altotrees

The oversupply problem is one that doesn't seem to be going away ay time soon, especially in the pure sciences. From my anecdotal evidence, it seems to be harder and harder to get into academia or cross into industry each year. I have multiple bio and chemistry PhD friends who have been either stuck in limbo at a postdoc position or who have left the field in frustration. I wonder if it will correct over time, or if the glut or PhD's will continue to grow.

I feel like there is a strong emotional component at play in these approval rates. There are many people who have been touched and directly impacted by disease, terminal or otherwise. It changes your life in a really stark and eye-opening way, whether you're the afflicted or it is someone you love or care about. While GMO's certainly draw concern and ridicule from swaths of the public, many aren't impacted by them in the same immediate (read:empirical I see it with my own eyes without a shred of doubt) way a serious disease is capable of. Probably part of the reason, anyway.

No, I totally agree with that sentiment. Things have changed for our younger generation and sadly in most cases, not for the best. It blows my mind sometimes to think of my grandfather working a factory job with my grandmother not working while raising 8 children. Oh, and they owned their own home which was a nice middle-class abode and also drove decent (but not luxury) cars. Grandfather retired at 58. Grandmother died at 86, some money still in the bank.

So yes, things have changed for many reasons. Our middle class, outside of those in a few booming sectors is struggling, if not outright choking. College is becoming a no-win proposition for some and at 33, I certainly am not expecting a life like that of my grandparents or great-grandparents, for better or worse. So I get it. I was just pointing out that there is a middle ground between those two viewpoints on either end, and perhaps, just perhaps a solution is somewhere in that terrain.

I'm not holding out hope though, as there are so many forces at work right now and...yeah our leadership is making me a bit nervous.

^These observations is all America-centric, I know that. I don't pretend to know how things are for every young person globally and don't want to act like I do.

There has to be some middle ground between these ideas, surely.

I agree that it may not make much of a difference. This seems to be more of a surface change — i.e. the business model won't change, but the faces behind the trouble are gone and now there is a new leader so everything slowly fades into the past, all of that fun stuff that happens as the dust settles after a period of scandal.

To the point about seeing potential in Uber: they definitely shook things up and grew quickly, but with the competition now growing in their sector, it seems that this growth has slowed a bit and sadly they have been in the news for wrong reasons. If this CEO is aiming for massive growth and pushing revenue way up, could be an uphill battle.

Okay, now with all that obvious stuff out of the way I have to ruminate on the idea of self-driving cars. On HN, with TechCrunch and speaking with friends I have who work in the Valley, you would think self-driving cars are around the corner, may be wifely adopted within 5-10 years and possibly could propel companies like Uber into the stratosphere of Google and Facebook.

My hesitation is that we here on HN and others who spend hours immersed in tech thinkpieces are not indicative of society at-large in certain ways. Something that seems like a fantastic idea to many of us may seem outright scary or "going too far" for the everyday person. I feel like self-driving cars may be one of these ideas. Who knows how long adoption and general acceptance could take? I have no data other than anecdotal to share, so I shall refrain. This is just my gut feeling.

Sounds like a great idea. My skills aren't quite up to UI design collaboration standards but I guess I am curious as to how you would build and implement such a browser?

This is a really neat app. How long did it take and was it just a personal side project?

So, potentially stupid question but here goes...with a new CEO coming in, what impact will this have on the company in the short-term? Did they foresee this probe coming or is this something that they will have to scramble to react to?

I mean it sounds like they may have expected this investigation with the handling of obtaining medical records, but wow.

Long ago I read an article about Dr.Rick Doblin in Rolling Stone. Thought his ideas on psychedelics and mental health treatment were amazing. Wrote about him and his research for my Honors high schoo English thesis. Got some looks from my teacher, but I digress.

Glad to see this is slowly being taken seriously.

Nothing, shockingly. My supervisor just shook his head and went "man, I just...you can't..oh man." I felt like an idiot and had another serious talk with supervisor. Apparently, only a few members of our marketing team had seen it, and I had been doing good work so the damage was mitigated somewhat.

It helped that I was the only person on staff who really knew Javascript and Coffeescript well and that I was also well-versed in writing and editing. Had I lacked any of these, had another staff member been better at them, or had the project been further along I'm sure I would've been canned. The president didn't find out until weeks later, thank god.

I'll start. I had been chatting with a coworker online while at work — using a bit of coarse language. Shortly before leaving, I copied and pasted some marketing copy into the CMS for the page I was working on. I didn't check my work and went home for the weekend.

Got a text Saturday morning that something was off about our "For Prospective Students" landing page (I was working on the new website for a Private Catholic College). Navigated there, and stood staring in disbelief as I read my own words calling a certain friend of mine a certain derogatory name or 4 under the heading "Why Choose Us?" Turns out, I thought I had added the Marketing copy to the clipboard, but must've accidentally copied and pasted a fraction of my damning convo instead.

Lesson Learned: ALWAYS check your work, no matter how long you have been building websites or anything public-facing. It was such a dumb mistake. I didn't end up fired, but got a stern reprimand from my direct supervisor. Months later, the President of the school confided to me that he found the incident fairly hilarious, and somewhat troubling. Hoo boy.

I kind of thought that, but then second guessed myself thinking that is such an old and tired trope that there is no way that could be what they were aiming for. I guess some tropes never die.

This is pretty interesting and sounds promising. I found it kind of odd the emphasis on "dropping out" of Stanford and USC respectively. These guys have clearly been busting their tails to get things done, why even mention that? Am I missing something?

This is amazing and a scenario I had never really considered before. I know it has been said that the best programmers carry around small programs in their heads and map things out mentally — this is kind of the same idea taken to the extreme.

I thought the portion on frontend development was really interesting. Something I had never considered, but to think of it from the angle in which it is presented just kind of blew my mind. This piece made my morning.

edit: I guess this post also just shows that if you want to learn to program and be an engineer, there are certainly ways to make that happen, regardless of specific elements of your situation (to a point, obviously). Really, really neat.

Yeah. I remember reading about Dean Potter dying at Yosemite. For someone who had taken calculated risks his whole climbing career, it just seemed like such a reckless and dangerous way to go. Sad.

You're exactly right. I meant to add that to my comment. Euro wines do usually tend to really stand out with food, and really do pair well with it as you said. Good point.

I worked in a wine shop for a while years ago. Occasional drinkers would always come in wanting French wine, but after trying Argentine malbecs or even American reds like those produced by Dave Phinney or say, K Syrah, would always prefer those over the few French wines they had tried.

Granted, this is all anecdotal, and I have had some great French wines (love that they are biodynamic as well for the most part), but to my eyes the wine market is really broadening. French wines just may not hold the mystique they once did.

I am self-taught. Spent at least 2 hours a day learning everyday in my mid 20's. I think it is critical to find an experienced dev or engineer to be a code mentor and to be disciplined and give yourself realistic challenges and goals.

Doing it the way I did saved me probably 10-15k and an expensive move. It may seem like an awesome idea to join a bootcamp, but just remember that you may be able to create an even better (and cheaper) environment for yourself with a little dedication and creativity.

An aside: it really scares me how camps tout Backbone and React like they are the only frameworks you will ever need to know to be employable. It is way more important to figure out how you learn, so you can keep pace with changes when they come, because they always do. Just my experiences, and I would certainly never look down on anyone who did attend a bootcamp. Different strokes, as they say.

My girlfriend's sister lives there and works at an oil refinery as an engineer. All production has been halted and plant shut down. She hasn't been able to leave the house in a few days, but says people are still trying to drive.

If I'm correct, they only predicted a smaller amount of rain and now have this. I hope everyone stays safe.

To take it a step further, the area in which I come from has been hit hard with economic and social disasters. Even though factories are closing down and heroin deaths are rising each day, people choose to stay here. Family and other social networks are a big part of it I think, as someone said downthread.

I bolted as soon as I could to gain employment and the resources of a bigger city. It still boggles my mind that more people my age don't, as things seem to be getting worse rather than better. But it's home, it's familiar, it's comforting, no matter what issues may loom. I had cousins refuse to leave post-Katrina New Orleans for similar reasons.

Sorry, just a comparison to your line of thinking from a different angle, slightly related.

This is fantastic. I have played around with Clojure and Haskell a bit, but really want to get into functional programming more. Not to hijack the thread, but I guess I am having trouble getting started. Any good resources for novices out there?

Edit: for the record I have Googled the topic and am overwhelmed by how much is out there. Looking for personal recommendations.

I have read about Alan Kay, but never looked into Project Xandau. This sounds like something pretty interesting to check out and I will most definitely do so. To the parent reply, thanks for the clear, concise writeup, enlightening, it is appreciated.

I like the idea of "rebooting the web". If things continue in the direction they are going now, I could see many forms of the internet existing. Just as the Darkweb exists, I could see other splinter networks and technologies taking shape as the internet we know now becomes more homogenized, whether it is because of giants like Google and Facebook or government control (oh god pls no) or any other factor.

I still fondly remember looking at Nike's newest shoe offerings in 1997, waiting for the photos to download and listening to my dad complain about the phone line being tied up. I looked at my girlfriend the other day in fact, and just went "god, think of how different the internet is now compared to when we were younger. What the hell will it look like in twenty years?" She called me a nerd, but still considered the question. Exciting and sightly terrifying thought to ponder, really.

Really late to this discussion but wow. Having worked as a web developer/tech writer and editor, this writeup pushed all my buttons. High-level concepts broken down in an exciting way. Nothing turns me off quite as much as clicking on a tech blog post and suddenly feeling like I am reading a whitepaper or portion of someone's Ph.D. dissertation. This is the kind of post I love — stripping things down to the nuts and bolts but keeping me engaged in a way that gives me that excited feeling in the pit of my stomach like I am watching something important take shape.

This is a fantastic technology and I feel like Servo has a pretty amazing future ahead of it. Exciting stuff.

>"The most important thing to remember about technical writing is that the goal is not necessarily to be understood, but rather to avoid misunderstanding.

That quote is fantastic. Having worked as a Technical Writer, the problem I most often run into is what I term the "forest for the trees" issue. Oftentimes, I work or did work with engineers who knew a language, framework or low-level system inside and out. Sometimes they even spent their entire adult lives learning it. When it came time to communicate the essentials of said technology or language, it was almost like they froze, unable to go back to basics or build concepts from the ground up. If it wasn't high-level or advanced, they stumbled.

I was often brought into situations like these with little knowledge of what I might be asked to write about. I was usually given the option of starting a project by interviewing engineers, but often delayed that and did a bit of my own research first. Once I had the most basic of concepts and understanding locked down, I would guide the engineer toward those areas, and have them start remembering their earliest introduction to whatever their area of expertise was. I found that was oftentimes the best way to avoid being misunderstood — not for me to understand everything 100 percent, but to get those who did to break things down into the simplest terms and build things up.

Hey there, thanks for the nit. I am kind of a language nerd, so always appreciate a bit of analysis. I see your point "poaching" as a word has had a somewhat problematic historical context attached to it. I guess I used the term relating to it's sub-definition "take or acquire in an unfair or clandestine way."

I found the migration of experts from CMU to Uber fascinating — for two reasons: 1. The geographical proximity in which the acquisition occurred (i.e. a rust belt town with an awesome CS school and a well known Silicon Valley startup on location). 2. The moving from the academy to the private sector of said professors/researchers happened in a way I hadn't seen before. I mean lots of academics work within industry at some point, but this move seemed to carry more weight in the media — maybe because of the institution involved.

Anyway, with that said, lots of the articles and speculation I read about it, for better or worse, painted the acquisition of academics by Uber as a bit unfair. I.e. Uber could and did pay way more than CMU and provided super interesting problems maybe outside the realm of what a professor normally faces in their research, I don't know. It was the "unfair" element portrayed in articles/opinion pieces I based my wording off of. I am in no way suggesting these profs and researchers did anything wrong or did anything but make the right choice for themselves, something we all have to do.

I digress. Word choice noted, problematic history and other associations noted and hopefully I cleared up my choice a bit.

So, it seems there is way more backstory to this than the issue spells out (or only starts to). Can anyone provide a bit more context? Was this done in a backhanded, malicious way? Did Google tell their intern to start this project, or is it his side project? I mean, it's not cool either way, just curious.

>I'm glad people are working on this. The bike directions on Google maps aren't very good, IMO

I agree, but they are certainly better than nothing. There are so many times I have wished for a real-time, traffic sensitive routing feature on Google Maps when it comes to bikes.This usually happens around rush hour when I am pinned up against the shoulder trying to take the lane and being cursed and buzzed repeatedly.

I am also really glad people are working on this, it is really cool and so full of potential.

Definitely. Anchoring bike lines or bike infrastructure to any one sub-set of people is asinine. Hell, linking bike riding with any one sub-set of people is problematic.Spend any time around a bike co-op and you'll see that lots of people need bikes and bike lanes — from decked-out road bikers to those of lower income who don't own a car, and yeah, maybe some hipsters with fixies.

That part of the article left a nasty taste in my mouth. The only reason anyone would make such a statement would be to backup their own shortsighted, backward-looking way of thinking.

This is kind of what I figured. I get the distinct feeling that any startup that is unable to keep pace (or break new ground) with AI research & development is going to be hurting badly within the next five years. Uber is poaching AI and Robotics talent, read:profs, from Carnegie Mellon for a reason. It is a do-or-die situation it seems.