Facebook Is No Longer the Most Popular Social Network for Teens - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/blogs/business_insider/2013/10/24/facebook_and_teen_user_trends.html <comment><USER2> It's great that young people are diversifying in this way, but isn't it a little apples to oranges? You don't use Facebook to send disappearing images to each other, you don't use Instagram to plan events or remind you of birthdays, and you don't use Snapchat to share pictures of your cat with followers around the world. They're very different things, yet they are all lumped into the category "social network" because you can make connections with people. By that standard, practically any online service or platform these days is a social network!

Still, it's very significant that Facebook is not the go-to thing for lots of online connective tasks (even if they do own Instagram). People don't want all their interactions to be on one platform for the same reason no one puts all their eggs in the same basket, and in addition, there are nicer baskets out there to try out!

<comment><USER3> Absolutely. It is a complete misunderstanding if they're considering services like Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat as somehow mutually exclusive.

You can only really compare Facebook with services like Google+, Myspace, and Orkut; and even then, many people have active accounts on multiple of those services.

<comment><USER4> Isn't that how it starts though? It is no longer possible to disrupt Facebook on its terms. You have to offer something completely different at first then slowly add Facebooks key features to provide a smooth transition.

<comment><USER5> Is there a precedent you're referring to? Because I believe all of the above social networks started as... social networks.

<comment><USER6> "Innovator's Dilemma" describes a similar process. An underdog comes along, creates an inferior product or a product addressing slightly different needs, and then slowly but surely builds up its feature set to address the big dog's other customers.

<comment><USER5> Again, where's the precedent in the world of social networking...

<comment><USER7> What does it matter?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> To be clear, this doesn't mean teens aren't using Facebook. It just means they don't call Facebook their "most important" social network. That's a huge difference: more teens are likely still using Facebook than Twitter, they just don't consider it their most important social network.

This means Facebook has essentially reached utility status, which is reflected anecdotally in my life. It's replaced email for a generation. But that's arguably a fine place for them to be: if you own the entire backbone of people's communications, there's a lot of money to be made in that. You'll find a lot more teens who use Facebook but not Twitter than the inverse.

To put it another way, if asked I'd say Hacker News is "more important" to me than Google Search. But Google definitely makes a lot more (potential) money off me.

<comment><USER9> Hacker News is more important to you than Google Search ? sorry, that cracked me up

<comment><USER8> Yup. :) For one thing, HN doesn't really have any viable alternatives at this point. Google has plenty.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Um, since Instagram _is_ Facebook, by my estimate Facebook owns 46% of that graph and is still most popular by a long-shot.

<comment><USER11> If you want to get pedantic, then the Facebook corporation is the most popular social network corporation. We're talking about platforms here, not the parent company.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The chart shows a huge jump in "Other," from 4% to 17% in just six months. I wish they explained that. Vine?

<comment><USER13> In Asia (at least here in Thailand) I think LINE is quickly overtaking all other social networks. It's sort of like What's App, but with much more functionality.

<comment><USER14> They have huge advertising campaign going on here in India with top bollywood stars. I would still be surprised if they were doing good here. Why is there _still_ a market for internet messengers? There are so many of them already. it's like image sharing apps.

<comment><USER13> Ok, here is what I have observed so far (I don't use Line myself):

1\. Line works with your telephone number (if you have someones number you can send them a message)

2\. Line allows you to send messages (free sms) and voice calls.

3\. Line allows you to have friend groups.

But there also reasons specific to Asia (at least Thailand):

1\. Line has a "cute look" and has smilie packs which you can buy (big images actually). Thais seem to love that. Westerners would probably find them childish.

2\. Line has status messages. These seems to be used in quite an interesting way: to tell people something which you don't really want to tell them directly, e.g. "Stop being jealous. Change your life to make other people jealous.".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Facebook is becoming more unpopular among other groups, as well. I am tempted to say that everyone is getting sick of Facebook. Many of my friends now have a love/hate relationship with it, trying to make a higher quality experience by shaving down their friends' lists or just deleting their profile altogether. I feel Facebook burnout as well...it's this thing I have to do compulsively, which offers no joy, yet it's where everyone is, so I don't really have a choice but to go there to keep in touch with everyone...and I think that is the general sentiment these days at least among my mid-30s peer group...many of whom don't bother checking their page anymore...

<comment><USER16> I'm curious if that is a function of how Facebook works or if that is what naturally happens when you see everyone you know online doing fun things (which would apply to every social network of that size).

<comment><USER15> Not sure, but I believe in the law of diminishing returns...after a while, a human being gets used to something, and eventually sick of it after repeated exposure.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Social networks: the best way to waste time ever invented in the history of history.

I never saw a need for any of them. Twitter had potential, but it got overrun by people who somehow felt the need to rant about their opinions on political decisions without being completely educated about any of them, by celebrities, by people who can't spell, and by people who think that @messages are the perfect way to privately communicate on the internet.

I really don't see Snapchat lasting for longer than a year. The others will stay around for a while, but then eventually fade into irrelevance... like all trends that don't provide palpable services, e.g. Google et des autres fournisseurs de recherches.

<comment><USER18> Also a very nice way for everyone to create their own dossiers, that most law enforcement agencies can access even without a warrant these days, and can even collect en masse.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I find Silicon Valley's obsession with teens fascinating. Why is teen usage a benchmark for the health of a startup?

Do teenagers spend money online? Is there any research on that?

<comment><USER20> Teens represent the near future. They'll grow up and maybe carry their allegiances forward.

<comment><USER21> If services only remain at their peak for 4/5 years this doesn't represent much of an advantage.

<comment><USER22> The question is, does Facebook behave like Google, or even more generally, like e-mail, and last a long time, or is it just another 4-5 year fad? If its a longer term tool then the behavioral trends of young demographics are a big deal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> That's because all the parents are on it.

</comment><comment><USER24> The other night at dinner my eleven year old daughter asked me "What's instagam?" and then proceeded to ask if she could have an account because _all_ her friends were on it. I told her no because I don't like the idea of her on a social network yet (and it's probably against their TOS anyway).

Truthfully, I don't know why there isn't a K-12 social network that has schools and teachers, and kids were grouped by class, and teachers could moderate all posts and (have the option to) see all messages (with a notice to the parties that it had been looked at). That would alleviate any concerns I had about inappropriate content, and online bullying (there's a record, kids would be accountable for what was said), and provide immediate benefit to students and parents (who could maybe have accounts that were read-only for public discussions and their own children's correspondence).

Edit: As numerous replies have pointed out, there apparently is one, edmodo.com. I guess it's just not used around (or at least not in my district).

<comment><USER25> Because kids would never use it. They like their hidden caves. It's similar to passing secret notes to each other in class. Except now they can do it from afar.

<comment><USER24> Oh, they would use it if it was a valuable resource for asking for help with homework, communicating with other students and teachers, the only way to contact some of their friends (which aren't allowed on other networks), or in any way mandated. Parents would like it for the control it offered, and kids aren't in total control of their choices.

Kids might _also_ want and indeed use other social networks, but I would feel much more comfortable as a parent telling them no if I knew they had this to fall back on.

<comment><USER26> Chicken and egg problem - they wouldn't be really active ther because they don't want to, and because noone is really active, then it wouldn't be a valuable resource for homework and communicating with other students.

I've seen a large implementation (around 1/3 schools in my area) that technically could do all that, but you can only 'mandate' a horse to the water but can't make it drink - in the end, they were used for parents to look up grades communicate with teachers, while kids used only the absolutely practical things rarely, and since they couldn't be mandatory (as not 100% can afford a computer at home) it sort of died out. It would be fun to ask the developers what percent of kids sent even a single message to another kid... All at the same time, the ten year olds are extremely active online elsewhere.

<comment><USER24> I wonder how much of that was based on (lack of) teacher buy-in and parents knowing about it? I can tell you that if the teacher was available on such a system in my are, there would be at least a few users just from my kids.

Beyond any moral or parent protectiveness issues, Facebook, Google Plus and Instagram all require you be at least 13 years old to use their services. My (very limited) understanding is that TOS are in some cases legally enforceable now, so letting kids use those sites is problematic from my perspective.

<comment><USER26> What teacher buy-in would you like and reasonably expect?

Does such a system have a single practical benefit to a teacher doing their job, that they couldn't / wouldn't do better offline by simply talking to the kid at school after the lesson? It's a benefit for the parents, and they got the daily status information (attendance, grades, discipline&other issues) flowing quickly and easily from teachers to parents, that part worked.

What would you expect from a teacher buy-in there - individual assistance with the homework online in the evenings ? My imagination is failing me here :) The original post sort of implied that it would be the place where you'd want kids to move their communication between themselves, no? (and they wouldn't avoid any important communication in any place moderated or monitored by their parents, naturally)

In any case, teachers pretty much everywhere tend to be overworked and underpaid; as much as they want to chat with a few kids individually they are already doing it in school. However, if you're (for a random example) teaching math to only 6 groups of 30 pupils each, then if you'd spend after hours 5 minutes weekly on online communication for each student, it would come out 15 hours per week, on top of handling homework - it's simply not going to happen.

<comment><USER24> > Does such a system have a single practical benefit to a teacher doing their > job, that they couldn't / wouldn't do better offline by simply talking to > the kid at school after the lesson?

I think so, as long as the scope is clearly defined. You are right in your later implications that it could easily be subverted to a tool making more work for teachers, and I was erroneously drifting down that path.

> What would you expect from a teacher buy-in there

Listing homework for the night

Listing upcoming longer term assignment dates

Noting any information that students/parents should be aware of

Sending important announcements to students/parents

Addendums to lesson plans that they forgot to cover or came to light later ("Joey brought to light that I might have been unclear or misspoke when I was referring to the Spanish inquisition. What I should have said is that 'No one expects the Spanish Inquisition!' That should help you complete your History of Monty Python unit tonight.")

An official way to send a message to a teacher outside of class

I receive emails from one daughter's teacher on a regular basis, at least twice a week, because she hates the school website software (I hate it as well, it's horrendously bad). The other daughter's teacher has emailed maybe once, to confirm the address. I assume all her updates are going to the website, I haven't seen them. The teachers are all very responsive to email though.

> The original post sort of implied that it would be the place where you'd > want kids to move their communication between themselves, no?

No, just that it is a place they _could_ communicate between themselves, with some other benefits and a heaping level of oversight. My daughters would use it because 1) They aren't on any social networks, 2) they don't have any email addresses I know of (I'm not discounting that they don't have any, but I doubt it at this point, ask again in a year), and 3) we don't have a land line, just cell phones, so she doesn't have a lot of easy ways to contact some of her friends.

> In any case, teachers pretty much everywhere tend to be overworked and > underpaid

Agreed. I'm all about using technology to make life better and _reduce_ work, not create more work. When I'm referring to teacher moderation, my original thought was more along the lines of the teacher being able to research and see message history of a student when actively searching. If someone complains they are being bullied or targeted, that shouldn't be any more acceptable in the online system as in the classroom. I think kids need a safe place to learn this.

As a _replacement_ for a class website, I think it would have quite a bit of potential.

<comment><USER26> For this functionality such systems work okay - but they won't work for kids- to-kids communication due to the same chicken and egg problem.

Your daughters wouldn't (couldn't) use it the way you imagine, because, face it, the 'critical mass' of other kids who'd they want to talk to simply wouldn't be on such a system online/active/quickly responding as they are on facebook/snapchat/whatever.

And I'm not sure if _any_ classmate communication forum with a heaping level of oversight is realistic - the nature of teens and pre-teens is such that any must-be-part-of social activities would happen elsewhere; and if all the good stuff is elsewhere, then they don't need/want to use the monitored forum.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Have teenagers ever been an important group for Facebook? It started for college students only, thus for the first few years the only _other_ age group it could expand to were people who started using it in college and continued to do so as they got older. My assumption would be from there it spread to/through friends and coworkers (most of which would be past their teens).

</comment><comment><USER28> I find it a little bit hard to believe that tumblr is only 4% and that Google+ is 3%.

I highly doubt the veracity of these numbers.

</comment><comment><USER13> It seems as if Zuckerberg (fore)saw this trend. This explains why he paid such a hefty price for Instagram.

</comment><comment><USER29> > Twitter has overtaken Facebook as the social media network that is _most > important_ to teens, according to Piper Jaffray's semi-annual teen market > research report. Twitter is the new king of teens, with 26 percent naming it > as their "most important" social site.

(emphasis mine)

<comment><USER27> > _Only_ 23 percent said Facebook was most important

(emphasis mine)

A difference of ~3 points in a group as fickle as teenagers isn't very significant.

<comment> guard-of-terra Facebook had monopoly once and now it has less than quarter.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Yeah, yeah, IPO is coming, we know.

</comment><comment><USER31> Tried to signup for facebook several times today and it kept asking for my phone number. I wonder if teens are less willing to go through that hassle.

Compare that to twitter's new onboarding experience, which is (arguably) very well done.

<comment><USER25> No they don't want to hang out on the same place their mom is. They have accounts but they sit idle.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> It is true [https://twitter.com/search?q=uses%20AND%20facebook&src=typd&...](https://twitter.com/search?q=uses%20AND%20facebook&src=typd&f=realtime)

</comment><comment><USER33> I just wanted to point out: Instagram + Facebook = 46%

</comment><comment><USER34> One thing is for sure. Teenagers are no longer the most popular demographic for Facebook.</comment>


Ancient crystals suggest Earth's core is 4B years younger than the planet - <AUTHOR> https://newatlas.com/mit-jenga-playing-robot/58276/ <comment><USER2> [https://newatlas.com/earth-core-age- younger/58257/](https://newatlas.com/earth-core-age-younger/58257/) just in case anyone wants to read the correct article

</comment><comment><USER3> This suggests an interesting science fiction plot: the hollow earth was inhabited by an advanced human race, but in a war with another civilization, they were defeated when liquid metal and magma was poured into the empty crust, forcing the few surviving remnants - now without Vril energy - to flee to the surface.

</comment><comment><USER4> Wrong URL</comment>


Ask HN: Will Tesla's Model 3 be released soon enough for it to be drivable? - <AUTHOR> An optimistic release seems to be late 2017. With delays, that could be pushed to 2018, which roughly coincides with Musk's estimation for when his cars will be driverless. So, what are the odds the Model 3 will be released <i>sans</i> steering wheel? <comment><USER2> Zero. A car without a steering wheel wouldn't be street legal. Regardless of the pace of technological advancement in self-driving cars, the 50 states will not all have revised their individual motor vehicle laws by 2018.

</comment><comment><USER3> 2018 is unfathomable for the Model 3. Hopefully 2020 is more realistic if they can survive past their Model X issues. I have friends at Tesla, some in the service centers, and they said there are still less than 1000 Model X's on the road, and there are still problems.

Yes, they raised $200 million from the Model 3 debut, but they are spending $100 million per week, so that doesn't dent their spending.

</comment><comment><USER4> 0.

Driverless cars are legal in 3 states.</comment>


Ask HN: Does music increase productivity at work? - <AUTHOR> Should I listen music at work to increase my productivity and how to find it? <comment><USER2> For me, yes. Has to be instrumental, though, or I can't think. Faster beat to grind through mapped-out tasks or for a final push at the end of the day. Downtempo for thinking through a problem or mapping out tasks.

Discussion about programming music yesterday, with many resources mentioned: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12844434](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12844434)

</comment><comment><USER3> Nine out of 10 workers perform better when listening to music, according to a study that found 88pc of participants produced their most accurate test results and 81pc completed their fastest work when music was playing.

>> [http://qz.com/185337/the-complete-guide-to-listening-to- musi...](http://qz.com/185337/the-complete-guide-to-listening-to-music-at- work/)

I belong to the part that really performs better while listening to some music. It works best when I'm working from an open office space with lots of distractions and unwanted noise that prevents me from concentrating. So the only solution is music in my headphones.

Important question here is to how exactly do you listen to some music at work. I think that one of the best options here are online streaming services (8tracks, Focus@Will)

>> [http://8tracks.com/](http://8tracks.com/)

>> [https://www.focusatwill.com/](https://www.focusatwill.com/)

or recommendation and streaming apps like MuzApp [https://muzapp.com/](https://muzapp.com/)

<comment><USER4> I'm in the same situation, my office has an open floor plan and can get very distracting at times. +1 for 8tracks, I haven't created any myself but there are some great electronic playlists with minimal vocals for coding.

<comment><USER3> I think that the social aspect of it is actually what makes it fun here. Quality playlist is a hard thing to find and editors' picks are not always the most suitable ones

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I am always against listening to background music. It does not matter if it is during driving, workout, study, sleep, work, bathing or whatever. The music I listen to is the one which I highly respect and it is not in my habit to just play it in background. I consider this to be a disrespect of my favorite artist. Also, I don't like listening to a music if I don't respect and know about the musician and it is a noise to me. I find that more I respect the artist more empowering that music becomes to me. I love Cello and sometimes while between my study session I like to listen to any piece of music by Mstislav Rostropovich.

I know most of the people will differ with my opinion and habit but I just cannot do what is usual.

There is something called binaural beats which has lot of benefits and used for therapeutic cases. I don't know if this should be counted as music. But you can try it. You can look into its physics in Wiki page. It's simple. But I really don't know how does its psychological part works. It's mystery to lot of people.

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

Hope my answer helps.

</comment><comment><USER6> Not if someone else forces you to listen to the music of their choosing. I hate open plan offices and startup kool-aid

</comment><comment><USER7> Only if I don't have the ability to pick the music.

Once that comes into play, any improved productivity from the music itself is lost to hours of clicking " _Skip To Next Track_ ".

<comment><USER3> This is what playlists do, mate

Wrote a bit on it above ^^

<comment><USER7> Not good enough for the distraction levels of which I'm capable. I'd still hop through the playlist.

The best solution I've found is a trusted third party (read: co-worker) who's anal about picking their own music. I'm essentially delegating my procrastination to them!

<comment><USER3> Ha! That's what they should do building social media apps for music

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It was Kant who called music "The Quickening Art"

and quicken, it does</comment>


Our Brains Are Shrinking. Are We Getting Dumber? - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=132591244

<comment><USER3> Whatever, idiocracy-like event occurred thousands of years ago, I think the one happening now will dwarf it. At least in most western countries and Japan where successful people have less children. It's almost like an anti survival of the fittest, if you are successful, less people in the next generation will carry your genes.

Brain size might or might not be related to intelligence. In any case, this is what Wikipedia has to say "In general, these studies have reported that East Asians have on average a larger brain size than whites who have on average a larger brain size than blacks."[1]

If you ignore who is having children among whites (successful people or not), you still have the white population rapidly declining with a birth rate below replacement levels, I believe that this coupled with mass immigration and the high birth rates of immigrants, specially in Europe, in addition to race mixing in other places like the US, will ensure that brain size in these places decreases at a fast rate. Unless we have mass immigration from East Asian countries, like Vietnam.

In the "racist" comment above, I didn't lie, I didn't insult anybody and I didn't say that one race is more intelligent than the other. I agree that my opinion might not be politically correct.

[1][http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_intelligence#Brain_siz...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_intelligence#Brain_size)

<comment><USER4> In case you are right, the good news is that this "survival of the dumbest" phenomenon can only be sustained as long as there are enough smart people to take care of the dumb ones. This trend will inevitably be reversed one day.

<comment><USER5> Not that I read so from your post, but that's not something to take much comfort in. To be fair, we saw this coming a _long_ time ago... or at least The Onion did:

CHICAGO-In a report with dire implications for the intellectual future of America, a University of Chicago study revealed Monday that the nation's uneducated are breeding twice as fast and twice as often as its educated. "The average member of the American underclass spawns at age 15, compared to age 30 for the average college-educated professional," study leader Kenneth Stalls said. "America's intellectual elite, as a result, are badly losing the genetic marathon, with two generations of dullards born for every one generation of cultured literates." Added Stalls: "At this rate, by the year 2100 there will be five smart people on Earth, swallowed whole by more than 12 billion mouth- breathers incapable of understanding the binary exponentiation that swamped the Earth with their like." High-school dropout Mandi Drucker, 16, said of the findings, "All I know is, we're in love."

May 14, 1997 | ISSUE 31•18

[http://www.theonion.com/articles/study-uneducated- outbreedin...](http://www.theonion.com/articles/study-uneducated-outbreeding- intelligentsia-2to1,4282/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> No mention of surface area or number of folds. It is believed that the vast majority of our intellectual ability resides in our cerebral cortex. I know that anthropologists estimate brain size based on the size of the skull and the brain cavity, but I don't know if they can tell us much about the actual make-up of cro-magnon brains? The question mark is there because I don't know. Can anyone offer any insight there?

It would stand to reason that since the cerebral cortex is the home of our higher-thinking abilities, an overall reduction in brain size might not equate to a reduction in intelligence, were there an increase in the number and depth of the "folds" on the surface of the brain.

<comment><USER7>
      > It would stand to reason that since the cerebral cortex
      > is the home of our higher-thinking abilities ...

Not only that, but the prefrontal cortex (PFC) is one particular cortical region that has become enlarged in humans with respect to other great apes. PFC is generally implicated in "higher" reasoning, metacognition, and other executive functions. It's possible that cro-magnon brains were larger but that additional volume was allocated to other functions (balance or smell, for example) and that they still had smaller frontal lobes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> In response to all the comments referencing "Idiocracy" - I can't believe so many of you are taking that movie seriously.

1\. Even if the effect it claims is true, it wouldn't result in an "everyone's stupid" society, it would result in a split society with an even more distinct intellectual upper and lower class. Not desirable, to be sure, but not necessarily dangerous to the human race as a whole.

2\. What we arrogantly see as the "stupidity" of the lower classes is almost entirely caused by social and environmental factors. Genetically, they're not necessarily inferior at all. Even if genetic drift COULD occur within just a few generations, which I doubt, genetic effects would be entirely dominated by environmental factors such as education, nutrition, and socialization.

If you pulled a healthy baby from the worst white trash family at birth, raised it well and gave it an education, there's no reason to think it would be any less intelligent than you.

<comment><USER9> The movie actually did depict a split society. At the top was President Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho, who operated at a much higher cognitive plane than Frito the lawyer, who operated at a much higher level than the masses - for example the woman operating the Fischer Price diagnostic panel at St. God's Hospital, where Dr. Lexus was clearly high-functioning - <USER2> well above his undepicted & "tarded" ex-wife, a pilot.

<comment><USER8> But everyone was still sub-average by "normal" standards.

If this actually happens, you're likely to see an intellectual upper class that is _more_ intelligent than the current average. Selection works both ways, and even if the intelligentsia reproduce more slowly, they still reproduce (mostly) within their own group, leading to ever-smarter offspring.

Assuming genetic factors dominate intelligence anyway.

<comment><USER9> _But everyone was still sub-average by "normal" standards._

You mean that everyone was sub-average by _todays_ normal standards. But what was normal in the year 1435 is very different from what is normal in the year 2011, and again very different from what the norm will be in the year 2505.

Had Trevor and Carol been able to produce offspring, they (and the rest of their class) might have been able to bolster the norm. Alas, Trevor tragically met his demise with a heart attack whilst masturbating to produce sperm to artificially inseminate her.

Meanwhile, Clevon kept cleaving on, appreciably moving the needle on what 'norm' means.

 _Edit:_ We didn't get to see much inside of the Brawndo corporation, where all of the power was concentrated, so we can't be sure that President Camacho was the brightest around. All we got to see was the CEO, who may not have been the brightest bulb in the drawer. The descendants of the medical researchers bent on curing hair-loss and prolonging erections probably work in the bowels of that - or some other - corporation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The fact that people are getting smarter over time is the firm scientific consensus and I'd think that most science writers should know that: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_Effect>

Brain volume contributes to a lot of things. It might be that we're getting clumsier, or that we're less visually perceptive than our ancestors were. But we can be sure that IQs aren't going down.

<comment><USER11> The Flynn effect has been observed over less than a century. Extrapolating it to 20k years is a stretch.

<comment><USER12> Not at all. This article cites a gain of 0.3 points per year and postulates (admittedly without drawing any conclusions) that the average person in the early part of this century had an IQ of 80:

[http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/id.881,y.0,no.,conte...](http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/id.881,y.0,no.,content.true,page.1,css.print/issue.aspx)

If we continue to extrapolate, we can conclude that 300 years ago people had an IQ of 10. Not very bright, but a significant improvement over their great- grandparents, who would have had an IQ of -20.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> No, that's just Moores law, with the higher integration levels of the brain we are now seeing more power efficient and smaller brains. It's that new .1 nm process that they're using.

<comment><USER14> I know it's a joke and you might be right, but I don't think the need to reduce brain size would be such a huge evolutionary pressure to see a decrease of 10% in just 20,000 years, that's relatively little.

Granted that the bigger the brain, the more energy it needs, but if the brain uses 25% of our energy, 0.25*0.1= 2.5%. Even if that's wrong by a few percent, it doesn't sound like such a big advantage to cause that decrease in so little time and as it's been pointed out, it actually started happening when more food/energy was available from agriculture or whatever.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> "the actual make-up of cro-magnon brains"

There seems to be no agreement about what the word "cro-magnon" refers to. Possibly the phrase should be disused? I have frequently read that cro-magnon refers to the first homo sapiens who arrived in Europe. With that usage, "cro- magnon" is just a way of referring to us, a synonym for homo sapiens. But the phrase has other uses. Some writers continue to refer to "cro-magnon" as if it refers to some distinct species, different from us. But then, the question arises, which species are we talking about? Who is it related to? Why does it need a unique name?

As far as I know, the most exhaustive coverage of the various human species is in Ian Tattersall's book, Extinct Humans:

[http://www.amazon.com/Extinct-Humans-Ian- Tattersall/dp/08133...](http://www.amazon.com/Extinct-Humans-Ian- Tattersall/dp/0813339189/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1294160996&sr=8-1)

Tattersall is among those who refer to cro-magnon as homo sapiens, and therefore makes the phrase "cro-magnon" largely meaningless. One might say, with greater clarity, "Early homo sapiens in Europe."

Having said that, I should add, there is no doubt that Neanderthals (I'm using the spelling suggested by the Google Chrome auto-suggest, which may be out of date) were a distinct species, and that they had larger brain cases that homo sapiens. There is no evidence they were smarter than us. They never showed much advance toward abstract thought, which gives us reason to assume they were dumber than us, at least using traditional (habitual) notions of "smart" and "dumb".

<comment><USER16> 'cro-magnon' has been out of fashion for quite a while, at least in stuff that I read. I haven't seen the term in any decent book for, I dunno, say, several years.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> H.G. Wells predicted this in The Time Machine (okay, I'm being slightly tongue in cheek). He wrote of far future human descendants, the Eloi, who had undergone severe mental and physical degradation due to no longer being required to solve difficult physical and societal problems. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eloi>

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> The conversation claims that "humans" have lost an equivalent of a tennis ball volume of the brain. But perhaps a more revealing measure would be weight of brain lost in proportion to the body mass.

Elephants have a much larger brain than us, but smaller when compared to their body mass. (Side note: they are one of the few species that can recognize itself in the mirror)

<comment><USER18> Neanderthals were bigger and stronger than us, but this transcript only references us in comparison with Cro-Magnons. They're still Homo sapiens sapiens so a difference in body mass of 10% seems large (but then so does such a difference in brain mass).

<comment><USER19> Wolves and chihuahuas are the same species, too. Their body mass difference is well over 10%.

<comment><USER15> Not the same species, only the same genus:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canis>

They are related. That does not mean they are the same species.

<comment><USER19> Second paragraph of this link: " _Wolves, dogs and dingos are subspecies of Canis lupus._ " Did you think I just made it up?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> If cro-magnons really were smarter than us, it just shows how big of a role knowledge and culture play in what we perceive as intelligence.

<comment><USER20> Or the humans who make discoveries are anomalous.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Got the following from an article:

According to one of the theories on the shrinking of brain, "The big heads were necessary to survive Upper Paleolithic life, which involved cold, outdoor activities."

Another theory said, "The skulls developed to cope with a chewy diet of rabbits, reindeer, foxes and horses. As our food has become easier to eat, so our heads have stopped growing."

[http://www.themedguru.com/20110102/newsfeature/shrinking- bra...](http://www.themedguru.com/20110102/newsfeature/shrinking-brains- leading-unintelligent-humans-study-86143216.html)

</comment><comment><USER22> Explains The Sergey-spot <http://popstrip.com/sergey-spot>

</comment><comment><USER23> Then why do IQ test have to be normalized so often? How would you explain the Flynn Effect? <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect>

</comment><comment><USER24> (1) Women's brains are typically smaller by about the difference between Cro- Magnons and Homo Sapiens.

(2) WRT problem-solving ability, bonobo populations are shrinking much faster than chimps (which are increasing in some places). Perhaps that politically correct behavior has consequences....

</comment><comment><USER25> I wonder if the decrease in brain size is due in part to infant mortality and trauma in childbirth. Big brains don't exactly... fit as well coming out, although it's also not clear how much early brain size influences brain size later in life.

</comment><comment><USER26> Maybe were just outsourcing the knowledge to the rest of society.

</comment><comment><USER27> Much like laundry detergent, they're getting more concentrated.

</comment><comment><USER28> Idiocracy wasn't a great movie, but it might be prophetic.

</comment><comment><USER29> Keep in mind Einsteins brain was especially small, and nodes were closer together. In addition, women's brains are smaller than mens, but it is fairly well understood that both genders are equally intelligent.</comment>


Eruda: Console for Mobile Browsers - <AUTHOR> http://eruda.liriliri.io/ <comment><USER2> I'm wrapping up my 6th month of using an iPad as my main computer [1] and this is one of my largest remaining annoyances. Working on frontend code is a huge pain, and I often have to resort to hacks like alert()ing to debug problems. Weinre [2] is great but it's in a separate tab and requires you to run a server.

It would be great if someone wrapped this into a React component so you could drop an <Inspector /> into the root of your project.

[1] [http://campedersen.com/2017/06/30/ipad/](http://campedersen.com/2017/06/30/ipad/)

[2] [https://people.apache.org/~pmuellr/weinre/docs/latest/](https://people.apache.org/~pmuellr/weinre/docs/latest/)

<comment><USER3> I think every two weeks of buying an iPad Pro as my daily driver and then I think, nah I'll miss the Inspector. Otherwise the iPad should have all I need.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Interesting although if you have access to a computer it probably makes more sense to plug your phone in and use remote debugging.

<comment><USER5> "What's a computer?"

 _/ / Typed on iPad Pro_

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Hey, great efforts. But why don't you use browser's remote debugging? Same GUI for debugging website on mobile devices.

<comment><USER7> So one can debug without a full desktop OS, at least for my use-case :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Thank you!!!</comment>


Tiny nuclear reactor looms large at UMass. - <AUTHOR> http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2008/09/07/tiny_nuclear_reactor_looms_large_at_umass/

<comment><USER2> _fossil fuels [is] a limited resource._

To put this in perspective: the Earth' crust contains 2.1 quadrillion barrels of oil. At a consumption rate of 80 million barrels per day, world-society's oil supply would last 70,000 years. In addition, oil is rechargeable:

[http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Ajuliansimon.com%2Fwrit...](http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Ajuliansimon.com%2Fwritings%2FUltimate_Resource+oil)

 _contrary to common belief, category 3 resources (including oil) are all renewable._</comment>


Freelance technical writing opportunities - <AUTHOR> I'm looking for more information/ opportunities on freelance technical writing. I've recently been made aware of this niche, and was told it would be a good fit for me. I currently work as an engineer in the auto industry, and am interested in learning more about technical writing as a career.
Thanks! <comment><USER2> You should repost this via 'ask'.</comment>


Why didn't I get any money from my startup? - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/startups/comments/a8f6xz/why_didnt_i_get_any_money_from_my_startup_a_guide/ <comment><USER2> Question : is it still possible to raise without following the practices of the day ? Aka : no liquidation preferences, or shorter than average vesting period, etc.

Or is the trend to give more and more safety nets to VC at the expense of the people actually working in the company irreversible ?

<comment><USER3> > give more and more safety nets to VC at the expense of the people actually > working in the company irreversible ?

There are logical arguments for both 1x non-participating and 1x participating. Using 1x non-participating as an example because it's simpler: if a startup raises $5 million and then sells for $4 million, they traded $1 for $0.80. No enterprise value was created. Employees aren't getting shorted because there's no gain to allocate in the first place.

Above 1x is not at all standard. You used the word "give," but these terms aren't gifts, they're negotiation outcomes. If a startup obtains multiple term sheets and/or or is satisfied with a lower valuation, they'll negotiate better liquidation preferences. A startup which accepted a 2x liquidation preference either pushed the valuation as high as possible, obtained no other offers, or both.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Tldr because the big institutions and rich people demand liquidation preference.

If your startup isn't sold for hefty multiples (e.g 100M sale price, 10M in vc money), then employees and founders are the first to be negatively impacted (see also: boned)</comment>


Ask HN: How to keep Fruits and Vegetable fresh (actual and perceived) until delivery - <AUTHOR> Hey All,
When Fruits & Vegetables have to be shipped from warehouse to a customer's house (transport time - 5-10 hours). What kind of packaging can we use for fruits & vegetables to ensure the freshness - actual & perceived till it reaches customer's house?
Constraint - we cannot have cold room in the transportation vehicle due to high cost per order.
Thanks <comment><USER2> food grade petroleum wax is how most places preserve things</comment>


14.2M unemployed people: general strike and protests in Brazil today - <AUTHOR> http://imgur.com/a/tvXbS <comment><AUTHOR> More info here:

[http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin- america-39744030](http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-39744030)

[https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/apr/28/brazil- corrupt...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/apr/28/brazil-corruption- unions-strike-michel-temer-austerity)

[http://www.reuters.com/article/us-brazil-politics- protests-i...](http://www.reuters.com/article/us-brazil-politics-protests- idUSKBN17U0EX)

[http://www.nasdaq.com/article/brazils-jobless-rate-sets- reco...](http://www.nasdaq.com/article/brazils-jobless-rate-sets-record- for-5th-month-in-march-20170428-00706)

</comment><comment><USER2> > The ShadowStats Alternate US Unemployment Rate for March 2017 is 22.5%.

[http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/unemployment- chart...](http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/unemployment-charts)

<comment><USER3> Shadow stats is also entirely bullshit.</comment></comment>


Rate my app (iconswitch.me) - iOS icon creator - <AUTHOR>

http://iconswitch.me/
I got tired of manually exporting, resizing, and re-naming icons from Fireworks and Photoshop, so we built a PHP script to automatically convert a 512x512 image into the necessary bundle used for iOS apps, including iPad, retina, and spotlight.
Still unsure how I'll use it to promote anything, but for now it's something I made because I needed it.
Thoughts welcome. <comment><USER2> Clicky: <http://iconswitch.me/>

Nice work. My comments:

+) Is it possible to use only one button? When I browse and select the image, I expect it to be uploaded automatically. For example Gmail and Tineye have this behavior.

+) Try to show more feedback about the uploaded image. When I upload the image, almost instantly a download notification appears. (I think that it was "too fast".) I expected to see some changes before the download is available. For example:

      - see an upload progress bar

      - see an scaled version of the image in the site (this is important)

      - see a fake "working" progress bar :)

      - see a message "Your images are ready to download"

      - see a "download button" in case the automatic download fails or I touch "cancel".

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, all great points.

The progress bar is next in line, as is a preview. I also agree on the instant download - it was just a quick way to make it work.

Appreciate it!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This site is also a must-have for iOS developers who want to see the glossy/rounded edges version of their icons:

<http://www.midnightmobility.com/iphone-icon/>

</comment><comment><USER4> Very nice, and just saved me a lot of messing about. Thank you!

</comment><comment><USER5> Wow - this is awesome. I have a lot iPhone apps so this will be real useful to me.

suggestions:

I would change the titles of the buttons:

Isn't "Upload" really "Download icons"? Isn't "Browse" really "Upload photo"?

progress bar or status message for each action.

Add cancel button just in case.

below the fold explain the steps or add text near the buttons:

Step1. Upload photo

Step2. Download icons

Done.

I am curious what did you use to make this app? php? what did you call to resize? I have been working with iOS so I doing some transforms but I have done nothing like this in other languages.

Very nice.

<comment><AUTHOR> You know, you're right - the upload really could be a download or "convert" button.

It's made in php, I might throw the code up on Github once I get a final version I'm happy with.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Deciding absolute vs. relative URLs, and related issues - <AUTHOR>

I know this issue is very old news, but frankly I don't know of any thorough discussions or references. (Help!) In short, it would be great to hear the criteria HNers follow when choosing a link style. For example, from "http://example.com/d1/d2/doc.html" to "http://example.com/d1/foo.html" three choices come to mind:
1) Absolute URL ("http://example.com/d1/foo.html")
2) Relative URL, absolute path ("/d1/foo.html")
3) Relative URL, relative path ("../foo.html")
Which type of URL do you favor for your intra-site links? Why? Do you try as much as possible to use a single style throughout the site?
Further comments and references would be most welcome.
Cheers! <comment><USER2> This is going off on a bit of a tangent but I would drop the .html from the URLs as well. Apache's MultiViews option makes this (and content negotiation) a breeze, allowing you to keep the extension on your files but drop it from your URLs. This way, if/when you decide to replace a static page with dynamic content, your users' bookmarks (and your own intra-site links) won't break.

</comment><comment><USER3> I use relative URLs almost exclusively throughout my sites -- the main exception being anything that ends up or has the potential to end up outside the site, RSS feeds being the primary example. Relative URLs simply won't work there, so anything that gets syndicated (through a feed or otherwise) it's probably best to use absolute URLs.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for your reply. If you don't mind, do you favor relative or absolute paths? Why?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> For option 1, if you're generating pages with templates, just hand off the domain portion to a util method, so if the domain ever does change, it should be a one-line change.

</comment><comment><USER5> #3 will be best if the domain name ever changes. It happened to me three times and #3 kept my head over the waterline.

<comment><AUTHOR> OK, but as long as the directory structure remains the same, #2 would also work. Why do you prefer #3? (Again, just curious.)

<comment><USER6> In case he renames the directory.

<comment><USER5> Obvious and true.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


A project networking site to launch that lets you discover new projects. - <AUTHOR> http://www.algoy.com

<comment><USER2> No it doesn't. It lets me sign up for a launchrock.</comment>


OpenSSL DSA key recovery attack - <AUTHOR> http://eprint.iacr.org/2016/594 <comment><USER2> _Make Sure DSA Signing Exponentiations Really are Constant-Time_

"...the OpenSSL team committed two code changes relevant to this work. The first adds a "constant-time" implementation of modular exponentiation..."

"The execution time of the "constant-time" implementation still depends on the bit length of the exponent, which in the case of DSA should be kept secret [12, 15, 27]. The second commit aims to "make sure DSA signing exponentiations really are constant-time" by ensuring that the bit length of the exponent is fixed."

"...While the procedure in this commit ensures that the bit length of the sum kq is fixed, unfortunately it introduces a software defect. The function BN_copy is not designed to propagate flags from the source to the destination. In fact, OpenSSL exposes a distinct API BN_with_flags for that functionality..."

"In contrast, with BN_copy the BN_FLG_CONSTTIME flag does not propagate to kq. Consequently, the sum is not treated as secret, reverting the change made in the first commit..."

Exploitation requires a local 'spy' process recording timing signals while the handshakes are running. I assume this is an unprivileged process, otherwise wouldn't the key be directly accessible?

<comment><USER3> From section 5.2, _Attacking SSH_ (emphasis mine):

"...our client saves the hash of the concatenated string and the digital signature raw bytes _sent from the server_. All subsequent messages, including SSH_MSG_NEWKEYS and any client responses, are not required by our attack. Our client therefore drops the connection at this stage, and repeats this process several hundred times to build up a set of distinct trace, digital signature, and digest tuples. See Section 6 for our explicit attack parameters. Figure 3 is a typical _signal extracted by our spy program in parallel to the handshake between our client and the victim SSH server_."

This inclines me to believe that an attack can be executed _via connections to a vulnerable SSH server_ , not from _a local process on the SSH server_.

<comment><USER4> Random network delays would probably hide any meaningful timing signal in the case of remote connections, thus they used a local process.

<comment><USER5> One might expect this to be the default case, but it may not be so, given a large enough sample size.

<comment><USER4> Found further discussion here: [http://seclists.org/oss- sec/2016/q2/514](http://seclists.org/oss-sec/2016/q2/514)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Needs to listen to only a few hundred handshakes. Ugh. Something tells me this could be deployed on AWS large instances with some success.

<comment><USER7> As others have mentioned, the attack requires a local process that has a shared cache, so it would also require a server that has a remote code execution vulnerability.

<comment><USER6> My memory is that there are ways to punch through virtualization that AWS uses and get insight into cache hits/misses of other tenants, but I'm not sure if that applies here.

In that world, you just rent some time on a large AWS instance and sit around mucking with the cache timing waiting for another tenant to do some cryptography.

I can't find the link to the paper now, but my thoughts went to combining these two immediately -- you can get a local process without remote code execution if you just log onto your shiny new multitenant virtual server.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Use `.. 3` instead of `cd ../../..` - <AUTHOR> https://geonnave.com/posts/navigate-faster/ <comment><USER2> probably zsh goodie but `cd ....` works the same for me</comment>


10 Big myths of copyright explained - <AUTHOR> http://www.templetons.com/brad/copymyths.html <comment><USER2> Imagine I see you take a rock and stick and tie them together with sinew, which you then use as a hammer to break apart rocks.

After seeing you build this device, I then build my own.

For me to steal from you, you have to lose something you own, so how have I stolen anything?</comment>


Orgzit Enters the API Market. Contesting ZOHO One? - <AUTHOR> http://blog.orgzit.com/orgzit-features-triple-team-productivity/ <comment><AUTHOR> I wonder if ZOHO one is another way of saying - Let's put our whole business cycle in one place?

Orgzit has been at it since long.</comment>


What they didn't teach me in college - <AUTHOR> http://ericholscher.com/blog/2009/nov/10/what-they-didnt-teach-me-college/

<comment><USER2> I really like this idea, and I hadn't heard it before. Unfortunately, it would require significant collaboration between professors in different classes and a curriculum that consistently builds on earlier material in a meaningful way. These are difficult things to achieve, perhaps too difficult to be worth doing for the benefits they would bring.</comment>


CocoaLove – A conference about people, not tech - <AUTHOR> http://cocoalove.org

<comment><USER2> I am friends with some of the folks putting this together. Now that that's out of the way...

I am excited about the conference because I think the human factor is often missing from software development, and one of the hardest skill-sets to learn.

In an era where frameworks and libraries are ubiquitous, understanding and developing the right products and experiences is going to be increasingly important. A conference that focuses on these "timeless" skills is much more attractive to me personally than any one that is focused on a particular technology.

Doesn't that make you feel all warm and fuzzy?

</comment><comment><USER3> I dig the focus on smaller size & more interaction.

</comment><comment><USER4> lol @ the headline.

It is about tech, yo.

<comment><AUTHOR> "Not tech" as in no sessions focusing on how to maximize your CoreData performance, or how to use Metal in your new iOS8 game. No talks that are technical in nature.

<comment><USER5> What's a good conference for mobile developers who do want to learn how to use Metal, advanced design, etc?

<comment><AUTHOR> Check out CocoaConf ([http://cocoaconf.com](http://cocoaconf.com)). They travel around the country and provide many technical talks. I was at their DC one in March and found it very educational.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Working with pixels is a privilege - <AUTHOR> http://justinjackson.ca/if-you-work-with-pixels-you-should-be-thankful/

<comment><USER2> Great post, I used to work in manual labor. There are issues with mental fatigue in software development that affect work/life balance more so than physical fatigue, but in general I agree with you.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the reply!

I had 2-3 summers jobs in manual labor and couldn't believe the amount of physical effort (and long hours) that went into it.

I think even more significant is the number of guys I've known in their 50's and 60's who have to walk with a cane, or have bad backs, and other injuries that have severely impacted their lives.</comment></comment>


Crazyflie Nano Quadrocopter showing off some performance and tools - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WBUVYZkODI

<comment><USER2> Anybody know if it is possible to attach object sensors to the board? I'd like to program it to detect and fly around obstacles autonomously.</comment>


The fear of dart:mirrors - <AUTHOR> http://mrale.ph/blog/2017/01/08/the-fear-of-dart-mirrors.html <comment><USER2> Excellent article. I admire taking extra steps and fiddling with the runtime code to make it faster.

One question though: if dart:mirrors is not working when targeting JavaScript does that mean the API is practically unused? Or do people use Dart without compiling to JS? (honest question)

<comment><USER3> People use Dart on the server and seem to be quite happy with it: see for example [https://aqueduct.io/](https://aqueduct.io/) as an example of homegrown server framework that heavily relies on mirrors.

But it is true that mirrors more dead than alive on the JS target.

I also would expect that eventually Flutter would want something in this space that is compatible with AOT compilation because it allows to tremendously cut down on boilerplate in some cases.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Note that the dart2js version of the Dart JSON decoder is lazy; if you don't actually read all of the JSON, it won't create the Dart maps corresponding to the JavaScript objects. On the other hand if you do read everything, laziness is no help and may slow things down. (At least, it makes performance measurement more difficult.)

The JsonDecoder class has a reviver argument, same as JavaScript. But the only use I found for it in the protobuf library was to disable laziness:

[https://github.com/dart- lang/protobuf/blob/814653b49b90b48db...](https://github.com/dart- lang/protobuf/blob/814653b49b90b48db3d00781b594068ba4aca59a/lib/src/protobuf/generated_message.dart#L165)

Some kind of JsonListener would be welcome when we don't need to create these Dart maps at all.

<comment><USER3> I should have stated this more clearly in the post - that it is lazy. I referred to the code itself, but did not explain what the code does very clearly, just said that it has a lot of overhead.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Well written article!

One question regarding the "More declarative replacement for dart:mirrors" chapter: Is this what typescript/js is doing, with emitting and processing metadata only for decorated types?

<comment><USER3> Yes and no. "Yes" because JS decorators are indeed very local - they apply to what they decorate. "No" because JS decorators are still imperative. Essentially when you write

        @D class A { }

this simply means something along the lines of:

        class A { }
        D(A)

where D is an arbitrary function doing arbitrary things to A. There is nothing declarative here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This all smacks of a language that isn't very mature, at least for general- purpose programming. Given than Go works pretty well out of the box for this JSON parsing example, and is known to work pretty well for lots of other use cases, why would I choose Dart over Go?

Of course Dart can be used to target JavaScript, which Go can't, so that's a big difference. But it sounds like dart2js performs badly for this example.

Is there an area where Dart excels?

If it's just a clean modern OO language, that's useful, but it seems like Kotlin is the hot new thing in that area right now.

<comment><USER3> > This all smacks of a language that isn't very mature, at least for general- > purpose programming.

Could you clarify what "smacks" of a language that isn't very mature? There are libraries written in any language that are not tuned for performance.

The goal of this post is to show that poor performance of a single library should not be interpreted as poor performance of a language feature that this library uses... Instead you must rigorously evaluate performance issues. (And also provide feedback to language implementors)

It is true that builtin libraries could have provided a better JSON deserialization support... So if your definition of an immature general- purpose language depends on whether or not there is a fast JSON deserialize built right into the core libraries - then Dart certainly does not pass.

However one can also define a general purpose programming language as a language in which programmer could efficiently implement all sorts of things, including but not limited to an efficient JSON deserializer - which seems to be the case for Dart.

> why would I choose Dart over Go?

I don't know. Why do you have to choose Dart over Go? You choose want you like most and what makes you most productive. For me it would be Dart for you it might be Go. Such is life. Not everybody has to write everything in the same language.

We can offer you to try Dart. You can refuse to try. You can also try it and then refuse to use it... Endless possibilities :)

<comment><USER6> _Could you clarify what "smacks" of a language that isn't very mature? There are libraries written in any language that are not tuned for performance._

("Smacks" isn't meant to be pejorative, I guess it's just a British idiom. I just meant "appears to be" or "comes across as")

Sure -- to clarify, I think reflection is a pretty important language feature, but it sounds like it's unnecessarily slow on the native target and not really usable on the JS target.

It wasn't clear to me whether this JSON parser was a widely-used core library, or just a random third-party one. But a good fast strongly-typed JSON I/O library also seems like something a good new general-purpose programming language ought to have.

Maybe it's unfair to extrapolate so much from this one example, but I hardly hear anything about Dart at all. I was interested to see what I assumed was a Dart advocacy post show up on HN, but on reading it, found it didn't make Dart sound very appealing.

 _> why would I choose Dart over Go?_

 _I don 't know. Why do you have to choose Dart over Go?_

I'm not trying to start a language war (I kind of picked Go at random, mostly because it was also started by Google). But I think it's a reasonable question, and there's room for a bit of advocacy here. If people like Dart, what do they like about it?

<comment><USER4> At Google, it's heavily used by Adwords. Building very large desktop web apps (with many screens, large tables displaying lots of data, material design, etc) with AngularDart is a sweet spot. Tiny mobile web apps for slow networks haven't been a focus (yet).

The other major use is for Flutter (cross-platform mobile app development), which is in alpha.

Outside Google, a developer advocate could tell you more but I don't think there's a central theme yet; various teams use it who like the language. Sass is using it, for example.

If you're looking for a fast VM and care more about type checking than about JavaScript or Lua compatibility, you might want to try it out.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Google 'segregates' women into lower-paying jobs, stifling careers, lawsuit says - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/sep/14/google-women-promotions-lower-paying-jobs-lawsuit <comment><USER2> I want to treat carefully as this is a hot button issue - and I'm not trying to defend Google at all but:

>>But other male software engineers who were less qualified than Ellis or at the same level were promoted into Level 4 and higher positions, according to the suit.

What is the proof that this is the case? Did Google admit that these candidates were "less qualified" than Ellis, or is it just the perception?

Just because two people graduate at the same time from the same program and have similar experience does not mean they are equally qualified.

Again, I'm not saying Google is in the right - but just because something appears one way does not make it so.

>>But Pease herself was denied a promotion to a technical position, the complaint said: "Ms Pease's two interviewers, both men, did not ask her any technical questions, and one interviewer did not even bother to take notes of the meeting with her."

This is the part that carries the most weight imo. It's pretty clear that interviewing processes in tech are biased at best. Maybe the course of action here is to encourage more blind interviewing processes, or bring in a larger pool of interviewers.

Its sad to see that this rampant sexism is so prevalent, especially at one of the most publicly visible companies in the world.

<comment><USER3> Honest question: Is note taking in interviews seen as necessary? I've always found it to be somewhat insulting when the interviewer has their head in their laptop or paper pad, and types furiously while I realize I'm already stumbling. It's a terrible dynamic, and I've tried to avoid doing that _aggressively_ in my own interviews; be engaging the interviewee, following along/trying not to seem distracted. I'm hard pressed to think about material subtleties that I'd miss in the time before I'm able to go to my desk and write up a summary post-factum.

(This is tangential to the core thrust, but as an eng trying to do my part to make interviewing less of a pain, this stood out to me)

<comment><USER4> > Is note taking in interviews seen as necessary?

It's increasingly common at companies that have highly standardized/calibrated interview processes. Often, this is for the express purpose of avoiding discrimination. Interviewers have to ask approved questions, measure them according to specific criteria, then express their evaluation in terms of a number and be prepared to justify it. That allows the numbers for different candidates to be compared meaningfully, like to like. The downside is that it's impossible to do all that without taking notes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> 'Ellis, who has a degree in applied mathematics and a minor in computer science, had experience in back-end development. But "Google assigned her to an occupationally-segregated frontend engineering role", the suit said.'

Personal data point: I have a B.S. in Mathematics and a Master's in Bioinformatics (taken after 7 years of PhD study), and I had over three years of backend professional experience when I was hired at Google as a Level 3 in frontend engineering (I was told I was going to a backend position with "lots of math" when I first accepted the offer). Before I left Google I mentored a Noogler who was hired as a Level 3 despite having just finished a PhD in CS.

My point is that Google is filling slots with bodies, very smart bodies, but that it is incredibly common to come in for a level you are overqualified for and a role you are unsuited for.

</comment><comment><USER6> Just my suggestion, and probably a far out there one...

I offer that people should be put in front of a machine with facial recognition and the most advanced AI available that can conduct a one on one interview with a person to determine if they meet the qualifications for the specific job they are applying to.

This would be controlled by a 3rd party who has no ties to any employer and would be used more as a data gathering tool that produces results of a person's interview and compares it to other people who interviewed as well, obscuring name obviously but providing gender and race breakdowns, among other things. people could possibly view this data after they've had the "real" interview with Google or whomever and compare with what was determined by their interview with the AI system. The 3rd party could provide this data to the public on a monthly or yearly basis so that everyone can know, possibly, if there is an incredible amount of bias that an interviewer may hold toward any particular people or groups of people.

Of course, there's 1000's of caveats to this and companies like Google would have to provide how they conduct their interviews to said 3rd party, as well as techniques and what they expect in a person's personality but wouldn't it at least be better than having people constantly reject the notion that there is a discrimination and bias problem in and out of the workplace? Not to mention it would all but eliminate the need for lawsuits for this kind of thing, unless one disagrees wholeheartedly with 3rd party AI results and actual interview results.

</comment><comment><USER7> During your interview, you can demonstrate strong technical skills even if you aren't asked about them. You can also demonstrate strong soft skills. The latter is generally seen as less 'merited' and generally gets paid less.

I wonder how this kind of information can be qualified other than a full transcript of everyone's interviews.

</comment><comment><USER8> As a former Googler: bullshit. If anything, Google gives women all the help they can possibly get, including preferential treatment during recruitment, hiring, and promotions. If this is not enough, I'm not sure what else they could do to boost the numbers of women in higher paid roles.

<comment><USER9> clearly the answer is to start holding men down so that woman can be equal

<comment><USER10> Ideological battle-style comments are against the site rules. We ban accounts that post this way, so please don't.

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Why is this flagged?

<comment><USER12> HN is in full on denial mode regarding sexism in tech (or at least that's how it seems to me)</comment></comment>


DIY HTML-based prototyping for microcontrollers open source project - <AUTHOR>

What do you think of my DIY HTML-based prototyping for microcontrollers open source project?
https://github.com/Agilart/Agilart-Run-Time
Do you think the documentation is ok?
That's my first real Github project, any suggestions, comments, advices, best practises are very welcome! <comment><USER2> This sounds awesome but I can't get to the page from my phone. You should delete this submission and resubmit it as a link with 'Show HN' at the beginning of the title.

<comment><AUTHOR> done, here it is - <https://github.com/Agilart/Agilart-Run-Time></comment></comment>


Browserify vs. Webpack - <AUTHOR> http://mattdesl.svbtle.com/browserify-vs-webpack

<comment><USER2> The gist of the argument is that Browserify can access more file extensions out of the box, whereas Webpack uses an external config file to define how special file extensions are to be processed.

The given scenario of loading a regular ".js" looks like it is in favour of Browserify, but that advantage quickly goes to Webpack as soon you change the extension to be jsx/sass/yml/myown. How those files will be loaded and processed is not up to the bundling tool - that should be delegated to single- purpose loader that convert whatever the content is into an app-compatible format. This is exactly what Webpack does by keeping the core minimal and outsourcing all content loading to mini-loader, including the loading of simple JS files. The Webpack approach is much closer to the linux goal of do- one-thing-really-well-and-play-well-with-others.

Edit: The suggested "fragmentation" seems unlikely as Webpack does not enforce the change in the require() syntax. In practice, very few people would use that in the source files because using the overall config file is so much easier and more powerful - it is akin to having a makefile for the JS app.

<comment><AUTHOR> The gist is that Webpack is diverging from Node, has difficulty consuming node/browserify modules, and encourages non-compatible syntax through its require() overloads (which are encouraged all over the docs).

Browserify also decouples its transforms from its core. The difference is that browserify can correctly identify which transforms your various dependencies are using, since they are listed in the package.json of each module, and it can resolve them automatically during the bundle step. This is not yet in Webpack, which makes code re-use more tedious.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> In your `webpack.config.js`:

        module: {
          loaders: [
            { test: /\.json$/, loader: 'json' },
          ]
        }

Elsewhere:

        var version = require('./package.json').version;

Loaders are common.js packages that export a single function and expect `this` to have the loader API. You can put them as dependencies in your `package.json`. You can wire them up in your config. It's not any less flexible than browserify.

<comment><AUTHOR> The issue is twofold:

\- It shows Node compatibility is not a primary concern of Webpack.

\- It is not a default feature of Webpack. Pretty much every Webpack project will need to include this loader config if you want to (safely) start consuming Node/browserify modules

I added the config to the article to detail the additional steps.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've been using wreq ([https://github.com/substack/wreq](https://github.com/substack/wreq)) recently and it's worked a treat. Yes, it hasn't been committed to in 3 years - but I've had 0 problems with it. It just works like you'd expect it to work.

</comment><comment><USER5> In my opinion a bundler should bundle and nothing else. Transforms should be implemented as externals tools that package assets and whatnot as CommonJS modules. One benefit among others would be the ability to implement the build process as a Makefile. These tools try to do to much at once.

<comment><AUTHOR> I would say it depends. brfs is perfect since you don't change any node source to support the browser.

glslify is another useful one if you're authoring WebGL modules. Not only does it statically analyze the uniforms/attributes for use at runtime, but it also allows for modularization, minification, optimization, etc.

On the other hand, transforms like cssify and hbsfy might be better suited only for the application level.

In an ideal world; these transforms would be completely decoupled from the bundler so that Webpack, Browserify, or anything else can use them in the same way.

<comment><USER5> Though brfs can be nice to make a module instantly usable in the browser I think it is highly misleading because it skews fs semantics a lot. It shouldn't be encouraged in cases where other solutions are available. I can't talk about glsify because I don't know it, though trying so hard to make the browser behave like node has a lot of benefits at first, I think it is a very brittle solution in the long run.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I prefer Loadstar, it is newly released but it is pretty useful and simple:

[https://github.com/wvl/loadstar](https://github.com/wvl/loadstar)</comment>


Free Directory Submission - <AUTHOR> http://www.directoryark.com <comment><USER2> Thanks, but couldn't find add url or any other way to submit - you might want to check/fix that. All the best.

BTW, here is one of ours (completely hand-coded), that we built as an experiment a couple of years back, where you can get free _instant_ listings in upto 5 categories:

<http://www.EGYG.net>

ps. We've found that new sites submitted there usually get crawled within a few hours. - HTH</comment>


New analysis method predicts disruptive solar flares - <AUTHOR> https://phys.org/news/2020-07-analysis-method-disruptive-solar-flares.html <comment><USER2> There's a slight difference in wording that can change the mental image of the title: the report is titled "A physics-based method that can predict imminent large solar flares"[0]. So this is a method designed to predict imminent large solar flares that has been validated on eleven years' worth of data.

I'm not a native English speaker so my perception is likely very biased, but the "can" implies less click-bait-y stuff than the current title.

I can't judge the method or the validity of the research, but it sounds like a potentially useful tool to develop, even for humans specifically, given the potentially devastating impact of solar flares hitting our planet.

[0] [https://science.sciencemag.org/content/369/6503/587](https://science.sciencemag.org/content/369/6503/587)</comment>


Ask HN: Can a company be built using open source code? - <AUTHOR> Well, for companies like Docker or Mongo, I guess their revenue model is to provide support for enterprise customers. But can a new company like say the next Uber or Facebook or Netflix or Amazon be built on top open source products where their core offering is available for everyone to check and read? What about licensing the code? What kind of licenses should they use? <comment><USER2> You nailed it with the first part. Another big example is Mesosphere. Yes, you can open source everything* (my company does) because most B2B customers don't want to bother running it. Most small ones would rather just use your SaaS and not have to run and maintain some boxes, if they're even that technical.

Not to mention cloud pricing these days is complexed and nuanced when your app uses a bunch of services and deals with lots of inbound and outbound traffic — more things customers don't want to deal with.

Most big companies want support around the clock and are used to going for enterprise licensing deals. At the end of the day, you're providing a solution to their problems, and hosting and running the code for them makes solving their problem and their lives easier. If a problem costs them $50k in lost revenue or opportunities, and you solve it for $45k, you have a happy customer, even if they could have done a lot of work and run it themselves for say $20k.

I don't think this works as well in the B2C space, but it really depends on the price point of your service and your user base. For instance, I run a Ghost blog because I can have the skills to install and maintain it, which isn't much, and they charge $20/mo for their SaaS while I can run it on DigitalOcean for $5/mo.

*except a small bit of secret sauce

<comment><USER3> To add to this, open sourcing your code also provides a bit of insurance policy if your company ever goes out of business. This is especially helpful in infrastructure markets; businesses don't want to build their foundation around proprietary dependencies that might disappear when their creator company goes belly-up. If the code is open sourced, then even in the event of you going out of business, your customers can find a way to recover.

There is also the nice bonus that open sourcing your code means you'll get a bunch of "free" contributions, bug fixes and security reviews.

</comment></comment><comment> git-pull I think product-izing open source projects is a long shot, but:

I would go the SAAS route, the way WordPress.com does it. Self-serve DIY hosting and enterprise clients (the kind of stuff you'd have account managers for).

There also is a recipe for a permissively licensed library, with a commercial front-end: spaCy, the NLP library [1], and prodi.gy, the front-end [2].

The spaCy devs are my favorite success story. A solid library, and using their know-how to create a value-added front-end on top of it.

There is a lot in play when this happens. SaltStack is a superb configuration management system. But when I make tickets on GH to pressure them to make things more fluid for non-enterprise deployments, they don't get much traction. I can't help their bottom line, and their incentive to cater to enterprise clients takes them astray from the values that made it great: the masterless, solo quickstart [3] (this is strongly my own observation).

By far the biggest usage of open source is going to be intermixing permissively licensed libraries and build tools in larger works. By the time you see a polished service or product, you may not be able to tell what it's built in, even though they stand on the shoulders of giants. PS4 and Switch is built on FreeBSD.

[1] [https://spacy.io/](https://spacy.io/) [2] [https://prodi.gy/](https://prodi.gy/) [3] [https://docs.saltstack.com/en/latest/topics/tutorials/quicks...](https://docs.saltstack.com/en/latest/topics/tutorials/quickstart.html)

</comment><comment><USER4> Sure. Amazon seems like a good example -- if the source code to the site and backend were released, you'd still have a company as profitable because the hard part is the global logistics work, relationships made, warehouses they've built and staffed.

I don't think it matters which license is used in most cases. GPL vs BSD used to be a big argument, less so now that we're not all running desktop software on our own machines for everything.

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm hoping so though from where I am now it looks like it will be a long road ahead ;)

[https://opencollective.com/property_web_builder](https://opencollective.com/property_web_builder)</comment>


Recommended Reading - <AUTHOR>

I am the "business guy" involved in a young internet startup (much of the coding is in php). My tech knowledge is fairly limited. While I am never going to be a developer, I would like to gain a better understanding of at least the basics of the tech side. Any books/reading that people out there would recommend?<p>Thanks. <comment><USER2> "Code" by Charles Petzold is a wonderful book about how computers work and it covers pretty much everything but in a way that is accessible to anyone who understand basic algebra.

</comment><comment><USER3> If scalability is relevant to your product, this is an accessible classic:

[http://www.amazon.com/Building-Scalable-Web-Sites- Applicatio...](http://www.amazon.com/Building-Scalable-Web-Sites- Applications/dp/0596102356)

</comment><comment><USER4> >basics of the tech side

This is a very vague target.

Do you want basics on web development? networking? computer science? programming language? managing softwares? databases description? survey of computer science?

<comment><AUTHOR> Basics on web development, yes. I was just given a book on php and sql, which hopefully will help since both are involved in the project. Thanks.</comment></comment>


My Glorious Defeat? - <AUTHOR> http://www.menshealth.com/cda/article.do?site=MensHealth&channel=guy.wisdom&category=life.lessons&conitem=03044e632f144110VgnVCM20000012281eac____

<comment><AUTHOR> Read through all 4 pages. It is a good article. The best quotes: "Maybe failure isn't the problem. Maybe expectation is",

"The great thing about surviving a storm is that you're much better prepared the next time the winds start kicking up. You recognize the early warnings. You stock up on essentials. And, most crucial, you go in knowing that no matter what happens, you can always rebuild.",

"Because I'd failed, I wasn't afraid of failing. And that enabled me to push a lot harder for what I believed in.",

"Given all these risks, why do it? Because even in failure, I knew I'd grow from it. ",

"It's just like weight training, really. You push yourself until your muscles fail. That's how you grow stronger."

<comment><USER2> Yes, it's a really good article. I don't know why it's not in the front page...</comment></comment>