Ask HN: Do You Consider Remote a Working Perk? - <AUTHOR> I was contacted about a remote position today. They asked for my expected rate and I told them. They replied, "Can you consider coming down since this is a remote position?"
I really struggled to come up with a response to this. Yes, I'm willing to negotiate on principal, but it has nothing to do with being remote. In fact, I consider remote a reason to pay more money.
My thinking is that it's difficult to find the type of people who has the focus and skills (focus overrides skill, I think) to really do remote work well. The employer is not paying for the office, not giving me free coffee, not paying for the computer I'm using, and (if it's important) no ping pong, and no social interaction with coworkers. In return, I give full-on focused work with no cruft.
I understand that it is a trade off, but I'm never sold on the thought that remote is some exclusive benefit. <comment><USER2> No, working remotely isn't a perk, it's simply: work.

[Use of the term "telecommuting" seems like another common giveaway, where and when it appears.]

The teams I've worked with have never had difficulty with communicating and collaborating, meeting deadlines and "innovating," and I highly doubt that we're all ninjas (because surely I am not).

Typical was my last position: I never clocked in from 9-5, usually from the early morning hours until late at night, to provide time zone coverage and purely out of interest and the desire to be a contributing member of the team, with several breaks included for meals, exercise, etc. Flexibility meant I was more likely to contribute, rather than less. (So many entities fail to understand this basic human dynamic. Instead create a prison, and watch how the inmates adapt and behave.)

I'm mostly able to control my environment, which means a quiet space in which to work, free from the distractions of my cube-dwelling days (though at least those had walls).

It's simply natural to work together remotely at this point, and I frequently notice how it provides companies with other tangible benefits, which I think some fail to consider.

I'd say some are trapped in a twentieth century mindset, but perhaps we're stuck here: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factory_system](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factory_system).

<comment><USER3> My company recently went through a merger and did the typical rearranging of deck chairs, including renaming things arbitrarily. My department is commercial products (mobile apps). The new name for this department?

"Agile Build Factory"

They're literally telling us we're factory workers to them. My objections to this name were met with blinks and hand waves.

<comment><USER4> _" Agile Build Factory"_

Love it. Management probably thinks it is "cool, hip and edgy"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> No. These days I consider it a _requirement_. Doesn't have to be full remote, but I want at minimum 2 days to be able to be out of the office and enjoying from the house I'm paying for using the salary _you 're_ (employer, not you, OP) are paying for. Have spent the last couple of weeks embroiled with an engineer who has made my Ops team almost 4 months behind on a specific deliverable.

Meanwhile, the rest of our deliverables that didn't involve this engineer and his team have shipped 90% ahead of time. That 10% was one deliverable that wasn't shipped ahead of time, it was shipped _on_ time.

And my dept. is 100% remote.

I like your arguments though, working remotely sacrifices a lot that you would otherwise get by being chained to a desk, and the idea that you should take LESS money because of it is offensive.

</comment><comment><USER6> We're getting hung up on semantics here. What's going on is really a negotiation tactic. Here's what the company is thinking:

 _\- dizzystar would enjoy working remote

\- it would be hard for dizzystar to find other remote-working opportunities

\- hence, dizzystar would be willing to work for a discounted rate, in order to be remote_

In their perspective, there is no "right or wrong". It's purely a matter of negotiation leverage. You have a couple options here:

 _\- admit they are right, and accept a discounted rate

\- claim that your rates are final and not negotiable

\- claim that you don't value remote working, but because you value them as a client, you're willing to negotiate on your rate_

Option 2 is more likely to get you a higher rate, but also more likely to drive them away. Option 3 involves accepting some discount, but at least you minimise the leverage they think they have over you.

This discussion over semantics is not helping anyone. Just treat it as a negotiation game, and play it the way you would any other negotiation scenario.

<comment><AUTHOR> Right, I did go with a variant on option 3.

If it matters, I've only worked on site for one job. I've always been remote otherwise. I probably should have mentioned it in my OP, but really was wondering more about the general perspective on remote.

<comment><USER7> Another option is to work at a company for a year and then demand remote during a critical part of a project. If they don't give you remote they lose a valuable asset and are behind schedule.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I've been remote for a few years. I've negotiated remote offers from many bay area a companies. This is a pretty standard piece of hr bullshit you should ignore. The correct answer is to hold your ground.

If for some reason that doesn't work out, you've discovered that the company values you less based on your zip code which is something you definitely want to find out before you're relying on them for your livelyhood.

</comment><comment><USER9> In my opinion, no you should absolutely do not come down in your rate because of remote work.

It is a perk... for the company.

Imagine not having to pay for office space? The company doesn't have to buy a desk and chair, or pay electricity to run your computer, or stock the coffee and snacks. And there is the added benefit that the work hours are completely blurred. There is no such thing as "work stops when you leave the office" when you live at the office.

Sure it has its benefits to you too. Easier to spend time with friends and family, less money spent on gas, etc but the company is saving way more money.

I'm personally extroverted (rare for a software engineer but we exist) so working home aline drives me crazy and I consider mandatory remote work a negative. I actually rent space in a co-working space (an added expense for me) in order to be productive. Some people use coffee shops for this purpose.

<comment><USER10> > There is no such thing as "work stops when you leave the office"

um...I dunno about _you_ but it sure as hell applies to me. I leave my home office for the day and work stops. Emergency fires that affect customers are the only exception and i would help with those even if i didn't work at home. Being able to set boundaries like that when you work from home is _critical_ to maintaining mental health and minimizing stress.

<comment><USER9> That was a bit of hyperbole. But I'd say it is true for 9/10 companies I am familiar with that do remote work. Stories of bosses calling people and expecting them to pick up at 8PM abound.

<comment><USER11> Stories of 8pm calls are not limited to work from home employees though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> git-pull Every programmer wants remote unless otherwise stated.

Work Remotely. Salary. Benefits. Software Stack. Chill Boss. That is what matters.

Just about anything else the startups have to offer is categorized as "meta". Not helping things ship.

Devs don't care about "culture". What does that mean? Mandatory stand-ups, weekly 2-hour meetings, signalling "values", and these group photos where everybody forces a smile? (You haven't exited. What is there to celebrate about?)

They don't want the politics. Colleagues trying to justify why they're there, instead of being in a conscience frame of mind to better the company. Anything else not helping the product to market (shipping), gaining users, and retaining them.

The requirement of "on-site", unless there's a legit reason, has become a red flag that invokes an image of a boss in a suit, reclining in their Aeron chair, that's an insecure, yapping, "expert beginner" micro manager who won't heed technical advice; a bozo.

So what makes a "Chill Boss" for programmers? A correlation worth testing is greater software development experience than employees. As opposed to just having a history going straight into management soon as possible.

</comment><comment><USER12> It's not a perk _at all_ in 2018, IMO, except perhaps for some logistical issues you might personally have (eg dealing with your kids, etc). I speak from experience. If you are maintaining full-on focus, as you said, you're only saving the company money. Every point you've made here is valid.

Working "remotely" actually puts the entire burden of managing an office and managing deadlines squarely on your shoulders.

EDIT: I mean managing your _own_ deadlines of course

</comment><comment><USER13> I value working remotely because it allows me to save time and live in an area that fits my lifestyle. And it costs my company money as they need to pay my travel expenses when I do visit the office, as well as some HR and legal overhead. Many managers also find an employee's presence in the office valuable in and of itself.

I work remote full-time because it's something that I negotiated up front my with employer, but most of my team members are required to come into the office every day (or at least most days). If they work from home too often their manager will notice and "have a chat" with them eventually.

So from that perspective it definitely feels like a perk, and something that I am fine negotiating over as part of a larger compensation package.

</comment><comment><USER14> Think carefully about this negotiation. I've been down this road before, and I feel I was a bit too quick to decrease my salary. Many times companies will use the region you work remote from to compute your salary. So if you live in Colorado and work for a company in SF, they might try and pay you a Colorado rate.

The funny thing about that is, many times they will probably be offering to pay for relocation costs, and a full SF salary when you do relocate.

In my mind, if they are willing to pay for relocation, and a full salary AND the real estate costs of having you sitting in the office, then they should be willing to pay you the salary you expect.

</comment><comment><USER15> This is a red flag. That company or manager probably assumes people doing remote work are doing their laundry or whatever and not doing work. Perhaps they had a bad experience with someone? Or was this an HR person just doing their "get the rate lower" job objective?

They aren't going to save much by having a remote worker, right? Yes office space but chances are a company leases an entire floor, used or not. The amount of electricity a laptop uses over a year can't be much either. A single person drinking coffee can't cost them that much either.

I would almost want to ask how they come to the conclusion that remote should pay less? Or a slightly different wording like how are pay ranges determined for <insert title here> position across the company? Does this also come into play with promotions, raises, bonuses, etc?

</comment><comment><USER16> Because I'm firmly in the remote-first camp from my point of view remote should never be considered a perk or something that's graciously granted to you but rather the default case while on-premise work should only be required if or when it's truly necessary. I know that many companies are far from that assumed ideal situation but that's the way it should be in my opinion.

There of course also is an objective negotiation angle to this. You could calculate your personal cost of commuting to their office every day and add that on top of your usual rate. Then you could go down by that amount when asked that question during negotiations.

<comment><USER17> Bingo - you would think in an industry like tech this would be the common belief. Head into the office on days when meetings/ in-person collaboration / brainstorming /planning etc is cirtical. Spend the rest of the time remote (which is realistically about 80% of the time). IMO there is no reason - especially in tech - you need to be in the office every day. I say 50/50 is a good starting point. Can you imagine the traffic relief not to mention the stress relief (and health benefits of this) if this was common?

This is _especially_ true in the bay area!

<comment><USER16> > Can you imagine the traffic relief not to mention the stress relief (and > health benefits of this) if this was common?

Indeed, traffic is a major aspect of this. Remote work is the key to solving the traffic problems in large cities around the world.

Non-remote work also incurs ridiculously high costs both in terms of necessary public (railways, roads, parking space) and private (office buildings) infrastructure costs and hidden costs such as those caused by health issues and opportunity costs caused by the huge amount of wasted human lifetime.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I don't consider it a perk, but at this point you'd have to pay me a lot more to come to an office. I don't think that I would (have to?) take less just because they want to hire me.

I agree that "remote work" is a skill into itself, but no matter how much I value that, I don't see how it's costing my employer anything.

If anything they ought to pay me more because they don't ave to provide my office and coffee and whatnot.

<comment><USER19> "at this point you'd have to pay me a lot more to come to an office"

So then you're saying that you will work for less to work remote, because you value it as a perk.

<comment><USER18> I suppose that any point of negotiation is a perk?

I mean, I'd work with a live band playing in the room if you'd pay me enough and give me ear plugs, so I suppose "no live music at work" is a perk? I dunno?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> It's not exclusively a benefit, but it does have some powerful upsides:

* Less commute time and cost (I save 8-10 hours a week, plus a few hundred a month in parking, fuel, and insurance)

* More freedom and flexibility (not every gig offers this, but many do)

* A bunch of focus time

* Communications (oddly) are greatly normalized as everyone has the same handicap. I find a fully remote team easier to manage than a mixed one, as no one has an advantage over another (as happens when part of a team shares the same office).

On the other hand, you're maintaining your office space and much of your setup (internet, wifi, heating, desk, chairs). Again, some jobs offer some compensation here, but some of it will be on the employee to maintain.

You're also more isolated, and team culture takes a bit more work to create and maintain.

Personally, I value the option to work remote as a net gain. I love my home office, I save time and money on the commute, and I have more time to focus than in the office. I understand the company benefits too, as they pay less rent, own fewer fixtures, and get more of my time. But I still see it as a net win for me.

</comment><comment><USER21> As computers start to code themselves, remote work will become essential as people (in theory) will have more time to live their day to day lives. But remote working is not that big a perk per se. What is modern work going to be about when it is just metrics and data? we need to rebuild a lot of communities and networks with our new (hopefully) time rich societies.

<comment><USER22> You got shadowbanned. I'm vouching for you because you seem to be an earnestly new account.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I find a mix of working on premise and remote the best - on premise keeps you in touch with the company and your colleagues, remote is the best to get stuff done.

They introduced it a while back at my workplace, and tbh, I would not take a job these days where remote work isn't atleast partially on the table.

Saves me between 1 and 3 hours of commute (depending ont he location).

If you'd expect me to come to the office every day... either it has to be somewhere where commuting to is really easy, or pays significantly more. And I'm not even sure I'm willing to compromise on the remote work part.

</comment><comment><USER24> Working remote is a perk. I don't see anything wrong with a negotiation based around perks vs income.

There are extremes and exceptions, of course, but the base assumption seems reasonable to me.

</comment><comment><USER25> In some situations it would be said you are being too literal?

Sometimes when people negotiate they say "can you do x because y" where y is just a plausible way to ask for x.

It is often more graceful than just saying "we don't want to pay that much."

<comment><USER26> im not following, can you explain what you mean a little more thoroughly?

<comment><USER27> He's saying that saying "can you do X because Y" sometimes is just another way of asking "can you do X". So in this case, them asking for the OP to lower salary may have nothing to do with the position being remote, even though that's what they said.

This is a common negotiation tactic. If you give someone _any_ reason when making a request, they are more likely to comply, even if that reason doesn't make sense.

Small example, at a coffee shop: "Can I cut in line?" might get a negative response, but "can I cut in line, I am late to pick up my son from school" is much more likely to get a positive response. I don't have a link, but there have been studies to show that even nonsensical justifications are more likely to get positive responses. "Can I cut in line, my grandmother is watching TV" is more effective than no justification at all.

In this case, by connecting the salary reduction to a feature of the job (remote), it makes it more acceptable to comply with the request than if it didn't have a reason attached.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I charge a 30% premium for my time on site. Working from a location of my choosing is more productive. When on site, I am endlessly harassed for meetings and chats and people coming to say hello (and oh btw can you help me with <insert issue>), whilst it is expected that my productivity remains the same. Some clients actually expect an increase in productivity. Being on site is more work, so the client pays more.

</comment><comment><USER28> Nope. You've built a comfortable work environment and the discipline required to be an effective remote worker. No reason for the company to expect to capture all the value in this. They're already saving on office real estate. Very likely saving in taxes. You're also assuming all the risk in being in an area with limited local opportunities. Get what you're worth and don't settle.

</comment><comment><USER29> Paying market prices for employees is a great way to cut costs and optimize profits by exploiting workers' living arrangements. If someone lives in a market where there is very little job competition, and their cost of living is low, pay them less money! Your business will save money, and it's more fair to your workers who live in more expensive neighborhoods.

^ This is basically the rationale I imagine when people pay the same worker less money just because of where they live. They obviously could hire someone local and would pay them more money. But they _want_ to hire you. But they _also_ think they can get away with screwing you on compensation, because you're remote. They save money and they get an employee. It's a win-win for them.

Fuck. That. Especially because they said "Can you consider ...". Uh, no, Mr. I Just Lost All My Negotiating Power By Asking Someone To Think About My Request Rather Than Insisting On It.

Remote is not a benefit. If they had a million qualified _local_ candidates banging down their door, they wouldn't be negotiating with you. Tell them to put up or shut up.

</comment><comment><USER30> I _love_ working remotely.

It's not for everybody. Some people need the social interaction at the office.

But I love not having a commute to work, the convenience of having the extra time, saving on gas, meals, etc.

For me, it's become the primary perk of the job.

<comment><USER31> Just my two cents, but agree completely. Remote lets me focus on my work better, and skipping the commute is a huge benefit to my mood overall. Plus far less gas, car maintenance, I can go for a run during lunch...

It's also hard to overstate the freedom it gives you - you can literally live anywhere in the US you please. It's not for everyone but I don't think I could go back at this point.

<comment><USER32> And when you say "US" you mean "world", right? :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> It's possible they are considering cost of living (e.g. you can live "as well" nowhere near Silicon Valley on half the salary, depending). If that were true though, they should also be expecting to "up" their offer if you were remoting from downtown Manhattan or something.

Ultimately, you decide if the offer is what you wanted.

</comment><comment><USER34> I would think the company benefits from a purely financial point of view because they don't need to provide an office or any of the other amenities that go with one.

I personally hate working remotely. Most people don't though so it is viewed as a perk. I've interviewed people before who applied solely because we offered remote. Some of them even lived within a pretty easy commute to the office.

And along the same lines, it's not a great idea to respond to "why are you interested in working with us?" with "because it's remote" even if you really love remote work.

</comment><comment><USER35> It depends on the type of work. Working remotely with fixed hours isn't a perk. However, usually working remotely gives you significantly more control over your own time and schedule, which IMO is a huge perk.

</comment><comment><USER36> It costs me about 600 dollars a month to commute to work where I live. So yes, if push came to shove, I would take a hit roughly equivalent to that, all else being equal. I might even go above that, because I greatly value working from home.

That said, in a salary negotiation, I don't think I would let that slip. As you have pointed out, remote work is a mutually beneficial situation, and just as I save money, so does the company. It makes sense to share the savings, and charge about the same rate one normally would in the region in which one lives.

</comment><comment><USER37> I wouldn't negotiate down because of a remote position. That's garbage. I mean sure, you're saving on commute, but what would that ultimately save you in gas money? $50-100/mo? That's $1200.

In office work = free coffee, work laptop, social interaction, and sometimes free food. Pretty sure that greatly outweighs $1200.

And it's not like you're going to get the time you spent commuting back. Likely their expectation would be that you work through those hours. So. Nope.

</comment><comment><USER38> I only work remotely, 2-3 days/month on-site is fine. So no, it's not a perk, it's a requirement.

You are right: working remotely effectively requires a different skill set. Most of all, a remote worker has to be really good at self-motivation, focus and communication. I have been working remotely for a decade now and consider myself an expert in those areas, so no, I would not accept lower pay.

</comment><comment><USER39> > They replied, "Can you consider coming down since this is a remote > position?"

It's a perk in the sense that you're not paying bay area rents. If you're in a high CoL area and want to say, applying to remote positions is an uphill battle, as the chief reason most companies want to look remote is to expand their recruiting reach without raising wages, and hoping to lower them.

<comment><USER40> Meanwhile, companies like Basecamp are doing the opposite, and basing pay off of SF:

[https://m.signalvnoise.com/basecamp-doesnt-employ-anyone- in-...](https://m.signalvnoise.com/basecamp-doesnt-employ-anyone-in-san- francisco-but-now-we-pay-everyone-as-though-all-did-3ee87013cfc2)

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> They are playing you because they know you want this. Hold your ground and walk away if necessary. Remember that you have the control. Not them.

</comment><comment><USER42> No. I get more work done at the office, and since I am fortunate to work for a company that doesn't prescribe to an open office plan, it's actually fun being at work sometimes. It's no fun working at home when there's so many cats and dogs that need hugs, Netflix shows to watch, and everything else

</comment><comment><USER43> I spend 3 hours a day in traffic. That comes up to a 8 hour vs 11 hour work day. Transportation cost is about 5% of the salary. The 3 hours is completely lost too - it's not hours I can spend in contemplation. The biggest thing I cut from those hours is exercise, cooking, and grocery shopping. So this would cost me some more in health later.

So remote work is definitely a perk/benefit.

But I think the question here is that it's also a perk to the company; they don't need to pay for office space and all those other things. And there are less people who can fit the remote worker requirements.

So I would say that remote work should pay roughly the same.

Personally, I would take a big hit to pay to work remote, but this is only because on site benefits here don't include computers and comfortable seating.

</comment><comment><USER44> I think remote work is a benefit when you're sitting in a cubicle farm 8 hours a day, some days of the week. I'm much, much happier when working from home and can focus much better when it's required. Definitely not a "taxable benefit", though, in the sense that you get a decreased salary in exchange for it.

You bring up very good points about working 100% remote, though. It should not constitute a decreased salary unless you're not working full time remote.

If I were you I'd try to negotiate for the employer to pay for gigabit internet and buy you a nice new PC, then just take those things off the total compensation. Nice thing being that those things are now pretty much tax-free income for you. You'll be saving on commuting costs, too. Also calculate what you can write off for a home office.

<comment><AUTHOR> >>> You bring up very good points about working 100% remote, though. It should not constitute a decreased salary unless you're not working full time remote

Why do you think this?

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> When you hear this, you say: "I appreciate your position, but I just can't find a business reason to justify lowering my rates."

Ultimately, it comes down to this. Do they view you as a someone special, a person who can really deliver value in a unique way, or do they view you as a commodity?

If they view you as a commodity, they'll try to pull all sorts of stunts like this one. But if there's a special bond, they will respect your rates and try harder to get you onboard.

So perhaps if you are getting asked this question, it's because they're too lazy to learn more about you and haven't really figured out that special thing you bring to the table. There isn't enough of a relationship yet.

</comment><comment><USER46> It's entirely subjective. To some people it is a perk, to others it is a downside. If you don't consider it a perk, I would say so. Tell him that you appreciate the flexibility, but don't consider remote work to be an advantage.

</comment><comment><USER47> Absolutely. I'd take on the order of 10-20% of my salary to never have to be in-office. It'd be a steal for the company, too since I'd get so much more done than if they were mandating 9-5 ass-in-seat time in the office.

</comment><comment><USER48> From the point of view of the employer, it does not matter too much that you personally dislike remote work. Their negotiating position is based on the fact that other people think it is a perk, so because of the tradeoff between fun and wages[1], they can find a replacement just a little bit easier than if the position was not remote.

[1] [https://www.mruniversity.com/courses/principles-economics- mi...](https://www.mruniversity.com/courses/principles-economics- microeconomics/tradeoff-wages-no-such-thing-as-free-lunch)

</comment><comment><USER49> Everything comes down to each parties BATNA [0]. If the employer values on site employees more than remote then they will offer less (all other things being equal), if they value remote workers as being more valuable then they will offer more. The same applies to the employee.

The cost of living of where you live is not the employer's concern. Everything comes down to supply and demand.

0\. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Best_alternative_to_a_negotiat...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Best_alternative_to_a_negotiated_agreement)

</comment><comment><USER50> I have worked remote for most of the last 12 years. When looking for new positions I tell them my expected rate which is for remote. Then tell them my on site rate is my expected rate + 50% inconvenience fee.

</comment><comment><USER51> > Yes, I'm willing to negotiate on principal, but it has nothing to do with > being remote.

Why do you even care then?

> My thinking is that it's difficult to find the type of people who has the > focus and skills (focus overrides skill, I think) to really do remote work > well.

Are you basing that on anything other than wild fantasy? Have you heard of eastern Europe, where tons of people will work remote for far less money?

> In return, I give full-on focused work with no cruft.

All employees are expected to give that, remote or not, whatever "with no cruft" really means.

</comment><comment><USER52> Working remotely is a skill. I negotiate my compensation based on all of the skills that I bring to the table. So should any prospective client/employer.

</comment><comment><USER53> Think about how much money the company is saving by not reserving you a desk in an office space, etc. You may save some money on a commute, they definitely save money by you being remote. Since it's a money-saving move for them, why should you lower your salary? IMO salary should be dependent on other factors like what you're worth on the market and how much it would cost them to find an equivalent employee.

</comment><comment><USER54> It's mutually beneficial. It saves you time/money on driving, and saves the company on overhead (office equipment, electricity, office space, etc).

</comment><comment><USER55> "I really struggled to come up with a response to this."

When faced with a request of the form 'can you please do X because of justification Y', people are by default more willing to do X than if there was no stated justification. If they refuse, they feel compelled to explain why justification Y doesn't apply.

But there's no need.

If the rate you've quoted is reasonable given the market, then just say so.

</comment><comment><USER56> Not a perk but as This is a specific market it all comes to the balance between number of remote Job offers in your domain and number of people looking for a remote position in your domain. Anyway if you're experimented working remote you can explain that it makes you real productive and that you see no reason to lower your fees/salary

</comment><comment><USER57> Your intuition is right that you shouldn't come down because it's remote unless that is an optional accommodation for them. It's not like they would offer you the same position without the remote option for a higher rate. Your rate is based on the sum total value they can offer, right? It sounds like a poor negotiation tactic on their part.

</comment><comment><USER58> If not a union we need developer training on negotiation, the hiring staff are too good at it. "Can you consider coming down since this is a remote position?" When I hear that now I'd see through the BS it is, back a few years ago I would thought, may be they have a point.

</comment><comment><USER59> Maybe they feel like you will be saving money and time not having to commute? I don't know. You make valid points and I agree, they shouldn't use remote as leverage when they are already saving a lot on the position being remote.

<comment><AUTHOR> The gas is valid if they only want to negotiate $3/hr or something like that. It's always more, of course.

<comment><USER60> Commuting cost time also. If your rate is $80/hour, that really adds up if you have a one hour commute each way with traffic.

<comment><AUTHOR> I live in Los Angeles. If the company is in New York, does that mean I should take out the price of plane tickets for each way?

<comment><USER60> The comparison doesn't make sense in a vacuum.

If you live in Hollywood and the job you want is in Santa Monica, then you would add some time for that. If the remote ob is just as good, you could save some time and not go to Santa Monica.

If your ideal job is already down the street from where you live, then remote doesn't offer much commute advantage.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> No, it's not a "perk". This industry has plenty of jobs that can be done (and done very well) by 100% remote teams. The location of a worker should have zero negative impact on the pay arrangement.

</comment><comment><USER62> I don't think remote work is a perk, but I do find some employers either think or feel that they can pay employees less just because they are remote. I would never work at a place like that.

</comment><comment><USER63> Yes. As someone who has to take a 1h30 bus twice a day I would jump ship if a company offers me remote work for even 50% of the month.

</comment><comment><USER64> Work is something you do, not a place you're at.

The only good reason for an employer to require you to be at a specific place is if there are some levers or buttons there that needs to be pulled or pushed.

</comment><comment><USER65> I've worked entirely from home before and I didn't really like it after a while. It was too hard to get motivated every day and keep to the schedule I'd set and I missed having coworkers even just being around even if we don't talk all the time. But I would enjoy being able to work from home while still having a workplace I needed to go to at leaat a few days a week.

<comment><USER66> Where I work, "working from home" is code for "checking email a few times during the day so it appears I'm at least somewhat engaged, while really doing very little at all yet not using a PTO day."

Too hard to get anything done when others you need to collaborate with are not there.

<comment><USER67> Yes, it only works (from the employers point of view) if the following are true:

1\. the employee either genuinely enjoys the work or genuinely cares about the company

2\. the employee has not become cynical about the company, even if (1) was originally true.

In most lines of work these are unlikely to be true for most people. However, software engineering can, if you're lucky, have an addictive quality and be intellectually enjoyable and intellectually meaningful. If that coincides with a decent company with decent people, then weirdly, remote working can result in people working hard away from the office. In my case, getting much more done away from the office because personally I can get nothing done in an open plan office with frequent meetings.

<comment><USER68> You left out the critical ingredient: the company has to have remote-first DNA. If they aren't set up to handle that style of employee, its going to result in a hire that feels isolated and who will very probably experience being passed over for anything interesting. Remote-first implies all kinds of things, up to and including having slack convos with someone sitting one desk over, and most companies just don't care enough to put the effort in to make a truly remote friendly workplace.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Go on, Leave Your Job - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/20/business/businessspecial2/20blogs.html?ex=1361163600&en=8eb1a532bc2eb440&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=all

<comment><AUTHOR> If you don't live in the US, people will think you are crazy for leaving your job. They will just assume that your business will fail and you are just wasting your time. Essentially, they will view you as unemployed and feel sorry for you.

<comment><USER2> Many people will think you are crazy even if you live in the US. That's why it was cool to go to Startup School last year. People actually encouraged me to quit my job there :).

<comment><USER3> huh? Here in SF, a good chunk of engineers I met work for startups, and alot of them are not really known. Some have their own startups. It is just accepted, and startup failure is just part of the normal life in here.

After a startup fails, few people will get burned and just seek stable employment on a large company, either for good, or just to save some money so they can start another startup again. Some just jump to the next startup available.

Part of life. Unless you are getting paid lots of cash, the best engineers are not necessary working for the big companies out there. HP and Oracle cubicle culture, are downright depressing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Most of us oblige Newtown's First Law - The Law of Inertia - when it comes to going off the safe path

"Our benefits were astonishing in comprehensiveness and quality of care. Sometimes we questioned whether they were worth it. We though moving to India might be better, or going back to nursing school. Doing something with the handicapped or working with our hands. No one ever acted on these impulses, _despite_ _their_ _daily_ , _sometimes_ _hourly_ _contractions_. Instead we met in conference rooms to discuss the issues of the day"

Then We Came to The End, A 1st Novel by Joshua Ferris, First page. Excellent writing, still reading it off and on. (Note text emphasis mine, not in text)

</comment><comment><USER5> Watching the Big Idea with Donnie Deutsch one of the interviewees suggested jumping out of the plane first and building your parachute second. That was a powerful image, you really need that parachute but until you jumped, you never really got to it.

</comment><comment><USER6> escapefromcubiclenation.com?

I never really cared for the concept of starting a business in order to MOVE AWAY from something you don't like.

I always thought that you geometrically increase your chances for success by MOVING TOWARD what you really want.

</comment><comment> daniel-cussen Sign-up required. Next.

<comment><USER7> Using bugmenot extension to skip past paywall > you</comment></comment>


Some shrug at NSA snooping: Privacy's already dead - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnn.com/2013/06/07/tech/web/nsa-internet-privacy/index.html?iid=article_sidebar

<comment><USER2> Yeah, CNN has been doing a series of these. I wonder why.

</comment><comment><USER3> Privacy is a human right. Not something a government can grant or take away.

And certainly not something CNN can declare dead. Mine is alive and well and I'm keeping it that way.

</comment><comment><USER4> Way to go CNN...</comment>


Blind Auditions Could Give Employers a Better Hiring Sense - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2015/05/28/410264592/blind-auditions-could-give-employers-a-better-hiring-sense

<comment><USER2> Blind auditions made a huge impact in increasing gender diversity in professional orchestras:

"In the 1970s and 1980s, orchestras began using blind auditions. Candidates are situated on a stage behind a screen to play for a jury that cannot see them. In some orchestras, blind auditions are used just for the preliminary selection while others use it all the way to the end, until a hiring decision is made.

"Even when the screen is only used for the preliminary round, it has a powerful impact; researchers have determined that this step alone makes it 50% more likely that a woman will advance to the finals. And the screen has also been demonstrated to be the source of a surge in the number of women being offered positions."

[http://www.theguardian.com/women-in- leadership/2013/oct/14/b...](http://www.theguardian.com/women-in- leadership/2013/oct/14/blind-auditions-orchestras-gender-bias)

<comment><USER3> The problem with that study is that they didn't control for all the other possible influences on the change. The comparison was made between different orchestras in different years.

<comment><USER4> As I've commented elsewhere, there are plenty of other studies.

Eg. Moss-Racusin et al (2012) which found that female students applying for jobs were seen as less competent than male students with identical application materials.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "Calderon learned to code at an intense boot camp for Latinos. She says the men in her class have had an easier time getting jobs than the women, even though they learned the same skills."

Honestly, after reading this, it really makes me wonder about why she wasn't getting hired. A bootcamp in coding isn't going to really give you enough skills to do the job.

Superficially, you might be able to get a few things to work and mash together some frameworks, but to truly understand, it takes many more years of learning and discipline.

I wouldn't hire someone that only went through a bootcamp for a developer position.

<comment><USER6> > "I think, overall, when I do go interview, I kind of have I guess what some > people would term flamboyant taste in colors and patterns," she says. "I do > tend to wear very like loud and dangly and big earrings and I have gone in > like bright green sports coats and things like that, but I still think are > professional — they're just colorful."

Depending on where she's interviewing, that dress code may not match what they're after.

That said, my last several jobs I landed, I went in blue jeans and conference swag (startup tshirts).

<comment><USER7> Wait, you went to the interview in blue jeans and a t-shirt? Do people do that? What's wrong with putting on some real clothes for one day?

<comment><USER8> One major tech company I interviewed for explicitly recommended blue jeans, and said I'd be outdressing the interviewer if I went any higher than that.

<comment><USER7> And yet engineers wonder why we are thrown into open offices like cattle and compensated with foosball tables and Mountain Dew. We are skilled professional workers. How about starting with some self-respect? Grow up and put on a collared shirt at least. (NOTE: This is not directed at the parent commenter...I'm just ranting in general)

<comment><USER9> What I would sometimes really, really like to wear at work, is a three-piece suit, minus the jacket. So smart suit trousers, a well ironed tailored (i.e. made to measure) shirt with a good tie, and a waistcoat. The waistcoat ensures that the tie doesn't flap, and also neatly covers the join twixt shirt and trousers - no unsightly loose shirt on display (because, if you wear a shirt, it's going to loosen as you move around). Shirt sleeves folded back from the cuffs (which require cuff-links to join, such that when not joined they're free enough to fold back smartly) and the sleeve prevented from loosening unduly with a discrete sleeve garter.

Look smart, feel smart, and a clear separation for me between dressing for work (and thus being in professional work mode - this would be advantageous to my employer), and dressing for not work. As it is, at my current place, I can dress like this, which is nice.

However, the majority of tech places seem to have strict dress codes (brilliantly, hidden behind protestations that there's totally no dress code, no no no, although last week we [1] didn't hire someone because he wore a suit to the interview, but that's not for violating the dress code at a job he didn't even work at, no no no), and someone dressing smartly rather than the uniform of jeans/chinos and t-shirt, would cause uncertainty and unsettlement amongst the workers, many of whom would not be able to effectively work with someone who is not just like them.

[1] General case "we". If I ever hear someone come out of interviewing a candidate and suggest that dressing smartly was a negative, I go absolutely. Nuts. Hasn't happened for a very long time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> My company has just launched an anonymous interview process for 3 open positions - [https://careers.bytemark.co.uk/](https://careers.bytemark.co.uk/) . We only take a mobile# and an alias, and just talk to candidates over IM for 2/3 interviews. I blogged about the rationale - [https://blog.bytemark.co.uk/2015/05/20/bytemark-is-hiring- by...](https://blog.bytemark.co.uk/2015/05/20/bytemark-is-hiring-by-anonymous- interview)

re: the post on gapjumpers, I'm not sure about asking someone to do (what appears to be) a 1-2 day programming exercise on their own time to prove themselves for a job. That favours people with the most time to put aside - and it's a heck of a lot of wasted effort for the candidate who gets rejected. I don't think that's as fair as it should be.

We're using anonymous interviews for all our positions (not just development), and it's great to get a sense of personality without thinking about gender, age, race or anything else irrelevant. When we turn people down, we don't even know who they were. I _think_ that's a good thing for both sides.

I'm not going to pre-judge what's happening with our process, but so far we've got through a load of interviews without stress, and got very strong impressions from these 30 minute initial chats. Second interviews will start happening the week after next & I'll write about it once we've got this batch of recruits through the door.

<comment><USER8> Sounds like a really good idea. I assume you guys are gathering metrics on this, and will compare the demographics of people who got hired and rejected in the anonymous process vs. the previous one?

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Specific performance on a challenge is certainly a piece of the puzzle. But cultural fit is also important. And someone who may be less than perfect in their "audition" could likely be mentored into a great employee, if their cultural fit is close to perfect.

One of my standard statements is that the ability to do a job is not a guarantee to get the job - it is just the base requirement to even be considered.

<comment><USER12> > But cultural fit is also important.

Is it? I fail to see how preferring Dr Who over BSG is relevant to becoming a great employee, or more seriously, how hiring managers selecting for "cultural fit" doesn't end up as 'I prefer to work with people who put work ahead of family, health, and sanity.' With maybe a tinge of discrimination bias.

IMO, the right place for cultural fit isn't in the hiring step, it's in the recruiting and application steps, when you broadcast what your workplace environment is, what the priorities are, and then applicants choose to work within that culture or not.

<comment> bjelkeman-again We quite successfully do the "cultural fit" interviews early in our process. It is true that the recruiting and application part is the great filter, but there still needs to be people who understand our organisation really well involved in this step to see if this is the right person. The right person can learn new skills, but we find it hard to take someone with poor cultural fit and make the personal chemistry work.

<comment><USER9> If only there was some people could act like professionals, able to work with people who aren't cultural clones of each other.

<comment><USER13> What exactly do you think culture is? Hiring for company culture could be as simple as having a no asshole rule or preferring people that can capably balance their home-work life rather than 10x until they burn out in a year and a half and quit.

<comment><USER9> "Cultural fit" is code for "just like us". It's not code for "can do the job needed to a high standard". It's not code for "would work well with our current employees". If that's what is was, people wouldn't say "cultural fit". They wouldn't say they interviewed for "cultural fit". They'd be interviewing for professionalism and ability to do the job and ability to work well with other employees, and people who turned up to a job interview wouldn't get turned down because they wore a suit to the interview while the interviewer dressed like a slob in a retro-ironic t-shirt.

It's code for "just like us". "Cultural fit" is important for workplaces which contain a number of people already who couldn't work with someone different; at that point, you look out over your homogenous banks of identikit employees, and wonder how vulnerable you've become because you all think the same, and how many excellent applicants you've turned down because they weren't just like us.

If anything, you should hire for NOT cultural fit. You should hire for people who think differently, who will bring new ideas, new perspectives. Who will see the gaps in your current products because they're bringing a different perspective. Instead of hiring the same person over and over, duplicating existing ways of thinking and reinforcing the same mistakes, the same vulnerabilites, the same blind spots, hire people who can fill in those gaps and actually bring something new to the table and see those mistakes and those vulnerabilites.

<comment><USER11> Wow. I'm not even sure where to begin. Clearly, you do not understand what we are talking about when we say "cultural fit".

People do work differently. They have their own communication styles, leadership styles, and working styles. Some of those styles work better together than others. That is is not a judgment call of saying any one style is better or worse, it is just saying that mixing incompatible styles can build a dysfunctional team. So knowing who you have on board, and how they work and communicate, lets you hire compatible styles.

This has nothing to do with diversity of people. Very diverse people can still have compatible working styles.

<comment><USER14> Then provide us with a precise definition of "culture fit", and some notion of how you screen for it.

Maybe none of us will disagree with it. Few of us have a problem with a "no asshole rule", for instance.

Precision is important here, because it needs to be communicated to everyone who interviews, lest "culture fit" assume its inevitable role of "escape hatch for allowing interviewers who are having a bad day to neg anyone who doesn't jump out at them as someone they'd enjoy having a beer with".

<comment><USER11> I'm getting the sense that maybe the groups I work with just have a bit of "secret sauce" going on here. Clearly, it works quite well for us, without the problems being expressed/experienced by other folks here... but just as clearly, I'm not communicating it effectively.

In any case, this thread is starting to feel toxic to me, so I'm not all that interested in getting even deeper into it by answering your questions, even though I do appreciate the respectful and helpful way in which you asked. Thanks for that.

But this may be a topic better addressed another day, using a different venue.

<comment><USER9> While I agree that this discussion should end, how do you know it works quite well for you? How do you know that you haven't rejected some candidates, on grounds of "culture fit", who would have been really valuable employees?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I've been using and promoting a similar process (including side-by-side, blind comparison) since 2010 on ars.io

As an ATS it removes photos and names, just shows candidates side-by-side allowing managers and team members to quickly rank-sort the applicants without gender or nationality bias.

Combine that with our "gig-to-hire" process and the result is lower time to find higher quality candidates.

I wish I was better at press.

</comment><comment><USER16> Bytemark in the UK have started hiring by initial anonymous interview [https://blog.bytemark.co.uk/2015/05/20/bytemark-is-hiring- by...](https://blog.bytemark.co.uk/2015/05/20/bytemark-is-hiring-by-anonymous- interview)

<comment><USER4> Really interesting, thanks for sharing

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> A coding challenge isn't going to tell me whether you might be an asshole who's hard to work with.

<comment><USER18> It's more about having less non-assholes filtered out prematurely by biased skill tests and evaluations.</comment></comment>


AlphaGo shows its true strength in 3rd victory against Lee Sedol - <AUTHOR> https://gogameguru.com/alphago-shows-true-strength-3rd-victory-lee-sedol/ <comment><USER2> It would be interesting to know AlphaGo's estimated probability of winning as the game progressed; presumably we can see directly how worried it was at any given point in the game. And thus get another sense of whether it ever really felt threatened by Sedol.

At this point, the match is won, but games 4 and 5 will commence. The question shifts from whether AlphaGo is better than humanity's best, to whether humanity can even have a chance of beating AlphaGo in a single game. And so far, it sounds like the answer is likely to be a resounding no.

<comment><USER3> This isn't exactly what you were asking for, but here are some graphs from a _different_ Go AI (Facebook's "darkforest") showing its estimated win probabilities: [http://zhuanlan.zhihu.com/yuandong/20639694](http://zhuanlan.zhihu.com/yuandong/20639694)

<comment><USER4> Can anyone with Go knowledge comment on this?

<comment> andrew-lucker First game, AlphaGo looked ambiguously weak until end of mid-game when it suddenly looked very strong.

Second game, AlphaGo looked obviously strong throughout.

So the probabilities are maybe not entirely wrong.

For reference I am 4k rating, somewhat below darkforest(1d amateur) and so very very far from 9dan pros that AlphaGo is beating. Usually, pro matches are hard to understand but the excellent commentary and abundant community analysis helps greatly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I felt that Lee thought global sometimes, especially when he had time on the clock, but his mind could only take so much thinking, and time was catching up, so for a great many number of moves he thought locally.

AlphaGo doesn't tire and thinks globally on every move.

We saw that time and time again. Lee playing locally and AlphaGo surprising everyone with an unexpected move somewhere else on the board.

Obviously it is better to be globally optimal than locally optimal.

<comment><USER6> Doesn't principle of optimality state that if a solution is optimal than any of its sub problem must be optimal as well?

<comment><USER7> Instead of downvoting this comment, let me provide a counter example. Imagine the knapsack problem, where you can lift 10kg and you have a 10kg gold bar and 5kg cinderblocks. In this case solving 2 5kg knapsack problems will give you two cinderblocks, which is obviously not optimal.

I don't know a lot about the strategy of go, but it seems to me that any play that doesn't take into account the entire state of the board is allowing for the same class of sub-optimal behavior as the example above.

<comment><USER8> the guy you're responding to is correct:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bellman_equation#Bellman.27s_P...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bellman_equation#Bellman.27s_Principle_of_Optimality)

and your attempted counterexample makes no sense (as the 'two cinderblocks' solution is not a subproblem of the optimal solution).

<comment><USER9> From the very section of the article you quoted: "In computer science, _a problem that can be broken apart like this_ is said to have optimal substructure." \- There is no reason whatsoever that _any_ problem could be broken down to this. In fact there are many problems for which it is known to be impossible. The article on optimal substructure lists a few.

<comment><USER10> Yes. The principle of suboptimality only applies to problems which are optimally solved by dynamic programming. This is a small subset of problems and the knapsack problem is not one of those problems solved by dynamic programming. It does not have optimal substructure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Skeptics have said that achieving this milestone would not happen within this decade, our lifetimes or even ever. It happened yesterday.

It took Lee Sedol many decades of his life to train to achieve this level. And his ability to pass on his skills is limited. Now that a computer has achieved this level, the state of the neural network behind it can be serialized and ran into an unlimited number of computers and have millions of systems that are more proficient at Go than the best player in the world.

People have said that achieving the cognitive level of the human brain requires to match its computational power. But if you take out all the parasympathetic and motor boilerplate, what is actually left for mental tasks is much less from that, most of that power is not even recruited for higher level mental tasks. That lowers the bar for strong AI.

Then, strong AI can be immortal, and never physically deteriorate from aging. Strong AI can multiply infinitely and communicate at a rate that would be equivalent to writing millions of books in a second. It could transfer all its knowledge in seconds. It can also recursively improve itself. This advantage will lower the bar for strong AI even more.

<comment><USER12> On the other hand i would like to read an assessment of the significance of this advance. While AI may have perfect applicability to these perfect information games, we may still be decades from useful real world generic applications.

<comment><USER13> Exactly so. While this is a major advance, I roll my eyes at the sea of comments hailing the arrival of a superior intelligence.

When the AI is cognizant of the fact that Go is a game, and knows what a game is, and perceives that the game is taking place in a larger reality, where there are other things happening while the game is going on....then I'll be impressed.

<comment><USER14> > ...then I'll be impressed.

Or maybe not. The history of AI is one of humans always moving the goalposts when AI advances.

Chess? just a computationally simple game. Driving? Well it's just physics. Go? _now that requires intelligence_ oh wait, just some deep neural savant thing, not _real_ AI

<comment><USER13> Well, I think what I'm describing (general awareness) is a little different from your examples there, but I acknowledge my choice of words implied I'm not impressed, which I completely am because this is obviously utterly amazing. It's just not AS big a deal as a lot of people are making it out to be with proclamations of apocalypse.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> What I found especially chilling was how the AI took its time when it thought it was ahead, and played exactly as aggressively as needed to win. It seems like we're seeing the full benefit of detaching logic from human emotional drives like pride, loss of nerve, etc. Which at first sight looks awesome, but in a way it's deeply terrifying, because if such a machine is ever given power in the real world, we would really like it to have some regard for human emotion. More than anything else I've seen, this makes me feel in my gut like I'm seeing my replacement.

<comment><USER16> On the perhaps more reassuring side, it's possible for there to be an AI that takes into account human emotion, but does not have any of its own. Given power in the real world, it would do a better job of making people happy than a human with all their biases. It wouldn't assume that other people must like things it like, for example.

(Of course, making an AI that understands emotion isn't easy. And happiness by itself is an insufficient goal if we're building ourselves a benevolent overlord.)

<comment><USER17> I view all such arguments about "friendly AI", "emotion", having machine intelligence "understand us" as wishful thinking at best and laughable delusions otherwise.

I think the writing on the wall is clear, to anyone who cares to take a look. The moment we create an artificial intelligence capable of self-improvement and let it loose, we will have fulfilled our function (others say destiny) and will therefore be obsolete in every sense of the word.

What will happen to humanity after that point is irrelevant.

You don't see humans trying to keep bacteria "in the loop", why expect otherwise from our artificial progeny?

<comment><USER16> You're anthropomorphising the machine. An AI will do what it's programmed to do, not develop free will and decide on its own destiny.

Correctly programming something that takes into account all of the nuances of the human condition might be impossible, and the results of mistakes are uniformly terrifying, but the result is entirely in the hands of humans (and human mistakes).

<comment><USER18> Unless someone programs one to develop free will and decide on its own destiny. Which someone will no doubt, when that becomes possible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I don't understand how this is considered fair. AlphaGo has been trained on a database that includes every recorded game Sedol has ever played while Sedol is seeing AlphaGo's play style for the first time. Sedol should have been allowed to play against AlphaGo for a few months before the match so he could study its style.

<comment><USER20> So what? I could watch every game Roger Federer played in any tennis tournament and still lose all sets to love. It used to be that computers could only do combinatorics better, but that where 'intuition' played a strong part, there was still hope for us humans... Well, guess I will have to start playing Calvinball...

<comment><USER21> There's a difference between having skills and having knowledge.

In your case you have knowledge but lack skills.

When Federer was losing to Nadal he changed his practice and game to counter Nadal's style. He took knowledge and applied it to his skills.

When Federer came out with SABR people were like wtf. Now they know of it and put more umph on their second serve. See. Knowledge + skills

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I'm curious if AlphaGo is simply winning by virtue of having more computational capability (and therefore can never be defeated consistently by humans) or if in its training it actually discovered and is now deploying interesting new tactics that humans, studying these games, can uncover and therefore use to defeat AlphaGo in the future.

<comment><USER23> Sedol said that it was doing tactics he had never seen before -- like the now infamous move 37 that caused Sedol to get up and walk out of the room.

<comment><USER24> Apocryphal, but romantic -- he left the room ten seconds earlier.

<comment><USER23> Is that right? From the Google stream you couldn't actually see him leave, that's just what the commentators said.

<comment><USER24> Yeah, reddit /r/baduk had a thread about it including video from a different angle. The commentator only noticed that the move had been played and he was gone, didn't get the ordering correct.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> The main discussion of the third game can be found here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11271816](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11271816)

However, this article contains much more analysis of the game than previously posted articles, and is worth reading.

</comment><comment><USER26> I understand very little of Go beyond its basic rules and having played only a couple of matches with a friend who knows as little as I do...

I reviewed the match, and it seems that very quickly White (AlphaGo) went aggressive, and Black was trying to contain it. I suppose a human player can commit serious mistakes by playing too aggressively from the start, right? But the summary of the game speculates move 31 might have been the losing move (maybe implying the game until that moment wasn't going so bad for Lee Sedol?), while to my untrained eyes it looks as if White was constantly on the offensive from the start, and Black was playing almost exclusively to contain it.

Or am I reading this wrong?

<comment><USER27> I think that most high-level Go players (including AlphaGo) play moves that serve multiple purposes simultaneously. The ideal move reinforces your own position while forcing your opponent to defend their own.

White certainly played plenty of moves that required black to respond, but black also did the same. For example, the sequence beginning at 77 is black getting a foothold inside an area that white might've hoped to claim later. Then at move 115 black attempts an invasion into a very strong white area, ultimately failing to escape or live, leading to resignation.

That all said, I wouldn't say that either player was particularly aggressive. I've watched plenty of human games where one player or the other very intentionally picks an all-out fight. If you're really good at reading ahead locally and you think your opponent is not, this make sense. This is especially true if your large-scale game play is not as good as your tactical play.

This is also common in high handicap games. If white can't slowly eke out an advantage early on, the only remaining tactic might be to go for a huge fight and see what happens.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> It was fascinating when the author experienced a weird bit of nausea when thinking about the implications of AI. I'm not sure how I feel about it yet. It does scare me a bit.

<comment><USER29> Think about that we're constantly pushing toward our own replacement.

<comment> david-given Don't we normally call that _having children_?

<comment><USER29> How much of humanity genes will skynet inherit ?

<comment><USER23> Not genes, memes.

<comment><USER29> memetics

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> This is different from DeepBlue and Garry Kasparov

Chess may have a big search space, but it is "well behaved". Moves might be out of the ordinary, but not too much (weird moves that still help to win the match are rare)

AlphaGo might also have learned from past matches, but that doesn't give all the answers

The black-box aspect, the fact that you can't understand what it is thinking is curious, to say the least

<comment><USER31> I don't know if that's true. "Computer moves", referring to weird moves that computers play that often turn out to be very good, tend to get mentioned a lot in chess. And you might hear about them less and less, because many of them have been absorbed into the human chess repertoire.

<comment><USER32> Also notable is the verb "spacebar", meaning "to play the same move an AI would". The chess world provides an interesting microcosm of how humans adapt to a world dominated by AI.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I just thought of an interesting (and somewhat more "real-world") task for AI research: Can an AI outperform a human at play-calling in [American] football?

<comment><USER34> Considering that plays are often called or changed by quarterbacks on the field right before the snap based on what the QB sees from the opposing team, I think it would be difficult to provide all that input to a computer AI.

<comment><USER35> A neural net would be able to read the opposing defense more quickly and accurately than any human, but it would not be a fair fight (the human doesn't get a bird's eye view of things!).

<comment><USER36> It just doesn't have as big of an impact though. Each team has a very limited set of plays it's actually able to call and execute. Maybe 300 max (as a guess). Many times much less than that. So there's really not much room for an AI to see huge improvements via play calling.

It's really all about execution on the field and the "feel" of the game.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Well, at least we still got poker. Until AI knows how bluff or how to call out bluffers.

<comment><USER38> Hmmm...

[http://www.latimes.com/nation/great-reads/la- na-c1-claudico-...](http://www.latimes.com/nation/great-reads/la- na-c1-claudico-poker-20150521-story.html)

[http://spectrum.ieee.org/tech- talk/computing/software/comput...](http://spectrum.ieee.org/tech- talk/computing/software/computer-battles-top-human-poker-players)

[http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2015/01/08/375...](http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2015/01/08/375736513/look- out-this-poker-playing-computer-is-unbeatable)

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> How strong is AlphaGo?

DeepMind doesn't generally comment on these sorts of things, but I think they knew it would be strong, just not how strong.

It is hard to accurately gauge the playing strength of such a program for the following reasons:

* Go is not solved, it doesn't really even admit a good heuristic for close games. In chess, given enough time, we can do a pretty good job of searching the possible outcomes from a given position, and even if we can't evaluate all the possible endgames, evaluation functions exist that give us an idea of which side is ahead when we terminate the search. Go has a much higher branching factor (more moves available at each turn, making the search more expensive) and short of a catastrophic blunder, it's hard to quantify who is ahead at each point in time[1]. So we can't (in general) quantify optimal play, and therefore cannot quantify how much AlphaGo (or anyone else) deviates from it.

* One known aspect of programs using Monte Carlo Tree Search is that they play to win, and are willing to sacrifice margin of victory to maintain or increase their odds of winning. According to some people I've talked to, this can be suboptimal, but there are methods of addressing this[2]. Note that you can't just change the objective function from "winning" to "win by as much as possible" without potentially reducing AlphaGo's strength.

* The value function learned by a deep net is hard to interpret, partly because it encodes information about the possible futures arising from a position, and partly because it involves a tremendous number of calculations to compute. We do not know what it is representing at the intermediate levels-- techniques that aim to visualize or cluster unit activations can provide a bit of insight, but there's always the possibility that we're interpreting the patterns incorrectly because we're trying to fit it into the framework of "what would a human think?". Further, the representation is somewhat monolithic-- we can't tweak the value of one thing without changing the values of others. In chess engines, we might modify the material value of, say, a knight, without affecting the value of a rook. In a convolutional net, if we adjust the value of one position, it will tend to affect the value of many others.

* We can attempt to quantify its strength by comparing it to other programs, but AlphaGo has already crushed other programs (99% win rate), so all that it tells us is that it is stronger than those programs.

Essentially, without the ability to perform a significant amount of searching, or gauge strength via margin-of-victory, or to examine the program from other angles, it's hard to gauge just how good the program is.

The only thing we can do is throw skilful opponents at it, and see if it fails eventually[3]. In its current incarnation, though, it seems like its playing strength is just going to be "stronger than you".

\---

1\. Hence the need for Deep Reinforcement Learning-- we learn how valuable each position is based on the results of the positions that it can lead to.

2\. By modifying the search to maintain a given margin once it has been attained-- but I do not work at DeepMind, nor am I an expert on MCTS like some of my colleagues, so I don't know if this could adversely affect AlphaGo's overall strength.

3\. We might be able to get a better idea by having extremely strong players play against weaker versions of AlphaGo (ones with less computing power) and then sort of telescope upwards once a good baseline has been set, but it remains to be seen if the current level of invincibility is due to it not having been around long enough for its weaknesses to become apparent[4].

4\. How would an AI researcher play against it? I've talked to a few people, and the answers have been: (a) play the game to the conclusion, don't resign; (b) attempt to take the game off-the-rails into parts of the state-space it hasn't really explored before (although this is risky because the human player is more likely to make mistakes in these cases as well), and (c) let it get ahead somewhat so that it "relaxes" (see the points about margin), allowing you to catch up and overtake it.

<comment><USER40> The way to find out how strong AlphaGo is is to start giving handicap and see when the game becomes even. A difference in rank of 1 stone corresponds roughly to a 2:1 advantage. It is traditional in long-running matches to increase the handicap by 1 after one player wins three consecutive games. I haven't heard any talk of that here -- I'm sure Lee Sedol wants the chance to beat AlphaGo in an even game -- but it would be interesting. It would also be interesting to see how AG plays when it thinks it is behind.

<comment><USER39> That might work; the concern is that this would take it too far off of the task it was trained on. That is, if it doesn't have a lot of experience being significantly down, then it won't play nearly as well when trying to catch up-- but that doesn't matter in even games because it never gets that far behind.

You're right that it would be interesting to see, though-- we need to get better at understanding these sorts of systems, at least until they can start optimizing themselves.

Alternatively, we might train a different agent (OmegaGo?) to try to win by the largest margin possible-- if it works as well as AlphaGo, then that might give us some more insight into how strong both programs are.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> What are some good resources to learn Go?

<comment><USER42> There's a good interactive tutorial at [http://playgo.to/iwtg/en/](http://playgo.to/iwtg/en/)

The community has also collected a lot of good Go resources at Sensei's Library: [http://senseis.xmp.net/](http://senseis.xmp.net/)

Good luck!

<comment><USER41> Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Out of curiosity how much electric power is alphago burning while playing ? Does someone know it ?

<comment><USER44> Much more than then "stupid" human used, I guess. So for now, we are at least much more energy-efficient ...

<comment><USER18> Apparently 1920 cpu's so maybe 200 kW?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> The actual match is largely effected by psycology at the time of game. The match is somewhat unfair to human player. AlphaGo and its team know all about each human player and preference. But human player knows little about AlphaGo. Also it is AlphaGo team who decides whom to choose to play against AlphaGo, not the other round. In the sense of psycology and , the game is greatly favor to AlphaGo right now. This is the difference with the match between IBM DeepBlue and the chess world champion 10 years ago. It should be that any player(human or AI) can be allowed to enter the game, with or without a fee.

</comment><comment><USER46> Seems like just yesterday (actually seven months ago), I was saying dbn's aren't good at go yet in an argument: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10028908](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10028908)

i guess it's time to play with dbn's again. At least I have accumulated a few more Titan x cards in the mean time.

</comment><comment><USER47> Holy crap. It's a total beatdown.

<comment><USER48> So far, but yes, it looks bleak (or good, depending on which side you're rooting for).

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> Did Lee Sedol have a reasonable idea of AlphaGo's recent strength? To put it more harshly, did DeepMind misrepresent the true strength of the program?

I find it very hard to find information about this online.

<comment><USER50> They challenged a top player for $1M. Doesn't that imply they think it's stronger than any human player?

<comment><USER51> This can also imply that for Google it is worth $1M to know where AlphaGo still has weaknesses.

<comment><USER52> Don't be silly, a Go AI has very little direct value for Google's business. But the publicity is great, easily worth $1M. More important is keeping the DeepMind team busy and engaged -- the real value is in spinning that know-how off into other projects.

<comment><USER51> > Don't be silly, a Go AI has very little direct value for Google's business.

On the other hand: Knowing what makes some problems much easier for humans than for computers can have direct value on Google's business. Go was a hot candidate for a game with this property.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> Huh, Go doesn't require intelligence after all.

</comment><comment><USER54> Can alphago be defeated ?

<comment><USER52> Deep Blue can be defeated at chess now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> So what happens if we play AlphaGo vs AlphaGo?

<comment><USER18> They did loads of that in the cloud during training.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> This is awesome, finally AlphaGo has beaten Lee Sedol. Congratulations to the team at DeepMind and Google. But I will go straight to the really interesting point: My completely baseless intuition tells me that we will have full AGI (artificial general intelligence) in 5-10 years. Maybe not very powerful at first, but a least working. Real general intelligence. I say this as a programmer with superficial knowledge on ML (machine learning). All that is needed is to figure a way, to make neural networks handle the flow of thoughts of human consciousness. Reasoning, short/long term memory, basic controlling "emotions", etc. Then to assemble this central thought unit, in a system with various neural networks to handle more specialized tasks: Vision, natural language processing, audition, motion,etc. The task is of course extremely difficult, but I have the feeling that it will be possible to overcome.

Once this have been achieved, it is downhill from there. The singularity. In my opinion, we must start to consider how this tremendous breakthrough will affect the human race. Our lives, economy, culture, etc. Awesome things we will be witnessing in the coming times. It would be great if it were possible to make public, the progress made researching specifically AGI. I wonder how big of an effort is currently being done. This would be possibly the biggest discovery ever for humanity. It deserves a fantastic effort.

<comment><USER57> I don't know if you're serious, but how can you make such grand predictions, considering you yourself admit to having only superficial knowledge of machine learning?

<comment><USER56> It is just a guess. Human thought, although highly complex, is in my opinion something actually feasible to be simulated. If I had a large research budget under my control, I would be betting most of it on AGI.</comment></comment></comment>


How color is deeply connected to the existence of life - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/team-transparentcareer/the-crazy-connection-between-color-and-the-existence-of-life-3e27a26f8a00#.kycl0g1h2 <comment><USER2> Not to jump to conclusions, but is this ultimately leading to "If it's not a blue/green exoplanet, don't bother"

<comment><AUTHOR> More just posing the question of how Earth based life forms are dependent on a lot of variables that are interconnected to wavelengths of life that correspond to colors. Not drawing a conclusion on what this means for life elsewhere in the universe, but more documenting the interconnections between various parts of biology, chemistry, and astrophysics and how they relate to the colors we see.</comment></comment>


How many people are in space right now - <AUTHOR> http://www.howmanypeopleareinspacerightnow.com/ <comment><USER2> Is there a long-term graph of this? I believe the number has been nonzero since 2000, and wanted to see how it's changed over time.

<comment><USER3> Here's one up to 2014: [http://www.arcaneknowledge.org/science/spaceflt.htm](http://www.arcaneknowledge.org/science/spaceflt.htm)

Number of living humans who have walked on another world: [https://xkcd.com/893/](https://xkcd.com/893/)

<comment><USER4> So the most number of humans in space is 11, which has happened a number of times.

<comment><USER5> Most number of humans in space is 13 according the graph in the link. You must be looking at second graph, most numbers of Americans in space at a time is 11.

<comment><USER6> Most number of Americans in space is actually 10 according to second graph :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Hopefully some day this number will be so large that it will be impossible to track accurately.

<comment><USER8> By then it may be quite easy to track accurately!

<comment><USER9> You have to take births and deaths into account, which is not straightforward. Assuming fast interstellar travel, "loss of simultaneity" causes the number of people in space to depend on your reference frame (your speed and location).

<comment><USER10> That is only if we still die which I hope we have moved past then. Perhaps we simply make new humans when we have the need.

<comment><USER11> Would eternal life not be boring? And ever growing population also leads to issues, even when populating infinite space ...

<comment><USER12> I don't understand this argument.

1) Literally infinite permutations of entertainment out there. 2) Birth rates have been falling steadily for decades. I don't think it'll be a problem in space unless you think space Catholicism is a thing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> There's also a 23.0 MB app (iOS only) that you can download and install — just to display a single number.

(It actually does a little more than that, but still, a perfect example of an app that should be just a mobile web page.)

<comment><USER14> Was just thinking the same thing. Its unnecessary

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> It is currently only possible to be in space on the ISS (or in transit to/from there) right? Does anyone know when the last human space mission farther than Low Earth orbit was? And is any country seriously planning another one?

<comment><USER16> there's also a Chinese space station but it's not currently occupied.

The last mission past low earth orbit was Apollo 17.

As far as I know, SpaceX are the only ones planning on taking crews further out, first with a mission around the moon, and then possibly Mars

<comment><USER17>
        > Apollo 17

Jeez, 45 years since the last person walked on the moon.

<comment><USER18> 45 years since anyone has been more than 330 miles from earth. totally pathetic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> "You promised me Mars Colonies. Instead, I got Facebook."

<comment><USER20> they promised mars colonies and we got a number that's also available as an iphone app.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Not to nit-pick, but aren't all ~8 billion of us in space all the time?

<comment><USER22> "How many people are outside the protective confines of Earth's atmosphere right now" doesn't sound as good.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> *that we know of

</comment><comment><USER24> DuckDuckGo does this as well:

[https://duckduckgo.com/?q=how+many+people+are+in+space](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=how+many+people+are+in+space)

</comment><comment><USER25> From where are you getting this data?

<comment><USER26> Probably from [http://open-notify.org/](http://open-notify.org/) , it provides free space data.

<comment><USER27> Open Notify has an API for this and some other space data.

Here's a few more APIs I've collected into a small R package:

[https://github.com/phillc73/rinspace](https://github.com/phillc73/rinspace)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> It's a bit sad, actually. You'd think we have progressed further…

<comment><USER29> Well its expensive and there are known deleterious effects associated to staying in orbit at zero g. Space exploration is at minimum budget for a while now.

</comment></comment><comment> cup-of-tea I would have thought at the very least it might say where they are.

</comment><comment><USER30> spoiler: 6

</comment><comment><USER31> ah, very useful app for astronauts

</comment><comment><USER32> that we know of :)

</comment><comment><USER33> Prior discussions [https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=howmanypeopleareinspa...](https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=howmanypeopleareinspacerightnow.com)

</comment><comment><USER34> It's no [http://howmanydayssincemontaguestreetbridgehasbeenhit.com](http://howmanydayssincemontaguestreetbridgehasbeenhit.com)

</comment><comment><USER35> We are all floating in space. Duh.

</comment><comment><USER36> All people are in space right now.</comment>


3D Printed Gun Fires 6 Shots Then Falls Apart - <AUTHOR> http://betabeat.com/2012/12/3d-printed-gun-defense-distributed-wiki-weapon/ <comment><USER2> All I can say is, phew!</comment>


Sex robots may cause psychological damage - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-51330261 <comment><USER2> Are they worried about the AI or the robots? Because there are lots of rape fantasy hentai/manga games out there already that allow people to engage in that pattern of thinking.

Seems to me that a person won't buy a rape 'bot unless they already are turned on by it.</comment>


There is no Plan B for dealing with the climate crisis - <AUTHOR> https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00963402.2019.1654255 <comment><USER2> Why does this scientific publication read like an op-ed? Absolutist language strikes me as exceptionally unscientific.

"it's time to panic." "We are in deep trouble." "That's it. Forever." " _Forever._ Think of what that word means."

Disregarding that, the paper seems to address the idea that stratospheric albedo modifications cannot counteract atmospheric carbon buildup since they operate on timescales of decades versus millenia. Specifically they state that:

"Deployment of albedo hacking does not in any way "buy time" to get carbon dioxide emissions under control, since once emitted, carbon dioxide cannot to any significant extent be unemitted with known economically feasible technology"

Which seems to rest on the absolutist premise that we will _never_ know an economically feasible way to go negative carbon. Otherwise, buying time should absolutely be a reasonable thing to consider.

The author closes with a sentence along the lines of:

"To decarbonize, however, requires building a political movement that regards the climate crisis as a top priority."

Which strikes me as... not exactly impartial (Why would not an economic reason work? Or a grassroots social reason?). Which is obnoxious when the author makes specific appeals to the authority of their profession which has authority by the very virtue of being impartial:

"As a scientist, I viscerally dislike repeating myself; I like to think that once the truth is out there, it will somehow win out and it is not necessary to belabor the point."

This "article" rubs me wrong.

<comment><USER3> > Which seems to rest on the absolutist premise that we will never know an > economically feasible way to go negative carbon. Otherwise, buying time > should absolutely be a reasonable thing to consider.

Well, that absolutist premise happens to be correct. There's no such thing as _negative_ carbon. The carbon is never destroyed. Plants don't destroy carbon either, they just store it.

What we need is to find a way to be able to store long term X amount of carbon using X-Y carbon's worth of energy output, netting us Y carbon-free energy output to use for productive activities. So far the best/cheapest method here still seems to be planting trees and burying bio-char, almost entirely replicating the process that occurred millions of years ago before bacteria could break down lignin.

<comment><USER4> Second version would be trying to bacterially attack said trees after burial to speed up the process, making buried bogs.

Trees are slow, maybe there's something a bit more efficient.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> In Canada people fight so much over a pipeline, while the neighbors of the north, Russia, are like,, enghhh f __* that, investing 180 Billion dollars to dominate oil production there [1]. Like other comments have mentioned here , you can 't 'force' other nations to agree to do the same as you. Unfair but you will have to lead the way.

[1]: [https://newsinteractives.cbc.ca/longform/putin- arctic](https://newsinteractives.cbc.ca/longform/putin-arctic)

</comment><comment><USER6> FWIW if anyone doesn't feel like they already know what "Plan A" is, its fairly well infographic'd in the IPCC's Special Report on 1.5C. Study the charts and graphs here: [https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/graphics/#cid_6333](https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/graphics/#cid_6333)

</comment><comment><USER7> > "The upshot is that the total cumulative carbon allocation for humanity > compatible with a 50–50 chance of keeping global warming under 2 degrees > Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) is, in round numbers, a trillion tonnes.

That's it.

Forever.

And of that trillion tonnes, we have already used up over 630 billion tonnes, leaving just 370 billion tonnes to go.

That might seem like a lot of tonnes, but at current emissions rate, we'd get there in just 37 years, or 2057."

This makes me sincerely feel that it's likely not worth it to pursue reducing carbon emissions except where it's super easy and unobstructed.

Instead, it would be better to create technology and plans for how best to live in a rapidly warming world.

I do not believe we can solve political coordination fast enough so that the long tail of consumer demands, from floss to x-ray machines to smart phones, can be manufactured without accumulating much more carbon emission than this limit.

Meanwhile, suggesting we live without these things, especially when they dramatically improve, even save, lives, is equally unrealistic.

(It reminds me of the David Deutsch anecdote in The Beginning of Infinity where people were criticising color TVs in the 60s, as a ludicrous consumer indulgence, totally ignorant to the possibility that they would be vital for saving lives (surgical imaging, among other uses) decades later.)

<comment><USER8> Using air conditioning will increase the energy usage per capita which will accelerate climate change. More realistically a lot of people will move away from the equatorial regions to the north or maybe even to Antarctica.

<comment><USER7> Air conditioning and heating will be needed well into the hot future. It saves lives (especially of the elderly). Trying to "not have air conditioning" is unrealistic, never gonna happen.

So either we devise carbon-neutral air conditioning very suddenly, or else we prepare for hotter planet and geological-scale side effects.

(This just by air conditioning... so then multiply by agriculture, consumer media products, medical products, transportation, etc. etc.).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > Barring technological breakthroughs allowing for the active removal of > massive amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere,

Hey, this sounds like a good plan B: [https://projectvesta.org](https://projectvesta.org)

<comment><USER4> It's not enough. There are not enough olivine rock deposits. It also attacks CO2 only, skipping methane and freon.

Simple back of the envelope math ruins this alleged plan. It can be a part of the big effort, but alone it won't do nearly anywhere enough.

Plus the problem is, the deposits are not in the places that emit GHG. You need to put them where they can be most effective. That's not free.

And then you have to get the world to not pump yet more GHG into atmosphere.

<comment><USER9> I would like to see your back of the envelope math.

And isn't it okay that this doesn't address methane, etc. as long as it sequesters enough CO2 to offset the radiative forcing from the extra methane?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I was tolerating the bombastic language until Russia started pumping out greenhouse gas just to re-unfreeze their sea ice in the future plan b scenario.

</comment><comment><USER11> For all, who missed it: the deep adaption paper [1]. there is written, it's not a crisis anymore, it is already a 'tragedy'.

[1]: [https://www.lifeworth.com/deepadaptation.pdf](https://www.lifeworth.com/deepadaptation.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER12> For a slightly less doom and gloom point of view:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSCF6JNW4oE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSCF6JNW4oE)

Sean Carroll with "Ramez Naam on Renewable Energy and an Optimistic Future"

</comment><comment><USER13> Tony Stark in the first "Avengers" movie had a pretty good plan B: "If we can't protected the Earth, then you can be damn well sure we'll avenge it".

</comment><comment><USER14> Saying there is no Plan B kind of implies we have a Plan A, which we don't.

<comment><USER4> Plan A is stop pumping GHG immediately by force (including warfare and economical pressure) or fiat and try to adapt to living on a somewhat hotter Earth.

It's extremely hard to pull off.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> So... flagged because... some people don't like it?

</comment><comment><USER16> Are there any comparable crises in history that mankind eventually wriggled its way out of against scientific consensus? Is history not littered with once-valid and absolutist scientific conclusions that were never borne out?

</comment><comment><USER17> This is exactly correct. The US only accounts for 12% of the total carbon output into the atmosphere.

Countries like India and China have been polluting the earth for decades and the Paris accords won't solve any of these issues because there is no repercussions.

Why aren't we going after these countries and demanding answers instead of going after the countries, like the US, that are actually doing something about it?

<comment><USER18> The USA has double the carbon emission of china with only a fourth of the population. So per capita an average US citizen contributes 8 times as much to emission as an average Chinese citizen.

<comment><USER19> Per capita does not really matter in this particular case; it's an absolute numbers thing. CO2 emissions go into one same atmosphere.

<comment><USER20> Who's buying the products built in Chinese factories?

<comment><USER19> The entire world; you do make a good point here. So should we start taxing Chinese products more, like Trump has started doing, and some people in the EU have been suggesting for a long time, then? This would at least be coherent. Yet the group of people warning the most about global warming tend to also be people who are still promoting free trade and globalization (a good example is French President Macron, who seems to holds both beliefs simultaneously).

<comment><USER20> Yeah, that's exactly what I say we should be doing.

Set the standard, and then ensure other countries honor that standard by penalizing offenders with tariffs.

Edit: Also, Donald Trump is well known as denier of climate change, so it's dishonest to frame his tariffs against China as a positive action for those who want to prevent climate change. China knows Trump doesn't give a shit about pollution, so they will not correct for it, which means the additional taxes have no effect on addressing climate change.

Macron deserves no defense. Please attack his hypocrisy as you please.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


8 Free Online Entrepreneurial Finance Classes from MIT  - <AUTHOR> http://www.collegemogul.com/content/8-free-online-entrepreneurial-finance-classes-mit

<comment><USER2> This is actually pretty useless. None of the courses seem to have video or transcrupts - only "notes" are present. Think powerpoint. How much can you learn about finance from powerpoint? Some courses actually even lack half of the notes.

This MIT courseware thingie might be a good idea, but implementation leaves a lot to be desired.

If anyone knows a good source on entreprenial finance please chime in.

<comment><USER3> Read the textbooks. You don't even have to leave your computer, I think the entire Wiley Finance collection is also available in ebook form.

Start out learning the basics of accounting, then move onto financial topics. That's how I did it.

I will gladly make suggestions if necessary.

<comment><USER2> Which text books? I don't think there are texbooks for the courses I looked at. For example, [http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Sloan-School-of- Management/15-431E...](http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Sloan-School-of- Management/15-431Entrepreneurial-FinanceSpring2002/CourseHome/index.htm)

Or did I miss it?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is awesome, I'm really enjoying the recent wave of great schools posting their full class lectures and materials online and specifically iTunes U.</comment>


Citizens: U.S. Border Agents Can Search Your Cellphone - <AUTHOR> http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/american-citizens-u-s-border-agents-can-search-your-cellphone-n732746 <comment><USER2> > "One of the officers calls out to me and says, 'Hey, give me your phone,'" > recalled Shibly. "And I said, 'No, because I already went through this.'" > The officer asked a second time. Within seconds, he was surrounded: one man > held his legs, another squeezed his throat from behind. A third reached into > his pocket, pulling out his phone. McCormick watched her boyfriend's face > turn red as the officer's chokehold tightened.

This is disgusting as well as terrifying behavior.

</comment><comment><USER3> As a UK citizen arriving in the US for SXSW I had my phone's text messages searched. It was extremely alarming but what can you do? If you say anything they'll just turn you around and say "see ya". Travelling to the US is a very hostile and stressful experience.</comment>