The US Navy says no to touchscreens–maybe automakers should too - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/cars/2019/08/the-us-navy-says-no-to-touchscreens-maybe-automakers-should-too/ <comment><USER2> I disagree that the failure here was having touchscreen controls, but don't disagree that hydraulic or fly-by-wire controls would improve reliability for ships. But in this case it was really just poorly designed software and a bad UX. If you can take an action in a vital software application that is not clear then that software/UX design has failed. It also seems reasonable that it was also a lack of training like a number of articles have stated, but it should still be obvious in the UX where control is for all vital functions at all times.

So the idea that cars can't have a quality solution in touch screens is not valid IMO. Ships are manned by multiple teams of people that require coordination and communication. Propulsion and steering is just one example. But this is not analogous to a car in anyway today, not even to a bus, tractor trailer or even train. A single person controls these vehicles (even trains for the most part), so as long as the UX is not poor it won't become the same type of problem. Of course a horrible UX could still cause problems, but a car systems will not reach the complexity of ship level systems.

<comment><USER3> "A single person controls these vehicles"

Who's eyes should be on the road 100% percent of the time. Lack of tactile feedback is automatically poor UX so there is no such thing as a quality solution when it comes to touchscreens in cars. I can't believe it's even an argument to be had, it's such an obvious bad choice, no one should have even attempted it in the first place.

<comment><USER2> I don't necessarily disagree that tactile feedback is important in many applications, but in a ship borne system tactile feedback is almost all manufactured and not real if it exists at all. A team of 10 people couldn't turn a rudder on a large ship with mechanical means only, it requires power of some sort, typically electric or hydraulic with a fly-by-wire interface. And feedback is not as usable in a ship based platform as it is in say a small car or boat. Even in cars today, steering is already being adjusted as to feel and responsiveness by the computer in most newer vehicles, typically to help prevent drivers from oversteering. So again, it goes to the right UX for the right job, and I agree not a one size fits all.

To be clear, no where did I say that the UX should solely be touch screen all the time, just that in this case I do not think the failure was the touch screen type interface as much as the UX it provided. For example, most modern yachts and super yachts have more than one helm station. And to take control at one station over another you need to push a button (or possibly a couple) to take control. So if you run out to a starboard station and forget to mash the control button and start trying to turn you are shit outta luck, no different than the touchscreen the Navy was using overall (and there are lockouts etc on these). The advantage is in the yacht systems it is generally really obvious really fast you don't have control, whereas in a very large ship it takes significantly longer for the correction to take hold, exception being an all stop or powered stop where the ship will feel quite different. But a simple turn is not as obvious since it isn't like a car, especially in dark, dusk or fog. You have to watch your instruments to see if you are really turning and what the rudder position is etc, as well as what the power is at each screw etc, so the touchscreen interface in this case isn't out of line in my view and is more informative in many ways. And for automobiles, the UX may require a joystick or steering wheel for the foreseeable future, but that doesn't mean we should ditch touch screens for all the other functions which can be properly designed and laid out to reduce driver distractions. And who knows, maybe we find a new style of interface that works better for automobiles in the future.

To me saying there is no quality solution in a touchscreen for cars is a ridiculous statement. There are probably certain functions that may be better left to traditional controls for now based on our current methods, that seems reasonable, but absolutes don't make sense here.</comment></comment></comment>


How paywalled sites permit access to visitors from social media sites and apps - <AUTHOR> https://elaineou.com/2017/01/19/how-the-twitter-app-bypasses-paywalls/ <comment><USER2> This bookmarklet works too: javascript:location.href='[http://facebook.com/l.php?u='+location.href](http://facebook.com/l.php?u='+location.href)

<comment><USER3> In exchange for Facebook tracking, and potentially intercepting and modifying, every page you look at this way.

<comment><USER4> Which, for many people, will be preferable to the obvious alternative way to get through the pay wall...

<comment><USER5> Actually it is not, but most people lack the knowledge and understanding to care enough.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6>
        if (details.url.includes(url)) {

So, if I want to detect if you have this plugin installed, I load an image with ?plugin-test=wsj.com as any part in the url can have it to trigger.

Might want to improve this...

<comment><USER6> If you add this to the manifest "permissions" section and go to [http://pbb.nkcss.com/](http://pbb.nkcss.com/) you can see it's easily detected:

        "http://pbb.nkcss.com/*"

And if I can do it in a few minutes, I'm sure those who have a paywall can do so as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Some code review just in case anyone is interested. (I don't expect it to make it into the article as it was written six months ago.)

This pattern:

      if (details.url.includes(url)) {
        return true;
      }
      return false;

should be replaced by this:

      return details.url.includes(url);

This pattern:

      array.map(someFunction).reduce(function(a, b) { return a ||b}, false)

should be replaced by this:

      array.some(someFunction)

(Note the semantics are slightly different—`.some` will break early, so it's more efficient and equivalent provided there are no side-effects in the map function.)

Taking both of these, the following:

      var useTwitter = VIA_TWITTER.map(function(url) {
        if (details.url.includes(url)) {
          return true;
        }
        return false;
      })
      .reduce(function(a, b) { return a || b}, false);

can be rewritten much more simply as:

      var useTwitter = VIA_TWITTER.some(function(url) {
        return details.url.includes(url);
      }

You could even do it thus if you desired:

      var useTwitter = VIA_TWITTER.some(details.url.includes.bind(details.url));

… but that's probably harder to read. I will mention arrow functions, however, which are pretty:

      var useTwitter = VIA_TWITTER.some(url => details.url.includes(url));

This part:

      details.requestHeaders.filter(function(header) {

        // block cookies by default
        if (header.name !== "Cookie") {
          return header;
        }

      })

`.filter` only cares about truthiness in its return value—as this code does it, undefined is false and an object is true. But you could simplify it:

      details.requestHeaders.filter(function(header) {
        // block cookies by default
        return header.name !== "Cookie";
      })

Also in the original code's usage of map, it's not actually changing the values, only things inside them, so using `map` is wasteful (as it entails allocating a new array). You could just use `forEach`:

      var reqHeaders = …;
      reqHeaders.forEach(function(header) {
        if (header.name === "Referer") {
          header.value = setRefer(useTwitter);
          foundReferer = true;
        }
        if (header.name === "User-Agent") {
          header.value = setUserAgent(useTwitter);
          foundUA = true;
        }
      });

A remark on fine-tuning performance: when you access properties inside an object multiple times, it's optimal to store it as a local variable to save having to look it up multiple times. (This is especially the case if the property is expensive to access.) Take the `blockCookies` method:

      function blockCookies(details) {
        for (var i = 0; i < details.responseHeaders.length; ++i) {
          if (details.responseHeaders[i].name === "Set-Cookie") {
            details.responseHeaders.splice(i, 1);
          }
        }
        return {responseHeaders: details.responseHeaders};
      }

This is accessing `details.responseHeaders` many times when it only needs to access it once. It is also accessing its `length` member once per iteration, rather than caching the length. Normally for that I'd say "store the length once up front," but in this case the code is changing the array length in the loop, so that'd actually break things. On that note, the code as published is actually missing some cookies, because it removes an item from the array and then skips past the new element at that index. To fix that, you need to move the `++i` into the loop so it can be skipped if you do splice the array. Also in order to not need to access the length property many times you could iterate in reverse instead of forwards. I might write the whole function like this:

      function blockCookies(details) {
        var headers = details.responseHeaders;
        var i = headers.length - 1;
        while (i > -1) {
          if (headers[i].name === "Set-Cookie") {
            headers.splice(i, 1);
          } else {
            i--;
          }
        }
        return {responseHeaders: headers};
      }

<comment><USER8> You can actually just do this:

        for (var i = 0, l = details.responseHeaders.length; i < l; ++i) {

<comment><USER7> I would have done that, but because of the splicing you don't actually want ++i every time. That's why I rewrote it to a while loop.

Even then you could do it as a for loop with an empty increment clause, of course. Or even use a one-liner for loop with no body:

      function blockCookies(details) {
        for (var headers = details.responseHeaders, i = headers.length - 1; i > -1; headers[i].name === "Set-Cookie" ? headers.splice(i, 1) : i--);
        return {responseHeaders: headers};
      }

But that's crazy talk. Leave optimisations that to the minifier if it feels so disposed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I remember this trick many years ago was useful for bypassing download sites that otherwise obliged you to use their adware-filled "download manager" to get files or gave bonuses to such usrs (special user-agent). The words "User- Agent: MEGAUPLOAD 2.0" might bring back interesting memories for some here. ;-)

It's trivial to do this with a filtering proxy, which means it works in all browsers. On the other side, I've unknowingly embedded images from image hosting sites that didn't allow "hotlinking", only to be told by other users they couldn't see them, because of the referer headers (or lack thereof) my usual configuration sends.

IMHO things like this shouldn't be spread _too_ widely... much like the fight between adblockers and anti-adblockers, it can only eventually lead to a more hostile computing environment.

</comment><comment><USER10> Paywalled sites (particularly news/media sites) are playing at a messy game here. It's similar to the free vs paid music. In the radio-records day, free radio play drove record sales revenue. Ideally they would sell records to anyone willing to pay, but give music away to anyone willing to listen. In the actual world, you can't do this perfectly so you need another way for free & paid to co-exist. Once the medium changed to digital, all the rules get thrown out. Attempts to force digital to play by radio-&-record's rules have been a slog.

Many internet generations ago news sites were mad at Google for showing ads alongside their headlines on news.google. They even got some lawmakers to agree. Google offered to de-index them. Stalemate.

Similar issue here. News sites want paid subscriptions if they can get them, so paywall. They also want the readers who won't pay, so no paywall.

Overall, I think paywalling is a semi-dead end. I don't mean that it won't work for any site, but it'll probably be a niche revenue source like a print- only publication. Most news sites want to be part of the greatest, most relevant discussions. Those happen on the internet as a whole, not inside walled gardens. This mess free for some, paid for others mess is to much of a kludge to be _the_ model.

<comment><USER11> It's fine talking about messes, but _someone_ has to pay for the content, and display ads don't cut it. Paywalls will be the dominant form of monetization for most mainstream news orgs in the next 5 years. The second most important one will be the Guardian's supporter model, which is a paywall lite. It's still not clear this model will work at the Guardian is still bleeding money.

I think eventually you'll see a re-arranging of press wire cooperatives such as AP and CP to limit dissemination of wire content for free without strings attached, forcing the hand of many.

<comment><USER5> The content is usually crap used to brainwash people, so let the shareholders pay for it. Besides once _someone_ has paid then no one needs to pay ever again because sharing and digital copies.

The business model is wrong and broken, and this failed business model is not our problem.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I honestly prefer to not use pay walled websites. I also run adblock but in a whitelist mode, sites i often visit, find entertaining and worthy of any money from my activity, get whitelisted.

</comment><comment><USER13> I am curious as how these sort of guides are taken as incouous fun reads while a guide to, say, shoplifting would seem less than legitimate.

<comment><USER14> And how about a guide to illegally copy Spotify tracks without an account?

<comment><USER15> link?

<comment><USER14> Just hypothetical. I'm curious about the perceived value of music versus news articles.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> As someone who has worked on building two paywalls and still involved in them, please bear in mind a few things.

1\. Publishers have ability to configure access on paywalls as they see fit.

Whether based on referrer, UA, and a whole host of other attributes, history and so on.

2\. Publishers don't care about a degree of paywall evasion.

Studies show that people willing to pay will pay, and those who go to great lengths to evade won't ever subscribe. The question is then, do you want to waste expensive developer resources in an arms-race against ppl who'll never give you a cent, or do you want to spend that developer time enhancing the experience for those who will subscribe.

3\. Full locked-down paywalls are known to be bad.

Publishers still want to ensure their content is in the public conversation, and that means their content has to be accessible in soem form - or you strategically choose to follow a different business model. See: [https://techcrunch.com/2010/11/02/times-paywall-4-million- re...](https://techcrunch.com/2010/11/02/times-paywall-4-million-readers/)

</comment><comment><USER17> This is the kind of thing that eager prosecutors will turn into a CFAA charge.

</comment><comment><USER18> Another way to get free access to the WSJ, which doesn't require stepping into a legally/ethically grey area, is to use one of the handful of apps/extensions that has been granted free access.

The WSJ approached me and offered this access to a project I'm building, Read Across The Aisle [1]. I've built an iOS app and Chrome extension, both of which are free. I don't know exactly what the WSJ gets out of this deal (we have not given them, or anyone else, any user data), but I think it's that they want to be associated with post-filter bubble projects.

1: [http://www.readacrosstheaisle.com](http://www.readacrosstheaisle.com)

</comment><comment><USER19> So why isn't this on the Chrome store?

<comment><USER20> A Paywall Extension, hmmm? What if it were part of a dev tool bundle?

It's arguably unfair that users of Facebook and Twitter and other social media sites should have access to more content than someone who has decided not to use those platforms.

<comment><USER21> Private websites have no duty to allow "fair access" to their content. Non- users of Facebook is not a legally protected class.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Firefox and ModifyHeaders is nice for this.

</comment><comment><USER23> While I think these kind of posts are really fun to read, they should also mention little bit more about why these are paywalled. People needs to understand that traditional newspaper is dying and in order to support real journalists, they need to make money. I am neither working for any news organisation nor talking about a specific news outlet.

As far as I can see, they are trying hard not to annoy people but at the same time try to make some money for their work.

<comment><USER14> I'm wondering what keeps e.g. Google from implementing micro-payments. If I can get access to an article or website for 20 cents by simply clicking a (universal) payment button, I would do so in many cases.

<comment><USER24> Like the old adage goes, they won't do this because their livelihood depends on it.

A single user can be exposed to 3-4 (or more) ads per page. Each ad can earn them some money depending on the relevance of the ad to the viewer. In this case, the price they charge the advertiser is more guesswork/auction than science. They don't have to/can't prove to anyone that the ad truly worked. Advertisers tweak and A/B test ads to achieve higher engagements and better results.

A fixed rate model like you're suggesting limits the scalability of selling the same pair of eyeballs to 3-4+ advertisers. It forces google and content creators to attach a hard number to each visitor which is essentially upper bound by people's spending habits - if people are feeling poor, they can simply stop visiting websites to make ends meet!

Fir these reasons, I don't believe any advertising based company is ever truly going to get behind pay-as-you-go content. I've made my bet (see my profile for deets aka FD) and I'm in the process of quitting my job to put my money where my mouth is.

<comment><USER25> I don't think these two approaches are diametrically opposed. In the traditional print journalism model, I pay for my copy of the newspaper/magazine, and I get a lot of ads -- most magazines are > 50% ad content by area. Even online, I am a subscriber to the NYTimes and WaPo -- I still get ads when I view the site. Paying does not turn off ads.

I am sure I'm in the majority on this site, but I believe that it's possible to do advertising-supported content in a tasteful way where the ads add to the experience, or at least do not detract from it.

<comment><USER26> Likewise cable TV. You pay for a subscription and you also see a lot of ads (more than on OTA TV, which is one of many reasons I cut the cord.) In the early days of cable networks, many had no ads because it was thought they could survive on subscription revenue. That idea didn't last long.

<comment><USER24> As a whole, broadcast and cable TV is (used to be) a captive market. It was very possible for channels to synchronize or nearly synchronize their commercial breaks which meant that they could get away with charging for content AND showing ads.

The proof is that the minute add-ons like DVRs and set top boxes like Roku came along, the first thing people did was to bail on the old TV model.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> This only works, of course, for paywalls that want links in Twitter feeds to bypass their paywalls. I'd at least expect an ad at that point.

</comment><comment><USER28> Interestingly the FT's paywall is immune to this in my testing. Device fingerprinting?

<comment><USER29> Not that I condone doing it, Google Bot trick still works for FT.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> You can download my Firefox plugin to bypass the WSJ paywall (also bypasses FT paywall): [https://addons.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/addon/bypasspaywall...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/addon/bypasspaywalls/)

And if you want the Chrome version you will need to manually download it: [http://bypasspaywalls.weebly.com/](http://bypasspaywalls.weebly.com/)

</comment><comment><USER31> How Google's Web Crawler Bypasses Paywalls

[https://elaineou.com/2016/02/19/how-to-use-chrome- extensions...](https://elaineou.com/2016/02/19/how-to-use-chrome-extensions- to-bypass-paywalls/)

<comment><USER32> That article links back to the one published on HN:

"Update: A newer version of the chrome extension is available here."

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> tl;dr:

Wall Street Journal ended allowing special access for search engines through their paywall. By spoofing Twitter app's Referer and User Agent access is still possible and an included Chrome Extension script implements this idea.

<comment><USER34> <rant> Personally, I'm finding the increased use of tl;dr here on HN annoying. I feel, that like myself, HN readers are intelligent enough to read and understand the articles without someone coming along and posting a summary, simply for up-votes.

HN is all about the articles, and then the discussion on top. If people are finding the articles to hard to penetrate that they need a tl;dr summary, then maybe HN isn't the site for them? </rant>

<comment><USER35> This is exactly the kind of article I expect a tl;dr on, I actually looked for it to save myself opening the article, scanning for "referer" and then closing it immediately (which I did because the tl;dr was so low)

I think this is a backlash from the self-congratulatory, self-indulgent tone medium has perpetuated, not through design I'm sure.

Sometimes one just wants to validate what we expect/know and move on; personally I don't want more than 200 words to elaborate this headline.

edit: typo

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Is it just me or are websites that implement these kinds of selective paywalls rarely worth visiting, let alone worth spending effort to get through the paywall?

<comment><USER37> The Wall Street Journal is a very, very good newspaper that brought us such amazing series as "What They Know", which I believe started the practice of referring to the use of trackers as "spying" (much to the dismay of advertisers), which has certainly helped deliver the message that tracking is something users should worry about.</comment></comment>


Help Us Get this 4 TB data set freely available inside AWS - <AUTHOR> http://basekb.com/subjectiveEye/

<comment><USER2> Paul - this sounds cool but can you give some examples of how you anticipate different types of people could use this for good/profit/etc?</comment>


Apple Wins Strategically Important Micro SIM Patent - <AUTHOR> http://www.patentlyapple.com/patently-apple/2012/12/apple-wins-strategically-important-micro-sim-patent.html <comment><USER2> Why were sims ever made so big? Given that a pair of carefully used scissors and make a standard size sim into the other 2 sizes. The standard one is understandable (presumably there was no recognition of just how space constrained devices would get), but the mid size one? Why go smaller without going as small as possible?

Edit: Is patent related to the iPhone 5 sim? I'm very confused as I thought that was a nano sim?

</comment><comment><USER3> So this is why they wanted so much to get carriers to use the micro-sim?</comment>


Video: Adobe Edge HTML5 Web Developer Tool - Apple-Guy http://obamapacman.com/2011/08/download-adobe-edge-html5-web-developer-tool-preview/

<comment><AUTHOR> looks pretty impressive. the fact they do manipulation in JS and don't touch markup or CSS is a great thing</comment>


Show HN: Program "Greppy", a 2-wheeled robot, using a new robotics language - <AUTHOR> https://yoga.dev/timeshared-robots/ <comment><USER2> Off-topic. I'm thinking about building a game where players are controlling real robots. The players compete for resources which are randomly distributed in the land. In the first version of the game it will be on the Earth. This game can be later used to help colonize Moon and Mars.

Do you know any robots which can be used in such game?

<comment><USER3> You probably heard of Isotopium: Chernobyl. Interesting concept and a solid implementation of a similar idea.

[https://youtu.be/TET-xQIgZQE](https://youtu.be/TET-xQIgZQE)

<comment><USER4> Nope never heard of it. That is amazing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Looks like this is what Bret Victor is promoting for years: a real-time feedback loop with your code and the outcome.

This would also be very nice for game development as Bret Victor demonstrated multiple times.

great!

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm greatly inspired by his work. It seems magical for game design.

Game engines like Unity also let you tweak a lot of things interactively, but more by making those things be assets rather than code. But I never really liked that style. (For that matter, I don't like CSS being separate from the page content either.)

So I want Dynamicland for robots.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is a really great idea

> The compiler extracts anything marked as a parameter into a separate data > structure, with a link to the location in the source code they came from. > When the IDE renders the Yoga code, it shows the parameters as sliders.

Turning code into data that can be represented in another way. I guess the idea is from projectional editors, where the code is projected onto different representations depending on the context and what the user wants to accomplish.

Does anyone know of other work along similar lines? Programming the robot is also cool and I'm curious if this idea can be applied to other types of programming where a simplified projection of the program can make code more accessible to non-programmers.

</comment><comment><USER7> How does the differentiable programming implementation work?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yoga is purely functional, so it's possible to use backpropagation to compute it efficiently.

It actually compiles 2 versions of each function: call them foo and foo.grad. foo.grad takes the same arguments as foo, and also a gradient for each output argument. It then computes gradients for each input argument.

The algorithm is simple: traverse the expression tree in the usual order you'd use for emitting code, and remember the order. Then traverse in reverse order, propagating gradients as you go.

The tedious bit is writing the gradients for every built-in op. For an operation like + it's simple: each argument gets the same gradient as the result:

      void ExprAdd::backprop(YogaContext const &ctx, GradientExprSet &grads, ExprNode *g)
      {
        grads.addGradient(ctx, args[0], g);
        grads.addGradient(ctx, args[1], g);
      }

For something like divide it's a bit grosser:

      void ExprDiv::backprop(YogaContext const &ctx, GradientExprSet &grads, ExprNode *g)
      {
        // https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quotient_rule
        grads.addGradient(ctx, args[0], ctx.mkExpr<ExprDiv>(g, args[1]));
        grads.addGradient(ctx, args[1], ctx.mkExpr<ExprNeg>(
          ctx.mkExpr<ExprMul>(g,
            ctx.mkExpr<ExprDiv>(
              args[0],
              ctx.mkExpr<ExprPow>(
                args[1],
                ctx.mkExpr<ExprConstDouble>(2.0))))));
      }

More at [https://gitlab.com/umbrellaresearch/yoga2/-/blob/master/jit/...](https://gitlab.com/umbrellaresearch/yoga2/-/blob/master/jit/expr_backprop.cc) if you're curious.

<comment><USER7> Have you considered using an off the shelf differentiable programming implementation? Or are the requirements for real-time applications too demanding for existing software?

<comment><AUTHOR> I looked at a few systems but didn't think any of them would work.

The real-time requirement is fairly hard. The robots I work on use a 1 kHz feedback loop, so it has 1 mS in which to recalculate everything.

Caffe is pretty efficient if you can supply batches of values, but the overhead is high when running real-time.

<comment><USER8> have you tried torchscript w/ the C++ interface?

<comment><AUTHOR> No. It looks promising. I should try it.

<comment><USER7> I think Tensorflow with Swift or Rust bindings may also work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Okay I'm 100% biased, but this is something I've enjoyed working with as well. It's made developing a self-balancing greppy super easy :)

</comment><comment><USER10> The robot's name seems to imply it can find specific items in a cluttered closet. Is that the case?

<comment><USER9> That's what the googley eyes are for! Ideally, this isn't the only "greppy" design (:

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is amazing. I love the concept of remote programmable robotics and the real-time feedback of the controls is a great idea. I think this is the way forward, I wasted countless hours trying to fiddle with code only to see the robot failing on the edge of breaking apart. Any indications on how to build my own Greppy and the whole infrastructure behind it? :)

<comment><USER9> Curious about your use case! Do you want to setup your own warehouse for you and your own friends? Or use the existing Yoga warehouse and get your own personal Greppy on it that only a subset of people can share? Or something else?

<comment><USER11> I would love to understand how the whole thing works actually and how it can be configured/updated. Surely this approach can be adapted to smaller robots? It's more of a curiosity question since I love to tinker with robots and am looking for a good way to make them better. Apart from didactic purposes I don't have a really specific use case yet. :)

<comment><USER9> Yoga is a language as well as an environment, so if the robot has an open controller where a compiled program can be installed, it will work!

What robot did you want to tinker with

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> By the way Trevor is a founder of YC

</comment><comment><USER13> I love this creepy robot!</comment>


Wanted: Factory Workers, Degree Required - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/30/education/edlife/factory-workers-college-degree-apprenticeships.html <comment><USER2> This doesn't sound like a higher education problem - it sounds like an education problem. If adults can't pass a "screening test geared toward a ninth-grade education", we're either teaching the wrong things (useless subjects with no practical applications) or we're teaching it the wrong way. Higher education is too late to solve this.

Requiring degrees, I agree that's a problem. People should do degrees for academic purposes. And while there's undeniably an association between "smart"/"clever" and "degree", the real issue is the feature creep. Put simply, because of lack of other standards, either from education or industry, a degree is now the easiest way to determine if someone is, well, reliable/hard-working without taking a gamble. While I'm sure it isn't perfect, licensing like lawyers (the bar in the US) or electricians (at least in the UK) have is a potential work-around for this.

As an aside, I strongly believe a gap year between school and college/university is underrated. Everybody I've met who worked for a year or more beforehand had a different approach to college, and got more out of it. It also gives you the chance of discovering non-academic pursuits you enjoy, and maybe deciding college isn't such a big deal along the way. Gap years are a huge missed opportunity for both individuals and industry.

<comment><USER3> _> This doesn't sound like a higher education problem - it sounds like an education problem._

The story isn't really about "higher education" in the traditional meaning. It's about taking the blue-collar _apprenticeship & training_ model and calling __that__ a _" college degree"_. Since blue collar schooling (apprenticeships) and blue collar careers (e.g. factory workers) have a social stigma, some folks in the article are saying "degree required" should be expanded to mean "apprenticeship required". The last sentence of the article highlights this re-labeling:

 _> "And whatever you do with training, you need to call it college. You want to make people feel good about the path they choose."_

Other sentences in that article on that same theme:

 _> But the college-for-all movement, [...], is often conflated with earning a bachelor's degree._

 _> "Higher ed," he said, "needs to respect the dignity of labor."_

E.g. the prospective factory worker attends training at a community college for 2 years and gets a credential that's _not_ a traditional bachelor's degree -- maybe a Completion Certificate and call _that_ the _" college degree required"_. That's the idiosyncratic meaning of _" Degree Required"_ specific to the NYT article's title.

<comment><USER4> >> The story isn't really about "higher education" in the traditional meaning. It's about taking the blue-collar apprenticeship & training model and calling _that_ a "college degree".

When I was in high school, we had vocational classes. I took electronics, others took small engine repair, welding, or drafting. Hands on classes that in some cases require applied math. I think these are mostly gone in the US today with everyone demanding higher achievement is pure STEM classes. I'm not sure what the "T" for technology is in high school, but I fear people may thing it means the ability to use Word and PowerPoint.

<comment><USER5> The loss of those classes bothers me. My 10th grader just finished a class in Sheet Metal Fabrication and loved it. He's now taking Welding and plans to do Electronics next year. He signed up for sewing, but it was cancelled due to lack of interest. I can't remember the last time he was that interested in anything at school

What's his motivation? He wanted to make costumes for ComicCon and accidentally found something he really enjoys doing.

These classes are increasingly rare. Our school district is primarily rural kids, and skills like the above are obviously useful on farms. But the reality is that pushing everyone to college ignores that there are many very smart kids out there who have no interest in college-level academics, or will simply not thrive in that environment. However, they may be fantastic machinists, CAD technicians, electricians, etc.

<comment><USER6> College-bound kids should be taking those classes too. I saw the same thing when I was in high school: they treated things like auto shop as things that college-bound kids shouldn't be doing. So you wind up with college kids who have absolutely no hands-on ability and no understanding of the machines that enable their lives, and then these kids go into engineering school and have no idea how to actually build things that really work.

A machinist should not know more about metals properties and how to make things out of metal than a mechanical engineer. The machinist should know more about the particulars of operating a particular machine tool, since he uses it every day, but the mechanical engineer should know more about how to actually make physical things that work, and not just theory. So a class in machining, IMO, is absolutely essential for a ME major. Same thing for EEs and electricians; if a EE can't use hands-on skills to troubleshoot his design, he's a failure of a EE.

<comment><USER7> I have a degree in Mech Eng from an "elite" college in the UK, and welding, machining etc were required courses. How can you design something without understanding how it will be fabricated or maintained?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > Ditto at John Deere dealerships, which repair million-dollar farming > machinery filled with several dozen computers. Fixing tractors and grain > harvesters now requires advanced math and comprehension skills and the > ability to solve problems on the fly. "The toolbox is now a computer,"

I don't know about America but here repairing expensive machinery is the job of engineers, not factory worker. The latter's work involve pushing button, soldering, assembling etc.. but not something that require critical thinking or problem solving. Automation is still either 1. more expensive than manual worker (in case of FMS _) or 2. only applicable for large scale /high value added manufacturing.

_ FMS: Flexible Manufacturing System.

<comment><USER9> As an owner of one of those high-priced John Deere grain harvesters, who has spent plenty of time repairing it, I'm left wondering what advanced math is used? Certainly some of the control systems will contain software that uses advanced math, but I cannot imagine the tech coming out and fixing a bug in that software like that out in the field. In that case, in my experience, it's usually more of a "The computer's broken. Let's replace it completely."

<comment><USER8> For some of the CNC systems I have had experience with, repairing means figuring out which parts are broken and need to be replaced, sometimes it's just trial and error.

<comment><USER10> A lot of things can be broken but there are a lot of software and hardware patching that tech do.

During my military service we had a plotter that was used to print aerial and spatial photography it went haywire one day and the HP tech said the alignment heads were screwed.

While he did order a new part he also downloaded the firmware from the device, opened it in a hex editor and manually patched some values to give us some print capability back.

So instead of the print heads not wanting to go beyond half the width of the role it was limited to about 80-85% of the width with more or less even edges.

So even when you need to fix what is effectively macro-machinery there are a lot of things that you need to do and being able to understand EE and programming concepts is a must. The tech wasn't an engineer (BSc./MSc), but most likely had the equivalent of a 2 year engineering degree / programme.

I don't think there are a lot of low and even medium skilled jobs today especially not in anything that relates to manufacturing, repairs and similar fields that one can do without quite a bit of knowledge.

That said even in in the "educated" community information and knowledge has degraded, people don't know how to fix basic things, don't know how to solve problems other than "just google it", I can count on one hand the amount of people I know that can install a dimmer properly without connecting hot to ground.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > But to succeed in programs like those at Walla Walla, students need to take > advanced math and writing in high school, academics typically encouraged > only for those going on to four-year colleges.

I don't really know much about these positions but I'm having a hard time buying that advanced math is required here.

Maybe my high school was an outlier but "advanced math" consisted of one course: calculus. Even as a developer, it's not something I've ever _needed_ professionally. English was the same whether you were on the college track or apprentice track and more students, say 3 to 1 went into an apprenticeship, or industrial tech skills type role vs went to a university.

I get that the roles are changing from 10–15 years ago, but making the requirements sound inflated is misleading or confusing at best and could discourage good applicants or cause them to undertake an unnecessary amount of debt at worst.

<comment><USER12> Considering the fact that the adults mentioned in the article can't pass a 9th grade test, I think advanced math refers to "Algebra 2", or "Geometry" here, rather than calc/precalc.

<comment><USER13> They are referring to Algebra I.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> In 2007 in college, my class group and I did a presentation promoting outsourcing (an assigned task). But before we did that, we took a deep look at the reasons for outsourcing. The kinds of info we came across blew our minds and the minds of our audience.

The number one reason for outsourcing: it was too difficult to find high-level workers (college degree, managers, technical IT stuff) to work in factories, simply because they did not want to work in a factory "when they grew up".

In a rank of nations where finding high-level factory workers was difficult, Germany was #1 and the United States was #8. The countries on the bottom of the list were China and India, respectively.

If you took a look at the top 10 jobs most difficult to fill in the U.S., Sales Associate was number 1 and high-level factory-based professions were 8 of the top 10.

All info was gathered from a blog post on taleo.com (bought out by another company) and that information can no longer be found.

The second reason for outsourcing: no young person in America wants to spend their time making stupid stuff like pencils and chalks and little american flags . Foreigners would be more than happy to do it though.

The reasons for outsourcing is a lot more complicated than money. And there are nations where wage is cheaper than China and India, but were never able to garner so much attention of manufacturers.

<comment><USER15> The problem for young people isn't image, but percieved limited future growth potential. Wages for factory workers have been dropping since the 70s.

<comment><USER14> Wages of professions have shifted to other directions. While wages of low- level workers may be low and getting lower, the supply is still high. Conversely, wages of higher level workers are relatively higher but the work is a lot more intense, has more hours, and poor working environment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I don't have much compassion for companies that are having trouble finding skilled people, but do not have a training program. The government should supply a solid liberal arts education.

However, "John Deere, for example, has designed a curriculum and donated farm equipment to several community colleges to train technicians for its dealer network. "

Sounds like John Deere is trying to get off cheaper. This is different than the complaint that Siemens had with basic education.

<comment><USER17> So true. Why are high school graduates unable to repair John Deere tractors? Well, maybe because they need some training. Why should they pay for a university degree? Which degree? Mechanical engineering? No. Computer Science? Also no. There is no degree in John Deere tractors. Donating your equipment to schools won't help. Hire people, train them, and put them to work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> > _nearly nine in 10 jobs that disappeared since 2000 were lost to automation > in the decades-long march to an information-driven economy, not to workers > in other countries._

> _Even if those jobs returned, a high school diploma is simply no longer good > enough to fill them._

> _fewer than 15 percent of the applicants [in Charlotte, N.C] were able to > pass a reading, writing and math screening test geared toward a ninth-grade > education._

There are going to be some disappointed people who thought all they had to do was vote for a president who would "bring back the jobs". On the plus side, looks like post-secondary education is going to be a valuable commodity as Trump tightens the labor market.

<comment><USER19> And a Ed. Secretary who is more concerned with vouchers for religious schools than helping public ed...

<comment><USER20> Maybe public education is causing some of these issues, I don't know too many private school kids who get out of high school and can't read.

Such things seem to be readily accepted in public high schools. I remember in my first year of high school I ended up getting selected for a program where I was to read and write the answers for another kid's final exam since he apparently didn't have the skills and it's not a requirement to finish high school.

I wasn't monitored, so in theory I could have just gave him the answers. Looking back on this now, I'm kind of horrified.

<comment><USER21> The voucher debate is 100% about using public money to send kids to religious schools. "Education quality" is a smokescreen and largely irrelevant. To test this, propose granting federal vouchers to anyone who asks, but with the limitation that they cannot be used at religious schools. I guarantee voucher supporters would oppose this.

<comment><USER22> I really don't think so. In fact, if such a ban would mean that vouchers couldn't be used for Islamic and Jewish schools, I suspect the typical voucher supporter would be relieved.

The normal expectation is traditional private schools. Directly cashing the vouchers for homeschooling (books, chemistry set, opportunity cost of lost wages, etc.) is another possibility.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Reminds me of an archeology job offer I once saw in Germany (for a dig). Masters or equivalent degree in archeology, PhD preferred, 6 Euro/h.

<comment><USER24> Wait. It was _paid_!!?!?!!???

There's a steady supply of archaeology grad students who don't just work for free, but rather _pay_ for the privilege of doing field work. Their only compensation is in false hope and broken dreams.

</comment></comment><comment> rm_-rf_slash Serious question, fellow hackers: what is going to happen to the millions upon millions who will be automated out of the only jobs they are capable of doing?

Eventually there will be no need for truck drivers, fast food employees, even housekeeping is becoming more and more automated. How will people find work if a machine can always do it better? How will the less-intelligent find work if all the jobs require education they cannot or will not strive for? What happens to them? What happens to their children? How many people around the world are we willing to support without their working? 100 million? 1 billion? _Several billion?_

This is a serious and terrifying question. Automation is eating jobs so quickly I don't have any idea what the labor landscape will look like in ten years.

What happens to these people? Who lives? Who eats? Who gets medical attention?

Who pays?

<comment><USER25> We have already been through this transition before. Two hundred years ago, 90% of the population worked in agriculture. Now only a few percent do. The rest didn't end up unemployed, we invented entirely new industries to meet demands that didn't even exist before.

But I do agree that the speed of the change this time makes the transition period far more dangerous. I think the biggest hurdle is that culture itself will need to change. People have been taught to judge their own worth based on how hard they work. That makes this transition an identity threat, which is even worse than an economic one.

If we can get through the transition period without a horrible war, I am highly confident we will see an economy that's as much beyond ours as ours is beyond 1817. It's very hard to say it will look like (any more than farmers in 1817 could have predicted how I make my living writing software). But as long as there are unmet needs and desires, there is work to be done. And as long as some things are scarce (attention and social prestige seem fundamentally scarce), there will be economies.

Another way to put it is: if most people can access the output of the robot factories, then they won't be poor. If most people _can 't_ access the output of the robot factories, then they constitute a big market and there will be plenty of jobs serving each other.

<comment><USER26> That transition was FAR different than the one we're faced with in the near future. People moved from agriculture to factory jobs, because there was still a massive need for labor. We don't have that today. Someone being displaced as a semi driver isn't going to suddenly hop into an AI startup.

So back to the question: What does that person do? How do they feed and house their family?

<comment><USER25> People who were displaced out of agriculture didn't necessarily go get factory jobs either. The industrial revolution was massively disruptive socially, and a lot of people didn't come through fine. A lot of them drank themselves to death, much like the opioid crisis today. It was their children who adapted to a new economy.

> So back to the question: What does that person do? How do they feed and > house their family?

We need to build the political will to take care of them through guaranteed basic income or equivalent. And even if we do some of them will still drink themselves to death anyway, because they see welfare as shameful.

<comment><USER27> And the life expectancy of a factory worker was insane. Cities were in a constant population decline, only propped up by people in the country having to find work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I do not like the condescending tone.

Many factories require highly qualified personel. Manufacturing turbines (specially turbine blades) is highly complicated. CPUs are made in factories...

<comment><USER29> I agree and don't care for it either. Over time, the things we manufacture will be done by less people, using less energy and materials and it will require rigor to ensure what's manufactured is safe for use.

Over the years, the manufacturing industry will require employees to perform duties that require an engineering mindset and a craftsman discipline. That discipline will be applied more on the processes and machines that perform the manufacturing rather than the products themselves. Repetitive work will become less repetitive. It will require more ingenuity, mental and computer modeling, and a keener understanding of the core sciences.

Education needs to become inexpensive and something people do continuously in their adulthood if we want to remain competitive. We can't treat people like garbage and throw them away when their skillset doesn't align with what the markets demand.

Subsidizing overpriced university educations that pour more money into brochure perks like luxury student housing and competitive football teams is not the answer. For people who need it the most, education needs to be accessible and practical.

<comment><USER13> competitive football teams are a profit center. non-competitive football teams are money losers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Is it possible that workable solutions are going to be addressed on a state by state vs federal level?

For example, my home state of California has an extensive community college system that is very good at administering 2 year technically focussed associate programs.

In contrast, a state with a lower population (or college) density might favor apprenticships.

Also, if the stopping point is utilizing custom industrial applications or specialized industrial skills, why can't companies take the initative to make teaching versions available on public facing sites, where students can train and test themselves before applying for jobs? U.S. companies are wealth aggregators with little tax burden in the U.S.; it seems fitting that they should take up some slack since they are so much more reliable funding streams than public institutions. (Although, the article notes John Deere's solution, which was in a very similar vein)

<comment><USER31> There are few areas that lack the population density to support community colleges.

Wyoming has 7 community colleges for ~600,000 people. They will of course be in the larger towns, but more than 200,000 people live in the 3 largest "metro" areas, and the people that cannot commute to one of the colleges will anyway be facing a high probability of moving to find employment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> In my experience, German companies are particularly bad about having a rigid focus on specific academic credentials, often coupled with an unwillingness to believe that effective learning can occur outside of schools. I do respect their traditional apprenticeship track, but even that seems to be slowly disappearing.

<comment><USER33> It's getting better. My first employer hired me for a programming role although my background was in physics, based on my open-source contributions.

<comment><USER32> Did you have a full 4 year degree?

<comment><USER2> You mean BSc? Bachelor degrees often aren't 4 years outside the US.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I know plenty of smart people who did badly at school but excelled at working with machines including CNC. Some people just learn differently and don't fit into the current school system.

</comment><comment><USER35> Nearly 2 potential candidates per position, just from a single job fair, excluding applicants who didn't go to the job fair. It's not that bad, is it?

<comment><USER36> > some 10,000 people showed up at a job fair for 800 positions

Nope it's not that bad, it is in fact between 500 and 600% worse than that.

<comment><USER37> Traubenfuchs' point is that of 10,000 people, about 1,500 were able to pass the screening test. This means that Siemens can choose from about 2 'qualified' applicants for each of 800 positions, which isn't too bad for Siemens.

But you're correct that for the applicants, no, 12.5:1 is not very good odds for getting a job.

<comment><USER36> It just baffles me that in a city with supposedly lower-than-ever-before and decent for the country unemployment you'd get a turnout like this.

(source: [https://www.bls.gov/news.release/metro.t01.htm](https://www.bls.gov/news.release/metro.t01.htm) Charlotte metropolitan area: 4.5% unemployment, pretty good non-coastal city)

<comment><USER21> 1\. Unemployment nubmers do not adequately count the number of people unemployed.

2\. The people who show up are not necessarily unemployed.

<comment><USER36> Well, sure. But the Fed keeps talking that unemployment is now low enough that it's driving up wages, and uh ... not in this case at least.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> chroem- If you're struggling to find qualified workers, simply offer better pay.

<comment><USER38> I don't think it's that simple. If you have a factory in the middle of Iowa you can't offer $110k/yr and expect people from SF or NYC to move out there, despite the huge gains relative to COL. I think a larger point of the article is that apprentice/blue collar jobs have a social stigma around them, particularly among people who already have degrees, and that artificially limits the applicant pool.

How many people here would quit writing software to work in a factory if it paid more? I'm guessing not many.

<comment><USER39> Though no one would admit it here I bet a lot more people would jump at that opportunity than you think. It doesn't exist though so there is no way to show who is right. Not to mention having a job like that would give you so much free time and money that you could write gobs of software outside of work if you cared to.

<comment><USER40> This.

We used to sit around and say we should have owned a bread truck route. Up at 4 and done by noon.

Then the cell phone was invented and we all lost our jobs.

<comment><USER38> To be fair, changes are that if you work remotely there's nothing stopping you from working 4-12 every day :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> [http://indedge.com/](http://indedge.com/)

The reality of making uninformed decision regarding basic skills: The results of an Industry Edge study of over 500 applicant tests revealed that the average score for reading a ruler was 56%.

<comment><USER42> At risk of sounding horribly cynical, this is a company providing industry skills assessments, proclaiming loudly that industry skills assessments are very necessary.

<comment><USER21> Sad when you have to put a disclaimer on critical thinking. Anytime $ORGANIZATION publishes a "study" proclaiming that $THING is needed, always check to see if $ORGANIZATION sells $THING.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Hmm I used to work for Siemens as a field service worker and worked on their turbines and generators. Neither me nor any of my coworkers had degrees. The only people with a degree were the project managers who were engineers and even then you'd sometimes get older guy who had been around long enough to know their shit that they didn't need a degree to get promoted into that position. I've also worked for a few other power generation companies and it's pretty much all the same across the board, in fact most of their employees are contract workers who work for outside companies because it's easier to lay them off in the summer when it's slow.

</comment><comment><USER44> A small grammar question, it says:

"But fewer than 15 percent of the applicants were able to pass a reading, writing and math screening test [...]"

Shouldn't it be _less than_? Isn't it refering to "less than 15% [...]" instead of "fewer [...] aplicants"? AFAIK for people/countable things is fewer than, but wouldn't this refer directly to the percentage?

Note: English is not my native language but that's not an excuse not to improve.

<comment><USER45> 1\. Less/fewer is a distinction rapidly being lost by native English speakers, so don't feel bad if it's confusing. (It's also a relatively recent rule; Shakespeare didn't follow it, for instance.)

2\. If I were copy-editing this, I probably would have substituted in "less" for "fewer", but mostly because as a copy-editor you feel like you have to contribute something

3\. The senses are ultimately identical ("fewer applicants than 15% of them" vs. "less of a percentage of applicants than 15"), so I'd say ultimately either is OK.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Google started their apprenticeship program recently and has five positions: [https://services.google.com/fb/forms/appszrh/](https://services.google.com/fb/forms/appszrh/)

Good to know Google is a good citizen and participates in this.

</comment><comment><USER47> Our company, [https://oden.io](https://oden.io), is currently hiring engineers in NYC to help tackle this problem. We are an IoT company helping to facilitate the 4th industrial revolution. Look out for our post in tomorrow's Who Is Hiring thread!

</comment><comment><USER48> Can anyone comment on government programs whereby the gov't pays for a portion of a new hire's salary for the first X months to cover training costs?

This at least seems like an _interesting_ way to deal with the problem.

Formal training is great, but you still have to train people on your processes etc.

<comment><USER49> There's a risk of exploitation by employers - hire workers for unskilled jobs, "train" them for a few months, then make them redundant when the subsidy runs out.

Here in the UK, there used to be a lower minimum wage for trainees. It was common practice for employers to classify bartenders or farm labourers as trainees for protracted periods, even though no real training was being provided.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> Remember this great article about a German machinery company opening a factory in the US and not being able to find candidates that knew what a micron was. CNC needs to be precise.

They started hiring veterans of the US forces, because those guys at least got trained on heavy, expensive machinery.

<comment><USER51> If they really need to be that precise, perhaps they should be using only the standard SI units. They should have asked about micrometers (µm). "Micron (µ)" has been deprecated since 1935, and was revoked entirely in 1967.

US schools typically do not teach the archaic or old-fashioned terms, as they won't be on the standardized tests.

It would be similar to a US company going to Germany and looking for people that knew what a "mil" was. (It's 0.001 inch.)

<comment><USER52> or a thou :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> Either it's too complicated for the average human or it can be automated ...

<comment><USER54> Logically-following question: why do we have such a population that the average and below-average members are too stupid to out-think common automation? Let alone, why do we _continue_ to have such a population?

<comment><USER53> My old coach used to say that anyone can win a medal at a national event if they just want it bad enough, and I think he's right. You can become top 3 in any area if you just want it bad enough. But the problem is, it guarantees a life in poverty unless you manage to become top 10 in the world, compared to taking an average job with an average salary.

Say someone invested 3 years to get competent enough to work on that plant, then he doesn't get a job. Now what ? It's not like his turbine blade expertise will be useful working as a expedite in a supermarket ...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> I'm not sure what it means by "degree"? 9th-grade level math and reading? [referring to the first couple of paragraphs in the article]. That's hardly what is usually meant by a "degree".

</comment><comment><USER56> Vocational education is undervalued in both America and the UK, it seems.

</comment><comment><USER57> Most IT jobs in Switzerland are apprentice routes.

And theyre far better than Germans these days.

Had friends with BAs apply for entry level jobs in Switzerland and get rejected with "too little experience".

<comment><USER58> Another plus is that you can still go to university after a apprenticeship. So you can do something practical before you decide what you will study.

<comment><USER57> I hope the system will adjust itself to do exactly this. Otherwise were facing a real crises.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> The economic value of high school education is not quite zero but it approaches zero. So much tax money spent for nice pensions with zero results.

</comment><comment><USER60> Prediction: in the distant future people who want to join an organisation will be evaluated by how _interested_ they are in the work.

</comment><comment><USER61> I think post wise degree is better format.

</comment><comment><USER62> NY Times is arguably an unreliable source of information. They can't help but inject opinion or cant into every article. They have cheapened their brand, so can I trust their reporting?

<comment><USER63> If you don't, then don't read the article. A lot of people still read the NYT and think critically for themselves. Please refrain from making general dismissals like this. If you have a specific criticism, please make it.</comment></comment>


What were you doing at age 20? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> I started my computer science degree the year I turned 20!

I'd previously been studying in the biological sciences, and although I really enjoyed learning the material, I dreaded actually doing the practical labs & real-world applications. The practical applications of computer science, in contrast, excited me greatly. So I switched degrees and fell in love with my new field.

Now, just three months before my 30th birthday, I feel incredibly happy, lucky, grateful, and relieved to have made the switch. My career in software has been such a joy. I could so easily have ended up spending the past decade being miserable in a field that I didn't enjoy. I think switching into computer science was the best decision I've ever made.

</comment><comment><USER3> At twenty, I had a wife and a five year old daughter. We had been living on our own, in our own apartment for about a year (no longer floating between parent's houses). I was in my second year at university on a near full ride (tuition totally covered, books and living expenses were mine). I had just taken my first programming class and worked nights for a friend's start up making $8/hr (2003) programming in php between 10pm and 2am a few nights a week. I was also the youngest student hired at my university to work in the graphic design department, and worked maybe ten hours a week there. Upon graduation, I would leave tech and not return for ten years. A very hard ten years.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm 20 (plus or minus a year), and I feel qualified to answer.

Last summer I had an internship with a software company full of nice people, and I got an offer to work with them after I graduate in the spring. I'm pretty excited.

In my free time, I hang out with my group of friends, I watch weird movies, and browse the web looking at stuff that doesn't matter. And between working out and having a sleep schedule, I'm starting to work on my health.

I wish I was more experienced in relationships, so I'm going to join a lot of clubs at school to try to meet people. I'm also a little afraid my life is running out of novelty - when you're a kid/teenager everything changes so much, but once I start the job this spring, I'll have to force myself to make novel changes.

All in all, I'm excited for the future, I just hope I'm courageous and hard- working enough to run after my best life, not my easily-reachable life.

</comment><comment><USER5> Still in college, last year of a CS degree. My favorite year, my thesis was a space combat game altered to run on a P2P architecture. The highlight was an engineer from Havoc (who did the physics engine for half life) visiting to check out the demo. It was running on 30 PCs simultaneously - we had to bring in 5 friends to run around restarting the ones that crashed while we distracted the visitors. Fond memories.

Plus working in a video rental store in evenings & weekends to support. And usual student layabout stuff like games, drugs & travel.

</comment><comment><USER6> I was struggling through electrical engineering, not sure if I ever wanted to become an actual engineer. In hindsight, college was extremely challenging because I had no clue if I wanted to go into engineering, or finance, or consulting. I have a feeling if I knew the joy of programming and being able to build a company from my house over the internet, I would have ditched college and just started my own thing. Wish I found HN back then for sure!

</comment><comment><USER7> I was in college, and I must admit it was one of the most transformational experiences of my life. A lot of fuss nowadays is about how colleges aren't worth it, but I would have to respectfully disagree, college isn't just about academia, it's also about the experiences that you share with a diverse set of people who are working towards the same goal of expanding the horizons of scientific understanding.

</comment><comment><USER8> Drove a truck delivering paint for a local paint company. Carried heavy 5 gallon buckets up stairs at construction sites. Decided to go to college, to avoid doing manual labor for the rest of my life.

Edit: added buckets

</comment><comment> non-entity Same thing I'm doing at 21. Working and hoping my life works out in a way I'm satisfied with.

</comment><comment><USER9> Undeclared major and a proof-machine operator at a bank. Lifting weights.

</comment><comment><USER10> I was playing online poker professionally during the peak of that craze.

</comment><comment><USER11> working and living in a pub on darkest Bodmin Moor

</comment><comment><USER12> I am doing 22 years old</comment>


Divide acquired by Google - <AUTHOR> http://www.divide.com/

<comment><USER2> There's no mention of the acquisition on the home page, so you should edit the submission URL to this:

[http://blog.divide.com/divide-is-joining- google-2/](http://blog.divide.com/divide-is-joining-google-2/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Maybe they're A/B testing the page, but when I go to their home page (with or without the www), most of the page is taken up with an image announcing the acquisition:

[https://d13l276seps7jd.cloudfront.net/wp- content/uploads/201...](https://d13l276seps7jd.cloudfront.net/wp- content/uploads/2014/05/divide_google.png)</comment></comment>


Achieving consensus with 99% dishonest actors - <AUTHOR> https://www.radixdlt.com/post/simple-consensus-in-radix <comment><USER2> That's a very strong claim, and I hope it is true (if there is anything I have learned from cryptography, it is that sometimes things that seem impossible are proven to be possible).

But I would like to see a much more formal mathematical paper describing the proof, at least similar in detail and rigor as say the Algorand paper. This is such a short article, in plain english, that it's pretty hard to believe the claim of achieving consensus with 99% dishonest actors..

Edit: I just noticed that the final sentence _does_ reference a white paper, which I will now read and comment upon after finishing.

<comment><USER2> OK, I read the paper, I was hoping for a repeating sequence of Theorem, Proof Motivation/Explanation, repeat... English word salad motivating the strategy or approach, but proofs for each claim.

Perhaps they have proofs, but they're not in the paper.

Now it's just impact factor jello :(

Moreover, it seemms that the initiator of a transaction chooses its own inspector, who then chooses the next. What prevents the united 99% conspiring malicious from selecting each other as inspectors, and underwriting each other?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> They've shifted the hard work to a separate system that isn't described in the article. I'll go ahead and predict that their "Mass" system is either proof of work or proof of stake.

</comment><comment><USER4> Congress has been doing this for 200+ years!

<comment><USER5> Please don't do this here.</comment></comment>


Access your files on the web and share them securely | AeroFS Blog - <AUTHOR> http://blog.aerofs.com/access-your-files-on-the-web-and-share-them-securely/ <comment><AUTHOR> I am curious about the technical details here, but I suppose they can't have zero knowledge of your files if they're able to share them via link anywhere.</comment>


Things that Saved Apollo 13 - <AUTHOR> http://www.universetoday.com/2010/04/08/13-things-that-saved-apollo-13/

<comment><USER2> As I said before, the Lunar Module [1] is awesome. It can dock. It can land two people on the moon. It can support them on the surface of the freaking Moon for longer than three days. It's a moon rock transporter and impromptu TV studio. It can freaking ascend again. And in this case the descent engine could be used for necessary course corrections [2]. Is there anything this truly marvelous piece of technology can't do? :)

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_Lunar_Module>

[2] [http://www.universetoday.com/2010/04/13/13-things-that- saved...](http://www.universetoday.com/2010/04/13/13-things-that-saved- apollo-13-part-4-using-the-lm-for-propulsion/)

</comment><comment><USER3> An interesting read, though some of the things that supposedly "saved" it seem like a stretch.

I was born in 71 and I remember when I was a kid, fascinated by space, how the Apollo program was still fresh in people's mind and wondering what would come next. It's too bad that 30+ years later I'm still waiting for something to surpass it.</comment>


How I automated my writing career - <AUTHOR> http://radar.oreilly.com/2011/11/automated-writing-software.html

<comment><USER2> Just a prediction here, so take it for what it's worth, but my hunch is that the profession of writing is going to fragment into more and more subsets in the coming years. At the low end of the totem pole -- what we'll call "low- value" writing -- will be the sorts of articles that software can eventually automate. Things like news updates, information dumps, how-to pieces, lists, summaries, and so forth. Much of what traditional journalism would call "news" stories, and what magazine journalism would call "informational" pieces, fall into this bucket. In these sorts of articles, substance is more important than style. These pieces are all about the facts, or summations of the facts. Or, in the case of content farms, they're about relaying and recombining information in endless mixes, using provocative headlines. You don't need a Pulitzer-caliber author to crank these out. Hell, pretty soon you won't even need a _human_ to crank them out. It's no surprise that this type of writing doesn't pay well, because frankly, it's the fast food of journalism. It's cheap, it's disposable to the consumer, and so it pays cheaply.

On the other hand, higher-value writing will be that which isn't easily automated, and for which style is every bit as important as substance. Fiction (good fiction, at least), features, human-interest stories, editorials (especially those relying on expertise), and so forth. This will be the kind of writing that either pays crap, or pays big, depending on the writer's skill level -- and his or her ability to build a market or following for it. There will always be a need for this kind of writing, and until such time as software AI becomes genuinely creative, it'll be very hard to automate the highest-quality, most interesting, and most innovative stuff.

Low-value writing will, if anything, see its value decline even further. It is the equivalent of the man on the assembly line who can be replaced by a tireless, hyper-efficient machine. High-value writing will not, on average, find itself paying more handsomely than it used to. It will still be a high- variance profession. But it will be what remains for professional writers in the age of content farms, automated news, social networking, and so forth.

Essentially, the way to earn a decent living in the future will be: 1) be damned good, 2) build and maintain a following, 3) differentiate yourself, and 4) produce at high volume.

<comment><USER3> Fiction, at least, has been well-studied and broken into defined components. All stories follow a predictable arc: exposition, conflict, climax, conclusion, and denouement [1]. Use well-tested plot devices to move through the story arc [2]. Define a skeleton framework of what kind of plot devices go where in the story. Have a database of scene location descriptions. Have a database of character stereotypes. Make your algorithm mix-and-match them to fill-in the story skeleton.

Seen this way, A New Hope and Raiders of the Lost Ark are kind of similar.

Plot: Rescue the princess/my father

Hero: young/grizzled adventurer

Plucky sidekick: loyal robots/Professor

Ally: Semi-sleazy smuggler

Scene: Fascist Empire spaceship/Nazi North Africa

Bad guys: Stormtroopers/Nazis

Main villain: black-clothed mystical bad Jedi/Archeologist

Heck, using this format, you could make your own OWS drama:

Plot: Rescue my bankrupt mother

Hero: idealistic hippy

Plucky sidekick: loyal golden retreiver

Ally: Semi-sleazy drug dealer

Scene: Urban city streets

Bad guys: city police

Main villain: black-suited bad finance executive

I would call it "Wall Street Raiders" or "Wall Street: A New Hope".

Yes, FWIW, I've been contemplating coding just such a story-generating engine. Like Mad Libs on steroids.

[1]<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dramatic_structure>

[2]<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plot_device>

<comment><USER4> Could this be done in reverse by software? Instead of story-generating engine, automated identification of the plot line, character profile. Basically automatically building the database you mentioned by feeding already written fiction. I think a larger business may be in building such a repository. Story generating engine will commoditize fiction creation.

<comment><USER3> I think that there are far fewer plot devices, character stereotypes, and background scenes for fiction than you expect. There are enough though to have, at least, 100s of millions of possible combinations. And those combinations are where the "creative" novelty of fiction novels arises.

For example, let us suppose that at the end of Braveheart, instead of getting disemboweled, Optimus Prime flys down out of the sky, kills the executioner, saves Mel Gibson, and lays waste to the English forces; thus allowing Mel Gibson to have his revenge and to ride off into the sunset with the English queen. Creative? Sure. Formulaic? Yes!

I think that a few Google searches would reveal lists of the majority of the different story components

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> That was a very inaccurate headline on the story.

 _Our software can create eight paragraphs now, but is it possible to create eight chapters' worth of content? The answer is "yes," but not quite the same kind of technical books I used to write, at least right now._

...which is why the previous paragraph says "[b]ecause I've been so focused on running Automated Insights, I haven't had time to write any new books recently."

That is a variant on the Calvin and Hobbes bed making robot[1]. I strongly suspect he will end up like Calvin, with something that doesn't work as planned. If he is lucky, like Calvin he will find he accomplished his goal, but discover he started with the wrong goal in mind.

[1] [http://books.google.com/books?id=NV4WEqQtvTYC&pg=PA126&#...</a>

<comment><USER6> the headline was a lede to draw you in...which it did. The reality is that he has created really interesting technology which _is_ automating content, which is really freaking cool. As far as him becoming like calvin and developing something that won't "work as planned" - seems like from the article the plan wasn't and isn't to replace himself, but rather to replace some of the lower value pieces of content. the human/machine interplay is an important part of the whole concept.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> "How I didn't do what I claimed in the title, really, but I'm going to use this title anyway because it's bound to get clicks and upvotes"

 _cynic_

</comment><comment><USER8> Slightly off topic, but when I was writing The Geek Atlas one of the things I did was keep metrics about my writing so that I knew where I was, and then I used those metrics to predict the book's delivery date to O'Reilly, and measure how I was doing against the required delivery date.

This was all done in a spreadsheet and it enabled me to see whether I was ahead or behind on my writing. Turned out to be very, very useful.

<comment><USER9> What metrics did you use?

<comment><USER8> The Geek Atlas consists of 128 similarly sized 'chapters' (one for each place) so I had a number of key metrics:

1\. Number of chapters completed. A very gross progress bar that I could use to get a rough estimate of when I would deliver.

2\. Words per chapter. I used this to determine if I was changing the length of the chapter without realizing (which did happen) and correct for that so that the book would be consistent.

3\. Hours per chapter. I used this to test my writing speed and work out more accurately when I would be done and also how many hours I could allow per chapter.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> On an unrelated note, if you highlight a portion of the article, you can listen to it. Very useful for listening to articles while working, instead of listening to music, or just to rest your eyes.

It is powered by <http://www.readspeaker.com> and AFAICT is the best sounding Text to Speech implementation, I have heard so far.

If you just listen to the text, it sounds like a human news reader, much better than Siri. Wow. And the cherry on the top is that it highlights the text which it is reading as it's being read.

</comment><comment><USER11> I tried a little automated journalism a while back and wrote a blog post about my code:

"I wrote this article with one mouse click" [http://coding.pressbin.com/60/I-wrote-this-article-with- one-...](http://coding.pressbin.com/60/I-wrote-this-article-with-one-mouse- click)

There are a whole bunch of little things that go into play with something like this that you just don't think much about until you try it -- stuff like subject/verb agreement, when to use figures and when to spell out numbers, etc.

</comment><comment><USER12> What's Googles take on this? Are they for or against automated content creation? Will they be kicking these sites out of search or letting them stay?

<comment><USER13> Regardless of whether they are for or against it, they would have a tough time detecting it in the first place. In theory, their detection algorithm would have to be at least as smart as the StatSheet Algorithm.

This also differs from most forms of automated content creation in that the underlying data is recent and newsworthy as opposed to simply reworking text found elsewhere on the internet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I loved the 3rd bullet point: "Software doesn't get bored and start wondering how to automate itself."

I'm not sure if this will ever be applied to non-data driven fields but this is still extremely cool.

</comment><comment><USER15> "A common, and funny, question I get from journalists is:* "when will you automate me out out of a job?"* I find the question humorous because built into the question is the assumption that if our software can write the perfect story on a particular topic, then no one else should attempt to write about it. _That's just not going to happen."_

It only takes one misguided and uninformed manager to fire good writers, thinking that they can be replaced with an army of computers, only to find that the product is now crap. Damage will have been done.

The example I'm thinking of? Square-Enix firing their developers and outsourcing core development to China. The Result? Crappy games. (In a humorous twist, they've since then been asking the very developers they fired to come back and work for them)

</comment><comment><USER16> It makes sense that the sports genre was chosen. With scores, winners, teams, tournaments and the like all being mentioned in pretty much every article out there, it stands to reason that it would be fairly easy to parse them all and get good data. I'd imagine tech and celebrity writing would also work well.

Political stories have such a wide range of views, this approach would produce gibberish until you sort out all the articles on a left-right scale.

<comment><USER17> > Political stories have such a wide range of views, this approach would > produce gibberish until you sort out all the articles on a left-right scale.

I'd hope we need more scales than that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> If you're writing style happens to be very repetitive and templatized, then yes, you've automated your writing career.

A more likely scenario for applying this tech to journalism would be for providing filler paragraphs around the more substantive prose banged out by an human journalist, that way the journalist doesn't have to write as much or spend time on pulling tedious raw data into the story.

</comment><comment><USER19> A friend of mine was working on an automated story telling system for Nethack as his Masters (Linguistics & CS/AI, IIRC) thesis.

It was never really completed, but there was some interesting work in applying goal-based planning AI in reverse to generate possible long-term motivations for individual actions.

I don't think it's available online though, sadly.

</comment><comment><USER20> Funny how articles about computer-generated prose are never computer- generated.

</comment><comment><USER21> Would like to see an example of this - even if it's not all that impressive - applied to some non-data intensive area, i.e. someplace other than reporting (sports, finance, etc).

<comment><USER22> An INSEAD professor built an automated system to do something similar, though the quality of the output leaves something to be desired: [http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/14/business/media/14link.html...](http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/14/business/media/14link.html?_r=2&pagewanted=all)

<comment><USER23> If you're interested in this guy - Phillip M. Parker - check out his list on Amazon ([http://www.amazon.com/gp/search/ref=sr_nr_i_0?rh=k%3APhilip+...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/search/ref=sr_nr_i_0?rh=k%3APhilip+M.+Parker%2Ci%3Astripbooks&keywords=Philip+M.+Parker&ie=UTF8&qid=1320365116#/ref=sr_st?keywords=Philip+M.+Parker&qid=1320365151&rh=k%3APhilip+M.+Parker%2Cn%3A283155&sort=inversepricerank)), currently standing at 111k+ "books" published.

From a skim of his titles, it seems like there are different series of his books - from the "The Official Patient's Sourcebook on $disease" series ($28.95) to the "The 2007-2012 World Outlook for $niche-industrial-product" ($795.00) series.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I stand unimpressed. I am still waiting for "How I automated my reading hacker news"...

<comment><USER17> Just like you use a VCR to watch your favourite TV shows for you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> This is one example he gives of his automated writing: "Second-seeded North Carolina was defeated in the Elite Eight with a 76-69 loss to fourth-seeded Kentucky in the Regional Finals in Newark."

That's perfectly serviceable. But it makes me wonder...what is the point of this? Not his automated-writing tool, but why are we putting what was meant for a statistical/symbolic graphic into sentence form?

This kind of writing is only possible with the collection of discrete datapoints: the date, the score, the participants, and the location. From there, you can do any kind of variation of subject-verb etc., even adding adjectives if the point spread is high.

So we're taking data and turning it into a less efficiently readable form. It's no fault of the auto-writer of course, that's just how we are taught to read and write. Someday, we move towards a society in which other forms of communication, particularly visual, are as commonplace. [insert your own Tufte-inspired rant here)

<comment><USER26> _why are we putting what was meant for a statistical/symbolic graphic into sentence form?_

Because many people (and other important constituents, like Googlebot) cannot read graphs and so perceive a graph as having zero value but a paragraph telling 1/10th the story of the graph as having positive value.

This is hardly the only "inferior form factor dominates because of ease of consumption" thing out there. For example, rather than look at an unemployment graph or read a paragraph beginning with "Government figures released earlier today say that unemployment is the highest it has been since 2004", most of the world prefers someone whose professional competence is looking pretty to read "Unemployment is up" to them for approximately 4 seconds before cutting to commercial.</comment></comment>