Ask HN: Why aren't there many credible online bachelors programs? - non-entity There are swaths of masters programs out there that can be completed online, and are backed by legitimate, well respected institutions.
bachelor degrees, on the other hand, seem to be pretty desolate. There are a handful of well known, decent schools that offer online bachelor degrees, but majority seem to require existing credit or offer non-sense sounding degrees in favor of normal ones (i.e. I've seen schools offer degrees in Professional Studies, Organization studies or Interdisciplinary Studies vs. Computer Science or Physics). Occasionally, you can find a legitimate looking CS degree from a legitimate school, but the programs still seem be below what you would get in-person.
I imagine there has to be a number of uneducated, working people who want to achieve more, or who's career progression many be held back because they don't have that credential, but the only schools advertising to them are the for profits, who charge exorbitant amounts for what seem like below average programs. <comment><AUTHOR> I used to work in the higher-education field for a respected private university, and I think I know part of the answer to this: institutional momentum.

This university launched an online MBA program early on, and built it out with a bunch of other offerings as well. We were genuinely ahead of the curve on a bunch of things, but we were also pretty separated from the rest of the university, physically and culturally. We had our own building removed from campus, and we did things a little differently. Not quite Silicon Valley agile, but comparatively. Meanwhile, the rest of the campus was adamantly against online learning, for years.

I think a big part of this is that we had an older faculty and institutional culture that was pretty set in its ways: they didn't see or recognize the value that the internet afforded their classrooms, and weren't set up to implement them. That's begun to change a bit as we got younger faculty, but there's still a tendency towards in-person learning, because of the tradition and training behind it.

I don't think this is necessarily malevolent on their part: they just haven't thought deeply about it. Plus, there's a lot of infrastructure that you'd have to build out to provide online learning: there are a lot of logistical obstacles in the way. You need to select a CMS, hire course developers, train reluctant faculty and staff, figure out how to make it accessible and ADA- compliant, design courses that make sense for online learning, then market to students who are willing to go up online to take their classes.

Those are a lot of hurtles to overcome for an institution, and it requires a lot of willpower and political wrangling within the institution in order to make sure it gets done. As a result... it just doesn't. I think it'll change with time, but it's like turning an aircraft carrier: you can't do it overnight.

<comment><USER2> I wrote a long-winded, somewhat ill-tempered response, and then quickly deleted it. But in brief --

I _have_ thought semi-deeply about teaching online. I _do_ believe it can be done well, but only with a _lot_ of effort, and (at least in my department) I don't think it would save the university money, if done well.

Personally, I'm not terribly eager to invest this effort. I've had a poor experience with our university's training, and also I just like interacting with people in person better. Maybe I'm just being selfish, but there are a lot of other things I can do to benefit my university and my students, which I'd enjoy more, and I'd rather invest my efforts there.

That said, I do think that universities who are willing to hire faculty for remote work could develop fantastic online programs. There are tons of dual- career academic couples that don't get jobs in the same city, and try and make some crazy commuter marriage work. Hire them.

<comment><USER3> > I don't think it would save the university money, if done well.

IMO universities these days are mainly in the real estate business. The maintenance on a building with multiple 1k person lecture halls isn't cheap. Faculty are underpaid. And yet it's more and more expensive.

<comment><USER4> Most universities don't pay property tax (maybe not most, but many are public and don't). They all have owned most of their land for over one hundred years. Buildings are expensive, but those are "one time capital expenses) and just plain don't add up.

What I'm saying is there is no obvious reason why a university costs more to run today than 1990,but tuition has gone up far more than inflation.

<comment><USER5> Guaranteed loans and other subsidies.

<comment><USER4> Those are enablers for sure, but not causes

<comment><USER5> What's the difference?

<comment><USER4> If students can't get the money prices cannot go up without a drop in enrollment thus students need a way to get money. That is why more money enables prices to go up, the alternative of going without becomes forced if students (other than the rich) cannot raise the money.

However the ability change more doesn't force it. Administration could presumably keep prices down instead of - here I have no idea what they are spending it on.

This lack of knowledge means that I cannot comment more. My opinion on using the money to pay more teachers thus reducing class size is very different from my opinion on private jets to some exotic vacation. (I don't think either of the above are the case but I could be wrong)

<comment><USER5> Yes, many folks comment on administrative growth and lavish student services to compete.

<comment><USER4> Those are commonly blamed, but I don't have enough information to know if they are right or any reason to believe they are experts who know what they are talking about. It isn't something that I reject, but I am careful not to believe it as well.

<comment><USER5> Aka, grain of salt. Well, at least there are only a few places they could be socking away the money.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Part of the issue is that BA programs are supposed to transition students from high school to the "adult world."

The is very, very hard to do.

Look at how many BA students wash out at respectable institutions. At least 50%.

It required more than classes. It requires mentoring, encouraging, and shaping students to a degree that's hard to do online.

Graduate degrees are different. They take in people who have already graduated, and who are more adapted.

Not many Ph. D students throw keggers five times a week.

<comment><USER7> How much mentoring do you think goes on at your average school? My assumption is the motivated students seek it out, but the 5x/week kegger types probably get very little.

<comment><USER8> My experience is it's struggling students who seek out mentoring. That may be because their holding down a job while in school, have kids, or dug them selves a hole by spending to much time playing video games / at parties etc.

Around 70% of students who graduate high school are going to collage. That's a huge swath of people who are dealing with a huge range of issues.

<comment><USER7> > That may be because their holding down a job while in school, have kids, or > dug them selves a hole by spending to much time playing video games / at > parties etc.

Interesting. I saw the opposite; people who are struggling don't always have the time, energy, or skills to build relationships with potential mentors.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The Open University is pretty well respected: [http://www.open.ac.uk/](http://www.open.ac.uk/)

<comment><USER10> Would one recommend this for someone in the US who is already decades into a career and just needs the checkbox checked and their employer will pickup the tab?

<comment><USER11> I hear OU is surprisingly hard work and surprisingly expensive.

You think you'll do an online degree in your spare time and it turns out it's a decade of work and costs thousands of dollars.

<comment><USER12> My wife is doing an OU degree, outside the UK, but in Ireland. (So, testing centers are available, but we're paying the non uk/ni/Scotland rates). At current prices, an undergraduate degree from the OU is on the order of $20k. It's nominally a 3 year degree, and at a full time class load, it's supposed to be a full time experience, I.e. 40 hrs a week.

Of that, there are probably 4x 30 credit classes in first year, 2x60 in each of second and third year. For a degree in a specific subject, these are all going to be "in major".

My read of it is that it's a more focused, less all around degree than what I remember of an undergrad degree, where I had 4-5 classes 2x per year for 4 years. I can't speak to the technical level, as she's doing languages, which are all Greek to me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Arizona State seems to have some good online bachelor degrees. They don't offer CS but they do have software engineering.

[https://asuonline.asu.edu/online-degree- programs/undergradua...](https://asuonline.asu.edu/online-degree- programs/undergraduate/bachelor-science-software-engineering/)

</comment><comment><USER14> This might be an unpopular opinion, but I finished my last year of AA (psych) with University of Phoenix after starting at my local community college. Side by side I wouldn't hesitate to say that while the data transfer medium was different, the work and testing was on par with the community college curriculum. I would note that there was a lot more written work than lecture at UoP, but that could be a discrepancy between first and second year studies.

The stigma for attending one of these schools is terrible. Not undeserved, as they are predatory and for profit. But so are community colleges, in maybe different ways, but for the same reasons.

I keep it on my resume even though I work in IT. I'm personally proud of it as an accomplishment despite the crap I catch whenever it's brought up.

<comment><USER15> I never knew community colleges were predatory and for profit. Aren't they public institutions? Do you have any good references you can share? Thanks

<comment><USER16> Where I came from (NE Ohio) most of their students took longer than 4 years to graduate with a 2 year degree and many more never finished. The quality of curriculum and teaching was typically poor and the equipment was only adequate. It was and probably still is, for the average customer, a waste of money.

<comment><USER17> This is the complete opposite of what my friends and family have experienced. Many of their favorite teachers worked at community colleges. Specifically at Austin and Houston community colleges. And many got their undergrad at more prestigious universities like University of Texas at Austin.

<comment><USER14> Nobody here is saying the teachers were bad.

<comment><USER17> That's how I read

> The quality of curriculum and teaching was typically poor

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I think this is a good one: [https://www.wgu.edu/online-it- degrees.html](https://www.wgu.edu/online-it-degrees.html)

<comment><USER19> Agree. I completed 2 years at 2 different "brick and mortar" Universities in the past, took a long hiatus to build a career in IT, then went back to school (WGU) to complete a BS in IT-Security last June and am now back again and enrolled in the Masters in Cybersecurity and Information Assurance program. I / we haven't missed a beat with the onset of this pandemic (unlike almost everything else in my life) and that's saying something.

Just like the "B&M" classes I took previously, some classes are great, some less so, some hard, some less so. Anyone who thinks a school like WGU is "less good" probably has not actually experienced it and / or has a reason to protect the status quo. A student does have to self direct more in online programs, for a fact. But with that comes much more flexibility and scheduling freedom. And the price, at least for WGU, can't be beat.

<comment> non-entity My biggest worry is the aggressive advertising ministry that of for-profit degree mills. Even just filling out an interest form leads to a mass of spam email, phone calls and even snail mail.

<comment><USER19> WGU is non-profit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> It might be as simple as there as tens of thousands of 18 year olds ready to fill existing Bachelor's programs straight out of High School. The financing for that is low hanging fruit, they can use their federal aid or loans to pay for several semesters (whether they pass or fail). This stream of cash is easy money, new adults and their parents are expected to spend their time and money on this from a cultural standpoint. There's nothing to switch up in this business model.

Now take a Master's program. Most people are done with college and are working full time. If you seriously want their business, you better offer them every flexibility in the world. It's a whole different game.

One group is literally groomed to hand you money, often not even their own. The latter is a group that is no longer part of that setup and will make an independent decision based on a variety of factors.

</comment><comment><USER21> Self study is never going to be as good as immersion in an academic environment. The impact that ad hoc conversations and events with peers and professors have is profound. You just don't get this with online or remote learning.

<comment><USER3> My undergrad is very focused on self-study. Prof's have gone the the extent of saying, "I won't waste time showing you this, you could just go on youtube". Flipped classroom models are increasing and the focus is again, on self study.

I'd say online doesn't work for all programs or courses. But do you need to sit in a room with 1k people in order to learn calc 1? It's just the prof going through some examples on the powerpoint/overhead nothing more. Asking questions isn't easy either.

Upload some lecture videos and then hold office hours instead of lecture hours. It's not like what you taught in psyc 100 last semester is much different than this.

<comment><USER22> > My undergrad is very focused on self-study. Prof's have gone the the extent > of saying, "I won't waste time showing you this, you could just go on > youtube". Flipped classroom models are increasing and the focus is again, on > self study.

What university is that? It sounds awful.

> But do you need to sit in a room with 1k people in order to learn calc 1? > It's just the prof going through some examples on the powerpoint/overhead > nothing more. Asking questions isn't easy either.

> Upload some lecture videos and then hold office hours instead of lecture > hours. It's not like what you taught in psyc 100 last semester is much > different than this.

That's only kinda true of 100-level courses and massively popular generals, and quickly becomes false the farther you advance.

And even if it is a 100-level general, you can still ask questions if you're motivated and curious. When I was considering a career change, I retook general chemistry and a few other lower-level science courses as an adult. I asked a lot of questions, though many were picking at things that were too advanced for the course. You can't do that with a recording.

<comment><USER3> > What university is that? It sounds awful.

Rather not say, but a few do that. Plus in something like CS there's an hour long wait for office hours which are 2 hours twice a week with maybe 3 profs - so 6 hours for 500+ students - not much opportunity to ask questions.

> That's only kinda true of 100-level courses and massively popular generals, > and quickly becomes false the farther you advance.

Absolutely. Get rid of the 1k lecture theatres for the undergrad courses and build some labs. Get some 3D printers/CNC machines for the Engineering students. A mock court room for the Law department? Some chemistry labs? Move the "I don't need to be here to learn" courses online and expand office hours, TA availability and provide more hands on experience.

Ya, I wouldn't want to see a doctor who learned online. But one how took some calc or basic med courses online but has more hands on/practical experience? Sure!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I speculate this is because specialized higher education is less valuable, in all senses, than well-rounded general education at the bachelor's level.

A bachelor's degree is valuable to the student and to society as a transformative period of time when someone can study a wide range of topics, especially topics that focus on large-scale world ethics, and integrate the moral and social maturity imparted by it via social networking within and across universities.

The particular domain knowledge or training in eg math or computer science, pre-med, sociology or psychology, music, education, etc., are not very valuable. Employers don't really care about any of that, apart from virtue signaling to weed out mass candidate pipelines. The actual knowledge itself is just table stakes and pretty worthless; companies will have to train you to do jobs that have effectively zero to do with acquired skills like programming. But general well-rounded cultural appreciation of a base foundation puts everyone into a level playing field to be fit for plugging in as an employee: basic understanding of how to work in groups on projects, managing interpersonal relationships even when you don't like them, having a common standard of collegiality and "how things are done," common understanding of academic/liberal social norms.

While possible, there has not been created an online bachelor's program that successfully replicates anything like this yet. They all focus on skill building and curriculum, as if that was any part of the purpose of college.

Master's degrees are quite different. They are a pure credential kind of thing, a certificate of advanced training. It's assumed you already have the social norm education and that's not the goal. The hard skills of the training still don't actually matter to anyone in master's degrees (nor even PhDs), but they can be used for clout or authority or stack ranking in terms of how decision-making ranks are established. This is much more amenable to online courses because all that matters is the certificate at the end, nobody cares how you got it. With bachelor's degrees they actually do care that you physically attended "intellectual workforce finishing school" at a physical campus, because the social norm / behavioral training is the only part anyone cares about.

</comment><comment><USER24> That's a great question that I've wondered myself - a part of it (in the U.S.) I think is the belief that a huge part of the value of a bachelors degree is growth you get living alone, in dorms, learning how to be an adult, etc. that aren't really part of a curriculum and would be hard or impossible to do online. In addition, I know that a massive number of people who take online courses (just the individual ones from Coursera and the like) tend to drop out, so maybe they colleges think that if they had an entire 4yr degree online almost no one would actually graduate (which may hurt their rankings or they dislike for some other reason that doesn't bother for profit colleges).

<comment><USER25> > I think is the belief that a huge part of the value of a bachelors degree is > growth you get living alone, in dorms, learning how to be an adult, etc. > that aren't really part of a curriculum and would be hard or impossible to > do online.

a counterexample would be the existence of respected schools with a large amount of commuter students, many of whom continue to live with their parents while going to school. I graduated from such a place. if you really wanted (in cs at least), you could only show up in class for exams and still get an A if you did all the homeworks and projects. this school is one of the most heavily targeted in the state for tech recruiting.

> In addition, I know that a massive number of people who take online courses > (just the individual ones from Coursera and the like) tend to drop out, so > maybe they colleges think that if they had an entire 4yr degree online > almost no one would actually graduate (which may hurt their rankings or they > dislike for some other reason that doesn't bother for profit colleges).

this is a bit more convincing. online schools already have a stigma since the originals were almost (or actually) scams. probably no one want to take the risk of offering the first online degree.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> My partner works for an Australian university, she had this to say when I shared this article with her:

"From my understanding Bachelor degrees are much more regulated (in Australia anyway). Private Colleges can offer Grad Cert and Grad Dip and Master degrees but not Bachelor degrees, which make me think the government has highly regulated Bachelor degrees. I think that there must be a certain percentage of face to face, practical subjects, mentoring and industry placements, but I imagine in the current environment that this will be all up for discussion."

<comment><USER27> Got my Bachelors from Charles Sturt University. 100% online (not counting the 1 networking elective i took that had a 2day school playing with network gear, and international study tour i took in China for a couple weeks).

[https://study.csu.edu.au/courses/technology-computing- maths/...](https://study.csu.edu.au/courses/technology-computing- maths/bachelor-information-technology)

You have to sit exams in person at the end of each semester. There are exam centres all around the world [https://exams.csu.edu.au/dist_students/centrelist.php?intern...](https://exams.csu.edu.au/dist_students/centrelist.php?international=international&action=All+Centres+Outside+Australia)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> This course is offered by a reputable university and is supposed to be equivalent to it's on campus course.

[https://www.coursera.org/degrees/bachelor-of-science- compute...](https://www.coursera.org/degrees/bachelor-of-science-computer- science-london/)

</comment><comment><USER29> Recently, I've had the strange privilege to teach for two very different education groups at the same time. One, a traditional university that includes online interaction but definitely not adept at it. The other offers intensive bootcamps that offered online or in-person.

I began this year teaching both as in-person classes. When restrictions from COVID-19 the bootcamp quickly responded and converted all of it's classes online with relative ease. It already offers these classes online with great success and the content has converted into the virtual world _very_ well. Students are completing their work just fine.

The university on the other hand was somewhat slow to respond. The faculty I work for reacted much faster and jumped into virtual classes asap. Even then, the content just isn't designed for online classes. I don't have the tools to properly communicate or provide help. The students don't have the etiquette for it or the motivation.

The cohorts are quite different too - mature students vs. high school graduates - so I guess the compared experiences are muddled by that also.

Overall, I've found the university just hasn't invested in its content. Not to say the program content isn't valuable - I completed it myself years ago. The educators there don't have the drive/need/want to create content that works virtually. They're comfortable where they are, and to be fair, I honestly think in-person teaching can be more effective. However, you can get damn close - virtually - if you can write good content.

I think this echoes other comments here. It's hard and they don't have the resources to get everyone on-board with making online-capable content.

<comment><USER30> Traditional Universities were going to be slower because they need permission from the accreditation agency before going fully online. We got word last week that they would expedite requests because of the COVID-19.

<comment><USER31> Excellent! Let's hope there is at least some lasting good that comes from the current terrible situation.

<comment><USER30> Currently, its a temporary waiver, so I wouldn't be too hopeful. Plus, I can see it at the state schools, but if we are talking the "prestige" schools then I would be damn mad because their biggest value is the contacts you make (or so I am told and observed).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Apparently Coursera manages online degrees that are "real" degrees for some schools. Like U of Illinois: if you get your degree online you get a regular diploma, not one marked that you pursued your studies online (and you qualify for the alumni assoc etc).

The implication I read from this is that online degrees are not taken as seriously. And the fact is there's a lot you get from school beyond the lectures; the interactions with other students and with faculty and just being out of your usual zone all make a big difference.

It's also a lot of work I imagine to get on a platform like Coursera's, and while it's the only one I've really found useful (I've tried a few for a class here or there) I still didn't like it much.

Note: my gf used to work there which is why I tried one course on their platform and why I even know about this at all. Which is another sign that online degrees are still considered marginal.

</comment><comment><USER33> Teaching classes effectively is very hard and very few people can do it. It also doesn't pay that well and is draining and often times not that rewarding. Universities try to get people that are good at it as professors by bribing them with the respect and autonomy that the title "professor" confers. Outside of the classroom, the professor does whatever they want to advance their own agenda.

I would think online only programs would have a hard time competing with universities for people that can design and execute effective courses. There are so few that most universities don't even employ many of them. Why would someone like that work for an online school when they could work for one that would give them tenure, funding, lab space, grad students, etc?

<comment><USER34> >Universities try to get people that are good at it as professors by bribing them with the respect and autonomy that the title "professor" confers.

Generally speaking, universities don't care much about teaching ability. Hiring decisions are based almost entirely on research profiles (except where the institution itself has a clear focus on teaching over research, as at e.g. some liberal arts colleges). There are two main reasons for this. First, research brings more money and prestige. Second, student satisfaction has little to do with teaching quality. You can make students happy just by giving them a light workload and good grades.

So in fact, there are lots of people who are good at teaching who universities have no interest in hiring.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I think universities are protecting their turf, and people who spent quite a lot of money and effort for in-person college are also to some degree. There are a significant number of people who do not want online bachelor degrees to become credible.

<comment><USER36> Not sure why you are getting downvoted. Just like other industries, there are people who benefit from the status quo.

What does a reputable university have to lose by offering equivalent degrees online? Quite a bit actually

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> It's because the purpose of college is more about signalling than about career training. The things that keep people out are what make it valuable. If you make it more accessible then it loses it's value.

<comment><USER38> I see this trope oft-repeated on HN and I just don't think it's true. I certainly hope that that wasn't your college experience. My experience was incredible, both academically and socially, and it truly changed the way I think. The level of abstraction with which I approach the world now is way higher than when I entered college, and I credit that to the math classes I took.This abstract thinking makes me a better problem solver in every part of my life. I also walked away with a handful of friends that will be my best friends until the day I die. College was the crucible that forged those friendships, and I haven't found a substitute for that since.

To you point about "career training", I don't see college as a vocational school. The best point of college in my opinion is to learn not only a lot of facts and specialize in an area of study, but more importantly, to learn how to think and solve problems.

If you learn a lot of facts and rely solely on the facts that you've learned, then obviously you won't adapt well to the real world where most of the problems you encounter are situations with imperfect information and no clear best solutions. However, if you choose your college degree wisely and learn how to learn, then you'll be able to tackle most challenges that come your way later on in life, both in your job and outside.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> What we need is a credible credentialing system where you can demonstrate you've acquired knowledge comparable to a bachelors degree. Instead of just adding more walled gardens of degree granting institutions.

<comment><USER40> How would that be different than a "learn at your own pace" school?

<comment><USER39> It would be a separate entity, whose sole job is verification, not education.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> This is an interesting question and one I hadn't thought of before. In the market for talent, degrees are just a signaling device. They help employers identify "the good ones." So schools build their signal by making it hard to get in, doing the prework of identifying the good ones. MOOCs, on the other hand, do the opposite - they let anyone in, so there is no signaling. It does seem like you should be able to create an online degree that mirrors this signal by marketing the hell out of how hard it is to get in and complete.

</comment><comment><USER42> I would say that it is because a bachelor program is a system that needs to be born at scale to be useful. With most online education, it's a single course. With a bachelors program, it's many curriculums, which is many courses in many areas of study. I don't see how you get to that and preserve quality. The only thing you may not have to scale is having all four years worth of courses on day one. You do however need all courses for the first year of study on day one and a commitment to provide subsequent years of study as students advance. But then it's chicken and egg. What student will pay for a bachelors program that has no guanrantees of the remaining 3 years of the degree.

The only way I see a credible one existing is if people focus on just coursework for one area of study, each of these being a startup, and then later on down the line, consolidation through mergers and acquisitions starts to produce a multidisciplinary program.

The only other path I see is a credible meatspace bachelor program moving entirely online.

I suspect the idea of a bachelors program will die before any of this happens. The increasing focus on indoctrination in higher education is destroying the credibility of the humanities departments. I'd personally be more interested in hiring someone that spent two years doing a focused engineering degree than someone that spent 4 years pursuing a bachelor degree that contains 2 years of engineering and 2 years of indoctrination and brainwashing.

</comment><comment><USER43> Comparing my engineering BSc and MSc experiences, there were significant numbers of "labs" during the BSc years that would be difficult to replace in an online course (and I think I would have regretted not having those experiences). Conversely, MSc courses didn't have labs; even the big projects were things that could be done at home (e.g. programming, hardware kits) and while the classes usually had TAs, the TAs were rarely present for any in- class components.

</comment><comment><USER44> Somebody else has already mentioned The Open University ([https://open.ac.uk](https://open.ac.uk)) and I happily recommend them, as one of their alumni.

Another established and well-regarded institution is the University of London International Programme ([https://london.ac.uk](https://london.ac.uk)). The courses are relatively low cost, but rely a lot on self-discipline.

<comment> barry-cotter I'm doing a Master's with the University of London. I can recommend it though as with anything else you get out what you put in. I've found my course, Finance (Economic Policy[1]) interesting and reasonably rigorous.

[1] [https://www.cefims.ac.uk/programmes/economic- policy/masters/](https://www.cefims.ac.uk/programmes/economic-policy/masters/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Someone eligible for a Master's has already demonstrated the ability to complete a time-intensive course of study that requires a decent level of self-efficacy and advocacy.

In contrast, a typical middle of the road University might only see 60% to 75% of its original freshmen class students graduate in 6 to 8 years. 40% in 4 years is common. So, a majority of undergrads do not, for one reason or another, stay on the recommended track for graduation.

A big part of this is supper resources: many\most schos are under staffed in academic support services. Now consider, in that context, an online course: it is even more the case that such students are further removed from the support structure provided by the college.

Finally, there simply isn't strong demand: most students are looking for the traditional undergrad experience, which is at least as much a social environment as a learning one. You don't get that online. Contrast that to post grads looking for a Masters, which tend to be a group much more focused on the nuts and bolts of completing their program.

Source: I work in Higher ed analytics, focussing quite a bit on success factors in persistence and completion rates.

</comment><comment><USER46> I would guess that the difficulty of preventing cheating in an online setting discourages institutions from going fully online.

For masters work and above I suspect this concern is less prominent because it's likely to be a smaller student pool (easier to police per student), doing higher level work (harder to cheat successfully), and to be less accessible to would-be cheaters (due to filtering at the bachelors level).

<comment><USER47> This. Preventing cheating in an online-only course requires meatspace infrastructure: testing facilities where students can be monitored. That infrastructure is still patchy.

<comment><USER48> Not really. They mostly use proctortrack these days, along with algorithmic analysis of the answers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Part of the problem may be the accreditation process. For federal student aid, and also professional licensure for certain occupations (psychology for example), you need to attend an accredited program. But the accreditation process is controlled by existing institutions and people who work at existing institutions.

One way to open up this market to innovation would be to try to get the laws changed about accreditation. Make it so it's much easier to objectively prove that the institution is providing ongoing value to its students, and receive accredited status without significant involvement by people who are not incentivized to encourage innovation.

People might be involved in the process, but rather than making subjective judgements about whether the program is good enough, make the measures objective. Then the person involved is really just checking boxes. If they refuse to check the boxes despite evidence, there should be an appeal process with civil damages for any clearly unnecessary delays caused.

<comment><USER49> wgu.edu pushed accreditation laws to change: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Governors_University](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Governors_University)

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> By the time they reach the Masters, students should know how to learn independently. Masters students often have some work experience as well.

The Bachelors is the period where students go from being taught in High School to learning on their own. It probably is harder to implement effectively online than the Masters.

</comment><comment><USER51> I have been enrolled in classes at The Pennsylvania State University's (PSU) World Campus[1] since the spring semester of 2014. This is PSU's fully online offering. I first earned an AS in Information Systems Technology (IST) en route to continuing for my BS in IST. I will graduate this fall.

I took my sweet time because, alongside my studies, I've maintained full time employment in industry (first as an SE and recently moving into cloud architecture). I share this to highlight that, although I've been in it for the long haul, the quality of the education (e. g., course design, instructor engagement, CMS quality, etc.) has kept me thoroughly rapt along the journey.

[1] [https://www.worldcampus.psu.edu/](https://www.worldcampus.psu.edu/)

</comment><comment><USER52> One excellent option is BYU Pathway Worldwide and associated programs. It requires a Church affiliation but not necessarily membership (I think) or the same standards for on-campus BYU attendance. I think tuition is lower, bachelors programs (like business) are available, and the programs are excellent, and can be done entirely on-line, and is also suitable for those who need to become qualified for entering a university, then provides that university. More info is in Wikipedia and I have gathered a bit of info including linking to a news article that explains it well I think, here: [http://lukecall.net/e-9223372036854578440.html](http://lukecall.net/e-9223372036854578440.html) .

<comment><USER52> Looks like there are ~40 bachelors degree programs including in tech, business, family something, and professional something.

The WGU (wgu.edu) mentioned elsewhere here is also probably very good.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> To follow up with this: is there a good online community college anyone can recommend?

</comment><comment><USER54> I didn't see it mentioned yet, but Oregon State has been running an online Post-Bacc in Computer Science for the past several years. They also just started doing a standard bachelor's program 100% online for CS.

</comment><comment><USER55> I've been teaching at a community college for a few years and online classes - at least in my field - tend not to be great. There isn't a lot of "teaching" that goes on in them. While students may learn it is largely up to them. I have made up the assignments and I have recorded some mini-lectures but I feel like I'm a grader not a teacher of online classes.

(Of course right now with the virus we are trying to do as many regular meetings online at the scheduled class times as possible and I feel it is more similar to face to face teaching.)

</comment><comment><USER56> The same reason why it's very hard to find high school programs online. Academically, many degrees you can study online and be as successful as the non-online students, as far as passing tests goes. But bachelor studies unlike masters is not viewed as a professional degree. Like high school it's an important phase in one's development - in all aspects, not just socially. And in the US at least it's also a pretty important money maker for many schools. You cannot charge $30K/year for an online degree.

</comment><comment><USER57> There are quite a few at Penn State's world campus: [https://www.worldcampus.psu.edu/](https://www.worldcampus.psu.edu/)

</comment><comment><USER58> Have you ever said screw it with your online mates and skipped classes and gone to the pub and ended up being chased down by the police after stealing traffic signs?

For young people universities decide their cohort for life. This determines success.

Like you say, masters online is more common, cohort's by a masters are often already decided.

</comment><comment><USER59> Well all credible universities are going to have to enable online bachelors programs if we are going to properly deal with infectious diseases moving forward. If most companies become remote first, it's not much of a stretch to make college remote first.

<comment><USER60> It's way too early to assume that the current pandemic will cause such drastic changes to society. Even if it turns out to be close to the damage as the 1918 flu, that was still more than 100 years ago. My guess is that the rise in remote work will be due to people being forced to all try it now more so than because they'll be preemptively trying to prevent this from happening again.

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> I think Minerva has a big online component: [https://www.minerva.kgi.edu/](https://www.minerva.kgi.edu/)

Fully accredited by the KGI so also has some legitimacy.

</comment><comment><USER62> Thomas Edison State University has been online for over 20 years: [https://www.tesu.edu/](https://www.tesu.edu/)

</comment><comment><USER63> Just wait after this year. Spring quarter at UC Davis is purely online because of the COVID-19 outbreak, for example.

</comment><comment><USER64> The real answer isn't as logical or rational as most of us would like to believe. It's a combination of inertia and fear of cannibalization.

Most Universities want the high price/high value programs to remain on campus and don't want to undercut themselves by putting them online.

</comment><comment><USER65> That fact is because the bachelor degree no longer has any particular value. It's the new GED. It's required for jobs that do not need that level of education. It rarely is enough to qualify for a job that needs a university education.

</comment><comment><USER66> This article mentions one possible factor: [https://www.huffpost.com/highline/article/capitalist- takeove...](https://www.huffpost.com/highline/article/capitalist-takeover- college/)

</comment><comment><USER67> Probably worth reading Bryan Caplan's The Case Against Education for some insight on why.</comment>


The Interview Question You Should Always Ask - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2009/01/the_interview_question_you_sho.html <comment><USER2> I don't necessarily agree, but the buried lede is, "...people are often successful not despite their dysfunctions but because of them."</comment>


Ask HN: Any interest for idea-to-launch in 6 weeks for $3800? - <AUTHOR> I finally found a small team of developers who successfully launched my side project. The hardest part has been, by far, finding the right team to outsource. It took me several years and several failed attempt to land with this team.
Since I was happy with the output for the amount of money I paid, I thought others in my shoes might benefit from something like this. So I worked out a package with team:
MVP, 6 weeks of effort, one mobile platform of choice, $3800, includes basic design, includes publishing to app store
Wanted to see if there is any interest from the startup community. Any feedback on the package, pricing? Any experience to share? <comment><USER2> I need an app that scans receipts, runs OCR on them and extracts given data fields using regex. Both pictures and extracted data need to be send to a backend provided by me. Ideally, the app can be build using web stack so it can be used via browser as web app so we do not need to code native for iOS and Android . Users need to be auth before using the app since scans and data will be saved under each users account.

<comment><AUTHOR> This sounds like something that they can deliver. If you want to get it built send me the mocks at buildanappwithme at gmail. I will review the team and finalize.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> What is your take/incentive from this?

<comment><AUTHOR> Not decided yet. For now it is helping this good team get couple projects. I teach the community how to build mobile apps online. Some students expressed interest in skipping the learning curve and getting an MVP out. Thought I will ask here and see how it plays out.</comment></comment>


Trump's Tough Talk on NAFTA Suggests Pact's Demise Is Imminent - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/11/business/economy/nafta-trump.html <comment><USER2> Whoops. Somebody should tell the Brits.

[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/10/10/britain-could- joi...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/10/10/britain-could-join-nafta- trade-alliance-us-canada-mexico-post/)

"Britain could join trans-Atlantic trade alliance bigger than the EU if there is no deal on Brexit"

(Article only _two_ days old at time of writing!)

<comment><USER3> Brexiteers have been pushing nonsense like this for ages, usually under the delusion that Britain and America would be equal partners.

Meanwhile we're facing another Trump related trade dispute with Canada that affects the UK: [http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern- ireland-41592474](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-41592474)

What's not stated in all of this is that the collapse of a major employer plus other Brexit fallout plus the collapse of devolved government in NI could result in a resumption of terrorist violence.

<comment><USER2> I don't think there's any appetite for a return to violence. Besides – as you probably know – the former IRA's political arm, Sinn Féin, is in power north and south of the border.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Prediction: this is going to kill a lot of American jobs short term. It may or may not be good for America long-term, but in the short term it's a huge disruption, and in disruptions jobs get lost quickly and gained slowly.

Example: right now, an American firm builds widgets in Mexico with Canadian resources and sells to all three countries. In the future, the American firm builds in America and sells only to Americans. A Cana-Mexican firm builds in Mexico with Canadian resources and sells to Cana-Mex. You can argue which is better for America & Cana-Mex. But there's no doubt that the transitional period will suck for all.

In the transitional period the Cana-Mexican firm hasn't been founded yet, nor the American factory built, so the pre-demise scenario continues. But now prices double for everybody due to increased tariffs, non-tariff barriers and currency fluctuation. So sales drop through the floor or are lost to Chinese competitors. Lose-lose-lose.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I know when we hear about NAFTA we usually think of industrials and manufacturing. Curious if anyone has a good analysis of NAFTA and the (obvious) first-order benefits it presents to the information economy -- since the US is a large net positive on that front.

<comment><USER5> Yes, I expect that if Trump continues on his protectionist direction in some industries, there will be consequences in other ones. Why should the rest of the Western world allow Amazon, Google, Hollywood etc. to dominate their respective fields without tariffs or restrictions if the USA becomes protectionist where it suits Trump?

<comment><USER6> The EU and its countries are actively trying to tax Facebook, Google, Apple, Amazon, etc. more than today for some time now. It's just not so easy. But that doesn't have anything to do with Trump, this started well before most people in Europe even knew him.

<comment><USER5> That's because those companies pay _lower_ taxes than local companies. The real beef here isn't with the companies themselves, but with some smaller member states that steal the tax base of other bigger member states.

<comment><USER6> You are right, that's what e.g. the verdict against Ireland/Apple was about. But this is only part of the story. The verdict in this case was that Ireland let Apple pay lower taxes compared to other local companies. Some other EU- countries want to tackle a different thing: Apple (just to give an example) not paying taxes on the profit they make in each country individually but only in Ireland (in the case of Apple) for all (EU-)countries combined.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Trump's negotiating tactics do genuinely seem quite clever, despite me not liking the man at all or supporting the aims of the negotiation.

He seems to combine the "madman" theory with "good cop, bad cop" to produce a "crazy leader, sensible leader" tactic. It's probably a very effective strategy, if all you're interested in, is optimising the short-term, very narrow, very selfish interests of a part of the US population. It's a strategy I'd like to try in a board game.

<comment><USER8> The crybully is similar but he rotates through all three phases of the Karpman Drama Triangle often in order to play hero. My hypothesis is many sociopathic leaders of different stripes use/d similar tactics to hit people's emotions and bypass their rationality. It is what it is, and many people are seduced when times seem rough that someone has a panacea or a plan to make everything better. I wish people focused more on manipulating _him_ into doing what actually needs to happen and less on useless demonizing or lionizing. Polarization is gonna kill more people by not tackling huge problems like locked-in climate change... the world needs CDR, solar shade or whatever scales as fast as possible, "moon-mission"-style.

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

<comment><USER9> > I wish people focused more on manipulating him into doing what actually > needs to happen and less on useless demonizing or lionizing.

While I'm hope to be wrong and corrected about this, the impression I get is that this is exactly what's already happening. Except it's the 'bad guys' doing what they feel needs to be done.</comment></comment></comment>


Yer a Developer, Harry – Programming Is Magic - <AUTHOR> http://spin.atomicobject.com/2014/12/18/programming-is-magic/ <comment><USER2> I'm reminded of a scene from the _Inheritance_ series of books that I read when I was younger. The main character, Eragon, was telling his mentor how he blessed an orphan baby with the magic words " _Atra gülia un ilian tauthr ono un atra ono waíse skölir frá rauthr_ ".

His mentor's response was "Wait what? Are you sure you said _skölir_ , and not _sköliro_?"

Turns out while he had meant to say "May luck and happiness follow you and may you be shielded from misfortune", he instead said "May luck and happiness follow you and may you be _a shield_ from misfortune". Because of this, the girl grew up prescient, supernaturally aware of when other people were in danger or about to be harmed, and compelled to do anything in her power to protect them from it.

I'm pretty sure I've seen problems that are almost as bad in some of the codebases that I've worked with.

<comment><USER3> I read those when I was younger as well. I came away not a huge fan of the series because of the (in my opinion) poor writing and huge plot holes.

Why didn't he just bless the kid with "May you be a killer of Galbatorix, and may no one else die in the process."

<comment><USER4> The extremely derivative plot didn't help either. I actually came away with an active dislike of the series.

But, I like the connection to semantic errors.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think it's interesting that people associate programming with magic, but I don't think it's the most enlightening comparison. The actual magic, from my perspective, is social skills and the ability to organize/manipulate people.

People like magic narratives because magic acts as a force multiplier for a single person. The force multiplier in real life is the ability to organize a bunch of other people to do stuff for you. The real Merlin is Steve Jobs or Obama. Just like magic, the ability to do this is generally an inborn talent (theoretically it could be learned, but you can't do anything to change whether it's the kind of thing you like to do, just like you can't do anything to make yourself like golf enough to make yourself practice as much as Tiger Woods).

There are weaknesses to this comparison, of course. In real life when you are using social engineering to further your goals, you become beholden to the network of interests that support you (e.g. politicians, customers). Also, in real life the ability to gain positions of influence is not distributed in any egalitarian manner.

One of the reasons magic is appealing to programmer types, is because they tend to be weaker in these areas, and they wish that they could have access to the same sort of power, but based on the things they are good at (studying tomes, complex incantations) rather than the things they aren't good at (networking, salesmanship). If magic were real, I would definitely be dedicating a lot of time to mastering that, but even knowing the power of politics I am not particularly interested in becoming a politician.

<comment><USER6> The ability to organize other people is not the only force multiplier in reality, and it's very little like magic. Programming is like magic because software is divorced from reality but also steeped in it. SICP does a better job of explaining this then I can.

"We are about to study the idea of a computational process. Computational processes are abstract beings that inhabit computers. As they evolve, processes manipulate other abstract things called data. The evolution of a process is directed by a pattern of rules called a program. People create programs to direct processes. In effect, we conjure the spirits of the computer with our spells."

"A computational process is indeed much like a sorcerer's idea of a spirit. It cannot be seen or touched. It is not composed of matter at all. However, it is very real. It can perform intellectual work. It can answer questions. It can affect the world by disbursing money at a bank or by controlling a robot arm in a factory. The programs we use to conjure processes are like a sorcerer's spells. They are carefully composed from symbolic expressions in arcane and esoteric programming languages that prescribe the tasks we want our processes to perform."

The only other force multipliers I am aware of that have the same property are language and math.

SICP source if anyone wants to read the whole thing. [http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/full-text/book/book- Z-H-9.html#...](http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/full-text/book/book- Z-H-9.html#%_chap_1)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Reminds me of this quote from the Mythical Man Month:

"The programmer, like the poet, works only slightly removed from pure thought- stuff. He builds castles in the air, from air, creating by exertion of the imagination. Few media of creation are so flexible, so easy to polish and rework, so readily capable of realizing grand conceptual structures.

Yet the program construct, unlike the poet's words, is real in the sense that it moves and works, producing visible outputs separate from the construct itself. It prints results, draws pictures, produces sounds, moves arms."

</comment><comment><USER8> I think it is a bit sad so many people see programming as pure magic. A programmer should not, in my opinion, see itself as a wizard doing tricks.

Maybe see yourself as a modern magician instead: you have to work hard, you have to do the tough job, you have to know every tiny part that can go wrong during the show. Only then your work will appear to the audience as a great piece of wizardry.

Never fool yourself!

<comment><USER9> > you have to work hard, you have to do the tough job, you have to know every > tiny part that can go wrong during the show

I absolutely agree. My intent wasn't to describe programming as magic in the sense that it's easy or as simple/nonsensical as waving a wand around. It's very much a discipline. I was drawing the parallel to magic in that it's an ethereal exercise—you describe what you want to happen, and then the letter of your description comes to pass. Getting this description to accurately model a moving system is a huge part of what makes the field so challenging.

dyeje was on the mark with their fantastic quote further up the thread:

"The programmer, like the poet, works only slightly removed from pure thought- stuff. He builds castles in the air, from air, creating by exertion of the imagination. Few media of creation are so flexible, so easy to polish and rework, so readily capable of realizing grand conceptual structures. Yet the program construct, unlike the poet's words, is real in the sense that it moves and works, producing visible outputs separate from the construct itself. It prints results, draws pictures, produces sounds, moves arms."

<comment><USER8> The message was not indeed directly at you but more for new comers in the programming world. Just to remind them that without the hard work part, they'll end up doing small tricks at dinner. They can't expect to run the show in Vegas. And yes I feel very alike Gandalf some day, summoning intruders: you shall not pass!

<comment><USER10> Summoning intruders? That sounds like the last thing you'd want to summon!

<comment><USER8> Sure. Banning them indeed. For those interested in the why, in some language I speak everyday you could say something that would translate literally into "summoning someone to do or not to do something" as "summoning intruders not to enter". Thanks for pointing that out. :-)

<comment><USER10> Cool. Which language?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Great quote! - "Programmers are still stuck writing their incantations down in a way that devices made of elaborately etched metalloids — powered by lightning energy gained from harnessing the power of the wind, water, or, most commonly, motion itself via the liquified corpses of ancient beasts that used to dominate the earth — can understand and execute."

<comment><USER12> Priceless. Imagine that on a job description.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is one of the more fun corollaries to Clarke's Third Law: "Any sufficiently advanced engineering is indistinguishable from wizardry".

</comment><comment><USER14> Entertaining post.. I tend to relate programming (in my mind) to engineers and architects designing a large building, or civil engineers designing a city... but considering "software engineering" is a named discipline, I guess that's not a novel idea.

</comment><comment><USER15> At least he is honest about his motivations.

</comment><comment><USER16> Author ought to start referring to themselves as a technomancer, it helps the mystique.

</comment><comment><USER17> I found this to be a thoroughly enjoyable lighthearted piece of reading. Bravo!

</comment><comment><USER18> Wait, is there any other reason to want to become a wiza- I mean programmer?

</comment><comment><USER19> I bet Harry ends up in computer security.</comment>


Python 2.7.12 - <AUTHOR> https://www.python.org/downloads/release/python-2712/ <comment><USER2> That means an acceptance about the Python-3-not-been-adopted problem?

<comment><USER3> I'm afraid not. No new features are being added to 2.7, but bug fixes are continuing to be released. There are lots of new features in 3.x, and these days most new projects start out with 3.x support given the compelling list of neat features. That being said, there are some of us who are still trapped on 2.7 for legacy reasons, and luckily we're still getting bug fixes (for now).</comment></comment>


Easy Automated Snapshot-Style Backups with Linux and Rsync - <AUTHOR> http://www.mikerubel.org/computers/rsync_snapshots/ <comment><USER2> Article is from 2004. Is all this still accurate?</comment>


Next big thing is ride sharing on 3D-printed self-driving super-sized drones) - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/2014/09/military-grade-drone-can-printed-anywhere/

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh, and I've predicted it a week ago)) [https://www.facebook.com/Rocking.IT/posts/760010057395213](https://www.facebook.com/Rocking.IT/posts/760010057395213) while sharing another link [http://techcrunch.com/2014/09/10/forget-the-apple- watch-thin...](http://techcrunch.com/2014/09/10/forget-the-apple-watch-think- drones-in-the-enterprise/)</comment>


Why There's More Matter Than Antimatter in the Universe - <AUTHOR> http://www.universetoday.com/2008/03/28/why-theres-more-matter-than-antimatter-in-the-universe/ <comment><USER2> So I guess it's still the usual explanation then? Some tiny strong or weak force asymmetry between matter and anti-matter?

</comment><comment><USER3> Sounds like a scene out of "Angels & Demons". Dan Brown did a pretty neat job at explaining Matter, Antimatter, Photons, etc..to the average person.</comment>


Turns out CS4 is the Snow Leopard Problem Child - <AUTHOR> http://forums.adobe.com/message/2216315 A forum thread documenting common, repeatable bugs in Adobe Photoshop CS4 running in Snow Leopard. If you need to use Photoshop, DON'T UPGRADE YET! <comment><USER2> Hard to believe Apple wouldn't work with Adobe closely to make sure their CS product suite works with the OS before its release! You see kids, back in the day, Microsoft made sure the software of all their big software vendors where working with any new version of Windows before they released it: vendors got advance OS disks, and sometimes MS worked in close conjunction with them to make sure none of the API they depended on were broken.

<comment><USER3> In other words Microsoft kept crap that could have been refactored or implemented in a better way altogether, for the sole purpose of saving the likes of Adobe the "effort" to have to fix their dirty hacks. Given this helpful Microsoft attitude, one really wonders how did they get in the jam they are in today?

<comment><USER2> It's not unusual for partner companies to accommodate each other, specially when their interests are so overlapped as Adobe's and Apple's are. You say re- factoring and I say it makes perfect business sense for Apple to make sure Adobe's stuff works first and foremost; CS showcases the Apple platform better than any other app suite I can think of, not only that, but it also pushes sale of Apple products like crack. Adobe's bloated stuff sells macs, plain and simple; it's one of the main anchors that keeps the creative and media industries on Apple (though they could have CS on Win32 as well.)

<comment><USER3> For one, Adobe's tools are much less important for Apple than they used to be. We are far from the days when the most significant market for Macs was desktop publishing and graphic design. Apple were very smart to diversify - on the pro side, in the last few years they have gained significant penetration in photography, videography, music, software development and science markets, to name a few; on the consumer side, they grew their marketshare and their mindshare significantly - so much so in fact that I'd wager they are making more money selling consumer level computers than pro machines. On top of that, Mac OS X has evolved to be very nice and usable operating system and as a result, if Adobe were to discontinue their Mac products today, there would be a good number of creative professionals who'd rather switch software than switch away from the Mac.

And for two, Apple have been accommodating Adobe's needs for years, with little to no reciprocity. The sole reason for the existence of Carbon is so Adobe and Microsoft wouldn't have to make significant changes to their products overnight _. In return, Adobe dragged their feet with Carbonization, the switch to OS X, the switch to x86, and now the switch to 64-bit. In the last nearly 10 years Adobe had not put one iota effort into transitioning their core products to Cocoa. They had put the bare minimum of effort into optimizing their products for Mac OS X (in some cases, like the Flash plugin not even that).

Why should Apple go out of their way to ensure compatibility with Adobe's CS, when Adobe don't seem to care enough to test and fix things on their end?

_ (There is an apocryphal story about the reason for the rift between the two companies - back in the early days of Rhapsody Apple had a three way meeting with Adobe and Microsoft in which they discussed Apple's API plans and in which Apple tried to push the two biggest software vendors to port their products to Cocoa (née NextStep). Surprisingly, it supposedly was Adobe not Microsoft, who although not thrilled at the idea were ready to find a compromise, that put the kibosh on Apple's plans. They outright told Apple to go pound sand - they didn't intend to put effort and money in such a port, regardless of the fact that Adobe had a version of Illustrator for NextStep, meaning they had both the expertise and the code base to do it. Therefore Carbon.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm finding all these anecdotes leaving me a bit unimpressed. I installed Snow Leopard on my home machine on Saturday, and since then I have been through two 3~4 hour work sessions with Photoshop with no trouble. (To be fair my anecdote is no further proof of anything, I just thought I'd share for the sake of a more complete picture.)

<comment><USER5> Agreed. I have to use Dreamweaver every day (so the static HTML stuff I do is usable by our web content guys) and I'm amazed at the number of bugs that make it through version after version. Not to mention some of the sh%&ty workflows that they implement...

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This headline is sensationalist. There are some problems, obviously, but if it were really that bad, then there would be a whole bunch more. I upgraded from 10.5 and CS4, and have not run into a single issue. I tried everything that the users report in this thread as crashing Photoshop, and it's stable for me. Not one crash.

One user reported that on a clean install with CS4, everything went smoothly. That, to me, says some people have stuff running that is causing problems.

I had issues with system stability after the upgrade. Lot's of beachballing. Turned out to be a kernel extension that I was using in Leopard. Hardly surprising that a rogue kernel extension can make your system unstable. After removing it, SL has been rock solid.

</comment><comment><USER7> It's hardly surprising that Adobe has problems with almost every OS upgrade, a perousal of <http://adobegripes.tumblr.com/> will quickly show you what garbage software it is.

<comment><USER8> Despite problems like that it is still the best feature set out there and is actually worth the money.

I don't care what people here will say, gimp doesn't cut it in some major area's including things like photography and camera raw.

Gimp is darn good but missing 30% of the sort of features that make me hand over a wudge of cash while shouting "It must be mine!"

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Adobe did testing across the CS4 line atop the new Apple OS. There are a few minor issues documented... see blogs.adobe.com or individual product support pages. Most people find it just works.

It's quite possible that someone has a minority experience, where it doesn't work. First steps are to check the integrity of the applications (it's legit CS4 direct from Adobe?), then any customizations to the system that may cause it to act differently than others. It's to everyone's advantages to document all meaningful Snow Leopard differences.

</comment><comment><USER10> In the comment stream Jeffrey Tranberry (from Adobe) is saying a new font, Menlo, is causing at least one of the problems. How can a font cause a serious problem?

Also, following someone's Twitter stream for information is fail when it's a ton of @ messages.</comment>


Want your privacy back? Try disappearing - <AUTHOR> http://lastwatchdog.com/privacy-back-disappearing/

<comment><USER2> Earlier this year, a friend of mine (Alex) was part of the Wired "Disappear" contest that was tied in with the Repomen movie. She had to disappear for a month, all while doing one or two mandated tasks from Loneshark Games to give some clues to the people hunting her and three other "runners" down. With all the photos and videos the runners had taken during the course of the hunt, it would have made for a really fascinating read, but the writer left before the feature was finished, and the whole thing was boiled down to a rather lame blog post instead.

<http://cs.condenastdigital.com/cs/wordpress/repomen/?p=2124>

I've bugged her to write down her experience in some form, she traveled all over the country on a limited budget, and we pulled some pretty smooth tricks on the people chasing her (by the time one guy figured out I was a mole, none of the other hunters trusted him, and thought HE was the one leaking info to the runners), but she never got around to that.

Alex managed to elude people quite well, using me and one other friend as her sole contacts during the ordeal. I think we did a smashing job eluding everyone, and it was a really fascinating experience, even just from my position as the guy gathering and relaying intelligence and information. The other guy who beat the hunters was ex-Army, said we'd do well in the CIA, heh.

Anyhow, I guess what I'm really posting about is that even when you're forced to reveal aspects of your whereabouts online, it's not that hard to disappear. The hard part is not going crazy during the process. At first you're too paranoid, but if you get too comfortable, you'll start to give away clues to your past, and that will ultimately be your undoing. "Never look back" is so much harder than most people realize, especially in the long term.

I would love to believe that in the future, people are given more leeway for the way they behaved in their youth, given the way the internet never forgets. Everyone makes mistakes, but so many people are documenting each other now, things like that aren't forgotten the way they used to be.

The idea of completely shedding an old identity is pretty absurd, a short-term workaround at best.

</comment><comment><USER3> I wish there was more explanation for the "never use a false identity" bullet point. Your real identity is out, surely? Does this mean avoid having to use an identity at all? What if you're forced? (pulled over, etc.)</comment>


New ENCRYPTED email service - <AUTHOR> https://www.mail1click.com/

<comment><USER2> I just signed up and I'm in a web interface with no new client side certs. Looks like my mail is encrypted on the server side, not too hot as I prefer client side encryption.</comment>


The New Red Scare: Reviving the Art of Threat Inflation - <AUTHOR> http://harpers.org/archive/2016/12/the-new-red-scare/?single=1 <comment><USER2> Except that the CCCP/RF actually _has_ recently invaded two of its neighboring states (Georgia, Ukraine) and non-trivially menaced 2 others (Moldova, Estonia). And, according to a preponderance of evidence, succeeded in doing a bit more than tweaking the nose of the electoral process within the U.S. itself.

So maybe it's not just a "scare".</comment>


Kinect-controlled tesla coils: Evil Genius Simulator - <AUTHOR> http://www.tomscott.com/evilgenius/

<comment><USER2> Don't get me wrong, I admire the hell out of this. But when you think about it, it's kind of sad that our civilization literally took until _2011_ to get this far.

<comment><USER3> What marvels will the singularity bring us? Claustrophobic computers?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> _I designed and built the Tesla coils and there came along_ "The Hacking Gentleman"

<comment><USER5> The world needs more hacking gentlemen, with a monocle and their own mahogany- panelled laboratory.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Very cool, I really enjoyed listening too BrightArc's coils play music at the San Mateo stop of the faire. Now if you could just direct the beam to where you are pointing you'd be all set :-)

</comment><comment><USER7> I had a go on this.

It was awesome fun.

It happened on a whim - it was noticed the tesla coils were powered by audio, and we could easily get audio output from a kinect.

<comment><USER8> Audio? What if instead of kinect, we used a _microphone_? Maybe voice activated lightnings or a continuous electrical background for your phrases.

A whole new meaning for "thundering voice".

<comment><USER7> it is driven by pure sine waves -- you can't have polyphony or voice spectra (easily...)

<comment><USER8> I didn't mean to _talk_ using the lightnings, just to make a background sound. Maybe map to the wave frequency to the speech volume or tone (harder). It would still be sine waves, but sounding slightly different based on the microphone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> An original hack with great (if very geeky) humor. I'm much more interested in Kinect's application in this sort of stuff than in video games.

Extra points for tesla coils, too.

</comment><comment><USER9> I so want one of these in my basement for those occasional moments when I'm plotting world domination.

<comment><USER2> World domination is such an ugly term. I prefer to call it world optimization.

<comment><USER8> It took me a split second to realize why you weren't citing the source.

So this phrase was just _adapted_ into the book? I'm starting to fear you.

<comment><USER10> Sorry, which book? Feeling like I missed an in-joke here...

<comment><USER11> [http://m.fanfiction.net/s/5782108/1/Harry_Potter_and_the_Met...](http://m.fanfiction.net/s/5782108/1/Harry_Potter_and_the_Methods_of_Rationality)

<comment><USER10> Oh yea, I remember that. Everyone should read that!

So uh, _adapted into the book_?

<comment><USER8> As in "I'm the mad scientist and I'll write a book containing my evil phrases". For specific definitions of "mad" and "evil", of course.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Immortal Jellyfish: The Turritopsis Nutricola - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turritopsis_nutricula

<comment><AUTHOR> Still falls prey to other animals though :-P</comment>


Ask HN: How much software is duplicated? - <AUTHOR> Just a thought while reading this post about Jobs on the other side of the sea:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12906019
Why are there so many software jobs? Practically speaking; How many Software do we really need to write?
There's the reason of 'Programming Language' used. But even if we just picked 'Java';  we'd still have a lot of Jobs all over the world. There are jobs that actually write new software, stuff like ML, Driving Cars, etc., but those are just a small fraction of all the jobs - right?
I do understand that Capitalism doesn't care. But I just wanna have a better view on just how much 'Java Jobs' are practically the same (just a little different DB schema and CSS). <comment><USER2> > How many Software do we really need to write?

As many as there are questions that you can ask about some data.</comment>


P4P: A Syntax Proposal (for Racket) - <AUTHOR> http://shriram.github.com/p4p/ <comment><USER2> This has been discussed in length here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1941373>

<comment><USER3> An interesting read as well, and upvoted for that, but I fail to see how it qualifies as a substitute for the parent post. The proposed syntax is entirely different and especially the almost non-significance of whitespace is quite a difference from other proposals.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> So now we will be counting tabs instead of parenthesis. I still prefer the latter.

<comment><USER3> This is not yet-another-proposal-to-pythonize-Lisp. The proposed syntax is hardly whitespace-sensitive, except for a few special situations.</comment></comment>


Stop Reading Lists of Things Successful People Do - <AUTHOR> https://hbr.org/2017/03/stop-reading-lists-of-things-successful-people-do <comment><AUTHOR> I have mixed feelings about this article. On the one hand I like to copy things that "successful" people do. Some of my best habits come from something I read that so and so successful person did.

On the other hand I have fell into the trap of emulating too many habits and being overwhelmed. I think the author's points have merit.</comment>


Ask HN: Teamleads, Managers – How do you encourage learning? - <AUTHOR> How do you encourage other devs to learn? I'm interested in specific methods/techniques/things to try. In particular from the point of view of a team lead / manager.
Background: My colleagues, many of which are junior, all appreciate learning, or more specifically /having learnt/. It's a bit harder to get them to /start/ the learning. There's time, there is opportunity, and there are topics, but it oftentimes takes basically an assignment of a topic to a person. Once that's there, everybody is learning, sharing, happy. What I'd like to improve here: I'd like to be out of the picture. Ideally, learning is a habit that doesn't involve me. I believe (yes, it's a belief) that regular learning is a powerful step in one's personal and career development, and I'd like to pass that on to my team.
How do you do that? Please share ideas and experiences what to try or to experiment with. <comment><USER2> I work with a small (12) group of developers for a certain startup. I'm been the longest at the company, so i supposed you can call me lead. The title rotates from project to project. Gives everyone the change to lead the team. Some of them are Senior developers, some are fresh out college or just recently bootcamps. Things that have had significant results in the wisdom and effort throughput are responsibility, teamwork and repetition. I'll expand.

Responsibility - Often times entry-level jobs start out by slowly intruding material until a certain level of knowledge is gain. Not with us. You're going to hit the ground running. Day one you will clone the repo and start hacking at it. You will be expected to complete a set of amount of features/bugs or whatever. How? Google it. This is not left without supervision and guidance of course. All work is peer-reviewed and collaborated on. We even share tips on how to be a stack overflow power user. Countless times a junior dev has left Seniors saying, "Damn, I should have thought of that". I truly believe that stress is a great potion for extra XP. Heck, some of my best work has been done under a deadline induced panic.

Teamwork - I find it extremely valuable to handle business critical jobs as if it was a tag team wrestling. I was skeptical when I first heard this. Thinking that a single developer would be more efficient if he focus on one thing and did it right. But boy was I ignorant of the alternative. Here is an example. Feature B has to done by certain day, size and complexity of the feature is arbitrary. Rather than assign to a single dev, its broken up into chunks, and spread out. This allows for fantastic teamwork, albeit a lot of technical fights about the best methodologies and such, but this is as healthy as it gets.

Repetition - This important. No matter the material it will not be learned first or second time around. Its only through countless trials and errors that I and the team really understand something. Example. Laravel, a fantastic PHP framework. When we began using it, we built 6 mock applications, 4 of which where the same thing just built differently before everyone felt hella comfortable using it. And like magic, the thing we were actually supposed to build with Laravel was done 40% faster than projected. and a lot better too.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is fun advice for team building (not in the let's-drink-a-beer sense, but in the forging-effective-work-teams sense). And it's great for learning what you need at the job — I am wondering how to get people to learn the other stuff. Looking at that new library, trying out a language feature they don't need (but maybe they might have), experimenting with our processes, challenging old habits, … none of it directly helps with the task at hand, but will be invaluable over time nevertheless.</comment></comment>


Show HN: I Love It Ship It - <AUTHOR> https://www.iloveitshipit.com <comment><USER2> This is pretty spot-on with my agile workflow. I've trimmed my project management from a kanban board to task list (Pivotal Tracker, Asana), and finally to an ordered list of emoji-prefixed titles indicating their state, with :ship: being the final state.</comment>


Herb Sutter: Design for Manycore Systems - <AUTHOR> http://www.drdobbs.com/high-performance-computing/219200099

<comment><USER2> It might be just me but this august 2009(?!) article is stating the obvious.

Let's put this another way: "design for the state of the art systems".

</comment><comment><USER3> Article mentions:

 _'The only thing I can foresee that could prevent the widespread adoption of manycore mainstream systems in the next decade would be a complete failure to find and build some key parallel killer apps'_

I'm no expert in this area, but aren't there a lot of graphics problems that are easily parallelized? Given that gaming is now mainstream I'd imagine the first set of killer apps to be game related.

<comment><USER4> Good point, plus they are well motivated to improve performance and typically are on the cutting edge.

Who else does a lot of tech innovation? Since on the server side this relates to cost / page view I'd guess the super-competitive porn industry will do some of it.

And of course keep an eye on the functional programmers. With parallelized map and filter we can do a lot...

<comment><USER5> Also, just about everything Google does is highly parallelizable.

<comment><USER6> That's mostly because Google chooses to do only things that are highly parallelizable. Given the number of servers they own, I can't say that's a bad choice, either.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


What costs are exponentially dropping? - <AUTHOR> What costs are exponentially dropping? I.E. dropping Solar panels, Body scan medicine, Chip costs. Cell phone tech?<p>- <comment><USER2> To those that say DNA seq; although the cost to perform the actual sequence has dropped, there are still a ton of overhead costs in acquiring and managing any genomic data. Context - product platform guy at biobank.

<comment><USER3> I mean, I suppose that depends on how you're defining "overhead" cost? To sequence a human genome, you _need_ to purchase a ~$700 reagent kit from Illumina to plop into your HiSeq and a ~$300 library prep kit -- are these overhead? I wouldn't call them overhead, and this fixed-cost hasn't really changed for 5+ years.

Those two costs are what makeup the $1000/human genome stat, we don't factor in the human and consumables components

<comment><USER2> How much does it cost you to source that data? What kind of programs are in place to maintain compliance? Who runs the sequencers and performs QC?

I'd like to see how those kind of costs stack up against the $0.6K-WGS. Yes, I understand the difference between marginal COGS and opex.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The exponential part is going to trip up most of this. In the best scenarios you might get that for a very short duration of time in a segment and then see a continued, very slow decline in costs.

Space launch costs, thanks initially to SpaceX pressure.

Wireless and wired broadband access costs per bit continue to decline persistently globally. Satellite broadband costs are about to do a hard one- time plunk as Starlink comes online (another example of the short lived nature of the biggest drops).

The cost of entry for a decent virtual reality experience vs the value potential or value derived. The hardware requirements vs the median machine has adjusted massively in the Oculus era and the quality of the software will continue to persistently improve over a long period of time.

The cost of lithium-ion batteries $/kWh.

<comment><USER5> Solar, memory chip, etc. had exponential declines for over half a century, so it's not always "a very short duration of time".

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Lighting.

[https://www.statista.com/chart/10567/the-cost-of-light- throu...](https://www.statista.com/chart/10567/the-cost-of-light-through-the- ages/)

</comment><comment><USER7> \- Costs of delivering mass to orbit.

\- Nanotubes

\- Graphene

\- Internet costs (I'm pretty sure it's dropping faster than exponentially)

\- CDN and storage in general

\- Many medical procedures

I expect meat prices to collapse in the next 10 years.

<comment> jagged-chisel > \- Internet costs

The astute reader will recall these are 'costs' not 'retail prices'

<comment><USER7> Internet retail prices have been dropping significantly, except for the places controlled by monopolies. In the EU you can get a gigabit connection for 20-30 eur/month, which seemed impossible even just 10 years ago.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The Wikipedia page on Moore's law includes similar observations.[1] For example, the DNA sequencing cost.[2]

And another list that features laws, some of which describe exponential processes.[3]

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore%27s_law#Other_formulatio...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore%27s_law#Other_formulations_and_similar_observations)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlson_curve](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlson_curve)

[3] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_laws#Technology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_laws#Technology)

</comment><comment><USER9> Apparently on field DNA testing

[https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/27/us/politics/dna-tests- bag...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/27/us/politics/dna-tests- baghdadi.html)

<comment><USER3> Ehh, not really for any appreciable amount of sequencing, w've been pegged right around ~$1000/human genome for a while now [1]. The machine mentioned in the NYT article is almost certainly a variant of Thermo's RapidHIT system[2], which is not DNA sequencing.

[1]: [https://www.genome.gov/about-genomics/fact-sheets/DNA- Sequen...](https://www.genome.gov/about-genomics/fact-sheets/DNA-Sequencing- Costs-Data) [2]: [https://assets.thermofisher.com/TFS- Assets/GSD/brochures/rap...](https://assets.thermofisher.com/TFS- Assets/GSD/brochures/rapid-dna-brochure.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Barely aged electronic devices, like laptops, phones, TVs, etc.

<comment><USER11> Nostalgic comment: My Commodore Amiga lasted for many years..

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Food

(not the largest exponent, but probably the longest history)

<comment><USER13> I'm not sure. I did some analysis comparing the cost of basic grocery items in the early 20th century to now and they aren't that different. I used the price of gold at the time vs now and the average daily wage to try to get a better feel for relative prices.

Over hundreds or thousands of years, yes, definitely.

All that said, it seems like automation could push the cost of food to near zero in the coming decades.

<comment><USER14> These guys find that the price of food per hour of unskilled labour wage was about 8 times higher in 1919. [https://fee.org/articles/food-prices- in-1919-compared-to-tod...](https://fee.org/articles/food-prices- in-1919-compared-to-today/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Don't forget the follow up: Which products/services are now becoming viable or much more attractive as a result?

</comment><comment><USER16> Television screens.

I bought a 65 inch 4K Sony Bravia tv about 4 years ago for around $2500-$3000.

I would be lucky to sell it on craiglist now for $500.

</comment><comment><USER17> Price per megabyte of non-volatile storage, probably.

</comment><comment><USER18> TVs are still getting cheaper, amazingly. I didn't think there was much lower they could go, but $500 buys you more and more TV every years - and that's in nominal dollars, not counting inflation, so the effect is even more pronounced.

</comment><comment> jerome-jh Interest rates since 1980? [https://www.macrotrends.net/2016/10-year-treasury- bond-rate-...](https://www.macrotrends.net/2016/10-year-treasury-bond-rate- yield-chart)

</comment><comment><USER19> Stock trading

<comment><USER9> My 11 year old brother trades stocks

Not sure if that's what they meant by free market

<comment><USER20> If he's doing it based on valuation models he's created and 10-Ks, why not. Might be a fun math exercise if he has money to burn.

<comment><USER21> How do you trade stocks with the amounts of money a typical 11 y.o. has?

<comment><USER14> There are several brokerages that will let you buy fractional shares.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> The cost of computation.

</comment><comment><USER23> Gene sequencing

<comment><USER24> the price of genome sequencing is no longer dropping exponentially. And when it was, it was heavily amortized across very expensive machines that masked the true costs.

<comment><USER25> Huh, didn't know this. Surely the cost of the machines has to be included somehow in the cost per basepair?

<comment><USER24> Let's just say that every analysis of sequencing costs I've seen has to play extensive trickery with the various costs (the capital cost of acquiring the machine, the operational costs of the reagents, the costs associated with staff running the machine, the servers required to store the data after it's acquired). Basically the stated prices are "the operational costs for a reagent" with the cost of the machine subsidized out or amortized or otherwise hidden from the calculation.

Many of the predictions about exponential genomics were done during a period of a few years where those misleading rates were published. I spent a bunch of time trying to figure out how to engineer systems to deal with exabytes of genomics data, but there is no reason to do that, because there isn't that much data being produced/retained or that needs to be maintained on spinning platters of rust. Just another example of bio hype, unfortunately.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> -cloud storage

-data costs (cell phone, broadband)

-hosting (became free in last couple of years thanks to Netlify, GH pages etc.)

<comment><USER27> > -hosting (became free in last couple of years thanks to Netlify, GH pages > etc.)

Uh, GitHub really wasn't the first to offer free hosting, and it's definitely not something of the "last couple of years". Geocities has been doing that since 1995 and I don't know if they were the first. Moreover, GH Pages is super limited, others allow you to run dynamic scripts (PHP being the most popular). I never heard of Netlify but Wikipedia tells me it's standard shared hosting for static content.

As for "cloud" storage, that's getting cheaper in the sense that they are reducing profit margins (getting closer to charging the actual cost price), but if you roll your own, you can still do it for less than what the cheapest third party charges. And those costs are also dropping year over year. With both effects combined, I guess it's dropping quite rapidly, but for two separate reasons and not because of advances in hard drive tech.

<comment><USER28> No, netlify is basically a fancy-ish github pages.

<comment><USER27> So... static shared web hosting? Or does GitHub Pages do something I don't know about?

<comment><USER28> It's static shared web hosting, with a few cool features like a built-in CI, server-side analytics and serverless functions. They also advertise worldwide high availability.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Laptops were for a while, but then stopped once they hit parity with desktops.

<comment><USER30> >once they hit parity with desktops.

I don't think they ever hit parity with desktops, mainly due to thermal constraints. There's no way that a 15W laptop cpu can ever come close to a 95W desktop cpu in anything other than short term (< 15s) single threaded performance.

comparison between a mid range desktop CPU (i5-9600K) and a high end laptop CPU (i7-8550U): [https://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel- Core-i5-9600K-vs...](https://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel- Core-i5-9600K-vs-Intel-Core-i7-8550U/4031vsm320742)

<comment><USER31> You could argue that it reached feature parity. Today you can do nearly everything on laptop including basic editing.

Compare that to even 5 years ago where the costs of such a laptop was much higher.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Solid State Drives.

</comment><comment><USER33> Air travel. Depending on the route, it's down to about $1.30 per minute of flight time.

</comment><comment><USER34> Computer Storage costs

</comment><comment><USER35> Cost per GFLOPS: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FLOPS#Hardware_costs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FLOPS#Hardware_costs)

Probably the clearest chart that explains why machine learning is blowing up now, despite the fact that the same neural network architectures existed since 1990s (e.g., LeNet-5).

It's because cost dropped from $47,000 per GFLOPS to $0.02!!!

<comment><USER36> That $0.02 value is entirely bogus. It is based in the published 30 "teraops" for Xavier, which it uses as teraflops and assumes is comparable to the other flops values. ($699/30 "TFLOPS" = $0.02 $/"GFLOP"). "Teraops" counts int8 performance on the GPU plus the random vision and CNN ASICs in Xavier - it is definitely not equivalent to normal fp32 flops.

It looks like the GPU in Xavier can do 1.4 TFLOPS single precision, so the correct value is $0.49.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Tech startup valuations, all contracting exponentially. Super cheap!

Sorry I'll show myself the door.

<comment><USER38> Back when I was a kid, Silicon Valley startups sold dollar bills for ninety cents.

Now WeWork is selling them for a nickel. The cost of everything is dropping like a rock! /s</comment></comment>


Researchers convert sunlight to electricity with over 40 percent efficiency - <AUTHOR> http://phys.org/news/2014-12-sunlight-electricity-percent-efficiency.html <comment><USER2> The paper for this research doesn't come out for a few days yet so this article could have just been the title. Nothing of substance in the article except to give a shout-out to the researchers.

TL;DR: "Researchers convert sunlight to electricity with over 40 percent efficiency."</comment>