The Man Behind Common Core Math - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/blogs/ed/2014/12/29/371918272/the-man-behind-common-core-math <comment><USER2> _It hit the mainstream in early 2014, when a dad in North Carolina posted a convoluted "Common Core" question from his son's second-grade math quiz on Facebook, along with a letter he'd written to the teacher. "I have a Bachelor of Science Degree in Electronics Engineering which included extensive study in differential equations and other high-math applications," he wrote. "Even I cannot explain the Common Core mathematics approach, nor get the answer correct."_

Lunch costs $14.45. You pay with a $20. If you calculate your change without borrowing you just did common core math. The best facet of common core is the amount of adults complaining they don't understand it. Rather than an argument against, it is exactly an argument in support of teaching kids multiple ways to think about math.

<comment><USER3> _If you calculate your change without borrowing you just did common core math._

Borrowing?

<comment><USER2> Some random gis image. [http://i.imgur.com/RvAUuPK.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/RvAUuPK.jpg)

Compare that to how you could solve the problem in your head.

.01 + .70 + 6.00

For my example I bet you'd think 5¢ + 50¢ + $5.00 to compute your change.

<comment><USER4> Firstly, I think you probably mean +0.01 +0.70 +6.00

Also, when you say the +0.01 and +0.70 there, aren't you implicitly borrowing anyway? It's just "easier" borrowing -- you say that 0.09 + 0.01 = 0.10, as opposed to explicitly borrowing the 1 to the second decimal and subtracting the 9. Similarly, you say that 0.30 + 0.70 = 1.00 instead of borrowing the 1 to the first decimal.

I can see why this makes mental maths easier, but I don't see that it is any deep conceptual improvement over the borrowing. Is one of the goals of Common Core to improve mental arithmetic? If so, then this makes sense. Otherwise, unless you properly explain why the two are equivalent, and why the other method is faster, it's more like a neat sleight-of-hand trick that might leave kids slightly more confused about why it is "better" than the borrowing method.

[Reference: Non-American, non-parent who knows very little about the American education system, but has some friends teaching in it.]

<comment><USER2> Fixed, thanks.

All math solutions will be equivalent. And it isn't a parlour trick. It's teaching kids to think about breaking down problems into smaller units and composing a solution. The rote algorithms work, but training kids to execute an algorithm won't help them understand.

The long form subtraction algorithm isn't a skill that carries over to multiplication. Breaking a problem into smaller components, composing a solution, and checking with your original estimate does carry over. And not just multiplication but programming as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> My children's school sent me a questionnaire on Common Core. They ended with a comment, maximum of 300 characters. Here is what I told them:

 _Educational reforms usually result in an ambitious curriculum being presented by underprepared teachers to unprepared students. And parents don 't understand the homework and can't help._

 _For example, "New Math" ended with "Johnny Can't Add". I wish my kids weren't victims of the current round._

I stand by that comment. Given how many failed reforms there have been over time, how could these smart people not have predicted what has happened?

Right now we have a new set of standards. A new set of lesson plans. Every teacher has been retrained to teach in a new way. We have new homework going home with kids, which makes little sense to anyone. Kids learn to perform the operations, but do not seem to be mastering the concepts. There is an endless drum beat of positive messaging being sent home from schools. Parents that I talk to are..shall we say..less than convinced.

This is about the worst kind of big bang upgrade that you could have.

<comment><USER6> > Kids learn to perform the operations, but do not seem to be mastering the > concepts

This is explicitly what Common Core is designed to fix -- Common Core is designed to break K-12 math's traditional focus on rote arithmetic and instead focus on learning math as abstract reasoning and multiple different solution strategies.

That you would include this barb in your comment shows that you're more arguing against the concept of changing standards, and not against Common Core itself. That's not an indefensible position, and you do consistently argue from that stance throughout your comment, but I fail to see how it's constructive. The US is ranked ~30th in math worldwide -- obviously things need to be changed. Perhaps there are better ways to change our standards: what would you propose?

<comment><USER5> _Common Core is designed to break K-12 math 's traditional focus on rote arithmetic and instead focus on learning math as abstract reasoning and multiple different solution strategies._

The fact that it is designed to do so does not mean that it succeeds in any way. What I see is the replacement of rote arithmetic with the rote repetition of formulaic statements that are not connected to actual understanding. This is not an improvement.

 _That you would include this barb in your comment shows that you 're more arguing against the concept of changing standards, and not against Common Core itself. That's not an indefensible position, and you do consistently argue from that stance throughout your comment, but I fail to see how it's constructive. The US is ranked ~30th in math worldwide -- obviously things need to be changed. Perhaps there are better ways to change our standards: what would you propose?_

I would suggest incremental improvement, not revolutionary change. The education establishment has a long history of revolutionary change, and knows exactly how to go about it. This always turns out badly. The much safer way to go is to incrementally improve, with constant feedback and repetition. It doesn't feel day by day like progress, but it has much higher odds of actually succeeding.

What our educational system has done is the equivalent of throwing out a major software system, and rolling out a new one. Such big bang upgrades seldom go well, and the larger the system the worse the disaster that follows. Even if you can wind up in a situation where success can be declared, huge amounts of damage are done.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> IMO, the problem with the way Common Core has been implemented is that there is a whole new analytical/critical thinking component that is bundled together with math. But parents when parents think of math they think of computation, arithmetic, formulas etc. Not 'explain why ancient calendars used 60-day units' (actual question from my daughter's 6th grade curriculum, may be misquoting a bit. The answer is because 60 has many factors).

I'm not saying it's good or bad to teach math that way, it was just not communicated well and still isn't. Math has been replaced with math+critical thinking. It's as if English class now also included Latin. Maybe good, maybe bad, but it's a whole different class.

<comment><USER8> It's hard for me to imagine a world view where adding critical thinking to a subject might make it worse.

> It's as if English class now also included Latin.

I think a better analogy would be "it's as if English class now included critical thinking." Or "it's as if Science class now included critical thinking." Or "it's as if History class now included critical thinking."

All of those sound unambiguously good to me.

<comment><USER9> The math curriculum I was exposed to in school (relatively recently, by any standard) always included critical thinking and was likely the subject that involved the most critical thinking because it was the subject where critical thinking was the most objective.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I have looked over some of the common core material given to both early grade school and middle schoolers and its very clearly attempting to teach abstract reasoning. There is alot of word problems that ask how to decouple a concept from the concrete values calculated in a previous step. Most people from older generations are not going to see the value in this... parents (and teachers) need to know there is much more to math than arithmetic

<comment><USER11> Isn't it much easier to just use "x" and "y" instead of strange terms like "subtraction stories"?

I always did quite well in math, but sitting there at the back of the class messing around with stuff at the end of the book, I found that teachers tried _so damn hard_ to make the content _easier_ , and in the process made it harder. I could figure out how what they were saying corresponded to the material, because I already knew the material, but could not see how anyone else would understand it. Few did.

That said, "Common Core" is probably fine, as usual the implementation quality is just much more important than any particular methodology. (just like "object oriented programming" etc).

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I think the greater problem is not with the standards (which I know nothing about) but with who is teaching it. I have talked to people who are elementary school teachers who know nothing about mathematics, yet they are given the task to teach it to children. They have little understanding of why the mathematics they teach is important and useful. If you don't give children a solid foundation in their formative years, they will always struggle with mathematics.

</comment><comment><USER13> The real problem is that Common Core tried to do several things in order to improve rankings against countries like South Korea. But instead of doing the things which high ranking countries have shown do actually produce high-level results, they put together an almost completely untested curriculum, then rolled out it out everywhere.

There's not really any evidence that the approach in Common Core will improve student's math achievement scores, and lots of evidence that it's been an abysmal failure. Instead of confused students ignoring the subject, we now have confused, frustrated, miserable students, a generation of which will now hate mathematics more than the one that came before them. The only thing CC has achieved is in alienating an entire generation of students from the critical skills of math.

The article makes the argument that the absurdity of the implementation of CC is a result of local standards overriding a national, well thought out program and that the CC creators are powerless to fix things. I call hogwash. Set up a textbook certification program: publishers have to pay some nominal fee to these guys to review the book and give it a seal of approval that "yes, this book fulfills what Common Core intends". Use that seal as a quality signal, books without the seal should be considered next to garbage and books with it are assumed to be better.

They should also have written their own reference K-12 curriculum, providing a gold-standard example of what it should look like. Publishers can license that curriculum and publish it unmodified or they can license it and add (but not subtract) chapters to handle local requirements.

That these things weren't done, on what's supposed to be a national educational reform that was "a lot of work" boggles the mind.

It reminds me of various specification-by-committee standards that are all over the tech world. They're laid out in document somewhere, with no reference implementation and no certification that some other implementation really is compliant and we end up with a decade of lost time while every developer tries desperately to get their image to line up just right in half a dozen different browser rendering engines, or get their query to work right in a dozen different SQL standard databases to work the same.

</comment><comment><USER14> I'm a parent and I've overall been very happy. In math it's very simple for a kid to get hung-up on one simple thing and then they have this hole and cause things build on previous knowledge later things are now trouble as well.

For example one of my children could not factor in the way I was taught with the trees, but another way was presented and it totally clicked for her. For one of my sons he could not do long division in the manner I was taught, but another method worked for him instantly. He showed me and I even liked it, cause I remembered how hung-up I had been about getting the correct digit at each step myself.

I also like how it seems to have this component about reasoning. To many people math is arithmetic, but it really is not that. The problem is that there are kids where requirements were different. So for example now a third grader is supposed to have memorized multiplication table, but there were schools that never did that before. Or a sixth grader is now already supposed to have done some geometry, but the school only did it in 8th grade or HS before. There is no route to fill in the gaps during this transition in many schools it seems.

</comment><comment><USER15> One of the biggest problems in changing anything like this is that it requires extra effort from teaches to completely "retool".

Anyone who has ever spent anytime teaching knows that when you first start out, you have to figure out a lot of stuff when teaching a new curriculum, but by the time you've taught the material 2-3 times [0], you start streamlining things and getting more efficient. The time you spend retooling almost always comes out of your personal time. i.e. from hours beyond the 40-50 hour work week.

After you know a curriculum well, you end up with more personal time. Introducing new standards, means a new curriculum and a new curriculum means a lot of unpaid personal time from teachers if you want them to really adopt it and teach it well.

I just don't see a new curriculum working well unless it comes with the notion of paid extra-time that you know teachers will have to put in to succeed with the new curriculum. It doesn't have to be a lot, but simply 5-10 more hours each week and a bonus equal to 10-25% of their salary to make up for the additional time would probably work. The only key would be that there needs to be a way to measure that teachers are putting in the extra time to really learn the new curriculum and apply it instead of collecting the bonus for putting in the minimum effort.

At the end of the day, it you don't budget both time and money to learn any new curriculum, it's either going to fail or be met with resistance from teachers who feel like they already have a system that works for them and their students.

[0] either in the same semester or school year because you teach multiple groups the same material or after 2-3 semesters or school years of teaching the subject to one group at a time

</comment><comment><USER16> Firstly, I would love to hear what tokenadult has to say about this.

Moving on, I think the article mentions the problem of getting good textbooks. This has always been a huge problem, I think. In India, there is a trinity of syllabi: one recommended by the Federal (Central) Govt. (CBSE), one by a consortium of private schools (ISCE) and each individual state's syllabus. So, a school does not have the independence to create its own curriculum, it has the choice of adhering to these 3 systems. It does have the independence of choosing textbooks; however, there are also officially prescribed books, and many teachers teach from them only because they cover things that are often asked in the standardized tests.

So, I don't know if it does good to have just one system, and not give schools access to more options.

</comment><comment><USER17> Does anyone know: is their a difference between "Common Core" the method of teaching, and "Common Core" the idea that all students across the nation should be held to one standard?

<comment><USER18> Common Core is a set of standards ([http://www.corestandards.org/Math/](http://www.corestandards.org/Math/)).

I don't think there is one official way of teaching that is "Common Core."

The texts currently labeled Common Core are mostly copy-and-paste remixes of existing material.

The exams labeled "Common Core" are unfortunately similar. They don't test the standards as written. For math, a discussion at [http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer- sheet/wp/2014/11/...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer- sheet/wp/2014/11/30/a-dissection-of-common-core-math-test-questions-leaves- educator-appalled/) . Unfortunately, a theme seems to emerge of Pearson tests written to test Pearson materials, some of which have a "Common Core" label.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> > _As powerful and influential in reshaping American classrooms as the > standards could be, they don 't include lesson plans, or teaching methods, > or alternative strategies for when students don't get it._

That seems like a really serious flaw. Did the teaching community at least make and share their own?

<comment><USER20> That's what consultants are for.

The typical cycle for curricula, teaching strategies, and/or discipline plans in schools:

1) OMG the kids aren't learning better change everything!

2) District, state, or both pick some new system and pay some consultants and various companies a bunch of money.

3) Administrator presents plan to teachers: Here's the new system. Half of it's not finalized yet. Should be done in a year or two. We're not implementing some parts of it because they make me uncomfortable. The old way is stupid and sticking to even the parts of it that work well for you will result in my making your life miserable and eventually trying to fire you. You'll need to re-write all your lesson plans to conform to the new system. Here's a mountain of new paperwork for you. No, you can't stop filling out any of the old paperwork.

4) A couple years pass

5) Goto 1

<comment><USER21> A few years ago, a veteran teacher told me his version:

1\. Introduce a new test with an unfamiliar blend of questions, new style questions, etc. but don't give teachers extra time to actually receive updated textbooks, update their classes, etc.

2\. Start giving the test to students immediately before they have any experience with the new format

3\. Use the result low test scores as proof that things were really bad before

4\. As everyone gains experience with the new system, attribute rising scores entirely to the brilliance of the new model. Give bonuses to district / state officials.

5\. Once scores plateau at roughly the previous levels after a few years, start talking about repeating the process. At no point should you seriously consider tackling the structural problems preventing holding perennially under-performing groups back.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> If I were to design a school program from the ground up, I would teach programming just after reading & writing. The best way to learn math is to try to make a program that solves specific problems.

<comment><USER23> _The best way to learn math is to try to make a program that solves specific problems._

An often reasonable way to ensure that you can mechanically apply a problem solving technique (which is related to, but absolutely _not_ the same thing as understanding the maths) is to make a program that does it. Trying to learn maths by programming it is a terrible idea.

Just this morning I've been looking at Riemann's geometry; learning that through the medium of writing a program to "do it" would be painful. I don't even know what it would mean to write a program that "does" Riemann's geometry. I suppose I could write a program to apply some equations, but that's not learning the maths at all. That's automating some equation solving and it teaches me nothing about the maths.

<comment><USER22> >An often reasonable way to ensure that you can mechanically apply a problem solving technique (which is related to, but absolutely not the same thing as understanding the maths) is to make a program that does it.

What "problem solving technique"? There's no algorithm you can mindlessly remember and use it to create algorithms. Making a program that solves the problem is the highest possible understanding.

>I don't even know what it would mean to write a program that "does" Riemann's geometry

That's because it's an abstraction, not a problem to be solved. In the same way you can't write a program that 'does' functional programming, you can only program in a functional way.

Well, I guess writing an AI which can solve problems in Haskell would be an exception. I bet you couldn't remember its code and execute it in your head, though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The common core Mathematics standards are available for anyone to read here:

[http://www.corestandards.org/Math/](http://www.corestandards.org/Math/)

I would encourage anyone who is really interested in this issue to spend some time reading, or even skimming just a few sections. I find the standard is generally quite readable (conceding that it's a non-trivial commitment to read more than 1 grade level, but then again, there's a lot to know about math...) and I also tend to agree with many of the ideas in it.

I've been disappointed, but in hindsight not very surprised by the anti- intellectualism in the public response to the common core. I'm more surprised to see similar anti-intellectualism here. I expect better from you, HN!

It's true that the common core places more emphasis on critical, analytical, and sometimes even abstract thinking than the "traditional" math curriculum (whatever that is...). But as people who read hacker news, doesn't that sound good to you?

It's also important to know that the Common Core standards are a set of expectations, and that's actually all they are. They are not worksheets or standardized tests. If you see a bad "Common Core" worksheet, it is a bad response to the Common Core, but it isn't actually the Common Core itself. If you want to criticize the Common Core itself, choose a part of the document above and criticize it. Or failing that, criticize the process that led to its creation and dissemination. But criticizing a few oddball problems is not a powerful argument.

My own criticism-in-hindsight is that the Common Core is trying to do two things at once. Maybe it would be succeeding better if it only tried to do one of them at a time.

The first is to provide a nationally standardized set of grade level expectations. Many people have an interest in this goal because it makes it easier to prepare teaching materials for a large group of students, and to compare education effectiveness across regions. In an alternate world, this could have been done descriptively instead of prescriptively. The standards could have simply described what was happening in the largest fraction of the country's classrooms.

The second goal is to improve math pedagogy in the U.S. and bring it up to the best international standards, including tying math more strongly to critical, analytical, and abstract thinking skills. This is a prescriptive goal.

If the standard was a process, we could have started with 1, and moved to 2 incrementally. But I suggest this only half-heartedly, because I think 2 is a great goal, and I think the Common Core (as a document) does a pretty good job of it.

Now to be clear about my own biases:

I don't have any children (school age or otherwise). If my first exposure to the Common Core was seeing my child assigned problems that looked unfamiliar, unimportant, or even that I didn't know how to do, I'll concede that I might have reacted negatively too.

I do have a physics Ph.D. (i.e. math background), I do think and care a lot about how people understand math, and I do work on a software tool that tries to help children think about (part of) math more powerfully.

<comment><USER24> The issues with Common Core as I've read are a lot bigger than a few oddball problems, or under-developed worksheets or testing. The problem is apparently instead of taking these core and mostly trivial concepts and finding ways to actually make them intuitive, in the name of "critical thinking" we've created this theater-of-the-absurd approach like what you see discussed above.

I don't have much personal exposure to "Common Core", but I've found when all the implementations turn out as shit, the blame usually lies with the specification.

My personal opinion is that a lot of this overloading on processes and bizarre approaches to presenting problems (and don't get me started on the form of homework assignments and tests) is because we're out-pacing the natural cognitive developmental process. For example, take the sample chapters that were on the front page a couple days ago from "Math from [Age] 3 to 7" [1] you can see a very interesting approach to building math skills. But even in that case, the author is rushing developmentally advanced tasks which are more likely to result in frustration and giving-up than engagement and learning.

Fundamentally, most learning does not occur while a teacher is speaking. The more absurd lengths the teacher goes to "explain" some concept, the less likely any child is to actually learn it. The more foreign the concept is by the time the kids get home, the less likely it is to be mastered.

I have a daughter in Kindergarten, but fortunately not one that follows CC. I just spent some time reading through /Math/Content/K/ on corestandards.org. Most of it is, IMO, complete trash and not at all aligned with how kids in kindergarten _actually learn this shit_. As a "spec" it's writing is sloppy, poorly defined, and highly ambiguous. If this is the starting point, I'm not at all surprised the resulting lesson plans are worse than nothing.

I also spent some time reading /Math/Practice and it struck me how all these things that CC is presenting as "Standards for Mathematical Practice" are not at all how children conceptualize mathematics, or cognitively approach the task of solving a math problem. Many of the stated practices are directly contrary to how children will naturally want to approach and solve a given problem, and I can imagine exactly how teachers faced with "instilling" these practices would get to exactly where we find ourselves.

[1] - [http://www.ams.org/bookstore/pspdf/mcl-5-prev.pdf](http://www.ams.org/bookstore/pspdf/mcl-5-prev.pdf)

<comment><USER8> > I just spent some time reading through /Math/Content/K/ on > corestandards.org. Most of it is, IMO, complete trash and not at all aligned > with how kids in kindergarten actually learn this shit. As a "spec" it's > writing is sloppy, poorly defined, and highly ambiguous.

I respect that you took the time to read the document, but your criticism isn't very specific. Are you bothered by the fact that it uses words that aren't appropriate for Kindergartners to describe what they should know? Or that it says what they should know, but not always how to teach it?

I think the "spec" analogy is a good one. The goal of a spec is to lay out requirements, not implementation. Same idea here, which strikes me as the right choice.

The actual expectations are to know a few things about counting, numbers, and shapes. That seems developmentally appropriate to me (admitting that I don't have much recent experience with kids this age).

What do you think Kindergartners should know?

Re: the practices part, these same practices are mentioned at every grade level through high school. I agree that the practices sound way too advanced for Kindergarteners, but the goal is to get students to do them well by the end of high school, not by the end of Kindergarten.

<comment><USER24> A specific accounting of that would be several blog posts long I think, it's quite hard to get specific without cherry-picking particularly bad parts.

I continued to read through 5th grade math curriculum, and really I think it's completely the wrong approach for how children should learn the material. It's hard to summarize everything I dislike about it in just a few sentences. Mainly I think the process should be much more natural. This isn't something that really has to be taught, through 5th grade at least it all comes naturally in the right environment. So the approach is backwards; it's not 'here are the list of skills which should be taught and mastered at each grade' it's here are the ways we foster learning over this 6 year period.

The whole approach of setting these micro-goals, the whole thing is far too low level. When a spec starts at such a low level, it becomes a prescriptive checklist, not a spec.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> The way you improve test scores and increase America's economic competitiveness is to understand that higher IQ students will learn faster and more efficiently than lower IQ ones, and then by grouping the students accordingly. Instead of wasting billions trying to get everyone up to speed, let's devote more resources to those who demonstrate talent, while those who cannot keep up are encouraged to pursue vocational work. Hence, we see that that the problems facing our educational system cannot be lessened by throwing money at it with reckless abandon, but by better understanding human biological differences and how these not only effect learning, but economic outcomes. I don't want to make this a partisan issue, but what we observe is a leftist denial of human cognitive differences and a denial of the significance of these differences as the culprit. Better teachers, new technologies, and new curriculum can only go so far; for progress to really be made we need to stop being in denial of human biology as it pertains to IQ and learn to face these sometimes uncomfortable but inescapable realities head-on.</comment>


The Slave of Seriousness - <AUTHOR> https://slate.com/culture/2019/10/sontag-benjamin-moser-biography-review.html <comment><USER2> Since this article didn't do it (or if it did, I missed it), can someone explain why Susan Sontag is considered an important American intellectual figure? I've read a few articles about her over the years, and the general picture is of a charismatic, intelligent, intimidating person whose contribution seems to be just...being that kind of person, the famous Susan Sontag. Unfortunately, the accounts from people around her have a weird cult of personality vibe that make her seem like an academic con artist.

Of course, that's pretty uncharitable. So can anyone explain some of what Sontag contributed, or how her work has helped you in some way, a specific work of hers to read, etc?

<comment><USER3> Read Notes on Camp. I'm certainly no expert on Theory, but a lot of stuff in there rang true to me. Also, be sure to read the linked Slate article if you haven't. The title makes it sound like it's going to be an anti-Sontag polemic, but it's really not at all.

If there's one feminist author who really doesn't deserve the usual "feminists bad!" treatment that some corners of the internet default to, it's Sontag.

<comment><USER2> Thanks, I'll read Notes on Camp.

I did read the Slate article, and I didn't get much out of it beyond a claim that Sontag, via her writings or just her status as a public figure, represented and argued for a serious approach to thinking about culture. But this conclusion seemed oddly tacked on to the end of the article.

<comment><USER4> Also for many major figures like Sontag their impact is hard to measure just by reading their work. Their impact is measured more by influence on their peers and intellectual ancestors. So if you're not familiar with an entire canon of literature you might find her interesting but not necessarily special.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Most Americans seem to regard literature, art and other cultural subjects as an innocuous recreational activity. Since they are not taken seriously, there is not much call for censorship. On the other hand, perhaps our freedom of expression allows such variation of writing and arts to flourish that they are not taken seriously.

<comment><USER6> I would add that Americans' deification of money also drives this view. In our culture, anything that doesn't produce profit is by definition a hobby, and can be safely ignored.

<comment><USER7> Europeans seem obsessed with obscure status games, which probably drives the obscurantism in European (Continental [sic]) philosophy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Pardon my ignorance but I only heard of Susan Sontag because Nassim Taleb used meeting her to illustrate "virtue signaling" in one of his books</comment>


Ask HN: Product to let users vote on features? - <AUTHOR> Are there any products out there that creates a widget you can add to your web site that lets users vote on features? I'd like to concentrate on features users want without having to guess.<p>I thought awhile back there was something like this. Each user got 10 votes to spread out as they wanted on however many proposed features as they wanted. But I can't seem to find it now. <comment><USER2> [https://feedback.uservoice.com/](https://feedback.uservoice.com/) has such a feature. (Very expensive, but they started small, too).

In my experience when competing sites were using it it backfired. The top ideas were stuff like "website too slow", "my order didn't arrive" or requests which were unreasonable.

</comment><comment><USER3> good issue trackers like [https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/](https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/) have voting features</comment>


Image Copyright Infrignement = Invoice - <AUTHOR> I have a not-for-profit client that posted a image of a Las Vegas hotel on their website (where they are holding a conference). The hotel provided the image, but it turns out the hotel didn't own the rights for the image. We revived a $900 invoice from the image owner (Destination360) threatening a lawsuit. We explained the situation and agreed to remove the image, but they still want the $900 or else. Should we pay the $900? There was no previous DMCA notice or any other previous contact. I know this is not a legal forum, but others may have had similar situations. <comment><USER2> Given that the client was holding a conference at the hotel, and that the hotel provided the image, your client may have a fair-use defense for use of the image. Note I am not a lawyer, but you may want to investigate this aspect before you do anything.

</comment><comment><USER3> Did you _copy_ the image or _link to it_ from the hotel site?

</comment><comment><USER4> Is it the actual owner or a copyright agency that represents the owner?

<comment><AUTHOR> This person refers to themselves as "Legal Counsel" for the company, but I doubt he is an employee.</comment></comment>


Best First Question to Ask on the Phone When Selling Web Development Services - <AUTHOR> https://www.simpfinity.com/blog/best-first-question/

<comment><AUTHOR> The question is "why this particular project and why now?" and the article deals with the exact questions one should or should not ask when talking to new clients on the phone and also with what to do with answers you receive.</comment>


Can Simplicity Scale? (2012) - <AUTHOR> http://blog.regehr.org/archives/663

<comment><USER3> At the end of the day, programming is about mapping physical typing into (stored) changes in electrical signals (in transistors, capacitors, etc).

The 'theory' that we can somehow reduce this complexity to 'thousands of lines of code' is simply an understatement of the most profound nature. At the lowest level, the possibly vast [assembly | machine] code will have to exist.

Instead, a better viewpoint or name for this article could be 'Building extremely specified and well tested high level libraries to reduce programmer risk' \- or something of that nature.

When you think about it in this way, its not different from any other library that you work with - except maybe its behavior is more understood.

<comment><USER4> >The 'theory' that we can somehow reduce this complexity to 'thousands of lines of code' is simply an understatement...

Apollo 11 managed to land on the moon with about 145 thousand lines of code so it can be done. Whether that kind of thing would be a good idea these days with vastly more capable hardware is another matter.

[http://www.itworld.com/article/2725085/big-data/curiosity- ab...](http://www.itworld.com/article/2725085/big-data/curiosity-about-lines- of-code.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Whether something can 'scale' or not in this case is a question of whether a piece of software can go from 'tech demo ' to 'industry ready'. When it comes to so called 'real-life' practicalities, there are presently a couple salient factors that limit our ability to practically introduce simplifying abstractions, which come down to 'having to speak in terms of the underlying machinery,' or that there is some sort of irreducible, intrinsic complexity in the problem; the first case is still very common, the second would be a pretty rare anomaly afaik. In that case I'll just address the first issue: the necessity to acknowledge the underlying computational processes goes away as our machinery becomes powerful enough to support more levels of fundamental (e.g. our starting point for building things) abstractions that further and further disguise how computations are performed so we can focus increasingly on expressing ourselves in the simplest manner possible.

I can think of two limitations with the above, however. The first is that in some cases, we're prevented from laying down higher level abstractions not just because it would be computationally inefficient, but because we haven't yet discovered a great abstraction that everyone wants to adopt. For example, dealing with user interaction or network events. I'm tempted to say concurrency presents a similar issue, but really concurrency is just a performance concern too—an aspect of the underlying computational process, not intrinsic in problems we want solved. The other issue (pointed out in the article) is that these simpler approaches tend to require more mathematical sophistication of potential developers. My feeling is that that's mostly an incidental state of affairs: I don't think there's anything intrinsically more difficult about the more mathematical (i.e. simple, abstract, and drawing from a store of concepts from mathematics and language theory) approaches to coding, it's just that the routes to acquiring the required knowledge have a scary status in our society (at the moment).

Doing a project with fairly intense performance requirements and dipping into expressing everything in terms of specially formatted data buffers to be shipped off to the GPU has given me a new perspective on present, practical limitations of abstraction in coding...

</comment><comment><USER6> Reframe to the analogy of biology. Are living organisms simple? Did they scale? Will they continue to scale?

On the one hand, we can look at the amount of stuff that's going on at the cellular level and say "no, life is very complicated." On the other hand, we've gained an understanding of some of the basic constructs in a relatively short period of a few hundred years(vs. millions of years to evolve it) - <USER2> maybe there are some simple things about it, after all.

And we might say that it's failing to scale because it takes so much time for evolution to "progress". But if we are simply viewing complexity of life as the metric of progression, then we've done quite a few things to accelerate this progression, just within the time anyone reading this has been alive.

Our perspective is collectively narrowed by the existence of a marketplace and its momentary demands. The construct of "scaling" is imposed through it; but it is not a survival truth that you have to scale to be alive. A small system like a bacterium can remain relatively simple.

<comment><USER5> The situation with programs is different, though. Being able to scale descriptions of various complexity (computer programs) is a different matter from the existential viability of phenomena that we must describe complexly (organisms). Nature doesn't use our descriptions to produce itself, and complexity is only an interesting metric because it says certain things about whether/how the human mind can think about things.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I just watched Alan Kay's talk about the same research:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ubaX1Smg6pY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ubaX1Smg6pY)

I'm happy to see this blog post today because it saves me from writing the same thing. Prototypes can be beautifully simple in ways that systems with a bunch of customers and a long legacy often can't...

<comment><USER8> I transcribed a part of that talk for another thread, where he mentions the 10KLOC system from Parc:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8860680](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8860680)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Was there ever a final report for the STEPS project? I can't find it at [http://www.vpri.org/html/writings.php](http://www.vpri.org/html/writings.php) but maybe I'm just doing something wrong.

<comment><USER10> No, you didn't miss it, it's absence has been much remarked upon on the mailing list.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I guess complex adaptive system ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complex_adaptive_system](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complex_adaptive_system)) is one of the topics worth exploring. I think some new advanced technologies in programming besides "protocols" among programmers could help people to get closer to what we want, though I'm a complete layman of those techs. Simplicity probably does not lead to successful scaling every time, but it seems to be the only way to get there. My 2 cents as a layman.

</comment><comment><USER12> I don't worry about the number of lines of code. I do worry about lack of clarity, readability, maintainability, clear flows of events. Unfortunately, hacked together fragile code that produces desired effect (as the article mentions) has been the norm at every place I have worked at. A serious source of job dissatisfaction.

</comment><comment><USER13> I think that simplicity can scale, but it requires someone or something which can see through the abstractions that your normal programmer needs and distill out just the important points.

In other words, it will require artisans of the craft, or really good new languages and compilers.

<comment><USER14> That's what the post is about. What did you think of those new languages and compilers? Are they good?</comment></comment>


Microsoft under Ballmer - <AUTHOR> http://www.mbaonline.com/microsoft-mba/

<comment><USER2> What goes down can always go back up again. I'm not a Microsoft fanboy by any means (actually I prefer Apple a lot), but 11 years ago it was Apple that was on the downturn before they released the iPod. Who knows? Maybe Microsoft will be onto something soon.</comment>


American Airlines: one day of lounge access to anyone with Klout score over 55 - <AUTHOR> http://corp.klout.com/blog/2013/05/american-airlines-klout/ <comment><USER2> I removed myself from Klout over a year ago. This is the first time I've come close to regretting that choice- but then I remembered that I never fly with American Airlines.

But I can see how this could be an interesting win-win for both companies- you care about your Klout score more, and you're more inclined to fly with American Airlines.

That said, most people I know that _are_ on Klout joke about how they've been identified as experts in topics they know nothing about. Klout is either genius, or it's waiting for someone to reveal how inaccurate their entire model is. I removed myself after I realised I would never get past x points until I linked my Facebook account. It is a personal account that has no bearing on my professional life- why would I do that?

<comment><USER3> Even if you're not flying AA, you can still use this pass to gain entry to the lounge. From the post: "You do not have to be an American Airlines passenger to be eligible for this Perk."

<comment><USER2> Even still, I fly out of JFK most of the time, and the sheer number of terminals means their lounge is unlikely to be in the same place as my departure gate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> For those who are jealous... it looks like this just gives you a one day Admiral Pass that you must use before July 31st. It's not like you get continued access to their lounges.

screenshot: <http://i.imgur.com/4iflZt0.jpg>

And it enters you into a contest to win a one year pass. So this is a one time freebie + contest promo, not an ongoing perk.

<comment><USER5> Thanks, this gives me peace of mind in having killed my klout account a few years ago.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Embarrassingly i'll admit to having a klout >55.

Having just logged into the AA/Klout thing, you'll note that they're actually just giving away a 1 day pass with a chance to win a free year in their Admirals Club

check it: <http://cl.ly/image/3g1f2h04002J>

<comment><USER7> Wow, that's very unimpressive after reading the title.

If you use that yearly pass too much during that year, watch out: [http://articles.latimes.com/2012/may/05/business/la- fi-0506-...](http://articles.latimes.com/2012/may/05/business/la- fi-0506-golden-ticket-20120506) /s

<comment><USER8> The article you link to has nothing to do with one-year Admiral's Club memberships. It's about unlimited AAirpasses, something AA stopped selling decades ago.

(With the Admiral's Club membership, you have to assign a name to the membership, and you can only show up there if you look like the person on a photo id with that name. So there is very little abuse and you can go as much as you want.)

<comment><USER7> Notice the /s at the end of my second statement.

<comment><USER8> Adding a /s to a non-sarcastic comment doesn't make it sarcastic. If that were true, people would add a /G to signify that their comment was a great work of literary art. For something to be great, it has to be great. For something to be sarcastic, it needs, at the very least, some snark.

Also, this isn't Reddit. Just write what you mean.

<comment><USER9> His comment was perfectly clear, enjoyable, valuable, relevant, and came with a link to a great article.

The fact that you're insulting him for his valuable and interesting contribution is an outrage. Why don't you go pick on someone else, someone who doesn't contribute, who doesn't post great links, who doesn't have an entertaining style.

Not everyone has to be a robotic autistic technical writer on this casual internet forum.

Posts should be judged by their content and style. Your nerdy hatred toward the colloquial /s tag comes off as dry, dweebish, vindictive pedantry.

I'm aware that you represent the HN Zeitgeist to some extent but that pretty much just exemplifies the problem here. You're engaging in the "automatic middle brow dismissal" that pg has identified as majorly obnoxious.

You think sarcasm tags are "too urban" for HN. How fucking classy of you. /s

<comment><USER8> I really appreciate the critique from someone who's had an account for two days. The personal attacks were an added plus. And, I like how you didn't actually read any of the thread you're replying to.

Nice work. A+, would read again!

(See how I wrote a sarcastic post without needing a "/s" tag? The written word is pretty cool!)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> What a truly horrifying partnership. Let's fill up our departure lounge with a bunch of big-headed bloggers. Brilliant!

<comment><USER11> ...or people who can set a breakpoint in Burp Suite.

       t.reward = "http://fly.aa.com/klout/api/reward/ + t.id;
       var n = t.score >= 55 ? c("free-pass") : c("50-off");
          store.set("StoredUser", {
          id: t.id,
          score: t.score,
          nick: t.nick,
          reward: t.reward
       })

<comment><USER12> Even better:

<http://fly.aa.com/klout/api/reward/>

A JSON dump of all the rewards codes.

<comment><USER13> That's the kind of thing that'll get the US Attorneys on you these days.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> In order to connect to this company that lives by social media, I have to give them permission "to access [my] public profile, friend list, email address and News Feed."

What could possibly go wrong?

<comment><USER15> Why hasn't anybody whistleblown the value of that kind of information? I'm sure it has a monthly or annual price and it may even be written down somewhere.

<comment><USER16> Rapleaf charges pennies for it, in bulk.

[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/05/14/personal-data- adver...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/05/14/personal-data- advertisers_n_861829.html)

I don't know what it would be worth it if you were targeting a specific person.

<comment><USER15> I think you misunderstand their pricing structure (as portrayed in the story). It's a penny or more per attribute, per person. How many items would the abovementioned FB profile access garner per Rapleaf? From my experience in market research and by looking at the linked price sheet, it doesn't appear that Rapleaf supplies PII.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm ambivalent at best. Is creating a new class of privileged "influential" people a good idea? I'm not sure, but I think people should be rewarded based on the quality of their influence, not on the strength of it alone. At least, that seems like a more "free market" approach.

</comment><comment><USER18> My Klout score is a literally a 53.95. And I fly from SFO > Istanbul > Bangkok in two days. On American.

This is the first and only time in my life I'll ever be pissed that my Klout score's not high enough...

Edit: In all seriousness though, does anybody know how I can raise it just one point?

<comment><USER19> I was at 61, now 53. Flying in 10 hours; could've used this on my layover. Wonder why it dropped...

Edit: As an aside, if anyone wants to get coffee in the Seattle area sometime in the next couple weeks, shoot me an email (it's in my profile).

<comment><USER18> Something tells me there might be a magical barrier at 55 now...I was at 57 last week...

<comment><USER20> It seems to me the decay rate over 51 or 52 is pretty high. I can hang on to 50 forever, but over that and I slip back down fast.

Getting a couple tweets widely re-tweeted seems to have the biggest impact for me.

Now, if only we could use HN karma for something useful...

<comment><USER21> Hah, agreed, if _only_ karma was useful! We can dream, I suppose.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Klout scores between 45 and 55 get lounge access to _United_ Airlines.

<comment><USER22> I know you're joking, but FWIW United lounges are by and large better than AA lounges. Free beer and wine, for one.

<comment><USER15> Like the AA lounges, I'm gonna predict that free stuff will be going away once they start letting the social media rabble in.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Who cares. American Airlines lounges are not that great.

<comment><USER24> Free beer at LAX and most airports. It's better than nothing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> So high Klout users get one one-day pass and you hand over your e-mail address to AA. The promotion makes sense - AA.com gets publicity and likely some tweets from popular Tweeters, etc. And they get a chance to upsell people to a club membership.

</comment><comment><USER26> Let me know when Emirates offers the same.

</comment><comment><USER27> How long until people game the system?

How many dollars does it cost to get a bunch of twitter followers? facebook, linked in? It would probably cost the same as paying to use AA lounges for a yer.

<comment><USER28> What does it even mean to "game the system"? The whole Klout nonsense _is_ a game.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Could someone tell me what a person with a Klout score over 55 would be like please? Just how influential is that -ish?

<comment><USER18> You can log on to your Klout account and see the scores of all your FB/Twitter friends. That would probably give you the best idea.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Site is down. 404 error

<comment><USER31> _American Airlines' Admirals Club Welcomes Klout Users in Nearly 40 Locations_

At Klout, we know that understanding your influence through the Klout Score, Moments and analysis is just one step toward being recognized for your influence. We launched our Klout Perks program to recognize influencers with amazing products and experiences, and have partnered with major brands like Sony, Nike, Microsoft, Disney, Audi, Gilt and many others in an attempt to keep upping ourselves. Influencers clearly like this recognition – we delivered our one millionth Perk last week!

We think we've found another way to top ourselves…

Today we're announcing a partnership with American Airlines that gives Klout users access to nearly 40 worldwide lounge locations including San Francisco, Dallas, Los Angeles, New York, Tokyo, London and many more. Starting today, if you have a Klout Score of 55 or higher, you can gain access to the Admirals Club by going to aa.com/klout. You do not have to be an American Airlines passenger to be eligible for this Perk.

[Picture of an airport lounge with upholstery from the 70s]

This is only the beginning of the momentum we're seeing with businesses and brands who recognize the power of Klout to further reward their best customers, and introduce themselves to a great breed of new customers.

Go to aa.com/klout to get your Klout treatment!

<comment><USER32> I just threw up a little in my mouth.

<comment><USER31> Why?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Klout tells me I'm inside the top 1% and I have a score of 52 - so not a lot of people get this.

</comment><comment><USER31> This might be the first time internet points actually count for something in the real world.

<comment><USER34> Far from the truth. Internet "celebrities" have received free goods and perks for quite some time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I just created my Klout account and it seems to meassure your popularity in various social networks. Seems like a win-win for the site and the proverbial -famous person- if they can get free perks.

How is this sustainable though? Are they selling their data?

<comment><USER36> It looks like the business model is taking money to provide perks to people with a high score who in turn do free social advertising. Sounds more sustainable than Facebook or Twitter's model.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Does anyone still use Klout? I had to admit that out of curiosity I tried to use it, but the site just never worked when I tried it. It was either slow or non-functional. I thought it had died and slipped into obsolescence.

</comment><comment><USER38> I know just about nothing about klout. How "high" is 55?

I just signed up hoping I has >55, but I am only 54, maybe adding some other random accounts social media accounts will nudge my score higher.

</comment><comment><USER39> Who is savvy enough to have a 55+ klout score who doesn't already have lounge access via any of a bunch of different avenues (AmEx, PriorityPass, FF program, etc) already?!

<comment><USER40> People who don't fly enough to bother going out of their way to get lounge access?

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Did the AA site crash under load? I'm getting a 404 on the promotion page.

<http://aa.com/klout>

<comment><USER11> you need the www

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This caused me to check my Klout score, haven't done that for a very long time. Looks like they may be onto something...

</comment><comment><USER42> <http://aa.com/klout> HTTP/1.1 404 Not Found

<comment><USER43> Add `www` and it works

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> seems they have hit their limits and entries are closed

</comment><comment><USER45> The real story here is that all of the U.S. airlines are in an embarrassing state, not only financially, but in terms of cultural standing and morale.

Flying used to be glamorous-- 50, even 30, years ago. Now it's just as expensive (except on three or four high-traffic routes over which deregulation actually worked) but it's such a negative experience that no one looks forward to _a flight_. First class and lounge access are supposed to bring that back, but those fail as well.

The appeal of flying in the old days was that you were guaranteed to be seated next to an interesting person doing something that either was exciting, or seemed it at the time ("international business"). Also, there was serious investment by the airlines into the quality of the experience: pilots actually told you when you flew over the Grand Canyon. That all got cheapened along the way. Also, attempting to create an "interesting people club" out of transportation is doomed to failure. Uninteresting people have money, too, and there's literally no way of keeping MWOCs (Money WithOut Culture) out. Plus, the airlines are constantly going bankrupt and have proletarianized the experience (baggage fees, uncomfortable chairs) to the point where it doesn't feel like a premium product, but they've also had to sell off the premium parts (first-class upgrades) for whatever coin-shavings they can get, to the point that they no longer feel special.

Airlines are desperately trying to revive that brand and allure, but it's gone forever. It's old technology put to a mostly uninspiring use. The flight is something that you learn how to sleep through, not part of the experience.

Before, frequent flyer programs were their attempts to find the interesting people and create something compelling. That might have worked in 1997; but in 2013, this generation's interesting people are in about 15-20 city centers (New York and San Francisco come to mind, but also places like Austin, Seattle, and Chicago) and generally do what they can to be locally self- sufficient (i.e. they don't fly more than a few times per year).

This Klout partnership is the newest attempt to create an "interesting people club" out of the flying experience and, like all others, it will fail.

<comment><USER46> >interesting people club

wtf am I reading?

<comment><USER45> I'm not saying that I like or even support this. Obviously, the idea that any commercial purchase would take someone into an "interesting people club" is the height of douchery. But appeals to douchery can make highly effective marketing.

I am saying that there was a time when air travel (yes, commercial flight, even coach) had an allure. Airlines are desperately trying to revive that experience-- that's what those "exclusive" airport lounges are about-- but they're not able to do it and it's probably not possible at this point.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> _American Airlines: one day of lounge access to anyone with Klout score over 55_

I tried American Airlines lounge access with Google Glass on and I'm never letting my Klout score go under 55! Never.

scoble.

;)</comment>


Valley "Meritocracy" = Stanford, Harvard, or MIT - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2013/09/13/silicon_valley_meritocracy_reuters_story_finds_connections_background_matter.html

<comment><USER2> It almost sounds like there's something bad about it.</comment>


Why You Don't Invite Your Mother to the Office - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/this-happened-to-me/dde19cf4a935

<comment><USER2> If this guy wrote a book, I buy it.

<comment><USER3> I was thinking the same thing right at the end. Thoroughly enjoyed the story and his style especially.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Maybe because I'm a software guy and not a lawyer, I can't imagine my mother wanting to see my office. In fact I can't imagine anybody wanting to see my office. Well, except my daughters, but even then they are mostly looking for an opportunity to miss a day of school.

</comment><comment><USER5> Brilliant.

I think it's astonishing that his mother can look at a beautiful office (essentially, an elaborate lie that a corporation uses to impress the Clueless) and think that must make him happy. It's as if a view of the Bay makes up for shitty work and a terrible schedule. (I know people in biglaw; some firms really are awful.)

Those ornate offices actually make a bad job worse, because once you work there, it's a reminder of _their_ power, almost designed to make you feel small in the same way that a medieval cathedral would.

I think that the corporate hangover in this country (seen in his mother's expectation that he should enjoy the job because of an attractive office) actually has something to do with the Great Depression. The 1930s scared the shit out of people. Poverty entailed risk of death by starvation. People moved across godforsaken expanses with nothing just for a chance. Then there was World War II. After that, people wanted extreme stability in the postwar era. They wanted to be done with fighting and looking for work, forever if possible. This created a culture where jobs were long-lived, but companies could treat people really badly. I'm not saying that they all did-- managers had to stick around for long periods of time, too, so there were incentives to be decent to subordinates that no longer exist-- but companies really could treat our parents' generations worse because it was so stigmatized to change jobs (cf. Duck Phillips's humiliating exile after Sterling-Cooper fires him).

Even the typical 55-year-old parent (born 1958) looks at the way we move and thinks we're "entitled" or "unstable" for refusing to put up with garbage; when they were our age, they put up with more boring work, worse behavior from management, and an even more lethargic career ladder. It's the Golden Banana Effect; even though they never experienced the Depression, they've kept the stigma and that extreme fear of changing jobs (rational in the Great Depression, but detrimental in a world where 5 years without progress leads to downward mobility) stuck around for some time.

This might actually lead to a counterintuitive conclusion, which is that the entrepreneurial hotbeds of the mid-21st century might be the currently socialist-leaning countries in Northern Europe, because if another 1930s-style Depression hits, the shock of it for US-style countries will just ruin peoples' entrepreneurial impulses (if you experience real poverty, you often lose that hatred of subordination that inspires people to do great things). That's a scary thought, because while the 1950s economy still needed people to be fairly subordinate, the 2050s economy will need the opposite.

I think the 1980s were probably the worst of it, because that was the time when it was still completely socially unacceptable to lose or leave a job (unless poached, and even that couldn't be pulled more than about once per decade) but the new, more fluid economy was already coming into place.

That might be too much exposition for a (admittedly, very well-written and thought-provoking) humor post, but there it is.

</comment><comment><USER6> I invited my mother to the office. She made nutella cookies that everyone loved.</comment>


Typing Errors: The standard typewriter keyboard is Exhibit A... Dvorak not so great either - <AUTHOR> http://www.reason.com/news/show/29944.html

<comment><USER2> What bullshit. There's a common pattern in Dvorak VS Qwerty: Dvorak advocates sometimes rely on history and sometimes on purely technical grounds to prove their claims, while Qwerty advocates always only rely on history because there's simply absolutely no way to prove Qwerty approaches Dvorak when it comes to logic.

Here are some facts about Dvorak that are easy to verify and the utility of which is obvious:

\- Dvorak has the most used keys on the home row. Compare: AOEUIDHTNS VS ASDFGHJKL;

\- Dvorak optimizes for alternating hands, which obviously helps speed. Ever tried typing "street" or "states" in Qwerty, two common words with common letters that you have to type all with the left hand? On the Dvorak side the worst word is "joke" I think.

\- Dvorak optimizes for typing a bit more with the right hand instead of the left hand, which makes sense because the right hand is usually the strongest.

\- Dvorak optimizes for typing from the outside to the inside (try tapping your fingers in rapid succession on the desk from outside to inside, then inside to outside, and you'll see immediately which one is easier and faster).

\- Dvorak optimizes for typing more with stronger fingers (index and friends) than weaker ones (pinkies and friends).

\- Dvorak has all the vowels on the left hand on the home row (except Y which is conveniently on top of I), one beside another, which is great for learning. It also makes sense because you use consonants more than vowels, (see right hand argument) and since the most used consonants are on the right home row, it optimizes alternating hands.

No need to mention Qwerty makes no such optimisations and the result is correspondly atrocious.

See? No need to bullshit with biased reports about history.

<comment><USER3> You weaken an otherwise useful post by using words like "bullshit". The problem with "bullshit" isn't that you are cursing. It is a way to dismiss an article with out actually engaging in any of the arguments made by the article. At the end you do hint that you believe the article gives a biased report of history, but you give no specifics, and it comes many paragraphs after "what bullshit".

<comment><USER4> I see nothing wrong with beginning the post "What bullshit". It's a concise statement of what he believes. And what's wrong with stating your belief up- front and then providing the argument afterwards?

<comment><USER3> My objection is that he does not provide the evidence! He gives a bunch of sensible reasons that Dvorak might be better, but never once addresses anything the article says. You don't get the right to call something "bullshit" with out giving your reasons. If you _do_ give your reasons, saying "bullshit" is unnecessary.

<comment><USER4> So if you give an argument for a conclusion then you shouldn't state what the conclusion is? Judge that point with reference to your own comments.

<comment><USER3> You are mischaracterizing what I said. Of course, stating the conclusion is fine. My point is that he _never gave an argument_ for the conclusion that the article is bullshit. There is not a single statement in the article whose truth has been called into question.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Based on the distance your fingers have to move to type average words on qwerty and dvorak, it's really impossible that Dvorak wouldn't be loads better.It's sort of like claiming that someone wouldn't be faster at running 50 meters than 100 meters. Of course, where this analogy falls down is that you have to learn a new skill, which means there's an upfront cost and thus makes the whole issue interesting economically.

The article claims that the cost of learning the new skill could never be amortized and uses this evidence:

> In the first phase of the experiment, 10 government typists were retrained > on the Dvorak keyboard. It took well over 25 days of four-hour-a-day > training for these typists to catch up to their old QWERTY speeds. (Compare > this to the Navy study's results.) When the typists had finally caught up to > their old speeds, the second phase of the experiment began. The newly > trained Dvorak typists continued training and a group of 10 QWERTY typists > (matched in skill to the Dvorak typists) began a parallel program to improve > their skills. In this second phase the Dvorak typists progressed less > quickly with further Dvorak training than did QWERTY typists training on > QWERTY keyboards. Thus Strong concluded that Dvorak training would never be > able to amortize its costs. He recommended instead that the government > provide further training in the QWERTY keyboard for QWERTY typists.

I really can't express how stupid this is. The logical implication the article would have you draw from this study is that qwerty actually may be MORE efficient. To believe this, you'd have to believe that the top end hypothetical speed of qwerty is higher than dvorak. This is literally physically impossible, as I've already pointed out. Moreover, the fastest typist ever used Dvorak. While that's not conclusive, it's suggestive. Folks trying to optimize a skill to the highest level are very good at cutting out all inefficiencies.

To understand the results of the study cited there, we need only look to exercise science. First of all, what most lay people don't realize is that a great deal of exercise results for activities like weight training is explained by the exercise's affect on your nervous system, not your muscles. Properly managing your nervous system response is at the heart of continued gains, and not managing it properly leads to overtraining and plateaus. All top flight Olympic athletic coaches spend much of their time thinking about this.

As a matter of fact, it is a well known and well documented phenomenon in the literature that if you train at close to maximal capacity on the same training regimen for longer than 3 to 4 weeks, you will stop making gains. You'll see big increases the first 3 weeks, and after that, nothing. This is a nervous system effect.

Armed with that knowledge, it becomes clear why the study's results look the way they do: The dvorak trainee were already in a state of CNS fatigue, whereas the qwerty trainees were starting out fresh.

Dvorak is clearly better than qwerty. Colemak is even more better. However, I don't think this situation is much of an indictment of the free market. I don't think the bottleneck in most people's productivity now (or ever) was top end typing speed and it would take quite a long time to recover the cost of the switch. Considering that this is THE MOST concrete example ever cited where you might be able to say that government meddling could induce a positive effect, I'm not inclined to agree that it's in general a good idea to have our economic lives centrally manipulated. There are far more examples of net economic losses from government interference.

<comment><USER6> Hmm... Colemak looks interesting. I've always had a hard time learning to use Dvorak, especially since everywhere else you work it's going to be Qwerty by default. Colemak is also public domain, according to Wikipedia. I might have to give it a try.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colemak#Colemak>

<comment><USER7> I actually installed Colemak on my computer yesterday. I played with it for a couple hours before uninstalling it. Most of what I type is programing code, not prose. It dawned on my that most my typing delays come from all of the parens and brackets and other programming symbols. Since all these fancy keyboard layouts have been computationally optimized for prose language, they don't address the primary cause issue. I decided that if I'm going to take the time to learn a new keyboard layout, then it will need to be one that has been optimized for programming.

<comment><USER8> Fix this, please. It's making this thread just about unreadable.

<comment><USER7> My apologies. I didn't notice until the edit link disappeared. And I have no clue why the site decided to add <code> brackets to my comment.

<comment><USER9> <http://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc>

I fixed it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> For "real science" on keyboards go to:

<http://mkweb.bcgsc.ca/carpalx/>

From the site: "The carpalx project attempts to find the best keyboard layout to minimize typing effort for a given set of input documents. These documents may be English text, programming code, or whatever you find yourself typing for hours"

Take a look at the studies from those results.

<comment><USER11> Thanks for posting this! I was in the midst of writing something very similar.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> If we were designing a keyboard from scratch: What shall we do? How about we find the most popular letters and put those under the strongest fingers. then we favor hand to hand switch, since that is faster. etc. etc.

Seems to me that the logical conclusion of such a study, would be a Designed Keyboard (DK). Said GK has to be better than any alternative that came from a) Random arrangement b) being able to type 'typewriter' at sales demonstrations or c) designed to to avoid jams of moving parts. We would call this Not Designed Keyboard (NDK)

So we have DK and NDK. Almost by definition DK has to be better than NDK.

Now we all know that in order to do a good job we need to use the right tool for the job. If the job is typing which it is for 100,000 of people then the only logical conclusion is that we need to use the better keyboard in this case Designed Keyboard. (DK)

Next what if you had an organization with 1,000 secretaries that their whole work was to type documents day in and day out for the next 20 years and you could improve their typing in just 1% using a better keyboard. Would it be economically worth doing? Of course.

In conclusion switching to a DK is the smart choice, is the cheaper choice.

And the only thing absent from this article in "reason" magazine is precisely that; reasoning.

<comment><USER12> Our wonderful universe acts in surprising ways. Human intuition is often wrong, and the only way to know something for sure is to test it. The Dvorak keyboard's logical organization seems intuitively faster, but we don't know how the human brain is wired, so we don't really know the limiting factors on typing speed. Anything is possible, and the only way to know the truth is by experiment. That's the scientific method. According to this article, the valid experiments support QWERTY over Dvorak, or at least show little difference. I don't know if the article true without examining the experiments myself, but I wouldn't call the article "unreasonable" for valuing science over fallible human reason.

<comment><USER10> Agree on all accounts except on:

"I wouldn't call the article 'unreasonable' for valuing science over fallible human reason. "

Because I don't think this article values science. If it did, then it would simply state: "Here we have 2 keyboards which one is better?"

Defining better as either: a) Fastest to type in for a user with IDK a 2 year experience in it. b) Easiest to learn, from scratch. c) Easiest to retrain for a person that already dominates the other keyboard. d) Healthiest over a period of 10 years (RSI anyone).

Instead of doing an experiment or honestly revising the studies mentioned. This article spends most of its time, attacking the Dvorak history or "hoax" as the author calls it in the end.

So this study is neither truly scientific nor truly logical. Is simply the author trying to support his preconceived notions: "Dvorak is a hoax". And using "ad hominem" attacks or self selecting studies to support his conclusions.

as I mentioned before for real science on keyboards check: <http://mkweb.bcgsc.ca/carpalx/>

And thank very much for your comment, it is nice to see succinct well thought argument on the internet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The Dvorak keyboard might have some slight advantage for English text, but it's noticeably worse for programming where you need ;=+-,./{}[]() and the numbers quite often.

There might be a advantage for a programmer's keyboard, basically QWERTY with common punctuation on a fifth row above the numbers. But my few brief experiments with unorthodox layouts caused no end of hassle when trying to use other people's machines, so I gave up.

</comment><comment><USER14> This is not just about keyboard layouts. It's about the concept the poor products (VHS, Windows) win over superior products (Beta, Mac) because of a winner take all economy.

As you can guess the author shows this to be bunk science.

<comment><USER15> What they are afraid of is the idea of the free market not always and in every case producing the best possible result, so they need to aggressively attempt to demonstrate that 1) either market failure just doesn't exist, as they attempt to show here, or 2) that in no case, ever, will government intervention improve the situation, which is the topic of other libertarian writing.

In other words, this is just another episode of "Libertarians vs Socialists":

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=419503>

For a serious treatment of the economics of digital goods and networked economies, I think Varian and Shapiro are a better read:

[http://www.squeezedbooks.com/book/show/7/information- rules-a...](http://www.squeezedbooks.com/book/show/7/information-rules-a- strategic-guide-to-the-network-economy)

(Edit: to be fair, it turns out the authors have a more scholarly treatment of the subject matter, which is a better read:

<http://www.utdallas.edu/~liebowit/harvj/harvard.html>

Still though, I think it's pretty clear that they're coming from a point of view, and "backfilling" to try and get there)</comment></comment>


Rich people pay their way into Harvard - <AUTHOR> http://www.quora.com/Harvard-University/Do-rich-people-really-pay-their-way-into-Harvard <comment><USER2> Another way the rich get in to Ivy League schools is through recruitment for "aristocratic sports" such squash, crew, sailing, polo, golf, etc. Most of these sports are not offered at public schools, and even if they are, the only way to attain the necessary skill level is through expensive private coaching. Golden's "The Price of Admission" provides a thorough look at these practices.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is the case even aside from alumni-preference. As recently as 2006, 20% of people admitted to Harvard got double time or more on the SAT. In 2003, College Board stopped flagging scores that were achieved under extended time conditions. The way to get double time on the SAT is to get a particular learning disorder diagnosis, something less wealthy students have less access to, particularly considering the lower likelihood of their parents being in the same social circles as local doctors.

<comment><AUTHOR> Do you have a source on that 20% stat? The only information I can find about it is this 02 article from the Crimson, which states that they receive several hundred APPLICATIONS that are flagged with extra time. Considering they have 35k applications and accept ~2k students, I find it really hard to believe that 20% of their admitted students got extra time.

[http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2002/7/19/sat-changes- will...](http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2002/7/19/sat-changes-will-not- affect-harvard/)

That being said, your point that rich kids are more likely to get extra time is certainly true: [http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/story?id=1787712&page=1&...](http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/story?id=1787712&page=1&singlePage=true)

<comment><USER3> Can't find the source where I originally read this. But, from that ABC article you linked:

"The natural proportion of learning disabilities should be somewhere around 2 percent, the College Board said, but _at some elite schools_ , up to 46 percent of students receive special accommodations to take the tests, including extra time."

emphasis added

<comment><AUTHOR> elite schools refers to high schools though, not colleges

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Ivy league schools, including Harvard, have always made money off of their ability to mix the paint of the smart with the wealthy and call it the same color. It's always been one way to pass on an inheritance, but in this increasingly meritocratic world, more and more people are realizing that simply attending a school is not much of an indicator of ability or knowledge.

</comment><comment><USER5> People seem to be answering two completely different questions on that site. The first question is "Does Harvard give preference to legacy admissions?" The answer to that question is unequivocally yes.The second question is "Can you pay your way into Harvard independent of legacy admission." The answer to the second question is far more interesting and far less official.</comment>


Foursquare iPhone App / Website goes live tomorrow - <AUTHOR> http://twitter.com/foursquare/status/1318482049

<comment><USER2> Sorry but... What is foursquare?

<comment><AUTHOR> Remember Dodgeball? Google bought it, then didn't do anything with it, then axed it. This is the new dodgeball.

See this article for more info. [http://www.observer.com/2009/media/foursquare-hot-new- phone-...](http://www.observer.com/2009/media/foursquare-hot-new-phone-app- dodgeball-steroids)</comment></comment>


Category Theory for the Java Programmer - <AUTHOR> http://reperiendi.wordpress.com/2007/11/03/category-theory-for-the-java-programmer/

<comment><USER2> _Next time, I'll show what category theory has to offer to the Java programmer._

Looks like he never followed up on that. Here's a much better exploration of the relationship between category theory and programming:

<http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~david/categories/book/book.pdf>

</comment><comment><USER3> I've always suspected this stuff is just a mathematician's variant of postmodernism, but felt shallow for thinking that way. If there really is an accessible explanation of what motivated it, I'm looking forward to seeing it.

<comment><USER4> Category theory is a way of taking theorems in one area (say, group theory), figuring out the minimum set of assumptions necessary for the theorem to hold, and then translating it into every possible similar structure. It's sort of like interfaces in some ways. Because normal mathematics is already pretty darned abstract, category theory gets even worse, but there is some content there underneath it.</comment></comment>


How Much Do You Know About Solving Global Warming? - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/06/09/climate/drawdown-climate-solutions-quiz.html?_r=0 <comment><USER2> This is feel-good non-sense, in that it ignores the elephants in the room. It's the equivalent of micro-optimization trivia on Stack Overflow, when most programs are bounded by Amdahl's Law.

People driving >20 miles a day for work/groceries/school, exponential economic growth, and exponential demand for consumer goods are what's driving climate change. Exponential population growth is, as well, but at least there's some end in sight for it.

Whether or not you compost, or throw away your food isn't going to change much - not to mention that most food waste is outside of my control.

For instance, I don't throw away 50% of the food I buy - it gets thrown away by farmers, transport companies, and the grocery store long before it gets to my table.

<comment><USER3> Well put.

Likely best thing anyone can do for the environment right now is to vote for politicians that want to balance the budget. Deficits are artificially increasing consumption at the expense of our children's environmental and financial future.

Furthermore, no one wants admit it but mass immigration is undeniably horrible for the environment. Not only does consumption of each immigrant increase by a factor of 20x by moving to a developed nation. It also drains 3rd world countries from the ambitious people it needs to develop into a stable and prosperous nation.

<comment><USER2> The best thing we could do for the environment is to mandate a 20-hour working week. Or, alternatively, a crippling carbon tax, with the proceeds spent on carbon sequestration.

<comment><USER4> You could double up fuel taxes. That would make commutes shorter.

<comment><USER2> It won't, though. You still need to get to work, and there's still going to be a shortage of housing near workplaces.

The number of office workers that can, and will opt to work remotely, because they will spend an extra ~$3/day on commuting will be a drop in the bucket.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _Which would have the bigger impact: encouraging more car-pooling, or the reduced car emissions from electric vehicles?

Although the book only looks at ride-sharing in the United States and Canada, it presumes pretty modest gains, so the benefits of car-pooling don't even come close to the emissions savings from electric cars._

With the benefit of hindsight the question is more clearly phrased as:

"Which would have the bigger impact: simply _asking_ people to do more car- pooling, or _actually making_ the switch to electric vehicles from ICE vehicles?"

The question sneakily turns out to be about what's (assumed) easier to get people to do, not which action, undertaken on equal scale, has greater benefits. (But then why are wind farms preferred over solar on a later question, considering how much more frequently NIMBY opposition arises toward wind farms?)

</comment><comment><USER6> Maybe it's just me, but I think this test avoids some questions I expected there, and does so in a very contrived manner.

"Switch to Electric" is favorably compared to "Hitch a Ride", and then "Hop on the Bus" is unfavorably compared to "Ships ahoy".

The overall impression I take is something like: "just wait and see, some guys are working on hard engineering problems wrt ships and planes, you save for your Tesla while eating plants and you'll be doing your part".

<comment><USER7> Relatively speaking, I think far more attention has been given to reducing emissions from passenger cars than from shipping, even though it's a much smaller source of CO2. So it's an interesting comparison.

<comment><USER8> I think you're mistaken that passenger cars are the smaller part. I'm struggling to find a clear source but pg 45 of this [1] shows passenger cars as 50% of total transportation energy (including road freight and shipping, I think) and page 35 projects passenger cars as 43%, compared to 8% for shipping, of CO2 emissions in 2050. You might be mixing up CO2 emissions with Sulfur emissions [2]

[1] [https://www.iea.org/publications/freepublications/publicatio...](https://www.iea.org/publications/freepublications/publication/transport2009.pdf) [2] [https://www.quora.com/Is-it-true-that-the-15-biggest- ships-i...](https://www.quora.com/Is-it-true-that-the-15-biggest-ships-in-the- world-produce-more-pollution-than-all-the-cars)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Great practice if you're making day-to-day decisions for hundreds of thousands of households!

</comment><comment><USER7> I didn't realize onshore wind was going to be bigger than solar. I wish they had some references.

<comment><USER3> Solar farms are an anti-pattern. Solar will be much larger than wind because it makes the grid obsolete, doesn't require employees maintain, and has no moving parts. Solar (both active and passive) is king IMHO.

<comment><USER10> Not sure what you mean by active / passive solar.

There are some economies of scale, even for photovoltaics, so calling PV solar farms an anti-pattern is extreme. Then there's concentrated solar thermal, which has extremely strong scale merit and therefore requires farm-scale to be cost-effective.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The sheer number of changes required, and their impact relative to the problem suggests to me the inevitability of serious consequences. I think I may be more interested in investing in technologies that help people cope with the coming changes. Seems more practical than investing in technologies that invite people to spend more of their money to avoid a tragedy of the commons.

</comment><comment><USER12> A lot of these feel like trick questions. Which offers more bang for the buck: improving airplane efficiency, or building a global network of high-speed rail?

It matters a lot how much we are improving efficiency, and how complete the "global network of high speed rail" is.

<comment><USER13> A teleport will fix this...

<comment><USER14> Depends on the energy required to run it.

<comment><USER15> Long before you use it for people, teleportation would unlock other capabilities and efficiencies. For example, consider what would happen for nuclear power replacing fossil fuels if we could safely teleport nuclear waste to a sealed cavern on the moon.

It's a relatively small payload (compared to transporting humans and goods) and you don't really care if an imperfect teleporting process only allows you to squeeze it through as a stream of molecular toothpaste.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This list ducks the most important question: "Is it possible to reduce greenhouse gas emissions without everyone on Earth mastering every technical detail of modern industry?"

The answer is, of course, yes.

</comment><comment><USER17> I'm guessing that these are contentious to some degree, or at least need context. I think this format would work better if it made the case for the right answer, or against your answer.

<comment><USER18> It's an advertisement for a book, here's the list of scenarios they've evaluated with some more information on each of them:

[http://www.drawdown.org/solutions](http://www.drawdown.org/solutions)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> This list assumes, of course, that we don't want to change our lifestyle. I don't see innovation and optimization alone keeping us below 2C.</comment>


Employees say Chicago startup Learnmetrics owes tens of thousands in wages - <AUTHOR> http://www.chicagotribune.com/bluesky/originals/ct-learnmetrics-employees-wage-claims-bsi-20170303-story.html <comment><USER2> This is the dark underbelly of startups. I think it's important to recognize that this happens- founders keep thinking they can close the next funding round, sign the next big deal, and as a result, employees pay the price.

I think it's important to recognize that this happens, and shame the founders & investors into making good their commitments to their employees.

Also- if someone stops paying you, you should _almost always_ stop working for them. That's a major red flag.</comment>