Tesla raises $1.8B - rising-sky https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-bonds-tesla-idUSKBN1AR28M <comment><USER2> Let's talk about Solar City.

Their product is intended to be a solar roof, indistinguishable from a typical roof from street level. Costs look to be in the $50,000+ range. The marketing is that homeowners will not only drive electric vehicles, but go completely off grid by storing the energy collected into Tesla batteries.

In order for this to make financial sense, there needs to be an ROI for the homeowner. So... how long will it take the homeowner to recoup that, say, $75,000 investment?

I am currently spending about $125/month on electricity. That's $1,500 per year. Two Tesla's would run through about $1,000 [0] of electricity in the same year. That's $2,500 per year I'd spend on electricity to my grid operator.

That's 30 years to break even.

I could probably buy an equivalent roof-mounted system for half that, and the batteries, and see a return in 15 years. Is the aesthetic worth the longer term payoff?

Or would Tesla see more uptake in new home construction where the cost of the roof can be amortized into the construction cost?

I understand that Solar City has a different financing biz model, are they going to continue with that.

[0] [http://www.greencarreports.com/news/1090685_life-with- tesla-...](http://www.greencarreports.com/news/1090685_life-with-tesla-model- s-one-year-and-15000-miles-later)

<comment><USER3> How much would it cost for a roof-mounted device that makes gasoline for you?

Add your local transportation bill to your electricity bill and now tell me how many years it is.

<comment><USER4> You can use a Tesla on the grid, and potentially see quicker ROI, depending on your local per-kW rate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's interesting to me that in May of last year Snap, Inc raised about the same amount of money. I've never understood how some companies need so much money. To me it makes sense for Tesla. They are building actual cars and that is expensive. What on earth did Snap need a 1.8 billion for?

<comment><USER6> Did you see how much Snap was/is paying on infrastructure? It is _insane_. $2 billion over 5 years.

The amount of waste that is obviously happening there is maddening.

<comment><USER7> That's more than maddening. One company is working on the forefront of an entire ecosystem transformation in a 100 year old entrenched customer base the other...well, let's just say in another 100 years you'll be lucky to find anyone that knows what snap was.

<comment><USER8> Depends. If Snap fails, and Facebook gets a monopoly for centuries due to network lock-in, we'll know Snap as the last competitor to Facebook.

<comment><USER9> "Competitor". Externally funded R&D for Facebook.

<comment><USER10> True - but can you ELI5 for everyone - even though we can infer based on being in tech and can see this - but spell it out for others...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Is there a difference between 'raises' and 'borrows'?

I read this as Tesla took investment of $1.8B (presumably in return for shares), but in this case they have issued $1.8B of bonds, so they've effectively taken out a loan.

<comment><USER12> Yeah this was just a loan. The first time for them that it wasn't attached in some way to shares.

<comment><USER13> Not only that it is unsecured "junk" debt, and the interest rate is incredibly low at 5.3%.

<comment><USER14> 5.3% is not incredibly low for a corporation borrowing 1.8 billion. it is pretty high which is why investors are jumping on it.

This adds $95 million in interest expense per year which is pretty substantial.

<comment><USER15> It is incredibly low for bonds in the "junk" trough. For companies with Tesla's credit rating, you're typically looking at 6.5-7.8%. If you're GE, you're of course going to pay a lot less, but GE has a much more robust credit history.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> _Tesla sold $1.8 billion of eight-year unsecured bonds at a yield of 5.30 percent._

That's considered junk bond level today. Historically, it's not a bad interest rate. It's an OK deal for Tesla.

<comment><USER17> Yes, it's a testament to how strange the financial environment is that people would lend such money speculatively at low interest.

Those are the prevailing rates but I think the bond holders are getting a lousy deal considering tesla's actual risks

<comment><USER18> It's hard to quantify those risks when you have a rock star CEO. As long as Musk can keep the hype train going he'll be able to borrow money cheaply, which will make _today 's_ investment less risky.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> "Tesla aims to boost production to 500,000 cars next year, about six times its 2016 output."

What is the new goal to 2020? 2 years[0] ago they were expecting delivery 500,000 cars in 2020. If they will do that this year, maybe their new goal is to finally put a foot in the top 20 group of world manufacturers[1]?

[0][http://www.businessinsider.com/everything-tesla-promises- to-...](http://www.businessinsider.com/everything-tesla-promises-to- accomplish-by-2020-2015-12/#create-500000-cars-per-year-by-2020-5) [1][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_manufacturers_by_motor...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_manufacturers_by_motor_vehicle_production)

<comment><USER18> I wonder if they mean Tesla is going to actually produce a half million cars next year, or if they're going to ramp up production to a half million cars per year by the end of the year.

<comment><USER20> The latter.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> It's heartening to see financial markets helping a company with such potential for positive externalities. Sometimes maybe the system does work!

<comment><USER22> Positive externalities like 8-year-olds mining cobalt to make the batteries?

<comment><USER23> Do you have any examples of eight year olds habitually employed mining cobalt? Tougher, can you tie that in to Tesla with confidence?

Disclosure: I own quite a few shares in Tesla. They were only ~24.00 USD when I bought them. I admit my bias.

<comment><USER24> There was a discussion on HN a few days ago dealing with this issue.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14964857](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14964857)

<comment><USER23> Thank you. I missed that one. I do notice it is specifically about cell phones, though I suspect it is difficult to tell where else it is used.

I don't own enough shares to pressure them into ethical sourcing and, honestly, hadn't even given it much thought until just now. I only have ~850 shares. Which, while a bunch, isn't going to influence much.

It does make me curious.

<comment><USER24> Yes, that article isn't specifically about automotive batteries but I figured it was still fresh in reader's minds. It wouldn't surprise me if ICE cars had similar problems with conflict minerals, particularly in the catalytic converters.

I'd love to see a really exhaustive study comparing the environmental effects of ICE and EV cars when taking into account the entire product lifecycle from mining, transport, manufacturing, power generation and distribution, refining, etc. I've seen studies comparing a few of these things but nothing that goes from the time some alloy is mined or oil is taken from the ground through the entire life of an automobile.

<comment><USER23> There are a lot of externalities but here's a recent one with a bunch of information.

[http://www.adlittle.com/fileadmin/editorial_us/downloads/ADL...](http://www.adlittle.com/fileadmin/editorial_us/downloads/ADL_BEVs_vs_ICEVs_January_24_2017_USA.pdf)

This is a bit older and more about energy consumption.

[http://publications.lib.chalmers.se/records/fulltext/218621/...](http://publications.lib.chalmers.se/records/fulltext/218621/218621.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> A little imprecision in the article: "The company, founded by Musk in 2003" is untrue. Musk joined the company after it was funded.

<comment><USER26> [https://www.cnet.com/news/tesla-motors-founders-now-there- ar...](https://www.cnet.com/news/tesla-motors-founders-now-there-are-five/)

'....a Tesla representative said that Eberhard and other principals in the dispute have come to an agreement. The company did not reveal any details of the resolution, except to say that there are now five, rather than two, agreed-upon "founders" of Tesla.'

<comment><USER27> Just because he pays them to say he is a founder doesn't make him one (in the technical sense of the word).

But also, it doesn't matter that much, few would disagree that JB and Elon has done a tremendous amount for Tesla and that it wouldn't exist without them).

<comment><USER28> Precisely. Tesla today is today's Tesla because of these two gentlemen.

I remember that there were quite a few EV startups back in the day - <AUTHOR> from Tesla next none of them exist today.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> 5.3% counts as junk these days? Wow, I miss the 13 - 22% days :-). Certainly shows a lot of confidence in Teslas ability to produce Model 3's. It also is going to squeeze the short sellers a bit harder as the capital is going to push out their 'dead by' dates. I feel no pity for them.

</comment><comment><USER30> If there are any college student hackers interested in pushing boundaries MHacks is going to allow you to hack a Tesla this September in Ann Arbor.

<comment><USER31> Are applications open?

<comment><USER30> Go to mhacks.org and create an account. According to the FAQ that will let you then apply.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Maybe they can use it to pay their workers fair wages [0] or to improve work conditions to be not twice as bad as in the rest of the industry [1]

[0] [https://www.forbes.com/sites/alanohnsman/2017/02/09/unionizi...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/alanohnsman/2017/02/09/unionizing- tesla-worker-says-uaw-help-sought-for-factory-pay-and-conditions/amp/) [1] [https://amp.theguardian.com/technology/2017/may/24/tesla- fac...](https://amp.theguardian.com/technology/2017/may/24/tesla-factory- workers-injuries-higher-than-industry-average)

<comment><USER33> Do they have incentive to do that?

<comment><USER34> Not really, Tesla is very much like Apple in the sense that they expect their employees to be 100% compliant and not "overshare", with overbearing corporate security that'll handle you if you step out of line one iota. I don't see why Tesla would change, apparently working conditions are terrible at their factories: [http://www.thedailybeast.com/workers-say-tesla-is-trying- to-...](http://www.thedailybeast.com/workers-say-tesla-is-trying-to-scare- them-out-of-a-union)

On a vaguely related tangent, the sheer duplication of work I saw at Apple was impressive, their corporate culture has secrecy so ingrained that large chunks of the company are duplicating eachother's work needlessly, out of fear of communicating effectively.

<comment><USER35> Funny you should say that about Apple. I think about the saying about software reflecting the organization in structure. Apples effectively static binaries are a bit the same thing. (The ".app" folders.) They contain everything needed to run the application, no libraries are shared between apps. Massive waste, but at the same time, the system is more robust this way. Apps can be upgraded and redone without caring about potential sharing and conflicts with other applications.

This has benefits. I think it's the same with organisations. The secrecy and keeping to yourself, also means you are free to do your thing and there is less need to communicate, "build a shared view" and so on.

<comment><USER36> That's the general direction that things are headed more broadly with containers. It's sort of amusing how this came about because containers are really an outgrowth of OS virtualization work while app virtualization never really went anywhere in a mainstream way--but os virt (containers) has really developed into a way of encapsulating apps.

Storage is cheap. It's much more efficient overall to bundle apps with essentially everything they need to run--modulo the kernel although there's some debate about that last point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> So much for their running out of money. Impressive that they can get it from the bond markets. Highlights maturity as a company.

<comment><USER38> More likely it suggests they would have trouble selling that many new shares. Even Musk has said their share price is higher than they deserve, so selling shares makes more economic sense.

But this amount will only cover their loses for a few months and they probably want to demonstrate their ability to make future profits before diluting their stock significantly. If they sell equity too quickly, it'll look like the stock is crashing and encourage even more selling.

This is how Solar City floundered at the end - under crushing debt from junk bonds.

<comment><USER37> Isn't debt harder to raise than equity? My impression is that the risk tolerance for junk bond buyers is somewhere between high grade credit and equity, perhaps closer to equity. Certainly more conservative than growth or venture equity.

I'm the first to admit that I don't follow their specific financials to know how much runway they need to be profitable.

<comment><USER38> Normally, I would say that's the case, but Tesla stock isn't normal. When they sell debt, their stock price goes up.

Debt has one big advantage over equity too, which is that if the company goes under, bond holders are repaid if possible. Equity holders only own whatever is leftover.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> The "junk bond" rating and high debt load makes me a little nervous, but maybe that's irrelevant and this is just them raising money as an accelerant because they can get it at a good price?

<comment><USER40> They need the money. From a few days ago:

"The company burned through $1.16 billion in cash in the second quarter [...] a little more than $3 billion in cash on hand"

[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-02/tesla- bur...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-02/tesla-burns- through-record-cash-as-musk-brings-model-3-to-market)

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Looking at the stock price, people seemed to know 5 days ago.

</comment><comment><USER42> "Tesla (TSLA) bonds were oversubscribed by $300 million, $1.8 billion raised for Model 3 production"

[https://electrek.co/2017/08/11/tesla-tsla-bonds- oversubscrib...](https://electrek.co/2017/08/11/tesla-tsla-bonds- oversubscribed-model-3-production/)

</comment><comment><USER43> I hope this works, otherwise we are all screwed when earth continues to catch fire

</comment><comment><USER44> How much of this is actually being used to pay down SolarCity debt?

<comment><USER45> You can't pay debt with debt. They may be getting better interest rates on the bond market to refinance their existing loans but total liabilities are going up, not down.

<comment><USER46> Sure you can. That's the exact definition of "refinancing".

<comment><USER45> You may be paying off the note and it shows up as a different line item on the balance sheet, but it's not paying the debt.

<comment><USER47> I think I'm going to need a scanning electron microscope to see the hair you're splitting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Tesla should just mint their own crypto. IF filecoin gets 200M for a white paper, Tesla can get 20B.

<comment><USER49> I would _not_ recommend committing securities fraud.

<comment><USER50> I'm curious. How is what was flippantly suggested related to securities fraud?

<comment><USER51> Crytocurrencies serve one purpose very well: they're presently not being prosecuted as Ponzi schemes.

Which they argueably _are_.

<comment><USER52> Ponzi?

<comment><USER51> Yes, thank you. Fixed. Auto-incorrect strikes again.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> If tesla can get 500,000 cars out there, ICE cars are toast. Enough of legacy cars and makers.

<comment><USER4> The Camry alone sells 400,000 a year in the US, where the market for new cars was _17.55 million units_ last year.

If Tesla can pump out 500K globally, that's respectable, but hardly a death knell to the 80 million unit industry.

[http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-auto- sales-20...](http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-auto- sales-20170104-story.html)

[https://www.statista.com/statistics/200002/international- car...](https://www.statista.com/statistics/200002/international-car-sales- since-1990/)

<comment><USER54> Watch the trends, not the current year.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The tension is building! They've got all this money, they've shown a few of the cars, they've got half a million deposits, but the cars are just dribbling out of the factory right now like pre-ejaculate.

<comment><USER54> They're coming soon.

<comment><USER12> I guess I'll just have to face it.</comment></comment></comment>


Police Now Can Switch off iPhone Camera and Wi-Fi - <AUTHOR> http://www.veteranstoday.com/2013/08/19/police-now-can-switch-off-iphone-camera-and-wi-fi/

<comment><USER2> Maybe Apple is patenting this in order to ensure it _does not get invented_ (for awhile). Some companies patent something to ensure nobody else can do it either, with the idea that the invention will just die after that.

Maybe. But ... I'm to cynical to put my faith in "maybe".

</comment><comment><USER3> While that is a horrible idea, it's worth noting that a patent != actually doing anything. So no, they can't turn off your camera… yet.

</comment><comment><USER4> Once again: If you read the actual patent ( [http://www.google.com/patents/US8254902](http://www.google.com/patents/US8254902) ), the quote about some police activity requiring _complete blackout conditions_ is actually in reference to the _screen brightness_ , not the cameras. One aspect of the idea seems to be that the phones OF THE COPS would be able to go dark in response to a central command. It has nothing to do with turning off the cameras of citizen-journalists.

(jwz nails it here: [http://www.jwz.org/blog/2013/08/oh-noes-apple-has- patented-b...](http://www.jwz.org/blog/2013/08/oh-noes-apple-has- patented-b..). )

Here is the full paragraph from which the misleading quote was yanked:

> _Excessive lighting emanating from wireless devices can also create > disruption in dark environments. While it is well known that excessive or > bright lighting in a movie theater can spoil the mood of certain movies, > excessive lighting can also become a more serious issue in other contexts. > For example, darkrooms used to develop film can only tolerate very low > amounts of ambient lighting. Some biological labs also require low levels of > lighting in certain instances (for example, as in the growth of light- > sensitive bacteria). Covert police or government operations may require > complete "blackout" conditions. A person 's sleep can even be interrupted by > a bright flashing or modulating display (such as to indicate an incoming > call)._

</comment><comment><USER5> Per the FCC, "Federal law prohibits the operation, marketing, or sale of any type of jamming equipment, including devices that interfere with cellular and Personal Communication Services, police radar, Global Positioning Systems, and wireless networking services (Wi-Fi)."

Although, I'm sure an exception would be made for law enforcement on the grounds of national security.

</comment><comment><USER6> On the other hand. Apple users can already determine the location of their phone and remotely lock or wipe out the iPhone using Apple's iCloud website. Thus apple has technical ability to do just the same - just a matter of sending few command by the server administrator.

</comment><comment><USER7> Not just for police... I'd imagine event organizers would like to have just such a technology at their venues to prevent "unauthorized recording." Seems pretty useless in practice though. Couldn't you just put your phone into airplane mode?

</comment><comment><USER8> I think they are talking about the patent that is 3 years old and allows them to turn functions off, no mention of the camera. Like the rest of the media they have immediately jumped to the worst case scenario.

</comment><comment><USER9> Interesting choice of photograph to represent the police, for a military veterans and foreign affairs journal.</comment>


Go Turns 10 - <AUTHOR> https://blog.golang.org/10years <comment><USER2> And yet it still feels like a language out of the 60s or 70s. To me, Go feels like the programming language equivalent of insisting that everyone communicate just by grunting because it's less complex to teach people just grunting than it is to teach them more effective forms of communication. And in theory, they still can communicate all the same things with more grunting! Some people refer to this as simplicity, and in a way it is, but it's simplicity in the language constructs at the expense of more complexity in the usage of the language to form more complex thoughts. There must be a golden balance here, but I don't feel like Go is it for all the fanfare it has been getting lately.

<comment><USER3> Any specific complaints, or did you just feel like calling us all cavedwellers?

<comment><USER4> \+ By declaring a field/variable []Thing vs []*Thing you get different for loop semantics. Way to easy to think your mutating the array item, but only mutating a local copy or vice versa. If you change the field/variable you need to audit all your code to make sure you haven't broken things.

\+ gofmt feels way out of date. These days clang-format (c++), prettier (typescript), black (python), scalafmt (scala) take care of wrapping/unwrapping lines such as function definitions or function calls. They basically cover all formatting needs so you never have to manually format anything.

\+ Scope of element in for-range loop isn't right, so capturing that scope in a lambda does the wrong thing with no warning.

\+ Encourages use of indexes; which is error prone, most modern languages allow writing most code without needing indexes using map/filter/reduce or comprehensions.

\+ No help from type-system for use of pointer without nil check.

\+ Very easy to get nils in places one would hope to be able to prohibit them in. EG Using pointer as a poor man's unique_ptr<> means that I also get optional<> symantics (without the type checking) when I don't want or expect such. Also allows for aliasing when I don't want or expect such.

\+ Difference between '=' and ':=' is silly, especially since ':=' can be used to reassign values. Even more frustrating that ':=' creates shadowing in nested scopes, so doesn't always do what one would expect it would do, such as accidentally creating a shadowed 'err' that doesn't get checked.

\+ if/switch should be allowed to be expressions, allowing much safer single- expression initialization of variables, rather then requiring default initialization and mutation, which is much easier to get wrong.

<comment><USER5> I actually like Go's simplicity a lot, it was very easy for me to learn and very easy to programming with it because of that. But I agree strongly with some of your points. = vs := specifically feels like a plain mistake, and even against Go philosophy of having just 1 way to do things.

I think any new language should be designed around options instead of nils. F#, Rust, Zig show different ways to do this, and often any performance penalty can be compiled away.

if/switch being expressions is a simple and helpful idea, languages should allow this.

using map/filter/reduce as the idiomatic way to do things I am less sure about. This can come in handy but also would add a lot of complexity to Go, and in most languages these have a performance penalty.

its important to remember that not all programmers are interested in languages, they just want to get their project done. So being able to hop into a code base and have low cognitive overhead, because there are no mysterious features they have to learn, having quick compile times, and explicit semantics can be really helpful there. That can save you more time than typing less because of generics and meta programming sometimes.

<comment><USER6> 'and in most languages these have a performance penalty' \- pretty sure this is due to either bad implementation or because of additional guarantees they provide. Because fundamentally these constructs can be rewritten to be loops by the compiler, except where you're wanting to violate the guarantees they enforce (i.e., maybe you want to mutate every item in the array, rather than treating it as immutable; these won't do that). For those few situations you want to violate those guarantees, you wouldn't reach for these higher order functions. There's not really any reason not to include them except for language design ethos.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Go is such a productive language. Well deserved cred to its authors and community. Please, please hold firm against the inherent pressure from language theoreticians to add more features that increases complexity.

<comment><USER8> I think the tension is more between people writing executables and people writing libraries.

If you want your language to be suitable for any purpose by using an intricate web of libraries depending on each other, you need those language features and deep theory. Think haskell, lisp, rust, etc.

If you kind of know what people will use your language for, and you build in the most important functionality, you aren't nearly so dependent on libraries. You just make the language accessible and as productive as possible. Think Go, erlang, PHP, SQL, javascript, VB.

<comment><USER9> Yet the Go standard library is one of the best around ...

<comment><USER8> It seems that you are agreeing with me.

A standard library for a language with a purpose (like Go) should include a lot of stuff related to that purpose. That avoids the need for an intricate web of dependencies and specialized third-oarty code, but ties the language to its purpose a bit more.

A standard library for a use-for-anything-and-everything language (like rust) might be smaller because it relies more on third-party libraries for the specific purposes you have in mind.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> If you compare Go to C++, Go has gotten more organized but still retains understandability, and in my opinion, C++ has become unrecognizable. I did 10+ years of C++ until around 2012, and since then the changes have been so quick and so drastic I would not call myself an experienced C++ programmer anymore. It's a shame because I love C/C++ but not what I see today, because they have lost what makes Go great: an opinion. They are trying very hard to be everything and it has changed the language too quickly to keep up.

<comment><USER11> Although I share similar experiences with what you're saying per se, I don't understand why people compare Go to C++. Comparing Go to C makes sense; to Rust or C++ does not.

<comment><USER10> I'm comparing it as a language that is evolving. Not as a point-to-point comparison. I feel like Go has evolved properly and C++ is mutating too quickly for its own good.

<comment><USER11> Nah, C++ is hardly mutating, in the sense of being backwards-incompatible. Rather, it is expanding incrementally (these days in big chunks). Anyway... Would you compare Python and C++, then? The goals of the languages are clearly different.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Is modern go code still 50% "if err != nil" ?

When I last used it the error handling drove me a bit mad. I get the reasoning, but the amount of identical error checking code for (almost) every single call didn't make me feel terribly happy compared to my easy life in the erlang/elixir 'let it crash' world :}

<comment> ainar-g All points are like stale mantras by now, but still:

* Errors happen. All the time. And how you handle them matters. The err != nil path is _not_ unlikely.

* If your error processing code is repetitive, you're doing it wrong. Wrap your errors. Add context.

* Errors are values. Make them useful. Again, add context.

Honestly, while a lot of people look at Go code and think "this is 50% error checking", every time I read an under-handed piece of C or under-catched piece of JavaScript, I think to myself "where _is_ the error checking?"

<comment><USER13> In Java I feel like most of the time it's fine to just Throw (or let throw) errors, and a parent can catch and log and move on with its life.

Go feels like making _all_ exceptions checked, whereas I usually try to only use unchecked exceptions and it seems to work out fine :P

<comment><USER14> Sure it works fine until you start multithreading, where handling an exception doesn't end with unwinding the stack, because there are multiple stacks. So then have to pass it _as a value_ to some other thread's stack, and remember to catch it in every thread or else your thread will silently die. But then you're right back to where Go is: treating errors as values.

<comment><USER15> You simply have a _single_ uncaught-exception handler and that takes care of the problem that you mention.

Instead of 500,000 if err != nil checks littering the source code and making functions unreadable.

<comment><USER14> I'm well aware of how to deal with the problems created by unchecked, stack- unwinding exceptions. The thing is, when I'm reading Go code, I can look at a call site and easily know if an error can occur and what happens to the error (including if it's sent to another goroutine), using very simple and consistent mechanisms. The tradeoff is verbosity, but it is worthwhile verbosity IMO because it's simple, consistent, explicit, and does not create the unnecessary coupling of checked exceptions. I appreciate this low cognitive overhead when I go back to a codebase 6 months later, or when onboarding a new hire.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Go is so good for web servers. Performs extremely well "out of the box", easy to learn, and easy to deploy due to static linking.

Here's how I usually look at programming languages vs use cases in back end development:

\- Go for back end API's with high performance requirements

\- Typescript for IO bound API's that can easily be modified and understood by front end developers who use typescript for front end work

\- Python for scripting and IO bound API's

</comment><comment><USER17> Go saved me from EntityFramework.

About 8 years ago, I was writing some app in C#, and the recognised way of doing things was EntityFramework. I duly wrote a bunch of code around EF, only to notice that sometimes it wasn't populating with the data correctly. Digging into the documentation, I found that EF didn't actually do lazy loading properly, and that if you really wanted to be sure that the data was populated, you should call a method to check that the property you wanted had been populated, and if not, call another method to populate it.

I threw Windows in the bin after that. I uninstalled Windows, installed Linux, and started looking around for another language to code in. I found Go. It's total lack of magic, utter transparency and attitude of simplicity made complete sense to me.

<10 years later I'm still happily coding in Go. Thanks guys, this is awesome!

<comment><USER18> How does Go solves your EF issue? Or, what would you use to write that app today in Go?

<comment><USER19> Sounds like throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

<comment><USER17> Today I have to write the SQL, and pull the results of the query into a struct, which implements relevant interfaces. It's more code to write, but it's simple, and straightforward, and it does exactly what it says it does, and no more. It's easier to write and understand, and trust. Most of all, trust.

<comment><USER20> Entity Framework is just an ORM. Every ORM has their quirks. It's unclear why you ditch a whole language, and even the OS just because you didn't enjoy using an ORM.

If you want to write pure SQL and pull the results into a struct with interfaces, you could do that in C# also.

<comment><USER17> It became a symbol for the entire C# coding attitude/worldview/paradigm at the time. I lost it with EF because it just didn't do what it said it did, and all the documentation lied about what it was actually doing. It became the straw that broke the camel's back, the poster child for everything that was wrong with .Net and C# (at the time - I gather things have got better since).

Go became the antidote, the "way things should be", and moving from Win/C# to Linux/Go was eye-opening and very healing.

YMMV. I'm totally happy I found Go right then, when I needed it

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> That's great, amazing and all good, but at my company I am looking for people with at least 10 years (or more) experience with Go. :)

/s

<comment><USER11> That's not my view of the market for Go devs. A few decent Go projects in your GitHub profile perhaps? Sounds like you're being filtered by HR. Just mention a few extra buzzwords.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> "This pattern repeated for almost every language I looked at: it seems to take roughly a decade of quiet, steady improvement and dissemination before a new language really takes off."

It does help when the company who created the language is Google and they start using it in significant products like Kubernetes. :-)

<comment><USER23> Kubernetes was almost written in Java. That it was written in Go instead was motivated in part by Docker choosing Go, which Google wasn't part of.

<comment><USER24> Found this video [https://archive.fosdem.org/2019/schedule/event/kubernetesclu...](https://archive.fosdem.org/2019/schedule/event/kubernetesclusterfuck/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I really like go, it's a wonderful language in many ways.

But I really wish we got official answers on things like the code duplication. Either something like generics or code generics and just establish we're not going to get generics and put an end to the discussion.

<comment><USER26> Have you seen Contracts?

[https://go.googlesource.com/proposal/+/master/design/go2draf...](https://go.googlesource.com/proposal/+/master/design/go2draft- contracts.md)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Python : Django === Go : ??

If I want a nice ORM and built in migrations, what framework should I be using 10 years later?

<comment><USER28> I wasn't happy with the current database access packages ([https://github.com/jmoiron/sqlx](https://github.com/jmoiron/sqlx), [https://gorm.io](https://gorm.io)), so I wrote my own for PostgreSQL. It takes existing queries and generates type-safe Go methods ([https://github.com/kyleconroy/sqlc](https://github.com/kyleconroy/sqlc)). I enjoy using it and thought others might too.

As for migrations, I've had success with [https://github.com/pressly/goose](https://github.com/pressly/goose). It's lightweight and is also just SQL.

<comment><USER29> Nice, much like people would use Pro*C to generate C to talk to Oracle. I think converting a DSL to boilerplate (which should rarely be read and never edited) is key to living with a language that isn't good at reusable abstractions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> It's really interesting to have seen a language launch, develop and evolve over the last 10 years. Back in 2009 I'd just started my career, and while I've been mostly doing Java development professionally, I do a lot of Go stuff in my side projects.

Long may it continue!

</comment><comment><USER31> Happy birthday to a wonderfully refreshing language.

> Go has also found adoption well beyond its original cloud target, with uses > ranging from controlling tiny embedded systems with GoBot and TinyGo to > detecting cancer with massive big data analysis and machine learning at > GRAIL, and everything in between.

I've often thought of this, but I'm not qualified enough to answer my own questions.

While a very expressive and extendable language like Python seems well suited to researching the desired abstractions when designing neural nets and ML paradigms, it seems to me that a production phase would benefit from translating it to a 'sleek' language like Go — which forces you to think closer to the machine, and opens boulevards to safe performance.

I wonder what people fluent in Go and other languages, experienced with ML, think of this. (it's a minor concern overall, but the future of Go in ML is of interest to me)

> especially the community working together.

I have to say this is one of the nicest things for a Go programmer, a 'Gopher' as they say. I've been online since the late 1990's (teenager back then), in all sorts of communities, and being quite civil and empathic myself I tend to have strong opinions about the 'mindset' or 'culture' on a very down-to-earth human level.

The Go community is among the very best. Period. One telling sign is how welcoming, respectful and elevating they are with newcomers, to Go or programming in general. It's a trainee's paradise, even if material is still relatively scarce compared to longer-established big names.

> In fact, people often tell us that learning Go helped them get their first > jobs in the tech industry.

This should not go unnoticed. Few languages are able to move that needle — remember that for now, we increasingly need more developers than we can produce at a worldwide scale. It's both a matter of a language and its paradigm being in demand by employers, by clients projets; it's also a matter of said paradigm and implementation/spec to be _conducive to the making of programmers_.

We know the names. C. Java. PHP. Python. COBOL before that (and I hear, today still). It's the big ones that consistently do it forever regardless of 'project / tech buzz flavor of the year or even decade'. I have every belief that Go is destined to join this select club of industry norms. Lots of reasons why but among the most fundamental are ticking all the right boxes at a low level — ease of programming, stellar readability and portability of others' code, really cross-platform target, self-documenting, etc. etc.

Anyhow. Here's to a masterpiece.

<comment><USER32> > While a very expressive and extendable language like Python seems well > suited to researching the desired abstractions when designing neural nets > and ML paradigms, it seems to me that a production phase would benefit from > translating it to a 'sleek' language like Go — which forces you to think > closer to the machine, and opens boulevards to safe performance.

This is a common perspective from outside of the ML field that arises usually from missing knowledge about the ML technology stack. Underneath the layer of expressive and exploratory Python lies a bedrock of optimized and domain-aware numerical libraries written in a combination of Fortran, C, C++, handwritten assembly and some HDLs. HPC resources are not cheap, so there is no software stack that provides a meaningful performance advantage over the one currently in use.

<comment><USER31> OK, I understand better. I was indeed thinking of whatever piece of code hits the metal last before kernel (including kernel actually), I see now that was badly worded in GP.

This does strikes me as an interesting perspective though:

> a bedrock of optimized and domain-aware numerical libraries written in a > combination of Fortran, C, C++, handwritten assembly and some HDLs

So, we're talking lower level, from the kernel and above but below TensorFlow and Keras etc. I take it?

If yes, we're into systems by that point; it just so happens that this is Go's domain. Think of shrinking a 1000-brains 10-year cycle to a 100-brains 5-year or less (you may actually DevOps/CI-CD and sprint that stuff with Go like you would with most high-level's like Python or Js; a general "no-can-do" with low-level concurrent C++).

I may be wrong or totally out of my depth here, but I'm speaking of the library layer where e.g. in compute you'd see a CUDA-based industry versus whatever else (OpenCL...) take about a decade to unfold (and as much to move back); same in graphics, you'd see DirectX / OpenGL/Vulkan market penetration play over the entire lifetime of a GPU architecture (not 'gen', the core design like e.g. GCN).

I'm lacking the experience with ML workflows for sure; however the general hardware cycles and industrial market profiling seem to hold there as well (from GPU / TPU / FPGA / whatever fabrication, and the economics thereof; up to high-level software libraries and 'engineering muscle' that proponents of tech XYZ can push beyond marketing).

Where Go fits in that landscape is not so much versus a data scientist's Python but rather against infrastructure / Ops people's C++. Like Go is currently a strong candidate to refactor (parts of) the COBOL space, because it's basically 10x faster than in C++ or Java.

I'm thinking out loud. Don't quote me on any of this!

<comment><USER33> > So, we're talking lower level, from the kernel and above but below > TensorFlow and Keras etc. I take it?

Tensorflow/Keras are frameworks built on:

> a bedrock of optimized and domain-aware numerical libraries written in a > combination of...

You are not making any calculations in Python (if you do you are using native numerical libraries via FFI mostly), you only setup your workflow, prepare data etc. Heavy lifting is done in low level libraries used by ML frameworks. That's why Go will not make it drastically more performant/better. Additionally most people doing ML knows Python, almost none know Go. 99% of tutorials, ML libraries etc are in Python. Not enough benefits to leave such an rich ecosystem in favor of Go. I write a lot of Go but even I would prefer Python over Go for any ML work.

<comment><USER34> > 99% of tutorials, ML libraries etc are in Python. Not enough benefits to > leave such an rich ecosystem in favor of Go. I write a lot of Go but even I > would prefer Python over Go for any ML work

I can give you one reason: Most of the ML tutorials online work on toy problems. Full stop. When it comes time to deploy the models, good luck, you need to move heaven and earth with devops stuff. Dockerize all your programs, add more heft.

Not so when using Go directly. There's a reason why data engineers are more in demand now than data scientists. With Scikit learn, keras etc it's easy to build models. It's not easy to deploy models to production. Half the tutorials don't teach the important bits: that your model needs to live in production.

Now, if you write your programs using Gonum or Gorgonia, you need to think a lot deeper about what your model is doing, about memory about things that software engineers think about. It's not easier, but it's the only sustainable way forwards.

<comment><USER33> > I can give you one reason: Most of the ML tutorials online work on toy > problems. Full stop.

And most libraries and implementations are also in Python because they work on toy problems?

> There's a reason why data engineers are more in demand now than data > scientists. With Scikit learn, keras etc it's easy to build models. It's not > easy to deploy models to production. Half the tutorials don't teach the > important bits: that your model needs to live in production.

There is also a reason why you employ full stack web developer instead of frontend developer. I can tell you what is the reason - it's cheaper than employing frontend developer and backend developer. And for _toy problems_ you can hire fullstack developer.

> Now, if you write your programs using Gonum or Gorgonia, you need to think a > lot deeper about what your model is doing, about memory about things that > software engineers think about. It's not easier, but it's the only > sustainable way forwards.

So you are implying that whole industry, researchers and ML practitioners got that wrong and they should use Go now? I know a lot of people working on ML related problems and none of them use Go for their ML work. Some of them have Go in their stacks, sure, but it's not used for ML directly. And they solve practical business problems.

I've also worked before with two ML researchers respected in the industry and I can assure you, they are not working on toy problems and they do not know Go. And this is coming from Go user and enthusiast. Programming languages are just tools, not a religion.

<comment><USER34> Perhaps "toy problem" is the wrong term to use. "Deploy unfriendly" is perhaps the term I should have used.

Programming languages are tools indeed. Some tools make life easy in one way, some tools make life easy in other ways.

<comment><USER33> > Some tools make life easy in one way, some tools make life easy in other > ways.

Exactly, you always choose between different set of trade-offs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Happy birthday to Go :) I've been using it for a couple of years both professionally and on the OSS side of things and I'm absolutely loving it!

</comment><comment><USER36> I am recently introduced to golang. I really like the simplicity, expressiveness and standard library. I am also a fan that developer need not to deal with every nitty gritty details about the language, os etc.

</comment><comment><USER37> 10 years old and still very immature and a pain to work with... it's all so backwards and I am not sure how many unnecessary lines of error code handling I had to write. Its horrible to read, my takeaway, pick either Java for business problems or Rust if you wanna do native stuff. Python is also much better compared to Go. I feel like I became less skilled in coding the last year and a half... Switching jobs soon, moving to a go free world. :)

</comment><comment><USER38> Ten years old and still basically Java 1.4...

</comment><comment><USER39> This makes me feel even older than the XKCDs that point out its longer from now to not-that-long-ago-seeming _X_ from your youth than it is from _X_ since very-ancient-seeming _Y_ from your father's days.

<comment><USER40> can you share that xkcd pls?

<comment><USER41> He really loves his "want to feel old" jokes.

Also, want to feel old? The 'want to feel old?' factoid meme dates back to around 2011, closer to the Bush/Kerry election than to today.

[https://xkcd.com/1686/](https://xkcd.com/1686/)

[https://xkcd.com/1757/](https://xkcd.com/1757/)

[https://xkcd.com/1624/](https://xkcd.com/1624/)

[https://xkcd.com/1995/](https://xkcd.com/1995/)

[https://xkcd.com/1898/](https://xkcd.com/1898/)

[https://xkcd.com/1959/](https://xkcd.com/1959/)

[https://xkcd.com/1981/](https://xkcd.com/1981/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Congrats! When a man's gotta Go, he's gotta Go!

</comment><comment><USER43> if err != nil { panic() } on virtually every single function call gets a bit tedious.

<comment><USER44> I'll still take that over having no idea what errors could be thrown at which point in my code. Treating errors as values is very verbose, but it's the easiest error handling I've ever tried to wrap my head around.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> C++ within 10 years had conquered the world. Go, on the other hand...

<comment><USER45> C++ was invented in 1979.

In 1989 the most popular programming languages, in order of popularity, were:

1\. C

2\. Ada

3\. Pascal

4\. Lisp

5\. Fortran

6\. C++

7\. Assembly

8\. COBOL

9\. BASIC

10\. APL

Source - [https://youtu.be/Og847HVwRSI?t=120](https://youtu.be/Og847HVwRSI?t=120)

<comment><USER42> More accurately, "In 1982, Stroustrup started to develop a successor to C with Classes, which he named C++". (Source - Wikipedia.)

As far as Go's popularity, see e.g. [https://fossbytes.com/most-popular- programming-languages/](https://fossbytes.com/most-popular-programming- languages/).

<comment><USER45> True enough, one could name any year between 1979 and 1985 as the "invention" year of C++, and the claim would have some merit. [http://www.cplusplus.com/info/history/](http://www.cplusplus.com/info/history/)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


An underground cathedral protecting Tokyo from floods - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20181129-the-underground-cathedral-protecting-tokyo-from-floods <comment><USER2> I took a trip to this place when I was in Tokyo last spring; here are my pictures for the curious:

[http://www.lucashayas.com/journal/2018/11/18/maoudc](http://www.lucashayas.com/journal/2018/11/18/maoudc)

It cost about 80 bucks all told and was a bit of an ordeal to organize (you need a fluent Japanese speaker), but was definitely an experience. It was a little disappointing in how limited our tour was. I get the sense that they've narrowed down the area you can wander since opening. Still, I've explored storm drains in the US quite a bit and this was a whole different level.

<comment><AUTHOR> Your pictures are stunning. The entire facility has quite a sci-fi aspect to it. Did you actually run into any hornets? :)

<comment><USER2> Thanks! Didn't see any scary hornets sadly. The whole structure is totally sci-fi, even inspiring a level in Mirror's Edge.

You might also enjoy some of my other drain exploration shots from stateside:

[http://www.lucashayas.com/journal/2015/3/31/minolta- af-s](http://www.lucashayas.com/journal/2015/3/31/minolta-af-s)

[http://www.lucashayas.com/journal/2014/1/19/understructure](http://www.lucashayas.com/journal/2014/1/19/understructure)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> What's cool to me is not only the planning and engineering involved in creating these sorts of responses, but ability to accumulate the funds, the political will, and the discipline to see it all go through start to finish.

<comment><USER4> Read about Chicago's Tunnel and Reservoir plan.

It's a 60 year underground water infrastructure plan that's been miraculously more or less on schedule and budget.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunnel_and_Reservoir_Plan](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunnel_and_Reservoir_Plan)

<comment><USER5> The Chicago system is about 2 orders of magnitude larger (someone might want to check my pre-coffee morning math), but a very big distinction is that Chicago stores the overflow water in outdoor, open-air reservoirs, not underground storage tanks.

I agree that it is rather impressive for a long-running American construction project to be on-time and on-budget, but keep in mind that most of the project has been tunneling through very consistent bedrock with nothing in the way. Also, the McCook Reservoir mentioned in the wikipedia article as 13x10^9 liters is a former limestone quarry that they purchased and then connected to the system. The wikipedia article says it will be expanded to 38x10^9 liters by 2029. That's true... but what is really going on is that all they've done is sign a contract to buy the quarry on the other side of the highway once the stone company is done with it, perhaps around 2026 or so. Only then will they do any construction to connect it to the system. Don't get me wrong, it's a very smart move. But it's not an 11-year long project for which they have to maintain a schedule and budget.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is quite magnificent, some pictures here: [https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/首都圏外郭放水路](https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/首都圏外郭放水路)

<comment><USER7> wow, those pictures bring to mind the film depiction of the mines of moria in terms of scale and regularity

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's big, but I haven't seen any information about how the capacity of the system compares to the capacity of the rivers feeding into it to generate water. Would the system survive a Harvey-type event? Or is it meant to deal more with seasonal fluctuations to prevent runoff causing flooding? 100 tons per second doesn't seem like a lot to me, compared to runoff that can be generated during spring thunderstorms. It's impressive and no doubt Tokyo will benefit from the infrastructure, but really the main chamber does not look much larger than a dig for a large skyscraper.

<comment><USER2> In addition to the main chamber there are several pits that also store lots of water. Here's a photo I took on the tour that might show it better: [https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5265796de4b0bacb22141...](https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5265796de4b0bacb221414bc/t/5bf1a9784ae237221b19d406/1542564238049/Metropolitan+Area+Outer+Underground+Discharge+Channel+3.jpg?format=1000w)

Unfortunately I don't remember the tour specifics well enough to confirm the exact use case of the system.

<comment><USER9> From what I remember (and similar to other designs), the pits take the brunt of the flash flooding, before releasing into the chamber. The reservoir can hold the water for as long as required before dispatching it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Helsinki doesn't need flood protection, but we have a large (~25000 cubic meters) underground lake right in the center of the city for heat management: [https://gizmodo.com/helsinki-built-an-underground-lake-to- co...](https://gizmodo.com/helsinki-built-an-underground-lake-to-cool-its- building-1631985837)

The local energy company is also converting some artificial caves, originally dug for oil storage, to similar use: [https://www.helen.fi/en/news/2018/Gigantic-cavern-heat- stora...](https://www.helen.fi/en/news/2018/Gigantic-cavern-heat-storage- facility-to-be-implemented-in-Mustikkamaa/).

</comment><comment><USER11> Pretty awesome!

Reminds me of the cisterns underneath Istanbul (Constantinopolis), built by the romans.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basilica_Cistern](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basilica_Cistern)

<comment><USER9> There's a few things similar in Paris as well. Most dense cities with little natural run off have them. [http://ninjito.com/2009-07-19](http://ninjito.com/2009-07-19)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I love this level on Mirrors Edge

<comment><USER13> Came here to post this. Now I know where they got their inspiration! Though, ironically enough, I always got the vibe that that city from the first game was more like Singapore.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Now that's what you call a GeoFront.

</comment><comment><USER15> Any pictures of it flooded?

I searched and could only find pictures of it empty.

<comment><USER9> The ones we visited in Paris have 50cm thick solid steel doors and submarine hatch style wheels to wind them shut.

I would anticipate that even just the air pressure that is expelled during a surge is probably enough to cause serious damage to people.

On the scale of G-cans, it's hard to know if it would be more dangerous or less dangerous..

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Last week we tried to book a ticket for a visit next month. (They have a strict schedule). Unfortunately seems tours suspended until March 2019.</comment>


Ask HN: Employed bootcampers, what advice would you give a struggling developer? - <AUTHOR> I wanted to attend Hack Reactor in March 2016 but ended up at DevMountain. After asking a question on Quora, one of the founders of DevMountain said 'our curriculum is just as good but also has free housing'. I fell for it to save money (HR was only at SF at the time) and moved to Provo, Utah. I was doing really well but felt like I got ripped off for several reasons (the hiring stats were greatly exaggerated, the curriculum was not as quality as promised, they got acquired midway through my cohort, and I had a sociopathic ex-mormon roommate).
Long story short: I got a full refund. I don't want to make this about DevMountain. I want to focus on Hack Reactor or something close.
I didn't go back home, I lived out of AirBnb for 2 months and landed a dev job at a shady MLM company. I learned a lot there but it was potentially a Ponzi scheme, so I bailed after a few months alongside most of the other devs. Next, I worked at a Bluehost call center where I focused on Wordpress support and planned out some new ideas in my free time. There was a mass layoff in January of this year and my last day was 3/31. I tried and failed to get into YC as well, it was a crap shoot but I tried anyways.
I'm back where I started from and now doing HR's prep course (free) while hoping to build a passion project into a viable company. I've thought this over a lot but I think I should try one more time and this time not be so naive.
I'm overcoming depression/burn out/disillusionment by taking good care of myself, learning code, designing stuff, and spending time with my family. I think I can do this if I try with beginner's mind and listen to whatever is posted here.
I sincerely appreciate any and all advice, encouragement, and direction. I've never wanted anything so bad in my life.
Thanks <comment><USER2> Hey man, it's Tyler. I feel as though DevMountain did alot to help you. Even to the point of when you left you literally told me you had nothing but good things to say about DevMountain. You were in our program for 6 weeks and received a ton of training and help. Then, after the run in with legal troubles, we legally had to let you go. Our hands were tied as a professional schooling institution. It was unfortunate because you were seriously one of the top students. You think we wanted to let you go? We did not. We loved having you around. We even refunded every cent of your tuition because of the situation you were thrown into. That is a school who cares. That is a program who cares about it's students. You even landed a job after our program. I really don't know what much more we could have done for you given the situation. I really don't know how you can continue to say that you were ripped off?

And most importantly: Do not give up.

You will not get the first position you apply into. Nor the second one. Maybe you have to send dozens of applications without a result. But that's not in vain. In that process, you'll learn about yourself. You'll learn what you know best and what you are passionate about. And after you have figured that out, you modify your application and send it to the next company and before you know it you got yourself a job.

When I have been between jobs I have listed companies with open positions and sent few (4-5) applications per day. First day I usually start from the least ideal/desirable company and work my way towards the dream jobs in. Every day I have read and modified my resume and sent the new version to few other companies. Sometimes less than 10% of these companies have interviewed me and it has taken about ten interviews before I have found a company that is willing to hire me.

So it will take time and effort but you will learn so a lot during the process.

<comment><AUTHOR> I also said 'I don't want to make this about DevMtn but about HR' because I'm trying to move on and start over. I'm getting some help from a support group to leave Utah in the rear view and try one more time but with a clearer mind and stronger will.

Can you imagine trying to escape poverty, moving 2200 miles from home with the hope of starting a new life only to see it collapse like it did? That's a pretty traumatic thing to go through, especially with no friends/family in the area.

When we were in Moab, all I could think about was coming back and starting my project. That was what brought me to Utah. The kid who told on me went through my room when I was in Moab, I know because the cop couldn't find any weed so he left my room to talk to him again. I heard him whisper to the cop, 'check the closet, in the suitcase, outside pocket'. Another student there advised him not to call the cops for something so small and petty. He did it anyways He ended up kicked out himself for God-knows-what. It was a very traumatic experience, a wound that still stings no matter how much I try to forget it.

I'm sorry if it seems like I'm trying to sabotage your business, that is not my intention. I'm a college dropout, first-generation American trying to escape poverty. I hope there is a day in the future where my 14 month adventure throughout Utah will be seen in only a positive light because of how much I learned about life out there but it can't happen until I at least make some progress towards my original goal of being able to build what I dream.

Anyways, to make things right I'll drop this whole experience and let it go best I can. The biggest pain for me was my roommate, who seemed to have issues with everyone there but one person. I understand you had no control over that, so I forgive DevMtn.

Sorry again, I'm just struggling to keep my dream alive because it seems like there is a plot twist every time I make a few months of progress.

On the bright side: I've learned how to live through another form of adversity. If all this doesn't kill me, it will make me stronger when it all comes together.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Have a project. Write code. Just keep writing code. Do not stop writing code. It will be too hard. Do not give up. Persist. Keep writing code. Again and again you will think it is too hard, you are not smart enough. Do not give up, keep writing code. Etc etc

<comment><AUTHOR> It really is that simple. Not easy but it is very clear what I need to do. I have the capacity to learn the material and overcome adversity, and experience in the field. There isn't much else needed but the will to keep going.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Multiple things, and sorry, but as an European, english is not my native tongue.

First of all, know and acknowledge that as a bootcamper you "know" programming the same way a toddler knows how to run (a marathon) - i.e. you know the basic mechanics but you are a long way from great.

Really good developers have years of practical experiences (my guess is at least 5, maybe 10). As others have said, keep on churning code and you will get better and better (I still learn/"get better" every day after almost 20 years of experience). Most of the things you need to learn are impossible to teach and impossible to even formulate...

Second of all, starting a business, whether it is a Start-up (i.e. VC backed online cat massage reservation system) or a start-up (i.e. the start of an old-fashioned profitable business), is also like running a marathon.. It requires a lot of skill and extreme "keep going at it".

I have a master's degree in business (finance) and I have to say, that having investors seems like a great idea, but is brutal. You get a "large" sum of money, but after a few years you have either made it or are broke (often personally too). The math is so much better for the VC than the entrepreneur (I wrote my masters thesis on this).

Personally I am bootstrapping my company for the 11th year and growing slowly (and profitably). I think I am on the edge of really taking off - but as the saying goes it takes 10 years of preparation to be an overnight-success. I made a lot of costly mistakes, accumulated probably in the 50k USD range, and nearly killed the company more than once...

So concluding, my advice is: \- Don't let the impostor syndrome get you (if you have that, but most have, especially the good ones) \- Keep writing code and learning \- Consider strongly whether you want to make the sacrifices for doing a startup/Startup or just be an employee (nothing wrong with that!) \- If you wanna be your own boss, consider strongly whether you wanna bootstrap or get funded. Acknowledge the risk of funding... \- If you wanna be an employee, start out by shooting at the junior positions (you still only got a few months of experience...), be honest about your "greenness" but confident in what you know you can do. \- Try to find a smallish company without all the hype (i.e. the brown paper bag company). There you get the chance to grow the most (given that you stay there for some time) and they most likely have a stable business model (i.e. can pay your salary "forever" and are not running out of "runway" (VC money)). \- Also consider doing more than just programming. Having a working knowledge of sysadmin and networking makes you much more valuable.

But as said, the most important thing (that others also have said)... keep on trucking..

<comment><AUTHOR> I'll just strive on, all I can do. I've worked as a technician and a designer for years before getting over my fear of code. I've learned a lot about how all various pieces connect together to create the Internet, I need to deepen my knowledge of those connections now.

I've travelled too far to quit now.</comment></comment>


Tokyo police are using drones with nets to catch other drones - <AUTHOR> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/12045733/Tokyo-police-are-using-drones-with-nets-to-catch-other-drones.html <comment><USER3> I recall that in the beginnings of World War I, planes were primarily used as surveillance tools. So the germans and french would send their planes above a battlefield, and the pilots would see each other, sometimes even wave at each as they passed by.

A little bit later someone brought a shotgun on one of the planes and the rest is literal history.

<comment><USER4> I'm very curious as to what the reaction was of the first pilot that was shot at. My guess is he was probably be thinking more "Wow, what an asshole," than he would be thinking that the aggressor's action makes sense in the context of war.

<comment><USER5> That probably was their reaction considering it's usually the governments that have issues with each other, not the people. For instance, I have no problem with Russians or Chinese, I think in general they're nice people, as with any population, but our governments have problems with each other and that causes us to fight.

I get we're, for the most part, fighting the ideologies of the other country, but it's a real shame we can't live in peace. It's the few bad apples - <USER2> greedy, the criminals, the oppressors, the deceiving - that ruin it for everybody.

<comment><USER6> That generally how I think when I "dislike" a nation. Its not individuals, but the governments.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> People will probably start building bigger drones with bigger nets to catch the police drones. It's just a matter of time.

<comment><USER8> or smaller drones to go thru the nets. or drones that don't look like drones:

[http://www.mybionicbird.com/](http://www.mybionicbird.com/)

[http://www.snopes.com/photos/technology/insectdrone.asp](http://www.snopes.com/photos/technology/insectdrone.asp)

<comment><USER9> "Bionic Bird benefits from strict quality controls that are so rigorous that each bird is built like a prototype." ....um, what?

<comment><USER10> Ehhh.... Reminds me of the story about when the Soviets were cloning the B-29 to make the Tu-4. Supposedly Stalin ordered an _exact_ copy of the American bomber, and so the copies were made exact down to the bullet holes.

<comment><USER11> What was Stalin's reaction?

<comment><USER12> Don't know, nobody lived to tell about it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Short clip of the drone catching a drone:

[https://gifs.com/gif/pYYzXr](https://gifs.com/gif/pYYzXr)

</comment><comment><USER14> Seems it would be equally effective, and a lot less weight, to just drape a bunch of monofilament lines below rather than a full-on net. Those would get tangled in the "bad" drone's rotors well enough, I'd reckon.

<comment><USER4> Running steel cable or nets, instead of monofilament wire, is pretty much SOP for denying an area from rotorcraft. There's a pretty cool article on Wikipedia about prison escapes by helicopter [1] that explains how this is often implemented in high-security correctional facilities.

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

<comment><USER15> I like it how there are green or red helicopter icons in the table to indicate success or failure.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, somebody had fun with that article. It's one of my favorites on Wikipedia.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Is flying your drone away from the nets resisting arrest?

</comment><comment><USER17> Game of Drones!

</comment><comment><USER18> This is beyond funny/awesome to me. Apologies that this doesnt add anything to the discussion other than my own feelings about the comic-like start to the anime-style-cyberpunk-future we have all been subconsciously building for the last 70 years....

</comment><comment><USER19> Do checkout: [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/japan/1155690...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/japan/11556902/Drone- with-small-amounts-of-radioactive-material-lands-on-Japanese-PMs-helipad.html) which is linked in that same article. It makes me wonder if these drone- catching techniques will be focused on Fukushima/nuclear related protests or fly-overs to get independent radiation measurements.

</comment><comment><USER20> The only next counter-logical (criminal) course of action I can think of is counter thieves using drones with nets to catch the police drones with nets.

<comment><USER21> Or laser immolation? Or a cloud of little wires to clog the propellers? Magnetic attack? Helium balloon defense? As someone said above: Begun, the drone wars have.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Can't decide between "fascinating high-tech solution (drone)" and "fascinating low-tech solution (net)". Which one is it?

<comment><USER23> I don't know but my gut reaction to the video was: "That is so f---ing cool I can't even believe it."

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Something like this seems like it would be more efficient: [http://www.cadincadout.com/dronedefender-radio-gun-waves- dow...](http://www.cadincadout.com/dronedefender-radio-gun-waves-down-drones- from-the-sky/)

<comment><USER25> That seems dangerous if the quadcopter falls down in the middle of a freeway or something

<comment><USER26> Right. And therefore rather pointless as the reason to capture these drones is because of safety issues.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> It reminds me Watchbird [https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/29579](https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/29579)

</comment><comment><USER28> Watching this gave me a distinct "the future is now" feeling. Odd-shaped hovering craft designed to take down other hovering crafts would look at home in most scifi movies.

</comment><comment><USER12> It's official: we're living in the future.</comment>


A Bestiary of Sir Thomas Browne - <AUTHOR> http://publicdomainreview.org/2015/06/17/a-bestiary-of-sir-thomas-browne/

<comment><USER2> _Pseudodoxia Epidemica_ is dense, strange and delightful. Probably my favorite chapter is on the Amphisbaena [1] (a serpent with a head on both ends), which Browne dismisses as basically being too weird to exist. Then he can't help but throw a jab at philosophers:

"And therefore this duplicity was ill contrived to place one head at both extreams, and had been more tolerable to have setled three or four at one. And therefore also Poets have been more reasonable then Philosophers, and Geryon or Cerberus less monstrous than Amphisbæna."

How funny is that -- the idea of the Amphisbaena is so wild, how more plausible is having three or four heads at a single end? (Geyron being a multi-headed giant, and Cerberus a multi-headed dog.)

Further, Browne does mention the existence of multi-headed serpents (snakes), but those too are anomalies:

"Which double formations do often happen unto multiparous generations, more especially that of Serpents; whose productions being numerous, and their Eggs in chains or links together (which sometime conjoyn and inoculate[13] into each other) they may unite into various shapes and come out in mixed formations. But these are monstrous productions, beside the intention of Nature, and the statutes of generation, neither begotten of like parents, nor begetting the like again, but irregularly produced, do stand as Anomalies in the general Book of Nature. Which being shifts and forced pieces, rather then genuine and proper effects, they afford us no illation; nor is it reasonable to conclude, from a monstrosity unto a species, or from accidental effects, unto the regular works of Nature."

Really wonderful writing; I couldn't help but share.

[1] Of the Amphisbaena: [http://penelope.uchicago.edu/pseudodoxia/pseudo315.html](http://penelope.uchicago.edu/pseudodoxia/pseudo315.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> Love this! "In general, we encourage contributions which highlight material at the more unorthodox end of the cultural spectrum – curiosities, obscure theories, strange inventions, and so on. If on a well-known figure then we tend to favour an unusual angle or a focus on lesser known works. As well as pieces which focus on particular works, we also welcome articles with a broader historical focus, though they should be closely aligned with interesting material to which we can link."

They even have a book of selected essays available! [https://publicdomainreview.org/essay- book/](https://publicdomainreview.org/essay-book/)</comment>


Ask HN: Is there a HN for mathematics? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> You could always try a subreddit like r/math [0]. I've found the mathematics stackexhange site helpful for questions or just browsing [1] it even has a chat [2] which is nice if you have a question that's quick or not really that useful to anyone else. On reddit and stack exchange you can also do some form of sorting by all time popularity which can be interesting sometimes.

[0]: [https://www.reddit.com/r/math](https://www.reddit.com/r/math)

[1]: [https://math.stackexchange.com](https://math.stackexchange.com)

[2]: [https://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/36/mathematics](https://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/36/mathematics)

</comment><comment><USER3> Mathoverflow! [https://mathoverflow.net/](https://mathoverflow.net/)</comment>


With More Than Enough Apps, Apple Pushes for Quality - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/03/app-store-quality/

<comment><USER2> I suppose I'm a minority opinion, especially with the high YC concentration of developers, but I feel pretty personally gratified by Apple's policies. I don't own an iPhone, but I'm more interested in purchasing one who's App Store is full of quality, innovative applications.

You can call it stifling free speech or alienating developers, but I feel like there's at least an attempt internally at Apple to follow the rules they set plus the one, unwritten one of "improve our brand, we worked really hard to make it the way it is". I'm not going to agree with every ridiculous decision that's happened so far, but I will say that the removal of crude sexy apps and cookie cutter RSS feeds makes me more interested in poring through the App Store someday.

It's, to me, equivalent to pruning out spammy advertisements. I never mind paying, in attention or money, for craft.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm a developer, but I also agree that it makes sense for Apple to ban spam and to ban what they describe as "degarding and objectionable" content. So I agree with your sentiments.

imo, the one thing Apple should do is provide more clarity and transparency about the rules for the app store - i.e. what is allowed, what is not allowed, why an app was rejected etc. That will help developers decide whether or not to build any specific app for the app store.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> As a developer I don't develop for the iPhone because I am unsure if it will a) be approved b) be rejected for some bs or c) be approved and sell

Now with apple being even more of a dictator about which apps are available I would expect more developers to stop developing for it.

While I agree there are some really crappy ones out there Simply removing them is not the right choice.

What apple needs to do is have apple approved apps. Allow all app to be sold in the app store but have a specific section that is only for these approved ones. Keep these "quality" apps here and everyone sift through the rest in the other sections if they so choose to.

<comment><USER4> The whole App Store is "Apple-approved apps," whether you like it or not, because that's how their agreement with the phone companies requires them to treat it, and that's how the most casual segment of users will think of it (i.e. "my phone [running X 3rd-party app] is broken! [because that 3rd-party app is crap.] Why did Apple screw me over like this?")</comment></comment>


Top 7 Places to Watch Great Minds in Action - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2009/07/28/great-minds-videos/

<comment><USER2> This would be better described as the 'Top 7 Place to Watch Great Speakers in Action'. I'm sure they are really clever too but you aren't really seeing them 'in action'. By analogy to sports, you are seeing the post game analyses rather than the game.

I really would like to see a place where you can see the top minds in action. I guess you could argue chess and poker are somewhat like this but they are too restrictive and slow for my liking. I wonder if anyone does public brainstorming sessions - the only similar things I've seen have degenerated in to deliberate comedy.

<comment><USER3> Humour is probably an easier and more polite way to demonstrate dynamic intelligence in a group setting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't know if the sites are "great minds in action", I do know they are mind-stimulating speakers and insights into their works. Example of great minds in action (my view) is watching Feynman lectures.

TED is not the only place for thought provoking videos, <http://fora.tv/> is equally good. I wonder why this site doesn't come out as popular.

And one place to watch many insights is <http://www.charlierose.com/>

</comment><comment><USER5> I went to BIL last fall and I wasn't really impressed by it. Understandably for a free event setup by volunteers at just an average CSU campus it doesn't have the same polish and glam as TED, it was... still... very hokey. Most of the talks were geared towards the speaker not so sneakingly pitching his merchandise. Holding it the same week as TED wasn't really helpful either as it doesn't attract better speakers or conference go-ers.</comment>


FCC Questions AT&T: Explain Why Your Fiber-Optic Rollout Will Be Delayed - <AUTHOR> http://www.techtimes.com/articles/20275/20141115/fcc-to-at-t-explain-why-your-fiber-optic-high-speed-internet-nationwide-rollout-will-be-delayed.htm

<comment><AUTHOR> It could be that ATT is already charging consumers the maximum, or close to it, amount consumers will bear. In that case even with gigabit speeds the average consumer probably won't pay much more than their already paying. So, in the absence of competition to motivate them to improve their network they would have to find other revenue streams to justify the cost of installing a fiber-optic network. If they can't charge content providers to use a new faster network (or find some other way to increase their revue) then ATT won't want to build them.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I had to abbreviate the title. The original is "FCC Questions AT&T: Explain Why Your Fiber-Optic High-Speed Internet Nationwide Rollout Will be Delayed"</comment>


Destroying Cockroaches and a Hackathon Experience - <AUTHOR> https://emsal.me/blog/2 <comment><USER2> Very innovative idea. Not sure if it's in the article, but did you bring CockroachDB down? Also, for anybody trying to repeat that experiment, you should have a look at Jepsen ([https://jepsen.io/analyses/cockroachdb- beta-20160829](https://jepsen.io/analyses/cockroachdb-beta-20160829))

<comment><USER3> Definitely going to take a look at that!

Our foundation with respect to distributed systems isn't really formally rigid (I'm still trying to understand how Raft and Paxos work) and looking at this will probably help a lot!

<comment><USER4> I would suggest [https://raft.github.io/](https://raft.github.io/)

That has a nice, interactive visualization along with links to the paper itself, implementations, and talks about raft.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Hi everyone! This is my post! (Proof [1])

Feel free to ask me any questions about this.

[1]: [https://twitter.com/emsal1863/status/847905495679516676](https://twitter.com/emsal1863/status/847905495679516676)

<comment><USER5> WOW. Also worked on this project. Holy crap em. If anyone has questions about the bash side of things, hit me.</comment></comment>


CEOs of Merck, Under Armour and Intel Resign from Trump's Business Council - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/08/14/543384974/merck-ceo-resigns-from-a-trump-business-council-citing-his-conscience <comment><USER2> Oddly, only one of these has been publically called out by Trump.</comment>


Automated Reasoning About LLVM Optimizations and Undefined Behavior - <AUTHOR> http://blog.regehr.org/archives/1122/ <comment><USER2> I'm the author of this piece. Everyone should go try out Alive instead of reading the blogpost:

[https://github.com/nunoplopes/alive](https://github.com/nunoplopes/alive)

Alive automates all of the stuff described in the post. Here's some info:

[http://blog.regehr.org/archives/1170](http://blog.regehr.org/archives/1170)

Also we gave a talk at the LLVM Dev meeting a few weeks ago, the talk doesn't seem to be online (yet?) but here are David's slides:

[http://www.cs.utah.edu/~regehr/devconf14.pdf](http://www.cs.utah.edu/~regehr/devconf14.pdf)</comment>


Show HN: Save notes + bookmarks while browsing - <AUTHOR> http://noteplz.com

<comment><USER2> I have yet to find a similar service which would let me do the same but save my data on my own computer instead of their servers.....and at the same time, the data is compatible with multiple browsers.

The standard bookmark managers of both Firefox and Chrome are so outdated and they don't play nicely together.

</comment><comment><USER3> Cool Idea. I was really looking for something similar. Adding some notes with bookmark is much needed. No need to open lot of similar bookmarks while looking for something. Good job Guys.

</comment><comment><USER4> Looks cool. If I use this for an extended period of time and create a lot of notes, can I get programmatic access to my own data somehow?

</comment><comment><USER5> seems like everyone writes one of these(mine is notefeeder.heroku.com). I hope one of them gets popular so that others will stop repeating this cycle.

Looks good though.

<comment><AUTHOR> I like the simplicity of your app. You should add twitter/facebook login.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Thank you for implementing BrowserID.</comment>


An Open Letter to Tim Cook and Apple - <AUTHOR> http://matthewmcmillion.com/rmbp-open-letter/

<comment><USER2> Here's a great example of how bad the image retention was on my Macbook Pro with Retina display...before they replaced the LG screen with a Samsung LCd panel.

[http://sphotos-g.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak- snc6/246631_5211445...](http://sphotos-g.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak- snc6/246631_521144561234654_806643858_n.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER3> It's things like this that come to mind whenever someone speaks about how Apple really _cares_ about their customers and making their lives better. They're a technology company. They care about money.

<comment><AUTHOR> I completely agree, but they're still in the business of selling a product. If that product is defective, and they continually belittle customers, eventually they'll be making less money.

Even if all they care about is money, it's still in their best interest to care about the customer if they want to continue making that money.

<comment><USER4> Not if you're selling a brand and not a product. They're at that point now where they can basically sell anything with absolute disregard for quality control.

The little round plastic pads under a MBP I bought about a year ago are falling off, they were just glued.

But they're figured out their audience and they're making billions so bravo.

<comment><USER5> > _The little round plastic pads under a MBP I bought about a year ago are > falling off, they were just glued._

How did you think they managed to attach chunks of plastic to a chunk of aluminum with no visible fasteners and no wiggle (as a "click-in" connection would exhibit)? Glue is probably the best way to attach those feet. The use of glue is not indicative of a lack of quality control. Falling off? Well, that could be.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Homebrew is collecting anonymous aggregate user behaviour analytics by default - <AUTHOR> http://docs.brew.sh/Analytics.html <comment><AUTHOR> Homebrew has begun gathering anonymous aggregate user behaviour analytics and reporting these to Google Analytics. To turn it off, please run

brew analytics off</comment>


Frankensteins's ___ 2 or why build a static site generator in 84 lines of bash - <AUTHOR> http://www.niconomicon.net/blog/2014/08/28/Frankensteins-2-0.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Proper name would be "Frankenstein's ___.sh 2.0 or why build a static multimarkdown generator in 84 lines of bash", but that wouldn't fit in the 80 characters limit for the title.</comment>


Neftlix and Facebook Integration (Non-US) - <AUTHOR> http://blog.netflix.com/2011/09/watch-this-now-netflix-facebook.html

<comment><AUTHOR> The reason it's not available in US is the following:

 _"This new feature will be available before the end of September to Netflix members outside the U.S. We won't yet enable it for U.S. members due to a 1980s law that creates some confusion over our ability to allow U.S. members to share what they watch."_</comment>


Idea HN: Kubernetes-Native CMS in .NET Core - <AUTHOR> TLDR; Cloud native WP alternative for .NET Core. Disillusioned, and need tips and feedback.
Flexible, strongly typed models in C#. Serialization thru JSON.NET.
An uploaded image would be a public string Image { get; set; } with a [UIHint("image")] on top.
Admin UI is separated from the web application and can be run locally like kubectl. Written in native, non-transpiled ES6 modules.
Existing CMS:s lack good custom content support and pluggable form controls.
Web frontend is stateless and lightweight.
Data backend supports physical files for simplistic scenarios and development purposes.
Content types are generated at runtime and not persisted.
The CMS is free and open source.
The business idea is to provide shared hosting (namespaced k8s) with a free tier, as well as cloud architecture consulting.
I'll spin up an AKS instance, and make users deploy to the cluster within their namespaces. Developer accounts keep instances for 1 week, registered companies get meager but free hosting with tight memory/CPU limits. Then there'll be pricing tiers for scaling up and out.
In scandinavia there is a strong bias towards .NET, but with no good free CMS to use. Umbraco is a legacy monolith, Episerver is better but pricey. Sitecore, SharePoint ...
Making the case for a good .NET CMS with agencies would certainly be possible.
For legacy shared hosting, bundle the whole application as a monolith.
I must say I'm getting disillusioned. People really don't even want to have a look or even hear the idea. Yet Another CMS …
Much of the code is complete though. I just need more time and a user base. I don't wanna make an HN thread with no replies.
If this one gets no attention, I think I'll lose faith in humanity and drop the whole idea ... <comment><USER2> Isn't the point of a CMS that users don't have to care about the underlying tech and hosting?</comment>


U.S. Should Adopt Higher Standards for Science Education - <AUTHOR> http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=us-should-adopt-higher-science-education-standards

<comment><USER2> So quick things I noticed reading the Article

1\. There are still places in the US where our _current_ standards are world class ( boston is given as an example )

2\. This quote """ The first draft, released in May, explicitly included evolution and climate change. A second draft will be available for comment this fall. """

Why, why as your drafting standards for something that could help all americans do you intentionally politicise it. You have now turned this from something everyone would agree with ( We need to educate our children better ) to something that people will draw up battle lines off of. I understand that people see the denayal of these two aspects as a marker of an anti-science mindset, but the solution is not to just draw the line in the sand and use the tynnary of the majority as a hammer to force your changes through.

Prediction, this will turn political and nothing profitable will get done and a majority of america will continue to see its education standards fall.

<comment><USER3> I up-voted you, but there is _nothing_ political about evolution or climate change outside the US. If you want a world class science education you need to actually you know teach science. And science is based on two and only two ideas, everything is on the table AND reality dictates your views though experimentation. Sacrifice either of them to political grandstanding and you are doing something else.

PS: Biology is so closely tied to evolution at this point that I can't help but wonder what's left once you discard it. Global warming is less important, but it's rather hard to avoid that topic for 12 years.

<comment><USER2> But were not talking about ourside the US were talking about the US, and unfortuinitly it is political. Sticking our heads in the sand and pretending that roughly half the population won't disregard everything your working on to get two bullet points off your list is just stupid.

Also this idea that science is underpinned by evolution and cliement science is laughable. I guess chemestry and physics don't count ?

<comment><USER3> Climate science _IS_ chemistry and physics. More specifically Climate science is mostly Spectroscopy and Thermodynamics and if it's off the table you can't really talk about them. Nor can you can't talk about convection currents which means you can talk about the gas laws which means you can talk about heat engines.

PS: And no I am not kidding, if you actually understand why a mass spectrometer works then climate change is obvious.

<comment><USER4> You're overestimating the anti-science critics. You can teach all the spectroscopy and thermodynamics you want and they won't care, because they don't know what that stuff is.

It's purely the _words_ "climate change" that they'll attack. And picking that fight is not a winning solution.

The winning solution is to show children how awesome science is, give them the fundamental tools to participate in it, and let them see for themselves the validity of conclusions like climate change.

We're in the mess we're in because too many people's science education was purely focussed on the conclusions of science without the methods of science. When "science class" means memorizing facts it's no different than catechism, and truth becomes a question of one authority vs another.

The conclusions of science are of secondary importance to the process of science.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Changing standards is meaningless unless you dismantle the current structure of public education. Ever since its founding the Department of Education has not noticeably improved the outcomes of students nationwide. Nor has the many fold increased spending. Yes change will require rethinking having a teachers union

Where we have gone wrong is that school systems are saddled with far too many non-teaching positions and new school buildings tend way too many times to be symbols of the politicians who had them built.

<comment><USER6> There are plenty of states without teachers' unions, and guess what- the kids don't perform any better there.

Non-teaching positions are the results of regulations and laws to 'protect' the interests of students. Until someone makes hard decisions that pare back some of those mandated 'services' they're not going to go away.

<comment><USER7> "the kids don't perform any better there"

You bring up an interesting data point. I wasn't even aware there were states with no teachers unions, that is a bit surprising. Do you know which ones? Without looking up the states and the stats, I'll take your word for it. I have no expectation that labor unions increase or decrease teaching quality, so if true as we'll assume, this is not particularly surprising.

I would expect, though I haven't checked, that these areas with teachers unions have better pay and benefits for teachers. Is that true, from the data you have analyzed?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Being a former board of education member for a large city, I can say with some experience that "standards" alone will do nothing. Education is so messed up beyond recognition today.

There's so much incredible bureaucracy. So much. Unimaginable. Federal, state, local. School districts have centralized to the point that it's nearly impossible to implement changes unless it's some sort of "one size fits all" scheme. Local schools are hamstrung by work rules, union rules, tenure rules, and then on top of that state and local education "standards."

Then there are socio-economic issues. Parents who themselves never learned to read. Kids living in areas where the person to look up to is a drug dealer. Cultures of dependence and reliance on government handouts. Many (if not most) urban school districts have dropout rates of over 50%.

Even where there is not that sort of culture, there are parents who think that the schools are babysitters and any kid who does something wrong much have done so because it's the school's fault.

And of course, teachers unions, licensing rules, pay scales, and lack of individual accountability contribute as well.

It's such an enormous problem that there's no single answer. I think that decentralizing education would go a long way toward helping to spur innovation. Charter schools, vouchers, and removing attendance boundaries help too.

Centralization has really hurt education and the only answer that seems to be proposed is more centralization.

</comment><comment><USER9> Better standards are good, but without change in other areas, they won't have much effect. If kids are failing to meet the current standards, how do you expect them to meet newer, more rigorous ones? I am sure Massachusetts and Minnesota's education systems have other things going for them besides standards.

<comment><USER10> Better teachers.

I'm sorry but, using my mother as an example, in a single year, my mother elevated inner-city students in English from very low scores to very high scores. I'd need to ask her for specifics; but, the change was incredible. I believe they were getting near highest marks in the area. She demanded a LOT from the students, a truly incredible amount of writing and work. She was very, very hard on her students; but at the same time rewarded achievement greatly and taught in an effective, repetitive way. Years down the road, her old students have repeatedly come back to her, thanking her for her work with them. It is all about the teachers.

If people are sufficiently interested in her method, I might be able to get her to log in to my account (or one of her own), and expound upon her methods of training and relating to the children.

<comment><USER11> We need better teachers AND a better system AND better parents. We can't just put all of the expectations on the teachers and expect any sort of change. We do need teachers who are willing to be tough (like it sounds like your mother was) yet caring, but that requires a system that rewards teachers not based on seniority but on merit (sorry unions) but also doesn't encourage teachers to artificially raise grades or teach to specific tests. This means we'd have to invest more in evaluating progress in students, instead of just throwing standardized tests at kids. We also need parents who allow teachers to be tough (no complaining because your kid fails!) _and_ who are supportive yet disciplined back on the homefront.

<comment><USER10> Ab-so-lute-ly. We agree on pretty much all fronts. (I don't know my mother's stance on unions; and I don't have a stance on unions since I haven't given it any thought).

Since I haven't seen many willing parents (indeed in some situations, the parent isn't a positive or even present factor at all), I've only raised up the factor that I've actually seen make a positive change. It's actually the same way for me with computer science. A good first introduction made all the difference in the world.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> One problem with this article is that it attempts to exonerate some American districts (that happen to be some of the most affluent urban regions in the country) by pointing out they can compete favorably with the world's top nations. That is an Apples to Oranges comparison. They're being compared to those _entire_ nations including all children from their affluent urban suburbs to their impoverished backwoods one-room schools. If you compared Boston's math performance to only the richest urban areas of Finland, South Korea, or Canada you'd find the disparity as stark as ever.

</comment><comment><USER13> I think this points out the need for a "crowdsourced" set of standards.

I put crowdsourced in quotes because it needs to be done carefully. We need a body of standards that is subject to continuous improvement by subject-matter experts, and expert teachers. It needs to be set up so that popular opinions can be expressed, but simple votes do not override expert conclusions.

This body of standards should be mapped to each state's standards. Teachers could work from the crowdsourced standards, but fulfill reporting requirements on their state standards. This is what good teachers in states with poor standards do anyways. Teachers work from a set of high-quality standards, but report on their own state's standards.

</comment><comment><USER14> U.S. Should Adopt Education First</comment>