Self-Driving Cars Can Handle Neither Rain nor Sleet nor Snow - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-09-17/self-driving-cars-still-can-t-handle-bad-weather?srnd=premium <comment><USER3> The article is kind of vague. What they seem to be doing is operating a ground penetrating radar under the vehicle so that underground details can be used as positional references. This is useful only if you have a map which includes that data. At best, this tells you where you are. It tells you nothing about what's ahead.

LIDAR units that return "first and last" returns are helpful in dealing with rain and fog. The first return (nearest thing seen) will be noisy in rain, but last (most distant thing in that direction) should be stable if it's from a solid object. "First and last" is used with aerial LIDAR surveying; "first" gives you the treetops, "last" gives you the ground.

Range gated imagers for seeing through fog and dust have been available for over a decade. These are active devices which allow filtering out anything that's outside a narrow image range gate. You can adjust the gate and get images layer by layer. This technology is used by the military and seems to be somewhat restricted.[1][2][3] In addition to fog, it can show what's behind a camouflage net, objects concealed by brush, and such.

The submillimeter radar people are slowly making progress, too.[4] Automotive radars are currently running at 77GHz, which is low resolution compared to LIDAR. The resolution gets better with frequency. There are now systems in the 300GHz range.

So the sensors needed are available now, in expensive forms, and can get cheaper.

[1] [http://www.dvsmil.com/PDF/Imaging_Lidar_Seeing_Through_Cloud...](http://www.dvsmil.com/PDF/Imaging_Lidar_Seeing_Through_Cloud.pdf) [2] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOTo-6jXOYo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOTo-6jXOYo) [3] [http://www.sensorsinc.com/applications/military/laser- range-...](http://www.sensorsinc.com/applications/military/laser-range-gating) [4] [http://consortis.eu/](http://consortis.eu/)

<comment><USER4> Small nitpick. The range resolution improves with increasing pulse/chirp/waveform bandwidth, not increasing carrier frequency. It's true that at higher carrier frequencies there is more bandwidth available and thus better range resolution is possible but the relationship is slightly different than "delta_r ~ frequency"

<comment><USER5> The relationship is cT/2, where c is the speed of light, and T is the pulse length, if the waveform is CW. Note that in this case T can limit the minimum range you can detect. Or you can use c/(2B) where B is the bandwidth of the signal as you stated. I believe the limit is wavelength/2 for resolution though.

<comment><USER4> Yup. And in order to get a pulse of T you need, at best, a sinc window. Resolution is intrinsically linked to bandwidth.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > The cluster of sensors, bolted underneath a chassis like a skid plate, can > scan 10 feet beneath the ground to reveal soil, water, roots, and rocks. > Once WaveSense has scanned an entire roadway, it creates a map of the > subsurface strata that can determine the location of a vehicle within a few > centimeters.

 _nononono!_ Even assuming you can create sufficient map data as soon as there is any kind of roadworks - or even only the winter cracking the asphahlt - your data will be useless. They don't even need to change the layout of the road. I'll never understand companies that focus so much on maps as priamry source of data. Every day, massive - temporary (construction site) or permanent - changes are occurring to the road network. Also, the centimeter- precise location of the vehicle doesn't matter that much. The actual situation on the road matters much more: You may need to drive a meter more to the left because of a parked truck, a vehicle may obscure signs, a tree branch hangs down into the road, some car is parked too close to intersection, etc.

<comment><USER7> > I'll never understand companies that focus so much on maps as priamry source > of data.

Maybe they don't really care about the product. Maybe the execs only care about making money, so they'll find funding for anything - whether it will pan out or not.

Self-driving cars are hot and for now there's a lot of money available. I think things will cool down when the hard part starts - like when they really do have to figure out how to make them drive in less than ideal conditions.

<comment><USER8> Depending on how good that data is, this might be a data play where the data collected in a single repository is extremely valuable. Sell it to the military for operating when GPS is jammed. Sell it to mining companies, insurance companies for a detailed very large map of what lies below.

<comment><USER9> That's what I was thinking. Worst case, the map data isn't all that critical for self-driving cars, but you have a huge amount of potentially very valuable data that can be used for a lot of other things.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I've taken downvotes from HN optimists for years about self driving cars. The slightest bit of criticism would have comments calling me an idiot 20 different ways.

Then a single dead pedestrian changes all the news articles and the opinions change.

We are a very, very long way away from self driving taxi cabs. What a total PR scam that was - but it did help valuations.

<comment><USER11> Not sure if you have read the article, but it's actually about a company called WaveSense who claims to have developed ground-penetrating radar that can greatly improve all weather autonomous driving. So yes, it's a daunting task but lot of people are working on it and progress is being made. I'd be interested to hear your counterargument.

<comment><USER10> I'm not an expert in self driving car engineering. I have some experience with ML but not in a significant professional way. What I have is a decade of professional experience building all kinds of software and a skeptical eye.

You have a problem that is unconstrained, with infinite variables, where even a simple mistake can have catastrophic outcomes. Society itself may object to self driving cars for a ton of reasons, from safety to simply driving like a grandma and slowing everything and everyone down. The cost to develop this technology, plus the added cost of hardware to each car, will be enormous and is not obviously a cost savings over a $15 per hour human. If the self driving car is doing anything other than getting from A to B, you still need a human (or a human-like robot) to handle the unloading / delivery / whatever at the end.

Now, I've worked at companies with extremely talented and intelligent engineers, and something as constrained and seemingly simple as making a login form can take a long time to perfect - and no lives are at risk! Just imagine the challenges and requirements for building self driving cars. New hardware, software, real-time processing and analysis of tons of data, all to drive split-second decisions that can kill people if done incorrectly.

Huge challenge - huge risks - huge money - uncertain payoff. This is not something that will appear suddenly. If there aren't convoys of self driving trucks operating in desert highways overnight, where it's dry and straight and flat and no one else is there, then we aren't going to see city taxis for a very long time.

<comment><USER12> But it doesn't have to be perfect, just has better than human drivers. That doesn't seem too difficult.

<comment><USER13> I think you're underestimating the ability of even bad drivers to accurately process and react to new information while driving.

<comment><USER14> I think you're also overestimating the abilities and self-restraint of drivers to not use their phones while driving, to look both ways, to not go too fast, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Waymo's Michigan testing facility is very close to my home. I'm really curious to see how they do on snowy pothole ridden roads in Michigan. I've seen very few of them on the road this summer but if there's supposed to be heavy testing and validation going on perhaps we'll see an army of them on the roads here soon.

I'm curious how self driving focused groups are solving lane detection and managing surrounding traffic on snow covered roads. It's not uncommon for a multi lane highway to be completely covered with snow and multiple tracks for different 'lanes' that overlap. It's also not uncommon to see cars just making their own lanes. This occurs even after the snow has stopped flying.

<comment><USER16> "I'm curious how self driving focused groups are solving lane detection and managing surrounding traffic on snow covered roads. It's not uncommon for a multi lane highway to be completely covered with snow and multiple tracks for different 'lanes' that overlap. It's also not uncommon to see cars just making their own lanes. This occurs even after the snow has stopped flying."

Yep. As a Michigander, I totally agree. You see 6 to 12 lane roads reduced to "random" 2 lane roads when there is a good pileup of snow. And the snow drifts make it even worse!

<comment><USER17> Humans are good at improvising. Not using all the lanes when the lane markings are covered by snow, and the road is slippery, sounds like a reasonable strategy. And nobody ever told us that's what we should do.

With autonomous vehicles, you need to plan every situation in advance. Our current AI technologies can't improvise. It seems to me that current AI is basically just a decision tree with some neural networks sprinkled on top.

<comment><USER18> We don't want machines to improvise because we want to be able to test their whole gamut of behavior as thoroughly as possible. We can build AI that can improvise, but that's not the kind of software you want to be liable for as a manufacturer.

<comment><USER19> I am not at all convinced that improvisation is an easy add-on. While AI has demonstrated some creative ways to satisfy goals that have left options open (sometimes inadvertently), real-world improvisation has to be appropriate for the situation and the unusual difficulties it poses, and, in the case of driving, it must not create additional problems or (of particular relevance here) present significant dangers.

In general, I think, improvisation requires causal reasoning. It also often needs a broader knowledge than that needed for the nominal task (for example, when driving on a potholed road, one needs to have some understanding of how it affects the car's response, and sometimes of issues such as ground clearance.) Constraining the vehicle to avoid such issues would constrain the option to improvise.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> > Waymo, widely seen as leading the self-driving vanguard, says it has made > progress teaching its software to better filter out "noise" from > precipitation.

The last Waymo leak claims that it is more than just 'progress', but that 'rain is solved', incidentally: [https://thelastdriverlicenseholder.com/2018/09/14/waymo- plan...](https://thelastdriverlicenseholder.com/2018/09/14/waymo-plans- autonomous-car-launch-leaked/)

<comment><USER21> From that article:

> Also snow seems to be solvable, as there will probably similar patterns that > the sensors get in their signals.

Real snow is not just a software problem. Fancy rear facing sensors near bumper? I hope they function through a couple inches of frozen muddy spray. Front windshield? Sometimes needs scraping. Lidar on roof? Does it work through the big heap of snow on it?

<comment><USER22> I have a hunch that as cars get more sophisticated, they also need to have more sophisticated treatment. The reason I leave my car out to have a foot of snow on it is because it works anyway. If the car wouldn't actually _work_ without the windscreen clear and sensors ice-free, I would either use a garage every night or have a less sophisticated car. And I suspect that once autonomous vehicles get good enough, people will actually want to ride in them - so will keep them indoors more than they do with their normal cars. Effctively then, the rugged cars have become machines we treat like fragile fighter jets.

Still, for a wide range of weather conditions the autonomous car will just say a big NOPE and refuse to drive anywhere. Which is why it must always have manual controls. The autonomous car that could take me to the city through the worse conditions I experience every winter, won't have to take me in it because that car is probably clever enough to do my job as a software developer too.

<comment><USER23> There's real irony in this statement, when the people who develop the technology and commend home garaging are also the garage-free, commute-free kind type of people who vehemently tear down the idea of a suburban home/garage setup.

But I guess when it's your product; you change your mind.

*This is not an attack to alkonaut.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> "robots sophisticated enough to [...] improve on lackluster human perception"

This underlying misapprehension is at the root of the self-driving car hubris. Humans have _remarkable_ perception of physical environments. The fact that electronic systems can beat humans handily on a few metrics has led to an entire industry built on the misconception that those few metrics are all that matter. But those were just the _trivial_ bits.

The more sophisticated perceptual tasks--even the basic ones involved in the simplest self-driving task of traveling down a restricted access freeway--like correctly interpreting the behavior of other cars; interpreting whether the debris in the road constitutes a dangerous obstacle or something easily driven over; or even knowing which objects speeding toward you are moving and which are stationary--require more than just raw sensory input. There's a mountain of implicit cultural awareness embedded into all of those perceptual tasks that we haven't begun to form an idea how to represent in a software system. And again, this is the easy stuff!

<comment><USER25> > This underlying misapprehension is at the root of the self-driving car > hubris.

I will basically guarantee you that no one working on self-driving cars thinks human perception is lackluster or an easily matched capability. Journos interpreting their work might impute that belief to self-driving engineers, but nobody could work on the problem for even the shortest amount of time without realizing that it is an incredibly hard problem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Driving in dry / warm conditions is simple mechanics. Driving in snow and ice is an art.

In snow and ice, variables that are typically constant or static become dynamic. Formally dynamic variables now become multi-variable equations. For example: travelling down a hill normally requires dynamically factoring for the extra speed due to the incline. Under blizzard conditions you have to factor ice/snow volume, as well as the incline.

I don't want to share the road with self-driving cars in winter for a long time.

<comment><USER27> Or most people. If it is actually blizzard conditions, one should have a very serious reason to be on the road. If not, stay at home instead of driving. Snow days are called for schools. Maybe work in general also?

<comment><USER22> I think this is very regional. I have never had a snow day in my entire life because we get snow several months per year. I think the "snow day" phenomenon happens in cities where snow is rare enough that there is no infrastructure in place to take care of it (having that would be more expensive than just accepting everything stops a couple of days per year) AND not every car has winter tyres.

After 60cm snow on one night everyone is expected to be at school and work, on time, just like any other day. It should be noted that as a driver I also expect the roads to be bare at 7am even after that kind of night, and amazingly they almost always are. At least all major roads will be, but residential streets will not. [https://static- cdn.sr.se/sida/images/109/b924f65c-8cc4-4332-...](https://static- cdn.sr.se/sida/images/109/b924f65c-8cc4-4332-88ff-d7be5b425650.jpg?preset=768x432)

<comment><USER28> Where there is a lot of snow the infrastructure handles it. Snow plows run all night long. There is 60cm of snow on the ground, but at most 3cm on the roads, and plenty of sand/salt underneath so that there are no ice spots.

Where there is little snow they don't have plows or salt/sand. 4cm of snow and you better stay home because the roads are covered in ice, and nobody can help you.

<comment><USER22> If roads are covered with ice then you should have studded tyres or at least M+S. If even 10% of the cars drove around with the same tyres all year, I'd stay at home too (even if MY car had studded tyres).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> As a Canadian, it's the snow that's made me skeptical of self-driving cars. Seeing how much they depend on road markings to navigate in traffic properly is completely impossible in winter. Until that's solved, there's a lot of places that just can't use them for a lot of the year.

<comment><USER30> It seems plausible to me that LIDAR + radar could eventually outperform humans in white-out conditions.

Here's an interesting bit of research on filtering out snow noise from a LIDAR point cloud:

[http://wavelab.uwaterloo.ca/?weblizar_portfolio=real-time- fi...](http://wavelab.uwaterloo.ca/?weblizar_portfolio=real-time-filtering-of- snow-from-lidar-point-clouds)

<comment><USER31> But if snow occludes lane markings, which is what the parent was discussing, then no amount of sensing helps you see them, right?

(You can have a map with lane markings and localize on that map, though)

<comment><USER32> Except that many times when the lines are invisible, new lanes form that are in a different location. So your map will not match up with what the rest of the traffic is doing.

<comment><USER31> I agree. I was just anticipating the common response to that challenge, or any other "static" perception challenge, which is "but there is a map"

<comment><USER30> I mean... the map at least bounds the problem. You can be pretty certain in almost every case that the lanes won't be _outside_ of the mapped roadway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I wonder how self-driving cars will handle highway lanes in active snow. Here in Minnesota four-lane highways regularly turn to three and two lane highways when the snow covers the roadway markers and people just start making their own general paths. Will the software just follow the crowd, or will the software car be the one weird vehicle ignoring the conditions and following the lane that no one can see.

</comment><comment><USER34> I don't see the fact that self driving cars can't drive in all conditions as a reason not to still want one that can drive on the freeway in good weather. A lot of people spend a large portion of their driving time on freeways so if we could solve that to a standard of safety that is acceptable, that would be a huge win in my book. As soon as it starts raining, have the system disengage and I'll take over.

It seems to me that a lot of people commenting here are a bit obsessed about the edge cases, and if it has edge cases then it's not a "true" self driving car. I disagree. I think a car that can self drive in some situations would still be amazing.

<comment><USER35> The first cars ever couldn't drive in 100F+ heat, and wouldn't start below 0F. And even worse, there were virtually zero gas stations! Especially in rural areas!

Does that mean they were useless? Absolutely not!

Lately the mindset seems to be unless a product is all things to all people at all times then it's useless.

In reality a product just has to fit a category really well and it will sell like hotcakes. Then it will evolve in iterations.

<comment><USER36> This reminds me of intel's optane. Yes they overhyped it and it doesn't perform 1000x faster than SSDs. But you have to consider that SSDs required decades of improvements to become viable and cheap. Even when Optane was a first generation product it was already better than SSDs in terms of latency and IOPS but despite that people thought it was a massive failure.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> My old summary has been that current driving on current roads with current traffic occasionally but too often for practice requires actual, full human intelligence, generally that of a prudent person over 16.

So, the intelligence of a mouse, crow, parrot, dog, cat, monkey, elephant, dolphin, orca, etc. just is not enough.

So, self driving cars requires essentially _full AI_ for driving and nearly everything else in life. So, the self driving car problem is no easier than the full AI problem.

Sure, there can be some special cases that are easier -- trucks in a huge, open pit copper mine, a tractor on a huge, flat farm in Missouri, some military battlefield situations, and the public roads if heavily reengineer them with lots of essentially electronic tracks, etc., uh, right, on roads in perfect condition, no big objects falling off trucks, no drunks, no tire blowouts, dry weather, daylight, perfect visibility, no alarms from an extensive monitoring system, and no rain, sleet, or snow. Then, sure, a "self- driving car"!!!!

</comment><comment><USER38> Honestly, it seems like a more workable solution would be to improve the roadways with built-in beacons to indicate where a road is, and where it isn't. The cars would work only on the improved infrastructure, but they would work. I suppose there is a danger of nefarious actors spoofing beacons to make you drive off a bridge, but it seems far-fetched.

<comment><USER39> To me that removes the "self" in self-driving car. A car that stays on the road because there are magic beacons is like bowling with thise giant bumpers in the gutters. It'd be more like cars with uber cruise control.

<comment><USER40> Don't we want driving to be more like bowling with bumpers in the gutters?

Safer is better, no matter how we get there.

<comment><USER41> > Safer is better, no matter how we get there.

Not really true. It'd be safer to just get rid of high-speed vehicles in the first place, but that would be disastrous.

<comment><USER40> Yeah, I knew that was a bit hyperbolic when I wrote it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Recent Waymo leak suggests rain is solved and snow looking good to be solved next year.

[https://thelastdriverlicenseholder.com/2018/09/14/waymo- plan...](https://thelastdriverlicenseholder.com/2018/09/14/waymo-plans- autonomous-car-launch-leaked/)

</comment><comment><USER43> >For the local breed of unflappable seagulls—which can stop autonomous cars by simply standing on the street, unbothered by NuTonomy's quiet electric cars—engineers programmed the machines to creep forward slightly to startle the birds.

seeing the fun my dog is having chasing the birds, i'd suggest that a Boston Dynamics dog would jump out of the car, scare the birds away, jump back (and continue to drive while watching electric sheep funny videos :)

</comment><comment><USER44> Or construction, or detours, or cops directing traffic ...

<comment><USER45> I'm still curious about street signs.

Can any self driving car read parking signs because it's not like there is some API for when/where you can park or drop passengers off.

<comment><USER46> Waymo for one definitely reads signs, but I'm not sure about those. Lots are written in ways that the average adult human can't decipher.

<comment><USER47> I kid you not - "No parking Mon Tues and Thurs. Every Month" is a real sign. I'm yet to figure out what that means. Then there are the slightly confusing ones with conflicting messages which you learn to decipher with experience. Placement of signs (esp one-way) are not consistent or does not take into account and driving cars - how will a car exiting a garage or a highway know if it's one-way or no? Definitely not without a mapping software.

As someone who had to relearn the rules of the road for a new country - <USER2> is a lot that's unsaid.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Sensible 4 ([http://sensible4.fi/](http://sensible4.fi/)) uses bunch of various sensors including LIDAR, IR and normal camera. Seems to do ok in typical winter environment: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQWrngWvcnU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQWrngWvcnU)

<comment><USER49> That's awesome, they also have some old videos from 1990-1993:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7jxensSdhE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7jxensSdhE)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMlz5tAKmUs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMlz5tAKmUs)

They've been working on this problem for a very long time. Which explains the progress they've made. I don't know how people can say this is an unsolvable problem when some high end research applications have made such progress.

Plus there's Microsoft's 2016 announcement with Ford about algorithms that can work within snow/rain by identifying raindrops and snowflakes then 'ignoring' them:

[https://qz.com/637509/driverless-cars-have-a-new-way-to- navi...](https://qz.com/637509/driverless-cars-have-a-new-way-to-navigate-in- rain-or-snow/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> This is one of the times where I am glad to be working in maritime autonomy and not (any longer) in automotive -- we have the considerable benefit of being able to modify the operating procedures for our autonomous vessels to restrict operations or modify operating procedures in environmental conditions where normal operation is no longer safe.

</comment><comment><USER51> Not to be Cynical,Somehow the article sounded like a sales pitch for "Wavesense". They too want to have pie out in the self driving race. As mentioned in the article, each sensor(Radar,Lidar,Camera) has a limitation on its own. But, Self driving cars depend not just on one sensor but on Fused output of sensor. Also, they use V2V, HD maps and GPS/DR for localisation. Wavesense is another sensor that can solve localisation problem. They too might have difficulty in cases where there are fallen metal objects that reflect different signatures, causing trouble. More the sensors, more the confidence for Self driving.

Edit: Grammar & some terminology

</comment><comment><USER52> All the extra sensors that can be added to cars in addition to the suite of cameras make self-driving cars seem inevitable, yet no manufacturers appear to be close to bringing one to market.

<comment> rm_-rf_slash The problem isn't sensing, it's decision-making.

<comment><USER53> The trolley problem is a tough one.

<comment><USER9> I've never understood why. I can't imagine any programmer or self-driving car company having any interest whatsoever in going down that particular rabbit hole. The answer is simple -- we don't expect humans to do realtime analysis of who is worth killing when an accident is happening, so we will not expect that of computers either. It's an unsolvable problem. So we just tell the computer that in the event that an accident appears unavoidable it should do everything within it's power to stop the car immediately. End of story.

<comment><USER54> It's a _thought experiment_ ; do not expect a literal trolley (or even literal corpses!) any more than Schrödinger's cat deals with actual felines.

Here's a restatement without all those corpses: In the event that an accident appears unavoidable, the computer should do everything within it's power to stop the car immediately. (This is already a given: safety first.)

"If there are multiple ways of doing the above, what variables should the computer optimize for - stopping distance alone, or stopping so that it doesn't immediately get rammed from behind?" There's your trolley problem again, just restated so it doesn't appear so offensive: in both cases, the occupants of the vehicle are in danger, as are the occupants of nearby vehicles. Now is the interest in the rabbit-hole clearer? The problem doesn't go away just because it's inconvenient to solve...

<comment><USER9> Well, that's where crumple zones come into play. Trying to have a computer calculate whether or not it is feasible to stop slower to avoid or reduce an imminent rear collision gets very complex in a hurry. What if the guy behind you is much smaller, or much bigger, what if his car has better crumple zones, or none, what kind of energy is he going to impart to you when he hits and where will that send you, who is at that location, etc. These are the kind of questions that can't be answered with certainty even when you give a supercomputer a few days to work it all out. So I think the only reasonable solution is to not expect self-driving cars to make any kind of moral decision. As a bonus it is much easier to explain in court and saves us endless pontificating on whether or not the computer made the _right_ choice and who is actually responsible if it did not.

We tell humans not to swerve for squirrels, because it's a great way to end up dead, so the computer should get the same instruction. Slow down as you can, the prime directive is to maintain control.

<comment><USER54> In that case, I present a SDV that never makes a wrong choice - by remaining stationary at any cost ;o)

In other words, there is always a balance between safety and usefulness, and the question of "is this the right choice" is always upon us, whether we want it or not. You can never have certainty anyway, what the software is doing is maximizing on some reward function. The TP also asks " _is_ there even a moral component to this?" It seems there is, from the range of emotions this conjures up.

(btw "do not swerve to avoid unknown objects" has directly caused at least 1 dead person - Elaine Herzberg - so that's a really unfortunate maxim for illustrating your point: the car has also an obligation not to be a danger to others. "We just maintain control and everything else be damned" is _easy_ to explain in court, true: IANAL, but sometimes you need more than a simple explanation to avoid being convicted.)

<comment><USER9> To be fair, I said don't swerve for a squirrel. History is filled with examples of people giving up their own life for a squirrel/cat/dog because they swerved and lost control. You should have planned in advance what your threshold is for swerving. E.g. just brakes for anything <= white-tailed deer, and active avoidance w/braking for anything bigger, or human.

Elaine is not a great example because not only did the car choose not to swerve, it also chose not to even try to brake. And on top of that, a human would have seen her from a _lot_ farther away.

<comment><USER54> Because it was trying to decide if it's a shopping bag or a bike or a human or a squirrel...for six seconds, long enough to stop multiple times. The problem, from what we know so far, wasn't "car didn't see her," it was "car wasn't sure what it was, therefore squirrel."

And the larger point stands: "protect occupants, ignore outsiders" is _a_ choice in the TP, always choosing the same strategy is not "TP is irrelevant."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> Well boys, looks like it'll be another couple of decades

<comment><USER56> Or it could start taking off 2-3 years after the bubble bursts. Amazon lost 90% of its value between 2000 and 2002, and many of the big players today entered the market between 2002 and 2005, when confidence in the "new economy" was at a minimum.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> That's because of LIDAR, rain and snow interfere with LIDAR. A simple Google search shows that [https://www.quora.com/Autonomous-driving-how-good-is- LiDAR-u...](https://www.quora.com/Autonomous-driving-how-good-is-LiDAR-under- heavy-rain-or-fog)

<comment><USER58> As LIDAR's pièce de résistance to date has been its ability to "see through" forest canopies to the terrain below, I don't understand how rain or snow should present an unsurmountable obstacle to seeing the road ahead.

<comment><USER59> Trees don't refract and reflect light.

<comment><USER60> Of course they do. Airborne lidar usually works in the near infrared spectrum which is not absorbed by wood. It is however more absorbed by leaves which have a higher water content. My main point is: airborne lidar (which is what OP is referring to when talking about removing forests and keeping the ground) has multiple returns for one laser beam. Laser beams can have a radius of 1-2 meters or more when they hit the ground. By keeping only the lowest return in the z direction you most certainly have a ground point. It's not rocket science and interpreting ground lidar scans (velodyne and such) in bad weather is a much much more difficult problem.

<comment><USER61> What would prevent using the same technique of only retaining the maximum Z direction return to tell the difference between a refracted rain drop and car bumper?

Perhaps it is that the rain drop refracts the beam to all sorts of other objects which can make it difficult to tell which actually has the longest Z-distance return?

<comment><USER62> If I understand correctly the airborne LIDAR works in the timedomain and is much more expensive, while the LIDAR on automobiles is much more affordable but works in the frequency domain...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> It sounds like a post created by the public relation department of the company creating the underground sensor.

</comment><comment><USER64> An X-prize for autonomous racing on lubed up figure 8 tracks would solve this real quick.

</comment><comment><USER65> I think the real game changer will be when self-driving cars also communicate with each other in some kind of mesh network sharing road surface, weather, and obstacle information.

</comment><comment><USER66> It's pretty funny how we're running into AI-winter at the same time the autonomous vehicle VC boom is moving all their money to scooters.

</comment><comment><USER67> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bx08yRsR9ow](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bx08yRsR9ow)

</comment><comment><USER68> A basic question: What would we achieve if make successful self-driving cars. And can we achieve the same without building the self-driving cars.

</comment><comment><USER69> Neither can most humans driving cars.

<comment><USER70> That is clearly not the case.

<comment> munk-a That clearly is the case, it was my experience growing up that even seasoned New England drivers couldn't take the weather seriously and ended up in a ditch on the side of the road.

<comment><USER60> That's not really a good point. When New England/Canada drivers drive through a snowstorm, the vast majority of them get to where they were going just fine.

In comparison, basically no self driving car could safely drive 100 ft during a snowstorm.

Getting self driving cars to be as good as humans during harsh weather (which is not that good I'll give you that) will take 10 years in my opinion (I say this as a grad student in mobile robotics).

<comment><USER71> I'd say betting any tech 10 years down the line is a fools game. in 2008, people were saying the same thing about object detection, or literally 100s of other things that deep learning has done that people said was impossible.

Autonomous cars are already safer on ice. being able to individually apply abs to each wheel in micro second speeds of detection of change in terrain is far more accurate than any human.

As far as snowfall, for the vast majority of places, hi def maps and semantic knowledge of signage already exists, so as long as the car can localize, it can obey snow covered signs, and google and others are already working on filtering out weather "noise".

The problem isn't as intractable as it seems

<comment><USER60> I think you're mostly right; the only thing I'm more skeptical about is the availability and reliability of high def maps and semantic knowledge as you say. Maintaining such thing will be expensive and I wonder how it will scale country-wide as opposed to a few select cities. I bet using the self driving cars themselves to do the mapping and correct mistakes will be a big part of that.

Rough localization in a snowstorm (as in good enough to use prior knowledge of signs) or rain shouldn't be too hard. GPS still works in bad weather and lidar localization (scan-to-map matching) should be hampered but still usuable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER72> The Uber car failed in Dark of Night too.

<comment><USER49> It didn't fail _because_ it was dark though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER73> Nor glom of nit

</comment><comment><USER74> I wouldn't be surprised if these problems proved intractable enough that the solution will be adding electronic guides to the roads themselves.

Things like burying a wire that can be followed, embedding RFID devices in the pavement (along with an online database that gives their precise location and any updates on road conditions), etc.

It would be conceptually similar to all the ground based systems that guide aircraft.

Of course, these would be deployed only on high value roads like freeways first, and you could at least let the autodrive work on the freeways, and do the last mile yourself.

</comment><comment><USER75> Oh really? Tesla tested in michigan winters. I find it hard to believe this is not possible.

</comment><comment><USER76> If you've used any sort of ADAS this is old news.

</comment><comment><USER77> Humans can barely handle these conditions!

<comment><USER78> The problem here, is that you are half-right. Its localized conditions. No country, much less worldwide, system can account for local anomolies.

Where I learned to drive, most humans could 'see' black ice by predicting where water will pool, the recent weather, and subtle clues that abound, but are not easily expressable. Any out-of-town'er would surely be spun out or driving 10mph, white-knuckled, aghast at the "maniacs" flying by at normal speeds. While in my college city, I had to relearn everything, as it was rainy, and the drivers hyper agressive, and 15mph faster. The same model would struggle to encompass both modalities.

Until AEB stops accidentally triggering constantly on colleagues cars, I have zero interest in trusting my life to an algo connected to a 300hp steel cage.

<comment><USER79> I've often wondered how much of this is hubris or fear vs. physics. What I mean is - are people in say, icy and snowy climates actually better drivers, able to adjust to the conditions, or are they fooling themselves? Likewise, the person going exceptionally slow and cautiously - are they misjudging the actual risk of inclement weather, relative to an actual scientific judgement?

It certainly feels like humans become improved drivers through various weather / road condition experiences, but I sometimes find myself wondering whether my gut instincts would align with a scientific approach.

<comment><USER80> I don't think they are qualitatively "better drivers". But they are more experienced at certain things. When I lived in Minnesota, I got lots of practice driving in snow and ice and rain. Now in NorCal, not so much :)

Its a skill. You get better with practice. The person going slow probably just hasn't had enough practice yet with the conditions. Going slow is probably a good choice for them. Am I a better driver overall for knowing how to handle ice? Probably not, but I might be the best person to do the driving under those conditions if everyone else in the car is from warmer climes.

I remember standing in line at Minneapolis rental car counter one night when it was snowing an inch an hour with 4 inches on the ground already. Agent to the guys in front of me: "There are chains in the trunk if you need them." Customer with heavy southern accent: "Chains? What the heck are chains?" I wonder to this day if those guys made it to their hotel.

<comment><USER78> I think auto racing has priven there are most certainly qualitively 'better drivers' adjusted for training and experince.

<comment><USER81> And learning to drive in the ice and snow is definitely a leg up; in racing (I have heard this in rally and F1) "If you want to win, hire a Finn"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER82> I still cannot comprehend the current push for automated driving.

We, collectively, not just the US, have a problem with too many cars and instead of reducing said number of cars we want to make them self crashing?

Instead of investing heavily on public transit systems we keep feeding this fable that somehow, in the near future, cars driven by computers will do _at least_ as good a job of driving as sentient, sober people.

I can't get my smartphone to understand my language and do simple things by voice commands and yet we seem to think that there's (nearly) available technology to make a car drive by itself...

These companies must not exist in the real world, that's the only possible explanation.

<comment><USER83> > I still cannot comprehend the current push for automated driving.

Google and Uber believe they can make an insane amount of money with the transition to automated driving. This is being sold to the public as the solution to a public safety crisis with the narrative that human controlled cars are death machines which need to be taken off the roads as soon as possible.

<comment><USER82> I wonder how long will it take them to realize that it won't happen before someone cracks the artificial general intelligence problem...

I don't know what ticks me off the most, people believing that these companies can easily solve the automated driving problem or these companies stubbornly pushing for it.

<comment><USER83> I'm sure plenty of engineers actually working on the problem are aware of how difficult it is... but they're not the ones doing the pushing or making the grandiose claims.

<comment><USER82> Fine by me, research is research.

I'm just utterly surprised by how so many people think this is a fixable problem in the near future, it's not.

How long until people realize that?

The next AI winter won't come soon enough.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Has anyone ever got contacted from the "Who Wants to be Hired?" posts? - <AUTHOR> I got a minor in CS, MS in genetics and have been looking for an industry job for about a year now. I got an interview for a minimum wage Jr. Dev but didn't get the job. Post every time to the Who Wants to be Hired but never heard anything. <comment><USER4> I posted in the December thread and was contacted several times over the next 6 weeks. Here is my learning from this:

* Be unique. As a JavaScript developer I mentioned that I will not work on Angular, React, or other big frameworks. This immediately tells 90% of hiring companies to not waste their time with me and I am also not competing with many other people.

* Be patient. I grew impatient and jumped on an opportunity outside of software.

* Be careful what you wish for. The same failings and faults that apply everywhere else in software hiring will happen here too. Always be skeptical of the process, and ask good questions.

* Keep your experience in mind. Mostly what software companies are looking for is experience. Education is a nice to have, but it isn't required to be a developer. Education is never a certification no matter how much you wish it were or how expensive it was. If you have no experience you should expect to start as a junior developer.

* You don't need to be hired to obtain experience. Nothing is preventing you from writing open source software personal project and making mistakes that you are learning from. As somebody with a masters degree you are in a stronger position for advancing quickly compared to most other developers. After 20 years of writing software I am convinced that there are only 2 difference between a novice developer and an expert: writing skills and an advanced appreciation for data structures. Those are both skills that take practice to develop and the results a self-evident when reviewing code.

<comment><USER5> Just curious, what's the vanilla JS niche? Is there any particular reason a company would go with it instead of frameworks like React, etc (not saying I agree with those decisions, just an observation based what's happening on the job market)? Do you do server-side or client-side JS?

<comment><USER4> I can not speak for other peoples' opinions. Here is the reason I would pitch it in one word: scale.

An application written with original logic directly to the requirements provided will be smaller, execute faster, and require less overhead to maintain than something written with a giant framework provided your developers know what they are doing. One of the biggest selling points to using a large framework is precisely because many developers don't know what they are doing and many businesses are not willing to invest the money in training and documentation.

There are also specific demands that require original code that a framework is not ideal for. One of the employers that contacted me from HN was wanting me to write and maintain a Jabber based chat client that runs the browser with high concurrency like a high volume IRC room. Performance was critical and so they didn't want to deal with the overhead of a large framework.

Also, large frameworks are generally there to supplement developers' insecurity with the DOM and general architecture in the browser. That doesn't solve for writing a Node.js application.

As for myself I do both client-side and Node.js work. I enjoy working with Node more because that space is less opinionated. Developers' have all kinds of irrational opinions that they are willing to bet their careers on when it comes to working in the browser. Compared to most of that foolishness I am a 10x developer, and its not because I'm great at writing software.

What is super frustrating though is talking through these concerns during a job interview and dazzling the interviewers virtually ensuring my selection for the position. This is super frustrating because it isn't my intent. I am not trying to impress anybody when I go down that risky path of laying all my cards on the table. I am trying to voice my concerns as directly as possible to ward off a future bad relationship. Then once I get hired and go to work on the team sure enough all my apprehensions that I attempted to illuminate during the interviews are present ensuring that everyday at work will be a slow death trying to sprint though an ocean of tar.

<comment><USER6> Not sure what type of sites you're building on the web, but building nontrivial feature-rich web applications does not scale well with vanilla JS. Frameworks like React and Angular give you the power to manage state, respond to state updates with performant and predictable UI rerendering, and share components and logic in an opinionated way that buys engineering teams consistency and speed of development. Maybe the 10% of companies that aren't deterred by this opinion simply don't have websites that necessitate a "web application," but having an applicant say this would personally have me looking the other way 100% of the time.

<comment><USER7> > Maybe the 10% of companies that aren't deterred by this opinion simply don't > have websites that necessitate a "web application,"

The further your features get from a static html page the less JS frameworks helps. For example you can pretty easily write super mario in vanilla JS using normal html elements for rendering, doing that in JS frameworks would not be very fun at all. However if all you want to do is display data from servers or let the user fill in forms then JS frameworks are pretty good.

<comment><USER8> Super mario is orders of magnitude simpler than most web applications. Almost the entire state is encoded in the current frame and there are only three instructions.

<comment><USER7> Change it to mario maker where you can create and upload levels and look at and play others levels directly in the browser and it is still easier to implement in vanilla JS than for example react. Honestly if these things are not enough to constitute a complex web app then I don't see how the demand for people able to write complex web apps can be that large, since almost nothing I use are complex in that case.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I posted once and someone at a much better company than I'd otherwise get hired at saw the post and decided to refer me on a whim. That put me on an upward career trajectory and I now work at a FANG. I'm grateful for this community and also reminded of how much of a role luck plays in everything.

As for OP my suggestion is that the people who read Who wants to be hired are MUCH more clued in on tech than the average recruiter. If you've written blog posts or done anything cool or noteworthy put them in the post. They might make a difference.

<comment><USER10> What did you do to prep for the interview process? I'm assuming you weren't already prepping nor ready for FAANG, but maybe I'm wrong :)

<comment><USER9> Luck was on my side :)

I also had help from a friend who was a top ranked competitive programmer. We went over problems together. To anyone with a competitive programming background most FANG interview questions are absurdly easy.

You often see people asking "So I'm supposed to come up with these 3 tricks to solve these problems in 5 minutes and write the code in 20 minutes under pressure ?". Competitive programmers have trained themselves to do exactly this and they do this consistently on questions way more difficult than the average FANG interview. The value of this skill in day to day development is debatable but it's definitely something to sharpen your mind. It's something one can learn to do with reasonable effort and is not impossibly hard as some like to claim.

I also winnowed down on what to prepare by eliminating types of questions not generally asked or too difficult by scanning lists of common questions asked. Although I had only a few weeks to prepare. If you have more time the second step may not be as necessary.

If you have one month to prepare use the Elements of Programming Interviews book. If you have more time check out Udi Manbers book on designing algorithms using induction. It goes into the why and the how.

In recent times I've observed that the system design interview increasingly plays the deciding role as most candidates can now solve the DS/Algo questions being asked.

<comment><USER11> I would say that it depends on the role when it comes to system design and may be reflective of your level of experience. Certain roles require you to know how to run _something_ in a production context because otherwise the dev will make bonehead decisions. It's important to interview for that aspect as well for growth as there are some people that enjoy working on problems but just are awful at maintainable system design or conversely consuming large complex base systems. Anyone who 'develops for cloud' generally needs more system design skills just to understand how to work and build in cloud compared to a developer where everything is provided for them when it comes to actually delivering the code. This is a large change as well for people playing containers, kubernetes, and so forth where a lack of system design fundamentals can be a direct impediment to actually doing something of use given the constraints.

<comment><USER12> What resources do people recommend for getting good with systems design questions?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Related discussion with 300 comments, summary is positive "Ask HN: Has anyone ever been hired from "Who wants to be hired?" threads?" [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20330818](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20330818)

</comment><comment><USER14> You are getting your _PhD_ in genetics. That really seems like your passion. I looked at your website and it's clear that you have been involved in some cool research. Maybe it's a blessing you didn't get that junior dev job. Is that really the path you want to take? Will that leverage your skills and interests? I think you're better off using the Advanced Search function on LinkedIn Jobs to mass apply to recently posted jobs in your niche. Bonus points for having a coffee chat with the person who posted the job. Also, make a list of all the people who can vouch for your work, especially people that you've done research for/with. Analyze their LinkedIn, find jobs at companies that they've worked with in the past, and ask if they can introduce you to someone at the company who can discuss the job with you.

<comment><USER15> Some of us like to eat while following our passions. ;-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Yes. I had a pretty strong resume and a couple startups reached out to me through the contact information I posted. Also this is not the first time someone has asked.

But remember that you're probably competing with above average developers and as someone with little experience you may be overshadowed. Don't let that discourage you but be grounded in your aspirations.

</comment><comment><USER17> Yes. I only posted once, but did get a few replies.

I will say that more than one of them was by people who were not hiring managers but rank-and-file employees fishing for referral bonuses.

The number of _good_ leads I got was effectively zero.

</comment><comment><USER18> I was contacted by – and took – an awesome job in Seattle via one of those threads. So glad I got out of SF.

<comment><USER19> What did you not like about SF? I dream about moving to a much larger city (from a boring midwestern one), just don't know where.

<comment><USER20> Not OP but:

\- incredibly expensive

\- political gridlock preventing the city and region from taking action on common sense livability issues like:

       - housing supply and affordability

       - <USER2>

       - drug abuse

       - <USER3>

       - sanitation (see: "San Francisco Poop Heatmap")

\- persistent drought and wildfires

All of the above create a city with a transient population that can only afford to stick around for a few years, which leads everyone to treat the city as a temporary playground.

I made a lot of fond memories of San Francisco, but it's always been a gold rush town: young men come seeking fortune and adventure, but they tend to leave a few years later with their pockets empty... if they're lucky, perhaps a little wiser for the wear.

<comment><USER21> What is Seattle doing differently than SF in these issues, other than the lack of wildfires?

<comment><USER18> I'm guessing I'm who you meant to reply to, since I'm the one that mentioned Seattle.

What we're doing differently:

* Building way more. We had (have?) the most cranes per capita of any US city, and price inflation noticeably slowed – flatlining at times – in response to increased housing availability.

* Building taller: in addition to more development overall, I see more multi-story construction here, anecdotally.

* Investing and policing transit more aggressively. The light rail is much newer and better maintained than BART. Both trains and stations have officers on regular rotation. Stations are clean, and fare enforcement is a thing sometimes. Seattle's major stations (Westlake, Capitol Hill) feel nothing like their SF equivalents (Powell, Mission).

* The harsher climate isn't a thing we're "doing", but it likely makes Seattle a less desirable destination than SF for the chronically homeless, so it feels dishonest not to mention it as a factor.

This isn't to say that we're free from these issues – our problems differ in degree, but not in kind. But that change in degree has a palpable impact on everyday life.

Namely:

* It is possible (albeit expensive) for non-millionaires to purchase a home and raise a family here

* Traveling around the city on foot and via public transit is fairly pleasant outside (outside of rush hour)

<comment><USER15> Thanks. How is WA handling mental illness compared to CA, which dumps them in the street?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> My company has hired multiple developers from these HN posts. In fact, it's by far the most effective method I have been using to find high quality candidates.

Ping me via email if you want to discuss more.

<comment><USER22> In fact, if you live in NC and want a cool job, here you go:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22466932](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22466932)

<comment><USER23> Gotta respect the hustle, but this thread is about "Who wants to be hired", not its more popular brother "Who is hiring".

I don't think anyone doubts the effectiveness of the latter.

<comment><USER15> Am gainfully employed but never got a job from either, cargo cult interviews are the rule here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> From the other perspective: I posted a remote job ad in one of those threads once. I was buried under applications from remote employees.

Some advice: If you want to stand out, make your initial contact as easy and as complete as possible. The more the person on the other end needs to work to access your resume, understand who you are, and discover other details, the less likely you are to get a response.

<comment><USER15> Yes, what does work to access a resume mean? Log into a site perhaps?

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> We've hired people from both sides - us reaching out and people reaching out to us. I'll usually Ctrl+F keywords for what we're looking for and email anyone that looks relevant.

</comment><comment><USER26> I've never posted on the "Who wants to be hired" but I've applied to a number of positions on the "Who's Hiring" and consistently get feedback from those.

If you've been looking for a job for year without any promising job leads, i would recommend:

-seek some feedback on your resume -speak to some professional developers for some general advice on getting the first job

I'd be happy to help if you want to message me on twitter @jakeduchen

</comment><comment><USER27> I did on the 'who wants to freelance?' version once. It was a whole 45 minutes after I posted - someone one town over noticed my location and we connected. I ultimately didn't get the gig, but got a nice tour of their facility and some of the work they were doing. :)

</comment><comment><USER28> Probably because HN is geared more toward tech/web/ai startups and you have something else on your Resume. I would try other communities instead. I don't think you should be looking for a Jr. Web Dev position.

</comment><comment><USER29> I was contacted for a potential internship based on my post in "Who wants to be Hired?" in Feb 2020. I have prior background in industrial control systems, and the startup which interviewed me had some overlap as they focus on power grid. The startup is quite small but profitable, and I felt that it has a solid strategy+position for sustained growth. In the end, I believe my skills weren't a total grand slam for what they needed (lots of web dev skills), and I was also located 2+ hours (each way) and they likely needed someone to come into the office each day. They were also originally looking for someone fulltime, not part time or internship.

At the end of the day, I think both sides of the table was wonderfully honest, flexible and open to finding a potential fit/solution/consensus, but we couldn't figure out a satisfying way to make the parts fit together.

I've done about a dozen interviews since January (and found several offers), and several dozen more earlier in life. The interview I found via "Who wants to be Hired?" really stands out for being the most earnest, open, flexible, and consensus-focused. It felt like discussing a potential partnership ("Here's where I'm at, whats that look like for you?"), rather than a typical job interview -- i.e. "This place has been voted top quality of life in Metropolitan (because we paid for it, but our employees actually end up working 60 hrs/week most weeks)" and "Yes, I have Django experience (from my personal project I never quite finished or ever deployed)"

</comment><comment><USER30> Whoshiring worked for me back in like 2014-2016 when I was the "only" React.js freelancer with deep experience. (Not sure when whoshiring started but somewhere in there.) It stopped working in ~2017-2019 once everyone had that and I don't think I was ever contacted again (by a serious opportunity). Trolling public forums is so low effort that anyone can do it and it's a race to the bottom unless you stand out in some clear way.

</comment><comment><USER31> Yes, I got contacted by HN hiring threads multiple times. I ended up taking few gigs and it turned out to be good. The quality of the jobs and requirements we get from HN is good when compared to other job boards. Experience definitely matters for a good role. I see lot of requirements are related to javascript frameworks (e.g React). In your case I would show some links to your profile (i.e Github, linkedin or your own website). Good luck with your search. You can also reach out to people from "Who is Hiring" thread.

Here is list of compiled remote job boards.

[https://github.com/lukasz-madon/awesome-remote-job/#job- boar...](https://github.com/lukasz-madon/awesome-remote-job/#job-boards)

</comment><comment><USER32> Has anyone had success posting on the "who wants to be hired thread" looking for work but not having a traditional software background? I'm just wondering if there is any real way for this to be effective when lacking the 'normal' key signals for software jobs.

</comment><comment><USER33> If you're getting a PhD you might want to consider a Data Science / research role, or at least an analyst role. If you wanted a job as a Software Engineer, why stay in school so long? Many SE roles don't even need a bachelors degree (though, ofc, companies want people with a BS).

I've never worked with a PhD software engineer, but as a data scientist, most of the people I work with have a PhD or masters. I'm the odd one out not having a degree.

And to answer your question, when I post in the Who Wants to be Hired threads I always get responses, but I've got 10+ years of industry experience, so it makes sense.

</comment><comment><USER34> Yep. I moved from Boulder to NYC based on an offer I got from my only post.

I've also worked in a couple of companies that need computational biology, biostats, etc., and I don't think any of them would be likely to reach out to people on HN.

</comment><comment><USER35> I have- however, both of them called me the wrong name; so I didn't reply.

</comment><comment><USER36> I got hired on my first internship after I graduated college from HN, in 2017. I was jobless at the time and living with my parents in the hope I would be able to get a good opportunity. I ended up being hired on a small internship role developing a Rails app, which wasn't enough to sustain me so I still relied on my parents for rent. After that I got lucky on one of my other applications and got hired by a much bigger org, such that I can now pay for my own rent.

</comment><comment><USER37> Got a few leads in the past year from two personal submissions to the freelancer seeking work topic. They ended in nothing massive (or life changing, as some are reporting on here, well done to you!) because onsite still seems a pre-requisite for anything non-software and, more than that, real life teams cannot outsource IP trust or strategic responsibility for heavy-impact r&d decisions.

</comment><comment><USER38> As for the question in the topic: yes, I have been contacted.

Do you have any experience outside the university degrees? It is difficult to hire someone who has a very diverse skill set with no particular experience. You should probably focus on building a portfolio - work on some open source projects or create something on your own... Otherwise, it will be tough :)

</comment><comment><USER15> Once I was in dire straits, in great need of honest work, and had lots of skills and experience.

Got one reply from someone building a surveillance apparatus for authoritarian countries. I had to say no. :(

</comment><comment><USER39> I think that most employers look at that MS in genetics and assume you're looking for related work. The problem with that is that biotech employers don't read Hacker News nearly as much as software employers. You need to look for other venues.

</comment><comment><USER40> Those posts are generally for people with dev experience or BS/MS/PhD in CS. Pretty much a strong resume though there are exceptions.

> I got a minor in CS, MS in genetics and have been looking for an industry > job for about a year now.

If you have a MS in genetics why are you applying for jr. dev jobs which primarily targets towards CS majors fresh out of school? You are at a distinct disadvantage with a minor in CS.

With your background in genetics, why are you seeking out dev positions at all? Shouldn't you be seeking lab/research positions and use your CS minor to differentiate yourself from other people with MS in genetics?

Anyways good luck with your job search, but I really don't think the "Who Wants to be Hired" is what you are looking for. Your best bet is through your alma mater/networks, professors, job fairs, etc.

<comment><USER41> It probably depends on where you are, but I wouldn't be surprised if OP could get a jr. dev job that pays better than any biology lab/research position they would expect even after a PhD and some experience.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Have you looked into the possibility of bioinformatics at smaller biotechs who aren't looking for lots of acumen? If not I'd probably look there.

Sometimes you don't have to hit all the boxes. Knowing R would help.

</comment><comment><USER43> I sent you an email and left a message on the number listed on your personal site you advertised in the other hiring thread.

Would love to help you out (even if its just referrals or advice), I know how it feels.

</comment><comment><USER44> I have been contacted and even got on-sites with them in the end. I always post when I see the post. I can follow how useful it is via my website and google analytics!

</comment><comment><USER45> Those threads are a great way to datamine info.

</comment><comment><USER46> A couple of years ago I was contacted and did some freelance engagement with a great client.

</comment><comment><USER47> I was contacted but I had a different offer by the time it happened. Still worth it because the position looked interesting.

</comment><comment><USER48> I was about to post the same question But I have similar question would love to hear community opinion on this

</comment><comment><USER49> I commented on a Who's Hiring thread a year ago, and got an interview out of it :)

</comment><comment><USER50> I hired two people from The Who Wants to be hired posts.

</comment><comment><USER51> i've reached out to someone to hire them for some small freelance work</comment>


Bare Metal Rust 2: Retarget your compiler so interrupts are not evil - <AUTHOR> http://www.randomhacks.net/2015/11/11/bare-metal-rust-custom-target-kernel-space/ <comment><USER2> I've been playing with Rust for os dev and emulation for a little bit. It's great to have others who are significantly more well-versed in this field sharing their knowledge with those of us who are struggling through it.

<comment><USER3> With that memory model its not surprising.

On the other hand, i really really would encourage any new developers to read the rust docs before learning c++ etc. It is amazing to have a language that puts its mem model first. The docs tackle the very basics really well.

The k&r c book is amazing but did a poor job of dealing with the true memory model because that was common knowledge at time of writing. Its short because of assumptions

the best java (top 0.01%) developers are the only ones I encounter often who understand the x86 + javas basterdised memory model

The rest just take it for granted. Even c++ developers (I'm one).

<comment><USER4> I actually doubt Rust puts the memory _model_ first, but it provides a path through which you effectively don't have to worry about it at all. Which is wonderful and good enough, really.

IIRC Rust has a similarly confusing underlying memory model. However, due to a lack of direct shared mutable state being available, you don't get to see this often. In fact, one might call Rust's model more confusing than C++ since you have `noalias` everywhere which can enable more aggressive optimizations. But it's mostly irrelevant since you don't deal with it unless you're writing unsafe code.

On the "encourage new devs to read the Rust docs" front I agree, though. We've had tons of people saying that they code better C++ after learning Rust. Also I've heard of companies wanting to start programming in C++/Rust-y things with a majority of python/ruby/js/etc devs use Rust because "Rust teaches a lot of things to the programmers that they no longer have to". Something like that.

<comment><USER3> Agreed. What i meant was they start talking about the memory model at the very beginning of their online book, more than most languages bother with.

[https://doc.rust-lang.org/book/the-stack-and-the-heap.html](https://doc.rust- lang.org/book/the-stack-and-the-heap.html)

<comment><USER5> Yeah, this is because we want people who may not have a systems backround to be able to use Rust. That's just general info on the concept of stack vs heap, it's not Rust-specific.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Can you just not use the first 128 bytes of the stack on a interrupt?

<comment><USER7> No - Part of how interrupts work is that the CPU itself pushes the values of certain registers onto the stack (As well as an error code in the case of an exception). The CPU has to store those values _somewhere_ so that when the interrupt is finished it can return to where the CPU was running when the interrupt happened, and the stack is the obvious location to do so. You can't tell the CPU to do anything different in this case, so you're forced to simply make sure your stack pointer always points to the top of the stack so it doesn't get clobbered.

At the end of the day, it's not really that big of a deal - Allowing the redzone only really allows you to avoid two `sub` and `add` instructions on the stack-pointer. It's a nice idea, but losing it isn't that big of a deal at the end of the day. The majority of functions can't take advantage of the red- zone anyway, because any function that calls another function has to make sure its stack-pointer is correct before calling it.

<comment><USER6> Understood. Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> There's been a lot of really neat stuff focusing on beginners in the Rust OSDev space lately. Glad to see even more posts about it!

</comment><comment><USER8> I was wondering, would the monolitic/micro-kernel discussion be different today due to userspace services being able to use all the fancy cpu extensions, or would that still disappear compared to the cost of ring switching? Now that filesystems are more complex databases, maybe extensions could help with fast indexing/checksumming.</comment>


Do ArXiv papers get deleted after a particular period? - <AUTHOR> Hi everyone,
This question has been bugging me since long. I am not able to access papers on arxiv that are more than 7 days old.
For ex, today is Feb 6th. The oldest paper I can see is from Jan 30th. Not before that.
And I see this happening for almost 3 years now.
Do they delete their papers periodically?
Am I doing something wrong here?
Any suggestions would be highly appreciated.
Thanks in advance for any help you could provide.
Memento Mori :) <comment> T-A Are you looking at the list of recent papers? That would explain it.

Here are the hep-th entries from August 1991, which was... a while ago:

[https://arxiv.org/list?year=91&month=08&archive=hep- th&submi...](https://arxiv.org/list?year=91&month=08&archive=hep-th&submit=Go)

Here is the list of recent submissions to hep-th:

[https://arxiv.org/list/hep-th/recent](https://arxiv.org/list/hep-th/recent)

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi, thanks for replying.

May I ask how did you pull out August 1991 entries?

Did you run a query or something on their search bar?

<comment> T-A Go to the front page,

[https://arxiv.org/](https://arxiv.org/)

and click the topic you want, for instance "High Energy Physics - Theory":

[https://arxiv.org/archive/hep-th](https://arxiv.org/archive/hep-th)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your quick response.

I am interested in Hardware Architecture in Computer Science. So I clicked on that. This is the URL I get - [https://arxiv.org/list/cs.AR/recent](https://arxiv.org/list/cs.AR/recent)

After that, did you modify the URL manually to include "archive/cs.AR" or did you click somewhere else on the website?

Merci beaucoup.

<comment> T-A Oh, I see what they did, they broke up CS into a bunch of subject classes and did not include separate archive links for those.

This (hand-made) URL gives you the humongous archive for all subject classes:

[https://arxiv.org/archive/cs.AR/](https://arxiv.org/archive/cs.AR/)

<comment><AUTHOR> I am still missing something.

Even if I use the URL above which you were kind enought o provide - and I go to the browse section and enter, say, - "September 2013", the results don't appear from Hardware Architecture. They appear from all subsections. Few entries don't even have Hardware Architecture tag on them.

<comment> T-A Yes, that's why I pointed out that my hand-made URL gives you papers from all subject classes.

I guess what's happened is this: originally they just had CS, then the number of submissions swelled and became impractically large, so they broke it up into subject classes... but they did not go back and sort all old submissions according to the newly introduced subject classes, because it would be way too much work.

Maybe they will let somebody train a classifier on new submissions and let it go back over the old entries, someday. But until they do, the archive is an unsorted mess of all subject classes.

And that's why they don't provide an archive link for each subject class.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks a ton for your help and explaination so far !!</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Ultimate Failure of Moneyball - <AUTHOR> http://www.tnr.com/print/article/against-moneyball <comment><USER2> Moneyball has been so successful that it is now invisible. Because it is widespread knowledge, the competitive advantage has disappeared, and the teams with the most money come out on top.

Money helps teams compete every year, but a lesser team with a good strategy can sometimes contend. 2008's World Series winner was the Phillies, 13th in payroll. They played against the American League Champions and the Rays, who were second to last in payroll.

The Rays beat the White Sox ($121M payroll) and the Red Sox ($133M payroll) with a payroll of $43M. The Yankees, with their $209M payroll, didn't even make the playoffs.

This article, in typical sports journalism fashion, is written based on current events with no historical perspective and cherry-picked data.

<comment><USER3> It's not cherry-picking to note that several players whose obscurity and subsequent utilization by the A's were basically the focus of Lewis' book had unimpressive careers in the majors. Jeremy Brown had 10 MLB at-bats total; the book, IIRC, ends with him hitting a home run.

And again I'll just note, the author of this article is a reporter of some real repute.

<comment><USER4> Kevin Youkilis was also prominent in the book ("the greek god of walks" is how he was described). Seems to be doing quite well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "Market inefficiences are harder and harder to find, one of the ironies of Beane's brief but successful reliance on on-base percentage from 2000 to 2002 is that it has made players with such skill far too expensive for his pocketbook."

Market inefficiencies don't last when a book is written about them. Not that surprising.

<comment><USER6> Exactly. But then the author ends with this note: "But [Billy Beane] is not the man who changed baseball."

It seemed to me the author was making the argument that Billy Beane's tactics, which once were unique, are now widespread and without that advantage, his team stinks.

So... it sounds like he did change baseball. At least he changed the appreciation of OBP and Slugging Percentage. This article's conclusion is confusing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> If you read any later edition of Moneyball, Lewis mentions how much the 'baseball establishment' disliked his book, and frequently referred to it as "Billy Beane's book". This is interesting, since, for those of who've read the book, Billy Beane is sort of a distant figure, almost certainly not the motivator of the story. He's sort of a figure that Lewis can hang his hat on as the ostensibly interesting figure in a story that's really about cultural changes in an American sport.

The little comments at the end of this article make me think that a true old- school baseball insider is writing the article.

So, in 2002 or so, Billy Beane was doing something interesting with statistics that gave him an edge in baseball. Since then, we have baseballprospectus.com, many (most? all?) teams have full-time statisticians (Red Sox being the most famous), and there have been multiple books about baseball analysis from all different angles.

I don't even mention Pitch/FX, and the great excitement it has generated among baseball stats folks for how it will help their analysis of the game.

All this to say, this article reads like a weird Billy Beane slam from someone who doesn't really get what the hell Michael Lewis was talking about, (market inefficiencies first exploited by cheap teams, and already put in play by rich teams by the time you or I read his book) and, frankly, probably doesn't care.

</comment><comment><USER8> This is kind of a red herring.

First a large part of Moneyball isn't about player salaries. Billy Beane was forced to build teams with lower payrolls. But what he really did was change a lot around how players are evaluated. Taking these methods of rating players and adding them to a decent payroll and you're going to see increased success.

Also I personally think that Billy Beane's main focus wasn't really post- season success. It's putting a competitive team on the field - and puts butts in the seats for as long as they can in the regular season.

I know the A's are a bit battered right now but its hard to argue with the success they had for a long period in the late 90s' to early 00's with a really minimal payroll.

</comment><comment><USER9> I'm not familiar with the arguments for and against a salary-cap in baseball, but in the NHL (my primary sport) it has done a great job of making the teams _relatively_ even. There's no equivalent to the Pittsburgh Pirates in the NHL - the worst teams last year were in the playoffs just a bit before.

I am not sure that buying talent helps the top teams as much as it pushes the worst teams down by making it impossible for them to afford to keep their talent.

<comment><USER10> There are a lot of systems in place to help small market teams, including "profit sharing" and a compensatory draft system.

One of the differences between MLB and NHL is the number of teams that make the playoffs each year. In hockey you get 16, in baseball there is only 8 across the same number of total teams. I'm sure the commissioner would love to change that, but the season is too long as it is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> As a diehard Dodgers fan, I experienced the flaws of Moneyball firsthand during the brief tenure of Paul DePodesta (Billy Beane's protégé) as GM.

DePodesta took Beane's emphasis on statistical analysis to the extreme, almost completely ignoring player personality, team chemistry, and the recommendations of Dodger scouts, who are some of the best in baseball.

He signed guys like Jeff Kent, Milton Bradley, and J.D. Drew with great talent, but selfish or non-existent personalties. As a result, the team was really more like a sum of parts rather than a united, functioning group.

Luckily, the Dodgers fired DePodesta in favor of Ned Colleti. Colleti's more pragmatic approach, which takes into account more than just stat sheets, has taken the Dodgers from 20 games under .500 in DePo's last year to 3 straight playoff appearances.

</comment><comment><USER3> For what it's worth, Bissinger also wrote Friday Night Lights, which is one of the more famous investigative journalism pieces ever written about sports.

It's one thing to point out that, having identified and (famously) exploited market inefficiencies in the MLB Draft, Billy Beane helped eliminate his claimed edge. That's how markets work. It's another thing to take Michael Lewis' book, look at the career of one of the central characters (Jeremy Brown), and find that he wound up only getting 10 at-bats before retiring. Ouch.

<comment><USER12> Yeah, and Joe Blanton's in the World Series for the 2nd year in a row, and Nick Swisher's a game away. What's your point? The list of players from Moneyball isn't exactly embarassing:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moneyball:_The_Art_of_Winning_a...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moneyball:_The_Art_of_Winning_an_Unfair_Game)

One of the main reasons Jeremy Brown was featured so prominently in the book was because he was such a long shot to make the majors but was being drafted anyways. He was also doing pretty well in the farm system his first two seasons before injuring his thumb. It's sports - lots of players, regardless of how promising or hyped they are, have to leave the game for a wide range of reasons. Jeremy Brown's career is not at all evidence that Moneyball's premise was flawed.

<comment><USER13> Yes, it seems to me that the lesson of this article is that the author _still_ does not understand statistics, even though he has read a famous book-length Michael Lewis treatise on the subject.

Sabermetrics isn't clairvoyance. No matter how good your data, you still have to play the game.

Meanwhile, while we're playing the anecdotal-data game, those of us in Boston are pretty happy with Billy Beane and company's predictions about Kevin Youkilis.

<comment><USER12> Bissinger's a really good sportswriter when he's focused on his subject in his own voice, but he's definitely a jock, and he's got a history of being a jackass to other writers:

<http://deadspin.com/385770/bissinger-vs-leitch></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Atbswp, a Minimalist Macro Recorder - <AUTHOR> https://telegra.ph/Announcing-atbswp-a-minimalist-keyboard-macro-recording-and-playback-tool-03-16 <comment><USER2> I've also been reading your source out of interest (and time ;)). Must say you have quite a consistent style, and you found a good balance what concerns writing comments.

Not an OO connaisseur myself, what I'm a bit puzzled about are the long conditional constructs in on_press() and on_release(). Partly it seems to handle mapping of specific keys that might not exist in all layouts, but is the rest needed because of conversion between different classes that encode keys?

</comment><comment><USER2> Hey, well done! For these kinds of tasks, myself I regularly use the venerable Expect [0].

[0] [https://core.tcl-lang.org/expect](https://core.tcl-lang.org/expect)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I too use expect for some tasks, atbswp was built for quick and dirty things, and non-technical people.

<comment><AUTHOR> And ultimately, I want to achieve Wayland support, which I don't think is possible in expect either.

<comment><USER2> Expect is a Tcl extension. You can also put Tk in the mix if you want, to create graphical Expect-based applications. You might know Tk from Tkinter (a Python binding to Tk).

Undroidwish [0] is a Tcl/Tk binary that apparently has experimental support for Wayland (through SDL). It's a spin-off from Androwish [1], but more for desktop/embedded systems.

You might have something there, as Expect is supported for Androwish already.

[0] [https://www.androwish.org/home/wiki?name=undroidwish](https://www.androwish.org/home/wiki?name=undroidwish)

[1] [https://www.androwish.org/](https://www.androwish.org/)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Jasmine Standalone Test Runner: A Free Screencast - <AUTHOR> http://www.watchmecode.net/jasmine-standalone

<comment><USER2> Stay away from Jasmine, just invest the time and go with qunit instead, you'll be much happier.

<comment><AUTHOR> Any reason why, or just offering an opinion?

My opinion: I've used qunit and I don't like it. It's better than nothing, but not what I want in a testing framework. The syntax is awful.</comment></comment>


Show HN: GoodGrapes – Discover Wines You'll Love - <AUTHOR> https://goodgrap.es/

<comment><USER2> Some quick feedback. I'll be blunt, but don't take it the wrong way:

1) Show a nice big picture of grapes or wine or both on your home screen. This alone will boost the appearance tenfold.

2) Way too much explaining how it works. I don't really care if it's social or there's thumbs. Just get me wishing I had a glass of wine now.

3) Don't make me sign up to experience the value. The best call to action I can think of is to have me put in a wine I like and you show me a whole bunch of wines you think I would also like. No need to signup for that.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback! All three are good points. With respect to #2, what do you think about the "top x" wines for the landing page?

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This is a new (just for fun) side project of mine. New features are in the pipeline, but I want to get some people using it now while it is young so that I can get some good feedback on where to go in the future. It should be pretty stable and (hopefully) free of critical bugs.

Let me know what things you'd like to see added to make it more useful. Either in the comments, or preferably on <https://getsatisfaction.com/goodgrapes> so I have a list of things to do :)

The idea is that you recommend wine, and then based on your tastes wines will be recommended to you. It is also a great way to keep track of wine you've tried and enjoyed.

In a way I'm scratching my own itch. I enjoy wine a great deal but know little about it and find the choices overwhelming. Getting recommendations seems like a great place to start exploring.

Thanks!

</comment><comment><USER3> The wine.com API does a lot of work for you, here. I don't really see what you're accomplishing by adding a social layer on top of it.

If the killer feature is the recommendation engine social or otherwise, I don't think that you're selling it well enough. I also don't think that you have a good enough feature set for a decent learning model to consistently offer up good wines.

I once attempted to play around with this kind of domain space in the past. I was really disappointed at how hard it was to get the actual descriptions and star ratings of the wines I was looking at. I think the descriptions would actually be what would be useful for discovering new, awesome wines. For example, "You consistently like wines that were described in terms like honey or berry, so we suggested this Chenin Blanc to you," or, "This 2002 Cabernet Franc was suggested because you consistently favorite aged reds that are described with terms like 'tobacco' and 'leather'." If you have that, then you've created an AI wine sommelier. Start pairing things with food, and you have an app that might go places. But the data you need to make that happen is really hard to come by.

Wine is also a messy topic because of the ridiculous amount of local producers, which means that in places where people actually enjoy wine, there's a good chance they're drinking something that isn't available on the API, at all. In fact, if you're a wine connoisseur, odds are you're trying to find progressively more obscure wines in the first place. In other words, why would I, as your target audience, want recommendations from anything unexhaustive?

This project shows a lot of skill integrating with APIs, though, and the design isn't bad. But it seems like more of a weekend hack project than a viable service. Still, from someone who once used a beer API to teach people about search engines, well done.

<comment><AUTHOR> Fair points. It is a bit of a weekend project, and it is really just me working on it in my spare time. Who knows, maybe it will grow into something bigger/better. Or maybe not. Either way it is just something fun to play with.

Thanks for the feedback.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think andrewcross has some solid feedback. I once read that if you have to give instructions to your website, you've already failed the UX. Even though I could deduce everything that your website does without reading the instructions, I did so anyway which took me away from getting to actual product.

I wish your top 25 had price as a column. Otherwise, great job guys & good luck. I forwarded this to one of my colleagues who is a huge wino and will add his feedback.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh, and what do you think about the top wines being displayed as the root page? What would you like to see on the landing page?

<comment><USER4> Honestly, this is not my field of expertise by any means but one of the top 25 wines randomly selected with quotes, reviews and history with a simple way to cycle through other wines or see the entire list. Maybe scrape amazon + wikipedia?

<comment><AUTHOR> Wikipedia is definitely on my list of things to do. That's a great idea for the landing page.

Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think it's a great start. I'm working on a related project. But one thing that may cause confusion is that at least in my mind, wines are related to wineries or producers, and through a winery to one or more vineyards, rather than directly to vineyards. Often a winery is also a vineyard, but at least with cult wines there's a symbiotic supplier relationship, wherein, for example, a winemaker will produce a wine made from grapes grown by a particular vineyard, which is owned by someone else. The winemaker will then "vineyard designate" the wine, to both the winery's and the vineyard's benefit.

So the quick fix is that I think from looking at what you've built here, that maybe you should have a big list of wines, and another big list of wineries, rather than vineyards?

Hope this helps :)

</comment><comment><USER6> Interesting site! I know next to nothing about wines so I think I may be using this next time I go to pick one out.

I do have a suggestion however: avoid using so much purple. As you already know, purple is a mixture of red and blue. The problem is that red and blue are the opposite ends of the color spectrum - this makes it very difficult for your eye to focus on this color - similar to trying to read red writing on a blue background, or blue writing on a red background.

Anyway - just a thought as I struggle reading the purple font (it strains my eyes ever so slightly).

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the input. I see your point with the red/blue. I'll play with some other colors this weekend. (Visual design isn't my strong suit).

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> It would be great if there were ways to sort the results when you look in the big list of wines, such as by price, year, name, vineyard. Also, when there is more than one page of results, having the pages separated by something related to the sorting criteria is a lot more intuitive in order to browse through to find what one is looking for. For example, sorting by vineyard could do A-C, D-E, F-H or A, B, C. Either are lot easier to understand than page 1, page 2, page 3.

<comment><USER8> also, don't show multiple years. display a particular wine (all years) and then let year selection happen on the wine's page. otherwise you can get a search result with the same wine repeated again and again for many years, which is frustrating if it's not the one you are looking for.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> As an avid wine drinker, who has been around the world and tried wines from every country...

Get recommendations, try a bottle, and try something new all the time. It's to be an experience, it's not just a beverage.

</comment><comment><USER10> What do you use to do the recommendations? Apache Mahout?

<comment><AUTHOR> <https://github.com/davidcelis/recommendable></comment></comment>


Hillary: 'Don't Let Anybody Tell You' That 'Businesses Create Jobs' - <AUTHOR> http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-TV/2014/10/24/Hillary-Dont-Let-Anybody-Tell-You-That-Businesses-Create-Jobs <comment><USER2> "It is not the employer who pays the wages. Employers only handle the money. It is the customer who pays the wages" \- Henry Ford

follow up reading: [http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/06/the- pitchfork...](http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/06/the-pitchforks- are-coming-for-us-plutocrats-108014.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> Nick Hanausr says much the same thing: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKCvf8E7V1g](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKCvf8E7V1g)

Here is an excerpt from the Atlantic:

"Anyone who's ever run a business knows that hiring more people is a capitalist's course of last resort, something we do only when increasing customer demand requires it. In this sense, calling ourselves job creators isn't just inaccurate, it's disingenuous."

"That's why our current policies are so upside down. When you have a tax system in which most of the exemptions and the lowest rates benefit the richest, all in the name of job creation, all that happens is that the rich get richer."

[http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/05/here- is-...](http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/05/here-is-the-full- inequality-speech-and-slideshow-that-was-too-hot-for-ted/257323/)

</comment><comment><USER4> George McGovern (liberal politician who turned entrepreneur) wrote a great piece about his experience in business after politics. Maybe Hillary should read it (or start a business, since she has no private sector background).

"In retrospect, I wish I had known more about the hazards and difficulties of such a business, especially during a recession of the kind that hit New England just as I was acquiring the inn's 43-year leasehold. I also wish that during the years I was in public office, I had had this firsthand experience about the difficulties business people face every day. That knowledge would have made me a better U.S. senator and a more understanding presidential contender."

A Politician's Dream Is a Businessman's Nightmare (1992)

[http://digital.library.ucla.edu/websites/2008_993_056/Politi...](http://digital.library.ucla.edu/websites/2008_993_056/Politician_Dream.htm)

<comment><USER5> _" Maybe Hillary should read it (or start a business, since she has no private sector background)."_

Actually, she did have private sector experience early in her career. She was a partner at the Rose Law Firm in Arkansas (which famously represented the Madison Guaranty Bank, that was involved with the Whitewater scandal).

She also sat on several corporate boards:

 _"...she also held positions on the corporate board of directors of TCBY (1985–1992), Wal-Mart Stores (1986–1992) and Lafarge (1990–1992). TCBY and Wal-Mart were Arkansas-based companies that were also clients of Rose Law. Clinton was the first female member on Wal-Mart's board, added following pressure on chairman Sam Walton to name a woman to the board. Once there, she pushed successfully for Wal-Mart to adopt more environmentally friendly practices, was largely unsuccessful in a campaign for more women to be added to the company's management, and was silent about the company's famously anti- labor union practices."_[1]

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillary_Rodham_Clinton](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillary_Rodham_Clinton)

<comment><USER6> Can someone give me the real skinny on corporate board seats? I hear they are basically the rich people equivalent of a blow-off class in the University of Soft Knocks, but few people who sit on boards seem to directly address this question.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> That's a really astounding statement. Basically, I think there are only two types of employers. Businesses and government. When government is the employer your salary is paid out of taxes. Those taxes are taken from the economy. So, even if no businesses ever hired anybody, and say, worked only with robots, they would still be the ones creating the economic growth necessary to provide government jobs.

I guess, with the power to print money, the government could eliminate taxes and just print money to pay everyone. But I wonder what the dollar would be worth in such a situation. I don't think much at all. Then again, I guess there'd be nothing to buy with them either.

<comment><USER8> Customer demand creates jobs. Giving money to profitable businesses doesn't do anything because they are already capable of hiring more but don't. Giving money to consumers works better because the money is spent and creates demand for labour.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's a statement made in the context of supply-side economic policy.

Some people believe that giving money to businesses via tax reductions will result in more hiring and economic activity. This stuff is typically attributed to President Reagan.

</comment><comment><USER10> I've never understood why Clinton gets credit for the speculative boom during his term, but never gets blamed for the subsequent and inevitable bust. That is one of the finest pieces of political spin in recent history.

</comment><comment><USER11> For most of us debating politics is like debating astronomy - it can be fun to spin one sided theories but at the end of the day we can't make much of a difference, so no sense getting all worked up about who said what and wasting hours in political debates online. The best thing you can do is to educate yourself, which means listening to others and researching data.

The best way to affect the world is to do something yourself, not debate what others will do.</comment>


Made everything myself: Design, Webpage, Video and of course the Music - <AUTHOR> http://www.vukkake.de Feedback would be greatly appreciated! <comment><USER2> RESPECT! Video looks great. Bu there still some minor fixes you could fix!</comment>