Software developer since the 1990s dot-com boom. Spent a decade in academia as a PhD and professor of information systems. My first computer was an Apple IIe
Thanks for the effort; I have a little feedback:
- Very few of these are labeled with a clear reference to source and date (think APA style).
- They don't seem to be in order chronologically. I would think "essential" papers would be read from the earlier "foundational" works up to the more recent ones that work on them.
- The oldest ones seem to date to the 2010s. I think it would be hard to jump in at such a recent point. The basics of machine learning come from the 1960s-70s.
If you want to improve it I would recommend coming up with a sequential "reading list" including a few classic papers, some intermediate advancements (frequently referenced), and then a few new, cutting edge articles.
Learning about ham radio was one of my new "pandemic hobbies" and I got my license in June. I don't think it's dying at all; in fact, to me it's much more exclusive than Internet chatting or playing with Arduino. Both because of the licensing requirement, and because you need to learn something about electronics. That exclusivity is a draw! Similarly, learning CW (morse code) has become more popular since they dropped the requirement -- people like to learn things that are a challenge!
I have kids aged 9 and younger, and their friends are starting to get cell phones. I'm hoping I can get them to earn their technician licenses so I can give them cheap radios instead; then they can have their own "social network" without all the harmful stuff a smartphone gives access to.
This is kind of a stupid take on the movie. The main message of the movie is that citizenship carries with it not only privileges but also responsibilities. Granted the action is so over-the-top it's sometimes comical, but if the director intended it as a satire, it just goes to show once again that leftists can't do satire. This was supposed to equate American liberty with fascism or something? Give me a break.
On top of that, you have to realize that these countries (YT, Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc) are completely obedient to the government of China. Not because it's their biggest market, but because China will shut them out if they don't toe the line. Whereas the US and Europe have never indicated a willingness to sanction these companies no matter what. It's a tyranny of the minority.
It kind of depends how big this is going to get. I'm using Java/Spring/Thymeleaf right now for an "enterprise" project but that has certain considerations: it may have a 20+ year long lifespan, it may in the future have to be worked on by inexperienced developers. So Java is a nice choice because it pretty much forces you to write self-documenting OO code. Spring Boot is good here because it has default implementations for practically everything (login, security, etc) and you don't have to write custom code that someone will have to maintain. But it has a fairly long learning curve.
On the other hand I've used Python/Flask in previous projects and that's nice because it's quick and easy. If you just want to write a few CRUD methods/endpoints that are a thin web veneer on top of your database, and it's for use by a small group of users, that's much more "productive". Quick to learn and start, and then you can add more functionality (like authentication) on incrementally when you need them.
Steel Beach by John Varley. It's been 20+ years since I read it, but the main character is a newspaper reporter and as I recall he writes notes in the field on some kind of a screen or film embedded in his forearm.
Software and database developer with broad and deep experience (over 20 years with many technologies). Ph.D. in information systems. I have a stable gov't job and am looking to add about 20 hours per week freelance or contract work.
Depends on what you want to do! For me, I want to live in a small town in the woods, raise chickens, that sort of thing, so I would pick a region first, then look for interesting businesses there, and simply write and ask if they need someone with technology skills.
How about picking a company that does something you'd love to be involved in -- building rockets, brewing artisan beer, raising cattle on the western prairie, etc. -- and go become their one-man IT department. I guarantee there's a lot of great small companies out there that need help but can't find it. The work may be a mix of the menial and the interesting, everything from fixing printers to analyzing data in the ERP, but/and you get to be a part of something that makes you want to get out of bed in the morning. Whatever that may be.
I suppose it depends on why the academic is writing code. I've written simulations for social science research -- basically to extrapolate the results of certain decision making strategies by an idealized decision maker in a toy problem. The theory is the subject, not the code. Many people who read my paper will not be programmers able to critique the code, and few will care whether it follows best practices. I've made it open source (https://github.com/joeclark-phd/bandito) because I think it's a good practice to promote, but I'm kind of an oddball. When I was studying other well-known simulation papers, I found their models were incompletely described and I had to contact the original authors to get implementation details in order to replicate them. This is a lot like the problem of data sharing -- all academics should be willing to share their data in order to prove that their results are as reported, but it's not an easily enforceable principle.
If you are talking about computer science academics, of course, that's a horse of a different color. In that case, the code is the topic, so I would guess that they're providing it! On the other hand, the majority of such research is probably solving niche problems and special cases, so it may not be very usable in your professional coding.
I've seen others link Joel Spolsky's method before. In short, you divide ownership equally within "tiers". The founders split the company equally between them. For the first group of employees, a new chunk of shares are created and divided equally, even if they don't join exactly at the same time. The next group of employees divides up the same number of shares (but there are probably more employees in that group, so they end up with less individually than the early employees). And so on. This creates a sense of fairness while still rewarding founders and early employees more for the risk they're taking. (link here: http://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-allocate-ownership-fai...).
Let's say you want to give this free internet to marginalized communities - remote pacific islands, for example. Maybe you could provide internet to the islanders for free, and get paid by multinational companies to do it, for the PR value. As far as the world is concerned, it'll be Tostitos or Jiffy Lube providing internet to Easter Island or wherever... but on the ground it'll actually be you.
World War II ended the Great Depression. The linked article mistakes correlation for causation. Also it suggests there are times when "economies need governments to run deficits" and "economies need governments to print money"... boy, aren't those unexamined assumptions super convenient for the government! Fiat currency, by the way, is an experiment that's only been run for a very short time in history, and how well is it working out so far? The US has had toxic levels of inflation since before I was born (and I turn 40 this year), destroying savings and turning us into a nation addicted to debt (both as individuals and at the government level). We've been in a deep depression for a decade. Of course we can't see the alternate universe where we still used gold and silver instead, so there's no way to prove the point. A prudent philosopher would wait at least a thousand years or so before confidently stating that fiat currency has proven a useful innovation.
Since cryptocurrences are basically pyramid schemes, and sooner or later you run out of suckers, probably never. Don't interpret this as me saying that fiat currencies are much better, though! Really nothing that anyone has invented out of thin air can beat gold and silver, or paper directly exchangeable for the same.
There is a lively debate in the Western world about just how free the free market should be, but very few even on the political left think that "for-profit" == "evil". If the publishing business model works for the researchers, the universities, and the publishers, what's wrong with it? No need to fix what isn't broken.
I think more generally the issue is that most of us are "skimming" off the work of others, in the so-called "service economy" or "knowledge work". Being a lawyer, banker, insurance agent, accountant, professor, etc, is not dishonorable in itself; these services are necessary in some amount to make the economy work. But there's no need for 50% or more of the population to be doing such jobs. A small town with ten banks isn't going to be any richer than a small town with two. A small town with ten manufacturing companies would be much richer than a small town with two. Napoleon once mocked the English as "a nation of shopkeepers" at a time when England's economy was largely profiting off "real work" done in its remote colonies. I think the USA and I daresay most rich nations today could be zinged with the same insult today. We seem to have lost some of our vigor and competency when such an overwhelming number of young people aspire to do cubicle jobs instead of, say, engineering.
This would have been real useful to me about a week ago as I was writing several of these types of queries!
On the debate of "timestamp vs timestamptz" I reached the opposite conclusion of the author: I've got Amazon RDS instances set to UTC and my timestamps are stored as UTC times with no timezone awareness. Instead, I add the timezone while querying. I think this is better because I never have to remember anything about server settings!
I discovered that the `AT TIME ZONE` clause has two meanings, so I sometimes have to use it twice. In this example which selects all records created this month:
...WHERE create_date AT TIME ZONE 'UTC' AT TIME ZONE 'America/New_York' > date_trunc('month',current_date)
the first occurrence of `AT TIME ZONE` tells postgres that the timestamp is in UTC (which it is) and the second occurrence subtracts four or five hours (depending on daylight savings time) to show New York time. If I only had the second such clause it would subtract that many hours... it would think I was giving it a New York timestamp and I wanted to see the UTC time.
Are you a kid in school? If so, I suggest approaching companies in your local community and specifically saying you want a job "for summer vacation". IMHO the biggest risk for an employer is getting stuck with someone that's no good and has to be fired later. By coming in as a freelancer, intern, or summer employee, you take that risk away. And given the desperate shortage of good IT people out there, if you prove yourself better than terrible you'll very likely be asked back.
I would not target "software companies" but rather ordinary companies that lack IT talent. Lots of businesses out there need simple edits to their web pages, or SQL queries from their ETL or CRM (systems they buy but don't know how to work with "under the hood"), and could use your h elp.
It discusses the intrinsic characteristics of work that lead to satisfaction, growth, mastery, and ultimately happiness. The author is a PhD, worked at a think tank, and quit the white-collar life to go work on motorcycles. He discusses how white-collar work has been hollowed out, transforming "professionals" into "clerks", why so many of us "knowledge workers" feel unsatisfied with our work. The book has helped me figure out how to change my work to be more intrinsically rewarding, and as an IT developer whose technology affects other people's work, it also helps me think more about how to make the end user's life better.
Another great book along these lines is Joanne Ciulla's (2000) "The Working Life", which is a bit more academic and has less motorcycles but is nevertheless very readable.
Well, why do you actually want the MBA? What are you hoping to get out of it? Remember you're going to be sacrificing two years that you could be spending on something else, so it matters. Once you can answer that, I can give you better advice on application strategy.
Unless you're targeting the Harvards and Whartons of the world, either should be fine. Graduate schools aren't too picky, they just want to know that you have the ability and are going to follow through and finish. My point was really that you should know for yourself why you want the MBA. Honesty works well in interviews.
Now, if you're targeting a top-10 program, understand that for those schools it's all about the rankings. MBA programs are ranked on things like GMAT scores but also on starting salaries after graduation. What's the best indicator you'll get a high salary after graduation? Answer: you have a high salary before entering the program. If you want to get into a Harvard or Wharton MBA, tell them about your job making six figures at a Fortune 50 company and that you want the MBA so you can get promoted to the next rank of management. Acing the GMAT would also help. No matter what the brochure says, they don't really want dreamers who want to change the world. For those top-10 schools, the full time MBA program is really kind of a showcase to keep them up in the rankings. Then they can cash in with undergraduate tuition, executive and part-time MBA programs (companies usually pay for these for their employees), publishing, and other side ventures.
I actually think one of the best cases for an MBA is for a techie who wants to expand their business skills. When someone who does an undergraduate business degree comes back for an MBA, they're really wasting time going over things they already learned, just to gain a credential. For a programmer, though, an MBA could be your first exposure to fundamental stuff like the basics of finance, accounting, and marketing. Heaven knows they don't teach us about compound interest in high school.
I cannot recommend enough a paper called "A Garbage Can Model of Organizational Choice" (1972) by Cohen, March, and Olsen. Maybe the best thing I was assigned to read during my whole PhD. The authors propose that decisions are made by random co-occurrences of problems looking for solutions, solutions looking for problems, and people looking for opportunities to make decisions (not exactly in those terms). The authors even did a little computer simulation, which might prove enlightening (or distressing) given your objective. Link: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2392088
You might find "The Phoenix Project" interesting. It's a novel about IT operations management that I've assigned my MIS students to read in the past. You don't have to understand all of the technology buzzwords to get what it says about the roles and activities in IT.
Just ace the GMAT and they'll be happy to have you.
You should also have a decent reason why you want the MBA, and some sense of what you might do afterward. In my case, I had been through the dotcom bubble of 1997-2001 as a web developer, saw that all these companies had business models that made no sense, but didn't know what the better way was, so I thought I needed to get that MBA (in 2002-2004) to understand what makes a good business model.
I suspect if you read HN, you have at least a little bit of interest in entrepreneurship, and that could be what you talk about in your interviews. Don't worry!
I'm pretty sure licensing requirements would make it impossible. In my state, just selling raw vegetables at a farmer's market requires jumping through hoops of paperwork and inspections. Selling any kind of prepared food requires more. Some products are practically impossible for anyone except a large company to get permission to produce. Your Etsy of food would have to find out how to get all of its vendors trained, inspected, licensed -- a different process in each state -- and probably have to provide them with practical help in the logistics of refrigerated shipping, etc. My suggestion would be to focus on one metro area only, rather than try to create a national-scale dotcom business.
Alternatively, become an activist and change agent in the political sphere, and try to get some of these barriers torn down.