cpkscpks

I've hired a person without even a bachelors. They competed in Kaggle competition relevant to what we were working on, and were one of the top competitors. I reached out, hired, and it worked out well for all sides. Eventually, they left to do a startup. But we got our money's worth, and they got a decent salary for a while, and a decent spot on their resume.

I don't think the emphasis should be on Ph.D so much as on demonstrating your competence. A thesis is a way to do that. Kaggle is another. A startup is another. So is doing some interesting crunching on data sets and writing blog posts or articles. Another way is to work up from Analyst to Data Scientist to ML (or other jobs -- you might be able to start in ML at a startup at a low salary).

But if you have no track record, you'll need to get one somehow. A single course degree isn't sufficient. That's 1/32nd of a Bachelor's degree, 1/8th of a Master's, or 1/25th of a Ph.D.

I got the same impression.

The world rewards non-conformists deeply if you do it right.

Doing it right is mostly finding something that contributes value to the world. A non-conformist collecting toothpicks? Not so much.

Zero-to-one is a great guide for non-conformists. This, not so much.

You're not "infected." You have a copyright violation. It's the same as if you violate the terms of a commercial licensing agreement.

The resolution is damages in both cases, not any kind of "infection" spreading.

If your lawyers think otherwise, they're idiots.

And look at the stunning success Microsoft has had over the past decade! Much of that is a result of stupid policies like this one.

That's funny. I work in industry, and we have a lot of GPL flying around.

How do you folks get away without Linux (including Android)? It seems like you're in industry, but you're probably not in very successful industry if you don't have a mobile strategy that includes running on Android.

And if you do have an Android app, then you do GPL. You just do it without any sort of sensible policy around it. Again, not all industry is that stupid.

Puncture proof bike tires work extremely well. I have Continental Top Contact tires. Except for overinflation (my fault), never had a flat over thousands of miles. They feel nice to ride on too. Before that, I had Panaracer ribmo tires. No flats, ever. However, the ride was a little bit stiff.

Both were a little heavy, but worth the extra weight.

If you're getting flats, that's a much better solution.

I did this before I had a family. Now, it's the first flight out. Sometimes I'll fly in a day early to get over jet lag, but that's usually working in a hotel room.

I agree with the sentiment about Uber, but there is a substantial difference. Uber will close them down when it stops to make business sense. A research professor is expected to be out on the street once grant funding runs out. Most postdocs are expressly 2-year appointments. Grad students get paid dirt, and have a ~7 year limit (depending on school) with random students kicked out at random points (qualifying exams, etc.).

Neither is stable, but of the two, almost any industry, even including Uber, is much, much more stable.

Nice.

I'm looking around the NREC web site. At the top, it is "research professors," with similar abusive quasi-academic positions. Maybe this will give some incentive to move from short-term grant-funded or teaching-funded positions to workable long-term faculty positions.

The pattern of decades of post docs is not workable. People want families. There is a biological clock (women, but also men if they marry similar age).

The NERC response is a little bit arrogant. Jeff's quote on Uber coming to them -- well, Uber hired short-term university employees into long-term positions. They did with those positions exactly what universities claim those positions are for (training ground for stable work). Jeff should be applauding them.