Intel CEO leaves American Manufacturing Council - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.intel.com/policy/2017/08/14/intel-ceo-leaves-manufacturing-council/ <comment><USER2> Major companies that still have representatives in the council: GM, Blackrock, BCG, Walmart, Boeing, Pepsi, IBM, GE, Dow, Dell, Whirlpool, Ford, Johnson&Johnson, Lockheed Martin, US Steel, 3M, Corning

Everyone who has left: Uber(Travel Ban and #DeleteUber), Disney(Paris withdrawal), Tesla/SpaceX(Paris Withdrawal). And now Merck, Under Armour and Intel(all left after failure to condemn white supremacists)

<comment><USER3> > Everyone who's left: ...

Could you please disambiguate that? I am confused.

Does it mean "Everyone who _is_ left" or "Everyone who _has_ left"?

Thanks!

Edit: For anyone who wonders what the heck I was talking about, the parent comment originally said "Everyone who's left" \- and I honestly was not sure which it meant. That comment has now been edited to read "Everyone who has left", so I am grateful for the clarification.

I would delete this comment since it's now moot, but since a couple of people were kind enough to reply, deleting it now would probably make things even more confusing. :-)

<comment><USER4> The first para is those that _are_ left, hence the latter is those that have left.

<comment><USER5> We goin' way into grammar land now, but not necessarily - you can repeat the same initial clause like that for emphasis:

Everyone who is left is xyz. Everyone who is left is abc. Everyone who is left is (insert usually more dramatic thing than xyz or abc).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's like a lose-lose. Stay on the council, you ostensibly are committed to keeping manufacturing jobs in the US, but could be seen as complicit of Trump. Leave, and you're making a stand against Trump...while at the same time leaving one of the few good things he has going for him. And let's be honest, without some sort of external coercion, these companies aren't going to stay in the US.

<comment><USER7> Protectionism is not an answer, it's never worked before and it won't work now.

<comment><USER8> You're not wrong, but your logic is flawed - things are happening now that have never happened before, like New Automation, that are massive game- changers. This means that things that have never worked before, will _start_ working.

<comment><USER9> But to be fair, there's no going back. Automation means we don't actually need people to do huge numbers of things. Those displaced people may never have a job again.

What got us here, won't get us where we're going. It's all going to have to be reexamined.

<comment><USER10> > Those displaced people may never have a job again.

The unemployment rate is at the lowest level since 2001, and excluding 2000-2001, the lowest level since 1969.

[https://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=z1ebjpgk2654c1_...](https://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=z1ebjpgk2654c1_&met_y=unemployment_rate&idim=country:US&fdim_y=seasonality:S&hl=en&dl=en)

<comment><USER9> And next, McD's and Carls' are planning to do away with the counter staff. Banks automating tellers completely. Some 30 millions of Americans out of a job, at the lowest levels. What then?

Automation is exploding at a dizzying rate for a decade now. Our ability to accommodate will be exceeded soon.

Further, that graph looks like what happens when people fall off the employment rolls - they quit looking for a job and no longer show up as 'unemployed'. How can we tell that's not responsible?

<comment><USER10> The number of people employed is also at an all-time high.

[https://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=z1ebjpgk2654c1_...](https://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=z1ebjpgk2654c1_&met_y=unemployment_rate&idim=country:US&fdim_y=seasonality:S&hl=en&dl=en#!ctype=l&strail=false&bcs=d&nselm=h&met_y=employed&fdim_y=seasonality:S&scale_y=lin&ind_y=false&rdim=country&idim=country:US&ifdim=country&hl=en_US&dl=en&ind=false)

Automation may change that in the future, or people may insist on dealing with humans, or new jobs may emerge. Who can predict the future?

<comment><USER9> These guys: [https://economics.mit.edu/files/12763](https://economics.mit.edu/files/12763)

This quote: "Using this approach, we estimate large and robust negative effects of robots on employment and wages across commuting zones. We bolster this evidence by showing that the commuting zones most exposed to robots in the post-1990 era do not exhibit any differential trends before 1990. The impact of robots is distinct from the impact of imports from China and Mexico, the decline of routine jobs, offshoring, other types of IT capital, and the total capital stock (in fact, exposure to robots is only weakly correlated with these other variables). According to our estimates, one more robot per thousand workers reduces the employment to population ratio by about 0.18-0.34 percentage points and wages by 0.25-0.5 percent."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I think more people need to resign from such positions. Good on Krzanich.

<comment><USER12> They do:

[https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/14/merck-ceo-resigns-from- trump...](https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/14/merck-ceo-resigns-from-trumps- american-manufacturing-council.html)

<comment><USER11> Thanks. I heard about that. I am not sure how much resigning will help, but it needs to be done.

<comment><USER12> It sends a pretty strong message that certain ideologies are not an option for some of the American captains of industry. Trump is rather big on having their attention so them resigning sends a clear signal that if this is the path Trump wants to be on it will be a lonely one. Whether or not that message will be received and how it will be interpreted if it is received is an entirely different matter.

<comment><USER13> "Trump is rather big on having their attention"

I imagine that it feeds his vanity to have them around. Perhaps "their attendance" is nearer what he wants.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Merck's CEO did this too.

<comment><USER14> And is the only one who got blasted by Trump.

<comment><USER15> Coincidentally also the only one who wasn't white.

<comment><USER16> Coincidentally, he was also the first one who left (edit: not fired). Trump got around to tweeting angrily about the others after you posted this: [https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/15/trump-hits-ceos-who-left- man...](https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/15/trump-hits-ceos-who-left- manufacturing-council-as-grandstanders.html)

<comment><USER15> 1) No one was fired.

2) He did that 3 hours after I posted this, and long after they had all left.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This position probably had very little political influence. However, why not stay and use whatever influence you may have to make a difference? Is it just not possible anymore to stay and disagree?

<comment><USER18> I suspect resigning, especially if it gives headlines, gives _more_ political influence that they'd have had just staying on the board.

> Is it just not possible anymore to stay and disagree?

Many have done that so far in the administration. At a certain point it becomes untenable to stay and give any appearance of support/cooperation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> > I am not a politician. I am an engineer who has spent most of his career > working in factories that manufacture the world's most advanced devices. > Yet, it is clear even to me that nearly every issue is now politicized to > the point where significant progress is impossible. Promoting American > manufacturing should not be a political issue.

There's something I can get behind. Angry people have a positive feedback loop, so if we all collectively talked about Monads there'd be fewer problems.

<comment><USER20> Promoting the interests of your own country over those of others is _fundamentally_ political. Perhaps you think it should not be _partisan_? Otherwise, this is just wrong - trade policy is diplomacy and diplomacy is, always has been, always will be, and _must_ be, political.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> "A house divided against itself cannot stand." \-- Abraham Lincoln

Pretty worrying to observe the polarization in the US where IMO both left and right are full of extremist views and moderates have no audible voice.

<comment><USER22> This is not about some general vague problem with "extremism" of which supposedly all sides are guilty. This is about the emergence of a right-wing terrorist movement which has already committed several attacks. When your first reaction to this is to to bring in some unspecified crimes of the left, then this calls into question whether you understand the seriousness of the situation. There is a real chance that real, actual fascists kill many more people and perhaps even gain more political power. We can talk about this without engaging in some false equivalence.

<comment><USER23> > to bring in some unspecified crimes of the left

I realize that a large portion of young social media posters have already forgotten about this. Probably because John Oliver doesn't talk about it, and that's often their primary source of news analysis. But the Majority Whip for the U.S. Congress is STILL in recovery from a mass shooting over two months ago, by a deranged left-wing activist.

In Dallas last year, 5 police officers were assassinated and another 9 injured at a BLM protest march (the deadliest incident for U.S. law enforcement since 9/11), by an Army veteran who openly cited racial hatred as his motive. I went to church the following Sunday. I was a member of a Unitarian Universalist congregation, one of the most liberal American sects. The sermon more or less boiled down to, " _Meh, they had it coming_ ". I have since left the UU community, after more than a decade of fellowship there.

Where is the balancing point, at which you can declare "equivalence"? I don't know, and don't really care. But the narrative that polarization and extremism are entirely one-sided needs to go.

As a moderate, BOTH extremes in the U.S. scare the shit out of me right now. I'm a bit sick of being told that I'm "normalizing" awful things by not locking arms with one side, shutting my brain off, and chanting along with the mob. The mob has the intellect, the morality, and the attention span of a goldfish.

<comment><USER24> > I was a member of a Unitarian Universalist congregation, one of the most > liberal American sects. The sermon more or less boiled down to, "Meh, they > had it coming".

Who was the speaker of that sermon? I'd love to email them and get the real story, because that smells suspiciously like confirmation bias in your summary.

<comment><USER25> That would be a very weird email to get out of the blue.

<comment><USER24> Weird? For a contentious sermon that allegedly resulted in a person who had been a member for over a decade quitting the church? I doubt it.

Anyhow, a UU sermon that is _dismissive_ of terroristic violence is novel enough that requires a citation. In fact the only thing I could say to generalize about the variety of topics I've heard in various UU sermons is that none of them could possibly be characterized with the word "meh" in the summary. If anything it is the "Church of Anti-meh." And I'm not even a member, so I'm sure I've only heard the tip of the iceberg.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Isn't being on council would provide us like 0.9% of chance he would listen rather having no correct person on the council ?

</comment><comment><USER27> Live by the sword, die by the sword.

</comment><comment><USER28> Nothing productive is happening in these comments. Admin should intervene.

<comment><USER29> Lots of comments condemning Trump's condemnation of (the Nazi collaborator) Soros funded Antifa & BLM and white supremacists. I wonder who is responsible for the curiously pseudo-liberal turn in the comments here.

Anyway, Merk, Intel, and so on exemplify all that is wrong with the fringe in politics that seeks to use violence as a means to an end. Anyone with any sense can see this for what it is, however, and no one is buying the mainstream narrative - the MSM and these corporate fascists are only painting a larger target on themselves.

<comment><AUTHOR> ... what?

<comment><USER29> TL;DR: Intel is going down and AMD is going up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I hate to get involved in politics here at HN, but maybe I can contribute a comment that really isn't politics but is business and news _strategy_?

First, I try to stay up on the _news_ , that is, the facts about what has been happening. Well, there's a lot of _news_ on the Internet, so I can get a lot of input on some version of what has been happening.

At this point, to me, the _news_ doesn't make any sense. The _news_ doesn't look like it is trying to give me facts about what has been happening. Or, the collection of supposed facts are self-contradictory, don't _add up_. And the _news_ looks like something other than facts about what is happening.

In particular, nearly all the supposed news looks like made-up, cooked-up, stirred-up, faked-up, gang-up, pile-on something other than facts about what is going on. Or the real fact about what is going on looks like the news has become some propaganda Goebbels style with "If you tell a lie often enough, then people will believe it.".

Or, maybe easier to swallow, it looks like the news is expert in high school in-group gossip where they fight with gossip. Then, with enough bad gossip about person A, lots of other persons, e.g., some person B, even if they don't believe the gossip don't want to fight all the people who do or pretend to believe the gossip so go along with the gossip, the mob, and also reject A. So, the gossip is not true but has much the same effect as if it were true. I'm guessing that the news is really good at such high school in-group gossip. In high school I was a math nerd and no good at gossip!

So, a question, then, is what the heck is going on in the _news_ business, industry, etc.?

Guesses:

(1) The old news business is very short on revenue. Why? The Internet has cut off much of the revenue they got from (A) classified ads, (B) other ads, (C) revenue per copy on paper, (D) audience size. Also maybe significant is that maybe the local shopping mall stores no longer nearly as often run big ads in the newspapers because Amazon has such mall stores nearly out of business.

So, such news operations, really short on money, have gone to whatever shocking, astounding, content they could find to try to increase their audience. There they have moved up a step: The _stories_ and headlines are not just shocking but are planned as part of a larger _narrative_ that the media outlet hopes will catch on, like big gossip, and yield more stories over the horizon, where the narrative helps the credibility of each story and each story adds to the narrative. So, in simple terms, they cook up an issue, make it a _narrative_ , pile-on, gang-up, and push it, over and over. The issue is just made up and not true, but all the news media sees the opportunity right away so just piles on, goes with the narrative, and hopes for revenue.

(2) Some of the advertisers and other people, companies, etc. are behind the scenes, have long been there, have big bucks, influence the content of the news, and cases of such influence go way back in the news business.

In particular, now some of the issues in the news are really efforts for some of the people with big bucks to try to get their way, and there is big money involved.

E.g., there was the recent Sharyl Attkisson remark that essentially everything in the news is put there, paid to be there, by someone out to influence your opinion.

(3) The election of 11/8/2016 was in many ways darned close. In particular, the election for POTUS was so close that one candidate won the popular vote by some and the other candidate won the vote in the Electoral College by some.

Well, for the news, take the Trump voters over here and the Hillary voters over there.

The media wants a big audience. Soooo, they can go for the Hillary voters. There are still lots of them out there who still like Hillary, Obama, Schumer, Pelosi, etc. The news can fire up the Hillery voters and get audience, eyeballs, and ad revenue. And there are claims that the news rooms were 90+% for Hillary anyway.

Then for the Trump voters, or just the Republicans, they are not uniform and tend to split. So, there are "never-Trump" Republicans. There's John McCain who seems to hate Trump going way back at least to an early Trump campaign speech in Phoenix that McCain quickly described as "firing up the crazies", and that spat has continued through the Iowa event a few days later to the present. And Paul Ryan, VP with Romney, is no Trump buddy. And Romney hates Trump. Soooo, the news can get more audience by playing on, playing up to parts of, the divisions of the Republicans.

And likely could find more such motivations for the news.

So, the news is no longer about giving me facts about what is going on.

And it looks like the news is no longer interested in facts at all and, instead, is in some attention getting but also very bitter, center ring, mud wrestling, gossip, cage match.

So, I've given up on nearly all the news -- their people are getting no attention, eyeballs, clicks, or ad revenue from me. I still want facts about what is happening. Well apparently for now the main fact is just that mud wrestling cage match.

So, the OP was about the CEO of Intel resigning. Why? Maybe he was influenced by the gossip; maybe be believes a lot of the gossip; maybe he just wants to keep himself and Intel away from the mud wrestling. My guess is the last, he just wants to stay the heck away from the mud wrestling and away from the gossip.

So, now we see, as in high school, that enough gossip can have a lot of influence with some actual, tangible results. Some people are really good at gossip and now are the center of a big gang-up and pile-on of news media business and maybe political, strategy. Curious.

My view is that the news people are throwing away their credibility, but my guess is that the news is so short on revenue that they no longer care about their credibility and want to go with the gossip. Maybe, apparently, they believe that if with enough gossip they can actually get Trump out of the White House, then they will get back their credibility -- that even with total BS gossip they can make their claims have the practical effects that might happen if the gossip were true.

IMHO, that _self-fulfilling_ gossip strategy will flop: The media will shrink back to some Internet Web sites and YouTube video clips with only about 10% of the revenue they were long used to. Why? Well, really, the credibility of the news has long been a really bad and ugly joke. E.g., there's an old 1930s Andy Hardy movie, maybe still shown occasionally on TV, if we still have TV (do we?), where Andy is laughing at the credibility of newspapers -- the audience in the 1930s was fully prepared to laugh at the news. But going back to Thomas Jefferson, the credibility of the news was even worse, much worse, as in Jefferson's

[http://press- pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/amendI_spe...](http://press- pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/amendI_speechs29.html)

with in part

"Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle. The real extent of this state of misinformation is known only to those who are in situations to confront facts within their knolege with the lies of the day."

So, apparently since Jefferson, the news has been, really, just dramatic fiction, light entertainment. Well, really, a lot of people know this. Too bad the CEO of Intel didn't and, instead, took the gossip seriously.

<comment><USER31> The _black_ CEO of Merck resigned from the council when the President failed to denounce white supremacists in Charlottesville (blatantly so, watch the entire raw video through the bill signing). The CEO of Merck was then attacked on Twitter via the @realDonaldTrump account. Later, Under Armour and Intel CEOs both resigned from the council. Both white. Neither were attacked on Twitter.

Yesterday, the President went on TV again and gave a speech denouncing the KKK and white supremacists. The sincerity of the speech was called into question due to the late timing and his delivery. Yesterday evening, the @realDonaldTrump account retweeted an Alt Right leader's tweet about unreported violence in Chicago over the weekend. The tweet was, subjectively, a racist dog whistle that essentially translates to, "Sure a white supremacist killed a woman at our alt right rally on Saturday, but look at what black people did in Chicago!"

Explain to me how this is a self-fulfilling narrative? It has nothing to do with the news media and _everything_ to do with the President himself on TV and Twitter.

<comment><USER30> I'm sorry: This "failed to denounce" is just a game, part of the news gossip I described. And the second play of the game is failed to denounce "soon enough".

Trump did NOTHING at all wrong. His first speech was fine, presidential, responsible, good leadership, highly ethical, calm the nation, slow, hopefully stop, the violence, save more people from getting killed.

The _failed to denounce soon enough, strongly enough, and convincingly enough_ is just a game played by people who want to have an excuse for a headline, to make up a story, to contribute to a narrative, to play to a partisan audience, to get eyeballs and clicks, to push gossip, innuendo, etc. It's not objective.

This is not the first time: The newsies jumped on this game, manipulation, way back in the campaign on the cooked-up issue that Trump did not "denounce" David Duke "fast enough". Made-up, cooked-up, stirred-up, deliberately deceptive and provocative, BS. Attempting to incite a riot. Skilled, clever gossip, Victorian garden party nasty, bitchy, social chit-chat used as "news".

They also want to start a fight, to have something to write stories about, to blame Trump for, to get more stories, to push their narrative, even if the fight KILLS more people. The newsies are very dirty dogs. You fell for their manipulation.

You can go for that nasty, dangerous, inciting violence, manipulation BS if you want; it's a free country; we have a free press; the press is permitted to publish total BS; and some people will believe it -- that's their right.

But in a free country with a free press, one of your responsibilities as a citizen is to be darned skeptical of such BS manipulation, to filter it out, not fall for it.

That Trump did anything wrong is just silly, again, pile-on gossip: The POTUS should not be pushed into having his statements dictated by newsies.

Look, this newsie game, if you fall for it, is like a "fork" in chess: If Trump gives a really good, presidential, responsible speech as he did, then the newsies claim he didn't denounce specific people and groups fast enough or strongly enough.

So, the newsies want Trump to say provocative things. They basically want to trick Trump into using the newsies words and content. Then the newsies get to demean Trump, make him an obedient puppy, cost him respect and status.

So, if you go along, either way with the fork, Trump loses and the newsies win.

Again, once again, over again, yet again, one more time, this time just for you, it's a dirty newsie manipulation. You need to see this.

It's a little like some dirt bags in high school creating gossip and pushing and pushing it to create a consensus, based on absolutely 0 that is real, to push the captain of the football team actually off the team and likely out of the school.

For the newsies, with just gossip, to bring down a freely, properly elected POTUS, to cancel a free election, to overturn our democracy, would be one of the worst harms to the US in all its history, but THAT is just what the newsies are trying to do. Then, think of all the headlines, eyeballs, and ad revenue they could get?

The captain of the football team and the POTUS are safe unless you let yourself be manipulated by dirty newsies.

Trump's statements were fully, very appropriate.

Sure, the newsies who want headlines want to start a fight, have Trump name names, do name calling, get into specific fights with specific people and groups, etc.

Trump was correct -- such newsies will never be satisfied. Why? The biggest reason is that as soon as people are satisfied, the newsies lose audience, clicks, ad revenue, headlines, stories, and their narrative.

The newsies are trying to incite a fight.

The American people are getting a crash, high level course in reading comprehension and understanding manipulation: The newsies will throw made-up, cooked-up, stirred-up, incited, provoked, gang-up, pile-on nonsense as fast as they can. First cut, we should just ignore it. When they called Melania an "escort model", they got sued big league and lost.

The news people are very dirty dogs and want your eyeballs.

You've let them get to you with their claim that Trump should pick fights. No he shouldn't. The newsies want a FIGHT to cover and want to provoke Trump into a fight. So, the newsies have a _narrative_ that Trump is _racist_ (top card in the Democrat deck, the race card, then the gender card, ..., and the newsies are about 90% Democrat) and keep pushing that narrative. Look at all objectively and see that the narrative is just total propaganda JUST as in the Goebbels "if you tell a lie often enough then people will believe it". You've been manipulated, been had. The newsies are thrilled with you and count on a lot more clicks from you.

The good news about the dirty dog newsies is that they have been shoveling their deceptive, manipulative, lying BS against Trump for 2 years now, and the worse thing they have found so far that has any credibility at all is just something about two scoops of ice cream. So, with all that newsie effort at dirt, we have to conclude that Trump is squeaky clean and a really good guy.

They've got nothing; they've got zip, zilch, and zero; they've got nichts, nil, nada; they've got their 1+ year old Russia story with nothing, a big nothing burger, "where's the beef?". As I wrote in my post above, the newsies are desperate for headlines, stories, eyeballs, revenue, etc. They are about to go out of business and have zero credibility left.

You have fallen just for nasty gossip. Why? You just want to take up the Goebbels style lies so that you can fit in with others who do that? The dirty dog newsies are inciting violence that stands to get people killed, and you are going along with them. Not good. Wise up.

<comment><USER31> White supremacists came to my city and killed a woman 4 blocks up the street from my house, and the President's message was "there was violence on all sides". Only one side came to Charlottesville and killed someone. Only one side came to Charlottesville and chanted "Blood and Soil" while holding 200 torches in front of the Rotunda.

Trump explicitly refused to acknowledge white supremacists when asked about it. The questions were shouted out, but maybe he shouldn't call it a press conference if he wants to be the only one talking. This idea that it's all media spin is frankly insulting to anyone personally affected by these domestic terrorists.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> What took him so long?

<comment><USER12> I suspect that he thought that it would be possible to work some change from the inside. Now that the optical disadvantages of being closer to Trump have clearly outweighed the advantages there is no other choice left than to resign.

<comment><USER33> But Trump has been bedfellows with white supremacists since day one. All of a sudden there are "optical disadvantages" of being closer to him?

<comment><USER12> > But Trump has been bedfellows with white supremacists since day one.

Yes, but there were people who thought that once he became president his true nature would come out and things would be better and that he was merely using these people as a tool to get elected. Now, he _probably_ did use them as a tool to get elected but at the same time I suspect that his real sympathies lie with them rather than with the groups that would like to consider everybody equal before the law.

> All of a sudden there are "optical disadvantages" of being closer to him?

Well, there probably always were disadvantages but they are becoming rather more pronounced now. People are calling for boycotts of the products of companies standing with Trump and every action that Trump takes that forces them to either go all in or denounce him will cause a few to break off. It's surprising me that so many companies are still on board.

<comment><USER33> When you dance with the devil, you don't get to pick the tune.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> >> I resigned to call attention to the serious harm our divided political climate is causing to critical issues...

.. by performing a further politically divisive act. I can't believe corporate virtue signalling has become a thing now.

</comment><comment><USER35> What is the point in quitting? You just went from some voice to zero. This is just virtue-signaling and is non-productive.

<comment><USER36> Having a voice is pointless if the person you're speaking to has no intention of listening.

<comment><USER37> And that's why the "Why won't people just TALK to the Nazis?" nonsense is nonsense.</comment></comment></comment>


Tesla racing series: Electric cars get the green light – Roadshow - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/tesla-racing-series-electric-gt-cars/ <comment><USER2> As a car modder/tuner myself, having watched electric cars racing before, I can say it's a very different experience and likely won't appeal much to the existing large consumer base of racing fans. Electric cars are far more "sterile", for lack of a better word, and just doesn't appeal to my senses in quite the same way as the sights, sounds, and smells of a fuel-burning one; or to put it another way, going fast is not the only thing people like about racing.

<comment><USER3> > _doesn 't appeal to my senses in quite the same way as the sights, sounds, > and smells of a fuel-burning one_

In the future our great grandchildren will look at comments like that with disgust, much the same way we think about harvesting whales or elephants today. Heathens

<comment><USER4> It's always easy to appeal to the morals of future people, since they don't exist yet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Quite an optimistic take on the situation, especially considering (from the article): _the racing engineers are having trouble with the car 's battery management software. Because the Model S doesn't know that it's a race car ... it starts to shut the battery down when it detects excess heat in the pack._

Right now a Tesla on a track should be good in a 1/4 mile drag race, but is pretty much a joke for any serious number of laps. Here's a Car and Driver effort that found _" by the exit of Snake, about 40 seconds into the lap, the 5010-pound P85D entered a reduced power mode (roughly half of the max)"_[1]. The Tesla wound up finishing the lap with the same time as a Jeep Grand Cherokee SRT8.

[1][https://www.caranddriver.com/features/tesla-model- s-p85d-at-...](https://www.caranddriver.com/features/tesla-model-s-p85d-at- lightning-lap-2016-feature)

<comment><USER6> Here's one at the Nordschleife: [https://jalopnik.com/heres-what-a-tesla- model-s-can-do-aroun...](https://jalopnik.com/heres-what-a-tesla-model-s-can- do-around-the-nurburgrin-1600644908)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I almost thought for a second that it would be an all self-driving Tesla race. How cool would that be! I personally would trust way more self driving cars when they reach that level of awesomeness. Not to say that I wouldn't happily for self-driving car immediately.

<comment><USER8> Well there's Roborace [https://roborace.com](https://roborace.com)

Its funny that they're doing this with full-scale vehicles. I think a smaller scale would be more accessible to smaller and therefore more teams. It would also mean that a team could take more risks - imagine an 'unlimited' class that just specifies max dimensions and weight (and maybe allowed power source). That would be fun to watch I think.

<comment><USER9> After the steroid controversy I want to see an unlimited robot baseball league where anything goes but keep the equipment (bat, ball, bases) the same.

<comment><AUTHOR> Now I imagined that, since the first human-like robots are expected to be "self-driving" sex toys, there will be endless awkward situations emerging from in-field software failures.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> a neutral question (honest question): Isen't the best part of a race show the sounds? I honestly don't know how a race sounds with electric cars but I imagine it to be quite different.

<comment><USER11> But on the other hand electric vehicles can have phenomenal acceleration and braking capabilities, and that would perhaps make races more frenetic.

<comment><USER12> Phenomenal breaking? On a Tesla? Have you driven one on a track? The breaks that come with it are utter garbage compared to its weight class.

<comment><USER11> While I haven't driven a Tesla, does not the regenerative braking in Electric cars offer more accurate torque control during braking?

<comment><USER13> Feel free to correct me since I'm not that familiar with Tesla, regenerative braking is more like engine braking rather than "pedal" braking. As in, while you coast, there's negative torque against driving axle which charges battery.

It's rather useless in racing situation. You want 4-wheel braking then, this may throw off your balance. I believe regenerative braking is not very effective when compared to full-blown racing brakes as well. It's great when you're stopping at traffic light from far away, but not when you brake hard.

On top of that, this is not limited to electric cars. Some regular cars have it too. For example non-e Golfs got it.

<comment><USER14> Theoretically, regenerative breaking has a torque that increases linearly with the car speed. So it should be a great fit for racing cars.

That said, there are many practical limitations that may apply.

<comment><USER13> Do you want linear braking torque though? Progressive (more speed-more torque) braking may help to brake to exact spot and avoid lockup.

As you brake, car dives in, taking force off rear wheels. With linear braking, it may be too easy to lock them up. Which is especially dangerous if you're still braking when entering the corner.

<comment><USER14> "Torque increases linearly with speed" means "more speed more torque".

The "linear braking torque" you are talking about seems to be a completely unrelated concept referring to how the brakes react to inputs from the pedal. A braking system can have both of those, none, or any single one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Imho the main race will be against the car's DRM.

</comment><comment><USER16> Tesla Racing Circuit ideas for increasing power discharge rate, reducing heat, and reducing build weight:

Hemp supercapacitors (similar power density as graphene supercapacitors and li-ion, lower cost than graphene)

Active cooling. Modified passive cooling.

Biocomposite frame and panels (stronger and lighter than steel and aluminum (George Washington Carver))

<comment><USER16> > Biocomposite frame and panels (stronger and lighter than steel and aluminum > (George Washington Carver))

"Soybean Car" (1941) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soybean_car](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soybean_car)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Hopefully teams can get enough spare parts to keep cars on the track. It will be a good step for Tesla.

</comment><comment><USER18> I saw a Tesla at a NHRA drag last November against a souped-up Mustang and it was decisively beaten. Was a bit disappointed, didn't even do better off the line.

Not a great comparison as it looked completely stock, but still expected more somehow.

<comment><USER19> I wonder what's possible in the way of souping up a Tesla Roadster.

I imagine it would be possible to chop out the computer and roll your own, change some suspension components and tyres.

I suppose you could remove the electric motor and put in a different one. Add or remove battery capacity.

Internal combustion engines must be orders of magnitude more customisable.

<comment><USER20> Remove weight, ditch seat cushions etc

<comment><USER18> Probably doesn't need the full battery pack for the quarter mile either.

<comment><USER21> Yes, you do, because the discharge rate is proportional to the size of the battery. Halve the battery, slow the car.

<comment><USER22> If we are speaking only seconds on max power, ultracapacitors will do a whole lot better job than batteries.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> so... if they have no official support or solution to the commonly maligned issue with driving tesla cars on a track (overheating), how will they be racing them? racing such a computer-controlled car without a good way to interface with them seems untenable.

<comment><USER24> Race cars are always heavily modified (compared to the road going versions). They must have upgraded the cooling system to allow for sustained high loads.

<comment><USER25> I was surprised to learn about the 2018 Dodge Demon's SRT power chiller. It uses the car's refrigerant to cool down the supercharger. On race day you actually have to turn off your AC. The whole car is insane, especially considering that it is street legal and may of its owners will be using it as a daily driver.

<comment><USER26> That's an idea that dates back quite a ways. Ford had a prototype F150 Lightning that used A/C to temporarily cool down the intercooler and gain something like 30-50 horsepower for around 30 seconds at a time. Unfortunately Ford elected instead to just kill the Lightning altogether at that point.

<comment><USER19> Great idea, surprised I haven't seen this as a street legal mod.

You would only need to sandwich the intercooler between the hot and cold heat exchangers with a (fairly powerful) automotive refrigerant pump connect to them. The cold heat exchanger would go in front of the intercooler.

I'm going to start talking about this to some enthusiasts I know and see if I can convince one of them to do it.

<comment><USER27> >> Great idea, surprised I haven't seen this as a street legal mod.

It was a homebrew hack by people in the Honda Civic / del Sol community decades ago, I recall it fondly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Awesome! I'm hoping to see Teslas in iRacing soon, would be highly interesting. :)

</comment><comment><USER29> nice autoplay video that plays over the embedded youtube video creating 2 live audio tracks which actually didn't sound wrong together...</comment>


Paul Graham: News from the Front - <AUTHOR> http://www.paulgraham.com/colleges.html <comment><USER2> Peter Norvig in his essay "Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years" says, "If you want, put in four years at a college (or more at a graduate school). This will give you access to some jobs that require credentials, and it will give you a deeper understanding of the field, but if you don't enjoy school, you can (with some dedication) get similar experience on the job. In any case, book learning alone won't be enough. "Computer science education cannot make anybody an expert programmer any more than studying brushes and pigment can make somebody an expert painter" says Eric Raymond, author of The New Hacker's Dictionary. One of the best programmers I ever hired had only a High School degree; he's produced a lot of great software, has his own news group, and made enough in stock options to buy his own nightclub. # Work on projects with other programmers. Be the best programmer on some projects; be the worst on some others. When you're the best, you get to test your abilities to lead a project, and to inspire others with your vision. When you're the worst, you learn what the masters do, and you learn what they don't like to do (because they make you do it for them)."

He is referring to Jamie Zawinski. <http://norvig.com/21-days.html>

<comment><USER3> Isn't it ironic that Peter Norvig touts this view, but works at google? I've heard that GPA/pedigree are one of the key decisions for hiring?

<comment><USER4> Actually I think its the problem solving questions that they ask you. I may be mistaken,since I don't work there. Theres an article in businessweek or b2.0 about it right now. Things such as "You are shrunk to the size of a nickel..preserving your density proportional...and put in a blender...you have 5 seconds before the blades start moving - what do you do?

<comment><USER5> Google is a total slut for a high GPA, make no mistake about that.

Google also has a list of schools that are considered top-tier, and if you're not from one of those, you're unlikely to be hired. I don't believe Google has always been this way--and I think the pressure to raise the hiring bar in so many artificial ways comes not from any elitism, but from the fact that Google is hiring way too fast, and the folks at the top know it. By ruling out everyone below a quite high academic threshold, they've cut down the number of applicants under consideration.

I suspect, but don't know for sure, that if you have a long track record of producing good results, you can still get hired by Google. I received a recruitment letter from them, but never followed up by going through the hiring process to find out if someone with a couple of two year community college degrees (and no computer science classes at all aside from AP high school classes--I tested out of all of the computer-related classes for my degrees) could get hired there, based on the strength of accomplishments, alone. The letter came two days after I accepted funding from YC, and a few months after we started making money with Virtualmin, so it wasn't really of interest at all. But now that I think about it, it would have been an interesting experiment.

<comment><USER6> You're right for the vast majority, but Google does make a few exceptions. One of my friends has no college degree but was hired by Google as a programmer almost entirely based on his rank on the competitive programming site TopCoder.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Two points: 1) It does seem to matter for at least CS grad school, as was said in Undergraduation, because of research opportunities. So if you just want to start a web startup and get rich, fine, but if you want to go to grad school after you get rich, not so fine.

2) I've taken classes at CMU, Berkeley, and Stanford, and while the differences didn't particularly correlate with the rankings (since the relative rankings of those three places in CS get permuted regularly anyway), there were serious differences in attitude and rigor. CMU and Berkeley were both very rigorous; the difference was that CMU was rigorous in a somewhat more pointless, soul-sucking manner, on average, and didn't explain things as well. Stanford was somewhat less rigorous, which I imagine was because of the Ivy-league difficult-to-get-in but easy-to-pass phenomenon. This seems to correlate somewhat with the number of undergrads at each place involved in research; at both CMU and Berkeley, I know many undergrads involved in research, while the one professor I talk to at Stanford hungrily scrounges for the rare undergrad who's good at research.

So there are differences in curriculum and selection, I think; they're just not particularly amazing predictors of success. They certainly should influence the decision of which colleges to apply to, though.

</comment><comment><USER8> Though as a reader I start sympathetic to both the thesis (it matches my priors) and the author (always enjoy PG's essays), this struck me as hand- waving.

For all the talk of, "I have a lot of data" and "[w]e're just finally able to measure it," there are no supporting numbers, just general impressions.

C'mon, give this topic the rigorous Bayesian treatment. How does the population of YC market-successes compare with YC-chosen and YC-applicants, along the 'prestigious college' dimension? How do these compare with the college-graduate population as a whole, and the college-graduate population succeeding in other competitive fields?

Those numbers would be great, and I'm rooting for the "college-doesn't-matter" result.

<comment><USER9> We don't have enough data yet to prove anything by research paper standards, but that doesn't mean I'm saying nothing. We try consciously to ignore where people went to school; that is not standard practice; and moreover this is something I'm claiming we've changed.

<comment><USER10> Presumably, your data can only show that it doesn't matter what school you went to, conditional on being accepted by YC.

That is a completely different statement than showing that it doesn't matter what school you went to. Your article appears to me like it is conflating the two.

<comment><USER9> No, I'm also considering people we invite for interviews.

<comment><USER8> So the conjecture of the essay is some combination of the following:

(1) Conditional on having applied to YC, YC finds that having attended a prestigious college makes one no more likely to be selected for interviews.

(2) Conditional on having been selected for YC interviews, YC finds that having attended a prestigious college makes one no more likely to receive YC support.

(3) Conditional on receiving YC support, YC finds that having attended a prestigious college makes one no more likely to succeed in the market (here defined as visibly thriving within about a year).

Given the initial essay's strong emphasis on market success as the ultimate verifier (paragraphs 5-8), I thought the main idea was (3) -- but if interview invites/subjective-evaluations are a factor, some amount of (1) and (2) are mixed in, too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> First, I'd just like to point out that PG is in an interesting place to report that college doesn't matter, having himself attended two Ivy League schools.

There are two arguments happening here. The first is that entrepreneurship and business success are not so well correlated with where you go to undergrad. The second is that where you go to college doesn't make much of a difference in life in general. I won't really quarrel with the first, since it's been demonstrated pretty often, and YC's results support it as well. The second, on the other hand...

The main problem with trying to assert that college doesn't make a difference in life is that there's really no easy measurement you can do over "net change" in life. That's due both to the long span of time a life consumes as well as the complex and/or fuzzy cause-effect relationships that are at play throughout. At best, I think, you would need to argue over objective differences that have some immediate effect, and then hope that those actually do make a difference. As an example, here are some of the things that I think made Paul Graham successful that are pretty strongly related to his going to graduate school at Harvard:

\- he met RTM and Trevor there

\- he got to spend his time in Boston, where he's acknowledged startups can thrive

\- being able to drop the H-bomb almost certainly helped give credibility to his company

\- he learned Lisp (not really the most popular language at the time, except at certain places)

Would Viaweb have happened had he gone elsewhere, or skipped grad school altogether? Well, maybe. But I doubt it. Harvard's name is what convened the talent (peers, advisors, mentors, investors) that shaped much of that company, and it's there that Harvard's value lies. I think this essay horribly undervalues the magic that happens when everyone in the world thinks your university is amazing.

<comment><USER9> > strongly related to his going to graduate school at Harvard

This essay is about college, not grad school. I tried to make that clear by always using the word college rather than university. Maybe it was not clear enough.

> undervalues the magic that happens when everyone in the world thinks your > university is amazing

Sure, but not by accident. The whole thesis of this essay that this "magic" is bullshit, and that as success depends more on measurable results, it will play much less of a role.

<comment><USER12> >This essay is about college, not grad school. I tried to make that clear by always using the word college rather than university. Maybe it was not clear enough.

Certainly not clear enough for this non-US reader. But of course the word "college" has a different meaning on this side of the border (and an entirely different meaning in Oxford).

<comment><USER13> A bunch of other education-related words have different meanings on different sides of the pond. For example,

UK: You write a dissertation for a masters degree and a thesis for a PhD.

US: The opposite.

I wonder if the terminology will converge...

<comment><USER3> In the US you never write a thesis, you write a dissertation (document) based on a thesis (idea.)

<comment><USER13> Interesting. Wikipedia thinks the two are synonymous:

"In academia, a thesis or dissertation is a document that presents the author's research and findings and is submitted in support of candidature for a degree or professional qualification."

[from <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thesis>]

<comment><USER14> Npk is correct, but it's a pedantic distinction. Most people, apparently including the Wikipedia editors, just use the two words interchangably.

Edit: yikes. Somebody went on a downmodding spree on this thread.

<comment><USER3> I asked all my academic friends, and I've come to the conclusion that it _is_ a pedantic distinction. But it's useful to have two different words for the two separate concepts :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> When I was taking an education theory class we had to do simulated admissions. We had to do three applicants every ten minutes, which works out to just over three minutes per app. In that amount of time you can quickly scan over the grades and SATs, and maybe read the first paragraph of each essay if you're lucky. The other thing I learned is that the real admissions officers got statistics updates twice a day for the average GPA and SAT score, and also the projected US News rank. This means that whether or not your grades and SATs were good enough depended largely on whether your app was read before or after lunch, because what it took to get into the college completely changed every time they were handed the new report.

For low income minority students there was an option to set the app aside for a second reading in order to learn more about the student's situation and if there were an ameliorating factors, but for the rest of the students the admissions officers were expected to make a decision on the first pass after the three minutes.

Athletes also largely got pre-approved by the academic department they were applying for, so they pretty much knew whether they'd be accepted before they ever applied. The flip side is that they only got an edge in admissions if they applied early decision, because if they were going to bring down the average GPA then they had to bring up the average matriculation in order to not affect the overall US News rank.

I think it's one of those things like eVoting. That is, people with no CS experience think eVoting is totally secure whereas CS experts know it isn't. Similarly, I highly suspect that anyone who thinks getting admitted to an Ivy shows a certain baseline level of respectability has never worked in admissions. I'd guarantee it.

As for the importance of college GPA, if you want to see something funny then apply for a wall street job. If they ask you what your GPA was in college, ask them how GPA correlates with alpha. :-)

The craziest thing was that Google did a massive HR survey and determined that there was basically zero correlation between college GPA and value created for the company. Because of this they decided that they would give jobs to five or six people with sub 3.0 GPAs each year. Well if there is little or no correlation, why should it matter what GPA is at all? I suspect the psychology behind the Google hiring process has a lot in common with the psychology of female circumcision. That is, it was done to me so it must be a good thing. And if it's a good thing, then by definition it must be good to do unto others.

edit: fixed a few grammatical errors

<comment><USER16> _Athletes also largely got pre-approved by the department they were applying for_

As ridiculous as this is at a fundamental level, you know damn well that the athletic recruiters take long, careful looks at all the potential players, unlike the academic recruiters.

 _basically zero correlation between college GPA and value created for the company_

I'm a GPA skeptic myself, having blown off every class (including the important ones), but this is easily explained: If a company puts weight upon GPA, then any low-GPA students they happen to hire likely had some _manifest achievements_ that got them in. Such achievements are more important than GPA one way or the other.

<comment><USER15> I won't argue that the athletic recruiting isn't a bit ridiculous, but in general the academic standards are probably more fair and transparent than the regular admissions process. Each team has its GPA published each semester for all to see, and in general the number of recruits a team is allowed to bring in is highly dependent on whether or not the previous recruits have been succeeding academically. Of course each individual athlete is also highly monitored, and if GPA dips below a certain level then it's even worse than if you were a normal student. Not to mention the random drug testing that no other students are subjected to, the prohibition against putting certain types of photos in your Facebook profile, the mandatory diversity/alcohol/sex training sessions, etc. Apparently it's no longer even allowed to smoke cigarettes or use any other tobacco products.

That being said, the NCAA bureaucracy is still lame.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> When I was in college, I figured out that the education you get doesn't really change. However, what does change is the people that you are associating with.

At the "elite" colleges, there is a greater percentage of smart students, which lends itself to more productive discussions and more difficult tests that force you to challenge yourself. Also, it is like the difference between the regular classes in high school and advanced classes -- in the advanced classes you cover the same material, but with greater breadth and a deeper understanding.

And the number 1 biggest advantage of going to an elite college is that you have a much better chance of meeting the world's future movers and shakers -- the people that will be the educational and business leaders of the next generation. That alone is a good reason to go to an elite college.

So I have to disagree, and say that there are indeed advantages to going to an elite college, just not the advantages that most people think.

<comment><USER9> If you read all the way to the end you'll find you're not disagreeing as much as you think.

<comment><USER17> I did read to the end, but I didn't really see anything in there indicating that there is still a benefit to going to an elite school. I just read it again, and still didn't see anything.

My interpretation of this essay is that one's success won't be predicated on which school you go to, and that is the point that I am disagreeing with. Did I misinterpret the point of the essay?

<comment><USER9> [4] At the best colleges you learn more from other students than from your professors. You should be able to reproduce this at almost any college by making a conscious effort to find smart friends, instead of leaving it to chance.

I.e. the benefit of going to an elite college is that you get almost for free something you have to work at otherwise: knowing lots of smart people.

<comment><USER17> Ah. I guess being in the footnote made me think it was more of an offhanded comment than a major counterpoint to the premise of the essay. Perhaps in an edited version, this should get its own paragraph.

<comment><USER9> Ok, a lot of people seemed to be commenting about this, so I pulled that point out of the footnote and up into the body of the essay.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> But it DOES matter where you go to college, and the essay itself argues for that.

In this context, we can say there are three things that can determine someone's success:

1) confidence others have in you

2) self-confidence

3) actual ability

Going to a "good" college affects 1 and 2 the most, and arguably 3 the least. In a startup 3 and 2 are arguably the most important, and 1 the least - so I guess that agrees with pg's argument. In the corporate world, 1 and 2 matter the most, and 3 the least - aligned with what a brand-name college provides.

So the argument seems a bit circular: based on the yc sample set, college doesn't matter because college doesn't matter to the yc sample set. Even if that SHOULD extend to the world at large, it doesn't.

<comment><USER19> This is why Seth Godin champions NOBS instead of a traditional business school: [http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2007/04/nobs_the_end...](http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2007/04/nobs_the_end_of.html) NOBS maximizes #1 and #2 with little work. Now if only there really was a NOBS. Wait, it's called YCombinator! :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I did my D.Phil. at Oxford University, and my B.Sc. at Simon Fraser University; while SFU is one of Canada's best universities, it clearly doesn't have the stature of Oxford or Harvard. Were the students at Oxford more intelligent than the students at SFU? No. Were they more motivated? No. Are there jobs for which I'd rather hire an Oxford alumnus than an SFU alumnus? Absolutely.

The largest advantage of a great university like Oxford is in increasing the range and depth of ideas presented to students. It's impossible to completely separate the teaching role of a university from its research role: Teaching (and inconvenient questions asked by irritating students, like yours truly, in class) informs research, and research informs teaching. And quite apart from the "indigenous" research, if you're at a minor university without a strong reputation for research, you don't have Knuth dropping by for a few months, or Rivest visiting to give a lecture (albeit about the rather odd notion of obtaining forward security by using a stream of broadcasted random numbers which is too fast to be stored).

There are undeniable advantages to being at a great university in being exposed to new ideas. Why haven't PG et al. noticed this? Probably because their measurement -- can someone create a successful startup? -- is just as biased as everyone else's measurements. After all, when was the last time that a YC-funded startup really did anything new?

<comment><USER9> > when was the last time that a YC-funded startup really did anything new?

Considering how many there are of them, probably within the last couple days. But instead of me giving you an example to which you will predictably reply "that's not really new," how about you giving us an example of a non-YC startup you think is doing something really new, so we can see what level of really-newness it would take to satisfy you?

<comment><USER20> Why don't you fund a few (or at least one) "crazy" startups like Anybots? Because that's probably the coolest thing YC-related! Are you only interested in web stuff, or is it a lack of serious applications?

Here are a few "cool" ventures I have in mind:

<http://www.armadilloaerospace.com>

<http://www.intellasys.net>

<http://www.teslamotors.com>

<comment><USER9> You don't count justin.tv as crazy?

<comment><USER20> Yes, I have to agree that the technology behind justin.tv is quite interesting. Right now, it seems like it's only used by a bunch of exhibitionist and egocentric persons in a real TV fashion, but it will probably end up being used for more interesting stuff (like, say, a sailor racing across the world).

On the other hand, they'd be stupid not to go where the money is (that is, were all the MySpace generation kids are).

<comment><USER21> A sailor racing across the world would be dead boring in real time. It would be interesting to watch a half-hour documentary summarizing a couple months worth of travel.

Then again, I guess that's true for all kinds of reality TV we've seen so far, including justin.tv.

<comment><USER20> Most people are dead boring in real time; a sailor, an astronaut or any other kind of explorer is just a little bit less boring than a teenage girl buying whatever crap.

<comment><USER22> Lifecasting will attract a certain initial audience but to me its the least interesting thing about justin.tv They want to be youtube live. The opportunities for small theatres, musicians, sports, awards and presentations etc to create a live event online is huge. The difference between a youtube video that can sort of limp along without context for years to come, and a live event will be very important if they can do it right.

At the moment though, they just aren't set up to make short snippets of content from different broadcasters easily findable.

The distribution of tech is a problem as well. Another random idea; I wonder if they could set up a post based rental of equipment for one off events.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I have thought about this a lot.In fact lot of my teen years were spent thinking about this. I went to an elite school in India. And I leave a comment here just to confirm that its the same all over the world. These lines are gold. ( I mean very valuable :)

"The unfortunate thing is not just that people are judged by such a superficial test, but that so many judge themselves by it. A lot of people, probably the majority of people in the America, have some amount of insecurity about where, or whether, they went to college. The tragedy of the situation is that by far the greatest liability of not having gone to the college you'd have liked is your own feeling that you're thereby lacking something. Colleges are a bit like exclusive clubs in this respect. There is only one real advantage to being a member of most exclusive clubs: you know you wouldn't be missing much if you weren't. When you're excluded, you can only imagine the advantages of being an insider. But invariably they're larger in your imagination than in real life."

</comment><comment><USER24> Analogue: no one ever gets penalized for upvoting comments that have already been upvoted several times.

Same basic idea.

<comment><USER16> No, college is more like this: You see somebody, "Jd", (except let's call him "Harvard") who already got a lot of upmods, and you attach yourself to him by replying (except, let's say "applying") and _bang_ now my comment is closer to the top of the page.

More people read it, leading to an extra opportunity to gain Karma. Of course, if I don't stay "on topic" (let's say "go to class") people will notice and downmod me (let's say "flunk me"). Staying "on topic" leads to a dull uniformity.

<comment><USER24> Absolutely. My comment was more directed towards those that evaluate/hire ivy- league/equiv. grads. Yours is correct re: why people attend such schools.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> See also: [http://weblog.raganwald.com/2005/07/why-you-need-degree- to-w...](http://weblog.raganwald.com/2005/07/why-you-need-degree-to-work-for- bigco.html)

</comment><comment><USER26> PG: Here's a good way to test this: Please ask the next round of applicants to NOT mention the school they went to.

What do you think?

<comment><USER9> We considered that, but there's more information there than just a scalar value representing impressiveness.

<comment><USER26> Can you expand on that? What kind of information?

<comment><USER9> We can tell which founders went to the same school. We can ask people who teach at or went to school x about applicants from there. If they went to a school we know about first hand, we can ask more specific questions about what they did in college. If they went to a big hacker school like MIT, we can suggest that they recruit friends and/or launch their beta there.

<comment><USER27> It also gives you the data you need to continue testing this theory.

<comment><USER28> He could always ask them after accepting (or even rejecting).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> How was the data analysed?

The most obvious way, and the way the essay seems to imply, is simply to look for correlations between success / failure and which school the founders attended.

If this is how it was done, then the conclusion is flawed. All it shows is that the school doesn't matter, conditional on being accepted by YC (rather than rejected). This is a completely different conclusion than the one the essay reaches, namely that the school doesn't matter, period.

</comment><comment><USER29> As always, a convincing case, well edited. :) Paul's point probably plays even better among Hacker News readers, who are probably more suspicious than the average bear of college in general.

Seems to me there's an extra factor contributing to the longevity of the "which school" criterion. There are other roles in the business (especially larger businesses) such as biz dev, M&A, etc. where attending an elite school might enhance success considerably - not for the academic content learned, but for the network of friends and colleagues you gain at that school. It's the English Grammar School model of corporate success.

s Paul points out, hiring decisions are often made by HR types: but HR is a very extroverted, business process focussed profession. As personalities, and in job description, the HR folks have more in common with the people and roles that do benefit from elite school connections than with technical people for whom the elite school is irrelevant. Like all of us, they apply lessons from familiar situations to more unfamiliar situations. And so the Stanford Screen lives on.

</comment><comment><USER30> "The curve for faculty is a lot flatter than for students, especially in math and the hard sciences; you have to go pretty far down the list of colleges before you stop finding smart professors in the math department."

I wish this would be repeated more often. I've implemented many interesting algorithms based on papers written by people at, like, Louisiana State University. Noname places.

<comment><USER14> It's also interesting how many universities kick ass in little obscure research niches. I had never even heard of Chalmers until I learned Haskell.

<comment><USER30> I wouldn't have thought Glasgow even _had_ a university much less one that produced a really nice implementation of a modern functional programming language.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> This essay seems to resonate with another Paul Graham theme -- to avoid prestige while choosing a job. His point then is that you are never compensated for prestige, so you might as well stay away from it.

It looks to me like the education market is starting to catch up with the job market. Prestige in either area probably means that you're paying too much or being paid too little.

</comment><comment><USER32> I'm surprised it took Paul this long to realize this about universities. A little less than half way through high school I realized that the entire process (get good grades to go to a good school, get good grades there so you can get a good job) is crap. I decided that it was more important to spend my time in high school learning what I cared about then to obsess over GPA.

I never got around to finishing my college degree, I left about 2 years into it and got a job because I ran out of things to learn in college. I've worked for a series of both small and large companies and I've found that most companies also don't care where one went to college (Google is a big exception to this). Most companies simply don't value people that are fresh out of college because colleges don't teach people the right skills.

It's true however that in good schools there are more smart people and you are more likely to meet interesting people, but that doesn't mean you need to go to a top school, just live close to one.

</comment><comment><USER33> I was amazed initially (though that quickly faded) how few truly "smart" undergraduates there were at MIT in the 9 years I hung around there. I put smart in quotes because I really don't like that word, but I don't have a great substitute either. Obviously they were smart enough to get in. But most were significantly lacking in at least one necessary area to be labeled "smart" IMO (often several), including intuitiveness, creativity, being a self-starter, analytical thinking, breadth and depth of knowledge, intellectual curiosity, etc.

Putting exact numbers on it is difficult due to the self-segregation at MIT and subjectivity obviously at play. However, I would say perhaps 30% fall into the seriously lacking category, another 30% in a substantially lacking category and another 25% in a good but not great category (perhaps lacking only one major thing). That leaves only 15% or so of people I came across I would say were "smart" in the sense described above. When you move to people with the essential qualities necessary to work successfully at a really early stage startup, I would say it drops to 7% or so. I'm not saying found one, just work at one as one of the first employees. When you move to people with all the founding qualities, the % probably drops to 1-2%. I know this first hand after trying to start companies with people in the "smart" category.

The above has really hit home other times as well. Here are two more occasions. First, when graduating, 62 people in my class out of about 1,080 (~6%) were inducted into Phi Beta Kappa. I was shocked at a) how many of these people were my friends at MIT; b) how many of these people I had come across (given that I didn't meet all 1,080; and c) that this list included pretty much all of the people I had previously labeled "smart" myself in my class that I had come across.

Second, my wife taught statistics at MIT for several years. One time a kid came up to her complaining about an exam grade and told her it was not possible to have gotten an A on this exam. He said all his friends studied real hard and yet they all ended up with Cs and Ds. To which she replied, actually roughly 30% of the class got As. The point is, they were completely self-segregated by "smartness" and didn't even really know it.

All that being said, an MIT degree really does go a long way in terms of impressing the average person/company. I have done independent consulting and applied for jobs where they basically stopped researching me when they saw MIT. That is the rule, not the exception. And that was in Boston. Now that I live in PA, it seems even more shocking to people to come across someone from MIT. Given the above, and in agreement with PG, this behavior is unwarranted. I of course am thankful, but it also annoys me that so many people are free- riding on the name.

<comment><USER34> In response to your first paragraph, I think more people should obsess about where there kids go to kindergarten.

Not obsess about how a selective kindergarten will help them get into the right college, but about whether the environment will suppress creativity, being a self-starter, and intellectual curiosity, as most schools do. Unfortunately, schools that nurture those qualities usually cost money.

<comment><USER14> One of my biggest motivations for getting rich is so that when I have kids, I can afford to home-school them.

<comment><USER35> i disagree with home-schooling. kids need social interaction, they will get more creative, they will learn faster, and more importantly be more open to new ideas. putting your kids in a walled garden is going to harm them a lot

<comment><USER14> Walk down the halls of your local middle school and tell me what behavior you see which you think your kids ought to emulate.

Whenever I meet someone who was home-schooled (or occasionally alternatively schooled) I can often guess that they were after a few minutes of conversation. There's a certain kind of confidence and maturity in them that doesn't survive public schools and never comes back afterward. I envy it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> For me the biggest thing about going to an elite school is expectation.

The more you expect for yourself, the more others expect from you the more you are driven to succeed or make something of your life.

Elite colleges are like the newsweek article on octopart, it makes you want to beat the expectations on you, only several order or magnitudes less.

I think getting an education is secondary in college. Finding people who live with passion used to be a problem when we didn't have the internet. And working/studying in elite institutions gave you a higher chance of meeting passionate people.

</comment><comment><USER37> I've noticed the same thing about top-tier chemists. Grad schools tend to have a good mix of Ivy kids and others, but the most brilliant scientists always seem to come from some mid-level state university or a little liberal arts college.

Success at the highest levels of scientific research takes an odd mix of creativity, intuition, and intellegence that has little to do with academic success in high school or undergrad.

</comment><comment><USER38> I think Paul's logic here is subtly backwards...

"It doesn't matter much where a given individual went to college."

From Y-Combinator's perspective, yes, I'm sure that's true. The people they're looking at are self-selected, and pretty much guaranteed to be smart, motivated and well-educated, which means that all Y-Combinator needs to do is worry about how they think - not where they were taught. But that's after the fact. To someone deciding what college to go to, or where to send their children, I think the choice is still very important.

"someone with a real thirst for knowledge will be able to find a few smart people to learn from at a school that isn't prestigious at all." True, of course. But where does that thirst for knowledge come from? With the right support, or the right teachers, perhaps that party animal would have changed his ways. As far as I'm concerned, _that_ is really the purpose of good schools.

In Y-Combinator terms, it's not that they make a founder more likely to succeed: it's that they make him more likely to try being a founder in the first place.

</comment><comment><USER39> One hundred years from now will an "elite college" still exist? The reputations of today's elite colleges stem from a perceived legacy of alum achievement 25, 50, 100 years ago. Are factors operating now that will more evenly distribute this achievement in the future? Or is this "legacy of achievement" and conferred eliteness already BS?

</comment><comment><USER40> I liked this article, if for the simple fact that it can only help my cause (I graduated, though not from a prestigious school)!

The whole time I was going to school I was super impatient to get done so I could actually get working on something real. I was really just after the piece of paper they give you at the end (though I never attended my graduation to get that paper, and the original was sent to the wrong house).

Once I graduated I started my own project so that I would have some work to show when applying for jobs. I found that that experience led to as much or more knowledge gained as my best year in school. And that is not a knock against the school I went to (I thought the staff there was awesome).

I am always reminded of a quote from some movie (cant think of the name of it now)... "You spent x thousands of dollars on an education you could have got for 2 dollars in library late fees"

<comment><USER13> _I am always reminded of a quote from some movie (cant think of the name of it now)... "You spent x thousands of dollars on an education you could have got for 2 dollars in library late fees"_

Good Will Hunting.

<comment><USER14> Great movie. It became my nickname when I took a construction job the summer between high school and college :-).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> The second paragraph reminded me of this Alan Watts talk: <http://www.freshminds.com/animation/alan_watts_life.html>.

But unlike the Watts talk, the essay does converge to a very rigid notion of "success".

</comment><comment><USER42> "Good" colleges are a self-fulfilling prophecy. If the best students organized online and randomly picked some backwoods institution and applied there, it would instantly become _the_ place to be. Meanwhile the previous top schools would be left with the second-stringers.

It bears repeating: out of the top 10 richest "U.S. Americans", 4 inherited it; of the six who didn't, one has a degree (Warren Buffett), and 5 are drop- outs: Bill Gates, Sheldon Adelson, Larry Ellison, Paul Allen, and Michael Dell. Woz dropped out to start Apple (he went back to school only after he was done working there) and Jobs dropped out of Reed College here in Portland. (We're all very proud of him.)

</comment><comment><USER6> Anyone have that awesome quote from Bowling for Columbine where Moore is interviewing South Park co-creator Matt Stone and Stone explains the supposed consequences of not getting into honors classes in the 3rd grade?

<comment><USER34> They're like, "Don't screw this up...or you won't get into honors math in 7th grade...and you'll just die poor and lonely."

[http://www.eslnotes.com/movies/word/Bowling-for- Columbine.do...](http://www.eslnotes.com/movies/word/Bowling-for- Columbine.doc)

<comment><USER6> Thanks for the effort, but I think he phrased it differently.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> It doesn't take a Paul Graham to realize this nor do I think this is the first time the thought hit him. There are also things that I, and others, would argue about, in favor or not, but nonetheless,

thank you for writing this.

</comment><comment><USER44> As someone who took 1 term of a bad C++ class at a community college, and primarily studied Italian prior to dropping out of the University, I can't help but vote this one up.

</comment><comment><USER45> I always wondered if boso getting into YC had anything to do with the founders having gone to Oxford.

<comment><USER9> No. It was because they were obvious ass-kickers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> PG: have you noticed that a) GPA matters (at any school); b) that GPA matters at so-called elite schools in particular; c) any other consistencies with regards to college activities and/or honors, e.g. Phi Beta Kappa, having had started clubs or groups, etc.?

<comment><USER9> I don't know. We don't ask people what their grades were or what honors they got.

<comment><USER33> Why not? I'm not implying that grades & honors definitely correlate in any way with whatever it is you are looking for in applicants, but they could.

Additionally, it may be the case that overall you have noticed that attending an elite school has no correlation with success in your program, but that doesn't mean an identifiable subset of elite school candidates do not as well. For example, suppose GPA doesn't correlate by itself, or even a high GPA at an elite school. Yet maybe a super-higher GPA at an elite school does, or Phi Beta Kappa or whatever.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> the idea that college is necessary is a relatively recent aberration that from what I can tell dates back to the end of WWII and the GI Bill. before that, going to college was rare.

college is not for everyone (we need good plumbers and auto mechanics, fer chrissakes). i didn't apply myself as well as i could have at college, but about 40% of the value I got was from reading interesting books I found in the library, which I could have got for $100 a year while working in the real world and gaining money and experience -- which is what I'm doing now.

that said, some things are very hard to learn outside of a classroom and the mathematical maturity I gained from taking math classes will serve me for a life time.

</comment><comment><USER46> Here's another dirty little secret: Your grades don't matter either.

I still chuckle when I think of the drones in my fraternity that missed the best 4 years of their lives because their heads were stuck in their books. Sure, they got 4.0 averages, but who cares now?

<comment><USER43> They matter in different ways. High grades are like the good college. It's instant attention. If your goal is to work on Wall Street, good grades are an advantage. Just depends on what you want to do.

Similarly, high IQ implies smart, but low IQ does not imply unsmart.

<comment><USER32> Grades matter only if you have no other experience. If you want to work on Wallstreet chances are you don't have much experience coming out of school. But after you get the right experience nobody cares about grades. The question is whether or not you can get the right experience in the time you would otherwise waste worrying about grades.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> This is the first of PG's essays I've seen with comments at the bottom. It seems they're brought to us courtesy of Disqus, a YC startup.

<http://paulgraham.disqus.com/news_from_the_front/>

</comment><comment><USER47> ha, this is true. i go to rutgers for 4k/yr after a certain ithaca ivy wanted 43k/yr or whatever it was, so i get to keep a college fund's worth of seed money for whatever i do post-grad. and the "elite college" types i meet in the summers are no better-educated than me (and incidentally, drink a lot more...)

</comment><comment><USER48> From what I can tell, being a YC alum has similar benefits to being a Harvard (or other Ivy League) alum.

</comment><comment><USER49> Thank you, this helps me a lot.</comment>


The Engineer Drop-out Problem - <AUTHOR> http://money.cnn.com/video/news/2011/12/02/n_engineers_quit.cnnmoney/

<comment><USER2> An yet it's hard for engineers from outside US to move to the US.</comment>


Firefox OS – video presentations and slides on the OS, WebAPIs - <AUTHOR> https://hacks.mozilla.org/2012/11/firefox-os-video-presentations-and-slides-on-the-os-webapis-hacking-and-writing-apps/ <comment><USER2> Mozilla nurtured the web with Firefox. This is yet another great project for the Mobile ecosystem.

I always wished for myself and for the larger web community a 'Rock solid web based Open' Mobile Platform. And it is happening fast.

All such advancements are only possible today, as we have faster Javascript engines, can leverage Cloud services, access to cheaper hardware and much faster Internet Penetration and adoption than ever before. The web can function as a strong platform by itself and not a hybrid model.

Also let's not forget the big failure of the over hyped Palm WebOS. Many said - it was too early; not ready for the market. I too agreed then. :) Lets hope Firefox has good design patterns and moves agile.

Couple of things I wish everyone knows -

1\. Are all the System level API's ready? Telephone API, Sensor API's et al. It looks to me, its under prototype and design, what's the current stage?

2\. Can this leverage WebGL and all HTML5 features?

3\. AFAIK, all the front end is around Javascript or some Javascript MVC. Are there any other programming API's?

<comment><USER3> Seriously, I don't know why exactly but this stuff makes me feel like a dirty utopian hippie despite all the steely-eyed "realist" devil's advocate posturing people can summon.

I only wish FirefoxOS devices were around to have been considered for our retarded "give every child a tablet" program that's underway in Turkey, especially given the rumors that Mozilla is shooting for the cheap end of the market. As expected, the tablets for the program are being marketed as a toy.

<comment><USER4> Probably the use of "retarded", IDK, but that's usually considered non-pc by Americans. Especially in such close proximity to "child"

<comment><USER3> thanks. to be clear then, the program is "bad and ill-timed" because there is no educational framework or material ready to support the tablets. so by the time it does start rolling in, there's a danger that the devices will be out- dated.

<comment><USER5> I'm jumping into this game as an experiment to get khan academy working properly on a Nexus 7.

<comment><USER3> that's great to hear, more power to you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Mozilla has lost their way with Firefox, and are becoming like MS. They have a slow, bloated browser that runs terribly on Android. Instead of trying to make the best browser for the platform, they created FF OS, locking the user into their platform and API standards, just like MS tried to do when it bundled IE in Windows.

I had a WebOS phone and despite loving the beautiful UI and it being ahead of iOS in many ways like notifications and task switching, I dumped it. HTML5 killed the user experience. I need fast, responsive apps that only Android and iOS can deliver.

There's no way I'd ever go back to generic, laggy, HTML5 Apps.

<comment><USER7> Regarding your comment on HTML5 being "laggy", I think you should take a look at <https://hacks.mozilla.org/2012/11/html5-mythbusting/>

Besides, Mozilla is not trying to tie down anyone to it's platform, because the platform is basically the Web, which is open to everyone. There are many things which distinguish it from other platforms like you can host your "apps", which are nothing more than simple websites, on your own site and not necessarily Mozilla's MarketPlace. Mozilla is working hard to reduce the memory footprint and make the apps responsive[1] and by the time it comes out, I think it's going to have a really good performance.

[1] - <https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=797189>

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> i haven't been this excited about something in a long time. what i wouldn't give to hack my own phone without learning proprietary platforms.

<comment><USER9> Then get yourself a Nexus Android phone today. The OS is completely open source, with a whole community built around hacking phones, XDA. You can get much better performance out of Java than you could ever dream to with JavaScript. Many of FF OS's hardware APIs are Mozilla specific, no different than Android's.

<comment><USER10> It's open source in the sense that the source is available. It's not open- source in the sense of being a community project. As for Javascript vs Java, Javascript has come a long way. Recent JS engines are pretty fast. Not to say that it can't be tricky to maintain a large base of JS code, but that's a different debate.

I for one am looking forward to it, though the lack of apps compared to the other two dominant ecosystems will be a problem.

<comment><USER6> "not open-source in the sense of being a community project." Android is no less a community project than FF OS. And it does have a great community of outside developers around it, XDA. Check out the forums.

If you want to contribute back, Google has been good about accepting patches into its AOSP project. For patches they won't accept, there's always CyanogenMod.

"JS engines are pretty fast" Good enough for simple text based apps and casual games, yes. Modern 3D games, not by a long shot. Native code, NDK, or Java under HotSpot are the only decent options creating for modern responsive 3D games.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Sorry for the OT, but I always get a certificate error when visiting that domain. Am I the only one?

[http://www.sslshopper.com/ssl- checker.html#hostname=hacks.mo...](http://www.sslshopper.com/ssl- checker.html#hostname=hacks.mozilla.org)

Says the cert is ok, but my firefox complains:

      hacks.mozilla.org uses an invalid security certificate.
      The certificate is only valid for tbpl.mozilla.org
      (Error code: ssl_error_bad_cert_domain)

Maybe there is something wrong with my network.

<comment><USER12> Update your browser - happens to me in IE8, but not Chrome 22. Certification verification is done by the browser, and I believe they store acceptable CA signers somehow, which is probably out dated.

Edit: Don't quote me, been a while since studying site certificates.

<comment><USER11> I have the latest ff: 16.0.2.

I even tried

      $ openssl s_client -connect hacks.mozilla.org:443

from a linode vm:

      CONNECTED(00000003)
      ---
      Certificate chain
       0 s:/serialNumber=I1oZ-yurbFWiPu/xP8HIzW3f9mApQvMv/C=US/ST=California/L=Mountain View/O=Mozilla Corporation/OU=IT/CN=tbpl.mozilla.org
         i:/C=US/O=GeoTrust, Inc./CN=GeoTrust SSL CA
       1 s:/C=US/O=GeoTrust, Inc./CN=GeoTrust SSL CA
         i:/C=US/O=GeoTrust Inc./CN=GeoTrust Global CA
       2 s:/C=US/O=GeoTrust Inc./CN=GeoTrust Global CA
         i:/C=US/O=Equifax/OU=Equifax Secure Certificate Authority
      ---
      Server certificate
      [...]
      subject=/serialNumber=I1oZ-yurbFWiPu/xP8HIzW3f9mApQvMv/C=US/ST=California/L=Mountain View/O=Mozilla Corporation/OU=IT/CN=tbpl.mozilla.org
      issuer=/C=US/O=GeoTrust, Inc./CN=GeoTrust SSL CA

Any idea?

<comment><USER13> s_client doesn't support SNI, so this is expected behavior. The client (s_client) doesn't know how to tell the server what hostname it's requesting during the handshake... so the server returns the default one. After the handshake completes, normal HTTP semantics kick in and the client/server have no problems... but by then it's too late, and the client has already negotiated based on the wrong cert.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> There's no mention of gaming in those slides. Will they be supporting WebGL?

<comment><USER15> Yes. There are a couple of WebGL demos that come pre-installed on the current build.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Oh yay... another OS.

<comment><USER15> What's wrong with a variety of OSs?

<comment><USER17> Nothing wrong. It's just not hype-worthy because it doesn't contain the words Apple/Chrome/iOS. So most people will just ignore this.

<comment><USER18> They're not trying to sell a brand, though -- I believe the starting goal is to get this on low end commodity phones in South America. (Notice how everything in the original link is also available in Portuguese?) To that end they already have deals with carriers there.

Since Mozilla actually has the health of the web as their main mission, they have a role catering to markets that others will neglect.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Adobe: Eliminate the mandatory "creative cloud" subscription model - <AUTHOR> https://www.change.org/petitions/adobe-systems-incorporated-eliminate-the-mandatory-creative-cloud-subscription-model

<comment><USER2> I don't really understand the rationale of petitioning a corporation to change the price of their products. Why should Adobe gut their business to support yours?

If you don't like what Adobe is doing, vote with your wallet. If it turns out businesses really can't afford to pay Adobe what they are asking, they will see that in your bottom line and react accordingly. Thats how you make a stand, not by making a petition. If you need Adobe's products, then you should work that into your costs accordingly. Charge your clients more to make up the costs.

Adobe may be robbing small business, but at the same time the thailand floods destroyed factories and caused the prices of HDDs to go up. Does it really make sense for me to petition Seagate's decision to increase their prices?

At the end of the day its really your fault for putting all your eggs in one basket. I'm not saying its wrong to depend on corporation x, but you should be aware that they are the ones controlling the pricing.

<comment><USER3> While this answer is spot-on, I'm sorry to say that this doesn't work with major players who hold a monopolistic advantage because they make some of the best/most used products.

As a designer, I think this is a nightmare scenario for my fellow designers and artists. Most of the professional designers have been very early adopters of Adobe because the alternatives simply aren't comparable enough. Because, if there were, that's what we'd be using right now.

Can you suggest me a good alternative for Photoshop? GIMP?? It doesn't support several things that is possible on Photoshop, - (edited out because of my ignorance) for example.

This is a case of Monopoly and hence this petition and I think it's entirely valid. Imagine if Microsoft/Apple one fine day decide to charge you for detecting additional RAM that you install on your PC, using their OS. Something like that.

<comment><USER4> > GIMP?? It doesn't support several things that is possible on Photoshop, - > content aware fill, for example.

While I am sure the GIMP doesn't support many features that Adobe does, that is a really poor example: [http://blog.patdavid.net/2012/08/getting-around-in- gimp-heal...](http://blog.patdavid.net/2012/08/getting-around-in-gimp-heal- selection.html)

<comment><USER3> Okay, I admit that's a poor example...the last time I used it, that feature wasn't there :(

<comment><USER5> It's a plugin, it's not built into the GIMP. So, technically, you were right.

<comment><USER3> Thanks Samuel :) I didn't really know that it was a plugin..

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> A few commenters on here mentioned in another thread that they would buy it for a month and see. Bear in mind that there's a years contract hidden away in the terms and conditions, otherwise it's $75 and not the advertised $50 per month.

</comment><comment><USER7> Petitions are great for rallying people around a cause, but remember: the only message Adobe is going to hear is the one you send (or don't send) from your wallet.

</comment><comment><USER8> I wonder if there may be a streak of good news to this policy change. If Adobe make their CS software effectively unavailable to most individuals and small companies then there should be even more incentive and resources available for usability design and features of the (free and open) alternatives.

</comment><comment><USER9> If you can't afford £50 a month for a software license. I doubt your ability as a "freelancer" or business owner. That is a very small price to pay for software which is your bread and butter.</comment>


Cassini Finds Saturn Moon Has 'Sea Level' Like Earth - <AUTHOR> https://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/cassini-finds-saturn-moon-has-sea-level-like-earth <comment><USER2> I think the linked story from Cornell is more informative:

[https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2018/01/saturns-moon- titan-...](https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2018/01/saturns-moon-titan-sports- earth-features)

<comment><USER3> ... which I posted earlier:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16173631](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16173631)</comment></comment>


Getting vital signs from lowcost cameras - <AUTHOR> http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2010/pulse-camera-1004.html

<comment><USER2> it would be cool to see gazehawk incorporate this into their software</comment>