Edit: I see 'bing', so maybe not. Also, if anyone related to the project is looking, the elevation model is extremely noisy and likely broken, so wrapping the imagery around DEM might need to uhh be looked at.

Interesting note on the elevation model, if you've got a second, can you open an issue on the github site with a screenshot of what you are seeing?

Somerville's prices are disgusting, as is most of the area--I just moved to Malden, where I've got a really nice 2BR that isn't in a falling-apart house for about two-thirds of what I'd have paid in Somerville or Cambridge. And I'm actually a touch closer to downtown Boston for when I want to go out...I thought I'd be sacrificing something I cared about to move here, but nope.

But the tone of the article is ridiculous. For any reasonable definition of "it works", the system doesn't work yet.

No one's saying it's a great job. But the point for many of these people is that it's a job. Which they won't easily be able to find a replacement for.

This. x1000. I wish there were more places I could put my four goddamn years of CS knowledge to use. I joke with business people in our team how they could steal my job after maybe 2 weeks of programming bootcamp.

TBH, any 9th grader with reasonable determination can do what I do on everyday basis, while the advanced/cool stuff that I really enjoyed/struggled with in college slowly fades from my brain.

I wish there were a way to somehow reconcile these. I want to make money, yes, but I want to do cool stuff too. I'd be willing to take a not insignificant paycut to work on cool stuff. Unfortunately, it appears that places with more 'interesting' stuff to work on are also those that end up paying more. Just like how colleges that are more expensive to get into are also those that will [more likely] have more money to throw your way.

What gives, people of HN?

1) Read papers about this stuff, attend conferences about this stuff, and try to implement some of it yourself. For this particular set of techniques, SIGGRAPH is a good conference to attend and their proceedings are full of good papers to read.

2) Make a project that uses some of these techniques on your own. It can be open source, or it can be an app you sell on your favorite app store, or whatever. It doesn't really matter.

3) Look for a new job that uses some of this stuff. You don't have to jump right into working at Facebook or Google. There are smaller companies out there that do this type of stuff.

My story is that I was working for a company that sold large database services to large retailers. It paid pretty well, but was boring as hell. After working for a few years and saving up, I looked for a job doing the stuff I was interested in. I found one. It didn't work out and I quit after 4 months. But the next one! The next one worked out! It was a bunch of image processing stuff. They were a small company and needed someone with some graphics experience. I had never shipped anything graphics related, but I had written a bunch of graphics tools for fun for myself to learn how it all worked. It was enough to get the job. My pay probably stayed the same for 2 years as I went from job to job, but my happiness increased. After 3 or 4 years at the company, I left and started my own company doing graphics work. I did that for about 5 years and eventually decided to go work for one of the big companies that's doing cool stuff with this.

You can do this. It just takes time and effort.

For instance, let's say we could automate the process / approval system for management sign-offs for a software development using a blockchain scheme.

Great! You or I could come up with something using open source software and probably have a fun couple of days. In reality, you'd have to train a whole bunch of people and someone will want to integrate with the old system, someone will want to be able to just print and sign and send through the interoffice mail, and then good luck finding affordable technical help because the recruiters won't know how to hire for it, and someone who hasn't done it will want a premium.

Anyway, probably a bad example but creativity is rather punished a lot of time.

I don't understand. How is this unfortunate?

Not just home side projects, either. Depending on what you can squeeze in, you should take opportunities to hack together little side things at work. You should do this for your own sanity.

Many times at work the awesome things come from somebody's (secret) side project, which turns out to benefit everybody.

If you do this, you will gradually fill up your resume with cool things that were a result of your own initiative.

Also: side projects are a source of startups.

For reference, here's the highly amusing and interesting paper he's written on this:

"NP-complete Problems and Physical Reality" http://www.scottaaronson.com/papers/npcomplete.pdf

Abstract:

"Can NP-complete problems be solved efficiently in the physical universe? I survey proposals including soap bubbles, protein folding, quantum computing, quantum advice, quantum adiabatic algorithms, quantum-mechanical nonlinearities, hidden variables, relativistic time dilation, analog computing, Malament-Hogarth spacetimes, quantum gravity, closed timelike curves, and “anthropic computing.” The section on soap bubbles even includes some “experimental” results. While I do not believe that any of the proposals will let us solve NP-complete problems efficiently, I argue that by studying them, we can learn something not only about computation but also about physics."

Spoiler: the number of photons required scales up so quickly that the phenomenon cannot be observed for sufficiently high N.

If there's a gathering of less than 20 people from my country, I love everyone. 20-50 and I start hyperventilating. More than 50, and I make and execute elaborate plans to get out at any costs.

How do I, as a 27 year-old Grad student invite women for coffee without them feeling it might be a 'trick-date', or having them not get comfortable?

Really, I want it to be a date _less_ than you do, but how do I convince you that?

To quote Always Sunny, it's all about the implication. I start with a question unrelated to the coffee "Jane, how are things going at Salesforce? I've been considering a move lately, mind if I get you a coffee and pick your brain a bit?" You can initialize the convo at that point and then either fluidly move the conversation elsewhere if desired, or, you know, not. Anyway, that's how I do it: transparent objective.

The converse is also true though, there's a much greater risk for not taking the leap given a). the amount invested (lack of it) so far and b). the real risk of them saying no (I mean if they say no, then what?). What if this person is the key that unlocks the meaning of life for me and I don't take this leap? Admittedly they're probably not but weighing these risks against each other, it would appear more foolish not to ask than to ask. If you don't ask, or you ask and they say no, you're exactly at the same position you are now (except your ego is a little bruised, but that'll recover). If you don't ask, you'll spare your ego potential embarrassment but you'll always be stuck where you are.

Please don't do this. Make your intentions very clear. "I find the fact that you love old botanic illustrations and go to flea markets every weekend to find them sexy about you." (where X is not her appearance, of course). "I'd like to buy you a coffee and continue this conversation."

If there is one thing my women friends may agree on, it is the ambiguousness of a meeting, particularly if they are interested in the person. Changing gender roles aside, the man has to take the lead. There must be polarity in the relationship from the beginning, otherwise it won't even start. This is the classic "friend zone", in which the window of opportunity exponentially fades away and trying to make the relationship romantic will burn the friendship.

Yes, the woman chooses if she wants to accept. Make it easier for her to say not. If she says yes to an ambiguous thing, she has to consider the possibilities. So, in fact, it may be easier for her to say no or give an indefinite "maybe" which is in fact a no.

One of my women friends who works in tech was lamenting recently about how guys would invite her to coffee wanting to learn more about her research. And then it would become clear that they just wanted an excuse to ask her out for coffee (a date). It is awkward for both sides. Consider this - if one of these coffees becomes a date or more, she fears word will get around that, yes, she will "date" people in her tech community.

Getting coffee with coworkers of different genders is such a completely benign and routine activity.

Keep calm and friendly when asking. Make sure the stakes are low for you.

Try ice cream.

Worrying about the outcome of this date/trick date/non-date probably isn't going to change the outcome of your conversation - it's probably not going to change her answer to your invitation. All it's going to do is worry you into not inviting her; and then what?

If she thinks you're an interesting person, she'll come for coffee, if she doesn't think you're an interesting person, she's probably not going to come for coffee unless you're more interesting than whatever else she's got going on right now... like studying for that exam she's procrastinating about not studying for... and really, do you want to be the guy (or girl) she has coffee with only because you're a distraction from her current reality or would you rather be the cause of the distraction?

The key isn't to appear interesting, it's to be interested and interesting. Start with the small talk, let her get onto a topic that fascinates her. Listen! Become invested in the conversation, find something you find fascinating about it. Offer insights you may have, walk, talk, get coffee and let life unfold.

... and if you don't mean it to be a date, why worry about it anyway? The outcome of whether or not she goes for coffee with you doesn't even make a difference. You may as well just say "hey, can we walk and talk? I'm not really finished with this conversation, but I need a coffee, perhaps we can walk in that direction" or if you're already walking perhaps "Hey, do you mind if we just stop in here so I can grab a coffee?" and then when you're paying say "hey, can I get you anything while we're here?"

The key is to be invested in the conversation. When you're invested in the conversation - not just your part of the conversation, but theirs too, people want to be around you. Being engaging is a key ingredient of that thing that everyone calls charisma. People want to talk to you because you make them feel important, you make them feel like things matter (not only to you, but to them as well), but mostly you make them feel; and I can tell you this:

A few days after, people may not even remember what you talked about, perhaps not even what you looked like, but they will always remember how you made them feel.

I feel like someone important may have said this before, perhaps Maya Angelou. Though I've held to this for years, so I like to believe she ripped me off (I'm deluded, what can I say? :D)

Often then you find that life will just unfold as you let it; and if you do find yourself in a position where you feel you have to make a leap, perhaps because you want it to become a date, or whatever, to rip a quote right out of a movie (We bought a zoo):

"You know, sometimes all you need is twenty seconds of insane courage. Just literally twenty seconds of just embarrassing bravery. And I promise you, something great will come of it."

Conversely - if you don't, where are you? You'll spend your life kicking yourself and asking "what if I had?"

You might as well tell a blind man the key is to use his retina.

Some of us find success at this sort of interpersonal interaction to be well-nigh impossible.

If you don't project what you're interested in, how are you ever going to know if they're interested in it? I've generally found that even the most arcane things I find fascination with, that you'd probably think people would think are boring can spawn the most intriguing conversations. If you project that fascination, that sense of wonder and awe, the thing, the grain of the idea that most excites you about it, when you get excited about it, people (in my experience) tend to come along for the ride. Before you know it, 15 minutes is 4 hours and all that stuff you wanted to get done this evening is gonna have to wait until tomorrow.

Not a woman, but I suspect this is true & a good point. Coffee is ambiguous, and it seems unlikely you'd be turned down because I would probably enjoy hanging out with you but this MIGHT be a date so NO.

She (or he) might wonder "is this meant to be a date?", but you can concretely answer that question just in your behavior. The way you act will telegraph your intentions. Stammer a compliment about her/his eyes, it's a date. Wave them over to your table when they walk in, say hi, don't even get up, it's just friends.

If there is true information that is being reported only by certain sources, it is perhaps worth thinking about why. See this article by Freddy Deboer on that topic:

http://fredrikdeboer.com/2016/07/20/whos-in-and-whos-out-tha...

"People who gleefully trashed Justine Sacco complain about pile-ons; people who say doxing is wrong get others fired from their real-life jobs. There are no principles; there’s only who you’re cool with and who you aren’t."