NASDAQ quotes go real-time on Google Finance - <AUTHOR> http://googlefinanceblog.blogspot.com/2008/06/nasdaq-quotes-go-real-time-on-google.html <comment><USER2> Looks like Yahoo beat google to real time quotes. Plus, their NYSE/AMEX quotes are also real time.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yahoo Finance is much, much older than Google Finance. Google was actually using Yahoo's data for their finance product.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Sweet, now we have a direct feed from the trading floor right into the caffein-encrusted twitchy fingers of the nervous financial bloggers. How can we work Twitter in here someplace so that the breathless realtime apocalypse will be complete?</comment>


This is what no-deal Brexit actually looks like - <AUTHOR> http://www.politics.co.uk/blogs/2018/07/27/this-is-what-no-deal-brexit-actually-looks-like <comment><USER2> Pretty crazy to believe that the whole Brexit process could be agreed in 2 years even if there wasn't much difference in opinion on both sides. Certainly will put off any other EU country from thinking of triggering article 50.</comment>


Delete your code - <AUTHOR> http://darrenkopp.wordpress.com/2013/03/07/delete-your-code/ <comment><USER2> This is a lot easier to do in high level languages. When working in C or assembly, I find that defining the problem in code takes so much work that it's too costly to delete and restart.

For some reason, I've always written documentation, emails and code in a single draft, only going back and tweaking if absolutely necessary. I've never understood those English professors who require 3-4 drafts before a final version.</comment>


JQuery, JS, and CoffeeScript interactive course deal at CodeSchool(3 for 1) - <AUTHOR> http://www.appsumo.com/~yzqwa/

<comment><USER2> Not a very good deal, given Codeschool's $25/month unlimited access membership plan.</comment>


Pitfalls of the ship & iterate mentality - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/p/260b6de30a48

<comment><USER2> After 4 years of using Agile this team (at least the management side of it) has no clue to how Agile works. Its NOT an excuse to ship things faster (even if that is an occasional side benefit)! Its a method to ship things with less bugs and less "missing" features. Its a way of testing early and often so that you don't end up a month away from your deadline with no chance of meeting it. If you get a new use case two days away from the end of a sprint, schedule it for the next sprint. Thank the person who found a hole in your use cases, that is the point of Agile. If you only start finding them at the end of a waterfall cycle there is no way to recover.</comment>


The Ocean Carries 'Memories' of SARS-CoV-2 - <AUTHOR> https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-ocean-carries-memories-of-sars-cov-2/ <comment><USER2> The project is barely related to SARS-CoV-2, the title is almost a linkbait.</comment>


Ask HN: Explain why apps like FB/Shopify are more than CRUD applications? - <AUTHOR> I have not worked for large internet companies and I want to know why there are so many engineers working on seemingly simple CRUD applications like FB/Uber/Shopify etc? <comment><USER2> There's a lot of detail you're glossing over. For instance calculating the total tax on a purchase depends upon, sellers location (to varying degrees of resolution down to county), delivery method, buyer's/store address, type of item (HS codes), maybe whether it's permitted, and probably many things I've never heard of.

[I work at Shopify but not in this area.]

Edit: saying CRUD app without discussing details is like calling everything 'just' a Turing machine/program with bits on a tape. It's true but doesn't consider complexity.

</comment><comment><USER3> distributed systems are inherently hard to build no matter how simple the idea is. consider a simple application like pastebin. the idea is a block of text and a shortened url associated with it. most people have built one. but only few have built something close to pastebin.

size makes all the difference. even if your version of pastebin promises 1 successful save per second, you can only get 86k saves on a good day!

if all your saves were unique visitors it means you are only promising 86,000 unique visitors per day. and that's only considering saving new snippets, we haven't considered displaying them yet.

that's essentially what these systems have to deal with plus security, backup & replication, monitoring etc...</comment>


IPhone User? 90% Chance You're On The Latest OS. Android User? 0.4% Chance - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/01/17/ios-android-breakdown/ <comment><USER4> Look, fellas, I keep seeing these kinds of blog posts and while I am waiting patiently for some fresh insights, I keep seeing the same discussion recycled. So to spare everyone the angst, here's the bottom line:

Apple takes the attitude that if you give users what they just discovered they wanted, they will give Apple money.

Apple considers this more important than its relationships with the carriers, which is why AT&T got an exclusive: None of the other carriers would play ball with a phone that the carriers can't control to the point of making their users miserable.

I am not making a value judgment that this is good or great or a revolution, just stating what I believe to be Apple's business strategy.

Google works the other way, it makes an OS that _in theory_ is just as good as iOS or even better, but in practice Google's business strategy is about getting as many copies of Android out on as many handsets as possible. Take your pick, this is to get as many search clicks and/or other data aggregations into Google's hands or to suck the oxygen out of the market from their arch- rival Microsoft, or possibly both.

To that end, they give the carriers what the carriers want, and the carriers want to make their captive market miserable.

This plays itself out in a myriad of different ways, and it always seems to come down to the same thing: Android is more open in theory, but the gap between theory and practice is smaller in theory than it is in practice, and the cause of the gap is the carriers and Googles perfectly sane business strategy of appeasing them.

I am not saying Apple's strategy is better or worse than Google's. It is possible that each strategy is a local optimum, and the poor companies between Apple and Google--like Microsoft, RIM, and so on--are between a rock and a hard place.

But I do think each strategy is valid given its company's goals, and therefore I do not expect to see anything change unless there is a seismic shift in the industry. Until then, Apple will make a lot of money off a smaller number of handsets, and Android will dominate the numbers but its users will be hostage to the carriers.

<comment><USER5> That logic does not apply to unlocked GSM phones (like mine), where no carrier is involved in the purchase.

These don't get updates either, despite (or because) the device manufacturer is in control, not the carrier.

Maybe in the USA, it is not common to buy phones unlocked and unsubsidised, but here (Germany) many carriers offer rebates if you don't buy a subsidised phone and bring your own.

<comment><USER4> Well, it wouldn't apply if you could argue that the carriers don't want Google selling unlocked phones and it defies them. My guess is that there are so few unlocked phones sold that the carriers don't really care one way or another about people buying unlocked phones, they mostly care about people hacking a phone that is supposed to be locked down.

<comment><USER5> I think a fair number of people have unlocked phones outside the USA because their carrier offers rebates for "phoneless" contracts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I know he considers Android's .X releases major, but in case you don't: iOS 4.X: 89.73 % Android 2.X: 87.4%

Of course, it's hardly the fault of the Android users. If it wasn't for cyanogen and a couple hours of work I wouldn't even be on 2.2.

</comment><comment><USER7> This really is the key difference between the two platforms for developers. Apple just makes a developers job so much easier, an iOS dev is safe to get excited about new features, because they can count on them being supported by customers devices almost immediately.

One of the big advantages android has is the lack of app approval. However if curated stores like amazon take off and users prefer it android will loose that advantage too.

From a users perspective it is great to know you can get 3 years of new features out of an iPhone vs ??? From an android device.

<comment><USER8> I think your last point is key.

Remember back in the day.. if you wanted a Nokia phone that played MP3's, you got the special model the played MP3s. That model didn't really surf the net or have games. If you wanted to play games, you had to buy an NGage, and if you wanted to surf the net (poorly) you needed to get the net surfing phone (can't think of the model). Then there were the E series black berry knock offs.

And once your phone's model year was up, that was it. You were stuck with what you had.

I like my iPhone. It does 97% of what I want it to do. I could get the other 3% of features by getting an Android, but the Android doesn't match the 97% the iPhone has -- it's more like 80%.

Plus, in Canada, my phone has to last 3 years -- that's the contract term up here. 3G's are 3 years old and can run iOS4. Let's see an Android that you buy from Telus or Rogers today run the latest Android in 3 years (even if it doesn't have 100% of the features).

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Doesn't matter much from either a regular developer or regular user standpoint as long as people are using 2.1 and above (90% of users are) - most of the apps just work.

If you are keen on OS upgrades - you just need to have bought the right phone - Nexus line or some of the HTC ones or even the original Droid. I am running Cyanogenmod 7 which is Gingerbread on my N1 happily.

I happen to know many iPhone users at my office - they don't use iTunes and don't even know there is an upgrade - they are running the version of the OS their device shipped with. Only the Mac/iTunes users (which there are few) tend to upgrade to the latest.

So yeah - big numbers but not much practical significance in comparison.

<comment><USER10> _as long as people are using 2.1 and above (90% of users are) - most of the apps just work._

A bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy if developers are targeting old Android OSes because the newer releases don't have critical mass. I'm reminded of the Vista debacle.

<comment><USER9> Well the developers don't lose anything by targeting a lower API version - <USER2> they target 2.1 the app is more or less guaranteed to work on 2.3 due to forward compatibility.

<comment><USER10> Developers who target old OSes lose the features that are available in the newer OSes (unless they do feature detection and a lot of extra testing). This is so obvious that I must not be understanding your comment.

<comment><USER9> It would be a problem if Android 2.x APIs were deficient in basic features like iOS 3.x were when it came to multitasking. That isn't the case. Android API additions are mostly tied to new hardware - NFC/Multiple Cameras/Tablets etc as opposed to pure software improvements like added multitasking.

Not many developers _need_ to target latest AOSP release - that's my point. Almost all apps can target 2.1 and benefit from under the hood improvements in 2.3 like faster VM. Few apps that rely on 2.3 specific features like NFC/SIP/Multiple cameras also rely on hardware features being available - <USER3> software features are a moot point there and then the problem is not unique to Android.

iPhone 5 comes with new NFC and iOS 5 - developers have the same problem - they have to wait for enough people to upgrade to iPhone 5 and iOS5 and if they target iOS4 they lose the iOS 5 features. How many apps will be impacted - not many. Same thing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> iPhone OS 4.0 first available: June 24, 2010 (seven months ago)

Android 2.3 first available: December 16, 2010 (one month ago)

So, really, a release seven times older than another one has more adoption? Stop the presses!

Android revision takeup on disparate hardware is a real issue, but as usual this is just cheap fanboyism in its presentation.

<comment><USER10> Read on to the part where Android 2.2 has much less share than iOS 4.x, despite them being of similar age.

<comment><USER11> Right, like I said, Android revision takeup is a real issue.

It doesn't change the fact that headlining "90% vs. 0.4% LOLOL" is just yet another episode of sports team like boosterism.

Or did MG write an article titled "apple tablet crippled by lack of OS upgrade strategy" 30 days after 4.0 shipped that I missed?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I don't think that headline is even remotely fair. When Apple releases a new version of iOS, it often comes with a new phone and a $200-$400 price tag. When the new Android version is released by Google, there are hundreds of different devices that already exist that have to be updated, and it gets updated for free.

<comment><USER13> And how is this different from Android?

 _"When Apple releases a new version of iOS, it often comes with a new phone and a $200-$400 price tag."_

\- When Android 2.0 was announced, it was available on only one device, the new Verizon Droid ($199 w/ contract). Even the Verizon Droid Eris released the _same day_ did not have the latest OS. (It missed out on 1.6 and 2.0, was upgraded to 2.1 six months later, and will never see supported upgrades to 2.2 or higher.)

\- When Android 2.1 was announced, it was available on only one device, the new Nexus One ($529). When 2.2 was released, buying a Nexus One was still the only way to run it at first, although some other devices did get updates a short while later.

\- When Android 2.3 was announced, it was available on only one device, the new Nexus S ($529 or $199 w/contract).

Many Android devices _never_ get updated to the latest major release. New devices are _released_ every month or so that ship with year-old versions of the OS. Meanwhile, Apple provides upgrades for every one of its older devices, for at least the next few releases.

Among other things, this means developers must decide whether to cut off half their users by taking advantage of new OS features now, or wait a couple years for enough old devices to be updated or thrown away. I work on Firefox for Android, and a bunch of features in the Gingerbread NDK would be perfect for us... if we could actually use them any time soon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Step 1. Click link

Step 2. See the article is written by MG Siegler

Step 3. Find something else to read

<comment><USER15> Flag, don't comment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> If you use the same binning strategy that is used for the iOS versions then the numbers aren't so far off. 87.4% of Android users are on 2.x which compares favorably to the 90% of iOS users on 4.x. Granted there are bigger differences between each Android point version than the iOS, but the iOS data is too lacking to make this a fair comparison. It wouldn't surprise me if iOS suffered from users not being on the latest latest (4.2) version because of the lack of OTA updates.

That being said, my roommate has a Nexus S and I have an HTC Evo and would trade HTC Sense for quicker updates to the latest releases (without having to load custom ROMs).

<comment><USER17> Yes but this is MG Siegler's article. He cherrypicks certain data to show that Android is inferior to iOS.

Majority of Android phones are on 2.1 and up. For him that's not enough so he had to break it down to specific releases (2.1, 2.2, and 2.3) so he can prove his point.

There may be significant difference between 2.1 and 2.2. However, after playing with 2.3 for a month, there's not a big difference from 2.2.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> An alternative explanation not involving carriers:

Device manufacturers fiercely compete to get people to buy THEIR phones. They get customers by adding custom extensions, and by always having fresh phones in the pipeline. Customers do not seem to prioritise promises of timely updates.

Porting customizations costs money that the device manufacturers prefer spending on new models.

Apple customers on the other hand are loyal enough to (now) buy phones from mod 2010 or even 2009 - of course only with the latest iOS. Of course these phones get updates.

</comment><comment><USER18> Even if the carriers _wanted_ to update users to the latest Android OS many devices come with a preinstalled custom UI and existing apps. You don't want to mess with the users' experience by changing their UI or what apps they expect to see.

It would actually require a great deal of work to get new OS updates into the many varieties of Android phones in the way users are accustomed to their phones' experience.

</comment><comment><USER19> For years the majority of the web uses were using an archaic browser (ie6) and the web flourished.

</comment><comment><USER20> Chance this arbitrary statistic matters to real world Android users? 0.4% Chance

<comment><USER21> Certainly mattered to a friend of mine who was suckered into buying an Experia X10.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Transcription Editor - <AUTHOR>

Audio/video transcription tools are quite rudimentary. The audio player is separate from the editor which makes it very cumbersome cross-reference between the audio and the text.
Our transcription editor solves this problem. It provides the audio and a fully featured text editor on a single interface and tightly couples both of them. Jumping to any position in the audio causes the cursor to move correspondingly, and vice-versa.
https://scribie.com/tools/transcription-editor
The editor is built on Ace Editor and the audio player flash or native.
All standard features are present. One experimental feature is text analysis. It performs a trigram match followed by a TF-IDF analysis which highlights the new terms and phrases in the transcript. Those are the most likely places for mistakes.
We have been using this tool for the past year and half internally and now have opened it up for everyone. Please try it out and let us know your feedback and comments.
Thanks in advance! <comment><AUTHOR> clickable - [https://scribie.com/tools/transcription- editor](https://scribie.com/tools/transcription-editor)

</comment><comment><USER2> So what do you use for the actual transcription? MTurk or similar?

<comment><AUTHOR> We have our own MTurk like platform, specialized for audio transcription. Around 4500 certified transcribers right now. We have developed a 4-step process for transcription. The first two steps are where the freelancers are involved, the last is done in-house by a QA team. More details are here.

[http://scribie.com/blog/category/transcription- system-2/](http://scribie.com/blog/category/transcription-system-2/)</comment></comment>


The NSA just posted its first "full" transparency report - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2014/6/27/5849618/the-nsa-just-posted-its-first-ever-transparency-report

<comment><USER2> Why should we believe them now? Clearly they are willing to lie to Congress so I am sure they have no compunction against lying to the public. How about an independent audit of these numbers? I didn't think so.

Once you have been caught in a lie rebuilding your reputation is virtually impossible.

<comment><AUTHOR> Exactly. I actually edited the headline. Originally it read: "The NSA just posted its first full transparency report." (For the submission I added parentheses to "full.")

On another note, I wonder how many dissenting voices are present behind the doors of the NSA given the Snowden revelations // what the state of the workplace culture is.</comment></comment>


Why Mac apps never get "closed" - <AUTHOR> http://unix.stackexchange.com/a/5160/111087 <comment><USER2> Great answer to a common question. I've always liked the distinction between windows and processes in macOS, but many Windows users find it (understandably) odd — Windows power users sometimes feel that the mechanic robs them of control, in that clicking what they believe to be the "close application" button does not typically do what they expect.

I agree that neither approach is objectively right nor wrong.

</comment><comment><USER3> I wonder what portion of users doesn't even know that you can/should quit mac application when you no longer use them. I frequently see people with dozens of active applications in their dock.

This is the converse of the situation on Android. I know many people who close android apps (by swiping them away in the app switcher) because they are afraid they will run in the background.

<comment><USER2> Should users quit running applications? Given a generally large amount of memory available (due to its low cost), and OS application paging, I'm not so sure.

The only reason I ever quit a running application on any modern OS is due to old habits that have died hard and a tired model of thinking ("I'm probably low on memory so I should kill this process"), or because the process itself is misbehaving. Correctly-behaving applications _generally_ don't need to be terminated.</comment></comment>


It's 2015. Can we declare Google Glass dead yet? - <AUTHOR> http://news.dice.com/2015/01/05/can-google-glass-survive-2015/

<comment><USER2> I shouldn't comment on a dumb article, but this is pretty much original content free. It is a summary of other articles with a link bait title.</comment>


Google self-driving car pioneer wants to teach people how to face the future - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/news/technology-quarterly/21662654-sebastian-thrun-pioneer-googles-autonomous-cars-wants-teach-people-how <comment><USER2> I agree with the premise that machines will increasing exceed our capabilities (and are improving quicker than we are). This seems so obvious as to be not debatable.

I also think there are a lot of merits to online-education and Udacity seems to have the right general idea. On-line education needs to be more engaging and entertaining than simply videos and online collaboration.

However, this whole "people need more skills" and "we need more jobs" meme feels like a losing fight with reality. In fact this push for increased human skills seems like it will only widen the gap between the uber skilled and the 99%. In our current economic model, this seems like increased pain for most of us.

IMHO it would be much better if we could stop this denial. We need to pivot our economic system towards a basic income model. I think a much better strategy would be for us to start focusing our best and brightest on full automation of our needs and basic wants so that we can provide most essential services to people with minimal human and resource cost.

<comment><USER3> Many great scientists (Einstein amongst them) get into trouble when they veer into Economics. Einstein predicted social unrest from massive unemployment due to productivity improvements. Productivity improvements help people in aggregate.

The question here is will a small subset of the world accrue all the benefit from the AI productivity improvement? One answer is basic income, presumably based on taxation of the rich. Is another answer some kind of universal ownership scheme of the companies creating the AI? I'm not advocating government ownership of business (this rarely ends well) but perhaps some way for the government to give shares in index funds in lieu of basic cash payments? Essentially equity based social security or welfare payments in lieu of some portion of the cash payments. I haven't thought this fully through yet, but it does allow some aspect of shared upside. (My sense is there will be a lot of shared upside anyway, similar to how we all benefit from free maps and search)

<comment><USER4> Russia tried that. When the USSR ended, they gave every one vouchers to bid for shares of state owned companies. The little people had no idea what they were doing and got screwed brutally. It created many of the ridiculously wealthy Russian oligarchs you see today. [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privatization_in_Russia](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privatization_in_Russia)

<comment><USER5> Interesting. The fundamental goal seemed a noble one, but it was badly implemented. Any lessons to take away?

One immediate idea is some kind of vesting, i.e. you can't actually sell your vouchers for X years (or stages, being able to sell certain percentages after a certain number of years).

A second idea is to encourage the formation of public interest associations to manage the ownership. There are already some non-traditional funds run with some social goals in addition to the goal of making money, perhaps that would help. (But I'm really just brainstorming right now.)

<comment><USER6> My knee-jerk reaction is that these people got bit because they weren't educated on the matter, so free education would've been helpful. Incidentally, I feel like that would help with the original problem as well.

I am really starting to think that government should reduce the cost of education as a public good.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Even though the standard of living is raised for all humans, it seems like advances in AI and automation will drastically reduce the percentage of productive members of society, in spite of educational opportunity.

Improving educational opportunities (a la Udacity) is a noble idea because it levels the playing field a bit (giving the underprivileged a chance), but the end result is the same - a small number of people will inevitably own AI, and the world by extension.

Assuming that the new AI titans are compelled to share their wealth with humanity, wouldn't less productive members of society still face existential threat? Improved standard of living only takes care of the first 2-3 layers of Maslow's Hierarchy of needs - but "esteem" and "self-actualization" are really important as well.

<comment><USER8> _but "esteem" and "self-actualization" are really important as well._

Many people fill those needs with banal things like drinking contests or sports.

<comment><USER9> You mean, as opposed to banal things like their jobs?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is not about humans vs machines, it is STILL, after all these centuries, about labor vs capital.

<comment><USER11> Pretty much. The massive automation that happened during early 20th century modernization sparked a unionizing movement with laborers. Kind of interesting that we don't see that level of organization now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> If Thrun is right about AI "outsmarting people in every dimension", how in the world could more entertaining job training videos organized into "nanodegrees" help us at all? I know this article was just a free ad for Udacity so he had to say self-serving things, but do you think the dude really believes this???

As others have pointed out, the real problem before us this century is to _somehow_ decouple having a basic standard of living from performing work--- more specifically from "contributing to productivity". My amateur guess is that even with our current state of food and energy production, the biggest barrier isn't the massively difficult economic and organizational problem, but advancing as a culture beyond our entrenched moral assumption that the means for basic living is something to be earned rather than a human right.

</comment><comment><USER13> When this company can build a phone that won't crash, I'll believe they can build a car that won't crash. Until that day comes I feel like stern warnings of the coming economic revolution are not really in order.

</comment><comment><USER14> Arrogant, as is typical of those with a financial stake in a particular version of progress. This guy is under the belief that his version of the future will happen and that it is his job to help others realise that truth. Technological progress may be inevitable, but that progress envisioned by any particular person is not.

Nanodegrees may seem a good idea, and they no doubt make sense financially to google, but that does not make them inevitable. People have been attending today's traditional schools since long before the Aztecs were even a thing (Cambridge 1200s). There is wisdom in those years. It may be time to change that wisdom, but it won't happen within a generation.

Self-driving cars seem likely but are not inevitable. All sorts of safety- enhancing technologies are dropped for apparently irrelevant reasons. Why do we sell cars that can break speed limits? Why do school buses not have seat belts? Why do planes still have error-prone pilots? Why are alcohol and cigarettes still a thing? Each of those have at some point been challenged by technological progressives who though their version of the future was unavoidable. Each was proven wrong. Only the arrogant assume the future.

fyi, anyone who thinks driverless cars are inevitable should look at the futurama exhibit of 1939. We were then going to have them by 1960. Then it was ford. Now it is google. I'll believe it when I see it.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futurama_%28New_York_World%27s...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futurama_%28New_York_World%27s_Fair%29)

<comment><USER15> _Self-driving cars seem likely but are not inevitable._

Yes they are inevitable.

 _All sorts of safety-enhancing technologies are dropped_

Self-driving cars are not only a "safety-enhancing technology".

First and foremost they are a money-saving technology.

Over 4 million people are employed in the USA transportation industry[1]. 1.7 million of them are truck drivers[2].

Global logistics companies will save billions of dollars per year by upgrading their fleets to self-driving vehicles.

[1] [http://www.bls.gov/emp/ep_table_201.htm](http://www.bls.gov/emp/ep_table_201.htm)

[2] [http://www.bls.gov/ooh/transportation-and-material- moving/he...](http://www.bls.gov/ooh/transportation-and-material-moving/heavy- and-tractor-trailer-truck-drivers.htm)

<comment><USER14> My point: There are often seemingly irrational reasons why new technologies are not adopted. One can make all rational arguments only to have them fall down when it comes to implementation. It is arrogant to assume that one today can perfectly predict technology tomorrow. (I say perfectly because the OP references only a narrow range of self-drive tech, not acknowledging all the other options.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> > To the extent we are seeing the beginning of a battle between artificial > intelligence (AI) and humanity, I am 100% loyal to people.

Perhaps I'm just jaded or cynical, but _fuck people_.

We, as a species, are the greatest threat to ourselves, and we are our greatest asset. An individual may be brilliant, and and large groups congregating together into governments that empower hundreds of millions of individuals may be the greatest feat our species has accomplished, but there is just so much instability across a wide spectrum of life.

We, as a species, are approaching the limit of what 7B people on this planet are capable of. Globalization is piquing and revolutionary growth will pique with it, and maintaining the rate at which we grow will be accomplished by broad-sweeping reforms with the end-goal being tearing down inefficiencies -- starting with economic.

We, as a species, absolutely can bring a first-world quality of life to everybody, so why shouldn't we?

We, as a species, absolutely can cooperate and govern on a global scale, where such cooperation is codified into law, so why shouldn't we?

The answer is that we don't want to because we can't handle giving up control to _those other people_ because they don't have _our best interests_ in mind.

How do we face the future? By letting go of our ill-conceived notion that we are fit to govern ourselves in the current manner, and accept that operational control of various aspects of humanity (eg: supply chain management, namely natural resource allocation and food distribution) will be automated, and as such outside of the purview of _human judgement_.

<comment><USER17> I disagree. You are probably being downvoted out of disagreement. (d_-1?)

I'd like to thank you for contributing your perspective in this reasoned and impassioned advocacy for authoritarianism.

<comment><USER16> It's not authoritarianism, it's trust. We already trust large aspects of our lives to machines, it's time we take that trust to the next level.

If and when it happens, nobody will miss having to manage large fleets of container ships that currently move hundreds of millions of dollars of goods per day.

If and when it happens, nobody will miss having to manage large fleets of trucks, vans, and cargo planes that currently move hundreds of millions of dollars of goods per week.

If and when it happens, nobody will miss having to find and drill for oil and nat-gas.

If and when it happens, nobody will miss having to raise and slaughter farm animals.

If and when it happens, nobody will miss having to tend to land for our apples and oranges.

Freedom of movement will diminish, in exchange we will achieve riches nobody ever dreamed of.</comment></comment></comment>


Gaggle monitors the work and communications of almost 5M students in the US - <AUTHOR> https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/carolinehaskins1/gaggle-school-surveillance-technology-education <comment><USER2> This is completely absurd and I'm convinced it solves zero problems. The kids don't know they're being spied on until they do something "wrong". Gaggle (a terrible name btw) claim they prevent suicides and school shootings. This might "work" at first until kids know they are being spied on. Now they know not to send an email saying "I'm going to kill people". All your doing is preventing communication using school provided technology and eroding students trust in the school. You're not actually preventing a shooting. Kids can still do whatever they want and there's nothing you can do to stop it.

On top of that they monitor for profanity. WHY? It doesn't harm anyone and let's people express themselves how they want.

If I was a parent I wouldn't want some random people at a for profit company spying on my child. That's my job.

Do kids still read 1984?

<comment><USER3> How much of this is typical social indoctrination? Teach children early that they are constantly spied on and they'll accept it in their cars, on their phones, in their houses. Total surveillance state.

I'm more and more certain much of this is the result of post-modernism. God is dead. We can no longer expect the fear of hell or desire for heaven to keep us in line, so the state must become the omniscient god watching over us.

<comment><USER4> > I'm more and more certain much of this is the result of post-modernism. God > is dead. We can no longer expect the fear of hell or desire for heaven to > keep us in line, so the state must become the omniscient god watching over > us.

I wish more people would see our police state through that lens, because hell and heaven never kept people in line and the state will do no better. It's all just metric-driven management... in the long-run, nothing really keeps the masses in line.

<comment><USER5> incentive structures and monitoring don't influence people's behavior?

<comment><USER6> People still murdered and committed adultery and broke the Sabbath even after they'd been told that an omniscient being would definitely know and punish them. I think that was the poster's point, anyway.

<comment><USER7> (not personally religious, or really for surveillance in schools, would probably teach my children to build their skills circumventing it to be honest)

But surely that's a strawman. No one thinks religion would stop all evil or all people, but there certainly seems to be some kind of psychological effect from being brought up in such a framework, which can be observed, for instance, in latent guilt and residual fear of hell and judgement that happens when people leave certain christian sects for instance, which is totally absent and baffling to those not from such a cultural background.

I think its eminently feasible that SOME people are being 'held in line' through explicit or implicit fear of rules/authority/sanctity/hell/punishment/purity/etc provided by religious and social structures.

<comment><USER3> I suspect _I_ am. Do you not think about what you search for on the internet before you do it? Sometimes I really have to think, "do I want google to know I want to know about this?"

Even if you use DDG, you go to a site with GA on it, google cdn, maybe facebook too, anything with those icons to share with a social media site.

Even searching for symptoms. I was searching for something my girlfriend mentioned the other day and now wondering if I'll start seeing some kind of ad related to the issue.

It's not good.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Hard not to compare this to surveillance in mainland China.

> Among the many banned words and phrases on Gaggle's list are "suicide," > "kill myself," "want to die," "hurt me," "drunk," and "heroin."

Children growing up in this sort of environment will come to expect it from their government.

I wonder if they have any data at all that shows they can actually prevent catastrophes with this sort of system or if this is just a placebo with dangerous social side effects?

<comment><USER9> Also, have they ever actually seen kids communicate? With the way the world seems to be, my friends and I joked a lot about wanting to die (and still do). We don't actually mean it, it's just a really strong way of saying that shit's messed up and it's all rather absurd. The joke itself also implies irreverence. It's usually taboo to joke about dying, so doing so is a bit subversive. It can also be used as pure ironic detachment. For example: [1]. I don't know if current youths make jokes like this, but my friends and I do.

Anyway, yeah, restricting a few key phrases is amateur hour. It doesn't actually help, and kids will just find ways around it anyway. Wait until they discover Unicode homographs!

[1] [https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/like-this-image-to-die- instan...](https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/like-this-image-to-die-instantly)

<comment><USER10> hahaha! I am laughing so much at these images right now. Genius.

It's totally true though - no amount of word filtering is ever going to serve a real, tangible purpose for people who are having a consensual conversation between each other. Further, if AIM or ICQ back in the day had filtered my conversations, my friends and I would have just moved to one of the other many services that _don't_ use such filtering. It was bad enough when they started showing automatic previews of URLs in messages, the last thing I need is something actually modifying or acting on the text content of the messages.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This made me laugh. I'm currently in High School and we use GSuite (we also used GSuite in elementary/middle school for that matter), but am not 100% if we use Gaggle, but even if we did:

Once kids come into HS/Middle School at least now in 2019/2020, most if not all use personal emails and external chatting apps (most likely Messenger if not Instagram Messages or Snapchat). Compounded with psuedonyms, it's hard for any AI to determine who's chatting who... and even if FB/Snap knew who it was, I'm somewhat certain they wouldn't do anything.

However, in Elementary school, email and Hangouts was the way to go (experience from siblings and myself around 5 years ago), so I guess Gaggle's "AI" can determine if elementary and some middle school kids are a "threat".

Regardless, kids nowadays are really into "self-deprecating jokes": "I want to KMS" or other abusive/harmful messages which a good majority use as jokes (in my experience) although they don't have any wrong intentions. I think any AI or NLP model to determine which is a credible threat and which isn't will be extremely hard to tell, even for humans who aren't teens.

<comment><USER12> The students at my school used to joke and say KMS and KYS all the time, too... until one of those kids actually did. And then they stopped saying that to each other almost over night.

Sometimes you are joking, but the person you are joking with isn't. Think about that next time you jokingly tell someone to KYS because they got a 65 on a quiz.

<comment><USER13> You're implying that an environment where people don't jokingly reference suicide would have led to a better outcome. Is there evidence for this?

<comment><USER14> So you have evidence that telling people to kill themselves is safe?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> > Gaggle is one of the biggest players in today's new economy of student > surveillance, in which student work and behavior are scrutinized for > indicators of violence or a mental health crisis, and profanity and > sexuality are policed.

There has to be a way to reach so-called "troubled" kids without creating a culture of fear around expressing difficult emotions. This is part of a larger trend of parenting surveillance tech (ie Life360) that I find quite disturbing.

Schools seem much more willing to pay for newfangled tech rather than more trained counselors, for example. Outsourcing content moderation to low-paid contract workers is what gave us Facebook. I fear that these technologies will put a nice band-aid on the problem of student mental health while actually making it worse.

<comment><USER16> This is a combination of CYA ("we did everything we could, we even surveilled all their communications"), and tech "magic" mentality: where new, unproven technologies are sold as an easy fix for complex societal issues. 10 years from now we'll read about how none of this actually helped any kid in real crisis - but it'll make a few school administrators feel good and in control for a few years.

The bigger problem is that unlike previous similar boondoggles (see D.A.R.E.), this might have lasting consequences by acclimating a generation to constant surveillance.

<comment><USER17> I'd not be at all surprised to learn D.A.R.E. went a long way to vilifying drug users.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I try to have a charitable interpretation of other people's actions, but I can't help but feel like this is the old trick of using "think of the children" to force the leading edge of a wedge on something reprehensible.

This is an absolutely disgusting level of surveillance on developing minds, and trains them to think it's normal to live in a virtual panopticon. It's easy to force societal change by poisoning the impressionable minds of children and simply waiting.

<comment><USER19> It's not even meaningful. I read through the article and it's just scanning word docs and anything else that goes through your school email account. How many kids are dumb enough to threaten harm upon themselves or others, or otherwise share explicit imagery on their school email account...

All this does is get kids used to being watched.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I am currently attending a school at which GSuite and Gaggle are both used. I agree that Gaggle is extreme, especially the "three strikes" system.

On the other hand, I also try to avoid tying my school online identity to my personal online identity, and leave my school account for school. That also means not doing anything personal on district provided chromebooks. However, I only really know to do this due to knowledge in technology focused areas, not something most students have.

My main issue with this sort of tracking is that the students are very loosely told what it is tracked and how; at our school, students were told that the chromebooks used gaggle and not much more than that.

Overall, students and parents should definitely be better taught as to what occurs with surveillance, and in my opinion the current level of surveillance is extremely excessive.

</comment><comment><USER21> From Gaggle's FAQ ([https://www.gaggle.net/frequently-asked- questions/](https://www.gaggle.net/frequently-asked-questions/)):

How much does Gaggle Safety Management cost?

Gaggle Safety Management truly is a one-of-kind solution that shouldn't be mistaken for a less expensive or free alternative. We understand that no two school districts are alike, so our per student pricing is based on your specific requirements as well as the size of your student population. Pricing for other Gaggle solutions also can be customized to the needs of your school or district.

 _Perhaps a better question to ask is "How much will it cost your school or district if you don't use Gaggle Safety Management?"_ (emphasis mine)

A lot of their webpage seems to be riding on fear, as is visible when just visiting their homepage.

</comment><comment><USER22> My school district started giving out a Chromebook to each kid, and has these things locked down pretty tight. Kids are forbidden from installing their own software. (We tried installing Python / Jupyter). They also hired a surveillance company, maybe the one mentioned in the article.

They conducted a trial run of the surveillance service at one middle school for a couple months, whereupon they claimed that it prevented two suicides. A suicide per month in a single middle school isn't remotely plausible.

Now of course the kids know about the surveillance. It was announced in the newspaper. But already for years, parents have already been teaching our kids about dealing with the internet: Don't write anything that you wouldn't want to see on the front page of the New York Times. Don't admit to being a member of a hated group. Don't criticize governments that are capable of carrying out censorship beyond their borders. Assume that all "private" information will be stolen or sold.

My kids have told me that every kid at school has figured out how to install a VPN on their cellphone, so they can bypass the content blockers. They know that the VPNs themselves aren't secure. They don't use the Chromebooks except to look up school assignments (which are themselves surveilled via anti- plagiarism service).

Unfortunately the short term desire for entertainment, and to be part of a community, outweighs their long term concerns for security and privacy. But at least from the standpoint of being informed, they're quite well informed.

<comment><USER23> > whereupon they claimed that it prevented two suicides. A suicide per month > in a single middle school isn't remotely plausible.

The software is really worrying, and this is one reason why.

Risk prediction for suicide is really hard. Currently the risk prediction tools (created and used by health care professionals) are bad, and there's strong advice that these should not be used to predict future suicide or self harm, and should not be used to determine who to offer treatment to or who to discharge from treatment. And these tools are somewhat more sophisticated than "has the person used the word suicide?"

[https://www.nice.org.uk/donotdo/do-not-use-risk- assessment-t...](https://www.nice.org.uk/donotdo/do-not-use-risk-assessment- tools-and-scales-to-predict-future-suicide-or-repetition-of-selfharm)

[https://www.nice.org.uk/donotdo/do-not-use-risk- assessment-t...](https://www.nice.org.uk/donotdo/do-not-use-risk-assessment- tools-and-scales-to-determine-who-should-and-should-not-be-offered-treatment- or-who-should-be-discharged)

<comment><USER22> In my view a serious problem is that a person becomes "labeled" as a suicide risk, and has to bear that cross for the rest of their lives. It could get you kicked out of school, barred from employment, and so forth.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I wonder what can parents do to prepare kids for that -- teach them to never post anything personal where school could be watching (so nowhere), create a fake public persona to avoid closer scrutiny, and so on?

Schools will prepare students for accepting global surveillance and to counteract that parents will prepare kids for living in cyberpunk underground. I don't think either of those extremes are good for the kids themselves...

<comment><USER25> Honestly, I'd flood their system with words, phrases and various images from the internet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> So much for education for democratic citizenship.

Someday I will help lead a school whose software is written by students and whose policies are debated by student government, faculty senate, and the PTA.

</comment><comment><USER27> This is so utterly horrifying I can't even put into words my disgust. Although, I probably should have seen it coming.

How do the schools and Gaggle have access to all of this info anyway? I assume they have school accounts that are provided by the school and therefore the legal property of the school since they are the ones paying for the MSFT 365 accounts? But what about Gmail? I don't use it but I thought it was free? I take it there is some corporate version that is paid for?

<comment><USER28> [https://edu.google.com/why-google/k-12-solutions](https://edu.google.com/why- google/k-12-solutions)

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Profiting off of fear-mongering. But I suppose there's a certain amount of sales genius (albeit evil) in manipulating faint-hearted administrators to buy your product.

They need to add things like _going outside, storm, thunder, lightning, raincoat_ and so forth to the list, since getting struck by lightning is about 600 times more likely nationwide than being shot at school.

<comment><USER30> Lightning doesn't make global news.

<comment><USER29> Right, because, I suppose, it's 600X more commonplace than school shootings!

So, we're paying close attention to exotic scenarios we'll likely never experience personally, and getting worked up over them. Meanwhile the various elephants in our rooms, the ones that are likely to be actual problems for us (heart disease, dying in a car crash, cancer, etc.) are drab and gray, so we ignore them. I mean who wants to solve real problems? BORRINGGG!

Suddenly just now while typing I realized that 1) an exotic, unlikely scenario 2) that we engage closely with ...is precisely the paradigm of all fiction, fantasy and entertainment. What is a video game other than an exotic scenario you'll probably never experience in real life, that you engage with and try to "get into?"

How about in ancient times? Sure - even back in Greece or in Shakespeare's time, "the play was the thing," namely an exotic scenario (the inside of the royal castle perhaps, which most people will never see) and "getting worked up over it" might be more aptly described by your drama teacher as sharing in the tension, drama and catharsis.

Even our ideas about the future tend to center around exotic utopias, or exotic apocalypses (the writer John Michael Greer has talked about this) whereas in reality things will probably just continue to slowly get shittier, more annoying, less comfortable, less convenient etc., and ironically it'll probably be that way precisely because we've got our heads up our asses with fantasy (including things like "Hey there was a shooting; let's implement 1984.") and can't seem to reach a basic consensus about what reality is and how to keep our house in order. BORRINGGG!!!

Anyway if we're using news of a school shooting as entertainment -- "Riveting tension!" says the New York Times. "So sad!" says the Washington Post -- then suddenly instead of a fictional universe with actors, we're using real people, real victims, for our entertainment. Which feels like a wrong to me.

Huge tangent, sorry. Didn't expect to be writing in this direction today.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> A really sad state of affairs when we are monitoring all our children's communications. Its the same as those parents installing spyware on their kids' devices: an attempt to alleviate the symptoms, rather than the causes: loneliness, lack of attention, lack of parenting skills, poverty, lack of funds for good teachers, ...

</comment><comment><USER32> I find it interesting how this sort of thing is spreading so far.

The CCP state, Facebook, Google... now Gaggle.

I hope there's some studies of the damage such things do to people.

 __How much do they lose the ability to control their own lives? __

 __How does this change their attitude to other people? __

 __Respect for authority? __

Most of all, this ought to be __opt-in __, opt-in only, and if you opted-in you can get out again. My reading of the articles says it 's none of these.

</comment><comment><USER33> It would be great if a hacker could get this system to create a bunch of false positives to the extent that the schools could no longer justify the $60k price tag on this. Also, isn't that enough money to hire an additional school psychologist? This is not a problem software can fix.

</comment><comment><USER34> This is awful. Privacy should be a fundamental right.

But I cannot help thinking of my younger self, toying with that Gaggle AI :) I mean as a teenager (old enough here to have been through the "no-future" 80's) me and my friends would have push that Gaggle AI, where no AI has gone before :)

What can they do to the kids who write "inappropriate" stuff ? They cannot prevent the kids to do it again, it is free speech during private conversations.

This reminds me and my cousin who created a secret language "fefe" that easy enough to process and speak, but too confusing to understand when listen too. Kids are going to just do that, new words or old ones with new meaning, and challenge Gaggle.

<comment><USER35> They say it's AI but it seems like just a hash map to me.

<comment><USER36> Most AI seems to be either that, human workers pretending to be AI, or some half-baked, misapplied and not working deep neural network. I have a huge respect for companies that know about linear regression.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> How is this legal? I'm not doubting the school's intentions but this is a massive breach of privacy, a sort of dystopic 1984 scenario.

"Believe happy thoughts! You are happy! Smile please!"

I think the solution lies outside the tech world and in face to face solutions; train teachers to spot problems and red flags and possibly have a tally system. Are several teachers reporting issues? A student missing classes, showing up long sleeves, withdrawn, depressed? Grades slipping, unable to focus? Set a counsel meeting and get to the bottom of it.

An abstract and mind-you poorly run AI is just a nightmare scenario. I feel sorry for any students going through the system now.

<comment><USER38> > How is this legal? I'm not doubting the school's intentions but this is a > massive breach of privacy, a sort of dystopic 1984 scenario.

You might also be surprised to know that your employer can also log everything you do with company property. Not that I agree with it but the legal precedent is there and children in school have far fewer rights than others.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> >>student emails are scanned in real time, and those that violate the rules are blocked from their intended recipients.

Aside from the massive overriding issues of such pervasive surveillance, this practice seems additionally stupid and counterproductive.

As soon as kids figure out that their language is being monitored for certain phrases -- and this is an instant give-away -- they'll simply avoid using those phrases and develop a new code, rendering the entire system useless (as well as abhorrent).

Gaggle's mgt are clearly not the sharpest tools in the shed, making this kind of basic and stupid opsec errors...

</comment><comment><USER40> Back when I was in school, they had a software called "Foolproof" installed on all the computers that largely did the same thing. In addition to that it prevented system-level changes to the computers and crippled them in other ways, like preventing installation of applications and hooking into Windows to implement all sorts of restrictions. It also did content monitoring and would regularly take screenshots of whatever you were doing.

However, the software was poorly written, full of bugs, would frequently crash, and generally ineffective. It wasn't long until we (kids) figured out its weaknesses and we had full control of it —- we could force it to crash, uninstall it, and we even took over it's command and control server.

Mind you, this was 20 years ago. Today's kids are up against more mature software but I tend to feel whoever makes these things is generally bottom of the barrel outsourced devshops, so it's probably all still very low quality. Couple that with kids being generally more tech savvy and advanced these days with clueless school administrators —- kids are generally smarter than you think and need a lot less protecting. Information spreads at lightning speed in a school. I'm sure they all know all about this software and how to get around it.

</comment><comment><USER41> > "[There's] a very consistent and long-standing belief that children have > fewer rights to their own communications, and to their own inner thoughts > and to their own practices,"

IMO, that's the biggest problem here. Until we stop treating children the way we treated slaves, people of cololor, women and LGBTQ+ in the past, we will get horrible systems like this. We need to recognize that "it is self-evident that all people are created equal", and that includes children too.

I'm a pretty young user by HN standards and I still keep in touch with under18s. I know a few who have been surveilled at every step and prohibited from using most modern technologies like other teenagers do. This created way more problems than it solved. This was particularly prevalent in the U.S. On the other hand, I never had any rules imposed, and I think I'm in tech only because of that. In Poland where I live, monitoring children's use of technology is almost unheard of. I haven't really heard of any problematic situations that monitoring would solve. On the other hand, I know a few horror stories from the U.S. where monitoring was used.

</comment><comment><USER42> One of these days, someone is going to suggest the radical idea that there might be some connection between

(a) a culture of authority and draconian measures where adolescents aren't respected and the very people who are supposed to look after them and set an example are instead their enemies and not to be trusted

and

(b) a culture where significant numbers of adolescents think it's OK to commit extreme acts that harm themselves or others.

<comment><USER43> dont tell them that they're the problem, because they (and their investors) are making loads of money on positioning themselves as the "solution."

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Its part of a broader pattern of factory-lining everything in the industrialized world. Any solution that is not codified into a law or structure of some kind is "illegible" to those who only see structures.

Who needs social structures when you can just outsource every problem to a company and throw the ones that don't fit into some variant of prison or mental ward?

</comment><comment><USER45> When I was going through school I was taught that this is the sort of thing that happens in the GDR--the surveillance state. We watched videos/documentaries on this. These are the tools of totalitarian states is what we were taught. The technology has changed but the end result hasn't-- it's still chilling.

This has come up for my family this past week. When my son came home from school and said he feels uncomfortable with all of the video cameras in the hallways I was shocked that this was a thing. He said he even felt uncomfortable going to the washrooms as he couldn't be sure there weren't cameras.

The measures of surveillance employed without notifying the parents was shocking to me--with no option to give feedback or opt out? I haven't even looked into other forms of monitoring like what's shared in the article. But I'm going to find out.

</comment><comment><USER46> While Gaggle is indeed crazy intrusive, they're not really alone in this world of K12 monitoring. GoGuardian and Lightspeed Systems are doing the same thing, perhaps to a lesser degree, but maybe not.

For example, administrators using GoGuardian can get 'Smart Alerts' for 'self- harm' and other objectionable material. They'll receive an email that includes a screenshot of the material in question, and for G Suite, it spans Google search, Docs, and effectively any Google service.

However, that said, I just tried to pull up a link for GoGuardian and noticed they have this disclaimer:

"Please note: Smart Alerts for the "Self-Harm" category is no longer available for new customers. For more information, please reach out to your sales representative."

</comment><comment><USER47> My high school gave all students Gaggle email addresses 10-15 years ago. The account was used as part of an assignment in a computer class to send some emails, though I think the teachers expected you to continue using the account for personal things. I don't recall being told the account was being watched by anyone. Makes me glad I never used it for anything beyond the assignment.

Incidentally, over the past few years I've been doing an audit of my password manager and couldn't log into the Gaggle account any longer, so I suppose the addresses are deleted after a few years. Hopefully that's current policy as well as I think most people would agree that what you write as a teenager may not reflect well on you later.

</comment><comment><USER48> I am a childless tin-foil hatter so I am asking out of ignorant curiosity- is there any way to avoid tracking on your child? Does refusing to agree to Google/Gaggles/MS/Etc's ToS, EULA or Privacy policy mean the public schools can refuse your child education? Is there some different ToS and privacy policy for minors forced into using these services?

I also feel like this CYA policy may backfire. Before they could rightfully say they weren't the responsible party. Now that they are using tax payer funds to "prevent" these things I feel like they put themselves in a position to be responsible if it fails. I am sure there is some legal doctrine term for what I am trying to say.

<comment><USER38> > I am a childless tin-foil hatter so I am asking out of ignorant curiosity- > is there any way to avoid tracking on your child? Does refusing to agree to > Google/Gaggles/MS/Etc's ToS, EULA or Privacy policy mean the public schools > can refuse your child education? Is there some different ToS and privacy > policy for minors forced into using these services?

> I also feel like this CYA policy may backfire. Before they could rightfully > say they weren't the responsible party. Now that they are using tax payer > funds to "prevent" these things I feel like they put themselves in a > position to be responsible if it fails. I am sure there is some legal > doctrine term for what I am trying to say.

This is a really interesting perspective and I'm curious if someone knowledgeable on the subject would comment. If public education is a right, can my child be denied that right if I refuse to consent to a license? If the child consents, is that not an invalid contract?

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> Two brief thoughts

1) This is no way to treat kids that are already suffering from a dysfunctional society created by adults.

2) Even worse, to these kids, this is only going to normalize the idea of the surveillance state. But maybe that's the point.

</comment><comment><USER50> This feels like an extension of how the work world is being run increasingly. More and more process, policies and automated decisions and less common sense. Good to teach children as early as possible to fall in line :(

</comment><comment><USER51> > Gaggle touts itself as a tantalizingly simple solution to a diverse set of > horrors. It claims to have saved hundreds of lives from suicide during the > 2018–19 school year.

I just read a great newyorker piece on a security company that sold FUD[0]. This seems like another example of FUD for sale very similar to some security companies out there.

[0] [https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/11/04/a-cybersecurit...](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/11/04/a-cybersecurity- firms-sharp-rise-and-stunning-collapse)

</comment><comment><USER52> Somewhat of a tangent, but I can't help thinking about it – since workplace surveillance has now _also_ been normalized in the US, four years of college might be the only place where young American adults will have the ability to be exposed to a place where they can say or do anything on the Internet without Big Brother looking over their shoulder.

I'm assuming that most progressive college campuses don't use these ridiculously invasive tools (the college I went to ran a fairly unrestricted internal and guest network), but perhaps that's being too optimistic.

</comment><comment><USER53> Note the politics of funding such surveillance as a justification for not needing to restrict access to weapons.

</comment><comment><USER54> Ethics and privacy rights notwithstanding, how can we help to educate schools that software like Gaggle are more fraudulent than they are helpful? It's quite clear to me all this product is doing is maintaining a blacklist controversial words and flagging any content that is passed through it that contains them, and is calling this AI to make it sound more advanced than it is. False advertisement to a community that is generally not very tech savvy. Are parents and schoolboards really comfortable with $10/hour contract employees looking through their children's content to decide its obscenity? With the money these school districts spend on scammy software, they could be spending it on recruiting health experts. I'm confident this company justifies its product's existence by taking a secondary school kid's joke about killing himself or herself out of context, flagging it, and claiming they prevented a suicide to boost their metrics.

</comment><comment><USER55> I was not happy to learn recently our school was using google sites and chromebooks. We weren't asked or even notified about that. Gaggle is another large step in the wrong direction.

All demonstrating that school (and govt) officials are not even aware of the need for privacy.

</comment><comment><USER56> Foucault was astute in observing that schools mirror the architecture and processes of prisons.

</comment><comment><USER57> This is completely unnecessary. Has our world really come to a complete dragnet? Anything in the name of safety? Innocent as long as you keep proving yourself innocent. This is no longer the land of the free and the home of the brave.

Let the kids be kids.

</comment><comment><USER58> Seeing this headline reminded me of that Lysol TV ad. All sounds like a noble cause until they briefly mention "and partnering with a smart thermometer company". And bam, there's your kids data being sucked up by medical company...

</comment><comment><USER14> Sex and violence and curse words have never been allowed at school. Kids can do all these things on their personal Gmail/WhatsApp if they want.

</comment><comment><USER59> Sounds like something out of a Black Mirror episode.

<comment><USER60> Heh, I came here looking for this comment. That's because it literally is! "Arkangel" follows a very young girl through to young adulthood. When she was very young, she was part of a pilot program that allowed her mom to see what she was seeing at all times, filter visual and auditory content, etc.

It went about the way you'd expect.

Bark's response to DHH [1] made me fucking literally nauseous. How detached from reality do you have to be to not realize the insular effects that this will have on children? How insulated is one's life that they would be unable to conceive of the obvious and likely immediate effect these tools will have on teenagers _who are already struggling with identity and discovery_?!

Can't wait until Bark announces the feature where they'll mail you weekly to tell you if your kid is likely to be gay (which as any LGBT person on social media will tell you, is incredibly easy. Facebook has been accidentally outting people via association for a decade or more, and I can't imagine how that is amplified with full access to the screen, messages, raw data.) Just disgusting.

[1]: [https://mobile.twitter.com/brandonhilkert/status/11892177623...](https://mobile.twitter.com/brandonhilkert/status/1189217762335432715)

EDIT: Also, wow, he's really trying to drop "prevented" statistics in another Twitter thread. IT's not even impressive. You're monitoring 50M students and have only caught 320-some predators despite pervasive constant monitoring? I don't even find that impressive.

The testimonies too, HOW IS THIS REAL -- _" I only get notifications if there are items of concern (sex, depression, bullying, profanity, etc.) Totally worth it!" -Bark Mom_

<comment><USER60> I can't seem to edit my comment any further (Thanks HN for just returning 200 on the edit and trashing the content of my update! This is the third time I've typed it, thanks a lot!)

As a last plea, young adults are human beings with autonomy. Trying to suppress that autonomy has always had the same effect, every generation has tried.

Meanwhile, I can confidently say that there is a VERY STRONG chance I would not have made it through high school with pervasive, constant surveillance. An overly anxious boy coming to terms with his sexuality in god damn Kansas is hard enough, to think that I would have to worry about every electronic action being reported to my school or parents probably would've made the thoughts of suicide unsuppressable and I wouldn't have had the VERY small community that I sort of accidentally discovered via Facebook, again because there are so many indicators of someone possibly being LGBT even just from what friends you have in common, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> You have to wonder about the slimy people who advocated for and approved this crap in the school systems. Only in America

</comment><comment><USER62> oh my god what a world.

Basically, this is a scam where a company gets rich by convincing school districts to abusively surveil their students with no real benefit.

</comment><comment><USER63> DHH really laid into Bark" this week: "[https://mobile.twitter.com/dhh/status/1189235145192157184](https://mobile.twitter.com/dhh/status/1189235145192157184)

</comment><comment><USER64> Creepy. Who's working on homeschooling?

</comment><comment><USER43> but i was just writing a paper on the social impact of Beck's mid-90s hit, "Loser"

</comment><comment><USER65> piazzo is doing the same thing.

</comment><comment><USER66> Have to get them ready for the police state</comment>


World's Shortest Wavelength Laser Diode Emits Deep UV Light at Room Temperature - <AUTHOR> https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.7567/1882-0786/ab50e0 <comment><USER2> In the atomic research world, diode lasers are great because they're cheap and fairly tunable.

Many of atomic cooling studies done 20 years ago were done using rubidium because it had a primary absorption wavelength that matched what commercial CD players used. This made the 780nm diodes dirt cheap.

Having new wavelengths of diode lasers makes certain basic research more accessible. I've been out of the field too long to know where this one may help but it's exciting to see progress.

<comment><USER3> Nowadays in atomic physics frequency-quadrupled diode lasers are commonly used for accessing DUV wavelengths. They produce a lot of power and have narrow linewidths, but are very expensive (>> 100k€). Here is a chart from one manufacturer that shows commonly accessed transitions: [https://www.toptica.com/fileadmin/Editors_English/15_downloa...](https://www.toptica.com/fileadmin/Editors_English/15_downloads/TOPTICA_Laser_Absorption_in_Physics_Chemistry_Biology.png)

In the paper the authors only demonstrate pulsed operation of a bare laser diode. To make it usable for atomic physics, they would have to achieve continuous-wave operation with feedback from an external cavity. This might be pretty difficult to do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is good, the usage for UV is huge and anything that reduces costs will only help.

Whilst many don't need it, I'm sure having a UV filter of your water would not go amiss.

<comment> m-p-3 Or maybe for photolithography hobbyist.

<comment><USER5> Yeah, especially because that hinges on having coherent light, whereas sterilization does not AFAIK.

As for incoherent UV light, I wonder how this laser compares in efficiency to arc lamps. Is that still how incoherent UV is generated? Deuterium and mercury vapor? Or have LEDs taken over?

<comment><USER3> DUV for lithography is usually produced with excimer lasers at 248 or 193 nm. While they are technically lasers, they are barely coherent and have horrible beam quality.

For other applications such as sterilization or curing adhesives, mercury vapor lamps and LEDs are popular.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Normally, in LEDs and solid state lasers, there is a direct relation between wavelength(energy quantum) (electron-Volts) and operating voltage (Volts).

For example Red = 660 nanometers = 1.8 electron-Volts = 1.8 Volts, which is the typical operating voltage for a Red LED.

Blue = 470 nm = 3.3 eV = 3.3 Volts operating voltage.

So: Deep UV (270 nm) is supposed to operate on ~4.6 Volts.

But article mentions 13.8 Volts. I wonder why there is such a huge gap?

<comment><USER3> The bands of laser diodes are not necessarily sharp, so there can be a significant difference between the injection voltage and the photon energy. The paper mentions that their particular doping method produces a step-less valence band profile.

Furthermore, they need a fairly large current (0.4 A) to get this thing to lase. The "knee" in the U-I curve is at around 9 V and 0.05 A, so there seems to be a fair bit of voltage drop due to internal resistance of the device. This is probably also why they have to pulse the laser with a 0.01 % duty cycle in order not to produce too much heat.

<comment><USER7> By sharp, do you mean a direct band-gap?

I recall that you sometimes want to pump your atoms in a higher energy state than the one that corresponds to the output energy, but I forgot its usefulness. Could someone enlighten me on this? Or is it just for optically pumped mediums (thus pumped with higher energy photons than the emitted ones)?

<comment><USER3> It is impossible to achieve inversion (and therefore gain) by optically pumping a medium exactly at the emission wavelength. Therefore, optically pumped laser gain media are at least three (usually four) level systems.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Does this have any implication for chip fabs? Right now EUV requires crazy Rube Goldberg machines using tin plasma or something like that, which is insanely expensive.

<comment><USER9> EUV is 20x smaller wavelength, 10000x higher power, and far larger area

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> it's noteworthy that even when it's on, this laser is mostly off. its duty cycle is 0.00001% (50 ns at 2khz).

</comment><comment><USER11> Who is the lead writer of this paper? According to google Ziyi Zhang is a famous Chinese actress.

<comment><USER2> Likely not the same person. From the article:

Author e-mails firstname.lastname@example.com Author affiliations 1 Innovative Devices R&D Center, Corporate Research & Development, Asahi Kasei Corporation, Fuji, Shizuoka 416-8501, Japan

2 Center for Integrated Research of Future Electronics, Institute of Materials Research and System for Sustainability, Nagoya University, Furo-cho, Chikusa- ku, Aichi 464-8601, Japan

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> But can I use it to burn things?

<comment><USER13> What does "Burn" mean?

Break the bonds of just about anything except fluorides and metals? Probably.

Deposit enough energy I locally heat the material above it's auto ignition T? Well that's a flux question

<comment><USER14> This looks like a great HN comment, but could you please stop creating accounts for every few comments you post? We ban accounts that do that. This is in the site guidelines: [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html).

HN is a community and we want it to remain one. For that, users need some identity for others to relate to. Otherwise we may as well have no usernames and no community, and that would be a different kind of forum. [https://hn.algolia.com/?query=by:dang%20community%20identity...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=by:dang%20community%20identity&sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix&page=0)

You needn't use your real name, of course.

<comment><USER13> " This looks like a great HN comment, "

Thank you. I thought it was rushed w/out the explanation that it deserves (it has fascinating implications about the lack of the color blue in nature). Also, I felt it came out as snarky or arrogant, which I didn't intend. But I was juggling other things :S

Unfortunately, I'm afraid you'll have to ban me. I've abused the site far too long but I also have no intention to expose myself w/ a profile (any user with a karma > 1000 is trivial to dox).

<comment><USER15> > any user with a karma > 1000 is trivial to dox

How so?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Europe's Doctors Repeat Errors Made in Wuhan, China Medics Say - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-17/europe-s-doctors-getting-sick-like-in-wuhan-chinese-doctors-say <comment><USER2> >Traditional Chinese medicine

aka eating tiger penises. Its a political scam, doesnt work just like Traditional Chinese Martial Arts.

>The evaluation system for the TCM could be "futile or invalid", because it has a different philosophy or evaluation system for efficacy from western medicine, he added.

mmmhmm</comment>


W/ Fedoracoin: Dedicated payment platform for Fedoracoin restores faith in coin - <AUTHOR> https://pay.withfedoraco.in/

<comment><USER2> Join us on drevil.com and discuss your app!</comment>


Sneak peak on the new, web-based Arduino Create - <AUTHOR> http://blog.arduino.cc/2015/05/05/sneak-peak-arduino-create/

<comment><USER2> "Peek", damn it, "peek".

You're not climbing a mountain stealthily, you're allowing people to "peek" into an early version of your product.

How hard is it to just use common sense before writing words, seriously?

<comment><USER3> [https://twitter.com/stealthmountain](https://twitter.com/stealthmountain)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Cynical thought - this is a good way to thwart ex-co-founders who're building your hardware and forking your open source software IDE.

If this is part of that plan, I'd expect to see significant new work and features in this "web based" version of the software which never end up in the open source version that people (including your new-found competitors) can download and fork.

I wonder if we'll ever see an FTDI-style USB firmware bricking from either side of the Arduino war?

</comment><comment><USER5> I've recently started using [https://codebender.cc](https://codebender.cc) which seems to offer the same feature set.

</comment><comment><USER6> How does it get binaries onto the device? Mbed had something similar, that bit always seemed awkward.

<comment><USER7> Would be one way to do it : Install an app, let it bind to a http protocol to communicate with the website ( like the following popular protocols magnet:// , itunes:// or steam:// ).

Save the code-history in git and let the app download the git and compile it + upload it to the Arduino, would be the next step. So the only thing you have to "transfer" is the git-hash + app id or an appid and a version number. Or generate the binary on the webserver, download it with the app and upload it to the arduino.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Seems a bit like what spark.io have been offering for a while.</comment>


What interviewing feels like when you're a black in Silicon Valley - <AUTHOR> http://qz.com/696562/what-interviewing-for-jobs-feels-like-when-youre-a-black-software-engineer-in-silicon-valley/ <comment><USER2> If you get asked questions like the ones asked in this article, terminate the interview immediately, show yourself out, hire a lawyer, tell them exactly what was said and ask them what the possible next steps are.</comment>


No Silver Programmers - <AUTHOR> http://www.knowing.net/PermaLink,guid,fde0f610-3773-47b8-9be6-d6e5a8a76858.aspx

<comment><USER2> 20x is ridiculous - it's far too _low_.

Look at the graph referenced - it describes, on a scale of hundreds of minutes, how long it took programmers to implement something to spec.

My biggest problem with this is the time scale. More advanced programmers build generalized solutions to problems and build on previous abstractions. There's no clear limit to how clever someone can be while building abstractions, so the gap between programmers will become greater over larger time periods.

Taking a sample of developers creating small, custom websites, better developers will have factored out a lot of functionality into a general purpose web development kit with metaprogramming by site #3 (i.e. created a Django, Rails).

Is it unreasonable to accept that:

1) Creating a site with a decent web tool kit is 20x faster than rolling your own with mod_python, and

2) Metaprogramming for creating an (elegant) web tool kit is beyond the abilities of a section of programmers?

Now, the barrier to picking up Django or Rails is much lower than writing one, so perhaps this advantage is somewhat less important in a world with open source and extensive libraries?

Well, I would argue that in a way, the efforts of the creators of Rails and Django have been multiplied so many times by all the users that they, in effect, have increased global productivity by a factor so large it dwarfs the productivity of a single programmer - so their 'productivity', as measured by the impact they have on the world, is a hell of a lot more than 20x the impact of Mr Blub programmer in the cubicle next door.

Why stop at frameworks? What about languages? What is Guido van Rossum's impact on global value delivered by programmers? What about the developers of the microchip? I'm pretty sure my personal productivity would be lower without that. The invention of the internet, which allowed for free sharing of knowledge? What would the productivity of a programmer who invents general purpose AI be? It really depends on how philosophical you want to get.

So, sure, the difference between developers creating an application to spec on the time scale of hundreds of minutes is unlikely to be 20x. But that's a garbage metric, and as always, GIGO.

<comment><USER3> What about PHP, though? The crappiest, least abstracting language seems to be the most productive one. Perhaps abstractions really are just bullshit? I like abstractions, but while I am busy thinking about my abstractions, the PHP coder has already churned out another three no-brainer pages.

<comment><USER4> There's the rub: measuring production time needs to take into account maintenance time!

<comment><USER3> Nevertheless, PHP seems to be by far the most successful programming language for web applications. I also don't think that maintenance time was ever measured for typical production time studies.

<comment><USER5> successful != popular ?

<comment><USER3> Most of the recently hyped web applications are written in PHP, for example Facebook. Wasn't there a list recently with the 10 most successful startups (by whatever criterion), and 7 out of 10 were based on PHP?

<comment><USER6> That's not because PHP is especially great, today, but because there weren't any decent alternatives in 2004.

Rails is _three-and-a-half_ years old, as a public project. The alternative frameworks are about the same age. There are programmers with ten years of PHP experience; there is nobody on Earth with so much as three years of Django experience. Give the newbs some time to settle in before you declare PHP's long-term victory. PHP has had a long headstart.

To have a successful startup that makes a 2007 list, you have to start learning programming before 2007. Back in 2003, PHP was pretty much the name of the game, unless you enjoyed being married to Microsoft or wanted to construct vast mountains of overdesigned, stateful, undeployable Java middleware. Or unless you were writing your own framework from scratch in an alternative language, like DHH, or the Django folks, or the Redditers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Would he deny that there are good programmers who can do things that bad ones couldn't no matter how much time they were given? This is true in other fields; why should programming be any different? And if one programmer can be infinitely more productive than another, he can also be 20x more productive.

<comment><USER8> They would only be 20 times better or infinitely better at those particular tasks though.

That seems right to me, it seems like only really Hard problems allow people to show what they are made of, and the easier problems keep the pack more bunched together.

It's an important distinction, because a lot of programming is not of the demanding sort described above. It might even be that for some jobs, in some job markets, you don't want to try to hire the best. The cost in salary, recruitment, lost time and turn over might trump the 2-3x gain a top level programmer would offer in a non-challenging environment.

<comment><USER7> Part of performing a task is redefining it.

<comment><USER9> There are tasks that are strictly defined from the outset: there is an existing code base and tech stack, and you must conform to certain company conventions, and the requirements are strict. I would guess this work constitutes 90% of paid development (and ~2% of useful code). I don't think your argument really applies to those tasks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Certainly food for thought. I think the author underestimates just how bad some programmers are, though. To me, his assertion that there is some arbitrary limit on the productivity differential between any two given programmers is much harder to prove than the assertion that there exist some programmers who are 20x better than others.

<comment><USER11> There are definately some programmers who are 20X better than others, but I think the authors point was that the 20X difference is between programmers who are 3X above average and programmers who are multi-X BELOW average. The myth is that there are some super-coders who are 20x better than your average decent programmer, and I think that would be difficult to substantiate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> > find me a peer-reviewed study of individual programmer productivity among > professionals not students

Often, five man development teams create products that are very successful while thousand man development teams create a product thats useless and basically has no value. Thus the five man teams were way more productive. This happens all the time.

Also, the same principal can be seen on an individual level within projects.

There ya go pal. It would be a waste to do a peer reviewed study just to confirm something so obvious. You could even say that they reviewers would be "less productive" if they spent their time doing so;)

</comment><comment><USER13> Making any kind of assumptions like this is retarded. The coder umbrella covers too much. Assembly line coders in a large corp are completely different than a freelancer etc. Different skills, different motivators, just plain different. Comparing the two is like comparing two completely different fields... because they really are different fields.

Like comparing automotive designers and mechanics.

Coder is just too big of a blanket. Articles like this are irrelevant.

</comment><comment><USER14> He's right that almost all the discourse on this topic is anecdotal and that the literature basically sucks. It's surprisingly difficult to find hard evidence for the claims people make about software development. The only good, readable source I know is Robert Glass' _Facts and Fallacies of Software Engineering_ , which systematically cites research, most of which is surprisingly weak.

</comment><comment><USER15> Nice article as far as it goes. I've always felt that the productivity of all developers is affected greatly by all the other mundane tasks that surround the programming - communications, deployment, answering the phone, logging in, futzing in general - and that they are much better targets for productivity improvement. That's why I find the recent rails vs. php deployment discussion very interesting. I've been working on a django app for a while, and while I enjoy the language and framework, I suspect any (slim) productivity increase I have gained will be negated by the deployment.

</comment><comment><USER16> I am addicted to programming for startups. I have learned from 1st hand experience and from CVS logs that on most projects 99% of the check-ins and real coding is done by at most 2 guys (usually 1) on a 8-10 man project. I would say, even though I haven't done a study, I see the hard facts every time I check-in code. There really are programmers out there 20x-30x more productive than the rest.

</comment><comment><USER17> He lists C++ and C# as his favorite languages, and I tend to agree that with these languages you can't really be x100 more productive than the average competent programmer.

That kind difference is only possible in languages that are more expressive & condensed, where you spend most of your time thinking not typing.

<comment><USER12> I'd program in raw machine code if it meant that I could live in HI.

<comment><USER18> Sorry. What does 'HI' mean?

<comment><USER4> Postal code for Hawaii.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Silverback programmers:

<http://www.newtechusa.com/ppi/talent.asp></comment>