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Here are the calculators that show S3 is cheaper than GCS - hopefully I didn't type anything in wrong. I used 1 TB of storage, 10 million get operations and 10 million post operations, and 200 GB egress.

S3 monthly: $102.63

GCS monthly: $160.62 (about 56.5% more expensive)

GCS: https://cloud.google.com/products/calculator/#id=cddb4e9a-f2...

S3: https://calculator.s3.amazonaws.com/index.html#r=IAD&s=S3&ke...

It has a great UI (material design), and the UX makes sense (the dashboard shows you a summary of your resources, resources are organized by project, notification/status icon animates when resources are changing, etc). Going back to the AWS dashboard feels clunky.

There aren't a million different image types for each region and zone - simple, autoupdated base images are available for Ubuntu, CoreOS, etc.

It has easy to understand base machine types and custom machine types with tailored specs can be created if needed. Product/service naming is clear (ex. Compute Engine vs EC2, Cloud Storage vs S3).

Addons like one-click secure web SSH sessions and Cloud Shell are amazing, no more key pairs to worry about.

Google Container Engine, with a hosted Kubernetes master, is a great concept and more transparent than closed source AWS ECS.

Their on-demand per minute pricing with sustained usage discounts is almost always significantly cheaper than AWS on demand instances, and your discounts are given automatically. Try the two calculators for yourself: Google (https://cloud.google.com/products/calculator/), AWS (https://calculator.s3.amazonaws.com/index.html).

Also, I have seen Google engineers all over HN (look at the comments on this post!) and other sites responding, commenting, and blogging - they seem actively engaged while I have seen very little from AWS.

That is not to say GCP is without problems. AWS IAM is still superior - it is easier to grant access to specific services for specific users, or have an account for a web server to upload to S3. Part of that is due to the fact that there is more plug-and-play tooling available for AWS today - boto comes to mind (boto GCP integration isn't as seamless as with AWS), as well as WAL-E. AWS's new certificate manager with free, auto-renewed SSL certs and installation on EC2 is awesome. S3 is cheaper than Google Cloud Storage. AWS has a longer free tier.

Luckily, tools like Terraform allow us to mix and match services from each cloud.

https://blogs.vmware.com/vfabric/2013/04/how-instagram-feeds...

http://www.infoq.com/presentations/Twitter-Timeline-Scalabil...

I certainly do not agree that all out of class work should be abolished. However, I do think there is a threshold at which it becomes too much. As I presume many of us on this website can relate to, there is lots to be gained through personal study and developing good individual working habits. Many students tend to complain about being forced to go to bed late, however I am willing to bet that many of these students (myself included) sometimes push their assignments back to later in the night and could go to bed earlier with more efficient scheduling. This certainly does not always hold true, sometimes there is just that much to do.

Being a three season athlete I have a little less time than others, however I have found academic success. In general an HN appropriate modification of the "time triangle" (http://cdn1.theodysseyonline.com/files/2015/09/02/6357682979...) has held mostly true:

Pick 3 for the day: Sleep, Academics, Sports, Programming OR Social Engagements

Also, a note about my school. It is in the notorious Lower Merion School District, which is known for collecting lots of money in property taxes from the local old money who send their kids to private school. Thus, they have lots to spend per student (every student is given a new Macbook Air at the beginning of freshman year to rent for 4 years. They receive the exact same laptop every year, to incentivize keeping it in good shape. Only cost to student is $80 insurance deposit per year. The program is extremely successful.), every teacher is paid very well, great facilities, and they perform very well as a school. There is also a competitive academic culture: you are expected to do well at Harriton, and many do. Where homework plays in that equation is unclear, but take it how you will.

My final point is that not everyone who isn't doing homework is sitting around watching TV or playing on their phones. Some have found a passion in something like programming, and actively pursue those passions in their free time (working on side projects, or perhaps even trying to build a company). Our district even provides a mini incubator with small amounts of seed money, free mentorship, and summer office space.

Many of them are actually quite good. Super interesting paper.