Where does a tip to an Amazon driver go? Sometimes, toward the driver's base pay - <AUTHOR> https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-amazon-drivers-tips-20190207-story.html <comment><USER2> I can't wait for tipping culture to end - it's just a way for service workers to be abused in a multitude of ways.

I only wish more workers would realize that it will be better for them collectively to get upset at their employers for not paying them fairly instead of the last customer who stiffed them on the tip.

<comment><USER3> Tipping serves a purpose. It's a clear, precise and immediate communication channel about customer satisfaction. If you get bad service, just don't leave a tip - it doesn't have any social friction of calling the manager or anything like that. You, as a customer, feel that you're in control.

Why would you want to get rid of that?

<comment><USER4> If I give my delivery driver $5 and his employer drops his pay by $5 as if I'd tipped $0, the communication channel is muted.

Maybe I'm deceived into _thinking_ I'm rewarding good performance, but the truth is I'm a chump making a voluntary donation to some billionaire CEO's pay packet.

Why would anyone volunteer to be taken for a fool like that?

<comment><USER3> I completely agree with you, but your point is not about tipping, it's about this particular scam. Why are you replying as if I'm defending it? There's no argument to be had about this.

<comment><USER5> Have you considered what article you're posting on?

Also tipping culture enables companies to do things like this.

<comment><USER6> Credit card culture enables this. When you tip with cash, you cut out the corporate middle man.

<comment><USER5> The same thing could happen with cash if the system was set up a little bit differently.

<comment><USER6> No not really. Hand the cash to the person you're tipping, nobody else.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Again I am puzzled how this does not count as fraud - a felony with a jail term measured in years.

And no, re-defining 'tip' to mean whatever Amazon wants it to mean somewhere in the Terms of Service fine print does not absolve them.

<comment><USER8> In the food service industry, for example, your tips almost always reduce base pay until a federal, legal minimum different from the better known minimum wage.

I'm not saying that's just. Companies abuse service workers, and use some legalistic convention to do so.

Would you go suing basically every restaurant for fraud though? Justice here really means legislating the wages and tips laws to be more generous to workers.

<comment><USER9> That's not how it works. They get a base pay without considering tips. If they get tips they get more. They don't get a base pay that gets eaten away by tips until the tips exceed their pay, otherwise why would anyone bother to work harder for the tips if they just get the same amount?

<comment><USER10> That's exactly how it works. For example in West Virginia, you get paid either 8.50 or 2.62 plus your tips, whichever is more.

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

<comment><USER11> A few successful waitresses I've known earned 2-4x minimum wage with tips and fought hard against proposed local laws that would cancel that "tips count towards minimum wage" concept on the grounds that restaurants couldn't afford it.

<comment><USER12> Yet restaurants do quite well in the seven states that ban this shady practice: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tipped_wage_in_the_United_Stat...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tipped_wage_in_the_United_States#State_law)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I think the problem here is that in some lines of work, it's generally understood that the worker _only_ makes tips (waiters, bartenders -- any base pay is negligible), in other lines of work it's generally understood that the tip is a nice but non-required "extra" that nobody should be depending on (barista, Uber driver), and in yet further cases it's a "required" extra (taxi driver, hairdresser, massage therapist).

And while pre-Internet delivery was previously understood to be _only_ tips (e.g. in NYC, the person delivering your Chinese food is paid solely by your tips, not by the restaurant, effectively just like a waiter)...

...we haven't societally established what the right expectation is for dot-com delivery people. Because it's such a new thing, most consumers probably assume they're paid a fair wage and tips are either a non-required bonus (like Uber) or a required bonus (like hairdressers). Yet the companies seem to be treating tips as the entire salary (like waiters, bartenders, and restaurant deliveries).

Of course there's zero logic to any of this, only custom. And the insane confusion around it is just another argument for getting rid of the damned practice of tipping in the first place, everywhere.

<comment><USER14> Simple: they shouldn't be able to use the word tip. That word has meaning and expectations.

Call it "wage subsidy" and see how many people leave anything.

<comment><USER15> ... Does it?

I mean, "mandatory"-ish tips have been legal "wage subsidies" for a very, very long time yet are still called "tips."

[https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/commentary/ct- pe...](https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/commentary/ct-perspec- tipping-minimum-wage-service-workers-0402-20180328-story.html)

>The origins of tipping go back more than a century, to the days when only well-heeled Americans dined out and waitstaff constituted a tiny fraction of the nation's labor force. Government left the custom alone, even though — or perhaps because — it reinforced the hierarchy between mostly white, male restaurant customers and their servers, often women and minorities. Even New Deal-era minimum wage laws exempted tipped workers until 1966. By then, tipping was so culturally embedded that Congress took it for granted that certain workers "customarily and regularly" received tips, while others did not. It created the "tip credit" system, whereby restaurants could pay customarily and regularly tipped personnel a much smaller minimum wage than others received, as long as tips offset the difference.... The June 19 ballot initiative in Washington would gradually replace the "tip credit" with a system under which all local restaurant employees would get the statutory minimum wage — soon to be $15 per hour — and servers could still receive tips on top of that. Similar laws prevail in seven states, mostly on the West Coast. However, servers wouldn't necessarily get to keep all of the tips, because the law Congress just passed lets restaurants that pay servers the statutory minimum and don't use the "tip credit" redistribute tips to their back-of-the-house employees.

Sounds not so straightforward to me.

(That's before we get into tip pooling, which is an extremely common practice.)

<comment><USER16> > reinforced the hierarchy between mostly white, male restaurant customers and > their servers, often women and minorities

Sounds weird. It used to be a big faux pas to have non-male non-white waiters and still is sometimes in some kind of restaurants.

<comment><USER17> Indeed. I think it goes back much further too.

Restaurants are basically a 200 year-old technology, but rich people dining well when visiting each others' country houses goes back a lot further. And I believe it was the custom that, on departing, a visitor would tip the host's servants. It's my impression that this is where the custom came from (but not an expert opinion).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Can we take this opportunity to get rid of institutionalized tipping entirely? It is beyond me why this is even accepted, let alone expected behavior for companies to specifically ask for tips on behalf of workers. I traveled to several (developed) countries recently recently and was pleasantly surprised and relieved to not have to worry about tipping for each and every service.

<comment><USER19> I can tolerate it but I don't understand why 20% is now regarded as "normal" for a basic level of service.

<comment><USER11> I have known plenty of smart, capable people who worked hard in the service industry and, frankly, deserve it.

I don't like the idea of people working for my benefit earning starvation wages.

<comment><USER20> I understand why the kitchen staff deserves tips, they're the ones doing all the real work. I can't understand why the server who spends at most 2-3 minutes an hour taking the order and carrying it from the kitchen to the table deserves 20% of the bill.

(In my area servers and kitchen staff now make the same standard minimum wage before tips, so it's especially obscene to demand 20% _on top of the $12-$15 /hour_ the server is already making for almost no work.)

<comment><USER11> I'd challenge you actually try to get to know some people working as waitresses and reevaluate your position about tipping on top of minimum wage being "obscene".

<comment><USER20> I actually know quite a few waitresses and others in the restaurant industry.

I think you should actually try to get to know some of the people who do far more valuable work than taking orders and occasionally delivering plates to a table and who make less than waitresses, like social workers, janitors, and bus drivers. If you know enough of those people, you begin to question the entire moral justification for tipping waitresses or serving staff in the first place.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> This is disgusting. Tips are meant for the driver and _not_ for the company. I am truly surprised that so many HN readers have their fundamentals of terms so corrupted that they are choosing to argue about this.

Amazon should be upfront - clearly declare that the minimal wage is taken from your tips. Declare this right in the employment contract and call it a wage subsidy. The fact that they are hiding this and not responding to enquiries shows that they are operating in a malicious and dishonest manner. This is injustice to the driver and Amazon should be prosecuted.

</comment><comment><USER22> I've always been skeptical of where my digital tips are going. Even in local restaurants if I have the cash, I'll write "cash" on the tip line for the credit card receipt and tip in cash.

<comment><USER23> Why do you write anything?

<comment><USER24> > Why do you write anything?

Should be obvious: So that unscrupulous places don't fill in their own tip amount.

<comment><USER25> What does it matter what they write on paper - I only authorise the amount I intend to when I put my PIN in and no paper will change that.

<comment><USER26> Payment at restaurants in the United States is very different than you might be imagining. The process goes like this:

* Server brings bill, disappears to go serve others

* Patron places credit card in the sleeve thing the bill came in, leaves it on the table, waits. (Maybe is still finishing a drink or dessert at this point.)

* Server picks it up at some point, takes it to a register, swipes it (not in view of the patron). There is no entering of a PIN, because U.S. credit cards do not require a PIN.

* Server brings receipt back to patron. There are at least two copies: "Merchant copy" and "customer copy". Each has two blank lines: One that says "Tip", and one that says "Total". Often a range of "suggested" tips is provided below. The "Merchant copy" also has a line for a signature.

* Patron fills out "Merchant copy" with their desired tip, and does the math to fill out the total. Signs the signature line. Takes "Customer copy" with them, leaves "Merchant copy" in the sleeve, and exits the restaurant.

* Server takes "Merchant copy" and puts it in the stack designated for such things.

* At some point that day, a restaurant employee goes through the stack of "Merchant copy" receipts and enters the tip amounts for each one into the register.

It's an insane system that beggars belief for people who aren't aware of it. But this is how it works at probably more than 95% of "sit-down restaurants" I've eaten at in the U.S.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I don't mind tipping as an appreciation of above average service. I do mind having to pretend to appreciate bad service because certain countries basically just can't be bothered to implement minimum wage, which is what this boils down to. I try not to be a jerk about it and just generally tip on the principle that I don't want to cheat people out of some income they probably need. But it's not exactly a great system.

My main problem with this is that all the hard work is typically done by people you don't interact with, which in a restaurant would be the people cleaning the place, cooking the food, doing the dishes, etc. Basically, people working double/triple jobs because of the before mentioned minimum wage issues. So, I tip and I hope some of that trickles down to those people as well. But I would not be surprised to learn that most of that money never ends up where it belongs.

In the US, basically you get your ass kissed in a blatantly indifferent and disingenuous way by eager waiters desperate to ensure you tip generously for the service of delivering food from the kitchen to your table. It makes the whole experience of being in a restaurant a lot less pleasant. There's also this pressure to basically leave ASAP so the waiter can start harassing the next customer. So they say, "is everything alright" but what they mean is "hurry up so I can maximize my tip/hour ratio". There's just something deeply unpleasant about that.

</comment><comment><USER28> Since when are people expected to tip package delivery drivers? I didn't even know this was an option in the Amazon app.

<comment><USER29> I think it's only for their Amazon Fresh / Amazon Prime Now deliveries, not the general "we're replacing USPS / UPS" ones.

<comment><USER5> Doing the same thing a day faster probably shouldn't be the decider between tipped/untipped.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Tipping is bad for everyone, but Americans love it.

<comment><USER31> What's not to love? It makes you feel rich _and_ generous for a moment: "Look at me as I'm sharing my riches to save this pleb waiter from certain starvation."

<comment><USER32> Obligatory

[http://www.temporarilyembarrassedmillionaires.org/](http://www.temporarilyembarrassedmillionaires.org/)

<comment><USER33> [https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Steinbeck#Disputed](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Steinbeck#Disputed)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> It's the first time I hear about tipping an Amazon driver.

Is this an American thing? (part of this 'strange' American tipping culture)

<comment><USER6> > _Is this an American thing? (part of this 'strange' American tipping > culture)_

Definitely not, I've never heard of it. The closest I've ever heard of this is writing a christmas card for your mailman once a year.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> It's sad. At some point Amazon decided that's how they would handle tips. They do it because they can.

</comment><comment><USER6> Rule of thumb: If you're not tipping cash, you're not tipping.

<comment><USER36> Most relevant comment here.

We can argue all day long about whether this 'culture' should exist or not, the fact is it _does_ exist and there are many situations where the most ethical choice is offer some kind of tip (and cash is most certainly appreciated by those in the know). Yeah, it's archaic and overcomplicated and regressive, much like just about everything else involving human interaction.

If you don't like it, abolish the practice in businesses where you can influence such policies. Feel free to withhold tips if you want, in lots of cases the workers you interact will hardly notice because plenty of others do the same. Just know that if you ask a low-wage worker to put up with extra hassle for you and don't offer extra compensation in return, in many cases you will be viewed as clueless and/or selfish. That's just how it is, respond to the reality as you see fit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> This is wage theft.

</comment><comment><USER38> I wonder if The Washington Post will report on this. :-)</comment>


So, you want to deploy a J2ME app in the US?  - <AUTHOR> http://www.nextgenmoco.com/2008/01/so-you-want-to-deploy-j2me-app-in-us.html

<comment><USER2> That's the main reason, my friends, that successful mobile startup is a huge oxymoron right now.

I work for one of the biggest mobile app vendors, and to get to that stage, you have to be in bed with the carriers, yet if you made too much money, they probably will aim squarly at you, and do in house (or with third parties) what you used to do.

They can just look out whatever they don't like. Even if they tell the user they are paying for "data service", they still let in only non-free apps where they get half the cut so the consumer is being charged twice for that data access. They can ban apps outright, or just make it in a way that everytime the app request something on the network, and anoying popup comes to tell the user if they want to give this app permission to access the network. Here is the dirty trick: They put up this poup for every HTTP request, which means any network aware application becomes useless! It used to be that many phones that the option to let the user say "Yes", once, and never be bothered anymore, but carriers just requested phone manufactors to remove this, and annoy the users everytime, unless the app is "blessed" (i.e. signed) by the carrier themselves.

Of course they are doing this to "protect the user", and their "network", which is total b.s.

Unfortunately, the FCC does nothing about this, and that's why Google's move to force open apps standard with all the spectrum auctioning that happened a couple of months ago, was a great step.

The scary part is that this is yet another look, on how the internet could become if ISPs or broandband providers are let to tamper with whatever they want and all the traffic that passes thru them. That's why I think net neutrality is a very important issue, and it should be extended to wireless providers also.

<comment><USER3> > Of course they are doing this to "protect the user", and their "network", > which is total b.s.

I'm no more a fan of the vetting process that mobile apps have to go through than anyone else, but this particular piece of FUD actually bothers me quite a lot.

Imagine if J2ME-equipped handsets were subject to the same sort of malware ecosystem that, say, Windows boxes are. Now, add to that the fact that an 0wned mobile device is an automatic money-maker for the black hats, (think 1-900 numbers) and I think there's a _very_ good reason for carriers to be nervous.

<comment><USER4> _Imagine if J2ME-equipped handsets were subject to the same sort of malware ecosystem ... I think there's a very good reason for carriers to be nervous._

Now, that's true for something like Symbian (or iPhone) native applications, which pretty much get the run of the house.

However, J2ME was _explicitly designed_ to make this kind of thing impossible. The user can just kill the JVM at any time, easily (too easily - all good J2ME apps should autosave!). The program itself is trapped in a sandbox which asks for explicit permission to do things that can cost money (data access, phone calls, etc). Hit up java.sun.com for a full explanation of the security model.

The smoking gun is, once again, the European carriers - well, and the Asian ones, and generally everyone not in North America - who allow arbitrary downloads and arbitrary IP access...and strangely enough, nobody's phone's been 0wned yet via J2ME.

I'm afraid this is really is just the American carriers being tight-fisted.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Michael Mace wrote about this here: [http://mobileopportunity.blogspot.com/2008/02/mobile- applica...](http://mobileopportunity.blogspot.com/2008/02/mobile-applications- rip.html)

      Summary: The business of making native apps for mobile
      devices is dying, crushed by a fragmented market and
      restrictive business practices. The problems are so bad
      that the mobile web, despite its many technical
      drawbacks, is now a better way to deliver new
      functionality to mobiles. I think this will drive a rapid
      rise in mobile web development, largely replacing the
      mobile app business.

If we project this forward it will be either HTML5 or Flash/AIR/Silevrlight which will displace the still-born mobile application platform.

</comment><comment><USER6> Ties in with: [http://alexkrupp.typepad.com/sensemaking/2007/05/cell_phone_...](http://alexkrupp.typepad.com/sensemaking/2007/05/cell_phone_soft.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> Both my current handset (BlackBerry Curve on T-Mobile) and my previous one (Sanyo MM-7500 on Sprint) supported "over the air" installation of 3rd-party J2ME apps.

Many of the applications the poster described as not working (Google Maps, Opera Mini, etc.) worked just fine out of the box on both handsets.

Sorry, but this was more whiny than informative.

<comment><USER7> Your experience is atypical. I've never used a phone (unlocked or carrier- issued) that enabled all the J2ME capabilities for an unsigned application. I've used SE 610, SE T637, SE K750, SE K790, Samsung D900, Nokia 6300. All of these phones are were well above average in capabilities (J2ME and otherwise) at the time I purchased them. But, the vast majority of the J2ME applications I tried to download were unusable for a variety of reasons.</comment></comment>


How I Got Over $2,000 in Orders for a Product I Didn't Launch - <AUTHOR> http://blog.lukewarmemailer.com/2014-10-23/how-i-got-over-2000-in-orders.htm <comment><USER2> What was the product actually? Everything just refers "look at the homepage!", which just tells me the product isn't available anymore.

<comment><USER3> It was a "cold email" tool. I think the product listed below it (ContentMarketer) on the homepage does some of the same things.</comment></comment>


Go 1.14 - <AUTHOR> https://blog.golang.org/go1.14 <comment><USER2> dupe of [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22416067](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22416067) ?

</comment><comment><USER3> A rather nice ~10% speed boost for my tool scc from this just with a simple recompile against some input sets.

        $ hyperfine 'scc' './scc'
        Benchmark #1: scc
          Time (mean ± σ):      43.5 ms ±   1.7 ms    [User: 30.4 ms, System: 88.2 ms]
          Range (min … max):    40.5 ms …  48.9 ms

        Benchmark #2: ./scc
          Time (mean ± σ):      39.6 ms ±   1.3 ms    [User: 46.1 ms, System: 89.7 ms]
          Range (min … max):    35.9 ms …  42.5 ms

        Summary
          './scc' ran
            1.10 ± 0.06 times faster than 'scc'

Trying it on various other inputs it seems to be somewhere between 3% and 10%

I am surprised they are still getting these sort of gains to be honest. From memory 1.13 for the same workload came with a ~3% improvement over 1.12. This is purely in terms of wall clock time to run the same code over the same inputs. Have not had a look at the impact of a long running process or memory yet.

</comment><comment><USER4> Thanks to the Go team for the great work!

The more I use it, the more I enjoy Go. Having grown up with the healthy dose of Pascal and later Modula 2, I appreciate many traits of Go which let me just focus on the tasks at hand. With very little "magic" going on, some parts of the code might be a bit tedious, but you also always have the feeling of being in control, as everything is very explicit. Add to that a few underapreciated dynamic features. I am first of all a professional Lisp/Scheme programmer and a lot of Scheme concepts translate surprisingly well into Go due to having first class functions and a garbage collector.

It is very nice to see how the Go releases are very careful to add new features while continuosly improve on the "quality" side. Enhancing the performance of "defer" is a great example. Like unwind-protect in Lisp, it is a very elegant way to ensure that cleanup code is run under any circumstance. Removing its overhead is a big thing.

</comment><comment><USER5> I love Go. It's too bad that go modules broke ide support and godocs. I miss the simplicity of gopath.

Edit:

Go modules were not welcomed and godep was supposed to be the official dep manager: [https://twitter.com/_rsc/status/1022588289461743617](https://twitter.com/_rsc/status/1022588289461743617)

Godoc is broken because of it and Rob Pike doesn't like it: [https://github.com/golang/go/issues/26827#issuecomment-51584...](https://github.com/golang/go/issues/26827#issuecomment-515849507)

VScode with gomodules is still bad even with gopls restarting every 20m: [https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode-go/wiki/Go-modules- suppo...](https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode-go/wiki/Go-modules-support-in- Visual-Studio-Code)

<comment><USER6> Hello,

I'm new to go (and so far enjoying it). I haven't use modules yet. How do they break IDE support ? (using Goland here)

<comment><USER7> It doesn't. You just need to configure goland properly

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Any Go developers with past experience in "heavier" frameworks have thoughts on giving it a try?

I enjoy working with "batteries included" frameworks currently, and value the approach of "Here's an ORM... here's a template language... here's an auth system... use or remove them as you see fit"

I've been told that the Go standard library is fully-featured enough that it can be considered a framework in its own right, but I haven't heard how converts from the Django/Rails world feel about the completeness of that "framework"

<comment><USER9> I have written several HTTP-based services in Go. When you only expose an API, net/http is 99% of what you need. There are some useful addons like [https://github.com/gorilla](https://github.com/gorilla), and you'll probably pull in a library for auth.

For services with a web GUI, net/http is not comparable to the likes of Rails or Django. There _is_ a templating library, but it's pretty barebones and you'll have to put quite a lot of boilerplate (or additional libraries) on top to make it work for anything beyond hello-world scale. Also you need libraries for all those secondary concerns that are usually handled on the framework level, like CSRF protection.

<comment><USER10> you might not need more advanced csrf protection than a cookie samesite policy.

<comment><USER11> Then throw a hidden input field with a CSRF token in your form and your done.

Not sure what the big deal is here.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Web Analytics & Startups - <AUTHOR> http://www.contrast.ie/blog/the-future-of-analytics-products/

<comment><USER2> I had hoped they mentioned the two leading open source Analytics options as GA alternatives:

<http://piwik.org/>

<http://www.openwebanalytics.com/>

Regardless, GA works in _most_ situations at present and will continue to dominate the market. It is due for some much needed upgrades though.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've added your two OSS solutions.

Re: G.A. Yeah, free will carry them for quite a while.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> In other news, web analytics software is a very crowded marketplace, the competition is stiff. Best not to enter it unless you have something really new and interesting to offer.

<comment><USER4> Actually it looks like the market may become a very segmented marketplace with a lot of competitors. This is usually a good thing and its a good place to be for a startup. And its obviously a very big pain that needs to be solved with lots of customers available.

<http://www.ericsink.com/Choose_Your_Competition.html>

A worse situation is a winner-take-all market with only a few large companies taking 80% of the market: PC-market (Lenovo,Dell), Social Networking (Facebook,Twitter) etc. Here its much harder to gain a foothold but there are companies that do it eg: AlienWare in the highend PC-Gamer market.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've been thinking about building an analytics package geared towards SaaS. I've found it very difficult to track different types of users and their associated revenue in tradition analytics packages (GA, GetClicky, even MixPanel). I've always envisioned a simple analytics package based entirely on user types. Think visitor, free/demo account, paid account 1st level, paid account 2nd level, etc...

I think this is an important missing functionality in many of the existing solutions and I would definitely pay for something that made it dead simple, would HN agree with me?

<comment><USER6> We're working on it. Trust me. - Mixpanel =)

<comment><USER5> I used to be a paid Mixpanel user with several accounts. I liked it but it bothers me that you guys don't break the mold any more than traditional analytics did.

Why can't I just choose any random set of events as a funnel and view the breakdown that way? I want to mix and match events on the fly and see how they perform based on past data. I don't always guess the user path correctly, why not help me?

<comment><USER6> The scaling complexities are great and challenging and require new infrastructure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Des has very aptly compiled a list of the leading analytics tools and we're honored to be included in this list alongside so many great tools (We use and love Chartio and Mixpanel).

I also definitely agree that it would be rather difficult for a single umbrella tool to cover everything, so segmenting the field into traditional web analytics, event-driven analytics, and social analytics makes a lot of sense. We hope to become the industry leader in the rapidly growing social analytics space, but our vision goes beyond that - like you said, Google Analytics primarily drives Adwords sales, whereas with social analytics, there are so many more actionable things you can do. Crowdbooster hopes to guide its users towards that end with our data-driven insights and actionable recommendations, such as telling you the best times to send out content (and giving you an easy way to schedule that content for delivery).

</comment><comment><USER8> Hummingbird's premise seems like it kind of misses the ball, it certainly would be cool to see a real-time stream of analytics, but what would you actually do with that feature? Seems kind of gimmicky, but I agree with the author in that it could find a home in some other analytics package.

Definitely a solid list of interesting options in the analytics space, thanks for the share.

<comment><USER9> As the author of Hummingbird I'm happy to see it get exposure, but it doesn't serve the same purpose as most of the other packages on the list. It doesn't tell you where you should optimize your site to get the best conversions.

The purpose of Hummingbird is mostly just emotional--it feels really cool to watch your site go from 2 pageviews / second to 400 pageviews / second.

At Gilt Groupe, this happened daily and on an order of magnitude larger scale.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey Mnutt - that's really cool of you to reply. It's a really impressive piece of technology.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I've often wondered why someone doesn't combine analytics with more traditional executive dashboarding, ie show me revenue per click, per visitor, etc. There is more to most businesses than can be measured in just a website.

<comment><USER11> The E-Commerce functionality of Google Analytics does that pretty well-- or did you mean something else?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Wow, great to see that round-up on one page.

Question for HN - does anyone value real time analytics for anything other than a physical LCD dashboard? Personally, I guess it's nice to have, but I wouldn't pay more for it.

<comment><USER2> Analytics data is only useful if you intend on reacting to it. The same goes for real time Analytics. Its only useful if you intend on reacting to it _in real time_.

The usage scenario most people fall back on when I have asked them about it is a blog post or something going viral. They don't want to wait the couple hours that Google Analytics sometimes takes to update. Great, you know something is getting a lot of traction with social media or maybe gathering some links... what do you do with that?

If you don't have a plan for how to react in real time, there's no sense knowing your Analytics real time.

( _The other usage case often brought up is knowing when there is an issue with your website. In my opinion, this isn't the job of an Analytics package to detect._ )

<comment><USER9> It's often tough to justify from a ROI perspective, but it turns out that there is quite a bit of emotional reaction to real time analytics.

Sort of like fear of flying vs. fear of driving, people like to feel in control.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> you've completely left off mobile analytics!

i'm not sure startup analytics are so different than larger company analytics (i work for a large ecommerce site doing analytics).

might just be my opinion, sitecatalyst can be overly complicated/difficult to implement but it really does have some unique strengths also. it is also one of the more expensive tools though.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey TPiddy - Yes, I did. I couldn't cover everything. I might do mobile as a separate post.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Woopra is missing from this list. It is very solid.

<comment><AUTHOR> Added

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> KISSMetrics is missing from this list</comment>


Ask HN: Are smart watches worth it? - <AUTHOR> I haven't tested the smartwatch waters of apple/android/Fitbit but lately I've been wondering more. Now that they've been out for a while are they actually useful or just fad items that you'll forget about after a couple of months? Any ways they've improved your life? <comment><USER2> Like a lot of products, it's great if it solves a problem that you just happen to have.

I currently have a Fitbit charge 2. I've used Fitbit for a few years now.

For me, it offers otherwise hidden insights into my state of health. We're not all totally self-aware spiritualists who can meditate and smoothie our way to good health. Sometimes I rely on my smart watch informing my sleeping has gotten worse, or my resting heart raise has gone up, to indicate I'm going through a stressful time and need to fix it.

Otherwise, it reminds me when I've been sitting still for a long time. Easy to do when you're 'in the zone'.

There's some other stuff I think is specific to Fitbit. Namely, the community side of things? Where you can join a group where you all compete to have the most steps in a given period. The interface to that is great, I think.

</comment><comment><USER3> I used to wear a Fitbit religiously, for about 2 years. I considered it my "fat band" and while it kept me aware that i should walk more and exercise, I can't say it did wonders for me. Was it useful? Sure -- it made me want to walk more.

And yeah, I lost some weight. But after a while, it just gets annoying. In general, I can't wear watches, bands, or anything like that. After a while, my wrist starts to turn red and break out in hives. I've tried all different brands and its the same result. My girlfriend even gave me her Apple Watch when she switched to another watch and that too, made me break out in a rash after just a week or two of wearing it.

So aside from forgetting to wear my Apple watch, it just causes me rashes.

I'd say it is preference.. some people like them, some don't.

</comment><comment><USER4> I think my Moto 360v1 has been worth what I paid for it. I got it on special when it was ~150 USD. Its not for everyone and I especially wouldn't use it as a full-time fitness tracker since it only lasts a day and the HR monitor is hit or miss. Right now, the smartwatch market is in a bad place. The new ones may look better than their predecessors, but they also haven't added 'good' value. There's too many smartwatches that either try to cram in a whole bunch of hardware that not a lot of people want, or are simply too expensive for what they are. Until Android Wear has a solid Pebble-like alternative for a reasonable price (85-140 USD) I won't replace mine anytime soon.

</comment><comment><USER5> I have a Moto360v2 which I must have used a month or so. Now it just sits there in the charger. If you are looking for fitness tracking, might as well buy a Fitbit. For other notifications and the like, might as well use the phone. There's only so much you can display on that tiny screen. I haven't tried the Apple Watch. That may be better. Personally, I think it's a fad.

<comment><USER6> I officially gave up on Fitbit once and for all when my third one (at this point a Fitbit Charge HR2) suffered the classic band tearing away from the bit. No more.

Switched over to the Galaxy Gear S2; I like the software better, I like the ability to choose different watch faces, I like the apps, _and I love being able to detach the band at will_. I have two bands now, one's my "okay to get sweaty/dirty band" and the other is my "wearing to work" band.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I started wearing a regular watch after not having one for a while. Sounds stupid but being able to quickly check the time instead of awkwardly pulling out my phone saves a bit of time. I don't get emails/IMs often enough that I would need to immediately check that I can be bothered having something extra to charge though.

</comment><comment><USER8> Own an Apple Watch 1. I wear it every time I go running for tracking distance and time, as well as watching my heart rate.

Aside from that I don't really wear it. Notifications on the wrist is nice, but doesn't add that much value. No apps of value either.

<comment><USER9> Don't you need to be paired with the phone to give distance (or are you using some pedometer function?)

I've used Polar HR watches a lot in the past and after usually 15 jogs/bike rides I could estimate my HR pretty darn close (and I would get worse at estimates after a few months and put it back on for a ride or two).

<comment><USER10> The first Apple Watch needed the paired iPhone to use GPS, otherwise it would estimate distance based on previous data. Series 2 of the Apple Watch has GPS built-in tough, so the phone isn't needed for your sports tracking.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It's convoent to read messages I guess. They do seem more like a fad item. Your phone can track your steps supposedly so I'm not quite sure why the watch has that much of an advantage.</comment>


Study Concludes That We Need a "Strict Ban on Human Cloning for Any Purposes" - <AUTHOR> https://futurism.com/new-study-concludes-that-we-need-a-strict-ban-on-human-cloning-for-any-purposes/ <comment><USER2> The _conclusion_ of the study is that the failure rate is still high. I can't read the paper, but if that failure rate is too high for use in humans is an _opinion_ , not a scientific _fact_.

I'm a little cautious and I prefer to avoid experiments with human cloning until the technique is more reliable. But this is only a taboo, not a scientific fact. It's like avoiding to use the carcass of your recently dead neighbor as a bow target. (This may be even be illegal where you live.)

</comment><comment><USER3> It is unclear why a "strict ban on human cloning" is needed. The article quotes researcher Lewin: ""We now understand why clones fail, which can lead to improvements in the process of cloning of animals. Our discoveries also reinforce the need for a strict ban on human cloning for any purposes."

A quick read of the article itself suggests the it does no consider human cloning and does not provide support for the conclusion that a "strict ban on human cloning" is needed.

But the reasoning behind the "need" is never explained. I suspect that the need for a strict ban comes from the bioethics folks and is not a real need.

<comment><USER4> May be they are thinking that cloning is not yet well understood and have too many unknowns to legally apply on humans? Imagine a cloned human with some problem starts reproducing en-mass...

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> To paraphrase a line from Aeon Flux, human cloning is trading in excess. At least given the state of humanity at present.</comment>


Apple deletes your OLD SMS messages with new bugfix - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2012/9/20/3361912/ios-6-sms-spoofing-bug-fixed

<comment><AUTHOR> ADDITION TO ARTICLE: If you in your history have SMS messages from what now is classified as an "untrusted source", as soon as you click on them they will disappear!

I have tested it myself, and several big services in Sweden seems affected.

SJ (Swedish Trailway's) are affected amongst others.

<comment><AUTHOR> More info: [http://www.avforums.com/forums/iphone/1681103-certain-sms- be...](http://www.avforums.com/forums/iphone/1681103-certain-sms-being- deleted-after-update-ios-6-a.html)</comment></comment>


Instapaper is now a free app, with extra Premium upgrade that costs $30/year - <AUTHOR> https://www.instapaper.com/premium

<comment><USER2> Those who purchased app get a month free. From the email announcement:

"Since most Instapaper users purchased the iOS and/or Android app, we'd like to thank you for that past support by giving you a free month of Instapaper Premium."</comment>


Something's Happening Here - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/12/opinion/theres-something-happening-here.html?_r=1&ref=thomaslfriedman

<comment><AUTHOR> Friedman does highlight some positive points of where America is though it seems like the main point is the flux that America, nay, the global arena is in - partly due to challenges, partly due to opportunities. I'm wondering how HN users see the situation we're in.

</comment><comment><USER2> More people are going to college now than ever. Life expectancy is higher. Quality of entertainment is _much_ higher from both the devices we use and content. You can learn so much on the Internet, and it's easier to do anything (like finding when a venue is open, directions, etc.). I agree that unemployment is some percentage points too high, but I wouldn't say the general state of the U.S. is so bad. I also think pollution levels are lower in the U.S. now than a few decades ago.</comment>


Tim Ferriss Needs A Startup To Invest In - <AUTHOR> http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2013/07/17/spearhead-capital/ <comment><USER2> I would also invest 100k-1mi in a company that's growing 10% month-to-month and had 10k+ paying users.

No companies in such position should need to raise that amount money. It's not completely useless, but: you can't hire talented developers with it, you could spend cash with office and 'stuff'... My point is, if you are profitable, raise 20mi, 10mi. 100k won't make much difference.

Maybe you want to work specifically with Ferriss, but the truth is, profitable startups are in high demand (because there are none) and they are the ones choosing partners.

<comment><USER3> I don't think these kinds of startups would work with Tim for the money. They'd work with Tim because he'd turbocharge their growth. Tim is a better partner than the vast majority (maybe all) of the other VCs chasing these fast growing startups. Tim can offer money and massive exposure. Other VCs offer just money. Take your pick.

<comment><USER4> I think these companies would work with Tim for just the exposure and press.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Is it possible to short startups? Because I would love an opportunity to short Tim Feris, even if only by proxy.

<comment><USER6> If there's one thing he knows it's marketing and hype, pretty sure that'd be useful for a startup with a proven business model.

<comment><USER5> The base rate for all startups, regardless of hype, is not awesome.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> If he were true to his own principles I would expect each employee at that startup has only to work 4 hours a week. Would love to see how far they get with Ferriss' success strategies.

<comment><USER8> Let's see if he comes and comments about that! I think that his nick is tferris.

<comment><USER9> I doubt that's him. Comments/submissions history is almost all about coding (Go, Ruby, Node/Express etc. etc.)

<comment><USER8> Yep too much hours to learn that to be him!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> There's a lot of negativity about Ferris in this thread, and it's clear he's a very divisive figure, not only here on HN.

But I wonder, what about those successful startups he advises? Surely, if Uber, Evernote, WordPress, and Shopify are happy with his services, he can bring _something_ to the table?

I'm genuinely curious why all the negativity. Just in case anyone's wondering, I'm not particularly a fan of his either, but I'm open to the possibility he can add value to companies.

<comment><USER11> He seems to add value in the same way that Donald Trump does, and is only slightly less unsavory a human being.

<comment><USER12> I just can't take a judgement of unsavory seriously from someone who's chosen to call themselves cuntfart... :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> It's really sad to see the HN community hate on Tim Ferriss so much. Yeah, he's a controversial person, and he's totally aware of that (even using it to his advantages).

But after you inserted your 4 Hour joke here, think about what you have done, that created value in this world?

Tim wrote three NYT Bestsellers and at least two (if not three depending on how you'll measure this) have touched and changed so many lives in a positive way. What have you done?

<comment><USER2> There is just one single (and dead) negative comment about Tim Ferriss in this thread.

"What have you done?"

Ask that more often, you will be surprised to learn that mostly every single person actually creates and do things that are important to others in one way or another. Don't diminish people just because their work is not broadly recognized, everyone is important.

<comment><AUTHOR> Landscape's changed in 10 hours. Negative comments have gone to the top.

And true, but not necessarily depressed people.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Slightly OT when Tim says "US-based investable entities (which is easy)" how easy it really is?

Even if one incorporates in say Delaware, according to (say UK rules) a company is resident where the heart of the company is. And if I, as a director, am physically out of US (or Delaware), how can you claim your company is resident there? Nominee directors?

<comment><USER15> I believe the intent is that the business was founded in the US.

<comment><USER16> Not really. He explains what he means in the article.

> \- US-based companies, or companies willing to create US-based investable > entities (which is easy). Shopify started in Canada, for instance.

The business can be founded anywhere as long as it has a US based entity.

<comment><USER15> Very true. Wasn't aware Shopify was started in Canada

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Mm what a pitty that we are only lacking 10000 paying costumers to meet the requirements...(we are about to launch in a couple of weeks, 0 tracktion by now) Anyway here it is www.apparly.com

<comment><USER17> You need to look at your copy again - missing words, and missing spaces galore on this page: [http://www.apparly.com/providers](http://www.apparly.com/providers). Even in the title! - Are you [a] provider.

<comment><USER18> They need to look at every page, even the home page:

What is Apparly? [We are] an Appstore that lets you choose how to pay.[space]Download Apparly, [and subscribe, buy the license or 'Pay per use' the program you need] needs rephrasing.

Our application list Browse the list of Apps available for subscription, pay per use or sale.[space]Let us know if you don´t find what you are looking for.

Good luck though, looks like a good start and you just need to do some final polishing

<comment><USER8> Thank you, I am not coding the home page and made the text edit on the file. It takes some time to know how it looks well as I'm not a programer myself and the guy uploading this is not of the team. I hope to nail it this afternoon! By the way would you mind If I ask you for a short test once we launch?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Don't expect more than 4 hours of mentoring!

<comment><USER4> Damn weak.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I find it interesting he states "No enterprise software".

<comment><USER3> It's because he can't add much value to enterprise software companies. He has broad reach to consumers, not businesses.</comment></comment>


A Gentler Introduction to Programming - <AUTHOR> https://medium.freecodecamp.org/a-gentler-introduction-to-programming-707453a79ee8 <comment><USER2> It would be awesome if the author used Python 3 instead of Python 2 (based on that print statement example).</comment>


Ask HN: Why don't I get some indication of a response to my comments? - <AUTHOR>

One thing I like about Reddit is I get a little red mail icon when someone responds to my comments.
I tend to check if someone has answered my current comments on HN, but if someone answers something I wrote a while ago, or in a deep thread, I'll likely miss it.
I'd really like to get some indication when I get a response. This seems good for the community too, in that it promotes more conversation.
It seems sort of sadistic to make me dig through my old comments to see if I missed anything. <comment><USER2> You're not the first to ask for this. I have asked before, and there is a feature request submitted on the feature requests thread: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=363>

<comment><USER3> That thread as far as im concerned is dead.

I always thought PG would give the site to someone willing to keep it up.

Put like one ad on it so the person updating the code can get some small amount of revenue from it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Not saying you shouldn't be able to be notified when you get a response, but when I used Reddit I hated that little red icon, and would have loved it if there was a setting to disable it.</comment>


Colleges are turning students' phones into surveillance machines - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/12/24/colleges-are-turning-students-phones-into-surveillance-machines-tracking-locations-hundreds-thousands/ <comment><USER2> > logging their absence into a campus database that tracks them over time and > can sink their grade.

Fortunately, I attended a college (Caltech) that as institute policy did not take attendance and no part of the grade was based on attendance.

The result was nobody was disruptive in class, because if students didn't want to attend, they didn't attend.

I remember sitting in class as a freshman thinking about this and enjoying being treated as an adult for the first time in my life. Nobody was telling me to go to class, admonishing me for not going, giving me credit for attendance or docking me for not.

The freshman EE class professor was famous (infamous?) for scheduling his lectures at 8AM, because he only wanted the interested students showing up at them.

<comment><USER3> This sort of thing doesn't work at schools that don't have such a high bar of entry. Caltech can afford to treat their students like adults, because they're picked from the cream of the crop.

On the other hand, schools like the one I went to would have a horrible(r) matriculation rate if students were not forced to attend certain classes. It infuriurates me (and I think students who want to fail should be allowed to fail), but ultimately it's a product of the financial incentive structure; more graduates = more $$$.

And forcing attendance of some classes does indeed increase the likelihood of certain borderline students graduating, nobody can deny that.

<comment><USER4> I disagree. I went to the University of Canterbury (the New Zealand one), the bar to entry was literally to pass your high school exams.

We were treated like adults, and attendance was entirely optional for most lectures and tutorials. If you failed a paper because you didn't go to any lectures, that was your problem.

<comment><USER5> If you fail out, it's not just your problem though. It's also the taxpayers who paid for the school that the student wasted.

That remains true whether that's a Scandinavian model of fully-paid schools, a US public university model of a partially taxpayer funded & partially student funded or even a private university if it ultimately results in a taxpayer funded loan forgiveness or other subsidy.

<comment><USER6> Rate of dropouts is probably priced in. Plenty of people in the U.S. drop out of public education before they've completed it as we..

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'm a college student myself (my university, as far as I'm aware, has no system such as this). As far as I'm concerned, it's both an insidious creep of social-credit policy and a gross invasion of student privacy. It treats us as children rather than as the adults we are, and seems to me to be a sign of the re-infantalization of colleges. Many generations ago, when the age of majority was for the most part higher, colleges acted in loco parentis for their minor undergraduates. It was during the twentieth century that college students came to be recognized as real adults. But now it seems that the coddling has in many ways increased, and some find it fit again, as one sees here, to surveil us like children.

Further, while there have been obvious benefits of technological advancement, they have in large part erased informal procedures and social understanding in favor of a rigid and unforgiving process. For example, my assignments are now largely due at midnight, at a very particular second: submit a nanosecond late at your own penalty. Whereas in the past the common practice of most professors would be along the lines of "get it in my mailbox by 4 p.m.", or something like that, but with the informal understanding that at 4:00:00.0...1, the door of the mailbox would not close and chop off your hand. And exceptions to rules were easier to get before the arbiter of the rules became a severe and unfeeling one.

<comment><USER7> > For example, my assignments are now largely due at midnight, at a very > particular second: submit a nanosecond late at your own penalty.

From the instructor's point of view, there's no winning here -- there will always be a cutoff, and _any_ position of it will lead to complaints. Even for an informal system, there's always a last person allowed in, and hence a cutoff.

If you have a good reason for an extension, you can still get it. But there's no reason anybody needs, specifically, the extra second after a formal deadline. If the deadline were moved to a second after midnight, you would try to submit two seconds after midnight and complain, and so on. (I mean, why do you think deadlines are at midnight in the first place? Because in-person collection would stop working at 5 PM, leading to complaints, so deadlines were extended to midnight to let people work at night.)

This is pointless slippage, and the resolution from the student side is so easy. Just pretend every deadline is 5 minutes earlier than it actually is, and you'll never have problems.

<comment><USER8> I've been an instructor for CS courses before so I know what you mean. I never made deadlines anything but absolutely final, which is appropriately not unlike a lot of other things in life --- from what I've heard from others, any leniency just tends to cause more whining. Someone who waits until the last second to do something is not going to do any better if given a tiny bit more time (nevermind the question of how much more?), and in any case procrastination is not a habit we want to encourage.

<comment><USER9> How about having the student's score decay as some function of how late they turn it in? If they turn it in before the deadline, they get 100% of their marked grade, if it's an hour late 90%, a day late 50%, etc (use whatever function you want)

<comment><USER7> Usually, delays lead to logistical difficulties. Until every copy of an assignment is submitted, you can't release solutions, assign grades, talk about the problems in lectures or recitations, or really give any feedback whatsoever. I've had excellent courses that ran on your system, but in those cases they had it completely standardized from year to year, and even automated grading systems.

<comment><USER10> This issue only comes up if you have a low caliber class where homework is nontrivial part of the grade.

<comment><USER7> My graduate classes were 100% homework-based almost without exception. When you're doing hard enough physics, it doesn't make sense to demand people do anything nontrivial in an hour, like in a typical exam. Real problems take at least whole days of thought.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> ""Several students said they didn't mind a system designed to keep them honest. But one of them, a freshman athlete at Temple University who asked to speak anonymously to avoid team punishment, said the SpotterEDU app has become a nightmare, marking him absent when he's sitting in class and marking him late when he's on time.

He said he squandered several of his early lectures trying to convince the app he was present, toggling his settings in desperation as professors needled him to put the phone away. He then had to defend himself to campus staff members, who believed the data more than him.""

This is downside of tech, false positive and negatives

Also, couldn't you just buy a cheap burner phone and hand it to a friend to take to class for you? Just because the phone is there doesn't mean the person is.

<comment><USER12> Lets not blame tech, the root cause is the administrators are douchebags. Tracking because they can is their fault. Adding control because they can is their fault. Not doing their testing of their unneeded system? Not being responsive at the tech support level? All their fault. They neither need nor deserve the excuses and allowing them that rhetorical shield has only harmful results.

<comment><USER13> I work in higher ed. I wouldn't say admin are douchebags, they are just under pressure and responding with a solution. For various reasons schools are under pressure to increase student success which is measured by retention, persistence, graduation rates among others. These systems help "teach to the test" if you will. They are pitched in slick presentations with complex statistics with dubious claims to non-technical staff who are poorly versed but like many high-level managers, smarter than their own good.

These systems are often pitched as turnkey solutions with very little input from the people on the ground who are expected to support and triage incidents in a system where training is thin if it even exists.

If, before you send your kids off to college, you look at college rankings then you're just as culpable in the use of these metric boosting systems.

<comment><USER14> In fairness though, thinking by enforcing attendance you improve outcomes is a misreading of the data. Sure, when students attend classes, they tend to do better... _when the choice to attend is without consequences_. Once you make it mandatory, there's a good chance it will cease to be an effective predictor of outcomes, and it may even negatively harm outcomes (classrooms behave differently when attendance is mandated).

<comment><USER6> I think this is something that is understood by a lot of people at universities, but the overlap between these people and the people writing checks is slim.

<comment><USER14> Presumably it's the people writing checks _at universities_ that are making the decisions though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> > "They want those points," he said. "They know I'm watching and acting on it. > So, behaviorally, they change."

I can't tell if he realizes that his students find electronically-tracked attendance points more valuable than his lectures.

That sounds like a fundamental problem. You can lead a horse to water, and all that. Are these students paying attention in class? Are they getting better grades? If they're showing up to lecture but playing on their phones or reading other books, you've accomplished exactly nothing.

The only justification I can imagine is that it's an intro class for freshmen, and so maybe they're trying to ease students into an environment (i.e., the real world) where they have the freedom to do whatever they want, even if it's bad for them. Do they stop requiring this system for upperclass students? They doesn't say, but it doesn't sound like it.

</comment><comment><USER16> > _The dream of some administrators is a university where every student is a > model student, adhering to disciplined patterns of behavior that are > intimately quantified, surveilled and analyzed_

An appropriate dream for a college administrator. But a travesty for creators, entrepreneurs and groundbreaking scientists.

I'd be curious. Would these same administrators object to their timeliness being similarly measured? Quantified coffee-break time theft, for example, could be deducted from pay cheques.

<comment><USER17> I've observed there are a class of people that desire to keep everyone else under control. There seems to be no other reason than it makes them feel better, the fact that some people are not under control makes them feel uneasy. These people seem to be inserting themselves everywhere, IT is a bonanza for these people. Anyone know any psychology researching this? It's something that's been irritating me more and more since I've noticed it.

<comment><USER8> It's called authoritarianism.

<comment><USER17> Thanks, @droithomme's comment put me onto that to, I didn't realise it was classed as a personality type not just a form of government. [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Authoritarian_Personalit...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Authoritarian_Personality) this irritates me even more that its been known since the 50's and we still put up with it.

The book is here [https://smile.amazon.com/Authoritarian-Personality- Theodor-A...](https://smile.amazon.com/Authoritarian-Personality-Theodor- Adorno/dp/1788731646/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=The+authoritarian+personality&qid=1577312193&sr=8-1) the comments are an interesting study alone.

<comment><USER18> > _this irritates me even more that its been known since the 50 's and we > still put up with it._

Throwing a label on it doesn't make it a bad thing. Authority can be a gift. It helps people thrive by giving them the motivation to live up to their potential. If everyone just let everyone else do whatever they wanted, humans wouldn't have gotten very far. Of course, freedom to choose does a lot of good too. There is a balance to be had.

<comment><USER17> Certainly, but is that discipline you mean? Discipline is a good thing in general, but this isn't discipline - its imposed conformance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> > "We're reinforcing this sense of powerlessness … when we could be asking > harder questions, like: Why are we creating institutions where students > don't want to show up?"

This is a great rebuttal. The tracking app of focus, SpotterEDU, was made to target student athletes and reduce truancy. But the founder has an odd history and this just smells of a money grab under the guise of helping students. The professors who lay laurels on the application because attendance is up need to assess performance of their classrooms with the app and those from the past without it to really make a statement.

<comment><USER20> In the early 80s at several large universities I knew of, it wasn't uncommon for attendance at lectures to be effectively optional. The student was expected to do the homework, pass the midterm and final and maybe participate in discussions in a small section with a TA or graduate student.

This varied from class to class, of course. Still, this was an incentive for a given professor to make their lecture interesting and useful enough that students wanted to attend.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Not sure if this is still the case or not but at Maryland circa. 2007-2010 it was school policy that no class could have attendance factored into the grade. If you wanted to skip every class and only show up for exams, that was your choice. Privacy implications aside, I feel that this should be the case everywhere since college is effectively a business transaction. What you decide to do with the product after you've paid should be entirely up to you.

<comment><USER22> I teach in political science and I require regular attendance as part of one's grade. Miss more than a few classes absent a compelling excuse and you are docked a half letter grade.

Why?

My classes are typically small, under 15 students, and are heavily discussion dependent. Engendering open discussion between students, as opposed to top- down lecturing, has resulted in keeping students engaged and actively learning in class. If a handful of people decide to skip a class that impacts both their learning outcome as well as it deprives their attending classmates additional and varied perspectives of the issues under discussion. Hence the incentive to attend.

Yes, these are all adults who are engaged in a "business" transaction with the college to be formally educated. However, the students have the opportunity to review the syllabus in advance and the class participation requirement is clearly stated.

<comment><USER23> > Miss more than a few classes absent a compelling excuse and you are docked a > half letter grade.

Why not give a half letter grade boost to those with good attendance rather than docking a half letter grade to someone who misses a few classes? Why not incentivize with a reward rather than a penalty? The carrot rather than the stick?

> However, the students have the opportunity to review the syllabus in advance > and the class participation requirement is clearly stated.

That's fine if only you require attendance and most other professors don't and if your class isn't one of the mandatory classes. But if every professor requires attendance or if your class is mandatory, then students really have no choice when it comes to attendance.

<comment><USER24> If the class is easy, then the half letter grade won't matter much and nearly everyone will get high scores, rendering attendance useless. If the class is curved, then boosting those that attend is functionally the same as penalizing those that do not.

<comment><USER25> Classes shouldn't be easy. I had the privilege as an American of studying at a university abroad that used the English system of marks, where a top grade began at 75%, and that was difficult to attain. The quality of education I received there was exemplary, and the grades were not inflated, at least not to the extent I've seen at American universities.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I'm 32 years old, going back to school part time to finish up my degree. I'm paying tuition fully out of pocket. Thankfully my school doesn't seem to be doing this yet, but if they did, there's absolutely no way I would tolerate them surveilling me and treating me like a child like this

I'm paying _them_ , so if I choose to skip class that's on me. And thanks but no thanks for trying to assess my mental health -- I already pay people who are actually qualified to do that for me.

Also, why is it that in articles like this they can always find someone willing to say "this isn't invasive, I have nothing to hide"? Christ.

<comment><USER27> It's not so bad: [https://dilbert.com/strip/1994-02-27](https://dilbert.com/strip/1994-02-27)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Schools and colleges should ideally be a place for creativity, free thinkers and open by default.

Using surveillance and improving attendance through fear tactics is not going to help. You will get their physical presence but not their involvement.

I wonder how long it will take for students to start placing check Bluetooth devices in all places they are expected to be present and remotely switch them at desired times. I hope this happens and defeats this unethical forced surveillance by colleges.

Alternatively, I would encourage student counselors spend a little more time with students and assist them to monitor themselves. Motivate the youngsters to better regulate themselves and grow up to be independent and responsible adults.

Note: On Android, there is an app named Tasker. You can automate your phone with it. Schools could start maintaining shared Tasker profiles that can help students stick to some well defined and commonly followed routines. This is giving control back to the student and coaching them about the merits in planning and sticking to plans.

</comment><comment><USER29> Due to what we know of history, universities who deploy this type of system will clearly not be the melting pots of tomorrow's leaders, geniuses, and world changers. Neither do I see how this helps a university's bottom line. To me this seems only like a university-killing move, by forcing many talented folks to non-campus ways of learning - or other institutions that respect diversity.

<comment><USER30> Yep, I am already a non-academic mathematics researcher. Pursuing the degree and putting up with the toxic university environment is not worth it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Weird.

My university didn't care if you attended lectures. Why would they? It's not a prison camp.

More focused tutorials with 1 on 2 or 1 on 4, sure.

Not everything needs to 'scale'.

<comment><USER32> In my experience it varied from professor to professor. Many professors would notice when you don't attend lecture, which I found to be impressive given the size of some of the classes. I found that some professors were more likely to be lenient or accommodating if they recognized you as a frequent and engaged attender, or if you went to office hours or asked insightful questions during lecture.

On the other hand, there were classes I didn't attend very often at all, and I remember a couple of times being stumped on the homework and going to office hours to gain some traction only to be gently ribbed for not going to lecture. You get the sense that many professors do pay attention to that kind of thing and it does factor in, if only unconsciously.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> ...so does this mean that if you buy a Librem 5, you'll be automatically considered absent and will recieve a lower grade? I can't imagine the apps these colleges are using would be compatible.

I realize this might seem like a lower concern compared to everything else, but it strikes me as one more way that people are permanently locked into the major platforms.

</comment><comment><USER34> > "calculate personalized risk scores"

Seems like they're trying to predict social outcomes. Red flag.

Also seems the technology behind this is a BLE Beacon - would be hillarious if someone dropped a rasperrby pi in the class in some corner that kept making web requests on your behalf the entire year.

Attending class is a choice - and that decision is best left up to the student.

</comment><comment><USER35> Maybe Jeff Rubin should spend his time improving the quality of his lectures instead of strong arming his students into attendance. From my own college days I remember the really good lectures being mostly full while the bad ones were deserted and people rather spent their time self studying textbooks (which is also fine).

</comment><comment><USER36> What if a student doesn't have a smart phone (yes they do exist). If they did this at the university I teach at, I would resist using this and there might be some "accidents" with these beacons.

</comment><comment><USER37> I find it telling that they are afraid of letting students know what their bluetooth receivers look like. I know that if I was in still school and being tracked like this, I'd ether vandalize or come up with a way to jam those receivers..

<comment><USER13> I think you answered your own question and I'd be right there with you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> It is no wonder, that young people are growing up with more authoritarian beliefs. All through their life, into early adulthood, a greater power is monitoring and controlling what they do. They then expect the government to have the same power over citizens.

Treating people like babies, results in people acting like babies. Treating people with respect and autonomy like adults, makes adults.

</comment><comment><USER2> > the schools rely on networks of Bluetooth transmitters and wireless access > points to piece together students' movements from dorm to desk. One company > that uses school WiFi networks to monitor movements says it gathers 6,000 > location data points per student every day.

I already turned off the bluetooth on my phone. I guess I should turn off the wifi when I'm not home, too.

<comment><USER39> Unless they are doing deep packet inspection or analyzing your browser through a wifi login portal, I think an iPhone's MAC randomization should be able to defeat WiFi-based tracking (barring WiFi-as-radar, those are much more difficult to evade, there is a ton of metadata you can collect from stuff like breathing, gait and heart rate etc. Cross reference with CCTV to prevent false positives.).

<comment><USER40> If you are 'logged in' into a wifi network, then MAC address randomization is turned off for that network and the iPhone gives the real MAC address of the device. It's only used in non connected scenarios such as scanning for available networks.

Another bad thing is how iBeacon bluetooth is something you can't turn off specifically on an iPhone if you have bluetooth on in any capacity. And there is no per app privacy permission to turn off ibeacon processing. It's a huge privacy violation and I always wonder why it's not brought up that much.

<comment><USER39> Oh that's terrible, I also thought the randomization is constantly on. Is this the case for Android and the desktop operating systems too? Windows, OS X, Ubuntu etc.?

<comment><USER41> Your connection with the AP is bound to a particular MAC. You could randomize it per AP, but you can't like, randomize the MAC for every packet.

<comment><USER39> Yes but you can randomize every time you connect to the AP.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Speaking from the Devil's Advocate side, as I work in Higher Education analytics:

First: this data is, by the vast majority of institutions, used very respectfully in terms of privacy rights and it is ABSOLUTELY never sold. Third part vendors that provide hosted systems are REQUIRED to affirm that they pass nothing on to any other party whatsoever. (I should note that this is the case in public and traditional private non-profit schools. For-profit schools are much less scrupulous and should not be regarded as trustworthy in this respect)

Beyond this, students are apprised of these uses of data with the ability to opt out. This is done as upfront as we can, very "in your face", though the tendency to click "agree" to something without reading, even very short and to the point, is of course always an issue.

Finally, the data collected is _extremely_ useful. I cannot emphasize that enough. It is extremely useful _in helping students be more successful_. And it's not used in terms of surveillance. It's used pretty much exclusive in understanding the patterns the coincide with success and those that coincide with failure, dropout, academic struggling, and so on. In short, it is used to proactively intervene with students at risk rather than wait for it to be too late, e.g., final grades are in and no tutoring intervention is possible. A recent use had me using Xgboost to examine patterns of LMS usage to determine students at risk of early drop out. It worked, and we can now identify about one third of early drop outs with practically no effort and almost no false positives and work with those students to address there problems before they go too far.

I'm sure privacy maximalists will not be satisfied with the above, but really, within the realm of data comprehensive I idividual data collection, I'm not aware of any business, much less an entire industry, that treats such data as responsibly as this, and that really is concerned with using it only to further the best interests of it's constituents. Obviously I'm biased. That probably means things are not as rosy as I envision. But I think it is nonetheless an important and valid synopsis of the issue.

<comment><USER43> Just because the institution does not use the data irresponsibly doesn't mean the service provider will not. Not to mention third parties which could potentially gain access to this data directly or indirectly by listening for the check in signal devices send.

Per the article, this is not being used to help the students succeed, instead it is being used to damage their grade for a lack of attendance. I think most reasonable people would agree attendance is not a reliable metric by which to base a students grade. The exception being discussion based or interactive courses like debate or public speaking.

<comment><USER42> We have extremely stringent security checklists for 3rd part vendors, as I alluded to in my post. Both the vendors, and any of the vendor's vendors, must be able to demonstrate that data is not used for any purpose but the school's. As for attendance, automated attendance tracking has been around for decades in the form of swipe cards, and simply automated a process professors undertook manually. No data is captured that would not have been in the analog world, and professors are still free to have no attendance policies at all schools I have spoken to about it. Granted, that may only be a sample size of 100 or so.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Caltech and other top-tier schools (MIT, Princeton, Berkeley, Chicago, etc.) won't have the problems this was described as addressing, namely students who are at the school but don't care about getting the education. It makes sense that "student-athletes" were the original targets- having a majority focus on sports instead of scholastics has been a real problem in schools with strong NCAA men's programs.

There's another background problem here: young adults being given the assumption that they need to install someone else's nanny on their own phone. In the work world, if your employer needs you to use an app on a device, they need to pay for the device- there is no way they can force you to spend your own money on their business requirements. (Unless your employment contract says you need to maintain a smartphone or similar, I've never seen that though.) I have a feeling that carrying school apps on your phone will erode that understanding.

And this app sounds like a nice hacking target. I won't elaborate any doubts about the app security or the backend service security, let's just see what happens.

Very likely, the schools that are prone to having the problems will institute this more and add more institutional conformity while the schools that aren't won't. The students that go to these institutions will assume more background surveillance while the students to go to better schools will be free of it.

If I were back in school I'd probably just give up the attendance points. But I didn't go to a school that was likely to use this

</comment><comment><USER45> Real question is, what are we educating people to be?

<comment><USER46> This, so much. I was a developer in the Moodle community once. I was several times puzzled by how deep the interest of teachers was to just get to control students, regardless of whether it seemed to serve any apparent learning goal/purpose.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> Also if you don't carry your phone with you everywhere, you're going to penalized for that. Hmm.

</comment><comment><USER48> This is so ripe for abuse. I would not want my daughter going to a school that implemented such a program.

</comment><comment><USER49> Disgusting that an IT "professor" forces students to install spyware on their own hardware.

Students should unite and collectively uninstall the malware.

<comment><USER50> Now, now, don't get too frisky there or these same people might get the idea to uninstall the spyware put on their phones by the manufacturer, the carrier, the OS provider, and the app devs. Then where would we end up? [/s]

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> Just wanted to chime in here- I'm an undergraduate student at a major state university in the US, but I've also built a (small) start-up in edtech.

I condemn schools that are using techniques like Bluetooth beacons to track attendance, but I can say it's definitely not the norm.

The vast majority of schools use pure software solutions (apps like Top Hat) to track attendance (if they choose to do so.) These typically function by having a randomly generated code that the professor writes on the board at the start of class, and students then have to enter into their apps.

It's not the best, and I generally don't agree with tracking attendance in college courses, but it's certainly less invasive than the system described in the article.

<comment><USER52> What if the student does not have a cellphone?

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> The uni I work for is about to introduce this, but we're leading with transparency - everything the system sees is on a student-facing dashboard, and there's the opportunity to opt out. And we're targeting engagement rather than attendance - use of the LMS, watching videos, etc rather than basic attendance.

And we have had vendors attempting to get us to look at video-based attendance and attention trackers. This is a privacy nightmare so we have always said no, but as we are keen to get a handle on room usage and efficiency, we investigated using the existing cameras used for lecture capture to count the backs of heads - in this case how many is more interesting than who.

</comment><comment><USER54> The problem is many classes don't require attendance, especially the sort obsessed with making sure athletes are present as mentioned.

This is about forcing compliance.

The REAL issue is people unprepared for college come, do not attend lectures, fail out, and complain.

Conversely, students who understand that a class is rote memorization and put in the memorization at a time of their choosing after reviewing the powerpoint are penalized if they have physical/mental/social issues that sometimes prevent them from being attentive at a specific time in a specific place.

If instructors want to complain about grade grubbing and cheating, they need to focus on teaching, not measuring compliance.

</comment><comment><USER55> One way to resolve this is to pay vigilante students to remove and destroy these unwanted tracking devices.

>The launch was so sudden that some students were alarmed to see an unknown man enter their classroom, stick a small device near their desks, and walk away. The student newspaper, the Daily Tar Heel, reported on "an individual" entering class to install a "tracking device" and filed for school records related to the SpotterEDU contract.

This can be undone.

</comment><comment><USER56> So I don't even see the point in taking attendance (and as far as I remember at my university in the UK lecturers didn't even take attendence), but if you _do_ , what's wrong with taking a register at the beginning? It's probably cheaper, less error prone and the teach can use their discretion if a student is a little late to class because of ~reasons~.

<comment><USER57> For large classes, it'd take a while, and students would show up and leave halfway through.

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> What happens if you don't own a smart phone?

<comment><USER59> You probably just don't get those attendance points?

<comment><USER60> ... and then your grades suffer because you don't have a smartphone?

Or what am I missing?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> What's wrong with an attendance sheet?

<comment><USER62> Why does attendance matter?

<comment><USER63> That's where you learn the material?

Beyond that most of my anthropology classes (I minored in anthropology) had class discussion as part of the grade. I even had one professor who had us move the desks into a big circle as we entered (and put them back as we were leaving) in order to better facilitate discussion.

Also you'd have to be there to hand in previous assignments and get new assignments. Most of my classes (in all classes) had assignments due either every day or at least most days.

You'd also have to be there to hear about changes in the schedule. If you only show up for tests and the day of the test changes you'd need to know.

Plus pop quizzes. They aren't used much in college, but I think I had one or two.

<comment><USER64> Attendance is irrelevant to most of your points:

1) Some can learn the material without attending. If they don't learn it, their grade will reflect that.

2) If one is present but doesn't participate, how does taking attendance help reflect that? (This is just a lazy prof/TA as they really should be noting participation, rather than attendance, if it's relevant to grading for a course)

3) If your assignment(s) don't get handed in, they don't get handed in and your grade will reflect that.

4) If you don't attend and show up on the right day for tests etc, your grade will reflect that.

5) If you're not there for a pop quiz, your grade will reflect that.

Taking attendance is a weak mechanism at best to address any of these issues. One of the things that college _should_ be doing is preparing people for the real world where they won't have paid babysitters. Classes are proxies for meetings etc. where you may, or may not, show up but are responsible for the content covered either way. Taking attendance just reinforces the view that the students are still children.

<comment><USER61> How does one get the material without attending? Where I studied, the courses were not simply following the course text as the course. Perhaps at lower tier schools that's all they do.

<comment><USER65> Professors post slides and documents containing the lecture material online. However, some professors would purposefully leave out key words out of the slides to force you to come to class and fill to fill in the blanks

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> So now it seems like students are required to bring a smartphone with them on their way to class. So, if they leave their phone at home, this ridiculous system will mark them as "absent"? This is pure madness.

</comment><comment><USER66> Why are kids paying for school if they're not going to class?

<comment><USER67> I stay at home and read the lecture slides on my computer because it's easier for me, and lets me be nocturnal. Am I really missing out on that much by not being there?

</comment></comment><comment><USER68> What if you don't have a smart phone or if your phone dies? I know most people have one ... but this makes it a requirement. Maybe it already was one?

</comment><comment><USER69> What happens if the athlete gives their phone to someone else who will go to class for them and take notes/record lectures.

</comment><comment><USER70> How hard would it be to make a device that spoofs everyone's phone?

<comment><USER71> Not hard. No dedicated device required, either.

It requires reverse engineering which data in being transferred to the school. This likely occurs using a simple HTTP request. Or series of requests. Copy the data from that HTTP request. Then replicate those HTTP requests.

<comment><USER72> That works only if the app authors have no basic idea of security

<comment><USER73> Good news: that's very likely the case for the system described in the article.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER74> What a terrible turn to combat online schooling...

</comment><comment><USER75> Yeah that's incredibly creepy.

</comment><comment> Pete-Codes Super creepy! Another reason to teach yourself or go to a bootcamp.

</comment><comment><USER76> no paywall: [https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/colleges-are-turning- stude...](https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/colleges-are-turning-students- phones-into-surveillance-machines-tracking-the-locations-of-hundreds-of- thousands/ar-BBYiX9M)

</comment><comment><USER77> A large fraction of student borrowers are not repaying their loans, as documented at [https://libertystreeteconomics.newyorkfed.org/2019/10/who- bo...](https://libertystreeteconomics.newyorkfed.org/2019/10/who-borrows-for- collegeand-who-repays.html) . In a private loan market, lenders would monitor how students are doing in college when deciding what interest rates to charge each semester or whether to make further loans at all. This would encourage college students to attend class and work harder.</comment>


Ask HN: Moving into ML as a DevOps/Security Guy - <AUTHOR> I'm looking to move into ML. Some facts about me:
* My background is in Security (i.e. pentesting/red teaming, security engineering) and I spent some time as a "DevOps" guy. I'm comfortable with designing and building cloud environments, worked a lot on Kubernetes, poked around Kafka. I've reviewed security for event driven architectures etc. So I've seen a few things around the block and I know how things fit together in modern environments. I'm Senior in my security role.
* I can "code" but I'm no "software engineer". I can throw together whatever several hundred lines of Python I need to get anything done, I've built quite a few frontend and backend services for side projects over the years, worked with MQs etc. but I'm no software architect. If I wanted to get hired as a software engineer I'd probably be looking at junior-mid-level positions, but I feel I would ramp up quite fast given transferable skills I have from Security and "DevOps". Probably what I'm lacking most is theoretical CS stuff that would come up in interviews.
* I'm doing the MITx "Statistics and Data Science MicorMasters" part-time.
* I have enough savings to quit my job and spend a solid year (or even two) re-skilling without emptying the bank account.
* I'm not under the illusion that I can transfer to ML after a puny MicroMasters and start doing some hardcore theoretical stuff. That's not the objective. I do seriously want to wrap my head around the work of others though.
What is your advice to someone in my position who wants to work on the exciting "new world" stuff driven by our progress with ML?
If you work somewhere doing awesome things with ML, where do you think a guy with my background would provide good value, with some reskilling? <comment><USER2> Something to keep in mind - experienced devops and security experts are extremely valuable, at the same time ML beginners are in oversupply. Do you really want to put yourself at a massive disadvantage in the near to medium term, especially if the future of ML is kind of uncertain while with your other skillset you can have a pretty stable career?

As someone working in ML (a couple of years of experience), I'd much rather be in your position than mine.

<comment><USER3> There's a huge oversupply everywhere until expert ML levels.

Just about everybody was able to tweak some parameter in models, some can explain themselves, others can't, the end result doesn't differ that much.

The way I see it, there's 2 ways you can walk around this. By being a software engineer that deals with the underlying ingestion/infra (that's increasingly a solved problem too), or be the guy that actually write the ML package themselves. Only the latter will be anywhere near secure, but that's almost 0 percent of the current supply.

I'm glad I got out of machine learning/data engineer role for a pure software engineer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> First, kudos for Having a growth mindset.

Some thoughts Taken with grain of salt

\- before quitting try to figure a few positions that you want to head to after your masters and study. Is it ML scientist, Data scientist, ML engineer, Data engineer, PhD in ml etc., use that to figure out your plan. This will help if you want to add more time to learn algorithms and programming too.

\- what are your strategies to get a Ml job Or higher studies once masters is complete

\- tradeoffs — a part time masters gives you the flexibility to see if you truly enjoy, switching to fulltime has the advantage of compressing time to speed up your learning

\- if you can intern in a ml position while doing masters nothing like it. Network as much as possible, on campus,instructors, alumni etc

</comment><comment><USER5> Have you thought about getting a job in a security company that does active software development (i.e not a pure hardware play)? Someone who wants to be an ML head with a security background would be an asset there. I can easily see companies like DarkTrace, and Vectra loving that type of profile, and being interested in seeing people grow from one side to the other. It's core to the business.

</comment><comment><USER6> Hi. Hit me up and I'll set you up so you could have an environment that already has pretty much all the libraries installed, where you can track experiments, deploy and invoke models, schedule long running notebooks, collaborate in near real-time on notebooks, have multiple check-points, and automatically parametrize notebooks so you run experiments filling up a form.

It's a play version of our internal tool to which we invited around thirty students of one of our colleagues for their ML projects.

This way you can concentrate on the actual courses instead of the nightmare of setting things up and the usual ML specific problems. This should speed up your progress, because people lose an ungodly amount of time on these issues. Well, maybe not on course projects, but in real projects they do. I'll also add you to the Slack workspace in case you encounter issues.

<comment><USER2> Are you really offering an easy setup to the senior devops person? I'm sure they can figure things out.

<comment><USER6> > _Are you really offering an easy setup to the senior devops person? I 'm > sure they can figure things out._

I'm sure a mechanic would figure out their broken car; it just is not ideal to do so everyday on their way to their new job/course.

Plus, in this case, it is not only about mechanics (devops). The window jams and doesn't close when it's raining. The fuel the car can fire changes every week. The seats were salvaged from a 1920's car. Seat belts are too tight and thin. The pedals are slippery. The sequence to turn on the car is in their colleague's head, and he's often absent. The tyres start skidding on certain streets. The door handle are the house door's handle and they must transfer them back and forth every time they take the car, and the refrigerant liquid is leaking, but there's a funnel on the dashboard the driver has put an upside down bottle to automate filling canceling the leak.

Offering them a car that just works is in no way doubting their competence, but merely a catalyst for the change in state they want to happen. Consider it reducing the activation energy.

I gather from your other comment you have a couple of years of experience in machine learning. I suppose with real deadlines and money on the line, with colleagues working on the same project? Can you tell us more about your workflow? How do you deliver value without dealing with jammed windows and leaky reservoirs? Or how do you deal with that?

What's lacking? What's getting in your way? Why does the value take so long to reach end-users?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > where do you think a guy with my background would provide good value?

Probably in devops/security stuff

</comment><comment><USER8> Wow, two years worth of living expenses saved up. Kudos.</comment>