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epalmeron Think Bayes: Bayesian Statistics Made Simple (2012)

My youngest has Allen Downey as a professor this year. She says he is crazy. And she means this in the best way possible. His productivity is prolific having written Think Java in 13 days. He memorized pictures and bios of all 90 students in the first year class at Olin College of Engineering.

Edit typo

epalmeron The Disappearing American Grad Student

I have a friend that went to John Hopkins for one year in CS and dropped out. Just did not think he was suited for college. For the last year he worked at low wages for a sensor board company doing electronics and firmware coding. He just got a job doing cloud programming at a bank for $80K. Sometimes you don't even need an undergraduate degree.

epalmeron Things I Wish I'd Known Before Using Vagrant

We have our vagrant in git and every developer has the same environment. We run on Vbox under Mac OS X. It has been a big time saver and is reliable relative to hosting the dev env natively on mac os x. LAOP stack with the PHP being provided via Zend Server. We connect to a enterprise test instance of oracle.

We are starting to build simple docker containers for python via RHEL SCL version and will have other docker containers to "play" with for a while. Maybe someday we will get rid of Vagrant. Not likely anytime soon.

epalmeron Amazon Key is a new service that lets couriers unlock your front door

No, no, no. Not my house.

epalmeron Python is the fastest growing programming language due to buffer protocols

I agree. Your analagy resonates with me. Every day that I get to write python is a happy day. I now dread my Java days.

epalmeron PureVPN Logs Helped FBI Net Alleged Cyberstalker

If an entity can mint certificates that are signed and appear legit then MITM is possible. We so many certificate authorities now it is possible that are certificate trust is failing us or can fail us.

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/03/googl...

Google chrome can detect a google cert that is not legitimate because it has embedded the certificate fingerprints in the browser for its public certs. We don't have that benefit elsewhere.

Might some state actors have cert signing ability. You be the judge.

epalmeron Don’t Get Too Comfortable at That Desk

I have a 32inch single monitor and that is good enough for me. I'm ADD and dyslexic and more would overload me. I'm on Mac so I have desktops setup. I hate open spaces. I have an office now and my team of two share a collaborative space and respect each other's need for quiet. Our FE devs work in a big open space and hate it.

At my last employer I was a roaming employee. No desk. Just a file drawer. I was not a dev then. But I hated it. I had to wander 4 buildings to find space to work. I hated it.

epalmeron Launch HN: Forever Labs (YC S17) – Stem-Cell Banking

How old is too old to use my stem cells/ I'm 64 in 2 weeks.

epalmeron Show HN: Raspberry Pi Zero W Simultaneous AP and Managed (Client) Mode WiFi

This is fantastic and well documented.

epalmeron The power of a 'not-to-do' list

When we are approaching new somewhat abstract project idea we do a IS and IS NOT exercise and get the sponsor to sign off on the lists. This has been helpful in the last 15 years of my career.

epalmeron If You Get the Chills from Music, You May Have a Unique Brain

For me Hot Tuna, Asleep at the Wheel and Alison Krauss with Union Station. Jefferson Airplane and the Dead live many years ago. Some of Alison Krauss's new work Windy City.

epalmeron If You Get the Chills from Music, You May Have a Unique Brain

I too get chills when listening to some music. I too thought this was universal or commonplace.

edit: sentence improvements

epalmeron Five Magnificent Years: On Otis Redding

Zelma's work to buy back the catalog was a great move.

epalmeron Jerry Pournelle has died

I read his column first when I received my copy of Byte Magazine. Chaos Manor helped me decide to become an IT professional. He will be missed. Sad day.

epalmeron Americans Losing Faith in College Degrees, Poll Finds

Note where I work and where my wife works. She works at a public university and I work at a private liberal arts university. We see resistence to skills and competency being taught. Teach them critical thinking and history and they will be fine we hear. We witness lack of critical thinking in some senior administrators which does not give comfort.

Students are encouraged to study what their hearts tell them and not consider outcomes. That is employability. I personally know recent grads that are dramatically under employed. They could earn more, much more if they were trades people.

epalmeron Vagrant 2.0

I am the maintainer for a dev env for our team. We are on Mac OS X but we develop for RHEL so the vagrant image is centos. Building an image takes a few minutes but we love it.

We will probably research docker in 2018.

epalmeron The Incredible Growth of Python

I abandoned Python 2 around April 2017 for greenfield.

epalmeron The fertility of the older mind

I'm almost 64. I will get my CSP (Certified Scrum Professional) certification soon. I am learning Python and taught myself Java at 52-54.

I can run circles around some of my younger associates in terms of critical thinking, design thinking, and integrative thinking. My job requires this and I do it whenever needed.

epalmeron Olin College Produces Founders at Five Times the Rate of Stanford

http://www.olin.edu/blog/olin-admission/post/welcome-class-2...

They should apply. Many are not makers or robotics. Smart kinds with grit, determination and a willingness to fail to succeed.

epalmeron Olin College Produces Founders at Five Times the Rate of Stanford

The incoming class of 2021 http://www.olin.edu/blog/olin-admission/post/welcome-class-2...

epalmeron Olin College Produces Founders at Five Times the Rate of Stanford

If you visit make make sure to walk through the academic building. Yes only one such building. That is where you will find the students, usually on the floor, with their project, in the halls, everywhere. Giant post-it notes all over the walls.

My wife and youngest visited in 2015. She is now a first year their. She did a gap year.

epalmeron Olin College Produces Founders at Five Times the Rate of Stanford

They are working with larger engineering schools to bring some of their learnings to the other schools.

http://www.olin.edu/news-events/2013/olin-insper-collaborate...

https://engineering.illinois.edu/news/article/2009-10-14-oli...

http://www.olin.edu/news-events/2013/university-texas-el-pas...

Project Based Education can scale. It just takes effort.

epalmeron Olin College Produces Founders at Five Times the Rate of Stanford

I've had a chance to read his books and talk with him. Amazing. down to earth and brilliant at the same time.

epalmeron Olin College Produces Founders at Five Times the Rate of Stanford

All of the commenters might find this useful.

Olin outcomes for the class of 2017 http://www.olin.edu/blog/career-and-graduate-stories/post/co...

Olin is trying to reinvent engineering education for this century. They did locate at the edge of Babson college because they think that having business knowledge is important. The student can take classes at Wellesley and they think that is important also. aka Liberal Arts.

The are working to export their engineering education successes. I can't find a link that explains that right now but they want to change engineering education widely.

They are selective. They require an onsite interview and observed team work after you have been academically qualified. They want students with grit, that know have to reflect, and students that know success comes via failure. You can read about the incoming class of 2021 here: http://www.olin.edu/blog/olin-admission/post/welcome-class-2...

Full disclosure: My youngest daughter is a first year 2021 student. She is not a start up kind of person but she iterates toward success via failure and has 4 years of FLL experience, 6 years of FRC experience and 2 years of FTC. She has assembled a 3D printer, written a state law that funds after school STEM (it passed and was funded) and worked with underserved middle schools on after school STEM enrichment for a year between HS and College (gap year). Yes I am proud.

FLL - First Lego League FTC - First Tech Challenge FRC - First Robotics Competition

I have a engineering degree and a pure science degree. I would die and go to heaven if I could go to Olin. And yes Dr. Allen Downey is amazing. I have spoken with him when he visited the university I work at, read several of his books and my daughter has already had classes with him teaching Modeling and Simulations with Python.

epalmeron Ask HN: Programming is mentally overwhelming to me now. What to do?

First see a medical doctor and rule out an physical / medical problems. Once you rule that out then see a therapist. Talk it out with a professional.

I don't know how old you are but getting foggy due to age should not happen till late in life if your health is good.

Stress can make you sick. Please get help.

epalmeron Amazon cuts Whole Foods prices

In my market Wegmans came in and demonstrated higher quality and better pricing. I'll give Wegmans my business first.

epalmeron “We are working on getting Sublime Text 3.0 final ready to launch”

I use ST3 daily and have been using the beta since it came out. I don't have problems with it. Granted I'm not a poweruser of ST but I do use at a lot.

I love it. I could have stayed with ST2 for free but I chose to pay so that the devs could get the $.

I love sublime.

epalmeron How do I improve my storytelling?

A lot of practical advice in the comments so far. Practice is important. Don't wait in your story to hint at the outcome. Don't give the punch line until it is time but entice the audience with what is coming early on. Hook them.

There are short TED talks on giving TED talks. Here is but one play list. https://www.ted.com/playlists/226/before_public_speaking

If you must have slides

-- don't use bulleted text much -- don't use much text at all -- use images, pictures, sketches

See how boring that is.

And don't read your slides when you do have text.

I'm much better at presentations than one on one. I tend to provide more details than I should one on one. There is room for improvement.

epalmeron Why the Brain Needs More Downtime (2013)

Right now the other half of the scrum team has been relocated to the football stadium till office renovations are done. When the team practices they play music loud to simulate crowd noises. So their open environment is worse than imaginable.

epalmeron Ask HN: Does coding give you brain fog?

Yes mindfulness is helpful.