who are the sort of people that start businesses, tend to forget that while students might spend lectures wishing they were elsewhere, that elsewhere is rarely 80x24.

Admittedly, I don't have a solution. Increased STEM funding helps, no doubt, but not in the exponential way many of us envision. Resources in the form of state of the art equipment or funding for student projects only serves to empower those who are already driven, and this drive seems to be something determined long before students enter high school.

</comment><comment><USER36> I find this to be quite hilarious. I just came back from a movie at my school called "Race To Nowhere" that touches on the issue. I then participated in a 45 minute discussion with members of my community, including my principal and other staff at my school. I was going to go onto Hacker News and make a very detailed thread on the topic....but someone stole my thunder. I will be back over the weekend to discuss this. I obviously can't leave with just this post since it's a pretty low quality post. So here it is:

We must shift the focus of education back to education. It is ridiculous to believe that a single letter can show how much work a student put in to learn the content. A "C" can be given to a student who puts in their best effort but just can't remember when to use a semi colleen. Yet an "A" can be given to a student who crams for the test the night before, yet can't think critically on any subject.

We must rethink our approach to education, and shift it back to education, rather than to that test at the end of the year.

</comment><comment><USER37> I ignored English homework and taught myself jquery. Now people call me incredibly smart and are jealous of the great agency I started working for at only 21. These days kids have to take education into their own hands, because even though there are classes available in a subject; techers do not know what knowledge is most relevant in the workplace.

<comment><USER15> Agreed. Self-education is just so much more scalable because a self-educator doesn't need a teacher or assignments to learn. All one needs is a book or access to a knowledge on a subject. The Internet has connected us to more knowledge one every subject imaginable than previous generations could have dreamed, and yet most of my friends still take classes on something that can be picked up with a few tutorials and a well-written book. It's a lot of extra money down the drain that could be spent other, wiser ways.

<comment><USER38> Baloney.

Stuff worth knowing in academia takes dedicated effort and access to deep resources that are unavailable on the internet.

Even knowing what _book_ to read can be a significant challenge.

Just cause you can read some tutorials, watch a MIT lecture, and write PHP/jQuery does not a computer scientist or a mathematician make.

<comment><USER39> Taking a class and getting a piece of paper also does not a computer scientist make.

<comment><USER38> maroons happen everywhere.

But I guarantee you only the most amazing and celebrated of individuals have self-taught themselves advanced mathematics and performed at the highest level of the art. The only one I can think of the modern era is <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Srinivasa_Ramanujan>, who is essentially legendary for what he did.

The core issue is climbing the tower of knowledge of what has gone before requires deep investment and usually a guide until you attain a deep _and_ broad knowledge. There is so much knowledge, we must leech off of the knowledge of those who have also done the studying and have more experience. It's a pain.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> jesus, please increase the contrast, i can barely read it

<http://contrastrebellion.com/>

</comment><comment><USER41> For what it's worth, though I didn't do GCSE's (I was in Switzerland at the time), I coasted through A-levels without much effort. Other high achievers I know also spent about 2-3 days max (in addition to the required time sitting on a school chair, of course) studying and revising for each "paper". That left plenty of time for many extra-curricular activities.

</comment><comment><USER42> No matter how bad the problem may be, please use a lighter background and higher contrast.

</comment><comment><USER43> TWENTY TWO GCSEs? Christ... You didn't go to a comprehensive!

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, I did. Students with upwards of twenty GCSEs are not all that uncommon anymore

<comment><USER44> In general, I think students from better schools get fewer GCSEs. I went to a selective state grammar school and I only got the usual ten.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think you're spot on there, better schools take fewer GCSEs, thus (Im assuming) producing a higher caliber of student not necessarily in terms of qualifications, but in terms of depth of knowledge and culture

<comment><USER17> I also went to a state grammar and got about ten. I find it hard to understand how you can get 22 though. Your workweek wasn't any longer than mine, and I certainly don't remember any days off.

What on earth is the point of doing 22 GCSEs? They become worthless the moment you get your A levels. I like to think I would've refused to go along with that.

<comment><USER45> I did ok getting 8 back in 1983, one of the smartish kids. Then 5 highers then university at 16.

I find the thought of 20 absolutely bone-chilling.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I take issue with the idea that there is too much structured time and students need more unstructured time to be creative. I think there's room for lack of structured time but not in school. Does this mean to give a students so,e materials and tools (materials/tools can be anything from clay or other art supplies to mechanic's tools, to computers with an IDE installed) and let them just make something? I don't like that idea. That's not real creativity.

We should be teaching critical thinking skills, then giving them tools and materials along with, most importantly, a problem to solve with a set of constraints. Now _that_ is what creativity is all about. The article is from the UK point of view so I can't speak for them but in the States here we need something more like I described. And really, students aren't too overworked. They're just made to memorize and vomit up later useless facts for standardized tests instead of being taught critical thinking or problem solving skills.

Here, teachers get the short end of the stick. Especially the ones who are really passionate about teaching. I've got several friends and my mother who are all finishing up teaching degrees or have just started teaching and they tell me all the time that they aren't given the tools they need to properly teach their students.

Here we're teaching what used to be middle school math in the 50's in college. I'm not sure if overworked students is a problem. At least not in the U.S.

<comment><USER5> I think this is no different than the situation with programmers. Are most programmers "overworked" in that they get too much done? No. But many are "overworked" in that they are constantly distracted with little problems and don't protect enough time to think hard about any single issue. As a result, they do lots of short-sighted work and don't get enough done overall, but also feel constantly busy and hard-working.

I think that's pretty close to what normal high school is like today. There are constant distractions for standardized testing, mandatory this-and-that, worry about your SAT scores, etc. And not enough sitting down to understand what this novel is really about. Or what an integral really is.

I think this explains both the subjective feeling that students are "overworked" and the objective truth that they aren't doing or learning nearly as much as was traditionally expected of students.

<comment><AUTHOR> This. Exactly

Its a combination of all of the little things added together. Worrying about coursework deadlines, conflicts between subjects, modular testing "You dont realize it now, but this test could be the difference between a good life and a wasted life". Its not that there is too much hard work, quite the opposite, its all the little things that count towards the feeling of being "overworked".

I was suggesting in the op that we eliminate at least a few of the little things so that students dont feel overworked, giving them time to think hard about a single issue, rather than barely thinking about multiple.</comment></comment></comment>


For Dell's Billionaire CEO, Taxing the Ultra-Rich Is a Joke - <AUTHOR> https://inequality.org/great-divide/billionaire-ceo-taxing-rich-is-joke/ <comment><USER2> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hauser%27s_law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hauser%27s_law)

Hauser's law is the proposition that, in the United States, federal tax revenues since World War II have always been approximately equal to 19.5% of GDP, regardless of wide fluctuations in the marginal tax rate.[1] Historically, since the end of World War II, federal tax receipts as a percentage of gross domestic product averaged 17.9%, with a range from 14.4% to 20.9% between 1946 - 2007.[2]

So...yeah, marginal rates have been 70% or higher...but the Federal government has never successfully collected that much, due to write-offs, tax shelters, and other schemes that were largely closed in 1986 with...

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_Reform_Act_of_1986](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_Reform_Act_of_1986)

<comment><USER3> Honest question: if people like the one described in the article won't actually end up paying more in taxes due to an increase in their tax rate, why do they oppose it?

<comment><USER4> because this Hausers law shows that the U.S. government doesn't have a revenue problem, it's collecting proportionately the same amount of money as it has been. there' a spending problem: we keep finding more and more ways to spend money.

this whole green new deal proposal is "lets go spend billions more dollars on XYZ" a lot of the mental pushback is what are you going to stop spending on today to pay for it? the answer: "nothing, we're just going to raise taxes"

i believe opposition to this is less about can the 1% afford the taxes or not, and more for principled spending

<comment><USER5> What's wrong with investing taxes in growing the GDP?

Why does the funding of current projects affect you level of support for different projects? That's sunk cost fallacy.

<comment><USER6> Where's the proof that this would increase the GDP?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I see where people are coming from when they dismiss high marginal rates out of hand, without giving the honest answer as to why:

No-one who is caught by them will pay them.

If I'm Michael Dell, and my marginal rate is 70%, or 90% or even 100% (whatever) then I'm incentivized to take that money in another way, be it in stock, deferred bonuses, or even in leaving the capital in the business without issuing a dividend.

The reason this is such a problem is that regardless of whether you manage to close every conceivable loophole, you're still talking about personal taxes. The corporation is making the lion's share of the money, and that's where the tax would need to be applied to raise the revenues required by the Green New Deal.

Thing is, that's never worked for a state because the biggest companies are multi-national corporations that can (and do) shift their taxable income to the most favourable jurisdictions, which is why nation states keep trying to undercut each other on CT rates (Apple and Google are notorious for the lengths they go to in order to avail of this, for example). The state can't close _that_ kind of loophole because it doesn't have the authority to (unless it goes down the road of sanctioning other countries due to their tax rates).

I've not seen a solution to wealth distribution yet that acknowledges that we exist in a _global_ economy, regardless of local policies (however well intentioned they are).

Thing is, most people don't really seem to want wealth re-distribution to anyone poorer than them. Unless you're planning to pay a living wage to everyone in India/Thailand/China/wherever then why shouldn't they undercut your taxation rates as much as is needed to attract local jobs?

<comment><USER8> If it accounts to investment income, then the easy solution is tot borrow against your equity. Better to pay 2% interest a year than to pay 70% on realising a gain.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> His main argument besides 'name a country where this has ever worked' was that he is a philanthropist. He alleges that his foundation would have contributed more (in terms of $$$) than a 70% marginal rate. He further feels more comfortable deciding where/how to help by himself instead of giving the money to the gouvernment.

Just because some billionares use their money in good faith, how many of the >5.000.000$/year behave the same? Do they help, buy overpriced luxury goods they don't need, or park their money in some financial product.

His foundation does much work outside of the USA. That's commendable, but it's not up to the individual to decide what they fund. For a good reason.

He really came as arrogant and uninformed. And where was the push back from the host?

[1] [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NR_lictGa5g&t=1m50s](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NR_lictGa5g&t=1m50s)

<comment><USER10> > Just because some billionares use their money in good faith, how many of the > >5.000.000$/year behave the same?

Also billionaire philanthropy probably wont tackle the problems or solutions that will help society but hurt billionaires.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_zt3kGW1NM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_zt3kGW1NM)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Any discussion that doesn't even broach the topic of actual tax incidence is superficial at best, and probably just negligent. You can't really say if X worked at a societal level if X didn't do what it sounds like it did and literally applied to around half a dozen people.

</comment><comment><USER12> I have given up with the long answers. The US had a marginal rate this high before: wrong, this doesn't reflect tax paid which, for the top 1%, is only down slightly since mid-1960s (and not worth anywhere close to what the US needs).

Other countries do this successfully: wrong, other countries are far less progressive than the US with many more paying top rates. The lazy "we can be Sweden" thinking also indicates a fairly weak understanding of political theory.

Assuming no reductions in revenue, the only solution is raising taxes substantially on the wealthy below 1%. Simple.

<comment><USER13> No amount of tax increase alone is going to address a $22 trillion debt. Reducing the size of the state will be required.

<comment><USER14> We were on track to pay off the debt 20 years ago. The debt is substantially higher now but nothing has fundamentally changed.

<comment><USER11> The difference between what it takes to pay down a moderate debt and what it takes to pay down a truly massive debt is a fundamental difference.

<comment><USER14> The debt is about 3x higher in real dollars, and about 2x higher relative to GDP. That doesn't seem like the sort of change that would take you from "moderate" to "truly massive."</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


How Companies Pay Artists to Include Brands in Lyrics - <AUTHOR> http://blog.wired.com/music/2008/09/products-placed.html

<comment><USER2> Who cares? Today's Pop music isn't music anyway. It's all specifically crafted to make it extremely popular so people will buy albums for singles, listen to the same songs 100 times on the radio, and buy tickets to overdone concerts with half-naked women dancing and crazy lights flashing everywhere.

Britney Spear's (does she still "make music?") next hit single could be an advertisement for Coke and I couldn't care less. In fact, I'm confident most fans wouldn't even notice.

<comment><USER3> Not to squabble on generic terms with you, but pop music is still music. Does it focus on entirely different things than other genres of music? Yes. Does that mean that you can easily dismiss it as not having any musical merit whatsoever? Of course.

However, it takes talent to make a good pop song. It's a radically different talent than the sort that goes into other music, but pop musicians are talented. They're just looked down upon because their music is so lacking in terms of depth. But that too contributes to WHY they're so popular. The creation of pop music is a study unto itself.

<comment><USER2> Right, I'm not saying it doesn't take talent. Musically, though, the songs have no merit, so I don't really consider Pop music to be music; it's more like smart marketing or something. For instance, would you consider the songs in Coke commercials to be... music? I mean, it's music in the dictionary sense of the word I suppose, but nobody with any reasonable amount of taste would call it that. It's just an advertisement.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Well this just exposes the musicians for the charlatans they are when they say things like "I only want to sell my album as a whole on iTunes so as not to sacrifice the artistic integrity."

<comment><USER5> To be fair, there are a few musicians for whom this is true: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Album-oriented_rock>. Led Zeppelin albums, for instance, are worth buying in whole.

<comment><USER6> I totally agree with this point. Putting together a coherent, musical album is largely a lost art. Just listen to any old Led Zeppelin or Rush album (particularly [ _Led Zeppelin IV_ ] and _A Farewell to Kings_ \+ _Hemispheres_ ) and compare it to a modern rock album by a band like Nickelback or Papa Roach and there is simply no comparison.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This has been going on since the birth of the record industry. The only thing different about the present and the past is the volume of chatter about the subject.

<comment><USER8> Perhaps it is different in an age of free, all-you-can-eat, high-quality copies of commercial audio.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's not in the article, but the 60s Ray Davis band Kinks had Lola (Lola... Coca Cola).

</comment><comment><USER10> Is any more evidence required that the music industry has no respect for it's audience?

<comment><USER11> Actually, while reading this article, I found myself wondering whether these guys might have made up the email... I wouldn't put it past them, and a single piece of evidence is a bit thin.

That said, I agree that the recording industry deserves to go out of business. I just like to hear a little bit more supporting evidence than a single email that a couple of activists claim they received.

<comment><USER12> I don't know... If they're not going to make any money on distribution because of free downloads, something like this becomes more attractive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Analogy:

<http://www.funatiq.com/images/david-mcdonalds-statue.jpg></comment>


How the Napa Earthquake Affected Bay Area Sleepers - <AUTHOR> https://jawbone.com/blog/napa-earthquake-effect-on-sleep/ <comment><USER2> The fact that Jawbone has this information on their users (yes, I know they say it's aggregated and "anonymised" data) is pretty scary to me. In my opinion, this data should only be visible to each user, and no one else. I really doubt Jawbone users are aware that their UP devices are sending data to third-parties... it feels like 21st century shackles.

<comment><USER3> Comments like these make me think that the pro-privacy crowd is officially a cult. I just don't see the argument about anonymized data that you can opt-out of being such a threat to the end user. I love these types of analysis, especially the ones about dating from OK Cupid. Tivo used to reveal all sorts of interesting things about viewership that was very enlightening. I'd hate to lose this data just because a minority think its a threat to their civil rights. There's a reason why no one outside of reddit and HN knows what the EFF is or cares about their mission. It doesn't fit in with most people's politics.

I really think the privacy advocates are holding us back at this point. They refuse to make reasonable concessions and while they think they're fighting the good fight, they've just marginalized themselves to the point where only a tiny extremist minority is engaged because moderate voices are shouted down as "selling out to the man" or the NSA or whoever the villain of the day is.

Its also sad to see a arguably progressive community like HN fall for this stuff. Not only are we doing this stuff all the time, the current fad of health devices, smart watches, etc are going to make this a lot more common. We're like cavemen throwing spears at an enemy with machine guns. Its a fight we've long lost. I think its better for us to focus on privacy issues that are legitimately victimizing instead of railing against anything and everything that kinda sorta rubs us the wrong way.

If anything, the cult of privacy is hurting us because its created a "boy who cried wolf" situation which is now a political liability. How am I supposed to tell Joe Midwest Voter that X is harmful when he keeps hearing about how tracking cookies or Tivo stats or iPhone policies are harmful and didn't give two shits about those either.

<comment><USER4> There is no such thing as completely anonymized data. And in this case there releasing information without the consent of their users. Sure, you might think that it's reasonable in this case but the important thing is _users are not making that decision_.

So, as long as companies feel they can do _anything_ they feel like with the data your only option is to completely opt out. Which means companies have no reason not to release your data as everyone assumes they will anyway.

<comment><USER5> This isn't a question I have an answer to, but isn't it likely that users relinquish their right to data privacy when they sign a privacy policy and/or terms of use?

<comment><USER6> But they're probably not tremendously informed about this.

In clinical research it's considered unethical to take uninformed consent and a great deal of effort goes into educating participants on the risks and benefits of their contribution.

Such stuff is fantasy for modern EULAs though, which makes it sketchy when these entities do (public) research.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Am I the only one that's finding a bit upsetting the fact that a single overlooking identity could dispose of people's data like that? I know, I know: all the Up wearers have "enrolled" voluntarily, but I wonder if they really like to be part of a giant anonymous data science experiment. If you can do this with the users' data, you can certainly do the same for more profit- related purposes. Or maybe it's just me, sometimes I just can't ignore the scary within the scientifically cool.

<comment><USER8> Did they really dispose any of the users data though? It appears they displayed a chart.

That graphic, it could be argued, is based on an entirely new data set.

So while individual data sets may been used at some point behind the scenes, it's not like those data sets are the ones being disposed.

<comment><USER9> the issue is that they're collecting this data in the first place.

I cant help but wonder how much it would cost to get the sleep records of a competitor of mine - or if it's not for sale, how much the data would be worth on the black market if their servers got hacked.

I have doubts this information is being kept as securely as it should be, that's where my concern lies.

<comment><USER10> Well, if one is willing to one-up a fellow human like that, one is a bad person. But you don't need Jawbone data to do that, there are plenty other ways. Honestly, the problem in your example isn't the data.

<comment><USER11> _one is a bad person_

So what? Time and time again things that would make you a bad _person_ are silently accepted as normal or even expected of a _business._

<comment><USER10> You're correctly describing the state of the world, but my indirect point was that we should stop accepting such behaviour in business and shun people who do. It's stupid and wrong.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Interesting data. Some things that jumped out at me:

1\. Apparently everyone in Santa Cruz goes to bed early and gets up early.

2\. I would have expected bigger jumps on the hour. Maybe I'm the only one that sets my alarm on the hour though.

3\. Why would there be dips in the AM? People hitting snooze perhaps?

4\. How long do you have to moving for UP to think you're awake? How long do you have to be still for the UP to think you're asleep?

<comment><USER13> > 1\. Apparently everyone in Santa Cruz goes to bed early and gets up early.

Probably some selection bias at work here. It's possible the type of person who's buying and wearing personal fitness monitors is also the type of person who gets up early.

> Maybe I'm the only one that sets my alarm on the hour

Probably my OCD coming out but I only set my alarm with minutes beginning 0-4 and ending with 8. I'm sure everyone has their own habits. On the hour seems so numerically boring!

<comment><USER14> If it was selection bias like that, the same would apply to people in other cities, so it wouldn't explain the difference in the graph. My guess is people in Santa Cruz on average have a longer commute.

<comment><USER15> It's going to be a selection bias of:

1\. People who are fit (or want to be)

2\. People who are technical (or are interested in quantified life in general)

Technical people who commute from SC to Silicon Valley have far less bus options and routes than SF (SC has three each way for Google which ends at 9:25). That forces a lot of the number 2 people awake earlier than they otherwise would be.

I think SC is probably the same, if not average getting up later than other Bay Area places, due to the large student population and short walk/bike commute for those who work in the town.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> It's unfortunate but almost all Quantified Self devices work like this. You have to go through the device provider website to see your data.

I wish there existed more engineer-friendly initiatives where you can install the data collection server, data store and analysis server on machines you control.

<comment><USER17> If these consumer-level devices are $100-200 a pop don't you think that would be prohibitively expensive for a decidedly smaller audience?

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> In response to antr and others talking about how this is "private" data, a few things:

1) Jawbone is a data company. You get what you want from them by giving them your data. Giving them your data is your choice, so if you are uncomfortable with it then you should not have a Jawbone. 2) What's interesting about this article is that it's in aggregate, across a statistically significant (so they say) number of people in these areas. They're not looking at individual stats, and I would bet would have a hard time tracing it back to a single person/name/etc, if they're even allowed to store it that way (not sure, but it would surprise me if they did).

If you don't like your data being stored somewhere, why are you even on HackerNews? You know your data is being stored here and being learned from.

<comment><USER9> > If you don't like your data being stored somewhere, why are you even on > HackerNews?

having my sleeping records and a table of what times during the day that I shit is a lot more sensitive information than the trash I post on hacker news

<comment><USER18> Once again, if they have your sleeping records it's because you have chosen to give them that data. It's your problem then, not theirs.

Also, if you think others care about what time of day you take a shit, you have way too high of a view of yourself.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Here I am, a resident of Melbourne, Australia, where we never get interesting earthquakes, visiting SF for the first time (staying in Belmont) and they don't even wake me for the earthquake they evidently put on for my benefit.

<comment><USER20> Hey fellow belmont buddy! Just curious, about how old is the building that you were in when the earthquake hit?

<comment><USER21> It's just that Belmont's on bedrock. Take Ralston east toward the bay, out on the landfill a few blocks past Oracle, and you won't be sleeping through it. It shakes like Jello out here.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> How useful do you find the sleep tracking to be? I've been using it for a couple of days now and I'm on the fence whether a simple movement tracker can really tell whether I'm in a deep or light sleep phase...

<comment><USER23> Think of it comparable the difference between "pop science" and "academic science" in book publishing. Its cool, and usually pretty informative, but largely just for fun or minor utility.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Who else finds this as creepy as hell.

<comment><USER25> Who else finds this cool as hell?

<comment><USER26> Imagine when NSA starts to publish such charts. They have really COOL data.

<comment><USER10> Sure they do. And they could do _a lot_ of good with this data.

<comment><USER23> Post-Snowden PSA: Remember, they already have it if they want it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Since Jawbone apparently don't know how to post a simple image for old-school browsers: [http://blogs- images.forbes.com/dandiamond/files/2014/08/Jawb...](http://blogs- images.forbes.com/dandiamond/files/2014/08/Jawbone.png)

And for those who've noted that the NSA are going to have all the cool data, after seeing this chart, I'm pretty sure they'll start tapping into Jawbone as well.

<comment><USER28> But this is not simple image. This is interactive chart. You can hover lines and get some info via tool tip. Apparently you are using quite old browser, if you don't mind asking you? Since D3js, the lib used to generate SVG, supports majority of browsers[1].

[1] [https://github.com/mbostock/d3/wiki#browser--platform- suppor...](https://github.com/mbostock/d3/wiki#browser--platform-support)

<comment><USER27> You are correct. I am using an old browser.

It does date from the present decade, however. It's not _that_ old. I'm somewhat amused by the number of sites which fail to work properly (some at all) with it.

Imgur is entirely dead. Reddit I can read, but moderation and reply buttons don't work. I hit the beta rollout of a news site last night (apparently part of their A/B test) and found that among the features which failed to work was the "opt out of beta" button.

<comment><USER29> So... Update, maybe? I'm sure the web developers of those sites aren't "somewhat amused" by having to try to support your ancient browser.

D3 should work in any browser that supports SVG, which is every desktop browser but IE8 [1]. If you're still using IE8, some sites not working is going to be the least of your problems soon - Microsoft isn't patching it anymore.

[1]: [http://caniuse.com/#feat=svg](http://caniuse.com/#feat=svg)

<comment><USER27> The OS I'm using isn't eligible for an upgrade. So that would require hardware. That's not in the budget at present.

The browser isn't a Microsoft product.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Google Cache - [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:8rhxYGx...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:8rhxYGx- uJcJ:https://jawbone.com/blog/napa-earthquake-effect-on- sleep/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=fi)

</comment><comment><USER31> A map version of this (with contour lines for percentage awoken) would be nice. This would also eliminate the small differences in the time people in different areas seem to go to sleep and rise.

</comment><comment><USER32> Very cool!

The text says that 93% of the Napa area woke up, but the graphs shows 74%. I'm assuming the graph is off?

<comment><USER33> The graph is showing how many people are awake. The 93% number reflects the fact that some people were already awake before the quake.

<comment><USER32> Then according to the graph, 59/85 were awoken from sleep, which is about 71%.

59 awoken = 74 (awake at quake) - 15 (awake before the quake)

85 = 100 - 15 (awake before quake)

Maybe they are adjusting for other things that are not shown on the graph.

<comment><USER33> Good point. I wonder if they are smoothing the data, which would make the peaks less peaky (which brings up another question, what is the time resolution for UP's ability to measure wakefulness?).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Maybe more interesting is that Santa Cruz/Modesto people are early to bed/early to rise.

<comment><USER35> A number of people live in (beautiful!) Santa Cruz but commute over the hill to work in San Jose or elsewhere in Silicon Valley. It's a long commute on a treacherous but crowded mountain highway, so it's no surprise that they need to wake up early to beat traffic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Link currently leads to a 404.

</comment><comment><USER37> Serious question:

I wonder if they can track how many people die per year and differentiate between type (car, earthquake etc.).

<comment><USER38> That's not the point. Jawbone (and similar devices such as FitBits and Nike FuelBands) can detect whether the user is sleeping or not; this post asserts that the earthquake is the primary cause of the spike in sleep disruption at 3AM, which is a valid and supported hypothesis.

As far as I know, these devices cannot detect the _cause of death_.

<comment><USER37> But the device detects movement doesn't it? Is it not able to detect seismic activity or any other force? So if a person was in a car accident or in an earthquake that would be something that can be measured.

There are now devices that can tell what exercise you are doing just by being on your wrist.

<comment><USER39> I don't know much about this device but I guess it doesn't do continuous synchronization. I believe the user need to initiate it which won't happen if he die.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> "All results are statistically significant."

Isn't this an overly optimistic claim? Surely people using a sleep tracking device do not form an unbiased sample of the general population when it comes to sleep patterns?

<comment><USER40> Nobody said it was a study on the general population, only on the UP wearers population.

<comment><USER41> OTOH, if their sample size is the same as the population size, their data is by definition statistically significant.

<comment><USER38> Not even that. If the sample size in general is extremely large (irrespective of its proportion to the population size), than the results are statistically significant.

A sample size in the thousands counts as "extremely large."

<comment><USER16> Surely the sample, however large, must follow the same distribution than the population distribution? If you sample 1000 insomniacs, how do you get anything significant?

My remark was just that, the sample bias has an impact on the significance of the results. I do not know if in actuality people using sleep monitors form a different distribution than the general population regarding sleep patterns, but it seems likely.

The title of the article mentions "Bay Area sleepers", so it would seem to me that they do form conclusions about the general population, not just Jawbone wearers.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Blueprint - code generator for {Chef,Puppet,shell} based on system state - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/devstructure/blueprint

<comment><USER2> I first thought this was about Blueprint the CSS framework (<http://www.blueprintcss.org/>).</comment>


Scott Meyers, Andrei Alexandrescu and Herb Sutter: C++ and Beyond - <AUTHOR> http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/Scott-Meyers-Andrei-Alexandrescu-and-Herb-Sutter-C-and-Beyond <comment><USER2> Interesting fact from the article, Alexandrescu works at facebook:

        Andrei Alexandrescu is the co-designer of the D programming language, technical
        author and research scientist at Facebook

<comment><USER3> He is probably better known for Modern C++ Design, Loki, and D

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Is there a transcript? I prefer to skim.</comment>


C++ For C Programmers  - <AUTHOR> https://www.coursera.org/course/cplusplus4c

<comment><USER2> Imho, C++ should be thought of as a new language with a degree of backward compatibility with old C code, not as a 'bigger C'.

How I'd start:

        Lesson 1: Pointers don't exist in C++, we
           have references.
        Lesson 2: malloc() doesn't exist in C++
        Lesson 3: Templates are awesome.
        Lesson 4: Smart pointers are awesome.
        Lesson 5: 'Structs' can have constructors, and
           they're awesome!
        Lesson 5.5: Exceptions are awesome!
        Lesson 6: 'Structs' can have copy constructors and
           assignment operators, but the default ones do
           exactly what you'd expect so you shouldn't have
           to write them often.
        Lesson 7: OK, OK... pointers still exist in C++ but
           smart pointers and references make them almost
           deprecated, right?
        Lesson 8: ...oh, and if you use raw C pointers you
          need to do all this extra donkey work when it
          comes to handling exceptions, and write a lot
          more of those pesky copy and move constructors
          and assignment operators I told you you didn't
          need to write.
          Example: writing a smart pointer (with C pointers!)
        Lesson 9: Implementing a safe, dynamic, exception-safe
          array in C++ using templates and C pointers.
        Lesson 10: back to sanity, the ease of using <vector>
          (or the output of lesson 9) in every day code.
           Introduction to the STL, <string>, etc.

...and so on. The idea is to first teach the common C++ way, and then teach the penalty of ignoring it and going the C way, and then the places where you need to pay that penalty.

Imho teaching inheritance or virtual functions early is also a bad sign. I'd go with public/private access control first (leaving protected), then member functions, then _pure_ virtual member functions and basic inheritance, all the while presenting no hint of Circles and Ellipses, just interfaces.

<comment><USER3> What's wrong with handling errors with status codes as opposed to exceptions? Just because it exists doesn't mean one has to use it, no?

<comment><USER2> Exceptions allow you to leverage value semantics and safe reference semantic abstractions like smart pointers. If you fail to handle them properly you will also discover bugs a _lot_ sooner.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Nice! However, I'd appreciate the converse more.

I'm pretty well versed in C++, and every time I try to write something in C, I fall back to C++. I find memory management a pain without RAII, error handling a hassle without exceptions, and, well, anything really a pain without some sort of standard container library.

I have the idea that there's good alternatives for these in C-land, but I'm unfamiliar with them and would love for an expert to teach me.

In general, I wonder whether there's really that many people who know C but not C++. This might just be me projecting myself onto the world, though. Anyone?

<comment><USER5> You're the first person i've heard of who falls back to C++, if that data point is of any value.

AIUI exceptions and RAII are mutually exclusive in C++. I don't know enough about C++ so i wouldn't be surprised to find out this is wrong.

<comment><USER6> > AIUI exceptions and RAII are mutually exclusive in C++

That is... very wrong. Exceptions are perilous unless you use RAII religiously (which you should; it's good.)

For more information, read up on RAII and search for "exception safety."

The definition of C++ RAII from Wikipedia: "In this language, if an exception is thrown, and proper exception handling is in place, the only code that will be executed for the current scope are the destructors of objects declared in that scope". Without this it is very hard to reap any benefits of exceptions (people have disagreements on what those are, if any, but that's another topic).

<comment><USER5> Up-voted a few of the others below too.

I also found this which I thought was a high quality summary: [http://www.parashift.com/c++-faq-lite/ctors-can- throw.html](http://www.parashift.com/c++-faq-lite/ctors-can-throw.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I heard awful things about this course. Just check the reviews for it's textbook: [http://tinyurl.com/cppcprog](http://tinyurl.com/cppcprog)

In general, anything that says "X for Y programmers" is not worth it.

If you really want to learn C++, and you already know C, I suggest either "Accelerated C++" or "The C++ Programming language"

<comment><USER8> ___" Accelerated C++"_ __is a fantastic book if you wish to pick-up idiomatic C++ quickly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm slightly afraid to learn C++ after being told so many horror stories. But for the low low price of free? Count me in.

<comment><USER10> Forget about the stories. I have quite some experience with both C and C++, started with C. There's horror in both of them, if you do it wrong enough. Oh yes there's more horror in C++, there are more ways to do it wrong. But in the end it comes down to the same: learning curve. If you know it well enough there's no horror anymore, just joy.

<comment><USER11> Agreed, specially since C++11 provides better mechanisms for writing safe code if one needs to stay in C++ world.

Now C is a different matter.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> On another note: people claiming "C/C++" skills usually have neither.

<comment><USER3> Why do you say that?

<comment><USER13> By definition C++ is a different language (contrary to Objective-C that was "an extension to C"). It encompasses a lot (nearly all) of C but introduces also new concepts. For example and besides the evident OOP features, all the different types of casting, use of IO stream, default parameters...

</comment></comment></comment><comment> guard-of-terra C++ for C programmers:

RUN

<comment><USER14> Surely that would be BASIC for C programmers?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I think "Thinking in C++" is a good book for C programmers to get started in C++.

</comment><comment><USER15> OK I'm going to date myself here...when I studied comsci/CPrE in college, we started out with C and moved to C++ and then to Java. I guess it doesn't speak much for the depth of the classes that I found C++ pretty easy to get into and used it in higher level courses, such as one involving Open GL.

I guess what I'm asking is... _who uses just C any more_? I can only guess that if, by this point, your main expertise is C and you are still hacking away at it, you're a hacker who is beyond the need for any introductory C++ course and who could probably learn it on your own. If you're a C-person and just want to dabble in a more OOP language to do fun things, why wouldn't you just jump into Python? The world of mostly-and-only-C-programmers seems to be fairly small these days, and the ones who need to get into C++ -- in lieu of what's out there --- seems even smaller

To reiterate my thoughts, here's a review from someone who has read the recommended text book:

[http://www.amazon.com/For-Programmers-Third- Edition-3rd/prod...](http://www.amazon.com/For-Programmers-Third- Edition-3rd/product- reviews/0201395193/ref=cm_cr_dp_synop?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=0&sortBy=bySubmissionDateDescending#RZP1WC0D6AEL)

> _I was initially dismayed by the large number of negative reviews, but now > that I 've completed this book I believe I understand why; this book is > really intended for a very narrow target audience: very experienced C > programmers with no knowledge of C++ -- i.e., Old Farts,... like me. Is > there ANY school out there today teaching people C WITHOUT also teaching > them C++? It seems unlikely, almost as unlikely as it would be to find a > potential employer out there who is seeking Plain Old C programmers today. > So if you are an Old C Dog like me looking to learn the "new" trick of C++, > this book is for you and ONLY for you! I read it carefully and was able to > pass a C++ test that I wouldn't have gotten a single answer right on before > I read it. Anyone else looking to learn C++ would be better served by > choosing C++ for Dummies or something similar._

<comment><USER16> There are many, many people who use C and rarely or never use C++. Most embedded work is done in C, the Linux and BSD kernels are in C, etc. There are a variety of reasons for this, with audit-ability and debug-ability being two big ones. Code space is also a reason, although there are ways to make C++ mostly behave the way you want it to on all but the teensy tiniest platforms (although the resulting code is sometimes a questionable upgrade over just writing the thing in C). A great number of language interpreters are also written in C rather than C++ (cpython being one of them) - easier bindings are one reason for this.

As another datum, where I went to school the intro to CS data structures and algorithms courses were taught in C++ and the operating systems course was taught in C. In my day to day work I use C and a tiny bit of assembly (more reading than writing).

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> "Fly, you fools"

</comment><comment><USER18> >Please use a modern browser with JavaScript enabled to use Coursera.

One wonders how people who can't even create a static HTML page will manage to teach people a complex language like C++.

<comment><USER19> Because this University of California professor runs the entire Coursera website.

<comment><USER18> Well I don't know anything about who this organisation is or who in particular is running the course because I can't view the website!</comment></comment></comment>


Companies who send you email but don't want you to reply - <AUTHOR> http://do-not-reply.tumblr.com

<comment><USER2> I don't think there's anything necessarily wrong with this technique as long as a company makes it easy to contact them some other way. If you have a reply-to address that actually accepts mail, then any large mailing (which isn't always a bad thing) is going to receive a massive amount of vacation auto-responses, chain letters and the like. It isn't exactly the most friendly gesture but it's for very practical reasons, IMO. I wouldn't judge a company's customer service on this alone.</comment>


ShowHN: My first iphone app got approved today (Finderous) - <AUTHOR>

Yay, my first ever iphone app Finderous got approved today at the app store. Before it is ready for sale, I have got some promo codes for you guys to try it. Please use these codes and let me know how you feel about it:
7XYNRKAWL4MJ XNEYXKXMAYWL REKWKE97RHRL 9R3HTNEN69AA KJPJ69WRAN33 XYJ993H47NLX LHWL33PRNTMW FWANKNAK3JRN ERAW9JM39R6F K7KEMHX4T3T9
About Finderous: It is a multilevel locations based short Q&A app, where users can follow places, questions and post short queries at city/county/state/country level according to the type of question. Please let me know if you find any issues with the app. Thanks <comment><USER2> Took KJPJ69WRAN33. I think the interface could be cleaned up a bit. It's sort of confusing navigating around. At first glance it seems like a Quora clone.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. Any suggestions on what UI element can be improved upon?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Congratulations! Are you sure people can use promo codes before it's ready for sale? You might want to include a link too.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you. The App status is ready for sale, so I think people can use the promo codes.

<comment><USER3> Do you have an iTunes link?

<comment><AUTHOR> I have the link, but somehow it's not opening up in iTunes: Here, you can try accessing the app: [http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/finderous/id520384764?ls=1...](http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/finderous/id520384764?ls=1&mt=8)

<comment><USER3> It tells me its not available in the U.S. Store. It could be that your app just hasn't been populated throughout the App store, in which case you should wait a day and try again, or you may have done something wrong in iTunes connect and set up you stores incorrectly.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh, now I know why it is not showing up in the app store, I set the release date to 1st June 2012. You may still use the promo code to download the app as few of my friends have been able to download it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> XNEYXKXMAYWL Used. Thanks. Will try it out.

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome. Let me know if you have any suggestions. Thanks</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What tools/apps should I use to develop web apps on my iPad? - <AUTHOR> I would like to try and experiment for a while with developing web apps (I currently know Ruby on Rails) from an iPad. I'm planning to buy an iPad Pro (probably the smaller one) and before doing it I'm curious if anybody is using an iPad for web development (more then HTML+CSS) and what kind of tools are you using?
Is it sustainable? What kind of projects have you coded this way? In what languages/frameworks? <comment><USER2> I use an android tablet when in public transport, to develop with quite everything in my projects, going from python to c++ including java, c# etc.. Using Quoda IDE and Termux as the terminal for compilation and git project sync.

<comment><USER2> (note: I use the nvidia shield k1 ~200€)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I haven't done that but I feel like it won't be sustainable or fast enough, you'll need to use a full fledged computer [desktop/laptop].

But if you're adding a keyboard and able to switch between apps easily like we do on MacOS [haven't used iPad Pro] then probably that difference should be further slim. Sounds interesting as I think of it, you should definitely try & tretch/test the limits. Good luck :)

<comment><AUTHOR> I currently have an apple wireless keyboard and iPad 4th gen. I sometimes use an app to SSH to a server and then vim. But only for quick fixing problems or debugging.

I was thinking this could be a solution: a remote server with everything installed and a SSH app. The development could be done in vim on the server and the UI could be tested through the mobile browser.

But I was curious if maybe someone else has a better environment or advices on what could work.

I plan to buy an iPad due to split screen capabilities so that I have two apps displayed.

Maybe it will not be sustainable for big projects, but for side projects or small projects could work.</comment></comment>