Legendary Apple Engineer Gets Rejected for Genius Bar Job - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com.au/jk-scheinberg-apple-engineer-rejected-job-apple-store-genius-bar-2016-9 <comment><USER3> It goes the other way too. The older I get, the less inclined I am to work for any company. I just no longer believe in really any corporate mission. I'm not inclined to work hard for anyone except me. Most companies seem to be doing things that are either uninteresting or trivial or silly.

I was super ambitious and worked super hard for other people when I was younger and now why the heck should I do that for some other company?

<comment><USER4> Funny, the older I get, and the more businesses I become involved with - <USER2> more I realize that even the silliest, most trivial problem on the outside takes relentless execution and talent to make successful.

With age, came the wisdom that I am best when supported by a team of people who take up the fight alongside me. The challenge then, becomes to inspire, reward and treat my collaborators with the respect and dignity that they deserve.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I have wanted to run an experiment of famous programmers or computer scientists applying to jobs at Google/Facebook/Etc (under an assumed identity) and seeing if they get rejected. My hypothesis is that there would be several notable rejections.

Unfortunately, I do not not anyone well enough to conduct this experiment.

<comment><USER6> (Tedious disclaimer: my opinion only, not speaking for anybody else. I'm an SRE at Google.)

We expect and accept a high false-negative rate. Our interview process is optimised for zero false-positives at the cost of many false-negatives. This is a deliberate choice. So yes, I would expect to see a significant rate of rejections of people who are clearly qualified.

The sort of people that we want to hire are likely to come back for another try anyway, and the long-term effect of this process seems to be doing what it was supposed to.

<comment><USER7> I've often heard this, and it seems a poor excuse for a terrible interview process/terrible hiring figures. Why do you not try to improve your interview process to lower the false-negative rate? Doing so in an intelligent way need not raise the false-positives rate (unless you somehow believe that the interview process is already perfected by Google...)

<comment><USER6> I am not allowed to share our data with you about how well the process is performing.

But I would like to point out that of the two of us, only the one who _doesn 't know_ is suggesting that we have "terrible hiring figures" or a "terrible interview process".

<comment><USER6> Hi, downvoters who aren't commenting.

What exactly is your objection to this post?

<comment><USER8> I didn't downvote, but I'll take a shot at answering. Your post had a touch of condescension, sort of: "well I work at Google and you don't, so I obviously know better than you ...".

Kind of reminds me of this HN comment and rejoinder: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35079](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35079)

       Did you win the Putnam?

       Yes, I did.

You generally don't know the history of the people you're interacting with here on HN, so it's not always appropriate to act so smug about where you work.

<comment><USER9> That thread is amazing. My favorite part is the inventors of Tarsnap and Dropbox basically saying to each other, "oh hey, I'm working on the same thing as you!"

<comment><USER10> That's a bit of a mischaracterization. Drew said that he was working on the same thing as me; I didn't respond, because my response would have been "no, you're not; I'm building a _secure_ backup tool" and I didn't want to antagonize people any further.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> As some one in their 40's I'm really hoping this situation will improve.

One bad thing is there does not seem to be much social stigma against this kind of discrimination. You could engage in it, talk about it with friends, and probably not raise a eyebrow.

<comment><USER12> If this is a worry, you might wish to consider starting your own business.

Take control of your life rather than just let it happen to you.

<comment><USER13> I did that. Then I fond out I'm terrible at business - because I don't want to sell anyone anything. I don't want to "network" to try to push products or services to people. Note that I'm pretty social, I have no problem at all with presenting (in fact I love it) and talking to people (quite the opposite). I just don't want to do it for the purpose of extracting payment and pushing products or services.

I think your advice is good only for some very few people. You also forget that the vast majority of businesses fails. Would you give somebody investment advice in an investment product known to get you big losses? Because that's what this is, even aside from personal suitability.

Not to mention this: What happened to specialization? one of THE keys of human success. But these days everybody is expected to savvy at business, finance, long-term planning (privately financed pensions), investment. I claim the world would be much better off if people were not being forced into things they are neither good at nor like doing. I think corporations or smaller options to work together in a group (firms, but also NGOs and other organizations) where a huge step forward. Now whenever somebody fears (and for good reasons) they might not find a place in an organization they are told that going it _alone_ is the way to go. No it isn't. Those developments IMHO are a step backwards in human development.

.

The one thing I _do_ like about seeing people try to start their own is because often they will become reasonable and good human beings. I've seen successful and smug high-level employees who think when people are not successful it's just their own fault for the most part. Then they try to start their own business, very confidently. When they were in an important place in the hierarchy of the corporation everybody wanted to talk to them! Evidently, they were important and popular human beings.

Every single one of those guys came down to earth within the first three years of their business. I've had people that I already had almost given up on, talking to them became more and more painful, become very nice and reasonable people again. Going out on your own sure helps getting in touch with reality, so there's that.

I know several people with the business finally going quite well now - but oh my god are they close to burnout. On the other hand, visiting them and talking to them now is fun again, they are back to seeing themselves as mere mortals.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> On face value this story seems ironic, but there's a lot of questions in my mind. What is the skill set overlap between an Apple engineer and an Apple genius? Although Mr. Scheinberg's experience may be useful in addressing technical issues, would a retired engineer be able to comfortably transition to a customer service role at Apple?

<comment><USER15> There is no required skill set for the Genius bar job, it's a very entry level support job.

Apple releases zero of it's internal support documentation, so there pretty much can be no applicant with experience unless they previously worked in an Apple support position, which surely is a very low percentage of people they hire for these positions.

<comment><USER16> There may be no required _technical_ skill set, but you better bring some rather advanced _people_ skills (Not really _sales_ skills, nobody at an Apple store works on commission). From what I've seen, the job looks quite demanding in terms of customer interaction; I don't know JK Scheinberg to judge how he would do on this, but putting it all down to age discrimination seems to be jumping to conclusions a bit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> X-Istence My local Apple store has a bunch of older people working in the store. They are often just as knowledgeable as the younger kids running around, and have all kinds of cool stories to tell about how things "used to be done".

I actually prefer to work with one of the older people when making my purchase because I don't feel nearly as rushed and it seems to me to be a lot more personal...

<comment><USER17> Marketers have been falling over themselves to get a piece of the 14-24yo market.

Um, hello... the biggest market with the most disposable income (and growing bigger every year) is in the >45 segment.

Companies that don't refocus their efforts on this segment won't survive the next 5-10yrs IMHO.

<comment><USER18> To play devil's advocate, the difference between these two groups is not just their disposable income, it is their buying habits. The habits of 14-24 year olds are far less set than those of the older generations.

If you look at life time value, hooking a 14 year old on your brand (of soda, chips, shampoo, whatever) has high LTV, whereas a 45 year old will just plain buy less X.

Of course it does depend on your market. I bet the luxury car market ignores the 14-24 year olds.

<comment><USER17> Sure, back when industries weren't on an endless cycle of cost cutting and when consumers (esp. 14-24yo) actually had an attention span, LTV was something marketers could rely on. Today the younger the consumer, the more fickle which equates to no loyalty and endless churn.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> You could be a great engineer but horrible in sales, or dealing with troubled customers like in this case.

Just because companies have the ability to discriminate you, does not mean you can accuse them of age discrimination that is based on your prejudices, not on reality.

</comment><comment><USER20> So, how is he chatting with people who may know irritating little about their iPhones etc? What are his people skills like?

</comment><comment><USER21> So? It's a sales job, not an engineering job.

<comment><USER22> The Genius Bar is tech support, not sales.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Ive seen a older sales people in some Apple stores. A good sales manager knows customers relate to people their own age.

<comment><USER11> I don't want that. I want sales people who are smart, know the products inside and out, and do not lie.

<comment><USER24> The last point is at odds with actually selling you Chinese phones and laptops in a fancy case...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Do american interviewers actually say, entirely unqualified, "we'll be in touch", and then never actually send ANY follow-up?

</comment><comment><USER26> Weird, the text is an inch wide. Given that the three inches of whitespace on either side of the text haven't changed width, I guess we know which part of their site Business Insider think is most important.

</comment><comment><USER27> Besides the sanctity of old people as a reliable voting block, why is age discrimination a problem? If companies are stupid enough to not hire good candidates, or under pay the ones they do hire, then they'll lose out against the better companies that don't do those things.

Plus, it's my understanding[1] that it's not discrimination to refuse to hire someone for being "too young" or "too inexperienced". How is that not discrimination if the bright eyed youngster is equally qualified?

[1]: _If there 's someone with the appropriate legal background, please correct me if I'm wrong._

<comment><USER11> >why is age discrimination a problem?

1). Same thing that's wrong with racial discrimination and LGBT discrimination, etc.

2). It's illegal.

3). It's stupid and hurts our economy by making it less efficient.

4). Reverse age discrimination: This is wrong and inefficient also, but unfortunately legal. If you face this it's highly annoying but there are strategies to work around it. It might require changing jobs but you can usually find someone who appreciates your talent if it is truly something special.

<comment><USER27> > 1). Same thing that's wrong with racial discrimination and LGBT > discrimination, etc.

Honestly I think those laws are all bullshit too. If people want to be racist assholes they're going to do it anyway and all this does is create work for lawyers. Vote with your minds and wallets and go work for places that treat people fairly and shop at places that do the same.

> 2). It's illegal.

That's not a valid reason as to whether something is a problem. At one point it was illegal for woman and blacks to vote, did that make it "good" to have those laws?

> 3). It's stupid and hurts our economy by making it less efficient.

The government's track record of making anything more efficient through legislation is effectively zero.

> 4). Reverse age discrimination: This is wrong and inefficient also, but > unfortunately legal. If you face this it's highly annoying but there are > strategies to work around it. It might require changing jobs but you can > usually find someone who appreciates your talent if it is truly something > special.

If that's acceptable remediation for young people faced with the same issue in reverse, why do those other classes you mention need special treatment? Why can't gays, minorities, and old people "work around it"?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Could also be easily a case of being overly qualified of them not even taking the application seriously because if some one sent a CV that looks like his to any entry level tech support / sales support position they would most likely assume it's a gag.

Overall hiring overqualified people is a problem, they might never be happy and they can easily undermine the structure of a company even unintentionally.

This is like hiring some one like Wozniak to do entry level programming at a company hell undermine everyone from the team leader upto the CTO just for being who he is.

<comment><USER29> Age discrimination and not hiring "overqualified" people are overlapping problems. Older people can often be described as overqualified.

It's also unclear whether being overqualified is actually a problem, which you assumed as true. See for example

[https://hbr.org/2010/12/the-myth-of-the-overqualified- worker](https://hbr.org/2010/12/the-myth-of-the-overqualified-worker)

> research shows that overqualified workers tend to perform better than other > employees, and they don't quit any sooner.

<comment><USER28> Again age discrimination is also something easily thrown out.

And overqualification simply cannot be dismissed as you easily point out, the studies that have been conducted a are both contradictory and in your case completely misleading.

Being "overqualified" by possessing an above average intelligence and being more highly educated than the average employee in a menial position such as retail or sanitation is one thing, being overly qualified in a technical field in a highly competitive market is another.

Taking on a considerably more experience engineer than the average for an entry level job might end up good, but it also might not end up that well, you can see it a lot during the recession people needing work accepting lower paying jobs which they overqualify for and they leave as soon as they find a better place.

so no "> research shows that overqualified workers tend to perform better than other employees, and they don't quit any sooner." isn't universally true, it can be true for certain circumstances but this isn't even the level of overqualification we are talking about.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> This reminds me of the outrage when Uber kicked Sebastian Thrun off its platform when he worked as an Uber driver offering people rides in his Model S (founder of Google X, inventor of the modern "self-driving" car).

I think all you have to do is say the legendary engineer is "over-qualified" for this position -- I mean, you can't jump to age-ist conclusions right away when Michael Jordan applies to play high school basketball.

</comment><comment><USER3> Call this an unfair generalization if you must, but old people are no good at everything.

\- Moe from "The Simpsons"

<comment><USER13> That is a straw man. You are arguing against if someone would have complained that "seniors" don't get _every_ job. But the subject is discrimination, they get _less_ jobs after 50.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Does age discrimination even uphold for remote work?

</comment><comment><USER32> so, they didn't bother checking his cv?</comment>


Flat-Earther's rocket lofts him 1,875 feet up - <AUTHOR> http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-rocket-man-blast-20180325-story.html <comment><USER2> I wonder if he really believes the earth is flat, or if he's just pretending so the flat earth people will keep funding his rocket hobby.

<comment><USER3> No one really thinks that the earth is flat it's just attention seeking behavior.

<comment><USER4> My take away from Flat Earthers is how much I rely on third parties as a source of truth. Or perhaps I should say "truth". Probably a mixture of both.

Similar to what he said about the Earth being frisbee-shaped, I believe the Earth is round, but I know I don't have personally-acquired observation that my belief is fact.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I have a high altitude balloon+electronics education project and it is very fun. We were using our pocket money. It can get expensive really quickly was very hard to raise money for this kind of stuff. We spend about $300 per launch (not including transportation) given we retrieve the payload successfully. If we don't, it is going to be $1.5k per launch for a latex weather balloon. There is a lot of risks involved in the process.

With that in mind, I think being able to launch a hunk of metal to 2k ft with just $20k is actually really quite impressive. I don't care if he raised money for the flat earth cause or any other scandalous cause, I think he did a legitimately impressive engineering feat, risked his life for it, raised money for it, didn't hurt or rob nobody. I am thoroughly entertained by this guy. Anyone with an iota of a brain will quickly realize this is just a comedy sketch, but as they say, a fool and his money are soon parted. If they didn't give money to this guy, they would have given their money to another stupid cause. And if anyone decides to give their money to any flat earth cause, I'd rather see they give money to this one.

With that in mind, I don't think I would go so far as going on the radio saying stupid shit just to raise money for my hobby project. But then, the world rewards people with crazy ideas and crazy execution plans when they work. Clearly, this is one of the instances when an unlikely funny idea actually worked. If I knew about this earlier, I would have chipped in some of my money just because it's so hilarious (and I can see many people would do that too).

</comment><comment><USER6> Can't really fault him for literally studying "the natural world through observation and experiment" as opposed to blindly taking some else's word. But, he should probably spend his time understanding what others did to "study the natural world through observation and experiments" and realize it's not so blind to look at their conclusions.

</comment><comment><USER7> If you're going less than 2000 feet up, what's wrong with an airplane?

<comment><USER8> It's harder to get flat earthers to give you money for airfare.

<comment><USER7> Well obviously commercial jets have video screens instead of windows, but surely building an ultralight or using an open cockpit plane is easier than this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm more interested in the fact that he converted a motor home into his launch pad. Well ... the steam-punk side of me also wants to see how his steam- powered rocket works. Unfortunately after looking at NoizeTV I don't think I'll be watching his launch.

</comment><comment><USER10> Does he still believe the earth is flat?

</comment><comment><USER11> I don't think this is high enough to see the curvature of the earth. So, experientially he probably has a confirmation-bias event which reinforces his core belief. Well.. the belief he espouses, to further his aims.

</comment><comment><USER12> Video of the launch:

[https://gizmodo.com/at-long-last-flat-earth-rocketeer- finall...](https://gizmodo.com/at-long-last-flat-earth-rocketeer-finally- manages-to-b-1824059035)

</comment><comment><USER13> I think putting a gopro on a balloon would have been easier.

<comment><USER14> But the GoPro's firmware is probably hacked to show a globe, because GoPro is in on the conspiracy, etc., etc.

<comment><USER15> Admittedly, GoPro does actually have a lens distortion going on so that it can be wide angled. It actually makes it look more globe like than it is, as you can see from numerous sky diving videos. In them you can see this distortion by noting that the skyline is straight when it goes through the center of the view but looks highly curved when on the side.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The flat-earth stuff is nonsense, but I am glad he stuck to it and launched. Congrats, and even a bit of admiration.

<comment><USER16> I was either downvoted twice because the mods were flat earthers, or because they view it as impossible to ever admire guts in an idiot. And if you want to say it was down-voted because the comment was not technically informed or provided insight as befitting an expert in the field, I'd respond that this article is clearly asking for flippant comments, no serious discussion is to be had about this article. It is a fluff article, and deserves fluff comments. So instead of down voting, as I am sure this comment will also receive, write why you disagree.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> If he is a true believer, he is at least willing to test those beliefs by conducting an experiment. As it should be. How many true believers of anything are willing to have their their minds changed?

This guy should be praised instead of ridiculed by a bunch of internet non- contributing zeroes.

<comment><USER18> Yeah what he did was definitely cool. But if you just want to test a hypothesis, it would be much easier to send a camera and not a whole person. Also a balloon could obtain a higher altitude than any amateur rocket. And people have filmed the curvature of the Earth with just balloons, they can get quite high.

<comment><USER17> I am sure just the enormous challenge of actually building a rocket with a couple of friends also played a major role.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Wouldn't it have been more sensible to do the launch from somewhere nearer the edge of the earth?

</comment><comment><USER20> Given people have always known the earth is round based on the shadow it casts on the Moon...

<comment><USER21> EDITED: Obviously not trying to argue that the Earth is flat, but flat things can still cast round shadows if they're, well, round

(ORIGINAL: Obviously not trying to argue that the Earth is flat, but there are round things that are also flat)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> He could have gone up to the top of Burj Khalifa instead. But, that wouldn't have placed him on the headlines. Also, he is running for governor. As far as I can tell from recent experience, he will win.

<comment><USER22> Or pay for a helicopter tour. You can get a ~10 minute helicopter tour for under $100 where I live. They don't fly incredibly high, but given that the minimum safe altitude is 1000 feet in some cases:

[https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/27076/what- is-t...](https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/27076/what-is-the- minimum-allowed-altitude-for-helicopters-over-a-residential-area-in)

Or, just book a flight on a commercial airliner, which is also cheap but doesn't get you a panoramic view. But you'll get way higher than 1875 feet.

<comment><USER23> The windows are actually screens to trick you.

<comment><USER22> Hah, I hadn't considered that!

Probably a skydiving trip would be a better plan then. I've never done it but it seems you jump from a decent height (13K feet or 4km -- so says [https://adventure.howstuffworks.com/skydiving1.htm](https://adventure.howstuffworks.com/skydiving1.htm) ) because they want to give you some good freefall time.

But I suppose the truly dedicated flat earther will find a way to dismiss that too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Translation for metric units users:

1875 ft ≈ 570 m

150 miles ≈ 240 km

350 psi ≈ 2.4 MPa

350 mph ≈ 560 km/h

86 miles ≈ 140 km</comment>


Coca-Cola launches 'twist' water bottle to aid recycling - <AUTHOR> http://www.letsrecycle.com/news/latest-news/coca-cola-launches-twist-water-bottle-for-recycling/ <comment><USER2> So they made a cheaper water bottle and greenwashed it. Cool I guess. Reminds me of the video talking about the 100s of tons saved by the incremental evolution of the aluminum can.</comment>


Ask HN: What tools to grab slices of production? - <AUTHOR> Where I work, it has become infeasible to grab the entire production database for local testing, debugging or dev. Not to mention the regulatory climate changing which discourages this.<p>What tools do you use to grab just slices of it? We use Postgres as our db. <comment><USER2> I have this problem too and don't have a good solution. One approach I've been thinking about doing is to just automatically deploy yesterday's RDS snapshot to a dedicated test instance that rolls over every 24 hours and is replaced. It would dedicated for testing tricky migrations and support cases.

</comment><comment><USER3> We just take a weekly snapshot where we run a script to drop most customer data, sanitize the little bit that is left, add our internal users and data and apply the grants needed for each person internally. This image is built and everyone can pull down the container. New grants preferably wait until the weekly snapshot happens.

</comment><comment><USER4> If you have the cash in your firm you could look at Delphix. It only works on RDBMSs but allows databases to be "forked", branched committed to, rolled back and datamasked.

</comment><comment><USER5> It depends on if you have a shared dev environment or a truly local laptop environment and whether or not you have any restrictions on data usage from prod. I have had to deal with this a lot over my career as most of the time the production databases have been quite large. And in many cases, privacy or security rules prevented us from just copying the data straight away. If you have no restrictions it is easiest to do snapshots of prod on regular intervals and just restore a snapshot into Staging or local etc.

Outside of that, the other methods I have seen & used varied over the years, but I'll share the most common pattern I have used which seemed to work the best, but it does require some work to setup and maintain.

For SQL specifically, we used to write a number of functions (stored procedures or the equivalent) where for each record type a function would anonymize the data and return the new record. Then we would start combining these procedures into modules which we could run a single function and specify the number of records to pull and recreate in our destination. We also would always write a special use case procedure where if some records we found broke production in the past we would always create those records in the dev/test data to make sure new code doesn't fail. This worked really well and yes, takes time initially to setup and takes some time to maintain, but it means you can reproduce a meaningful dataset into any environment for testing or development quickly and automated.

The best one I was involved with we had a SQL Server backend and so we wrote a C#.NET component to take place of the majority of the stored procedures, which made it faster and let us use RAM more efficiently to handle some of the translations & lookups. The same could be done in Postgres, MySQL, Mongo or just about any database in a language of your choosing for the most part.

For what it is worth, I have tried most database data tools out there that claim to solve this problem and never found them to be as good as spending a little time and building a custom toolset. Our .NET version (which could easily be done in Java or another language for Postgres) could be run from a stored procedure itself, so even repopulating staging environments etc could be done on a schedule and be 100% automated (plus gave DBA's comfort). We made the .NET one sophisticated enough it could import tables by enumerating the tables through SQL API's and then pull data from them generically. This process worked great for all the lookup tables and things that didn't need to have extensive translations. So as we got better more of the code was generic and we moved the translations and details to meta data about tables stored in SQL. In one case this worked against a database that was spread across 4 physical DB servers and ~700 tables and huge amounts of data. We could pull a reasonably sized local dev set and be working in roughly 20 minutes and that would include all the weird edge cases that had to be created. This was the closest we came to making something generic. For our shared staging environment we could use the same code and just specify a larger dataset, which typically took many hours to run but we'd just run it overnight. We also built in ways to pull specific client's dataset in if we were struggling with one client having unique issues.

FWIW too, currently at the startup I am in we are using primarily Postgres right now and I have been replicating a similar system to the .NET one I built before because we have strict requirements about the data given it is medical data. So we can't just let people have access to production or let people copy data to staging or local machines, as it would create a compliance and legal nightmare. I tried a couple of tools recently that again said they could do this, but the amount of time & money to invest in those tools and the features you still have to supplement just doesn't make sense to me. I'd much rather buy than build in most cases but this is one where it is hard to do that.</comment>


Semantic Validation in Rust - <AUTHOR> https://slowtec.de/posts/2019-09-03-semantic-validation-with-rust.html <comment><USER2> I've been really happy with Keats's validator library [1]. 'semval' doesn't seem as user friendly as 'validator' but maybe it's trying to solve a different problem?

[1] [https://github.com/Keats/validator](https://github.com/Keats/validator)

</comment><comment><USER3> The problem I have with this style of validation is that it doesn't "make illegal states unrepresentable". If the validation is not run then it is still possible for instances of `ContactData` that violate the business rules to enter the system.

      > Our reservation business requires that contact data entities are only accepted if all of the following conditions are satisfied:
      >
      > - The e-mail address is valid
      > - The phone number is valid
      > - Either e-mail address, or phone number, or both are present

In this case, all of the above rules can be encoded into the type system itself. Here's how I would approach this particular problem:

      struct PhoneNumber(String);

      impl PhoneNumber {
          fn new(value: String) -> Result<Self, ValidationError> {
              if is_valid_phone_number(value) {
                  Ok(Self(value))
              } else {
                  Err(ValidationError)
              }
          }
      }

      struct EmailAddress(String);

      impl EmailAddress {
          fn new(value: String) -> Result<Self, ValidationError> {
              if is_valid_email_address(value) {
                  Ok(Self(value))
              } else {
                  Err(ValidationError)
              }
          }
      }

      enum ContactData {
          PhoneOnly(PhoneNumber),
          EmailOnly(EmailAddress),
          PhoneAndEmail {
              phone: PhoneNumber,
              email: EmailAddress
          }
      }

This approach, when applied alongside Rust's modules and visibility modifiers, would make it impossible for any of these types to be in an invalid state.

</comment><comment><USER4> Marshmallow in Python is a bit of an odd tool.

It does a great job of validating and deserializing inputs to Python objects, which is what it's meant to do.

But this means that now you have to define your "schema" _twice_ \-- once when defining the data structure where the data will eventually reside, and once to define the validator. There are few ways around this, but there's nothing well-established yet. The default experience is still implementing everything twice.

ORMs handle the problem by automatically generating a database schema from your class definitions in code. Maybe we should be generating input validation schema from our class definitions in code as well. But then composability becomes a problem; the ORMs in Python tend to "take over" any class defining a model, and it's not obvious how you'd write a class that's both a Django/SQLAlchemy model and a Marshmallow schema, without some really verbose and messy code.

Maybe this is a Python-specific problem, and in Rust people just don't write classes very often. But I think it goes beyond the specific problem of writing class definitions, and more generally into the problem of how to ergonomically define data structures at compile time while defining validation for those data structures to be applied at run time. Edit: and perhaps even more generally, defining a single interface for the same logical data structure that can be applied across multiple systems.

I'd be interested to see how semval and validator (mentioned in another top- level comment) handle this situation, if at all.

</comment><comment><USER5> The only real features that i see on display here are Option and Sum types. Which are great, but far from unique to Rust.

F# and it's ML ancestors are great for this also.</comment>


Cédric Villani: mathematician challenging to be Paris mayor - <AUTHOR> https://www.ft.com/content/73c7a6a6-ee57-11e9-ad1e-4367d8281195 <comment><USER2> He is already an elected representative in the French parliament, being part of the current government's majority. His political party and the government have already passed several laws that are very damaging to research and higher education (among other things, but these two topics Villani actually knows something about, and he should care a bit given his background). He has never said anything publicly about it, or only to support the government. I see this behavior as proof that he doesn't care at all about being a mathematician (well, except when it gives him credit he doesn't deserve), so he should just be considered another random politician, and he's not even a good one.

Edit: fixed "dommageable".

<comment><USER3> "dommageable" is "damaging", for anyone who couldn't guess.

Can you go into detail about what his party has voted for that's so bad for higher education and research?

I consider myself pretty academia-friendly, and there's a lot of things I'd vote for that most people would consider damaging to higher education and research.

For example, I think free college for everyone is a terrible idea. Most people consider that heresy.

<comment><USER2> First we do not agree on free education. I believe that's a good thing.

Now, what Macron's government did wrong with research and higher education is: literally everything they did about it. The switch to high tuition as you said (especially given that it was _only for foreigners_ , which I consider racist, and anyway the Conseil Constitutionnel recently found this measure unconstitutional). Parcoursup was a very bad decision: it is poorly designed, it is much worse than the previous system for university admissions for obvious algorithmic reasons that my undergrad students can spot (but that Villani apparently can't?), and it also does not solve the actual problem which is the lack of universities and professors. There is also the way they force universities to merge by making funding conditional to merger, this comes at high cost for no clear benefits (except for _maybe_ jumping a _few_ places in the Shanghai university ranking, which is pure bullshit). There is the way they decided to fund public research: almost exclusively via calls for project, which is a very very inefficient wqy of distributing money as everyone has to work for month to make application and less than 10% of applicants are actually funded so more than 90% of all this work is done for next to nothing, and in addition to that the money is very badly distributed with very rich man that have so much money they don't even know how to spend it and a majority of labs where it becomes difficult to do any research at all. Their funding policy also force universities to cut there spending which is mostly salaries, meaning not replacing professors who retires for example, which means even less professors while there is more and more students (and that was forseeable, they all were born around two decades ago and have been through primary and middle and high school, we saw them coming). I could continue but I'm on my mobile phone so I will stop there.

<comment><USER4> I'm curious, what's been going on with Parcoursup? (I don't read enough French to understand the discussions.)

Also, I'm not surprised that tuition for foreigners is a lever they are pulling. A government is responsible, first and foremost, to its own citizens. Racism? Really? What about "localism" or "separation of duties"?

<comment><USER5> For the racism part: France, as an ex-empire, is very attractive to its former colonies' students. And we have agreements to make it easier for them to come. So we get many students from Africa or the Middle East, often on merits and/or scholarships. In my engineering school, there were students from Turkey, Sudan (might be South Sudan now)...

Raising the price of tuition will mostly impact people from these countries rather than people from other European or American countries.

<comment><USER6> So because France had colonies they now have an obligation to take in foreign students?

<comment><USER7> It's a moral obligation, yes. Plus, it's still nowadays a very powerful lever to keep relationship with local elites.

<comment><USER6> No, it isn't. They are independent countries and should be treated as such. Diplomatic bribes aren't a good enough reason to continue doing subsidising this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Being a former Parisian, I can object here you can be a medal fields winner and not having a clue about economic problem. Paris is facing quite sensible issues right now ( higher debt, untidy streets, insecurity,etc...) and for now all he's proposing here is very similar to what any others politician would offer to get elected. Parisians need some radical changements and for now I haven't heard anything from him tackling the right issues but just big promises and gifts for all ( please note that this also applies to the others candidates as well).

<comment><USER9> > Paris is facing quite sensible issues right now ( higher debt, untidy > streets, insecurity,etc...)

Most of these problems stem from national-level irresponsible policies such as uncontrolled immigration. They won't be fixed by the mayor alone, and they plague most big and even medium cities in the country.

<comment><USER10> As far as I can judge, the problem of untidy streets and insecurity in Paris have nothing to do with "uncontrolled immigration". Do you have some evidence supporting your statement?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Not just a mathematician but a Fields medal winner.

The current mayor of Paris is also an interesting person, being a Spanish-born woman from a working class family. She has made huge strides in the greenification of Paris:

[https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/05/world/europe/paris- anne-h...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/05/world/europe/paris-anne-hildago- green-city-climate-change.html)

<comment><USER12> Current mayor is hated by a lot of Parisians because of the "greenification of Paris" as you call it.

She closed a few roads and made them pedestrian-only; that was not well received by a number of people.

<comment><USER13> This appears to bother the people that live outside Paris rather than most Parisians. I'm all for it. I've watched my balcony become unusable from pollution. I imagine if half the stuff that was collecting on the balcony floor was going into my lungs my lungs would look like a 50 year heavy smoker.

<comment><USER12> I am all for it too, I was just giving some context for HN readers who might be surprised to see a lot of hate comments regarding the current mayor under most articles covering Paris elections :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Nothing to see here unfortunately, he's like any other politician. I mean you wouldn't be able to tell he's received a Fields medal by the way he speaks and what propositions he makes.

I too would like to hear him say " ... you bring up the subject of housing in Paris and I'll tell you how I think about the problem: in mathematics we have a rather abstract concept called a Group ... ".

<comment><USER15> Maybe he's secretly actually talking about a _differen_ kind of building? [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Building_(mathematics)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Building_\(mathematics\))

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> He has a few videos on Numberphile:

On the Fields Medal: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vp3sgYKULp0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vp3sgYKULp0)

On his wearing of decorative lapel spiders: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gq4REVI30Qc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gq4REVI30Qc)

Beauty vs Utility: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xopM9BFjcNo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xopM9BFjcNo)

On his office: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eeLpkCZkWfc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eeLpkCZkWfc)

</comment><comment><USER17> He was commissioned for a report on AI while been part of the french parliament. You can found it here in EN : [https://www.aiforhumanity.fr/pdfs/MissionVillani_Report_ENG-...](https://www.aiforhumanity.fr/pdfs/MissionVillani_Report_ENG- VF.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER18> Is he in favor of clopen borders?

<comment><USER19> I think he prefers neither open or closed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> [http://archive.is/PhUZW](http://archive.is/PhUZW)

</comment><comment><USER21> I have always wondered at the popularity of the first name Cedric, because the name was newly coined(in the early 1800s) by Walter Scott in his novel Ivanhoe, for the character Cedric of Rotherwood, a Saxon chief, and is not a historically relevant name.

<comment><USER22> Close enough [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cerdic_of_Wessex](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cerdic_of_Wessex)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'm a bit sad to see such a brilliant mathematician playing the game of petty politics. I like when scientists participate in "everyday" duties, but in this case it feels that we completely lost the guy to administrative tasks.

</comment><comment><USER24> Also see, [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Painlev%C3%A9](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Painlev%C3%A9)

</comment><comment><USER25> Looks like another Macron. Well done.

<comment><USER2> It's one of the good reasons why it's a bad idea to have him in any position with political responsibilities.

<comment><USER25> I should have added a /s

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> oh wow! much luck to him! i remember watching a talk from him on youtube and putting that book he wrote on my wishlist.

<comment><USER2> Maybe he should keep to writing books and making YouTube video. The guy has no clue whatsoever when it comes to political matters. It's depressing.

<comment><USER27> > The guy has no clue whatsoever when it comes to political matters.

I find it unlikely he is clueless and very likely that he has incentives that we do not see.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> paywall

</comment><comment><USER29> Can't help noticing this is an anagram for Cerci D. Villain (the D presumably stands for Diabolical).</comment>


Surprising numbers behind startup survival rates – Chicago Booth Review - <AUTHOR> https://review.chicagobooth.edu/entrepreneurship/2017/article/surprising-numbers-behind-start-survival-rates <comment><AUTHOR> "Entrepreneurs starting their companies from 2009 to 2011 had nearly a 51 percent chance that their firms would still be in business five years later—almost 3 percent higher than the survival average for the previous decade and a half. The only other stretch during that period when survival rates hit 50 percent was in 2002 and 2003, right after the tech crash. So it would seem that right after a market downturn is a good time for entrepreneurs to start new ventures."</comment>


Ask HN: Text-based PPT alternative? - <AUTHOR>

Is there any good way to generate slide presentations from text files?  I'd like to be able to push my presentations to GitHub as text, so that I can see changes from one version to the next and so on.  Is LaTeX the answer?  Somebody's got to have wanted to do this before me... <comment><USER2> There are a bunch of solutions for creating S5, Impress.js, Reveal.js, etc. from Markdown or ReStructuredText:

[http://docs.hieroglyph.io/en/latest/](http://docs.hieroglyph.io/en/latest/)

[https://hovercraft.readthedocs.org/en/1.0/](https://hovercraft.readthedocs.org/en/1.0/)

[https://github.com/yoshiki/markdown2impress](https://github.com/yoshiki/markdown2impress)

[https://github.com/gnab/remark](https://github.com/gnab/remark)

[https://github.com/jdan/cleaver/](https://github.com/jdan/cleaver/)

</comment><comment><USER3> [http://decksetapp.com/](http://decksetapp.com/) does this from Markdown.

If you don't need actual PPT/PDF/etc. slide generation, and don't mind writing HTML, S5 was one of the original standards to do this; there are plenty of others, now: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web- based_slideshow](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web-based_slideshow)

<comment><AUTHOR> Deckset looks great. Not great enough for me to switch to a Mac, but great.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> On a Mac, I like tpp, which can be found at [https://github.com/cbbrowne/tpp](https://github.com/cbbrowne/tpp). I installed it using Homebrew (brew install tpp), which will install the necessary Ruby dependencies. Optionally, for huge letters, you'll need FIGlet (brew install figlet).

</comment><comment><USER5> I usually go the LaTeX+Beamer route, since LaTeX is what I work with anyway and I usually need LaTeX's math typesetting. Another option is MagicPoint [1], but I have never personally used it.

[1] [http://member.wide.ad.jp/wg/mgp/](http://member.wide.ad.jp/wg/mgp/)

</comment><comment><USER6> The Slideshow language in the Racket ecosystem: [http://docs.racket- lang.org/slideshow/index.html](http://docs.racket- lang.org/slideshow/index.html)

One of the authors is Matthew Flatt, and he wrote it despite knowing LaTeX well.

</comment><comment><USER7> Latex is pretty great. Use the Beamer packege. However, its drawback is that all slides look very similar, and it's very time-consuming to experiment with discrete slide layouts.

For most users I'd say this is one of the few scenarios where you really really want a graphical editor.

<comment><USER7> But i totally agree with the need for a github for ppt (and other binary files, like doc, etc!)

<comment><AUTHOR> I'd be happy if they could just show the contents on the website (or even if they could show PDFs) so that you don't have to click "View Raw" to access them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Try [http://johnmacfarlane.net/pandoc/](http://johnmacfarlane.net/pandoc/) and [http://gitprint.com](http://gitprint.com)

<comment><AUTHOR> GitPrint is really cool, I used it today in class to make my course syllabus printable. Thanks for the tip!</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do you go about validating your startup ideas?  - compass-seeker <comment><AUTHOR> For a B2B product - identify five people to whom you can honestly say: "You would be stupid not to buy this product" These should be real people you can name - not hypothetical people. If you cannot identify such people, but think they are out there, do everything possible to find them. Go through Linkedin and see who in your extended network fits your target market and find someway to talk to them. Email people or message people on blogs or social sites that seem to have the pain point you have identified. In reality, you will need to talk to far more than five people in order to narrow it down to five people who clearly need your product.

Once you have found a set of people who need your product, get their feedback on the idea, show a mockup or prototype, and ask if they would buy it. If a bunch of people say "yes", time to go build! But as you build, make sure you check in very regularly with potential customers, so that you stay on a the right track.

Keep in mind there is a big trap you must avoid in this process. Many prospective customers will be positive about an idea, but they overestimate their own willingness to get through the friction involved in adopting a new product. So the prospect says the idea is good - but then you build it, and they don't actually use it, because turns out email and excel had a bunch of hidden benefits that make them better than your product.

As an entrepreneur, you need to implore people to be brutally honest in their feedback, lest you build the wrong thing. You should focus more on identifying their pain-points than on pitching your own solution. You also have to make your own judgements about how big the pain point is, rather than just blindly trusting a prospect when they say they would buy your product. And you should to some extent reverse pitch - ("Did you think of solving your problem by doing X? Do you really need me to build a product to help fix this?")

</comment><comment><USER2> I'm assuming its a computer related startup, but here are a few brief methods.

Website landing page:

        - build a landing page
        - explain the product and optionally post a mockup
        - mention the price (optional but will give you a better proof of validation)
        - collect at least an email address at the bottom
        - optionally add a stripe checkout form (takes only a few min) and get some $

Kickstarter

Website or Shoppify or Etsy or Amazon stores:

        - build one
        - sell a trial run of the product

Physical product:

        - Option 1: You can test on ebay or craigslist
        - Option 2: Run one small ad in a magazine or newspaper

Bar method:

         - Take the product(s) / apps to a bar
         - Ask people to try it or offer to buy them 1 beer if they try it
         - Try to actually sell it.
         - Ask for feedback

MVP (Minimum viable product)

         - Build only the basic features
         - Build only a basic site
         - Try to sell
         - Lots more info on this out there

It would help to run at least some forms of advertising for almost all of these (sans ebay, kickstarter, and the bar method)

If you get orders you can't fulfill just say you are sold out and ask if they want you to contact them when you get more product.

If you have any others you care to share I would be interested to hear! Also good luck

<comment><USER3> > \- sell a trial run of the product

> \- Try to actually sell it.

> \- Try to sell

Those are critical steps.

Your product is only viable when people are actually paying for it, not when people only tell you they will pay for it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is a big question which can not be answered without knowing detail about you and your startup ideas. (In my opinion, B2B and B2C startups have totally different structure about idea and validating.)

Today I read a post about it in this link [http://www.jasonshen.com/2014/test- your-startup-idea-with-a-...](http://www.jasonshen.com/2014/test-your-startup- idea-with-a-minimum-viable-transaction/)

When you think about your idea, generally tend to think about technology, product, development but generally this doesn't work.

(When Twitter first launch, most of people can't get their Twitter account. A big UX problem!)

(Beginning of something is totally different than already exist business.)

When validate idea, first don't too much focus on validating and speedly generate your prototype business. This business maybe your first sale or your first counseling.

Don't forget needed and optimal is very different. Everybody talks about their optimal but you should focus on your needed strategy.

</comment><comment><USER5> I think all the methods listed by mc_hammer are great but nothing beats talking with your target customers and figuring out whether what you are building is a real problem. I will admit this is a lot easier for a B2B startup than a consumer startup but it has worked great for us.

</comment><comment><USER6> One good route is to solve a problem you're experiencing yourself (or even better, one that you and some friends / colleagues are all experiencing).

It's how our startup came about -- we built something which did what we needed, and it turned out that a whole load of other people had the same problem (unsurprising with hindsight, but the point is we set out to solve a problem, not to "create a startup")

Happy to share more thoughts if you're interested.

<comment><USER7> Counterdote: One company I was with created a product to solve our own problem (time-tracking for projects) and while we loved it we did not find anywhere near enough other people to buy it.

If you're going to be building something anyway, even if there's no market for it, that's fine. If you simply assume that a given solution to a problem that happens to please a handful of geeks is going to please many, many more, you may be in for disappointment.

In retrospect we screwed up by not first validating the market for what we were _so sure_ people would want.

A corollary here is that, for all I know, people would have _loved_ the product if we pitched it to them correctly. Being unable to sell/market a good product is as bad as having a dud offering.

In any event it is far from a given that scratching your own itch means you have market validation.

I've become increasingly convinced of sales+marketing first, serious product building after validation of the idea _and_ of the ability to sell it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I sold four pieces of non-existing product, gave refunds, apologized to buyers and stamped idea as "perfectly valid"

</comment><comment><USER9> Always start by talking to customers.</comment>


Which Is More AI? - <AUTHOR> http://www.allourideas.org/whichismoreai/ <comment><AUTHOR> Our research group made this online quiz to promote our recent paper "Defining AI in Policy versus Practice" [https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3431304](https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3431304)</comment>


Ask HN: when will the startup visa be passed by the congress? - <AUTHOR>

It has been proposed for 2 years now, a lot of people are supporting it and I guess Obama is also supporting it implicitly during the Facebook town hall meet a few weeks back. However, when can this visa be actualized in reality? 5 more years? <comment><USER2> It's highly unlikely that a new piece of immigration legislation gets passed before the next presidential election, since all of the political horsepower will go into legislation that will look good to voters. Considering that the next presidential election is next year and the new president will take over the year after you're looking at least 2 years.

Even then I would wonder since the startup visa program affects so few people in reality. They have been discussing similar programs since the dotcom bubble and nothing came of it since it's a narrow problem to a narrow industry. I would be surprised if it ever passes.</comment>


Amelia Lin on Learning Fast: Going from Zero to First Paid Customer in 12 Weeks - <AUTHOR> https://bootstrappersbreakfast.com/2019/05/17/amelia-lin-on-learning-fast-going-from-zero-to-first-paid-customer-in-12-weeks/ <comment><AUTHOR> On Fri-Apr-26 at Red Rock Coffee in Mountain View, Amelia Lin of Keep Life Stories gave a short briefing on "Going from Zero to First Paid Customer in 12 Weeks "

Amelia's story: "When I started a service to capture a loved one's life story on audio, I was coming from a completely different background in EdTech. I needed to know: Would people even want such a product? How much would they pay for it? Who were the right people to sell to? Why would they buy my thing instead of something else? …and I needed to learn all of this, very fast. Here's my top lessons on how I sped up that learning feedback cycle and closed our first paid customer 12 weeks later, without writing any code."</comment>


Ask HN: Shopify or Magento? - <AUTHOR>

I know there are a ton of other choices for e-commerece platforms but the business in need is a small/local Rock and Roll bar/restaurant that is interested in selling their own merchandise with a collection of other affiliate products that fit 'the vibe'. The store itself will have anywhere between 20-75 products, which is why I thought that Magento (Magento Go, to be more specific) and Shopify would probably be the easiest to get up and running. The Owner isn't very tech savvy himself, which is another reason I chose those two.
Any suggestions and advice is greatly appreciated!
Thanks in advance. <comment><USER2> You don't say where you are from. I know people who didn't choose shopify because of language/translation issues. They ended up choosing prestashop.

Like you they were not programmers.

<comment><AUTHOR> I had heard the same thing but I'm located in the US so I don't think that should be an issue but thanks for the heads up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I've been through all of them, and in 90% of all cases woule recommend shopify... 80/20!

<comment><AUTHOR> I had them use the free trial of Magento Go to try and ease them into it but they seemed to be overwhelmed. Shopify however looks very ease to manage and a good starting point for beginners into the e-commerce scene.</comment></comment>


Google silently correcting search terms. Anyone else having this problem? - <AUTHOR>

I've noticed recently that it's become hard to do google searches that aren't "mainstream".  For example, if I search for "riak configure listen interface", "riak" is automatically corrected to "risk" without showing the usual "showing results for..." text.
Screenshot: http://i.imgur.com/tuNhF.png
Anyone have a good way around this that doesn't involve adding a + to every search term? <comment><AUTHOR> Clickable: <http://i.imgur.com/tuNhF.png>

<comment><USER2> I have experienced this and it's really, really annoying. A solution is to put the word in quotation marks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Is there a technical reason why Google couldn't use some sort of "I know what I'm doing" setting to disable some or all of the help they're doing now? Quoting every word feels like a hack that could go away at any minute.

</comment><comment><USER4> this has been happening to me when using google instant and really annoying me. if i type slowly, it wont correct on me, if i type fast it does correction. sometimes large ones.

<comment><USER5> Unrelated to autocorrection, but my little rant. If I type fast Google instant only catches the first half of what I type. I don't know what kind of javascript runs instant but it fails for fast typers. Happens on different computers and different browsers. =(

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Yes, this has been happening to me too. It's particularly frustrating when I search from my phone.</comment>


Gabor Cselle: Leaving Google to join Xobni - <AUTHOR> http://www.gaborcselle.com/blog/2007/03/healthy-disregard-for-impossible.html <comment><USER2> Having a person coming out of Google would be great not only because you know they have some skills, but that they are completely committed and determined to get it done. What a great coworker they would be!.

</comment><comment><USER3> As comfortable as Google is you're right in acknowledging that there are more ambitious challenges to be had.

Good luck -- enjoy the ride.

 _"Fortune and love favor the brave"_ \-- Ovid

</comment><comment><USER4> So what is Xobni about? "Making email smarter", as they write on their homepage, is not a very profound description.

</comment><comment><USER5> How did you meet Xobni guys?

</comment><comment><USER6> Right on, man. Have fun.</comment>


College Educations of US Presidents... 20% Never Went to College - <AUTHOR> http://college-education.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=005922 <comment><USER2> To save you the trouble of scrolling through the kind of lame UI: Truman was the last president to not have a degree, and he left office more than 69 years ago. To be honest, this kind of seems like saying "91 percent of presidents never owned a cell phone"; it might be _true_ , but it doesn't make a ton of sense in a broader context.

<comment><USER3> And the period when Truman would've attended college, if he had done so at ages 18-22, would've been 1902-1906. At that time, quite a small percentage of people went to college. Nonetheless, he did apply to West Point, but was turned down for poor eyesight.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is downright misleading when presented in the context of "the pros and cons of college". Pro: some presidents didn't go to college, so you too could be president without going to college! Con: you will have to travel back in time about a century for that to be relevant.

<comment><USER5> Yes, going to college is the first in a long series of exercises you'll perform to show that you are qualified to be president based on doing what other people tell you. ;)</comment></comment>


Let's Call the Amazon Echo What It Is - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2014/11/06/lets-call-the-amazon-echo-what-it-is/

<comment><USER2> E-Commerce Home Ordering?

This tube despite the music streaming features, is a novel vector for ordering products online. If it was water proof, I'd use it in the shower.

</comment><comment><USER3> I was prepared for some stupid privacy FUD. HN comments don't disappoint though :)

</comment><comment><USER4> So I suppose I'll have to be the one to ask what the privacy implications of an always on microphone designed to sell Amazon products will be. NSA or no NSA, it looks about as welcome in my house as a dog turd.</comment>


Ask HN: Hackerrank like platform for Semiconductor world? - <AUTHOR> How do you feel about a hackerrank/programming based hiring platform catering to the semiconductor industry (interesting RTL Design and Verification problems). Given the times when everything is remote, I believe a platform like this would be helpful. Thoughts? <comment><USER2> You will likely miss out on some good candidates. Just saying. Programming based hiring platforms are overrated imo.

<comment><AUTHOR> But we might get access to a large pool of talent which would otherwise be difficult to get in touch with? The industry still relies on resume screening and telephonic interviews which means that the hiring team can only do so much!

<comment><USER2> Indeed, in terms of scale it does allow access to a larger pool! But the reality is that even good candidates, on a given day can perform bad on these platforms - and that becomes the basis for the initial impressions. How many people would be willing to take up the next round of interview for a candidate who might have otherwise performed bad on these platforms ?

Also, on the contrary, these platforms are used to eliminate a majority of "unpromising" candidates. It's just the easy way out for recruiters - outsourcing filtering mechanisms.

As such the hiring problem is multi-layered. Programming is just one aspect of software engineering. Well designed software requires wearing multiple hats and requires thinking which novice programmers lack.

When you make hiring a sport, you are likely to find more gamers of the platform than real problem solvers.

Just read the comments on this article for the general feeling amongst experienced developers : [https://dev.to/raddevon/hackerrank-is-teaching-you- to-write-...](https://dev.to/raddevon/hackerrank-is-teaching-you-to-write- terrible-code-3f1j)</comment></comment></comment>


Simple Genetic Algorithm Can Rival Stochastic Gradient Descent in Neural Nets - <AUTHOR> http://eplex.cs.ucf.edu/publications/2016/morse-gecco16 <comment><USER2> In theory it is exciting to use Evolutionary Algorithms instead of SGD but the authors only train populations of networks with under 100 neurons and about 1000 parameters, on toy problems. It would have been more interesting if they showed speedups on problems with millions of parameters.</comment>


Ask HN: Options for modern development with Node.js? - <AUTHOR>

I'm sorta new to Node.js and want to write some rather simple applications. I know there is Express and a bunch of frameworks built on Express, some in Coffee and some in JS. I'm wondering which are "the best", still active and worth looking into.
I had looked at Zappa a year ago and liked what I saw, but it seems it hasn't been active this past year.
Care to share experiences with various frameworks and some good options on where to start? <comment><USER2> I prefer express, async, jade

Express is very solid and production ready, it's a good balance of magically handling the default things and not having to code for a totally unique system

Async lets you organize your code really well, and works well with the patterns of node.js code.

I also like commander for making console interfaces to apps, this can help with testing and administration

</comment><comment><USER3> We use node+express for everything at MileWise. I put together a starter project for quickly bootstrapping new projects that's ready to go using our favorite set of tools:

Expres, Jade, Stylus+Bootstrap-Stylus, Passport (for auth), Mongode (MongoDb- native wrapper)

Maybe it'll help you get started! It's ready to be deployed to heroku or node- jitsu etc. And I use mongohq for new projects until they get bigger.

EDIT: link... <https://github.com/milewise/sideproject>

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome! Taking a look.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Meteor (<http://meteor.com/>) seems to be pretty popular these days. It's not labeled production ready but it is showing a lot of promise and is under active development. Checkout their screencasts to see what it can do.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've heard of meteor. Wish I could find more documentation on it. Going to take a closer look.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm working on a project using Restify (<http://mcavage.github.com/node- restify/>). It was a quick way to get a ReST API up and running to interface with MongoDB. The routing is very intuitive (server.get, server.post, etc.), and I like the minimal approach. I didn't need all of the templating that frameworks like Express have since I'm using Backbone on the front end for a single page app.

</comment><comment><USER6> Use connect middleware and small, focused, interoperable modules instead of a "do-it-all" framework.

I would recommend starting with Connect and using middleware specific to your needs.

<http://www.senchalabs.org/connect/>

As far as frameworks go, Express is stable, tested, fast and the perfect level of abstraction.</comment>


Bitcoin Skyrockets to Above $5000 - <AUTHOR> https://www.businessinsider.com/bitcoin-price-rockets-above-5000-2019-4 <comment><USER2> Does anyone else find it ironic and mildly entertaining that bitcoin's success and value is being gauged entirely by a thing (the $) it was meant to replace?

<comment><USER3> Success should be gauged by daily transaction growth, network growth, and decreasing transaction fees, all of which are slowly improving. Price growth is a nice corollary with these factors, although it is disjointed in terms of timing. That being said, price is still important because it translates the value of that asset to our current medium of exchange, just like we do with all other assets. It's sort of like the "easiest" way to track bitcoin's success, even if it has little to do with the fundamentals of the asset.

edit: Also, Bitcoin should never be considered something that will entirely replace any other currency. There is room for both (or many) to exist (all serving slightly different purposes), and it will be many years before we know what a good natural balance is between both USD and BTC.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think that cryptocurrency is future. To be successful in this crypto market, start out with some "fun money," then learn from resources like [https://cryptolinks.com/bitcoin-youtube- cryptocurrency](https://cryptolinks.com/bitcoin-youtube-cryptocurrency) . As you gain knowledge and experience, then you can start investing more "seriously".

</comment><comment><USER5> probably some Lyft cash being put to work.

<comment><USER6> ? None of the employees have been able to cash out yet

<comment><USER5> but the VCs have

<comment><AUTHOR> Nope...everyone is subject to the 6-month lockup period

<comment><USER5> well, at least some are behaving as if they are not:

Lyft investors who bought the ride-hailing company's shares well before its high-profile initial public offering Friday are protecting themselves against a decline in the high-profile stock despite "lock-up" agreements intended to block them from doing just that, numerous sources told The Post.

[https://nypost.com/2019/04/01/early-lyft-investors-are- betti...](https://nypost.com/2019/04/01/early-lyft-investors-are-betting-on- the-new-stock-falling/)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Confirmed: MySpace to acquire Photobucket for $250 Million - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/05/07/myspace-to-acquire-photobucket-for-250-million/ <comment><USER2> This is a great move for myspace. They finally figured out how to charge their users real money for those picture filled profiles -- all while being able to act like nice guys who give away everything for free. I predict that they will actually make a nice return on this investment.

More interestingly though, myspace has now put captchas in place for editing myspace profiles and similar actions that photobucket and many web2 sites have been using extensively. For example, photobucket could automatically put pictures in any section of your profile just by supplying photobucket with your myspace username and password.

Is myspace trying to crush future competition? Yes, yes they are.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think many people saw this coming. It's interesting how it can be viewed as a (semi) recently acquired startup acquiring another. The list of companies that would be interested in buying up your startup is indeed much larger than Yahoo and Google.</comment>


9 Things You Should Never Say at Work - <AUTHOR> http://blog.startupcvs.com/2015/12/15/things-you-should-never-say-at-work/?utm_source=hackernews&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=dontsaywork15122015 <comment><USER2> > That's not my job

I agree with not saying it that way. However, something that junior developers, in my experience, often need to learn is how to say no, politely.

It's not uncommon for me to hear either that someone senior has asked a dev to do something and they've straight out said no (so giving a poor impression). Equally, I've seen the opposite where they've been asked to do something, they've done it, and ended up not doing what they were meant to in the first place.

My recommendation to said junior is always to listen to what's asked, make sure they understand it, then confirm with their team lead/manager that it's ok to do it or pass it on to someone else.

Depending on who it is, I may also point out to said senior bod that they shouldn't be annoying devs and should have gone to the lead to get their request delivered. But that often falls on deaf ears.

</comment><comment><USER3> 10\. Loyalty? You want loyalty? Get a dog!</comment>


Server-Sent Events explained with usecases - <AUTHOR> http://streamdata.io/blog/server-sent-events/ <comment><USER2> This! It pains me to see so many people building fickle websocket architectures when this will solve (some of, obviously not all) your realtime woes perfectly fine.

<comment><USER3> > This! It pains me to see so many people building fickle websocket > architectures when this will solve (some of, obviously not all) your > realtime woes perfectly fine.

[http://caniuse.com/#feat=eventsource](http://caniuse.com/#feat=eventsource)

[http://caniuse.com/#search=websockets](http://caniuse.com/#search=websockets)

I think the reason why not use SSE right now is pretty clear.

<comment><USER4> I've also found eventsource to buffer IRL, still not sure if it was a browser or nginx issue, but not good for trying to send notifications in real time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> What the hell is going on with scrolling on that site?</comment>


The CIA's Phoenix Checklist for Thinking about Problems - <AUTHOR> https://boingboing.net/2019/02/28/heres-the-cias-phoenix-c.html <comment><USER2> thought this might have something to do with the cia's phoenix program:

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

> Methods of reported torture detailed by author Douglas Valentine that were > used at the interrogation centers included:

>> Rape, gang rape, rape using eels, snakes, or hard objects, and rape followed by murder; electric shock ('the Bell Telephone Hour') rendered by attaching wires to the genitals or other sensitive parts of the body, like the tongue; the 'water treatment'; the 'airplane' in which the prisoner's arms were tied behind the back, and the rope looped over a hook on the ceiling, suspending the prisoner in midair, after which he or she was beaten; beatings with rubber hoses and whips; the use of police dogs to maul prisoners.[21][23]</comment>


Siri, Am I About to Have a Heart Attack? - <AUTHOR> http://finance.yahoo.com/news/siri-am-heart-attack-001600366.html <comment><USER2> So, US taxpayers gave out $20Billion for nothin. Electronic records, but no common APIs or formats or hope for interoperability.

I still demand paper records for all medical stuff. I carry them around to any doctors. I can still read paper records from my childhood. I can't read digital documents that are 5 years old in some cases.</comment>


Publicly Funded Research Should Be Publicly Available - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/03/tell-congress-its-time-move-fastr <comment><USER2> Personally, I think civil disobedience is more effective at changing the status quo than e-mail campaigns, although they can help to increase awareness. What I would really like to see is a big institution / university take a stand and build something like Scihub to provide free and unlimited access to all of their own papers, even those that are stuck behind a paywall for "historic" reasons. It would be interesting to see if the publishing industry would dare to sue them in that case, as this could easily tip the public opinion against them.

In the end, I think the publishers know perfectly well that their business models have been made obsolete by the Internet long ago and that their value proposition is getting smaller and smaller, so they just want to squeeze the last remaining profits from their historically earned privileged position.

<comment><USER3> There are a lot of steps a university can take, even without a risk of getting sued:

* Cut 25% of your journal subscriptions to the worst offenders and keep cutting every year with some smaller percent.

* Publicly recommend to all scientific boards that the hiring process should judge applicants by the merit of their publications, not by their journal's ranking.

* Promote open-access submissions by your researchers: a small monetary bonus would probably suffice.

* Lobby your government to drop funding allocation based on journal rankings. Instead, promote some sort of combination of citation count [1] and expert consensus.

[1]: I realize currently the citation count is correlated with journal ranking (because the impact factor is computed by an average citation count) but it does not mean it is a bad measure. Plus of course, a comment on HN should not be the right place to design a really fair publication metric.

<comment><USER4> > Promote open-access submissions by your researchers: a small monetary bonus > would probably suffice.

Simply _paying_ for open-access submissions would probably suffice. I'm a scientific researcher myself, but most of my work gets published non-open- access: publishing open-access costs ~$500, and as a grad student as much as I think open-access should be the de-facto standard, I'm not in a position to be paying that myself.

Sadly, that's more or less what my department says as well.

<comment><USER5> How much is the department paying for those journal subscriptions?

Just redirect that cut journal subscription money that GP suggested into the open-access submission fee.

<comment><USER6> How budgets generally work:

University pays for journal subscriptions.

Lab (sometimes Department) pays to submit articles.

These are wholly different budgets. Some universities have open access funds to try to encourage researchers to publish open access articles. Some have open access policies that basically unilaterally declare all their research articles will be distributed by the university as open access.

This is a fight that has to occur monetarily at the university level, a lab that hasn't had a grant renewed and is having all its students TA'ing to pay their salaries doesn't have the funds to pay what is often several thousand dollars per publication[1][2] to always publish open access. A semi-productive lab could easily pay as much in publication fees for a year as they would for a graduate student.

[1] [http://acsopenaccess.org/wp- content/uploads/2014/01/ACS_Sale...](http://acsopenaccess.org/wp- content/uploads/2014/01/ACS_SalesChart.pdf) [2] [http://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/s/publication- fees](http://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/s/publication-fees)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> tma-1 I have to say, we should all be super grateful for the OSS community. There's so much free non-publicly funded continuously supported OSS available within a click of a button. I am a data scientist, and everyday I am amazed how powerful the anaconda distribution (and its over 150 included packages) is. Is there any industry on Earth that has anything like OSS?

<comment><USER7> Bioinformatics is close.

<comment> liviu- Could you please elaborate for those unfamiliar with their community?

<comment><USER8> It's tricky to pinpoint exactly when modern "bioinformatics" started. Some notable times are 1979 when the Los Alamos Sequence Database started, 1982 when that became GenBank, and certainly by 1990 when the Human Genome Project started.

GenBank is "an open access, annotated collection of all publicly available nucleotide sequences and their protein translations" ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GenBank](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GenBank) ). Most journals now require that sequences be entered into GenBank before publication.

I'll add a few historical observations. The early work at Los Alamos was on Sun machines running Sybase (1987, according to [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sybase](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sybase) ). These are serious Unix fans, who quickly took to perl when it came out. I think some of the support for SybPerl came from bioinformatics; the SybPerl, OraPerl, and other *Perl systems helped create the extension system for perl5. (I am not able to verify that, though the author of SybPerl, Michael Peppler, consulted in the mid-1990s for "Research Genetics" [http://www.peppler.org/resume.html](http://www.peppler.org/resume.html) .)

Unix people in the early 1990s were serious perl fans. The most popular perl4 library for CGI programming was cgi-lib.pl, by Steven Brenner, a computational biologist/bioinformatics researcher. It was replaced in perl5 by CGI.pm, by Lincoln Stein, another bioinformatics researcher.

This gives a hint that bioinformatics has not only a close connection to the technologies needed for the first dot-com era, but also that the field itself tends towards open resources.

("Tends towards" != "always". See point #3 of [https://liorpachter.wordpress.com/2015/07/10/the-myths-of- bi...](https://liorpachter.wordpress.com/2015/07/10/the-myths-of- bioinformatics-software/) .)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The government subsidizes research because we believe that research provides a public good that cannot be easily packaged and sold at a profit. So even though you are able to sell trade journals and such, the benefit to society is actually much greater than the price of the journal. Okay, fine. We subsidize vaccines, education, all sorts of stuff. We probably don't subsidize research enough, especially when you consider rapidly dropping funding for our public universities.

But the point of a subsidy is to make the producers of a good produce more of it than they would otherwise by making it more profitable for them to do so. If you were to ban profiting off of research at all, then you'd actually be discouraging the production of that good.

Some people have been arguing lately for something even more absurd, which is that if a university receives any public funding at all, then all of their research has been tainted by the transitive property of government funding and must be released to everyone for free and fuck the hard work the researchers put into it.

You're essentially asking for the government to limit all science funding to only government projects, like the government is commissioning science to be done. This puts too much control in the hands of bureaucrats and the ebb and flow of politics.

If, on the other hand, you want the government to provide the service of providing research to the general public, we have something like that and they're called libraries. Maybe you should band together to improve the kinds of services libraries offer.

<comment><USER10> >Some people have been arguing lately for something even more absurd, which is that if a university receives any public funding at all, then all of their research has been tainted by the transitive property of government funding and must be released to everyone for free and fuck the hard work the researchers put into it.

You do realize that often researchers have to pay to publish in journals. They don't make money from the papers being distributed. If anything, getting rid of the journals will give them more money back as they would stop having to pay to publish them in for-profit journals.

<comment><USER11> I think the suggestion here is more "Because Joe over in Agriculture took USDA money, I suddenly can't do contract work for Large Company because they want to keep it proprietary".

<comment><USER10> If he has used up the USDA money and switched to private sector, where is the problem? If he wants to do work for Large Company with USDA money, then that is a problem and I see no reason to not ban it.

<comment><USER11> Again, the post was addressing the absurd proposal that "If your university takes _any federal money_ , _all_ research has to be open."

<comment><USER10> All research the university does is different than all research the professor does.

As long as they are at a university being funded by the public, the public has a claim to the research. If they want to do private research, they can switch to the private.

If a person is being paid by the public, why should they be able to spend their time and resources working in private? Think of it like a general IP ownership agreement at work. Anything you create at work, using the tools your work provides, belongs to the one paying you. Now claims like any similar work you do even after you leave, or work you do on your own equipment on your own time are unreasonable, but I see nothing wrong with that requirement while being paid by the public and using equipment paid for by the public.

<comment><USER11> The thing is how academics are actually paid doesn't work like that.

"The university" is not funded by the public. It's funded by Federal money, and State money, and tuition, and commercial grants and donations. Just claiming that's "being funded by the public" is claiming 100% of the output, while not providing 100% of the input.

Similarly, I'm not paid from a single source. I'm paid through a mix of state money, federal money, and yes, some commercial grants. If a commercial entity wants to pay for a portion of my lab's expenses and salary, why should "the public" be entitled to the proceeds?

 _That 's_ the problem being argued against - not that public money should mean public access, but that "some public money" (no matter how small) suddenly entitles the public to everything.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> _published research be available to the public no later than 12 months after publication_

Why wait 12 months? Why can't published research be available immediately?

Does anyone know or have a citation for the rationale behind this?

<comment><USER13> [http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/microsites/ost...](http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/microsites/ostp/ostp_public_access_memo_2013.pdf)

"The Administration also recognizes that publishers provide valuable services, including the coordination of peer review, that are essential for ensuring the high quality and integrity of many scholarly publications. It is critical that these services continue to be made available."

Cf [http://www.michaeleisen.org/blog/?p=1312](http://www.michaeleisen.org/blog/?p=1312)

<comment><USER14> If these are valuable services, then customers will pay for them; no need to have a monopoly on access to published research.

(as a paper author and reviewer, I don't doubt they are valuable services, but given that reviewers do the work for free, and the research has been paid for, I don't see why the access should be limited.)

<comment><USER13> You can either charge the author customer, which is what open access does, or charge the reader customer, which is what non open access does. Insisting that the reader customer not pay just increases the costs elsewhere.

If the benefits of open access are considered to be worth more than the amount lost by not charging for access, then you need to fund that from elsewhere. If every grant costs an extra $2,000, there will be less grants, it's just math.

(Previously I was told that the cost is minuscule compared to the cost of the study itself in general, in which it won't have a large effect. But I haven't seen data.)

If we decide we want the government to also pay the cost of publication, as opposed to having readers pay, great. But it might be expensive, again, data would be helpful.

Blanket statements like "taxpayers paid for it, therefore it should be open" ignore the reality that publishers subsidize publication precisely because they charge for access.

<comment><USER15> > You can either charge the author customer, which is what open access does...

But non open access does it too! You have to pay to get published.

<comment><USER13> See [https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/18625/do- spring...](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/18625/do-springer- ieee-elsevier-charge-a-fee-for-non-open-access-journals) and [http://www.researchinfonet.org/wp- content/uploads/2013/09/We...](http://www.researchinfonet.org/wp- content/uploads/2013/09/Wellcome-survey-of-colour-and-page-charges-v-02.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Journal articles from NIH funded research are already required to be made freely accessible within 12 months of publication.

[http://publicaccess.nih.gov/policy.htm](http://publicaccess.nih.gov/policy.htm)

>The NIH Public Access Policy implements Division F Section 217 of PL 111-8 (Omnibus Appropriations Act, 2009). The law states:

>The Director of the National Institutes of Health ("NIH") shall require in the current fiscal year and thereafter that all investigators funded by the NIH submit or have submitted for them to the National Library of Medicine's PubMed Central an electronic version of their final, peer-reviewed manuscripts upon acceptance for publication, to be made publicly available no later than 12 months after the official date of publication: Provided, that the NIH shall implement the public access policy in a manner consistent with copyright law.

</comment><comment><USER17> Would it be legal to write a Twitter bot that detects mentions of pay-walled academic papers and responds with a SciHub link?

This seems like it would be a good way of promoting the service to the wider masses.

<comment><USER18> You could probably just search it on google scholar and post the free version link.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I always thought it was weird that it _wasn 't_ always publicly available. I'm ok with allocating taxdollars to funding new research, but I think that if my taxdollars go to something, I should have access to it.

I can see where there should be exceptions like in cases of national security or maybe if minors are involved, but otherwise I think public stuff should actually be public.

<comment><USER20> Shout out to NASA and whoever did this, as they've always had a much clearer mandate to make things public domain. On their website they explicitly state that images, models, etc. are not copyrighted unless they were copyrighted by someone else and used with permission.

<comment><USER6> That isn't a NASA policy, that is the law about works by government employees.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_status_of_work_by_th...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_status_of_work_by_the_U.S._government)

This is actually reflected in the copyright agreements at every major journal. See, for instance, Form B at the ACS journals.

[http://pubs.acs.org/page/copyright/journals/index.html](http://pubs.acs.org/page/copyright/journals/index.html)

The difference is in whom the employer is. If you are employed by a university doing work on a government grant, you are not a federal employee, so the work is copyrighted.

<comment><USER20> I suspected the all-government-employees thing but wasn't aware of the journal copyright aspect. Thanks for clarifying with sources!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Funny that some of the pharmaceutical research is 60-70% public money yet the results are IPd by the company.

<comment><USER22> 60-70% public money

How are you judging the percentage there? Are you including the cost of drugs that don't get approved?

<comment><USER21> You can read here about the process in the US more:

[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK50972/](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK50972/)

I guess this is different country by country.

<comment><USER6> Nothing in that link says pharmaceutical research is 60-70% public money.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> "Be publicly available" you mean available to everybody on earth even though they have not funded it ?

<comment><USER24> Yeah, why not?

Isn't it based on tons of other research from third countries, from Indian mathematics to Newton and Leibniz that you haven't funded either?

<comment><USER25> The usual reason is that then there is an incentive to not spend your own money on research and to just wait for someone else to do it for you.

Then we just get stuck in a waiting game.

<comment><USER24> Well, it worked well well all research was open back in the Newton, Leibniz, Kelvin, Maxwell, etc times. I don't see why it can't work now.

Besides, those that actually do the research also get other benefits, like having people already familiar at a high level with it, getting to derive and manufacture/patent etc stuff based on the research sooner, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> NIH has a Public Access Policy already[1], so anything NIH funded is public. Lots of stuff is already available ([https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)). Other agencies have public data to AHRQ, CDC, FDA, HHMI, NIST, VA (see link for acronym clarification)[2]

This FASTR proposal shouldn't be a big deal, since a lot of funding sources already have that requirement. I'm not sure why some funding gets not to be public.

(part of my job is uploading data to pubchem)

[1][http://publicaccess.nih.gov/](http://publicaccess.nih.gov/) [2][http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/about/public- access/](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/about/public-access/)

</comment><comment><USER27> I sent a letter. I really want to know how effective these mass stock-email campaigns are.

<comment><USER28> I've heard from a few people who work in politics in state and national congresses that (non-form) physical letters and phone calls from concerned constituents can have a surprising amount of weight on the decisions of congresspeople. I imagine it's less true for form emails like this, but still probably worth a go.

<comment><USER22> I think the basic way to judge this is "Is this a signal that the person who sent it is motivated to pay attention and vote based on this?"

Congresscritters care most about votes. They'll take campaign donations if thats all they can get, but they then need to figure out how to turn those campaign donations into votes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> If researchers would stop voluntarily sending their papers to private, for- profit journals then this wouldn't be an issue.

<comment><USER30> If employers and funding agencies would stop using publications in private, for-profit journals to evaluate whether researchers should get to keep their job or have their grants renewed, then this wouldn't be an issue.

<comment><USER31> This is a good point, but it actually goes further up the chain. The universities in UK, a lot of their funding is driven from publication record of their staff. So they too are just responding to incentives - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Research_Excellence_Framework](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Research_Excellence_Framework)

<comment><USER32> The major UK research funding councils have an open access policy for the next REF - [http://www.rcuk.ac.uk/research/openaccess/policy/](http://www.rcuk.ac.uk/research/openaccess/policy/)

<comment><USER31> Nice, that is good to see.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> FWIW, all research funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (the major funding body behind STEM research in the UK) is required to be Open Access, including data collected. In the next REF (the process through which UK universities including Oxford and Cambridge receive funding) only papers that are open access will be assessed. This puts immense pressure on both academics and UK universities to ensure their works are open access.

</comment><comment><USER34> Journals act as the Yahoo of scientific papers. That is they are an index of certain topical relevance and editorial quality. (The original idea of Yahoo was a vetted directory to web pages) I am not sure if papers scattered around random university servers would be easily found.

A case in point is the annual proceedings of the SIGGRAPH computer graphics conference. ACM sells a wonderfully color printed volume of these papers for nearly a hundred dollars. However an individual keeps a web index to the half of these papers posted on private laboratory websites. The index is free, but the quality of printing varies. This private index has already been vetted by SIGGRAPH for conference quality- the only accept about 1 in 15 submissions. Occasionally I poke around distinguished computer graphics labsvwesites. But their quality is variable. Sometimes the website is abandoned when the grad student care taker moves on.

<comment><USER35> Somehow, physics does not appear to need such extensive vetting - to me (as an outsider) it seems like physicists can find what they need on arxiv.org

Hope that model successfully crosses over to biology (biorxiv.org). For now, I use the following heuristic after finding an article on google/google scholar:

* do I know the journal at all (to filter out vanity journals) * do I know the researchers involved (and I learn of new researchers through citations in papers, through presentations online or at conferences and through twitter) * I look at the number of citations of the paper (using google scholar) and relevance of the papers that already cite the paper of interest (using google scholar).

In addition, I also read papers :-).

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I don't understand how research can possibly be published and properly evaluated without everyone who can contribute to it not having access.

For CS, some of the best minds of our generation are not tied to a university. These people who could otherwise help the world are barred from some level of introspection for papers.

</comment><comment><USER37> Aaron Schwartz would agree, from the grave where fighting this fight put him.

</comment><comment><USER25> If this was the case WWII would have looked much different. We need exceptions.

<comment><USER38> FASTR specifically applies to research being published in peer-reviewed journals and specifically excludes:

>classified research, research resulting in works that generate revenue or royalties for authors (such as books) or patentable discoveries, to the extent necessary to protect a copyright or patent

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> It's not so simple. Knowledge is power so you don't want to disseminate it blindly. Military weapons (including highly dangerous ones) for instance were designed with publicly funded research and yet everybody would agree that it'd be a bad idea to just publish the plans.

</comment><comment><USER40> This world is so surreal it's actually amazing. How the people running our countries can be this incompetent, slow, and unintelligent is beyond me.

<comment><USER41> Run for office. Your competence, speed and intelligence should make you a shoo-in and you can help fix things.</comment></comment>