Pelorus Jack - asimjalis
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pelorus_Jack
======
vore
Unfortunately, as often is with these things, the truth might be less exciting
that the legend: [http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2016/10/pelorus-
jack...](http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2016/10/pelorus-jack-hero-
dolphin-guided-ships-dangerous-water-early-20th-century/) :(

However, if you'd like to savor the magic, the truth and the legend can be one
and the same: who knows what really happened in 1909, after all :)

~~~
jszymborski
Is it less wonderful that, in moments of great danger and fear, this dolphin
was a symbol of joy and good fortune for the sailors on the ship?

It's pretty magical to me to think that a dolphin, just doing dolphin things
and playing in the wake of a giant wooden sea vessel, was enough to see those
sailors through life-and-death situations.

Little reminders of good in the world, regardless of whether the reminders
themselves are aware of it, can really change things for the better for a
whole lot of people.

------
d_t_w
Pelorus Bridge is the most beautiful swimming spot if you're ever in that part
of the world. The bridge runs over the river which runs into the sound that
Pelorus Jack was named after.

[https://www.doc.govt.nz/parks-and-recreation/places-to-
go/ma...](https://www.doc.govt.nz/parks-and-recreation/places-to-
go/marlborough/places/pelorus-bridge-scenic-reserve/)

~~~
Intermernet
Note to the unwary: If you ever find yourself in that part of the world, be
prepared for everything you see to be accurately describable as "the most
beautiful".

The entire south island of New Zealand is "the most beautiful"!

~~~
mkl
Heh. It looks like ordinary NZ bush to me! I'm not sure I'd say the entire
South Island though, as quite a bit of it is boring farmland.

Here are the places in the article:
[https://www.google.com/maps/@-41.051886,173.738907,51935m/da...](https://www.google.com/maps/@-41.051886,173.738907,51935m/data=!3m1!1e3)

Pelorus Sound is in the middle and extends down to Havelock. French Pass is at
the top. There's not nearly as much regular boat traffic through either
anymore, as most inter-island traffic takes the big Interislander ferry which
comes in to Picton (just south of map), and then there's a road to Nelson
(over to the west).

------
shirak_untel
>In 1904, someone aboard the SS Penguin tried to shoot Pelorus Jack with a
rifle. Despite the attempt on his life, Pelorus Jack continued to help ships.
According to folklore, however, he no longer helped the Penguin, which
shipwrecked in Cook Strait in 1909.

If this is true, it's the most amazing thing. Imagine a dolphin having a
grudge with a ship

~~~
coding_lobster
It seems too good to be true in my opinon.

~~~
Sharlin
Not _that_ far-fetched, though. Corvids, for example, are known to hold
grudges against specific humans who have done them wrong.

~~~
eitland
A friend of mine had a parrot that greeted me and some friends as we arrived.
Shortly after arriving on of my friends started making faces towards it and
immediately it tried to attack him, but left him alone for the rest of the
night.

As we left the parrot said bye to everyone but him.

A week or two later we came back. My friend had forgotten. The parrot had not
and immediately attacked as he came close :-)

------
gorgoiler
Of interest: the first link in the article defines _fl. <date range>_ as a
standard syntax meaning the dates in which someone was know to be alive and
_flourishing_.

I did not know this until today.

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

~~~
bdefore
No one wins a flds medal after 40.

------
gHosts
Almost more interesting than Pelorus Jack, and is currently observable is
French Pass, the hazard he helped them navigate through...

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

> The pass is 500 metres (1,600 ft) across, but the main navigation channel
> (the "throat" or "narrows") contracts down to only 100 metres (330 ft) with
> a 20-metre (66 ft) deep shoaling region. Most of the rest of the pass is
> broken reef.[8]

> On one side is Cook Strait with a tidal range up to 2 metres (6.6 ft), and
> on the other side is Tasman Bay with a tidal range up to 4 metres (13
> ft).[9] This can result in substantial pressure gradients across the pass,
> complicated by a phase or time difference of about 25 minutes between the
> high tides on either side. Peak flow in the throat of the pass is around 4
> metres per second (13 ft/s).[10]

> Near to the pass are deep holes where strong vertical flows can occur.[11]
> In 2000, student divers taking part in a drift dive during the local ebb
> flow were separated from their surface float and caught in a whirlpool. This
> dragged them into "Jacob's Hole", a 68-metre (223 ft)[12] deep depression
> south west of the pass. The depth of this descent resulted in multiple
> fatalities. The group appears to have been drawn deep into the hole and then
> returned to the surface again. A dive computer record of one of the
> survivors show a depth of up to 89-metre (292 ft). According to the
> coroner's report, the accident occurred on a falling tide, so the current
> was flowing from the south west to the north east.[13][14]

------
yesenadam
Thank you. What an amazing story!

------
presiozo
The most brilliant part:

Occupation - Dolphin

------
saagarjha
I find it quite sad that multiple people have tried to kill it :(

------
krthr
What a beautiful story!

And as always the human being leaving his mark. One shot :(

------
lowdose
More about dolphins in this youtube video with dr. Laurance Doyle at 30
minutes. In it languages are compared and apparently language dolphins follow
Zipf law.

[https://youtu.be/H30NipTkA5s](https://youtu.be/H30NipTkA5s)
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zipf%27s_law](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zipf%27s_law)

------
maxmouchet
There is a similar, and fascinating, story of killer whales co-operating with
humans:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killer_whales_of_Eden,_New_Sou...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killer_whales_of_Eden,_New_South_Wales)

~~~
boudin
There is also this which is a bit similar:
[https://www.livescience.com/20027-dolphins-work-
fishermen.ht...](https://www.livescience.com/20027-dolphins-work-
fishermen.html)

------
echelon
I'm a little late to this thread, but the French Pass looks like no cake walk
to navigate:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2nCrjDRJb4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2nCrjDRJb4)

------
aetherspawn
I'm waiting for someone to come into this thread and say the dolphin was just
doing it for food.

Some can not accept that dolphins are more sophisticated than some humans, on
the basis they are smart and maybe bored.

~~~
usrusr
Dolphin equivalent of a trainspotter. Doing it for food would be objectively
intelligent.

~~~
def8cefe
>It is an important and popular fact that things are not always what they
seem. For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was
more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much – the wheel,
New York, wars, and so on – whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck
about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always
believed that they were far more intelligent than man – for precisely the same
reasons.

-HG2G, Douglas Adams

------
quijoteuniv
[https://www.reddit.com/r/dolphinconspiracy/](https://www.reddit.com/r/dolphinconspiracy/)


Ask HN: Learning a foreign language - xaybey

For the past 6 months I've been learning Russian and am still struggling to break through.  While I'm making progress, it's very slow going and I'm looking for a better way short of moving there (maybe in a few years).
Every piece of advice I've received has fallen into 1 of 2 categories - the traditional (grammar heavy lectures, canned dialogues, workbook exercises, flashcard drills...) or the pragmatic (talking with native speakers, local language groups, learning only the vocabulary for common situations, watching subtitled movies).  I've tried different cocktails of all these.  I do learn from the traditional methods, but only if I repeat them 10 times.  And while the practical methods are more authentic, I end up drowning in the uncharted waters of the language instead of absorbing it.
Is learning a language just miles of crawling through the shit, or is there a way to make non-linear progress?  I'm willing to try anything.
======
redsable
I am a language teacher, so factor that into the advice that follows: 1\. Find
a language teacher that excels at teaching beginners. Tell the teacher that
you only want to study 1 hour a week but that you promise to do 6-10 hours a
week of homework (for at least 3 months). Ask for a plan from the teacher
based on this schedule. A good teacher is much like a good doctor and should
be able to give you a good plan. The teacher should be able to fill those 6-10
hours with productive work.

2\. Do not evaluate yourself based on what you can produce (say) but rather on
what you can understand. Listening in particular is the royal road to language
learning. Also, if you can understand slow normal speech you will have
personal proof of progress which will reduce self-doubt. Remember
communication is not possible without understanding.

3\. Make sure that you have mastered all the phonemes in the target language.
By doing this first you can avoid many problems later.

~~~
xaybey
IYO, what is the best audio to listen to? Tapes for language learners? Radio?
Subtitled movies?

~~~
seanccox
When I was learning Turkish, I spent a summer listening to an hour-long talk
radio show every morning. Three guys chatting about local issues and making
jokes, with callers phoning in to offer their opinions. It bumped my
comprehension to effectively fluent, and I learned a lot of colloquialisms
that make me sound more fluent than I actually feel when I speak.

~~~
laaph
Can you tell me the talk show you are referring to and if it's accessible in
the US? I'm trying to learn Turkish, and compared to when I was trying to
learn Spanish, it feels like there are very little accessible resources.

~~~
seanccox
Sure thing. It is "Modern Sabahlar". Here's a link to the podcast archive.
They are very good about keeping it current. You can also follow them on
Twitter for updates.

[http://podcast.modernsabahlar.org/](http://podcast.modernsabahlar.org/)
[https://twitter.com/modernsabahlar](https://twitter.com/modernsabahlar)

------
panglott
Don't think about it as "language learning" or "language study". That is not
how humans learn languages. Think about it as "language acquisition",
something you will pick up over time. There is a bunch of research about this,
much of it focused on classroom methods, however. Search for books on "second
language acquisition"; but the only popular science book I know of isn't
coming out until August:
[http://www.amazon.com/dp/0262029235/](http://www.amazon.com/dp/0262029235/)

All humans learn languages by interacting with other speakers, constantly
attempting to communicate more successfully ourselves, and trying to
understand the communication of other people.

As adults, we have a harder time perfecting the target language's phonology
(or perhaps this just tends to fossilize), but we have a huge advantage in
learning the grammar/syntax of the target language, because we already know
about such things in our own language. We don't have to make the massive
cognitive leaps that children do—we've already done that. This is what all the
emphasis on grammar exercises is about: trying to supercharge our language
learning ability. But it has to be built on a foundation of interaction,
comprehensive input, and effective communication.

Learning a language to near-native fluency levels is a years- or decades-long
process, and most people will stop at a level that they find "good enough" and
let their second language fossilize. And there's nothing wrong with that, it
probably is indeed good enough!

It's a question of continually finding new motivations, and motivation over a
long period of time, of setting new goals, and especially establishing an
identity as a person who speaks that language. Just have fun, keep it
interesting, engage in it constantly (or intensively). You'll be more likely
to keep at it if you enjoy it and don't look at it as "miles of crawling
through the shit".

~~~
xaybey
I don't know where I got the idea that one can reach fluency in a year
(especially without living in the country). Perhaps the marketing weasels.
Thanks for the perspective.

------
dimitar
If there was a short-cut, wouldn't everyone take it?

Here are some tips:

* Finding a Russian-speaking buddy you could go out with shouldn't be too hard look. Look around for local ex-pats - at least Russian-speakers are everywhere. No need to actually go to Russia.

* Drink a small amount of alcohol when practising speaking - its called a social lubricant for a reason. Or do things you enjoy - find a buddy you could talk with about your hobbies in Russian.

* There is a false dichotomy between practical and formal learning - they complement each other. Unless you are 5, learning a language only from practising can form bad habits and learning only in a classroom means you cannot apply your knowledge.

Желаю Удачи!

~~~
xaybey
I never thought about having a drink before speaking Russian - that probably
would help muffle my self consciousness.

------
BillFranklin
I actually built a Russian app for my sister to keep up her Russian:
[https://billfranklin.eu/russian](https://billfranklin.eu/russian)

It was a fork of my German app which was on HN fp a couple months ago. While
the app was just to scratch an itch and probably isn't as useful as the many
others available (Memrise, Duolingo, etc ad finitum), working on a project
that made me use German was great for learning (probably more effective than
the app itself).

So my ¢2 - work on something that forces you to use the language. This project
was basically an immersion course (of course a very short one).

------
arien
How do we learn to talk when we are toddlers? You point at something and ask
what is it, you learn its name, you repeat it out loud (use it in a few
phrases, with more or less success). You generally ask something about it, too
(what does it do, why is it so big, etc...). So when you are done, you know
the name, the use, how does it looks like, what does it do, etc.

You have to understand that just memorising words or phrases won't get you
very far. You need to associate these words with something that makes sense to
you, to fully understand and integrate them into your brain.

I teach myself languages as a hobby, now and then. I've learnt some Japanese
and Chinese, for example (using iKnow [1], great website and apps). I wanted
to learn the Russian alphabet but was having a hard time reading the
characters until I came across an article [2] which provides cheeky
associative method. It's brilliant, I can read any text in Russian now (I
can't understand it yet, but hey, it's a first step!).

[1] [http://iknow.jp/](http://iknow.jp/) [2]
[http://gadling.com/2009/03/30/gadling-teaches-you-to-read-
th...](http://gadling.com/2009/03/30/gadling-teaches-you-to-read-the-cyrillic-
alphabet-in-5-minutes/)

------
simonblack
Immersion seems to be the best way. Just use the foreign-language all the
time.

Those of us who have gone along the foreign language route seem to find that
it takes a short but definite time-lag within the brain when 'switching out'
the foreign-language and 'switching-in' the native-language. And then the same
thing happens with the reverse, you have to 'switch-out' the native-language,
and 'switch-in' the foreign-language. Consequently, by continuing to use the
native-language, you never get out of the habit of thinking in your native-
language.

On the other hand, when never having to 'switch-in' the native-language during
immersion, the brain gets much more acclimated to the foreign-language and
after a few days to a week, some thinking in the foreign-language occurs. The
down-side to this is that you feel a bit like you're living in a bubble,
because you don't get to speak freely (easily) to anyone else while you're in
immersion, and it just feels so relieving when you finally get to speak to
someone else in your native-language.

Good Luck. And if you go travelling to places where that foreign-language is
spoken, try not to go with a spouse or friend that only speaks your native-
language. They will prevent you from learning the other one.

~~~
xaybey
The time lag bit rings true. I think you're describing a longer term version
of the peopleware phenonmenon, where a programmer needs 15 minutes without
distraction to "get in the zone".

------
leap_ahead
Not quite giving you any tips, but a word of warning. Avoid learning Russian
through Russian-language community sites based on user-submitted content such
as comments, posts etc. For the last couple of decades we've been seeing a
trend of getting more and more people who are illiterate in writing, with the
last three years seeing an explosive epidemic on our hands. It is now very
rare to see user-submitted content written with the quality ready for
publication. Speaking of reasons, there are many. Young people don't like to
study and become smart so they don't read books anymore. Basically they hang
out online and learn illiterate language from each other, such that these
incorrect forms of speech have now proliferated to every corner of the web,
polluting everything and affecting the rest of the Internet users, gradually
replacing the correct forms with the wrong ones in their minds.

If I were to take HN community for example, this level of quality writing many
display while expressing their thoughts cannot be found on the Russian
community sites anymore.

There is also a staggering amount of hate speech and insults of all kinds.
Most of it is not moderated as this style of interaction has become the
standard way for most users. If it were to be moderated, it would mean wiping
out over 90% of the user-submitted content resulting in a substantial drop of
traffic, so nobody is doing it.

Many people (myself included) are now ignoring Russian sites seeing them as
dumping grounds, preferring to stick with the international community instead.

Read books, not the modern ones, but those from at least 30-40 years ago.
That's where you find a rich beautiful language in all its colors and the
depth of thought.

~~~
xaybey
I don't know exactly what you're referring to (I do read pikabu sometimes).
I've always heard writing correctly is less important than writing at all. Do
you suggest that this isn't true, that sloppy grammar isn't something that can
be improved later?

~~~
leap_ahead
I was trying to highlight the fact that if you intend on improving your
Russian by hanging out on Russian community sites, you're going to be learning
broken language and will be doing yourself a disservice in that regard.

I realize I talked about a local problem that the global community is unaware
of. In short, people are becoming increasingly illiterate, as in they cannot
compose grammatically correct texts, coherently express their thoughts and
sometimes cannot understand certain words from the imaginative literature from
just 50 years ago. People used to have large bookshelves at homes during
Soviet times, now the majority doesn't read anything except what they can find
on social networks. As it is, they unlearn correct language and learn broken
language from their own illiterate fellows. If you attempt to interact with
the community online, you will learn wrong things. And I cannot say if it
would be possible to relearn the corrected variants later. Better not go down
that road.

Basically I'm talking about: wrong spelling of words, non-existent words,
wrong expressions, wrong combinations of words, ways of constructing sentences
that are wrong and incomprehensible, not to mention a large amount of curse
words. You really don't want any of these.

As to the language itself, while it is massively different from English and
related languages families, it is a natural language derived from the
lifestyle of our ancestors. Words are sufficiently different from each other
to be easily recognized and sometimes their sounding alone can give you an
idea of what these could mean like something good or bad or whatever emotions
they might express. Way better than learning German words for instance.

I'm struggling to give you some useful advice, not being a language teacher
however I'm not quite sure where I can help. I'm dwelling on that though.

------
ianpurton
Read some of the research by Paul Nation into how people actually learn
languages. [http://www.victoria.ac.nz/lals/about/staff/paul-nation-
pubsd...](http://www.victoria.ac.nz/lals/about/staff/paul-nation-pubsdate)

In particular this research on how much vocabulary you will need to read and
converse.
[http://www.victoria.ac.nz/lals/about/staff/publications/paul...](http://www.victoria.ac.nz/lals/about/staff/publications/paul-
nation/2006-How-large-a-vocab.pdf)

For vocabulary I did the following.

1\. Learn a few thousand words from scratchcards. (4000-9000 words is ideal,
use a memory technique such as linkwords.)

2\. Buy a kindle and install the foreign language dictionaries.

3\. Start reading simplified books. (Not children's books, they have a
surprisingly large vocabulary. i.e. a 6 year old has around 6000 words of his
native language.)

4\. After this start reading 'normal' books, i..e hunger games. You may have
to fetch a few samples from amazon to find authors with a simple writing
style.

When you get to step 4, the vocabulary acquisition becomes fun.

Forget the Bennie Lewis guy, his stuff is pay for bollocks.

~~~
xaybey
Can you talk more about how you learned thousands of words? I've been drilling
words with quizlet, and find that it takes ~10 drills to burn a given word
into my brain.

~~~
ColinWright
Why do you think it will take less than that? Why are you assuming that there
is a magic bullet?

Yes, some people seem to find it easier than others, but acquiring another
language takes time. For some people, a lot of time, and there is, to
misquote, no "Royal Road to Language."[0]

People are always asking for the easy way to do things. Pratchett wrote about
this[1][2] in the context of writing. Sometimes there is nothing better than
taking a mashup of techniques and just putting in the time.

I've never mastered a second language, but I've got to the point of having
conversations in acquired languages. I always use the same technique:

* Memorise 100 phrases from a phrase book

* Memorise 500 words

* Substitute memorised words into memorised phrases

* Read a book in the target language: preferrably an action novel aimed at 14 year old boys.

* Lather, rinse, repeat.

[0]
[http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Euclid#Attributed](http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Euclid#Attributed)

[1]
[http://terrypratchettappreciation.tumblr.com/post/6680240757...](http://terrypratchettappreciation.tumblr.com/post/66802407570/terry-
pratchetts-advice-for-writers)

[2] [http://jackscarab.tumblr.com/post/105468067469/i-get-
asked-a...](http://jackscarab.tumblr.com/post/105468067469/i-get-asked-all-
the-time-in-letters-and-e-mails)

~~~
EliRivers
_Why do you think it will take less than that? Why are you assuming that there
is a magic bullet?_

Because surely by now someone has hack disrupted this space with a webapp
using DJango and swift across the whole stack with a leveraged angel investor
buyout round.

~~~
pliny
Are you having a stroke, or am I?

~~~
iends
He's having a Series A.

------
imaok
An interesting thing I've noticed about language learning is that it is
different from most skills in that the vast majority of its practitioners are
basically expert level. Learning a new language is uncommon enough that I
rarely met other people who had spent the same amount of time learning the
same language as me. So you end up judging yourself by an internal sense of
progress, by the things you can and can't do. This is sort of like if you were
learning to play the piano and everyone else but a few dabblers were playing
at or near the level of Mozart. Also interesting is that language learners are
always a master of at least one other language, so you inevitably compare
yourself in that way also. It can really skew your expectations.

Also a lot of times in language learning is sort of all our nothing.
Comprehension drops very fast or each additional thing you don't understand in
a sentence. So progress can feel very slow and then suddenly you have a big
jump in understanding.

------
T-R
My basic strategy is that component composition gives you more leverage than
memorizing individual words. Most languages have some degree of composition
for vocabulary, like root-words, prefixes/suffixes, or individual chinese
characters (and the radicals they're built up from) for CJK languages.
Learning those root-words/components and how to put them together into
compound words, or learning how to compose words into sentences by learning
grammar gives you the most leverage, once you have a small base vocabulary to
practice with - it doesn't just let you build more words, it also gives you
bits and pieces you can look for to help you parse out meaning of things you
don't know. For vocabulary, focus memorization on verbs and their conjugation
- nouns and adjectives tend to be easier to look up (and not conjugated as
much as verbs, and so easier to identify), and tend to be easier to infer from
context if you don't know them - if you don't know a noun in conversation, you
or they can usually point to it.

I also listen to music in whatever language I'm learning - I used to use it to
switch my brain between languages on the way from one language class to
another. For memorization, the best way really is to just write it and repeat
it a dozen times, so putting a song on repeat is really useful for refreshing
your memory on commonly used words, practicing pronunciation, and even
occasionally picking up new words by looking up lyrics, etc. Nothing beats
immersion, though, just because, on top of practice (inherently prioritized by
common usage), it gives you all the extra context to infer or reinforce
meaning - memorizing words or working from a textbook means you have no extra
information to go off of but what's written there. If you want to get those
benefits of immersion without actual immersion, find things that mimic those
qualities (extra context, prioritized by common usage, repetition), like
music, kids TV shows, comic books, conversation, etc.

------
thefinalboss
Learning a language requires constant effort and practise and finding a method
that works for YOU. For me what works ( I am learning Korean):

* 1 lesson a week on cafetalk.com (not related to them, great/easy website). We sometimes do grammar/vocab or just free talking

* 1 book. There is a great one for korean called: Magic Korean which has a very good learning style. I have tried another 3-4 books but they did not _click_

* Podcasts while at the gym . I listen to "talk to me in korean" which has over 1000 lessons recorded and still going

* 3 hours studying a week. I usually do it during commute. This includes homework for the online lesson and studying the book

* Live group lessons every Saturday morning. I did these for 10 weeks and stopped due to no availability of lessons at the appropriate level

So in total:

* 1.5 hours of podcasts at the gym

* 1 hour lesson

* 3 hours homework and learning

* (I used to do 2 hour sessions with a group but stopped)

Total: 5.5 hours a week

Also, going to Korea yearly for 1-2 weeks has helped.

Good luck!

------
wodenokoto
Few people reach even simple conversation topics in six month.

Spaced Repition is one of the most succesful systems for memorizing, but
learning vocabulary is not enough. Listening and talking is important too.

People will tell you of all sorts of short cuts and immersive methods and
learning like a baby. There is no easy way. Children are better learners for 2
reasons: they mind is geared toward language learning and secondly children
love repitition.

Matter of fact is, that you need to do category 1 and 2. Yes the Repitition is
boring, yes it's terrible to drown in uncharted waters.

Humans have been teaching adults language for thousands and thousands of
years, and we still haven't found anything close to a silver bullet.

------
gyardley
Russian's a fun one, that's for sure. Stupid noun declension.

Immersion's still your best bet. If you've got the time and the money to put
towards this, I'd recommend a intensive summer program like Middlebury
College's Language School - if you're in Silicon Valley, they've also got a
similar one in Monterey. For two months they put you in a group of about a
dozen with the same level of Russian you've got, make you vow to use Russian
and only Russian with each other 24/7, and then put you through an intensive
program of classes and cultural activities. It makes your head throb, but it
works.

~~~
xaybey
Unfortunately they don't seem to teach Russian. Is there an advantage to this
type of immersion as opposed to just moving to russia for a month?

~~~
gyardley
They certainly do teach Russian. I went through the Russian summer program
myself in the early 2000s.

[http://www.middlebury.edu/ls/](http://www.middlebury.edu/ls/)

[http://www.miis.edu/academics/language/programs/summer](http://www.miis.edu/academics/language/programs/summer)

An immersion program like Middlebury has huge advantages over just moving to
Russia for a month. Off the top of my head:

In Russia, everyone with any English will talk to you in English. People want
to practice their English - or just communicate more efficiently - more than
they want to help you practice your Russian.

In Russia, the people you meet often have no interest in conversing with
someone who speaks Russian poorly. (Russians make great friends, but they're
not the outwardly warmest people to strangers.)

In Russia, when you do find someone to speak with, that person won't be
speaking at your level - they'll be speaking fluent Russian, and quickly.

There's language schools in Russia, but it's unlikely that you'll find one
with as good teachers, and the curriculum won't be as intensive.

Living in an unfamiliar country where you don't speak the language can be
stressful like you wouldn't believe - it's not the same thing as tourism.
Language learning while dealing with all that crap is way harder than language
learning while living like a pampered college student in a pleasant little
Vermont town.

------
Cepr0
Попробуйте учить на память русские детские стихи. Аналогично тому как это
делают дети в детстве, когда они учатся говорить.

Из авторов рекомендую: Михалоква, Маршака, Чуковоского и Барто ([http://deti-
online.com/stihi/](http://deti-online.com/stihi/))

Try to learn by heart Russian poems for children. In the same way as they do
it in childhood, when they learn to talk.

I recommend to start from the the authors: Mihalokv, Marshak, Chukovoskiy and
Barto ([http://deti-online.com/stihi/](http://deti-online.com/stihi/))

~~~
xaybey
отлично, большой спасибо!

~~~
urxvt
s/большой/большое/

------
unimportant
Memorize the 2000 or so most common words via spaced repetition with Anki or
Super Memo using pictures.

Learn the grammar.

Start reading simple books / websites about stuff that interests you,
accompanied with a dictionary website, as you'll need to look up a shitload of
words.

Once you can read well enough, interact with people via forums or web chats in
the language, which will improve your skills further.

If you want to sound like a native you'll need lots of speaking practice until
your brain adapts.

Some people will sound like Arnold Schwarzenegger for life though.

------
laboo
You're at the foot of Mt. Everest asking if there's a shortcut to the top.
Learning a second language is like having a child. It's a life long commitment
that will consume much of your time for 10 years or so, assuming you really
want to be fluent, and will require maintenance thereafter. Consider learning
Russian history and culture instead if it sounds too daunting. That's almost
always a better choice for native English speakers, in my opinion.

~~~
xaybey
Well, I was asking if I was wearing the right kind of boots. The conclusion
seems to be that while there are many boots to choose from, none will make you
walk any faster.

I think your suggestion about history and culture is wise. Sometimes when I
get tired of learning the language I'll read Russian politics or recipes, just
to remind myself why I'm trying to learn it in the first place.

~~~
laboo
Yeah, boots is the better analogy.

------
kstenson
I suspect you might have heard of him but I found Bennie Lewis' blog to be
really good in my own language learning:

[http://www.fluentin3months.com/home/](http://www.fluentin3months.com/home/)

My wife who speaks a couple of languages says that to really ingrain it you
must think in the language, don't think in english and then translate.

------
laurieg
Some advice from someone who thought languages were impossible in school and
then learnt a second language in adulthood:

Input is much better than output. Reading and listening actually give you new
words, new phrases, new connections and new ways of saying things. Speaking
and writing only reinforces the things you already know. If you have never
heard the word "spatula" once you won't be able to say it.

Also, in a real conversation you only have to be able to say something one
way: "Where is the station?" or "How do I get to the station?" are just as
good, but you have to understand many different possible answers.

When you are looking for learning materials try to only use things aimed at
native speakers. Lots of resources for adults over-simplify to fit their
pedagogical idea, whereas even books for very young will children give you a
full range of grammatical forms and vocabulary.

Never learn vocabulary as single words. Doing a flashcard that says
"dog"=="hund" is just not that useful. Instead, make flashcards of sentences,
fragments and phrases. This way you learn which verbs combine together with
which nouns and all the unwritten rules.

Don't just blast through x000 flashcards. You will get bored and quit. As you
have noticed already, just dumbly repeating words takes a lot of effort to get
them to stick. When you are having fun with the language (whether that is
watching TV, reading books, playing games or speaking to people) words tend to
stick much better. That said, you should still use spaced repetition for these
words you find "in the wild".

Be realistic with the amount of time you put in. If you compare yourself to a
native speaker you're comparing yourself to someone who has had 24/7 practice
in the language for many many years.

Don't get tricked by the vague word 'fluency'. A 6 year old can hold a
conversation and knows a great deal of words. He is also easily confused by
simple words like "tax" and has very little spelling ability.

------
rogeryu
I've done a Spanish course in my early 30s. I went to Spain, did a two week
course there, four hours a day, very basic. The afternoon was free, although
we had to prepare homework, which could be quite a lot if you wanted to commit
to it.

Before going there I learnt some basic stuff: conjugations of being, having,
doing, most prepositions, basic counting (1-100), some emotions and words like
walking, seeing, right/left etc. The first morning they had a basic test and I
could skip the first course because of my preparation. The first week was
quite boring, just like being in high school, with stupid stories etc.

The second week on wednesday night we had a Sangria-tour around town. After
several beers and sangrias I started speaking Spanish. Up til then my Spanish
was mostly impaired by fear of failure, afraid to make mistakes. My teacher
was there and I spoke to her for a half hour, of course with lots of help,
searching for the right words, making many mistakes, but suddenly the fear was
gone.

Russia: do the vodka tour! ;-) Laugh a lot and don't care about what they
think. Listen to their English and compare that to your Russian.

I stayed in an appartment with other foreign students. Among eachother we
didn't speak Spanish. You could stay with a Spanish family, and they don't
speak English in general, so then you have to find a way. That will help a
lot.

After these two weeks I've done two courses in my home town, and left it at
that. Now when I'm in Spain I can speak Spanish after several days. I can
manage in hotels and shops, have very basic conversations. My French has
improved incredibly since then as well.

Disclaimer: in High School we had English, German, French, and even Latin and
classic Greek, so I had a good basic knowledge and knew how to learn a
language. It takes a lot of effort. After finishing high school my languages
were bad and clumsy. After going on holidays I suddenly got to enjoy it. Doing
a study where all books were English it all started to change.

Long story short: it takes a lot of effort. Do it all - traditional and
pragmatic. Going to Russia is probably most effective.

------
wjgilmore
Ah I'm learning Russian too right now (about 30 days in). I'm bilingual,
native English, became fluent in Italian in my 20s after spending a few years
living in Italy (fluent to the point of thinking and dreaming in Italian). I'm
finding the process of learning a third language to be really interesting in
the sense that all sorts of "patterns" are bubbling up now that I have two
under the belt, akin to what one experiences after having learned a few
programming languages.

Even so, no doubt Russian is difficult for a native English speaker. :-) The
State Department classifies it as a "Category II" in terms of difficulty,
meaning it is no walk in the park.

By far the most troublesome issue has been casing (nominative, dative,
genitive, accusative, instrumental, prepositional). So I've been spending some
extra time learning how the vocabulary changes according to each case. On the
bright side, word ordering really isn't an issue because of this, unless you
would like to stress a particular aspect of the phrase.

I use the free Chegg Flashcards app for iOS, it's great and there are tons of
Russian vocabulary flashcards. I also purchased a _paper_ Russian-English
dictionary; it's far more convenient than constantly tabbing over and typing a
word in, particularly since I don't have a Russian keyboard.

Additionally, I _write_ out vocabulary and phrases every day, basically
pretending like I'm taking a middle school quiz. It's tough and tedious, but
this is how I most effectively commit things to memory.

Finally, every single evening I spend time "reading"
[http://www.pravda.ru/](http://www.pravda.ru/) and
[http://izvestia.ru/](http://izvestia.ru/), dictionary in hand, looking up
word after word and then trying to find repeat occurrences of the word in the
page. This has been hugely beneficial.

Finding a Russian interested in learning English is on the TODO list, so we
can help each other out. Fortunately here in Ohio there is a large Russian
speaking population.

Bottom line: learning another language is tough, but also a lot of fun. It is
hugely satisfying to actually start understanding a phrase here and there in
the newspapers, and over time, phrases will become sentences, and sentences,
paragraphs.

xaybey I'd love to talk to you further via email, my address is in profile.
-Jason

------
mlent
I can tell you the steps I used to learn German -- it took about 6-8 months
until my only remaining hurtles were sheer vocabulary. Granted, I have a
background in Ancient languages, so learning an inflected language like German
(or Russian) is much easier for me than it would have been, already
understanding gender and case and such. BUT, the methods I used to learn
Classical languages did _not_ work for German. I was not a believer in the
"practical methods", but they really do work if you do them right, in my
opinion.

1\. Started with Duolingo. I did not find it useful whatsoever.

2\. Started reading Harry Potter in German. At first it took me like an hour
to get through a page, I would just look at the English if a sentence was too
complicated to figure out with the dictionary. I started to notice patterns,
and would read grammar blogs and help sites for stuff that was reoccurring,
(e.g. looking for "relative pronouns" on mydailygerman and german language
stack exchange). After making it through about 20 pages in HP, the improvement
was dramatic. Reading is most important for thinking in a foreign word order.
Now people tell me that I use some very sophisticated words and constructions,
and it's definitely because I learned German from reading. I've read three
books in german now, and can read HP-level stuff without a dictionary.

Btw, I got a kindle for this purpose, but I think that part of the slowness of
having to type the word out yourself in an online dictionary helps with
memorization. Also, translations are never 1:1, so often the kindle
dictionaries are not very helpful. I would go to the park and use my phone to
look up words.

Also -- translated books are way easier to read than books originally written
in a foreign language. Natively written stuff has too many idioms or strange
constructions for a beginner. So reading translations of books you already
know is much, much easier (you can also follow the story and not miss an
important detail because you don't understand a sentence and have to skip it).

3\. Did Memrise for vocab, 1000 Elementary German words. This is huge for
speaking confidence (and therefore, speed) -- that you _know_ the gender of
the word you are using. They also have sets that teach you which cases and
prepositions verbs take, etc. (e.g. In german, you say "I am proud ON you <you
in the accusative>". These are hard to learn from just reading) The important
thing is to say it out loud, just like the example. Eventually, you'll just
use the right gender without even thinking about it! (Something I thought was
impossible)

4\. Watched all the Harry Potter moves dubbed in German, with German
subtitles. Twice. First time, I paused when I didn't know a word, and used
google translate to translate the sentence. So it would take me like 5+ hours
per movie. But, this was one of the most dramatic things that helped my
listening comprehension. In the two week period where I did nothing but vocab
and watched these movies, I would say my german understanding at least
doubled. I also re-watched the movies without subtitles (understanding much
less), because it forces comprehension speed and really listening. But the
subs are important at first so you know how to spell things ;)

Now I watch movies in German, and always have German subtitles on if the
channel has them. If there is Russian Netflix, you can use a VPN and watch
your favorite movies subbed/dubbed. You just really have to get high-quality
productions, or the subs are too different to be helpful. The news is good
non-subbed because they enunciate very clearly. Nature documentaries are also
great, because they speak slowly and clearly. Never be afraid to
pause/repeat/look up a word!

5\. Writing. If you can get someone to write to, it's great, because you have
time to carefully express stuff you would want to say every day. So you
effectively learn to write phrases that you will later want to say in
conversation, but you have the time to research some more about how to do it
correctly (and get in good habits).

6\. Obviously, speaking. Though I have relatively little speaking experience
(my job is in English), I am very capable of expressing myself. If you don't
have a native speaker to talk to every day, it also works to talk to yourself
and try thinking in the language! Better if you live alone, so only you know
that you're crazy :)

So, in a summary: Watch movies and read books. If you see a pattern, research
it. Look it up again and again until you memorize it (by seeing it in
context). Tools like memrise are great for stuff that is hard to get from
movies/reading, like genders. And of course, you need to find someone to talk
to! Above all, realize that you will never know what is going on with 100%
confidence :D

To give you some realistic expectations: I've lived in Germany since Jul.
2013. It took me 6 months to be conversational, and 8 months to read HP/only
really need to improve vocabulary/expressions/comprehension speed. Interacting
with German every day cannot be understated as a motivating factor -- you
should visit Russia :)

------
jfaucett
I've learned several languages in my life, I'm trilingual now, and I've
succeeded on some and failed miserably on others. Here's my experience and
advice.

First, I guess you could say I learned Spanish, but really I was so young it
never even felt like learning it, so I can't give you much advice from that
account, just that speaking it was hard for me, I could literally feel things
get clogged on the way from my brain to the sounds coming out of my mouth - it
was wierd but went away quickly enough. The only advice here is that you
should probably be speaking the language a lot to train those brain to mouth
muscles :)

The language I really had to learn though was German, it was later in life at
around 20 when I started learning it.

From German I think the take away is dedication. You have to be motivated and
seriously dedicated in order to learn a language. I literally spent hundreds
of hours absorbed in German. I would listen to Deutsche Welle radio all the
time and lookup words I didn't know. I would always try to visualize
everything in my head for new words and grammatical constructs and it seemed
to help. When I saw people running it was "die laufen" not because I had to
think about running and then translate it, it was just thats what it was. One
thing I didn't do much of was learn grammar I found it terribly boring and
just learned whatever people on the radio said that I didn't understand.

I also spoke a ton with native speakers my then girlfriend being one, but in
the very beginning I remember that talking with native speakers was very
difficult.

What helped a lot in this regard was having a friend who also wasn't a native
speaker, we could both easily communicate with each other in German, we didn't
use slang and didn't speak very fast, but it helped us get used to it, we'd
talk about new words we learned and never spoke in anything besides German.
After about 6 months of serious hardcore learning we were both able to carry
on fluent conversations with Germans to the point where we didn't annoy them
by being too slow and dumb. It was also around this time that things started
getting enjoyable, before that it was all work and zero fun, just straining
your brain to internalize grammatical rules and meanings of word sounds. After
that most improvement just came through reading and learning written
formulations since the everyday word-set was more or less mastered, which is
another benefit of just learning to speak/understand - the language itself
becomes a whole lot smaller.

Finally, much later I tried to learn Polish and spent about a month on it
before giving up because I couldn't motivate myself enough to go through those
grueling months again. One thing I remember thinking with Polish, which
probably applies to Russian as well is that it would take longer than German
did to get to that same level where you start enjoying things. The grammar was
extremely difficult and its phonetical system and vocabulary much more
different than the western european languages I already spoke.

So in summary, my advice would be the following:

1\. Make sure you are really motivated and dedicated to learning it - it
sounds like you are :). It will become fun and a really amazing thing that you
can read literature and enjoy movies and a completely different culture than
your own, but in the beginning its just a lot of hard work so make sure you
have the internal motivation to carry you through the rough waters at the
beginning.

2\. Once you can carry even a broken conversation find someone who's at or
slightly above your level that you can talk with and don't fallback to some
other language, make yourself use Russian.

3\. When you are comfortable communicating without long pauses to think about
what word you want to say, find native speakers you can talk with.

4\. Listen, listen, listen - radio is the best. You have to concentrate on
sounds and their meanings to know whats going on and your brain isn't dumbed
into just understanding the visuals like tv or movies do. Also music,
especially rap is good if you can find songs you can rap along to and you
memorize the words and their meanings as well.

5\. Learn any grammar you need to, but don't overdo it. You'll have time later
to go into the nitty gritty and all the written language literary constructs.

Best of luck


McCain says NSA chief Keith Alexander 'should resign or be fired' - 001sky
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/nov/10/john-mccain-nsa-keith-alexander-snowden
======
rurounijones
Note he is not calling for Alexander to be fired for all the fun and games the
NSA has been up to.

He is calling for Alexander to be fired _for letting it slip_ (specifically,
for letting a contractor get that information.)

He hedges his language very well when asked about NSA shenanigans.

~~~
d23
I'm not so sure, and just as a note, I'm pretty liberal.

> Asked if the US intelligence services were out of control, McCain said:
> "There's not been sufficient congressional oversight, and there has been an
> absolutely disgraceful sharing of information that never should have taken
> place. For many years, we had an absolute provision that any classified
> information, which was going to be shared, is based on need-to-know
> information."

It seems like he thinks the spying was egregious as well. Given his hawkish
nature, I'd be surprised if he was actually that upset about it, but this
article makes it seem like he's equally upset that we were doing it and that
it was being run in such a poor manner.

~~~
ewoodrich
Senator McCain is almost certainly referring to compartmentalized intelligence
[1].

So he's not saying the spying was egregious, but instead that allowing a
contractor like Snowden to have access to the classified info about the spying
was egregious.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compartmentalization_(informati...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compartmentalization_\(information_security\))

~~~
001sky
To be fair, you compartmentalize intelligence so it does not get abused. If
you don't have a <need to know>, it is _presumed_ you are going to abuse it
somehow. That's the purpose of 'need to know' restrictions. Yes, it also is a
policy which increases OpSec. But note His interview reference seems to be
wikileaks and Manning, which was a breech of opsec, in theatre. Snowden
leaking on the NSA seems to be much more grounded in a principled position,
and is in a civillian context. Its hard to infer a position on the latter
based upon coments from the former.

------
stephen_g
I find this really interesting:

"And now we have a contractor employee, not a government employee, who has
access to information which is, _when revealed, most damaging to the standing
prestige of the United States_ and our relations with some of our best
friends," McCain said" (Emphasis mine)

If revealing the truth about what the Government is doing damages the standing
prestige of the country, then is he implying that much of that prestige is
based on a lie?

~~~
mpyne
> If revealing the truth about what the Government is doing damages the
> standing prestige of the country, then is he implying that much of that
> prestige is based on a lie?

Are you trying to claim that 'if the government has done nothing wrong, it has
nothing to fear'? I mean, I don't really care which way you believe on that
idea but you should at least be logically consistent :P

~~~
smokeyj
I think logic would dictate that institutions claiming to be public should be
public, and those claiming to be private should be private.

~~~
dinkumthinkum
Why does logic dictate that? You make claims about logic but you are just
falsely equivocating words in a semantic game.

------
justinph
Sadly, old man McCain wants to see Alexander fired for all the wrong reasons.
It's not the crime, it's the cover-up. McCain is throwing his hat in with the
cover-up.

~~~
SCAQTony
Interesting! First Dianne Fienstein proposes a "bait and Switch" reform bill
which is going nowhere and now you're suggesting Keith Alexander falls on his
sword and takes full responsibility so the public thinks there is closure.

Sneaky! Will it fly with the common man or is the common man getting it?

------
jobu
Love the final statement from McCain: "If you believe that Mr Snowden didn't
give the Russians information that he has, then you believe pigs fly."

Snowden plans to give up all of the documents publicly, so I can see how this
is even close to relevant.

------
rubbingalcohol
Keith Alexander is already planning to retire in early 2014, so I don't see
the point of this. McCain is just cock-waving.

------
steve19
McCain wants him fired because he did cover up the shenanigans (crimes) well
enough. How fucked up is that?

------
x0054
Yes, because the problem isn't that American government is doing things which,
when revealed, are "most damaging to the standing prestige of the United
States and our relations with some of our best friends." No, the problem is
that one man had the courage to reveal information about the kind of shit
American government is doing to our "best friends." Clearly!

~~~
dinkumthinkum
Are you all so naive as to believe all our "friends" whether from France,
Germany, Israel, or even Russia don't conduct operations on the US?

~~~
iSnow
I'd be much obliged if you provided any proof that one Western European
country has been spying on a member of the US government. Because if you
don't, this is all hand waving and smearing.

~~~
DanBC
If you count Russia there have been a number of recent stories about Russian
spies.

They seem comically bad at getting any intel - much of what the captured spies
were caught with were publicly available documents. They had "gained access"
to some organisation, but that org had open public access anyway.

I'd be amazed if GCHQ was not listening in to US politicians. I suspect that's
why Obama had so much work done to his mobile phone before he was allowed to
use it.

Really, governments spying on other governments is not news. The spies get
found and expelled by one country, the other country expels a diplomat or two.
Everyone expresses outrage. More spies get sent in.

~~~
x0054
Is it possible that they are amazingly good at not getting caught and
controlling leaks. Every now and then they allow them salves to be caught with
some crap documents, just to keep up appearances. Just a thought, neither you
or I will ever know for sure, unless they develop some serious leaks.

------
squozzer
Recently on TV John Bolton said something in a similar vein -- that everybody
spies on each other but no one talks about it and it's the people (such as
Snowden) who leak that are the problem, not the program itself.

But it seems to me that if something is commonplace and accepted then why all
the sotto voce?

Because once again the government practices ethical double standards. Which
makes sense if you assume a class structure where bureaucrats occupy the
superior class and those outside government occupy an inferior class.

------
joelrunyon
> "Asked if Alexander should resign, McCain said: "Of course, he should
> resign, or be fired. We no longer hold anybody accountable in Washington."

The irony here. It hurts.

------
lylebarrere
I was encouraged by the headline, until I read why McCain wants him fired. Not
for ignoring the 4th amendment; not for repeatedly, knowing lying to congress
—a felony— and destroying their ability to provide any oversight; not for his
tact...See More

------
Qantourisc
I recommend jail instead ...

------
mcantelon
It will be unsurprising if some dirt on McCain mysteriously appears in the
near future.

------
FridayWithJohn
When I read the title of this article I was _so_ pleasantly surprised. Who
would have thought that McCain (an old warmonger who is power hungry) would
say?

After reading that I now see that he wanted him fired, not because the NSA
targeted _everyone_ and not because the NSA violated _everyone 's_ privacy but
only because the NSA boss should have had even more security protocols in
place.


802.11 with Multiple Antennas for Dummies (2009) [pdf] - gballan
https://djw.cs.washington.edu/papers/mimo_for_dummies.pdf
======
AndyMcConachie
Is anyone else really bothered by the fact that academics don't put dates on
their papers? This could have been written yesterday. It could have been
written 10 years ago. How can I know?

I get this is not yet peer reviewed, but put a date on it that represents the
last time it was touched. Like a last modified date or something. And it's not
like it will get a date on it once it is peer reviewed. Someone will find it 5
years from now and think it still represents the state of the art.

~~~
chatmasta
Yes, I also find it extremely annoying and it’s definitely a thing. I always
end up googling the title to find the actual publication and hope that the
date is there.

Does anyone know _why_ academic papers do not include dates in the paper?
Surely there must be a reason?

Edit: StackExchange [0] cites uncertainty of the delay between writing and
publication as the typical reason for omitting the date. This seems fair, but
at least including the year would be nice. If you submit for review at the end
of the year, probably safe to increment it by one. Even so, presumably there
might be later drafts after review, so those should include the date.

[0] [https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/3424/why-is-
the...](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/3424/why-is-the-date-
left-out-of-some-academic-papers)

~~~
Fnoord
Why not add a writing date, and once its published add the publication date?

~~~
tinktank
No reason not to, I just think most people don't do it out of habit. Academics
are beginning to use arxiv more seriously and that provides versioned
timestamp functionality.

------
Quequau
Since this paper is so old, it should have the date in the title (2009 I
guess).


Comparing Standard ML and OCaml - rohshall
http://adam.chlipala.net/mlcomp/

======
Wilya
Regarding build systems, ocamlbuild is included with the standard ocaml
distribution and gives a high-level interface that is much simpler to use than
ocamldep and friends. Especially when combined with findlib.

~~~
nrlucas
Yeah, this is really old. I remember seeing it six years ago when I started
using OCaml.

------
beering
Nothing said about multithreading and parallel processing? Seems like a big
omission if you're comparing languages.

~~~
rwmj
The user group explicitly rejected multithreading at the OCaml Users
conference a couple of years back. (There was a working implementation called
oc4mc).

The reasons were that it will slow down single-threaded performance, and
threads as a programming model is not robust (compared to, eg. forking,
message passing, MPI etc). Also actual graphs of 4- and 8-way SMP performance
showed pretty poor scaling for real problems, so the benefits aren't that
great compared to going for full MPI, which you have to do for NUMA anyhow.

~~~
Evbn
GHC has a compiler flag to enable multi threaded runtime. Why can't OCaml have
that? It is a bit rigid to have to build two versions of a binary, but for
folks who run their own code, no problem at all.

~~~
rwmj
Sure, you can run OCaml and oc4mc. You'll also end up with two different
binaries. oc4mc isn't as well tested, so I guess you'll hit more bugs. This
still doesn't solve the horrible programming model [I've been cursing a
multithreaded C program in the past few days. It's amazing how much stuff you
have to remember and how much simply doesn't work in C when you've got
threads]. Nor does it let your program scale past the limit of a single NUMA
node. Whereas message passing a la Erlang lets you scale over NUMA and across
machines and networks.

------
batgaijin
Urgh! I want to see Jocaml posts around here!


Government grabs $360 million from idle household bank accounts - markmassie
http://news.com.au/finance/business/government-grabs-360-million-from-idle-household-bank-accounts/story-fnkjidjt-1226949101984
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hga
I've just read from a not terribly reliable source that the state of Georgia
is going to be doing this for accounts idle for more than a year. Many if not
most if not all states do it for longer periods.


Ask HN: Salary cut for position change Front-end – Back end? - knoblauch
Long story; I want to know if a salary cut is justified in my situation.
18 months ago, I started my first job as an android developer in a fintech startup, after graduating with my Masters in a top 20 university. When I joined, I was the only android developer and built 2 relatively complex apps from scratch (designing architecture,  app development, some security/crypto/api).
My CTO, to whom I report directly, knows since the day he hired me that I don't want to be doing front-end my whole life, and we agreed this summer that I'd be switching to the back-end.
At the time, I asked him if there would be any salary change with the switch, and he reassured me that there wouldn't be, because he allows his engineers to move horizontally without any salary change.
Since 2 months, I've been learning about the back-end language, Functional Programming, and other frameworks they use. All on my personal time in the evening and on week-ends.
Last week, the CFO asked to speak with me and told me that we'd have to sign a new contract, and that they're going to decrease my salary (by over 10%). His argument is that he wants to align my salary with the other back-end juniors.
This news came to me as a shock and I am very confused if this is a normal practice or not. I've explained the situation to some of my SE friends and older acquaintances and all of them without exception find it scandalous and have told me that I should not accept the offer and start looking for another job.
I feel like the company is not valuating my work and my experience at their place. During these 18 months, I have shown that I am able to learn and adapt fast, that I deliver good results, and they have seen that I am highly motivated and positive in a very consistent way.
(Continuing the text in comment)
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knoblauch
(Next part of the text):

Obviously, this career switch would be a great opportunity for me to move into
the back-end world, learn a lot of new stuff, broaden my SE skills, build a
better CV and invest in my future.

There are many arguments that I can find on my side to find it disgraceful and
why they shouldn't decrease my salary. I feel I shouldn't even have to defend
my salary in the first place in this situation, as decreasing my salary is a
bit of a low blow.

Some notes: \- The startup has a lot of cash \- We are ~20 software engineers
\- I am quite confident that I could earn more than my current salary with my
experience if I moved to a bigger city in my country \- The other juniors
didn't have more professional experience when they were hired, and don't have
a better education \- I absolutely love the the project, and the other
employees, our culture, and the office \- Even if I do accept now, I don't
know why they'd want to do this to me when they know I am not happy with the
situation, as their are making me lose some of my loyalty to the company,
taking the risk that I'll leave when I get enough experience on back-end

I feel like they are forcing the pay cut on me, after promising me a switch,
then promising there wouldn't be any salary change.

HN, shed light on my situation and tell me what you think.

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_ah
Sounds like this is a small shop. When you were off by yourself, your
compensation stood alone in its own category. If you join the other backend
devs, then your salary is compared against theirs and it "looks bad" on the
internal spreadsheet. This is an internal political game and your CTO is not
willing to spend his political capital on a junior developer. That may or may
not be a reasonable decision on his part. Your excellent work up to this point
(and future potential) isn't being weighed as much as it should be and there's
probably very little you can do to change that.

I wouldn't accept a pay cut. It's too early in your career for that.

The ideal option is to tell the CTO "I can't take a pay cut. Keep me the same,
and I promise I won't tell anyone." That might solve his political problem. If
he won't go for that, then your options are: (1) continue in your current role
(unhappy, but better paid), (2) leave for a different position. You probably
will want to start planning for your eventual exit anyway, since this smells
like a place with limited growth prospects.

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JamesVI
I think it is reasonable for you to be compensated according to the skills you
have and the performance you demonstrate. I think it's reasonable for everyone
with similar skills and performance to be compensated the same.

You are moving from a role you have 18 months experience into one where you
have much less. Personally, I wouldn't cut your salary immediately, but I
would work with you to build a transition plan made up of SMART goals. At the
end of the transition period (probably 3-6 months in this case), we would
discuss your performance relative to the expectations of the role and level
you have transitioned into.

If, at that time, you were performing at a level more junior that you are
being compensated, I would offer you the option of returning to your former
role (assuming we still had a need for someone in that role) or level you down
and adjust your compensation accordingly.

The CTO was foolhardy in making a blanket promise that you could move
"horizontally" without impact to compensation, but the CFO is also overly
focussed on what could be a small amount money (2.5-5% of your total salary).

I'd suggest that you go back to the CFO and the CTO and propose a transition
plan with an eval at the end to determine your level and compensation. You
should also ask what the promotion path forward would be like if you
transitioned and were leveled down. Will you be stuck there for a long time or
will you have a chance at being promoted back up once you have a year of
experience? Then you can decide if a possible (presumably short-term) decrease
in compensation is a valid investment in your long-term career.

"my SE friends and older acquaintances and all of them without exception find
it scandalous"

Obviously, you need to balance an anonymous voice* on the internets against
your friends and acquaintances, but this really isn't that scandalous. Perhaps
they've just not experienced it themselves.

Actually, the biggest problems you have right now are that the CFO and CTO
aren't on the same page and that the CFO is making decisions about
compensation for engineers. The CTO (or whoever your direct supervisor is)
should be making your compensation decisions based off strategic decisions
taken in conjunction with the CFO (and others).

*I'm actually the head of engineering at a growing startup, but maybe I'm lying :-D


Any cool projects we could do on this state owned oil company database? - joshdance
Database of state-owned oil companies. A project of the Natural Resource Governance Institute, pulls official data on nearly 100 metrics concerning 71 oil/gas companies owned by 61 countries. https://www.nationaloilcompanydata.org/
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thedevindevops
It'd be great for anyone who does Infographics.

Maybe a per country breakdown dashboard?

Prediction/forecast engine?

Use the National oil and gas reserves question and rank countries by estimate
of when they'll be depleted?

I'd love if someone linked this to a forestry or carbon capture by country
database to see the environmental deficit per country


Ask YC: Where do you post ads for programmers? - Flemlord

I've got ads posted on Monster and JoelOnSoftware for a .NET programmer at a Salt Lake startup. I'm getting spotty results. Where does everybody run ads?
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spif
Go to your (local) user groups where your flavour of developers like to hang
out. You immediately get a feel of who you would like and what their
availability is like.

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bigtoga
I would suggest joel Spolsky's book on hiring tech folks. He mentions several
methods and, although i"m only on page 30, (1) I like Joel's style/approach to
most things, and (2) the first 30 pages made sense to me. it's called "Smart
and Gets Things Done"

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gscott
I am having similiar results trying to replace myself so I can work full time
on my project and getting no serious bites. Next step is to try community
college job boards...

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thomasswift
you could try 37signals board or maybe krop(more designer related)

or good ole craigslist, but i'd recommend asking their level of .net
experience and wait for WIDE range of people.

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ALee
elance, odesk, craigslist, and the boards of frequented blogs.

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entelarust
craigslist

~~~
bigtoga
Craigslist is such a gamble. I've found that it's been mostly a waste of time.
The way, IMO, to successfully use CL is to use an RSS reader that allows you
to define "watches"/"alerts" (like FeedDemon). Create watches for the popular
terms you are looking for and then subscribe to CL's resumes board's RSS feed.
The more specific you are about the terms you want, the less clutter you'll go
through. Putting a watch on "Windows XP" will get you nowhere; putting a watch
on "Windows 2008" will find you an early adopter, for example.


Socialteria - voidale
https://socialteria.com
======
voidale
Hello everyone,

Looking to get some exposure about my app
[https://socialteria.com](https://socialteria.com) it's a social media
management app you can queue up bunch of posts and have them shared in the
future to your social media accounts. One cool feature is the content
suggestion you can find popular content from popular facebook pages we list
the best content on top you can one click share it.

Right now it's just me one solo developer, but my goal is to make it one of
the best web apps for social media. I have some great features on the road
map.

I would love to get your feedback let me know what you think or if you find
something that is broken (probably it's still beta!)

Thanks! -Mark