Taylorious

I'm probably late to this party where everyone seems to be hating on the President's plan, but I'll chime in since this plan would have had a huge affect on me.

I'm one of those people who didn't apply themselves in highschool and didn't have anyone push me to do well. I couldn't afford to go to uni because my parents made just enough so that I couldn't get any aid. They also didn't have money to spare and were smart enough not to cosign loans for me to go to a university. Who can blame them? Its crazy to spend 10s of thousands of dollars to take intro classes that are basically just substitutes for how terrible our k-12 system is. My parents did encourage me to go to college though, so I went to one nearby right after highschool.

I would like to point out that even though its cheap, if you aren't in district its quite a bit more expensive. I think it ended up being around $100 a credit hour where I went since I wasn't in district. I know that is peanuts compared to universities, but if you have to pay out of packet, it adds up really quick, especially with books etc.

I was lucky that my parents let me use their car and live at home for free. Because of this, I could pay for the classes outright by working 30 or so hours a week at minimum wage. Its really depressing to work for months and all summer, saving virtually all of the money you make, and then blow at the start of each semester.

Ultimately this worked out well for me though, because by getting high grades and most of an associates degree, I was able to get significant transfer scholarships and not have to take a bunch of pointless intro classes. I'm not saying that all liberal arts classes are pointless, but some of them are, and it feels like hell to have to pay for those classes out of pocket, especially when you make minimum wage (which was $7.40 at the time). I would rather just read a book on a subject than take a class in something that I only have passing interest in.

I still have some debt from university due to double majoring and adding another year (which is when my scholarships ran out), but I still got out with < 15k in debt. And hey, that's peanuts when you get a software engineering job right out of school. I would have had so much more debt if I didn't go to CC first.

I will say that I meant quite a few people abusing the Pell grants though. People who lived at home for free and had no ambition would get Pell grants which covered their classes and gave them an overage for living expenses. They would just take the easiest classes and pocket the overage check. It was like a job for them. So I'm sure there will be people trying to do the same here, and there will be sleazy schools trying to get a chunk of the money too, but those are just problems that need to be solved.

To be fair not all universities are the same either. A university may have a great engineering program but have terrible liberal arts professors. Why pay thousands for an English class where you learn to write a basic five paragraph essay (which you should have learned in highschool), when you can pay a few hundred instead.

I'm going to latch onto this comment because I basically want to know the same thing. What store and version of the book nets you the most money?

I don't understand why every time I read an article that has something to do with apples the writer bashes on red delicious apples and acts like people are being manipulated into eating them. I love apples and I eat a large variety of them, and though I don't get red delicious the majority of the time, they are still really good and are a good goto apple because they are so consistent. I love how they are crisp, that they have a thick skin, and that they aren't overly sweet or sour. Plus, they are really cheap and are often good sized. Varieties like honey crisps can be tasty, but they can be quite a bit more money and they are often so sweet that it's almost like a dessert.

Its weird that this pops up on HN because I have been trying a low carb diet for the last 2.5 weeks (with quite a bit of success). I have run into the same issue as you in regards to snacking. The best snack I found was flavored almonds. They are about 4 carbs an ounce and come in a bunch of flavors (coconut is my favorite).

I have had a huge sweet tooth my whole life but I find the thing that I crave the most is fruit (I know fruit is sweet but not like ice-cream and candy). I've always ate a ton of apples and now that I can't I am craving them like crazy. Also, no bread is really hard, especially since good whole wheat bread seems so healthy and is so satisfying, and it limits your options for most meals like pizza and sandwiches.

I hear a lot of knee-jerk reactions about the diet saying how it must be awesome to just eat steak, chicken, etc. all the time, but it gets real old real fast. Without bread/buns, bbq source, and common high carb toppings, it become really repetitive. Cheeseburgers are amazing but they are a hell of a lot less appealing with no bun, onions, tomato, or ketchup.

All this being said I do not see keto or whatever you want to call it as a long term diet/lifestyle for me. I have been convinced that I used to eat way too many carbs, but I think I just need to balance my meals more and do some portion control. Eating no more than like 20 carbs a day is really hard and for me it affects the quality of my life too much. But, I totally understand that there are people out there where this diet is basically the only thing that works for them, so I think it's awesome that more people are at least trying it.

I don't understand the weird obsession with Git. Its a version control system not the cure for cancer. Anytime someone shoe-horns it into a product they talk about how Git is so amazing and solves all these problems, but what they are really talking about is just a version control system, not Git specifically.

Using Git for just about anything other than what it was built for is a terrible idea. I mean the underlying system is incredibly powerful and could be useful in various projects, but the interface is horrific. I swear its like someone tried to make Git as difficult as possible to use. Programmers have a hard time understanding and using Git, non-programmers will just laugh and walk away. Every time a programmer has an issue with Git, whoever helps them has to sit down and explain the underlying system for 20 minutes and draw a bunch of sticks and bubbles. Non-programmers will never put up with this.

How are people too sensitive in this case? The things he said were absolutely horrific. Making flippant comments about a disturbed kid who went on a murderous rampage within the last week is absurd for someone in this guys position. If I had vested interest in the company I would want him fired just because this incident proves he has terrible judgement.

Also, what is the deal with people's obsession with rapgenius? Its a lyrics site. I don't understand how they got all of this funding for a lyrics site. There are like hundreds of them that work fine. In face, songmeanings.com is particularly good. People can say rapgenius is the best designed site blah blah blah til they are blue in the face, but I bet it doesn't matter for 99% of the people who use these sites. I would guess most people who look up lyrics do what I do and just Google the song/lyrics and click the first link. I have literally never used a lyrics site's interface, and I have never thought, oh man I wish there was a better lyrics site out there for me to use. The valley is crazy.

This is pretty awesome. I'm surprised that you can get such a detailed and responsive image with just different characters. Very cool.

Hey I'd just like to tell you that your site is an awesome resource and was useful to me as a student when I was talking my OO design courses. As someone with a gamedev hobby background your site made learning about patterns much easier for me. I will be sure to buy the book when it comes out. Thanks for putting in the hard work and making it available.

I feel similarly, I'm just not sure where I draw the line because it makes me feel like a hypocrite. I see a lot of people on HN criticizing the Obama administration for drones, NSA, Guantanamo, etc., but how many of them have stopped using tech companies whose leadership contributed large amounts of money to Obama's campaigns? I can't help but feel like there is a something deeper resonating with people when it comes to this Condi issue. I'm guessing if Hilary Clinton quit tomorrow and joined DigitalOcean,the people up in arms about this wouldn't be outraged.

She was Secretary of State not Secretary of Defense. I would hope this whole Eich fiasco doesn't start a conservative witch hunt in SV. Not that the Eich thing was really a conservative/liberal issue, but people may try to turn it into that.

There aren't necessarily "many, many more" quality interns to chose from for these companies. There is labor shortage in the tech industry right now and some interns are quite capable of contributing real work. That makes them valuable and gives them leverage. It is not unheard of for interns to pit big companies against each other for a better offer these days.

That's simply not true. CS internships vary widely in compensation and often approach entry level wages. I know interns making 7500 a month at Palantir, 4800 at Intel, 6500 at Amazon,and others. All of them have different relocation, housing, and other benefits on top of salary. None of these interns are from where they are interning, they all are flying out to live in a different state off of their own dime. Some of them even had to fly in to interview (as a freaken intern!). The CS job market is weird right now.

Seems like this guy has a good thing going. Lots of people pay for a gym and workout every morning before they go work. This guy is basically doing the same thing but he is getting paid for it.

I suppose it depends on where you live. If you live in Arizona it might end up being an issue due to the energy cost of processing the water for reuse. However, if you live in Chicago you aren't going to have a shortage of water anytime soon.

I don't really get these water shortage scares people talk about. I can see how it is an issue in remote/poor areas around the world, but a country like the US has nothing to worry about. If fresh water reserves get low we can always desalinate seawater. There are engineering challenges and energy costs to do that, but both are solvable issues. No one is going to die from thirst.

I don't think it's fair to blame the megacorps and not the companies that are selling out. All these startups talk a good game about being cutting edge, disruptive, a passionate place to work etc. but it's all BS. Engineers work their asses off working on something they believe in and the minute some megacorp waves a big check in front of the founders they sell out. They might be passionate about their product but they are still more passionate about giant piles of money.

It's stuff like this that makes me not want to work for a startup. These guys had a great business. Everyone loved their product. Even the people who got physically sick from using it still thought it was cool and wanted them to succeed. They had a perfectly viable company that could have been very profitable on its own. But hey who wants all the responsibility and work of having your own profitable company when you can just sell out...

Let's not even get into how unethical it is to use something like KickStarter to get you started and then turn around and sell out for billions a couple years later before you even ship a consumer product.

It's boggled my mind why Microsoft hasn't tried to buy Xamarin sooner to do something like this. If they give the tools away for free and provide good documentation, samples, and support they could attract a lot of developers. Hell, they could even give some sort of financial incentive to attract developers too. It's annoying enough to have to develop for iOS and Android, if you could do both at the same time with less effort AND get Windows phone support... well that's just a huge win win all around.

This looks awesome. The code is very clean and well laid out. I am disappointed that there are literally no comments in the source code though. Hopefully he will add comments, because a lot of what he is doing is not super obvious, at least not to me.

I for one welcome anything that exposes people to programming. I don't think it will necessarily transform the US economy or anything, but I think it will be genuinely good for people to have the exposure. K-12 and college students are taught all kind of things that may not click with them or be relevant in their daily life when they get out of school (plenty of people never use math or writing skills in their actual job/life). What I'm getting at is even though many people won't "get" programming or will simply have no desire to pursue it, exposing them to it wont kill them. There are also people who never thought of programming but try it and it does click with them.

At my university the intro CS course counts as a language. Since many degrees require a language course, lots of non CS students take it so they don't have to take French etc. A surprising number of strong CS students in my senior class started out in another major, took the intro CS class for their language,and then ended up switching majors! One person was going for nursing before he switched to CS and is now doing graduate level research as a CS undergrad and will be going to get a phd in CS and math. You'd think the guy has been programming since he was in diapers.

Unfortunately CS is one of those subjects that a lot of people are never exposed to and will never know if they love it or have a knack for it. It seems like most of the CS majors I have encountered are people who are either computer/math nerds or people were big into gaming and got into programming for that (most of them end up giving up on game programming for well known reasons). I think your average person sees CS as something only math/computer nerds can do and as something that is really hard and math intensive. If they actually had a gentle introduction they may love it and may even be good at it. Lets not kid ourselves, most programming isn't something only super geniuses can do.

Why only 50k? That's peanuts for researchers. U of M is one of the top universities in the US, they couldn't get a major grant for this? Could it be that the technology is not as promising/proven as they would like it to appear?

This is very cool. Interestingly it was generated by Google's Closure compiler. The author has the full source with excellent comments on his site.

link: http://www.gabrielgambetta.com/tiny_raytracer.html

Why is Mozilla trying so hard to make Firefox exactly like Chrome? I have been using Firefox since like 1.5, if I wanted it to be like Chrome I would use Chrome.

So I have seen several of these stories pop up and I am still kind of confused by them. Are these hackers actually getting "real" money at some point? Are they able to cash out these bitcoins to USD or something else in a reasonable time-frame, or do they simply have a large amount of "fake" money that they can use for very specific goods and services?

Not everyone learns to program because they want to devote their life to code and worship the bit gods. I am in a similar situation as you and I have noticed quite a few students like you mentioned. My question is, whats so wrong with them getting a degree/job doing something they enjoy even if they aren't a rockstar at it? Is it so wrong for someone to want a 9-5 job doing something they enjoy? Yes they can't compete for "real" developer positions, but maybe they don't want to live in the valley and work 80 hours a week on a Facebook for cats and then hope Google buys their company. The truth of the matter is there is a ton of crappy code all over the world making things run and making people money. You don't need to be a rockstar to be valuable to a company so long as you get things done. I'm not activating mediocrity, I'm simply suggesting that programming isn't some exclusive of club for obsessed geniuses.

In regards to the Midwest, I know. Who would possibly want to live in one of the most beautiful parts of the US, surrounded by lush forests, the Great Lakes, and friendly people who say hi when you walk by?

Articles are submitted to HN to be critiqued and discussed. In this instance the story is about a person who (apparently) is widely disliked in the tech community. It's no surprise that the comments are negative.

Good riddance. Can't stand the guy. I know he attempted to make tech accessible to the average Joe, but he always dumbed things down so much I felt like he didn't really know what he was talking about. He also seemed to let personal biases get in the way of the reporting.

The real reason why I didn't like him was for what he did to Nova. Nova was one of my favorite programs growing up and he absolutely ruined it with his annoying personality, stupid jokes/puns, and over simplifications. In a science show the science should be first, not the twit talking about it.

It is going to revolutionize education. Why would children watch a slideshow about ancient Egypt when they can walk in a digital recreation made by brilliant artists/game designers who worked with leading historians, archeologists, etc. I'll warrant that experiencing things "first hand" will make people learn faster/better.

I made this comment out of irritation at the suggestion that this guy is doing this because he needs food. It's a load of shit. It's impossible for a mentally sound person to starve to death in this country, homeless or not. Just because there are homeless people who are homeless because they lost their job and now cant afford food/shelter, doesn't mean that there aren't homeless people who prefer that lifestyle. If you are in a nice climate (like SF) and you are given food, shelter, and basic necessities plus some luxuries (bike laptop etc.) then the idea of working extra hard to land a crappy job where you can still only survive with subsidized everything and you don't have any spare money, doesn't sound so appealing. People on here infer that the average homeless person had some great job, a house, car, etc. and they just need some help to regain that. I'm sure there are people like that who exist, but I would warrant a great deal of the homeless (those who aren't addicts or mental)wouldn't have a much better lifestyle if they got a job, because the job would likely be minimum wage. You cannot live independently on minimum wage in this country. So why even bother working?

Love the picture of the "homeless" guy using a laptop newer than mine, with his pet, nice bike, playing a video game while he smokes a cig. He also has an energy drink... as if he needs it to get through his day of sitting around. It's people like him who are hurting the homeless people that are actually in need.

I imagine this post took some time to write up, so I want to say thank you for sharing your experience. I don't know much about the banking world so I found your story fascinating.