CodeWars: the Hacker Society where devs compete - <AUTHOR> http://CodeWa.rs

<comment><USER2> Ah, I just have to say I loved that I could just start doing them. No sign up, no email or anything, you just gave them to me. Wonderful.

<comment><USER3> Being able to see what it was without dicking about with authentication was great.

<comment><USER4> Yeah it was a really nice change to just jump straight in.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm signed up, answered all the questions. I'm on the leaderboard or w/e.

I love code koans.

I want more.

Feed me.

<comment><USER6> As a relative n00b, I appreciate being top 500, open the beta to moar users!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> It looks like only Javascript devs are welcome. :\

<comment><USER8> Yeah, there's a huge Javascript bias. When they describe a dev with 7 to 10 years experience as: "Web Hipster; I was using AJAX before it was even called AJAX.", it's a bit like hearing nails on a chalkboard.

<comment><USER9> I think the AJAX thing is just because 7 to 10 years ago, AJAX was not called AJAX (the term was coined in 2005).

As for Javascript, it is by far the easiest to implement online, so it's good for a prototype. I don't think it's supposed to remain that way, as subscribers are allowed to choose their favorite dev area.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Oh man, being number 13 makes me really want to get another 300 points to be in the top 10... This is pretty cool, I want some more!

<comment><USER10> EDIT: Welp, now I'm really far behind :/

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I wish I could see the whole leader-board or how points were allocated so I could improve my score. Otherwise, very nice job.

<comment><USER12> I've completed every point-granting action I could find on the site and I'm at 4029. 2528 of that came from linking my Github profile.

I assume that component scales based on the usual GH vanity metrics. The person atop of the leaderboard (<https://github.com/joho>) has 700+ 'stars' between his 70+ GH repos.

<comment><USER4> I'd be interested in knowing what the github metric is calculated off as I was moderately surprised at getting 800ish for my mostly slim GH account.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Nice, I had fun doing the intro questions, good luck with this. Keep it simple, don't try and pack to much into the app.

</comment><comment><USER2> Hey here's an idea: Let people create their own challenges and let them assign some point values to them (if the person is a high scorer, maybe let them give the challenge higher points). Then other people can try to solve it and vote on user created challenges. Get the ecosystem going! What do you think?

<comment><USER14> This idea has been done before by a site called KnowledgeBlackBelt, formerly JavaBlackBelt--although the idea is heavily perverted in its current incarnation. The site works on the concept of tests and courses. The test questions are submitted by users, but to take the courses you need to pay for an instructor of some kind to teach you. Completing tests moves you up ranks.

I contributed to a few questions a few years back before the site introduced this paid instruction aspect. A lot of good material was created through crowdsourcing. I am sure it could work again.

</comment></comment><comment> mck- Surprised nobody mentioned Interview Street. It has a lot of difficult challenges that you can solve in your own favourite language (supports 15).

That Leaderboard is dominated by China, perhaps you guys shouldn't be battling each other ;)

<comment><AUTHOR> They are all about challenges. We use them as Initiation to show who's legit... There's much more to be unveiled.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I want more points. WHY???

</comment><comment><USER16> Not to troll, but this seems quite close to Codecademy and HackerRank, without much of those sites' additional benefits.

<comment><AUTHOR> No worries, appreciate the feedback. Codecademy is aimed at beginners, we're focusing on experienced devs. HackerRank provides challenges, whereas we're promoting interactive competition.

<comment><USER7> It's somewhat reminiscent of RosettaCode or Project Euler, too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> That was fun! Hope to see more soon.

</comment><comment><USER18> I'm not sure I like the areas. I'd feel more comfortable indicating what languages I know, rather than where I apply them. I think that's a better way to present Domain knowledge when talking about code.

</comment><comment><USER19> Very awesome. I'm assuming the majority of points are gained via GitHub - Curious what your algorithm for that is. I can see you working with CodeAcademy possibly. Looking forward to seeing more.

</comment><comment><USER20> I completed the survey, entered my email, got "Confirm your account... Dojo Access Link" email, and then got: "Confirmation token is invalid".

What to do now?

<comment><AUTHOR> Appreciate the heads up, could you forward us the confirmation email: email@example.com... If you go back to the site (after clearing your cookies or on a different browse) you can renter the same email and opt to resend the Confirm/Access email, that should take care of it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> The code editor could use some work. It was very awkward to use, especially in my phone's browser. Otherwise, MORE PUZZLES!

</comment><comment><USER22> the first challenge that came up asked me to fix a JavaScript program. however, the logic of the program was fine; it merely contained a syntax error that was obvious if you know the peculiarities of JavaScript syntax but hard to spot if you don't. that's not the sort of challenge I want to solve.

</comment><comment><USER23> Nicely done. Reminds me of codingbat.com (solve the questions there in java or python).

</comment><comment><USER24> Call me easy to engage, but I really liked all the +100's next to the buttons.

</comment><comment><USER25> I really enjoyed this, looking forward to more.

</comment><comment><USER26> Interesting, what's the long term goal?

<comment><AUTHOR> The vision's to create a global arena, where as devs we can compete and build projects that matter.

<comment><USER27> We already have that. It's called real life.

Still I signed up and am present on the leaderboard.

<comment><AUTHOR> Fair enough. We want to complement real life with a virtual environment and make it easier to collaborate with dev's outside your existing network.

Congrats on the leaderboard status.

<comment><USER28> > make it easier to collaborate with dev's outside your existing network.

Sounds fun. Looking forward to it, thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Love it.

</comment><comment><USER30> Looks great! \-- Justin

</comment><comment><USER31> Throwing a 500 :\

<comment><AUTHOR> Really? Maybe b/c of server traffic. Let us know if it's still happening: firstname.lastname@example.com

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> cool!

</comment><comment><USER33> Is this for real? Wow, I'm sure a lot of rock star coders will hang there.

<comment><USER34> Is there anything that suggests that it is not real?

<comment><USER33> All the awesome ninja coder "build things that matter" ninja awesome makes it sound like a bad joke.

But we're all awesome rock star ninja web coders anyways, right? Or maybe I'm the only one tired of developers talking like as if they were teenage mutant ninja turtles.

<comment><USER34> I too am tired of the general ninja/rockstar terminology. To me though, this is different. It's referring to the aesthetic of their self-contained competition. To me, it's like playing a video game in which you are a space marine, which is already a thoroughly explored concept. It's just a framework on which to apply the particular mechanics of this site. For instance, they are saying things like "code wars ninja", not "Rails ninja". To me, that's different. To you, maybe not.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


4k monitor at 50hz. Guide for overclocking displays on GNU/Linux with Intel GPU - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/kevinlekiller/linux_intel_display_overclocking

<comment><AUTHOR> The U-series of Haswell CPU-s only support 30hz for 4K resolution. Which is borderline unusable. However, using reduced blanking timings, it should be possible to get 50Hz. I have a ubuntu laptop with i5-4200U and after a couple of hours of googling found the link above. Looks more complicated in linux than on windows, where Intel provides a tool with its drivers. Disclaimer: have not tried yet.</comment>


Neural Episodic Control - <AUTHOR> https://arxiv.org/abs/1703.01988 <comment><USER2> I wonder how they deal with the change of the mapping from states to vectors h from the CNN changing as training advances.

I reckon they _don't_ train the CNN, rather, they use it as pre-trained from DQN or something. In that case, no wonder it learns faster.

<comment><USER3> they do train the CNN from scratch, see section 3.4.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Note that Denis Hassibis is one of the authors and that all authors are at Google, Deep Mind.

Without this I'd be quite skeptical of these claims but now I'm wishing for analysis from someone better qualified than I am.

</comment><comment><USER5> A glance of the paper seems to suggest that they are going back to the traditional RL methods. It would be interesting for the paper to compare with them explicitly.

<comment><USER2> Which traditional RL methods do you mean, and what kind of comparison?

If you mean they are returning to tabular Q-learning, then yes, sort of. They still use function approximation (as required; tabular Q-learning stands no chance of generalising across states), but their function kind of looks like a table look up. A look up of the 50 closest values to some computed key though.

It would be totally uninteresting to compare this with tabular Q-learning though.</comment></comment>


Browser Abuse Syndrome - <AUTHOR> http://wiki.c2.com/?BrowserAbuseSyndrome <comment><USER2> Ironically, when I clicked the link, I got stuck on some JavaScript spinner and had to refresh to view the text.

<comment><USER3> I can't even read the text. I'm guessing it's something about "over- complicating web development" or something similar?

<comment><USER4> It's a thread, started about 2004-ish, apparently updated through 2011-ish, complaining that people should use native apps instead of web apps. It starts with the premise that using HTML to implement an application is abusive, since it was developed as a document display language, not an app framework.

They focus a lot on E-Mule as a non-HTML-based, native web app. (someone else eventually points out that it doesn't fit the customary definition of "web app").

<comment><USER5> E-Mule isn't a web app at all, it's just an Internet application. The fact that we have so confused the Internet and the WWW, to the point that even people complaining about WWW conflate it with the Internet, is a fucking tragedy.

<comment><USER4> I think that their argument (translated from rant) is basically that the web should be used for documents, and that we should build some other internet- based technology to implement applications on top of. It doesn't seem like there was a whole lot of justification beyond "this isn't what HTML was designed for", "Javascript bad", and "native app good".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> When was this written? 1995? They suggest loading Java applets. (2011, apparently, but maybe the original post is earlier.)

(Thing to avoid in web design: just displaying month and day, not year, even if something is more than a year old. Some blogs do that to look cool and current. Then they get stale and confusing.)

<comment><USER7> > _(Thing to avoid in web design: just displaying month and day, not year, > even if something is more than a year old. Some blogs do that to look cool > and current. Then they get stale and confusing.)_

Related, thing to avoid in web design: displaying time as something other than ISO-8601 combined date & time format (preferably omitting the 'T' separator, for the sake of non-tech people). If you absolutely _must_ display dates relative to current time (like "4 hours ago", "5 days ago"), please at least provide a full ISO timestamp in a title attribute (i.e. in a tooltip text).

HN has this problem, too. I get some find "4 hours ago" easier to read (never mind how imprecise it is), but then soon it becomes "1139 days ago", which is no longer funny.

</rant>

('dang, et al. - could we please have ISO timestamp as a title attribute to the relative date here? Pretty please :).)

<comment><USER8> Time element, datetime attribute:

[https://developer.mozilla.org/docs/Web/HTML/Element/time](https://developer.mozilla.org/docs/Web/HTML/Element/time)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> What about phone abuse syndrome? Playing a game on a phone when you should be using a Nintendo DS or a Playstation!

</comment><comment><USER10> Wanted to read this, but unfortunately I can't. Damn you, Javascript..

</comment><comment><USER11> Anything that has a certain level of utility gets "abused." Problems result, then are solved, sometimes generating huge wealth for the solvers. This happened with highways. This happened with cars. This happened with email. This happened with "The Web." This even happened with print. Hell, this happened many times with agriculture!

How much does anyone want to bet that this won't happen to AI/deep learning? (And would I still be around to collect on the bet?)

</comment><comment><USER12> It's too bad there are no timestamps on this. The attitudes expressed in thise comments seem to make sense back then and now seems so outdated.

<comment><USER13> Are they outdated, or have we merely ignored their wisdom?

<comment><USER12> Interesting -- is there one or two insights or wisdom you think is still being ignored?

<comment><USER14> HTML is still quite limited compared to native UI toolkits. It's still fundamentally a document model that we're using to write applications. Especially where layout is concerned: HTML and CSS are pretty clearly designed for document layout (and they're not half bad at that!). Flexbox helps, but it's still not there compared to e.g. layout constraints in Cassowary[1].

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassowary_(software)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassowary_\(software\))

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Give this guy a Chromebook! See how he gets on without files where the operating system considers all programs hostile.

I was surprised he suggested an offline SQL editor, thought he would suggest command line which is definitely impressive to clients sat next to you wanting to see their programmer doing stuff Bourne movie style.

</comment><comment><USER16> What kind of hoighty-toighty, ivory tower nonsense is this? If developers were this dogmatic about solving problems, literally nothing would get done.

</comment><comment><USER17> This was last edited in 2011. Things sure have changed.

</comment><comment><USER18> Ironic.

<comment><USER19> Indeed, since the rewrite, c2 has been the poster child for "browser abuse," IMO. There is literally no reason to require javascript for a wiki!

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Whoever wrote that is really f __*ing stupid

</comment><comment><USER21> Lot of hot takes, and outdated advice.

What's the point of this site?

<comment><USER22> "Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it."

It gives you snapshot into what developers thought about web development in the early to mid 2000's. Bandwidth and processor speed was in short supply. Early web app's would bog down the average machine. And our ISP (internet service provider for those who may not know that acronym) charged us by the _minute_ of usage, not by the month.

Desktop clients (games and email) would download a local copy of just the data and cache it. Many of these were applications were set to dial in the ISP, pull your information, and then disconnect. I remember a chess client that could be set up to dial in to the ISP every minute and then disconnect so that you might make it under the 60 seconds charge. That was cure for bandwidth. And the local clients were optimized for your machine so yo got faster everything.

You actually see the same thing going on with tablets and phone. Sure you can use Facebook through Chrome. But its slow and eats us your mobile data cap. But if you install the app its a lot faster, richer experience. And it only download the data it needs once without constantly reload the same contents over and over again.</comment></comment>


DuPont may avoid paying to clean up a toxic 'forever chemical' - <AUTHOR> https://www.nbcnews.com/health/cancer/how-dupont-may-avoid-paying-clean-toxic-forever-chemical-n1138766?cid=public-rss_20200301&utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf <comment><USER2> The 2019 feature film "Dark Waters" gives background on this. Highly recommended.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Waters_(2019_film)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Waters_\(2019_film\))</comment>


Ask HN: Taking my project to it's full potential - <AUTHOR>

Hi HN'ers :)
I posted a little while back on finding a co-founder. I decided to trial a few people out, but I thought it would be a smarter move paying the outright expenses, and keeping the site for myself. I guess what I'm saying, is that I don't really need a co-founder / developer.
My new problem, is getting the site too it's full potential. I'm doing 2000 uniques a day, with the majority of traffic coming from the US, then Japan, UK and Australia. The traffic is highly targeted, and of great quality.
But, how do I make the most of this traffic, and bring in the most income? (Whilst keeping a quality, and non spammy site)
Currently I'm selling an ad spot, and affiliate revenue, but I don't think I'm making the most of it.
I'd appreciate any comments, ideas and or feedback!
Cheers, Lachy
Site: iPadCaseFinder.com <comment><USER2> You left out all details, so there isn't anything I can say about your specific situation. The general rules apply: good content leads to more visitors which in turn leads to more ad impressions which finally leads to more money.

So you can either improve the content, improve the navigation so your visitors stick around longer, get better targeted ads or get better paying ads.

What is going to make the biggest impact in your case? Just make changes and measure the results. Figure out what kind of changes make the biggest impact to your bottom line and optimize ruthlessly. Then go back to square one and re-evaluate.

Generic advise, I know.

<comment><AUTHOR> What more information do you want? It's not really the content I'm worried about, it's the money. Should I go into drop shipping these cases? Should I optimize my affiliates? Should I concentrate more on banner ads?

<comment><USER3> What he means is that it's next to impossible to give that kind of advice (beyond generalities) without some more insight into the product/site itself. Because it is all relative.

(for the GP: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1370042> is the previous submission)

I would focus on affiliate sales through the site; it makes more sense.

Also: expand the network into other cases like you said in the other thread. That way you should be able to build up a big base of traffic across the niche.

 _Then_ you'll probably have more success selling targeted advertising space (i.e. case manufacturers who cover the whole niche)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I assume your project is the site you talked about in an earlier submission. If that is the case, here are a couple of observations:

The site looks very clean and I think another one or two ads would be ok, as long as they are relevant and of high quality. The current ad for screen protection is a good example.

I find the search to be a bit confusing. I would putting "type" at the top would help. I thought I had to choose a brand first, as it was not immediately clear to me that the categories are independent. I would rather search for a black leather case than for a case made by i-nique.

Use A/B-testing to evaluate changes to the site.

Random ideas: become an affiliate of a company that makes customized cases. Enter the itunes affiliate program, add a badge with the iPad app of the day or something similair. Make a dedicated site if one the non-case products gets a lot of traffic, e.g. an ad for screen protection.

I'm intentionally a bit vague because you didn't name the site. You might want to post the URL to get more answers.

Edit: added some more concrete examples.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry, just added.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Direct link: <http://ipadcasefinder.com/>

</comment><comment><USER5> Have you A/B tested making the buy button more obvious? Bigger and more prominently colored? Also, maybe you're better off, for the cases where you have multiple affiliate links, to make one of them big and shiny and put in small letters below 'also available on...' You'd made the affiliate that pays out most the prominent one of course, if your contract allows that. I like the site, this would be exactly the type of site I'd love to have if I were in the market for an ipad case.

</comment><comment><USER6> How about featuring iPad cases which are on sale on the ebay on your site (along with a affiliate link) - this should also earn you some affiliate money...

</comment><comment><USER7> Semi-related, is this you, or are you getting cloned? <http://www.ipadcasestore.org>

</comment><comment><USER8> Surely it's selling some of the cases directly yourself? That way you don't get the tiny affiliate %, you get the full sales markup. Though I guess that's a whole new skillset/risk point.</comment>


Show HN: Service to redirect to HN thread - <AUTHOR> https://discuss-on-hn.xyz <comment><AUTHOR> Reason to build: I've seen few blogs that link to HN as primary forum and think it's great, but AFAIU that forces you to update post after publishing to add HN link. With this you can just link to discuss-on-hn.xyz/go and it will update itself.

Inside it uses HN Algolia API [0] to search and redirect to first item and in- memory hashmap; I'll add rate limiting tomorrow, right now I need some sleep. Also this is my first Common Lisp project ever, that turns out to be quite fun.

[0] [https://hn.algolia.com/api](https://hn.algolia.com/api)

</comment><comment><USER2> What does it do when Algolia doesn't find the post?

An "advanced" feature request: Some sites are rewritten, for example [https://example.blogspot.com.ar](https://example.blogspot.com.ar) is transformed to by HN to [https://example.blogspot.com](https://example.blogspot.com) and BlogSpot will transform it to whatever country you are, so it would be nice to add in version 2 some canonizations to make it more compatible with HN. Also, medium is a nightmare, because it adds a random mark to the url and the HN post may have a different random mark. And the nytimes adds something like &r_1=0 or something. (Probably medium is the more important use case.)

Another idea: Can you transform this into a bookmarklet?

<comment><AUTHOR> If Algolia doesn't find it, DoHN reports it and suggests to submit it to HN.

Right now there is one canonization -- it strips utm tags, I'll think about more canonizations, thanks!

I thought about bookmarklet, but decided to postpone -- due to CSP bookmarklets don't work in quite few places (like Github).

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I think this could be against the HN rules as read in the FAQ[1], if anyone who came to the link were to upvote the post. HN penalizes these posts by not allowing them to be promoted outside of newest.

> Can I ask people to upvote my submission?

> No. Users should vote for a story because it's intellectually interesting, > not because someone is promoting it.

> When the software detects a voting ring, it penalizes the post. Accounts > that vote like this eventually get their votes ignored.

1\. [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html)</comment>


Ask HN: How will ICO's affect YC and other tech investors? - <AUTHOR> We're seing the rise of ICO's which disruptes the way startups raise money. How will it affect companies like YC? Will wealth become evenly distributed among the global population and not only the 'elite' people? Anyone can invest in an ICO. Happy to hear your thoughts. <comment><USER2> Most of the serious ICO's (i.e from companies with product, employees, etc.) only take money from accredited investors to avoid falling foul of the SEC.

There's also established equity crowd-funding sites (like WeFunder) who've failed to take-off because individuals generally aren't very good at picking winners (even most angels don't have great returns).

<comment><USER3> Only accredited investors in the USA. They don't care as much if I was a regular investor from somewhere like Switzerland.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> As to your first question, YC will likely be entirely unaffected because the money is the least valuable aspect of joining the program. An ICO doesn't bring the notoriety and community you get from YC.

As to your second question, it far more broad and open ended, but there doesn't seem to be any reason to believe ICOs will bring financial equality to the world. Ability to invest hasn't been the hurdle stopping wealth redistribution. If anything, this will likely result in more currency control by government, which in turn means more currency control by the global rich.

<comment><AUTHOR> How about Demo day at the end of the YC program? When startups pitch their ideas on stage to a selected crowd of wealthy investors. I think it's one of the main benefits of joining such a program. If I were to apply I'd mention the network as being the main reasons why but let's honest, how does YC make millions of dollars since money isn't what it's all about? I do see the network value, but do you really need to join a prestigious MBA to start a business? For example, Ethereum raised 3700 BTC in the first 12 hours of their ICO with just a basic HTML page.

In order to invest in a startup (at least in the US), you need to meet the accredited investor standards. Less than 3% of US households qualify. You need to earn $200,000/year for the last 2 years.

That's where I see ICO's as a way to give everyone a chance.

I just realized I should have added more details to my original question ;)

<comment><USER4> You don't need to have an MBA, and you don't need to join YC. Given that, most people who don't have an association with a prestige organization will fail. More than the "most" who will fail even with the association.

Major, serious funding rounds would be picky with who they take money from anyway. If accredited investor laws were removed in the USA, competent round seekers would still be looking for people who have the most money, the most industry connection, the most advisory capability.

Taking money from every Jack and Jill both doesn't include all of that secondary value, but can be a net negative because you now have people involved at an early stage that are a distraction, and have invested what is likely a larger stake of their personal wealth in your venture, which will have their incentives (safe return, stable financial outlook) not aligning with yours (spend to grow, take risks).

ICOs so far have just been an end run around regulation, and we saw an immediate return of all of the dark practices that the regulations are in place for. It democratizes investment for the general population the same way Las Vegas does.</comment></comment></comment>


The forgotten Muslim heroes who fought for Britain in the trenches - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/nov/12/forgotten-muslim-heroes-fought-for-britain-first-world-war <comment><USER2> I could recognize a title from The Guardian without actually looking at the "site" field.</comment>


We Got Ripped Off by a Huge Company. Again - <AUTHOR> https://museumhack.com/travel-leisure/ <comment><USER2> One thing I always try to tell myself is that if you are going to complain about something, be clear about what you want to get from complaining. Do Museum Hack want money? An apology? Crediting? What?

I see they sort of climb down eventually when T+L explain the issue to them too.

[https://museumhack.com/what-happens-when-your-startup- gets-t...](https://museumhack.com/what-happens-when-your-startup-gets-trolled- by-a-bigger-company/)

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't know where I stand on this one. Museum Hack seems overly protective of their pretty generic name. T&L either employs a lazy designer or a vindictive writer. None of the offenses seem legal-worthy, so really it's just a morality thing. Right?

Final Verdict: Museum Hack by a hair! Since I'm nobody, you only get 5 points this round. I can't tell if ya'll are just going for publicity with this or you're just really attached to primary colors. Whatever though, it's business.

</comment><comment><USER4> It's not pleasant when large companies insist they have the unrestricted right to certain words. It's no more pleasant when a small company does the same thing.

<comment><USER2> Read T+L's side of the story:

[https://museumhack.com/what-happens-when-your-startup- gets-t...](https://museumhack.com/what-happens-when-your-startup-gets-trolled- by-a-bigger-company/)

They don't insist on having unrestricted right to certain words - it's just that the term "hack" is common vocabulary. Sure, some mild graphic design co- incidence took place, but it was pretty mild!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Where can i get one of your shirts? Would also like to see a little tag which says "screw you, T + L"</comment>


ATM operators eye Linux as alternative to Windows XP - <AUTHOR> http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9247096/ATM_operators_eye_Linux_as_alternative_to_Windows_XP <comment><USER2> The main factor here is probably not the technology of Windows XP (which certainly is up-to-par for the problem at hand), but the possibilities of vendors to absolutely custom-tailor a computer OS, stripped down to the bare minimum of running the ATM, and, if necessary provide all the service needed, down to the kernel.

And currently it's pretty easy to do this, with build-scripts and infrastructure in place. Maybe even using a tailored Android?

But then I somehow doubt that the industry would take that opportunity: I've seem my share of "embedded" devices (signage, control-room-displays) where the vendor just slapped their proprietary .exe in Autostart and left the Vendor supplied Win-XP + Nagware + never-updated-virus-scanner + ... intact.

Why? Because people in industry are lazy (they should be, maximizing their ROI, doing as little own work), and so going the same route, but with an 8 year old Ubuntu will not gain anything.

<comment><USER3> It's always amazed me that they used Windows. Why would an ATM ever need a full blown OS like that? The requirements are totally different from a desktop PC.

<comment><USER4> I've done that with hardware that got installed in a factory.

Why not? You pay a one-time, small license fee, you get years of free support from a major company, I don't have to document all the details of my stripped down kernel and how to recreate it, you can hire anybody off the street to work on it long after I am gone (and I am long gone from that company, but the hardware lives on), they didn't have to pay me to build out a unique OS, the low power computer we had could more than handle XP, there was (and continues to be) continued new, unknown requirements and upgrades, the people required to occasionally touch the interface had more PC experience than for any embedded or linux OS, and on and on.

Why wouldn't I slap a copy of XP on there? Well, this story is the counter- argument, of course. I still think it was the right decision.

<comment><USER5> They took the path of least resistance and it paid off until now. Now that path is a dead end and they face a painful upgrade. But arguably it was still worth it in the long run.

<comment><USER6> This seems the most salient point. At some point someone said "What if XP isn't supported?" and someone else said "Well we'll deal with that when it comes, but for now we've got a product to ship."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> They should just go straight to Android - nice touchscreen drivers, 3G, that Dalvik thing - what more is needed apart from a few device drivers to spit the money out?

<comment><USER8> How well does Android fair on x86? (I'm assuming that's what most ATMs use)

<comment><USER9> Very well. It does better than most version of both Windows and Linux as far as smoothing and responsiveness goes. It runs well on much less resources.

It does have some quirks when trying to use it with software designed for swiping in mind and a keyboard and mouse, but that's probably not going to be an issue here.

I say Android could be a good choice, and it will also give them a migration path from X86 should they later on want to.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> April 8 is the EOL date for standard XP, XP Embedded (which is what most ATMs run, the article suggests it too) is Jan 2016.

<comment><USER11> Part of this is confusing for me. Standard XP support ends on April 8th, so no more bug/security fixes. However, I imagine most of the bug/security fixes for Embedded XP will more than likely still apply to Standard XP. What is there to stop people continuing on Standard XP with Embedded XP fixes?

<comment><USER12> Because they won't have been tested on standard XP. Microsoft will no longer be doing all the hard work of validating OS patches to ensure that they run correctly and have no unwanted side effects.

You could install one of these patches and it totals your machine. Now what do you do?

<comment><USER11> But the thing is that XP Embedded is still XP, in fact it's just a modular version of XP Pro... [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_XP_editions#Windows_XP_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_XP_editions#Windows_XP_Embedded)

As for totalling your machine, you'd do the same thing you'd do if you installed a flaky update now, i.e. a system restore.

<comment><USER12> And then what? Not install the update?

The difference is, if you were running a supported version, then you could get MS to help you solve the update installation. But with the unsupported OS, all you can do is skip the update. And then you're back in the realm of an unpatched, insecure OS.

<comment><USER11> The updates are being applied to the same components found in XP Pro. XPe is essentially a nLite-customised XP Pro with a support contract. If Windows Updates worked for nLite-customised XP, then I can't see XPe updates being majorly different.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The news should be about anyone serious still running Windows (XP!) in ATMs. Why hasn't everyone switched to Linux or BSD 10 years ago is a wonder.

I've seen last year an ATM stuck in a reboot loop of some kind running OS/2\. Was the first time in my life I saw this OS and probably the last.

<comment><USER13> Even more scary; why do almost all consumer and non-consumer screens like airports, train station, info screens, army rugged laptops, missile guidance systems, most nuclear reactor systems, medical equipment etc run some form of Windows? That's really what I will never get; I hear the excuses from people which I already typed out elsewhere and I know these are bullshit these days. So it must be some kind of MS infiltration tactic? What can they actually offer I wonder besides a 'safe name'? Maybe that's just all there is to it?

<comment><USER14> I think support. You have to remember that the first Red Hat Enterprise Linux is from 2002. Back then, the old UNIX vendors were in steady decline, but the freshness of enterprise Linux probably made potential customers weary.

Nowadays, things are really different. Red Hat is large and has a solid track record. IBM has shown its support for Linux over an extensive period. SUSE is now in the hands of a huge IT company.

Consequently, I don't think there is a good excuse in 2014 not to seriously evaluate Linux. In fact, it should be (and often is) the standard option for embedded devices.

<comment><USER15> _> SUSE is now in the hands of a huge IT company_

Which one are you referring to?

<comment><USER14> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attachmate](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attachmate)

<comment><USER15> Ah, I thought SUSE was split off into its own company back when they acquired Novell.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Some banks would have liked to migrate a long time ago but some ATMs vendors are not very cooperative : their XFS [1] interfaces were not compatible with new versions of Windows .... That's the problem when you are stuck with a locked down plateform.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CEN/XFS](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CEN/XFS)

<comment><USER17> the wikipeda links to the official website, though the page is gone Sharepoint error message): [http://www.cen.eu/cenorm/sectors/sectors/isss/activity/banki...](http://www.cen.eu/cenorm/sectors/sectors/isss/activity/bankingsoftware.asp)

What's the new page? their CEN website is a bit confusing

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Unless they established new Linux distro, say ATMLinux, where most ATM operators pays to maintain and contribute, it's going to be interesting how it will work.

I assume each operator paying to different opensource-shop of their choice is going to be more problematic than all of them paying to only Microsoft.

<comment><USER19> I'm guessing they'll just fork something and keep using the same kernel for "50" years, ignoring security updates. "Install this tgz as base system, add your config".

What's the attack surface anyway, the modem drivers? It really, really shouldn't be possible to overflow anything using a "custom" card, or the number pad... (I do sometimes wonder about hostile smart card code for chip and pin, though...).

<comment><USER20> _the same kernel for "50" years, ignoring security updates_

Well then don't they have the exact same problem as they do now with MS? Or more general: are the update cycles from a typical linux distro that different from Window's? I.e. can you really get security updates for such distro 20 years after it was released? That would mean the only benefit for choosing linux is that there are possibly less securit issues to begin with, while the article seems to claim the problem is all with the update cycle.

<comment><USER19> I (somewhat laconically) implied that the vendors could care less about security, if they could get away with stability and low maintenance cost.

More seriously, with a truly stripped down free software solution (be that Linux or *bsd founded), you can have a pretty good idea of exactly what code you are running.

Current Linux might actually be a pretty poor choice, given the high rate of change in the kernel (which tends to drag a lesser, but noticeable change in userland). A few years ago 1.3 kernel might have seemed a sane choice to build such a system on (along with busybox, minimal init etc).

Anyway, the idea would be to get a reasonably audited core system (mostly userland) and a kernel - and then only ever update drivers, and/or add functionality.

Personally I'd be a lot more confident doing that on Linux (or bsd) than on Windows XP, even if given source access (would you really want to compile the needed bits of XP kernel+userland to run on your embedded stuff? The thought scares the beejeezes out of me)).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> As usual the uptake or not of Linux for this or any other use case will be moderated by quality drivers or the lack thereof.

<comment><USER22> Linux drivers are no longer much a problem, and haven't been for a while.

Linux is have trouble shaking off its old reputation though.

<comment><USER13> The question is if anyone has gotten their hands on the few different ATM machines hardware-wise and wrote Linux drivers for them. Basically the market for these, magstripe and EVM cards is very much a Windows market => at least most of the US providers of services, backends, software etc for this all are almost entirely Windows based. And therefor the manufacturers, although it would be easy for them, have not much incentive to deliver proper drivers. I'm not saying it's a big problem per-se, but it might make people nervous anyway.

They also need to be complaint and that can take long on new software, so they would need to pull in a provider who already has the compliance in some related areas, probably Redhat has and then try to tape on the extra compliance needed for the new software, drivers and whole combination.

All in all, it's all very possible, but I think going public with all of this is unfortunately just a trick to get MS to play. I hope it's not as I have always wondered, as a software engineer who created banners, POS systems and information panels (I don't know the proper English jargon for these; I know the Dutch names, but like the panels you see at events, train stations, airports :) why they are not using Linux for everything anyway; everyone always cries about drivers but those have been a non-issue already 10 years ago. 'They are used to writing software on Windows' has also always been a none issue; these apps are complete, fullscreen apps which are the only thing running next to the kernel and a few drivers on these systems. They are almost always completely custom drawn and, like 2D games, that means the difference between Windows and Linux is not really there and hasn't been for many, many years now. You can run SDL straight on the framebuffer and make a _tiny_ Linux distro with your software/drivers to run on it.

We sold Linux POS systems over 10 years ago; built on C & Tcl/TK they were faster, easier, cheaper, and nicer than the Windows versions at that time by a long shot. There is 0 reason why you wouldn't do this, but people are ignorant and unfortunately many of these people are coders; like people are stuck on Linux & Mac, a lot of people are stuck on Windows and lose sight of what is better for the customer (over 10 years ago that would have been stability and price; both _much_ better under Linux) while peddling the 'everything is better under Windows'. I would not expect that from smart devs but he, here we go :)

<comment><USER23> While the POS and ATM systems themselves often run windows, Linux is quite often already in the picture.

That EMV terminal that's talking to the windows host might just be running ARM or MIPS linux.

(yeah I work on this stuff...)

<comment><USER13> I work on the card creation/manufacturing (EMV) side and this is good to know; people always send me Windows stuff and while I don't mind I always wonder if there is a sane reason for it (there seems not to be).

<comment><USER23> Huh, one of the few parts I've never touched - I've worked on acquirer and issuer systems, retail-level switches, POS payment subsystems and lately embedded reader/terminals, but not on what goes on inside the card itself.

I never really wanted to go back into payment systems and had a few years away from them, but it turns out that when you've written an EMV L2 kernel people want to employ you for that sort of stuff again...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> So are ATM machines monolithic devices where you have to scrap the entire thing if you want to upgrade the OS? Or do you open a door in the side, remove the old computer and hook up a new one, and as long as you have the drivers that same cash dispensing and receipt printing hardware will continue working?

</comment><comment><USER24> Seriously? This is happening now?! ATMs are supposed to be secure, then why the hell are they running one of the most security loop-hole OSes even now?

That too Windows XP, which has been deemed as the most unsecure OS in the world!. It's long time for them to switch to Linux!

<comment><USER25> Are you seriously suggesting that Windows as an operating system has some serious holes that has made it insecure as an ATM OS? Care to elaborate which those holes have been and how have they been exploited in the ATMs?

<comment><USER26> I came across this yesterday. Not necessarily just exploiting a Windows security hole though.

[http://media.ccc.de/browse/congress/2013/30C3_-_5476_-_en_-_...](http://media.ccc.de/browse/congress/2013/30C3_-_5476_-_en_- _saal_2_-_201312271600_-_electronic_bank_robberies_-_tw_-_sb.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I saw a Windows 95 blue screen on an Siemens Nixdorf ATM with a CRT monitor two years ago.

The operators (Germany, Austria) say they are not connected to the "internet". I wonder if they use a separate telephone-line-network or just use VPN/firewall.

<comment><USER27> They have their own network, no "internet".

<comment><USER28> Barnaby Jack showed how much that isolation is worth at DEF CON a few years ago: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htDMu7USsZQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htDMu7USsZQ)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I still know of one ATM (Bank of the West - Walnut Creek) whose ATM runs Microsoft Network OS 2.01. (or maybe 2.1?)

I think that's OS/2 - it looks like DOS with tcp/ip. The copyright on the screen states 1992.

</comment><comment><USER30> Good development which really had to happen earlier. As usual, MS shoot themselves in the foot.

<comment><USER31> By marking an ancient OS that everyone should have moved off as obsolete? It is the ATM manufacturers fault for accuing so much technical debt

<comment><USER30> By not being able to provide flexible updates the way ATMs need. Custom Linux distros can easily enable that. So it's good they realized that sticking with MS is a bad idea.

<comment><USER32> They did provide flexible updates, for like ~10 (ish) years. They're done doing that now and everyone should be well aware already.

<comment><USER30> With Linux no one can pull the plug. Here, they are at MS's mercy. So they learned their mistake the hard way.

Naturally, even supported versions of Linux like RedHat's and etc. have an EOL date support wise. But in the worst case if some company is stubborn enough to stay on the old version for whatever reason (which might be valid for them), they can take the code and support it themselves. With Windows it's not possible. So open systems have a clear advantage here.

<comment><USER31> Great, let's support companies who like to run financial software on ancient, insecure and decrepit platforms who don't want to invest in pulling their software into the 21st century.

Microsoft has offered an embedded version of Windows since 7, and say what you will about Windows but it's backwards compatibility is second to none. If they can't or won't move to a more modern, secure OS (after 10+ years) then I would argue that they shouldn't be trusted to make ATM's

<comment><USER30> While their reason was wrong (not taking care of upgrading in time), their outcome was right - they consider ditching Microsfot ;)

<comment><USER31> Great, now they can stick their ATM's on a 2.6.x kernel and not touch it for another 10 years. Everybody wins right?

<comment><USER30> In general yes, since it won't make it any less secure than it was already. But it will reduce MS grip on the market. Those who really cared about security didn't even use MS to begin with anyway. Having a black box closed source system with who knows what kind of backdoors as an ATM OS? Sounds bizarre of you think of it.

<comment><USER32> > Those who really cared about security didn't even use MS to begin with > anyway.

I don't know enough about this field to comment definitively, but I have to imagine that if one industry cares about security very, very deeply, it's the one that makes machines that give away money when you have a card with a magnetized strip and you push the right buttons. I'm willing to bet that the Windows XP that lives inside an ATM is not the same one that you buy from New Egg to play Half-Life.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> they just skipped a decade...

</comment><comment><USER34> it's more customizable, more secure, and free. really hard decision.</comment>


Yet another online t-shirt shop? - <AUTHOR>

I've teamed up with a great designer who has been making his own t-shirts for quite a while but has no knowledge of the web.
The product is already taken care of: dozens of great designs that he's been selling successfully in market stalls, the t-shirt quality is good and the finished products sells in bulk for 4USD a piece.
What sets us apart?
- Designs: obviously this is subjective but myself and friends that wear them get compliments, "where did you buy it?", etc. The designs sit in a niche between threadless and expensive brand name shirts.
- Price: The low bulk price allows us to offer serious discounts. Buy 2 get one free, promo codes offered after every sale, more promo codes if you tweet / share on FB, etc. Standard shipping is free world wide.
- Social: Initially sell 10 models for men and 10 for women. Then we'd launch a "groupon style competition", showing 5 possible designs that may be made next, asking people to vote for their favorite. If theirs wins, they get to buy the shirt at 50% off. Voting and results get disseminated on Twitter & FB.
- Packaging: Because of the low bulk price we can afford to splash out on nice packaging to make users feel appreciated.
- Support: 30 day no question returns. My partner is in Asia so we can answer emails within the hour, 24/7.
The goal is to set up a break-even business initially. All proceeds go in to advertising. I'm a web developer, girlfriend is a rock star designer / photographer; the website, design and product/model shots will only cost us  our time.
Thoughts? <comment><USER2> There are so many t-shirt shops it's hard to make a mark. I have two words for you: Geurilla marketing. Check out the this week in startups episodes where Jason and Tyler talk about their custom shirts- geurilla advertising at it's best.

<comment><AUTHOR> Is this on blip.tv? Couldn't find the episode you mention.</comment></comment>


Study Finds More Young Kids Can Work a Smartphone Than Tie Their Shoes - <AUTHOR> http://mobilized.allthingsd.com/20110124/study-finds-more-young-kids-can-work-a-smartphone-than-tie-their-shoes/

<comment><USER2> Hardly surprising, given that my 1 1/2 year old daughter can pick up my wife's iPhone, unlock it, swipe over to the second page, touch the folder with the baby apps in it, and run the flash card app she loves.

</comment><comment><USER3> One word: velcro.

I felt like quite the Luddite teaching my 5 year old son to tie his shoes.</comment>


Encrypted file synchronization in go. WIP - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/gaigepr/secureBox

<comment><AUTHOR> The discussion on reddit.

[http://www.reddit.com/r/golang/comments/24o9e9/cross_platfor...](http://www.reddit.com/r/golang/comments/24o9e9/cross_platform_file_system_monitor_in_go_wip/)</comment>


Tim Cook explains why you don't need a college degree to be successful - <AUTHOR> https://www.businessinsider.com/apple-ceo-tim-cook-why-college-degree-isnt-necessary-2019-3 <comment><USER2> Commented on something related in another thread, but it was either Bierce or Shaw who said something along the lines of, "all professions are a conspiracy against the layman."

This is distinct from trades and arts, where there is a simple scale of competence.

The reason most jobs demand a university degree today is because of the professionalization of management and HR means that the people making hiring decisions have a direct interest in preserving and increasing the value of their own positions and credentials.

For example, have fun getting P&L responsibility or significant direct reports without a degree, let alone getting a work visa. The reason for this is not because of competence, it is because of a tribal identity that the schools inculcate.

The thing about "uneducated," people is that because they have to trade on their skills and performance, and not credentials, over a certain intelligence you can't trust them to sustain cognitive dissonance (or to lie) on behalf of the team, because they will defect if they perceive risk to their competence- based identity.

When you hear someone say an uneducated person "doesn't get it," they are not referring to competence, they are referring to recognition of a power dynamic that means success and group survival is about relationships and the perceptions that drive them, and not about the material quality of the work.

This may sound nihilistic and cynical, but recognizing non-technical education credentials as more of a tribal membership or a kind of managerial officer training than a signifier of skill clarifies the dynamics of companies and organizations, and could save a lot of stress wondering if people are evil or insane.

They aren't necessarily evil or insane, they are indexed on perceptions and relationships that are not decided only by skill and competence.

Few will articulate it this way, but there is no incentive for people with an education to criticize it, and without one the perspectives and tools to do so are rare.

<comment><USER3> The value of a degree for most of us is mostly in passing those automated HR screens and not being defensive / self conscious about not having a degree. Where that degree comes from is largely unimportant _, unless you went to Harvard /MIT/Stanford et al.

That said, as someone who's going for a greencard, I'd be shut out of this process in 2 seconds without a degree. The degree itself? It was good, but let's not kid ourselves, it's a middle class stamp of acceptance.

As for Silicon Valley, good luck getting anywhere without a degree. Look at the founders of virtually every startup and you'll see a pattern, Harvard, Stanford, MIT etc.

_I have a degree from a no-name University in New Zealand.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> A college degree is not some terminal credential to make you into a coding cubicle robot the rest of your life. It goes more towards helping you be a more well-rounded person, for the short time in your life while you are more than just profit to the machine. US execs aren't helping anybody out when they push this anti-college garbage.

<comment><USER5> No amount of "roundedness" is worth the current asking price of college. They're going to have to offer more.

<comment><USER6> This is why European universities are _extremely_ worthwhile, especially if you're a US student.

<comment><USER7> Great point. I was thinking of returning to finish my degree at $US_PRIVATE_COLLEGE, where tuition is around $60k/year now. ETH and EPFL in Switzerland, about equally good, turn out to be, like, 1/3 the price, and those are at the expensive end. (You do need competence at French or German first.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > Cook also added that about half of Apple's US employment last year was made > up of people who did not have a four-year degree.

Of course, the majority of these are probably retail, manufacturing, and support staff. Cook himself has a degree (MBA), as do most of the software engineers at Apple, I'm sure.

<comment><USER9> True, although Steve Jobs didn't have a college degree. Bill Gates dropped out too. We have to be careful to avoid survivorship bias though. reply

<comment><USER10> Your credentials matter a lot less when you are the founder.

<comment><USER11> I always got the impression that, at least in Jobs' case, he was the founder _because_ he didn't have a degree - i.e. he had nowhere else to go.

<comment><USER12> Jobs had a steady job at Atari before he left to start Apple. I seem to remember he offered the first version of the Apple I (or maybe II?) to HP while he was there, but they turned him down.

<comment><USER13> I thought Jobs was gone and it was Woz who did

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The Economist had an article about 6 weeks ago that reached the opposite conclusion. It essentially found a comfortable middle class lifestyle was going to be hard to achieve without higher education now, compared with previous generations. Now, it wasn't specifically looking at coders and Tim was, but the title doesn't mention that.

<comment><USER15> Well, then the Economist is almost laughably wrong. This completely ignores the building and construction trades. In America, the average Millionaire drives a F150 pickup truck, not a Mercedes-Benz or BWW. (well documented in the book The Millionaire Next Door.)

Don't discount the trades.

Take the HVAC guy who just spent a morning putting in a heat pump at my neighbor's place for $6000. It was < $2000 worth of equipment (wholesale) and just he and a helper working under the house for a few hours. Let's be extraordinarily generous and subtract out half that for overhead (licensing, rent, van, advertising, insurance, taxes) and that's clearing $2k per day. $8000 per month. Owner's surely making more than the laborers, but let's just split down the middle. That's still roughly $45k per year for working 8 hrs per week. Yes, that's poverty in the coastal elite towns but a middle-class lifestyle in flyover country.

Move up to doing two such jobs per week (or even three) and a very solid upper-class lifestyle is within reach. Get a couple crews working under you doing a couple of those jobs per day, and now you're talking about a high standard of living, indeed -- vacation home on the coast/mountains and luxury vacations.

Another example: The guy who built my home is an Ivy-League MBA. After graduation he quickly discovered he couldn't tolerate sitting in a cubicle, so he turned the "side job" doing home renovations (used to help pay for his $250,000 degree) into a full-time profession. Now 20-years on, he has built hundreds of homes and is a millionaire many times over. By swinging a hammer.

<comment><USER16> The only trades who are millionaires are those who started a business that became successful and employ others, probably at least a dozen staff. That makes such folks no more likely than 1 in 12 (assuming their business lasts and they don't regress to the mean). That's _not_ the average tradesman today, and likely to be even less frequent in the future.

The average Joe Tradesman never makes no more than $50K per year and has to retire in his 50s because the hard physical work (and inadequate health care) has worn down his body and he can no longer keep pace with 25 year olds. That's not a winning career strategy, especially in a future in which the rise of product disposability and building with modular components will simplify and reduce demand for much of today's trade work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Just curious, how does apple's recruiters shortlist people if they are not looking for college degrees. We need some criteria for sorting through the haystack..right? Or is it just a standard motivational talk which we just read ,feel good, nod our heads and move on?

<comment><USER18> Coding test early in the recruitment pipeline. I've seen plenty of CS degrees on resumes that can't pass basic coding exercises/tests; at the same time, I've been impressed with the capabilities of new grads.

I'm looking for autodidects and could care less what educational format they prefer.

<comment><USER19> So you're looking for something that's so rare it's probably a myth? [https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/abs/10.1098/rsnr.2014...](https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/abs/10.1098/rsnr.2014.0027)

I think what you meant to say is you're looking for people with passion for the field, grit and curiosity and with a proven track record of delivering. The best engineers learn from others and stand on the shoulders of giants.

<comment><USER20> Judging by the abstract in that linked paper, I think that it is arguing more about semantics than anything else. It basically claims that: "No person is truly self taught as they stand on the shoulders of their predecessors". To which, I would agree. No man is an island and it would be very difficult to teach oneself something without material composed by others. However, I think the colloqual use of the term autodidact is more about the lack of a formal educational system or formal teaching figure and less about a person figuring everything out on their own.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> What the college attempts to teach is still mostly just writing and reading comprehension and math. It's just higher level than before.

You should have the ability to write 20-30 pages well structured text to show that you can think, organize your thinking and communicate your thinking to others in your field. Many people graduate without this ability, but at least they have had some practice and can write 5 pages better than when they started the college.

You should know about the things in your field even if you don't master any of them yet. Being smart but restricted is not substitute for college degree. For me the value from higher education came from mandatory classes where I had to learn stuff that I was not particularly interested in. I was interested in algorithms, machine learning and low level programming. I would have never studied database design, computer networks and software engineering as methodologically on my own.

You can avoid learning most of the above when you go to college, but you learn at least something. If you don't have a college degree, you should try to learn on your own. You should have completed large projects that you can demonstrate your grit. In many ways college degree is showing for others that you can delay gratification enough to graduate.

<comment><USER22> > You should have the ability to write 20-30 pages well structured text to > show that you can think, organize your thinking and communicate your > thinking to others in your field. Many people graduate without this ability, > but at least they have had some practice and can write 5 pages better than > when they started the college.

Almost all engineering programs I've seen, practically don't have any English requirements. I never needed to write a paper like that.

<comment><USER23> at my university, You're required to take 2 semesters of english and for senior design 1 you're basically writing a 100 page book on your proposal.

<comment><USER22> We were 'required' to take two semesters of English, but it was really easy to test out of, so that's practically what everyone did.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Alternate title "Duke MBA Tim Cook explains why you don't a college degree to be successful".

<comment><USER25> Would it be a substantively different talk if Bill Gates, Michael Dell, Larry Elison, Mark Zuckerberg, etc, etc had said something similar?

<comment><USER26> It really wouldn't. At the end of the day it's a bunch of 1 percent-ers spewing platitudes when meeting with government; they have no idea what recruiting for non-executive jobs looks like these days.

While I feel that the cost of college is totally out of line with the salaries most people make, I know that I wouldn't have been hired without a degree.

Although I'm far from a Thiel fan, he at least offered an alternative approach using his own money (not a lot, mind you, but still).

<comment><USER25> Elison and Dell were nowhere near 1% types. Dell started Dell with money he earned selling newspapers and dropped out once it was making 6 figures while still operating from his dorm room. Ellison came from a messed up family situation, dropped out to work odd jobs, and ended up teaching himself programming dropped out and worked odd jobs before teaching himself to code.

Of course the environment changes over time. And so trying to create a business selling computers from your dorm room or moving to California planning to teach yourself to code and then [something] is probably not likely to work out so well. But I think the moral of these stories is often one of creativity and drive. Now teaching oneself programming is trite. When Ellison did so in the 70s, it was something extremely uncommon to do which meant it had vastly more value.

\---

In reality, I think our opinions are going to be driven by our experiences. In contrast to your experience, I've only ever even mentioned my degree for exactly one job. And that job very much did not require a degree. Since then I've found endless opportunity in spite of the fact I'm pretty much the embodiment of anti-networking: dumb phone, no social media, etc. But I enjoy development. Create one product that's impressive and useful, and it's like the world just opens up to you. A lesson I rather wished I'd learned about 15 years ago. But hey, something I can pass on to my kids - perhaps not so different than one William Gates who enlisted in the army right at school, served in WW2, went to college on the GI bill, and eventually had a somewhat more well known William.

In any case, it's always made me question the value of the degree. I came from a very poor family which means that sheet of paper had quite the price attached to it. And that was before prices really went into lala land.

<comment><USER26> What difference does that make? They aren't being asked for their opinions about the job market in the '80s. They're giving their opinion of this stuff as it exists today. But they also haven't had to look for a job in a quarter of a century and don't personally vet hires unless they're at the senior mgmt level.

<comment><USER25> I had assumed you were framing things as them being out of context with 'real life' when you characterized them as "1% types." As for recruiting - that's what I was getting at. Different life experiences lead us to radically different views here. Your experience of finding your degree absolutely necessary is not necessarily indicative of people at large (depending on your field), though I'd fully grant neither is mine. It's just anecdata.

In either case, I'd fully agree with you though that a degree makes things much easier for most people. However, I think that is rapidly changing. Most of the big tech employers are now dropping college degree requirements and I expect we'll gradually see the same in ever more fields. A degree used to say a good deal about a person, and all positive. Now that's changing, and so the market is adjusting in response.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> If you want to get a Visa at some point in your live: things get much easier to if you have a university degree. All these "don't need a degree" posts always seem a bit US-centric.

<comment><USER28> What visa?

If I assume correctly that you're talking about US working visa.. What you said sounds much much more US-centric than anybody who ever said "don't need a degree".

<comment><USER27> More or less any visa to any country, no?

<comment><USER28> No need for a degree for an entry visa. Probably for any country. As for working permit... Lots of people won't look for one during their lifetime. Out of those who would, frequently it's not a showstopper. And many will stick to areas where they don't need a permit anyway (e.g. EU+EFTA for their citizens).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> If you read his quotes, this isn't what he is saying. He's saying you don't need a college degree to be useful, with an emphasis on coding (in fact, maybe coding is all he is really referring to). This is pretty obvious. But the fact that Apple, but not most others, are willing to accept this says nothing about your likelihood of being successful even if useful.

</comment><comment><USER30> Define "successful" ? What does that mean exactly ? A lot of money ? A good life away from trouble ? Be in the middle class mean you are successful ?

Really that definition matter a lot and the you might need a college degree to be successful

</comment><comment><USER31> I don't think you need a college degree to be successful, i don't even think you need a good college degree. I do believe it increases your chances of living a comfortable and fulfilling life.

<comment><USER32> It certainly expands your network and increases the odds of success. The MBA is the ultimate example of this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> A lot of current jobs directly tied to some sort of college degrees will be automated out of existence in the near future.

<comment><USER34> This is a silly statement - I'd say a lot more jobs currently tied to NOT needing a college degree will be automated out of existence. Jobs that require creativity and critical thinking will be the ones that survive (I believe that's the quote from the recent Last Week Tonight). Those tend to be college educated jobs.

<comment><USER35> How about Accountants? Turbo Tax automated many of the individual needs for accountants, and plenty of investing / portfolio management advice can be found online for free. The last big push is for enterprise / business / high net worth individuals to automate their accountants.

It's not to say accountants won't exist at all: we still need them as Subject Matter Experts to make changes to the software. But we won't need huge numbers of them like we do today.

<comment><USER36> TurboTax can't handle even moderately complicated tax situations without forcing the user to learn about tax law. (E.g. where people live and work in different states, which is not unusual in the northeast.) Nor can they handle the human-facing job of sorting through someone's documents. We pay an accountant about $1,000 a year to do our taxes, and being able to simply forward him a bunch of W-2s and email receipts instead of triaging them myself makes it worth every penny. (Fun fact: even though tax preparation software is more than 25 years old, more than half of people still pay a tax preparer to do their taxes.)

There is even less of a basis for thinking you can automate actual corporate accounting with known technology. Contrary to popular belief, that does not involve just applying clear-cut rules to ledger entries, but rather lots of judgment about how real-world transactions should be treated under the accounting guidelines.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> >The Apple CEO also said he believes that it should be a requirement for every kid in the U.S. to have some level of coding education before they graduate high school. Apple launched its Everyone Can Code program in 2016, a curriculum designed to help students from Kindergarten to college learn coding.

>Apple is one of several corporations that doesn't require a college diploma for certain jobs

Does anyone else feel like this is just an attempt by Cook to increase the supply of people able to code competently so Apple doesn't have to pay out as much for software engineers like they do now? Just increasing the labor supply to push down wages? Not saying if that is a good or bad thing, just a thought..

<comment><USER38> If they are actually going to pay less, what's stopping software engineers from switching companies? Someone qualified to work for Apple is probably also qualified to work for other tech giants, so if it's really Apple's motivation to pay less, why not just apply elsewhere?

<comment><USER39> I think they have already done this just using a different approach. [https://pando.com/2014/03/22/revealed-apple-and-googles- wage...](https://pando.com/2014/03/22/revealed-apple-and-googles-wage-fixing- cartel-involved-dozens-more-companies-over-one-million-employees/)

This is economic game theory. Supply and demand dictates profit share. Its also why wages tend to go up after plagues and wars.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> That is true, but at least he said: " _you don 't need a college degree to be successful _but_ education is very important_", because lazy students around the world and hypocrite-people who don't have university degree _& actually want to have it one but unfortunately can't_ will use his words as an excuse.

Cook has to remember, without academic research there will be no cutting edge technology like chip or processor that support hitech company like Apple. He should be wiser.

</comment><comment><USER41> Personal experience on this. My degree (physics) was nearly completely orthogonal to my career (software engineer).

But I have no doubt it helped me get not just my first job, but also subsequent ones, probably due to 'his code/tech talk could be better, but he seems smart and has a physics doctorate from a prestigious institution'.

Think software hiring+quality would be much better if we had an apprecticeship culture, instead of based on perceived prestige from excelling at University.

<comment><USER42> I agree but the very employers who are the literal gatekeepers to a good job often use credentials as signals right from the start, which contributes to the credentialling arms race that I think we've been going through.

Apprenticeships and trade schools will become a strong alternative path as soon as employers accept them to be. Moreover, often times the credential itself isnt the big deal, just its viewed as a competition and someone who got a good GPA from a top school seemingly displayed an ability to do well in that competition.

I wish it were different, but I don't see employers changing their game anytime soon.

<comment><USER43> I've met a disturbing amount of employers who love coding schools because they provide underpaid code monkeys.

IMO, things must change if we are to survive future obstacles.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> > Cook also added that about half of Apple's US employment last year was made > up of people who did not have a four-year degree.

A stat nearly as meaningless as the headline unemployment rate.

\- Since we're talking about "successful" or not, what is the median annual compensation for Apple's retail workforce in the US?

\- For non-college educated retail staff (or non-tech staff), what training opps does Apple provide to help them move up in the company?

</comment><comment><USER44> We also don't absolutely _need_ good health to somehow still enjoy success but it certainly helps, doesn't it?

It's quite the same with education.

</comment><comment><USER45> I consider the University as a shortcut for knowledge.

Without University, how many years I would take to understand ACID databases, for instance. How many bad decisions and mistakes I would do, how less competitive I would be, how much time I would lose doing things wrong. In the University I was guided and tested. I learned theory and practice, through the books and also by the mistakes of others.

<comment><USER15> Depends entirely on your curiosity, motivation and energy.

The answer could be "less than four years" or "a lifetime."

Everything is "self taught" when you get right down to it. The only difference is whether one has/needs guidance about what to study, and advice from others with more experience.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> I have a college degree and I value it a lot. I learned a lot there, not just theory but overall a mindset how to learn, analyse things. You cannot say that a college degree is priceless of course at the same time you cannot say that those without it cannot do anything. It just depends on what a person wants, for me learning was actually fun.

<comment><USER47> I don't know where you went to college, but I learned nothing about how to learn. How exactly did you do this? College for me was 4 years of remembering exactly what was taught and then taking tests on it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> With a college degree, specifically a Computer Science degree, you generally expect a certain level of competence in CS fundamentals. E.g. the recipient will know about Big O notation, will be able to do problem analysis and design, and understand programming principles like heap memory, object methodology and concepts like memory pointers.

<comment><USER49> That doesn't take four years. Most of it can be learned in a year. (Source: I did.) CS degrees teach you things like computer architecture, operating system, relational database, networking, etc. which are nice to have but optional.

<comment><USER50> The first 2 years of college is usually your core competency, including high level mathematics, statistics, and other things like ethics, technical writing...and other general education like history, foreign language to make you a more rounded education.

If you do well in high school you can obtain a lot of college level general education credit and knock off a year.

The last 2 years are probably more like what you did in 1 year.

<comment><USER51> That's very US centric.

In the UK the A-levels we do at the end of high school cover first-year uni material and there are no general education requirements at university.

The downside is we don't have the major system either - you pick what you will study at 18 before you go and it is rather difficult to change.

I preferred such a focused system but I can see why others may not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> Most answers are about CS degrees.

I imagine almost all Electronics, Electrical, Mechanical engineers at apple and elsewhere have degrees in their respective fields. With good reasons. One being that it is really difficult to learn these fields on your own, unlike CS/programming/coding/etc.

</comment><comment><USER53> Theres always so many views on this idea (whether its worth it to go to college if you work in tech and the externalities involved) but Tldr: I would have loved to take a 6 figure job without $80k in student loans.

I am a female software engineer and encourage the girls I know to not worry about the fact they are in their mid 20s stuck in retail jobs. I tell them to take udacity etc. Bootcamps. At our company some of our best hires are girls and guys who are doing bootcamps or took udacity courses.

One great benefit to this is

1\. From my view they arent tainted in tech. As a female I hated going to a tech school with men and I would have loved to haved skipped the four years of social hell.

Getting hacked keylogged and told I only got accepted into college because im a girl despite having a 4.0 and making perfect SAT scores was the norm and ive confirmed from other tech schools as well including but not limited to MIT.

2\. They dont have egos or entitlement associated with having a degree. They only have their relevant work.

3\. They have the ability and initiative to be self taught and learn new things without it being handed to them in a curriculum.

4\. They often feel inferior because they dont have a college degree which is bad but often as a result they are incredibly humble, open minded, respectful, greatful, eager to learn and grow.

We are currently hiring two great female candidates from bootcamp and honestly they know alot more relevant to my job because the classes are very applied whereas im stuck paying off loans and teaching myaelf everything they learned as well.

</comment><comment><USER54> > According to Cook, there are certain in-demand skills that students may not > learn in college — namely, coding.

Yes, for example studying for one of those degrees, that well... are unrelated to CS.

While i agree that some could replace college with self-study, especially in the age of open-source, can't help but think that some of these high profile managers could say that college is not essential just because employees without college debt and with a non-standard resume could be willing to work for less.

</comment><comment><USER55> That's pretty much the meme material :)

[https://i.redd.it/3j2yogn12cwz.png](https://i.redd.it/3j2yogn12cwz.png)

<comment><USER56> Off topic, but why are you the rare user I cannot downvote? Everyone else has a double triangle next to the username.

Edit: actually there are many in just this thread. Bizarre.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> I'm a Financial Analyst, CPA, CIA, CTA, Statistician, Expert System Developer.All my professional knowledge is self-taught, but I believe that I am involved in the various professions should be at a high level. [https://github.com/linpengcheng/fa](https://github.com/linpengcheng/fa)

</comment><comment><USER19> "Cook also added that about half of Apple's US employment last year was made up of people who did not have a four-year degree." My bet here is that he's counting retail Apple Store employees. I'm not entirely sure the upward mobility is there for those people.

</comment><comment><USER58> > Apple CEO Tim Cook says there's a "mismatch" between the skills learned in > college and the skills that businesses need, _especially when it comes to > coding_. [emphasis added]

So, it's fine when it's Tim Apple saying this! What happened on Twitter was So Unfair and So Sad!

<comment><USER59> Ah the English Disease "Employers not wanting to pay for training"

Universitys job isn't to rote teach how to code

<comment><USER32> True but then we need to treat programming as a trade.

<comment><USER59> And devaluing our "professional" Job into a lower status and lower paid one why?

Why do a lot of HN commentators fetishize "trade" skills when they have no real idea what they are talking about.

Possibly if your going to target a CS/EE degree you should have bean learning to code from 13 or 14 - in the UK you wont get to study Physics if you haven't specialised in physics and maths at the GCSE and A level.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> I think it all comes down to the required skills. If you don't have a degree, you have to convince the company in other way that you have what they need. Especially in software development it's pretty easy to show your skills.

<comment><USER8> Degrees do often make companies more inclined to let you show them your skills, though.

<comment><USER61> I've noticed a correlation between companies that are overly interested in credentials and those that will institute open plan offices, draconian intellectual property regimes, and other employee-hostile measures. No loss there!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> Colleges are turning into 'adult daycare centers'.

Encouraging people to go into six-figure debt, so that they can get a degree that has zero marketability (except of course to continue on in college), is a deeply cynical enterprise. At least drug sellers and casino owners are open about what they do.

<comment><USER34> This is a cynical statement with no truth behind it. How do you explain the stat that college grads make a million dollars more over a lifetime? Almost everyone on Wall Street has a degree, would you call that zero marketability? Doctors all have degrees...zero marketability?

<comment><USER63> Average physician has lower lifetime earnings than a UPS driver. Most of the difference comes from time spent in training instead of earning, and ... financing a giant pile of school debt.

If one of your exemplars has lower lifetime earnings than a UPS driver, your point may be on shaky ground.

<comment><USER37> I believe this is the site he is referring to

[http://www.er-doctor.com/doctor_income.html](http://www.er- doctor.com/doctor_income.html)

<comment><USER34> These numbers are wonky in the article. Average salary of UPS driver = $57,000. Average salary of a doctor = $299,000

(1) [https://www.truckdriverssalary.com/ups-driver- salary/](https://www.truckdriverssalary.com/ups-driver-salary/) (2) [https://www.usnews.com/news/health-care- news/articles/2018-0...](https://www.usnews.com/news/health-care- news/articles/2018-04-11/report-despite-physician-salary-increases-wage-gaps- still-exist)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> This is a dangerous thing to say because it's heard by teenagers who can't think about themselves at 40.

</comment><comment><USER65> But you do need a college degree if you're planning to migrate to most developed countries.

</comment><comment><USER66> The most common reason this is true is because you were born rich.

</comment><comment><USER67> I'm pretty sure a college graduate created the touchbar.

</comment><comment><USER68> If Cook really cares so much, why doesn't he invest in internal training and mentorship programs? Where are all the entry-level new grad positions where a junior is paired with a senior? Where is the performance evaluation category for mentoring as a developer? These have all but disappeared in the modern job market.

It used to be the company's prerogative to train hires for their job. Now that is being outsourced to colleges, with the media and politicians helping them broadcast their cost-saving strategy. It's sickening.

<comment><USER69> I've been coding for a long time. All that has changed is your perspective. It used to be that the "real" developers were working on "real" technology, like satellites and mainframes. This whole messy website muck was chided.

So those companies hired people like me and trained them. I was 14 working nights, weekends, and summers.

Now, the web is Serious. It has enough pro devs to make it nothing but a waste of time to drag along some high school kids. But there are still high school kids getting recruited, you're just not in the same low-standards part of the industry that they're in. Motivated kids these days are building weird shit in VR and hitting bug bounties. If anything it is not a problem of training and mentorship, it is a problem of getting people interested in programming in the first place. When I got my first computer at 4 years old I had to use a CLI to get around. Most of my games were in QBASIC and could be inspected and changed, which I would do when I was bored. It's harder to get the spark these days, but once it starts it is so much easier to learn than it used to be. I was struggling with pointer math at 10 years old.

Kids these days use JavaScript and Swift.

<comment><USER68> If enough kids weren't interested, the science and technology pipeline would dry up. Diversity in the stream may be an issue, but overall dearth is not currently a problem (used to be a much bigger problem in the past when computing was a less reputable industry).

Does it really matter what the technology or application area is? Electricians train and apprentice, as do scientists (what a PhD and post-doc are after all).

Given that you are a senior, do you feel these kids would not benefit from your mentorship? If so, does the organization you work at create opportunities for such mentorships? Do they count towards your promotion case?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER70> Sez the guy with the Duke MBA.

</comment><comment><USER71> tl;dr: This advice is unhelpful in reality if hiring/recruiting/mentoring practices do not change. There are many talented people without degrees, but I feel that current practices throw hay on the needle pile. In the end, companies care about the bottom line––anything else is in support thereof.

\--rant-- I am currently at a large university in the bay area. The competition is pretty tough. "CS" is a heavily impacted major and many schools have instituted gpa caps (while simultaneously espousing that equity and equality are of utmost importance).

So what are we all competing for exactly? I am not sure. I do not like the system; as it stands now it often feels like we are all competing for some sort of raffle ticket that we can then go door to door––company to company––asking "did I win," "did I win?" Many of my peers are confused as to why I dislike a system that we are benefiting from. My answer is that it seems off––something just doesn't feel right.

Companies save time and money, by not only feeding off of university pipelines, but also avoiding many smaller schools. I can understand the rationale. They seek skills––algorithmic and programming ability––perhaps also the ability to adhere to a factory environment.

I can see the rigor gap between my coursework and that of my friends at various other universities. I witness many talented students who struggle to find internships. I also see many students with tons of algorithmic ability, but cannot begin on a project of their own or contribute elsewhere.

I find it very odd that people (Tim or whoever) talk about not needing a 4-year degree, while possessing a 4-year degree. Likewise, as others have noticed, where are all of the mentoring programs?

To tell younger students that they do not need a 4-year degree is misguided if not negligent if not dangerous (that is under the assumption hiring/mentoring practices do not change).

I believe part of the problem is that Computer Science (or Software Engineer) has become the new "doctor"––except that you're out of the pipe in four years.

But of course, this (Tim's words) is just lip-service. What Cook and others actually mean may be two things––(1) they want talented people, period (2) they want to pacify those they will reject.

I agree with motohagiography, "there is no incentive for people with an education to criticize it." If I drop out and criticize the system, I'd probably be seen as "a sore loser." If I stay I am a cog.

I'd love if what Tim and others said was a truthful representation of reality. But the fact still remains, the fancy school name on my resume gets far more looks than a lesser-known school––what would it get if no school were listed? Hmmm, don't know. I do know that my linkedin profile got way more traffic when my school changed...

Lastly, I feel like Computer Science (and the degrees offered under this title) are meant to pipeline someone into a masters--->phd and not necessarily software engineering. You might be able to say that CS is a superset of software engineering, but even this is somewhat wrong.

I've been doing some soul searching lately and I'd appreciate advice. I see everyone in my community working so hard; for all the work to culminate in selling people things, ads, and maintaining the freemium-universe we live in seems... kind of dark. I know this isn't entirely the case, but yeah. \--rant over--

</comment><comment><USER72> College rules. If someone else is paying. It's too fucking expensive now. Boomers ruined yet another thing.

</comment><comment><USER73> College degree means for me that someone was willing to waste his own precious time for stuff never really needed, sometimes right away obsolete and usually totally disconnected from reality. Also it means, that one usually doesn't really understand nor remember anything from school (because there is no need for this knowledge in practice). I'm talking about CS and folks thinking that if they're able to install 300 cracked games they're automagicaly CS gods (these tends to end-up as java programmers). I've met too many people like that. So yes, one doesn't normally need CS degree (and i'm probably biased, too). Probably don't event need degree in electronics to make stuff or do some research. But definitely need it for things such as physics or law</comment>