The Development of Chez Scheme (2006) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://www.cs.indiana.edu/~dyb/pubs/hocs.pdf <comment><USER2> Note that Chez Scheme is now open source. This is a great gift to all compiler hackers, and I sincerely thank Cisco for the release.

[https://github.com/cisco/ChezScheme](https://github.com/cisco/ChezScheme)

<comment><USER3> Note also that Dybvig is still contributing to the project. Thanks Dybvig.

Edit: Hmmm. Also Matthew Flatt from Racket.

<comment><USER4> Racket is being rewritten on top of Chez

<comment><USER5> I always assumed this was a rumor, but I'm starting to get excited. It will mean significant performance increases correct?

<comment><USER6> There was a previous HN discussion about this: "Chez Scheme as the Racket VM" [0] which you may find insightful.

That discussion links to a Google Groups page where Matthew Flatt discusses the background, status and plan going forward.

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13656397](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13656397)

<comment><USER5> Thanks for the link. I was going to ask myself how i missed this, then realized I have one of the first comments :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I built Chez Scheme when it was open sourced and have enjoyed experimenting with it. I tentatively started a new book using both Chez and Chicken schemes for the examples (but I am just starting a new job as tech lead of an AI team, so I may not have time to finish it). I wrote a Scheme book years ago for Springer Verlag that I was disappointed with, and I would like a chance to do better.

It is really exciting that Racket is being restructured to use the Chez Scheme compiler and runtime. I believe that there is a place for concise and elegant languages like Scheme and Haskell.

<comment><USER8> Mark having bought your 1991 "Artificial Intelligence in the Era of Neural Networks and Chaos Theory", which set me down a crazy, but worthwhile path, I would buy your Chez/Chicken book in a heartbeat.

I was reading books on neural networks in the late 80s, but your book made me get over some learning humps that allowed me to go back and revisit cloudy areas.

Lisps and Scheme are great for AI still, and Racket moving to using Chez is something I am really looking forward to.

<comment><USER7> Thanks!!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Apparently a fast compiler that produces fast programs, with Windows, Mac and 64-bit support as well. Although there are no binaries of the 9.4 release, you'd have to build it yourself:

[https://github.com/cisco/ChezScheme/releases](https://github.com/cisco/ChezScheme/releases)

[https://cisco.github.io/ChezScheme/release_notes/v9.4/releas...](https://cisco.github.io/ChezScheme/release_notes/v9.4/release_notes.html)

<comment><USER10> I've recently compiled/installed it on a Macbook. That went without problems.

Definitely one of the great pieces of software in the Scheme world.

<comment><USER5> Does it create native binaries or what?

<comment><USER11> Sure. Heavily optimized. Normally it compiles to native code, shared libs, on the fly, but for shipping apps there are the usual tools. See [http://cisco.github.io/ChezScheme/csug9.4/use.html#./use:h8](http://cisco.github.io/ChezScheme/csug9.4/use.html#./use:h8)

<comment><USER5> If you get a native binary, shouldn't shipping an app be giving someone an .exe (assuming Windows)or are you talking about a mobile phone app?

<comment><USER11> I was using the terms of the user guide. Building and Distributing Applications. Which is first an scheme object file, which you can start with `petite myapp.so`. So the exe is either chez or petit which loads the scheme object files.

Unlike Allegro or Lispworks or clisp or Corman Lisp single exe's.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It would be nice to hear from people using chez scheme in real world, and know what are they building.

</comment><comment><USER6> >The compiler can also be directed to perform whole-program compilation, which does full cross-library optimization and also reduces a program and the libraries upon which it depends to a single binary.

Does anyone know if this involves "tree-shaking" to remove unused code; or is it simply creating a binary with all dependencies as stated?

<comment><USER13> With any decent optimiser, "full cross-library optimization" is large superset of what tree shaking does.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Are people using emojis less now that apple made them so easy to use? - <AUTHOR> <comment><AUTHOR> It feels like aren't using them anymore because the challenge was taken out of it...</comment>


Register for Google I/O 2011 - <AUTHOR> http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/register-for-google-io-2011.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+blogspot%2FMKuf+%28Official+Google+Blog%29 <comment><USER2> I'm not at all impressed with how they handled this. It looks like the (very broken) registration process was handled by a third party. I couldn't get in to the site, and when I did it was sold out. Vic Gundotra's twitter feed claims it sold out in 58 minutes.

You'd think they'd increase the capacity given the interest.

<comment><USER3> This was handled ridiculously bad. I am a member of press, last year's sandbox presenter, and an early reg invitee.

I emailed googleiopress@ on the first day but didn't get a reply until 5 days later, after emailing them again. They said no to press passes and by then, early reg was already sold out.

I would have gladly registered for full price, but now I was forced to wait for public reg. This morning, after posting about the reg within minutes (on AndroidPolice), I had errors for an hour and ended up without a ticket.

Needless to say, I'm less than thrilled with how Google strung me along.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Finally got the page to load, pressed submit and... "Thanks for your interest in Google I/O, but registration for this event is now sold out."

<comment><USER5> If that's the case, then this really blows.

I've been waiting since they announced the dates for io2011 last year. I booked the week off work, I purchased tickets to get there, and sat here this morning ready to purchase my $450 ticket. 503 every fucking minute. GOOGLE FIX YOUR SHIT. Sorry, i'm raging right now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Some people must have partially completed checkout multiple times. Those people are still in the database and taking up slots.

If any of you can find more than one URL in their history where fuseaction is something other than req.Login, those URLs might still work.

And if you have started registration more than once, could you spare me one url please?

<comment><USER6> Apparently the URLS with a pki# in them work. Whatever that means. If anyone has one, I'd more than appreciate it :)

Edit: The PK= part of URLs is what counts

<comment><USER7> Did you find one?

<comment><USER6> nope :(

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> If it is really sold out, then I hope that Google will be cracking down on the scalpers this year. I saw a bunch of tickets on eBay last year from people that had plainly bought them betting that the freebies would be worth more (usually attendance-only, freebies not included)

<comment><USER8> And I think I figured out how to do it... Google needs to announce that they won't give anything away this year!

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2190278>

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Google has confirmed via a tweet that the event is all sold out:

<http://twitter.com/googleio/status/34681464251490304>

Yes, it's true. Google #io2011 is now sold out.

</comment><comment><USER10> This is kind of frustrating. Been waiting patiently for registration and now that its open Ive been unable to complete the form successfully due to timeouts/503s etc. And now Im hearing its sold out as well? I hope that maybe a non-web registration channel is opened to take sign ups that the site wasnt able to accomodate.

</comment><comment><USER11> Kinda B.S. when they anticipated such a quick sellout to have the site crap out like that.

<comment><USER5> complete bs. i expect a lot more from google.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I finally got through and registered. I got the "sold out" message but kept on refreshing; it finally let me register. I wouldn't give up hope

</comment><comment><USER13> It would be nice to have Chris Pruet show more about games and android. His former presentations in 2009 and 2010 were really good:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4Bk5rmIpic>

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-62tRHLcHk>

</comment><comment><USER14> No big surprise. It only took a few hours for the first Google I/O ticket scalper to surface on CraigsList. And what a deal. Only asking for $5K !!!

<http://sfbay.craigslist.org/sby/for/2202131748.html>

</comment><comment><USER15> Was really looking forward to I/O. I hoped to get the chance to jump down when I moved out west.. Hard to believe that they can sell out a venue like this in 59 minutes.

</comment><comment><USER16> @GoogleIO Twitter confirms, sold out in 59 minutes.

</comment><comment><USER16> Sold out already?

<comment><USER10> also, student option seems to be gone already for 'attendee type'

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm seriously bummed about this.

</comment><comment><USER18> the entire registration page seems down now..

<comment><USER11> From @GoogleIO

We're really feeling the love on our #io2011 registration site right now! Bear with us and keep refreshing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> this has been up for nearly a week, you guys need to stop complaining

<comment><USER10> io2011 page has been up for a bit yes but the registration was just opened this morning</comment></comment>


Google blocks Huawei access to Android updates after blacklisting - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/may/19/google-huawei-trump-blacklist-report <comment><AUTHOR> Slightly better article from FT, but behind a paywall: [https://www.ft.com/content/d8b3d6e6-7aaa-11e9-81d2-f785092ab...](https://www.ft.com/content/d8b3d6e6-7aaa-11e9-81d2-f785092ab560)</comment>


What is the most efficient way to store thousands of telephone numbers - <AUTHOR> http://stackoverflow.com/questions/7685649/most-efficient-way-to-store-thousand-telephone-numbers

<comment><USER2> I love the lookup answer. Ultimate runtime efficiency!</comment>


Show HN: Vetter – check if your emails will be spammed - <AUTHOR> https://vetter.monsoonyeti.com/ <comment><USER5> Hi Hacker News!

I'm the co-founder and CEO of Medical Joyworks (the company which created Vetter). You might be wondering - why is a _medical education_ company building an inbox delivery tool?

Well, we have a 150+ international medical board (specialist physicians who peer-review our medical education content). We communicate with them both directly as individuals, and as a group via a mailing list.

We've found that some of our emails tended to end up in spam, despite their content being very much non-spammy - and even though our email domain has neutral reputation (we just don't send a lot of emails!); and we've got SPF, DKIM, etc. setup. We even tried to validate our emails against SpamAssassin - but our scores were extremely good (-1 or lower).

We figured that instead of dealing with tools that try to guess whether your email might be spammed, we might as well test our emails against real email accounts. So, we hacked up a set of scripts to send emails from our domain to a set of Gmail, Hotmail, Outlook and Yahoo accounts, and just started playing around.

We were kinda shocked to see how trivial changes in an email's subject and body could massively affect inbox rates. In fact, Microsoft's email services (Outlook, Hotmail, and Live) were consistently sending our emails to the spam folder. Thanks to our tests scripts, we managed to adjust our emails' subjects/bodies to get 90% to 100% inbox delivery.

Because these scripts turned out to be so useful for us, we thought of turning them into a proper tool that anyone else could sign up for and use - <USER2> Vetter.

Thanks for reading this. I'd love to read your comments and feedback - <USER3> good or bad!

<comment><USER6> Share it on email geeks Slack

<comment><USER5> Thanks for the advice! We've applied to join the Email Geeks Slack - <USER4> crossed.</comment></comment></comment>


High Schools Not Meeting STEM Demand - <AUTHOR> http://www.usnews.com/education/blogs/high-school-notes/2012/10/01/high-schools-not-meeting-stem-demand

<comment><USER2> What demand? The demand for cheaper labor? Outside of a few places like Silicon Valley, we certainly aren't seeing wages rise as they would if there was a true shortage.</comment>


A/B Testing the Effect of Sender Race on Email Response Rates - <AUTHOR> http://blog.ezliu.com/blog/a-slash-b-testing-the-effect-of-sender-race-on-email-response-rates/

<comment><USER2> You spammed a million people for this? Enough that over a hundred thousand people spent the time and energy to write an email reply? Please do justice to the collective time you took up with the survey.

Could you break down the data by name and/or gender of both the sender and the respondent? Test multiple hypotheses simultaneously? For example, in page 1002 of the referenced research article ([http://faculty.chicagobooth.edu/marianne.bertrand/research/p...](http://faculty.chicagobooth.edu/marianne.bertrand/research/papers/emily_lakisha_aer.pdf)), they break down a whole slew of other qualities that may have affected response rate.

It's entirely possible that the name choice for your study has more of an effect than the perceived race association of those names. The "99.9% confidence" cited is really not that, and is subject to various biases which are hard to discern.

<comment><USER3> The spamming part really bugged me too. It seemed like he harvested these emails rather than any form of opt-in. This seems like bad science in general.

<comment><USER4> I agree with you about the harmful spamming aspects being troublesome. If it was a medical trial that harmed the test participants, it would be deemed unethical. On the other hand, using opt-in would have resulted in a bias in the results. The experiment might be ethically dubious in regards to harming participants, but the design of the experiment is still logically sound. Calling it "bad science" is fair if your position is based purely on the ethical implications, but typically, the phrase "bad science" is used to describe improper experiment design and erroneous conclusions.

Eric left out a lot of wanted/needed details and data about his experiment. Due to the ethics questions involved, it would be best if his data was release and his experiment was evaluated, rather than lots of other people repeating the same or similar experiments.

The harm is already done, so let's try to learn from it.

Maybe I'm just being too forgiving?

</comment></comment></comment><comment> e-dard I get annoyed when I read things like: "A performed 4.9% better than B", when the comparison is between two proportions.

Just say it like it is, without putting a slant on it - A's response rate was 0.6% higher than B's.

I don't care if the results are significantly different, if the difference between the two samples is so small.

<comment><AUTHOR> i don't really understand why this is "putting a slant on it".

citing an absolute difference isn't very useful when you're talking about differences in conversion rates.

        * 0.6% -> 1.2% is a 0.6% bump.
        * 49.4% -> 50.0% is a 0.6% bump.

however, in the first case, you're talking about doubling your conversion rate.

it sounds like you're saying that if someone increases their landing page conversion rate by 1% (from 1%) you'd rather hear that the conversion rate increased by a point.

the business owner is probably more interested in the fact that their revenues doubled.

<comment><USER5> While I don't disagree with you, this is a false dichotomy. A proper analysis of the findings should have reported -- and explained -- both absolute and relative differences.

<comment><USER6> The article shouldn't have to spell out absolute differences in English sentences. The article mentions the important part (relative difference) in English sentences. The article includes the chart of the response rate by race the reader can see everything: race response rate black 11.01% white 12.32% hispanic 12.92%

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Eric, the write-up is great, but it would be better if you provided the supporting data. The research is interesting, but sending out a million emails with tracking bugs is a bit, umm, questionable when one considers the time/effort wasted by the recipients. If everyone ran similar experiments, it would make a real mess, so providing the data you collected could also be beneficial in reducing the load.

</comment><comment><USER7> Applaud you for doing the research, and I'll probably end up referencing it in my work at some point. Surely there are a number of holes to poke (as with anything) the one that stands out to me at the moment is you didn't control for the race of the recipient. I.e. if your overall recipient list was 50% Hispanic, even though you randomized who got what, would still expect Hispanic-sent open rate to be higher.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> op here. i should own up. this is an apology.

@dantillberg, @jcr, et al: you're right.

i heard about the original study, was curious, but not enough to think much of it. in a previous startup we had a female intern who was getting substantially better response rates than the male founders.

after the recent press about how women in senior roles correlates with startup success i became a bit more curious and wondered if i could craft the perfect "from" field for outgoing emails.

i admit this was aggressive and that I got carried away. that's no excuse.

</comment><comment><USER8> I assume the author was just trying to set up the premise before getting to the meat of the article but the opening paragraph claim that Americans are more sensitive about discrimination than anybody else is probably false and more than a little ironic.

</comment><comment><USER9> File this one under "tests that shouldn't have been conducted in the first place"

<comment><USER10> PC aside, why not?

<comment><USER11> TLDR: Because you can't act on that data without acting in a racist way that makes the world a worse place. There is no way to use that data without really bad behavior.

Let's break down why it is such an atrocious idea.

Say you have a black man in a high ranking position in your company. Oh, but you want to sieze every advantage possible, and you have data suggesting that black people get lower reply rates on emails. And women get higher reply rates on emails. How do you deal with this situation?

Should he have someone else in the company send high-priority emails for him? Or maybe just set up a dummy email for him with a female hispanic name, and pretend it is his "secretary"? Or maybe he shouldn't be in the kind of position in the first place -- maybe he should be in a more internally focused position? Maybe next time you hire, you should be on the lookout for a hispanic woman for an externally focused position, to make things easier.

There are a huge number of problems with these kinds of actions, starting with the fact that you SHOULD NOT be "dealing with" the situation that you have an employee of a certain race or gender.

1\. Flat out discriminatory -- forcing someone to jump through hoops because of skin color / gender.

2.a Fundamentally strikes at human dignity by treating everyone you email as racist, genderist animals.

2.b Fundamentally strikes at human dignity by telling your employees to pretend to be someone "more palatable". Or by having someone do a task, lets say, because the individual is in possession of a female hispanic name. Everyone is dehumanized.

3\. Liable to twist thinking. After reading that article, and next time you're hiring someone, you brain has a good chance of (inadvertantly) jumping to the notion of how the applicant's race / gender is going to impact email reply rates. We've agreed as a society, for good and just reasons, that hiring decisions and compensation decisions should be completely blind to those (and other) factors.

4\. Any actions taken to hide or shield people who seem to be less acceptable or attractive to society simple reinforces their position. The idea that there aren't successful [insert race / gender] people in [profession] is reinforced by hiding those who are.

<comment><USER12> You seem to be operating under the assumption that results from all studies will be acted upon by everyone who reads them. This assumption undermines the rest of your points because the chances of someone making a high-profile hiring decision based on potential email response rates is laughably small. Also, I'm looking forward to your "shouldn't be done" condemnation of the original study ([http://faculty.chicagobooth.edu/marianne.bertrand/research/p...](http://faculty.chicagobooth.edu/marianne.bertrand/research/papers/emily_lakisha_aer.pdf)) that prompted this blog post.

What's scary is tacit admission that you'd rather censor scientific research than face some uncomfortable truths about human nature. What other studies about human psychology would you censor?

>How do you deal with this situation?

You don't, at least not in a liberal state like California. If I may be realistic for a moment: here, having a high-ranking employee who's hispanic- female-gay-disabled-atheist is an advantage.

>We've agreed as a society, for good and just reasons, that hiring decisions and compensation decisions should be completely blind to those (and other) factors.

This is either naive or delusional, because a lot of people seem to have missed the memo. As much as we may want to be impartial, personal preference will always play a part because we're humans instead of robots.

Moreover, there's the grey area called "team fit". I may hire Juan (Hispanic male) because he's very friendly and helpful, but has less experience than Jason (Caucasian male) who's very experienced but cold and aloof. If you look at this strictly from a technical qualifications point of view, then I discriminated against Jason. If you consider the big picture, then you see I made the right hiring decision.

<comment><USER11> That's a really good question. I should have been much more clear about exactly what I was talking about. It wasn't about the knowledge gained, it was about everything surrounding that.

What I wrote was in response to an article that carried the subtitle "Are Emily and Brendan More Employable than Lakisha and Jamal?"

And included, just above the fold, these gems:

"Question: How can I use societal prejudices to aid in startup success?"

"Race for Internet Marketing and Startups"

There are many fascinating and extremely valuable studies treating race. You are right, they are often uncomfortable. I love those studies. But this post is not that. It not only has shoddy methodology and would get blasted to pieces by peer review, but its expressed purpose is the application of racism and sexism to the world of startups. THAT is what I was writing about.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> You should have also included unconventional names not usually associated with black people, such as Moon Unit, Starshine, Whalesong, and other such "hippy" names, or names associated with poor rural white people.

<comment><USER14> I would also like to see the effect of East Indian names. My name isn't from India (it is from Thailand), but it is often mistaken for being Indian or Arabic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Offtopic but I did a double take on this: "Former options trader. _Passionate QBASIC developer_." Subtle irony or what?

</comment><comment><USER16> Frankly, I'm not really surprised that Antonio Banderas commanded a higher response rate.</comment>


Quora Investor Scoffs At $1 Billion Offer Price - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/quora-would-turn-down-a-1-billion-offer-says-investor-2011-2 <comment><USER2> No revenue. Usability slammed in the New York Times and elsewhere. Concerns from old-timers that the site's going to hell even though they're not out of beta. Resolute refusal to consider languages other than English.

Sure it's an attractive space, but a $300M valuation and a $1B offer price? Sounds optimistic to me.</comment>


Reddit removed NSL canary from 2015 Transparency Report - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/4cqyia/for_your_reading_pleasure_our_2015_transparency/ <comment><USER2> This reminds me ... the rsync.net warrant canary[1][2] is ten years old this month.

I was hoping that it would be irrelevant after all of these years...

[1] [https://www.rsync.net/resources/notices/canary.txt](https://www.rsync.net/resources/notices/canary.txt)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warrant_canary#Usage](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warrant_canary#Usage)

<comment><USER3> I didn't know Australia outlawed warrant canaries. Luckily, it looks like that actually only outlawed journalist warrant canaries (so a company couldn't use a warrant canary to say that a journalist was investigating one of their customers).

<comment><USER4> I gather from stuff like the quote on Wikipedia pasted below that there is doubt about the protection from prosecution that canaries give you. But I'm finding that hard to believe. What about if it's literally a picture of a canary you remove, rather than any actual sentences, and you don't say anything about it? Or you change it to a cardinal (red) one day? Or you give a string of 1s and 0s with the understanding that the proportion of 1s should be interpreted as the probability that you've been subpoenad? Would the court's decision depend on the belief in the general population about the semantics of the page decorations?

      Bruce Schneier wrote in a blog post that "[p]ersonally,
      I have never believed [warrant canaries] would work. It
      relies on the fact that a prohibition against speaking
      doesn't prevent someone from not speaking. But courts
      generally aren't impressed by this sort of thing

<comment><USER5> The SEC doesn't mind if you cancel a planned stock sale as an insider - 'no insider trading without a trade'. It's an entirely plausible that there's "no speaking about a gag order without speaking".

<comment><USER6> Courts (especially in the US) have been known to equate all kinds of things with speech, so it's not unthinkable to equate the symbolic act of NOT doing something with a form of speech. Not standing for the the national anthem or Pledge of Allegiance, for example. So in THEORY a court could rule that the act of not doing something you might be expected to do, such as include a warrant canary, is still a form of speech, and in doing so you are violating your gag order.

Still, all theoretical and purely speculation, because as far as I know this has never been tested in court.

<comment><USER7> Part of the Apple all writs defense was the government can't force you to speak as it is a violation of the first amendment.

I do agree with the quotation though. I have a hard time believing government wouldn't somehow figure out a secret way to violate your first amendment such that you have no legal recourse.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Yishan just posted this a followup that I think is quite interesting[1].

Excerpt: "If you get an NSL, you're gagged. You can't talk about it. I can say that during my time we did not receive any National Security Letters. /r/ekjp was able to say in her Transparency Report for 2014 that they never got any. Apparently in this 2015 report they are not saying that."

[1] [https://www.reddit.com/r/yishan/comments/4cub02/transparency...](https://www.reddit.com/r/yishan/comments/4cub02/transparency_reports_and_subpoenas_eli5/)

</comment><comment><USER9> I am interested in what Yishan has to say about Amazon AWS

[https://www.reddit.com/r/yishan/comments/4cub02/transparency...](https://www.reddit.com/r/yishan/comments/4cub02/transparency_reports_and_subpoenas_eli5/)

Does that inform anyone's choice of cloud infrastructure?

<comment><USER10> Until we get workable homomorphic encryption, the bit about encrypted machine images is (charitably) optimistic. I wrote about this a year ago: [http://blackkettle.org/blog/2015/02/19/youve-got-to-trust- yo...](http://blackkettle.org/blog/2015/02/19/youve-got-to-trust-your-vm- host/)

<comment><USER11> Unless you're willing to trust the hardware manufacturer, at which point something like Intel SGX could be a runner.

<comment><USER10> You also have to trust your VM host not to provide an emulated SGX (which is what [https://github.com/sslab-gatech/opensgx](https://github.com/sslab- gatech/opensgx) is, unless I'm very much mistaken).

<comment><USER11> I think you're mistaken. Intel provides infrastructure to ensure you're talking to an enclave running on an actual Intel machine, and you can then do a remote attestation to verify the contents of that enclave.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Based on spez's language, is it safe to assume that a NSL has indeed been received? That's my interpretation (and it seems that of other reddit commentors too).

<comment><USER13> Any other interpretation would call into serious question the entire concept of canaries.

<comment><USER12> I agree. One commentor suggested that they could have voluntarily removed it for some other unrelated reason, but then they would have no reason to not say exactly that - which they aren't. Seems to leave only one reason why they did.

<comment><USER14> So, one disadvantage of these loophole canaries is that they only work once. What happens when another NSL is issued at a later date?

<comment><USER15> Moreover. The state, as an actor, should simply generate constant stream of NSL requests to trip as many canaries as possible. They have the time and resources. This would basically nullify the effectiveness of canaries as a concept.

"Hey George, did you hear Reddit has a canary now too. Ok, add it to the list. Pick a user there and issue an NSL. And don't forget about Google and FB this month as well, they are about to reset theirs".

Putting oneself in the shoes of such an actor this is a rational approach to take.

<comment><USER16> In theory, a NSL still requires a good faith belief by the issuing agency that the recipient possesses information relevant to a national security matter. That's not to say agencies couldn't use them maliciously, but it would require implying deliberate malice or deception on the part of the human agent who decided to issue the fraudulent NSL. Then again, any organization over a certain size is likely to have some conversation in their records that could be deemed nominally relevant.

<comment><USER15> > would require implying deliberate malice or deception on the part of the > human agent who decided to issue the fraudulent NSL

Can be done by re-interpreting what is happening -- "we are not issuing bogus NSLs to troll them, we are fighting terrorism and these sites deliberately shelter and protect terrorists and other criminals. We want to periodically issue NSLs to establish protocols and methods so we can more effectively protect our country and do our work".

So it has to be story which will look good on paper and workers will tell themselves without feeling like they are doing something illegal.

Another way is to do it as a side-effect of something else -- say "we decided to double our efforts to track down drug dealers on these sites, therefore we'll put 2x more people on it and they will conduct research and open new cases and so on". So simply by allocating more resources to the "problem" they'll ensure any of these large sites will simply get a constant stream of NSLs without explictly writing that down as "we are busting the canaries" as a goal anywhere.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Is this the first warrant canary that we have a reasonably high degree of certainty was actually tripped? I remember a couple of other warrant canary cases that could be more parsimoniously attributed to user error but none this clearcut.

Any other warrant canaries trip before?

<comment><USER12> According to Wikipedia, Apple's warrant canary was removed in the July- December 2013 transparency report (and remained absent in the following transparency report in 2014).

<comment><USER18> They now report on the number of such requests they receive using a banding system, right? They can say they received between 0-249 such requests this year, something (essentially useless) like that?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> \- Have you been served an NSL? \- No, I have not. \- Have you been served an NSL? \- No, I have not. \- Have you been served an NSL? \- On the advice of counsel, I decline to answer.

<comment><USER20> This sounds like the most logical explanation and basic legal standing of the situation. Not saying what has been said in the past is as clear an indicator as possible, given the circumstances.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I have never understood what value I personally would derive from a warrant canary. For the sake of discussion let's assume that reddit's warrant canary was intentionally removed and but for an NSL it would have continued to appear on reddit. How do my actions differ in this universe compared to one where the canary was present in the report?

<comment><USER22> Here's an example.

Let's say you frequent lots of subreddits that might be considered outside societal norms. Right now that data is ONLY available internally at Reddit.

If the NSA hoovered up this data, suddenly they might learn a lot about you that they didn't know before (although there's probably a fair argument that people probably leave enough other clues scattered across other data sources they likely have access to that make this redundant).

Maybe you aren't looking at things that would set off their alerts for today's hot media topics. But what about the future? What if we end up with a President with a radical discriminatory agenda (a scarily likely possibility at this point unfortunately)? What if suddenly things that may have been frowned upon before by the general public are suddenly made illegal by Executive order or some other horrible twisting of our laws? This provides the government with a great way to narrow down the list and identify targets that have become "inconvenient" for them.

Think it can't happen or that this is an off-the-wall conspiracy theory? Germany and Russia would like to have a chat with you.

Sure, the mainstream users probably won't have any noticeable impact on their lives. For now at least. But this can still have a chilling effect on free speech today, without the nightmare scenario I outlined above occurring.

Case in point from a couple days ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11374839](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11374839)

<comment><USER23> Firstly, I completely agree with you regarding why this is bad news. However, I don't understand one thing: let's say our hypothetical user has been posting in a private subreddit for carrot fetishists, which Trump will make illegal in 2018. If, today, a NSL was received by Reddit, isn't it potentially already too late for our carrot fetishist, even if they immediately stop visiting the subreddit or delete their account? Now, the carrot lover knows there was a NSL, but there isn't anything they can do except wait and see what happens when the new legislation rolls around in 2018. Emigrate, maybe? Serious question; I don't know how these things work. Asking for a friend.

<comment><USER24> It wouldn't matter. The US constitution prohibits laws that criminalize earlier actions that were legal when committed.

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

<comment><USER3> Recall the Communist witch-hunt in the cold war. That was done without retroactive policing and parallel construction. Just because they cannot imprison you for actions taken before the action was illegal doesn't mean they can't fuck you over in other ways. It's the thought police all over again.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Someday someone will get an NSL, say screw it, publish it on the internet (with mirrors) and tell the government screw you I now have standing.

<comment><USER26> Surprised it hasn't happened yet, not sure what the penalty would be but I'd guess months rather than years.

<comment><USER27> The government would very much want to make an example of anyone who did that. The punishment would be as severe as they could get away with.

<comment><USER28> Wait till they're sending so many of these out one day a person with nothing to lose receives one.

<comment><USER29> Its happened a times IIRC. The government always drops the NSL, then throws the book at the person.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> How the canary looked like in the 2014 report:

[https://www.reddit.com/wiki/transparency/2014#wiki_national_...](https://www.reddit.com/wiki/transparency/2014#wiki_national_security_requests)

The 2015 report:

[https://www.reddit.com/wiki/transparency/2015](https://www.reddit.com/wiki/transparency/2015)

</comment><comment><USER31> What terrifies me is not the potential data leak, but that the NSA may be obtaining their TLS certificates, bypassing the threat (to them) of "https everywhere".

<comment><USER32> Certificates are public, the NSA can just download them.

You mean private keys. Reddit uses forward secure TLS, so obtaining the private keys does not allow the NSA to decrypt the traffic, as fresh keys are negotiated on each connection. The long term private key is used only for identification, so they allow you to impersonate the server but as far as I'm aware, nobody has yet seen evidence of a large, popular website having all of its traffic hijacked by state actors with stolen SSL keys. I can only imagine that such an attack would be quite visible (unless the taps were done internally inside a big CDN).

<comment><USER33> According to the Snowden documents, traffic is hijacked in a targeted manner. So, for example, only on pages served to the designated user, IP address or IP blocks etc. We would not see all it's traffic altered, we would only see traffic being altered if we were being directly targeted. It would be incredibly hard to see by others.

Also, the SSL keys are not stolen, we have to assume that they have been given to them based on the letter. The gag order and canary indicated that everything has been compromised.

<comment><USER32> Doing that requires you to be able to see through at least some connections in the first place, in order to figure out which connections are from your target victim. That's why QUANTUM is a combination of packet sniffing and packet injection. If everything is SSLd then it's much harder to deal with cases where a users connection moves around.

<comment><USER33> I'm not familiar with reddit's set up. But given that a NSL means that anything and everything can be given over to the NSA by reddit, does this mean that it's not hard for them to do this now?

<comment><USER32> Only if they were able to get a direct tap of all traffic entering Reddit's servers inside AWS. Then SSL is irrelevant of course. Doesn't matter what keys or crypto you use.

If it's not a direct real-time feed then, no, doesn't really change much.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> It's amazing that it lasted this long. Given how I assumed the government was handing these things out like candy I would have thought just about every major tech organisation was getting dozens at least every year. In a weird way, it almost increases my faith in the system. Or it decreases my faith even further in the competence of the security agencies .. I'm not sure which. (after Facebook and Google, Reddit is probably one of the most obvious and valuable places to hit they could go to ... how did it take them this long?).

<comment><USER35> Keep in mind that canaries do not preclude false negatives, especially in larger organizations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> The only plausible NSL served on Reddit is for subscriber information related to a national security investigation. Reddit was compelled to provide the records they already had on some username's real name, billing details, and similar---and maybe a list of who they exchanged messages with.

<comment><USER37> There are a number of English-speaking, self-identifying ISIS members who post regularly in /r/JihadInFocus. /u/thelord4444 is one and /u/AnsarAlKhilafah is another. I wouldn't be the least surprised to find out it was about them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> This reminds me of when people asked Linus Torvalds if the NSA had approached him about putting in backdoors. To which he answered "No" while shaking his head yes...

Red Hat and Systemd anyone?

</comment><comment><USER22> This is incredibly disheartening to hear, but I have to say I'm glad to see the currently top-voted comment is about this, and most of the thread has turned to focus on this.

I wonder how big of an issue this NSL will become for Reddit, or whether it will be forgotten about in a week.

I also wonder what it means for me as a Redditor. "If you have nothing to hide" arguments aside, does this mean it is safe to assume that the NSA got full access to all of Reddit's data and hoovered it all up? Or are these NSLs only able to target individuals? Not sure you can really make that distinction from a data mining standpoint I guess.

<comment><USER39> No matter what the extent is, I have to assume that everything is compromised and reddit is now totally untrustworthy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Turns out this was intended to be a April Fools joke; not by Reddit, but the FBI. Pretty sick taste in jokes; FBI already had all of Reddit's data because they're hosted on AWS; Amazon already gives all AWS data to the FBI.

</comment><comment><USER41> Serious question, what's to stop the NSL including language along the lines: 'Any warrant canaries need to remain in place'?

<comment><USER42> An NSL can't just make stuff up. Everything in it must be specifically authorized by congress or a court.

<comment><USER43> The All Writs Act means that's not much of a bar.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> I was just about to ask if Hacker News has an NSL canary, when I saw this: < [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11402439](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11402439) >.

<comment><USER45> Isn't all communication on HN public? (I thought the only additional info on the servers was the votes. Or are IP addresses and timestamps stored for visitors?)

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> I found myself just now wondering whether a court case has been fought over whether the government can force someone to keep up a canary. It's sad that we can't even know this kind of information.

</comment><comment><USER47> It's a pity they can only use such a canary once.

<comment><USER48> Couldn't they just update a timestamp? "As of april 3rd 2016, we haven't received an NSL"

<comment><USER49> IANAL, but based on the EFF's page on warrant canaries, it seems like they can, in a way. They can state any legal processes they have _not_ been involved in, for basically any period of time, though EFF recommends several months between any such kind of report. The easiest thing is for them to issue, say, quarterly transparency reports and saying "For this past quarter we have received no XYZ".

<comment><USER50> Some services have a daily canary (like [https://proxy.sh/canary](https://proxy.sh/canary)), but we don't know whether they could be forced to sign a new canary even after they've been served an NSL.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> Why are you all arguing about fucking canaries? I grew up with this idea that there was a _right_ to freedom of speech and expression. You're all playing their little games when you should be standing up for your right.

<comment><USER52> In the case of violating the gag provisions of an NSL, that's a 'Fast Track' to an 8x10 cell in an institution not necessarily of your choosing.

Do feel free to write your representatives and complain, but don't try and sweep this all away under "right to freedom of speech and expression". National security is far more nuanced.

<comment><USER51> Great. Freedom of speech in fucking quotes. National security is nuanced. You've got to be kidding me. America has disappointed me.

<comment><USER53> So do something about it. You can't complain in the preposterous way that you're complaining and _not_ actively do something about it. And I'm not talking about voting, it's decades too late for that, and you'd never get the rest of the country to agree with your views.

Do something. You're sitting here bitching _us_ out for how the US government works like it's our fault and we should have done something different. Well what are _you_ doing? Because if the answer is "nothing", then maybe you should sit down and reevaluate your tone.

<comment><USER54> That's a bullshit response. You can't disagree with policy or people's attitudes unless you're "doing something about it"?

<comment><USER53> If you disagree that strongly with his attitude but aren't doing anything different than he is, you're a hypocrite. What makes you better than him? What puts you in a position to judge him?

<comment><USER54> That is not how hypocrisy works.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> Company creates "Government request officer" position in company.

Company policy states each month a polygraph must be taken by "Government request officer" covering "certain" topics, and the results are posted online.

This month the "Government request division" officer failed his poly.

The wording of poly test could be done to never even speak of nsl etc or even what poly was designed to do, and no company document/policy or spoken word ever says anything about the nsl etc.

</comment><comment><USER56> So as an average netizen what can I do about it? Is anyone actually going to boycott Reddit, and lose access to all of the communities that are there because of this?

</comment><comment><USER57> Assuming reddit received a national security letter (NSL), what does it mean? What are the implications?

</comment><comment><USER58> Reddit should take one for the team and shut the website down. Redirect it to nsa.gov or a pastebin and provide 223MM monthly uniques with the impetus to fix this fucked up country. Maybe a multi-billion dollar company disappearing overnight would be enough to convince our lawmakers that this isn't compatible with being a part of the new global economy. Maybe it would be enough to get people in the streets.

As an aside, I'd like to see more sites put something like, "if we are ever served a NSL, our website will stop operating", in their privacy policy.

The government can't force you to keep operating a business. If they want to abuse NSL's, so be it. I want the John McCains in our government to realize what they're doing.

<comment><USER59> At the risk of sounding cynical, I think this whole ordeal indicates the opposite. If "people in the streets" is to be evidence that surveillance "isn't compatible with being part of the new global economy," then we should also take a hint from the lack of "people in the streets."

<comment><USER58> That's fair.

It's also incredibly depressing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> Could this be an elaborate April's fool practical joke?

</comment><comment><USER61> Honestly the reddit admins lie so much and have so little respect for their users that I don't think we can conclude anything about this.

</comment><comment><USER62> We'll never know, but I have to wonder if it was bitcoin related. And I don't mean like dark web, but like Mt Gox or other.

</comment><comment><USER63> As a reddit users, might this give us standing to make a class action suit to see the letter?

<comment><USER64> Erm, can't edit thanks to noprocrast -- "As Reddit users" would be more correct.

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> Does a reddit thread constitute an email? How does the authorization define what an email is?

</comment><comment><USER66> For those who aren't familiar, a NSL Canary is like a Warrant Canary, but for National Security Letters.

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

Australia just outlawed warrant canaries. Scary times.

<comment><USER67> > Australia just outlawed warrant canaries. Scary times.

Assuming you accept the need for the non-disclosure requirements in some court orders and administrative subpoenas, wouldn't the decision to allow canaries be a legal mistake in the first place? (Albeit AFAIK one also made by the US Department of Justice)

The argument for the legality of canaries would have to rely on the distinction between the affirmative and negative disclosure. But it is very easy to imagine a service that scrapes sites with canaries and publishes an _affirmative_ list of those which took theirs down recently (or in a given time interval). This completely subverts the argument.

Is it perhaps yet another case where the legal minds failed to account for the current (actually... two decades old) state of technology? Am I missing something?

<comment><USER13> _But it is very easy to imagine a service that scrapes sites with canaries and publishes an affirmative list of those which took theirs down recently (or in a given time interval)._

[https://canarywatch.org/](https://canarywatch.org/)

<comment><USER68> Shouldn't that Reddit canary be dead, though?

[https://canarywatch.org/reddit/](https://canarywatch.org/reddit/)

<comment><USER13> I see this language at that location:

 _Reddit released its transparency report for 2015 and the warrant canary language was missing._

Maybe that's an edit after your post. I agree that a silhouette of an expired canary lying on its back, wings spread awkwardly, tongue sticking out, eyes crossed, would make this communication more effective.

<comment><USER68> Yeah, that's odd. It's timestamped March 31st - perhaps it was serving a stale application level cache (I've not been to the site in a while, or so I thought). Now the canary-logo is taken down from the reddit listing on the front-page too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER69> A workaround to the canary is to every month release an affidavit that says that you have not received an NSL last month. The month you receive one you do not release one.

<comment><USER70> The NSL could compell you to release an affidavit anyway.

<comment><USER71> The entire premise of the canary, and this discussion, is that you cannot (currently, legally) be compelled to lie, you can merely be compelled to not tell the truth.

If they could, we would not be observing any changes in warrant canaries, ever.

<comment><USER70> Welcome to the real world, where armchair legal opinions don't matter. A canary is a way of communicating information about the NSL, which is prevented by the gag order of the NSL. The courts see through the canary for the transparent practice that it is. And guess what? These days they side with the government, not the recipient.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> awinter-py I'm surprised nobody has tried to game this system using the CFAA. The CFAA makes unauthorized access a felony, i.e. it permits a site operator to define criminal behavior as they see fit. (and there are prosecutions to back this interpretation).

The hack: define 'unauthorized behavior' in your TOS / user agreement to include release of data to any third party. A court can't order you to commit a felony.

<comment><USER72> A contract is not protection from a lawful order by police. e.g. you cannot make a contract with the mafia, agreeing to never speak to police about the business you conduct, and then expect the law to say, "Oh, OK. You have a contract, of course we can't ask for those records! Sorry to have bothered you."

In short, when a court orders you to turn over information, it is not a felony to turn over that information, and in fact it is your legal obligation to do so. You can argue under what terms (e.g. in sealed documents that will not be disclosed in public records of the trial), which the court may or may not agree to.

I oppose NSL letters, to be clear, but armchair lawyering aint gonna make you or anyone else immune to them. As long as they are the law, you and I are subject to them, no matter what terms of service we post on our websites.

<comment> awinter-py Nothing to do with contract law -- the CFAA makes unauthorized access a felony, and 'unauthorized access' has been taken to mean 'violations of the terms of service'.

If the court rules to enforce the NSL, fine, but there's now a new precedent that de-claws the CFAA; a solid win.

Either way it will be a fun appeals process.

<comment><USER72> What do you believe "terms of service" is, if not a contract between a service provider and their customer?

And, regardless, even if terms of service falls under something entirely different from contract law, you cannot apply the law to law enforcement in the same way it applies to you or I. Police openly carry firearms in places where it is illegal for others to do so (and occasionally shoot and kill people), courts regularly order activity that is ordinarily illegal (or even unconstitutional without the order from the court), etc. Police search people, homes, and autos; not legal for you or me, but with the proper procedures, it is legal for police. You're trying to apply law in a way that is nonsensical. It is not that law enforcement is above the law, but that the courts have said that the NSL is not violating the law when law enforcement officers do it.

Again, I don't _like_ that NSL is a thing, and I really don't like that courts have upheld them as constitutional. But, that is not the same as saying you can "hack" the legal system to make an otherwise lawful order from law enforcement into a non-lawful order and that they or the courts would have any concern about that hack.

 _" If the court rules to enforce the NSL, fine, but there's now a new precedent that de-claws the CFAA; a solid win."_

So, if the court rules that law enforcement can enforce an NSL, regardless of the CFAA, you consider it a solid win? For whom? All it does is further cement law enforcement's ability to issue administrative NSLs.

Again, you're somehow conflating the law as we must follow it and the law as law enforcement must follow it, in a situation where courts have _already_ said they have this authority. There is nothing we can put in our terms of service that magically makes law enforcement subject to it, in pursuit of duty as a law enforcement officer. Police can lie, can detain people, can stick them in jail, etc. A "No Trespassing" sign will not stop an officer in pursuit or with a warrant.

CFAA will not be de-clawed by this, and no one would even try to take such a case to court.

<comment> awinter-py No, courts don't order people to commit felonies. Courts order people to do things they are ordinarily not required to do (pay money, stop selling a product, stop following somebody) but don't order people to commit acts normally prohibited.

(The exception is that a court can order law enforcement to incarcerate or kill a convicted felon; though we call it a ruling rather than a court order. That's not what we're talking about here).

Re: 'what is terms of service' \-- by reading this paragraph you are hereby bound to mail me one fresh batch of cupcakes on the first monday of every month.

Have you entered into a contract? My take is that you haven't because I haven't paid you (consideration) and you didn't sign or click agree (intent to contract, acceptance).

<comment><USER72> OK, then, sounds like you've got it figured out. Give it a shot. Let us know how it turns out.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Intermediated of the world, unite - <AUTHOR> https://radiobruxelleslibera.com/2018/06/26/intermediated-of-the-world-unite/ <comment><AUTHOR> Basically this essay is about the issue that many internet services become monopolies and the negative effect of this phenomenon. The author argues that we have to create pro-market regulations and models of development (e.g., favors the creation of services that are open, like email, instead of one closed, like Whatsapp) that favors the creation of competition between different players.

<comment><USER2> Email is effectively closed these days. You can't really send email from your own server and expect it to be read.

<comment><USER3> I used to think that way. But the other day, I set up a mailserver (dovecot + postfix) on a DigitalOcean droplet and a domain I own. With proper configuration (SPF, DKIM), I had no problem with delivery of the mail I sent from it so far.

<comment><USER4> You will run into issues sending email to services that run very aggressive IP based spam filtering w/ white-lists. AT&T (att.net, bellsouth.net) is one example of a company that does this. They subscribe to the UCEPROTECT blacklists, which will sometimes include all of DO in a bad neighbor list. The only way to not get on this list is to pay UCEPROTECT. If you don't pay then you will need to contact mail admins at AT&T (and others) to get added to whitelists. When you move to a knew droplet and get a new IP you will have to do it all again.

I had looked into moving to a service where I could reserve and IP and assign it to an instance (vultr.com) in order to keep a consistent IP across instance migrations. I eventually decided it wasn't worth the time and signed up for a managed email account with runbox.com (they have the best family deal).

<comment><USER5> Anyone using pay-for-delisting spam lists is running a broken email system - this is essentially blackmail, even if it is att that is using it.

Reputable spam blacklists use proper metrics and monetize their service via other means (e.g. spam appliances, client use service fees etc)

<comment><USER6> UCEPROTECT does NOT run a "pay for delisting" blacklist. See Removal Policy: [http://www.uceprotect.net/en/index.php?m=7&s=0](http://www.uceprotect.net/en/index.php?m=7&s=0)

Registering an IP into a high trustee whitelist is an optional offer to the admins of clean mailservers and not blackmail.

See the FAQ at [http://www.whitelisted.org/?go=faq](http://www.whitelisted.org/?go=faq)

And just because you said: "reputable spam blacklists...." I have to tell you the bad news:-) UCEPROTECT is and was never a problem for mailservers with a good reputation.

If you are running a mailrelay, all that matters for delivery success is reputation. That means you have to make sure your system can't be abused for spamming and you don't spam. Doing so will ensure that your IP will never show up in UCEPROTECT Level 1. Having a good reputation also means, you have to look at the reputation of your provider before signing up. If your ISP is activeley preventing abuse originating from their networks and ranges, and acting quick on abuse, then you should also never run in trouble with UCEPROTECT's Levels 2 and 3.

It's really that easy. But if all what matters to you chosing an ISP is the price, you don't have to wonder about the consequences. You know: Lay down with the dogs, stand up with fleas...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > Consequently, those who conquer world dominance in a sector can hardly be > undermined. Try telling your children to leave Whatsapp and start using > Indoona. They will never do it. On Whatsapp they can interact with all their > friends; sending them to Indoona would be like condemning them to a nearly > desert island.

I suspect it's the children that are reading the article in more cases than not.

</comment><comment><USER8> Socialist mambo jumbo!

An exchange doesn't favor the seller - it favors both parties for they wish to rid of what they want less in exchange for what they want more.

But that even isn't the point - it doesn't matter who might be favored - what's mine is mine and it's nobody's business if I sell it or consume it or give it away.

<comment><USER9> _> The article is blatantly Marxist. I don't know how this rubbish ends up on HN all the time._

Karl Marx's contributions to the field of economics are, to put it lightly, vast. Despite the authors' insistence on it's incompleteness, Marx and Engel's 3 volumes constitute a painstakingly detailed and, as evidenced by the lack of serious refutation from the field, accurate analysis of the economic and social systems of their time.

And let's be honest; the guy knew a thing or two about _disruption_.</comment></comment>


How Sun Tzu Would Outflank Patent Trolls - <AUTHOR> http://businessmodelvalidation.com/HowSunTzuWouldOutflankPatentTrolls.aspx

<comment><USER2> Actually, I think would have probably set fire to their homes, flushing them out and into the range of archers. Then sent his chariots in to route those still standing. I know it's what I want to do.

</comment><comment><USER3> Personally one of my favorite responses is in [http://www.audioholics.com/news/industry-news/blue-jeans- str...](http://www.audioholics.com/news/industry-news/blue-jeans-strikes- back).

I particularly like the line, _Not only am I unintimidated by litigation; I sometimes rather miss it._</comment>


Later school start times are associated with more sleep and better performance - <AUTHOR> https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/4/12/eaau6200 <comment><USER3> As a kid I remember waking up at 7 and heading to class which was starting at 8. I was half awake up until about 10 in the morning, I don't know how I was making it to school in one piece (school was within walking distance and was about 15 minutes from home). Also, in the winter at 7 it was still dark and cold I still remember the a magnetic force I had to fight away from the warm cozy bed. That was me at the time. A group of kids didn't seem to have this problem at all, so this early sleepiness phenomena is not universal. Throughout my life I was also a night owl, my most productive and creative moments took place after dark. Recently, however, something changed. I feel much more comfortable in the morning, I even enjoy the quiet hours early in the morning until things start to hustle and bustle and enjoy and am able to go to sleep earlier.

So to conclude, this is not a universal thing and this is the problem, we are all different so a one sized solution does both good and bad.

<comment><USER4> How has your diet changed over the years? I'd be curious to know if different foods and eating schedules might affect circadian rhythm.

<comment><USER3> My partner is a vegetarian and a good cook so we don't serve meat at home. Consequentially I eat less meat now; I eat less meat also because the meat quality isn't very good unless you go to a very good restaurant and that is not 100% guaranteed either. I've got a friend who ran a restaurant business and was shocked to learn the price of the chicken was suspiciously low. After doing some digging I realized what most meat we eat, how it is produced, what animals are fed and all the antibiotics they're fed are quite bad for us. I frankly lost my appetite for meat. I started eating more fish instead, not a very good decision either but nonetheless better imho. I still eat meat but not too often, not sure if I'll ever become a fulltime vegetarian.

Second, I stopped drinking alcohol excessively and completely stopped eating sugary drinks or sugary things in general. Rarely whenever I eat something sugary, because I'm no longer used to it, it makes me very nauseous.

<comment> crooked-v > and all the antibiotics they're fed

To nitpick on this one, the societal problem isn't the antibiotics, per se... it's that antibiotics get used to paper over an incredibly unhealthy and unclean environment, and that in doing they so encourage the rise of 'superbug' antibiotic-resistant diseases.

<comment><USER3> But also the mass over consumption of meat isn't very normal either, plenty of countries are vegetarian, take for example parts of India for generations; to me at least, the current practices in our modern meat factories kill my appetite. I do still consume some animal products but always try to get those from farmers, and for one it's noticeably tasting better.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I teach at the high school level. Everyone knows this is true and some districts in my area are changing to a later start time; however, there is a great deal of institutional momentum working against the change. Primarily due to primary school start times, bussing schedules, and athletics.

<comment><USER6> > Primarily due to primary school start times, bussing schedules, and > athletics.

Not only that. Starting late also creates a problem for parents.

Parents need to go to work. If kids take bus, kids usually need to board on the school bus before parents leave home. If parents drive kids to school, then the late school start time will become totally unacceptable for many parents because of the conflict with their work start time.

<comment><USER7> Yeah, it's a nice thought, but completely unworkable. I live 0.99 miles (seriously!) from my kids' school. The minimum bus distance in 1 mile - <USER2> they won't send buses to pick up my kids. That means that they have to walk 0.99 miles, sometimes in the rain, sometimes in the cold, across three fairly busy intersections, or I have to drive them. My commute is about an hour long (longer because I'm driving at the worst possible time), so I'm getting into work later than everybody else as it is.

<comment><USER8> Is there a reason they can not walk to school? It doesn't really take long to walk a mile and it is very good for them mentally to get a walk in before and after school anyway. There may be times when inclement weather might make it a little miserable but proper clothes can address that in all but the most extreme cases. I grew up in MT and had to walk about a mile to my elementary school and almost a mile to my High School bus stop. I enjoyed those walks and the time to think it afforded.

<comment><USER9> In my country there is no really the concept of the "school bus". Google Maps says I walked exactly 1.0 miles... climbing a mountain, because my school was in the freaking top of a mountain. In some parts climbs were so steep that nowadays there are escalators on the streets.

I did that from 4 to 18 yo. It did never bother me, sometimes I literally did the whole way back running non-stop for fun, it was kind of like a roller coaster. But:

\- Weather was generally good

\- I obviously didn't walk alone when I was 4 yo.

We don't even know the age of those kids. Maybe they will walk to school alone... when they are older.

<comment><USER10> How many 30-40 mph roads/intersections were between your house and school?

Unfortunately this is the kind of thing that prevents many kids from walking to school in the US, even in cities, there are often few safe walking routes, incomplete sidewalks, poorly designed intersections across wide, fast moving roads.

<comment><USER11> Sounds like you have bigger problems than school starting times. I'd be working on the local municipaility to get the facilities in place. Being able to walk anywhere you need to go should be one of those human rights. It's basic to our physology.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This could have made my formative years immeasurably better. I woke up between 5:30-6am every school day between grades 6-12. I had an incredibly hard time focusing on and starting my homework, and was often up past midnight. It was a vicious cycle of not sleeping and depression and anxiety. Typical school hours are insane for the kids who need sleep the most. Even being chronically underslept, I'd still easily stay up until 1 or 2am on weekends which I'm "too old for" (read: my circadian rhythms have changed as I reached adulthood). As a kid, I was frequently sleeping till 11am or noon on weekend days to try to make up for it. It's just not healthy -- any of it.

<comment><USER13> Yeah, same here. I remember getting home from high school around 2:00 (even earlier if I didn't have a class for the 6th hour). I would just collapse on the couch and sleep for an hour. Then, of course, I'd have trouble falling asleep at night, leading to it being hard to get up. Lather, rinse, repeat.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Reminds me of when Boston tried to make some changes to start times for a number of reasons:

What happened when Boston Public Schools tried for equity with an algorithm

[https://apps.bostonglobe.com/ideas/graphics/2018/09/equity-m...](https://apps.bostonglobe.com/ideas/graphics/2018/09/equity- machine/)

"But no one anticipated the crush of opposition that followed. Angry parents signed an online petition and filled the school committee chamber, turning the plan into one of the biggest crises of Mayor Marty Walsh's tenure. The city summarily dropped it. The failure would eventually play a role in the superintendent's resignation."

<comment><USER15> The Boston plan was to move a lot of younger students to earlier start times. People seem to just shrug this part off for some reason. People talk about the benefit of later start times for teenagers, but the negative impact that earlier start times would have on younger students gets ignored.

<comment><USER16> The younger kids _should_ be going earlier, at least around here. They start after 9:00! They've had two of their most alert hours of the day already by then.

This is so the older kids can start earlier. There are only so many buses. Adjust one to start later and the other starts earlier, and vice-versa. The high schools should have the 9:00 start and the elementaries should get their 7:40 start or whatever it is, assuming the whole window can't be adjusted.

Nb. I've had it explained to my by people in education that early starts in high school are insisted upon by the sports folks, so they can have longer afternoon practices with sunlight in the Winter, and that there's no hope of switching start times up on a large scale without attacking that constituency and winning, which is... probably not gonna happen.

<comment><USER15> The Boston plan was to start elementary school kids at 7:15, which is why parents were complaining about forcing young kids out of bed at 5:30-6:00 am. Not an unreasonable criticism, I think (there were also complaints from working families that they'd have to pay more for after school childcare).

But you're right that part of the problem was that there was no interest in spending more on transportation (or in generally improving the poor state of transportation). I'd say it's also worth questioning why we insist that all students need to go to school at the same time. The education system seems needlessly rigid (though I suppose imposing a certain amount of conformity is one of its goals).

<comment><USER16> Oof, OK, yeah, _no one_ should have to be somewhere at 7:15AM. 7:30's pushing it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Interesting study, but there are some potential issues.

One is that it is small, about 100 students.

The other is that the demographics of the students at the second school shift between the 2 years. This may confound the study due to cultural differences. For example, in my limited experience, it seems that white parents are more strict about bedtime than Asian parents, and if that is the case, more sleep may simply be a result that the second group had parents who pushed stricter bedtimes.

From: [https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/advances/suppl/2018/...](https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/advances/suppl/2018/12/10/4.12.eaau6200.DC1/aau6200_SM.pdf)

School RHS FHS

Year 2016 2017 2016 2017

Students 51 41 41 41

% Female 53 49* 56 58

% White 76 75 2 19

% Asian 10 5 54 46

% Hispanic 6 5 7 7

% African American 8 5 32 22

% Unknown/other 0 10 10 10

Age (mean ±SEM) 16.08 ± 0.05 16.27 ± 0.08 16.13 ± 0.05 16.13 ± 0.06

I would take these results with a grain of salt.

<comment><USER18> >The other is that the demographics of the students at the second school shift between the 2 years

Not really. The first class had 21 Asian students, the second had 20. The small sample limits the use of this study, but it's not the only one out there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I've posted this before, but it's relevant again:

My high school started at 7am. I also took the bus; which picked up around 6:15am; so I usually woke up around 5:45am during the week. I would often nod off during my first or second period; and routinely took 2-3 hour naps when I got home from school; which screwed up my ability to fall asleep early at night or get much homework done. I sometimes wonder what my academics would have been like if I was actually awake during those first two periods.

(This was in the 90's)

<comment><USER20> Same schedule still exists here, and we're on the East Coast.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I think it applies to adults just as much, except most adults "get used to it". So at my company we've always started the day at 10am and everyone cites it as one of the things they like the most about working here (we then end at 5.30pm – which also works out well as all the 5pm rush traffic has cleared up by then).

</comment><comment><USER22> My kid starts elementary school at 9am with one late start day a week. We're able to spend more time with her in the evening because we don't feel rushed to get her to bed so she gets enough sleep. I also find she doesn't seem totally exhausted when she gets up in the morning.

That being said, my spouse and I are very fortunate in that we have flexible jobs with part-time remote work ability. I can't imagine how a single parent working two jobs would deal with the schedule change and late start day.

</comment><comment><USER23> Reading this thread it appears high school in the US starts a lot earlier than in the UK.

Even the article states: "We show that a delay in the high school start times from 7:50 to 8:45 a.m. had several measurable benefits for students".

In my experience at least, high school in the UK doesn't start earlier than 9am and usually starts at 9:30am. End of day is about 3:30/4:00pm.

What's the reasoning for starting to early in the US?

<comment><USER24> I'm not sure if its universal, but in my district the biggest reason - or at least the most often stated challenge to changing the times for high school - is that we have limited buses that service the high school first, then middle and then elementary.

<comment><USER25> My district uses that excuse, and the logical answer is to swap elementary and high school start times.

In my district the HS start is 7:20, middle at 8:05, elementary at 9:00.

Any parent will tell you 9:00 is a crazy late time of the morning for a kindergartener.

<comment><USER26> I would wonder whether anyone who willingly created such a backwards schedule could be fit to run a school, except I've met the people who run the public schools in this country...

<comment><USER5> Advocate. Public institutions are strong when locals are engaged in their success.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> My head just can't operate on max level at morning for years. "go to bed earlier" isn't helpful here, working at nights too. Tried several times to change my owl-type nature, but without any viable success. The fix is easy: pretend to be productive, and be a rock star at the end of day.

</comment><comment><USER28> I vehemently disagree with this. The problem is that there are only 24 hours in the day. That's just not enough time to go to school, sleep 9.25 hours (recommended for teens, as I've been told), and still participate in sports, do homework, and (god forbid) play video games.

This would only move the problem later, not solve it. Even worse, parents would have to move around their own work schedules to get kids to school on time. The real problem, in my opinion, is the massive unchecked amounts of homework that get piled on students every year. Each teacher thinks that their amount of homework is reasonable but it only takes one bad teacher to cripple a kid's schedule. Writing a 5-6 page paper in middle school never taught anyone anything, but it did take away time that could have been used constructively.

<comment><USER29> What is the "this" that you don't agree with? The theorized causality? It's not a question of whether the kids in the Seattle study slept more or not. They did sleep more. The question is why, and I think most people agree that it is clearly because of the later school start time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I got pretty mediocre grades in middle school. I always stayed up way too late on my computer. However I noticed looking back there was one exceptional quarter: when my first class was PE.

I think running a mile at the start of every day did something to my brain. I advocate PE as the first class for all students.

</comment><comment><USER31> And yet, school start times won't change.

<comment><USER32> It's a matter of incomplete metrics. What impact do later school start times have on parents? How about parents' workplaces, especially for shift work? Regulatory capture means convenience for businesses is likely to trump children's health and performance.

<comment><USER33> I feel it's also a bit about perspective. Is school for learning, or is it a state sponsored day care with a guise of learning? Especially in the early years.

<comment><USER5> We ask schools to be all things for all people, so it is, of course, both and neither.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> When I was in college, the best semester I had was one in which my first classes every day were at 2pm.

I'm pretty sure that's the best I've felt in my entire life.

</comment><comment><USER29> I would like to point out that this is part of the reason that daylight savings time (not just the clock changes associated with daylight savings time) is so dangerous. This is one thing that a state could do today to implement a change for the better: outlaw daylight savings time, giving teenagers and children (not to mention adults) another hour to sleep for much of the year.

<comment><USER35> Would they use it to sleep? Or would they squander it on an extra hour of entertainment?

<comment><USER29> Research suggests that people use it to sleep. It's even been found that people on the eastern edge of a time zone sleep more than on the western edge because the sun goes down "sooner" for them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> A big problem here in US is kids logistics -- parents spend way too much time getting their kids somewhere and back.

In Eastern Europe I remember parents just told me to not forget about pool after school, so I get on the bus and went 6 stops to the pool after school myself.

That only worked since age of 8 for me, of course, before that logistics was probably a problem for my parents as well.

</comment><comment><USER37> Ah the joys of societal chauvinism, where your opinion is a priori wrong because of what you are regardless of evidence or any massive benefits they could possibly get. And the kicker is if you ever point out that you are maltreated they will deny it while maltreating you for daring to point out their casual cruelty.

</comment><comment><USER38> I'm curious if it the benefit comes from starting late compared to your environment or starting late in an absolute sense. The whole of China has just one timezone, so it could be a good place to look at.

</comment><comment><USER39> I was homeschooled so I missed out on a lot of public school stuff, but talking to adults my age and younger I'm continually shocked and horrified about what we're putting kids through; it's unacceptable.

</comment><comment><USER40> I used to wake up around 6:30-40 for a 7:55 start time. I didn't officially "wake up" until after 9:30 or so.

The high school juniors had statewide exams every year so the rest of the high schoolers got to go in after 9/9:30. I woke up much more well-rested and oddly enough, I felt happier. I really wished that a later start time was the norm.

I doubt it'll be, since one of the reasons why schools start early is due to parents' schedules, but who knows.

<comment><USER41> Said more times than I care to count: "My brain is not fully on until 10:00 am. Do you want me writing 1 hour of code in that state, or 2 hours of code?"

(A couple jobs, showing up regularly at 9:45 was tolerated, if not exactly appreciated. Those were glorious times.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> They don't care though. School was never about learning, but discipline. Through that lens, the fact its uncomfortable without purpose is by design.

</comment><comment><USER43> A high school educator once told me that the impetus for the early schedule was businesses who wanted teens to be able to work for them in the afternoon.

</comment><comment><USER44> My high school started at 7:17am and I would have given _anything_ for a 9am, or even an 8am, start time.

<comment><AUTHOR> 7:17am? Really? Not 7:15am, not 7:30am?

<comment><USER45> Not op but my middle school had a lot of odd schedule times to avoid students memorizing when a class ended. It didn't really work. Some teachers couldn't figure out when classes ended though.

<comment><USER46> > Not op but my middle school had a lot of odd schedule times to avoid > students memorizing when a class ended.

But wouldn't that also mean a lot of students didn't know when classes started?

I've never heard of school starting at 7:17. It was always a round number like 7 am or quarter intervals ( 7:15, 7:30, 7:45 ).

I don't think I've ever had anything like that for work meetings or interviews. If someone scheduled a meeting for 7:37, he'd get laughed at.

<comment><USER47> You (hopefully!) don't have six or seven 45 minute back-to-back meetings, with a few minutes of designated "passing time" to travel between them.

With those constraints, it's hard to develop a schedule that sticks to round numbers. This is especially true if you want to minimize downtime: your officemates can be trusted to productively--or at least quietly--occupy a few minutes of downtime, but many schools don't seem to think kids can.

My high school, for example, ended at 2:18pm (I can still picture the clock), but I think this was a consequence of starting at 7:30am.

<comment><USER46> > My high school, for example, ended at 2:18pm (I can still picture the > clock), but I think this was a consequence of starting at 7:30am.

That's interesting. If your classes are 45 mins or an hour long and you get 5, 10 or 15 minutes to get to your next class, how do you end up with 2:18pm? Also, even if it was 2:18pm, I'd imagine most schools would just round that up to 2:20pm or let you leave a few minutes earlier at 2:15pm.

I don't ever recall any of my classes ending in a none-round number ( time that didn't end with a 0 or a 5 ). I don't recall any school letting me out at a none-round number.

As a matter of fact, I don't recall any stores, government offices or tv shows that didn't open or start at a "round number".

And every meeting I've had ( even multiple meetings in a day ) always was at a "round number". I can't imagine saying lets start the meeting at 2:17pm. Most of the time we'd bump it to 2:30pm. And if we were constrained for time to 2:20pm.

<comment><USER47> I can't remember how long we got between classes (it was /many/ years ago), but it was far, far less than fifteen minutes, and maybe not even five. You had to hustle between distant classes.

Just for kicks, I searched for "high school bell schedule" and about half seem to run on round numbers and half seem to be totally bizarre. For example:

\- Starts at 7:45 but heads off the rails quickly: [https://lchs.lpsd.ca/about/bell-schedule](https://lchs.lpsd.ca/about/bell- schedule) \- 5/15/50 minute blocks: [http://beaconsfield.lbpsb.qc.ca/Parents/Bell- Schedule](http://beaconsfield.lbpsb.qc.ca/Parents/Bell-Schedule)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> As someone who attended high school during the afternoon, I am not shocked.

Having to attend six am classes in college is the sole reason I didn't graduate cum laude. I had the gpa for it, but I had to repeat a subject just because it was that early and I'd rather miss the classes.

</comment><comment><USER49> Why We Sleep is a good book on this topic and addresses many of the comments and concerns in this thread.

<comment><USER29> It's an entertaining book, and I like some of the things that it is trying to do, but it has some issues that it really shouldn't have.

[https://guzey.com/books/why-we-sleep/](https://guzey.com/books/why-we-sleep/)

<comment><AUTHOR> "Matthew Walker's "Why We Sleep" Is Riddled with Scientific and Factual Errors"

Thanks for posting this (upvoted you).

I was just about to order that book, but I usually research critiques of the book before buying it. I found yours here just because I'm the original poster (OP) and was reading through comments.

I am not going to buy the book, at least for now. Thanks again.

Edit: There's also a HN thread about the blog post that you shared [0].

[0]: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21546850](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21546850)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> When I was a teenager we had some natural disaster and the highschools had to share sites, the way they did it was we did school 12-6. We would eat dinner togeather after school I think we enjoyed it despite not being the norm

</comment><comment><USER51> It's an interesting thought experiment, what is harder for society?

-Going to bed earlier? -Rescheduling everything to be later?

As we know from many parts of Latin America and other equatorial countries, the eventual result is dinner at 9 or 10 pm.

I have no idea what is better...

</comment><comment><USER52> There are so many ways in which school is not optimized for learning.

</comment><comment><USER53> I have always had noon school..so the timings were from 10-5 pm. Many of my friends had morning school from 7-3 pm. I do not see any difference in sleep or performance due to this.

</comment><comment><USER54> And yet work start times won't adjust.

</comment><comment><USER55> How about just get kids to go to bed earlier?

<comment><USER56> There's evidence that some people are biologically pre-disposed towards waking up late, aka "owls" [0]. During adolescence, the tendency for delayed sleep phase rises to 7-16% [1], though it drops down to 1 in 600 for adults.

While never formally diagnosed with DSPD, I've struggled with chronotype/sleep issues my whole life, and it made public education a nightmare. I'm often still in a high-energy mental state at 2am (possibly heritable, my mother is the same way). Putting my head on the pillow is a futile gesture; I'll get tired faster if I get up and do something. I've found mitigation strategies (limiting blue light is the biggest), but it doesn't change that my energy starts low in the morning and steadily accumulates, while "larks" are the exact opposite.

I've only managed to function in my career due to much of the tech industry being highly flexible on scheduling; probably 30-40% of my output happens after 10pm, on average.

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

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> I suppose later school start times would also be associated with problematically late work start times, as such the school start times must be structured to give the optimal work start time under capitalism - and probably under most systems that require lots of people to work at specific times of the day.

<comment><USER57> I guess I'm in a bad mood today (splitting headache 5th day in a row), but why did the above get downvoted? It isn't apparent and I was wrong to claim it was? I'm wrong that later work times would be problematic for most employers? Is it the use of the word capitalism (I didn't capitalize it? It's a noun so I shouldn't) which is a reasonable description of the system that most of the Western world runs under, and really most of the world. Is it that I then went on to qualify my use of capitalism by saying lots of systems would also work the same way, is it that my qualification was sort of imprecise?

What possible reason, under the Hacker News guidelines would cause the above comment to be downvoted?

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> I never buy these stories. Why is it that an 18 year old high school student has trouble getting up and off to school by 7:30/ 8:00 am, but an 18 year old marine has no problems getting up at 4:30 am?

<comment><USER56> Self-selection? I imagine those are biologically wired for a late-night chronotype either don't join the Marines, or wash out relatively quickly.

<comment><USER35> Or maybe the more structured environment of the military enforces early bedtimes vs. lax family life where parents zone out on smartphones while their kids are left to their own devices (pun intended) to enforce their own bedtimes.

<comment><USER58> Correct. It's all discipline. When the school has late start, do the kids go to bed at the same time and get more rest? Nope. They stay up later.

<comment><USER59> You sign up voluntarily for the military in my lifetime. No so much for school. People tend to submit more readily when they aren't being compelled to do something. Even if they don't end up liking it, there's a tendency to act in accordance with a choice you made.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> This is well known, but it also has impact on lots of other interconnected issues. Such as parents work schedules, that effect stability, that effect students learning as well. It will also impact school budgets, which then influences what kind of supplies and teachers a school gets, which also has a big impact on learning, and on and on and on.

Not saying we shouldn't do it, I just feel like sometimes we see an idea that would help things and then jump to, obviously there is no reason not to do it, it must be evil <insert bogyman here government, corporations, lazy teachers unions, Illuminati, leprechauns>. We must remember we live in an incredibly complex system and pushing for changes in just one part will have ramifications that must be considered downstream.

<comment><USER29> Are you arguing that the ramifications for society of correcting for this issue are net negative? I would guess the opposite and think that we are going to see ever more schools pushing back start times in the next several decades. We are already seeing some acting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> Oh, Jesus Christ—so let's force kids into another Procrustes Bed, eh? Let a different tail wag the dog?

There are those of us who naturally wake up early (I'm one, and I know plenty of others), and there are those of use who naturally sleep until noon.

Obviously, later start times would be awesome for late sleepers. They would also suck hard for those of us who have already been up for hours before school even starts.

A German friend of mine told me her school started at 07:00 every day and finished at noon. She said she preferred it that way, and so would I have.

What's wrong with having staggered start times for high schools? Some students could choose to start at 07:00, others as late as the afternoon. We'd fit more classes into the same school buildings, making potentially more efficient use of public resources.

<comment><USER62> > They would also suck hard for those of us who have already been up for hours > before school even starts.

Why? If you are up early, you can use the morning to do whatever you want to.

<comment><USER61> You're not a morning person, are you?

I sure wouldn't have been getting a part-time job or been out playing with my friends at 06:00 in the morning, so, no, I couldn't "use the morning to do whatever [I] want to".

Especially if "what I want to do" is get my classes done and out of the way.

<comment><USER62> I am not a morning person, but my 2 year old is :). We have a few hours free every morning before she has to be at preschool. We read books, go for bike rides, go to the park, make large breakfasts, etc.

There's lots to do in the morning. The only disadvantages are that it is sometimes cold, and nobody else is up yet.

<comment><USER61> "The only disadvantages" you say, when I've already given you a few. There are fewer options in the mornings—and one of those fewer options is "getting classes over with" (to bring this back on topic), with people suggesting pushing classes back even later.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> This is ridiculous. What has anything of these to do with time? If you live at the east coast of the US, just set your time to GMT, and you can enjoy waking up at noon.

We need a culture of encouraging school student to go to sleep early and wake up early, and not overtaxing their health by staying up late and wasting time.

<comment> crooked-v Teenagers are biologically driven to stay up late and wake up late, as shown in studies of sleep schedules in laboratory conditions: [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2820578/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2820578/)

> Adolescents continue to show a delayed circadian (or internal clock) phase > as indicated by daily endocrine rhythms even after several weeks of > regulated schedules that allow for sufficient sleep. This delay is > maintained under controlled laboratory conditions in which there is limited > possibility for social influence.

<comment><USER61> Plenty of adolescents are not "biologically driven to stay up late and wake up late". I woke up at 05:00 or so nearly every morning when I was a teenager—per my internal clock—and I'm not alone.</comment></comment></comment>