Sure your point is a good one in general, but you're combining multiple profiles to create this narrative. Dylan didn't go to Stanford, he went to Brown University. Being an intern, you usually don't have a car, and it's not as easy to get from Sunnyvale (LinkedIn headquarters) to Palo Alto as the story sounds, especially pre-UberX. So the "dropping in" is not like they were living in the same city.
LinkedIn HQ was in MV for quite a while, no? IIRC they were on land owned by Google.
And getting between MV and PA has always been pretty easy via Caltrain, and the various corporate shuttles that connect it to destinations.
The one bit that didn't resonate for me, as a local, was the reference to "City Center in Palo Alto". I've lived here for a long time and never heard a reference to "City Center".
There's "downtown"/"University Ave.", "Cal Ave.", and "midtown" (though there's not much there). Has anyone else ever heard of "City Center"? Were they literally just walking around City Hall or something?
"[In 1885] Leland Stanford and Jane Lathrop had in mind to establish a town across El Camino Real to support the needs of Stanford University, including student housing, shopping, and recreation, but no liquor. The Stanfords asked the leaders of Menlo Park and Mayfield to close their saloons, but were answered 'No.'"
"With Stanford University's support, saloon days faded and Palo Alto grew to the size of Mayfield. On July 2, 1925, Palo Alto voters approved the annexation of Mayfield. The two communities were officially consolidated on July 6, 1925."
Ah i remember basically living out of the Sheraton in downtown Palo Alto for the better part of a year thanks to not accepting a permanent move to the bay area. It all seemed so weird at the time.
The sense i got of the place was one who's grandeur had passed. The furniture and the houses there seemed so dated, walking around the neighborhoods exposed all the cracked concrete on the sidewalks and the graffitis under the tunnel leading up University.
Take a short walk and you're in the great lawn at Stanford, such a shame how a beautiful city like that is not treated as it should be. I had far better experiences of public infrastructure during trips to poorer countries. The airport felt ignored, the caltrains felt dated and inefficient on the inside, i don't know. . . it just felt like everyone was waiting for a nuke to level the place and rebuild better than making it better right now.
Palo Alto is famously anti-development. Far ahead in the digital world but stuck in the 20th century physically. And Stanford has so much open land for nothing but nature. I mean come on…
FWIW, Caltrain is being electrified and there are people fighting for more development and density.
This doesn’t resonate with me at all about Palo Alto. From Sheraton, it is an easy walk to University Ave, and you are greeted by the cult coffee shop Verve which is at the very end of the strip. You also have Evvia one block away, numerous other restaurants, West Elm, RH, Real Real, a giant Apple store, the Nobu hotel, a huge Blue Bottle Coffee, Indian classic Rooh. So not sure what you were looking at. I also find Caltrain to be quite nice - clean modern stations with clean quiet ride.
You walk under the tunnel or through the Sheraton parking lot and across the stanford shuttle stop . . . compare that to say, downtown Austin or Houston and you see what i mean. After 9pm, those streets are desolate with the sole diner/creamery showing signs of life.
I travel internationally for work and when my return trips land in SFO occasionally, it feels like i've travelled back in time to an alternate timeline where the US lost the war or something.
My impression of Palo Alto as a single person was that it was beautiful, but quiet. It seemed to be oriented around family life, and families are generally not out and about after 9pm.
People looking for nightlife tended to gravitate towards San Francisco.
It's not even "Nightlife". It's weird, any sort of social gatherings past 9pm just didn't seem to exist (Except for the creamery/diner, some pockets of isolated restaurants). I would expect a college town to have some life, kids out and about after a late game etc. . .not the case, and i was there for a while.
Palo Alto isn't a college town, even though it looks like one at first. Palm Drive is long and it feels even longer, and after hours people generally stay on their respective sides of the moat.
As far as feeling suppressed, $4,000/mo rents for small apartments will generally do that to a place.
You're not alone in disliking the place. I did a three-year postdoc at Stanford, and after my first year I moved to SF because it was clear that's where all the social life was.
When was this? Palo Alto felt a little bit like what you describe around 2011-2012 after the economy crashed and Facebook had moved from its numerous downtown offices to their campus. The place has really recovered though.
"Around University Avenue" is the only reasonable deduction. Calling the other ones center would be too weird, and yes, if you take a stroll there, you could overhear a lot of such types of conversations.
I was pitching an Open Source developer tools startup around here at this time. VCs laughed in my face since there's no business model in OSS or in developer tools.
Looks like there's a bunch of OSS companies doing well now, with their business model being getting paid for a hosted version of their software. Posthog is a good example.
This was around that time. That's my point. In the valley companies like ours got funding for OSS and developer tools at that time (Xamarin, Github, etc.). But in other places it took 5+ years for the dime to drop...
> Uber has engaged in some pretty "creative" (i.e. unethical) business tactics to muscle their way into the taxi industry while avoiding both regulations and the payment of decent wages. They moved fast, but it was only a matter of time before government regulators (and their own reputation) caught up to them. Transportation is, indeed, something that's going to go back up in price in the short-term, if only because Uber and the Uber-wannabe's were using a business model that was never sustainable. I'd expect considerable contraction of this market as multiple companies fight each other for dwindling profits.
I want to push back on calling Uber's methods to avoiding regulations to be unethical, separately from discussing the wages. When they were starting, taxis had regulatory capture with their de facto monopoly. Lobbying over many decades prevented fair and healthy competition for out-of-date reasoning (like medallions and landmark tests). To break this corruption required illegal (and gray area) techniques, but I don't think it's unethical to destroy something that is unethical itself. Not all positive change can happen from following all the laws. Had they gotten shut down in the beginning, I think that would have been a major societal negative, and other ride-share companies coming on their coattails would not have happened.
> I want to push back on calling Uber's methods to avoiding regulations to be unethical, separately from discussing the wages.
Nope. Uber doesn't get a pass.
Uber could have confined themselves to the secondary cities with terrible cab service. Basically that's any city in the US other than New York and Chicago. People would (and some did!) have greeted them like liberators. For example, taxi service in Las Vegas was horrible until ridesharing showed up. San Diego taxis to the airport never showed up on time before ridesharing. etc.
Had Uber built up a commanding service in these secondary cities, they would have had all the momentum they needed to run over the incumbents in New York legally.
But, no, Uber decided they couldn't simply be a profitable business. Oh, no, they have to be unicorn-level and that wouldn't happen unless they were in the biggest cities right off. And then, when they showed up, they didn't even try to follow regulations with a fig leaf and were operating blatantly illegally.
And this is all on top of the fact that Uber and Lyft are skirting minimum wage laws.
But why ? You start with the place with the most impact and deal with the long tail later. So NYC should be the first. Several states don't allow direct sales of electric vehicles despite how well it works in other states. It's a pointless legal issue that will drag on for years/decades. If Tesla et al. had the same impunity and legal cover as Uber, they would be selling everywhere, and we would all be better off.
> But why ? You start with the place with the most impact and deal with the long tail later. So NYC should be the first.
Because your "long tail" of poorly functional taxi systems consisted of cities like Los Angeles, Houston, and San Diego. These aren't tiny even when compared to New York. "Most impact" should be the largest city without a functional taxi system. THOSE should have been the focus and then you would have had demand pull into New York and Chicago.
But, no, Uber wanted the "growth hack" of burning VC cash to transfer a bunch of people from the already functional taxi system into the ridesharing system.
> If Tesla et al. had the same impunity and legal cover as Uber, they would be selling everywhere, and we would all be better off.
Laws exist for a reason. Sometimes, such as the case of Tesla, those laws go out of date and should be changed. The medallion system, however, came into existence to avoid malfeasance by drivers. And, as we have seen, as Uber has reduced pay to the drivers, we are getting the exact problems medallions were put in place to solve.
> Uber could have confined themselves to the secondary cities with terrible cab service.
They've improved certain qualities of cab service here in Austin (like availability) but they've also severely diminished other qualities (like knowing that your driver won't drive straight past the exit because they don't speak English and don't know the roads and don't look at their GPS; or like demand-based pricing).
> People would (and some did!) have greeted them like liberators.
Yeah, because they were running a huge loss-leader to make themselves seem better than the competition until the competition was gone.
I agree that they don't get a pass but... ugh. Their practices, ignoring all law and regulation which apply to them, were not/are not okay no matter where they took place.
> When they were starting, taxis had regulatory capture with their de facto monopoly.
That might be true in some areas, but it certainly isn't in others. And nothing was stopping Uber from being a regulated taxi operator. Instead they were just friends using a networking platform to give each other rides (imagine heavy air quotes throughout that sentence)... while the networking platform set the prices and set the costs and took a large cut...
And in reality Uber et al are already far more expensive than taxis were before they took over. They're also subject to most of the same regulation... except the ones that kept pricing down and predictable/plannable... as taxis were, to boot.
That’s the problem. You are unwilling to discuss the wages. This predatory capture also existed to ensure a decent wage.
Uber did everything they could to hide the true cost of being a driver. Tons of sneaky fees. Gray area for insuring your car. Dropping drivers wages just after they bought their vehicle from a Uber financing program.
There’s a reason the quality of Uber drivers went down, the good ones realized that there was no money to be made once you accounted for all the hidden cost.
It's not like the average taxi driver was rolling in cash either. There are plenty of hidden fees with leasing a cab and medallions as well. I have little sympathy for taxi industry because half the time they try to hustle me.
> That’s the problem. You are unwilling to discuss the wages. This predatory capture also existed to ensure a decent wage.
So a few got a highly inflated "decent" wage and the people that desperately needed this work are just out of luck because they can't afford a medallion?
As a base law, that's helpful, but I'm wondering when it gets into cfaa territory. What if you violate the terms of service to scrape it? What if you have to implement tricks like IP rotating or useragent lying to get the data? What if you accidentally scrape some creative text which is copyrightable, embedded in the recipes and accidentally sell it?
This stories reminds me of the times before tech dominance, when programmers and innovators needed to get permission to do almost anything. Tech people were not allowed to run companies, or even manage people -- you needed MBAs for that.
Anything "disruptive" would be immediately shut down and threatened from the dominant industry. Anti-societal violence in video games were under constant protest (like the original Grand Theft Auto, or Mortal Kombat), and don't even think about trying to start a business like Uber or Spotify.
New file formats could be immediately crushed by IP concerns. Even web pages posting content about circumventing current systems or linking to sites like that were targeted. If you weren't a big player, you didn't have any way to accept money (besides asking people to mail you checks).
While tech is seen as too powerful now, I think it's at least nice that we no longer have the anxiety that plagued any idea or project in the past. You don't have to worry about going to jail for programming crypto code, or be unable to find a hosting provider for your website that shows scraped public data.
I don't understand why authentication usually requires you to type in some 6-digit number from your phone. From an ideal user experience point of view, why not just pop up a dialog on your phone, wait 1 second (to prevent accidental taps), show "decline" or "approve" options, and that triggers the authentication to proceed? This seems like an experience that Apple would design.
Even better, use a thumbprint to authorize on the phone, to add one more layer of security. Then you hit the trifecta of verifying 1) something you know (the password entered on the website), 2) something you own (your phone), and 3) something about you (your fingerprint).
Push notification 2FA certainly has some UX benefits over manually entering a TOTP, but there are documented cases of attackers gaining access by triggering the 2nd factor push and a user dutifully pressing "approve". Office365 is an especially bad vector for this risk as it prompts for auth throughout the day at seemingly random intervals while using o365 services. Users are trained to hit accept to keep going even if there isn't a password entry dialog that obviously triggered the 2nd factor ask.
WebAuthN makes this a moot point though. All the auth is handled under the hood. There is no password or TOTP code to enter and yet in the right setup can be 2FA with minimal user interaction. The keys are stored resident on your device (something you have) and there is interaction to unlock them (finger/are or PIN/know). Best of all it's unphishable since the keys are unique per domain, so lookalike domains won't work.
Google actually has this implemented for signing into Google with desktop Chrome and Android, but I'm not sure it's standardized yet. Ideally Google will make this mechanism usable with all WebAuthn-supporting sites.
(It seems like there's two different forms of this that Google has implemented. One form is done simply: when you log into Google, Google tells your phone to show a prompt, but this form is still phishable, because if you're using a phishing site while an attacker is proxying your login, they could still trigger it. The other form involves desktop Chrome talking over Bluetooth to your phone to verify what domain you're looking at. This method is immune to phishing domains like other WebAuthn authentication methods so presumably this is what they'd try to standardize. It does involve multiple moving parts so it's not too surprising it's not standardized yet.)
> From an ideal user experience point of view, why not just pop up a dialog on your phone, wait 1 second (to prevent accidental taps), show "decline" or "approve" options, and that triggers the authentication to proceed?
Because it's insecure. Because you as a user don't know which login attempt the prompt is for. This is especially bad when combined with applications with persistent connections that occasionally decide they need to re-up their credentials. It allows for attacks where you just spam someone with login requests until they either misclick or just get fed up.
Seems to me the MFA app could, with the approve/deny prompt, display the application the request is for.
If you delay the request of the MFA until after the password has been verified, then even a single "unexpected" MFA would be an indicator of the password having been compromised.
… and if it's insecure, well … MS is using that flow.
Simply displaying the application is insufficient; the spamming issue would remain as they would spam the most common app that asks for auth at random intervals. An actual fix would involve displaying a randomly generated sequence in the app and in the notification and training users to check, but there would still be plenty of people who would just say yes without thinking.
MS has that flow as an option and it can be disabled. In my job life I've already heard from regulators who want it off.
The actual fix is to move to webauthn where the user experience is excellent and the security is much stronger than any password flow could ever be no matter what stuff you pile on top.
For now it is mostly just that "pull-based" TOTP is cheaper/easier and works in more "offline" or "partially-disconnected" scenarios. Your phone and the website only have to directly "communicate" once: that QR code to bootstrap the secret key. After that all of the math is independent: the math to generate codes is done entirely on the phone and the math to verify it is done entirely on the website.
There is a growing support for "Push" style authorization tools that more directly communicate between the devices. Up to now the tools have been mostly vendor-specific. Google has push notification authorization in the Google ecosystem. Apple has push notification authorization in the Apple ecosystem. Microsoft has push notification authorization the Microsoft ecosystem. The growing WebAuthn standards (for which the linked post is a Guide to working with them) are exactly the sorts of standards that are being built to increase inter-operability between vendors and trying to make "push" style authorization cheaper/easier/more ubiquitous on the web. (Those standards aren't 100% there yet for multi-vendor interoperability as other comments in these threads accurately nitpick, but this is still a giant step forward in that direction.)
Also, if your TOTP Authenticator app isn't already using your device's fingerprint or Face ID biometric locks, consider moving to a TOTP app that does. Most of the major ones do, exactly for that "trifecta" reason of layered security.
I'm not an expert in authentication but afaik TOTP (and HOTP) work completely offline. That means you could store your keys on a device that doesn't have internet access. On that device you can do whatever you want. Some TOTP apps allow you to lock your keys with an additional passphrase or a biometric factor.
From my (maybe naive) POV as a user I tend to agree, it would be nice to have a standard for push-based authentication so that I can actually see when someone else has made it past the password prompt. Although email notifications would largely solve that problem (if more websites used them).
I"m not seeing a huge benefit of the personal device being offline, while you're trying to log into an online service. But let's say there was a need for that, what about using bluetooth or wifi direct to push to the device?
Like I said, I don't know the standards, so I don't know the authors' intentions. But there are actually specialized devices which do nothing but generate TOTP tokens, so that seems to be a use case. (The keys don't have to be on a phone or in a particular app.)
A push token usually means you're utilizing a service such as Okta, RSA, Symantec VIP, etc. whereas RFC TOTP can just be managed locally and the user can choose a 2FA app of their liking.
> I don't understand why authentication usually requires you to type in some 6-digit number from your phone.
Because it proves that the user logging in is in control of a device that they've linked to the account. When you add an account to whatever app you're using (Google Authenticator, Authy, etc.) what it's actually doing is receiving a cryptographic key that it uses to generate the 6 digit code based on the current time. Without that key, the proper 6 digit code can't be generated.
I think the procedure I described also can do this, but the 6-digit code is sent in the background. I don't see why a human has to physically write out 6 digits from phone to computer, instead of it just happening automatically.
I main difference here is usability. The current process is going into an app, finding+choosing the website from a list, tapping that website, manually copying from one screen to another, checking that you copied the digits correctly, then confirming. This is stressful and takes about a minute. A process where you just confirm a dialog, or use your fingerprint takes 2 seconds, and doesn't require the mental effort of memorizing and writing out 6 digits. If the people working on security can't see the enormous difference between the two workflows, then this is hopeless.
It's the same issue that plagues the security-minded people who think regular users will go around copying and storing each others' PGP keys.
The problem, IMO, is the lack of standardization. Okta has its own implementation, Google has its own implementation, etc. TOTPs in stark contrast are pretty universal and not that much harder to deal with, provided you have some way to backup and recover your TOTP keys (this is Authy's selling point, for example).
Does anyone know why there has never been any breakthroughs in air conditioning for 50 years? Windows air conditioners have been incredibly heavy, loud, expensive, and resource-intensive for so long. Even a small room needs one that is back-breaking to install. And pretty much everyone in the world (except those with central air) needs a couple of air conditioners now.
Sure the "efficiency" is improving but it's mainly tricks for turning it on/off at better times. I know there are some U-shaped ones now, but it's just a slightly different styling.
Edit: two commenters pointed out examples of air conditioners which are 77 lbs and 56 lbs. As a comparison, the OSHA recommended lifting weight is 50 lbs. I would love to see someone apply Apple's obsession with thinner, lighter, "revolutionary new design" to ACs.
Check out the inverter type ones such as this one [1] It isn't light but it is quiet and adjusts the amount of power it uses depending on cooling needs much better than a typical window unit making it more efficient.
The Midea U window AC units are a really good product. I am easily cooling a roughy 1,200 square feet space with only one of the 12k BTU units and a few ceiling fans, and it typically gets into the 90’s F here in the summer with significant humidity.
No affiliation to Midea just a satisfied customer.
I agree. The U shape is a gimmick, but a good one. It helps it be quieter inside, but even outside they are quite quiet. I have whole house AC, but I like the windows open, I like being hot. Just not when I’m sleeping. Basically only downside is a truly terrible app that is the only way to access just a few features.
Terrible doesn't begin to describe that app. Honestly what does the turbo button in the app even do?
I have one in a room on the far end of the house that the main AC can't reach, it helps reduce power usage since I can keep the rest of the house warmer.
Window units really only exist at all because of buildings that can't accommodate better designs for either practical or legal reasons. There's just no amount of innovation that can make it so that having the intake and the outtake right next to each other without a nearly perfectly sealed box on one side (ie. a fridge or a freezer) is gonna be anything but a big ugly noisy energy gobbler.
If you can't have central, you should have mini-split, and that's where all your problems get solved. If you can't get mini-split because your landlord won't let you drill conduit to outside then you're just kinda stuck and the laws of thermodynamics are your enemy, not a lack of innovation.
Idk this "toshiba" AC has a built in heat pump and operates at super quiet levels.
Would I call it a "breakthrough", likely not. But it is a meaningful improvement over an AC released decades ago.
Mini splits are widely used and have become dramatically more economical and popular over the last decade or so. They are much quieter and more efficient than window units.
Some areas (cough nyc cough) may need some regulatory breakthroughs but the technology is there.
"Lisa, in this house we obey the laws of thermodynamics!"
It's physics and thermodynamics. It's basically the same as with any heat engine, internal combustion engines included.
There is a certain maximum theoretical efficiency that is not 100%. When we build real machines (not theoretical ones) there are real world losses like heat loss, fluid flow friction, moving part friction, electrical inefficiencies, etc. Those real world losses van be gradually worked on over time, improved incrementally to yield small gains in efficiency. But never large ones, and never more than the theoretical max efficiency, which is not 100%.
It's like hybrid cars (not plug in hybrids, but just gas powered hybrids), they've doubled or trippled the mileage compared to a comparable regular car, but they will always need gas, they will never be 100% efficient.
Same with this. There will always be some fundamental electrical losses in the copper in the motor, air gap losses in the motor, friction in the bearings and fluid, heat losses to the environment, etc. It's the cost of doing the work. There is no free lunch, so we can only incrementally improve the little losses over time.
My understanding is that heat pumps can be over 100% efficient because they're actually moving heat from A to B where one side is the outside environment. It doesn't violate thermodynamics if you view the Earth as a closed system. The heat pump itself is not a closed system.
Thanks for highlighting this because it's a common misconception.
"The coefficient of performance or COP (sometimes CP or CoP) of a heat pump, refrigerator or air conditioning system is a ratio of useful heating or cooling provided to work (energy) required.[1][2] Higher COPs equate to higher efficiency, lower energy (power) consumption and thus lower operating costs. The COP usually exceeds 1, especially in heat pumps, because, instead of just converting work to heat (which, if 100% efficient, would be a COP of 1), it pumps additional heat from a heat source to where the heat is required. Most air conditioners have a COP of 2.3 to 3.5. Less work is required to move heat than for conversion into heat, and because of this, heat pumps, air conditioners and refrigeration systems can have a coefficient of performance greater than one. However, this does not mean that they are more than 100% efficient, in other words, no heat engine can have a thermal efficiency of 100% or greater. For complete systems, COP calculations should include energy consumption of all power consuming auxiliaries. The COP is highly dependent on operating conditions, especially absolute temperature and relative temperature between sink and system, and is often graphed or averaged against expected conditions."
In short, a heat pump is more efficient when compared to using the energy to directly generate heat because it's more efficient to move heat than generate it.
That means you need somewhere to move the heat to, and the thermoynamics of heat capacity are not forgiving if you are trying to make something lightweight. You need atoms and lots of entropic states to store heat :)
Thermodynamics are harsh mistress... Add that to limitations on what can be used as refrigerants. The reality that these systems need to operate with rather long duty cycles for decade+ at minimum. And the reality is that there isn't much magic in how they operate. Compression and expansion of gas.
Computers are actually a very special case. They don't really do any physical work in sense other stuff does, thus miniaturization gives lot of gains there. I have long said that small drones are answer to flying cars. We have them and they are small, but lifting people is hard work.
AFAIK the physics of heat pumps is considered to have been fully figured out for ages and all that's left is the engineering. Maybe it wasn't considered a "sexy" enough topic to nerd out over and hyper-optimize?
Edit: it might also be an issue of diminishing returns of better efficiency compared to how difficult it is to produce and maintain a better unit. Thermodynamics can be a pain like that.
Patents, intellectual property, etc. It's why every appliance is trash nowadays. Big corps are IP holders, and there's only so many ways to engineer certain actions. Regardless even if you try to startup a company you'll be pushed out by the control big corps have over manufacturing.
We need to start nullifying IP if we ever hope to see innovation.
Probably not this, most IP can be worked around, and especially in the area of AC operations and thermodynamics, that hasn’t changed in almost a century.
We got a U-shaped one for a big open attic space and I'm a fan of it. It cost more and was a little bit more drama to install (came with a big support bracket thing), but it's very effective and quiet. We meant it as a stepping stone to eventually putting a mini-split setup on that side of the house, but it might end up just being the long-term solution.
EDIT: Oh lol, the unit we got was actually one of those Midea ones linked in a sibling comment.
As I mentioned elsewhere: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31791936
there is a company that claims to use thermoacoustics for general heat-pump duty. I believe they are targeting European style hydronic heating. Aiming to be efficient whilst still producing the 80c water that many older hydronic systems here in Europe still require.
Interestingly, they aren't that loud because any sound lost is energy lost, so they try very hard to 'keep it quiet'.
Talk about moving the goalposts. You asked, people answered. The revolution is that you can now buy an 8000 BTU unit that weighs little, costs almost nothing, and can be installed anywhere in a few minutes.
> And pretty much everyone in the world (except those with central air) needs a couple of air conditioners now.
Absolutely not. Where I live we had 34°Ctoday but I would still never buy an A/C unit, which will ruin your health (heat/cold shock, bad air moisture levels, ...), waste immense amounts of energy and makes leaving the house a pain as the rest of the world becomes uncomfortable. Most of my friends here earn very well but I can't think of anyone that would see a reason to buy one. Live with the temperature and adjust - like the famous Iberian or Mexican siesta, where you simply accept that midday are low energy hours.
But even beyond this, the reason for A/C use is just bad architecture and city design. More trees in the streets can lower the temperature in the street itself and nearby residences easily by 1-2 degree. Less absorbing surfaces (asphalt, stone sidewalks, ...) make another difference.
And as regards the houses, there are plenty of ways for passive and energy efficient buildings that keep cool. In the middle east they have built self-cooling houses for centuries.
And in all this, even if you are stuck with bad streets and architecture, you can simply adapt, use efficient ways to keep cool (a fan can work wonders) and drink warm rather than iced drinks and your circulatory system will thank you as you don't switch regularly get shocked with 10-15° differences and you will sweat much less.
I'd been using a window unit for the bedroom but got sick of taking it in an out and decided to see how long I could manage without it. Now I prefer no air conditioning because of the reasons you state above - it feels much more comfortable being outside on hot days. I keep the windows and doors closed during the heat of the day then open them up when it's cooler outside than it is inside.
Let me guess, where you leave there are "serious" blinds outside the windows that help keeping sunshine out. I wonder when Central Europe will start installing them.
> Note that the definition of "international student" excludes those with permanent visas. The number of foreign born PhD students is therefore significantly higher than 64%. Don't know if there are any stats for citizen/non-citizen share of PhDs though.
Why are you interested in the percentage of foreign born PhD students? You realize that a lot of Americans are "foreign born". It seems like an archaic way of thinking about things.
"International student" should indeed exclude those who are permanent residents. Which means they have been living here permanently before becoming a student, likely grew up in America, or just waiting for the citizenship, etc. "International student" means someone who moved here to study.
I'm assuming good intentions, but want to make sure we're not intentionally trying to gatekeep what it means to be an American.
Because the statement that was challenged was "I think Western academia is mostly reliant on immigration" and almost all people not born in the US but living in the US are immigrants.
I didn't downvote you but your tone is overly dramatic for some simple heuristics. Specifically you're just repeating two things over and over. Here's some simple answers:
1) you're right that ASCII was English only, but now utf-8 is the defacto standard, backwards compatible with ASCII, and good for every language. Use that, no BOM needed and the BOM is discouraged by the standard anyway.
2) dates can be YYYY-MM-DD as per the ISO standard. Also they're sortable as a string too as a nice side effect.
"From what I understand (second-hand info), personality not productivity drove this decision. He ran an unhappy lab, and he was arrogant even for MIT. I can definitely see that in the way he presents himself, so I can give credence to that explanation. Don’t know personally so he could be a great guy and I’m wrong, but there are valid reasons someone can be denied tenure even with research that goes above and beyond, and it isn’t hard to imagine that being the case here."
It does sound plausible, but I wouldn't put too much weight on such Reddit chatter, nor spread such gossiping rumors. That level of indirection ("reddit guy who knows a friend but isn't sure") is worse than "my aunt's neighbor's nephew". Imagine somebody did this about you, that'd suck.
