nineplay

"How the American engineering degree, sold as a solid ticket to the American dream, has become less solid for recent graduates trying to find that first job."

As opposed to what? All the other recent graduates with non-engineering degrees who are drowning in job offers? It's tough out here for everyone. This kind of hyperbole doesn't help.

"How the American engineering degree, sold as a solid ticket to the American dream"

It wasn't "sold" as though there were some cigarette smoking ad men behind it. People went after _software_ engineering degrees when they saw a bunch of 20 year olds in Mountain View with 6 figure incomes. The other branches of engineering have always been hit or miss.

And "American Dream" - really? Has anyone used that term unironically since The Great Gatsby came out?

One of my background voices is constantly saying "How will you describe your current project in a job interview?". Maybe I add a little spin, maybe I highlight certain aspects, but I always have an idea of how I'd introduce it and how I would answer detailed 'star' style questions about my contributions and results.

I think some people with 'cushy' jobs don't take on this same mentality, perhaps overestimating the security of their current job. “telling the engineers what to do” is not a good starting point and the answers to follow-up questions had better be pretty detailed and convincing.

I find this all-or-nothing attitude extraordinary. Chatbots are the best personal tutors you'll ever find and I tell students so. Do you need to understand Mitosis for Bio 101? Ask your favorite chatbot. Then ask what daughter cells are - a question you might be too afraid to ask in class because maybe it was covered yesterday you weren't listening. Then ask why there are no "son" cells - which you'd also be to afraid to ask about in class but you want to know.

You can ask every dumb question. You can ask for clarification on every term you don't understand. You can go off on tangents. You can ask the same thing again ten minutes later because you forgot already.

No teacher or tutor or peer is going to answer you with the same patience and the same depth and the same lack of judgement.

Is it good enough for a grad student working on their thesis? Maybe not. Is it good enough for a high school student. Almost certainly. Does it give this high school student a way to better _really_ understand biology because they can keep asking questions until they start to understand the answers. I think absolutely.

I'm genuinely curious why my comment made you think I've ever claimed to be not racist, falsely or not.

Recently my daughter and I had to take a Uber home from airport at 11pm. I did not like the driver and I did not like the situation and I seriously was considering exit plans if he started going off the normal route.

The next time I had to take a late Uber I paid up for Uber Premium, which is maybe imperfect reasoning but the driver was pleasant and polite and didn't give any bad vibes.

I guess they figured out that people could still see <flagged> posts by going to /active. Disgusting.

AI and LLMs are really useful tools and engineers need to stop being all-or-nothing with them. They can't write code, they can't design code, but they can be used to make your code or designs better. Some people are turning up their noses on principle and they are missing out on a lot of useful functionality.

> If we adjust the question to "why don't we kill all infants after they're baptized if they will just go to heaven", the answer is because it is expressly forbidden by God in his prohibition on murder.

As a parent, I would go to hell to keep my children out of it. Therefore the logical thing to do would be to kill my children and ensure their salvation. While I burn in eternal torment, I can hold onto the slight bit of comfort that I will never see my children burning next to me.

I was helping my young teen with her English homework recently and I kept thinking that I might given her more feedback a few years ago. "Maybe you could clean up this sentence...". Now I think it's good that the writing looks unpolished. It's going to stand out among all the elegant perfectly worded essays with LLM tell-words like "delved" and "seamlessly".

I don't know where this ends up.

I could hide my head in the sand and imaging that the 'flaggers' are taking advantage of a loophole in the HN moderating system but I don't believe that anymore.

> People comment on flagging only to be ignored by the management

This still PG's site and I have no illusions about where his allegiances lie. The whole lot of them care for nothing but their own power and wealth.

It is extraordinary to me how easily 'politically incorrect' stories have been suppressed on HN. I've always found this site over the top in its support of free speech. Posters angrily railed against hate speech laws. Any attempt to regulate sites with immoral or illegal content was considered a attack on our fundamental rights.

Now we have a sizable contingent of posters who have decided that some stories are too dangerous for open discussion. This surprises me is that there is no large scale effort to fight back against these 'flagged' topics. Where have our free speech fighters gone?

Let us be honest in that they really only believed "free speech more me but not for thee".

People finding out and stopping use of your product only happens if people disagree with how you use your product. I guarantee you that a non-zero number of US citizens suspect that the LLMs are infested with liberal lies and are ecstatic that Elon is willing to stand up for the truth.

"Best kept secret"? People have been raving about then non-stop since the first great toilet paper shortage.

I largely agree but there is some egalitarianism with 'gifted' tracks in that they can exist poor areas. A friend of mine was the son of migrant workers who went to Stanford. He had the right combo of innate smarts, luck, caring teachers, and affirmative action policies which benefited dirt-poor minorities.

There's still a lot that I would improve if I were dumb enough to become president. Free daycare, free preschool, free after school programs - I think it's the best thing we could do for income inequity but there's not enough people to champion it so it will never happen.

I think things have changed more recently, but when I was in college it was pretty easy to change from one STEM major to another. I didn't know I liked programing until my first Fortran class.

I have heard complaints that the German system is pretty class-based and forces kids to make big career decisions at a younger age then necessary. The result is that upper class kids stay upper class, working class kids stay working class.

I can't speak for all trades, but in my experience 'owning a company' and 'high quality of life' rarely go hand in hand. Owning a company is hard. It's a 24/7 job where you are managing customers, employees, accounting, etc., and you can hire people to help but ultimately it's on you if someone screws up and orders the wrong cabinets.

I'm happier working for Big Corp in an air-conditioned office.

It depends on one's outlook. I know people who's attitude is both "boy that was a dumb tattoo to get at 18" and "dumb 18 year old me is still me, and I don't want to remove that tattoo any more that I want to remove that part of myself".

Obviously circumstances may change if the tattoo is offensive.

> What did the US democratic party ever do that was considered too left wing?

Jack shit probably but that doesn't mean right-leaning Democrats are going to vote for Bernie Sanders and cross their fingers that none of his proposals get enacted.

Sheesh

> First, the I-5 route avoids every major population center in the Central Valley, bypassing more than a million people who would be unserved

Who the hell is has been clamoring for a faster way to get to Fresno? What a pile of shit.

Why?

Yes but they take Southwest Airlines which is already really convenient.

I'm not convinced. The train is not competing with driving to SF, the train is competing with flying to SF. LAX -> SFO is 1.25 hours. There's time to the airport, time to check in, time through security of course, but there's going to be similar issues at the train station so the customer has to be convinced that the train is a time savings.

Plus, of course, SWA has 4 direct flights to SFO, 6 to Oakland, 4 to San Jose. If you miss your flight you get on the next one. It is going to be really hard for a high speed train to complete with that.

> stop supporting moderate politicians that appeal to no damn person

I think you are right but I think half of democratic voters think the party has gone too left ( abortion, gender politics ) while half thinks it has gone too far right. The democratic party is trying to have it both ways and utterly failing, but in their defense I don't think fully embracing either side will be enough for them to win. The problem is largely the voters who absolutely refuse to compromise on their personal hill to die on. Republican voters will unite on anyone as long as they piss of the left.

> find someone with charisma like Obama

That person does not exist, or if they do they are too smart to support the shambling mess that is the democratic party.

I think the party is gambling that Trump makes such a hopeless mess of things that voters will have no choice but vote blue. I'm not sure they will win that gamble.

> MLK said it best: "the moderate who is more devoted to order than to justice, who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice"

Are you a moderate who has a better plan? I ask that sincerely, if I've given up its not because I prefer peace but because I know a losing battle when I see one. We don't have a charismatic leader like MLK. The democratic party is in shambles. They're afraid of fighting the tariffs and alienating the working class. There is no one in the party who is broadly likeable, who has any chance of bringing the voting public together. Voters on the left still cling to their own personal pet peeves and insist they will never vote for anyone who doesn't specifically address whatever they think is the _real_ problem.

The sad reality is that Trump's policies are still really popular and if people are unhappy they are only unhappy with the execution. You see that in this thread. People see the this news story and see it as an unfortunate side effect of a basically good policy. They think illegal immigration is hurting our economy, they think 'anchor babies' are people taking advantage of a loophole that should be closed.

They think this country suffers because of tariffs and maybe they think Trump got carried away but they still support the idea. They are sick of Ukraine and think it's time we walked away. They think DEI means a black women will be hired over a white man under any circumstances. They think DEI in schools means our kids are being taught that the US is full of horrible backwards racists and sexists who need liberal saviors to make it better. They think that government agencies are overpaid and over bloated and full of people who don't do anything but get a fat paycheck.

These beliefs cut across people of all genders, of all colors, of all ages, of all states and cities. We can't even blame the boomers anymore and insist the younger generations will save us. No one will save us.

I'm surprised you single out Americans who on the whole still a lot more welcoming than a lot more countries in Europe and Asia. The last few months have torn that reputation apart of course, and there is loud group who would happily shut the borders, but there are a lot of citizens who are happy with legal immigration, sympatric to illegal immigration, and still embrace the melting pot.

My conversations with H-1B visa holders is that whatever aggravations they may have in the US, they can still get into the US. Other countries just don't have that pathway

I embrace my ability to anthropomorphize LLMs because I'm embracing anything that distinguishes me from LLMs. It is a distinctly living creature ability.

PG is a tech billionaire and I don't trust any of them more than I can throw them. They'll put on a nice "Don't be evil" face and then smash us under their heels.

Sounds like something Neville Chamberlain would have supported. We will at last have peace in our message boards.

Loudly complaining on a closed platform controlled by the unelected darling of the current adminstration is less impressive than he might hope. He has high profile blog that is silent on the current administration but highlights a article critical of "Wokeness".