throwawayjava

> And you're clearly not a landlord if you think it involves no effort.

The person described in the original post isn't a landlord.

That embedded world needs a simple, performant, low-level language that isn't C. If Zig focuses on providing that for the robotics domain, I could see it becoming popular.

All of the activities that Penn State's Outing Club used to organize are still available to students through the university-run Outdoor Adventure program [1].

The only difference is that now instead of a student club (cost center), the activities are organized by a university-run office (revenue generator).

So it's not about coddling. It's about money (and not even insurance)

[1] http://sites.psu.edu/adventurerec/

I agree that exhaustion and first sale doctrines should apply for Monsanto seeds, but I don't think that either of those doctrines are applicable to the Bowman v. Monsanto case.

Exhaustion or first sale would apply only to the first copy; i.e., if Bowman had purchased a seed from Monsanto and then resold that same seed to someone else.

But neither would apply to the next generation of seeds, just like exhaustion and first sale don't give you the right to sell N>1 copies of a single purchased mp3.

I don't see this in pools. 3m spring boards are still pretty common at pools in the US. My "nothing special" high school had 3m springs.

It's true that the 5m,7m,10m platforms are usually only found in sportsplex-type pools. They typically come as a package. But as you mentioned in an earlier comment, 5m+ starts the get actually dangerous. Flopping from 10m or even 7m without an agitator can do serious permanent damage. IMO a platform tower above 3m (or maybe 5m) is more "expensive sports equipment" than "general public recreational equipment".

I maybe could see a 5m platform as "general public recreational equipment", but 7 and 10 are definitely not. And there are just better ways to use time/money than building a 5m platform when you already have 3m spring boards.

American pools are moving away from exercise and toward recreation/amusement (i.e., switching out swimming lanes for "water playgrounds" and switching out diving boards for water slides). But that's a totally different phenomenon from "bubble wrap culture"; IMO those water playgrounds are way more dangerous than traditional pools (I've seen more than one kid injure themselves pretty seriously jumping off of the water playground into ~2ft water; that would never happen in a lane-swimming pool). And personally, I've had more injuries on water slides than on 1m or 3m spring boards.

So there's something annoying going on with American swimming pools, but it's not bubble wrap culture.

SS and other entitlement/retirement programs hold a monstrous amount of the total federal debt. I doubt the federal gov't could divest even a small fraction of those securities without destroying market for them.

In the United States, defaulting on Sovereign Debt would basically guarantee the death of social security. If you're in the USA, by far the best way you can insulate yourself against sovereign debt is by:

1) organizing your life's expenses so that you can retire (or at least continue to live) with $0.00 from social security.

2) Ensuring that you don't rely on any federal pension (including military retirement).

Of course, that isn't possible for most people. So in the USA, the answer to "who loses?" is "old people".

3) Ensuring you will have be able to afford healthcare in old age without medicare.

You have a very funny definition of "ignore".

> If you can ignore the rape of thousands of children because the political ramifications of it make you uncomfortable, you're part of the problem.

If everyone who disagrees with your framing "ignores child rape", you're part of the problem.

The reply begins with a sincere "...First, however, I would like to express my great admiration for you...".

The denoted intent of the letter is certainly not condescending.

Perhaps the content is what makes the letter condescending? The letter, if written today, might come off as condescending. It states many obvious truths, such as the observation that space development provides valuable tools to Zambian nuns. Today, this is obvious [1], and to point out such obvious facts to an expert borders on condescension.

But GPS wasn't at all an obvious implication of NASA funding in 1970!

If the letter comes off as condescending today, it's only because time (and science funding) has turned the impossible into the pedestrian.

[1] http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2011/0...

I'm aware of my own existence, thanks ;-)

> Noone respected agrees with the doom-sayers

But many, many, many respected AI researchers (who I've talked to about this) certainly do agree that AI/ML safety/robustness are important topics of inquiry.

Including researchers at all the top CS departments, at Deepmind, at OpenAI, etc.

Consider critiquing the concrete projects that are funded with AI safety money. Very little of that money flows to research about "preventing malicious superintelligence" or whatever strawman you have in mind. And even projects that consider those questions also consider many much more near-term AI safety questions.

This is not a new argument. Sister Mary Jucunda, a Zambian nun, wrote to a NASA scientist (Ernst Stuhlinger) in the early 70's with a similar critique of funding for space research.

You can read Ernst's cogent reply here: http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/08/why-explore-space.html

My favorite excerpt follows:

> About 400 years ago, there lived a count in a small town in Germany. He was one of the benign counts, and he gave a large part of his income to the poor in his town. This was much appreciated, because poverty was abundant during medieval times, and there were epidemics of the plague which ravaged the country frequently. One day, the count met a strange man. He had a workbench and little laboratory in his house, and he labored hard during the daytime so that he could afford a few hours every evening to work in his laboratory. He ground small lenses from pieces of glass; he mounted the lenses in tubes, and he used these gadgets to look at very small objects. The count was particularly fascinated by the tiny creatures that could be observed with the strong magnification, and which he had never seen before. He invited the man to move with his laboratory to the castle, to become a member of the count's household, and to devote henceforth all his time to the development and perfection of his optical gadgets as a special employee of the count.

> The townspeople, however, became angry when they realized that the count was wasting his money, as they thought, on a stunt without purpose. "We are suffering from this plague," they said, "while he is paying that man for a useless hobby!" But the count remained firm. "I give you as much as I can afford," he said, "but I will also support this man and his work, because I know that someday something will come out of it!"

> Indeed, something very good came out of this work, and also out of similar work done by others at other places: the microscope. It is well known that the microscope has contributed more than any other invention to the progress of medicine, and that the elimination of the plague and many other contagious diseases from most parts of the world is largely a result of studies which the microscope made possible.

I think there are many parallels between AI/ML and the microscope, and I think safety research is a very reasonable inquisitive lens for developing these new technologies.

> Walmart will pay only for degrees in business and supply-chain management because those areas of study “will be relevant across the industry and for future work opportunities,” according to spokeswoman Erica Jones.

They also cover books and supplies, which I imagine would be way more expensive without a single standardized curriculum across all of their employees.

I'm not sure which "couple of cities" you're thinking of, but I'm pretty sure I haven't lived in either of them. And even when I've owned a car, I've never used a car day-to-day.

By cutting deals with a few institutions and offering mostly online programming, Walmart can keep prices way down. I suspect they do it this way because the equivalent value of the tuition reimbursement would be way too low for any of their low-level employees to actually afford the education.

Caveat: only if you need a car anyways. If you only need a car to run errands, Amazon is pretty competitive for pretty much anything except fresh groceries.

Journals do provide some value. Editing, printing, and herding academics through the camera-ready process all require non-trivial effort.

I would have absolutely no problem with a handful of universities/non-profits/even for-profits devoting some staff to the curation/archival process. And also no problem with those organizations charging others modest fees to fund that work.

The problem with journals is that they capture a lot more value than they provide, that value is not distributed back to the people doing the actual work, and the prestige signal/branding provides a strong moat.

I REALLY think this is an important point. If we continue to behave like all of this stuff is trivial and obvious to replicate, then we'll be forever stuck with predatory journals like Nature.

Are you a mathematician simulating a dynamical system? A theoretical computer scientist exploring the effects of parameters that are difficult to nail down analytically?

Are you a computer scientist working on a new sort of system? Is the point of that system to support a long-running research agenda, or to demonstrate the feasibility of a general notion/idea?

Or are you a software engineer supporting a natural scientist (e.g., in a large bio/neuro/chem/physics lab)?

Are you the PhD student, the research scientist, the supporting engineer, or the PI?

But in any case, the correct answer will start with interrogating the purpose/role of the software in your research project. And that answer could range from "hack out the MATLAB and sanity check" all the way to "lives are on the line; practice extreme rigor". And certainly not excluding "convince your funding agency/PI that it's time to hire a professional"!

That was exactly the point the GP was trying to make...

1. The vast majority of middle class wealth is locked up in (non-investment) housing. That money provides a roof and access to quality education, but in almost all cases, it's not being efficiently deployed as capital.

2. Whatever remaining money that is deployed as capital, is not done so in a way that implies control over their chosen investments. Think "majority shareholder" vs. "just another investor". That's the difference between "controlling capital" and merely having a bit of skin in the game.

Notice that "don't go to college if you're going to drop out" is NOT the article's fundamental claim.

That piece of advice would be above the author's criticism. But it also wouldn't get a single upvote, let alone make the front page, because it's prime facie obvious.

Well then, I think we're violently agreeing. However, a couple of observations.

> e.g., maybe get to upgrade their 20 year old used Mazda to a 10 year old used Toyota and celebrate with a toast of tap water!!!

Here is CMU's dean on what happens to faculty with successful AI/ML research agendas: "How to retain people who are worth tens of millions of dollars to other organizations is causing my few remaining hairs to fall out".

I didn't realize how expensive used Toyotas have gotten...

>...applied math

I'll again reiterate that CS and especially AI have a completely different culture.

Also, this sentence seems to somehow undermine your entire thesis:

> If current academic AI research is too close to non-academic problems, okay, I can believe that but see little downside since I have no respect for 90+% of current AI work anyway.

Shop techs around here make ~$10-15/hr, aren't guaranteed 40, no benefits, never get overtime, and there's no upward mobility unless you start your own shop (which for almost everyone requires taking out a big loan, and most attempts flop). Finding work is easy, but you can do MUCH better in the service industry or in healthcare. Hell, I have a relative who breeds dogs because it pays better than the auto work he can find after his last attempt at opening his own shop failed.

But the hospitals are starving! With a Bio grad degree, the hospitals would pay you to get into nursing. From there, with the degree, it's easy to get into a PA program. And there's insatiable demand for PAs.

> You wouldnt believe how many trades pay close to six figures that are incredibly understaffed

My general observation, at least in our region, is that six figures are a high water mark, not an average. Six figures for the last ten years is A LOT different from six figures for all thirty years. And even the last 10 years is wishful thinking. But again, the recently closed factory might've put a huge downward pressure on salaries throughout the trades in our region.

I think that "trades are the answer" is just as stupid as "college is the answer". Inserting "community" into "just go to college" doesn't change the fundamental problem with the advice, which is that it's suggesting a global heuristic for a problem that has varying solutions from region to region and especially from person to person.

It's not about "trades vs. white collar". It's all about knowing the (regional) labor market.

There's also "the minimum viable candidate" vs. "cheap value-add".

E.g., an admin asst that does the job as described vs. the admin asst that occasionally helps with spreadsheets, does some basic graphic design work, and proof-reads both user-facing and technical documentation.

Does an admin asst need a college degree? No. But I'll take the admin asst with some art, accounting, and writing skills ANY day. Those skills completely re-define the role and add tons of value at very low cost.

I've seen the same in tech roles. Given two candidates who are both obviously capable of doing the primary duties of the job, the one with a deeper background (either from college or self-taught) is obviously preferable because versatility outside of the designated role is always a nice value-add.

Or the most obvious and common choice:

- go to literally any other college.

Also, of your alternatives, only one makes a lick of sense. Both

> Travel the world

and

> Use some of the capital to start a small online business

are 1) not actually options for anyone who has to take out loans for college, and 2) FAR more financially risky than the college route.

(2) is the most important point. Is college a great option? Often, no. However, are the plentiful better options? Often, no. (And the ones that do exist don't scale... not everyone can be a plumber.)

Another interesting thing: one major advantage of speed is actually slowing the game down.

E.g., if you move quickly between plays, you can catch the other team with too many men on the field during a substitution. in that case, you sometimes get a "free throw" (if the play works out, you decline the "too many players on field" penalty; but if the play doesn't work out or the other team intercepts the ball, you take the penalty and pretend like the failed play didn't even happen.

So you can actually increase the length of the game by moving quickly in-between plays...

These two explanations aren't even contradictory unless the state is motivated by profit, which it clearly isn't, so your comment seems like a bit of a red herring.

Your comment makes an implicit assumption that the goal of the state ought to be maximizing its revenue to expenses ratio. Some (e.g., the writers of the US constitution and the bill of rights) believe the state's interests ought to be aligned with those of the underlying population.

When the goal of the state flips from "profit" to "maximize general welfare", it's no longer obvious that "decreasing court expenses" at the expense of "eroding consumer protections" is necessarily in the state's best interest.

I'm pretty sure I explicitly agreed that this is often the case in my original post, so we must be talking past one another :)

What I'm arguing for is basically just academic freedom: the freedom of faculty and students to make choices about where they should resarch agenda. As your extensive history demonstrates, THIS APPROACH WORKS! All of those people chose to engage with industrial because it made sense for their research agenda!

More importantly, we can come up with an equally lengthy wall of text detailing accomplishments that would not have been possible without the freedom to work on things that industry isn't all hot and bothered about. E.g., neural nets until about 5 years ago!

And an even lengthier wall of text describing silly research agendas that only existed because of industry hype (AOP anyone?)

Industry collaboration can be a tremendous impetus. However, it can also be a distraction from more important problems or even an impetus to focus on silly problems. Professors and students should be incentivized and encouraged to do good research; industrial collaboration can sometimes be a useful tool, but it is a means, not an end.

Finally, IMO, the central premise of your argument (that there's not enough collaboration) is not factually accurate in the current climate. Read the proceeds of any major AI conference. Filter out papers written at top universities. Count the number of papers with vs. without an industrial collaborator named in the acks or even in the author list. Failure to collaborate isn't a failing of modern mainstream AI research.