A Plea for the Horizontally Organized (1995) - <AUTHOR> http://www-csli.stanford.edu/~jperry//plea.html

<comment><USER2> Horizontal. But I don't like the terminology; this has much more to do with how well your memory works than with anything spatial. I'm "horizontal" because, like Perry, I find that if I put something where I can't see it then I tend to forget about it and my memory fails to prompt me about it. "Vertical" surely means some combination of having (1) an effective "prompting" memory and (2) some separate system that compensates for any shortfall in #1.

</comment><comment><USER3> Definitely horizontal. I have a basic algorithm for garbage collection though:

When there is no more room for new stuff to be laid out (i.e., it would introduce structural unsoundness into the heaving mass that covers my desk), I sift through and make two piles: things I recognise, and things I don't.

The "things I don't recognise" are usually papers I printed and have never read (having long since abandoned whatever the project is that I printed it for), brochures and leaflets I'm handed as I walk across campus (which I deposit on my desk as soon as I reach my office), and things which are so out of date as to be irrelevant (e.g. a library notice for a book I returned months ago). All of this stuff goes into the recycling bin. The stuff I might considering looking at again forms a pile and gets pushed to one of the back corners of the desk.

Naturally, I dismantle the "keep" pile occasionally while looking for something, which redistributes things onto the desk so that they get re- considered during the next garbage collection run, so I find the pile is usually remains reasonably "fresh".

Stating it this way makes it sound like I've put a lot of thought into this, but I really haven't. It's just a natural way of working for me. My desk looks messy and disorganised, but I rarely have trouble finding things - it's either spread out on my desk, in the pile, or gone forever.

</comment><comment><USER4> The obstacle with vertical organisation is that you need to optimise things for lookup, and this is a learnt skill. One of the neat things about vertical organisation is that you can keep your head more free. I used to have a tasklist that would grow and grow. Recently I've moved to having projects I'm committed to and a project plan for each. I can easily now vet whether I should accept or pass off a new incoming task. It also allows me to dump stuff from my mind that relates to projects other than the one I'm working on at the moment. This doesn't work for all modes of work.

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm more of a supine organizer, myself.

Incidentally, I followed a link to Perry's other essays, which led me here:

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

to which I'm compelled to respond, _Yes, yes, a thousand times yes!_

</comment><comment><USER6> Horizontal to an embarrassing degree, I plan on hooking up a very large number of monitors to sort of 'work around' the problem of limiated screen space where the same issues seem to appear that I have on my desk.

Retrieving anything on my desk is an exercise in archeology, this sometimes has very bad effects (electricity bills going unpaid, stuff like that).

It's weird, because on my harddrive things are about as organized as you could possibly get.

Somehow 'surfaces' seem to bring out the worst in me and things start piling up.

<comment><USER7> _I plan on hooking up a very large number of monitors to sort of 'work around' the problem of limiated screen space [...]_

I find that virtual desktops work for this, though the interface matters a lot; if there's an actual miniature representation of the virtual desktops, that helps much more than having a list of them, and it took me a while to get used to Spaces (on OS X) because it doesn't have a good miniature representation, where the virtual desktop program I was using in Panther and Tiger did.

<comment><USER6> I hate that switching around effect that changes the whole screen layout just to get a look at some other screen for half a second, it is almost painful that _flash_ of all those windows being replaced.

I like stuff to have it's place and to not move unless I tell it to. I found out just how much I like that when on a lark I tried playing around with xdmx and got it to include the 'guest' machine here and a mac. It was quite amazing. No more switching desktops all the time it just became more quiet.

<comment><USER7> "it is almost painful that flash of all those windows being replaced."

I agree that it would be, except that the transitions are pretty smooth with the system I'm using, so there's no flash/blink effect. I haven't used xdmx.

<comment><USER6> What window manager do you use on what os ?

I've played around with a tiling window manager for a few weeks and I liked it but too many applications didn't like it so now I'm back to kde.

<comment><USER7> Right now I use Aqua and Spaces on OS X Leopard. There's an application called "Desktop Manager" that looked and worked more like I wanted, but the developer gave up on it after Spaces was integrated into Leopard, and Spaces is not unusably bad, just not as good.

This video shows how it works: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7MHup6kXbU>

I'm sure there's some VM program that works like this in the X.org world, though.

<comment><USER6> thank you!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I cannot for the life of me understand what this person is talking about. I've read it twice now.

Isn't this less about being 'horizontal' or 'vertical', and more about the fact that we display information on flat areas, and about different disciplines relating to segregation of 'in-progress', 'pending', and 'archived' material?

If I have five pieces of paper relating to a task that needs to be done, but which I'm not working on _right at this moment_ , I'll stack them up simply because that leaves more space for the task I _am_ working on right at this moment. Now, that stack may be 'horizontal' on the desk, or it may be 'vertical' in a filing cabinet. But it's simply a space-saving measure.

His main problem seems to be that when he files pending stuff away, he forgets to look at it again. But this isn't about vertical versus horizontal thinking -- it's just about bad document management. If you just have a monolithic filing cabinet that contains both ancient archived documents, and material relating to pending tasks, then yes, you're going to get confused and forget about things. If, on the other hand, you have one file as an archive, and one file that you know is for pending material (or an in-tray; or just a special pile on your desk), then you'll remember to check it.

<comment><USER7> _I'll stack them up simply because that leaves more space for the task I am working on right at this moment._

My guess is that the author of this wouldn't do that, unless the five pieces are all related to the same task. Instead, he'd stop working on the previous task, optionally move those papers to a free spot on his desk (but maybe still spread out as though he were working on it), and put the new papers on top of whatever's left in front of him, and work on them there. One organizational system I've seen that works well with this is the "sheet" system, where you periodically spread a sheet over your desk, first saving out anything you expect to need very quickly, and then after you haven't gone under the sheet for anything in some time, archive everything under the sheet. The "sheet" might actually be one of those plastic desk covers you can buy in an office store.

I do this on my computer, leaving dozen of windows and tabs open until I get back to them, rather than closing them and writing notes on what I need to do. It's easier to resume a task that remains in progress than to start up a task that was stopped, so we arrange to have any interrupted task continue to seem "in progress", even if we haven't worked on it for a while.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I hoped it would be a poll on whether your startups deal with horizontal or vertical markets - something I'm thinking about right now.

<comment><USER10> Good idea. Start one.

<comment><USER9> Um... could you do it? I feel I'm over my quota of "Ask HN" for today.

<comment><USER10> Done.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=800189>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Being left-handed, the foldup desktop weren't really a problem. I would take up two seats, the one I was sitting in and the one I needed to write on.

</comment><comment><USER12> Definitely horizontal. Sometimes I feel like the only one who can't use the fruit and vegetable bins in the fridge because I immediately forget about anything I've put in there, and it rots.

However, like other commenters, I wonder if it's less an issue of horizontal versus vertical, and more a matter of "out of sight, out of mind". If I can't physically see something, I have a very hard time remembering it's there. Thus, storage systems like drawers, filing cabinets, and to some extent cupboards are pretty ineffective for me. Shelves and table tops are much better, and see-through closed storage devices are somewhere in between.

</comment><comment><USER13> I'm vertical (seems like the only commenter who is, at the moment). I like to keep my desk spare; a cluttered desk tends to clutter my thoughts.

But, in general, I despise any paper to keep track of anything.

My desk consists of laptop, 30" monitor, and a moleskine. I keep notes in Evernote, keep track of lists in Google tasks, and in general, try to digitize everything.

In a digital world, it's less relevant if you're vertical or horizontal. I keep all my thoughts a click away, which does away with the "out of sight out of mind" syndrome.

</comment><comment><USER10> Horizontal. And I never even realized it until just now.

But I don't have OP's problem. Why? 2 words: wall space.

 _Everything_ is mounted on the wall somewhere. I'm a nut for those flipchart pads from Office Depot with the sticky strip on the top. I also have one wall completely covered with brown packing paper. I use lots of scotch tape and push pins. I rarely forget about anything; after all, it's all right in front of me all the time.

Artwork and window treatments, while astetically pleasing, are a total functional waste of valuable and limited wall space. I'd rather look at specs, notes, flow charts, and yes even source code mounted on my walls.

<comment><USER14> That's awesome. I might reorganize my work space so that I can take better advantage of wall space.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I am definitely horizontal. Though I wouldn't say I'd forget a project if I put it in a filing cabinet (unless I had a bunch of projects and didn't have reminders written down somewhere). I just don't see a point to going through the work of filing something that I'm going to come back to eventually.

To me, file cabinets are for important documents you need to keep around and reference very infrequently (tax documents, birth certificate...etc) and not for things you'll be looking at multiple times during the week.

</comment><comment><USER16> how many horizontal people are programmers? i am both. being horizontal, to me, is less about thinking differently and more about being a lazy efficient programmer. i get by with what i can get by on and i focus as exclusively as possible on the real meat of the project, which in this case is life.

i always viewed finishing what i work on and putting things away as things to strive for. i've noticed improvements over the years. i've never felt like i thought differently and 'oh others don't understand.'

thinking that 'vertical' people are magically able to put work into filing cabinets rather than layer half-finished projects on their desk is like thinking that i was magically born knowing biology and history. i did well in school because i worked hard. i was encouraged along that path because i had a good memory and enjoyed reading and reasoning. maybe those same things are helping me slide on the horizontal track, whereas vertical folks quickly have oh shit moments where bills don't get paid and freak out.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Poll created at <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=800047>

</comment><comment><USER17> I have a couple of manila folders of stuff I'm working on (5-10 sheets in each). These sit on the floor next to my desk. My desk top is clear (apart from pc, speakers, kb, phone etc).

</comment><comment><USER18> Horizontal!

Holy crap. I never realized it either, but this would explain how I never seem to mesh well with the vertical systems most administrators use.

</comment><comment><USER19> Horizontal. I think of my stack as a priority queue. If nothing ever makes a note important again, it sinks to the bottom.

</comment><comment><USER20> Horizontal; thank God I'm an artist --- I can fill the studio with incomplete work and no one bats an eye.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Horizontal. Definitely horizontal, but trying to be more vertical.

</comment><comment><USER21> I'm not sure. I'm quick to toss stuff out.</comment>


'Virus-eater' discovered in Antarctic lake - <AUTHOR> http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110328/full/news.2011.188.html <comment><USER2> Woah.

I know it's far too early to really speculate, but speculate I shall: would there be any inherent benefit in potentially using virophages instead of macrophages for treatment of viral infection? Macrophages haven't caught on in the west because they're quite cumbersome to produce and use, and obviously pharma companies have no interest in advancing macrophage treatments.

<comment><USER3>
      > and obviously pharma companies have no interest in
      > advancing macrophage treatments.

At the risk of seeming thick, why is that exactly?

<comment><USER4> Some speculate that drug companies don't bother working on cures because it's far more profitable to sell perpetual treatments.

<comment><USER5> Would anybody be interested in one-time multibillion dollars profit-making opportunities?

What prevent such formation of profit-making opportunities?

<comment><USER6> There is an insane amount of money in drugs. Some of this money can be used to erect barriers to entry against such profit seekers. I don't know that that's the case, but it could be speculated at least.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Really you'd call it the opposite of eating, if anything, right? Viruses inject DNA into their victim, and the victim explodes with clones.

<comment><USER8> Yes, but I think its a tad bit more meta. At the risk of sounding like a total idiot, I'd conjecture that the virophage injects DNA into its victim, a virus. Which in turn injects its DNA into its victim, a cell. The cell explodes with clones of the virophage instead of the target virus, which go on to infect more viruses. Thus systematically reducing the number of viruses with each iteration by cutting into their only replication mechanism.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This i would say lends loads of support to the "RNA world" hypothesis (that says RNA replication is the basic mechanism of life and DNA is just like storage of sorts, like RNA=RAM, DNA=HD)...

</comment><comment><USER10> I feel like I should be surprised, but it seems everything eats something and is eaten by something else.

</comment><comment><USER11> So, where exactly is "eastern Antarctica"? The Australian sector?

<comment><USER12> Eastern Antarctica is everything from 0° 0′ 0" E to 180° 0′ 0" E. If you take a look at the map of Antarctica on Wikipedia[1], it will be everything to the right of the centre line. So, yes, the Australian Antarctic Territory is the major part of Eastern Antarctica, but it's not the only one.

[http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2c/Location_...](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2c/Location_Antarctica.svg)</comment></comment>


California bans ITT tech from accepting new students - <AUTHOR> http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-itt-tech-aid-20160826-snap-story.html?utm_source=fark&utm_medium=website&utm_content=link&ICID=ref_fark <comment><USER2> I agree with a lot of the complaints I've heard about ITT. They seem to broadly fall into three camps:

1) They are expensive and rely on their students getting gov't loans,

2) They don't adequately prepare students for the work place, and

3) The teachers aren't very good.

I think those are all great reasons to not go to ITT. But, I think those reasons could also apply to a whole lot of other schools, profit, non-profit, private, and public.

Certainly, I think #1 applies to a whole lot of schools and student #2 applies to any school that has majors with poor job prospects. And I think nearly every college student has experienced #3 with at least some of their professors -- sometimes because they dont know the material well and other times because they are completely uninterested in the teaching aspect of their job.

<comment><USER3> Yes, these are problems that are present for some other schools, but ITT Tech is far worse. For-profit schools aren't even in the same ballpark as other types of schools, in terms of the default rate.

These are businesses where the "admissions counselors" are salespeople who are told to lie to people and strongarm them into attending, taking out massive government loans and effectively stealing money from the federal government when they inevitably default.

"In 2011, 22% of student loan borrowers from ITT Tech defaulted on their federal student loans. In contrast, the average default rate for 4-year public institutions was 8.9%. For private student loan borrowers, ITT's projected default rate is a whopping 64%. This is primarily because of the high tuition, low graduation rates, and low job placement."

([http://higherednotdebt.org/blog/time-itt-tech- go](http://higherednotdebt.org/blog/time-itt-tech-go))

<comment><USER4> why not allow them to operate instead of force them out--make them pay for all defaulted loans above 8% -- that might make them work harder to get their students gainfully employed so they can cover their loans. -- not that I like ITT, I abhor them, and think that Bootcamps are WAY better in terms of quality education and quality of job prospects.

<comment><USER5> Yes this.

The problem here is with the government instead of ITT in my opinion. If you are lending money to someone who is taking significantly more risk it is your fault if the person fails to pay it back and not of the consumer or the business selling the service.

In fact it makes sense for the government to do better credit risk analysis for every college-course-student instead of providing loans for any student, college course. The private banking industry already has this system and it makes sense for government to just leverage that.

<comment><USER6> Well, that's exactly what the Federal government did. "If you want a student loan, you can't enroll in ITT, as it's too high risk".

<comment><USER7> That's what the government of the state of California did, not the Federal government.

<comment><USER8> The federal government banned new students with federal financial aid from enrolling in any ITT program or campus.

Then, the California state government banned _all_ new student enrollment at ITT campuses in California.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> One of the things that's very interesting to me is how information asymmetry helps drive people to these kinds of companies. I don't know everybody's story, but when I was just out of high school, there was no chance (I believed at the time) that I'd be able to go to a traditional school. I had bad grades, my family was poor and nobody in my family had gone to university except for my father, who had quickly abandoned his post-University career for more blue collar work.

Wanting to try to make over minimum wage, I went to an ITT-like trade school to talk with an "admissions counselor" seeing if they would accept me (of course they would, for a price). I took a fairly simple "placement exam" (which of course I passed). I told the counselor I didn't have any money (no problem!) I was then shown a variety of ultra high-interest loan options which would guarantee I could get through the "program" (just sign here!). I remember getting odd, cagey, answers about the accreditation of the trade school, and couldn't imagine how I'd pay back a loan that large if I took it on.

I had the presence of mind to "let me think about it" instead of giving in to the hard pressure sale the guidance counselor was offering, went on to work my crappy jobs for a couple more years before accidentally running into an old friend who grew up in a similar situation as me and ended up going the community college route.

It was "real" college (for some value of "real" and "college"), was a tiny fraction of the cost of the trade school, and graduation guaranteed placement in a state school of my choice. _That_ sounded too good to be true, at least the trade school had some kind of real cost associated with it. But I went and checked it out, it was all true. A.S.->B.S.->M.S. and now I have a career, no student debt and choice of great high-paying jobs.

Later, while I was attending community college, a coworker was going to that same trade school, hemorrhaging money and then one monday came in and told a story where they had gone out of business, didn't tell anybody, and just padlocked the doors over the weekend.

Of course he still owed all the money for his loans.

<comment><USER10> Community colleges are a hidden treasure in the United States. Many of them have very good professors, are cheap and have the benefit of having transfer programs into a big name university for the last 2 years of your 4 year degree.

I'm not sure why schools like ITT or Phoenix even exist or how they attract "customers/students".

This may sound arrogant, but for me, an ITT or Phoenix degree is worth less than the piece of paper it's on. I would actually pay money to have my name never associated with them on a resume or otherwise. Buying a fake diploma in a subway might be a better investment.

Having a school like that on your resume is pretty much the best way to signal to potential employers to never hire you for the kinds of jobs that will let you move up the financial and social ladder.

<comment><USER11> It's not arrogant at all, as being able to do some basic research is a big part of any IT field you get into. If you can't be arsed to google for the reputation and qualifications of a "degree" from a for-profit "school" you're investing thousands of dollars in, what does that say about the potentially critical type of purchasing and general infrastructure decisions you'll be making on the job?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Reading the comments here has been really eye opening to me.

I always knew that tuition was orders-of-magnitude more expensive across the Atlantic but now it's a bit clearer why.

Here (Northern Ireland, but it applies to the UK as a whole), students don't start to repay their loans until their earnings are over a certain threshold, then repayments are proportional to how much they earn over that level. If their annual earnings ever fall below it again, payments stop until they're back on their feet.

I can't remember exactly what my interest rate was but I know it was fixed BELOW the central bank rate at the time.

Standard financial advice here is to max the loan out even if you weren't in need of it and just put it in a savings account for the interest (probably not worth it these days).

Lastly, if the loans aren't fully repaid by retirement age, they're written off.

So yeah, you folks are really getting screwed over there.

<comment><USER13> New Zealand use to have free education. Then it became interest free ... unless you left the country. They bleed a lot of talent out to Australia, so if you move for more than 6 months they start charging you interest.

It turned from being a good socialist system that helped everyone to being a forced means of talent retention.

In the same way, American student loans are really aimed at keeping people trapped in industry they might grow to hate. Everyone has to pay the mortgage and all that.

<comment><USER14> I think "forced means of talent retention" is an unfairly harsh characterisation. It's a pretty reasonable policy considering taxpayers have to service the debt, and people who go overseas stop paying tax. It's all very well to propose a "good socialist system" but if people pay domestic fees and then leave NZ they're essentially getting a free ride and it's the people who don't go to uni who end up paying for it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Are there any good ITT / University of Phoenix type schools? They all seem like scams.

I don't count community colleges here, I know those can be very good. My wife went to one, got great education, was able to pay it by just budgeting money every month out of her part time work. Then switched to a 4 years univeristy, transfered credits and graduated with honors after 2 more years (with minimal loans).

Would it be hard for any of these for-profit school to also do a good job?

<comment><USER16> The quality of education varies between institutions. I graduated from DeVry a little over 10 years ago. I got a decent education (ABET accredited B.S. Computer Engineering Technology) and was able to put myself through school and get a good job. I could have done it a little cheaper in a state school and a lot cheaper with a community college, but for what it was I don't really have any regrets.

My only critique is that they accept ANYONE. This leads to a large number of dropouts. You have people that haven't been able to grasp basic algebra and they bust their butts learning basic math and then hit Cal I, Cal II, Signal Processing, etc and they just can't hack it. By the time they flunk out they've wracked up tens of thousands in student loan debt.

We lost something like 60-80% of the students we started with in the first 2 years.

That seems immoral on the face of it to take advantage of those people, but at the same time this happens (albeit to a much lesser degree) in all schools, and I was grateful for the opportunity DeVry extended to me as a student with terrible grades in highschool.

<comment><USER17> One attorney I know pursued several claims against scam schools a few years ago.

Of the schools he had investigated, he said DeVry was unusual because it was trying to operate like a real educational institution.

Federal loan money has distorted for-profit and non-profit institutions. But it's depressingly uncommon to find for-profit trade "schools" that actually care about educating students.

<comment><USER15> Interesting. Other comments imply that too. It would seem like actually trying to teach students something might be good for long term survival. Being around longer means make more profits for investors, go figure...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> At my last company we had a slew of ITT graduates apply for a role one time. I talked to probably 10 or so of them. They seemed to have received little to no educational value from their time at ITT. I assume they were all promised great jobs, but all of them were not remotely qualified to get even a basic entry level technical role. I felt terrible for them paying money for the "education" that they received.

<comment><USER19> I'd be interested to hear what you would expect as bare minimums for a "basic entry level technical role." I've heard of recruiters being dumbfounded at CS grads not being able to code FizzBuzz and to be honest I can't believe it.

<comment><USER20> Let me flip that around and offer that I've had "technical" recruiters fail their end of this transaction as well.

One experience involved a recruiter who wanted a compete rewrite of a CV portion outlining a SQL project from planning to continuous implementation models I built.

This on top of 8 years of other experience in data design and management.

The recruiter wanted to pass on my resume because I had failed to indicate my experience with flat CSV files and thought I needed more experience with them as a "highly specialized software stack".

I decided not to pursue that company further, maybe it was ego getting in the way but insisting I rewrite a technical resume covering 10 years of database experience over the omission of operating with flat files seemed like refusing to hire a qualified electrical engineer because he didn't list AA Batteries on his resume.

<comment><USER21> > refusing to hire a qualified electrical engineer because he didn't list AA > Batteries on his resume

LOL! It won't be long before the majority of EEs under 25 won't even know what an AA battery is. In fact, I bet it would be pretty hard today to find someone in their 20s who knows what a 9-volt is.

<comment><USER22> Let alone experience licking one.

<comment><USER23> Haha! I'm 28, and my dad and I bonded over, among other things, licking a 9-volt battery.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> What about coding bootcamps? Aren't they worse? They try to make you a "coder" in a couple of months and promise people jobs if they finish the course. It sounds eerily the same thing as ITT...

<comment><USER3> Depends a lot on the bootcamp, and how motivated the person participant is. Some of my coworkers are bootcamp graduates and all are fantastic.

I met someone when I was at college who went to ITT and said that he paid $30k and learned nothing from unqualified instructors, he felt (and clearly was) scammed.

<comment><USER25> I mean, that was also my experience with my degree from a major university.

I told them I wanted to be a computer programmer, they said "Oh, you want a Computer Science major, then." I didn't realize until after graduating that I'd learned about electrical engineering and processor architecture and compiler design and lots and lots of math, but almost no actual, y'know, computer programming. Pretty much had to start from scratch to make an actual career.

<comment><USER26> But...if you learn all that stuff, isn't programming pretty easy? It's just specific abstractions on top of the fundamentals you already know... (I don't mean to be dismissive, I'm honestly mystified by your perspective here.)

<comment><USER27> I talked to a number of seniors majoring in computer science at a decent college not long ago - none of them knew what software version control was.

While, or right after, taking these theoretical courses in Java or graphics or whatnot, I would launch a project in that area to ground all that theory in something I could then manifest. I don't think this occurred to many of them, but to be fair, they are young and have been in school all their lives, and I went to class with a lot of (mostly non-programming) experience in the IT business already under my belt.

<comment><USER28> > none of them knew what software version control was.

I was pretty intimately familiar with CVS by the time I graduated (very late in the 90s). But now that I think about it, it was probably introduced in an "Intro to C and Unix" which was a 1-credit class one of the faculty forced as a pre-req for certain higher-level courses like those on compilers. It was a crash-course on C (for students who had mainly used Pascal in their first year or two), Unix philosophy, and some associated tools (make, cvs, vi/emacs).

It only met the first third of the semester, so it could be taken concurrently with the class the required it. I wonder if other schools do something similar. It worked quite well, since by the the time you got up to speed, it was time to start building lexers in the compilers course.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I think this is a fantastic step in the right direction, but what is the legal justification here? ITT is in no way alone in being evil and predatory, so I'm surprised I keep hearing about crackdowns for them but not for anyone else. I'd love to see some new rules to keep _all_ of these predatory places from operating instead of what kinda seems like a picking out a scapegoat. (Or is all this recent news more general and everyone just mentions ITT?)

<comment><USER30> California would probably _like_ to ban all of the for-profits, but can't. ITT, however, stepped so far beyond the pale that it gave regulators an opportunity to punish them.

California is basing its move on a US Department of Education decision, which itself was based on a history of previous litigation, which _started_ because of concerns over ITT's accreditation. Basically: no accreditation, no loans, which given ITT's business model would basically put them out of business. And if a school's accreditation is threatened in some way, the Fed can step in and require the school to post a bond, so that the USG isn't left footing the bill (students are already protected by law).

This, from what I can tell, is what happened to ITT: their accreditation was looking sketchy, so the Feds started to get concerned, and required them to post progressively larger bonds to protect the government against a closure, and also cut off new Federally-funded students from starting. This may or may not be enough to kill them as a company. CA is using this concern over future viability, combined with what appear to be some pretty strong consumer- protection laws, to prevent them from registering new students _at all_ in CA. (I'm somewhat surprised they can do this, if you were just going to pay cash- on-the-barrel-head and not get anyone else's money involved, but they must have some particularly stringent laws about higher ed in CA. Probably not a bad idea all in all.)

It's been speculated that what the US DOE is doing is a rare example of the administrative "corporate death penalty" in action; that the moves are designed not just for the immediate regulatory ends, but actually to kill ITT. _Pour encourager les autres_ , as the saying goes. Of course they can't come right out and _say_ that, but it would fit with some of the evidence.

And personally, I'm ready to throw some rotten vegetables as they're climbing the scaffold to the noose.

<comment><USER31> To keep with the analogy, do you think the _Robespierre_ will arrive to usher out the age of neofuedalism?

<comment><USER32> Minor nit: It was an English admiral that was killed to encourage the others.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Minorca_(1756)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Minorca_\(1756\))

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Does anyone have references to more specific accusations against ITT? There are lots of vague claims in the article, but the only semi-specific ones -- misleading students about program quality and pushing them into irresponsible loans -- could just as easily be laid at the feet of public and private nonprofit colleges.

I have no particular reason to trust or distrust ITT. But it strikes me as a trade school that presents itself as a college, and that seems like one viable approach to our credentialism issues, so I want to know if it's being attacked for legitimate or political reasons.

<comment><USER29> The gist is that they let anyone in (and advertise heavily to try to let _everyone_ in), regardless of their ability. They also charge exorbitant amounts that students can only pay because of their government loans. That might sound a little like the general complaints about college, except that they don't really offer anything in the way of actual education, and the costs are really high, even for U.S. colleges.

So what ends up happening is the government pays the school and the students lucky enough to graduate end up with massive debt, no useful skills, and a degree that actually counts against them on the job market as employers think, "They were dumb enough to fall for that scam?" Other students who leave part way through are often surprised to learn that none of their credits are transferable to a real college because other schools know how bad these are.

<comment><USER34> Do they really provide nothing resembling education? I once had a friend of a friend ask me for some CSS help for some assignment, later I found out it was for some University of Phoenix course. Ideally the instructor would have taught the principles of CSS so that my assistance wasn't needed, but instructors not teaching the fundamentals and letting students figure it out somehow (or muddling through without ever learning) is par for the course at most colleges. Presumably these schools have lectures, assignments, projects? What explains the gap seen by companies on the other side apart from letting students graduate without actually having learned anything? And does this really only apply to these sorts of private schools?

<comment><USER35> Class quality varies greatly by program but they are notorious for recruiting people who can barely read or will pass since the real goal is aquiring their hefty federal student loan allowance.

So either classes are dumbed down so they can eventually graduate or fail many leaving them with a gigantic loan amount(most schools try to max this out) and no education cert.

Also, they tend to pay fairly low for teacher faculty while having little prestige or oversight: quality is unlikely in this environment.

However they have top notch recruiting and sale teams.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Not a bad thing, but I feel like many public institutions at the bottom end of the scale aren't much better, just a little cheaper. There is a whole rung of public 4-year universities where the modal outcome is working a job that doesn't require the degree you paid a lot of money for.

</comment><comment><USER37> Btw to avoid confusion I've seen happen when a new guy shows up in the workplace: ITT != IIT

ITT = ~University of Phoenix, everyone gets in

IIT = Elite programs in a variety of sciences, almost no one gets in

<comment><USER38> To clarify, IIT is the Indian Institute of Technology, a series of schools that are basically India's MIT as I've had it described to me by people that went there. I had some graduate friends from there while I was in undergrad and they were very bright.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> "Last year, it enrolled 45,000 students and reported $850 million in revenue". That's about $19k/year/student. Just to put that in perspective, a 10 day Cisco Network Engineering course from Unitek in the Bay area (last time I took one, great school, at least in network engineering) costs $8,200. The issue isn't the cost, honestly, $19k/year isn't that expensive, the issue is whether they are delivering value for money.

<comment><USER35> Those courses are paid by your company as training or to accqure some cert to obtain a contract.....its not priced accurately nor intended for guys on the street.

<comment><USER39> Not sure what you mean when you say, "Not priced accurately" \- I looked around, and pretty much all the schools charge around the same price, if you want to be sitting in a lab with other students for 10 hours a day for 10 days with a best-of-class instructor. Lots of room for competition if someone thinks they can do it more cheaply, but the instructors are very expensive (they are the best in the business - and if you aren't happy with them, you walk out and demand a full refund at that kind of price). We definitely had students in the room who had paid out of their own pocket for the course. I've taken these courses both through work, and independently, paying myself.

I would much rather give someone $8500 and 10 days later come out with some highly relevant, actionable knowledge then spend a year (or two!) of my time getting some "credential" \- there is a pretty big opportunity cost to my time.

<comment><USER39> Also - put another way, not even including the cost of facilities, and equipment - I'm paying $8500 for 100 hours of instructor time. $85/hr (admittedly shared with a small group of other students) of a world class education, where every single second is optimized.

Seems reasonable to me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Are they preying on desperate students, or people who are considered "unfavorable" to learning otherwise?

I know a few people who considered ITT. They all have one thing alike: they're not the smartest or most driven of people by any means. (that's two, sorry)

I'm curious... What are their student's standardized test scores, as well as high school records? I'm sure there's a pattern there that can describe some their default rates.

<comment><USER41> Companies like ITT specifically target military service members because they are:

1) In their twenties and looking to start a career outside the military.

2) Eligible for a variety of loans, grants, and other financial services unavailable to the general public.

3) If they are still in the military, they will have much lower default rates as the military takes debt very seriously (as a representation of character really).

(IMO) none of these qualities are unfavorable to traditional institutions. Companies like ITT are 100% vultures.

source: many friends in the military

<comment><USER42> All true. The Post-9/11 GI Bill was a large driver of this - if you've done your time, it's basically free schooling and all you have to do is sign up. The govt sends the tuition money directly to the school, you just have to recertify with the VA every semester. (In the old GI Bill you got the money first, and the rates were different)

(source: prior military, used Post-9/11 GI Bill to get my master's)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> As someone who graduated from an Ivy Leage school, and boarding school before that, all on full financial aid with _zero_ loans, I count myself incredibly lucky. I also see the student loan system as incredibly fucked up.

The worst aspect of it to me is that the most predatory loans go to the lowest qualified students, who are the ones who get the lower paying jobs. Top universities are the only ones with loan-free, need-blind financial aid programs. Yet they're the ones with students who would be most qualified to pay any loans back. Meanwhile lower tier universities charge tuitions almost as large as the top tier ones, yet send students to $40k/yr jobs.

The students who need the money most don't get it.

<comment><USER35> Actually these students qualify for a large amount of federal student loans due to poverty.

Private student loan vendors are would never lend to these for-profit students with out collateral or a well off co-signer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Why _can 't_ there be such thing as a good for-profit school? We buy the highest quality smartphones from Apple and Samsung after all - I don't see a lot of non-profit phones or government phones.

<comment><USER8> Phones tend to be a repeated purchase that people are quickly able to assess costs and benefits of and optimize. It thus more closely approximates the rational choice model under which free markets are efficient.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> One aspect of ITT and its ilk is that the students often only sign up so they can take out "education" loans for living expenses, with the class work as a very secondary concern.

<comment><USER46> You're gonna need to provide a citation for such a serious claim.

<comment><USER45> It's hardly a secret that student loans, intentionally, cover living expenses, and that enrolment rises when the economy sucks. Students aren't embezzling the money; living expenses are bundled with the (crappy) package.

[http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB100014240527023045850045794150...](http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702304585004579415022664472930)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> I don't like our current educational system and really hate for-profit schools like ITT, so I'm kind of happy to see them fail.

Unless you really add value to the learning process, it is ugly to charge someone to teach them something they can easily learn on their own and most of the time ruin their curiosity!

In the future more people will learn on their own and just take a free test to get a certificate! Oh and books will be free (or very cheap) with government subsidies.

</comment><comment><USER48> Does anyone know which other national institutions something like this may affect?

<comment><USER49> Virtually all of them. Their main interest is the Federal student loan program. Vets are a special target.

> The emergency order, which takes effect Sept. 1, comes one day after the > U.S. Department of Education banned ITT from enrolling new students who use > federal financial aid.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> Maybe they should have done what Laureate did.

[http://money.cnn.com/2016/08/23/news/clinton-laureate- univer...](http://money.cnn.com/2016/08/23/news/clinton-laureate- university/index.html)

</comment><comment><USER51> This caption pretty much captures what is wrong with ITT tech.

"Jorge Villalba, shown in 2015 in front of the ITT Technical Institute in Encinco, left the school owing about $150,000 in student loans."

How the heck does someone end up owing $150K for a basic education?

</comment><comment><USER52> I went to ITT Tech and had mixed experiences in different classes. All in all it would have been cheaper and much better for me to have attended the state university and gotten a BS rather than the two years at ITT for an associates degree.

In terms of the classes, I had some taught by really great instructors, local professionals who were great about teaching skills that companies would actually care about. I also had some totally worthless instructors. In one instance I ended up standing up in front of the class and teaching everyone - instructor included - what polymorphism is.

</comment><comment><USER53> For those interested you can find reactions from students, teachers, trolls, and the peanut gallery here:

[https://www.thelayoff.com/itt-educational- services](https://www.thelayoff.com/itt-educational-services)

On the front page of the website you'll notice that Education Management Corp, University of Phoenix, Corinthian, Zenith Education, etc. are receiving an increased amount of attention.

</comment><comment><USER54> This is just the tip of the iceberg with problems in education, though. Let's not act like higher education in the US is exemplary.

</comment><comment><USER55> ITT seems like an easy first place to go because of their shady rep, but I think the risk here is that well entrenched interests in will ultimately give bootcamps and other online training courses the same treatment if they start eating into the educational establishment's pie too much. We have to be careful of a slippery slope.

<comment><USER35> Too late, some of the bigger chains have been bought out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> Just "ordered to engrossing and enrolling": [http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billStatusClient.xht...](http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billStatusClient.xhtml?bill_id=201520160SB1192)

<comment><USER57> An "enrolled" bill is one that has been passed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> I hope DeVry is next.

<comment><USER59> I don't know if they're as deserving of the vitriol. I've interviewed and worked with several people with DeVry degrees. I can't say if it's sample size or just good luck or both but I haven't been disappointed with them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> According to the ITT Tech Website they have now stopped accepting new enrollments nationwide.

</comment><comment><USER61> Education is a small tulip: try to compensate unfairness of life by subsidizing a flower to wed, an housing, health or education ... and here comes the bubbles fueled by the greed of a few who have had the luck of being born lucky.

In the case of tulip, it has still not be proven that wedding a girl that had an obsession for a foreign expensive flower was a good idea. And for coding neither the diploma, nor the idea of ruining yourself before either beginning to work has proven to be useful.

Overvalued diploma are a scam. Education is partly made of a financial bubble that takes its non-productive toll on economy. I hope Europa will begin to fire its teachers in public shcools and stop the privatization of education alike. I hate to fuel bubble with my taxes like a Dutch in the XVIIIth century.

</comment><comment><USER62> Bravo, now let's ban the rest of the fake schools!

</comment><comment><USER63> I believe many ITT students are from India.

<comment><USER64> I doubt it. Even if we wanted to waste our money there, the chances of getting a F1 visa is slim to none. Maybe there are Indians attending these schools illegally but pretty sure it's not large enough for anyone to notice. Do you have a source?

<comment><USER35> There is a con where guys looking for a usa visa get accepted at a school with no classes. i wouldnt be surprised if some for-profits did this on the side for extra cash.

Also, some foreigners just dont know any better and get conned.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> Great. _Now_ how will I learn TV/VCR repair?

</comment><comment><USER66> This site is absolutely unusable without an ad blocker..

<comment><USER49> Well, I read the article and don't have an ad blocker. People tend to take this complaint about ads way too far.

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> wow thats horrible news for all those motivated people that "were the first in their family to go to college"</comment>


Is safe, green thorium power finally ready for prime time? - <AUTHOR> http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/143437-uranium-killed-the-thorium-star-but-now-its-time-for-round-two <comment><USER2> I'm as big a nuclear proponent as they come, but I do wish the media would stop referring to thorium power as "safe" and "green".

Thorium is certainly _safer_ than Uranium-based fuels. It's not 'fertile' so runaway prompt criticality is much much less of an issue... might even be impossible. Its fission fragments are on average shorter-lived which reduces the amount of time it would be a radioactive waste hazard, etc.

But it does not eliminate the issues of radioactive waste, and does not make it impossible to have mechanical accidents, at least as compared to existing Uranium-based reactor designs. That is, many of the passive safety spoken of with Thorium-based reactors are a matter of design and not necessarily of fuel (though Thorium fuel is easier to use in the types of molten fuel salt reactors that are passively safe).

Don't get me wrong, I'm on board with using whichever is found desirable as long as we're maintaining the needed safety/design/construction/operation/etc. margin, but I worry that we're starting to oversell Thorium power. As ever, there's no such thing as a free lunch, there are simply advantages and disadvantages, opportunities and risks.</comment>


Cellphone Addiction May Be Contagious, Study Finds - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2012/12/03/cell-phone-addiction-contagious/

<comment><USER2> The quasi-scientific term "study" is a bit over the top for a data-mining observation that only describes and doesn't make any effort to explain or analyze. In other words, it's a disposable "study" in contemporary human psychology that will be forgotten a week from now.

"Look -- look! Joe saw Karen pick up her cell phone, so he picked up his cell phone too! Let's publish! Oh, of course the psychology journals will accept our paper -- they accept everything!"

Description alone is not science -- one must try to explain what's been described. Were this not so, astrology, all description and no explanation, would be classed as a science.</comment>


Arrival/Departure to require social media IDs, comments - <AUTHOR> https://www.regulations.gov/docketBrowser?rpp=25&so=DESC&sb=commentDueDate&po=0&D=USCBP-2007-0102 <comment><USER2> Here is the actual proposal: [https://www.federalregister.gov/articles/2016/06/23/2016-148...](https://www.federalregister.gov/articles/2016/06/23/2016-14848/agency- information-collection-activities-arrival-and-departure-record- forms-i-94-and-i-94w-and)

Proposed Changes

DHS proposes to add the following question to ESTA and to Form I-94W: "Please enter information associated with your online presence—Provider/Platform—Social media identifier." It will be an optional data field to request social media identifiers to be used for vetting purposes, as well as applicant contact information. Collecting social media data will enhance the existing investigative process and provide DHS greater clarity and visibility to possible nefarious activity and connections by providing an additional tool set which analysts and investigators may use to better analyze and investigate the case. Current Actions: This submission is being made to extend the expiration date with a change to the information collected as a result of adding a question about social media to ESTA and to Form I-94W, as described in the Abstract section of this document. There are no changes to the burden hours or to the information collected on Form I-94, or the I-94 Web site. Type of Review: Revision. Affected Public: Individuals, Carriers, and the Travel and Tourism Industry.

<comment><USER2> Here is a link to HN comments and discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12375616](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12375616)</comment></comment>


Aipoly puts machine vision in the hands of the visually impaired - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2015/08/17/aipoly-puts-machine-vision-in-the-hands-of-the-visually-impaired/

<comment><USER2> Looks interesting. Reminded me of this: [http://www.bemyeyes.org/](http://www.bemyeyes.org/) ("connects blind people with volunteer helpers from around the world via live video chat")

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, the main difference is that apparently this is fully automated and does not require any human intervention.</comment></comment>


Gaussian Distributions Are Soap Bubbles - <AUTHOR> http://www.inference.vc/high-dimensional-gaussian-distributions-are-soap-bubble/ <comment><USER2> Of course. As others here point out, the hypervolume inside an n-dimensional hypersphere grows as the nth power of a linear increase in radius. In high dimensions, tiny increases in radius cause hypervolume to grow by more than 100%. The concentration of hypervolume is always highest at the edge.[0]

The theoretical tools (and intuitions) we have today for making sense of the distribution of data, developed over the past three centuries, _break down_ in high dimensions. The fact that in high dimensions Gaussian distributions are not "clouds" but actually "soap bubbles" is a perfect example of this breakdown. Can you imagine trying to model a cloud of high-dimensional points lying on or near a lower-dimensional manifold with soap bubbles?

If the data is not only high-dimensional but also non-linearly entangled, we don't yet have "mental tools" for reasoning about it:

* [https://medium.com/intuitionmachine/why-probability-theory-s...](https://medium.com/intuitionmachine/why-probability-theory-should-be-thrown-under-the-bus-36e5d69a34c9)

* [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15620794](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15620794)

[0] See kgwgk's comment below.

<comment><USER3> > Density is always highest at the edge.

More precisely: it is the mass that is "concentrated" at the edge, not the density. In the Gaussian case the distribution "gets more and more dense in the middle" regardless of the number of dimensions. However, in high dimensions the volume in the middle is so low that essentially all the mass is close to the surface of the hypersphere.

<comment><USER4> What i found quite surprising in that context, is that the volume of the n-dimensional ball for any finite fixed radius goes to zero as n goes to infinity (see, for example, section "high dimensions" of [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volume_of_an_n- ball](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volume_of_an_n-ball))

<comment><USER2> There are multiple good (intuitive) explanations for this here: [https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/67039/why-does- volu...](https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/67039/why-does-volume-go-to- zero)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I was going to comment that what's going on here doesn't have much to do with the Gaussian distribution. In high dimensions, almost all of the volume of the unit ball is concentrated near the unit sphere. In the first comment, Frank Morgan makes the same remark, pointing out that you get the same effect with the uniform distribution on the unit cube in high dimensions.

High dimensions are weird.

<comment><USER6> It's true! I just made a colab notebook to visualize the effect: [https://colab.research.google.com/notebook#fileId=1znFHwemxa...](https://colab.research.google.com/notebook#fileId=1znFHwemxaNf2x8iAHWonBa_2LsKSGaZD)

(seems to require a Google account, sorry in advance)

<comment> semi-extrinsic Instead of plotting the cumulative mass distribution, why not just plot the mass distribution itself? I.e. the derivatives of the curves you've plotted?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Isn't the unsuitability of the high-dimensional Gaussian intimately related to the fact that for most realistic problem spaces, we actually believe there are really far fewer than the N >> 1 measured dimensions?

A uniform Gaussian presupposes that the variates are either linearly orthogonal, or all have the same linear interaction with each other (in the case of fixed positive correlation).

If your actual problem has dimension 20, but you've measured it with N dimensions, then that means there are strong interactions between your measured variates, and moreover the intervariate interactions do not have a single _fixed_ interaction strength (like a single Gaussian correlation), but probably vary like a random matrix.

This might be related to the Tracy-Widom[1] distribution somehow. Perhaps the the distribution you use to replace the Gaussian should really be something like: first generate a random positive semi-definite matrix as C, then generate random data based on different random choices of C.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tracy%E2%80%93Widom_distributi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tracy%E2%80%93Widom_distribution)

</comment><comment><USER8> I won't dispute the main point of the article but a couple minor errors bug me. First, he kept referring to a Gaussian distribution as being the _unit_ sphere, when of course the radius depends upon the parameters of the Gaussian (the standard deviation). If not, then it wouldn't be invariant under which units you chose. A bizarre mistake to repeat many times throughout the article.

Less importantly, the last paragraph says that the probability that two samples are orthogonal is "very high". Being precisely orthogonal is technically a probability zero event. There author means "very close to orthogonal."

There was a good discussion about this problem in the context of Monte Carlo simulations in (1).

(1) [https://arxiv.org/abs/1701.02434](https://arxiv.org/abs/1701.02434)

<comment><USER9> On that point my teeth were grinding because it assumes an identity covariance matrix. Ie the bubble needn't even be spherical.

The second is that the squared norm has a chisq distribution. There's no point simulating it. You can just plot the pdf, and have all kinds of facts about its mean, var, entropy etc. Also, iirc Shannon had something to say about this.

However, I do think these facts are worth a reminder.

<comment><USER10> I don't (on the first point). Everyone with the background to understand the problem under discussion and appreciate the explanation already understands that Gaussians are parametrized. I challenge you to find a counterexample. The specifics of non-isotropic parametrizations are even less relevant to the discussion than scalar parametrization.

On the second point, I agree that the approximation deserves a mention.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Those images [0] inputs that were optimised to maximise a certain classification response were cool! Instead of going to this peak of the response function, is there a way to explore the shell where the actual images reside? Would such images look, to our eyes, more like real input than the optimised input? I suspect they won't, but I still would like to see what is between the dogs!

[0] [http://www.inference.vc/content/images/2017/11/Screen- Shot-2...](http://www.inference.vc/content/images/2017/11/Screen- Shot-2017-11-09-at-2.12.44-PM.png)

<comment><AUTHOR> This paper is sort of about that: [https://arxiv.org/abs/1710.11381](https://arxiv.org/abs/1710.11381)

They use a gamma distribution which has more probability density near the origin, which causes samples around the origin and interpolations to be more like real input.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Compulsory "Spikey Spheres" notebook [http://nbviewer.jupyter.org/urls/gist.githubusercontent.com/...](http://nbviewer.jupyter.org/urls/gist.githubusercontent.com/syhw/9025964/raw/441645b476a2a997f27f5993e4da2988febe1ef3/SpikeySpheres)

<comment><USER2> Yes. t-SNE is probably the only algorithm that _might_ produce "sensible" 2D mappings.

BTW, matplotlib has a nicer facility than add_subplot() for making grid plots:

      fig, axes = plot.subplots(nrows=figdims, ncols=figdims)
      for dim, ax1 in zip(range(2, MAX_DIM), axes.flatten()[:(MAXDIM-2)]):
      .
      .
      .

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> In information theory, there's a reflected concept of a "typical set", which is the set of sequences of samples from a distribution whose probability (or probability density) is very close to the expected probability. If you draw a sequence of samples, you are overwhelmingly likely to get a typical outcome as opposed to, say, anything resembling the most likely outcome.

As a concrete example, if you have a coin that gets heads 99% of the time and you flip it 1M times, you are overwhelmingly likely to get around 10k tails, even though the individual sequences with many fewer tails are each far likelier than the typical sequences.

</comment><comment><USER14> So I have a feeling that he's looking at the wrong histogram. If you plot the distributions of the vector magnitudes, you'll get a spike around whatever large number, and a very sharp falloff to the right and left.

However, it's not a "bubble" in the intuitive sense. He's looking at the magnitude distribution of dots over the entire space, and implicitly using the Cartesian coordinate system (discarded angle, looking at just magnitude).

If you look at the distribution of dots per volume (or R^N hyper-volume rather), then you'll still have the highest concentration in the center, with no "bubble".

</comment><comment><USER15> Maybe it goes without saying but what I found distinctive about gaussian distribution in multiple dimensions is that it seems to be the only distribution which produces a smooth radial pattern when plotted co-linearly (yet not radially). All other distributions which I tested exhibit a bias through the main axis when just a number of (variateA,variateB) pairs are plotted. Gaussian seems to be the only one , fundamentally, which shows no sign of the orientation of the axis it is plotted along.

Comes in handy for plotting a radially smooth 'star cluster' without doing polar coordinates and trig. Just plot a load of (x=a_guass,y=another_gaus,z=another_gaus) and you have a radially smooth object. I dont think any other distribution can do that, it seems to me there is something mathematically profound about it which Im sure some mathemagicians have a proper grasp of.

The 'co-linear' distortions of other distributions can be seen here in some plots in the test page for my random distribution lib:

[http://strainer.github.io/Fdrandom.js/](http://strainer.github.io/Fdrandom.js/)

</comment><comment><USER16> I was recently reading the section on importance sampling in David MacKay's "Information Theory, Learning, and Inference Algorithms". Page 373-376 in the linked pdf ([http://www.inference.org.uk/itprnn/book.pdf](http://www.inference.org.uk/itprnn/book.pdf))

He shows that importance sampling will likely fail in high dimensions precisely because samples from a high dimensional Gaussian can be _very different_ than those from a uniform distribution on the unit sphere.

Consider the ratio between a sample at the same point from a 1000D Gaussian and a 1000D uniform distribution over a sphere. If you sample enough times, then the median ratio and the largest ratio will be different by a factor of 10^19. Basically, most samples from the Gaussian will be fairly similar to the uniform. A few will be wildly different.

Perhaps I'm misunderstanding both the post and MacKay's book. I'd be happy to be corrected.

<comment><USER3> If you sample from a 1000D Gaussian, most of the points will be "close" to the hypersphere of radius sqrt(1000). The distance to the center for 99.5% of the points is between 31.6-2 and 31.6+2. 99.997% will be between 31.6-3 and 31.6+3, 99.999997% will be between 31.6-4 and 31.6+4, etc.

This is what he means when he says "practically indistinguishable from uniform distributions on the [unit] sphere." As tgb remarked in another comment, the "unit" bit is incorrect.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> This is an interesting take and kudos to the author for relaying a helpful way to think about high dimensional distributions.

I really like and often come back to this talk by Michael Betancourt where the theme is quite similar: [https://youtu.be/pHsuIaPbNbY](https://youtu.be/pHsuIaPbNbY)

</comment><comment><USER18> This reminds me of the story summed up in this quote:

      There was no such thing as an average pilot. If you've designed a cockpit to fit
      the average pilot, you've actually designed it to fit no one.

Good enough source here: [http://wmbriggs.com/post/18291/](http://wmbriggs.com/post/18291/)

Humans form a very high-dimensional space. I'm not sure what to make of the point about orthogonality in that regard.

</comment><comment><USER19> Having trouble understanding a lot of the specifics of this--though broader concepts grok-able. Before I go blindly googling around to get up to speed--

Any recommended foundational texts to begin with?

Recommended learning trajectory to get to where this is understandable?

</comment><comment><USER20> Can we derive some type of optimization algorithms from using this?</comment>


Tesla delivered 83,500 vehicles in the third quarter, more than expected - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2018/10/02/tesla-third-quarter-auto-production.html <comment><USER2> \- accelerating China factory due to tariffs of about 40% into China, they don't indicate what accelerating actually means

Numbers:

\- Q3 production 53,239, \- Bloomberg's estimate: 53,457

\- North American deliveries of 55,840 rank the Model 3 among the 10 best- selling sedans in the region--and the only one that's electric

\- pretty good news in the face of what other car companies are doing

\- GM sales are expected to fall 14%, after falling 13% in August.

\- Analyst estimates for Ford (-9%), Toyota (-6.5%), Honda (-4.1%)

<comment><USER3> Yeah, there's a clear shift coming in the automotive industry. The auto makers who don't have plans for electrification right now are in big trouble.

Thankfully, the VW group will actually be okay - they've tasked Porsche's engineers with electrification of all the companies owned by the group.

The Taycan will be built on the J1 platform (Porsche controlled/built). Porsche is developing 3 different packages for other car makers: the SPE (Sport platform electric) for Lamborghini, and then they're developing a PPE (Premium Platform Electric) for Audi and Mercedes, and finally, they'll have the MEB (modular electrification box) which is a kit for anyone else who wants electric drivetrains (VW, others)

<comment><USER4> And just for completeness, Porsche "only" sold 55,000 cars in 2017. Tesla shipped 30%+ more automobiles in one quarter, yet there is debate about whether Tesla is a viable company and no-one is predicting the imminent demise of that tiny car company, Porsche.

Bias + old thinking dies hard, it seems.

<comment><USER5> Did you just compare a subsidiary of Volkswagen to some singular Silicon Valley startup in terms of production capability, available resources, expertise and infrastructure?

Also, define Porsche:

"Porsche AG is headquartered in Stuttgart, and is owned by Volkswagen AG, which is itself majority-owned by Porsche Automobil Holding SE." \- [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porsche](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porsche)

I'm a bit skeptical whether Tesla will survive a behemoth like Volkswagen shifting gear towards main focus on electric vehicles.

<comment><USER6> Tesla has a head start on serious automotive EV technology, and as a result, has: [https://patents.google.com/?assignee=Tesla+Inc](https://patents.google.com/?assignee=Tesla+Inc)

No matter what happens, anyone wanting to build serious EVs will at some point be licensing patents, especially the stuff they do which really is cutting edge around their battery packs.

<comment><USER7> Head start is no guarantee of success.

History is full of examples of this to be the case. Has Apple ever had a head start on any industry ?

<comment><USER6> My point is that they have a lot of patents around this tech in actual real EVs. Other competitors would have to license it from Tesla.

<comment><USER8> Has Tesla reneged on the "open patents"?

[https://www.tesla.com/blog/all-our-patent-are-belong- you](https://www.tesla.com/blog/all-our-patent-are-belong-you)

<comment><USER6>
        Tesla will not initiate patent lawsuits against anyone who, in good faith, wants to use our technology.

Define: Good Faith

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Tesla has a product that people want, and, importantly appeals to the new generation of prospective car owners in a way the other auto manufactures can't come close to even hoping. Youth haven't really been interested in cars in the same way and with the same level of excitement they once were for awhile now until Tesla came along.

To put simply, they will eventually figure out their manufacturing and economies of scale (they are already well on their way to doing so) and when that happens it will be a dramatic rise and unseating of power. We've seen time and time again market share and dominance means very little in the long term and the ability to manufacture a car isn't an exclusive right to the current incumbents.

<comment><USER10> We'll see. It seems that this debate has quickly polarized.

The Model 3 is still wildly expensive. The ones being shipped now aren't affordable cars. 35k really isn't affordable for a car either. It's firmly in the luxury market until 35k models ship. Even then, it doesn't make financial sense to buy a Tesla over another car without government incentives.

Charge time is a major issue and will be critical for Tesla to solve.

Durability and reliability for high miles remains to be seen. Batteries are expensive to replace.

As for manufacturing, mechanically electric vehicles are far simpler. I highly doubt there is much more to be gained from manufacturing improvements, and most of the car already benefits from the already existing economy of scale on hardware and metal forming. The issue is 1000% the battery. Everything with Tesla hinges on that battery - making it cheaper, more reliable, longer lasting. That's the hard part - because increasing range decreases efficiency because of the size and weight of the battery.

I'm excited - I think with any changes that can disrupt a business a lot of resistance will be faced. But I hope Tesla succeeds.

<comment><USER11> The TCO of a Model 3 at a MSRP of $35k is comparable to what... a ICE car at $25k? Maybe less. That's assuming all the cash incentives are long gone at that point, and gas stays above $3.00. It's a bit uncharitable to call that "wildly expensive" unless your context is a new grad buying their first ever used car.

> _Durability and reliability for high miles remains to be seen. Batteries are > expensive to replace._

Actually, we have very good data for longevity of the Model S batteries, and it looks beyond great. [1] Reliability of drive train and suspension remains to be seen for the 3 since it's so new, but the expectation is that maintenance is significantly cheaper for an electric vehicle due to so much reduced complexity.

> ... _I highly doubt there is much more to be gained from manufacturing > improvements_...

Says almost everyone ever about whatever the current state of the technology is they are currently discussing? Materials science is constantly improving, and it would be shocking to me if they are making the 3 basically the same way 20 years from now as they do today.

> _Everything with Tesla hinges on that battery..._

And hasn't Tesla proven that they are able to consistently drive battery costs down and density and reliability up? Tesla has hinted at $100/kWh costs by the end of 2018. They are at forefront of battery production, and have consistently pushed the envelope since the 900lb, 53kWh battery in the Roadster which cost something like $600/kWh to produce. [2]

[1] - [https://electrek.co/2018/04/14/tesla-battery-degradation- dat...](https://electrek.co/2018/04/14/tesla-battery-degradation-data/)

[2] - [https://www.tesla.com/blog/bit-about- batteries](https://www.tesla.com/blog/bit-about-batteries)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is great news for Tesla. Despite the Elon's recent conduct, the company is doing well. I hope they continue the trajectory.

</comment><comment><USER13> "53,239 Model 3 vehicles, which was in line with our guidance and almost double the volume of Q2."

<comment><USER14> The 13 weeks by 5,000 per week making 65,000 still seemingly stand:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18094836](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18094836)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18095198](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18095198)

<comment><USER14> Hmmm, queer the downvoting on a simple multiplication...

<comment><USER15> No, not at all, because as the guy below you in your link said, the guidance was 50,000-55,000 and "we expect an average of 5000 Model 3s per week" was a random offhand comment by Musk. He's probably thinking of the operating rate (ie average cars per day) and not the overall rate, since the operating rate is the statistic that he'd actually be capturing. There were 63 work days in Q3, and IIRC there were about 8 days of planned shutdowns, which would put the rate right at 5000.

Countering your nitpick with another nitpick seems inadvisable, but like... you're blatantly ignoring the actual company guidance to focus on a single random remark that was still essentially right. That's just goofy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Isn't "in line with our guidance" the key phrase here? How often does Tesla get to say that?

<comment><USER17> Who care about quarter to quarter guidance, except the investors and short sellers? What actually matters is how Tesla executes compared to their long- term plans. Despite all the delays and "failed" promises, they keep exceeding their multi-year goals.

Just check this out: [http://www.autonews.com/article/20140113/OEM/301139981/audac...](http://www.autonews.com/article/20140113/OEM/301139981/audacious- growth-plans-will-stretch-tesla-beyond-its-comfort-zone) (or watch any JB Straubel's keynote)

They're killing it. In fact, the naysayers just keep moving the goalpost.

<comment><USER18> Next year (March 2019) they will show the model Y, the smaller SUV based on the model 3 platform, but I doubt they'll start making them. The next year after that is the roadster. It's their secret plan that has been out on the web for years.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> From their press release:

"We also want to thank all of our customers who volunteered to help us with deliveries, and our new customers who are showing their faith in Tesla by purchasing our products in such large numbers."

Isn't it illegal for a for-profit company like Tesla to make use of "volunteers"/unpaid labor? There are only narrow exceptions e.g. interns for school credit.

[https://webapps.dol.gov/elaws/whd/flsa/docs/volunteers.asp](https://webapps.dol.gov/elaws/whd/flsa/docs/volunteers.asp)

[https://www.nomoreunpaidlabor.com](https://www.nomoreunpaidlabor.com)

<comment><USER20> I suspect Tesla is referring to customers driving out to pick up their Tesla from the factory or distribution center rather than waiting for Tesla to ship it to them. Something likely encouraged by long wait times.

<comment><USER21> Nope. Sounds like volunteers did new-customer orientation:

[http://www.thedrive.com/news/23779/tesla-accepts- volunteers-...](http://www.thedrive.com/news/23779/tesla-accepts-volunteers- as-model-3-deliveries-ramp-up)

Sounds like a face-to-face version of the unpaid peer-to-peer "support" you get in some product support forums.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Impressive, but they are going to need to dramatically increase that number to if they wish to compete when the big car companies wake up.

<comment><USER23> Sure it benefits Tesla to produce more cars to compete with the big auto companies. But I do not believe that suddenly any of them will be able crank out a cost competitive electric car with the same range in any large quantity.

Sure your existing car companies are better right now at physically building the conventional parts of a car, but the most expensive part of an electric car is the batteries. Tesla's partnership with Panasonic (Gigafactory) is their true advantage over all the other manufacturers, since they have a reliable source for large quantities of batteries. The rest of car companies are fighting for supply from LG Chem.

<comment><USER24> Don't forget the Supercharger network; seems like that's another big part of Tesla's first-mover advantage that any serious competitor will need to address at some point if they want to "catch up".

<comment><USER25> Couldn't the mainstream auto manufactures install chargers at each of their dealers? It seems that for any major car brand, there are more dealerships than there are Tesla chargers.

<comment><USER26> Would you enjoy spending several hours of your vacation hanging around auto dealers' showrooms?

<comment><USER10> How is Tesla any different?

My road trip to the beach would take 4 hours more in a Tesla than a ICE. That time would be waiting at rest stops along the way...</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Windows 10 LTSC Post-Installation Guide - <AUTHOR> https://www.naut.ca/blog/2019/07/29/windows-10-ltsc-post-installation/ <comment><USER2> It's sad that LTSC isn't that compatible with tablets.

<comment><USER3> Works fine on various Dell tablets at work.

What sort of tablets were you referring to?</comment></comment>


The easiest way to test Ruby 2.0 - <AUTHOR> http://blog.bitnami.org/2013/02/the-easiest-way-to-test-ruby-20.html

<comment><USER2> Bitnami Rubystack: (from the link)

BitNami Ruby Stack greatly simplifies the development and deployment of Ruby on Rails applications. It includes ready-to-run versions of Apache, MySQL, Ruby and Rails and required dependencies. It can be deployed all-in-one free native installers, virtual machines and Cloud Images. BitNami Ruby Stack is distributed for free under the Apache 2.0 license.</comment>


Dirty Word Searches In iTunes Store Suggested Apps for Disney... - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/11/15/dirty-word-searches-in-itunes-store-suggested-apps-for-disney-fox-washington-post-and-kids-games/

<comment><USER2> This must have made a wonderful internal bug report in Apple.

Perhaps a profanity filter lurking where it didn't belong?

</comment><comment><USER3> Apple was so quick to fix it...

</comment><comment> kgb-11 Wow, just wow!</comment>


Ask HN: Best way to find a technical cofounder? - <AUTHOR>

This may have been discussed before but wanted to throw it out there anyway as I have a web-based venture I am trying to get started. <comment><USER2> My advice isn't really advice, more of an observation based on my limited world experience. But here it is.

If you are looking for a cofounder, stop looking for a cofounder. Look at like this: if you were looking for a wife or a girlfriend, you would not be asking women whether or not they'd be interested in marrying you on the first date.

All friendships have to start somewhere and have a base of interaction. So why not network and make friends who are programmers? Find people to bounce ideas off of, discuss tech news, ask for opinions, etc. Offer your skills, abilities and network to them, work with them on side projects if possible.

If your not interested in investing your time into something like that, then really what you're looking for is someone to hire to do coding work for you. In that case, find someone to hire.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'd suggest looking into what would be required to get started technically yourself, and in the ensuing learning process you'd not only educate yourself so that conversations with your future co-founder would have some decent merit, but you might find someone along the way ;)

</comment><comment><USER4> This site can be a good place for such a thing... however, unless you're willing to give a high-level overview of what you're doing (at a minimum), you probably shouldn't expect very many people to make serious inquiries.

</comment><comment><USER5> Why not work on projects together for fun or profit?

I have a few projects where I could use a decent javascript/jQuery guy or gal in the SF Bay area.

</comment><comment><USER6> I have a background in web development and would be open to talking to you about your idea. What is the best way to reach you?

</comment><comment><USER7> Startup Weekend and Cofounder Speed Dating. Also hanging around coworking places (and being friendly but not annoying)

<comment><USER8> Are there any success stories from these events?

My intuitive suspicion is that trying to found a company with someone you've just met is likely to be doomed.

<comment><USER9> Some companies created at SW have gone on to be real companies, but SW is really better for getting the feel for working with other people and then working with them on other projects. I can think of five funded (not that that's a metric for success) companies that grew out of Seattle Startup Weekend relationships. While I'm not seeking a co-founder at the moment, everyone on my co-founder shortlist is someone I met at Startup Weekend 3 years ago or I met directly through someone I met at SW.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Here is a good post on the same topic, [http://www.jetcooper.com/blog/how-to- find-a-technical-co-fou...](http://www.jetcooper.com/blog/how-to-find-a- technical-co-founder/)</comment>


Simple client side error logging - <AUTHOR> https://metric.io/blog/2014/04/simple-client-side-error-logging

<comment><USER2> With AngularJS, you can process errors your way by implementing $exceptionHandler. (Otherwise errors originating within framework wouldn't reach window.onerror—default implementation of $exceptionHandler will catch them and log to console.)

This code, for example, reports each otherwise unhandled exception to user prettily using Messenger.js:

        window.angular.module('yourApp', []).

        // <…>

        factory('$exceptionHandler', [
          '$log',
          function ($log) {
            return function (exception, cause) {
              // Log to console
              $log.error.apply($log, arguments);

              // Show to user
              var msg = sprintf("Error: %s", exception.message);
              if (cause) { msg = sprintf("%s. %s", msg, cause); }
              window.Messenger().post({
                type: 'error',
                hideAfter: 0,
                showCloseButton: true,
                message: msg
              });
            };
          }
        ]);

To replicate functionality from the article, you could make a request using $http service in there.

(I assume it's possible to override not $exceptionHandler, but $log service directly. This would allow for more extensive server-side log collection, not just error reporting. Never tried that myself, though.)

</comment><comment><USER3> I discovered StackTrace.js does not give usable results on IPAD 1 and on Iphone 3GS ( these are the only IOS devices I own and had the pleasure of testing with Stacktrace). And it is useless when using with google closure compiler generated javascript code.

I have refactored my js code to have try - catch block in all my critical paths in Babckbone modules; this approach works on all google closure compiler generate javascript code. I really wonder why most people don't do this more often.

</comment><comment><USER4> Slightly off-topic, but please have someone proofread your stuff. In addition to "shear number" (it's sheer number), on the Metric.io home page I noticed the following at first glance:

"free trail", "build lasting realtionships", "Create pomotions", "siing how your customers are interacting"

You've got a beautiful site but these sorts of errors give the wrong first impression.

<comment><USER5> Thanks for that, must have missed them... fixing now!

<comment><USER6> while you are at it, the link to stacktracejs.com is invalid. For some reason they don't serve the www. version of their domain

and the heading and menus on your page overlap on Chrome under Windows when the browser is sufficiently narrow

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Occasionally I run into an idea or a concept I've not see before that is just so brilliant it makes me stop and stare slack jawed at the screen.

This is one such time, despite knowing about onerror I honestly don't think I would have _ever_ thought of doing this myself...it's simply brilliant.

Thank you for the post.

</comment><comment><USER8> This so many times discussed. In short use window.onerror handler and some transport depending on needs: like cors support, before and after load loggin etc. For begining you can just put all errors to google analytics and have all kinds of reports, stat by browsers and export to gdocs.

</comment><comment><USER9> I've looked at this kind of logging but haven't done it yet. Can the onerror handler trigger itself and end up in an infinite loop?</comment>