Could predictive database queries replace machine learning models? - <AUTHOR> https://aito.ai/blog/could-predictive-database-queries-replace-machine-learning-models <comment><USER2> I don't see it as a problem that this will likely just work for, and thus correctly target, "easy" problems. Nobody looking at this blog post should think "hmm, sober of this lets me implement an autonomous vehicle in a single query", but rather "this looks like a great way to explore data without requiring any data science expertise". Many businesses have data and could gain insight and improve their business if they just ran some rudimentary queries to understand customer patterns etc, without needing a data science PhD to crunch numbers for them.

This seems to provide that type of value.

If I were developing this, I would make sure to make this able to read from Excel sheets and integrate with popular invoicing services etc, because that is where I believe the primary customers are in technological maturity.

<comment><USER3> Agree entirely.I see this being implemented as a column type on analytics DBs such as Snowflake or Bigquery (feature of a bigger product) rather than a specific DB designed for ML.

The reason being that as you pointed out, this would be most useful for "easy" problems. These problems live with analysts who are using analytics oriented DBs as part of their Business Intelligence workflow.

<comment><USER4> I can see, why having predictive queries in solutions like Snowflake or Postgres would be extremely tempting.

Still, the problem of integrating the Aito like functionality in existing databases is that it requires lot of specialized data structures to work fast enough. While getting it to work in existing DBs is plausible, at minimum it would require completely new storage engine, or at least a wide refactoring to the old ones.

Regarding the analyst workflows: could you tell more about the main use cases? We haven't had Analyst / BI customers (yet), while they seem like a plausible audience for an Aito-like solution.

<comment><USER5> You work on this?

Writing storage engines for MySQL or even Postgres isn't that hard.

<comment><USER4> Would you be our first customer, if we do it? ;-)

The fact of the matter is that, while it is a tempting idea it's far from easy. The interfaces may not be that hard, but the storage itself will have its challenges and building a fast ad-hoc inference & representation learning layers on top of it is a huge project.

After working on Aito's DB and ML parts for several years, I can promise: it's more work & harder than it looks :-)

<comment><USER5> Yeah I trust you, I use and contribute to rdbms and am a bit familiar with their innards.

The key thing you want to enable is eg Tableau. Building classifications and predictions into something business people rather than devs use would be a promising strategy.

Recently I've been using presto to make various things appear to be conventional db tables, and getting computed data into tableau that way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The idea of doing predictive ML inside of, say, MySQL, sounds tremendously appealing. E.g. if you could add something like a "predictive index" that would model one column based on certain other columns, and with a variety of "prediction types" (just like choosing index types of b-tree, hash, etc.).

Although instead of a SELECT statement on existent rows, you'd need to use something like a PREDICT statement on non-existent rows:

      PREDICT product_category
      FROM invoice_data
      WHERE item_description = "Packaging design"
      AND vendor_code = "VENDOR-1676"

The big question for me, however, would be: when would the predictive model be updated? It seems too computationally expensive to update it on every UPDATE, INSERT and DELETE. I mean, if it's of any decent complexity, it would require a full table read every time it was updated, no? Would you have to manually issue a command to update it? How long would that take?

But it absolutely seems like a _very_ natural place to predictive capabilities -- directly into the database.

<comment><USER7> The power of SQL is that you don't even have to make the decision "when would the predictive model be updated? " . This could be configurable and be dependent on the data that you can find in the tables.

Also, another solution that is sort of the opposite is Datasette. [https://datasette.readthedocs.io/en/stable/](https://datasette.readthedocs.io/en/stable/)

<comment><USER8> That sounds more like fuzzy inference rather than prediction.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Short answer - no. Where is the explanation for how the predictive queries work. Is it some sort of bayesian model? It's not too hard to quickly fit some NB or regression model on some dataset on the fly given the simplicity of those models. However just throwing random features at it without consideration of bias vs variance, i.e. whether the model is either over- fitting or is not powerful enough to answer the question can easily result in a useless model. To make this useful you would need to build in all of the functionality regular data scientists use to build regular models. In doing so you would lose all of the speed and flexibility of the tool you are pushing. Also given the prevalence of deep learning models for unstructured data, and also search and recommendations, such an approach would not work given it relies on structured data. A lot of modern data science work focuses on those kind of problems as learning from structured data is mostly quick and easy with today's ML tools. I don't see how this framework would solve for these more complex and more typical business problems.

<comment><USER4> I would say, that the answer is partially yes and partially no.

We have done several projects with simple machine learning problems, where e.g. semi-technical RPA developers have been able to implement ML based automation just fine. We have gotten compliments that Aito is easy to use, and one intelligent automation demo was implemented in 5 hours with some integrations by 2 RPA developers. It's worth noting, that there is an absolute abundance of ML problems (especially in domains like automation or UIs) that are simple to understand and easy as ML problems.

At the same time, we have run into many ML problems, which require data scientist to even formulate the problem and to think about it. There are also problems, where Aito's Bayesian approach is inadequate and you need a data scientist to do good amount engineering to make it possible to model the patterns and then find the right model.

So TBH: I don't think the predictive queries can fully replace the traditional models or data science work, but there are large application domains, that can be handled just fine with predictive queries and even by normal developers.

Regarding text: Aito can already handle simple texts just fine, and with representation learning based 'world modeling' approaches: I believe that we can do also more complex analysis on text.

Overall, Aito does not seek to provide the best models or solve the hardest problems, but it's value proposition is on speed and easiness. We focus on investment instead of return in the return-on-investment equation. It gives an advantage on the lower-value 'tail' of the ML market, where the importance of costs is higher, and where the traditional data science approach is economically not that attractive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I didn't finish ready the article because it didn't give a succinct summary of what predictive databases are. But at a glance this seems to be a SQL interface to an AUTOML system. Is that a correct summary? I don't get the distinction between ML and predictive databases. It seems predictive databases use ML.

<comment><USER11> Seems like "predictive database queries" is more about the queries and less about the database, and there's nothing relational (or RDBMS/SQL) about it.

<comment><USER10> The title implies that it's going to replace ML models. But it seems that it still uses ML models, but provides a different interface. It also seems that it's using some AutoML training system, so that in theory little ML expertise is required to use the system.

<comment><USER12> > in theory little ML expertise is required to use the system

Maybe I'm just a cynical data scientist, but this is how we get people using and interpreting models that they don't necessarily understand the complexities of. If some data violates an underlying assumption or has some complexities around representation and meaning then there's nothing really stopping someone getting a model that appears to fit correctly but gives answers that are meaningless or just wrong.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> chroem- Glad to see my technical debt has gone full circle, and become the bleeding edge (joking-not-joking). Hierarchical linear models implemented as aggregation queries are surprisingly powerful and easy to scale. We use them in production to do time series forecasting, among other things.

<comment><USER13> >Glad to see my technical debt has gone full circle, and become the bleeding edge

This exact cycle is why I'm starting to feel serious burnout in this industry. Even when I look to other related branches of data analysis, everything just feels to be a gigantic cesspit of corporate ignorance feeding on itself, fueled by new buzzwords.

I wonder if anyone's done studies on the cycle time of technology adoption in corporate life; I swear it's getting faster.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The author here. If you have any questions about the article, I'm happy to help. :-)

I do believe, that the query based ML will replace the trained model based ML in the long run. I believe this not because the results would be better, but because it offers higher productivity and greater simplicity.

What are your thoughts? Does the query based ML makes sense?

<comment><USER14> I think there is a huge underlying assumption that given some data, building a model for it is trivial and can be done on the fly. I have seen the same kind of approach from people who have built toy models in 10 lines using pytorch and seem to equate fizzbuzz code for production code.

If you can clearly articulate how you do feature engineering, model debugging, meeting latency requirements, handling constant updates, dealing with non- numerical data and all the other issues that real world ML faces inside a query engine automatically, we can sit together and have a meaningful chat.

<comment><USER4> I do understand your point. There are definately tons of hard data science problems, which are simply not suitable for the predictive query kind of approach.

At the same time there are tons of ML problems e.g. in process automation or user interaction, which have extremely strong patterns and very easy to treat with sophisticated enough ML model.

Regarding your list of items. Feature engineering is greatly managed by the user selecting relevant facts in the query, by analyzers, by MDL based feature learning and by information theory based feature selection. I feel this approach is pretty robust for many problems, all thought not complete. There are special queries like $on for making conditional variables of form A|B, and $numeric to deal numeric data, that can be used manually.

Model debugging can be partly done with $why explanations, that are easy to create with the Bayesian approach. I feel that model debugging has been good enough.

Latency requirements and constant updates are more about software/database engineering and they are solvable, but right now we do recommend batch updates and applications, that can deal with sparsely occurring multi second latency. And OFC if you have limited data sets (less than 100k), there shouldn't be such problems.

I feel that all the problems you listed are solvable, but they are of course hard problems and we are still on the roadmap on fully solving those issues for larger set of applications. For many applications (like RPA, internal tools, analytics) these are not real issues, while the benefits (easiness, speed) are extremely concrete and relevant.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'd like to learn a bit more about your architecture/process and why it creates value over the standard ML toolkit. It makes sense philosophically to increase capability in the database to handle uncertainty and so forth. Databases were built for transactions not analytics and a rethink would likely be fruitful.

Also, do you have any funding?

<comment><USER4> The reason, why the predictive queries create value relates to the simplified workflow and the simplified architecture.

Instead of defining model, training model and using model, you merely ask for an arbitrary unknown variable, based on any arbitrary facts. This provides much easier interface, much faster iteration cycle and other technical benefits like the ability to create generic query templates. These benefits stand even when compared to the AutoML platforms (which also do lot of heavy lifting to simplify the workflow).

Regarding the architecture and process: the system has a lot of resemblance to normal databases (and especially to the Lucene like search engines), but in order to serve arbitrary predictive queries, the entire database is specialized in-and-out for counting statistics and doing millisecond time- frame ML modeling. The things are somewhat described in the article, but I'm also happy to answer to additional questions about the system.

As interesting details the underlying database is very functional programming oriented and build on a Git-like system. We'd like to expose the database's snapshot and branching abilities in the future.

<comment><USER15> So effectively, you've added a set of ML/statistics scripts to the query engine? But the query engine is otherwise still relational based?

<comment><USER4> No scripts. The change is much deeper, because Aito uses ad hoc / lazy models to provide the predictive query capabilities. If you would thinly integrate some 3rd party ML library, you would end up with separate 1) model definition and 2) training steps as an addition to 3) the prediction. Aito's database is specialized for counting statistics, so that it can create ML models in millisecond scale to answer pretty arbitrary prediction queries instantly.

There is quite normal query engine working inside Aito, but the basic database query capabilities haven't been our focus right now. We have an SQL API on our roadmap, but it will likely take time, before we can even start working on it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> It sounds a bit like search and search relevance. Which is a bit like trying to guess what's wanted in a ranked or probabilistic ordering.

Often not just used for finding blog articles or products, but also many other ranking situations we don't think about. One is "fuzzy joins" across databases. Like match this person in this database, with another person in another database.

<comment><USER4> This is a good point, and Aito's inference engine has lot of similarities with search engines. As an interesting, we can provide TF-IDF scored full text search functionality from the same indexes we are also using for inferences.

Still, while there are tons of similarities, I feel that the inferences engines are fundamentally different from search engines. The data structures are different, and I can see them diverging even more in the future. The algorithms and modes of operations are very different, even if there is some overlap.

From the user point of view, there is still a striking similarity between Aito and ElasticSearch. Both act now as auxiliary databases (all thought we would like to make Aito fully ACID with an SQL interface in future) and provide more search engine / inference engine-like functionality than full database functionality.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> The DB implementation of PA is the ultimate turn-key avenue if its indistinguishable in the markets from ML.

The could just call it artificial light, prepivot the marketing and open up a new field in the mind of the customers if its just a friendly game of spin the data among nerds.

</comment><comment><USER18> Kind of reminds me of Factor Tables: [https://github.com/RowColz/AI](https://github.com/RowColz/AI)

<comment><USER15> This looks like a fairly low power monte-carlo system. You just store samples, and the inference is sampling that sample set? That's just bootstrapping and has been far more explored in a much more extensive way by random forests and so forth.

You've shoe-horned this logic that usually belongs in linear algebra world into a database table form, there's some initiative there but this has also been heavily explored in the academic field under the topic of Probabilistic Databases. BayesDB is a full implementation of what you've just described, with a much deeper inference engine utilizing joint distributions rather than just distributions that exactly match the sample.

<comment><USER18> Re: "You just store samples"

Not necessarily. One can "summarize" the samples, as shown, to get approximations using much less data. And various sub-sets can be switched on and off as needed (or weights turned down).

Re: "BayesDB is a full implementation of what you've just described"

Perhaps, but using tools similar to what office workers currently use, staff without PhD's can study and adjust results based on direct observation and specialty sub-division. It's more about an approachable tool-set and division of labor than technical accuracy. It's about "de-esoteric-izing" AI so that more can assist in its tuning.

<comment><USER15> BayesDB provides a toolset, what you've proposed is where you need knowledge of the underlying process. You've shown some initiative here, but I'd really recommend studying what's out there and doing a true contrast of your solution to see the shortfalls.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Macaroni in 'Yankee Doodle' Is Not What You Think - <AUTHOR> http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-macaroni-in-yankee-doodle-is-not-what-you-think <comment><USER2> The author is trying to say there's some gay aspect to this, but it's really just a country vs. city thing. That goes back a long way, at least to the Roman Empire. There's also the Britain vs. the rest of the world thing, which was a big deal during the days of the British Empire.

The "macaroni" outfits shown are only a slight exaggeration of 18th century European male formal dress. The 20th century equivalent would be a zoot suit vs. a business suit.

<comment><USER3> The author quotes numerous original sources from the time that commented on the 'gay aspect' of macaronis.

They make the argument that this commentary, in particular caricatures, were a driving force behind the macaroni's change in perception in the public eye.

Perhaps these caricatures were motivated by a city vs country thing, but seeing as there were caricatures created in the cities this seems unlikely.

 _English commentators... variously referred to macaronis as "that doubtful gender," "hermaphrodites," and "amphibious creatures."_

 _One song described a macaroni as thus: "His taper waist, so strait and long, / His spindle shanks, like pitchfork prong, / To what sex does the thing belong? / 'Tis call'd a Macaroni."_

 _The Oxford Magazine similarly described the macaroni as not belonging to the gender binary: "There is indeed a kind of animal, neither male, nor female, a thing of neuter gender, lately started up among us. It is called a Macaroni. It talks without meaning, it smiles without pleasure, it eats without appetite, it rides without exercise, it wenches without passion."_

 _in the early 1770s, Mary Darly, a cartoonist by trade, devoted so much energy to caricaturing macaronis that her store in London became known as "The Macaroni Print Shop." Darly's ridicule of macaronis became the first widespread use of the caricature as a means of social commentary._

<comment><USER4> What would be comments on a "gay aspect" today aren't necessarily so 200 years ago, even if the wording is the same. The past is a foreign country.

Your third quote is especially unpersuasive; it lists "neither male nor female" side by side with many other obviously hyperbolic insults, all of which are to the effect "they're unnatural". And one of them specifically says that macaronis are given to womanizing.

<comment><USER5> The word "gay" may have changed in meaning from "cheerful to homosexual", but being referred to as _" that doubtful gender," "hermaphrodites,"_ and _" amphibious creatures,"_ or having questions asked about _" to what sex [the thing belongs]?_" or being described as _" a kind of animal, neither male, nor female, a thing of neuter gender"_ leaves very little to the imagination.

The fact that it was noteworthy and the main focus of commentary also implies that it deviated from the norms of the time.

<comment><USER6> You are conflating gender with sexuality. It may be a recent thing to explicitly differentiate between them in discourse, but gender was still distinct at the time - to insult a man's masculinity would clearly not in all contexts imply you were calling him a homosexual. In fact I'm sure in a majority of cases it would _not_ imply that, since insults to masculinity were and still are quite commonplace.

More specifically, hermaphroditism does not have any clear implication of homosexuality, and a neuter gender has an implication of _no_ sexuality. That doubtful gender is the strongest possible insinuation, but still weak given it clearly targets gender.

These all seem to be _immasculating_ insults, and much more convincing arguments would need to be made to infer the implication of homosexuality. In fact, even the article points to masculinity being the overriding theme.

If there were clearer contemporaneous examples of these phrases more unambiguously implying homosexuality, that would be more convincing.

<comment><USER4> > gender was still distinct at the time - to insult a man's masculinity would > clearly not in all contexts imply you were calling him a homosexual

To the classical Romans, a man having sex with men was considered to be demonstrating _greater_ masculinity (if he was topping) than one having sex with women; women were soft targets (as a Latin teacher of mine put it, "anatomically passive" and therefore not so much of an accomplishment).

<comment><USER7> The term macaroni was not used by the romans.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> So, hipsters and hipster hate has been around for at least 225 years?

<comment><USER9> I bet there is a letter from Roman times that calls out some hipster analogue.

<comment><USER10> The idea that current generations are less manly and morally upright than their forefathers is basically the defining trope of Roman literature.

<comment><USER11> Yup, when your founders were fathered by Mars and suckled by a she-wolf, you can only go downhill from there.

<comment><USER12> Interestingly, in Latin, a she-wolf (lupa) is slang for a prostitute.

For some inexplicable reason I feel that it is much more likely that they were nursed by a prostitute than by a wolf ;-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Nice job HN, I had a cool song to sing with the grand daughter as she ate her artesian Kraft Mac and Cheese about our founding fathers, but now it's about hipsters? Are hipsters the reason we can't have nice pasta based songs?

Next you'll be telling me the Oscar Meyer song isn't about baloney but some hipster tofu loaf infused with sirachi sauce.

<comment><USER14> Artesian? You mean there's a giant underground lake of pressurized mac'n'cheese? :D

<comment><USER15> Source please. Really.. GPS coordinates would be even better. A lake of Mac and Cheese? If it were adjacent to a lake of RC Cola, I think I'd be set.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Reading between the lines a bet, (first wave) "macaroni" is what certain hipsters called themselves, until people they didn't like started dressing like them, at which point the hipsters mocked their mainstream followers.

This behavior was satirized in Portlandia's "Over" sketch.

Also, "metrosexual". [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YlGqN3AKOsA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YlGqN3AKOsA)

</comment><comment><USER17> Am I the only one that actually did learn this in school?

</comment><comment><USER18> You ain't schooling me on nothing you click-baity title. I knew this from when I satisfied my own curiosity with wikipedia.

<comment><USER19> Likewise, though I was taught about Macaroni in a course on fashion history before I first even heard the Yankee Doodle song.

<comment><USER20> Out of curiosity are you American? I the first time I heard Yankee Doodle I was probably in.. first grade? Maybe second?

Just curious if there are places in the US where you wouldn't necessarily hear the song as a child.

<comment><USER19> No, I'm not American. :-p

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> There is a fantastic Lexicon Valley podcast episode about this [0] which draws on most of the same evidence. It also dicusses whether the word "Dude" my have been popularised from the same song. Definitely worth checking out! [0] [http://www.slate.com/articles/podcasts/lexicon_valley/2014/0...](http://www.slate.com/articles/podcasts/lexicon_valley/2014/01/lexicon_valley_the_etymology_and_early_history_of_the_word_dude.html)

</comment><comment><USER22> The author says

today treated as a patriotic anthem

Not in the america I grew up in. It has simple lyrics, a familiar tune and easy to instruct children to learn and play an instrument to

<comment><USER23> Maybe you just don't patriot? It's a 4th-of-July staple.

<comment><USER22> I would suspect this is a regional difference. I live in a different area that I was reared and we often have fun comparing the differences. like pop vs. Soda

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> So it was what I thought.

<comment><USER25> Same. Despise this headline formula.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> The modern day equivalent? The Brony?

<comment><USER27> The analogue that I thought of was metrosexual, but everyone else in the thread is calling them hipsters.

<comment><USER28> Is metrosexual still a thing? Haven't heard that word in years.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> It's amazing how, to this day, American fashion is still largely off the pulse and out of step with the world.

[http://i0.kym- cdn.com/entries/icons/original/000/014/711/138...](http://i0.kym- cdn.com/entries/icons/original/000/014/711/1380697092809.jpg)</comment>


U.S. patent office shortfall worsens - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/politicsNews/idUSTRE55M76820090623

<comment><AUTHOR> Tim O'Reilly sent this link out on Twitter. His question was "does this signify a decline in innovation, or the end of a bubble?"</comment>


Show HN: The Byte – A Byte-Sized Podcast about Containers, Cloud, and Tech - <AUTHOR> http://thebyte.io <comment><USER2> Looks interesting. I will take a listen tomorrow on my drive to work.

<comment><USER2> I listened to three of these and they were great. Thanks.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How would you make public transit profitable / create more value? - <AUTHOR> Reading the discussion on http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1069703 got me thinking about the fiscal crisis I keep seeing transportation authorities having. Both the MBTA (Massachusetts Bay) and MTA (NY Metro) systems, in my area of the world, have staggering debt and frequent problems, and I've heard about similar problems elsewhere.
From what I can tell, their main sources of revenue are vehicle / station advertising, fares, and in-station rents for business venues.
How would you improve or add to these revenues?
Update: There's a lot of (possibly justified) cynicism in some of the responses received so far. Maybe a better way of looking at this is:
How would you have public transit create more value? <comment><USER2> Separate the functions of providing mass transit service and providing mobility for those who can't afford it on their own. There is no need to subsidize mass transit beyond the value of the congestion, pollution, and any other externalities it reduces. Cincinnati does this to an extent through Everybody Rides Metro[1]. A similar concept is facing a lot more resistance in Austin[2].

Another necessary policy shift is ceasing to discourage transit-supportive density. Most American cities have wide swathes of land zoned for single- family housing. If everyone is _forced_ to spread out by their government, it will be harder to provide high quality mass transit. This is even worse when you have neighborhoods full of culs-de-sac, which I think should be outlawed, or at the very least they shouldn't be maintained with public funds as they are effectively private driveways that make the street network function more poorly.

Cities also often tax density by requiring large developments to provide a certain amount of funds for affordable housing. Dense developments make housing more affordable in the areas where people want to live by supplying more of it without a commensurate effect on demand. Single-family housing rarely has the same requirements. We shouldn't be taxing the things that make our transit systems work better and provide more affordable housing than the alternatives. Most zoning should be abolished.

[1] <http://www.everybodyridesmetro.org/>

[2] [http://www.austinchronicle.com/gyrobase/Issue/story?oid=oid:...](http://www.austinchronicle.com/gyrobase/Issue/story?oid=oid:940810)

</comment><comment><USER3> Public transportation is a choice for some. Whether economic-driven or lifestyle. My point is its optional - you can't force people to take public transit.

Public transportation is necessary because not everyone can afford a private car or wants to drive a car (not everyone can bike - and biking in inclement weather is not a good experience).

Public transportation works poorly outside of urban centers because of grid density problems (in the suburbs, you can't cut through someone's yard to get to a bus stop - whereas in the city, regular blocks make it more direct to get to bus stops).

However, public transportation has to support the suburbs because a lot of lower-paid workers rely on it to get to their jobs in the suburbs. On many suburban bus routes, you will probably find it a maddening experience - as it is designed to go in loop-around fashion through office parks.

In other forums, its been argued that private auto industry gets a huge indirect subsidy from the government by the government supporting almost the majority of infrastructure road costs, wars to keep oil producers in check. The private auto industry has huge lobbying powers (see how much highway construction dollars came out of the last stimulus bill). It's also been argued that the true purpose of public transit is to give jobs to people.

</comment><comment><USER4> Public transport can create value by running all night. That way, more young people move to the city and bring money with them and create wealth while they are there.

<comment><USER5> As a relatively young person living in a city, I'd appreciate public transportation being available all night. I don't think the ridership would be high enough for it to be profitable, though. You'd also have to deal with the problem of it becoming a de facto homeless shelter.

<comment><USER6> Instead of selling tickets and passes directly, sell bonds that pay interest in tickets / passes: you pay $1000, you get ten rides per month. These bonds would be transferable. That way, it's restricted to people who can put together, say, $1000 in cash. It wouldn't be hard to borrow that much, if you didn't have it on hand, unless you were a total failure.

Tourists would just put up the money as a deposit, and get it back at the end of their trip.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I can think of several times here in SF where I took a taxi instead of a bus because I didn't have cash on me. Now with the new RFID translink cards, it's much less hassle and I ride the bus a lot more.

</comment><comment><USER8> Much of mass transit (airplanes, tour buses, Greyhound, ocean cruise lines, etc.) are profitable.

There are things that people are not willing to pay for, and government types have labelled these things "market failures", which, BTW, is a misuse of the term.

Government has then stepped in and run programs that people are not willing to pay for.

So the question really boils down to "how would you make something that noone has ever figured out how to make profitable...profitable?"

It's a bit like recycling: there have been metal recyclers for centuries. People do not recycle glass and paper because it is a value DESTROYING activity.... and thus government got involved, and requires people to separate their trash streams...before recombining about 75% of the "recycled" materials and putting them in landfills.

The only good answer to this question is "mu".

<comment><USER9> Have you heard the term "externality"?

<comment><USER8> Yes.

Mass transit is subsidized, in most cases, FAR beyond whatever the externalities cost.

In Boston, 75% of the cost of each fair is payed for by other taxpayers. I dated a woman getting her PhD at MIT in transportation studies for a few years and asked her "are there any studies showing that the negative externalities that are dealt with here cost anything like the MBTA subsidy?"

The answer is no - even if you count externalities, most public transit is a huge exercise in value destruction.

<comment><USER7> Does anyone know the approximate percentage spent on actual operations vs. management and build-out of the system?

I lived in Boston for a summer in 2006, and I got to witness the transition from decades-old transit tokens to paper cards.

It was a giant cluster: Horrid machine usability, non-reusable transit cards, and untrained station personnel. It made me wonder what sort of premium the MBTA paid for that "upgrade" and how much rider confidence was lost.

<comment><USER9> The MBTA's a case study in incompetence, due to years of turf battles between the lege and governor's office. It's run by a bunch of overlapping boards with an org chart that looks like a spider web.

So anyways, they're about 30 billion in the hole over the next 10 years for what it will cost to do routine maintenance on the system going forward, mostly because it was all neglected for 20 years during the big dig fiasco.

I continually wonder why we can't build these things in this country anymore.. in the 20th century, a whole bunch of cities went from 0 to a complete transit infrastructure. These days, adding a single line or extension is a multi- decade fiasco (green line extension in Somerville, or the second east side line in manhattan).

<comment><USER8> > The MBTA's a case study in incompetence, due to years of turf battles > between the lege and governor's office. It's run by a bunch of overlapping > boards with an org chart that looks like a spider web.

Why is it that the MBTA, BART, the Phoenix light rail, etc. always have these problems (unrealistic projections, turf battles, overlapping spheres of control, etc.), and yet Greyhound, Southwest Airlines, etc., don't?

I'd suggest that this sort of problem is endemic to government run transit organizations, and doesn't crop up in the private sector because there's competition, and private firms can only get as many dollars of budget as the paying public is willing to give them.

Horrific incompetence results in extinction ... in the private sector.

<comment><USER9> You know, when I'm talking to engineers, if they say "relational databases are always good" or "relational databases are always bad", I conclude that they're either inexperienced or stupid.

The same oughta be true when evaluating different methods of solving other problems as well. Busses can be run by private companies as long as the government provides the roads, because you don't need government involvement to drive on a road.

Building a road, or a train track, requires some amount of government involvement, especially in dense areas with small lot sizes. Unless we're gonna knock down half the skyskrapers for 30 story parking garages in our major cities, we need to find a way to make mass transit work.

There's 2 approaches towards that -- try to help the right people get into government, or throw your hands up, bury your head in the sand and declare that "databases are never the right solution".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Get rid of the unions and lower revenue/fares at the same time.

<comment><USER11> You know, I try to give unions the benefit of the doubt. I think they still serve a function and I am not ideologically opposed to them. But then we come across incidents like this:

[http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/ttc/article/754297--is-he- sl...](http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/ttc/article/754297--is-he-sleeping- photo-of-mccowan-ttc-booth-goes-viral?bn=1)

Toronto's transit system is amongst a select few in North America where middle- and upper-middle class folks make up a significant chunk of the ridership. Other cities dream of trying to convince folks to give up their daily commute by car. We've achieved this for a good number of people. It also happens to receives the least government funding in all of North America. But the union is really holding our system back.

For crying out loud, it is 2010 and we still have manned booths whose sole purpose is to convert one kind of coin into another. We also have -- I kid you not -- workers that wait on the side of the road with crow bars to switch streetcar track paths during rush hour. Also, I'm embarrassed for anyone visiting our city to ever think of going to the washroom at a subway station. They're absolutely vile.

<comment><AUTHOR> What can you say on how Toronto's succeeded in getting more people to give up on commuting by car?

<comment><USER11> I pretty much concur with potatolicious' assessment. I'd just like to add that it took some visionary thinking to get to where we are today. The city anticipated during WWII, that cars would be the preferred mode of transportation for many more people when the war ended. Instead of building just freeways, the city transit commission went to work planning public transit around rail. At first streetcars were to be used and would just run underground, but eventually the idea morphed into a fully fledged subway system.

That's not the only example of forward-thinking. There is a huge urban valley in Toronto called the Don Valley. In 1918, Toronto decided to build a bridge connecting roads on both sides of the valley and the designer figured "hey, why not build a lower deck capable of holding two lanes of rail traffic....just in case?" About half a century later, when the subway was being extended, they just ran the line through this bridge. In today's fiscal and political climate, a similar decision would never be made. In fact, I'm positive that 50 years from now, future Torontonians will look back at us with frustration at our shortsightedness. Funny thing about that bridge... it can hold 5 lanes of car traffic with sidewalks for pedestrians to boot. The designer successfully designed a bridge to last more than 100 years. It's an incredible accomplishment.

I just want to elaborate on my first post. Toronto's transit system's problems aren't all due to the union of course. They bare the brunt of criticism these days, but the truth of the matter is financial and political backing of the system at provincial and federal levels pretty much stopped happening at the beginning of the 1990s. The federal Liberal government was voted into power in the early 1990s at a time when Canada was dealing with its own financial crisis, not too dissimilar to what the U.S. is facing now. We had all these social programs financed on deficit spending. The Liberals slashed spending on a lot of programs, and Toronto's transit system was one of them. A few years after the Liberals got into power, the Progressive Conservatives were voted in at a provincial level and they also slashed spending. They "downloaded" some social programs onto cities which affected municipal budgets drastically. So basically, the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) has been cash strapped for the better part of 20 years now.

Things are so petty here that when our Prime Minister announced stimulus funding last year, he flat out rejected Toronto's request of money to build out the TTC infrastructure because it "didn't meet the criteria" (details here: [http://www.blogto.com/city/2009/07/a_look_back_at_torontos_s...](http://www.blogto.com/city/2009/07/a_look_back_at_torontos_streetcar_debacle/)). Days after the rejection, our PM decided to fund a $790M mass transit system for a small university town an hour away from Toronto (one which he hopes to win votes in and probably will).

In any event, transit riders in Toronto are the ones getting screwed. It costs $3 for a one-way cash fare. The system is overcrowded. The infrastructure is getting old, although the TTC does a good job of keeping old workhorses running. You know those old GM "fishbowl" buses originally designed in 1959? We still have some of these clunkers operating on routes today (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:TTC_T6H_5307N_Bus_2284.jpg>).

On my more cynical days, I'm of the opinion that Toronto eventually needs to threaten to secede from Ontario (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Province_of_Toronto>) in order to ensure we get our proper share of the tax money so that we can spend it on things that matter to us like mass transit. The provincial and federal governments love to take our money and then not give much of it back when we truly need it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It's a complicated issue, so here's a little background (I have a Masters in Urban Planning so I've read a lot).

Streetcar lines (and subways in some places) _were_ profitable businesses, just like railroad lines. But there were a few features that we don't have today.

First, it was a new mobility technology so it opened up land that was too far away to be developed. There is no such land now in metro areas because highways and have cars make all areas equally accessible.

Second, they were a real estate play as much as a transportation play. Because they opened up new land, the lines tended to go to greenfields where the streetcar companies and their allies owned or could buy land. Take a look at the Brown line in Chicago and watch how it winds - that was a land acquisition issue. This wouldn't work now because a rail line doesn't increase the value of land enough since so much is accessible by car.

Third, people rode trains _a lot_ more then than people ride them even now. These trains were extensions off of a very dense, centralized city. Technology and social changes reduced the number of daily rides. For instance, refrigerators meant that women didn't have to ride into the market every day. Worker benefits (like the 6 or 5 day work week) meant that workers didn't ride as often. As shopping and employment decentralized, people didn't have to ride to the city as often. And when people got cars, they had an alternative to the train.

So what can we learn from history and contemporary transit to make transit more valuable today?

First, there must be attractions at both end so the fixed costs in tracks and cars can make money both ways. Early streetcar lines often has amusement parks at the terminus to promote two-way travel. The Las Vegas monorail is a decent modern version of this - there's something at every stop. Transit lines that end in the suburbs at a big parking lot will be underutilized by definition.

Second, land use matters. All of the streetcars and subways were built before zoning and so the market built what the market could bear by transit, and buildings could be razed and built bigger if demand grew. Housing in transit- rich cities and near light rail in cities with new transit systems if more expensive because zoning restricts how much can be built. In addition to maximum height, massing, and lot utilization, there are also minimum parking limits that mean every house/condo is much more expensive and not affordable to people that would use transit the most. Take a look at the area around the transit stops in Arlington, VA for an example of transit zoning done right - extremely dense development within 1/2 mile of transit stops. It has the lowest car ownership and usage in Northern VA and generates 50% of the county's property tax in 5% of its land area.

Third is that quality of service matters. Busses in the US suck and are slow because fare collection takes place one at a time while the bus is stopped. Curitiba, Brazil (look it up, it's the world leader in bus transit) has bus stops where you pay to enter and everyone boards at once. The city has one of the highest rates of car ownership in Brazil _and_ the highest transit utilization in Brazil. On their main bus routes they have 1-3 minute headways so there's no such thing as looking at a schedule. Other things like priority lanes for buses at stoplights, tech to let the bus hold a green light to make it through, etc help. Bogota Columbia is the other leading bus tech center and both cities do something like 50x the miles of service per dollar as a subway would have cost to build and operate.

Fourth, if there's lots of free parking at the destination it's almost always easier to drive. Point to point means the trip is faster and free parking means it costs less. Places in the states that have the highest transit usage (Boston, New York, Chicago Loop, SF) are places where parking sucks or is expensive. Even LA traffic doesn't keep people from driving because a) the buses are stuck in it too, and b) it's free to park when you get there.

Basically, any city that's building a light rail or subway line and not _dramatically_ increasing the zoning around it is throwing money away. For instance, the 2nd Ave subway in NYC probably won't change much for the $5 billion because there's no way to dramatically increase the number of people that live in the Upper East Side or Harlem. Without the proper land use, there's not enough population to drive demand, without demand there's not enough incentive to provide good levels of service, and without good levels of service people will find it faster to drive.

<comment><USER13> Do you know how the total amount of subsidies to mass transit compares to the subsidies to drivers by supplying a completely tax-funded street network?

<comment><USER12> I've always wondered how that would shake out. My guess is that roads are subsidized more per trip but less per mile than transit, because road networks are huge and trips are long but drivers pay for the vehicle and labor. I have no doubt that car trips cost more because drivers pay for their own vehicles but the economic advantages of point to point travel are tremendous and generally worth it in a society that's wealthy enough to afford cars and doesn't have parking congestion problems.

<comment><USER14> Just pointing out that parking is often a hidden subsidy to drivers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> In response to your updated question, I think the best way would be to change the experience of people who ride.

\- Install TVs with captions and an FM channel so I can listen to the news on my 30 minute commute.

\- Take out chairs from a few of the cars and make them standing room only so that during rush out you aren't crammed in like sardines.

\- Make the first and last cars dark so that in early morning and your way back from work you can sleep if you'd like.

\- Add WiFi so I can work my entire trip in, just came to mind.

These are things I'd love to see on the metro cause right now I feel like I lose 30 minutes a day just sitting there and reading.

<comment><USER16> I would _LOVE_ SRO cars. The CTA in Chicago ran some trials last summer, but the populace was too lazy and bitched enough that they ended the trials early and no SRO cars exist any more.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Make it really easy to get to the airport.

Pro: Airport parking is an expensive hassle, thus people are always taking cabs or asking for rides. Airports are far from city centers, and often inconvenient to get to.

However, it's probably not enough traffic to sustain an entire system, but I think it makes for a good first step in a new system.

The other thing is that we either need to:

1) Stop subsidizing air & road travel so much

2) Subsidize public transit in order to make it more competitive with road / air travel

#1 is politically infeasible ... but perhaps #2 is as well. Maybe public transit support could be billed as a way to get everyone else off the road?

<comment><USER18> > 1) Stop subsidizing air & road travel so much

Huh, I get that road travel is subsidized, but never heard about air. Do you know how that shakes out? Federal government or localities building airports, or providing some sort of free coordinating services, or some such? I had always just kinda assumed that airlines were renting or leasing airport space and covering most of the costs from it, but that was just me idly guessing.

<comment><USER17> I'm not super-educated here (learned from a friend of mine), but here are some links:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essential_Air_Service> (about $74/passenger subsidy for small airports in rural areas.

<http://www.dot.gov/bib2009/htm/FAA.html> \-- the FAA 2009 budget, includes:

$9.7 billion for Air traffic organization $2.1 billion for Safety & Operations $2.8 billion for Airport grants

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Michael O'Hare (Berkeley Prof) has an article about why public transit really wants to be subsidized:

[http://www.samefacts.com/2007/05/energy-and- environment/more...](http://www.samefacts.com/2007/05/energy-and- environment/more-on-transit-and-urban-planning/)

The short version is that the marginal cost for an additional rider is basically zero.

</comment><comment><USER20> MTA could add value to NYC subway by:

* Adding a compass/direction indicator directly out of the subway exit. Frequently, I get out of the subway and my sense of direction is off and street signs aren't much help.

* Make them safer to ride late at night.

* Get rid of the bible pushers yelling at everyone in the path between Port Authority and Times Square subway

<comment><USER3> When I was travelling in Europe, I glanced at a small compass while exiting the subway so I could head in the right direction and look like I knew where I was going, even though I'd never been a certain place before.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Reduce the fares to nothing. Utility of a system rises dramatically as the frequency of bus/train arrivals drops below about eight minutes so people can just show up without checking the schedule.

Tax money goes to build roads and other car related infrastructure. Car travel is obviously subsidized since you generally do not pay to drive on a given road at the time you drive.

It would not be unreasonable to subsidize buses or other public transportation in a similar way.

Obviously, free internet should be provided on all buses and trains, as well as increased bicycle carrying capacity.

Also, if the ticket price was reduced to zero for buses, ridership would increase and costs per rider would be reduced. Greater bus ridership would reduce the money municipalities would need to spend for road expansion.

</comment><comment><USER22> In Medellin, Colombia. The subway is connected to two systems of Sky carts (similar to ones used on ski resorts). That allows the "subway system" to reach hard terrain (mountains) and expensive terrain (need only to set large polls and stations).

For residential areas with high land prices, this might seem as an excellent and cheap to implement public transport. (These are the same areas where cars are usually sitting in traffic jams).

Does anyone have information if this model is working out for them ? Is it used somewhere else successfully ?

</comment><comment><USER23> Maybe I can give a UK perspective on how this is possible. I'm not sure whether we can say that rail travel is profitable here, it still receives substantial government subsidy each year, but it is successful in that last year saw a record number of rail journeys taken.

I'm not sure what the parking situation is like in the US but here if you work in a major city car parking will cost you at least $100-150 per month, London is much more expensive. A lot of our suburban railway stations allow free or discount parking so even if you can't make your entire journey by train you can park and travel into the city by rail.

When it comes to longer journeys the tickets are sold on a reverse pricing basis, if you buy in advance the first 10-20% of tickets for a train are sold at the cheapest rate, sometimes a 200 mile journey costs as little as $20. If you buy a ticket on the day and during a peak period you'll pay a lot more. This structure however seems to result in more of the trains being full more of the time as pricing reflects the demand.

Also faster trains all fitted with wifi make longer journeys much more simple. I often travel into London and buy an advance ticket that costs around £25 ($35 ish)the train at 125mph takes half the journey time of the car and you avoid parking charges and the london congestion charge. I also get to work the entire journey for a similar cost to the fuel alone. It really is a complete no-brainer, you'd have to be stupid to want to drive.

That is I suppose a long reason for a simple answer. When it becomes more attractive to travel by rail people will leave their cars at home.

</comment><comment><USER24> There is no general solution, of course. Every city is different, and cities in the USA are very different from the cities in Europe, and so on.

I'd like for the public transit to be seen more as a public service than just another private business. After all, transportation is a vital part of the city, and something that the local authorities simply have to manage somehow. It also affects every other aspect of the city life.

I believe that the actual question should be much more like "how would you like to your city look like?"

To offer some "solution". I'd try to abolish the fares. I'd try to reduce maximum velocities for the cars, make more one-way lanes, narrow some other lanes, and so on. I'd try to bring new development into the brownfields inside the city (every city has them). But, there is no general Solution for everything. After all, it's not a fight between public transit and individual cars, but aim should be to provide the best service for the lowest price (to bring that viewpoint here too).

And after all, things will simply change with the time :-) I expect, one day, that all those disgusting highways around and inside the cities will turn into parks or something similar, as the old city walls from the middle-ages did. :-)

</comment><comment><USER25> The future of public transit once prominently featured a monorail, but that glamorous view of the future soon lost out to the utility of a car. Current public transportation simply cannot compete with that level of convenience. What should follow from that is a plan to make public transportation more convenient.

Follow the adage of giving people what they want - make the subway more convenient by automating the system. Follow that up with MUCH smaller subway cars. I'm imagining subway cars that are the size of a compact car. I go to the subway station, get in a subway car, and tell it my destination, and it takes me there in the most efficient way and not stopping at stops in between.

Of course, the cost just to renovate all subway stations to have 4 lines so that some cars can wait at the station while others zip past would be unimaginable, and I can't imagine citizens of any municipality voting to fund this.

That is, however, my view of how public transportation would create more value.

</comment><comment><USER26> This brings back memories of a similar discussion in a finance class a few years ago.

Someone suggested increasing the cost of using private automobiles (via higher tolls on bridges and tunnels, etc.), and making the subways and buses free (both to encourage ridership and to reduce the overhead required for collecting fares).

The professor responded that the first idea was good, since it would motivate changes in behavior, but it would have to be _a lot_ , i.e., triple or more the current tolls, to really have an effect.

He thought the second idea made less sense b/c mass transit is an inelastic service to the population that currently uses it (i.e., people who ride the subway have no choice but to keep using it), and also since the cost of collecting fares is small relative to the overall income.

</comment><comment><USER27> Additional property taxes on land near the stations would be a good source of revenue. It's likely that the adjoing land commands higher rents due to proximity to transit, and it's rational that some of this extra revenue goes towards maintaining the transit that is its source.

<comment><USER28> This may be counterproductive - now you're penalizing people for using the transit system. A lot of municipal transit systems are unprofitable because of low usage (but high service level commitments) - penalizing people for riding transit wouldn't solve this at all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Deregulate parking.

Right now nearly all municipalities have laws that require a certain minimum amount of parking per square foot of building floor area, with the amount varying by use.

This has three perverse effects:

1\. Buildings cost more (surface parking requires extra land, underground parking is insanely expensive), so fewer people can afford to live close to employment centers, amenities, and transit stations. 2\. It encourages the ownership and use of cars. If you've already paid for parking in the cost of real estate and the price of crap from the mall, you might as well use it. 3\. Unless the parking is underground, everything is more spread out, so fewer trips are practical on foot or by bike.

</comment><comment><USER29> Why make them profitable?

<comment><USER30> So people have a reason to make them, which will lead to improvement on the current systems.

<comment><USER31> Public transit is a natural monopoly. We don't really need five different and independent subway lines per city, the same way that I don't need five sewer system connections to my house.

As such, the notion of making public transit anything other than a break-even government funded service is misguided. I'd consider break-even however to be key.

<comment><USER32> I believe that tokyo has 3 competing subway companies, so I guess there is room for competition.

<comment><USER31> I'm not saying there isn't room, I'm just saying that with limited space and a captive target audience, having three competing subway lines is incredibly inefficient, especially when you consider that there will be 1-2 lines that all three will service, while other areas won't have any service, given traffic patterns.

I'm not sure how this is in the interests of any city really.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Don't bother.

Instead, allow for car-based mass transit, by allowing far cheaper taxi cab medallions and issuing as many as people will pay for.

WHY is the cost of a taxi cab medallion in NYC $750K?

Instead sell them for say $1200/year renewable yearly. Allow pricing to fall or rise based on the market, provided they are within a range (e.g. no less than 50 cents and no more than $3 per unit of distance traveled).

<comment><AUTHOR> There's no way it would be more cost-efficient for people to take even a $0.50 / mile cab trip in their daily transportation than it would a $15/week bus & subway pass.

The congestion would be unbelievable, both on the highway and particularly at well-used pickup and drop-off points.

See: [http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3402/3342003343_0fa801cec5.jp...](http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3402/3342003343_0fa801cec5.jpg)

<comment><USER33> Clever photo; however the whole idea of a cab is to serve multiple people over the course of a day; so it doesn't really apply.

What would make more sense would be to show say 3 taxis, each of which had 20 fares during a shift. Which would take up less space than the parked bikes and a little more than 1 bus.

<comment><USER2> If people keep all other aspects of their commute constant while switching from private cars to taxis, traffic will remain almost exactly the same. The same number of cars will be on the road at the same time. Parking lots will free up, but roads will stay packed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Stop subsidizing low gas prices for automobiles.

<comment><USER35> [citation needed]

Did you mean _increase_ gas taxes? When I look at the gas price breakdown where I am (Michigan, USA), I only see taxes, no subsidies. <http://www.michigangasprices.com/tax_info.aspx>

Europe has much larger taxes on gas, diesel, and automobiles than in the US, which discourages car use and ownership.

<comment><USER36> I consider the taxes I pay to fund the US military to be a gas subsidy. Without it we wouldn't have access to such cheap and plentiful oil.

<comment><USER37> I believe most countries that are the target of the US military see an immediate drop in petroleum production and our single largest source of oil imports is Canada.

<comment><USER36> You're probably right, but that's not what I was referring to. I was referring to the US Navy that patrols international waters to ensure smooth flows of oil tanks, and I was referring to the money that goes to protect the Saudi government and their oil fields, etc.

It doesn't really matter where we import our oil from. The world market is interconnected. If supplies drop in Venezuela, Norway, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Iran, then the demand for oil from Canada will go up worldwide. So it's in our interest to keep the oil flowing from countries other than Canada.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I take light rail from Mountain View to San Jose almost every day. My trip of about 18 miles takes 50 minutes. Fix that please.

</comment><comment><USER39> On your last question

> How would you have public transit create more value?

I'd answer by subsidising it more. That way more people can afford to use it. Of course that will increase debts further which is the contrary to your original question. Revenue and value are not synonymous.

<comment><AUTHOR> Nothing I've seen suggests that fares are a barrier to use of the bus or subway. With the MBTA, subway rides are $2, bus rides are $1.50, and a week- long pass for unlimited use of both is $15. Even New York's $89/month for unlimited use of subway and local bus is many times more cost-effective than cab fare or car insurance.

Subsidizing further to reduce fares doesn't seem like a net gain to me.

<comment><USER39> I only said it because I'd ride the bus twice a day (and use it for leisure, the kids love going on the bus) if it were cheaper.

n=1, yeah, yeah.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> More Ads for one. I know in DC Metro (where I am) the ads are insanely small and you could definitely increase ad space on the subway and buses. Cram Ads down people in order to pay for the transit system.

<comment><USER41> That improves the advertising, not the transportation. Google just posted 2 billion dollars in profits, and I don't remember noticing increased ads or ad space in any of their properties.

<comment><USER42> Selling more ads would probably increase revenue for the metro systems. Making them bigger and selling them for more would help as well. Google doesn't apply here because they can't use this technique for fear of backlash.

I can't imagine anyone complaining about more/bigger ads on buses, especially if it helps reduce subsidies and spending.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Increase population density. Admitedly, this is not a quick fix.

<comment><USER2> It's a quicker fix than you'd think in the central areas of most American cities. In Austin, the neighborhood next to the University of Texas (enrollment: ~50,000) was drastically underzoned for decades. Within five years of its rezoning, the neighborhood changed drastically. I'd estimate that the neighborhood has about doubled in density in half a decade, and there's still plenty of land that will be redeveloped in the next decade.

Most suburbs will never be easy to serve with high quality transit, but most central cities could do it fairly quickly with the stroke of a pen.

[http://www.austinchronicle.com/gyrobase/Issue/column?oid=oid...](http://www.austinchronicle.com/gyrobase/Issue/column?oid=oid:193942)

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Consolidate the routes and reduce the number of stops on routes. Attempt to compensate for this by increasing capacity where possible on reduced routes.

</comment><comment><USER45> In cities where subways or other types of rail transit do not operate 24/7, use the cars (or different cars) to move packages in the off hours.

</comment><comment><USER46> Privatize the road system. Completely private public transits will emerge to compete. It's really that simple.

People don't use public transit because they're already paying for the roads with their taxes. If they had to pay tolls reflecting the true cost of maintaining the roads they would choose public transit, and public transit accessible housing and workplaces.

Pre-50s toll roads were much more common and private street car lines were very common.

<comment><USER47> Totally agree. Privatizing public transportation would be the fastest way to both make it profitable and deliver more value to consumers.

There is a good research to back this up, but intuitively it makes sense also for the simple reason that you always spend your own money more carefully than you spend someone else's.

A government employee is just trying not to be noticed or fired. A private company is fiercely competing to save their own money and make more of it (the only way to do the latter is to deliver a product customers want). The selfish profit incentive is the greatest method we've ever found to motivate people and drive progress for everyone.</comment></comment>


IBM Design Language – Front End: Fundamentals - <AUTHOR> http://www.ibm.com/design/language/framework/front-end/fundamentals.shtml <comment><USER2> This is nothing new. Its Google's material design. [http://www.google.com/design](http://www.google.com/design).</comment>


Donald Knuth's advice to young people - <AUTHOR> http://www.webofstories.com/play/17152?o=MS <comment><USER2> Speaking as a young man, I always found this counter intuitive and here is why (and this is an argument which has been called many things including cute). Wouldn't following the heard be safe? Suppose I don't really want to change the world, rather I want to enjoy myself. Now following the heard is easy, I do whatever everyone else is doing and have the advantage that I can learn from their mistakes. Now I have a large amount of data on what works and what doesn't so I can pick and choose how I wish to follow the heard. On the other hand I have this gut feeling thing which isn't really based on data and more so on... well nothing tangible really. I just feel it may pay out. Their is a high failure rate in such methods and a high frustration attached to it since like minds are rare. So is it that if I want to change the world I should not follow the herd and should follow if I want to just live?

<comment><USER3> A wise man learns from the mistakes of others, yes. But you don't have to be doing what everyone else is doing to learn from their mistakes (otherwise you wouldn't be learning from their mistakes, but from your own). Also, if, as you say, you follow others and do what they do it's not really based on data either until you get enough experience to know what works and what doesn't. After that your "data" will be the sum of past experience and observing the successes and failures of others. It's really the same process if you follow your intuition.

I think the misconception is that following your intuition HAS to mean NOT following the herd. That's only true in the sense of making up your mind and choosing what it is you want to do regardless of what other people are doing. If this happens to coincide with the herd's behaviour it doesn't make your behaviour herd-y (=P). The difference is the "why", not the "what". You're acting in a certain way because that's what you decided to do based on, say, intuition, or based on what other people are doing (or a mix of both). What it is you're doing may be exactly the same as what others are doing, but that's secondary. And I should say that living according to your inner voice really isn't that difficult/frustrating. In fact it's somewhat liberating to do what you want to do as figuring out the herd and convincing yourself to follow it takes more mental energy (in my opinion/experience, of course).

Lastly, when talking about "learning what works and what doesn't", it's unlikely that you'll learn about things that really work from those that follow the herd. It's more likely that you'll learn from those who lead the herd - and those people do it by following their inner voice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect." -- Mark Twain

<comment><USER4> Two quotes are better than one quote:

"The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd; indeed in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widespread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible." -- Bertrand Russell

<comment><USER5> "It's not mob mentality... It's jumping on the bandwagon!" -- Homer J. Simpson

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> tl;dr: Follow your instinct rather than the herd. Don't do something just because it's trendy. Do it because you believe it's important and will have a long-term impact to the world.

</comment><comment><USER6> Don Knuth, original hipster.

I couldn't help thinking of Ryan Dahl while watching this.

</comment><comment><USER7> Is Donald Knuth's approach the complete opposite of the lean startup methodology? Are too many people just trying to follow the latest trends?

<comment><USER8> His advice was to follow your instinct rather than the herd. I don't see how that's related to learn startup methodology.

<comment><USER9> because the lean startup methodology is currently the herd favorite...

<comment><USER10> The lean startup methodology is a process for following either the herd (coupons!) or your instinct (something useful).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Anyone can add a video to Web of Stories (see softbuilder 8 days ago | link below). It is simple and free to use. Just go to <http://webofstories.com> and try!

Anne Greenwood Web of Stories Ltd

</comment><comment><USER12> Setting aside Knuth for a second, this Web of Stories project is pretty great. I hope this grows.</comment>


Boston public schools map switch aims to amend 500 years of distortion - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/education/2017/mar/19/boston-public-schools-world-map-mercator-peters-projection?CMP=twt_gu <comment><USER2> Ah yes, map projections. Time for everyone to complain about why the projection is inaccurate (because all of them are).

The problem with Gall-Peters is that it gives a misleading impression of equatorial regions--it scrunches up the width and exaggerates the height. Humans are bad at estimating area when the rectangles have different ratios for their sides--notice how Africa appears to be the same size as Asia; in reality, it's only ~⅔ the size.

So, yeah, the Mercator is horrible as a projection. Cartographers have known that for over a hundred years. Yet if you want a better map projection, there are several decent ones that are better than Gall-Peters (which is basically the inverse of the Mercator: exaggerate the equator at expense of the poles). Even if you limit yourself to equal-area, Mollweide and Eckert do better jobs of avoiding shape distortion. Outside of equal-area, well, Robinson and Winkel tripel tend to do very well, striking a decent balance between all of the different kinds of distortions.

As a general rule of thumb, any map projection that insists that it depict a globe as a rectangle seems to do very terribly.

</comment><comment><USER3> Globes! I'm sure I had a globe in my classroom in grade school and I had one on my desk at home. I'm sure they didn't represent the actual shape of the earth, but much better in terms of visualization.

<comment><USER4> Even if your globe is a perfect sphere, it's good enough for all practical purposes. The difference between the Earth's diameter across the equator vs. between the north and south poles is only 3.3 parts per thousand.

In other words, suppose you have a globe one meter in diameter and it is (erroneously) a perfect sphere. The error is just a few millimeters, hardly enough to notice or worry about on a globe of that size.

And that globe is _much_ better than any possible projection onto a flat map.

This is what's puzzling to me: instead of arguing about one map projection vs. another, why don't they use globes instead to give a more accurate picture? Then they could get into the interesting discussions about the compromises and errors that all map projections make.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's funny because Gall-Peters is one of the worst projections in terms of distortion. It doesn't preserve shapes anywhere.

</comment><comment><USER6> Fun fact I recently learned: about 90% of world population is in the Northern Hemisphere. I expected it to be lop sided, but not that much.

[http://bigthink.com/strange-maps/563-pop-by-lat-and-pop- by-l...](http://bigthink.com/strange-maps/563-pop-by-lat-and-pop-by-long)

<comment><USER2> Not surprising. The equator runs under the bulk of Africa, through the middle of Brazil and Indonesia. The Southern Hemisphere ends up containing about 80% water, about half the landmass of the Northern Hemisphere. And about half of the Southern Hemisphere's landmass is uninhabitable Australian or Antarctic desert.

The more impressive fact is that half of the world's population lives in a small-ish circle in Asia: [http://io9.gizmodo.com/more-than-half-of-the- worlds-populati...](http://io9.gizmodo.com/more-than-half-of-the-worlds- population-lives-inside-t-493103044)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Wait? Schools still use Mercator?! Gall-Peters is even worse!

And the reason was social justice? How how the reason being science? The Robinson and Winkel projections are much more accurate. The planet is spherical, not rectangular.

This is about as idiotic and anti-science as teaching Creationism and Intelligent Design in schools.

<comment><USER8> Yeah completely agree. The article leads me to think the district made the change for political reasons rather than scientific ones.

If that is true, then that is indeed disappointing. Sure, the kids may gain more insights into cartography/geography, but I wonder if the lesson plan now includes a false narrative of the oppressive white man made his continents bigger because "racism."

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> West Wing vignette on the Gall-Peters projection

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

</comment><comment><USER10> And stop putting north up top every time.

Or even stop aligning with the earths spin occasionally.

<comment><USER11> [https://www.flourish.org/upsidedownmapimages/diversophy- larg...](https://www.flourish.org/upsidedownmapimages/diversophy-large.jpg)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> TLDR: switching to Gall-Peters rather than Mercator projector for the world map. Apparently, jaws dropped, which speaks volumes about the quality of the education here.

[https://xkcd.com/977](https://xkcd.com/977)

(The reason for the hate statement next to Gall-Peters is that the Gall-Peters projection has been at the center of not just one, but multiple serious political scandals over multiple centuries. Furthermore, the people who introduced it lied about it, because the primary reason for Gall-Peters is not mapmaking, or education, but "social justice", whatever that means. Exactly what is wrong in 2016 with using a fucking globe or Google maps (which now has a zoomed-out earth view on the satellite section). Also, please don't politicize map projections, or if you absolutely must, Robinson is the way to go)

<comment><USER13> What do you mean "don't politicize maps"? Maps are one of the most political things there are, with countless wars and disputes over territories, boundaries, and their importance in navigation and imperialism. I also don't get your claim that it isn't mapmaking—it's a map, look—or education, when maps have a big role in history classes and affect one's worldview. It's about striving for an accurate representation of our globe, and if you're against that because "the evil SJWs!", maybe it's you who needs to stop politicizing things. Regarding Google Maps, not every classroom is equipped with a projector, and a globe would have to be really large for students to see them and you'd need a 2D representation for student printouts anyway.

<comment><USER12> The controversy is not about where borders lie, the controversy is about which country appears the biggest on the map. How to draw the SAME borders so X appears bigger, that's what were discussing. I assure you those wars and disputes were not about the projection of those maps, but about what was drawn on the maps.

If you want to go for accuracy in worldview, show people a globe. If you want a map, Robinson projection is probably the way to go for "most accurate looking". If you want to cross the dateline, and navigate easily, I'd still go with Mercator I think.

<comment><USER13> My point was that the whole concept of a map is political, even if the disputes don't directly involve this issue with them. The whole world doesn't use the Mercator projection, they use ones more suited towards representing their hemisphere. That's politics.

As for your last point, the fact that you have to mention the drawbacks and advantages of different maps shows that there isn't actually one right answer. That's politics. Map choice has to accept limitations. You can't get a globe everywhere, the 2D plane is still really popular in our world so it's not a binary choice between "globe" and "Robinson", but rather "what exactly am I looking for in a map". It is politics and you can't just immediately shut down anything deviating from the status quo because "my way is the only way".

<comment><USER12> I can argue to shut down anything in science that gets changed because of political reasons, because there shouldn't be politics in science.

The further along we seem to get the worse it seems to get though. I did math, statistics specifically, so ... well ever since climate change that's a lost cause. And that's uniformly bad. Bad for the quality of people at university, students and academics. Bad for the science itself. Bad for society (imho). Bad for everyone.

The ONLY merit Gall-Peters has is this supposed "social justice" bullshit. Neither Gall and Peters were honest. Neither of them had anything to contribute to mapmaking. They just wanted attention and money. Get out. Just ... get out. Find a better reason, or please don't bother anyone.

<comment><USER13> > there shouldn't be politics in science

Politics is unavoidable in science. There was never an era in which the two weren't combined from phrenology to modern-day examples like global warming which you mentioned. To expect science to be free from outside influence is overly idealistic. Science needs funding. That fact alone makes it inseparable.

> The ONLY merit Gall-Peters has is this supposed "social justice" bullshit.

Now you're just being dishonest. Did you miss the whole "equal area" thing?

> They just wanted attention and money.

Yeah map projection creators are rolling in royalties... You tell me to find a better reason and you come up with bullshit like this, ha!</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: High quality music for my game trailer - <AUTHOR>

I'd like to get some music to my game trailer. I've looked at audiojungle.net, but I'm not happy with the quality. I googled a lot and find ramenmusic.com<p>Is there any other option? <comment><USER2> These independent sources will license music on a royalty-free basis:

[http://magnatune.com/info/licensing](http://magnatune.com/info/licensing) [https://pro.jamendo.com/stock-music-licensing](https://pro.jamendo.com/stock- music-licensing)

Musopen _claims_ to host all recordings that are in the public domain, but many are posted anonymously or semi-anonymously and I'd be leery of using them without doing some legwork first. (It's all classical music, which probably isn't what you want, anyway.)

[https://musopen.org/](https://musopen.org/)

</comment><comment><USER3> My team and I run a boutique production studio in NYC and we love composing music to visuals. Shoot me an email at "josh at soundassociation dot com" and let's discuss your project!

<comment><USER3> [http://www.soundassociation.com/work](http://www.soundassociation.com/work) showcases some audio scores we created.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I really enjoyed the subtle humor of how hiring an individual sound engineer/musician to actually compose something wasn't even considered an option by the responses thus far.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's definitely an option.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Moby has a site.. though it appears to be for film, you could ask about a video game. [http://www.mobygratis.com/](http://www.mobygratis.com/)

</comment><comment><USER6> [https://www.marmosetmusic.com/](https://www.marmosetmusic.com/) has some great tracks.

</comment><comment><USER7> [https://www.shockwave-sound.com/](https://www.shockwave-sound.com/)

</comment><comment><USER8> You should contact my friend: [http://octophonix.com/](http://octophonix.com/)

</comment><comment><USER9> I'm a composer, shoot me an email with some more info and we'll see if we can work something out!

</comment><comment><USER10> melodyloops.com has some good quality stuff.</comment>


Ask HN: Education is broken, how do you fix it? - <AUTHOR> For the past few years, there has been a worrying trend in education. Bill Gates has even blogged about it just last week. While everyone agrees we need a departure from the rote memory method of learning to one which involves critical thinking and decision making, how would you go about implementing this in a real life class format? Do away with text books and work with Case Studies like Harvard? What other methods could work? <comment><USER2> Hey man! Nice question. Our current system of education was designed for 19th century industrialism, yet today we're preparing our kids for jobs that don't yet exist, using technology that hasn't been invented, to solve problems we can't yet imagine.

We need to gear learning towards the 21st Century Set of Literacies: how well we can find information, validate it, synthesize it, leverage it, communicate it, collaborate with it and problem solve with it. And we need to be developing self-driven learners who are confident thinkers, socially mature, engaged in their communities, resilient in the face of life's challenges and adaptable to change.

How does this play out in the classroom? With a greater focus on critical reflection, teachers need to be Socratic and philosophic in their outlook. Teachers need to act as vital facilitators and motivators, reflecting the move towards a focus on self-directed learning. And they need to be highly trained in emotional intelligence, reflecting a greater focus on behavioural and non- cognitive skills.

I've written an essay about this on my personal blog if you're keen (thecreativefiles.com)

</comment><comment><USER3> The high school I taught at for several years was working to lessen the usage of textbooks and primarily work with literature and primary source materials. In the history department, we delivered facts using lectures or a textbook reading. Basically, the idea was to give the students enough facts that they could then interpret and critically think about literature and the primary source materials.

My testing was mainly essay based as it gave me the best view of whether or not the students actually understood the material. It also gave them the opportunity to learn how to better communicate what they knew, as opposed to only what a teacher was asking. For instance, students might completely know the circumstances and events surrounding the War of 1812, but forget things like the names of forts or specific battles or dates. That student could perform poorly on a multiple choice exam, but do tremendously well on an essay test.

Scantron test = easy as hell to grade. Essay test = you actually have to know what you're teaching.

I also believe that teacher credentialing has backfired. Credentialing programs are basically made up of $10,000 of busywork and make it so anyone that can put up with doing busywork can get through (exceptions exist). If I were in charge, I would have some sort of apprenticeship system where new teachers learned from the best teachers.

End note: it is also kind of silly that you need a college degree and a credential to teach elementary school. Shouldn't everyone be proficient enough at elementary school concepts when they graduate high school that they could then teach the basics to others?

<comment><USER4> _it is also kind of silly that you need a college degree and a credential to teach elementary school. Shouldn't everyone be proficient enough at elementary school concepts when they graduate high school that they could then teach the basics to others?_

This is a really important issue to understand. Good teaching is difficult, even at the elementary level. Good teaching includes: \- responding to each student's learning style; \- answering questions in a way that sets students up for deeper learning in later years; \- meeting each student where they are at, and allowing them to progress at their own pace each year; \- dealing effectively with students who come to school hungry, abused, neglected and so forth; \- a host of other situations that are difficult to deal with effectively, but for which solutions have been developed.

This ties in well with one of your other observations: _I also believe that teacher credentialing has backfired. Credentialing programs are basically made up of $10,000 of busywork and make it so anyone that can put up with doing busywork can get through (exceptions exist)._

In my experience as a teacher, I have seen this consistently. There is one local teacher ed program where I live, and the administrators pride themselves on running a "challenging" program. It is challenging in the volume of work required, not in the intellectual effort required. There are so many bad effects of this approach, and so many potentially good effects if an intellectually rigorous and challenging program took its place.

I have also had an incredibly frustrating experience dealing with certification. I started teaching in one state, and taught there for 7 years. When I moved, I was granted temporary certification based on having held full certification in another state. I have hosted student teachers, and generally been recognized as an effective teacher. But after a few years in my new state, I was told I had to go back and do a student teaching program because the paperwork from my old state didn't fill in the right boxes on the paperwork in my new state. Utter BS, and this is exactly the kind of stuff that drives good teachers out of education.

I chose to stay in education and not let myself get pushed out by stupid bureaucratic issues. I resolved to do my part in addressing these issues, though, and I am grateful to be working with a staff that is tackling hard education issues effectively.

<comment><USER3> I agree that there is more to teaching than simply knowing and understanding the concepts. My overall message is more that credentialing is not the best way to train new teachers.

I'd also argue that credentialing is also used to limit the number of teachers entering the field to keep wages higher, but I suppose that is another matter entirely :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> See Harvard Graduate School of Education report "Pathways to Prosperity: [http://www.gse.harvard.edu/news_events/features/2011/Pathway...](http://www.gse.harvard.edu/news_events/features/2011/Pathways_to_Prosperity_Feb2011.pdf)

Some interesting strides have been made by the Partnership for 21st Century Skills in changing how we learn and also how we measure learning success:

<http://www.p21.org/>

Even Apple threw its hat in the ring with Challenge Based Learning:

<http://www.apple.com/education/challenge-based-learning/>

Without doubt the current models being used in the US don't work. We aren't teaching the right skills, we aren't measuring skills the right way (uniform class-wide tests EOY) and the funding structure for schools encourages bureaucracy and corruption at times.

However, the problems are all tightly intertwined in one ball. I would caution against thinking that 'modern tech' is a cure all. Going from paper to iPads won't solve all of the issues in a day. That said, some really cool companies are killing it. Take a look at Edmodo.

Wish I had more time to get into this, alas, back to my code cave.

</comment><comment><USER6> Everyone keeps saying Education system is broken, and to some extent it is. Here's some reasons why...

1\. with advancements in technology, education too needs to evolve, but we are still stuck in the era of printed books and expensive text books. I remember seeing a computer for the 1st time in grade 7. It took me few years to understand the complete potential and how I can use it. Now, kids in pre- school are hooked to iPad games and have figured out ways to watch cartoon on demand. Thus going to school to learn about animals from textbook pics is not very inspiring and interesting.

2\. For higher education, the school text books are still stuck in the 90's technology. School needs to engage students with more hands-on work, rather than lectures. Hands-on project building and training is a very useful tool for learning and has proven to be more engaging among students of all ages. [Shameless advertisement : checkout my workshops on robotics at workshop.iroboticist.com]

</comment><comment><USER7> I think some of the others may agree with me...just teahch through technology. Make more places like khanacademy etc. Technology will disrupt the current system and through it people will be able to meet and stabilize a new system since it'll show people that learning is in new ways is possible. Bill and Melinda Gates foundation are funding Khanacademy and are excited about many sites like them, with technology we can answer more questions faster and help teachers focus on answering important questions while not repeating menial ones.

</comment><comment><USER8> speaking for myself as a learner, the only things I've learned to a very high level (foreign languages, computer science, maths, etc ) have all been things that I've had an immense amount of self interest in and have dedicated tons of time to. In the us educational system I think one of main problems is that you take a lot of subjects you don't need and another is that most subjects are not presented in a problem solving approach manner.

It might just be my opinion, but I don't think sociology, anthropology, or even anatomy have any reason for being on a high school curriculum. It seems much more important to me to give students in this age group a really solid understanding of core areas: math, physics, literature / writing (i.e. the analytical thought and expressive process), and foreign languages (for today's world I'd also add computer science). If you know and comprehensively understand the above areas there's nothing stopping a high school student from majoring in any field imaginable.

As far as the second area is concerned I think this just has to do with less busy work and more active thought and problem solving engagement. For instance, force students to come up with their own formulas for finding the area of a square BEFORE you show them the formula and steps for sovling the equations. I think this helps engrain knowledge and internalize it, also this is how everything in the real world works anyway, and prepares students for their future career choices.

Those are just some of my thoughts...

<comment><USER3> Your comments makes me wonder if educators are too focused on having students memorize specific information they deem necessary as opposed to being obsessed about equipping students with the necessary skills to learn anything.

School can also be incredibly boring for students with interests outside the narrow scope of the specified curriculum. I found that many students that 'didn't like history', just hadn't found a topic they could really sink their teeth into. Once they did -let's say food in a particular time period- we could then build off that interest to learn about that time period as a whole (politics, society, wars, economics etc...)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> There is so much hype and talk about this it's making me sick. Too much tunnel vision. We need a drastic innovation. As in a streamlined system built for our age. It needs to be agile.

We do education like we build products but we all know that after a four year degree more often than not we don't have 'product/ market fit'. We should train, test and iterate in small time frames.

</comment><comment><USER10> > how would you go about implementing this in a real life class format?

Allow experienced professional educators to shape education policy.

<comment> barry-cotter Indeed, letting teachers decide what to do on the basis of what's rasiest and most convenient for them is bound to have a 1:1 correspondence with the best way for people to learn.

<comment><USER10> > Indeed, letting teachers decide what to do on the basis of what's rasiest > and most convenient for them is bound to have a 1:1 correspondence with the > best way for people to learn.

I consider myself a professional educator, so I will treat this statement as if you were aiming it directly at me.

I'm not yet 10 years into my career, but I daresay I have a solid understanding of what facilitates effective learning among my students. I can quickly, accurately, and individually asses and guide my students on a path which best suits their needs.

There is nothing a standardized test in my subject area can tell me about my class that I don't already know, and there is much that a standardized test will not reveal about the individuals within my class that I and my colleagues already know.

I would like to see my students freed from wasting their valuable time preparing for absurd tests which do not serve them in any useful or meaningful fashion. My admins know how my students are doing because they receive reports directly from me. They know my word is good because I am a professional.

The implementation of my wish to eliminate meaningless standardized testing and have more control over my curriculum would not earn me one more cent than I currently make. (I make less than 45k / year and I'm 6 years into it with a masters degree.)

I love my work and seeing my students succeed is why I do it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> how about involving actual companies to come in and let them interact with the students? For example, the marketing department of an FMCG company could ask students to prepare a marketing campaign when students take up a marketing course.

<comment><USER11> this should be accompanied with the government providing tax benefits to the organization that indulge in this initiative, which would not only help in advertising and marketing, but will also catch the eye of organisations for their own benefit.</comment></comment>


5 ways engineers are like hot chicks - <AUTHOR> http://www.adambreckler.com/5-ways-engineers-are-like-hot-chicks

<comment><USER2> This article should be followed up with an article titled "Thousands of ways engineers are NOT like hot chicks"

<comment><USER3> Yeah, this article is so wrong I don't even know where to begin.

I clicked on it because I thought it would be funny. But it seems the author is trying to be serious.

One thing that did annoy me is the "impossible" part. At least personally, when I say something is impossible then it means its impossible. When I say something is not easy, then I mean that given the current restrictions(money, time, people...) it can't be done.</comment></comment>


Online Commenting: Why do both Disqus and Livefyre suck so bad? - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/readboard-blog/online-commenting-why-do-both-disqus-and-livefyre-suck-so-bad-54b021e72985 <comment><USER2> Never heard of Livefyre (so can't say anything of it) and never had any problems with Disqus. And what I know for sure is that Disqus is definitely better than Cackle and other similar systems that _require_ you to have a social or google account.

What's wrong with ya people? Since when isn't plain login/password pair enough? I don't want to get involved into online slavery sect with those "social" popular apps.

Thankfully, Disqus still allows to do things right, so I see no reason to bash it now.

And yes:

> Because the "customer is always right"

This very approach is the one that prevents IT from really rapid progress.

<comment><AUTHOR> Agree. Disqus is the best online commenting system out there. As far as it is serving all your use cases, there is not point to get rid of it.

And I too disagree with the statement "customer is always right" because in most cases, they don't know what they want so they can't possibly be right.</comment></comment>


Skinput: Using the Body as an Input Surface - <AUTHOR> http://www.chrisharrison.net/projects/skinput/

<comment><AUTHOR> Innovative and impressive new forms of input/interaction. Maybe this could diminish some forms of RSI too.

And the potential for new slang is incredible, of course: "High 5" or "Get some skin in the game" may never be the same. :)</comment>