Australia is doubling fees for arts degrees - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20200728-why-australia-is-charging-more-to-study-history <comment><USER2> This "job-ready" talk is a classic example of technology developing a life of its own (in the widest sense of the word "technology"), corrupting education specifically to suit its own needs of self-replication. [1]

The lede is a bit buried (and the financial restructuring "very complicated"), but here's the key insight to how Australia's implementing this:

 _The reforms redistribute these subsidies and changes the amount of funding that different subjects receive. For subjects like law and the humanities, the increase in student fees exceeds the decrease in government subsidies, meaning universities end up with higher fees overall. This is not the case in "job- ready subjects", where universities are forced to absorb a shortfall since the government subsidies do not offset the drop in student fees. This, higher education professionals argue, means lower per-capita student funding that will not give universities the resources they need to produce more 'job-ready' graduates – and could even back-fire._

I personally concur with this:

 _"I think the idea that you can persuade the student who is interested in philosophy to go and become an engineer is just not how this is going to work," says Joel Barnes, a public history researcher at University of Technology Sydney._

Of course, spending any time around a college undergraduate quickly shows you that most students take awhile to understand what their "philosophy" is. This, in my opinion, is the strength of America's (higher) education system - it is so flexible that one can decide to switch to philosophy/programming halfway through their training, once they discover that really is what they liked to do all along but had just never tried it. This Australian system would, instead, lock you into a cheaper major regardless of how miserable you are. Sounds to me like a recipe for a lot of incompetent engineers.

1 - [https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2019/08/rotten-stem- how-t...](https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2019/08/rotten-stem-how- technology-corrupts-education/)

<comment><USER3> The thing to remember is that in Australia the Federal Government provides interest free loans [1] to students to fund their studies. The government also subsidises university studies. In the past the government has reduced the subsidy for law and engineering on the basis that people who did these courses would earn more, and therefore should pay more. Now they have flipped that to drive students into in demand careers, as there is a shortage. This doesn't mean that humanities aren't important, but that since the government subsidies university courses, they are going to invest in whats most important for the country.

These loans are then automatically taken out of your salary based on earning a certain amount.

[1] [https://www.studyassist.gov.au/help-loans/fee- help](https://www.studyassist.gov.au/help-loans/fee-help)

<comment><USER4> > Now they have flipped that to drive students into in demand careers, as > there is a shortage.

If those careers were in-demand, shouldn't the wages on offer be enough to drive students into those careers?

<comment><USER5> You're giving 18 year olds too much credit. Ask the average college student what job they're planning on getting with their degree and how much it pays and they won't be able to tell you.

<comment><USER4> College students may not know precise numbers. But they're sharp enough to work out "barista with an art degree" makes less than "banker with a finance degree". And if they don't already know "art degree = low-paying career" we're failing them before they ever reach college.

<comment><USER6> A lot of people think art degrees will pay well because they see the explosion of interest in anime, web illustrations, comics, and graphic novels. They don't see the supply side though, so they assume good demand means a good career path.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I actually think this is a clever idea. While getting an advanced degree in humanities is a possibly laudable goal, the truth is that the vast majority of undergraduates with history majors or art majors will never enter into further studies in those fields. Rather, they will get underpaying jobs doing menial tasks.

Getting a degree simply to get a degree is one of the failings of our higher educational system and the high cost of tuition doesn't usually justify those degrees.

The perverse disincentive of doubling tuition for degrees with expected low workforce value might reduce the number of undergraduates who have such deemed unnecessary degrees in the workplace, but what then do you do with those post- secondary school students who feel that a college degree is useful, regardless of what that degree is in?

I think we need a renewal of trade schools, apprenticeship programs, and a movement to more practical degrees.

Of course if you truly want to study advanced art or literature or history or theater, there should be a path for that, but the future for those in those fields are not in high paying jobs, which means that the tuition will very rarely be returned to the student in the form of wages.

<comment><USER8> I think it's a pretty rubbish idea if you don't believe the point of life is to maximise your earnings. What if the point is to lead a good life that you enjoy on some level, and society is a system in which we perhaps try and facilitate that for everyone?

<comment><USER5> I don't see anything wrong with that but then tax payers shouldn't need to subsidize your particular goals in life. No one is stopping you from getting that arts degree, it's still there for you.

<comment><USER9> As an Aussie, I'm pretty happy to subsidise any of my fellow citizens getting higher education if they want to, because I believe the pursuit of life goals and in particular life goals in education leads to a societal betterment overall. Written differently, if someone wants to go and study philosophy even if they don't believe they'll ever work in the field, I'm happy that my tax helps to support that because I think that the process of higher education in itself is a valuable learning experience that helps produce better citizens within their communities. Higher education - even without directly leading to a career - can be a very powerful way of lifting people out of generational poverty traps.

You say that no one is stopping someone getting said degree, however often without subsidy/support it can be prohibitively expensive and that stops them. No one person may be stopping them, but systems doing so are no better.

Naturally, that comes with limits, since we are not yet able to function in a fully automated society where scarcity is abolished. Hence why the Aussie system caps the subsidised loans you may receive.

edit to add: I also support reducing the societal pressure that a university degree is the only path to success. I'd like to see much more support and emphasis placed on practical tertiary education, such as trades and the like. I think it's all too often an option that people dismiss because they're sold the lie that university guarantees success.

<comment><USER10> I actually think it's kind of a step back. In former times only rich people could afford to do anything with the arts, this is the first step that only rich people's kids can study the arts.

I don't personally get why anyone would ever do that, I always hated anything with art and music in school, but I don't want to stop them going for it. They need to live with the fact anyway that they might get a lower-paying job in the end and work in a field that's not related to their degree. But it's their choice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Beyond just the perverse incentives for university administrations discussed in the article, this would be quite disappointing. The constant push towards specialization has led to most undergraduate programs losing any liberal arts rounding, which has some obviously negative impacts (eg the perennially-absent ethics and history courses for engineers). With a further reduction in the number of students in the arts and humanities, I imagine this trend would be pushed significantly further (eg the vast majority of voters having last taken a history class in secondary school/never having taken a political science class, school districts following this lead and cutting the already-paltry funding of the arts and humanities for primary and secondary schools). Hopefully the lawmakers see that investing in STEM doesn't need to be at the expense of the arts and humanities.

<comment><USER12> Many engineering programs require an ethics class already, and many STEM degrees require TWO YEARS of "liberal arts rounding" classes. I learned nothing in those classes that I couldn't teach myself, but I sure as hell paid a lot of money for them. Additionally, every single university student has had 13 YEARS worth of liberal arts education before they've taken their first university-level class. If 13 years wasn't enough to "round out" a student, then what good will another few years do?

<comment><USER13> > many STEM degrees require TWO YEARS of "liberal arts rounding" classes.

Is that true in Australia? I assumed universities in Australia would be similar to the UK, where all classes are in the chosen subject only?

<comment><USER3> That is correct, stem degrees in Australia do not include liberal arts rounding.

<comment><USER14> It depends on the university; at University of Melbourne they do.

<comment><USER15> As someone who has gone through the Melbourne Model, I don't know if I'd call the semester's worth of breadths in the BSc "liberal arts rounding" in the same sense as people are using it here, mainly because it's a free choice of subjects outside your degree (and most subjects are available). E.g. it's not uncommon to take management subjects as an "employable" breadth.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The annoying part is that most of the politicians have humanities degrees and are of an age where their degree was probably free in Australia. $40K is a lot for an arts degree.

Surely a better solution is to provide lots of incentives to get a STEM degree - more carrot less stick.

I suspect their motivations if their stated goal is to get more STEM graduates, then this is not the best solution.

<comment><USER5> > $40K is a lot for an arts degree.

Working as intended.

Lower cost for a STEM degree = lower risk in the event that you don't find a job. Existing higher relative compensations = bigger carrot.

<comment><USER16> Humanities is also valuable - history, economics, traditional liberal arts are all valuable knowledge. I have one of each (B.Sc / B.A.) and a lot of the stuff I learnt in the BA is very useful, for one thing it gives you the skills to argue with politicians who are, in the main, lawyers and professional arguers.

As others in this thread have said, this will reserve humanities degrees for those that can afford them, i.e. the rich, who will become the lawyers and managers. Many managers have humanities degrees.

And on a lighter note, where will our baristas come from if there's no arts graduates?

It would be a poor society that doesn't have people educated in the arts.

<comment><USER5> Humanities won't go away. At some point, equilibrium will be reached and there will be an appropriate number of people going into each. Only the foolish think that liberal arts are completely worthless — but there _are_ too many people that go into them with no special talent to give them an edge in a very limited employment market. I know from experience how common it is for people to decide to go to college because that's the thing to do, and oh, well I guess I have to decide on a field to proceed with this so might as well choose something that my friends are doing. The thinking is backwards. First you have to decide what you want to do in life, calculate how that will provide for you financially, then figure out what education you need to get there.

Who knows, maybe there is in fact a B.A. in Gender Studies requirement at my local coffee shop I don't know about. ;)

<comment><USER16> Sure, but, in general, the people doing a BA in gender studies probably won't make a great addition to the STEM workforce, but the BA will teach them other valuable skills, and they'll end up in teaching or management or something. To exclude these people from an education is short sighted in my opinion, the more educated people we have the better.

<comment><USER5> >the people doing a BA in gender studies probably won't make a great addition to the STEM workforce

You never know. They _do_ keep demanding diversity. Diversity of thought might be just the thing.

<comment><USER16> I think you've made my point - BA's in things you may not think of may end up being useful, why exclude them?

<comment><USER5> I think we're in general agreement.

But we already have BAs, presumably mostly folks that are naturally more geared towards that. And they're not great for designing planes. So I'm proposing bringing the next generation of those same types of people, but to pursue engineering instead. You still need the technical education to do the work but perhaps it should be more than kids that grew up with Legos is what I'm saying.

<comment><USER16> Yah, maybe, this is part of a big picture that I've been thinking about lately - is the economy there to serve people, or are the people there to serve the economy. The libs want the dial set very much to the people serve the economy, and they're taking advantage of the current situation to make it so. I'm more an economy is there to serve the people, so let's make things so that people have a good life, and figure out how we can do this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Sounds like a great idea. Increase liberal arts fees and decrease STEM fees.

What could be the consequences good or bad?

Less women doing college - but it's already empirically proven that women don't really push for STEM (and no, it's not _only_ due to sexism).

Less degrees overall. This is maybe a good thing, since people are going to college without thinking what they really want to do (not having a plan).

More people doing vocational education, since it's not so easy to go to college for that arts and humanities degree that you'll be sure to pass.

Finally, waking up people to the fact that it's not so necessary to get a college degree for most professions on earth anyway.

</comment><comment><USER18> Australian tertiary education system is a bit of a mess.

Rather than saying 'the government provides subsidies / loans' \-- it's preferable to think of this as the _population_ does this, with the government merely administrating.

In theory the government should reflect the will and interests of the population, but in Australia that's not the case on most important issues (climate change, fossil fuel usage, renewables, health, etc) and there's no evidence to suggest they've got it right with this decision.

Trying to guess what the job market will look like in 10-30 years from now, and fiddling with deferred monetary incentives today, sounds like hubris.

HECS - university fees - came (back) in around 1990, initially a flat rate of A$1800 per student per degree. Naturally this number has risen steeply over the last three decades.

Interestingly many of our politicians obtained their qualifications when tertiary education was effectively free (1974-1990).

This, along with considering breakdown of what subjects our politicians actually studied at university [1], should be considered as they blithely toy with the long term social and economic effects of coaxing people into career pigeon holes.

[1] [https://www.torrens.edu.au/blog/business/what-degrees-do- min...](https://www.torrens.edu.au/blog/business/what-degrees-do-ministers-in- australia-have-and-why-it-matters-guess-the-top-3)

<comment><USER19> > " _Rather than saying 'the government provides subsidies / loans' \-- it's > preferable to think of this as the population does this, with the government > merely administrating._"

I think this is true of all public spending in some sense. Governments don't _have money_. Rather, the population does, and via taxation, the government is able to administer it how it chooses, for better or worse. Hopefully for the better, of course.

<comment><USER18> Yes, absolutely.

In some cases the distinction's less compelling, say defence, where individually I'm unlikely to notice the budget allocation, let alone how that expenditure is sliced up. It's still fair to say that it's the collective's money, but government budgeting for it is just not scrutinised in the same way.

Also, with education it's fundamentally different as almost everyone goes through some part of the education sector at some point in their lives.

In Straya we have about 1.5 million people in tertiary (university, colleges, etc) education today. This is a large chunk out of of the 25m population.

Consider also that we have 13.5m tax payers, and about 17m eligible voters (and voting is compulsory here).

I feel that _' the government spends this money'_ distracts us from the provenance and accountability for these crucial and significant social decisions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> So humanities and the power to dictate culture will be further reserved for the wealthy and privileged? Alternatively, humanity degrees fees should be quadrupled, but 3/4 of slots should be reserved for average income households who gets to attend for free.

<comment><USER21> As one of the other commenters mentioned, university in Australia is relatively affordable. The government subsidises most of it, and the bit that's left over is deducted from your salary by your employer until it's paid off. The news article is about the change to how much subsidy there is.

Who gets the slots available in a course is dictated by the students' results in the final exams in high school. (This is approximately true: in NSW several exams before the end of high school also count. Some universities will offer places based on the "other" high school exams if they can predict what your final exam result will be with sufficient accuracy.)

The student with the highest marks gets the place they want, and then the next student down gets their first preference, unless it is full, in which case they get their second, third, fourth, preference. And so on down through all the student candidature.

Theoretically this whole system should let a sufficiently capable average income student study humanities (or whatever they want).

In practice there are problems -- some schools have teachers who are very good at getting good marks for their students in the final exam; actually being intelligent and creative doesn't really help as much as it should -- but it's not an overly terrible system.

<comment><USER22> This is the entire point - people see this as a strict increase in out-of- pocket costs for people.

It's a reduction of subsidies, to maximise the government's ROI.

Plus, you still get a tax-free (although indexed) loan. If you want to do arts and/or humanities, you definitely can. Your loan, which you don't pay a cent of until a certain salary, and then only a percentage of your salary after that, will just be larger.

<comment><USER23> > It's a reduction of subsidies, to maximise the government's ROI.

Except, weirdly, the reduction in subsidy is _less_ than the increase in fees, so institutions will get _more_ money (fees + subsidy) for the not-job-ready degrees, while getting _less_ for the job-ready degrees. Which makes no sense at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Let's be honest: the quality of humanities degrees in Australia is bad. _Could_ they be good, and challenging, and actually useful? Of course - but I doubt you get this anywhere in Australia for undergrad. The bad thing here isn't the doubling of fees for mostly useless (and I mean intellectually useless - I couldn't care less if something isn't really directly relevant to a job) majors - it's the state of those majors in the first place. It pains me to see the lack of real rigorous and critical thinking present in undergrad classes, and the assessments are often a joke.

<comment><USER25> > It pains me to see the lack of real rigorous and critical thinking present > in undergrad classes

This is not a new phenomenon. I went to university in the US 20 years ago. Very few students ever thought to question the narrative they were hearing. Critical thinking was not taught where I went to school unless you were in a hard science. And from what I see around me today, it's still not being taught.

<comment><USER26> How good is the critical thinking that's taught in the hard sciences? My assumption would be that it's quite limited there, too - present only to the extent that it absolutely has to be for good science to be carried out.

It seems that critical thinking is generally seen (by whatever system is in charge) as an ugly thing, which, in some cases, must unfortunately be allowed to rear its head, so that progress can be made. Critical thinking is really quite a natural thing for humans to do, but it is for the above reason that it is largely stamped out of us by the school system.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Sky-high wages and low immigration were probably big factors here. Either way, there are alternatives:

Give kids more vocational stuff to do at school. Most children grow up with almost no understanding of the world of work.

Improve the humanities courses. Suggesting that they offer no workplace skills is nonsense. If you go to a good uni, you get skills that are useful in business. Simple.

Make university low-cost - why does it need to take so long? why does it need to cost so much? Make it more expensive really helps no-one. If you made a bad choice, you are now more fucked. The price mechanism doesn't work with education (ironically, this may have been clear if policy-makers had more STEM education...or is economics a social science? Who knows?).

Most of these effects are because humanities courses matriculate way more students than STEM, entrance to STEM is often controlled by trade bodies, the students have different goals, and more lower quality institutions do more degrees with more students that get thrown into humanities.

University is not the be-all...if you study history, that shouldn't really limit your career in any way. There are countries that turn out masses of STEM grads and haven't taken over the world (India, China's "engineer mindset" amongst its political leaders is also infamous). I am in the UK, and most people who do STEM degrees end up doing something non-STEM related to actually make money (either CS or finance)...most STEM jobs here actually pay poorly (most engineers earn the average salary, staying in academia in a STEM field is career suicide).

It is great headline but I suspect it will achieve little.

<comment><USER22> Low cost, low quality university is often the reason why the masses of STEM grads from India haven't taken over the world (as well as a healthy touch of racism).

This is in Australia, where not only do you get tax free (but indexed) loans for university, but the government also provides a "Commonwealth Supported Place" \- they cover half the fees, and then you get your tax-free loan for the other half.

This is entirely just trying to maximise ROI for the government. If people want to do an arts degree, they are able to, and will still get the tax-free loan. But the loan will be higher, because the government is less willing to subsidize degrees that have a lower likelihood of high income.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Two points:

1\. The "job emphasis" of higher education is out of control. That is not the primary purpose of higher education. The proper end of education is the education of the human person, not the production of a workforce. We are savages with a pinch of technical savvy perhaps, but nonetheless savages. Of course, savages make good slaves, even when they're rebelling. Of course, one must know the end of human life to be able to know the end of education. From this observation, we are led to, the second point...

2\. Sadly, most universities are wholly incapable of implementing a sound curriculum . Sure, the humanities are being measured by their industrial utility, but the humanities aren't blameless. If you thought the amount of garbage the STEM fields put out is jaw-dropping (it is), then I invite your to meet the humanities. The humanities have been slipping into decadence for some time and have become victims of ideological corruption.

</comment><comment><USER29> I overheard some students at a uni talking, one said they were doing a photography degree. They later qualified that they are studying the _history_ of photography. So they weren't learning how to do something, they were learning about other people doing that something in the past.

I wondered about their future earning potential, and where they would work.

<comment><USER4> Are you sure "history of photography" was the degree, rather than about a single subject or course? If you were studying for a photography degree, I could see you needing to study history of photography for a semester.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> You can see the actual brackets/tiers on pages 17 and 18 here: [https://www.dese.gov.au/system/files/doc/other/job_ready_gra...](https://www.dese.gov.au/system/files/doc/other/job_ready_graduates_discussion_paper_1.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER31> It reminds me of Reagan who spoke of "certain intellectual luxuries we can do without" and that taxpayers should not be asked "to subsidize intellectual curiosity".

Where I'm from (Belgium), there's also a tendency to focus more on educating for jobs instead of stimulating human curiosity and knowledge.

It's the same type of people who advocate progress and innovation, and just don't see how moulding people's education to an existing situation is counter- productive to their hopes for progress.

It's also the type of people who pay lip service to agile development methods, but cannot stand the insecurity of not knowing what the outcome will be.

We're living in times where many people fear being unproductive or producing something only to discover that is has no immediate value. Instead of moving us forward, such fears bring us to a standstill.

</comment><comment><USER32> This is somewhat inaccurate. The government pays for half the cost of a degree for Australian citizens. Then you pay back the other half in tax, interest free but with inflation but only when you earn over a certain amount of money.

The cost isn't doubling. The government isn't covering half the cost of the degree.

</comment><comment><USER33> When these degrees are tax payer funded the cost of said degrees should be index'd proportional to the historic rate of payback from past people doing these degrees.

Hear countless anecdotes of people saying they used their arts degree to get a professional job, so this sort of indexation shouldnt be a problem

</comment><comment><USER34> > A cheaper degree in an area where there's a job is a win-win for students

Uh, it also means a lose-lose for other students.

</comment><comment><USER35> Far as I can tell, the government has several levers that they are pulling/not pulling here (somebody correct me if I'm wrong, I'm just getting this out of news articles, not primary sources):

\- they are partially directly subsidizing the cost of degrees for domestic students. The extent of subsidy has not changed in the new policy. (questions: is the direct subsidy the same for all degrees? do arts currently get more or less than STEM?)

\- they set the fees that universities are allowed to charge students. In the new policy, the allowed fees for humanities have doubled, the allowed fees for STEM has decreased.

\- also, there is HECS/HELP, which is a scheme where all domestic students (not PR/exchange) are allowed an interest-free, CPI-indexed loan that is only paid back slowly when the student's wages go beyond a certain threshold. This is for the full cost of the entire degree, and is a big part of why students tend to be price-insensitive.

\- fees for international students are roughly 5x domestic students, and they don't get HECS/HELP. They are basically subsidizing the entire system. The covid situation has dried up this revenue stream and now the unis (who have not been financially prudent during the fat years) are deep in the red, with rumors of bankruptcy starting to circulate.

editorializing:

1\. Arts and humanities are bad choices _if you 're already poor_. If you're from a rich family it's actually pretty great - light course load, personal growth, better male/female ratio, etc. If you're poor and you do arts, you will have trouble getting a job. People should be allowed to choose whatever degree they want, but the government shouldn't subsidize bad choices.

2\. The government seems to be implementing this in a suboptimal way. It seems that there is a fee increase but no decrease in subsidy (or there's a mismatch). I would just lower the subsidy for arts/humanities and allow a fee increase that matches exactly.

3\. I doubt this will produce worse engineers. The engineering degrees in good unis are heavily sought-after and difficult to get in, and this just increases the number of applicants, while the number of available places won't change much. I think the largest effect is unis will spend more on marketing their arts degrees, since these will be more profitable going forward.

If it leads to the arts departments upping their game to attract students, it's probably a net plus.

</comment><comment><USER36> The article says they're increasing tuition for "courses seen as less vital to the economy". I have certainly not met all computer scientists obviously. But what I can say is almost every single arts / humanities graduate that I've ever met who decided to pursue a career in computers / programming were on average more qualified for the job than their computer science degree counterparts.

YMMV...

</comment><comment><USER37> I think one shouldn't confuse the destructive nature of the humanities currently with the schadenfreude of making people pay more to study them.

It's really hard to know how this will play out. The higher fees for instance is an argument the faculties should get more money and because Australian students can defer all payments of fees only on CPI it might not change numbers much.

</comment><comment><USER38> The Government has a somewhat anti-University agenda. This isn't necessarily a bad thing. Universities in Australia have drastically grown in size over the last 20 years, funded by international students. The other trend seems to be a lot of lightly employed people doing graduate degrees which are pretty lucrative for the Unis. Almost everyone I know is doing some kind of diploma, MBA, masters, PHD etc etc. I think in at least a non-trivial proportion of these cases, they do it because they can't get a good enough job or enough hours of work. It feels like everyone is over-educated and underemployed. Not clear any of this over-training leads to better job prospects. Feels like an example of the meritocratic trap [1].

They make ends meet because Australia has free healthcare, and the previous generation is very wealthy and can support them. This only lasts one generation of course.

There seems to be a dearth of opportunity for young professionals. On the one hand you have people in their 60s - 70s working longer, because they earn a LOT (eg > $300K a year as well established doctors, lawyers, accountants). The pay scales in government jobs also mean senior people can earn huge amounts just by virtue of being around for a long time (ie close to double what someone 20 years younger would earn for doing essentially the same thing). On the other hand you have young professionals who can't get a decent job, with ever more candidates piling up behind them.

I am not sure about the idea of a STEM shortage in Australia. Is this broadly true? The last mechanical engineer I spoke to quit to become a java programmer because he couldn't get a job. On the other hand a guy I know in Fintech hired out the whole team from overseas, there wasn't anyone with .NET experience locally. Boeing has a software shop and they used to hire a lot of engineers, not sure what they do now. It's puzzling. I suspect there are some social effects at play that are restricting labour market mobility and also that universities are not well aligned with the labour market. One thing I definitely notice - there is a real lack of highly technical startups here. Apparently venture capitalists in Australia are not the best. 'I wouldn't piss on them if they were on fire' was one comment I heard about local VCs.

[1] [https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/09/meritoc...](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/09/meritocracys- miserable-winners/594760/)</comment>


National Geospatial Intelligence Agency Open Source Software - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/ngageoint <comment><USER2> Opensphere ([https://github.com/ngageoint/opensphere](https://github.com/ngageoint/opensphere)) looks interesting and uses the Apache License. Anyone used it?

</comment><comment><USER3> Is this because of the latest JRE podcast?

<comment><USER4> [https://youtu.be/WNlqsuTJu2Q?t=739](https://youtu.be/WNlqsuTJu2Q?t=739)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> if we assume that committers to these projects are government employees or contractors (possibly with access to juicy systems or info), it'd be interesting to use this commit data as well as a 1 hop followers/following graph of authors to build a dataset that may shed light into communities of gov't contractors that could then be spear phished/targeted in other manners by say other intel agencies. i wonder if this is being done currently.

<comment><AUTHOR> Contractors are not secret, nor are employees. You can go to LinkedIn and easily look up people who work for NSA, or Booz Allen Hamilton, and learn a great deal of who does what (again, not a secret). Counterintelligence measures are employed elsewhere.

<comment><USER5> where'd i claim it was secret?

part of spear phishing is building up credibility, so it's a value add to have this information in addition to whatever other OSINT is out there. if you're committing in tandem with another user that's a huge opportunity to impersonate and phish, vis-a-vis "your buddy at Lockheed".

<comment><USER6> If you are that interested, you should probably just apply for a job there.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


SendGrid Service Outage - <AUTHOR> http://status.sendgrid.com/ <comment><USER2> damn it. Just before mandrill going away, sendgrid goes down. Today was the day I was going to migrate a few clients to sendgrid. :(</comment>


Show HN: Coding Spellbook - Learn CS Interactively - <AUTHOR> http://www.codingspellbook.com/

<comment><USER2> Work on interface, it's kinda ugly.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback; I will.

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> Shweet!

</comment><comment><USER3> awesome!</comment>


A new way to hire: contributing to open source projects - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/datalogue/open-source-hiring-84df05fdb357 <comment><USER2> This sounds horrible. And I say this as someone who's been contributing to open source since.. like 15 years? What does meaningful even mean? I sometimes spend hours and days trying to reproduce and triage a bug, not even talking about fixing it. How is any reasonably sized open source project different than a closed source inhouse code base (ok, usually the docs are better or exist at all) - do they really expect people to spend multiple working days on a job interview?

If you as an interviewee happen to find the proposed projects interesting or be contributing anyway, it's actually quite awesome, but even a big open source advocate this hiring method doesn't really seem practicable to me.

<comment><USER3> > do they really expect people to spend multiple working days on a job > interview?

if you read the article they say their previous interviewing practice was homework that took about a week to do (described as "high effort") so it does seem they are looking for substantial contributions.

From the perspective of spending a week on an ad-hoc coding effort vs a week on an open source contribution I can definitely see the value, especially considering that it seems it's up to you what you do (you are submitting your "this is what I did" together with your application and not "I want to apply"/"fix these github issues") which also means you can decide the effort level and most important when you spend it.

Reading the article it seems nothing prevents you from working on this for 3-4 weekends and then applying, which seems completely reasonable and honestly not a bad way to go at it. It really seems a win-win-win: for the company, they get to evaluate you as a candidate, for you, you have a meaningful contribution for your resume even if the application doesn't work, and for the open source ecosystem as a whole, which gets some bugs fixed or features added

I mean, these days to interview you'd still spend several weekends refreshing algorithms and practicing so as long as this is the whole of the technical interview and not just the initial part plus a day of whiteboard algorithm quizzes it'd be a nice alternative.

I am less sure about the "cooking together" part of the hiring process, but if that's the culture they want to foster I guess that's their prerogative, on the other hand I do believe this should be stated up front and not be a surprise, given how not everybody would be willing or able to partecipate due to dietary restrictions and preferences.

<comment><USER4> Dietary restrictions and preferences 100% welcome! Grew up with a celiac sibling and one of our team members is vegetarian. Similarly to design, in food, restrictions lead to creativity! (Founder of the company)

<comment><USER3> thanks for chiming in and clarifying, best of luck with your hiring! as I was saying I definitely think it's a net positive for everybody to harness your interviewees' effort to improve open source packages that you care about as opposed to just wasting it on contrived exercises not benefiting anybody.

<comment><USER4> There's also the fact that if more companies adopt this approach candidates could technically do a single open source challenge to apply to multiple companies :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If there's someone from Datalogue --

It's really hard to work out where you're based; I'm guessing New York from a tag on one of your medium posts. This is usually important to be able to discover when you're recruiting!

There's no way to get in touch with you that isn't "we'll contact you" with a mandatory phone number (which you're not getting).

I was initially interested in applying but now I'm not.

If you are about, could you let us know how well Open Source Interviewing has worked for you in the past? Or is this the first time you've done it?

<comment><USER6> Hi sonofgod,

On Datalogue's recruiting page ([https://datalogue.github.io/recruiting/](https://datalogue.github.io/recruiting/)) there is a recruiting email address (recruiting [at] datalogue [dot] io) if you would like to get in contact directly.

The form with phone number field is just for demo sign-up.

Feel free to reach out directly

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> My current employer requires clearance for open source contributions. They generally speaking approve all requests, but I'm not sure "it's required for an interview I'm doing" is going to be a compelling reason for them.

<comment><USER8> haha, same here, although I send enough requests that it might just slip through unnoticed :D

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I don't know. On the one hand, I get that "work for free and maybe we'll hire you" is going to block quite a lot of otherwise qualified applicants.

On the other hand, I've seen plenty of worse ideas around hiring. At least this will result in some positive impact on the world.

I'll also give them credit for requesting contributions to other companies Open Source products rather than just their own. There was one company who I had actually done some free Open Source work for in the past. When I contacted them about an open position, they essentially told me "that past work doesn't count and you need to do more free work on our newer platform we'll consider hiring you". That was a serious let down.

</comment><comment><USER9> "So we invite the candidate over for dinner."

If you are still working around dinner time, I already failed your cultural fit.

</comment><comment><USER10> Do free work if you want to be employed!

No thanks. Will my employer give money away to poor people just to show what good people they are?!

STOP MAKING WORK ABOUT MORE THAN A BUSINESS TRANSACTION.

</comment><comment><USER11> A week-long technical assessment? Cooking meals as part of the interview process? Jesus H. Christ. Now I've heard it all. We as a community have got to start pushing back on the increasingly obnoxious interviewing process for software development jobs. What other field do you know of that would put up with this sort of thing?

<comment><USER4> Would love to hear out a better solution.

We cook because we enjoy it. Its the last part of the interview and meant as a meet and greet of the team, not as an assessment of your cooking skills. Knowing that you enjoy the people you work with, in my opinion, is better than going in dark your first day on the job.

In terms of other processes, I've got through much more laborious interview processes. In the consulting world we'd prep for hours and then go through several rounds of case interviews and getting to know partners. One of our team members is a lawyer with similar experiences. As a software engineer I like to showcase my work. Having the ability to give back to the community and the liberty to pick the project that I contribute to sounded pretty good to me when the team pitched this approach.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Am I missing something here?

None of the examples they've cited at the bottom of that post are actual contributions to a popular open-source project, but seems more like stuff that's been built as a standalone project.

<comment><USER13> This was my contribution: [https://github.com/mljs/matrix/pull/50](https://github.com/mljs/matrix/pull/50)

I previously contributed to the mljs libraries and used the opportunity to add a new feature and demonstrate that I knew how to unit test etc.

<comment><USER14> Did you get the job?

<comment><USER13> Yes, I currently work here.

Should have made a disclaimer!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Best book about compilers? - <AUTHOR> I would like to grab a book on compilers but am not sure which one to choose.
The Dragon book (Compilers: Principles, Techniques, and Tools) is the one that gets recommended everywhere but that doesn't always mean it's the best. I find that many people recommend books they've actually not read and/or they haven't read anything else on the subject which makes it a bit tough to say the one they're familiar with is the best.
Some have said the dragon book is unbalanced in content and for instance Modern Compiler Implementation in ML is better in that.
What is your opinion? Can you recommend some book over another one?
Also: I'm not sure if a 800 page brick is the best to get yourself familiar with ... anything(?). I'm most certainly sure the book I'm looking for doesn't have to cover every tiny little detail that could be useful to know every 0.000001 % of time.
Thanks! <comment><USER2> I doubt people who actually do write compilers would get much of use of any book out there.

There are 2 main tasks a compiler does:

* parsing * optimized code generation

While nominally parsing is covered by books and there's loads of theory on it, production compilers (gcc, clang, Go, swift) pretty much always end up with hand-written recursive-descent parser, which are a lot work but their structure is rather simple.

Code generation is universally done by converting to SSA and then writing optimization passes on top of that. Again, lots of work and lots of optimization rules, but nothing earth shattering conceptually. Read up on SSA and study existing code like [https://github.com/golang/go/tree/master/src/cmd/compile/int...](https://github.com/golang/go/tree/master/src/cmd/compile/internal/ssa) for real-life optimization.

Then there's linker stuff like generating pe/elf/mach-o executables, generating symbols etc., which isn't covered in books but there's documentation on-line on all those subjects and you can study existing code like [https://github.com/golang/go/tree/master/src/cmd/link/intern...](https://github.com/golang/go/tree/master/src/cmd/link/internal/ld)

</comment><comment><USER3> The book "Engineering a Compiler" ([https://www.amazon.com/Engineering- Compiler-Second-Keith-Coo...](https://www.amazon.com/Engineering-Compiler- Second-Keith-Cooper/dp/012088478X)) is a good resource and reference; I keep it on my desk at work. Like other compiler books, it falls short in meeting all practical application purposes and does great with theory. Ideally, this book should be combined with looking at modern compiler implementations.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm not sure it is the best, but it is clearly an alternative to the Dragon book.

[https://compilers.iecc.com/crenshaw/](https://compilers.iecc.com/crenshaw/)

</comment><comment><USER5> Is the dragon book really recommended nowadays? I don't think so, especially for starters.

<comment><USER6> CMU still uses the dragon book 2ed for their grad level compilers course [https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~15745/syllabus.html](https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~15745/syllabus.html) and Andrew Appel's compiler book for the undergrad course.</comment></comment>


Crystal structure of monomeric retroviral protease M-PMV solved by FoldIt gamers - <AUTHOR> http://www.nature.com/nsmb/journal/v18/n10/full/nsmb.2119.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Was this on the front page at some point and I missed it? It would seem to me this is a great example of a hack with killer results.</comment>


Generating MIDI melody from lyrics using LSTM-GANs - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/yy1lab/Lyrics-Conditioned-Neural-Melody-Generation <comment><USER2> > Q5 In the case of Markov, etc., I understand that the generation may be not > very conformant to the style learnt, unless using a high order Markov but > with the risk of recopying entire sequences from the corpus and thus > plagiat. But, in the case of a RNN-based architecture [9], what is the > rationale?</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>-- A5: As mentioned before, RNN does the similar > work as LSTM in our work. But without including a discriminator, it only > learns transmission probability between adjacent notes, but does not promise > that generated sequences look like real ones.

Come on, guys, that's just not true. You do _not_ need an adversarial loss to get good quality melodies. Look at Sturm's char-RNN on ABC notation, or OpenAI's MuseNet, or a bunch of Project Magenta work, or my own GPT-2 ABC music (MIDI in progress): [https://www.gwern.net/GPT-2-music](https://www.gwern.net/GPT-2-music) Or for that matter, any generative model trained with a non-adversarial loss (anything using GPT-2 for example).

In fact, generally, everyone _avoids_ GANs for sequence generation because they work so badly compared to regular likelihood training... (Just at a skim, their 'baseline' is pretty suspicious. I'd expect an ablation for the GAN, not comparing their 400-unit LSTM to... a 100-unit LSTM [https://www.aclweb.org/anthology/N19-4015.pdf](https://www.aclweb.org/anthology/N19-4015.pdf) ? Really?)

<comment><USER3> feynmanliang's BachBot and hexahedria's biaxial-rnn also have very good melody generation, and these deal with polyphonic music which is quite a bit harder than simple monody/monophonic music.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Oh no, they're ruining popular music as we know it. Anybody can just push some buttons and generate the next hit song. All you need is some with artificial lyrics, artificial melody, artificial vocal (Yamaha vocaloid), on top of a beat bought on the net.

<comment><USER5> I know you're being sarcastic but I always thought the concern over the provenance of art is strange. If a computer can generate good music, why does it matter that a computer created it if it's good music? And if computers are just spitting out terrible music, who cares?

Same goes for computer generated visual art, painting created by elephants, or whatever else you can think of that challenges the position of humans as the sole creators of art.

<comment><USER6> Depends if you consider it pure raw material (I think it is) that you can use to convey something of your own or if you can relate to some point to it (and do the same, but to some further extent).

At a rather utilitarian level, one wouldn't consider a spoon exactly the same way whether it was: 1) carved out of wood by someone you can relate to (by history, reasons, knowledge); as a unique piece, or part of a series; 2) or built in a factory, by workers; and available in the same fashion in X instances; 3) or built in a factory by robots; and available as an exact copy in X instances; 4) or a pure unique artefact that got the practical shape of a spoon.

And that would be for a spoon only.

I am of the school of thought that one doesn't make art without the intent of communicating/transmiting (it/through it) with other people, however remote/intimate it can be. If only because one cannot live alone.

In this line, whatever pleasing something can be, if there's no transmission/communication/need/desire behind the creation of it, if there is no social reason behind it, it has no resonance, no affect to me that makes me actually relate to it (and to the person that thought of it, fell on it, carved it in their words, sounds, silences, colors, shapes, steps, etc.).

To me, whatever the artist intent was, when anything is done, it is done by someone - this someone cared, if only enough to make it, and that way attached something to their work.

That is something I can try to relate to (to the product itself, and to the intent perhaps).

When something is produced by a system, there still may be the intent of the person(s) that designed this system. But it may also be totally independant of the designers scope. That is interesting also, as pure rough material.

But it isn't remotely as profound, interesting, human as something that is done by someone real.

<comment><USER7> Now consider this: Something generated by a computer, in this case music, has no intent.

But what happens if I curate it, judge it, only publish the best ones. Through that I add my intent.

Where is the difference between curating a number of computer generated songs into an album, and curating a number of computer generated sounds into a piece of music?

Both require some sort of talent, both add intent to something that a computer generated.

<comment><USER6> Of course. You add your intent of curation/collection. The part that's original to you is the curation itself. Not the songs being collected themselves.

It's the same with instruments that generate a sound (whether mechanical or electronic ones). The sound source might be more or less generated. But what you do with it, the music you compose and play with it, that is original to your self. But the source sound material is just that: raw material.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Judging by the four provided melodies: 1) the notes have very little rhythmic variation. 2) the melodies don't seem to have any concept of metre or metric accent.

</comment><comment><USER9> Music, like weaving, is a predecessor in using algorithms to do work. For hundreds of years, music theorists have been codifying the algorithms, or creating new algorithms, that create good music (for particular definitions of good). Like other code instantiated in a network, this code is more tailored to specific prior states and is less available to analysis of its details than prior efforts.

</comment><comment><USER10> I always wanted a "demo engine" whereby one feeds in the melody and chord name, and then a style(s). The AI would then use pattern matching to make a fuller score in the chosen style(s). The output could be midi and/or an audio file (such as .WAV). Bonus points for vocals if given lyrics. I could make Elvis diet parodies: "Ain't nothing but a round dog..." Band-in-a-Box software sort of does this, but lacks realism in my opinion.</comment>


Ask HN: Which college should I attend? - <AUTHOR> I've been fortunate enough to be admitted as an undergrad into UCSD (engineering), UCLA (engineering), UCB (l&s), and possibly Caltech (waitlisted). I plan to major in Computer Science as I've spent a lot of time programming in my high school years and have found it very enjoyable. At the moment, I've been leaning towards Berkeley, but the only issue is that I applied for CompSci in the Letters and Science department. This means I will not be an engineering student unless, of course, I transfer into the College of Engineering, which I've heard is a very difficult process. As a result, I will be earning a B.A. instead of a B.S. in computer science at Berkeley, whereas at UCSD and UCLA, I'll be earning a B.S. Will this make any difference?<p>Taking this all into consideration, I would like to know if anyone could help me make the right choice for my career. I want to choose the best college in terms of the environment, connections, classes, job opportunities, and overall experience. Thanks! <comment><USER2> This is actually the startup I'm working on. We applied to YC a couple of days ago. My cofounder and I believe that there are better ways to find out where you should go and what you should study than the traditional routes of nearly guessing, getting a postcard with your name on it, or taking a tour around campus with a student worker. (Though, honestly, schools love the last one because attendance rates, once you get the student to set foot on campus, are above 70%. So as much as I knock the idea of a tour with a student worker making less than $10 per hour, it does seem to seal the deal.)

Anyway, we're going to change college selection for a lot of students. I'm sorry we're not ready, yet.

</comment><comment><USER3> I agree with the others that B.A. versus B.S. makes little difference from the perspective of a future employer. It might make a difference to you, though, in terms of what the class requirements are.

UCB is nice if you are interested in startups. If you get into Caltech, visit if you can (and haven't already). Caltech was my "dream school" from middle school onward. I was admitted and visited, at which point I realized that it was a horrible fit for me socially. I'm not saying that you'll feel the same way, but of the schools you've listed, Caltech is probably the weirdest, and therefore the riskiest choice if you don't know exactly what you're getting into.

<comment><USER4> My two cents is that the social scene in Caltech has a high degree of variability with respect to which House you live in.

</comment></comment><comment> D-Train Just like the others have said, choosing the school that makes you HAPPIEST is best. Culture is so important when it comes down to these long-term commitments.

Also, do think about the networking aspect. That is, where are some of those alums at those schools heading off to. This may be an important as you think beyond college.

They're all great schools, and if you're confident in your ability and work hard, you'll make the most out of any school you choose.

... and just because I am an avid fan of my undergrad, I'm going to throw in Georgia Tech to the talk. Just cuz...

Good luck and congrats!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your input!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> If you want to be a software engineer, UCB probably has the most renowned CS program of all the schools you mentioned.

At Cal the only differences between L&S CS and EECS are lower division classes. L&S CS and EECS students at Cal take the same upper div classes, and most of the same lower div classes (only differences are the non CS GenEd's and eecs has to take ee20n and ee40 but L&S doesn't).

I think the perceived value between a UCB CS degree and another school's CS degree (regardless of BS or BA) will be much greater than the perceived difference between a BS or a BA. And if you ever run into anyone who claims there's a major difference between a BA and a BS @ Cal, just point out that a Berkeley physics degree is only a BA as well.

EDIT: just realized I didn't give you an opinion. Here it is: Go to the most difficult program where you are reasonably sure that you can still get at least a 3.5 GPA. No, GPA isn't everything, but it is a lot, because people tend to use it to weed people out when there are too many applicants for something, especially right after undergrad or for grad school. Some schools have grade inflation. Others, like berkeley, have an active policy against grade inflation: [1]. Yes, you can still get a good job with a 2.1x GPA from one of those schools (or, at least, I managed to), but it's much harder than if you have a GPA > 3.

[1]: <http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/Policies/ugrad.grading.shtml>

</comment><comment><USER6> 1) Don't let your focus deride you from getting a more well-rounded education. That said, it should be an _interesting_ , engaging, and satisfying education. Not just "because I should".

2) And, _that said_ , keep your eye open towards to possibility(s) of turning this into a 5 (5.5, 6?) year Masters track. I guess I'm of two minds about this. My understanding from others is that, particularly in the shorter timeframe, such a curriculum might squeeze out time and opportunity for some other topics -- you might miss things you would find of significant value. But, it can be a more direct path to a more valuable degree and perhaps to a deeper educational experience in your topic of interest -- if this does indeed mesh with your interests.

So, I'll say, look into such opportunities. Whether you ultimately decide to sign up for such a path is a matter of whether it would be right for your (and what opportunities end up presenting themselves -- or, perhaps better stated, what you can shake loose, and at what cost).

P.S. A difficult, hard, challenging professor is one thing. A crap professor is another (and, believe me, they do exist -- whether their _attitude_ is malicious, disengaged, or even ostensibly helpful). Don't waste too much time on the latter. Nor work too hard to avoid the former; I remember one math(s) professor with a somewhat fearsome reputation, but boy did you learn! :-)

</comment><comment><USER7> Take a walk around each and talk to some people and figure out which one of these schools will LET YOU BE YOURSELF!

Which one you will learn at, but be able to pursue your outside passions.

Which on you can kick back with friends to blow off some steam.

I wouldn't consider money at all. You have the rest of your life to pay back loans and that is worth picking the place for the reasons I listed above and not worry about cost.

<comment><USER8> I disagree about not considering money at all. Yes, you have the rest of your life to pay back your loans and if you go to an expensive school, you will be paying them back for a long time.

You can be happy anywhere. Don't rely on a place to make you happy - YOU make yourself happy. You can make friends and pursue interests and passions of all kinds at any of the schools you listed.

Student loans have very different rules from other types of loans in this country... <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNM7nvcVm-0>

And remember, these days you're paying for a piece of paper that says you graduated from some place. Everything you'll learn in college you can learn right now for free.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I agree that BA vs BS isn't too big of a deal. But some employers do actually require a BS. You will lose some opportunities but they're probably at high- bureaucracy places with pointy haired bosses.

IMHO, choose the place where you'd (1) graduate with the least debt, (2) have the best chance of graduating, (3) would enjoy the most, (4) has the highest quality teachers (teachers, not researchers), and (5) has the best students... in that order.

You should also visit the campuses and pop in on some classes and talk to students or professors.

<comment><USER10> I don't think this order is the best. Otherwise, it wouldn't take into account your expected outcome. So, given that, IMHO (as a graduate who is going to be far better off, with better, happier long-term prospects having gone 85k into debt than had I chosen to get paid to go to college), I'd say you should weight difference in education with how much debt you'll be going into. Not having gone to the schools in question, I don't know what that would be, but I think some amount of risk-taking pays huge dividends, especially when the risks taken are very favorably calculated risks. Just remember to be a bit Bayesian, and be willing to re-asses your assumptions later down the road.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> If you'll do programming then a degree often isn't required to get a job, so choose the one you like the best regardless of the credentials you'll get. If you'll be paying for it, or borrowing, I suggest not spending or borrowing a lot more to get better credentials.

If it were me the location would be a big factor. If the costs were equal I'd choose Berkeley because of the great nature in Yosemite and the Sierras, and also Berkeley is near an epicenter of tech development.

</comment><comment><USER12> You haven't even begun to answer the most important question: _what are you looking to get out of university?_

</comment><comment><USER13> they all seem to be great schools, with great teachers. I'd choose a place where you'll live on campus and hangout with smart CS majors.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, definitely. I plan to surround myself around people with similar interests. I think I'll have the most fun that way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> My advice is just choose the place you'll feel _happiest_ at for 4+ years. Think carefully about social support in terms of positive family and friend interactions.

Choice of schools doesn't matter much - how interested and excited you are to learn is the critical factor, and the environment and your own situation influences that heavily.

You can get an outstanding education at any of those schools, regardless of department.

Whether you get a B.S. or B.A. won't matter. Don't forget to broaden your education and follow your interests wherever they lead - learn a foreign language in depth, take many humanities classes, take science classes outside the engineering track, learn how to write, draw, teach, etc. Enjoy yourself and the hard work will just naturally flow.

I studied engineering and biochemistry, but the classes outside my technical majors proved more valuable over time than anything else.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for the advice. I appreciate it!

<comment><USER10> Also, don't be afraid to change your major (though this might be harder to do in the UC system than I'm used to). Just because you think you love programming doesn't mean you can't be a great linguist, or chemist, or etc. Especially if you get through the first year or two of CS classes, you'll be capable of being an incredibly sought-after commodity in pretty much any field (including history or anthropology), because you'll be able to attack problems others don't have the same tools for. And absolutely, unless you want to get a Ph.D, a BA vs a BS doesn't really matter (and I'd argue research matters more): one just means the top part of your T-shaped knowledge is wider.

<comment><USER15> >> _Just because you think you love programming doesn't mean you can't be a great linguist_

That's the best advice among all these comments, OP (IMHO).

I still wish I had done my UG from a country where it was possible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> 1\. Look at the campus, area around and weather.

2\. Which college gives you how much loan burden(assuming you are taking one)

3\. Which is more international

4\. Look at your house and all those US UG things and see where you'll fit in, someone commented sth related above (back in my country there are hostels and no matter which hostel you are in, you are living in the entire campus)

5\. Walk into all these campus and see which one makes you feel most good (okay, it's not that simple but you'll know)

6\. I am sure you've worked on all other factors like acads and job prospects and entrepreneurial scene :-)

Lucky you, congratulations :-)</comment>


Recursion - <AUTHOR> http://gimmecsharp.blogspot.com/2010/08/recursion.html <comment><USER2> hmmmmm....C#

HN needs a vote down button

<comment><USER3> Over the past 6 days this user has submitted 27 articles, all from the same blog. They've garnished precious few comments, none useful or instructive, and very few upvotes.

In that time the same user has made no comments on any other submissions.

Basically, it's spam.

I've started to flag them all. They're the shallowest of "articles" and completely pointless for this audience.</comment></comment>


Keras 1.0 – Python deep learning framework - <AUTHOR> http://blog.keras.io/introducing-keras-10.html <comment><USER2> I'm curious what people think are the pros and cons of using Keras, vs using TensorFlow directly.

<comment><AUTHOR> A few advantages:

\- it's much easier to use. Using pure TensorFlow is considered "advanced" and requires familiarity with deep learning, understanding of what a symbolic computation graph is, etc. Keras, meanwhile, is meant to make deep learning more accessible.

\- even if you don't care about accessibility, Keras provides higher-level building blocks that speed up your workflow even if you are an expert. It is currently used by dozens of companies and hundreds of researchers, precisely for this reason: it allows quick prototyping.

\- with Keras, you can work with both Theano and TensorFlow interchangeably. They complement each nicely in a workflow: TensorFlow has low compilation times, which is great for debugging, and Theano tends to be faster for runtime (especially for RNNs). So you can prototype in TF, train in Theano, then to switch to production you can export the TF model.

<comment><USER3> Upvoting this thread because of fchollet's response. (fchollet is the creator of and lead contributor to Keras).

Great job!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I use Keras daily and find it very easy to use. It provides a nice set of examples to learn how to use it. Its also very easy to access the theano/tensorflow backend in a generic way.

Keep up the great work!

</comment><comment><USER5> > Keras is a minimalist, highly modular neural networks library, written in > Python and capable of running on top of either TensorFlow or Theano.

I hear a lot about new ML/neural network frameworks these days and it's difficult to know which complement other frameworks and which build upon other frameworks/create another layer.

Congrats on the 1.0 release!

</comment><comment><USER6> Congratulations on hitting 1.0, Keras really looks like the way forward for python ML. I tried to use Keras after doing Andrew Ng's Coursera course but found that I just couldn't connect the dots from what I'd learned on the course to the concepts assumed familiar by the keras documentation though.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, I think we should work on a FAQ to introduce common ML concepts and their implementation in Keras. Any specific concept that you had trouble with?

<comment><USER7> You may wish to coordinate a bit with this?: [http://www.wildml.com/deep- learning-glossary/](http://www.wildml.com/deep-learning-glossary/)

I came across that glossary a few days ago when looking to solve an RNN problem with a deadline. You may be pleased to know I think I may have solved it by switching to Keras, and this post actually helped unsticking me from a smaller problem too. Thanks, and congratulations on version 1.0!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Are activations still their own layer? Or are they moving away from that?

I'm brand new to Keras and online tutorials say that "everything, even activations are their own layer" but I can see that all the layers have a activation argument.

<comment><AUTHOR> Layers have always had an activation argument, this is not new. And yes, there is still an Activation layer. You can specify an activation function via either option.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> What updates can we expect to see in Keras of the next year?

</comment><comment><USER9> Seems that Keras API is just same as Torch API now

</comment><comment><USER10> Can you explain by what is meant by a functional API? Functional as in functional programming?

</comment><comment><USER11> Hey hey I don't see autoencoders anymore. Is that going to be coming back?

<comment><AUTHOR> The functional API removes the need for a dedicated autoencoder layer. But maybe in the future we will have a dedicated autoencoder _model_ , if there's interest in that (with autoencoder-specific methods).</comment></comment>


The first wearable computer: Claude Shannon hacks roulette - <AUTHOR> http://www.scribd.com/vacuum?url=http://www1.cs.columbia.edu/graphics/courses/mobwear/resources/thorp-iswc98.pdf <comment><USER2> That was a great and interesting read. The more I read up on these guys like Shannon, Von Neumann, etc., the more I find they do all sorts of weird ass things, even if they're only really known for one thing.

I had heard of Shannon's juggling theorem, but never really knew he dabbled in wearable computers. Interestingly enough, he knew about degrees of separation in '60 before Milgram in '67.

How did you come across this? Were you looking for it in particular, or did you stumble across it looking for something else?

</comment><comment><USER3> Well done, great read.

</comment><comment><USER4> excellent article.</comment>


Ask HN: How to build developer empathy in non-tech folk? - <AUTHOR> What do you wish you could teach non-developers in management roles, or those you have to work with, about how to communicate with, understand and treat developers?
What kinds of lessons would be great to teach that would force them to understand what developers have to go through? e.g. give them some sort of memory intensive challenge and then constantly interrupt them for pointless messages so they lose everything they were holding in their head and have to start over.
I'm thinking it could be fun to setup a training course for folk that will help these folks better understand how to work with and understand us Devs, but also give them a taste of their own medicine (for their own benefit of course!). <comment><USER2> >also give them a taste of their own medicine (for their own benefit of course!)

The biggest win is removing the 'us vs them' mentality. "taste of their own medicine" is probably not conducive to bridging gaps.

It's also probably valuable to think of this as a two-way street, rather than simply thinking 'managers lack empathy'. What Manager woes do Devs not know about?

The idea of a training course doesn't appear viable on first glance (little value gained, difficulty in getting buy-in, potentially patronizing, etc.) but workshops or 'lunch and learns' are sometimes used for general cross-dept knowledge.

Here are specific initiatives to improve communications and interfaces between depts:

\- Shared documentation - While different views might exist for different roles, many businesses (especially big business that uses archaic TOGAF / other EAFs) split out views - And even language - too far for each stakeholder, resulting in siloed areas and a lack of common language.

\- Company team cultures and cliques - There isn't any action to be taken here (it goes without saying that you don't want to try to force friendships and behavior), but it is worth observing the mini-cultures within the organization. The standard comparison would be between stereotypical Sales and Dev teams.

\- Compensation alignment - When Sales teams are being gamified with big $ commissions, it changes the culture of the team. When you do this for one team and not another, you are forcing difference within the org. It also causes resentment. Therefore it is critical that a business creates a standard salary&benefit backbone that aligns all staff. While they differ in specifics (sales = $ commissions on sales, service = $ commissions on performance, etc.) the point is to ensure that you are looking after everyone to the same standard.

\- Company Language - Go to your Sales department and ask what a 'Process' is. Now go to your Dev team and ask the same. Chances are that scope varies wildly in each provided definition. There is often no core language/definitions that bind a company together, causing communication issues.

\- Discussion - Many issues are never raised with management in the first place. E.g. "Have managers actually had the '20 minute shoulder tap cost' explained to them? Or are staff complaining about it without actually voicing it directly?"

\- Anonymous feedback mechanism - All businesses need this. Don't try to attach names to it unless you want to spoil company trust, undermine all collected data and reduce the amount of incoming feedback. Anything other than a true anonymous feedback system = unethical business / blind business.

\- Internal promotions (long-term) - Where appropriate, personnel functions are improved to facilitate more internal progression. Includes improvement of recruitment and l&d procedures. _In general_ there is tangible benefit in Managerial roles being taken by internal technical staff.

\- Inter-department newsletters, workshops etc.

\- Team and org structure changes. Often a 'cross-department pod' structure is incredibly effective (see Spotify for a good case study). Bring product managers, exec roles, dev teams etc. into pods that deal with end to end business scenarios.

And in terms of stereotypical dev-manager issues (shoulder taps, disruptive meetings, lack of empathy), the following are standard goals:

\- Clear discussion: Explicitly state to managers the intangible costs of shoulder taps and valueless meetings.

\- Meeting templates & improvements: Tighten meetings to be more valuable and follow consistent best practice for efficiency reasons. Implement expectations regarding meeting attendance, on-time kick-offs etc.

\- Set up 'No meeting days'. Many businesses are able to (within ~6 months) reduce down to 'Non-urgent meetings only on Tuesdays and Thursdays'.

\- Tighten up and automate reporting. Give managers a clear window into the operations of teams. Automate, so that devs don't have to manually update their line managers.

\- Templating and time budgeting - Set up clear boundaries that show managers technical estimates of time. Empathy rises when managers realize the true time investments needed for outcomes. This isn't about setting up complicated forecasting - It is simply a case of Devs stating "We don't know exactly how long this is going to take, but we do know that you should leave us alone until 03/02/19 - Don't bug us on this deliverable until then".</comment>