jlevers

My email's in my profile -- shoot me a line :)

Ok, awesome! I'm pretty much an exclusively Linux guy, so that's the path I'm planning on going down -- my email's in my profile. I'd love to discuss further!

While I agree with you that it's virtually impossible for humans to use up the uranium in sea water at our current energy consumption rate, I think it's worth thinking about that if we had "unlimited" energy, we might use orders of magnitude more of it than we currently do.

That being said, for that to be an issue, we'd have to increase our energy consumption at least 1000x, and if we get to the point of using that much energy, it seems likely we'll also have advanced technologically to such an extent that we'll figure out another solution. It's just an interesting exercise to consider how what seems impossible today, might be totally routine in 10/100/1000 years.

This looks amazing, thank you!

A few posts up, melvinroest suggested starting a study group for the (Windows-based) course in the original post -- would anyone be interested in doing the same for this Linux-based course?

> In work published last year in the journal Joule, Sepulveda and his co-authors made a powerful case for using a mix of renewable and “firm” electricity sources, such as nuclear energy, as the least costly, and most likely, route to a low- or no-carbon grid.

> Recognizing that “absolutes exist in people’s minds, but not in reality,” Sepulveda sought to develop a tool that might yield an optimal solution to the decarbonization question.

The second part, I think, is very important to keep in mind when discussing whether or not to use nuclear to help solve the climate crisis. I'm not a big fan of nuclear, but if deploying huge amounts of it is what it takes to get us to zero carbon emissions by 2050, I'm for it. Yes, nuclear has its risks, and it's not renewable, but I think it would be worth pursuing as a stepping stone to get us to net-zero emissions sooner, while we figure out how to power the entire world via truly renewable energy. IMO, the potential risks of failing to address climate change rapidly enough are much larger than the risks of wide-spread nuclear power.

Until recently, I agreed with you, but I just read a book called Quiet (by Susan Cain) [1] about introversion, and in the book they give evidence that shows that many of corporate history's most successful leaders were introverts.

I highly recommend the book to anyone who thinks they're an introvert, manages introverts, or has introverted family members -- it helped me understand/be happy with many of my own personality traits that I'd overlooked or misunderstood. (And, after reading the book, I realize I'm an ambivert, not an introvert.)

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Quiet-Power-Introverts-World-Talking/...

If you made something like this, I would absolutely pay for it :)

While my knowledge of IPFS is pretty basic, this strikes me as a great use case for it.

IPFS (https://ipfs.io) is a P2P internet protocol that's made to enable a decentralized internet...I believe its goal is to supplant (or at least supplement) HTTP(S). As I said, my knowledge of IPFS is still pretty basic, but I find it fascinating and I thought it might be relevant for this application.

Would you be willing to give an example of an area where it was widely thought that "someone" had already checked all the obvious possibilities, but you were able to find an obvious possibility that actually hadn't been explored?

I'd like to second this -- I'm slowly making my way through Nand2Tetris (currently building a VM -> assembly transpiler, and if you'd asked me to do that a few months ago, I'd have had no idea what you were talking about), and it's been really fun, taught me a lot about low-level computing, and given me the opportunity to learn a new language (I'm building everything in C). I highly recommend it!

If you don't mind me asking, who do you work for?

It seems to me that one of the biggest advantages of having a CS degree from an actual institution is that prospective employers are far more likely to believe that you actually have the skills you say you do.

If you're self-taught, but have truly gone through something like OSSU (or [https://teachyourselfcs.com/](https://teachyourselfcs.com/), or any other set of courses that covers much of what a CS degree would), how do you convince employers that you actually know what you say you know? Sure, you can perform well in the interview, but first you have to make it that far.

I agree with the many people who've said (in essence) that for 90%+ of programming jobs -- i.e., writing CRUD apps or the like -- a CS degree is unnecessary.

But how about that last 10% of jobs? Does the degree open doors to cutting-edge, exciting opportunities that aren't available without it?

I'm in the process of deciding whether or not to drop out right now. I know that I have what it takes to self-study and get to a similar level of knowledge as a CS grad, but I'm wondering if not having a degree will preclude me from the less common, more exciting jobs that I'm most interested in.

What aspect of climate change are you focusing on, specifically?

I'm partway through Nand to Tetris right now, and I'm really enjoying it! It's taking me quite a while, as I'm doing it in C (which I have no experience with) as a way to start making my way towards embedded programming, but it's a really rewarding course.

"Luck favors the prepared" is one of my favorite expressions, and I feel like it applies to this. Chance encounters do create tons of opportunities , but you have to be prepared to take advantage of those opportunities.

This is awesome -- I've been trying to find companies like this in the regular "Who is hiring?" thread, and been disheartened by how few companies I've found.

You replied to a thread that I created over a month ago about climate change [0], and I somehow never saw your reply. It's old enough that I can no longer respond to your comment, but I'd like to get in touch with you if you're still interested. My email's in my profile.

Sorry to respond to you on an unrelated thread -- I don't know how else to get in touch since comments are disabled on the original thread.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19908974

From this perspective, which people/roles would you consider to be the software engineering equivalent of a mechanic? How about the equivalent a mechanical engineer?

It makes me insane to sit still doing nothing for that long, which I think is kind of the point -- that you have to sit with your thoughts. But I don't have any issues sitting with my thoughts, I just don't like having to do nothing, and since I didn't see any benefits after a month+, it felt really pointless.

So I guess the short answer is, a combination of restlessness and feeling like I wasn't getting anywhere.

I've tried meditation on multiple occasions, using Headspace and other apps, as well as without any outside input. I've consistently meditated for over a month at times, but after that month, I still _hated_ it. I'm not someone who usually has a hard time getting into the habit of something, but I've never been able to get into meditating, and I never noticed any positive effects.

Do you have any thoughts on my experiences?

I very much agree that the default should change on college coming directly after high school. Sounds like we had pretty similar paths -- I also took a year off after high school, and did a lot of traveling that I funded by programming (I had a fair amount of previous experience). I feel like that year gave me a ton of perspective that I didn't have before, and while I knew that I liked programming beforehand, I think I gained some new appreciation for it. The one "issue" with that year off is that it's clear to me that I could have foregone college and still done well for myself working as a programmer, which definitely doesn't make me more motivated to finish college, since I much prefer working to going to school...but I'm not convinced that that's actually an issue, and I'm definitely really glad I took that year off. I'm much more disciplined and focused than I was before.

This is really interesting to me -- I'm super into working on/learning about old motorcycles (and cars), and it's always pretty difficult to find parts/procedures/torque specs/etc for a vehicle, unless you can find the factory service manual online. I'm not sure to what extent (if any) that data is covered by copyright, but if it's not, this seems like an excellent idea that I'd be interested in working on.

I made an extension to make Photobucket photos visible again, since last year Photobucket suddenly put all their photos behind a huge paywall last year, and destroyed a lot of knowledge on forums that I use: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/photobucket-embedd...

I'm curious to hear the tips of people who've avoided the extreme boredom/feeling of uselessness that many of the people in this thread have voiced.

I'm working at a startup, about to go into college, and am worried about this myself -- I've already started feeling that boredom a little bit, even though I'm lucky to have a job this interesting at my age, and this is only my second real tech job. I'm planning on majoring in CS and MechE, which I think opens up some opportunities for combining coding and building physical things, which I hope I'll find more fulfilling.

I know I don't want to spend much of the rest of my life writing code that I don't really care about -- how can I avoid that?

I just read and really enjoyed A Truck Full of Money by Tracy Kidder. It's about Paul English (founder of Kayak), both his life in general and his entrepreneurial adventures. I highly recommend it!

My bad, AR = augmented reality.