Kansas man admits to shooting Indian tech workers in bar - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/06/us/kansas-bar-shooting-plea/index.html <comment><USER2> While this is terrible it does have a silver lining; a regular at the pub intervened and actually told the guy to leave prior to the incident. When the aggressor returned the same man, Ian Grillot, intervened again and was shot twice trying to subdue the assailant. That is a pretty brave thing to do on behalf of 2 strangers.

<comment><USER3> It's good to know that there are decent people out there, but as an American who isn't white, I don't why anyone would go through the trouble of living in the Midwest if they had the choice. If anyone wants to move to the US, I always tell them to avoid the midwest and Texas like the plague. There's no point in being in an area where a significant number of people hate you because of your skin color.

<comment><USER4> That's a pretty broad brush you're using.

<comment><USER5> As a Texan of color with relatives all over the state, I believe a lot of Texans don't care about skin color AND a lot of Texans don't care about discrimination based on skin color. So as an immigrant of color, you might be better off in a society where the supermajority actively espouses inclusion (even if they don't practice it well).</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Practical Deep Learning for Coders 2019 - <AUTHOR> https://www.fast.ai/2019/01/24/course-v3/ <comment><AUTHOR> FYI, Google just completed adding all the pre-requisites for this course to their Colab service, which provides a GPU-powered Jupyter Notebook for free. There are no usage restrictions, other than that each session must be no longer than 12 hours (after 12 hours, you can just create a new session). So this means you can complete the whole course, and do your own projects, even if you don't have a credit card.

Here's the setup guide: [https://course.fast.ai/start_colab.html](https://course.fast.ai/start_colab.html)

<comment><USER4> That's great! I almost burn up my laptop running the NLP classes and wanted something more scalable that paperspace(is still a great way to run fastai).

Thanks Jeremy!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've gone through each iteration of the fast.ai courses and must say that it is worth it every time. The latest 2019 courses are again excellent. Even though I've covered the concepts before, I always learn a ton from every lesson.

Although it is recommended to dedicate ~10 hours per lesson, it is very possible to go through each video, then circle back to focus on one of the concepts/problems presented.

I recommend giving the first lesson a try. It is very rewarding feeling like you can actually do or build something at the end of each lesson.

<comment><USER6> If you haven't done so already, would you recommend going through the old lessons? Or is the current version good enough?

<comment><USER7> The courses move with the fastai and Pytorch libraries so its best to do the latest course so you don't run into features that have been deprecated or renamed or miss out on new features.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I don't have the time to immediately work on this course, but I might later this year.

What I'd like to know, as someone who has completed (in the past) the following MOOCs:

1\. ML Class (plus about half of AI Class) - 2011 2\. Udacity's CS373 Course - 2012 3\. Udacity's Self-Driving Car Engineer Nanodegree - 2016/17

...and gained a lot of knowledge about ML and DL thru them - would this fast.ai course be worthwhile to pursue as an addition to my prior education on the subjects? Would I find it just as challenging (from a cursory glance it looks to be a "yes", but I wanted another opinion)?

I'm open to suggestions from everyone here, not just jph00/fast.ai ...

Also - and this I would also like opinions on - would my time be better spent pursuing other areas I know I am not proficient in - mainly learning about probability/stats, as well as basics in calculus...

For instance, in the prior courses, there was always mention of - for say backprop - stuff about the "chain rule" and other "rules" for calculus, and I feel I need to understand that more. That is, I am wanting to understand things in ML and DL at a lower level; how the "black boxes" really work. So would I be better off pursuing that, or just continuing with courses like this one?

Or maybe both at the same time (if that is even possible)?

I've also considered that I might need to take those subjects (probability/stats/calc) as actual courses via community college or similar (or online MOOCs).

Any thoughts or suggestions are welcome!

<comment><USER9> Ive watched the first two episodes of fast ai and one thing i can say is that the whole approach of this course is the opposite of what the courses you listed are structured like. Fast Ai jumps right into "how to use the script/tools" while slowly teaching the concepts behind why they work in comparison to the typical ML/AI course that involves complex learning calculus and statistics before doing anything practical.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This. I can tell anybody thinking about taking this course, do it! The way Jeremy Howard explains things is so down to earth and clear, you'll be surprised at how easy all this ML/DL nonsense is :)

But seriously, there's a lot to learn here, and if you are looking to make your entry into the hype field of the decade I would strongly suggest starting here first

(Alternatively, for the more math inclined, perhaps take Andrew Ng Coursera course first: [https://www.coursera.org/learn/machine- learning](https://www.coursera.org/learn/machine-learning))

<comment><USER8> I second the Andrew Ng Coursera course; I took it in 2011 when it was called "ML Class" (pre-Coursera) - yep, I was one of the beta testers!

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Just wanted to say, your first course made me, someone with out a degree, extremely interested in the field, and empowered me to pursue a career in the industry. You making ML "uncool" really made me believe I could do it, when previously I had been quite self-conscious about my lack of academics.

I did realize however I was still going to be quite a hard sell for companies without the credentials. But that has lead me towards obtaining a B.S. in Data Management/Analytics from WGU.

Thank you for your incredible content and I look forward to completing this course. Your enthusiasm and teaching style make the class a real joy.

</comment><comment><USER12> Could someone recommend in which order should the fast.ai courses be taken for someone new to the AI field completely? Should "Introduction to Machine Learning for Coders" be the first? or I could dive into "Practical Deep Learning" right now, followed up later perhaps by "Cutting Edge Deep Learning for Coders" ? What is the difference between the two deep learning courses also?

<comment><USER11> If you want to get to building ML models right away, take Practical Deep Learning for Coders. Cutting Edge Deep Learning is a part 2 to that class, with more advanced topics.

The Intro to Machine Learning, from my understanding, is more of a normal class that will take a deeper dive into some of the concepts and theories that aren't necessary for practical implementation, but will be helpful for understanding the whole process.

I personally recommend starting with this newest course.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Can we have one in Julia please?

[https://julialang.org/blog/2019/01/fluxdiffeq](https://julialang.org/blog/2019/01/fluxdiffeq)

<comment><USER14> +1 for the idea

I use Python and TensorFlow at work but for at home side projects I am very much enjoying Julia and Flux. I haven't tried FluxDiffEq yet.

Jeremy, please :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm so excited to dive into this.

One question: is there a reason you opted for PyTorch over Keras? I had the impression that Keras was the go-to for "easy as ABC" neural networking.

EDIT: bonus question! I'm really fascinated with gameplay agents like AlphaGo and more recently AlphaStar. If I finish this course, will I have what I need to start work on a toy version of some gameplaying agent? If not, could you recommend where I could go next to start exploring that area?

<comment><USER16> The one advantage of pytorch is that you can make your graphs dynamic.

<comment><USER17> Tensorflow also created Eager - their dynamic environment

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> In my view, this is the _best_ , most accessible course on the planet for learning the _how to_ of deep learning as quickly and efficiently as possible.

Highly recommended!

</comment><comment><USER19> Well, very similar to one I just released (even in name)[1]. Specifically, I targeted taking one problem through several network iterations. I think it can be overwhelming to go through all those different networks. Once you get the basics new networks don't aren't really too difficult. I haven't taken their class before (and wouldn't want to spend money). I think that's a huge barrier, there's not much of a reason to require setup on sagemaker.

[1] [https://austingwalters.com/neural-networks-to-production- fro...](https://austingwalters.com/neural-networks-to-production-from-an- engineer/)

<comment><AUTHOR> It's free and there are no ads, and you can run it for free on colab or GCP.

I have no idea about where your sagemaker comment comes from.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Thanks for posting this, I have started working up some cloudformation scripts with the goal of getting spot instances into play for GPU nodes on AWS @ [https://github.com/frankamp/fast-ai-aws- advanced](https://github.com/frankamp/fast-ai-aws-advanced) not quite there yet, but using layering to get separation of concerns means a user can swap out for a bigger gpu temporarily without losing anything. Cheers.

</comment><comment><USER21> Does your definition of "coders" include those of us with at most middle school mathematics knowledge? I've tried some machine learning courses before, but couldn't make sense of the vast majority of information.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes it'll be a bit more work for you, but it should be OK. I provide links to more math background where required in the course.

<comment><USER22> Can the exercises in the fast.ai deep learning course be done in another language other than python? And how much time in weeks should it take to complete the course? If my laptop doesn't have a GPU, can I still do all exercises?

<comment><USER8> > If my laptop doesn't have a GPU, can I still do all exercises?

To answer this, while technically you could do the exercises, it is possible that it will take longer (perhaps much longer) to train models and whatnot without a GPU. Where you'll really have a hard time will be anything for deep learning and large neural networks. What might take a few seconds or minutes to train on a GPU might take hours with just a CPU with a few cores.

But not to worry - in the course it explains that you can use a variety of "cloud based" GPU systems that are fairly cheap to access (provided you have a credit card). So if you can't get access to a GPU, there are other ways that won't put you in the poorhouse (just make absolutely sure to completely shutdown and/or delete your VM instances you spin up).

Also - while you could use another language, it is best to stick with Python for now, because it has become almost the defacto language for ML and Deep Learning, at least as far as for education and such. Mainly because it has such great libraries for scientific computing available, plus it is easily approachable. It also has a great interface to Tensorflow (and ultimately CUDA and NVidia GPUs - also, get used to the fact that if you do anything DL related, you will be using NVidia almost exclusively; while AMD and others have their own DL hardware, it isn't nearly as well supported - maybe it will be better supported in the future).

That said - Tensorflow does have decent support in a number of languages, especially C++ - so if you are more familiar with that language, you'll be set to do some amazing things once you complete the course.

But Python, again, is really where it's at. Tensorflow is a great library that abstracts away a lot of the pain in dealing with CUDA. But even it has pain - and there are other libraries layered over it that make things even easier to work with (ie - Keras). Seriously; in the training I've had with DL (mainly thru Udacity), we had to learn how to build a simplified DL "library" of methods for building simple neural networks.

Once you learn about Tensorflow, you will have an epiphany of "OMG so much easier!". Then - when you learn about Keras, it's yet another epiphany - <USER2> makes Tensorflow look "difficult". Of course, it's best to learn in this manner if you can, so that you understand how the lower levels work - <USER3> of everything being a black-box.

Of course, at some level there will be "black-boxes"; for instance, you may or may not want to learn how Tensorflow interfaces with CUDA. Or how CUDA interfaces with the GPU. Or certain other methods in Tensorflow or some other library that perhaps wraps certain methods and functionality. Honestly, things are much nicer today than they were even 5 years ago. You can decide just what level of depth you want to explore down to.

<comment><USER23> Why not simply run on a cloud solution (like Google Colab), which can connect to GPU (and even TPU!) instances and is incredibly easy to work with out of the box?

<comment><USER24> Jeremy mentioned elsewhere in the thread that you can do this :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> As someone just wrapping up the FastAI Intro to Machine Learning course and moving on to DL, I'm really glad this came out now.

Thanks for all the knowledge, Jeremy!

</comment><comment><USER26> Does anyone else find it potentially problematic we have all these "get coding fast - for coders!" type resources available, when most programmers don't have the mathematical foundations to truly understand ML/AI/DL?

It's funny, programmers scoff at non-technical folk using drag-and-drop tools to replicate certain programming functionality but I see the same thing happening here.

</comment><comment><USER27> The course is amazing. I was frustrated in late 2018 when they promoted their code to "v1" but kept iterating with breaking changes on a literal daily basis. I have stopped using their library because of this+insufficient time. However, their work is so amazing that I will pick it up again when I have more time. Yes, it's so good that I will deal with daily breaking changes to use it.

<comment><AUTHOR> The changes were just during the development phase. Should be quite settled now.

<comment><USER27> Wonderful. I should add that you and Sebastian were always extremely responsive and helpful troubleshooting issues with that popped up due to the breaking changes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Any recommendations for getting up to date with Pytorch? I could pick some cheap books from packt or maybe good blogs ?

</comment><comment><USER29> It's worth noting Jeremy and team are making these invaluable resources available for free, even though a lot of folks would be extremely happy to pay for them.

It's amazing to me that learning materials of such exceptional quality and deep practical application are available without a paywall, especially when everyone else seems to be cashing in on the AI hype with a myriad of paid nanodegrees and such.

Thank you, Jeremy and team, for everything you're doing!

</comment><comment><USER30> I finished the 2018 edition of the class two weeks ago but I am happy to go through the latest version now. The class was so thought provoking. I came up with a lot of good ideas for my thesis project while watching the videos.

</comment><comment><USER31> Hey Jeremy, just FYI this release seems to have broken the links to the Introduction to Machine Learning for Coders course. For example, I can no longer access it from the fast.ai front page (I get a 404 error.)

<comment><AUTHOR> Many thanks for letting me know - I've fixed that link now. FYI the ML course is now at: [http://course18.fast.ai/ml](http://course18.fast.ai/ml)

<comment><USER32> Thank you for the link. It's currently broken here : [https://www.fast.ai/2017/09/08/introducing-pytorch-for- fasta...](https://www.fast.ai/2017/09/08/introducing-pytorch-for-fastai/) at this line:

"As we developed our second course, Cutting-Edge Deep Learning for Coders, we started to hit the limits of the libraries "

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Hey, this course looks really interesting! Although I'm hesitating to take it because I'm not sure what the difference is between Machine Learning and Deep Learning. Can anyone explain?

<comment><USER34> Machine Learning is a catch-all term for optimizing statistical models with data.

Simplest example that you are very likely already familiar with is that of a 'best fit line' to some xy scatter plot. This starts by making an assumption (model choice) that the relationship between `x` and `y` is linear, e.g. `y=m _x + b`, then you can use data (xy points) to figure out the most likely values for `m` and `b`. You can then make predictions for new `x_new` values by plugging them into your known line to get `y_new`.

Machine learning often manifests in a two step process: first feature extraction, and then fitting features to a desired output. Deep learning combines these as an end-to-end process to eliminate 'human in the loop' problems that occur from feature extraction.

Example: you want to predict who should win a chess game in a given board state

_ Feature extraction (what information you think matters): what pieces does white have, what pieces does black have, is white in check, is black in check, how many valid squares can white king move to, how many valid squares can black king move, etc...

* Fitting: make an assumption about the relationship between features and outcome (model choice), fit model using data (features, outcome)

The Deepblue 2 model that played Kasparov used around 8000 features (not sure if this is the feature vector size or # of features). As you can imagine, feature extraction is highly dependent on expert knowledge of the problem and will often fail to cover unknown situations/cases.

Deep learning models aim is to avoid limitations of expert knowledge by using raw data (e.g. occupancy of each square on a chess board) and extract features implicitly rather than relying on explicit human formulas. It has also opened up new possibilities for areas where expert knowledge has made little progress in the past (e.g. there is not much an expert can say about what pixel features are might indicate a dog/cat is contained in an image).

<comment><USER35> Though this end-to-end nature also makes it harder to spot biases and errors. There is some work that first trains with deep learning and then tries to infer a simpler model that is understandable for humans.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> This is amazing! :) I took portions of it before but motivates me to go back and work on it again. Is it just me or the overview notes from Lesson 6 & 7 are the same?

<comment><USER36> Also wanted to add that as someone who hasn't professionally coded or have a degree in CS, the learning curve was a bit steep (which is why I took a break from taking the course).

Are there any resources or good ways to get up to speed on getting sufficient coding experience/knowledge so that I can really digest the content?

<comment><AUTHOR> There's a lot of Python learning resources here: [https://forums.fast.ai/t/recommended-python-learning- resourc...](https://forums.fast.ai/t/recommended-python-learning- resources/26888)

My main recommendation is to try to do as many things as you can with code, instead of manually or with domain-specific tools. Even if it's slower at first, solving your own problems with code is the best way to become a productive coder.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> So we should watch these newer ones instead of the older ones?

<comment><AUTHOR> For sure. It's a giant step over last year's course.

<comment><USER38> Has the classic ML course been deprecated? I noticed that following link no longer works: [https://course.fast.ai/lessonsml1/lesson1.html](https://course.fast.ai/lessonsml1/lesson1.html)

EDIT: looks like they've been moved to the following link instead: [http://course18.fast.ai/ml.html](http://course18.fast.ai/ml.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> The lessons are fairly brief compared to Coursera\Udacity

<comment><AUTHOR> About 14 hours of lessons per part for fast.ai. A lot of Udacity courses I've seen are shorter than that. I certainly wouldn't call it "brief"!

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> The thing that separates fastai course from other courses is the use of fastai library (built on top of pytorch). fastai library makes it dead simple to train neural network faster and with more accuracy.

Write a neural network is easy. But tweaking hyper parameters takes lot of time and knowledge. fastai library implements cyclical learning rates which varies the learning rate during training along with some other defaults for other hyperparameters.

[https://github.com/fastai/fastai](https://github.com/fastai/fastai)

</comment><comment><USER41> Great course, looking forward to checking it out. I skimmed thru the overview and dismayed to see nothing on object detection still :/

<comment><AUTHOR> Object detection is in part 2. You can use the 2018 part 2 for now. We had hoped to move it to part 1 this year, but couldn't figure out a way to make it easy enough yet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> fast.ai courses are EXCELLENT. I've read/watched many interviews with both creators and have been even more impressed by their drive to bring deep learning to everyone, not just the AI specialists.

</comment><comment><USER43> Congrats, Jeremy and crew!

<comment><AUTHOR> Many thanks. I'm really happy with how it turned out. I hope you all like it! :)

<comment><USER44> I'm really interested in learning the math basics for deep learning. Is there an online guide that you can point us to if we want to learn the basics of calculus, linear algebra, probability theory? In other words is there a "fast.ai" version of "math for deep learning" out there?

<comment><USER45> Yes for linear algebra, though it's probably best suited to people with at least some exposure to matrix/vector math (for example you've used SVD but have no idea how or why it works): [https://www.fast.ai/2017/07/17/num-lin- alg/](https://www.fast.ai/2017/07/17/num-lin-alg/)

For probability, machine learning is more about statistics (the two are related, but courses explicitly about probability will cover different things), so I would lean towards that. An Introduction to Statistical Learning in R (ISLR) is a frequently recommended book. You can ignore the R and do the exercises in Python.

If you actually want to learn about probability, you can look at MIT's course: [https://ocw.mit.edu/resources/res-6-012-introduction-to- prob...](https://ocw.mit.edu/resources/res-6-012-introduction-to-probability- spring-2018/)

EDIT: If you've never been exposed to calculus, many people swear by Khan Academy's videos.

<comment><USER44> This is great. Thanks you!

<comment><USER46> I would also recommend the MIT calculus courses on edX. It has been a great refresher for me since the last I looked at calc was 8 years ago.

<comment><USER44> I'll check it out, thanks!</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Encrypted Transfer Protocols Compared: SCP, SFTP, HTTPS, FTPS - <AUTHOR> https://daniel.haxx.se/docs/encrypted-transfer-protocols-compared.html <comment><USER2> I basically never use scp/sftp unless sending out a small list of small files.

rsync over SSH is so much better that's it's not comparable. Not sure if any GUI clients would do that. It's mad faster even with bunch of small files and will continue on from where you stopped it the last time and obviously has all sorts of useful options for many situations.</comment>


Ask HN: Stack for creating web app also hosted on Windows app - <AUTHOR> I need to create a web app which should run on usual browsers (chrome, firefox, edge, ...) and as hosted application on Windows 10.<p>Which options do I have? For example AngularJS hosted within Electron is a viable option? <comment> T-A Microsoft's own solution: [http://manifoldjs.com/](http://manifoldjs.com/)

</comment><comment><USER2> You could use whatever JS framework you would like, and as a wrapper you could use Electron or QT. You have to also think about connections, updates, multiple screen support, HI Res, but it's all doable. Further more using electron or QT you could make your app cross platform

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeap, seems that Electron is good and fancy way, especially when I see (use) apps like VSCode or Atom. Maybe Slack is using in Electron, too, for native Windows and macos apps?</comment></comment>


Easy-to-add instrumentation of Java apps for online monitoring. - <AUTHOR> http://bazaarvoice.github.com/snitch/

<comment><USER2> I'm very impressed with the ease of integration. I'm highly considering this for some smaller ancillary projects.

</comment><comment><USER3> Design is nice, idea seems cool.</comment>


Bruce Schneier:  TSA Backscatter X-ray Backlash - <AUTHOR> http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2010/11/tsa_backscatter.html?nc=96

<comment><USER2> From the article, "At least two airports are opting out of the TSA entirely. I hadn't known you could do that."

Does anyone know if an airport opts out if it still has to comply with DHS (or other) regulations? For example, even if they kick the TSA out are they still required to pat down or backscatter x-ray passengers?

</comment><comment><USER2> Does anyone know if pregnant women can go through these machines? I wonder how many women go through who are pregnant but don't know it. We certainly don't know the long-term effects of this on children but I would think a fetus is substantially more susceptible.

</comment><comment><USER3> Useful summary.</comment>


The Design Koans - <AUTHOR> http://www.64notes.com/design/the-design-koans/

<comment><USER2> > Startups change the world > There is one in every corner > Like a million > stars in the Milky Way > Let design help you shine

This one doesn't work for me. Just too... marketing-ish.

<comment><USER3> >Design is like food >A good chef makes it smell, taste and look great >But a great chef makes it healthy too

This one doesn't work for me either. How healthy a dish is has absolutely zero bearing on how great the chef who made it is. It can happen to coincide, but since when have chefs _ever_ been rated on how healthy they can make a meal?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's not a real koan unless it ends with "... and he hit the student with a stick; with this, he was enlightened."</comment>


"No" is a beautiful word. - <AUTHOR> http://erniemiller.org/2013/06/14/no/

<comment><USER2> Even engineers need a bit of the Steve Jobs mojo:

"People think focus means saying yes to the thing you've got to focus on. But that's not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully. I'm actually as proud of the things we haven't done as the things I have done. Innovation is saying no to 1,000 things."

Just like in product design, a great software architecture is often defined even more by what you choose /not/ to do than what features you choose to implement.

Awesome article, thanks!

</comment><comment><USER3> Also, "never give an answer with more precision than is warranted." -> [http://clabs.org/blog/DesignPrecision](http://clabs.org/blog/DesignPrecision)</comment>


Ask YC: Good resources for learning more about sales (startup) - <AUTHOR>

Hi - as we make our transition from a startup focused fully on products to one concentrating on sales, just wondering if people had good resources for learning more about sales, sales strategies, cold-calling etc.<p>Great books or great websites anyone? <comment><USER2> I have found <http://sales.alltop.com/> very usefull</comment>


First It Was Song Downloads. Now It's Organic Chemistry. - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/27/technology/27digi.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

<comment><USER2> Some great comments here, but I gotta jump off track for a second.

I kind of want to know who or what the lead was for this article. No way the NY Times just goes through TPB looking for the most piquant torrent and write a tilted article about it. Seriously....revenge?

College students are frugal people. Between work and school it's not easy making a living to put food in your belly and pay the costs of student housing month after month. They want to save money, books cost astronomically more to purchase than they do to produce, and this columnist reduces all of this down to "revenge"?

I've got to admit, this is one tilted article if I've ever read one; quotes from publishing companies, none from TPB who if this writer had done PROPER research instead of stating oversimplifications would have seen are happy to talk with the press rather candidly about their operations.

No quotes from students, no quotes from TPB directly about the issues, and Randall Stross has the capacity to call this whole thing "revenge"? The best mention of TPB was on user statistics, what the eff

Pardon my language, but for the NyTimes, this is bullshit.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's a nice start, but this isn't a one-size-fits-all solution. This will be a difficult problem with certain majors.

I've taken several economics classes, and you have to purchase a new book for the semester in order to get a key card inside of the book. This will let you activate an online account, which will open up Flash-based homework. This is all linked into the school's grading system. Many classes _require_ the student to go through this registration process, or you could be dropped from the class entirely.

And economics is just one example. I had the same setup in several business, psychology, and engineering classes.

I'm sure this may work for some of the books, but I wouldn't really look at this as the end of expensive textbooks.

<comment><USER4> Most teachers side with the students when it comes to books costing an outrageous amount. So most of them avoid feeding publisher's pocket books. i.e. When I was in college most teachers just uploaded copies of homework problems on blackboard, and never used any of that published based info. + all of the problems were based on material discussed in class, so you never had to buy the book in the first place.

There are obvious exceptions, usually when the teacher is the one who wrote the book, and wants to profit off his students. i.e. I had one class where the guy had us buy 3 books, 2 of which we never even used. Surprise, surprise they all had the teacher's name on the cover.

<comment><USER5> When I went to college (2005 grad), almost all my textbooks were optional. A couple friends and I usually pooled our money and bought one to share, which was great for Midterms/Finals, since we studied together anyway. The books I actually kept were things like SICP, which were cheaper to begin with.

I wonder at what point the online editions of these books become so detailed that they compete with the University course itself. A lot of them already do all the grunt work for the Professor (giving quizzes/hw and grading them). All you have to do at that point is get accredited and make some kind of exam system and you have a substitute for the actual class.

$209 seems awfully pricey for a book, but not too bad for an intro course in Biology. And frankly, your intro courses are ripe to be taken over the net, because they are already given in anonymous lecture halls with 1000 people in them.

Imagine some student showing up in the Dean's office with her transcript from Prentice Hall, showing off her 4.0 in online courses and ready to dive into her major as a Junior.

<comment><USER6> I'm looking into transferring to a university to finish my BSc in computer science (dropped out of HS, went to a community college), and all the ones I've looked into usually had some sort of cap on the number and type of online classes you were allowed to take. Unfortunately. I would not mind taking nothing but online classes for most intro classes where hands-on stuff was either not necessary (like..CS?) or where you only had to actually show up to class for a lab (like chem, bio, anatomy..).

That being said, I took online classes because it let me slack off and then still get an A in the class, but it actually took _more_ effort to get the A because of the extra work to prove I wasn't just showing up to take exams. But the timing was more convenient for me. Sooo..

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Create an account at gigapedia.org and you'll see the extent of books available online for free. It's amazing. It's become my new Amazon for checking out new stuff that I'm not sure if I want to buy.

(All yee free market crusaders, don't worry -- I still have a regular truckload of books coming my way from Amazon -- as much as my budget allows.)

How unfortunate that my budget can swallow much less than my brain!

<comment><USER8> its the fate, what we need is to just go with it. it will carry you the way it wants as we have a saying in sanskrit "vidi likithalekani parimastrum na shakyathe

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Don't forget to search emule, very obscure media is where emule excels. Also, remember to share with the entire class! :)

<comment><USER10> If you're feeling lazy and don't want to install anything, you can also find websites with links to filesharing sites. They have the same kind of defense as a torrent tracker in that they don't actually host files, they just have links. They frequently feature highend technical books from Springer Verlag, Elsevier, et al.

 _We're through the looking glass here, people._

<comment><USER9> A closed online site for sharing textbooks would really take off. The PRQ has been unstoppable so far. It can't really be stopped.

<comment><AUTHOR> It did, and met its fate.

[http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080701-campus- copyrig...](http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080701-campus-copyright- battle-moves-to-textbook-torrents.html)

<comment><USER9> :/

When will pirates learn that you need to host in a secure country?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> having just graduated myself, this is really not surprising. its also not really that new of a concept -- after dealing with one semester of college book prices (which cost my friends and i 400 to 600 dollars each) many people started pirating books. there was a copy store down the street who would copy entire textbooks for $20. there was also the student who bought the books for the largest classes, took the pages apart from the binding, scanned them with an auto-feeder, and sold e-copies for $1 each which could be printed free of charge at the university's library. to me this just sends another signal that it is time for these stagnant industries to adapt to the times, and become more innovative with production and distribution of their materials. they also need to realize that college students won't accept being taken advantage of with ridiculously marked up prices - so they can either change and benefit or be left behind with nothing.

</comment><comment><USER12> For intro books for self study, I recommend Dover publications - around 12 dollars a book.

</comment><comment><USER13> I'd like a new model for academic publishing. Normally, two of the most important roles of a publisher are quality control (hopefully), and marketing. In academics, mechanisms are probably already in place to take care of both of these functions. In any case, distribution should no longer be an important part of the services a publisher provides. For academic publishing, then, the most important function of a publisher may be to provide the actual physical form of the book.

This is the new model: let the authors compete on the quality of their content, and let the publishers compete on the physical quality and price of the books they publish. Let the authors keep the rights to the books, but let them then allow many different publishers to compete with different form factors and prices for the books. Maybe then we would get much lower prices for higher quality physical books.

</comment><comment><USER14> This is why book publishers are so excited about textbooks being distributed on the Kindle (or similar device). It virtually eliminates the used book market. Of course, if the book is just static content, it's much easier to pirate in electronic form than paper form.

</comment><comment><USER15> I'm not sure if this applies to all majors, but one great thing about Math/CS at Waterloo was that the majority of reading material used was written by profs there. The little math dept. printing office latex/dvips/lpr'd and spiral bound it, and you just paid the cost of reproduction (more or less).

That's (yikes!) 10 years ago now, but I hope it hasn't changed.

</comment><comment><USER16> My community college chooses books that cost $15-$20, it was nice. Then at the University levels they hit me with $200 books. As for new editions, I understand that Biology changes frequently, and the books might need to be changed periodically, but classes like Calc I shouldn't be updated every other year.

<comment><USER6> Unless you're in pretty advanced bio classes, it doesn't change every year like the textbook editions suggest.

Also I have had community college classes where the text cost upwards of $200. I've also had classes where the used book cost $5 and the prof was willing to buy it herself if you couldn't afford even $5...

<comment><USER17> The material doesn't change, but the homework problems do...or at least the order of homework problems/chapters may change.

<comment><USER6> But the material isn't changing, which then begs the question as to why the hell the professors and teachers believe that using a brand new edition is a good idea. That's the key point. Homework problems don't need to be changed, unless you're worried about people cheating from folks who've taken the class before - in which case, change the _exams_ , and change which homework problems are being assigned. Even then it's their loss/problem if they decide to cheat. And it's not that the problems were incorrectly written - corrections are usually minimal - it's that if the problems change, what happens is that it's fundamentally the same question except numbered differently.

I've seen this happen so many times and I'm sick of it because the likes of all my _intro_ classes from chem and physics and bio to calc and CS have not fundamentally changed SO much that it is impossible to use a text that is a couple years old.

<comment><USER17> I completely agree with you: it's a scam.

But we, the profs, don't have a lot of choice in the matter. Problem 1: we need to assign a text which is available to all students, and I can't guarantee availability of enough copies of the old editions.

I'd love to use this book (<http://store.doverpublications.com/0486457710.html>) costing $20 for calc, but that brings up problem 2: I have to use the book the department assigns. Changing this would require joining a curriculum committee, turf wars, academic politics, etc. Yuck, I'm a scientist, not a politician.

I usually work with my students to save them some money (copy problem pages, etc), and I bought old editions when I was an undergrad. But that's about the best I can do. I have given the problem some thought, and have a startup concept (with some code). If I can overcome some technical issues, I'll go live with it.

<comment><USER6> With problem 1, wouldn't the old edition still be cheaper than the new? Or would the publisher just stop publishing the older edition? Even with new editions I've come across situations where the bookstore was having an impossible time ordering enough to meet demand.

And the second...I just guess I don't understand _why_ new editions have to be adopted so quickly sometimes. I taught myself all sorts of subjects out of used books I got at garage and library sales. Years later actually taking the classes with a brand new edition of a text, nothing's changed. Only the price..used books would be dirt cheap and the new edition would be $120. So the department assigns a book, why do they have to assign it? Kickbacks from the publisher? My question above about the publisher discontinuing the older edition?

I guess I'm ultimately mad about this whole situation (and yes, I was a textbook torrents user although they never had the texts for my classes). I even had one class at a CC (I think it was anatomy) where the class itself was only somewhere around $70 but the materials and mainly the text|online access|workbook were in the $300 range. I about flipped out then.

<comment><USER17> The publisher indeed stops publishing the old version. It would be cheaper for the students that can find an old copy, who knows if they will all be able to do so?

>So the department assigns a book, why do they have to assign it?

Do you want to buy a new book for calc 2 if you take it with somebody besides me? Or buy a new book if you switch sections?

Standardization makes sense, especially at the intro level. I'd prefer if they standardized on cheap calc books, but as I said, making that occur involves academic politics. Perhaps one day, when I've got clout...

<comment><USER6> Hmm, okay, now I'm hating them more and more.

>Do you want to buy a new book for calc 2 if you take it with somebody besides me? Or buy a new book if you switch sections?

Well, my idea was to standardize on cheaper books, not that it should be a free-for-all (for your reason precisely). It does involve academic politics and you'd run into the problem with having a lack of books in some cases. This sucks on all sides.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Useful tip: depending on your major, buying international editions of books from, e.g., <http://firstandsecond.com/> can save you literally thousands of dollars over a 4-year program. Subject to local laws and regulations, yada yada.

</comment><comment><USER19> I recommend open sourced textbooks. They are often of a much higher quality, they are written by people who have a true passion for the subject, and most of all they are free.

Check out textbookrevolution.org.

</comment><comment><USER9> I hope the publishers eventually embrace digital downloads, but DRM sucks and they're never going to go for non-DRM because of the obvious reasons. I bought a digital download of a textbook once (it seemed like a good idea at the time), and it took me hours to slowly print the book to .pdf because there were enforced delays to slow down the process.

</comment><comment><USER20> Is the existing level of pricing justified at all ? I mean a $209 book does sound like it carries a _huge_ margin.

<comment><USER21> The problem is that the average textbook sells a small run of copies, and doesn't benefit from economies of scale. Unfortunately, it seems that the professors and the publishers both like the current system, and the students have very little influence on the process.

There are some solutions, but the incentives don't seem to be in place to encourage them. The best seems to be reducing the overall number of textbooks, allowing each one to have a larger run and thus to better benefit from economies of scale (and be cheaper to buy at the same profit margin for the producers). But to achieve that we would have to stop letting professors choose their own books, and professors are not known to appreciate being herded.

<comment> cypress-hill _"The problem is that the average textbook sells a small run of copies, and doesn't benefit from economies of scale"_

WHAT??? for example, stewart's calculus book has been used for twenty+ years all over the english speaking world. you find me a ny times bestseller that has had that kind of run

<comment><USER22> Stewart isn't an "average textbook"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> cypress-hill its amusing how harvard stanford and princeton with endowments of like forty quadrillion dollars shake and quiver in the face of a thirty person publishing firm.

the big schools could trivially "nationalize" textbooks with online material. it would be cheaper just to buy a new laptops for students who don't have the means to access the data

<comment><USER23> Is this not what MIT are doing with OCW?

<comment><USER24> Similar, but it's not quite the whole picture. I've downloaded the materials from a wide range of classes, and the quantity of material and subsequent potential for greater understanding varied greatly.

Lecture notes are no replacement for a well-written textbook, especially if you're an autodidact attempting to further your horizons.</comment></comment></comment>


Apple Stores Will Sell Lightbulbs You Can Control With Your iPad - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/demo-of-philips-hue-light-bulbs-2012-10

<comment><USER2> This is interesting, not sure that I'd pay $200 for a lightbulb and $60 for every additional bulb, which is actually worse. I estimate that it'd cost about $1500 to light my house. It might be something someone would buy for just their bedroom or office. The app doesn't look very intuitive, the woman in the video tapped on five icons to change the brightness of the bulb.

I think a startup will eventually launch something similar on Kickstarter but more like the nest. I don't want to touch the controls, want to have the ability to but I shouldn't have to press about fifteen buttons to switch off each bulb in my house.

Also Original Source: [http://www.pocket-lint.com/news/48235/philips-demos- hue-led-...](http://www.pocket-lint.com/news/48235/philips-demos-hue-led- bulbs-video)

<comment><USER3> I look at it more as mood lighting than functional light you'd fill your whole house with. I might get the starter kit for my home office. It's a bit pricey, though.

I believe it's built on ZigBee protocols so hopefully it would be possible to create 3rd-party controls. The bulbs are supposed to last 15yrs - I somehow doubt the app will have such a lifespan.</comment></comment>


Movie Review Aggregator Ratings Have No Relationship with Box Office Success - <AUTHOR> http://minimaxir.com/2016/01/movie-revenue-ratings/ <comment><USER2> I think it's pretty apparent that success in this world revolves around satisfying the lowest common denominator. Pop music and bad movie sequels exist to feed this.</comment>


Is Your Startup Practicing Inward Facing Dog? - <AUTHOR> http://onstartups.com/Home/tabid/3339/Default.aspx

<comment><USER2> It's an article about the need for paying attention to what is going on with your customers and competitors, especially in the middle of a startup. In the past, I have made all of these errors at the same time, which may explain why I am a thousandaire not a millionaire.

</comment><comment><USER3> Every startup should be built around the notion of customer development anyways. I'm glad to see the customer development and lean startup movement gaining traction.

<comment><USER4> I'm glad too. @ericries is doing a phenomenal job pushing that movement.</comment></comment>


Startup Scaligent offering $20,000 referral award to find a designer - <AUTHOR> http://www.scaligent.com/referral.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Got an email from the company (I am a designer, working on my own investing startup), checked out their site, and found this -- yep, twenty thousand dollars.</comment>


New Jersey needs COBOL programmers for their unemployment claims system - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/manicode/status/1246497036389793792 <comment><USER3> I was sort of tempted to pursue this. I did a few years in the salty COBOL mines back when I was a PFY about 20...plus years ago. This niche probably hasn't moved very much since then and I could probably recall most of it after a few hours. I'm freelancing right now anyway and some other projects just vaporized.

But.

A quick skim of the postings is finding that what they're really screaming for is somebody who's been familiar with _their particular_ pile of toxic waste for at least four years at minimum. They're asking for people with 4+ years of COBOL, and JCL (ok, fine), and DB2, and VSAM, and "SDLC" (proto-waterfall), and, oh yeah, a four-year degree.

Heck, there's a posting asking for somebody to draw diagrams and document their existing processes, and for that they expect you to have 10 years of COBOL experience.

Okay then. This is not yet a mess that they're motivated enough to fix.

<comment><USER4> Or they, like many non-technical organizations, have no idea how to hire programmers. Could be worth a shot; even at regular companies they often over- state resume requirements.

<comment><USER5> As someone who works with a lot of state IT people, if they don't know how to hire programmers, they probably don't know how to manage programmers. In a bureaucracy, if the administrators are making these kinds of unrealistic hiring demands in a crisis, it probably means that the administrators outrank all programmers and don't trust them to make their own decisions. This is not an environment to work in.

<comment><USER6> This is a crisis, not a normal time. Fixing this system will make the difference between real people getting unemployment checks or nothing. That's worth enduring a bad boss for.

<comment><USER7> Problem is, that's how they get away with everything.

They fix nothing, then wait for somebody to need them enough, or have compassion enough to handle their mess.

Basically here, they are saying: we didn't listen to all those competent people that told us we should have cleaned this system a long time ago because one day it will bite us back. We didn't think technical debt was a thing. It has always worked. And it's virtual. And IT is always exaggerating anyway.

Now it does bite them back, and do they take responsibility ?

No. They ask for competent people to have mercy and save the day because the situation is dire. Because this is special this time, unlike the other times.

This is completely not like with the health care system that never got fixed and now the medical personal is paying for it so that the people don't suffer as much from this mismanagement.

They will not pay more. They will no fix anything. They will not respect you more, change the way things are done, or take any responsibility for this. And in fact they will probably guilt trip you into give up your health to overwork on this with less resources and for less pay because it's an emergency.

A friend of mine works in an hospital right now. She has been at work for 15 days straight. They already told her she won't get paid for the days she was not supposed to work but did.

Then as a final fuck you, if this turns out ok, if the catastrophe is avoided, they will get the reward.

The nurses or the programmers ? They will be forgotten in a week. Nothing will change.

But for the mismanagers, their superior will thank them for managing this situation well. They may even get promoted and have more responsibility.

So you have the choice between saving the money of poor people now and reinforcing the suck of the whole system, of letting people suffer for a chance of a redo and purging the ones that lead to this.

This is a terrible choice to have to make.

Especially since we have the empathy to make us discuss this, while clearly they don't.

<comment><USER8> This is honestly a terrible take. NJ did try to modernize the benefits system in 2007, awarding the contract to a company that is now owned by HP. News article: [https://www.nj.com/politics/2014/11/nj_ends_118_million_cont...](https://www.nj.com/politics/2014/11/nj_ends_118_million_contract_to_boost_enrollment_in_obamacare_other_social_service_programs.html)

EDIT: surprised at the downvotes. Parent asserted:

> we didn't listen to all those competent people that told us we should have > cleaned this system a long time ago because one day it will bite us back.

And the historical record showed that NJ made that realization at least before 2007 (which is when the contract was awarded)

<comment><USER9> Surely outsourced and offshored isn't something to praise them for

<comment><USER10> Given a choice between the government doing it and a company that has been specializing in this type of thing for decades, why wasn't this the best choice?

It's not like HP is some unknown foreign company.

<comment><USER11> > Given a choice between the government doing it and a company that has been > specializing in this type of thing for decades, why wasn't this the best > choice?

Because the only thing they are specialized in is sucking tax money from the government.

> It's not like HP is some unknown foreign company.

That's their only pedigree. In other countries they also took a lot of money and delivered crap. So people should be aware by now. But with all this corr^W lobby ...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Techies: What can we do to help? 3D print ventilators? Process terabytes of data in seconds? AI?!

Govt: We need COBOL programmers.

Techies: I am powerless to help.

But seriously some of the brightest techies I know quit their jobs to do a stint of government work which included slinging VBA and ASP Classic to remove SQL injections from VA websites and other similarly unglamorous tasks with huge impact.

If you want to be patriotic. If you want to make a difference. Government work can do that. You're probably not going to train a neural net to solve coronavirus, but you'll probably be able to stop 1000 hacks from ever happening or get help to someone who really truly needs it.

<comment><USER13> I could help rewrite in some other language.

<comment><USER10> We still haven't learned.

[https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/06/things-you- should-...](https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/06/things-you-should-never- do-part-i/)

<comment><USER14> It was a bad rule back then, it is even worse now and it didn't even stand the test of time at Fog Creek (or Glitch, looks like they have renamed themselves), where they had to do it for FogBugz to finally leave Wasabi behind. I could go on about how Firefox ended up very well and not as the complete disaster that Joel predicted back then, but that's besides the point here, namely: There can be good reasons to rewrite something and "hey, we do not find remotely enough people to work on the current code base" is pretty far up on that list.

<comment><USER15> Netscape went from the dominant browser to a negligible browser share. They basically handed the browser market to IE on a platter. They only rebounded somewhat because MS abandoned IE development altogether. And the result of the rewrite was not even that good, which can be seen from everybody else building on webkit rather than Mozilla.

<comment><USER16> I think the unspoken and (imo) wrong assumption here is that if you have a codebase which nobody understands, and the success of your organization relies on iterating rapidly and correctly on that codebase for its continued survival, there is anything you can do that has a high probability of success.

If you are in that situation, and you do not do a rewrite, you are likely to fail.

If you are in that situation, and you do a rewrite, you are likely to fail.

Sometimes there is no winning move.

<comment><USER15> I don't doubt the existing code was a mess, but I'm pretty sure their time would have been better spent refactoring it into a more modular structure. For example, what actually made people switch to Firefox eventually was tabs and a popup-blocker. There was no need to rewrite the entire network stack from scratch to support this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I used to work on mainframe COBOL during the Y2K times. While the language is easy to pick up and the OS specific things are not too hard, the style of programming can lead to issues. Typically, shared data structures are often stored in separate files called copybooks and they can be hard to track down. Most of the code is not in any source control repositories which means no one knows which is the actual deployed version. It was all fun times then..

<comment><USER18> That's not an issue with "style of programming", it's just complete disregard of software engineering basics.

<comment><USER19> Did software engineering exist back then.

<comment><USER20> Yes, it did. In fact, CASE tools were going to be all the rage: computer-aided software engineering.

One of them was METHOD/1 from Andersen Consulting (now Accenture). If you wanted to create a variable to hold, for example, a part number... you'd create an entry in the CASE tool for it and from then on, everyone was supposed to use that one. It would have validation rules, like 30 characters, alphanumeric, whatever.

The CASE tool would do code generation for screens and forms and whatnot. And.... that's about as much as I remember at the moment.

<comment><USER21> CASE tools are widely used today, but, you will see them scoped very specifically the databases in systems where everything is built around the massive pillar of a major db implementation.

I worked for a company for little while that made extremely effective use of this approach allowing hundreds of devs to effectively work simultaneously on a single monolithic system. It was shocking. I was so impressed. I've still never seen any software organization so... organized. And they owed it largely to the protocols revolving around their use of a CASE tool.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This is all second-hand, etc., but from what I've heard, NJ's IT systems are a mess across the board.

The most shocking story was about their system for tracking Medicaid patients. Their system had a fixed-width field for the patient's ID, and they ran out of identifiers - so they just started to recycle them again from the beginning. This problem was multiplied by the fact that, to say money, they didn't have backups of the original, clean data before the recycling. Thus it became pretty much impossible to understand what benefits had been afforded (or not) to whom.

Governmental budgeting seems biased strongly in favor of labor expenses, especially those with seniority, to the detriment of the maintenance of capital assets. This is pretty much a recipe for technological debt.

<comment><USER23> Any state government it department is going to be a royal mess. I worked for the Washington state government for 6 months a few years ago and it was the worst job I'd ever had.

I was at the top of my pay grade just under architect and only two years out of college making around 68k a year in Olympia. Olympia is not a cheap place to live. On top of that you're basically legislates NOT to do work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> This issue highlights one of my main fears about a pandemic such as COVID-19: if enough people with the necessary amount of knowledge to maintain necessary infrastructure die without sufficiently and timely trained replacements, then civilization as we know it becomes one more step closer towards total irrecoverable collapse.

The prevalence of COBOL and other older programming languages in many parts of the world's critical infrastructure (unemployment claims here, finance, government, defense) means that the average age of someone maintaining these systems tends older. Older people tend to have more health issues. From the summaries of reports I read about COVID-19, the majority of the deaths happen among the elderly and those with other health conditions.

The idea of civilization collapsing might seem fanciful and farfetched, but the idea struck me after watching a video that was submitted here on HN and the videos it references [0][1][2][3].

[0] Jonathan Blow - Preventing the Collapse of Civilization (English only) - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pW- SOdj4Kkk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pW-SOdj4Kkk)

[1] Preventing the Collapse of Civilization [video] - [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19945452](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19945452)

[2] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OiNmTVThNEY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OiNmTVThNEY) \- [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OiNmTVThNEY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OiNmTVThNEY)

[3] Eric Cline | 1177 BC: The Year Civilization Collapsed - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hyry8mgXiTk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hyry8mgXiTk)

<comment><USER25> Many generational skills die out. Your grandparents would make their own butter, bread, many things today that are not so common. Then more, many skills lost over time and fact we are still working out some historical things got created, you can imagine rosetta code sites being a good thing to keep alive for the future. [http://rosettacode.org/wiki/Rosetta_Code](http://rosettacode.org/wiki/Rosetta_Code)

<comment><USER26> The difference you're missing is we're still relying on COBOL, but we aren't relying on grandparents to make the butter and bread we eat lest we starve.

<comment><USER27> Not ideal, but it's not like it couldn't be migrated to another language and COBOL docs are readily available to at least understand the language. We would find a way.

<comment><USER25> I've worked for a software migration company and for some languages and the bulk of code you can automate the migration. However you also need to migrate the data and then anything that touches that data, so whilst you may want to migrate one program, that program will be a suit of programs and systems making it a more complicated task than it appears on the surface.

If you can data warehouse aspects off, that's great and can slowly bite away, migrate chunks bit by bit. Though one of the last will often be the database itself. Report generation is often an area that will hit resources hard and can also be easiest to migrate away towards something better using a system that periodically syncs the database onto another platform with all the latest do it yourself easy accessible tools. That allows those wanting the reports to be able to make and change that themselves removing a lot of code development and main system overhead.

With that, knowing the language is not even half the battle, the business knowledge would be the lion's share and to integrate the two skills effectively, that's where the money is.

You could have a payroll system, migrate line by line, logic by logic from COBOL to C. Yet the way the data is handled, the nuances of the way the languages round numbers, store data, formats, handle exceptions or early termination. It's not just a case of setting the right flags in the compiler and job done.

But yes, there is always a way. As always, the devil is in the detail.

<comment><USER28> One solution I saw somewhere here on HN the last time it came up was to carefully virtualize the existing systems so they have snapshots to restore from when things go wrong. That opens the possibility of moving the data to more modern systems with a translation layer between the 40 year old systems and the new systems that slowly replace them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> This will sound weird, but they should call up Northwestern State University of Louisiana for an alumni list. They were one of the last 4-year places that had a COBOL-focused degree program, through to at least 2012.

<comment><USER30> Probably CGI in Lafayette hires them all

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Yet I'm sure they're offering $60K/year.

<comment><USER32> I whole heartedly agree. The problem with government tech positions is they are not even competitive. Instead of hiring three mediocre or less than mediocre engineers at $60k, why not hire an amazing $150k - $180k engineer? I'm pretty sure they have ceilings on positions just so people don't get outraged at government salaries, but incidents and times like these prove government needs to be competitive with private business to attract talent. Especially in national security and healthcare roles.

<comment><USER33> > why not hire an amazing $150k - $180k engineer?

If you're making that kind of money, you have a lot better options than working on some ancient COBOL system that processes unemployment claims.

<comment><USER34> > If you're making that kind of money, you have a lot better options than > working on some ancient COBOL system that processes unemployment claims.

There's more to life than money and tech. I'm sure there are plenty of people who would be happy to work on a boring tech stack in helping to address possibly the largest public crisis many of us will see in our lifetimes vs. working with the new fad of the week in pursuit of selling ads marginally more efficiently.

<comment><USER35> Then the strategy of undervaluing the work of creating and maintaining robust systems will be validated.

Why spend the money and invest now for the future, when you can lean on people to donate their efforts in times of crisis?

<comment><USER34> > Why spend the money and invest now for the future, when you can lean on > people to donate their efforts in times of crisis?

First, no one said anything about donating effort...the scenario was getting paid a decent, if not quite FAANG, salary to work on an older tech stack. And sure, you _could_ take that approach. We tried it with pandemic preparation, let's see how that works out.

<comment><USER36> It's really not sustainable or realistic to rely on altruism. Taking a huge pay cut to work on awful systems nobody wants to deal with exceeds how much nearly anyone is willing to help.

Just giving a frigging UBI for at least the duration of this crisis would solve all of these problems and work much better.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> The point at which the government should have rewritten their COBOL systems into a language that would have a talent pool to draw from was at least 30 years ago.

<comment><USER38> There's a claim in one of the reply threads that they contracted HP to build a replacement years ago, but the project didn't succeed: [https://twitter.com/tradel/status/1246526465207869440](https://twitter.com/tradel/status/1246526465207869440)

<comment><USER39> This feels like government thinking around infrastructure or military hardware where you open up bids and accept the lowest offer.

While there are problems with lowest-bidder-win, the real issue here is that systems like this are more living and breathing than one-off; you need a teams that tend to them, not bringing in a contractor.

<comment><USER40> This is what happens when you have typical business moron-types get elected roles that treat complicated systems as though it's construction work.

It is, but you can't have any joe schmoe off the street coming in and learn how to pour concrete in a day. This is something that requires practice and problem solving skills. And years of it.

<comment><USER38> Judging by how a lot of construction projects have gone, this might also be usefully applied to pouring concrete [1]!

[1] [https://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/major-concrete- issu...](https://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/major-concrete-issues-found- in-silver-line-metro-extension/53398/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> I assume that every state unemployment compensation dept. has the same basic set of requirements as New Jersey with a slightly different set of business rules. Here's a crazy idea: all 50 states could cooperate and hire a company to develop a flexible, secure, modern system that's easier and cheaper to maintain.

<comment><USER42> The basic set of requirements are the easy part.

It's when you have to account for the differences between each state (50 factors!) is where the software becomes O(n^n) complex over the development of this product.

Even the best private companies struggle to build similar systems for a single entity.

I think each state should be accountable for their own programs. Avoids the "single point of failure" issue as well.

<comment><USER43> There are still benefits to choosing the same ecosystem. If everyone uses Java or Go and the same web framework then they can invest money into libraries that are useful for all 50 states. I've been at organizations that simply decided to use the same stack as another state (not USA). You end up using the same plugins and libraries. Even if you choose the wrong ecosystem because it is not mature enough you can just build it yourself and everyone benefits.

<comment><USER44> The problem is, you have to get the politicians to agree to the same policies so that the code works for both states. Politicians don't like to be told "You have to do it this way because of the computer system". Politicians want to decide the rules, then make everyone follow them. They don't follow rules themselves.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> How hard is cobol to pick up and learn at the level needed to contribute? I'm sure there are many no longer employed programmers in the tri state area that might be able to help

<comment><USER46> The thing about old COBOL systems is, the language isn't the problem. Snark aside, it isn't _that_ bad.

The major issue is the code written in it. Remember, a _lot_ of COBOL code comes from a time before a lot of programming best practices were discovered. Structured programming-- as in, actually having function calls instead of just GOTO statements everywhere-- was a novel hoity-toity concept when COBOL first existed. Relational databases? Forget about it, they won't exist for another decade and a half. You get flat files; if you're _lucky_ there might be field separators, if you're unlucky you'll have to find the column widths in the code somewhere. And don't even think that any of it is documented.

That's the sort of thing you're taking on when you jump into a legacy COBOL system.

<comment><USER47> That, and I don't imagine there's any tests written for a lot of these systems. :(

<comment><USER48> There are plenty of tests written for them.

They are just manual tests written up on literal, actual TPS reports (TPS = Test Procedure Specification) to be executed by humans.

<comment><USER49> My god. Are you serious? TPS reports are real?

<comment><USER50> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TPS_report](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TPS_report)

And were widely used, at one point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> I've got COBOL experience, but Everytime I check into these positions they aren't paying very well. I don't know about this particular case, but in general COBOL programmers aren't valued very much, despite the high demand within the narrow niches that still use COBOL.

</comment><comment><USER52> I imagine the COBOL programmers are in the high-risk group for coronavirus.

<comment><USER53> Unless working in a Halon-protected, 50-degree, raised floor environment confers immunity. It's only fair.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> I'm sure there is a lot to be said about the absurdity of this situation, but somehow this cartoon came to mind: [https://abstrusegoose.com/323](https://abstrusegoose.com/323)

</comment><comment><USER55> I did COBOL for about 18 months in the Army in 1967-1968 on a RCA 501. Wonder if I would qualify. None of that other fancy stuff, though. Also RCA 301 assembly language.

<comment><USER53> Allan Sherman, the Weird Al Yankovic of his day, turned the tune from "Fascination" into "Automation" in 1963, a song about his RCA 503 sexually harrassing him:

[https://youtube.com/watch?v=RsDFYUD5KUA&t=20s](https://youtube.com/watch?v=RsDFYUD5KUA&t=20s)

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> For all the legacy Cobol out there and the amount of money everyone always says there is in this part of the industry, does there exist any cross compilers targeting Cobol lang or would it be possible for interop with other langs to slowly move away from the old systems?

</comment><comment><USER57> Wow, if they don't have folks who can lead this redesign development project (SDLC? Ever seen a highly critical emergency project where the SDLC was not the first thing sacrificed in support of expediency?) 2nd is QA & testing. Their dates never change as slipping development dates are a given. This thing sounds like something begging to come off the rails before it even starts (Governor begging for COBOL coders) while having degree requirements for that kind of legacy experience? What's the definition of a legacy system? Anything in production!

</comment><comment><USER58> COBOL was one of the few languages I was introduced to in college back in 90s along with C, BASIC and FORTRAN. Even back then people used to say that COBOL is a dying language.

<comment><USER59> I was supposed to learn COBOL as part of class curriculum in the mid 2000s, but it was replaced with HTML and CSS instead.

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> Interesting. My family is pressuring me I should help out. I'm a retired expert with Cobol68, Cobol74 and Cobol85 (w/embedded SQL). Entire 42+ years career was on Burroughs/Unisys (early years) and Tandem Nonstop. I was on a Y2K project for a very large telecommunications company and had to change A LOT of COBOL code. In later years I managed software development teams. But at 64 years old, I ask myself do I want to work in any Covid-19 epicenters.

</comment><comment><USER61> Video clip of gov: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nlJqlWSPJeI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nlJqlWSPJeI)

</comment><comment><USER62> Would it be feasible to put the code up somewhere, along with an emulator of the ancient system, and some dummy data for processing?

I mean they're not going to pay enough to make it worth it, but some people might actually think it's fun, and maybe it will get more people interested.

</comment><comment><USER63> Ah, I've always wanted to put my software archeology skills to the test with something like this.

</comment><comment><USER64> So. The problem is. The rate you quote, if you were a cobol programmer, is that price gouging too?

</comment><comment><USER65> Has anyone ever built an interface ( software and / or custom keyboard ) specifically for interfacing with the terrible UI / ergonomics of COBOL / mainframe systems like this?

Basically, has anyone ever built modern dev tooling or custom hardware to reduce the pain?

<comment><USER66> Depends on what you mean.

For example, my editor (which I use for work like this)

      MODE-'COBOL'
        72.b -.a -.t -.h 8.h 12.h
        .r

Roughly: for COBOL - ring alarm bell if I type past column 72. Do not autoindent. Do not use tabs (spaces only). Remove all tabulation except at column 8 and column 12. For FORTRAN 66 (77) work, I just set a single tabulation at column 7.

But that is just me. You should look into THE: The Hessling Editor on linux, etc. Look into Regina Rexx.

which would be all the "tooling" needed. You could run a mainframe emulator (look into Hercules)

How is 80 column "punch card" style editing and printer output terrible?

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> Relevant: [https://twitter.com/Taytus/status/1246586694461202436](https://twitter.com/Taytus/status/1246586694461202436)

</comment><comment><USER68> How does anyone apply for this job if they know all these skills ? Covid19.nj.gov does not seem to post the Job at its site. Can someone help with where did you apply or saw the JD?

</comment><comment><USER69> They should just build a bridge gate to connect the island of old COBOL code with the rest of the world. But then Chris Christie would shut it down during morning rush hour. ;(

</comment><comment><USER70> I taught COBOL in grad school and used MVS/JCL/VSAM. I was an IBM systems programmer. I got turned down for a COBOL job a few years ago. Sigh.

</comment><comment><USER71> They could move to ReactJS... Move fast and break things

</comment><comment><USER72> In the 24th Century.... [https://abstrusegoose.com/323](https://abstrusegoose.com/323)

</comment><comment><USER73> Their own search for Cobol on their own site returns "Your search did not match any answers we have" \- are they serious?

</comment><comment><USER74> Unemployment putting people to work.

</comment><comment><USER75> [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z/OS](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z/OS) Wikipedia: "However, z/OS also supports 64-bit Java, C, C++..." Managers: "Why do we need budget spendings for that Java, everything works fine..."

</comment><comment><USER76> This reminds me of the article "COBOL and Legacy Code as a Systemic Risk." Like the pandemic itself, this was a foreseeable risk:

[https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/07/cobol-and-legacy- cod...](https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/07/cobol-and-legacy-code-as-a- systemic-risk.html)

</comment><comment><USER57> Hmmm. Sounds like every other mission critical emergency project in dire need of leadership, design and development. Perceived need way ahead of actual need, and legacy hiring practices (degree Requirements for legacy coders with 10 years experience and a degree, ha) not realistic to effectively recruit talented resources.

Job interview should include - what's the definition of a legacy system?

Has anyone ever seen an emergency mission and time critical project where the SDLC WASN'T the first thing sacrificed for expediency? And the second is QA & testing - their delivery date remains fixed while development slips and slips.

The point is, if you don't have leadership that has been there done that, knows what is coming, is solving tomorrow's issues (like finding and hiring resources) so when the project gets to that point, the resources are there and ready, then you are in the false start phase that will continue until you admit it, and begin again with refreshed plan and clear minds.

Most SDLC's do not recognize the false start as a very important first phase that must happen when a time critical emergency project is the only thing that can save the day. How long that phase lasts is dependent on how long it takes you to bring in the right leadership team to take control and begin anew.

Since they are in panic mode with the Governor pleading for "COBALT" programmers you know this is in the Coming off the rails / false start phase.

Some things you can't short circuit around and luck out. not on really important stuff.

It takes some good minds with excellent experience to noodle out what needs to happen, how to make it happen, line up the political and technical ducks and make it happen.

This is a technology project using a rock solid mainframe programming language, COBOL. Don't belittle it. Many of the nation's largest banks still use COBOL based systems to process their mission critical applications, so quit whining about old mainframe technology being so obsolete.

Those of us who have been there fully understand there are no longer many or any users who understand what entire systems do anymore - because those legacy systems have evolved over the years, projects all justified by headcount reductions in the user community. That means all that knowledge is now encapsulized within that cobol code in those legacy systems.

So. If someone needs help responding to critical needs that were not anticipated (like an increase 100 or 1000 or 10,000 times the workload - <USER2> Jersey?), technology alone is not going to solve your problem, not quickly enough. You need many more people to do the processing of paying the unemployed until technology can catch up and take over.

Pay me now or pay me later I always say. If you don't believe my predictions, Call me when you become enlightened and I can help you then.

Until then, good luck. PS: A legacy system is every system in production!

</comment><comment><USER42> Companies and government agencies need to "ante up" on the refactor of their old systems.

I hope the position goes unfilled. Worst case scenario, the unemployment agency has to do it the analog way ("by paper")

</comment><comment><USER77> Where do we sign up?

</comment><comment><USER77> Where do I sign up?

</comment><comment><USER78> It's a trap!</comment>


Show HN: Notification Control my weekend project - Email notification setup - <AUTHOR> http://notificationcontrol.com/

<comment><USER2> Just nitpicking here, but I noticed that a new HTTP request is done when hovering the links in order to download a different background, and that is not a good idea, because it will always flicker. Use one image with two states and modify the 'background-position' to "shift" the image.

<comment><USER3> +1

instead of having separate image files for each logos, I would prefer two sprites(b/w & color) and apply CSS to reduce the number of HTTP requests.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Built this because I've found that email notifications have gotten out of hand.

Even when I unsubscribe from some service, they still keep coming and then I have to login to that service and look around for the carefully hidden email notification settings.

Made this so that in just a minute any person could easily set up email notifications from most of the important services out there.

If people request more services, we'll certainly add them.

Have you had similar issues? Hope this helps!

<comment><USER4> Wow looks like a much nicer implementation of what I was setting out to do with emaildigest.me :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Consider making an image sprite for all of the icons, so when I hover over one it's preloaded with no delay.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good idea, will look into it. Appreciate the suggestion.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Nice and simple. Can't tell you how many times I just delete emails that I never wanted in the first place because I'm too lazy to change my notification settings.

If you're logged into the service you're wanting to change then this makes it a breeze.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks Jaisen, glad to hear that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> A nice add to the service would be the following:

1: let me choose my overall preference in a simple 3-levels way (alla investment management where you can choose "conservative, long term, aggresive" - something like that

2: Scan my email (automatically hook up alla greplin)

3: Suggest me changes to all services to meet my high level preference

4: Let me apply those changes by simply clicking "GO AHEAD"

5: (or I can go and edit the specifics and do a bulk update in that way) ability to scan my email/s and suggest me changes based on a super-simple "3 level" setting

<comment><USER8> There's absolutely no way I'm letting any old service read my email messages.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Cool little site. Is there a reason the eBay link goes through bit.ly?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Good question, fixed, it's now a normal eBay link.</comment></comment>