Are master's degrees on their way out? Alternatives grow as enrollment fades - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2015/04/13/are-masters-degrees-on-their-way-out-alternatives-grow-as-enrollment-fades/ <comment><USER3> I have an M.S. and work with a group of colleagues who mostly have M.S.s or PhDs.

I'd say in general, the value of an M.S./M.A. is far below that of a B.S./B.A. It's more valuable than had I gone and gotten an A.S./A.A. even though the A.S./A.A. would have been more work.

I can't say I regret getting it, because it checked some boxes for me that let me move up the corporate ladder without as much fuss. It's kind of like getting a "free" extra 2-3 years of work experience and tends to move you up a hair in seniority, but that's about it. I seem to get management tasks a little bit faster than my non-M.S./M.A. peers.

It seems to be that the next most valuable degree is a PhD, but with few exceptions, it's not nearly as valuable in industry as one might think. I'm not even sure if it's really worth it in terms of ROI, whereas I'm highly confident that a B.S./B.A. will generally earn you more than without. So in that case an M.S./M.A. is just a stepping stone towards that. And that makes the PhD even harder to justify.

The people I know who seem to do the best have both a PhD _and_ and MBA, which aligns them well with executive and senior executive placement in high-tech industry. It doesn't really even seem to matter what the PhD is in. An alternative that also seems popular among executive recruiters is J.D. & M.B.A.

<comment><USER4> A PhD is more of a life fulfillment thing, it's not about money. There are some jobs you can only get with a PhD, even if those jobs don't pay more than normal ones, the work can be more satisfying to those who aren't cut out for dev work.

A PhD MBA sounds...very weird.

<comment><USER3> You see a lot of people with PhDs and MBAs on the side outside of the typical HN startups space. You might be surprised at how many PhDs _also_ have an MBA, but just don't advertise it since their other credentials are more important.

For example, it's not uncommon for a researcher to come up with some great idea at a lab somewhere, quit, form a company (with him as CEO) and license the tech away from his former employers. In order to give the investors more of a warm fuzzy feeling about the competency of the guy running the company, they'll often have him do an executive MBA program while the company is still early stages.

In megacorp-land, PhDs for senior execs are reasonably common as well, and it's desired that they also have excellent business education -- so you'll see lots of MBAs in executive resumes that they picked up somewhere during their careers.

I haven't usually seen it as part of the education progression, it's treated more like a specialized certificate or accreditation program when people are moving out of researchy roles and into business ones.

<comment><USER4> The MBA title in tech already receive some scorn (deserved and not); a PhD with an MBA might be seen as overly pretentious! My guess is that many PhDs with MBAs probably don't advertise the MBA so much.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _> ..Lynda.com, which reaches more than 4 million people a year with its how- to tutorials online in everything from management skills to programming._

Now we know where Dilbert's pointy-haired boss learns his new buzzwords from!

In all seriousness, I can't help feeling that someone who, for example, learns how to program using a Lynda.com online course, is missing out on a lot of things (e.g. the underlying principles of computer science) that are taught as part of a full academic course of study (whether or not that course is taught in the traditional manner in lecture theatres, or online, using video lectures).

Given I'm not a programmer, I'm interested in hearing others' thoughts on the matter.

<comment><USER6> I used to work with a completely self-taught programmer.

He was very good in his area of focus but once he got outside of his narrow area, the consequences of his lack of education became extremely clear.

He didn't have any understanding of how the stack operated or how I, a college student at the time, could write code that executed significantly faster than his.

<comment><USER7> I have worked with and interviewed a ton of CS grads who couldn't tell you how the stack worked, what a linked list is, or compare the complexity of a hash lookup vs a b-tree lookup. I'd say something like 80% of the ones I've met fall in that category.

This has been pretty frustrating to me, because I am fully self taught and I know that stuff.

Additionally, your comment overlooks the fact that much of what is taught in college is really ancillary to what a programmer does most days. It's nice to know, but I'd say that most CS grads learn enough to pass tests then promptly forget it. Then, they get a job, and learn a bunch of stuff that wasn't taught in college that actually is useful.

Seems like a waste of time to me. Why teach people stuff that 90% of them forget? The only reason I learned this stuff is because I found it interesting, and I learned that while making money instead of going into debt taking on student loans.

<comment><USER6> For financial reasons, I did two years at a community college before I went to a University and my programming courses at the community college covered far more of the underlying mechanisms of program execution than any of my university courses.

Just to make sure we understood how they worked, we had to make our own linked list objects and then write functions to traverse them.

It turns out that by saving money at a community college, I actually got a better education than I otherwise would have.

<comment><USER3> I have a similar story. I remember when my group of 7 community college grads all transferred over to the local uni. We all signed up for the Junior-level weed-out course (you could pivot at that point and switch majors to I.S. without too much headache).

I think the class started with about 60 people, and ended with 11, 6 of which were my community college peers. All of my group worked up through school and graduated with top marks. It was funny, years after we had all met at CC to be standing on stage during our University graduation all receiving some kind of academic award.

In general I'd say that most of my CC professors were more dedicated and accessible to _teaching_ than my uni professors (with a couple exceptions). I remember several fond Saturday afternoons in the library where a couple of our professors would hold tutoring classes for students struggling with pointers and other hard to get concepts.

I have the sense that none of my CC classes were weed-out courses, the notion was that all of the students in attendance had already been weeded-out by life in some way and were being given the golden ticket of a second chance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm not sure if we have this feeling in Germany already, but I'm also sure that this is the trend and that it is correct that way. I visited one of the first online courses available and it was awesome. No more sitting for hours in boring presentations when you can just skim through the video, google the important information, do the homework and be done in half the time of a normal class. You can grab the knowledge of a whole semester in a week, if you work hard. And you can choose which time you do the learning. 5am, 1pm or 11pm? Sunday morning instead of Wednesday afternoon? All no problem with online courses.

</comment><comment><USER9> This article doesn't actually say anything convincing about master's-level enrollment fading. It cites one university's layoffs and that university's related press communications. Not a single number, no generalization or overall trends ...

I don't doubt it is happening but come on. Do some reporting. Link somewhere. Or change the title of your piece.

</comment><comment><USER10> In my experience, masters degrees serve as a waiting pattern to get into medical schoool and also get around immigration restrictions, especially the Master's cap. They serve these purposes rather well, the question whether anyone taking these degrees actually learns anything useful is not relevant at all.

<comment><USER11> I have two masters degrees (well, one and writing a thesis for the second one) and I found them both enlightening, valuable experiences. It is, of course, important to note that I didn't pay for either of them (except in the form of opportunity costs). If I'd had to go deeply into debt I might feel differently.

<comment><USER12> It's a shame you need a bachelor's degree to undertake a master's program. It might be fun to do a comp-sci program at Georgia Tech, and I believe I would find it enlightening and valuable. There is just no way I'd go through the trouble of getting a bachelor's degree first.

<comment><USER13> This. I'm in my 30s with a wife, kids, and a successful career. The Georgia Tech program looks great, but there's no way I'm going to go back and finish my bachelor's degree at this point in my life. Useless general education coursework and the absurd cost of online degree programs from reputable brick and mortar schools makes it a nonstarter.

If there were an affordable online B.A./B.S. program from a reputable institution, which was tailored to worldly-wise people for whom high school was half a lifetime ago, I might reconsider. But I haven't found it yet.

<comment><USER14> I don't know how far along you and the parent are in your bachelors, but there are BS completion programs that you might consider. I'm now 35 and I left my undergrad EE BS in my senior year to start a software company. Thankfully it worked out, but I have at times wished to be able to get a masters degree and have found the bachelors requirement troublesome.

Last year I enrolled at UT Arlington to get a BS in University Studies via the Finish@UT program ([http://www.finishatut.org/](http://www.finishatut.org/)). I am specifically planning on finishing a CS masters via the Georgia Tech program. To finish my bachelors I will need to finish 4 semesters of part-time coursework, essentially picking up where I left off in my undergrad EE at UT Austin, but of course not getting a EE degree, but still getting a BS degree.

Anyway, as a means to an end, I can stomach 4 semesters of undergrad online coursework to (a) finish my degree as an example for my daughters and fulfil a promise to my father; and, (b) enable for me the option to get a masters in CS for personal fulfilment reasons.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I look at master's degrees as advanced vocational skills certifications. A lot of people go into an MS/MA/MEng/MFA program right out of undergrad, primarily because they think they either may want a PhD or because they don't want to leave the safety of university just yet, but many more people matriculate into masters programs years after graduation when their work experience illustrates clearly that they would be well served professionally to dive deeper into a given area of study. For example, I started undergrad as a physics major but switched to history in my second semester, while continuing personal study of my hobby interest of computing/programming. I ended up getting a job as a webdev when I graduated (1999), and gradually moved into management. In 2007 when my company laid off 20% of its technical workforce and the economy was starting to tank, I made a decision to go back to school for a masters in an area actually relevant to my desired work (manufacturing systems engineering). I did and I learned a ton of useful stuff.

In these kinds of situations, it's hard to overestimate the value of a master's degree, because like others have said, besides the emerging MOOC opportunities, there aren't really any other places where someone can spend either 1-1.5yrs full time or 2-4 years part time earning an advanced credential that's globally recognized, in nearly any field.

</comment><comment><USER16> For practical work the online platforms are good, but for hard theoretical work like a master's at least _should_ be, they are not. At least not in my experience. I have one and I would get another one and even a phd if I could now, but at the time I thought all that theoretical bullshit wouldn't do me much good in real life. It did not directly but of course it did form my brain to actually being able to solve problems and learn things I never saw before while a lot of people who 'studied online' find have problems getting into things they never saw before.

I would not mind master's and phd's going back to the academic realm though; for people who _want_ to do research and not 'get a high paying job' as it once was.

</comment><comment><USER17> You don't get the same bang for buck out of a master's degree, but it's not clear that enrollment won't rise again when the economy slumps again. Getting a Master's Degree gets you classes, experience, connections, and it also gives you access to a lot of services, like Lynda.com. When you look at how many colleges offer free access to Lynda.com or how many colleges supply courses for Coursera, you realize that many of these services are trying to supplement college, rather than replace it entirely.

Continuing education has been necessary long before the rise of online video. I think these services will have a bigger effect on the publishing industry than the Master's Degree programs.

</comment><comment><USER18> As I ponder going into management, I tend to wonder if I should get an MBA or even a masters in CS. There are numerous leadership style classes at the major universities around here that I was thinking about taking as well in lieu of a full masters degree.

</comment><comment><USER19> I was the last student at my college to receive a master's degree in Computer Science; the program was eliminated. At the time, the movement was towards cross-discipline graduate programs, e.g. a Robotics and Intelligent Autonomous Systems degree that combined studies in AI, ML, Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, etc. At the time this seemed like a smart way to get a more practical focus while herding more students into fewer graduate programs.

I wonder today if even that approach is viable, or if, as this article suggests, the new-model education will continue to take market share from traditional university programs.

</comment><comment><USER20> Course-work based masters perhaps, but definitely not thesis-based.

My Master's degree was entirely paid for and I actually made money. I wrote a thesis that contained original research and published a paper with my supervisor on the research. This is awesome. It's a 'PhD-lite'. It showed me how to do research and whether or not I would want to continue on with a PhD.

</comment><comment><USER21> Are there any numbers on how many of the enrollments are from students of foreign countries because many people see M.S, as an easier way to have "Green Card" in US.

</comment><comment><USER22> When looked at from a pure cost/benefit standpoint (on a salary ruler), it doesn't make much sense. But perhaps there's still an intangible benefit.

</comment><comment><USER23> I still think a traditional, full time MS degree can be worth while, depending on how you go about it. You do need to be careful, though.

An MS can be a good way to build a portfolio, gain some skills that are hard to develop while working full time, and explore interesting ideas and options that might turn into a startup or software application. It isn't the only way, of course, but it can be a good way.

The ground rules:

1) don't go heavily into debt

If you are pursuing an academic MS, you can often get a TA position that will reduce or eliminate your tuition while paying a stipend. Alternatively, consider a highly regarded public university with relatively low tuition - <USER2> complicated reasons I won't get into here, public graduate programs in CS/Engineering tend to rank far more highly than the general undergraduate programs.

I want to emphasize the debt thing again here - if you go heavily into debt, none of this is worth it. I hear what I can only call horror stories about people going 100k into debt for an MS in things like religious studies. I'm not surprised some people are passionate about this field, and by all means, they should find a way to pursue it. But I'm amazed that the federal gov't created a special non-dischargable kind of debt that allows people to go 100K or more into debt for masters degrees with such limit career earning potential.

By contrast, 10-20k of debt with a MS from a reputable engineering school is no big deal. Really, the loss of income eclipses this, since people who can apply to MS STEM programs are usually already capable of earning a decent salary.

2) choose a program with flexible requirements.

If you get into a reputable MS program in a STEM field, odds are good you've already done mathematically rigorous and highly structured undergraduate degree. Your new program should allow you to choose courses that match your more specialized interests.

3) it's ok to take a relatively easy academic load and pursue side projects. Maybe even better.

This is where I fell down a bit. At Berkeley, I could have taken Intellectual Property through the SIMS/Law schools, product development through the MBA/Engineering schools. Instead, I dropped those courses to keep up with advanced nonlinear optimization and integer programming. Those are great courses for people who plan to be research professors in those fields, but they weren't good courses for me. I would have enjoyed myself more and gotten more out of my coursework if I'd realized what I was really there to do.

On the bright side, I did pursue a lot of side projects, mainly software applications inspired by things I was learning. If you're at a good university, there will be a lot of interesting speakers, seminars, students, projects, and other types of activities that are highly relevant to your field. Of course, it all depends on what you're there for, and if you are planning on advancing humanity's mathematical knowledge of integer optimization, this wouldn't be the right advice for you. But keep in mind, a university is actually fertile ground for interesting ideas that, oddly enough, don't really fit into something that will get you credit hours. Don't lock yourself down with coursework to the point where you can't tap into that, especially if you aren't PhD bound anyway. Plus, you _may_ be able to convert one of these activities into a MS project.

All in all, it's still up to you to decide whether it's worth the loss of a year or more of income. It can be difficult to pursue ideas like this if you're working full time, and what you do in an MS program may put you on a much more interesting and fulfilling path long term. It's hardly the only way. If so, it can be worth it.

Just really, don't go deeply into debt. All those wonderful, interesting paths that opened up to you may not be possible if debt forces you a demanding, full time job that takes up all your time and mental energy.</comment>


Ask HN: Which company is the 4th of the Big-4? - <AUTHOR> We've all heard of the "Big 4", in reference to the most praised companies in Tech. Apple, Google, Facebook, ?? Which one is the 4th one? Just curious. <comment><USER2> The makeup of the "big 4" depends on who you're talking to. The phrase is borrowed from accounting, where there really are just four megafirms (and a large number of "boutique" firms).

People probably mean Microsoft, Google, and two of Facebook, Apple, and Amazon. In terms of market share, you probably also want to account for large but less cool organizations like Oracle, HP, Verizon, etc.

</comment><comment><USER3> Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook

<comment><USER4> Interesting, I would equate the big four to Apple, Microsoft Google and Amazon (in no particular order)

I would not consider facebook to be in their realm, more in the realm of things like twitter. influential but not foundational in my opinion. thoughts?

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree the original list (microsoft, facebook, google, amazon) is outdated. Hard to ignore a company like Apple. I would put FB in it because every single CS student wants to work at FB.

Microsoft shouldn't be in the list anymore since it became an enterprise company like Oracle/Salesforce. Not hot anymore. Same for Amazon, I don't think they should be in the list, people don't really dream about this company anymore with all the bad press they got from their employees.

I would probably put SpaceX? Apple, Google, FB and Space X?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I haven't heard Big 4 in context of tech companies, only in context of accounting and consulting firms.

Some stock market analysts use acronym FANG for Facebook, Amazon, NetFlix, and Google, best performing tech stocks recently.</comment>


Google invites Kenyan anti-gay activist to Web Rangers conference - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/sep/30/google-invites-kenyan-anti-gay-ezekiel-mutua-web-rangers-conference <comment><USER2> This shows how impotent the new liberals are: when you cannot defeat people with arguments, you start twisting arms. This is terror, not liberty. And it is a defeat, not a victory. You cannot be promoting diversity while censoring people's views on the world, i.e. suppressing thoughts' and ideas' diversity! Next thing, you ban Christianity, the Bible, and Islam. You can't have claims about tolerance, about being morally and humanely superior, and yet be most intolerant, and not being able to handle the fact that not all people think the same way. Substantiate your claims and you will prove your "enemies" wrong!</comment>


Iceland passes the "Wikileaks law". What will it mean for journalists? - <AUTHOR> http://www.niemanlab.org/2010/06/what-will-icelands-new-media-laws-mean-for-journalists/ <comment><USER2> No law has been passed yet, this is a "proposal for a parliamentary resolution" (þingsályktunartillaga). Which basically means that parliament has expressed formal interest in getting legislation drafted to implement this.

How that legislation will look will depend on a lot of committee work down the road, and what parliament actually ends up passing is another open question.

Still, this proposal has the backing of several ministries, so there's a large change that something good will be passed. But whether it'll fulfill all the promises of the IMMI plan remains to be seen.

</comment><comment><USER3> Disappointing to see yet another publication not aware that most Icelanders have patronymics, not last names.

<comment><USER4> Ok, so I wiki'd what patronymics are (your "last" name is based on your father's name), but could you elaborate. Did the author use "Jónsdóttir" incorrectly?

<comment><USER3> Yes. Birgitta Jónsdóttir is properly referred to as Birgitta Jónsdóttir or just Birgitta, or by her first and middle name if disambiguation is required. Jónsdóttir alone is meaningless as far as name goes. Icelandic phone books are ordered by first name.

edit: although to be fair, in the context of an article written in English aimed at a general audience this is not an easy situation. Properly using just the first name might throw off people who don't know about the Icelandic conventions (that would be most of them) who might then consider this use as strangely personal. On the other hand, repeatedly using the full name might look weird too. Personally I'm not convinced these are worth the trade-off of being culturally incorrect, but I'm not the one making the calls.

<comment><USER5> Whatever. Good writers write for their audience. This article was written for an audience residing outside of Iceland.

<comment><USER6> I read a ton of articles that routinely use a persons first name, why suddenly should proper formality be artificially upheld in context of a culture that uses patronyms? They use first names as names, and in the context of an article they can use a first name without it getting confusing.

<comment><USER7> But in certain areas and with certain publications this clashes with house style. For example the tabloids/red-tops are happy to refer to Boris Johnson (London Mayor) as BoJo or simply Boris, the broadsheets would say Boris Johnson first and then use "Johnson" to refer to the person as using a first name is considered impolite and/or disrespectful in formal writing (which the broadsheets tend towards at least in non-editorial pieces).

More in depth or higher class pieces that are not expected to be widely consumed may well then go a step further and assume the reader has detailed knowledge of name systems (for example Chinese "Family Name, Given Name" ordering).

So to reiterate the expression of one of the parent posts they appear to be writing to their audience. Be offended or confused if you like.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> That, and them passing bills allowing same-sex unions makes me want to move there. Nice job Iceland!

<comment><USER9> Many countries have same-sex unions/partnerships and some even proper marriage but Iceland has the first openly gay head of state.

<comment><USER2> Many have some sort of same-sex unions, what Iceland did recently is eliminate all occurrences of "man and a woman" and replace them with "two persons" in their laws.

Most countries that have same sex unions have a different set of laws for them, usually for religious and political reasons. The Church of Iceland opposed the recent change, but it lost that battle.

Regarding Jóhanna, it's sad that the first openly gay head of state is also so openly incompetent :)

<comment><USER10> _Regarding Jóhanna, it's sad that the first openly gay head of state is also so openly incompetent :)_

Care to elaborate?

<comment><USER2> First of all, under normal circumstances she never would have been anywhere close to being prime minister. The only reason (seemingly) that she got the job was that after the collapse of the previous government the new leftist coalition needed someone to pass the buck to, and she was pretty much the only uncontroversial figure they had.

Her coalition government's only redeeming quality has been to suck less than their predecessors which facilitated the giant ponzi scheme which took down the economy. They're wasting a lot of effort on the equivalent of rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

One shining moment of incompetence was the press conference right after the president announced that the Icesave debt repayment bill would go to a public referendum.

She announced (well, mumbled actually) that the government was "disappointed" in the President's decision to bring the matter to a vote in a rushed international press conference hours after the announcement.

What they should have done is explain calmly that this was part of the democratic process in Iceland, and how the result might affect any future debt repayment.

Examples like these and countless others have shown that her and her government can't think two steps ahead, manage PR and foreign diplomacy horribly, and generally seem more interested in their pet leftist issues (which they can finally shove through, now that they're in power) rather than solving the problems facing the nation.

But what do I care, I moved abroad shortly after this all went down.

<comment><USER11> right, so previous icelandic governments brought down the country by dancing to the tunes of the banks, but it's the current government that is incompetent and only shoves through its pet leftist issues.

how unbiased. leaves me wondering if those previous governments had any pet rightist issues of their own. something to do with banks, do you think? bringing down the entire economic system, perhaps?

pet leftist issues don't sound so bad after all. i should look up which they are. i might even like them.

<comment><USER2> Perhaps you missed the part where I indicated that they were better than the previous government. They're just still a disappointment.

It's not like I'm some bitter right winger either, my views align more closely with theirs in theory. But in practice they're about the worst thing that could have happened after the crisis, sans the incumbents.

They've failed to enact any meaningful change to financial regulation or government oversight since they took power. They've failed to implement the government transparency that was widely demanded of them (e.g. doing secretive dealings with the IMF). The issue of changing the constitution is now dead in some committee.

As an example of something that's (still) being done right check out the election of the Best Party in Reykjavík. Their agenda (here in Icelandic: [http://www.bestiflokkurinn.is/ur-starfi- flokksins/samstarfsy...](http://www.bestiflokkurinn.is/ur-starfi- flokksins/samstarfsyfirlysing-besta-flokksins-og-samfylkingarinnar)) includes things that are actually relevant to improving short- and long term life for the population. They've set up an instance of a "shadow government" at <http://betrireykjavik.is> (running <http://github.com/rbjarnason/open-direct- democracy>), a fair amount of their policies are being drawn from there. So they're actually listening to their constituency.

<comment><USER11> missed that part indeed - i apologise.

google translate helped me make sense of the pages you link to. do i understand correctly that they run the Reykjavik council? sounds like a down- to-earth party representing the interests of the people more than those of the corporations. unusual, that.

also, i like how they use open direct democracy. i wish there were more reporting about this.

all in all, this sounds a little like reverse disaster capitalism: seize the crisis to install laws that benefit the people. disaster socialism? ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Maybe a bigger issue: What will it mean for file sharers? A private, anonymous server that can't be shut down by foreign powers sounds like a file sharer's dream come true.

<comment><USER13> Didn't they try that in Sealand?

<http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.07/haven.html>

Apparently it didn't work all that well.

<comment><USER14> I thought part of the problem there is that, while they _declared_ themselves independent, nobody would recognize their independence, thus they were still effectively under the laws of the area they were in.

If _Iceland_ , an already-recognized nation, decides to do this, trying to get things shut down without their consent could / would be seen as an attack, and it becomes a _far_ larger issue than simply enforcing laws within your jurisdiction.

<comment><USER13> Iceland may be a sovereign nation, but it has no armed forces. It's fair to say that its defense consists of its alliance with NATO, i.e., with the U.S., which implies that if the U.S. says "jump!", Iceland will ask "how high?". Considering that the U.S. government is owned by interest groups, I don't see how Iceland can become a data-haven.

<comment><USER15> I doubt the US will ever invade Iceland. It will have massive consequences for the US government, it might be controlled by interest groups, but they are not all powerful, the people still do have a say.

It will be much more difficult to convince a Kentucky farmer that the US should invade Iceland with it's white Christians, as supposed a strange- sounding nation with non-white non-Christians(sad, but true).

And though Iceland doesn't have a military, it does have friends who do. It is interesting entertaining the idea of a US invasion of Iceland. It would result in an immediate hostility towards the US from many nations, as it would be to attack a friend(if they attack Iceland, they can attack us), especially from the Nordic region(whose commercial powers are not to sneeze at).

Anyways, data safe-heaven, great idea.

<comment><USER13> (sigh)

Dude, seriously... who's talking about invading Iceland? Are you out of your mind? I never even suggested that!!!

Did the MPAA / RIAA mafia need the U.S. military to invade Sweden to shut down The Pirate Bay's servers a few years ago? That's right, they didn't. They merely contacted their obedient, corrupted "friends" in Washington D.C., and had the U.S. government pressure the Swedish government, and the Swedish government had the Swedish police raiding The Pirate Bay... even though Stockholm is way out of U.S. jurisdiction.

Sweden has professional armed forces, defense and high-tech industries, natural resources, land. Sweden needs the U.S. less than Iceland does. This means that the U.S. can pressure Iceland whenever it wants, and Iceland will obey because the small and the weak don't make the rules. International relations are, essentially, bullying. It sucks, but being in denial won't help.

<comment><USER16> _> Dude, seriously... who's talking about invading Iceland? Are you out of your mind? I never even suggested that!!!_

You really don't see how your words could have been interpreted that way?

<comment><USER13> No, I really, really don't see how my words could have been misinterpreted like that. I made it clear that, as Iceland depends too much on the U.S., it has no leverage and, thus, will be an obedient lackey whenever the boss tells it what to do.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to hire digital nomads nearby? - <AUTHOR> Here's a real problem that no one seems to have solved yet: In my company, we would need temporary help with a certain technology for a few months.
Freelancers in my city are fully booked. Yet I don't want to hire somebody remote because the job requires people to work closely together in the same room on a regular basis.
I know there's a ton of "digital nomads" out there, travelling through cheap countries like Thailand, working from nice beaches.
But my city (Munich, Germany) is also very lovely, especially in summer. I cannot find any "marketplace" where digital nomads hang out, waiting to be attracted by an amazing company like ours. The typical freelancer marketplaces like upwork don't seem to cover my search requirements.
Questions:
- Am I simply missing a marketplace?
- Or is this an opportunity to take? <comment><USER2> Digital nomads, not remote... Doesn't compute.

Why would any real digital nomad that could spend every month at a different place around the world want to get stuck in Munich in subpar and overpriced housing with only 2-3 months a year of bearable weather and deal with German tax bureaucracy (need to have at least 2 clients in parallel or be forced to register themselves as a single person business with all the increased taxes and no corporate veil), not to mention that it would take years to find just one real German friend for normal social interactions?

<comment><USER3> > not to mention that it would take years to find just one real German friend > for normal social interactions

That's factually false and incompatible with your previous statement.

> could spend every month at a different place around the world

<comment><USER2> I don't see any link. You e.g. go to Barcelona or Rio de Janeiro and you get a bunch of friends the moment you walk out of the door of your apartment (figuratively ofc), whereas in Germany it takes years to develop any closer relationship that could be qualified as something more than superficial friendship (i.e. nobody cares, unless you are useful in some way right away), and even those often get abruptly terminated in 15 minutes for whatever silly reason. In other words, for the month or year you spend in Munich, you won't make any friends unless super lucky, it'll be just about work unless you want to surf on a river or watch Bayern in action, etc. and "socialize" that way.

Germany is also the only place I am aware of where two colleagues sharing the same desk at the same company for 20 years still address each other formally in Höflichkeitsform all the time (this is absolutely funny to people from Netherlands).

<comment><USER3> > go to Barcelona or Rio de Janeiro and you get a bunch of friends the moment > you walk out of the door of your apartment

I lived in California for a while, everyone is seemingly your friend, but really no one is it's just the bro culture (for a lack of a better term).

Smiling and sharing a beer isn't being "friends". Now yeah, if your definition of friendship is socialising with random people in the street avoid Munich.

> Germany is also the only place I am aware of where two colleagues sharing > the same desk at the same company for 20 years still address each other > formally in Höflichkeitsform all the time

Dude, really ... did you work for the Deutsche bahn in 1982 or something similar ?

If anything my social life is better both in and out of work in Berlin than it was in mountain view / LA. I'm not saying it's bad in other places but Germany isn't as you describe it.

<comment><USER2> > I lived in California for a while, everyone is seemingly your friend

I agree it's not ideal in California (arguably similar to Germany wrt random quality, but without the perpetually angry faces though with fake smiles exposing whitened teeth). Still, it used to be a bit happier place and there is a large choice of (sub)cultures one might fit in better, and one can focus on real bleeding edge work whereas in Germany foreigners aren't really trusted with working on cool things/hit glass ceiling quickly.

> Dude, really ... did you work for the Deutsche bahn in 1982 or something > similar ?

I was told that by some Dutch guy who couldn't believe it, but that's what he experienced (I think he mentioned Siemens or a similar large co).

> If anything my social life is better both in and out of work in Berlin

Berlin is a huge outlier ("Arm aber sexy"), and probably the only cosmopolitan city in Germany that attracts young/creative people (Frankfurt is not for the young). Miami on the other hand is IMO way above Berlin/LA when it comes to social life (unless you are super rich, but then your tastes are completely different).

Also, regarding "friendships", they were either based on how useful you were, or how much dominated you could be, e.g. I remember playing tennis/squash/badminton with German players and the friendships lasted only while I allowed them to win; the moment I decided "* it" and played as good as I could, the "friendships" disappeared quickly. The thing is they do it even to each other unconsciously, so it's pointless to discuss this with them, as there is no awareness.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> _Yet I don 't want to hire somebody remote because the job requires people to work closely together in the same room on a regular basis._

Does it _really_?

<comment><USER5> For the sake of everyone involved, I suggest a company is remote either entirely or not at all. So if everyone else is in the office, I would consider being in the same room a requirement.

<comment><USER6> That doesn't reflect reality at all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> There's no opportunity IMO. Nobody wants to move to high COL place temporary for contract work. That is literal worst-case scenario unless you plan on paying for a year's worth of salary for those few months to justify the added expenses for the consultant.

Don't be cheap. Hire a consulting firm that specializes in your area if you need on-site help. Or, if you want to be cheap, learn how to support remote work.

</comment><comment><USER8> A lot of digital nomads don't actually have the right to work in the country in which they are located

<comment><USER6> Ssshhhh. You're killing the good vibes man. Don't let pesky things like laws get in the way of a good time.

Every time "digital nomad" comes up, there's an argument about "well that law is stupid, it deserves to be broken"... by foreigners breaking a law in some country they aren't a resident.

I wonder how many would be happy to also see the US/EU/AU etc also flooded by foreigners who turn up, and work illegally for ridiculously more than the locals do, without paying local taxes?

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Create a coworking space, offer space for meetups, promote to digital nomads, offer free/discounted use of coworking space to digital nomads.

I saw this strategy working in Japan. Several IT companies have coworking space that can be used for ¥100 to ¥1,000 per day.

You don't care about digital nomads in ROW, you care about digital nomads visiting your city, you need a way to find and connect with them.

<comment><USER10> Could you share a few examples of this kind of coworking space in Japan? Very interesting!

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Digital nomads are digital nomads because they want a certain amount of freedom. I don't think many of them would be interested in your proposition if it requires them coming into your office. Perhaps reconsider your stance on remote, you might be surprised by the results.

</comment><comment><USER12> It's a hell to be a freelancer software dev in Germany.

People can make much more money by doing that in London, which has proper/more flexible laws.

I think you could hire a consultant. There are some great consultancies in Germany that might be able to have the professional you need.

<comment><USER13> As tax resident, it's a hell, but someone living and having existing business in Greece or nearby Belgium could actually work in Munich legally for up to half a year and do some nice tricks like paying the rent via the company.

<comment><USER14> Not exactly... From what I've heard, as long as you're staying in Germany (i.e. it is your primary residence) and you work there, they believe you should pay taxes there. The 183 days rule is more for cases when you have two comparable residences at the time (and you travel back and forth between them).

Of course, people try their luck and contract using their non-German companies, but I've read on some forum that at least one guy was prosecuted (as in criminal charges, not to mention the taxes owed + fines) by Germans for that.

A thing some people I know do is to fly into Germany every week for 3 or 4 days, stay in a hotel/airbnb, and then come back to home country (BTW, talk about carbon footprint of the tax laws...). This way, you have no residence in Germany at all, and also you're there for less than 183 days per year, so they really have no claim to your taxes. Of course, this "bedouin" lifestyle is not for the weak, and the company needs to be open to it (the partially remote work aspect) as well.

<comment><USER15> "This way, you have no residence in Germany at all, and also you're there for less than 183 days per year, so they really have no claim to your taxes."

Be careful with this. I don't know about Germany in particular, but in many countries tax residency isn't as simple as whether you were present for >=183 days.

Take the UK as an example. The relevant legislation (Finance Act 2013) defines a 'Statutory Residence Test'. It's complicated enough that HMRC (UK equivalent of IRS) created a booklet to help you understand how it applies in your own situation.

That booklet is _105 pages_ long: [https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/rdr3-statutory- re...](https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/rdr3-statutory-residence- test-srt)

Even if you spend only 3 days/week in the UK, it's possible to become tax resident there, and is more likely if you do it for 2 years in a row.

<comment><USER14> Thanks. The possibility of being "caught" is quite low in this scenario I think, as HMRC has little chance of even finding out about your existence - you don't have an UK address or a bank account. You ARE frequently crossing the border, but I don't know if they have access to this information.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Perhaps the problem is your company can't manage remote workers effectively? It is very rare work must be done with everyone colocated unless physical hardware is involved.

</comment><comment><USER17> I would expect that most people who are "digital nomads" are doing so because they can do their work from anywhere, not because they're looking for a job. If the lifestyle of "work on a laptop while traveling the world" appeals to someone, they're probably not looking for a job that requires staying put and working in an office for a few months.

</comment><comment><USER18> It sounds like you're going to have to figure out how to do remote.

</comment><comment><USER19> Have you had a look at [https://nomadlist.com/](https://nomadlist.com/)? I recall seeing something like chat groups by location.

I'm sure a lot of the concerns other people raised re working rights and legal complexities are valid but it's not fair to assume that no nomad would be willing to take a break and hang around Munich for a few months.

</comment><comment><USER20> Have you considered incorporating in a digital nomad hot-spot country (Thailand comes to mind), renting an office in a co-working space there, and hiring multiple nomads into it at once?

It would be nice if remote companies provided co-working office space for their employees / contractors. And at that point, you may as well hire two in the same place.

<comment><USER6> Sounds like a good way to get arrested, fined and/or jailed, deported and barred from re-entering the country.

Edit: before someone complains "s/he said incorporated". Yeah, but are you _really_ going to fuck around getting 4 local Thai staff for every "nomad" you want to sponsor for a business visa and work permit, only for them to fuck off 3 months later?

It defeats the purpose. You may as well just hire local staff - you can pay them less than a foreigner and still be above local wages, no visas, no work permits (well except your own, which having local staff would _help_ )

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> "Butt-in-seat"-mentality is a big, artifical problem. Anywhere that practices it isn't worth dealing with.

</comment><comment><USER22> What about platforms like [https://remoteok.io](https://remoteok.io) or [https://nomadlist.com](https://nomadlist.com) ?

</comment><comment><USER23> What's stack you're looking for and what problems are you trying to solve? I'm not in Munich, but I wouldn't mind spending a few months there and I'm available.

</comment><comment><USER24> Not a marketplace, but LinkedIn should give you insights of freelancers in Munich easily.

google (and and the tech key words you like)

site:de.linkedin.com/in "munich area" freelance

</comment><comment><USER25> What kind of job are you doing "requires people to work closely together in the same room on a regular basis" ? Geniunely curious

</comment><comment><USER26> [temporary help with a certain technology]

Does this technology have a name? And can you explain why it's not reachable over a network?</comment>


New Take on Signing NDAs: Charge 'Em - <AUTHOR> http://www.texasstartupblog.com/2008/07/03/my-nda-policy-i-have-decided-to-starting-signing-them/

<comment><USER3> I've been doing that for some time. I charge extra for:

1) Signing NDAs - Projects under NDA get a premium charge of about 33%-50%

2) Releasing rights to the source code to the client - Premium of about 100% (I see this the other way around, though... If the client will let me have rights to the source I write, I give them a 50% discount)

3) Work I hate - I charge about $200/hour if someone asks me to fix their client PCs (virus, DLL hell, etc...). I hate doing this so much I don't even do it for my own computers (I just reinstall everything from scratch when Windows starts to act up). My point by charging so much is that I really, really don't want to do this crap, but I'll cry my way to the bank if a client really wants me to do this.

4) I also charge extra for doing stuff in really old languages (I started in the Clipper/dBase/QuickBASIC days). These clients just want to keep their system running and want minor changes (or database corruptions repaired). I have to keep DOS virtual machines for these people and have to keep around books for those old languages. I charge extra for these little, mostly single- digit hour jobs. The clients are happy because they keep their system running without risking the disruption of a rewrite (These are critical financial systems), and the extra income makes remembering old school tech worth it for me.

<comment><USER4> I must admit I often despise signing NDA's too; not because I want to steal someone's information, but because generally I've found people offer them up as a way of generating feelings of self importance (however unwarranted it may be)... and that kind of behaviour irks me.

That being said, I've often seen people who just cant shut up, NDA or not - <USER2> does it really matter?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I recently thought about the same thing, but my feeling is that I would like to charge more about 10000€ for signing an NDA. But even that might not be sufficient.

The main problem is that as a "hacker" (wannabe maybe), I always think about ways to improve things with technology. So basically any aspect of human life I come across I have the one or other idea about. That means the likelihood is about 90% or more that any NDA I sign would touch an idea I already had.

</comment><comment><USER6> :) Interesting how many comments I get (both public and private) on this topic.</comment>


What the JavaScript Job Market Really Looks Like in 2016 - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/javascript-scene/forget-the-click-bait-here-s-what-the-javascript-job-market-really-looks-like-in-2016-ddfe0d39b467 <comment><USER2> Really great article. In particular the comparison of top job per state in 2000 vs 2014 was pretty mind-blowing.

It also echoes what I have been hearing a lot -- despite tons of new developers and people interested in a career in coding, its becoming increasingly difficult to find solid, competent developers.

Lots of opportunity for innovation in the education space imo.</comment>


Grubhub made websites for many restaurants, sometimes without owners' knowledge - <AUTHOR> https://www.businessinsider.com/grubhub-registered-23000-domains-sometimes-without-owners-knowledge-2019-6 <comment><USER2> The source article from The Verge was discussed here at time of publication in June:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20321260](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20321260)

</comment><comment><USER3> If a restaurant already has a contract with GrubHub and somewhere buried in the contract it gives GrubHub permission to do this... then it's still shady, but owners should also be reading their contracts closely -- and for owners who don't have a website at all, it could even be beneficial.

BUT... if GrubHub has done this (which they reportedly have, although they seem to be denying it) for businesses they _haven 't_ signed a contract with... then is that not _highly_ illegal? There have to be laws against false representation in business, no? Whether cut-and-dried trademark infringement, or otherwise?

If that's the case, I hope they get a _serious_ class-action suit against them with massive punitive damages. It's deeply unethical and anticompetitive, and basically smells of extortion.

</comment><comment><USER4> We discussed this back in June, it's a despicable practice. Even using images, and logo from existing restaurant websites!

<comment><USER5> This report has a screenshot of one of the domains:

[https://newfoodeconomy.org/grubhub-domain-purchases- thousand...](https://newfoodeconomy.org/grubhub-domain-purchases-thousands- shadow-sites/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Some lawyer, somewhere, is likely drawing up a class action suit. Relatively easy to identify and sign up clients.

<comment><USER7> Except, you know, if Grubhub's contract with the restaurant allowed them to do this.

<comment><USER6> [https://get.grubhub.com/legal/grubhub-restaurant- terms.html](https://get.grubhub.com/legal/grubhub-restaurant-terms.html)

There appears to be some clauses that offer GH some protection. However, the language doesn't really hint at what they ended up doing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> If they are registering the name for the purpose of competition (or coercive cooperation) isn't it a slam-dunk infringement lawsuit?

</comment><comment><USER9> I have the impression that a class action "cost of doing business, and only if you get caught" handslap only emboldens others.

Would the following work to curtail practices like this?... Courts hit one so hard with punitive damages, and perhaps criminal investigation, that the company is wiped out. Then VCs decide it's bad business, and discourage practices like that (including by not funding someone who tries it once and expects to just serial entrepreneur if it fails), and then other companies take notice.

</comment><comment><USER10> "sometimes" from what I've heard elsewhere it should read "nearly all of the time, to benefit financially".

</comment><comment><USER11> My father owned a small business that this happened to. Not Grubhub but a "yellow pages" type site set it up. The contact information was correct, so we didn't think much of it. The site went down after a short period, most likely whomever was funding it ran out of money. In his case it was a speculative sales tactic.

</comment><comment><USER12> Massive Ip Rights infringement

</comment><comment><USER13> If in 2019 you haven't bothered to buy the domain name for your restaurant you can't call this "cybersquatting", honestly.

<comment><USER14> They're setting up domain names similar to ones the restaurants already own (ie the restaurant owns .com, they buy .net and drive traffic to it)</comment></comment>


Introduction to BigObject and In-Place Programming Framework - <AUTHOR> http://www.slideshare.net/BigObject/introduction-to-bigobject-and-inplace-programming-framework

<comment><AUTHOR> slides update on Aug 4. Also released command line tool and db loader on [http://github.com/macrodatalab](http://github.com/macrodatalab)</comment>


Johnson and Johnson, ViaCyte Testing Possible Diabetes Cure - <AUTHOR> http://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory/johnson-johnson-viacyte-testing-diabetes-cure-36704965 <comment><USER2> The meat of the announcement, from Fortune[1]:

 _The therapy, which is being tested in a small number of patients with Type 1 diabetes, implants a small capsule under the skin that is teeming with insulin-producing cells made from embryonic stem cells. The capsule acts like an artificial pancreas, creating insulin in diabetic bodies that can't make their own._

[1][http://fortune.com/2016/02/04/diabetes-cure-johnson- viacyte/](http://fortune.com/2016/02/04/diabetes-cure-johnson-viacyte/)

<comment><USER3> So this is actually about Type 1? I usually ignore headlines that don't specify, since they're almost always about Type 2.

<comment><USER4> It's a shame they don't have different names, so many people get confused between the two.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> These headlines are starting to annoy me. Yes, it says "possible cure", but I'd bet if you asked the companies involved if they were comfortable with the headline, they would say "no".

<comment><USER3> I was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes in 2001, and I was assured there would be a "cure" of some sort by the time I was 30. I'm 28 now, and as far as I can tell, there's been no significant progress towards a cure. I've long since stopped paying attention to the news; my endocrinologist will let me know if something happens.

<comment><USER6> I think your endocrinologist will certainly let you know about a viable cure (or perhaps greatly improved treatment) and so I do not mean to take issue with that strategy, but they are doing human testing on this thing. That's progress!

<comment><USER7> I want a cure, like many, but I don't consider this progress - there is no breakthru, just another alternate of another previous study. Most FDA drug studies never make it from the investigational phase to studies/trials to market, like this announcement [1][2].

There have been ongoing human trials for this or that at least my entire life. And every single one of them have failed due to the researches thinking they can "trick" the immune system into accepting a foreign body/substance.

Last time around (2-5 years ago) it was "inhale" or eyedrop insulin.

[1] [http://www.nature.com/nbt/journal/v32/n1/full/nbt.2786.html](http://www.nature.com/nbt/journal/v32/n1/full/nbt.2786.html) [2] [http://www.reuters.com/article/us-pharmaceuticals-success- id...](http://www.reuters.com/article/us-pharmaceuticals-success- idUSTRE71D2U920110214)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Well the only issues I have is that it requires the device to be implanted and the details are scarce on what that involves. How big is this device really? Capsule is used then business card and lets be honest, there ain't much in common with the two. Can new cells be added without surgery?

<comment><USER8> Picture here: [http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/2014/oct/07/stem- ce...](http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/2014/oct/07/stem-cell-meeting- mesa-2014/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> TIL: go.com still exists.

<comment><USER10> Disney has owned go.com since at least 1998. Why would you ever expect Disney to give up such a powerful domain name?

[https://whois.icann.org/en/lookup?name=go.com](https://whois.icann.org/en/lookup?name=go.com)</comment></comment>


Tool to convert image into 3D - <AUTHOR> http://make3d.stanford.edu/

<comment><USER2> Having tried to do the same thing (I didn't realize it had been done already until this morning), I AM quite impressed with the results. They do have varying degrees of success, but, in all, quite amazing.

Further, their scheme to work out the bugs is nice too. They are taking ratings, then if I were them, I'd look at the lowest rated, but still rated models for pictures on which their software does not work too well.

</comment><comment><USER3> Honestly I wasn't really impressed with this. Though I am glad that the code is open. Perhaps there'll be some interesting tidbits there.</comment>


Southern New Hampshire University offers the $10,000 degree - <AUTHOR> http://finance.yahoo.com/news/this-new--10-000-degree-has-everyone-talking-194103390.html

<comment><USER2> As a Canadian, this seems ridiculous to me. I paid $8,500/year in tuition for my undergraduate degree (Mathematics and Computer Engineering, Queen's University) and $7,000/year in tuition for my MASc (Computer Engineering, University of Toronto), although my stipend and graduate scholarships more than covered that (~$20,000/year). I wonder how many American students go North? Even with international student fees, Canadian schools are cheaper, and offer one of the highest-quality educations in the world.

<comment><USER3> International student fees are higher than you think at Canadian universities. Instead of $5-7K/yr, they are often $18-20K/year.

You can go to Berkeley or University of Michigan for less than that ($10-13K/yr).

<comment><USER2> Isn't that only in-state tuition? If you don't already live in the same state as the school that you'd like to go to, then you're going to have to pay much more.

Edit: some students are starting to do it: [http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/06/25/america...](http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/06/25/americans- heading-to-canadian-colleges/2456283/)

Also work permits are readily available for international students after 6 months of study: [http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/study/work- offcampus.asp](http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/study/work-offcampus.asp)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I was equally as excited about University of Wisconsin's offering. They're taking a step in the right direction, but I believe competency-based degrees fall short, in the mind of the general public, when compared to more traditional degrees.

In addition, I feel this program applies to such a narrow target in the post- secondary education market. Diversity of options is great. However, I'll be more interested when a university solves the problem from first principles and offers a 4-year degree in the $10K-$20K range, including the costs of books and board.

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm currently pursuing my math degree here (1.5 years) and have enjoyed it and learned a ton. Currently enrolled in Abstract Algebra which is already a tough course but then also add t ok it that the online classes are more intense 8 week "semesters" and it equals pain. But it's rewarding pain. This seems like a logical fit for them and I think it could be a great experience for those who are interested.</comment>


Deployd - <AUTHOR> http://www.deployd.com

<comment><USER2> I gather this is like a simplified Meteor, nice scaffolding for simple uses. But I can't for the life of me figure out who this is intended for, why reinvent the wheel like this?

Good effort, anyhow.

<comment><USER3> You can customize the entire back-end from within a dashboard embedded in the web application. I think this is what separates it from a framework like Meteor. Given this simplified UI, it seems to be targeting front-end developers or designers.

<comment><USER4> (I work at Deployd) Yes, that's pretty much right - an experienced back-end developer with a lot of time on their hands won't have much need for Deployd, but a front-end developer - or at least a developer who prefers to spend their time in the front-end - would definitely benefit from using it.

It's actually very different from Meteor. Meteor is a realtime library for unifying front-end and back-end logic, and Deployd is an API engine for scripting back-end logic.

In fact, with some hacking, you could probably get the two to work together; it's something that I want to try sometime down the road.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Interesting name choice. I was expecting, uh, a deployment daemon. I understand that you want to use the word "deploy", but I was thinking more of a continuous deployment kit?</comment>


Resigning as a Debian systemd maintainer - <AUTHOR> http://err.no/personal/blog/tech/Debian/2014-11-16-23-55_resigning_from_pkg-systemd? <comment><USER2> This part resonates well for me:

"Now, how did I, standing stout and tall, get forced out of my tribe? I've been a DD for almost 14 years, I should be able to weather any storm, shouldn't I? It turns out that no, the mountain does get worn down by the rain. It's not a single hurtful comment here and there. There's a constant drum about this all being some sort of conspiracy and there are sometimes flares where people wish people involved in systemd would be run over by a bus or just accusations of incompetence.

Our code of conduct says, "assume good faith". If you ever find yourself not doing that, step back, breathe. See if there's a reasonable explanation for why somebody is saying something or behaving in a way that doesn't make sense to you."

It's easy to say to ignore the comments and the haters, but if you keep shit thrown at you by people who automatically assume the worst possible for everything, even an elephant skin gets pierced at some point.

<comment><USER3> This is part of a larger cultural problem in the programming / sysops community. Too many people assume the worst, and way way too quickly. The Redis author's "This is why I can't have conversations using Twitter" ([http://antirez.com/news/82](http://antirez.com/news/82)) article describes this pretty clearly.

Even if you can write an awesome system, or an awesome article, with one tiny flaw, immediately an army of people will jump on that single tiny flaw and declare you stupid and incompetent, or worse, that you should be shot.

This kind of attitude does not bode well for the open source community, where cooperation and collaboration is important.

<comment><USER4> At this point in time i fear the *gate trolls have latched onto this issue and if using it for their "lulz".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Previously on Hacker News: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8615962](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8615962)

</comment><comment><USER6> They have seen a couple of departures lately. Joey Hess[1] blamed the way decisions are made within the project[2].

[1] [https://joeyh.name/blog/entry/on_leaving/](https://joeyh.name/blog/entry/on_leaving/)

[2] [https://lists.debian.org/debian- devel/2014/11/msg00174.html](https://lists.debian.org/debian- devel/2014/11/msg00174.html)

<comment><USER2> Can you elaborate why he considers the Debian constitution a toxic document?

<comment><USER7> I believe it's about referring technical decisions in subgroups to project- wide political votes (general resolutions = GR).

I can see why trying to keep everything as a pure technical meritocracy is appealing, but I don't think it's realistic. Libre software is inherently political.

<comment><USER8> And yet, its only happened basically once in 20 years, due to a project wide coup lead by the desktop environment people basically taking over the distro.

I don't want to leave the mistaken impression that every time someone does a git commit to debian-policy or lintian that a GR is auto-proposed. Virtually all historical changes to Policy or TC "cabal" decisions have been extremely calm and compared to the recent coup. Debian minus systemd is pretty calm and well behaved. If anything, cracks are forming because its such an earthquake compared to all previous debate and discussion.

<comment><USER2> _a project wide coup lead by the desktop environment people basically taking over the distro_

Maybe you should read the OP, for example the "assume good faith" parts. Really.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> As a strategy for keeping systemd out of Debian, harassing the maintainers of systemd until they quit the project is extreme, immoral, and effective.

(This is not an endorsement of the tactic!)

<comment><USER9> I'm not sure it's all that effective. Yes, they've managed to harass this guy into leaving the systemd team for Debian. But I don't think that's enough to keep systemd out of Debian. And the way things are going, nothing will.

Debian is an operating system, but the amount of code that comes from people actually part of the Debian project is very, very small in comparison to the amount of code that comes from upstream projects. Some of those projects have people on them who are involved in Debian, many do not. In a growing number of cases, those upstreams are starting to rely on functionality that systemd provides, partly because it's becoming common to have systemd available on Linux systems, partly because it's providing functionality that nobody else is (like logind replacing the aged and unmaintained ConsoleKit[1]).

So if upstream packages are going to rely upon systemd, what is Debian to do? They have a limited set of options. They are:

1) Ship the packages the way the upstream built them -- dependent on logind, for instance. Ship any systemd compatability shims that exist for people who want to make a go of it without systemd. 2) Stop shipping packages that require systemd, or rewrite parts of thost packages until they don't anymore.

The problem is that a lot of volunteers who maintain packages for Debian are convinced that number one is the best -- it's the least effort for them, and provides the best user experience for anyone on systemd. People who want to keep systemd out of Debian are pushing for number two, and they're trying to do it politically -- in other words, force maintainers to behave how they want to. In a volunteer project, that's rather dicey.

But there's really no avoiding it -- if the TC had decided against systemd as the default init, GNOME would still depend on logind, and there's still be a fight over who had to do the work to get GNOME running without systemd.

(This is also why I'm really annoyed at people who keep screaming that Linux is about choice -- yes, but it's not about coerced choice. Your choice not to use systemd doesn't mean you get to force others to work on code to support your choice.)

[1] Yes, someone forked ConsoleKit into ConsoleKit2. That happened about a month ago, way past the point where all this debate started, and probably past the point where most packages are going to care.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Thanks for your work on Debian and systemd! Sorry to hear that you had to endure flame wars.

</comment><comment><USER11> Sorry for the offtopic, but that's a great domain :) first "vanity" domain that made me smile in a long time.

</comment><comment><USER12> And then you have ANOTHER high profile departure like Russ Allbery from the Debian Technical Committee:

[https://lists.debian.org/debian- ctte/2014/11/msg00071.html](https://lists.debian.org/debian- ctte/2014/11/msg00071.html)

All of this (as a non-Debian but Fedora user) tells me that Debian is going through a really rough time. For the future of Debian and free software in general, I do hope they figure out how to remove all of the stop energy and get back to making a world class distribution. Just like Redhat, there are so many projects maintained by actual Debian Developers and Debian has written an epic amount of man pages, just to name a few small contributions from Debian as a distribution. It would be a very sad day if Debian devolved into another Gentoo when Daniel Robbins left and it all went to crud, birthing (more or less) Arch Linux in it's place.

<comment><USER11> And Colin Watson as well? [https://lists.debian.org/debian- ctte/2014/11/msg00052.html](https://lists.debian.org/debian- ctte/2014/11/msg00052.html)

<comment><USER12> Very sad to see

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Crap, and Russ Allbery resigns from the technical committee too:

[https://lists.debian.org/debian- project/2014/11/msg00054.htm...](https://lists.debian.org/debian- project/2014/11/msg00054.html)

<comment><USER8> "I think the agile philosophy got a few things right: find ways to reduce the cost of change, empower individuals to make choices and act on them, and reduce the cost of failure and embrace iteration instead of trying to prevent failure in advance."

This reads as a stealth attack against systemd, as that's a pretty good summary of the opposite of the systemd development philosophy as currently implemented. Although he claims in his post that line is about the Debian decision making process, which is perhaps true although very meta. Everything systemd is about is implementing the exact opposite of the quoted line above.

My one line summary of the overall situation is the systemd project is a coup of the overall ecosystem by the "desktop environment" people ignoring the needs of all other users, and the "universal OS" true believers are not overly supportive of that coup.

I'm reacting to the replacement of "universal OS" with "we're only going to be a gnome desktop" by simply moving everything, desktops and servers, to freebsd, other people are flaming, others are making threats, and of course others are moving to openbsd, whatever.

<comment><USER14> FYI, you're quoting an email from Russ Allbery, who voted for systemd: [https://lists.debian.org/debian- ctte/2014/02/msg00283.html](https://lists.debian.org/debian- ctte/2014/02/msg00283.html)

To quote Russ vote: "D U O V F", so systemd first and the current System V init last ("F" was for further discussion).

In the same email from Russ you're quoting, there's this: "I would appreciate it if people would ask for clarification rather than making assumptions, as assumptions about other people's motives are one of the things that I find the most demoralizing about the Debian project right now."

Worth a though IMHO.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> > [https://lists.debian.org/debian- > devel/2014/11/msg00133.html](https://lists.debian.org/debian- > devel/2014/11/msg00133.html)

This is a good letter about managing any kind of community dealing with a disagreement. It's also good to get this out in front before any decisions are made.

</comment><comment><USER16> On the subject of bad attitudes in social groups with long-term continuity of any kind, be it weirdos at a hackerspace or misogyny in STEM or death threats over Twitter:

I've found that it's so hard to manage and avoid these sorts of issues because the roots of it are laid long before it ever becomes vocalized as a problem. It usually starts with one person who misbehaves in some way and everyone else ignores/allows it because they don't want to be the bad guy who starts the conflict. But it grows from there--the original bad actor grows more bold and/or attracting other bad actors, and previously good actors start to become resentful, start to demonstrate their own bad behavior, especially now that they recognize the environment as tolerating it.

By the time someone says anything about it, passive-aggression has become a large part of the group. Pruning such a large (though not necessarily majority) part of the group could leave the group without the day-to-day support it needs to remain viable.

Note that I'm not calling this out as a failure of any particular group involved in this particular case. The vast majority of organizations either don't have people who are dedicated enough to stick around, year after year, or fall into this habit because they feel (most likely correctly) they lack the authority to do anything about it. Most organizations are not setup from the start to expect bad behavior, and therefor don't have the mechanisms in place to take care of it.

I don't know how to clean up an already existing problem. I suspect that it either takes admitting personal defeat and moving on to something new. There might be something in going after the minor offenders, first, to undermine the support that the long-established people enjoy in these sorts of conflicts, but I doubt such a strategy is not so transparent to throw up red flags.

If you're starting a new organization, I plead to you: always be friendly, always be fair, but always be firm. The _first_ time something even remotely inappropriate happens, you _have_ to say something directly to the offender. I can't even count how many times I've had to chide people for using the N-word (let alone other words that should be as obvious by now). Do it in private, there is no need to embarrass them. Public embarrassment should be reserved for 2nd-time offenders, because if they think they can get away with it a second time, it means they think they are in an environment that will support that behavior, so there are probably others who think the same way and just haven't acted yet.

You'll probably piss someone off in the process, "how dare they censor me?" But you don't need to please everyone. You need only the good people who can play nicely with others.

"Oh, I'm doing it ironically" is not an excuse, even if (in the exceedingly remote case) it's true. Because context is important. You never know when someone new is coming along and doesn't understand the person is "just joking". And there are two ways the new person can react, neither which are good for your organization. In the best case, they will be put off and not return. In the worst case, they will think they've found a sympathetic environment in which they can peddle their own bad behavior.

In the process, you absolutely must not stoop to their level. You must always portray an outward appearance of calmness, even friendliness, regardless of how angry you might be. It has to be clear that the issue is the behavior and not a personal conflict.

And you have to be fair. You have to equally reprimand bad behavior, even when you agree with the actor's thesis. There is no other way to make it clear that you mean business.

You're not going to have a problem with the vast majority of people. You're going to encounter one or two really obvious nogoodniks and it's up to you to be the adult, stand up and inform them that the sort of behavior they've demonstrated is not welcome there. If you don't ignore the elephant in the room when he shows up, you can avoid the much more insidious problems further down the road.

<comment><USER17> "If you're starting a new organization, I plead to you: always be friendly, always be fair, but always be firm. The first time something even remotely inappropriate happens, you have to say something directly to the offender."

Agree, but I would suggest that even then the elephant in room is a culture lacking diversity.

Look around the culture and see how much diversity is there.

It is much easier to insulate against harrasing and derogatory remarks when those remarks and attitudes are directed at people you respect, admire, and value.

<comment><USER16> Yes, people say horrible things when they think they are in an environment that will tolerate saying those things. But I'm going to give the management of whatever hypothetical org of which we're speaking the benefit of the doubt and say they don't want to start that way. I _hope_ that, for new organizations who have yet to establish their own culture, that tendency is a projection of expectations for the industry as a whole. My advice is for people who are serious about being fair and equitable in their dealings with diverse groups of people. If we don't have that baseline, I can't help them.

But with that baseline often comes a person who is specifically trying to be nice to others and not hurt other peoples feelings. This is, unfortunately, not going to keep bad actors from getting in and ruining the soup. Thus the need to be firm and resolute. One must establish early, often, and unequivocally that the org is not going to be party to exclusionary behavior.

It's easy to say, "you have to increase diversity", but that's a goal, not a plan. Being a part of the "majority", we're not going to be able to increase diversity by ourselves. That's rather much the whole point of the idea of "diversity", that the homogenous group can't solve all of the problems for all of the people of the world. That rather much includes our own damn problems and the problems of our own damn industry.

For example, take these "<TargetedDemographic>CanCode Campz" things. I'd like to see numbers about them. To me, they've always seemed very forced. I've also heard first-hand complaints from said people in the target demo that the concept is perceived as patronizing. I applaud the organizers for putting in the effort, and their heart is definitely in the right place, but I wonder if they aren't doing more harm than good.

It almost sounds like a chicken-or-egg paradox, that I'm suggesting you can't foster diversity without already having diversity, but that itself is a symptom of the problem. There _are_ very dedicated people out there who are trying to work and trying to be accepted. I've seen first-hand how easy it is for one, single, isolated incident to drive away the very people who would help introduce our organization to a broader audience. We have to stop being blind to the people who are already here.

All that it takes is to not let the vocal, hopefully-minority-of-bad-actors drive good people away. All that it takes is the shocking, controversial policy of just treating "them" not like "them"s.</comment></comment></comment>


Python 2.6 Quick Reference  - <AUTHOR> http://rgruet.free.fr/PQR26/PQR2.6.html <comment><USER2> This looks like a great resource. Sometimes, doing a web search for behaviors or lists of builtins feels too laborious for something I have to look up so often.</comment>


I'm Not the Product, but I Play One on the Internet - <AUTHOR> http://powazek.com/posts/3229 <comment><AUTHOR> Opinions on this article ?</comment>


Must Read Blogs for Entrepreneurs - <AUTHOR> http://refer.ly/24_entrepreneur__investor__and_startup_blogs/c/6e9e0baa4c8f11e2b5ab22000a1db8fa

<comment><AUTHOR> Back when I was living in Seattle and hadn't even conceived of coming to Silicon Valley I started to follow industry blogs. These are the ones I love, from my pristinely manicured Google Reader account (still the best "social" Google ever did). It is amazing how prolific these writers are since it is not a full time job for most of them.</comment>


Hidden Crypto-Mining Comes to Mobile Apps - <AUTHOR> https://www.ixiacom.com/company/blog/everythings-better-blockchain <comment><AUTHOR> Here are some random thoughts on the matter.

1\. This is scary. Any app you've installed and forgot to remove may receive an update and start doing it and you simply won't be aware. The apps from the article were doing during the night when the device was charging, zero chance one could've noticed it.

2\. AV companies are happy. Finally, there is a (one more?) legitimate reason for using a mobile AV app.

3\. I think the idea of mining in exchange for goods has a great potential, but it seems that nobody even tries to use it in a legit manner. It might replace ads or paywalls, but it's more likely to end up being a "new adware" if nothing changes.</comment>


New programming language delivers fourfold speedups on Big Data problems - <AUTHOR> http://www.nextbigfuture.com/2016/09/new-programming-language-delivers.html <comment><USER2> _Milk simply adds a few commands to OpenMP_</comment>


Ask HN: Is there a good solution for using AWS ALB to connect a k8s cluster? - <AUTHOR> For special reazon, our project should use AWS ALB(not ELB) or NLB to catch an application in k8s cluster. We are using kops to manage the k8s cluster. It seems its load balancer stategy is using ELB for AWS cloud. I have researched some approach to realize it:
- ELB https://github.com/kubernetes/kops/tree/master/addons/ingress-nginx - ALB https://github.com/coreos/alb-ingress-controller - External-DNS https://github.com/kubernetes-incubator/external-dns
About the second ALB, it shows:
NOTE: This controller is in alpha state as we attempt to move to our first 1.0 release. The current image version is 1.0-alpha.3. Please file any issues you find and note the version used. So it seems that it isn't a good choice for production environment.
Then, what's the good way? <comment><USER2> Pay CoreOS to finish sooner?</comment>


Devnet 2.0 and the New Oasis SDK - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/oasislabs/devnet-2-0-and-our-new-oasis-sdk-c858c25716e7 <comment><USER2> This looks pretty interesting. Feel like a lot of blockchain projects are really focused on the tech but less focused on how people are actually supposed to engage with the tech. Looks like a cool way to at least begin to bridge that gap.</comment>


A 4096-byte jungle - <AUTHOR> http://www.samiam.org/blog/20130606.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Follow-up posts with more details about the LFSR used to store the all the details of the jungle in 31 bytes: [http://samiam.org/blog/20130608.html](http://samiam.org/blog/20130608.html)</comment>


Whenever I write code in Java... - <AUTHOR> http://funcall.blogspot.com/2010/04/whenever-i-write-code-in-java.html <comment><USER2> ... as all the languages that come from an age where verbosity was not a problem. Glad to see that new languages/frameworks try to address this.</comment>


Ask HN: Examples of great scientific presentations? - <AUTHOR> I recently collected some presentation styles [0]. However, I found no example of a great scientific talk, where someone presents a paper or thesis. Maybe the HN hive mind knows?
I'm not looking for tech talks. No Rich Hickey, Bryan Cantrill, etc.
I'm not looking for broad keynotes or superficial TED talks.
I'm looking for great presentation skills. The topic of the talk is not important.
PapersWeLove has many talks, but I only looked through a few. While the content is great, I have yet to find an exceptional presentation.
[0] http://beza1e1.tuxen.de/presentation_style.html <comment><USER2> Some of the NIH's Wednesday Afternoon Lectures are really good [0], as well as some of the talks given at HHMI [1].

The quality depends on the speaker though. Some venture into TED Talk territory, while others are more focused on a series of publications.

[0] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4KNG7nd938](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4KNG7nd938)

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CoIfNx1EnQQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CoIfNx1EnQQ)

</comment><comment><USER3> You might find work, books and presentations of Edward Tufte helpful. This would be primarily addressing visual aspects of presentations. [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Tufte](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Tufte)

</comment><comment><USER4> I have always enjoyed the presentations at the Cornell Physics Department:

[http://physics.cornell.edu/upcoming- colloquia](http://physics.cornell.edu/upcoming-colloquia)

I have not found another talk series at Cornell (say Chemistry, Computer Science, or anywhere in the Life Sciences) that is consistently as good or broadly interesting. (ex. all of those talks would make sense to a condensed matter, astro, accelerator, elementary or bio-physicist; note that accelerator is about how do you accelerate the particles, elementary could involve what happens when they collide; Cornell has strong departments in all of the above.)

Now they do not have video and slide links for them, but peop

</comment><comment><USER5> Does it have to be specifically on an identified paper or thesis? Does it have to be science in the strictest sense? If not, what qualifies? Maths? Physics with a philosophical side to it? Do talks about how to give scientific talks count (if they are good talks in themselves)? TED talks that are not superficial?

Answers to those would help define your conceptual category, but as it happens each of them corresponds to a particular talk I have in mind.</comment>


Making $6,000/Month Profit from Crowdfunding Business - <AUTHOR> https://www.failory.com/mistakes/hyperstarter <comment><USER2> Thanks for the feature. If anyone has any questions on Crowdfunding or how we learnt from our failures, feel free to drop a message here.</comment>


Why Our Memory Fails Us - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/02/opinion/why-our-memory-fails-us.html <comment><USER2> Christopher Chabris is a very perceptive researcher on human perception, and I'm glad to see this submission here. The lead example of faulty memory in the article is very interesting, as it points to the problem of belief-motivated recollection of "facts" that never happened. This is important for all of us, as the article notes.

"Our lack of appreciation for the fallibility of our own memories can lead to much bigger problems than a misattributed quote. Memory failures that resemble Dr. Tyson's mash-up of distinct experiences have led to false convictions, and even death sentences. Whose memories we believe and whose we disbelieve influence how we interpret controversial public events, as demonstrated most recently by the events in Ferguson, Mo."

As I have written about this issue before here on Hacker News, the problem with human memory is that each read operation is also a write operation. We never go back to our memory of any event without rearranging our understanding of the event, often to the detriment of recalling verifiable facts. When in doubt, look it up. And be in doubt often when relying on your own memory.

<comment><USER3> I also like that he picks on Tyson... not because I don't like Tyson, but because it's important to point out that these are universal human cognitive failings that can befall anyone regardless of their belief system. Nobody who has a human brain is immune to the issues with that organ.

Too often "Skeptic movement" people tend to pick on religious believers, new agers, etc. as if obviously only those kinds of people fall prey to cognitive biases, illusions, logical fallacies, and other failure modes of the mind.

<comment><USER4> > Too often "Skeptic movement" people tend to pick on religious believers, new > agers, etc. as if obviously only those kinds of people fall prey to > cognitive biases, illusions, logical fallacies, and other failure modes of > the mind.

That was particularly annoying on the bad science forums. Especially since the whole point of the book was that people are subject to biases and well run research is the way to combat those biases.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> False memories of the kind that Chabris and Simons discuss are ubiquitous in healthy people, and there are lots of interesting wrinkles in the literature describing these memory errors — here are two of my favorites.

First, even individuals with extraordinary memory abilities are susceptible to false memory phenomena [0]. People with what's been called "highly superior autobiographical memory" (HSAM) can, for any given date in the last decade or two, tell you what they did, what they ate, and what the weather was like with extraordinary accuracy. However, when tested with standard laboratory tasks that induce false memories, they are just as vulnerable as typical individuals.

Second, focal brain injury may reduce susceptibility to false memories [1]. Full disclosure, this is some of my own published work. We investigated the effects of damage to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) on false recall in a standard laboratory test involving lists of conceptually similar words (the DRM task [2]). Patients with vmPFC damage showed reduced (but not abolished) false memories relative to healthy comparison participants. This is especially interesting to us because vmPFC appears to be necessary for decision-making in complex situations, particularly when prior knowledge must be integrated into ongoing behavior. We believe that deficits in decision- making accompanying vmPFC damage may stem from the same root cause the reductions in false memory that we observed. Regardless, we're not recommending vmPFC resection for healthy people seeking more accurate memory (not yet, anyway).

Although these are highlights, empirical work on false memories and other kinds of memory errors extends back more than a century. It's a fascinating domain, and I very much enjoy working in it. More information on a variety of related topics can be found at my website [3] and in my published work (see Publications).

[0] [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24248358](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24248358)

[1] [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24872571](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24872571)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deese%E2%80%93Roediger%E2%80%9...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deese%E2%80%93Roediger%E2%80%93McDermott_paradigm)

[3] [http://david-e-warren.me](http://david-e-warren.me)

</comment><comment><USER6> The article brings up Dr. Tyson.

He actually commented on this article and linked to these Facebook posts:

[https://www.facebook.com/notes/neil-degrasse-tyson/email- exc...](https://www.facebook.com/notes/neil-degrasse-tyson/email-exchange- with-the-federalist/10152354422065869)

[https://www.facebook.com/notes/neil-degrasse- tyson/partial-a...](https://www.facebook.com/notes/neil-degrasse- tyson/partial-anatomy-of-my-public-talks/10152360009440869)

</comment><comment><USER7> Why Our Memory Fails Us: Because we don't have badges. Cops have magically perfect memory, even to the point that their memory trumps dashcam video.

[https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140405/17142626817/india...](https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140405/17142626817/indiana- supreme-court-declares-officers-testimony-is-more-reliable-than-video- evidence.shtml)

</comment><comment><USER8> Disappointingly, this article does not tell us why our memory fails us, only that it does.

</comment><comment><USER9> Just a little thought experiment:

What if those memories that differ between people are not because of bad memory, but because the actual events are different?

Sort of a quantum superposition, which collapses the wavefront in different ways for different people?

Maybe tie in multiple universes somehow, and events shift from one to the other.

Would certainly be interesting if true :)

<comment><USER10> > Would certainly be interesting if true :)

Yes, except it's psuedoscientific crazy talk.

<comment><USER11> If by pseudo-scientific you mean difficult/impossible to falsify then I'd agree with you. If you mean gobbledy gook then I would disagree.

There are some number of theorists that are working with multiple universe theories defined by 'choices' in the quantum world. Its hard to prove that such things exist (or don't exist) but one notion has that detangling a photon from its entangled counterpart has you "actualizing" in one of two possible universes. The GP thread posits macroscopic effects of that, which is both impossible to prove and an interesting conjecture.

<comment><USER12> The GP posits interactions between the several possible universes, in the sense that I am from universe A and am litterally talking to someone from universe B. While it is conceivable that this type of cross universe interaction is possible, it is not at all possible in our current understanding of physics, and if it where possible, it would have to be possible in a very subtle way or else we would have already noticed it (in the same sense that relativity breaks Newtons laws in a very subtle way).

Assuming that such interactions our possible, we have no reason to believe that the macroscopic effects would be to transfer intact memories between universes, or for the universes to be similar enough for us not to notice this effect explicitly, but different enough for events to occur differently for different people.

<comment><USER11> Fair enough.

I'm not an adherent to the many worlds interpretation, and I claim no specific expertise in this space. That said, I read your comment as implying that a MWI would be, by definition, acyclic? To be honest I was thinking that might not be the case on the theory that you could arrive at the same universe by many paths. Some part of me wants infinity constrained slightly :-)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>