Bill Gates is giving Factfulness to those getting a degree from a U.S. college - <AUTHOR> https://www.gatesnotes.com/About-Bill-Gates/My-gift-to-college-graduates?WT.mc_id=06_05_2018_08_FactfulnessGift_BG-TW_&WT.tsrc=BGTW&linkId=52604752 <comment><USER3> Hans Rosling's work is famous for pointing out how media incentives, statistical illiteracy, and our preconceptions give us a flawed sense of the world.

In the vein of Hans Rosling, I've done add'l research on media coverage vs actual stats for death. What's covered is what we most want to read about. As a society, we need many more lessons on statistics and the incentives behind news:

The deaths that are most covered are a tiny fraction (<1%) of the way we die

[https://www.nemil.com/s/part3-horror- films.html](https://www.nemil.com/s/part3-horror-films.html)

Today's biggest threat to democracy isn't fake news—it's selective facts

[https://qz.com/1130094/todays-biggest-threat-to-democracy- is...](https://qz.com/1130094/todays-biggest-threat-to-democracy-isnt-fake- news-its-selective-facts/)

How Media Fuels our Fear of Western Terrorism

[https://www.nemil.com/s/part2-terrorism.html](https://www.nemil.com/s/part2-terrorism.html)

EDIT: As some commenters point, news covers "new" things — and so of course it's at odds with data.

The problem is that most consumers of news don't understand that just because something is heavily covered doesn't mean it's common — or relevant input for personal decisions they make. This speaks to the issue of media literacy, and I'd argue is why Rosling's book is so important.

<comment><USER4> > The deaths that are most covered are a tiny fraction (<1%) of the way we die

They are precisely covered because they are exceptional. No one care about car accidents because that's a banal cause of death. But a plane crash is not. In countries like France where islamic terror attacks have became common place, small scale attacks causing a few deaths are not covered for days and days anymore.

Also event like a terror attack informs more about the state of a country and the world than an one suicide (suicide rate or aggregate can be valuable insight hough).

<comment><USER5> Of course. By its very nature, outliers are the _only_ thing that news covers. Exceptions make news. Conventions do not. If you're hearing it on the news, it's useless information, like a TouTube video of a cat playing the piano while juggling mice.

Once upon a time, I think news was an invitation to get engaged in your community because change was needed or forthcoming, and as a citizen, it was your duty to know about the subject in order to contribute constructively, perhaps in a town hall meeting or at least in a civic (civil) conversation with neighbors.

Today nobody acts upon what they learn in big media news, other than to form misinformed opinions fraught with bias, to vote only every few years for a bad binary choice in rigged elections fielding untrustworthy candidates who pretend to address problems but actually perpetuate them via myopic self- interested gangsterism.

Pop news is 99% clickbait and 1% fact.

<comment><USER6> The point of mass media is propaganda and entertainment in that order.

<comment><USER7> And given that the point of entertainment, from the perspective of "the elite" (government officials but also other wealthy and powerful individuals who are a part of the same de facto governing system) the primary purpose of entertainment isn't much different from a form of propaganda anyways. Mass media is largely about programming the populace. Now of course it's not all produced with malicious intent, but that doesn't stop the powers that be from influencing them, and by extension "the people" through mass media.

But this is just my relatively uninformed opinion based on casual observation, not any serious study of the issue. Although given that if this were studied and published in a journal it would have likely gone through institutions which are subject to the same system which would be criticized by the research so...how much good could that really do?

I suppose my cynicism towards the people I'm supposed to trust is the primary thing prevents me from having a more fact based view of the world.

<comment><USER8> > _I suppose my cynicism towards the people I'm supposed to trust is the > primary thing prevents me from having a more fact based view of the world._

How so? Is it not a fact that politicians can't be trusted, and that, as you said, the mainstream media is largely about programming the populace?

"Cynisism" is what people call _realism_ when they want you to stop talking about reality.

<comment><USER7> Perhaps at one point I was realistic but I think at this point I've seen enough blatant deception that I am overly paranoid as sort of a defense mechanism. This is probably still more accurate than how I viewed things before, but all I really meant by cynicism is that I am conscious of the fact that I am probably even more distrustful than what would be reasonable, just as a result of negative experience. Perhaps I'm right, but I don't have an objective rationale for this, it's largely based on heuristics.

To be a bit more concrete, it's true that politicians and the media are liars, but then to extend that further to education, entertainment, and those who are culturally influential in general can be quite the stretch outside of a few specific data points. And _how_ is it connected? How does this system actually work? It's so complex it's almost immeasurable. A critical view of this is necessarily heavily influenced by intuition and emotion IMO since you're unable to trust a large body of your learned information from that mindset.

<comment><USER8> > _And how is it connected? How does this system actually work?_

Look at things and keep asking: "Who benefits?"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> One of the best things about reaching the Bill Gates level of wealth is probably being able to say, "man, I really liked this book, I think every college graduate should read it," and then realizing you can literally buy it for all of them.

<comment><USER10> I regularly buy books for friends for whom I think it would be useful. Sometimes business books for entrepreneur friends, sometimes fiction that I think they would enjoy (or I really want to talk to them about!).

Nothing stopping any of us from doing something similar at a smaller scale. (though the ability to reach people who we don't know, at a large scale, is definitely much much harder)

<comment><USER11> Who knows how much this is even costing him. It's pretty good PR for the publishing company and will probably generate sales from non-graduates. Could just be a genius marketing move which benefits brand Gates and the publisher.

<comment><USER12> You don't need marketing moves with a net worth of over 90B USD. If he wants to act, he'll buy the required companies/patents & do it.

How would this, as a "marketing move", make any sense for him - or even be worth his time to do in the first place?

<comment><USER11> Recruitment for his foundation?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I am reading this now, it's pretty good.

I think some misunderstand this book, maybe because there is a tendency to interpret any talk about how the world is improving as blindness about world problems. Or that admitting there have been gains made is the same as saying it's time to take it easy, stop trying to improve.

This is nonsense of course. The point of finding out what has improved is to find out what works, and do more of that. See if you can apply what works in one place to another place, another problem.

</comment><comment><USER14> I like to think of myself as reasonably well-informed and unbiased, with a pretty decent set of tools for looking at things I see in the news but when I read it recently I learned quite a lot. It's a very good book.

</comment><comment><USER15> I just finished this last night in fact. My first thought upon completing it was that this should be required reading in every high school curriculum. Very cool to see this happening. Highly recommended read.

</comment><comment><USER16> What are some other great resources for de-biasing oneself? I believe Charlie munger did a whole talk on this back in the day.

</comment><comment><USER17> This is great, I wish he were giving it to high schoolers and GED recipients too.

<comment><USER18> And the far right and far left.

<comment><USER19> We are running out of categories. Really, everyone will have availability to the book given that the chances that one person will upload it is pretty darn high if it isn't already available.

<comment><USER20> From the comments on that page it sounds like you just need to fill out the form with anything and you get the file. No validation. Also libraries :)

Anyway, I hope it's a clever trick to get people to feel like they beat the system and go read the book.

<comment><USER21> That's exactly it. Classic parental psychology trick: "are you sure you're grown up for this stuff? I don't know...."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> It would be great if the publisher would make digital copies of this book available to everyone for free. I wonder if Gates explored that option but the price was too steep.

</comment><comment><USER23> Was reading about the income levels I-IV in the book and looks like II-IV have access to cellphones form this article:

[http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/03/25/more-people-have-cell- ph...](http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/03/25/more-people-have-cell-phones-than- toilets-u-n-study-shows/)

</comment><comment><USER24> Funny. I just graduated and bought the physical copy like last week. It'll be nice to have the ebook too. I haven't really started it yet, because sadly I hoard books, and collect a lot faster than I read. I'm interested in the topic though. I would love to learn more about how we make mistakes in our assumptions, and statistical fallacies.

</comment><comment><USER25> It is incredibly important to see that the world on a macro level is improving at an incredible rate. Hans Rosling was a brilliant educator and while I haven't read this book yet, I will be adding it to my backlog today.

<comment><USER26> As others have said, it's a good thought to have (and the book indeed sounds like an interesting read), but we should still define what "on a macro level" actually means.

E.g., is "macro level" the average? Then it could just as well be a rich elite (or the spike part of a power law distribution) pulling up that average.

Even if it's not, we should investigate how different parts of the world are improving differently and why.

E.g., yes, eradicating certain diseases in African countries is laudable - <USER2> in an age where others dream about genetically augmenting humans, is that the bar we should use?

And even if the overall measure of health and well-being might go up, why is it that _nevertheless_ statistics for certain groups seem to regress? Like job security or the ability of low/middle-income groups to make savings?

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Great, let's me buy a cheap one second hand!

<comment><USER28> borrow from a library?

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Stephen Peterson says facts are relative.

</comment><comment><USER30> Yo, Bill, what about your own degree? LOL.

</comment><comment><USER31> 1 in 7 people in the U.S. face hunger every year and Flint still doesn't have clean water, but sure: let's buy every college graduate a book!

<comment><USER32> Arguably, turning college graduates into better citizens by giving them a book can have a bigger long-term effect than directly solving the problem. Not that immediate action shouldn't be done, but both are valid attacks to the same problem.

I think Bill Gates' underlying reasoning is that by giving all college graduates this book, the future generation will be better thinkers and therefore that society will be better than today's. Hopefully, this will lead to a situation where that 1 in 7 number will turn into 1 in 70, and every place in the US will have access to clean water.

It's kind of like that saying "Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime.".

<comment><USER10> One might call it leverage.

Also, any good is better than no good, if by requiring a person to pursue the maximum good, they would have not had the emotional catalysis for pursuing the good.</comment></comment></comment>


Opioids Aware: A resource for patients and professionals prescribing pain relief - <AUTHOR> https://www.rcoa.ac.uk/faculty-of-pain-medicine/opioids-aware <comment><AUTHOR> Actual title is "Opioids Aware: A resource for patients and healthcare professionals to support prescribing of opioid medicines for pain" but that's 120 chars.</comment>


A small startup responds to Amazon's S3 outage - <AUTHOR> http://webspeed.typepad.com/planaroo/2008/07/rethinking-what.html

<comment><USER2> Are there any memcached-style tools that can sit between S3 and local servers? Seems like the most popular data could continue to be served up indefinitely.

<comment><USER3> I'm pretty sure that would defeat the purpose for many people. It sounds like in this case S3 was being used as a CDN (which it's not) to save bandwidth and improve response times.

Using memcached locally gives you neither of those properties.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It sounds like they had their backups stored on a home machine and had to deal with a slow uplink to restore them. A cheap alternative is to use an inexpensive (but reliable) shared hosting provider for off-site backup. Don't use the account for serving web pages -- just use it as a fast, cheap parking spot for backup archives.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're absolutely right. That's the plan going forward.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> good lessons to learn.</comment>


Our Thoughts on the New Zealand Massacre - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/03/ourt-thoughts-new-zealand-massacre <comment><USER4> I am from New Zealand. This was a terrible tragedy, and the appropriate response to this horrible video is to not watch, and not share. It's not only glorifying an awful act, but it's potentially traumatic.

However I'm very uncomfortable with sties like liveleak being fully censored on NZ ISPs. I was unable to access liveleak.com at all from the few hours after the event, up to and including now.

It sets a bad precedent and while I hope no one sees that video, the content itself is not illegal and we should not be censoring it as a kneejerk reaction. People who go to LiveLeak know what they're going to get.

<comment><USER5> > I am from New Zealand. This was a terrible tragedy, and the appropriate > response to this horrible video is to not watch, and not share. It's not > only glorifying an awful act, but it's potentially traumatic.

The correct response is for the government to treat domestic terrorists, and preachers of hate the same way that they treat foreign ones.

Anwar Al-Awlaki, and his son were the targets of a US drone strikes for the same thing - radicalizing speech, and inciting terrorist attacks. Yet, here we have an entire ecosystem of alt-right radicalization, inciting terrorist attacks, and the government doesn't lift a single finger to deal with it.

<comment><USER6> Right wing white supremacist terrorism is clearly international. The New Zealand shooter's manifesto contains the same grievance and fear of invasion and replacement of white people expressed by Anders Breivik, and the Squirrel Hill shooter. The POTUS likewise uses the same invader grievance, playing down right wing white supremacist terrorism saying it's a "small number of people" when asked if it's a growing problem, even though FBI considers it a growing problem and has for over a decade; while in the same statement repeats his hyping of problems on the southern border, calling it an invasion, despite ~40 year low in southern border interdiction and crime including illegal border crossing. The invader grievance by POTUS is not lost on people who study white supremacy in the U.S., nor is it lost on actual white supremacists. Nor was his entire five year racist lie of birtherism. Simultaneously with his rants about violence committed by Muslims, POTUS cut Countering Violent Extremism funds which focused on mitigation of white supremacists and neo-Nazis by de- radicalization therapy.

So the right wing white supremacist problem, at least in the U.S., has been taken seriously; but with political change it has been taken less seriously by the current administration, for entirely predictable reasons. Whether FBI takes it seriously enough is an open question, but when intelligence agencies publicly list threats to the U.S., the southern border is not on the list, but right wing white supremacist hate groups are.

There is a very real issue that until there is planning or solicitation to commit violence, right wing white supremacy is legal freedom of association, and hate speech is still protected speech, so long as it's not in the gray area of "fighting words". I think it's completely reasonable for FBI to infiltrate violence prone hate groups by paying informants and putting agents on the inside. I also have no problem with enduring warrants on leader organizers of such individuals for wire tapping. What they want is a race war. They want to destabilize the country. It's not a new thing.

ADL and Southern Poverty Law Center have been tracking hate groups for a long time, both left wing and right wing. It just so happens right now it's overwhelmingly right wing hate groups out there. And it would not surprise me if the more violent prone ones would love to see successful recruitment of left wing groups, because they can't really have a race war, or make real their romantic notions of a civil war 2.0, with just a bunch of right wing groups. They have to incite the left to attack, or they've got nothing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> So thankful organizations like the EFF exist. If you work for a FAANG please take the Santa Clara Principles to heart and push them up through your ranks.

<comment><USER5> > give notice to users who've had something removed about what was removed, > under what rules; and

The reason nobody actually does this, is because bad actors will use this as a unit test, to figure out how to get bad content onto your system.

When you are trying to build a secure websystem, the common advice from the tech community is to deny all invalid, unauthorized, malformed requests - <USER2> a generic "Request failed" page. Don't give the attacker _any_ information that they can use to understand your system.

In the same breath, that same community completely disregards this best practice when it comes to social security.

<comment><USER8> > The reason nobody actually does this, is because bad actors will use this as > a unit test, to figure out how to get bad content onto your system.

The _real_ reason nobody does this is because it requires a _human_ in the system. And humans cost money. And, if your transaction cost isn't high enough, you can't pay for that human.

This is the real reason why none of these services will do anything about this.

<comment><USER9> I disagree. There's no technical reason why an automated system couldn't be fully transparent to the end user about the criteria on which it is acting. That's not the reason why.

I mean, you're correct about the fact that putting a human in the loop costs too much at scale, which is why it doesn't happen, and that sucks when you're an edge case that gets shafted. But that tangential to the question of transparency. Even if there were people in the loop, they wouldn't be fully transparent about the actions they take for exactly the reason the parent comment said. It would make it easier for the bad actors trying to exploit the system.

<comment><USER10> If for example I post a picture of myself in a skin coloured top, that gets automatically flagged as nudity, and I'm notified as such is that really transparency?

Yes I know why the post was removed, but based on the stated no nudity rule, the post should have been ok.

If we go one stage further and appeal (to the same algorithm). That too will presumably fail.

So what we are left with is a set of rules, and a set of defacto rules, that don't match up. That I wouldn't say is transparency, except in a limited and meaningless sense.

<comment><USER9> What's opaque about the situation you're describing? Everyone understands what happened and why. What other definition of transparent is there?

<comment><USER10> The rules as described and as implemented don't match. Saying you're doing something, when that something makes no sense and is unreasonable isn't transparency.

Wikipedia's opening paragraph on transparency:

"Transparency, as used in science, engineering, business, the humanities and in other social contexts, is operating in such a way that it is easy for others to see what actions are performed. Transparency implies openness, communication, and accountability. "[1]

There is neither openness or accountability in my example.

Yes in a narrow sense it is transparent, in the wider (I would say, most important) sense, it isn't.

[1] [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transparency_(behavior)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transparency_\(behavior\))

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I recently saw the he head of Google's Nordic cloud division give a keynote speech at an event for the public digitisation in Denmark called Offentlig Digitalisering.

She talked about Google's mission to democratise data. It probably would've been interesting to ask her what they planned to do to make sure their censorship filters knew the difference between hateful terrorists and human rights groups.

Because if it can't tell the difference between those two, then I don't think it's good enough to be allowed an editorial role on YouTube.

</comment><comment><USER12> My 0.02 c

Youtube has (imo) two functions - an independent hosting platform (which can argue it is not appropriate for it to censor content) and a _search engine_ which implies a recommendation algorithm. This second part is inescapably making editorial decisions.

I don't think Santa Clara principles are sufficient at this point - it's basically assuming Facebook et al run a "town square".

I am not sure the "town square" defence is useful if you cannot exclude certain content reliably and effectively (definitely an unproven point)

I know this is heading down the Warren route - but Inwoukd be grateful for other thoughts

Final note: I cannot conceive what twisted neurons male gunning unarmed people as a good idea, let alone _livestreaming_ it but I will be unsurprised to find that the killer has live-streamed previous sick rubbish and got lots of likes and comments.

Doing that in a normal town square would not have built a bubble of morons who laugh at a guy pretend killing muslims till the guy actually goes and does it - it would have built horrified approbium of a normal town. It's not a town square if the rest of the town does not see you.

<comment><USER13> What's the 'Warren' route?

 _I am not sure the "town square" defence is useful if you cannot exclude certain content reliably and effectively_

Beyond what is already existing illegal speech, such as telling someone to cause a specific crime, the whole point of this EFF article is that 'excluding certain content' does more harm than good.

<comment><USER12> If you are providing webspace then not knowing or caring what is stored there is a defence (but is limited the minute we say "but if it's illegal you should have known")

But by indexing and then returning search results you are choosing and selecting - maybe being able to find "grot porn" or "that video of muslims being killed" is a public good (!) but if it is then I struggle to see how adverts and other minimisation schemes will not influence your decision to return it - the very act of making something findable is a curation decision - and curation implies responsibility.

Perhaps we will work around it by having google publish it algorithm for search results - but that gets gnarly fast.

In short I think webspace is like selling white banners and pens to a political rally - what people write on them is their business. But once you look at the banners and start to hand them out on street corners you are engaging in political speech - and worse speech someone else has written.

i used to work for Demon Internet and our big USP (so we thought) was free webspace (10MB!!). And if you published your work on there you then needed to go through various cycles to get someone to come and read it - but Google and facebook have a domain name based leverage going on that means putting my stuff on facebook makes it easier to be found by orders of magnitude - <USER3> that implies curation and promotion of speech.

In short - there is no "hands off approach" to free speech that is not hard disk space. And we and FAANG need to deal with the responsibility

Edit: if you have the right to say awful things, you don't necessarily have the right to have those things promoted and published by some of the largest companies on the planet - but if they choose to edit your speech they need to start obeying everyone's speech laws (globally impossible) - so perhaps they should be split into Elizabeth Warrens platforms - and that would presumably allow duckduckgo to run its requests across google hardware and indexes on a free competition basis....

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Just looked at 8Chan's Twitter account. They've still got the shooter's preferred account image in their header. (The crass Australian wearing a hat).

[https://twitter.com/infinitechan?lang=en](https://twitter.com/infinitechan?lang=en)

8Chan is now blocked in NZ.

<comment><USER15> I just checked and it's still there.</comment></comment>


General Motors Is Going All Electric - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/general-motors-electric-cars-plan-gm?mbid=social_twitter <comment><USER2> I'm impressed that the American car companies have embraced electric technology so quickly.

I'm also disappointed that the Japanese companies are falling behind. The Prius was a very innovative car when it was first released 20 years ago (that's right, the first Prius was a 1997 model!), but it is falling behind. The Nissan Leaf is just not competitive anymore, and I see no sign of a newer version of it with better range.

However, these new electric cars are mostly of interest to homeowners. People who park on the street have no realistic way to charge their cars at their homes, and all but the newest luxury apartments lack charging stations. Relying on public charging infrastructure is not realistic, and relying on charging at work is unwise -- it will limit your next job opportunity to companies that also have charging stations, unless you are willing to replace your car. Even relying on charging at an apartment is unwise, because it will limit where you can move to.

So, I guess electric car ownership is effectively another perk of home ownership.

<comment><USER3> > People who park on the street have no realistic way to charge their cars at > their homes

Perhaps there could be combined parking meters and charging stations. You would pay a certain amount of money if you just wanted to park and you would pay more if you wanted to charge your car too.

<comment><USER4> That's an amazing idea.

Also imagine solar covered parking which could be a good moneymaker (sell energy and/or sell preferred parking spots).

<comment><USER5> I wonder how viable covering parking lots would be in areas where you get a lot of snow. At some point, you will have to find a way to remove it - sometimes even a bunch of ice.

But, it has a bonus of keeping the precipitation that would land on your vehicle. That might just be its best feature.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I recently bought an inexpensive electric (Ford Focus Electric 2017), and I can't imagine going back.

No gas stations, no oil changes, no transmission failures, no engine breakdowns, no timing belt, no transaxles, overall less costs even energy wise.

Also it's got amazing pickup and can beat guzzlers off the line (I've edged out Mustangs, but I haven't gone head to head with a Porsche).

So I have to charge every day - great, same with my iPhone (which, amusingly, is increasingly more important than my car - I can always hire a Lyft/Uber with my phone).

I think the electric revolution is like the SSD one - 10 years ago it was "unreliable" but today no one goes spinning rust unless they have absolute need to.

<comment><USER6> What about batteries wearing out year after year? How much would it cost to change all the batteries in your car?

<comment><USER7> There is very little year over year wear. After a decade or two in a moderate climate you can expect 80% capacity still.

<comment><USER8> How can you possibly make that claim when the oldest electric-only vehicles are 10 years old?

How can you possibly make that claim without knowing the driving patterns of the person you're addressing?

What is a _moderate climate_ ?

I mean, I'd love to just assume what you said is true (I'm as much as an electric car fan as your typical HN'er), but you're going to need to provide some data to back those claims up.

<comment><USER4> Go to the Tesla forums. You can estimate 10 year degradation rate based on the 5 year rate.

Moderate climate probably refers to not having many freezing or >100 temp days.

<comment><USER8> Yes, estimates, not certainties.

Thanks for proving my point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> If fully electric cars don't quite work for your needs because of the range or the charge times, I recommend looking at the Chevy Volt. I think the Voltec drivetrain is a great design. It drives like an EV, even when the engine is active, but eliminates range anxiety. The integration of the electric motors and gas engine is really good.

With my driving pattern, I end up driving on pre-charged electric 50% of the time and gas about 50% of the time. On gas, the car gets the advertised 42mpg.

<comment><USER10> My problem is seats. Ideally I want a vehicle that sits 8 people (minimum is 7) -- and not cost a small fortune. So, for the time being electrics are out of the running for me. I'll check back in 10 years when most of my kids have moved out.

<comment><USER11> Isn't your eligible list of vehicles tiny - 7 seater? Forget not costing a small fortune, off the top of my head a Mercedes Sprinter van and Chevy Suburban are not cheap to buy or run.

<comment><USER9> Every minivan is a 7-seater (2 + 2 + 3) and many bigger SUVs are, as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> About Time.

Just like Leica dropped the ball on moving on to Digital Cameras, General Motors was slow to get on the Electric Vehicles bandwagon.

> "General Motors believes the future is all-electric," says Mark Reuss, the > company's head of product. "We are far along in our plan to lead the way to > that future world."

Glad to see that they are going all-in.

<comment><USER13> GM had one of the first EVs in the 90s, the EV1. They jumped in before the technology was there.

They've also been working with gas-electric mixed technology with the Volt since 2010 and more recently the Bolt.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I was driving by some town houses[0] in a dense city recently and wondered: How would electric car owners who live there charge their cars? They don't have a driveway or garage or any designated parking place; they find parking on the street in their neighborhood. Unless someone installs charging stations up and down the streets, where will the residents charge their future electric cars?

I read about one city that discontinued a program where electric car owners could reserve a spot on the street and install a charging station. But that is inefficient use for a parking spot that may be empty most of the day.

[0] By "town houses", I mean houses that share the walls on either side with their neighbors; they are lined up side by side. You see them often in dense urban areas. There is no place for a driveway and rarely is precious real estate used for a garage.

</comment><comment><USER15> I don't see how this can work in anything but a commuter-centric car. Want to drive from LA to SF or from Austin to Tulsa? Too bad. Want to drive an electric, loaded pickup from Austin to Dallas? Also not going to happen.

Unless they make some significant technological strides, nations larger than Norway are going to take a serious economic hit.

<comment><USER16> According to the article, GM is also investing in fuel cells.

They also aren't converting to all electric right now, they're rolling out some new electric models and are planning to eventually stop building gas- burning cars. If that doesn't happen for another ten or twenty years, we can probably expect some significant improvements in battery capacity per unit of mass and cost in that time.

According to Google maps, Austin to Dallas is 195 miles, LA to SF is 382 miles, and Austin to Tulsa is 454 miles.

~200 mile road trips are possible now with current technology. There aren't any electric pickups on the market as far as I know, but it should be possible (though expensive) with current technology for an electric truck to make the trip if it had a battery that's sized appropriately for that kind of use.

~400 mile road trips are a bit too far for a single battery charge at highway speeds without some kind of new technology or a vehicle that's optimized for range over other concerns, but I wouldn't want be driving that long without a break anyways. I expect if there's a market for that kind of vehicle, someone will build it eventually.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Smart. Elon should feel very proud.

<comment><USER5> What I like most is that I bet they will make use of some of his patents, for free. Tesla's patent library is free for use, by any company. He has pretty much written his name into automotive history.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I am very impressed that GM decided to do this. I realize that this is apples and oranges. Cars are all different and each model has to be certified in all he different countries. But my first thought (besides "Awesome!") when Elon musk announced his mars plans was that it's amazing he wants to do all this in less time than car makers are able / willing to ditch fossil fuels. Good to see GM on the right track.

</comment><comment><USER7> It would seem Detroit no longer feels the need to emphasize the importance of traditional energy companies to our future. Very nice too see after so many years of them promising hydrogen will solve everything and make your wife and dog come back home.

<comment><USER16> From the article:

> The new all-electric models will be a mix of battery electric cars and fuel > cell-powered vehicles.

They don't specify whether the fuel cells will be hydrogen or something else, but it may be premature to say that Detroit has given up on hydrogen as a fuel.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I test drove a Bolt EV last week. Neat car. The interior was lacking for me, though. I ended up with an Audi.

</comment><comment><USER20> > That product onslaught puts the company at the forefront of an increasingly > large crowd of automakers proclaiming the age of electricity and promising > to move away from gasoline- and diesel-powered vehicles.

Uh, call that for small, mostly urban, pregnant roller skate cars but not much for SUVs or light trucks and certainly not for the main uses of Diesel in long haul 18 wheel trucks, backhoes, earth moving equipment, boats, etc. "Vehicles" is way too strong, has the authors dreaming.

Also, so far the recharging time is too long for nearly everyone. And for rural drivers, mostly "No way"; they still need gasoline, put in 20 gallons in a few minutes.</comment>


Open Academic Graph - <AUTHOR> https://aminer.org/open-academic-graph <comment><USER2> Their list of top venues for different fields of computer science [1] seems to miss several top conferences in each field.

Also, a mistake like this does not help: Machine Learning, International Council for Machinery Lubrication.

[https://aminer.org/mostinfluentialscholar#awards_by_fields](https://aminer.org/mostinfluentialscholar#awards_by_fields)

</comment><comment><USER3> The website is very long to load, its a bit of a shame.

However, I've always wanted to do that. A revocation feature would be good: if someday a paper is proved false, all underlying papers citing this one should be too.

<comment><USER4> "if someday a paper is proved false, all underlying papers citing this one should be too"

Um, most certainly not?

First, not all of the things you might cite in a paper are part of the support structure to your results. Citing other works one the same topic is quite common, for example.

Second, even of those citations which are part of the support structure for your conclusions, usually just a few of them are absolutely crucial to your point. The rest is just a web of additional supporting evidence.

Third, in view of the above points and the fact that every paper quotes a multitude of papers, just invalidating one paper would unnecessarily "invalidate" vast swathes in an explosive chain reaction.

<comment><USER5> papers that cited need to be re-examined at best. we certainly shouldn't rule out the event of recursive retraction of papers if they all were vitally dependent on false claims.

<comment><USER6> This seems incredibly unlikely.

I just had a paper accepted (yay!). Although we cited sixty-odd papers, I don't think our conclusions critically depends on _any_ one of them.

A lot of the citations place the current work in context. If these papers turned out to be false, it might make the paper less "interesting"\--the mechanism underlying a useless therapy is pretty boring, after all--but the factual content would be unchanged. Other citations compare our results with others' work. These discussions are silly if the other work turns out to be flawed, but again, the facts in our paper would not change.

We had a lot of techniques-related citations. Many of these, however, are mostly about giving credit or pointing to extra information: we used a behavioral paradigm adapted from this paper, evaluation was done using the criteria established by that paper, etc.

A few citations are used to "prove" something is (ir)relevant for the current experiments. An error in one of these papers could be damaging. However, we usually try to have multiple sources for these claims, so any one error would not be calamitous. People usually try to show that their own data matches the cited work, so we have several analyses like that.

Finally, it's worth noting that an individual paper (including mine) does not provide iron-clad or no evidence for something. Instead, it should nudge your beliefs slightly one way or another.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Nothing loaded. I'm looking forward to this working properly - is there anything I can do to help debug/investigate?

<comment><USER8> It looks like the request to [https://api.aminer.org/api/article/alias/open- academic-graph](https://api.aminer.org/api/article/alias/open-academic-graph) hangs. Eventually I get '502 bad gateway'.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> If the page isn't loading for you, go to the frontpage [https://aminer.org/](https://aminer.org/) instead of the linked page.

</comment><comment><USER8> Woo it finally loaded for me.

"This data set is generated by linking two large academic graphs: Microsoft Academic Graph (MAG) and AMiner.

The data set is used for research purpose only. This version includes 166,192,182 papers from MAG and 154,771,162 papers from AMiner."

There's zip files:

* 103GB MAG papers

* 39GB AMiner papers

* 1.6GB linkage

</comment><comment><USER10> For me, it took more than 30 seconds to "load," (spinner, progress bar) but then just showed a blank page with a grey bar at the top.

Windows 10, Chrome, Ghostery.

</comment><comment><USER11> nothing loaded</comment>


Scaling your application on AWS - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@roshanpaiva/scaling-your-application-on-aws-3f210ef18693#.44ac3mcej <comment><USER2> Spam, here's the talk this was taken from.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vg5onp8TU6Q](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vg5onp8TU6Q)

<comment><USER3> The link is already shared in the article. Good notes and good read.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: A site to find devs, designers to work on projects? - <AUTHOR>

I'm wondering if there's an active site where I can find other devs and designers to work with on projects that we mutually have an interest in. Any ideas? <comment><USER2> I sometimes have success on HN. Disasters on sites like Freelancers.com. I run a r&d team and am always on the prowl for good designers and developers wanting to solve hard problems. I'd encourage anyone who fits that criteria to email firstname.lastname@example.com with info on what types of projects you like to work on and how much time you have to dedicate to them :-)

</comment><comment><USER3> There are a lot of 'founder matchmaking' websites out there, but I haven't heard any good stories. Otherwise try the monthly Freelance thread here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7507753](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7507753) or Toptal, Elance, etc.

</comment><comment><USER4> You might be interested it [http://builditwith.me](http://builditwith.me), a platform for people with ideas to find designers/developers.

It appears to be mostly old listings (earliest idea is from Feb 2014) but people will probably still be receptive to emails. YMMV.

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm very interested as well. Currently looking for a designer to help me work on the frontend of [http://resrc.io](http://resrc.io)

<comment><USER6> I didn't know this was a startup :-/ just thought of it as a public service...

However, I will continue contributing to it.

<comment><USER5> It is not a startup, it is public service. But still, it needs some design work, don't you think?</comment></comment></comment>


Node.js SDK for Windows Azure on Github - <AUTHOR> http://github.com/WindowsAzure

<comment><USER2> Is anyone willing to speculate why Microsoft is supporting nodejs on Azure? Or their use of Github/git rather than TFS? Or the work on redis-win32? It seems like a negative for developer mind share in the long run.

<comment><AUTHOR> I helped drive the Windows Phone 7 app platform engineering and evangelism efforts (I left MS in early Sept).

I can't speak for the Azure folks, but I can tell you that as we built WP7 we recognized that one of our biggest challenges was reaching the hearts & minds of developers who had grown up outside the "MSDN tent". It was very clear (to me anyway) that we had to try extraordinary things to engage with those developers.

I suspect the Azure team is thinking the same way. It's pretty clear that being insular isn't going to work anymore.

<comment><USER3> I suspect that at this point it will be very, very hard to get the hearts of developers that are not into Microsoft, but I think this is not an entirely different effort of also conquering the hearts of normal users... at the point Microsoft is in how is perceived outside I think they need a spectacular change (a new CEO, with a new message), to publish a new version of the operating system that is not a mess, and then yes, to be more open. I doubt that supporting Node on Azure is going to really help as a first move.

<comment><USER4> I think people drastically overestimate the level of strategy employed by large companies like Microsoft and Google. There are so many divisions and projects within these companies, all with their own goals and personalities.

Of course Microsoft does have some large strategic goals for its public conduct, but is it really such a stretch to allow that the Azure team wants to embrace developers outside of their traditional base? So long as it doesn't conflict severely with some other goal of the company, I don't find it difficult to believe that an enterprising manager on a mission could push through a project like this. Interoperating with a fledgling open source project for mutual benefit, even though it might not be a traditional tactic employed by Microsoft, is certainly not a particularly hard pitch to sell. Particularly if it's not a heavily politicized open source project.

For example, let's not forget that both Microsoft and Google donate millions each year for academic research into computing -- stuff that is way far out, such as trying to find viable quantum computers. These companies have giant market caps, and even though Microsoft may have a corporate edict to stamp out Linux wherever possible, and Google's profits are directly affected by how much creepy info they can gather on you, these companies are made up of a bunch of humans, and you have to expect that at least a few of them can scrape together altruistic and benevolent projects.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I didn't think much of this until I realized that I couldn't find any references to CodePlex.com anywhere on the new Azure website. I definitely like where Microsoft is going with this.

</comment><comment><USER6> Do I see Microsoft on GitHub?

<comment><USER7> You can already see how much Scott Guthrie is changing things in Azure division.

<comment><USER5> Indeed. I'm convinced a lot of these changes are a direct result of Scott's magic touch. I've been actively using Azure for almost two years. In the beginning, Azure was a mess. The website, product names, portal and releases felt so disconnected and confusing. Now things are streamlined and focused and much more developer friendly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Can someone quickly explain (like I'm an idiot) how you remote administer a Windows Azure machine without a unix command prompt? I have a feeling that Microsoft and their cloud strategy is at a disadvantage in ways that they cannot even comprehend.

<comment><USER9> Why need it be a _unix_ command prompt? <http://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/gg271300></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Experience vs. Education? - <AUTHOR> I've been struggling a bit in my education, mainly because I want to focus on gaining experience in the technology industry. I was wondering, as an employer, do you tend to favor experience or education from an applicant? <comment><USER3> Higher education is what you make of it. I spent every moment I wasn't working on class work working on side-projects. So I killed two birds with one stone.

If you do college right (go above and beyond class work, absorb everything) you can come out with the equivalent of ten years experience in four but if you do it wrong (coast by) you can come out with negative return.

College also exposed me to a lot I wouldn't have been exposed to otherwise like operating system design, AI, physics, statistics, calculus, and compiler design.

I also got a high-profile internship through my school and THAT looked extremely good on my resume.

However, as a hiring manager I almost never consider the degree when hiring. The candidates get the same questions no matter what.

In fact, a doctorate is almost always a negative signal. I have never hired someone straight out of a doctorate. In my case they have always spectacularly fail the coding part of the interview.

In short: you get what you put in. If you can afford to spend four years with little to no pay it is an awesome experience (in my opinion). But it doesn't make or break you.

<comment><USER4> > In fact, a doctorate is almost always a negative signal. I have never hired > someone straight out of a doctorate. In my case they have always > spectacularly fail the coding part of the interview.

A doctorate is a research degree. Hiring a newly minted doctorate just to be a code monkey would indeed be a mistake. Frankly, both parties would probably be unhappy with the job requirements (I certainly would have been).

<comment><USER3> You're probably right, although they had to get through at least a B.S. and research jobs can be hard to find depending on where in the world/country you are.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I didn't finish my degree until I was 30. I am 39 now, so I spent roughly half my career without a degree and the other half with a degree.

For me, the difference is fairly simple. My education is a credential and it helps me get my foot in the door. My experience helps me actually get shit done.

</comment><comment><USER6> I had far better results hiring people with experience and no formal education than with people with formal education and same experience in terms of time. This is specially true to some people with a degree that feel some kind of entitlement, while on the actual results of the job they lacked significantly.

People can cheat in their formal education and still get the degree. It is a little harder to cheat their way through a job.

<comment><USER7> > It is a little harder to cheat their way through a job.

I have not found this to be true. Not that it is harder to cheat through a formal eduction, just that its about the same difficulty to cheat through a job. They are both trivially easy to do.

There are lots of people with long years on their resume that can't program their way out of a bag.

<comment><USER8> How do you program your way out of a bag? genuinely curious

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Do you want breadth, or depth?

Experience is good for depth of technical skills and office collaboration skills. Education provides introduction and breadth of topics.

Employers generally want to minimize the amount of on the job learning a new hire has to do. That means depth in the skill sets they want. And that doesn't even include employers who run an website/app assembly line and don't want to hire cogs, not engineers.

\----

Allow me to make the case for breadth, because your personal goals should be broader than focusing on what employers want and being a really really really good fit for small percentage of jobs.

Sacrificing your education to "focus on gaining experience" is a con. You want to be hire-able long term. To the extent that experience proves you can build something, have a project to show for yourself. Not a senior project, something you care about, with utility to yourself, something that by the time you get to an undergrad project, you just want to work on your thing for credit.

I can't even count the number of times I've benefited professionally from a few kernels of knowledge something outside my main work focus but knew because of a "topics" course I once took. Having an idea what already exists out there in the world, even if the skills aren't strong is a huge boon to solving problems as the come up, or approaching a new design. Otherwise you're often re-inventing the wheel, or feeling around in the dark until you stumble upon a professional domain you didn't know existed and can start reading their literature. The upsides of depth are just much more visible than the downsides of lacking breadth.

</comment><comment><USER10> There has always been a discussion around this.

Strictly speaking: no, a lack of a formal education will not disqualify you for _most_ tech jobs (although it will disqualify you from some, for example: consultancies staffing big government projects, where they have committed to consultants with minimum qualifications, anything in academia, etc). That said, it wont be regarded as an advantage either.

The real question is: if you haven't been studying- what _have_ you been doing? It may be that you have been working on a startup, or have fallen into something which has really made you grow technically. In this case you are probably doing OK, although you will have to study if you want to pass an interview at Google (which rather defeats the purpose of not studying).

On a side note: be wary of employers that make a great virtue out of hiring people with no education- this is often a sign that they want to press down pay and conditions or that fully qualified people not to want to work there.

<comment><USER11> I couldn't agree more. What I will add is that there are loads of development jobs in non-techy companies that will treat hiring a developer like they would with any other skilled employee in the company, and these usually involve a related degree.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> If you have little or no work experience, then your prospective employer will focus on your education. Once you have more experience, then that is what matters the most.

Some advice: internships and engineering coops are really great ways to get experience in your field, while getting that magical degree.

<comment><USER13> Counteradvice: I do not think Co-Ops are a good idea. Tying yourself to a 3-4 year commitment is directly counter to what I consider the big advantage of work/study. I had friends who badly wanted to leave their Co-ops, but were bullied by advisers into not doing so.

You aren't just padding your resume, you're also getting a feel for the different paths in your career you could pursue.

I had 3 different Internships for 3 different companies, and although that added a decent amount of stress (an annual job hunt) to my college career, I 100% recommend it.

I worked for a medium sized team at Georgia Tech's Research Institute, was the first hire at a startup, and worked DoD contracts for BAE, a defense contractor.

Those are all extremely different, and I not only built a resume that served me well in a variety of interviews, but also learned things I absolutely did not want to do.

However, your principal point, that work/study is a good idea, I wholeheartedly agree with.

<comment><USER12> At my Uni, engineering co-ops were just internships were you got paid, there was no commitment term. This is to differentiate from "traditional" internships, were you probably didn't get paid to work. But all this was 20 yrs ago, so things could have changed ;-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm 40 and don't have a degree. There are some kinds of more theory-oriented gigs that probably aren't for me (at the last place I worked, I sat next to a guy perfecting image stitching algorithms), but there's still _tons_ of work out there, and there are quite a few people without degrees or with "irrelevant" degrees who are happily employed. It's also worth noting that the more you see out there, the more you realize you can't know it all. Beyond math heavy gigs, I'm not much of a UX guy, I've never even looked at mainframes, and on and on. So it's just one of many things.

I'd try to finish your degree if you're in a position to do so, but if not, I would not sweat it too much either.

</comment><comment><USER15> I have very little formal education in CS, I've had no problems getting a career going. Especially at smaller companies that have less experience hiring, it's not difficult to get in the door with some networking and proof of your skills. Larger companies with a larger volume of applicants are more likely to use metrics like degrees as a filter, with small companies the right experience can matter much more than a degree.

I was able to find a student startup that I was enthusiastic about and overwork myself until I had enough experience to become interesting to larger companies, ultimately tripling my income in a 3 year period. There are many paths, but they're not always obvious.

</comment><comment><USER16> As an employer, while recruiting educational qualification helps. Especially fresher level recruiting. In India, we get too many resumes for fresher openings. It's not possible to interview every candidate. Even it is not possible to call every candidate for an aptitude test. What the Indian companies do? They set an arbitrary cutoff. Only people who have secured 60% in their engineering exam can apply.

I am telling this as an entrepreneur who didn't get a graduate degree. I eventually started my own company with some of my other friends. But now when I need to hire I definitely look at educational qualification. It's an easy criterion to make sure that there are "less" chances of getting bad hires. I would love to give everybody a chance to qualify for a job at my company, but hiring has costs associated with it.

But if you are really passionate about programming (or any other technology) and can build something impressive which other people in your age group can not do easily, then you shouldn't find it difficult to find a job without a degree. Generally, this happens via references. I got my first job like that. But I used to earn 1/4th compared to my other friends, who had good academics, in their first jobs.

However, after a few years of experience, qualification doesn't matter much. Your ability to communicate and prove your skills matters much more.

In the end, all your actions have consequences. If you want to leave education for your passion, be prepared to live with that decision for your life. As there will be long-lasting consequences (not necessarily all bad) with the decision.

</comment><comment><USER17> I have worked with some impressive people who have little to no formal education.

That said, getting inside the door might be a lot harder.

</comment><comment><USER18> It's not a one-or-the-other, IMO--you'll want both, eventually.

The most successful candidates I've seen often complete their degree while working actively on passion projects and going on internships/coops.

</comment><comment><USER19> A college education helps get you noticed, but experience will help back you up. In the end, you are the one who gives your own degree value. It comes with a set value itself, but your personality and experience add to it. I have a degree in psychology and absolutely no regrets for getting that degree, but I'm a web developer, web designer, software engineer. I use psychology all the time. We all do. I have a friend who spent a few months in college and hated it, but he has been a programmer for about 20 years. He has a confident personality and easily negotiates his salary. He knows what he wants and he goes for it. Last time I asked him, he's making around $100k a year as a software developer with no college degree. So it is possible to simply have the experience, but you need to back it up with confidence and the ability to prove it.

My initial experience as a programmer was a self-taught and that logic and experience has stuck with me with everything. It definitely is like a muscle and you just learn from your mistakes and only get stronger with every new program you write.

I rely more on my college degree for people to take me seriously, but I have spent the past 5-6 years building a professional portfolio and a base of clients, including acquiring recommendations on LinkedIn -- which is probably the most useful feature LinkedIn has. It really does help to have that as people can see those client websites and their testimonials. It definitely has paid off.

No regrets on the college degree.. and most companies do require it for them to even notice you nowadays.. my experience in college was awesome and made me who I am today. I fell in love.. got my heart broken... I learned a lot.. made friends who I still keep in touch with today, and its just a time in my life that was good. I would love to go back for my Master's degree, but at this time, I'm at a good place in my life, with a great job -- a career I want to call it that I love and could see myself doing for the next 30 years.

</comment><comment><USER7> As an employer I focus almost exclusively on industry experience for hiring more junior people. Once I start dealing with more senior people I focus on experience and understanding of the literature of our profession. How they get that understanding is largely unimportant to me but an academic background is one way.

I will say as a job searcher, the degree is pretty important, especially in bad job markets. In good markets, hirers are willing to overlook education more readily than in bad markets when they can be more selective.

Finally, I understand everyones experience is different, but I absolutely loved some of the projects I was able to work on while getting my degree. They would be frequently inappropriate outside of academia so you are unlikely to get those opportunities in industry. For me, working on academic projects while I was there was nothing but fun and it largely prepared me as well for moving into industry as anything my peers were doing.

</comment><comment><USER20> In the IT industry in general (programmers, sysadmins, etc.), formal education isn't quite as hard a requirement as it is in other fields or industries -- often because so many of us are mostly "self-taught".

For example, I would be more likely to hire someone with no formal education (beyond, say, high school) and four years of relevant, "in the trenches" experience over someone with zero real-world experience and a degree whose ink is still wet (and I have done that just, FWIW).

That's not to say that a college education is a waste; it's absolutely not, of course. You'll learn things there that you typically won't learn on the job (algorithms, etc.) and the networking and connections you make there can be extremely beneficial later on as well.

</comment><comment><USER21> In may change as you get older. Think about these scenarios.

After 4 years. What is better 4 years of experience vs 4 years of education?

After 8 years. What is better 8 years of experience vs 4 years of experience + 4 years of education ?

After 12 years. What is better 12 years of experience vs 8 years of experience + 4 years of education ?

</comment><comment><USER22> Most employers prefer work experience over education. But, right now, there's such large oversupply of labor and talent in Software engineering, they typically require both. Hiring at kabam, Even in the bay area, we had a large supply of candidates who had bachelors and masters degrees in computer science. Unfortunately, that's the minimum bar now. A master's in CS will help you get a job as a software engineer, just don't expect to learn anything useful from it (except maybe intro to OOP, and your Software engineering classes, and maybe the DB class). 97%-99% of the knowledge you need to be an effective software engineer comes from experience and side projects and learning on your own.

<comment><USER23> you dont take the CS class to learn a language... you do it to learn the concept of programming and how computer "ticks". CS education is not suppose to train a coder, but a capable person who can adapt the new language, concept or technology and run with it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> As someone who enjoys engineering in the trenches and getting my hands dirty, I always try to learn how much experience a person has when I interview them. HR and other areas of the business will use degrees and certifications as proxies, but I've found them to be unreliable. I work in an industry where the skills aren't really taught in school, so we have to try to filter for people who are really dynamic learners. Degrees aren't a good proxy for that, so we have to dig deeper.

Lots of people will have "bat boy" syndrome...a baseball team can make it to the World Series, and the bat boy gets to go with them, but doesn't provide any value on the field. These are engineers that were associated with projects, but didn't actually do any of the work. They just happened to be in the room when it was done, but put it on their resume anyway.

That said, if you're relying on experience to open doors, I'd make sure that you can actually show people what you've accomplished. I have 5+ years experience at a very reputable and challenging company, but all the work I've done is proprietary. So people have to take me at my word,and it's difficult to convey how much you're capable of in an hour long interview.

I think education will actually open more doors more easily. Another way to look at it: You're always getting experience(there aren't many gate keepers), but getting a degree can provide you access to lots of opportunities once you have it.

</comment><comment><USER25> I think this highly dependent upon the field and what area in the field you want to work at. While I think there is a lot of value in a formal computer science education a lot of people are employed in the area without one, or with bachelors degree. On the other hand if you are really interested in being an electrical engineer working on device physics problems probably better to plan on getting a doctorate. Unless your your grandfather is the founder of TSMC or something like that. Put another way, if everyone you have ever heard of that is doing the type of work you want to do has a Masters, and your debating getting a Bachelors degree, you have ask yourself why do think you would be successful. A personal anecdote, about 30 years ago I struggled academically with my degree because I was working long hours at my high tech internship. I learned a tremendous amount at that job, but in the end I quit so I could focus on finishing. It was a bad job market when I graduated and it took me about 4 months so so after graduation to get a job. It would have been much worse without the degree. You don't say what experience or education you pursuing, but if you have a internship while you are working on your degree that's in your area I would say that's the best you can do. But it's not worth not finishing your program.

</comment><comment><USER26> I'm 10 classes short of a BS in computer science. I started working more and taking one class a semester. At some point I really didn't care about school anymore, my resume was working just fine. I got tired of paying for classes that taught me what I already learned or classes that didn't apply. I cashed out my associates and haven't looked back. I still haven't needed those chem classes. There are places I can't work because of my choices, but at the same time I haven't wanted to work at those places. I can't go get an MBA, but I don't want one.

I have friends and family that seem to thrive on going to school and can't imagine why I don't. It isn't the same for everyone. In my case, I don't think it has hurt me. I've always had a job, always felt like I could quickly get another job and I make good money.

From the hiring side, despite my "lack" of education, I've had the chance to interview quite a few people. There have been some with masters degrees that I would only be comfortable hiring as a junior dev. They had books smarts but zero experience. Some of them could have had the job if their asking price wasn't insanely high or they had some experience.

I also interviewed a self taught programmer who I'd work with in a heartbeat. It didn't work out for other reasons, but he could have easily had the jr. job and likely grown out of it with more experience.

Formal education opens some doors that experience will not, but I think there are plenty of opportunities with and without a formal education.

</comment><comment><USER27> Both, but that's not really the point.

As others have pointed out, education and experience help you develop different skills. And yes, education is not for everyone.

However, your claim that you ar struggling with education because you wanto to focus on gaining experience is an amber light in itself. What would you think of a bodybuilder that claims that he is struggling to develop his biceps because his hamstrings are getting in the way? Sounds a bit off, doesn't it? It tells you, among other things, that his trainning is a mess, and that probably he has not yet developed the ability to set and pursue goals in a systematic way.

So, get your act together. You sound like a fairly young fellow, just starting on this path. So, it does not matter if your future peers/employers value education more, or experience more... since you clearly lack both. Just concentrate on self improvement, and things will eventually play out in your advantage.

Also, about education specifically. It is OK to not pursue that path, but be sure to make that decision for the right reasons. Every thing worth doing in this world requires effort; being struggling with each of them is the normal state fo affairs. Either complete your degree... or don't, but don't just leave because it is hard. Getting experience will be harder, in its own ways.

</comment><comment><USER28> On a somewhat-related tangent, I have a friend who swears by someone who is a self-taught doctor / nurse-practioner. This "doctor" cannot prescribe medicine obviously but is able to do checkups, etc. with self-purchased equipment and interprets OTC blood tests on his own. He apparently knows his limits and has sent people to the hospital when a situation exceeded his knowledge. He is completely self-taught from material online and books from the library

</comment><comment><USER29> We care, first and foremost, about what you can _do_ with whatever experience and education you have.

Education matters to the extent that it makes you a better developer than the other candidates. For example, did you take a DSP course and learned it well? That enables you to pursue jobs that require DSP knowledge.

Experience matters to whatever extent that you can demonstrate that you accomplished something significant during your job and that you learned and grew from it.

<comment><USER26> "...learned and grew from it". That reminds me of a guy I interviewed who rated his skills in language x a 10 out of 10. He didn't get the job because he couldn't back that up when discussing code. I'd say he was a 5, maybe a 6.

Fast forward 3 years. I'm at a different job and interviewing again - <USER2> guy. I'm not sure he recognizes me, but I know where I last saw him. I tried very hard to forget the last interview and give him a fair shake, but it was a repeat! I was sure he hadn't learned a thing in 3 years. The same types of questions were still a mystery to him. If I left an interview not knowing something and feeling like that kept me from getting a job, I'd go home and learn it. In this case the main language for both jobs was the same. Oh, in the end, he did figure out this interview was a repeat.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Someone with no college education who's been working full time in a real world shop that follows good practices as a software developer for 2-3 years is about as qualified for an entry level job building CRUD applications in a scripting language as a brand spanking new CS grad - maybe more so.

That brand spanking new grad may need a lot more training on version control and the differences between academic projects and the real world. But I'd expect them to have an easier time picking up machine learning, designing a custom circuit board, or writing an algorithm to do groundbreaking new things.

I love hiring people who are self-taught because it demonstrates that they're motivated and know how to learn. Faced with a problem they don't yet know how to solve, they'll usually be able to find a solution. It's not that people with education can never do that. It's that being self-taught in itself demonstrates that you can.

Education, by contrast, sets you up with frameworks for understanding what makes certain hard problems hard, and a toolset for evaluating potential solutions to them.

I don't usually hire entry level anyway, and my teams are rarely solving hard computer science problems. For this kind of work, by the time you have 8 years or so of education-plus-experience under your belt (in any combination), the differences are often minimal. I've had great reports and awful reports with and without formal education. So I don't really care.

That said, you may have trouble getting your foot in the door early in your career without formal education simply due to the way many HR departments screen resumes. It may take a lot more effort to find a place that will hire you and train you up in formal engineering practices for those first few years of experience.

</comment><comment><USER31> How do you want to live professionally? What's your long-term vision?

Gatekeepers, especially corporate HR flunkies are trained to screen for academic pedigree. A solid credential helps open the door.

Owners/Founders/Hiring Executives mostly look for experience and intelligence. Does this guy understand my world? Can he help solve our problems?

Find a way to pursue both goals. Get a part-time/flex-time job while completing your degree requirements.

</comment><comment><USER32> Focus on your education. You'll always have time to gain more experience, but, for most of us, the opportunity to get an education will expire. You find a job, get married, have kids, buy a house, etc, then all the sudden, there's very little time left for school.

</comment><comment><USER33> This sounds like 'competence vs proficiency'.

[https://www.oreilly.com/ideas/the-traits-of-a-proficient- pro...](https://www.oreilly.com/ideas/the-traits-of-a-proficient-programmer)

</comment><comment><USER34> While experience is generally valued more highly than education, it's worth remembering that many companies (in particular, the big, popular ones like Google, etc.) often have an education requirement irrespective of experience.

<comment><USER35> > the big, popular ones like Google, etc.) often have an education requirement > irrespective of experience

Google, Facebook and Amazon do not require degrees and some of them rely almost exclusively on their interview process.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I never completed my CS bachelor's degree and despite 25+ years experience as a professional developer and development manager, I still run into (usually large) companies that will immediately filter out my resume due to the lack of a degree. OTOH I have managed to get jobs that on paper required a master or PhD - it all depends on the company.

When I hire people I look for the right combination of theoretical knowledge and successful practical application of said knowledge. Personally I don't care if you got the theory part from watching videos of MIT lectures and reading books, or from a classroom.

</comment><comment><USER37> I think it really matters when looking for your first professional job.

Some formal education shows that you have at least the commitment and self- discipline to achieve a goal.

If not, you should be able to show off some professional work that you did (and you are able to demonstrate that YOU did it), which could be a problem if your expertise is something like, say, embedded software, and not frontend web developer.

After a couple of years of demonstrable experience, it should really not matter, although some of the more established/formal companies might still be looking for people with degrees (for reasons unknown to me).

</comment><comment><USER38> I've taken up to third year compsci, dropped out due to money and decided to go the certificate route (had about 6 at one time). I've applied to about 200+ places and easily passed all 'pre-interview' tech/programming questions and it usually goes good until the actual supervisors review my education, most just hammered on the fact that I did not have a degree and thus was somehow subpar.

</comment><comment><USER39> For education, It depends where you got Education. For me, hands-on experience matters most. I have met people who are very well educated, but not earning enough. And then there are people who have got no formal education are much richer.

</comment><comment><USER40> A degree tells me that you can stay focused for 3-5 years without your life falling apart, while being given increasingly difficult challenges. Even better if it's a degree in the field that I'm hiring in.

It's not about "no degree, no job", it's about "can't get a degree, higher risk that we're going to regret hiring you".

<comment><USER8> Does it matter if the degree is unrelated to the job? Example, a dev holding a psyc degree.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> the professional tech landscape is competitive: even with a degree _and_ experience, a job offer will not just fall in your lap. and at the moment, it sounds like you don't have either.

stay in school unless you have (a) a very good rationale for quitting, and (b) a detailed (in writing!) plan for how to get good enough at your craft to the point that you'll land some interviews and score a job offer. be honest with yourself about the discipline this will require, particularly if you're already 'struggling' in the structured learning environment you're in now.

beyond that, remember that the value of a college degree for you as a human being goes far beyond just your career.

edit: you might also do some research on what a typical technical interview involves these days. e.g., it's not unheard of to spend six months prepping for a google interview.

<comment><USER42> Well, it depends for the kind of job you're aiming for.

A top level job at the A-list companies requires intense interview preparation.

On the other side of the spectrum, there are companies on unattractive cities that will hire any warm body that can open an IDE. (I don't recommend working on those companies, or at least not for long though)

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> It may depend on the specific area of technology. I do phone screens and sit on interview panels (software company, retail point-of-sale), and I pretty much never pay attention to the education portion of the resume. For me it's all about what you've done and what you can do at my company.

<comment><USER43> Full disclosure: I'm a drop out, myself. 27 years into my career, I've never regretted it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> When I've been involved in hiring, neither of these mattered as much as if the person could show their knowledge of the relevant subjects we were hiring for in the application/resume/letter & then in the interview.

<comment><USER26> I always like to ask people what side projects they work on, what new tech they'd like to play with if they had time. Even if they dream of starting some project, but never do, that is a good sign for me. I've had some people answer that with blank stares. All I can think is they don't love to create, code or solve problems. Every good dev I've worked with has a project or at least talks about something they'd like to build, fix or improve. If a person loves to code and learn and will fit with a team - good enough for me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Google reported that Grade Point Averages are only useful when evaluating candidates who have graduated within one to two years. For other candidates work experience is more important.

</comment><comment><USER46> Depends on the job. Experience matters more for CRUD or Web programmer, formal education matters more for DSP or heavy data science.

</comment><comment><USER47> What do you mean?

Every employer simply favors competence. For competence, you need both knowledge and skill. That's it.

</comment><comment><USER48> 40% Education, 60% Experience. These are good proportions.

</comment><comment><USER49> Beware the educated idiot.

I was working with an old carpenter friend of my father's last weekend, and he was telling me a story about a guy he apprenticed with. The man didn't complete 8th grade, and could barely do arithmetic, but was a master mason and carpenter. He was once tasked with taking apart a good-sized sawmill and reassembling it on another site; he spent a day walking through the existing plant, looking things over, without taking any notes, and then when the equipment was packed up and moved, set the whole mill back up at the new site from memory, with a healthy dash of experience to supplement.

EDIT, forgot the conclusion: Clearly, education isn't everything. It's at best a proxy for talent.

<comment><USER50> Why is he an idiot? Not completing 8th grade doesn't make someone an idiot.

<comment><USER51> I had the same reaction to this comment as you. He says to "beware the educated idiot", then goes on to describe someone who is the opposite of that. I think we were both expecting an example of an "educated idiot". Maybe he should have said, "Keep an eye out for the uneducated genius?"</comment></comment></comment>


Ciao Python, Hola Go - <AUTHOR> http://tav.espians.com/ciao-python-hola-go.html

<comment><USER2> I don't understand this winner-take-all mentality around programming languages. Why "switch?" Why not instead simply add another tool to your toolbox? I like having a myriad of languages and libraries at my disposal. Each has its strengths and weaknesses. Understanding those allows you to choose the best tool for the job at hand.

One thing we need to learn to accept is that no tool is ever perfect. What is optimal for building applications may get in the way when doing embedded work. An outstanding teaching language may not be efficient enough for experts. There are many different situations we'll encounter as programmers. Not every can be resolved with the same set of tools, so the more we have available (and understand!), the better.

<comment><USER3> > Why?

Because you have a blog and must fill it with something or it whithers. Controversy is more filling than pragmatic rationalism.

<comment><USER4> That explains the blogs (and, well, a large part of the media) but doesn't answer the phenomenon of language wars.

<comment> hippee-lee s/language/religious/ and wars over religion have been going on for thousands of years. I don't think that explains it but the mentality seems very similar to me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It seems a little early to be making any committed switches. I think I'd wait until after I built something significant before I announced that something new was better than something old. Especially when betting on a combination of new tech such as Go and NaCl.

Most of the reasoning here that's not flat out wrong (such as to the reference to lack of Google support for Python, inability to secure the platform, ), seems performance focused, so perhaps that's a sufficient justification?

<comment><USER6> "A little early" seems like a giant understatement. Go has only been out for about a month. Python has been out for ~18 years, About 200 times longer than Go.

Why someone would choose to switch from a well established language to a brand new bleeding edge one is beyond me.

<comment><USER7> A calculated gamble on the new language becoming popular in the next several years?

It's like investing in a company; the smaller it is when you throw in your lot, the better placed you'll be when it grows big. Imagine that Go becomes the Next Big Thing five years from now, displacing large amounts of C/C++ code --this guy would then have five years of experience under his belt in the hot new language right as its popularity spikes.

The potential downside is that the language never takes off and you end up an expert in something that no one wants (see also: Lisp.).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> By switching this early to Go you'd have to write much of what is available as third party libraries in Python yourself.

<comment><USER9> I'm hoping someday in the future your statement will sound silly. There's got to be some way we can avoiding rewriting all the libraries every time a new language comes around.

<comment><USER10> The Parrot VM [<http://www.parrot.org/>] has been discussed here before: [<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=552850>]

Projects like this might help, but I suspect there will always be someone willing to port a library to be native.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> So what he wants is a modern language in which to write fast programs for NaCl? I find Go to be a rather strange choice for that given that it is quite new and a bit unoptimized. I think that D might have been a more intuitive choice as it provides you with a mature environment to write native code that does way with a lot of the pain you get when using C++

Than again, if you want to be really cutting edge and be mentioned in a lot of conversations, Go is probably a much more interesting choice as it as more of a hot topic right now.

</comment><comment><USER12> I think he forgot to write part where he explains why native client is better than ActiveX, or did I just overlook it?

Anyway, he seems to have a very specific, narrow use case (native client).

<comment><USER13> It's explained better on the Wikipedia page

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Native_Client>

It seems to be sandboxed, whereas ActiveX is a security nightmare.

<comment><USER12> I am pretty sure ActiveX had some kind of sandbox model as well?

Even so, I remain very skeptic about this.

<comment><USER14> There's "sandboxes" and then there's sandboxes. Native Client uses the latter while ActiveX had barely the former.

It does present a real concern and exposing additional APIs is going to always present increased security risk. That said, having looked a bit at Native Client's sandbox and having examined the findings of the well respected security researchers who examined the sandbox protections, Google's taking a pretty good whack at it and their sandbox itself is fairly sound.

My worry is not with their sandbox, but the additional APIs that they expose with it. (See also: WebGL which now throws your entire GL stack into your web browser as security critical code.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> "And, sure, the guys behind it had made some of the biggest contributions to computer science to date, including: UNIX, regular expressions, Plan 9 and even UTF-8!"

It's a little far-fetched to say that two operating systems and a string container are some of the biggest contributions to computer science to date.

<comment><USER16> What would you say are greater contributions than UNIX or regular expressions (which you skipped)?

<comment><USER17> If we're talking computer science then I kind of have to agree that Unix and regular expressions are minor contributions if they even rank at all. There are several theoretical concepts and core algorithms which are much much more significant.

On the other hand if we're talking about computing and programming in general then they are pretty damn major, possibly on the top 10. One has to remember that CS isn't programming and programming isn't CS.

<comment><USER7> "Computer science" is, unfortunately, often used as a catchall term for "everything related to software and programming".

Not to mention that computer science, in the narrow sense, isn't about computers and isn't a science. Three cheers for unclear terminology!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


How the NSA Identified Satoshi Nakamoto - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@amuse/how-the-nsa-caught-satoshi-nakamoto-868affcef595 <comment><USER2> This has been submitted multiple times in particular [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15135309](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15135309) and [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15125348](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15125348) got some traction [I´m not sure if there is another [dead] resubmission with more traction.]

Anyway, the takeaway of the comments is that this article is only an speculation without proofs.</comment>


Warren Buffett Offers $1 Billion for Perfect March Madness Bracket - <AUTHOR> http://extramustard.si.com/2014/01/21/warren-buffett-march-madness/ <comment> at-fates-hands Probably because the odds are only 9 Quintillion to 1. Yes, that's a 9 with 18 zero's on the end of it.

By contrast, the odds of hitting the Mega Millions jackpot is around 175 million to 1.

<comment><USER2> Those are the odds assuming you fill in the bracket by flipping a coin. You can substantially improve those odds by using data like seeding, historical win percentages and similar basketball knowledge.

According to [http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB114304314046605235](http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB114304314046605235) a skilled statistician knowledgable about college basketball could get odds as low as 1 in 772 billion.

<comment><USER3> So you're saying there's still a chance!</comment></comment></comment>


A tech Cinderella story: How Silicon Valley helped a homeless teen go to college - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2013/09/19/a-tech-cinderella-story-how-silicon-valley-helped-a-homeless-teen-go-to-college/

<comment><USER2> Slightly misleading title. it should be:

"How one girl had a great mentor and worked her ass off to get into college"

Silicon valley didn't do shit, Felicia Curcuru should get a Big Sister credit and Ashana Davenport should get credit for taking advantage of a good opportunity.

If silicon valley really cared, they would open up offices in places like philly or detroit...

<comment><USER3> Banally evil article. _" Davenport started working when she was 14 years old. For years she juggled school and clocked 40 hours a week at Taco Bell, where she earned the minimum wage, $7.25 an hour. 'Working less was never an option,' she said."_

Ok, US's institutional child labor. If this were an official enemy country, that'd be the angle. If it had the wrong economic ideology, the media would wring its hands about the disgusting culture where many are called "poor"—mysteriously allocated less food and warmth—in contrast to those with more gourmet food than they could ever swallow.

And that country hates females descended from Africa, for some mindboggling reason.

Maybe the Google section would be about how its innovative search algorithm came from government subsidy in a socialize-risk-privatize-profit scheme [1], and how Google avoids taxes and splurges on luxuries while children must work. [2]

Google's anti-meritocracy depends on expensive credentialist barriers: _" 'But Google won't take you unless you have a degree. What degree you get affects your salary.'"_

This quote would be a howler: _" 'Ashana is an example where resilience and persistence will pay off in the long run despite coming from a situation where the odds were against her.'"_ That's the thing about "odds": sometimes a person wins the lottery. (And Ashana didn't win any lottery. She won student debt and some college time.)

[1] [http://www.nsf.gov/discoveries/disc_summ.jsp?cntn_id=100660](http://www.nsf.gov/discoveries/disc_summ.jsp?cntn_id=100660)

[2] [http://www.forbes.com/sites/connieguglielmo/2013/08/01/apple...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/connieguglielmo/2013/08/01/apple- google-among-top-u-s-companies-parking-cash-offshore-to-reduce-taxes-study- says/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm glad this sparked a discussion :) And I really appreciate people donating to Ashana's indiegogo! To add to a couple points:

\- Ashana and I definitely did the majority of heavy-lifting, however I want to highlight that I was amazed by the amount of support I received from friends and the tech community. I've only been in SF 1.5 years and I don't have family out here. Friends + acquaintances stepped up big time to mentor her, tour her around their office and even give her internships while she was here. Ashana went to visit 30+ tech offices over the last few months. It sounds small, but exposing her to Google, Facebook, etc can have a big impact on what kids set as goals for themselves. An article cannot capture everything over the last 6 months, but trust me, a large number of people, including people I didn't know well, surprised me with how amazingly supportive they were.

\- Ashana is just one girl and there is a much broader issue that requires scalable changes. But, a) I want to give some credit to Big Brother Big Sisters for setting up this program. It does scale, and hopefully, our story and others like ours encourage more people to get involved as Bigs. b) One lesson this taught me is that people WILL step up to help if it is easy for them. E.g., if you say "help poverty", people don't know where to start. But if you say "my little sister needs some more mentors and I'm really busy at work, can you take her to Google for lunch next week?" Pretty much everyone says "yes" in my experience, because it is easy to do and the impact is more measurable. I truly believe (most) people want to do nice things if it is straight forward. --> I don't have a specific recommendation on how to scale that yet unfortunately, but I did find it to be interesting learning and wanted to share.

I look forward to other thoughts people have - especially ones with suggestions on how to scale equalizing opportunity.

-Felicia

</comment><comment><USER5> In germany there are child protection services which either help parents to, or do, care for persons unconditionally up until 18; or even up until 25 as long as they are provably in pursuit of an education. Even after that there are services that provide for unemployed people and try to get them into proper jobs.

The only thing that went through my head reading this was: Why does it take a rich benefactor for this? Why does her country and society not help her?

While i am happy for her, it is incredibly sad testimony to how cruel and thoughtless the USA as a country are to their children.

</comment><comment><USER6> I find it odd that on this site so much discussion goes on about:

* Helping the homeless

* Getting women into tech

* The cost of higher education in the USA

* Giving the poor an equal playing field

And yet, this article doesn't get even a _single_ comment in over 2 hours.

<comment><USER7> Helping one person with a rich benefactor and indiegogo campaign is pretty much the epitome of a local newspaper human interest story with literally nothing to say about fixing these broad topics that all of society must deal with, any more than a church community holding a bake sale to pay for someone's stroke rehab is a solution to our country's broken health care system.

Frankly even seeing this story on Venturebeat/HN reeks of a Valley-centric libertarian-friendly "pat ourselves on the back" moment.

<comment><USER8> Although I agree with you on that the story isn't about changing the fundamental problems that affect American society, Its still a good story. Come on, you can't change everything at once! Its not like the girl got through solely by influence/connections alone...she really worked hard and took initiative.

I'm of the opinion that a lot of people would find the determination to work themselves out of poverty if they realized just how much was possible with a little bit of effort. Sometimes, that inspiration is all that is needed to make a change....

<comment><USER7> It's a nice story for her, but the medium is the message. In this context the story plays into a tech/valley belief that it's OK to live in a world where a combination of "off the chart smarts, fierce determination, and generous well- connected friends" are the solution to endemic crushing poverty. Swap around a couple details and it's the same type of feel-good story of individualism you see all the time in the conservative media.

Read the article again and read about the problems she faced in her family and society. No teenager should need to rise above those challenges, even if some minuscule fraction of them have the intelligence and will and luck to do so.

We should be focused on building a better society for everyone, not making ourselves feel better about the broken society we have.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> 1 down, 1.6 million to go. High fives all around!</comment>


Ask YC:  Unconfirmed friend connections + explicit friend rejections result in more registered users? - <AUTHOR>

The idea is that you can make anyone your friend and it would appear as if there's a bidirectional (i.e., confirmed friend link).  If someone appears as your friend but isn't, you can reject that friend to break the link.
The idea here is that unregistered users would have to check out the site to see who their friends are and protect their reputation.  And if some of them aren't friends, they would need to register to break those friendship links.
One might imagine that this would result in more registered users than bidirectional friendship links. <comment><USER2> wait... so you can attempt to add friends that aren't registered? how does that work?

and why pray tell would I want to constantly defend against people who I don't know adding me. Sounds like a new form of social spam. MySpace has this problem except you have to confirm before they are added. You would just be making it worse.

My 2 cents, no offense.

</comment><comment><USER3> Reputation is only involved if you are a reputable source, and this may not be the way to become one.</comment>


New Sunset Quality Forecasts - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2015/11/23/sunset_quality_forecasts_are_here_for_new_york_city.html <comment><AUTHOR> It's really a shame that they've chosen not to open source their algorithm. They use data from the 4km (hi-res) NAM model, which can be found here[0]. The GRIB files can be read and exported to CSV using Panopoly [1]. They mention using RH at different heights along with low, medium, and high cloud cover (LCDC, MCDC, HCDC). I wanted to make a simple model and train it on Instagram data for #sunset tag frequency for a given location, but Instagram just closed access to their global data. If someone else has access and wants to run with this, it could be fun...

[0] [http://nomads.ncep.noaa.gov/cgi- bin/filter_hiresconus.pl](http://nomads.ncep.noaa.gov/cgi- bin/filter_hiresconus.pl)

[1] [http://www.giss.nasa.gov/tools/panoply/](http://www.giss.nasa.gov/tools/panoply/)

</comment><comment><USER2> More at [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10623436](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10623436).</comment>