Postal Service almost never denies mail-surveillance requests - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/federal-eye/wp/2014/11/20/postal-service-almost-never-denies-mail-surveillance-requests/ <comment><USER2> Why would they? They're a de-facto government entity. They have nothing to lose by honoring the requests and a lot to lose if they don't and "something bad happens" as a result.

That's not to say that I approve of this behavior. Just that it shouldn't be surprising. There is no oversight. If mom and dad are gone, why not have some cookies?

<comment><USER3> USPS is not really a government entity anymore. They are a private company who's head (Postmaster General) is appointed by the Executive Branch. Otherwise they are separate.

<comment><USER4> They have their own police service with over ~3500 employees, and ~1000 armed agents. It doesn't get more governmental than that.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Postal_Inspection...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Postal_Inspection_Service)

<comment><USER5> I agree that for all intents and purposes they are a government entity, but some private railroads (BNSF and UP) also have offical, bona fide police forces as well.So I'd say that by itself, having a legitimate police force isn't the sole criterion for being a public entity.

<comment><USER3> To further the point, most Universities have real police departments that can ticket and arrest you. Not all Universities are government run/funded.

<comment><USER6> anyone can make an arrest, but campus police et al can't shoot you legally as the government police can, they can't call in other branches of government like swat or air support or even the military, they can't take you to jail, after an arrest they need to call the real police. There's a big difference between campus police which are benign and the regular government police. sometimes (as at UC Davis) the campus police get ahead of themselves and start acting like the real police, but thankfully they can be reigned in, unlike the real cops who can do whatever they want and get away with it.

<comment><USER3> You hinted at the UCD pepper spray incident (which was under orders of the school chancellor, but nobody remembers that and she still has her job).

The campus police can and will shoot you. They are a real-deal police department. Most of the university shootings are ended by campus police (usually shooting the gunman).

However you sort of hinted at the fact that most campus police are a lot more lenient than city/state police. This is true in my experience -- guessing, but probably because they know who they are largely working with. Students. Drunk students, students doing dumb things, etc. Not hardened criminals most of the time. I'd probably step to far, but I'd wager campus police is a much safer line of work for an officer as well (no flip of the coin if the guy you pulled over for speeding will pull a gun on you, etc).

<comment><USER7> UC Davis is a state school. State schools tend to have real police, I don't know of any private university that does (why or how would they?)

<comment><USER8> Many do. Penn definitely does, for one ([http://www.publicsafety.upenn.edu/UPPD/](http://www.publicsafety.upenn.edu/UPPD/)).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This doesn't surprise me at all. Especially if you have ever been to one of those large Postal Centers. There are cameras everywhere, with signs saying you are being recorded.

The interesting thing is an article in today's WSJ, where the incoming Postmaster Megan Brennan claims to want to "act like private sector". If that's the case, they should be much more hostile to surveillance requests a la Twitter, Facebook.

The article is here [http://online.wsj.com/articles/new-postmasters-goal-act- like...](http://online.wsj.com/articles/new-postmasters-goal-act-like-the- private-sector-1416788696)

</comment><comment><USER10> Wouldn't a smart criminal rely on digital or paperless means to carry information or value (BitCoin)? Use electronic statements (and fake mailing address when requested), etc? I'm just trying to understand the point of mail surveillance when alternative means to collaborate in criminal enterprise exist.

<comment><USER11> Not defending (or attacking) this practice, but a lot of crime-fighting techniques are made to work against stupid criminals, of which there are many.

<comment><USER12> 80% of crime goes unsolved so it may be that the stupid ones are overrepresented.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Going on a depressing tangent, this is also why I worry about municipalities running internet. Then again I highly doubt that either Comcast, Verizon, or Time Warner actually reject any requests from Unc Sam

<comment><USER14> I wouldn't be too worried about that. There are already municipal employees that are some of the most staunch defenders of privacy (at least in my city): librarians.

<comment><USER13> Yes, but they probably won't be in charge of maintaining internet related services for people's homes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Are there any lawyers on here that can comment on the legality of this? It sounds like this is against article four of the US constitution.

<comment><USER16> 4th amendment says: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated..."

Generally, searches are considered "unreasonable" if someone has an expectation of privacy in that context. In general, this creates a divide between private and not-private. The inside of your home: private, and protected. Anything visible from other peoples' property? Not private, not protected.

Mail tracking involves looking at the _outside_ of your mail. It involves looking at information that is not only not private, but must necessarily be exposed in order for mail delivery to function. Hence its outside the 4th amendment. The government doesn't have to "search" your mail to be track it-- they just have to get USPS to hand over information it has to necessarily collect incident to its business.

For the opposing view, Google "mosaic theory." As with many debates, this one comes down to a conflict between people who think the Constitution means what it says, and those that believe in "living constitutions" where we should insert things into the Constitution that aren't there, "because change."

<comment><USER17> My understanding was that "reasonability" is more complicated than this, and that expectation of privacy is a factor, but an equally important one is the balancing of the government's interest (and the legitimacy of that interest). A search might still be unreasonable even if its subject has no reasonable expectation of privacy, right?

<comment><USER18> Kind of, like in US v. Jones and Florida v. Jardines, where the Katz definition of a search (where the reasonable expectation test comes from), was not in the majority, but rather a simple trespass test was used. But most importantly, at this point in the analysis, we're simply determining was this thing that the government agents did a search? If it was, and there was no warrant, then it is presumptively unreasonable. If it wasn't a search (or seizure), then the 4th amendment does not apply.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Potential for abuse = power / accountability

</comment><comment><USER20> If the DMV did the same thing it shouldn't surprise anyone.

<comment><USER21> Why would you expect anything you tell the DMV to be private?</comment></comment>


Microsoft - Automated Video Looping with Progressive Dynamism - <AUTHOR> http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/downloads/d02f3198-7896-45eb-89e8-5a75859b67c8/ Paper - http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/hoppe/proj/videoloops/<p>Video - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drKmS-Czu44 <comment><AUTHOR> Video Explanation - [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drKmS- Czu44](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drKmS-Czu44)</comment>


Show HN: ZenQ app -'ze' way to say thank you and appreciate your friends - <AUTHOR> http://zenq.co/

<comment><AUTHOR> Any feedback is highly appreciated. The app is available both for Android and iOS. "ZenQ" very much :-P

<comment><USER2> 1) Change your landing page. It makes it seem like your app is an alternative to just texting "thank you" to someone. A visitor is going to think, "Why not just text them? What's the benefit of doing it on an app that my friend is not using yet?"

And, on that note, I'd be interested to know how this is actually better than just texting the person (or tagging them in a grateful Facebook or Twitter post).

2) I knew a startup that spent 3 years working on an app that allowed you to publicly "thank" a service professional (waiter, hairdresser, etc.) That service professional would build up a profile of "thanks" and get a resume out of it.

That startup failed because no one wants to say thanks in an app. People aren't looking for new apps[1], so you'd better address a huge pain point in their lives if you want them to download anything.

3) Decide what you want to get out of this project (hopefully not an income). Set yourself a hard deadline. If you're not hitting your target, move on to something else. That was advice given to me by a 500 Startups investor, and though it was painful to hear at the time, it was incredibly helpful and important. Decide what failure means and, if you do fail, accept it and forgive yourself. You certainly wouldn't be alone.

[1] [http://qz.com/253618/most-smartphone-users-download-zero- app...](http://qz.com/253618/most-smartphone-users-download-zero-apps-per- month/)</comment></comment>


The comments on this Reddit post are disgusting.  - <AUTHOR> http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/20hyf8/sexist_culture_and_harassment_drives_githubs/ "If you want to see how shitty women tend to get treated in the tech community just read the comments here. Disgusting." - <USER2> <comment><USER3> Reddit isn't exactly the pinnacle of civilized discussion, especially the defaults like /r/technology. Regardless, that thread was definitely the worst cesspool I've seen since donglegate</comment>


Oxford student could be spared jail because she has 'extraordinary' talent - <AUTHOR> https://www.yahoo.com/news/oxford-student-stabbed-boyfriend-spared-jail-extraordinary-talent-144954285.html <comment><USER2> Wow. Essentially: "you've got so much potential that the law shouldn't apply to you."

Madness. Absolute madness.</comment>


The end of Moore's law has already happened? - <AUTHOR> http://www.krazykoding.com/2010/12/are-we-at-end-of-moores-law-already.html

<comment><USER2> _It looks like we are approaching the end of Moore's law. Heat is making it impossible to add additional transistors into CPUs and GPUs and the end result is that today's computer technology is about as fast as silicon transistors can go. Future gains are going to have to be based on architecture changes in the hardware to be more efficient and software algorithm improvements. That's not going to bring gains at the same pace we've seen in the past._

I'll put my money on the creativity and imagination of the engineers that build this stuff, the business men behind it that demand it, and the marketers that will convince you it's not true.

If Moore's Law hadn't taken hold so prominently, it's possible that the level of aggressiveness the industry took towards shrinking chips would not have been 2x every 18 months. Most people inside the industry will tell you it's more of a self-fulfilling prophecy

People also never seem to realize that Gordon Moore made his prediction with only four datapoints... He's clearly a brilliant man, but that's usually hardly enough data to claim anything :)

original graph on page 3 -

ftp://download.intel.com/museum/Moores_Law/Articles- Press_Releases/Gordon_Moore_1965_Article.pdf

</comment><comment><USER3> Seems like this article needs references.

AMD and Intel are both working on building out more cores, and building in new instruction sets (AVX, etc.) that allow for vector FP. That said, we're not seeing the single core clockspeed increase like in the late 90's.

On the other hand, the chip shrink is getting us stuff like Flash SSDs and very nice power reductions so those 4-8 core chips will go in new 10-hour laptops...

</comment><comment><USER4> Moore law is only that the price of a given set of transistors will diminish over time.

Nowhere in the original definition it says that all of those transistors have to be in the same processor.</comment>


Unconfirmed Reports of Massive T-Mobile Breach - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.channelinsider.com/secure_channel/content/data_security/early_reports_of_massive_t-mobile_breach.html <comment> brown9-2 From the forum post this article links to:

"We already contacted with their competitors and they didn't show interest in buying their data -probably because the mails got to the wrong people- so now we are offering them for the highest bidder. "

Are these guys serious? How could they expect any legitimate company let alone a large-scale telecom to want to buy this info?

Sounds suspect.</comment>


Srinivasa Ramanujan - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Srinivasa_Ramanujan

<comment><USER3> If you count him as unknown then you might as well count just about every other Mathematician other than Newton as an unknown as well.

<comment><USER4> I've discovered that John Nash ("that beautiful mind guy") is probably about as well known as Newton. So is "that Numbers guy" (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numb3rs>).

<comment><USER3> No. People don't call Newton: "That gravity guy", people know Newton's name. Every time I go to talk to a non-Mathematician about John Nash and say his name they go: "Who?", me: "The Mathematician from A Beautiful Mind." them: "Oh." Newton is Newton and in terms of popularity, John Nash; "The Beautiful Mind guy" isn't even in his league.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Ramanujan was also mentioned in "Good Will Hunting". However I do agree that Indians have done a bad in terms of Marketing our selves.

Our brand image over some time has been: Some time Back: Snake Charmers and Kings Now: Bangalore(Outsourcing) & Spicy Food

<comment><USER6> _However I do agree that Indians have done a bad in terms of Marketing our selves._

What is this "we", and since when are people brands?

Bit parochial and jingoist eh? Nations are an illusion, and better image "betterment" can be done by caring for one's immediate neighbor.

Don't succumb to regionalist propaganda that serve none other than the ruling classes; all earth is yours, and all (wo)men your kin.

<comment><USER7> Oh lighten up. Americans have a lovely variety of stereotypical images - <USER2> McDonalds consumers, Texan bullies, imperialists, the Japanese apparently think we "all smell like butter" or some such. Its kidding, and when done by friends is supposed to be answered good-naturedly.

<comment><USER6> I am not objecting to the existence of national stereotypes, I object to the existence of nations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I loved reading Robert Kanigel's biography - "The Man Who Knew Infinity: A Life of the Genius Ramanujan." Recommended for people who want to know more about the genius mathematician.

<comment><USER9> My intro to him was <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1051838/>

God bless the bbc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Why is this article at the top of the page ? As so many people have pointed out - he is neither an unknown nor has there been any recent incident/discovery which would require a re-iteration of his "geniusness".

<comment><USER11> White guilt.

<comment><USER12> For what? For recognizing his genius and rescuing him from the squalor of his native condition and landing him in the heart of the empire?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I probably should pipe up on this thread :)

The most amazing thing about Ramanujan is that there are literally multiple Springer Volumes devoted solely to the task of proving the results in his notebooks.

See for example:

<http://bit.ly/iWIQP>

<comment><USER14> Long url: [http://www.google.com/products?hl=en&client=firefox-a...](http://www.google.com/products?hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en- US:official&hs=D2T&q=ramanujan%27s+notebooks&um=1&ie=UTF-8&ei=J4LpSrrDJab4tgOk6pwI&sa=X&oi=product_result_group&ct=title&resnum=5&ved=0CCEQrQQwBA)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> One of my coworkers used to talk about Ramanujan. He remarked Ramanujan called every prime number a close personal friend. He sort of had this deep relationship with numbers.

Then I saw a documentary on people who could do complex math without the aide of a calculator (e.g. given any large number and tell if it was prime in their head). I thought there might be a parallel between people like this and Ramanujan. The documentary focused on a couple of people who were not savants, but by all accounts normal people. They followed a young British kid. He described how he saw and felt about numbers, and each number had a distinct personality. I found it remarkably similar to the description about how Ramanujan felt about numbers.

</comment><comment><USER16> [...]Hardy contacted the Indian Office to plan for Ramanujan's trip to Cambridge. Secretary Arthur Davies of the Advisory Committee for Indian Students met with Ramanujan to discuss the overseas trip. In accordance with his Brahmin upbringing, Ramanujan refused to leave his country to "go to a foreign land."

So much for being a Math genius.

Disclaimer: I am an Indian.

<comment><USER17> Newton was supposed to have been an absolute coward.

As a member of parliament the only thing he mentioned, during any session, was a request to open the window.

Feynman was a womanizer who was known to sleep with wives of colleagues. His biography "Genius" is a pretty good read by the way.

Genius doesnt mean "adventurous" or "virtuous" or "worldly". Its just one facet of a human.

<comment><USER18> And Newton was also heavy into alchemy and astrology. (Leibniz seemed much saner. But he was probably closer to Feynman in his worldly orientation.)

<comment><USER19> Netwon also spent a great deal of time attempting to decipher codes in the bible...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> How can you say that the inventor of taxicab numbers is unknown? Most people I know know who he is.

</comment><comment><USER21> This guy was huge, and he is very well known.

</comment><comment><USER22> Ramanujan is well known.

<comment><USER23> I think I first read about him in a Martin Gardner book as a kid. So yeah, not that unknown.

<comment><USER24> Kind of same here -- I think I first read about him on the Argentinian magazine "Humor y Juegos" (Humor and Games) some time in the late 70s/ early 80s. I guess most people with any interest in recreational mathematics/ puzzles will know of Ramanujan.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> But does he have his MCSE?

</comment><comment><USER26> Well known. Now, do you know Slava Pestov?</comment>


HypheNN-De: German Hyphenation with Neural Networks - <AUTHOR> https://blog.m-siemens.de/hyphenn-de-german-hyphenation-with-neural-networks/ <comment><USER2> Did you consider putting the "center" of the detector somewhere other than in the middle of the vector? what would happen if you had 6 before, and 2 after, or 5 before, and 3 after?

Another thought I had: for performance reasons, it might be nice to have something more compact than a one-hot vector for each letter. Have you looked at determining sets of characters which have a similar impact on hyphenation, and encoding them together?

PS: do you have the extracted list of wiktionary hyphenations sitting in a text file somewhere that you could put up? I'm fixin' to quickly compare the accuracy to TeX's German hyphenation (once the 30+GiB TeXLive repository finishes downloading).

PPS: You could improve the display of code blocks in your site on desktop by adding

        display: block;
        max-width: 710px;
        width: 80%;
        margin-left: auto;
        margin-right: auto;

to your `.post-content pre code` rule. Or maybe slightly indent it by reducing the max width a small amount below that of the body text.

<comment><AUTHOR> _Did you consider putting the "center" of the detector somewhere other than in the middle of the vector? what would happen if you had 6 before, and 2 after, or 5 before, and 3 after?_ _Another thought I had: for performance reasons, it might be nice to have something more compact than a one-hot vector for each letter. Have you looked at determining sets of characters which have a similar impact on hyphenation, and encoding them together?_

These are interesting suggestions! It sure would be interesting to do actual research on how to optimize the hyphenation even more. It also would be interesting to play with the hyperparameters and network architecture to see what impact they have on the hyphenation accuracy. Alas, I'm a student so time is rather scarce.

 _PS: do you have the extracted list of wiktionary hyphenations sitting in a text file somewhere that you could put up? I 'm fixin' to quickly compare the accuracy to TeX's German hyphenation (once the 30+GiB TeXLive repository finishes downloading)._

Sure! The GitHub repository actually contains a Rust program to process a Wiktionary XML dump into a word list for training, but if you want to skip straight ahead, I've uploaded the dataset I used to [https://gist.githubusercontent.com/msiemens/2aac63cf8d1b88c4...](https://gist.githubusercontent.com/msiemens/2aac63cf8d1b88c48d33c9c82f8f8e15/raw/d078a9dcad5e63afd8a5976184d973a02c5f591f/wordlist.txt) [6 MB, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0].

 _PPS: You could improve the display of code blocks in your site on desktop by adding [...]_

Thanks for the suggestion, I'll look into it!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> If you love spelling and hyphenation, you should star this issue in Chrome(ium):

[https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=20667](https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=20667)

There are a lots of spelling and hyphenation libraries e.g. for Finnish language, but it is not possible to get them to working in Chrome cause there is no extension capability for it. It's really shame, since these odd languages probably never get support by Chrome team itself.

</comment><comment><USER4> TeX implements a very good spelling engine that that is driven by patterns [1]. I would expect it very difficult to improve on this and as far as I can see, the article doesn't include a comparison.

[1]: [https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/262588/how-are- hyphe...](https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/262588/how-are-hyphenation- patterns-written)

<comment><USER5> He talks about exactly about pattern matching and mentions latex using it in the second section. Also that this approach doesn't work as well with German compound words which is the whole premise.

<comment><USER4> Giving one example is not an evaluation that would convince me that NN are better. The German LaTeX community is one of the largest and I haven't heard much about it being unhappy with TeX's hyphenation.

<comment><AUTHOR> That word would be _Nahrungsmittelunverträglichkeit_ again. I just tested it and LaTeX (with `\usepackage[ngerman]{babel}`) does the same mistake as pyphen in the article (it hyphenates the word as _Nah-rung-smit-telun-ver-träg- lichkeit_ ).

To be fair, in day-to-day use problems like these will be corner cases as to my knowledge LaTeX tries to avoid hyphenation and even if it has to split a word, it has a good chance of getting it right. Also, to me this project's focus was more on learning about neural networks than creating a better hyphenator.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This blog inspired me to hunt for some obscure machine learning papers from 80s and 90s that I may replicate and improve. Any idea where to start?

<comment><USER7> (serious reply.) A university library. (So you can find old papers.)

I assume you know some modern techniques. If not then I would start with a modern textbook (like, the assigned textbook from a machine learning class) and then see if you can use the same exercises to see if you can improve classic paper results. It would make an interesting blog post.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to delete my hackernews account? - <AUTHOR> I would like to delete my account. But, can't find any option to do so. Thank you! <comment><USER2> Not sure of an official way but they are pretty responsive to support: email@example.com</comment>


French Company Seeks $421M From Google For "Blacklisting" - <AUTHOR> http://searchengineland.com/french-company-seeks-421m-from-google-for-blacklisting-83427 <comment><USER2> This claim is brought under the rubric of antitrust but the impetus behind it is found in the nascent movement seeking to subject search engines to principles of so-called "search neutrality."

Search neutrality is explicitly modeled on the idea of net neutrality. Just as the ISPs are told they have overriding duties to users of their networks not to discriminate, etc., so advocates of search neutrality want to impose legal duties on search engines to abide by overriding principles as follows (quoting from a brilliant dissection of search neutrality by law professor James Grimmelmann, found here: [http://works.bepress.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1034...](http://works.bepress.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1034&context=james_grimmelmann)):

"1. Equality: Search engines shouldn't differentiate at all among websites.

2\. Objectivity: There are correct search results and incorrect ones, so search engines should return only the correct ones.

3\. Bias: Search engines should not distort the information landscape.

4\. Traffic: Websites that depend on a flow of visitors shouldn't be cut off by search engines.

5\. Relevance: Search engines should maximize users' satisfaction with search results.

6\. Self-interest: Search engines shouldn't trade on their own account.

7\. Transparency: Search engines should disclose the algorithms they use to rank web pages.

8\. Manipulation: Search engines should rank sites only according to general rules, rather than promoting and demoting sites on an individual basis."

Professor Grimmelmann goes on in his piece to critique each of these professed goals of the movement and to describe the legal implications of each.

Of course, if you open this gate in naked form (i.e., by explicitly adopting laws that expressly require search engines to abide by such duties), you effectively set up all search engines to be devoured by litigants and their lawyers, who can second-guess every decision, who can seek damages based on such second-guessing, and who can ask every manner of regulator to step in to supervise how search results are generated - all pretty much the antithesis of what we are accustomed to in this area and a serious step back from freedom (in my view) in an all-important area that affects us all profoundly in the modern digital world.

All this is mostly academic today except in the case of Google, which has to face such claims couched in terms of its allegedly abusing its monopoly position in various markets. Whenever you hear the innocuous-sounding term "search neutrality," however, realize that this is the direction in which it seeks to lead us if given the full implementation sought by its advocates.

<comment><USER3> re #2: on the subject of 'correct' results. if I search for 'cat' whos to say what's 'correct' maybe i was looking for lol cat images, in which case returning information about care and feeding of a pet cat would be wrong. way too subjective.

also re#4, i'm a 'bad guy' i DEPEND on a stream of traffic from google to hack my victims computers so they join my botnet. how dare google shut me down! or: i'm a content farm with content so low quality no one stays on the page longer than 0:01. yet that nets me ad revenues, so i depend on traffic from google! how dare they shut me down even though my page is useless to searchers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> First this:

 _1plusV claims its sites were "blacklisted" by Google and lost most of their traffic over a period of several years, suffering "irreparable" harm_

then this:

 _Between 2007 and 2010 no less than 30 vertical search engines created by 1plusV were "black-listed", some of which showed significant business potential._

By definition, a business that can suffer "irreparable harm" because of another entity's actions which are outside their control does _not_ show "siginificant business potential".

<comment><USER3> wait. so these ARE search engines themselves? doesnt that mean they're competition? i'm sure google can argue that no law could possibly require preferential treatment of competitors? or something like that?

<comment><USER5> > i'm sure google can argue that no law could possibly require preferential > treatment of competitors?

Google can argue that point, but it's not true.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> These are the same people who are suing Google all over the place.

The ridiculous notion of 'SEO by lawyer' should go away (very quickly!) and Google should establish that it's not a traffic pump and isn't obligated to send anyone traffic.</comment>


Create kick-ass resume in minutes for FREE - <AUTHOR> http://www.kickresume.com Kickresume allows you to create original looking resume in minutes for free. Choose one of extraordinary resume designs, fill in your details and download your new resume in less than 10 minutes. <comment><USER2> IMO it will be better if you can provide some sample resumes (full sized) and not just icons.

<comment><AUTHOR> we actually working on that feature :)</comment></comment>


Defining What Good Looks Like for a Software Engineer - <AUTHOR> http://www.tugberkugurlu.com/archive/defining-what-good-looks-like-for-a-software-engineer <comment><USER2> I am interested in what others' view on this, especially around based on what criteria you can understand that a software engineer is a good one.</comment>


Epic has published an in-game Macintosh commercial spoof in response to Apple - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYXnaKmXqGs <comment><USER2> Going after Apple's policies seems to require fanfare. Spotify made a whole website: [https://timetoplayfair.com/](https://timetoplayfair.com/)

This follows other public denouncements by Hey.com, ProtonMail, Netflix and others, all within a few months.

<comment><USER3> What's Apple's move when Epic, Spotify, Netflix, etc. all coordinate to "blackout" iOS for a day? Or even for an hour? And why haven't they yet?

<comment><USER4> Do you think that Apple would care? I'm sure plenty of customers would be angry though - but not on Apple.

We - here on HN - are far from the average customer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> open-source-ux This is the original Apple "1984" commercial (directed by Ridley Scott) that is spoofed by Epic:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtvjbmoDx-I](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtvjbmoDx-I)

In the Apple commercial, "Big Brother" is represented by a domineering IBM. It's rather ironic that Apple has been more closed, guarded and controlling than the PC platform has ever been.

<comment><USER5> You have to remember that the reality we live in is the one where CDP, Eagle and Compaq cloned the IBM PC BIOS and could offer compatible IBM PC clones with DOS from Microsoft. That happened during the summer / fall of 1982. The assertions made in the original 1984 ad were in many ways a straw man argument since the PC compatible clones really took of during 1983 due to low supply from IBM and freed the PC from the control that IBM had.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> 2015 me would be quite surprised to learn that 2020 me is rooting for an obnoxious gaming company to take down apple.

<comment><USER7> In what way has Epic ever been obnoxious?

From spending millions on free developer resources, to retroactively making products free, to having an owner who's invested millions in conservation, it's so bizarre that it's popular to hate Epic.

I think their biggest mistake in the public's perception was daring to challenge Steam's semi-monopoly on PC distribution

<comment><USER8> They didn't just "challenge the monopoly".

They made consumer experience worse by introducing exclusives to an ecosystem that was previously largely free of them. Then they bought over exclusives that were announced for other platforms.

That's pretty damn obnoxious to me.

<comment><USER7> I replied to your other comment explaining this, games were already de-facto Steam exclusives with very few exceptions.

Epic games became a new choice, and in an attempt to break the status wui, offered incentives for devs to not join the de-facto PC gaming store in an attempt to force them to give developers more favorable revenue splits

They've stated multiple times this is all about how Steam's revenue split should be moved to 88/12.

-

Steam no longer provides the level of service to these developers as they did when the splits were established anyways.

Once upon a time Steam was highly curated and publishing to Steam could conceivably replace a "normal" publishing push just by virtue of how many eyeballs each game got.

Now thiusands of games are announced a day, it's become a cesspool of crud not worth even looking at, and at this point it's just a fancy frontend for Steamworks, a download page, and payment processing (none of which is worth 30% of revenue)

<comment><USER8> >Now thiusands of games are announced a day, it's become a cesspool of crud not worth even looking at, and at this point it's just a fancy frontend for Steamworks, a download page, and payment processing (none of which is worth 30% of revenue)

Regarding this. Have you even looked at the steam frontpage recently? None of the games featured there are crud by most measures. Mine has Satisfactory, Darksiders Genesis, Horizon Zero Dawn, Death Stranding and Among US. Some of these might not be to my taste, but garbage not worth looking at is a tad harsh. If you're referring to all games released however, refer to the next line?

I actually like the way that they've managed to segment game distribution from recommendation/featuring, and believe that for game distribution platforms, combining a more liberal admission policy, but a more selective recommendation policy seems to be a good approach.

<comment><USER7> You think having 5 already wildly successful games on the front page somehow means Steam is only accepting "good games", is that a joke?

You realize Steam was accepting under 1 game a day when it launched right? And for many years after?

Like there was actual meaning to getting on Steam. It wasn't they couldn't get games, they only wanted the best

-

If anything you are literally making my point in regards to discovery.

Once upon a time if you released a game on steam you were guaranteed some modicum of traction by virtue of being a new game on Steam

In 2019 more games were added in 1 year than in the DECADE after Steam launched.

(I mistyped in the last comment, it was meant to be thousands of games per year, but you get the idea)

Every single game you described already has a massive following.

Gone are the days where you could launch with a small following and rely on Steam to do half of what a publisher exists to do... market your game.

That was what was worth 30% of your revenue, having Steam pickup your game and give it halo status.

Now Steam really is a crapshoot and saying your game is on Steam doesn't mean it was curated, it just means it's on Steam.

The completely and utterly demolishes the value proposition of the platform as a _publisher_.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is quite a clever move from Epic. Clearly provoking Apple and Knowing what they'd do they got a lawsuit and the famous 1984 Apple Ad's Spoof video. I think This spoof video is more than just mocking Apple. It's clearly playing the underdog theme and winning the support of Fortnite and other Epic games fans.

<comment><USER10> As someone that lived through the 1980s and the PC/Mac wars, this is _way_ more than mocking.

It's literally saying to Apple's face that they've become IBM in this situation.

<comment><USER11> Agreed. Note that IBM could not even dream of doing what Apple has done with the App Store. They had only just finished off their monopoly lawsuit in 1982...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=euiSHuaw6Q4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=euiSHuaw6Q4)

Direct link

Ah, there's an HN discussion already; [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24148204](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24148204)

</comment><comment><USER13> Well played Epic, well played.

<comment><USER14> Tim Cook typing "gg"?

Gg is good game, when someone admits defeat to the opponent.

<comment><USER15> More like "glhf"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> How long have they been working on this spoof commercial?

<comment><USER17> Probably about as long as they were working on their legal documents. This is literally something that I would expect to see on an episode of Suits not in real life.

<comment><USER10> You can see today's date on the screen being smashed. Epic had this primed and ready to render the moment Apple kicked them off the App Store.

<comment><USER17> It could've been easily also pre-rendered not that it would take too long to render this but since they knew when they'll pull this stunt and they knew that Apple would kick them off the store the same day or the next they could've had a few pre-rendered versions with the possible dates ready for upload.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> How much more did they prepare beforehand lol

</comment><comment><USER19> Oh how the turntables have turned...

</comment><comment><USER20> This is epic.</comment>


Amazon Echo Look - <AUTHOR> https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0186JAEWK?ref_=ecg_hdrx_ann_life_txt?enableAutoPlay=1 <comment><USER2> Not much mention of social integration with those photos (Pinterest, Instagram, etc) I'd think that would be more important than nobodys looking at you in your fancy clothes. Seems like they are missing something big here.

</comment><comment><USER3> This looks interesting. I now people are really letting Amazon into their lives.</comment>


Cloud Storage anxiety? Many are switching to Terafyle - <AUTHOR>

Terafyle is receiving unprecedented growth http://bit.ly/terafyle3 <comment><USER2> [http://terafyle.com](http://terafyle.com) is shorter than [http://bit.ly/terafyle3](http://bit.ly/terafyle3). So I'm not sure why you put the bit.ly link—it's very suspicious for a post that already looks like astroturfing.

To be honest, WebDAV and SFTP + GoodReader (on iOS) works perfectly for me and I have no reason to switch to this … whatever it is.

</comment><comment><USER3> Those are great, we also support Google Drive, iCloud Drive, Citrix ShareFile, Egnyte, Hightail, EMC Syncplicity, Barracuda Copy, MediaFire and SugarSync.

</comment><comment><USER3> Download the iOS App here. [http://bit.ly/terafyleAppStore](http://bit.ly/terafyleAppStore)

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</comment><comment><USER3> Let us know if there are any other Cloud Storage services you want Terafyle to support.

</comment><comment><USER3> Right now, we support your iOS device and Windows. The MAC app is coming out shortly.

</comment><comment><USER4> I use Terafyle with DropBox, OneDrive and Box. Definitely a great product.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Love the service, I never worry about Cloud storage space anymore. The cloud to cloud feature is excellent!

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<comment><USER5> Hi, just download that app, followed the link to download PC version. Chrome alerted, that file is infected, here is online check from DrWeb: Terafyle.exe packed by FLY-CODE >Terafyle.exe probably infected with Trojan.Inject >Terafyle.exe packed by BINARYRES >>Terafyle.exe - archive BINARYRES >>>Terafyle.exe/data001 - Ok >>>Terafyle.exe/data002 - Ok</comment></comment>


7 Keys to the Ideal Mental Age for an Entrepreneur - <AUTHOR> http://www.caycon.com/blog/2011/05/7-keys-to-the-ideal-mental-age-for-an-entrepreneur/ <comment><AUTHOR> Why wouldn't you want to hire an entrepreneur? They have such a good outlook and they have a good balance of prudence and risk taking.

Younger entrepreneurs tend to be higher risk takers because they have less to lose, so I see it as an advantage having them on a team.</comment>


A Clever End Run Around the Movie-Streaming Gremlins - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/17/technology/personaltech/17pogue.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&src=twr <comment><USER2> Not necessarily a new idea. Just an old idea repurposed to fit a legal loophole instead of a technical need.

From Wired Sept 1994, Fran-On-Demand: <http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/2.09/cable.labs.html>

"When an order for, say, Coneheads, comes in, she rushes to the giant videotape library on the far wall, retrieves the correct title, and hurries to insert it into the appropriate place in a gleaming bank of VCRs. During prime- time hours, two people share this job. But right now, on a Wednesday afternoon, it's all Fran.

Fran may or may not realize that her job category will soon be phased out. Her employer, cable colossus Tele-Communications Inc. (TCI), is conducting this market test with AT&T and US West. But all the other interactive television trials just getting underway are powered by computers, not by people like her."

The article ends in a chowderish claim:

"Watching any movie, any time - video-on-demand - is supposed to be the killer app that propels dozens of new interactive TV services into American homes by the end of the century. The home shopping, the custom news programs, the play- along game shows, the dozen or so simultaneous football games, the home banking, the on-demand Roseanne, the whole 500-channel scenario that cable companies have been hyping - all of this is supposed to piggyback on the raging success of movies-on-demand. But there's one glitch: there's not much demand for movies-on-demand"

TV's problem has ended up not being lack of demand, but disaggregation. People want movies on demand, and they can get them better and cheaper from companies that aren't in the traditional "TV business".

The same is happening all around. Newspapers' incomes are not down due to lack of demand for classifieds. It just happens that people who used to pay newspapers to print classifieds now post them somewhere else.

</comment><comment><USER3> Although this is a _kinda_ clever solution, part of the problem's premise is false.

Subtitles, directors commentary, alternate languages and the like aren't magical DVD only features. There's no technical reason that streaming solutions can't offer all these extra content streams except that they... don't. It's like arguing that, because you can ask HJ's to put extra onions on your burger and you can't at MickyD's, that MickyD's has flaws. They don't, they just don't offer that option YET.

I think their solution is clever, but it's a strawman problem.

<comment><USER4> I disagree. There are actual non-technical issues here that prevent streaming services from offering those options, that this company completely avoids. Language dubs and subtitle tracks are separately copyrighted works and the streaming services would have to negotiate separately for every possible combination. Sometimes the French dub of a movie is owned by a different company than the English one; the English subtitles for a Japanese TV series are owned by a different company than the Japanese one, etc. The DVD publisher already negotiated the rights for the language and subtitle tracks on the disc, so streaming a physical DVD gets you access to them, where Netflix might never be able to negotiate rights to the same combinations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Meanwhile, their home page:

"Zediva.com is temporarily down for maintenance.

"We experienced some exceptional customer growth this week as we officially launched Zediva to the public. We're delighted by the attention from the media, and the overwhelming enthusiasm of our new and prospective customers. We are, however, very disappointed that the resulting surge of customers has negatively impacted your experience.

"We do hope that you forgive us, and that you try back another time soon. We're working diligently to build capacity to serve America's hungry appetite for new release movies.

"In the meantime....please follow us on Twitter and/or Facebook where we'll update our status. "

</comment><comment><USER6> Want to get around all those silly restrictions? Pirate the film. Eventually the law will give up, in the same way to gave up about, porn, condoms, and men having sex with each other.

<comment><USER7> The amount of effort put into inconveniencing the user is really incredible.

</comment></comment><comment> brown9-2 _Furthermore, the lawyers have viciously clipped the wings of the streaming- movie era. You have to start watching a movie within 30 days of renting it and finish it within 24 hours._

Which streaming service does this describe?

The author paints "streaming" with an overly broad brush. Having only experience with Netflix, this quoted sentence describes a system I've never heard of - and saying Netflix's selection is from the Carter era is a gross simplification.

<comment><USER8> Amazon, Apple, Zune, Vudu, CinemaNow. Netflix is unique, though Amazon Prime is just getting around to trying a similar model.

The real problem with online rentals isn't the rental period, though; it's the ridiculous price. In a world where Redbox rents new releases for $1 who would pay $4 each to stream crappy catalog titles?

<comment><USER9> Well, the price is ridiculous in relation to the 24hr viewing period. $5 for a 5 day viewing window would be more reasonable.

Honestly, don't any of these people have children? Kids don't always go for something in one take.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Some MIT students tried this with music CDs in a project called LAMP (the Library Access to Music Project) back in the early 2000s. Kids could use the internet to select and listen to CDs played automatically via jukeboxes over one of 16 dedicated cable channels, which was hooked up to the audio for their chosen CD.

As far as I know, it's still running over there on campus, perfectly legal (though a current student could tell us for sure - I haven't tried to use it since 2006.) So there's _some_ precedent for this sort of scheme working without lawyers descending on it. Of course, suing students would have been far more uncouth than suing a for-profit organization.

<http://lamp.mit.edu/lamp-qa.html>

</comment><comment><USER11> The article doesn't mention it, but this would also seem like the solution for streaming outside the US. Services like iTunes and Netflix are only available to a small part of the internet (US + a few other countries), citing legal issues for not being available anywhere else. This would give Zediva a huge potential market to themselves.

I'm in Europe and signing up as soon as they'll let me to see if it works here. Perhaps, finally, video on demand for the rest of us.

</comment><comment><USER12> When I first read about Zediva and how they planned to work it, I laughed. Are they going to have tons of people going around changing dvd machines. I pictured a huge warehouse with people running around putting dvds in machines.

<comment><USER13> "Are they going to have tons of people going around changing dvd machines[?]"

In the short term, maybe. In the longterm, this can be automated with robotics, and not even very difficult ones. Certainly feasible today, if not something a startup can quite just run out and buy.

And of course, if they buy a hundred DVDs, why not shortcut the entire process and send a "cached" stream? What's the difference between a "cached" DVD and a DVD?

This is one particular manifestation of something I've been saying for a decade now, which is that like it or not and regardless of the challenges sooner or later the law is going to have to give up the idea that the mechanical source of content has any meaning, because whatever rules you draw can be gamed. The only question you'll ultimately be able to ask is whether you have the rights to view a movie or not.

And let me just underline the _one particular manifestation_ bit one more time. Once the kind of people who frequent this site start really thinking about how to game the system in this style you can generate a dozen ideas in an hour, each of which the law really has no current answer to. One immediately obvious example is that if this is legal for DVDs it obviously ought to be legal for CDs, right? Why not a library that takes video of a book two thousand miles away and physically turns pages? (It wouldn't take much post-processing of a video stream to make that feasible.) Why not add caching of the streams to any of those things? If caching in general is wrong, is it OK for me to go ahead and advance the book one page while letting the reader read the previous page, so they don't have to wait for the robot to turn the page laboriously? What if I mix in some P2P, can I stream my neighbor's copy of something? And so on and so on for dozens of questions resulting in hundreds of lawsuits and brutally conflicting and downright gibberish precedents for decades, until someone finally manages to sit down and really straighten this out somewhere around 2050.

<comment><USER14> Why not use late model computers or DVD players with some sort of digital input to control playback without mechanical input? It's not the player that's limited by the law, right?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> There is no clean-cut loophole here. People have tried similar services before (e.g., VHS, in a smaller area, such as a single video store or hotel building) and the Courts found a violation of the public performance right. See Redd Horne (749 F.2d 154, <http://www.law.cornell.edu/copyright/cases/749_F2d_154.htm>).

More precisely, the question is this: are they transmitting a performance of the DVD to the public? This gets a little convoluted thanks to the circular definition of "public" in § 101. There is an argument that the transmission is only to private homes, if Zediva puts restrictions on how/where their service can be used.

Sometimes people forget that reproduction isn't the only way to infringe. Depending on how their technology works, there may also be infringing reproduction in the buffer.

</comment><comment><USER16> Can't imagine this is going to last.

CSS authorizes digital output of video content when one in a limited set of copy protection systems is in place on the digital output. IP streaming video is obviously a digital output and though Zediva may be using copy protection within Flash, I highly doubt that specific type of copy protection is authorized by the CSS license. Additionally, CSS may only authorize specific digital outputs, in which case IP streaming through Flash is unlikely to be one of them.

Therefore, Zediva is very likely circumventing CSS, which is a DMCA violation.

<comment><USER17> Aren't you allowed to circumvent for interoperability? If the "these are just really long video cables" argument would hold up on its own, and the CSS- circumvention issue were the only thing standing in the way, then it seems like they could argue that they were circumventing CSS for the purpose of interoperating with their fancy software video cable. And if that argument _doesn't_ hold up, then their rental/streaming business is probably not legal anyway for licensing reasons, even without the circumventing-CSS issue.

Disclaimer: my knowledge of this area of law is somewhat spotty, so I could be wrong.

<comment><USER18> Not legal for licensing reasons how? If I buy a video from the store, I'm legally able to rent it out to others without the permission of the studios. Most large chains cut profit-sharing deals with the studios to get better- than-wholesale prices on DVDs. I won't comment on Redbox b/c it cuts too close to my day-job and don't want my comments coming back to bite me.

<comment><USER19> There have been articles about Redbox that stated that it will buy retail copies of DVD's for rental, if it has to, to achieve parity with other rental companies. You're right, the studios don't like it, but there is nothing that they can do about it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> This is such a clever and world changing idea. Forever services like blockbuster depended on your not being able to share your movie with everyone you know in the two days you rent it. But now that you can, companies like this one are sending a wake up call to producers holding new licenses and telling them that the old model just won't work. Maybe the music and book industries can take a hint (and much of everything else once we all have fabbers in our offices and studies). Maybe movies should only come out as downloadable non sharable files, for a third of the price. They'd need excellent security, but I can't imagine the world pointing in any other direction. I say, ditch the disks, and work on creating files that can only work on the computer which bought them. That, or bring back the VHS's.

</comment><comment><USER21> I don't need better movie selections as much as I need better streaming performance.

At this point, I stick to downloads, whether it's from Amazon or iTunes, because nothing ruins a good movie like stutters, freezes, or the dreaded Netflix "this movie cannot be played" error.

</comment><comment><USER22> Cute idea, but I surely wouldn't invest in it. At some point in the future the licensing scheme that favors physical DVDs over digital copies will come into line with reality and they're going to be stuck holding a lot of pointless hardware.

<comment><USER23> Not in our lifetime.

<comment><USER22> Well, if this idea of "streaming" physical DVDs ever actually caught on, I'm confident the movie companies would sign a deal with e.g. Netflix to offer those same movies for streaming with a per-view fee. They'd have nothing to lose and would make more money.

You really think there won't be rational movie streaming licensing in our _lifetime_? I'll take that long bet.

<comment><USER23> Lots of money has been made by the lack of rationality of those who control movies (Hollywood). I exaggerate to make a point, but if it is in my lifetime, it might be just barely.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I can't resist chiming in and reiterating how stunningly stupid the MPAA is. People have fistfuls of cash that they're ready to hand over to watch content, and these cartel cavemen refuse to allow it. Then they wonder why people pirate.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Maybe this is for novelty protest or subterfuge. It can't be profitable to stream DVD's individually, can it?

<comment><USER25> Sure it can ... netflix is cool, but watching movies is usually a spontaneous thing ... you have no idea how many netflix movies I've had sent over and then let sit for months because I didn't really feel like watching them when I actually had time to.

With regards to money ... a dvd costs what? Like 10 bucks ...

If they have just 5 people watch one at $2 a pop ...They've made their money back ... and these are top 100 titles (another clever move btw) ... so they are guaranteed to beat that in their first week every time.

Of course there is overhead to think about etc etc ... but I think its clear that they can be pretty profitable pretty fast, even though it seems rather awkward at first glance.

I'd give them my money if I were an investor.</comment></comment>


A physics master's degree opens doors to myriad careers - <AUTHOR> https://physicstoday.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/PT.3.4180 <comment><USER2> I've also heard the opposite, that it leads to absolutely nothing and you are kind of treated like a PhD dropout, at least in the US. Just be careful, I guess, and get plenty of advice from real people who took that path (successfully or not).

Oh, and a bachelor's in engineering physics seems to lead to nothing as well. Have had quite a few friends go to career fairs and every company rep lost interest as soon as they heard the words "engineering physics". They just went on to grad school in plain old physics since they had 0 other options besides learning to code.

<comment><USER3> That hasn't been my experience. I have M.S. in physics at a shitty school and went into industry. (I didn't fail anything, and actually had a 4.0 gpa, just didn't want to spend more time in school). Eventually switched from material science to data science. Currently an ML research scientist at AWS. It's been a fun journey. No one gave a shit about what I did or didn't do in college. It might matter to HR people, which can be the resume gate keepers. But the hiring managers and peers don't care. In fact, if you polled them, I would guess half would know my background is in physics, a third that I have a masters, and 0 which school I went to.

<comment><USER4> I'm currently getting a Masters in CS (specialising in ML) after leaving a pure math PhD. I'd love a research type job from anywhere, let alone Amazon, but every job posting for roles with 'research' in the title says they require a PhD. Was your success a case of simply applying anyway? I know they say to apply anyway but it feels like a long shot to me. Do many of your peers have a similar background to you?

<comment><USER3> My primary mechanism was reaching out to recruiters and people on LinkedIn that already had the jobs I wanted. I found that just applying through the job site almost never went anywhere. It comes down to a numbers game, so I would sort your hypothetical list of jobs from "dream job" at the top to "I guess" at the bottom, and then start applying from top down. You should absolutely take job postings and required skills with a healthy grain of salt. These are almost always generic, copy/paste artifacts.

An exception might be if you see "Publications in top-tiered journals" as a requirement. Those positions likely actually target PhDs with relevant publications. They might overlook a lack of a PhD if you're a recognized expert in the field, of course. But I interpret this requirement as "we want an academic", and there primary job is likely research and publishing papers. A Research Scientist at AWS is not an academic, as someone at Google Brain might be, but rather someone building applied ML solutions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Please please please do not pursue a PhD or MSc in Physics on the sole expectation it will open a door to a career that you believe would otherwise be closed. You will not enjoy it.

<comment><USER6> So I assume it would acceptable to pursue a degree if you enjoy physics and hope to use the knowledge and degree to advance your career. Are the job prospects for advanced degrees in physics that poor?

<comment><USER7> I would say yes. Pursue physics only because you love it. Unless you want to go into Defense the job prospects are terrible. However, learning physics teaches you how to learn anything and how to do it fast. This turns out to be an invaluable skill for programming, so physicists make great programmers. You just have to earn it on top of all the physics.

<comment><USER8> Yeah it's very much like that with my math degree. Demonstrated ability to torture myself with difficult concepts.

<comment><USER9> I think engineering degrees demonstrate an ability to torture oneself with boring and routine concepts. A skill which is apparently more valuable in the working world.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I have an MS in physics and I disagree with this. If you want opened doors, go for software engineering. You have so many things you can do with software, seriously.

I have finished my master's in November, and I have been looking for a job. I have not been very lucky so far. I am looking for data-science related stuff. If you have any suggestions, please, I am all ears. (I am in Europe)

There was a time when, if you had a degree in Physics, they'd throw money at you. That is no longer true.

<comment><USER11> why data science and not something where physics degrees confer more of a comparative advantage? Something like telecommunications engineering or something of that sort?

<comment><USER10> My MS was in astroparticle physics (applied). That means I am better suited for data science than for engineering stuff.

Weirdly enough, if I knew optics but no coding I would be in a better place than the one I am in right now, which is: I know (a little bit of) coding but no optics.

<comment><USER12> Applied?

<comment><USER10> Well, it's more experimental than applied, bad word I guess. It could've been theorical, but it was experimental.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I didn't do my physics PhD expecting it would lead to a job. Which is good because it hasn't.

<comment><USER14> I am very happy I choose to work on my own projects than peruse a PhD.

Anecdotes like yours from my peers were very helpful in making this decision.

Not to mention, both teachers seemed like they wanted me to pay to do their work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> As someone who obtained their Master's in Physics, I have to agree with the article. The breadth and depth of my scientific training has made me a much more capable data scientist (and engineer) than most of my peers who went the CS path. I only wished that I could have double majored in biology. I would say that my study in physics has taught me how to better see the "bigger picture" and to try to account for all possible outcomes in a given scenario.

<comment><USER16> > As someone who obtained their Master's in Physics, I have to agree with the > article. The breadth and depth of my scientific training has made me a much > more capable data scientist (and engineer) than most of my peers who went > the CS path.

Not knocking on you specifically, but I've seen this kind of overconfidence before in physicists, mechanical engineers, mathematicians etc.: "programming / statistics / data science is so easy, of course I know what I'm doing and will be up to speed right away." Their work is generally not bad, but not particularly great either. I do think the scientific training and rigorous education in these fields helps, but if it's not supplemented with a little humility it makes for poor colleagues.

<comment><USER17> It isn't overconfidence. The academic material these individuals study is directly and specifically related to the work of a data scientist. Statistical analysis is built in to any reasonably good physics curriculum starting with undergrad lab courses and proceeding through statistical mechanics, quantum physics and beyond.

<comment><USER18> In your mind, do you think a physics degree or a statistics degree is better suited to doing data analysis, and why?

<comment><USER19> > _do you think a physics degree or a statistics degree is better suited to > doing data analysis, and why?_

For finance, physics 100%. (The more experimental, the better.) When you're forced to map your theories to reality, and deal with the divergence, you develop an intuition for a certain set of problems. Those problems recur in commercial data science.

<comment><USER18> I'm not sure how this speaks to the superiority of physics over stats in this regard.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Not my experience and I have a Engineering-Physics degree, which is essentially a full physics degree with additionaly courses gears towards training us as systems engineers and luckily that's how I landed a job afterwards. I tell all prospective physics majors to dual major in CS or EE or some other engineering useful discipline if you truly want to do something good. You have a much better chance of landing a job afterwards and gaining the foothold you need to propel into what you really want to do. Most places outside academia don't know what to do with you. Funny thing is, the people I know with physics degrees end up being some of the best engineers and quickly bubble to the top. HR types have a hard time seeing that potential if you don't fit their criteria degree exactly.

<comment><USER21> I'm a recent graduate with a BS in Engineering Physics (EP) as well. I chose the field because I love mathematics and because of the "infinite career possibilities" that the Physics department advertised (just like in this article) which was actually very misleading. I had a really hard time getting started right out of college (your description of HR's view of EP majors is spot on) and started to pursue my Master's at the same University in EP. I dropped out of my Master's program after about a year because I realized I hated doing academic research. A lot of the courses that I took were also very similar to my undergraduate courses... So I didn't feel like I was gaining any added value from my MS.

Most of us graduates in EP either went to pursue graduate work or became Systems Engineers. Now I'm working as a Systems Engineer really only because it felt like the only alternative. I'm planning on getting my Master's in CS so I can get myself on track to the career that I really want. I don't regret studying physics - but I wish I had done a double major instead.

<comment><USER20> Yup, this resonates with me. I hated academia and wanted to get out there and do some real high level engineering work, so I took my BS in EP and left. Luckily I had some decent programming skills and it helped me land my systems engineering job doing simulation work. Yes I reversed engineered system in order to understand how to simulate them which applies to my degree focus, but without the software background I could never put theory into practice. Now I'm a project engineer leading teams of other systems engineers, so it worked out ok for me. If you are the more mathematically inclined theoretical type rather than the build systems hand on type of physics major, you will have a harder time. First thing I do when I go back to visit my Alma mater is dispell their "infinite possibilities" myth.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> From my experience both interviewing and hiring, a physics degree absolutely will not help you in tech. You will have more credibility than any non-STEM graduate, but employers will constantly wonder if you've bridged the gap created by your lack of a CS degree.

<comment><USER23> I guess my experience has been the opposite. On every software R&D team I have been on, there has been about an even mix of computer science, physics, and mathematics with a few sprinkles of data science from the biology fields. Especially by year 5 or so - who can tell the difference between a computer scientist that knows physics and a physicist who knows computer science?

The only skills a person needs to learn coding is the desire to learn coding and the persistence to do it.

<comment><USER22> This has been my experience within teams as well, but it was clear to me that we were hired _in spite_ of our degrees rather than _because_ of them.

I do not regret my physics education, and I would encourage young people who are passionate about the subject to pursue it. However, I think that they should go in knowing that unless they intend to stay in academia/research/defense, a physics degree is, at best, a signal of intelligence, and, at worst, a signal of overspecialization in a disparate field.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I don't agree with this article. I did my undergrad with a Physics & CS double major. It was painful, 9 semesters of maximum allowed courseload. While people seemed to be impressed, I always felt like an imposter, knowing less CS than the CS students and less physics than the physics students. Couldn't maintain a great GPA either. Applied to 8 PhD programs, got rejected by all of them. Most of the CS companies also rejected me (a recruiter said I had too many degrees (???)). I did end up working at a National Lab, which was an amazing experience.

Side note: The American Physical Society(APS) publishes undergrad physics employment data[0] that my peers and I used to look at to feel good about our non-grad school prospects after BS. After my degree I realized it is biased at best, misleading at worst.

Currently I am doing an interdisciplinary (read flexible) masters program in computational science. It allows me to take both CS and physics grad classes and do research in physics labs too. Now I plan on pursuing research in machine learning applied to super big data hairy physics problems. I am gonna apply to PhD programs again (fields are fuzzy: physics, CS, ML, data science).

Would I do it again? Hell yeah. Started out as physics and then CS seemed interesting. Both gave me valuable skills: Good understanding of data structures, HPC, prototyping is helpful with physics problems, and I am not afraid of math in grad ML classes because of physics.

Would I recommend it to others? Not really unless you are extremely passionate about both (took me about 2 years to feel that) or are a genius and confident in your abilities (I am not). I am still anxious about the future, and where will I fit. If you have a passing interest in physics, do CS with a physics minor to satisfy that itch or pursue an interdisciplinary program[1] so you are not stranded employment wise. Set on being a physicist? Take some CS classes (data structures, simulation, numerical analysis, HPC, algorithms etc.)

People of HN, if you have a similar background/work in a similar field, I would love to pick your brain about your path and research/career options.

[0] [https://www.aps.org/careers/statistics/index.cfm](https://www.aps.org/careers/statistics/index.cfm) [1] [https://www.siam.org/Students-Education/Resources/For- Underg...](https://www.siam.org/Students-Education/Resources/For- Undergraduate-Students/Detail/graduate-and-undergraduate-programs-in- computational-science)

<comment><USER25> I didn't read the artidcle yet, but I experience the same issues.

Computer science + business minor as a bachelor

Psychology (honours) as 2nd bachelor

Game studies master

Computer science research master

My fields of interest: computer science, psychology and business.

For the rest, your comment is almost identical, to some extent even the math parth (as psych. is quite statistics heavy compared to CS).

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Grad school is one of the biggest modern scams that convinces highly skilled people to work for peanuts for years on end.

<comment><USER27> it really is messed up. in addition, it creates a bunch of weird spots in the job search space. for example, i have come across many jobs that i am more than qualified for, but they ended up being "post-doctoral fellowships". so they are jobs that i can't get because i don't have a ph.d. but even if i could get them, i would take around a 50% pay cut. it doesn't make any sense whatsoever! the only explanation is the post-doc thing being basically a version of slavery for skilled and educated people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> i like the story of the college grads with terrible undergraduate grades applying for the masters program, and getting in! And then turning their life around. After they graduate with a master's degree its like all their undergraduate sins are erased.

<comment><USER29> After your first job out of college, your undergraduate sins are essentially erased as well. The longer your career exists, the smaller the emphasis (and value of) your undergraduate performance becomes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Came to check this to confirm my experience. I would hire an ex PhD physicist as a data scientist only if they actually talk data science in an interview. Even better if they have good work experience in the same field.

One thing that really irks me is this notion that PhDs in physics are so smart just hire them and they can figure it out. Maybe that's the case, but is it something I'm willing to take a bet on? probably not at least until you've learnt the field and ideally if you have experience.

That said my best friend in high school was one of the smartest people I know, went on to do a PhD in physics and then took two years to find a job. I know the struggle these guys go though because I spent a lot of time trying to help the guy out. Thankfully he landed on his feet, but the sad truth is a lot of these guys either just really love the field or think they're going to be the next Feynman, until they realize how competitive the physics world is for only a few tenured spots.

The good news is if you've still got what it takes after a PhD or postdoc and you have the time or determination you've definitely already proved you have the horsepower, the work is then just converting that into something the real world appreciates.

</comment><comment><USER31> I have worked in the software world for 20 years, and started coding while in grad school studying for my master's in astrophysics. I initially was building websites on the side to make extra money, but then decided to go full time. My physics background never seemed to matter to anyone. It neither seemed to help or hurt, so long as I could do the work, they seemed content to believe I could learn anything else I'd need to know. Which was true. I bought books on various languages, patterns and computation theory (one of my favorite textbooks).

Other than having co-workers find out I have a physics degree and thinking _I 'm_ the nerd as a result, there really hasn't been upside or downside to having studied physics.

Though, I totally went into physics not for the career but because I really wanted to learn physics.

</comment><comment><USER32> If one is thinking about trying to become H1-B, one should be extremely wary: [https://www.mercurynews.com/2019/04/16/h-1b-more-advanced- de...](https://www.mercurynews.com/2019/04/16/h-1b-more-advanced-degree- holders-selected-in-this-years-lottery-feds-say/) obviously this could change from Presidential administration to administration but they no longer permit those with physics/E.E./math advanced degrees to have H1-B for software work.

<comment><USER33> What awful news!

Unbelievably stupid (for reasons hopefully clear to everyone here). Extremely infuriating that someone would think that the people with these skills aren't extremely valuable for suitable software jobs (...contrary to what the market says).

Especially so in Silicon Valley, where so many software engineering jobs are more on the side of scientific computing, and actually _require_ advanced science degrees.

E.g.: my previous employer was an EDA firm; guess what: writing software for litho mask optimization requires a solid knowledge of EM physics, chemistry and math quite beyond what a typical MS in Comp. Sci. might give. (Everyone on my team had a PhD, none a CompSci).

Then there's the whole academic pyramid aspect: there are way more PhD students than academic jobs, and cutting off access to jobs for people getting PhD's in the US is a good way to slowly kill science (which is an international endeavor).

Out of all the stupid anti-immigration initiatives, this one is the most outrageous.

Signed, a mathematics PhD working in software engineering.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Does anybody have experience going from a CS/engineering undergrad to a physics MSc? I graduated last year with a CE/EE degree (so, some relevant background in mathematics and electromagnetism, not much quantum). I'm looking at programs which would let me leverage CS/software skills to make up for my lack of physics education, and of course I'm reading textbooks in my free time to try to catch up a bit. I don't have any expectation that this would be helpful to my career.

<comment><USER35> I have met a physicist at Perimeter Institute who went all the way to Engineering at Master level and pivoted to Physics PhD. If he could do that, I'm sure you can. I do not remember his name, just his face.

<comment><USER36> I know a person who can do that - Howard Wolowitz.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Its just a strange thing to hear people say a physics masters is useful because it demonstrates your capacity to learn the same material as a computer science undergrad.

I certainly respect a physics degree for the same reason I respect a math degree: it shows me that this person can work really, really hard for a long a time.

If you're in physics or math you may know exactly what I mean, but if you're outside: it is bonkers how hard they have to work.

</comment><comment><USER38> Just get a masters in mathematics. If you end up teaching, there are way more mathematics openings than physics openings. Usually there are 0 physics openings.

</comment><comment><USER39> In the US, a lot of Master's degrees in physics and mathematics are really watered down. I was an engineering student, and had an MS in engineering, and was pursuing a PhD in it as well. I dropped out of the PhD and got another MS in physics as a "consolation degree" \- I basically had all the coursework done as part of my PhD, so the credits just transferred over and I had a free MS in physics. I almost got another MS in mathematics just for the heck of it (took courses for fun).

Why do I say they are watered down degree? Because both the math and physics Master's requirements allow you to use courses _that are required for their Bachelor 's degree_! So the main undergrad analysis class could be used for a Master's in mathematics (unless you had a math undergrad degree).

They structured it this way to try to get people from outside the discipline (like me) into the MS program. I could get an "easier" MS in physics than a physics student could (they could not double count their credits for the MS degree).

It may be another reason the MS degree in these disciplines is looked down upon.

</comment><comment><USER40> I knew a ton of Physics PhDs who went on to be very successful software engineers. They were always sad they couldn't do physics because of either lack of salary or lack of good job options, but they were often very good quantitative engineers.

My PhD opened a lot of doors but it also taught me that I didn't want to be a scientist.

</comment><comment><USER41> This should be nuanced with the fact that a Master's degree in the US is much different than Europe. Typically, in Europe, STEM fields do a "Masters" but it's really equivalent to junior and senior level coursework in the US. This was the case for me as an exchange CS student in Sweden at KTH, and it seemed that all of my Euro friends that were getting masters in their respective country just treat a Masters in STEM as a necessity and it didn't have the same pedigree or difficulty that a top tier US masters would. This is no shot at Euro schools, but something that was very clear to me and my American exchange counterparts when we talked to our EU friends, which were all engineers of some kind.

<comment><USER42> For a countervailing viewpoint, I got a Masters in CS from Georgia Tech, and it was just coursework at the level of my 3rd and 4th years of undergrad in New Zealand. Bit of a let-down.

<comment><USER41> In person or online?

<comment><USER42> Online. Could have something to do with it.

Some classes were very good, but on the whole I think of it mostly as a cheap thumb on the H-1B scales. (Not true on the whole, though -- students of the online program are statistically _far_ more likely to be American citizens than their on-campus counterparts.)

<comment><USER41> I tend to think online programs, even from great schools like Georgia Tech or John Hopkins, are definitely easier than on campus. Typically on campus will attract students that did very well in undergrad and are on their way to a PhD, where as online has no option to continue for a PhD.

<comment> barry-cotter At least sixteen and possibly twenty students from GA Tech's OMSCS have gone on to Ph.D. programmes. The following 14 universities have OMSCS grads and CMU admitted one.

National University of Singapore

MIT

UNSW

Florida International University

UBC

UC-Santa Cruz

Iowa State University

Tokyo Institute of Technology

University of Southern California

Virginia Commonwealth University

Auburn

Georgia Tech

University of New Hampshire

[https://www.reddit.com/r/OMSCS/comments/awvb03/omscs_phd/](https://www.reddit.com/r/OMSCS/comments/awvb03/omscs_phd/)

<comment><USER41> Not trying to discredit your evidence, but according to the GT OMSCS website, there have been 8664 students in that program. 20/8664 is less than .25%. Anyways, all I'm saying is that I'm confident that Online MSCS are not held to the same pedigree or difficulty as their on campus counterparts.

<comment><USER43> But what is the basis for your confidence?

The vast majority of students are working alongside the degree and not looking to go on to phd programs...

Imperial, Stanford, Columbia, Gatech, UIUC, Utexas Austin all offer online degrees.

Being in one of these programs myself I can assure you that the standard is rigorous. I attended a top university in the UK and the quality of education is not any lower.

There are some universities that are absolutely frauds but that is not the case for the universities listed above.

If you disagree go on the coursework pages and try and do the first problem set then tell me it's not as difficult.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Case in point: an Ask HN from a few week ago about what people with Physics backgrounds are currently working on

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19500151](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19500151)

</comment><comment><USER45> ITT: a bunch of people with engineering physics or masters' of physics who are either doing really well or not so well and ascribing that to their degree. I'm a loser because I have anxiety and don't know how to sell myself, not because I have an MS. I keep going for shitty IT/programming jobs and they ask me "why aren't you doing physics." I say "I don't think I'm smart enough." Which is honest but I could just as easily bullshit them and use it to talk myself up. I don't think many recruiters would last a month in those courses anyway.

</comment><comment><USER46> Interesting!

Personally, I started with an B.Sc. Astrophysics, finished that. Realized that it may take a while before I could get in a job related to an area that I'm interested in. I went back and completed an B.Sc. Computer Sciences.

I've typically justified the two degrees by explaining that physics taught me how to learn, how to break apart a problem, and computer sciences provided the foundational basics as to how to associate abstract concepts into software. It was certainly an experience!

</comment><comment><USER47> This is probably bad advice. Better advice would be to just find a good experiment at a reputable school and latch on.

Projects in experimental physics at a good state school are typically a great place for access to a machine shop, computing resources, and the possibility for travel, in addition to the departments typically having a lower student to professor ratio compared to the engineering schools.

You're also more likely to work for people with a variety of skills.

</comment><comment><USER48> I've spent a lot of time getting an MA in mathematics, but I sometimes feel that I should've just gone straight for computer science. I never intended to do pure math research. My CS friends know more about databases and distributed systems than I do, even if I know more about representation theory. Still, if you subscribe to the signaling theory of education, what does it matter.

<comment><USER11> > My CS friends know more about databases and distributed systems than I do, > even if I know more about representation theory

I don't mean to be rude but this was a very foreseeable outcome of a masters in math. Why didn't you foresee it?

<comment><USER48> My reasons for choosing what I chose do not fit into a Hacker News comment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> I think there are two parts of it. Physics degree is good -- obtaining it correlates with the head being screwed on straight and is often appreciated by employers.

On the other axis, I am puzzled on why they consider a Masters as a sweet spot. If a graduate degree is not required, it does not get you much, career- wise; and wherever a graduate degree is appreciated a PhD gets you further. Just my 2c.

</comment><comment><USER50> Once you have the job a master's degree is a master's degree. If your employer (esp. large ones) has some benefits in place for possessing a master's you will qualify. However when you apply for jobs hiring managers may not know what your master's degree (or Ph.D. for that matter) in physics entails.

<comment><USER51> Depends on the job. Some government labs will only hire people with MS's or PhDs in physics or a related field.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> It me! Dropped out of my PhD program to do software engineering. Great preparation for thinking from first principles.

</comment><comment><USER53> Physics is a great general purpose education. I have a BS in Physics, from the early 1970s, and while I have always worked in some form of software development or research role, Physics was a great start.

In current times, a BS degree is probably not as useful, so spending a little extra time to get a MS makes sense.

</comment><comment><USER54> ... except in physics.

</comment><comment><USER55> I'm supposed to get my master's degree in physics this summer (only a thesis remains), and this thread is not doing me any good. Good thing I can program, I guess.

<comment><USER56> I am enrolling in an undergrad physics+mathematics program soon. And I started feeling uncomfortable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> In general, physics majors tend to be badasses.

I know of people in a myriad of tech careers: site-reliability engineer, MBB management consulting, QA, offensive security.

</comment><comment><USER58> Some universities have an Engineering Physics undergraduate program, seems like a good option, of having choices to work in a lot of industries.

</comment><comment><USER59> Another thing that opens the door to myriad careers is learning to code and learning math. it's free</comment>