12 ms·

Sugar: Open-source software learning platform for children

185 points by geogra4 7y ago

henrikberggren 7y ago
Naming a learning platform "Sugar" is like naming a rehab clinic "Heroin"
- voicedYoda 7y ago
  Know your enemy?
- maxharris 7y ago
  It really is an irresponsible name. Sugar (and more specifically fructose) is easily the unhealthiest aspect of processed food: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjttsybt2NM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjttsybt2NM
  - cies 7y ago
    Fructose usually comes as part of fruit. Fruit is extremely good food for humans (as long as you have not eaten fatty foods before it). Fructose also has the best ability to be absorbed by muscle cells without the need for insulin, compared to other sugars. I think you mean high-fructose syrup, which is not fructose but a glucose-fructose. Contains the same word but is verrrry different in health profile.
    - ObscureScience 7y ago
      I think you got it wrong. Fructose is more inflamatory than glucose (which is not good in high concentrations as well). Fructose-Glucose would be saccharine, the most common type of sugar extracted from cane and beet.
    - maxharris 7y ago
      > Fruit is extremely good food for humans It is most certainly not. The soluble and insoluble fiber in fruit is good for humans because it prevents rapid absorption of fructose, which is most definitely toxic. (Paracelsus was right when he said that the dose makes the poison! It just so happens that even small doses of fructose have an outsized impact on appetite.) Fructose is toxic because it is primarily metabolized by the liver. It has been shown to be at the root of overeating because of its effects on satiety signaling via leptin and ghrelin. > Fructose also has the best ability to be absorbed by muscle cells without the need for insulin, compared to other sugars. This is simply false. (Google it!) When used by an athlete after strenuous activity, it is true that fructose replenishes _glycogen_ in the liver, which is released as glucose, which muscle can use. But most people haven't just finished running a marathon when they gulp down a liter of Gatorade. So the effect 99% is to just fatten you up. I recommend a few educational videos to bring you up to speed on a great deal of science that has been discovered in the last 15 years or so. Dr. Lustig (endocrinologist at UCSF) lays it out: "Processed Food: An Experiment That Failed": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvgxNDuQ5DI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvgxNDuQ5DI "Fructose is a poison": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgTlFFWMNy0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgTlFFWMNy0 https://robertlustig.com/fructose-restriction/ https://robertlustig.com/fructose-restriction/ https://robertlustig.com/fructose2/ https://robertlustig.com/fructose2/
      - oil25 7y ago
        Fruit is absolutely healthy for humans - physiologically we are frugivorous apes, after all. Hence why nearly all evidence-based nutritional guidelines from all around the world encourage whole fruit consumption, as part of a diet with other whole plant foods like grains, legumes and vegetables. > gulp down a liter of Gatorade. So the effect 99% is to just fatten you up. This could not be further from the truth. Humans are notoriously inefficient at de novo lipogenesis - the process of turning sugar into fat. The myth that sugar causes weight gain (on its own, not accompanied by a high-fat diet) is just that - a myth. Not to say gulping down Gatorade is a good idea, but it isn't nearly as harmful as consuming a steak, or a stick of butter, when it comes to weight gain.
        andrekandre 7y ago
        i was under the assumption that it was simple calories such as pasta/bread/rice/candies etc is that then not true? if not, what is the cause of weight gain?
        oil25 7y ago
        Fat has more calories and is more easily stored by the body than carbohydrates. Processed carbs, simple sugars give a greater rise in the hormone insulin, which basically puts fat into fat cells. It is not carbs' conversion to fat which causes weight gain, but their consumption in the presence of a high-fat diet.
        andrekandre 7y ago
        interesting... would that mean, it’s easier to gain fat by eating pasta + lots of olive oil vs pasta with just tomato sauce? (i have a terrible olive oil addiction ^_^)
        cies 7y ago
        Yes. In case both meals are calorically equal, yes. The excess in cals from carbs are only marginally turned into fat (lipogenesis is not something humans are good at) and thus the excess is mostly burnt up by heating your body a bit higher (forgot the scientific term for this). So the fat you eat is pretty much the fat you wear. If you eat fat and carbs together (almost everyone does that) then your body will choose to use the carbs energy directly and store the fat. As fat is good for long term storage (unlike carbs, that get stored as sugar for short term use in muscles and liver), and carbs not bee efficiently turned into fat (as mentioned) yet can very efficiently be stored.
  - slothtrop 7y ago
    It leaves an impression that the portended motivation behind the platform is disingenuous.
  - hevi_jos 7y ago
    It is not sugar per se. It is being able to concentrate and crystallize it and then eating it in a completely non natural way. Fructose in nature , on fruit, has lots od fiber(celulose), that makes release of sugar in the bloodstream slow, that is Glycemic Index low. Refined sugar on the other way, specially in dissolved water, like with milk, coffee or soda, release enormous amount of fructose in a very short amount of time. In nature, only honey does that. Refined sugar was a luxury until 200 years ago. US by the way produces the worst sugar of all, because it is not fructose, but something they could produce from corn, way cheaper than brown sugar that comes from tropical places.
- guitarnick 7y ago
  In half jest, how do you feel about "Slack" then? One can argue it makes the product more memorable.
  - mobilefriendly 7y ago
    "Slack" has multiple meanings including nautical-- adding or cutting slack into a line, which gives it capability to do more...
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
    I don't use Slack, but from what I gather it's general slowness and the way it aids constant distraction means it is a pretty good productivity killer, so calling it 'Slack' is actually Truth in Television.
  - kazinator 7y ago
    It's an aptly-named productivity distractor.
  - rbanffy 7y ago
    Just like actual slack, it makes people less productive. Without the creative benefit of slacking. ;-)
- the_common_man 7y ago
  FWIW, I am indian, and sugar is never a bad thing in our culture. The firsts thing that comes to mind is just 'sweet'. It's got positive connotations for me.
  - udkl 7y ago
    I don't think he meant sugar in the sense of being bad when he compared it to heroin. The comparison was to highlight the similarity of addictiveness of sugar in children and heroin in adults. Addictiveness isn't necessarily always bad. > and sugar is never a bad thing in our culture Sugar IS bad, scientifically speaking. I wouldn't be surprised if sugar is an important reason for the high levels of obesity and heart diseases in India. In the end, I think we need to move ahead from traditional values and selectively and logically think about the parts of our culture we want to retain.
- autoexec 7y ago
  Could be worse. Could have been called Corn-Syrup.
klenwell 7y ago
I see a link for "How to get Sugar on an OLPC XO Laptop". Is this going to revitalize my old XO laptop? (I would really love to be able to do that.)
- jhbadger 7y ago
  It may be a newer version, but Sugar was the initial environment on the XO.
- khm 7y ago
  Your XO shipped with Sugar. Assuming it's an XO-1, the latest OS and installation instructions are here: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Release_notes/13.2.10#XO-1 http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Release_notes/13.2.10#XO-1
geogra4 7y ago
I was just playing around with Sugar in a VM and it reminded me so much of how the earliest GUIs on a Mac as a kid felt. In general I've been kind of struggling to how to introduce my kids to computing. They're at the age now where they ask about it and see me on the computer and want to be part of it. Sugar seems to be a good introduction - one of the best that's just not just a normal linux distro with a bunch of edu apps thrown in.
- josinalvo 7y ago
  How do you feel it compares to "just a normal linux distro with a bunch of edu apps thrown in"?
  - geogra4 7y ago
    Other options with more 'kid friendly' UIs like UKnow4Kids, Educado, DoudouLinux, or Leeenux Kids just seem to have stopped development many years ago. Something like Edubuntu isn't really appropriate for small children - it's a little too complicated. I don't think the UI is perfect, fwiw
    - radicaldreamer 7y ago
      I think the standard Linux Gnome or KDE UI is probably better for kids to learn than Sugar, primarily because the learning curve to transition to any other computing interface is pretty high because Sugar's UX is really poor.
    - ObscureScience 7y ago
      I'm kind of betting on EndlessOS.
CodeMage 7y ago
I'm not 100% sure, but I think this might be the first thing I've seen on HN front page, in all my time on this site, that actually motivated me to jump right into criticism. Usually I just stay quiet if I don't have anything positive to say. First of all, before even clicking through, my reaction to the name was negative. To quote henrikberggren's comment: "Naming a learning platform 'Sugar' is like naming a rehab clinic 'Heroin'." Second, those stick figures look like skull-and-crossbones. Third, your sample "fun activity" looks less fun than anything a kid with a computer has access to. Fourth, creating a new user in your Sugarizer demo is an awful experience. It asked me to pick a name first, then let me go through the rest of the steps -- including "choosing" a new avatar color by clicking to get random colors until I just gave up -- and then, at the end, told me the user "foo" already exists. Fifth, I don't find the UI intuitive at all. When I'm inside an activity, if I want to go back to the activity selection page, I have to click on an octagon with a square inside it. No idea how I'm supposed to associate that with "home" or "back" or any of the verbs I could think of. Lastly, I tried out a few of the activities and I have no idea how any of that is supposed to help kids learn or collaborate. The "clock" activity just displays a clock. That's it. The "tam tam" activity has a confusing UI, but once you overcome the confusion, you can just pick different instruments to hear their sound. The most confusing was the "maze" activity, because I pressed one arrow key and it solved the whole maze. Later I realized that it follows the path until a decision point and then waits for input, but it's really weird. I appreciate that this must have taken substantial effort, but I have no idea just how this is supposed to be useful. And let's face it, I gave it more time than an average visitor probably would.
- imulligan 7y ago
  I agree with your comment, in its entirety.
- Spooky23 7y ago
  I played around with it for a bit. It's frustrating to me as there is alot of really cool stuff in the platform, but it is such an opinionated interface that it distracts from the overall mission. Some of the apps are too complex for very young children, but the interface feels too primitive for 6-9 year olds who aren't living in a cave. 5 year olds are adept on awful UI like YouTube, this is too simple. There are some really cool apps that would be better served in a more traditional Android/iOS style tablet interface. OLPC is/was very pushy about their point of view.
AngeloAnolin 7y ago
Interesting stats (on the bottom of the page[1]) 3,000,000+ Users 11,531,321+ Activities Downloaded Significant numbers altogether. [1] https://sugarlabs.org/ https://sugarlabs.org/
- ascales 7y ago
  "To date, OLPC has distributed more than 3 million laptops to children around the world." Not quite 3 million active users, but 3 million machines that came pre-loaded with this http://blog.laptop.org/2015/09/03/olpc-announces-partnership-with-zamora-teran-foundation/#.XWl8pihKguU http://blog.laptop.org/2015/09/03/olpc-announces-partnership...
elkos 7y ago
Wasn't that the original environment of the OLPC computers? IMHO nowadays an X220 with a Debian and a KDE/Gnome/xfce environment goes a long way for me.
choward 7y ago
Those autoscrolling things are very frustrating. I start to read something or look at a screenshot then it goes away. I can't make it stop either. I honestly don't get who thought this was a good idea but it makes me question the UX of the entire product when stuff like that gets okayed.
- CodeMage 7y ago
  I figured it out by accident, after a whole lot of frustration: click on the image itself and the carousel will pause.
nimrody 7y ago
I thought one of the original aims was that kids could easily explore and modify the code behind the apps (python code I think). I like that approach but couldn't find the "show/edit source button" (using the Sugarizer web based platform) Perhaps a simplified Smalltalk environment would be better?
- nine_k 7y ago
  Sqeakland.org has that: eToys. Not that the UI is very intuitive there, too.
  - ObscureScience 7y ago
    That kind of saddens me as well. How can a GUI be this clunky and confusing? Why would an application mainly for children use the "put every option on screen and in the one uncontextual contex menu" atitude? I think it's low hanging fruit to create the best educational and entertaining environment for children, ask 4.99 on an appstore and be set for some time.
VikingCoder 7y ago
I absolutely love the mission of OLPC, and I hate literally every decision they made. I think they sucked all of the oxygen out of the room, and I think Sugar is possibly the worst part.
- mikepurvis 7y ago
  It's really beyond belief that they insisted on reinventing the wheel with so much of the system. How much more sane would it have been to just ship a regular Linux desktop with a curated selection of libre applications and established programming environments/repls? RPi is the learning computer that OLPC never was.
  - paulryanrogers 7y ago
    Keep in mind it was meant to be hackable by young, non-English speakers with limited literacy. Starting with Linux and heavy suites of apps meant and built for/by technically inclined westerners would not have been a better fit, IMO. Especially within the resource and budget constraints they had to work with. A mid-oughts, sub-$200 device just didn't have the capacity for layers of legacy software.
ascales 7y ago
This was part of the One Laptop Per Child program, and the '3 million users' stat comes from the fact that this was preloaded on every one of the 3 million+ laptops distributed. http://blog.laptop.org/2015/09/03/olpc-announces-partnership-with-zamora-teran-foundation/#.XWl8pihKguU http://blog.laptop.org/2015/09/03/olpc-announces-partnership...
blowski 7y ago
For all the adults moaning about it on here, I showed it to my 5 year old (British/Brazilian) son and he loved it.
- tuukkah 7y ago
  This is the most relevant comment here this far! Sugar wasn't designed for western adults, their prejudice and office work but for children's learning in pedagogical scenarios within developing countries.
  - rbanffy 7y ago
    Not trying to compete in developed countries was probably a mistake. That could offer them more exposure and welcome funding. But, then, they'd need to offer support they weren't ready to. Working with governments has some advantages.
- DrPhish 7y ago
  I also threw sugar on a stick on some old throwaway dell laptops my company got rid of and let my 3 sons do whatever they wanted with them. They were around 6/8/10 at the time They had a blast and made all sorts of cool stuff, despite the limitations. Possibly because of them Our middle son even did up a full squeak/etoys extra-hours project for his grade 4 class and got extra marks That said, I think the OLPC project only ended up being a shadow of what it could have been, and is one of the great squandered opportunities of human history. The amount of mindshare the OLPC project had was astonishing at the time, and either through mismanagement or being overly ambitious, it never fulfilled their vision It would certainly be nice to hear from the kids that had them in their schools in the developing world circa 2006+ and what kind of impact they had
kazinator 7y ago
Looks nice; name makes me cringe. If I'm crazy and names don't matter, then why not call it "Cigarette: open-source software learning platform for rug-rats ... from Tobacco Labs!" A parent that wants to reinforce a consistent "sugar is bad" signal to their kids will feel that such a thing undermines their message.
- DonHopkins 7y ago
  Funny you'd mention that. Philip Morris was a Media Lab sponsor in 2004 and 2005. http://web.mit.edu/annualreports/pres04/07.05.pdf http://web.mit.edu/annualreports/pres04/07.05.pdf http://web.mit.edu/annualreports/pres05/07.06.pdf http://web.mit.edu/annualreports/pres05/07.06.pdf (Those are the years I happened to know of -- looks like there are more.) https://www.google.com/search?biw=1183&bih=978&sxsrf=ACYBGNR0daBOkOIRA7YO3G6rfkJvH58Uzg%3A1567203842906&ei=AqJpXcr1Ns3FwQKckKXQAw&q=site%3Aweb.mit.edu+%22philip+morris%22+%22media+lab%22&oq=site%3Aweb.mit.edu+%22philip+morris%22+%22media+lab%22&gs_l=psy-ab.3...0.0..52314...0.0..0.0.0.......0......gws-wiz.fDmFfjjZfL4&ved=0ahUKEwjK_uKi0avkAhXNYlAKHRxICToQ4dUDCAs&uact=5 https://www.google.com/search?biw=1183&bih=978&sxsrf=ACYBGNR...
thomk 7y ago
https://imgur.com/l99s11R https://imgur.com/l99s11R For those times when you want your child to learn about alcoholic beverages. From a computer. On the internet.
- dmurray 7y ago
  A child being able to identify a martini glass doesn't seem like a terrible loss of innocence.
  - mavhc 7y ago
    Today we learn that most adults are addicted to drugs
  - thomk 7y ago
    Agreed. However, that's not a just martini glass, that's a martini. Maybe they are teaching kids about olives? :)
- em-bee 7y ago
  hah, that's funny. my wife is a montessori teacher. montessori likes to use kid sized things for kids hads. that means for example teachers like to use small glasses that the kids handle with ease. so that means as a religiously non-alcoholic family we have shotglasses at home - on full display - on the kids toy shelf and so does the kindergarden. i have to cringe every time i see that.
  - em-bee 7y ago
    stupid typo: for kids hands...
- esotericn 7y ago
  The entire bottom row there is made up of treat items?
aaron695 7y ago
"If you build it, they will come" is the worst line in a movie ever for actual humanity. Most disadvantaged kids have access to Microsoft or Android adding a layer doesn't help.
filmgirlcw 7y ago
I promise I'm not trying to be flippant, but is this still actively around? I see there have been two seemingly-minor releases this year, the first project activity since 2017. I had insomnia a few weeks ago and was re-reading a bunch of "whatever happened to OLPC" stuff to remember that utter disaster, and AFAIK, the Sugar project is basically just a few people, its now under the auspices of the SFC and its really barebones with almost no hardware support (the last OLPC devices were sold years ago). Even the base image of Ubuntu it offers for the USB stick reached EOL more than 18 months ago. We can all say this was a nice idea -- but this certainly isn't an active project in the sense that there is developer or monetary investment.
Havoc 7y ago
I really like this. The concept resonates - even though I have no children. One thing I'm not seeing is spaced repetition? It's one thing I'd really want if I DIY learning
- mnemonicsloth 7y ago
  1. Spaced repetition is for the end of the knowledge acquisition process. It crystallizes what you already understand pretty well. Sugar is for the very beginning: making kids aware that some subjects are interesting enough to learn. 2. Spaced repetition is boring, especially for kids.
  - Havoc 7y ago
    Don't see why a tool can't actively manage both - introducing new concepts and re-inforcing them on the right schedule. Yes you don't want a rigid spaced rep schedule...but I'd like to see some of that integrated in a soft fashion anyway
  - em-bee 7y ago
    if kids choose to play an activity over and over again (not continuously, but every day or so pick it up and play for a while), is that not also spaced repetition? how would that be boring?
  - mikekchar 7y ago
    I'm going to disagree with you, but I'm actually very interested to hear your reasoning behind your comments on spaced repetition. It is a very interesting perspective that I haven't heard before so I'm quite keen to hear more. Having said that, here's my point of view. Spaced repetition is not really directly involved with knowledge acquisition. When I say "acquisition" I have a very specific meaning in mind. In recent language acquisition theory there is a distinction between "learning" and "acquisition". Learning means to be able to go from not knowing something to being able to remember something. Acquisition means to go from not being able to use something to being able to use it appropriately without undue effort. Learning does not always lead to acquisition (something that's still not penetrated the organisations that do education, unfortunately). Spaced repetition is wonderful for learning. You can go from not knowing something to being able to remember something for a very long time with minimal effort. Again, it does not necessarily lead to acquisition. From the perspective of language, to acquire language you need to be exposed to it in realistic contexts where you understand the meaning. Personally, I have found that learning can help with acquisition because it kind of gives you a super fast dictionary to look things up and allow you to comprehend things when you are exposed to them. You need a lot of exposure and comprehension to actually acquire the knowledge, though -- and spaced repetition alone won't get you there. I think the same is true of all skill acquisition, but there is a lot of research to be done to show that (as an example, imagine learning all the rules of calculus -- you still won't be able to write proofs easily, but it will help you to save massive amounts of time when you start studying proofs). Where I think you might be coming from is that there is a period when learning something where you just can't remember it for a significant amount of time. In most spaced repetition software (like Anki), you go from a 10 minute review spacing to a whole day -- and even going from 1 minute to 10 minutes can often be a jump. What's interesting about that is that there is a different concept called "spacing" (which is unfortunately very similarly named to "spaced repetition"). With "spacing" the idea is that you will reduce the slope of the forgetting curve faster if you forget something. This is a crazy idea, but it seems to work very well. If you want to read a tonne of papers on the subject, google "desirable difficulties". So my idea is that you initially want to space a repetition longer than you would for spaced repetition so that you have to struggle to remember it. This will help you learn it faster. At that point you should switch over to spaced repetition. I say "my idea", because there are very few (or possibly none ;-) ) papers that discuss mixing spacing and desirable difficulties with spaced repetition.... If only I were a psychology prof... Anyway, there is another concept called "Interleaving". With interleaving, what you do is intentionally change the subject frequently while you are learning something. This makes it difficult to remember and potentially reduces the amount of spacing you require to get the "spacing effect". Many papers suggest changing subjects every 10 minutes (which seems crazy -- imagine 10 minutes of math, 10 minutes of English, 10 minutes of Foreign language, 10 minutes of geography, then back to 10 minutes of math, etc, etc, etc -- but the studies I've read show really incredible rates of learning) But again, the key is that learning is distinct from acquisition -- so while learning is useful it doesn't necessarily lead to skill acquisition. As for #2 I don't think spaced repetition is boring at all -- especially for kids. Give a small child a cartoon on a DVD. Watch as they repeat it over and over and over and over again. Watch at they view the video today, the same video tomorrow, the same video the next day. It's really incredible. Kids love that kind of repetition. I get your point that Anki might be boring ;-)
carapace 7y ago
One of the coolest things about the OLPC was that adults couldn't figure out how to open it but little kids could.
- em-bee 7y ago
  for years an XO testing device was my primary portable laptop for work. every time i ran into someone who hadn't seen it before, i let them try to open it. it was funny to see what people tried and how long it took for them to figure it out. sometimes i had to stop them as they would pry with force in the wrong direction and i feared they'd break it.
- Rediscover 7y ago
  Agreed that that is one of the coolest things about it. Two other features I loved: The screen -- great for coding outdoors. The DC-input -- the original Hardware Specification was for "10 to 20 V usable, -50 to 39 V safe, one- time fuse for excessive input" but changed to "11 to 18 V input usable, –32 to +40V input tolerated" ^0 with mine working fine from just below 11V up to 18V. 0: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Hardware_specification http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Hardware_specification
annoyingnoob 7y ago
I gave my nephew an OLPC with Sugar on it. Must have been 10 years ago. He could not figure it out, seemed useless to him.
heyiforgotmypwd 7y ago
Not to be confused with SugarCRM, which also goes by Sugar sometimes.
dr_dshiv 7y ago
Then there was Playpower, open source learning games for the $10 computer -- an 8bit 6502 Famicom clone https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2009/nov/04/playpower-80s-computing-21st-century https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2009/nov/04/playpower...
pumanoir 7y ago
This is really cool. Usually on HN the top post is some "controversial" contrarian opinion and people always fall for it.
beyondcompute 7y ago
“Nicotine – a learning platform for adults”.

185 points by geogra4 7y ago

henrikberggren 7y ago

Naming a learning platform "Sugar" is like naming a rehab clinic "Heroin"

voicedYoda 7y ago
Know your enemy?
maxharris 7y ago
It really is an irresponsible name. Sugar (and more specifically fructose) is easily the unhealthiest aspect of processed food: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjttsybt2NM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjttsybt2NM
- cies 7y ago
  Fructose usually comes as part of fruit. Fruit is extremely good food for humans (as long as you have not eaten fatty foods before it). Fructose also has the best ability to be absorbed by muscle cells without the need for insulin, compared to other sugars. I think you mean high-fructose syrup, which is not fructose but a glucose-fructose. Contains the same word but is verrrry different in health profile.
  - ObscureScience 7y ago
    I think you got it wrong. Fructose is more inflamatory than glucose (which is not good in high concentrations as well). Fructose-Glucose would be saccharine, the most common type of sugar extracted from cane and beet.
  - maxharris 7y ago
    > Fruit is extremely good food for humans It is most certainly not. The soluble and insoluble fiber in fruit is good for humans because it prevents rapid absorption of fructose, which is most definitely toxic. (Paracelsus was right when he said that the dose makes the poison! It just so happens that even small doses of fructose have an outsized impact on appetite.) Fructose is toxic because it is primarily metabolized by the liver. It has been shown to be at the root of overeating because of its effects on satiety signaling via leptin and ghrelin. > Fructose also has the best ability to be absorbed by muscle cells without the need for insulin, compared to other sugars. This is simply false. (Google it!) When used by an athlete after strenuous activity, it is true that fructose replenishes _glycogen_ in the liver, which is released as glucose, which muscle can use. But most people haven't just finished running a marathon when they gulp down a liter of Gatorade. So the effect 99% is to just fatten you up. I recommend a few educational videos to bring you up to speed on a great deal of science that has been discovered in the last 15 years or so. Dr. Lustig (endocrinologist at UCSF) lays it out: "Processed Food: An Experiment That Failed": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvgxNDuQ5DI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvgxNDuQ5DI "Fructose is a poison": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgTlFFWMNy0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgTlFFWMNy0 https://robertlustig.com/fructose-restriction/ https://robertlustig.com/fructose-restriction/ https://robertlustig.com/fructose2/ https://robertlustig.com/fructose2/
    - oil25 7y ago
      Fruit is absolutely healthy for humans - physiologically we are frugivorous apes, after all. Hence why nearly all evidence-based nutritional guidelines from all around the world encourage whole fruit consumption, as part of a diet with other whole plant foods like grains, legumes and vegetables. > gulp down a liter of Gatorade. So the effect 99% is to just fatten you up. This could not be further from the truth. Humans are notoriously inefficient at de novo lipogenesis - the process of turning sugar into fat. The myth that sugar causes weight gain (on its own, not accompanied by a high-fat diet) is just that - a myth. Not to say gulping down Gatorade is a good idea, but it isn't nearly as harmful as consuming a steak, or a stick of butter, when it comes to weight gain.
      - andrekandre 7y ago
        i was under the assumption that it was simple calories such as pasta/bread/rice/candies etc is that then not true? if not, what is the cause of weight gain?
        oil25 7y ago
        Fat has more calories and is more easily stored by the body than carbohydrates. Processed carbs, simple sugars give a greater rise in the hormone insulin, which basically puts fat into fat cells. It is not carbs' conversion to fat which causes weight gain, but their consumption in the presence of a high-fat diet.
        andrekandre 7y ago
        interesting... would that mean, it’s easier to gain fat by eating pasta + lots of olive oil vs pasta with just tomato sauce? (i have a terrible olive oil addiction ^_^)
        cies 7y ago
        Yes. In case both meals are calorically equal, yes. The excess in cals from carbs are only marginally turned into fat (lipogenesis is not something humans are good at) and thus the excess is mostly burnt up by heating your body a bit higher (forgot the scientific term for this). So the fat you eat is pretty much the fat you wear. If you eat fat and carbs together (almost everyone does that) then your body will choose to use the carbs energy directly and store the fat. As fat is good for long term storage (unlike carbs, that get stored as sugar for short term use in muscles and liver), and carbs not bee efficiently turned into fat (as mentioned) yet can very efficiently be stored.
- slothtrop 7y ago
  It leaves an impression that the portended motivation behind the platform is disingenuous.
- hevi_jos 7y ago
  It is not sugar per se. It is being able to concentrate and crystallize it and then eating it in a completely non natural way. Fructose in nature , on fruit, has lots od fiber(celulose), that makes release of sugar in the bloodstream slow, that is Glycemic Index low. Refined sugar on the other way, specially in dissolved water, like with milk, coffee or soda, release enormous amount of fructose in a very short amount of time. In nature, only honey does that. Refined sugar was a luxury until 200 years ago. US by the way produces the worst sugar of all, because it is not fructose, but something they could produce from corn, way cheaper than brown sugar that comes from tropical places.
guitarnick 7y ago
In half jest, how do you feel about "Slack" then? One can argue it makes the product more memorable.
- mobilefriendly 7y ago
  "Slack" has multiple meanings including nautical-- adding or cutting slack into a line, which gives it capability to do more...
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
  I don't use Slack, but from what I gather it's general slowness and the way it aids constant distraction means it is a pretty good productivity killer, so calling it 'Slack' is actually Truth in Television.
- kazinator 7y ago
  It's an aptly-named productivity distractor.
- rbanffy 7y ago
  Just like actual slack, it makes people less productive. Without the creative benefit of slacking. ;-)
the_common_man 7y ago
FWIW, I am indian, and sugar is never a bad thing in our culture. The firsts thing that comes to mind is just 'sweet'. It's got positive connotations for me.
- udkl 7y ago
  I don't think he meant sugar in the sense of being bad when he compared it to heroin. The comparison was to highlight the similarity of addictiveness of sugar in children and heroin in adults. Addictiveness isn't necessarily always bad. > and sugar is never a bad thing in our culture Sugar IS bad, scientifically speaking. I wouldn't be surprised if sugar is an important reason for the high levels of obesity and heart diseases in India. In the end, I think we need to move ahead from traditional values and selectively and logically think about the parts of our culture we want to retain.
autoexec 7y ago
Could be worse. Could have been called Corn-Syrup.

klenwell 7y ago

I see a link for "How to get Sugar on an OLPC XO Laptop". Is this going to revitalize my old XO laptop? (I would really love to be able to do that.)

jhbadger 7y ago
It may be a newer version, but Sugar was the initial environment on the XO.
khm 7y ago
Your XO shipped with Sugar. Assuming it's an XO-1, the latest OS and installation instructions are here: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Release_notes/13.2.10#XO-1 http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Release_notes/13.2.10#XO-1

geogra4 7y ago

I was just playing around with Sugar in a VM and it reminded me so much of how the earliest GUIs on a Mac as a kid felt. In general I've been kind of struggling to how to introduce my kids to computing. They're at the age now where they ask about it and see me on the computer and want to be part of it. Sugar seems to be a good introduction - one of the best that's just not just a normal linux distro with a bunch of edu apps thrown in.

josinalvo 7y ago
How do you feel it compares to "just a normal linux distro with a bunch of edu apps thrown in"?
- geogra4 7y ago
  Other options with more 'kid friendly' UIs like UKnow4Kids, Educado, DoudouLinux, or Leeenux Kids just seem to have stopped development many years ago. Something like Edubuntu isn't really appropriate for small children - it's a little too complicated. I don't think the UI is perfect, fwiw
  - radicaldreamer 7y ago
    I think the standard Linux Gnome or KDE UI is probably better for kids to learn than Sugar, primarily because the learning curve to transition to any other computing interface is pretty high because Sugar's UX is really poor.
  - ObscureScience 7y ago
    I'm kind of betting on EndlessOS.

CodeMage 7y ago

I'm not 100% sure, but I think this might be the first thing I've seen on HN front page, in all my time on this site, that actually motivated me to jump right into criticism. Usually I just stay quiet if I don't have anything positive to say. First of all, before even clicking through, my reaction to the name was negative. To quote henrikberggren's comment: "Naming a learning platform 'Sugar' is like naming a rehab clinic 'Heroin'." Second, those stick figures look like skull-and-crossbones. Third, your sample "fun activity" looks less fun than anything a kid with a computer has access to. Fourth, creating a new user in your Sugarizer demo is an awful experience. It asked me to pick a name first, then let me go through the rest of the steps -- including "choosing" a new avatar color by clicking to get random colors until I just gave up -- and then, at the end, told me the user "foo" already exists. Fifth, I don't find the UI intuitive at all. When I'm inside an activity, if I want to go back to the activity selection page, I have to click on an octagon with a square inside it. No idea how I'm supposed to associate that with "home" or "back" or any of the verbs I could think of. Lastly, I tried out a few of the activities and I have no idea how any of that is supposed to help kids learn or collaborate. The "clock" activity just displays a clock. That's it. The "tam tam" activity has a confusing UI, but once you overcome the confusion, you can just pick different instruments to hear their sound. The most confusing was the "maze" activity, because I pressed one arrow key and it solved the whole maze. Later I realized that it follows the path until a decision point and then waits for input, but it's really weird. I appreciate that this must have taken substantial effort, but I have no idea just how this is supposed to be useful. And let's face it, I gave it more time than an average visitor probably would.

imulligan 7y ago
I agree with your comment, in its entirety.
Spooky23 7y ago
I played around with it for a bit. It's frustrating to me as there is alot of really cool stuff in the platform, but it is such an opinionated interface that it distracts from the overall mission. Some of the apps are too complex for very young children, but the interface feels too primitive for 6-9 year olds who aren't living in a cave. 5 year olds are adept on awful UI like YouTube, this is too simple. There are some really cool apps that would be better served in a more traditional Android/iOS style tablet interface. OLPC is/was very pushy about their point of view.

AngeloAnolin 7y ago

Interesting stats (on the bottom of the page[1]) 3,000,000+ Users 11,531,321+ Activities Downloaded Significant numbers altogether. [1] https://sugarlabs.org/ https://sugarlabs.org/

ascales 7y ago
"To date, OLPC has distributed more than 3 million laptops to children around the world." Not quite 3 million active users, but 3 million machines that came pre-loaded with this http://blog.laptop.org/2015/09/03/olpc-announces-partnership-with-zamora-teran-foundation/#.XWl8pihKguU http://blog.laptop.org/2015/09/03/olpc-announces-partnership...

elkos 7y ago

Wasn't that the original environment of the OLPC computers? IMHO nowadays an X220 with a Debian and a KDE/Gnome/xfce environment goes a long way for me.

choward 7y ago

Those autoscrolling things are very frustrating. I start to read something or look at a screenshot then it goes away. I can't make it stop either. I honestly don't get who thought this was a good idea but it makes me question the UX of the entire product when stuff like that gets okayed.

CodeMage 7y ago
I figured it out by accident, after a whole lot of frustration: click on the image itself and the carousel will pause.

nimrody 7y ago

I thought one of the original aims was that kids could easily explore and modify the code behind the apps (python code I think). I like that approach but couldn't find the "show/edit source button" (using the Sugarizer web based platform) Perhaps a simplified Smalltalk environment would be better?

nine_k 7y ago
Sqeakland.org has that: eToys. Not that the UI is very intuitive there, too.
- ObscureScience 7y ago
  That kind of saddens me as well. How can a GUI be this clunky and confusing? Why would an application mainly for children use the "put every option on screen and in the one uncontextual contex menu" atitude? I think it's low hanging fruit to create the best educational and entertaining environment for children, ask 4.99 on an appstore and be set for some time.

VikingCoder 7y ago

I absolutely love the mission of OLPC, and I hate literally every decision they made. I think they sucked all of the oxygen out of the room, and I think Sugar is possibly the worst part.

mikepurvis 7y ago
It's really beyond belief that they insisted on reinventing the wheel with so much of the system. How much more sane would it have been to just ship a regular Linux desktop with a curated selection of libre applications and established programming environments/repls? RPi is the learning computer that OLPC never was.
- paulryanrogers 7y ago
  Keep in mind it was meant to be hackable by young, non-English speakers with limited literacy. Starting with Linux and heavy suites of apps meant and built for/by technically inclined westerners would not have been a better fit, IMO. Especially within the resource and budget constraints they had to work with. A mid-oughts, sub-$200 device just didn't have the capacity for layers of legacy software.

ascales 7y ago

This was part of the One Laptop Per Child program, and the '3 million users' stat comes from the fact that this was preloaded on every one of the 3 million+ laptops distributed. http://blog.laptop.org/2015/09/03/olpc-announces-partnership-with-zamora-teran-foundation/#.XWl8pihKguU http://blog.laptop.org/2015/09/03/olpc-announces-partnership...

blowski 7y ago

For all the adults moaning about it on here, I showed it to my 5 year old (British/Brazilian) son and he loved it.

tuukkah 7y ago
This is the most relevant comment here this far! Sugar wasn't designed for western adults, their prejudice and office work but for children's learning in pedagogical scenarios within developing countries.
- rbanffy 7y ago
  Not trying to compete in developed countries was probably a mistake. That could offer them more exposure and welcome funding. But, then, they'd need to offer support they weren't ready to. Working with governments has some advantages.
DrPhish 7y ago
I also threw sugar on a stick on some old throwaway dell laptops my company got rid of and let my 3 sons do whatever they wanted with them. They were around 6/8/10 at the time They had a blast and made all sorts of cool stuff, despite the limitations. Possibly because of them Our middle son even did up a full squeak/etoys extra-hours project for his grade 4 class and got extra marks That said, I think the OLPC project only ended up being a shadow of what it could have been, and is one of the great squandered opportunities of human history. The amount of mindshare the OLPC project had was astonishing at the time, and either through mismanagement or being overly ambitious, it never fulfilled their vision It would certainly be nice to hear from the kids that had them in their schools in the developing world circa 2006+ and what kind of impact they had

kazinator 7y ago

Looks nice; name makes me cringe. If I'm crazy and names don't matter, then why not call it "Cigarette: open-source software learning platform for rug-rats ... from Tobacco Labs!" A parent that wants to reinforce a consistent "sugar is bad" signal to their kids will feel that such a thing undermines their message.

DonHopkins 7y ago
Funny you'd mention that. Philip Morris was a Media Lab sponsor in 2004 and 2005. http://web.mit.edu/annualreports/pres04/07.05.pdf http://web.mit.edu/annualreports/pres04/07.05.pdf http://web.mit.edu/annualreports/pres05/07.06.pdf http://web.mit.edu/annualreports/pres05/07.06.pdf (Those are the years I happened to know of -- looks like there are more.) https://www.google.com/search?biw=1183&bih=978&sxsrf=ACYBGNR0daBOkOIRA7YO3G6rfkJvH58Uzg%3A1567203842906&ei=AqJpXcr1Ns3FwQKckKXQAw&q=site%3Aweb.mit.edu+%22philip+morris%22+%22media+lab%22&oq=site%3Aweb.mit.edu+%22philip+morris%22+%22media+lab%22&gs_l=psy-ab.3...0.0..52314...0.0..0.0.0.......0......gws-wiz.fDmFfjjZfL4&ved=0ahUKEwjK_uKi0avkAhXNYlAKHRxICToQ4dUDCAs&uact=5 https://www.google.com/search?biw=1183&bih=978&sxsrf=ACYBGNR...

thomk 7y ago

https://imgur.com/l99s11R https://imgur.com/l99s11R For those times when you want your child to learn about alcoholic beverages. From a computer. On the internet.

dmurray 7y ago
A child being able to identify a martini glass doesn't seem like a terrible loss of innocence.
- mavhc 7y ago
  Today we learn that most adults are addicted to drugs
- thomk 7y ago
  Agreed. However, that's not a just martini glass, that's a martini. Maybe they are teaching kids about olives? :)
em-bee 7y ago
hah, that's funny. my wife is a montessori teacher. montessori likes to use kid sized things for kids hads. that means for example teachers like to use small glasses that the kids handle with ease. so that means as a religiously non-alcoholic family we have shotglasses at home - on full display - on the kids toy shelf and so does the kindergarden. i have to cringe every time i see that.
- em-bee 7y ago
  stupid typo: for kids hands...
esotericn 7y ago
The entire bottom row there is made up of treat items?

aaron695 7y ago

"If you build it, they will come" is the worst line in a movie ever for actual humanity. Most disadvantaged kids have access to Microsoft or Android adding a layer doesn't help.

filmgirlcw 7y ago

I promise I'm not trying to be flippant, but is this still actively around? I see there have been two seemingly-minor releases this year, the first project activity since 2017. I had insomnia a few weeks ago and was re-reading a bunch of "whatever happened to OLPC" stuff to remember that utter disaster, and AFAIK, the Sugar project is basically just a few people, its now under the auspices of the SFC and its really barebones with almost no hardware support (the last OLPC devices were sold years ago). Even the base image of Ubuntu it offers for the USB stick reached EOL more than 18 months ago. We can all say this was a nice idea -- but this certainly isn't an active project in the sense that there is developer or monetary investment.

Havoc 7y ago

I really like this. The concept resonates - even though I have no children. One thing I'm not seeing is spaced repetition? It's one thing I'd really want if I DIY learning

mnemonicsloth 7y ago
1. Spaced repetition is for the end of the knowledge acquisition process. It crystallizes what you already understand pretty well. Sugar is for the very beginning: making kids aware that some subjects are interesting enough to learn. 2. Spaced repetition is boring, especially for kids.
- Havoc 7y ago
  Don't see why a tool can't actively manage both - introducing new concepts and re-inforcing them on the right schedule. Yes you don't want a rigid spaced rep schedule...but I'd like to see some of that integrated in a soft fashion anyway
- em-bee 7y ago
  if kids choose to play an activity over and over again (not continuously, but every day or so pick it up and play for a while), is that not also spaced repetition? how would that be boring?
- mikekchar 7y ago
  I'm going to disagree with you, but I'm actually very interested to hear your reasoning behind your comments on spaced repetition. It is a very interesting perspective that I haven't heard before so I'm quite keen to hear more. Having said that, here's my point of view. Spaced repetition is not really directly involved with knowledge acquisition. When I say "acquisition" I have a very specific meaning in mind. In recent language acquisition theory there is a distinction between "learning" and "acquisition". Learning means to be able to go from not knowing something to being able to remember something. Acquisition means to go from not being able to use something to being able to use it appropriately without undue effort. Learning does not always lead to acquisition (something that's still not penetrated the organisations that do education, unfortunately). Spaced repetition is wonderful for learning. You can go from not knowing something to being able to remember something for a very long time with minimal effort. Again, it does not necessarily lead to acquisition. From the perspective of language, to acquire language you need to be exposed to it in realistic contexts where you understand the meaning. Personally, I have found that learning can help with acquisition because it kind of gives you a super fast dictionary to look things up and allow you to comprehend things when you are exposed to them. You need a lot of exposure and comprehension to actually acquire the knowledge, though -- and spaced repetition alone won't get you there. I think the same is true of all skill acquisition, but there is a lot of research to be done to show that (as an example, imagine learning all the rules of calculus -- you still won't be able to write proofs easily, but it will help you to save massive amounts of time when you start studying proofs). Where I think you might be coming from is that there is a period when learning something where you just can't remember it for a significant amount of time. In most spaced repetition software (like Anki), you go from a 10 minute review spacing to a whole day -- and even going from 1 minute to 10 minutes can often be a jump. What's interesting about that is that there is a different concept called "spacing" (which is unfortunately very similarly named to "spaced repetition"). With "spacing" the idea is that you will reduce the slope of the forgetting curve faster if you forget something. This is a crazy idea, but it seems to work very well. If you want to read a tonne of papers on the subject, google "desirable difficulties". So my idea is that you initially want to space a repetition longer than you would for spaced repetition so that you have to struggle to remember it. This will help you learn it faster. At that point you should switch over to spaced repetition. I say "my idea", because there are very few (or possibly none ;-) ) papers that discuss mixing spacing and desirable difficulties with spaced repetition.... If only I were a psychology prof... Anyway, there is another concept called "Interleaving". With interleaving, what you do is intentionally change the subject frequently while you are learning something. This makes it difficult to remember and potentially reduces the amount of spacing you require to get the "spacing effect". Many papers suggest changing subjects every 10 minutes (which seems crazy -- imagine 10 minutes of math, 10 minutes of English, 10 minutes of Foreign language, 10 minutes of geography, then back to 10 minutes of math, etc, etc, etc -- but the studies I've read show really incredible rates of learning) But again, the key is that learning is distinct from acquisition -- so while learning is useful it doesn't necessarily lead to skill acquisition. As for #2 I don't think spaced repetition is boring at all -- especially for kids. Give a small child a cartoon on a DVD. Watch as they repeat it over and over and over and over again. Watch at they view the video today, the same video tomorrow, the same video the next day. It's really incredible. Kids love that kind of repetition. I get your point that Anki might be boring ;-)

carapace 7y ago

One of the coolest things about the OLPC was that adults couldn't figure out how to open it but little kids could.

em-bee 7y ago
for years an XO testing device was my primary portable laptop for work. every time i ran into someone who hadn't seen it before, i let them try to open it. it was funny to see what people tried and how long it took for them to figure it out. sometimes i had to stop them as they would pry with force in the wrong direction and i feared they'd break it.
Rediscover 7y ago
Agreed that that is one of the coolest things about it. Two other features I loved: The screen -- great for coding outdoors. The DC-input -- the original Hardware Specification was for "10 to 20 V usable, -50 to 39 V safe, one- time fuse for excessive input" but changed to "11 to 18 V input usable, –32 to +40V input tolerated" ^0 with mine working fine from just below 11V up to 18V. 0: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Hardware_specification http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Hardware_specification

annoyingnoob 7y ago

I gave my nephew an OLPC with Sugar on it. Must have been 10 years ago. He could not figure it out, seemed useless to him.

heyiforgotmypwd 7y ago

Not to be confused with SugarCRM, which also goes by Sugar sometimes.

dr_dshiv 7y ago

Then there was Playpower, open source learning games for the $10 computer -- an 8bit 6502 Famicom clone https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2009/nov/04/playpower-80s-computing-21st-century https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2009/nov/04/playpower...

pumanoir 7y ago

This is really cool. Usually on HN the top post is some "controversial" contrarian opinion and people always fall for it.

beyondcompute 7y ago

“Nicotine – a learning platform for adults”.