pisteoff

> a rate that's so much higher than STEM education that it makes sense to divert tens of thousands of dollars to a humanities major instead of a STEM one.

Likewise, your argument doesn't support diverting funds in favor of STEM programs. From my own personal experience of having both a liberal arts BA and a huge portion of a CS degree, the liberal arts program has improved my ability to think and read deeper and more completely than the CS coursework ever could. It has also proven to have prepared me to face the "real world" better than any of my STEM major peers have been able to.

More and more, and this thread re-enforces it, I think the STEM vs. humanities argument is veiled misogyny. White boys studying science = good, brown girls studying poetry = bad.

The STEM world has no soul and will fail all of us because of it.

This represents so much of what is wrong in the US right now.

> people are learning how to value educational degrees based on what they'll actually yield financially and making decisions accordingly.

So why bother learning about the basis of human thought and culture when instead we should be learning about how to make the next iPhone app that won't matter in 6 months. Anything to maximize those profits, right? People be damned, it's the bottom line that matters! Got it.

Only around 25% of people have jobs related to their degree. I'd rather be able read closely, think clearly and critically, and synthesize information then learn about algorithms and data structures. STEM degrees do not give you those skills to the same degree.

I can learn CS crap without a degree program. Tech stuff is easy, people are hard. A world full of STEM majors sounds boring as fuck.

> From what I can tell, there's very little enthusiasm for online education, on the part of either professors or students. Pretty much everyone is eager to get back to normal, and I'm fairly confident that this is exactly what is going to happen.

This is probably true from a faculty and student position. However, as an IT person for a university, nothing would get me to quit faster than being forced back into the office. I would leave this job in a heartbeat and go make WAAAAAAY more working a remote job in industry. Given current hiring freezes, budget shortfalls, and low, uncompetitive salary ranges, I don't think universities are in a position to lose many IT personnel.

I'm not the only staff member who thinks this. Universities should prepare for a mass staff exodus if they try to get us back on campus.

2001 called, it wants its shitty "Windows Sucks!" article back.

I stand corrected. But in all honesty, that smacks of privileged elitism. Do these pop quiz, brain teaser interviews really prove the person can be successful on the job at Google?

> Depends on what you do at Google.

I imagine they have multiple PhDs working on those projects. For your bog standard SDE these interviews have very little to do with the day-to-day job.

Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life by William Finnegan

A beautiful book about waves, love, writing, and living a good life. As a surfer, skier, mountain biker, and overall risk taker, this book affected me in the same way "Walden Pond" or "Pilgrim at Tinker Creek" affects some people. It is the most impactful book I've read in the past 10 years. Probably not for everyone, but for those of a certain ilk it is stunning.

Fair enough, however the I would counter that the JMT can be sectioned, though not necessarily as day hikes. Other than the permit requirement it is way more accessible and less difficult than the Enchantments (don't get me wrong, they're both hard). I agree the JMT is the best hike in CA. I see how Yellow Aster could be considered the best hike in WA, the Enchantments is just different and special in its own unique way.

Yellow Aster Butte is a reasonably accessible day hike that can be completed by just about anyone who's fit enough to hike. Yes, the last pitch to the butte is a bitch, but just about anyone can do it. The Enchantments, on the other hand, is a permit only area (for overnight trips), that is not easily completed in a day long thru-hike - which from the Stuart trailhead is 18 miles with 4500ft of elevation gain. Even experienced hikers struggle with the Aasgard Pass scramble. This list strikes me as not just best in terms of views and landscape, but also accessibility.

I totally agree the Enchantments are more spectacular, but they require some serious commitment and are not likely to be enjoyed by the vast majority casual hikers.

Even so, I bet it's better than Teams.

Not great. Monitoring my mental health is critical for me. I caught a severe TBI 8 years ago and things have never been the same. I hate the way my brain works now. I hate not being able to concentrate, not remembering a lot things, having to take stimulants, anti-seizure meds, and anti-depressants just to feel a bit normal. I especially hate the personality changes, however minor some of them are. I miss my old self more than anyone can imagine. Yes, I have therapists, physiatrists and doctors all on my side but every single day is still a struggle. It's taken a toll on my family and kids. Some days it seems like they're the only things keeping me going. It's easy to get down and to start wallowing in self-pity, but you just have to keep going. One thing, one step at a time. It could be worse.

ha It's always fascinating to me how language evolves. For some reason I thought this would be about hunting and skinning coyotes, as in the varmints I hunted as a kid, not people smuggling folks across the boarder. I read the URL as carcass, not caracas. I should know better than to think something like that would be a thread on Hacker News.

Blah blah blah. While I appreciate the skepticism, this is BS only for the sake of it (as so many HN comments are).

You instantly lose credibility with this line: "I bought a Giro Atmos over a decade ago and never needed to upgrade because the top of the line helmets were only a couple grams lighter, after a decade of “improvement.”

I hope you've since replaced it. General guidelines are to replace a helmet every three years due to material degradation and UV damage.

Yes, you are correct that there is a marketing element. Likewise, you are correct that people value their lives over $250 price tag.

As a bit of antidotal evidence, I had a fall this weekend on Evolution trail on Galbraith MTN in Bellingham, WA. I fell from about 6-7 feet up on a feature called the Stinger, a long, super fun north shore style bridge (watch some youtube videos if you want to see it). My face and head were impacted in the fall and I suffered, what I think is, a very mild concussion. I replaced my helmet afterwards as per the recommendations. I also have a history of TBI caused by a cycling accident where wearing a helmet saved my life. I am absolutely going to buy something that even vaguely suggests an advantage for injury prevention. Mountain Biking is, after all, and inherently dangerous sport.

As you suggest, any progress is good progress when it comes to saving lives. But I absolutely disagree that it "is a bet on the order of Pascals wager," especially when it seems I myself have made that wager and come out ahead. So, with the utmost respect, unless you are a leading researcher in this field, STFU.

Personally I think the photo of her holding the book "Are We Alone?: Philosophical Implications of the Discovery of Extraterrestrial Life” is rather telling - https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/11/us/politics/hillary-clint.... But hey, it could just be some light reading for her.

I make at least 30% less than any systems related industry job out there, so no I don't think my salary demands are outrageous. I think it's a combination of ageism, having a family - hence not being willing to put in insane hours, and the idea that someone coming from the public sector cannot succeed anywhere else.

I'm a systems engineer in WA state in my early 40s and this is exactly why I gave up trying to find a "real" DevOps job. I know Python, Puppet, Docker, Azure, etc. very well, have a liberal arts BA as well as a good chunk of a CS degree, but found that I couldn't get an offer no matter how well the interviews went. I eventually chalked it up to my age, especially after I was made fun of during a team lunch portion of an interview, and decided to just stay in the public sector. I've gotten to the point where it just doesn't matter to me anymore. My kids are well cared for, my wife is happy, and I have a life outside of work I love. What else do I need? For me, chasing a career is a fool's errand.

My local trail building and mountain bike advocacy group.

Plant lots and lots of Azolla. Like a lot of it. In addition to all the other stuff that people talk about.

Keep on living to work, brah. I'll feel less guilty clocking out early knowing you're there to keep things running. I bet you'll feel differently on your death bed.

Someone took Metaphysics 101. It turns out reconciling science and philosophy isn't so easy.

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/is-scientif...

> being told that once the kid comes out thousands of years of evolution magically hit you in the back of the head

This is true, there are studies out there that have shown men go through physiological changes in the brain, similar to what happens to women, both during their partners pregnancy and after the child is born.

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_exa...

"The enthusiastic replies on this thread are understandable, but disappointing to see: we all need to be less credulous regarding the lay science press, and especially the lay medical press."

So fucking what? I suffered a moderate (GCS 8) TBI 6 years ago and it has been the most impactful thing to ever happen in my life, more so than even the births of my children. This article is a small glimmer of hope in an otherwise depressing and difficult subject.

I am beyond glad people such as yourself exist in this world, are skeptical, and do the hard work of helping people and making lives better. But please remember that us lay people need these bits of hope and glimmers of light. I don't particularly care about the science, as a parent and TBI patient I'm simply glad she's ok. This article made me tear up.

Don't be so serious.

I think this is exactly correct. I've used ExtJS exactly once and it was for building an internal, administrative app.

It's also correct that building an administrative interface with Rails or Django is much easier. In the case of the app I was building we had to interface with some Django code, so I wrote this Python meta-class that would inspect Django models and produce classes that would then produce ExtJS models, widgets, etc. that could then interact RESTful interfaces provided by the Django app. It worked great but was slow due to javascript blocking issues. So like you said performance issues were a barrier, but I doubt in that case it was ExtJS's fault. I've thought about posting that code somewhere but I'm kind of embarrassed that I actually tried it. After that little experiment we scrapped ExtJS and built a strait Django application that did what we needed.