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aharrisonon Ask YC: What project to work on?

I built something similar to this in python once, which was kind of fun. Instead of 1 (alive) or 0 (dead), it was 1 (blue colony), 0 (dead), -1 (green colony), and things spawned as a summation of their neighbours. What this meant was the playing field cleared out quite suddenly, but man it could be a colourful explosion! I think with some good thought and a fun interface this could be a really amusing way to spend a weekend.

aharrisonon Poll: Caffeine Usage

After having gone the whole gamut of caffeine, from 5-6 cups of coffee per day to completely dropping it in the last three months, I have settled on the following: I drink one (1) cup of really good (expensive) coffee as soon as I wake up. It is my morning ritual, so to speak. I then avoid coffee like the plague for the rest of the day. It gives me a jump start in the morning without inhibiting my sleep the following night, and it gives me a little treat to look forward to every morning as I wake up.

aharrisonon Design notebook suggestions?

Just this morning I literally wandered around Staples for an hour pondering this exact question. Staples might not be the prime place to look, but it was the best I had.

Anyway, my requirements were thus: it had to be reorganizable (e.g. your standard three clip binder), it had to be relatively small (I want to carry it around in a small messenger bag or even better my versipack) and it had to be amazingly simple (lined paper only, no calendar, no pockets, no special latches).

Long story short: every notebook I looked at was absolutely idiotic in some fashion or another. The reogranizable requirement limited me to like half a dozen. The simple limited me down to basically two: a standard 1/2" binder or one of these new fangled "rolla" notebooks, which are absolutely horribly designed. I ended up going with a simple 1/2" binder, a bunch of paper, and the hope that eventually someone will solve this problem acceptably so I can have a reorganizable notebook.

The main benefit of the 1/2" binder is it small: keep only what you need, but keep it with you as often as possible. Insight comes at odd times, and if you keep your goals in the binder they will get revisited often, solidifying them in your mind.

Hope that helps.

aharrisonon College: An Overpriced Monopoly (by Kent Pitman)

The real problem is not that colleges have been advertising this, but that companies require it. On the one hand, I have learned a hell of a lot about Computer Science in college, but I could have survived an entry level programming job damn near anywhere straight out of high school. The problem is that the degree is a barrier to entry; it is almost impossible to get a decent job without one unless you are absolutely spectacular at what you do.

My friend once had this argument with me, saying that college isn't intended to train people for the job. Regardless of its intention, that is what it has become...the real question is, what are we going to do now that it has transformed this way?

aharrisonon In the Future, the Cost of Education will be Zero

This reminds me of Good Will Hunting: "You dropped a hundred and fifty grand for an education you coulda got for a buck fifty in late charges at the public library"

A professor of mine is very interested in solving the cost problem of education, but internet-based learning is weak in a number of areas. He is well known for having an extremely painful automated grading system for Comp Sci homework, but that does not work nearly so well for other course (e.g. higher math or essays). The article claims they have solved this by peer review, but I would be interested to hear how they are making that work.

One of the other problems is the questionable value of degrees and grades in the first place: we as a society need to start evaluating people/employees based on prior results, like internships.

So yeah, more online learning is a good thing, but I doubt we will have online universities truly overtaking four year brick and mortar universities any time soon.

aharrisonon Nine years to the Singularity

I am not entirely sure that this belongs on HN, but it definitely made me laugh. It was very appropriate with the most recent XKCD.

God I hate Gillette.

aharrisonon No Recovery in Sight

Thank you for your perspective on the matter. I had assumed something along those lines, but it is still frustrating to see someone making an argument as important as this without two fundamental parts:

1. Data to back the argument up.

2. Some recommendation.

Which reminds me: does anyone, anywhere, actually have a recommendation? I know the HN crowd would say "start a million startups!" but realistically, what can we as a society do?

aharrisonon No Recovery in Sight

The economy can’t be re-established on a sound basis without aggressive efforts to put people back to work in jobs with decent wages.

As a college student who will be in the job market before too long, I have been keeping a decently close eye on these economic recession stories. Time and again people have claimed for strong measures, aggressive efforts, and assertive changes. Never have I seen an actual recommendation. Is it just common knowledge what should be done? Bob Herbert says "decent wages" like it is a commonly understood legal term...but what is the market value of their labor? I am not asking this as a free-market capitalist libertarian devotee, but more from the perspective of "Ok, so what do you want [me|theGovernment|bigCorp] to do?"

Also, why the hell don't journalists cite sources? "...and most analysts now expect it [unemployment] to hit 10 percent or higher." Says whom? How many is "most"? Why is it they get away with this?