> I'd love to work for Nasa, but I live in Portland, OR. Does this geo basically disqualify me from ever joining Nasa
Yes. And it always did since the 1950s unless you were interested in relocating.
Ffs aerospace engineering cannot be done remotely, and that too in a city with a nonexistent aerospace industry.
> Does that mean there are legitimately no other jobs open for tech-related folks? What is the point of the fancy landing page (that provides zero actual info) if that's the case? No Data Science or developer openings for tech folk that don't have Abet certified engineering degrees
Not all industries need SWEs who are CRUD monkeys. And your assumption deeply underestimates how most Aerospace and Mechanical Engineers know how to develop at a CS level now as well - most MechE and Aerospace undergrad programs now see their students double major or minor in CompE or CS.
Thanks. I was dual questioning people that likely knew the answer and lamenting my life's decisions.
I have no doubt that modern engineering students have CS know-how. It's almost a requirement for the modern world. But I was curious if there were roles for things like simulation, embedded software, etc. or even general scientists that may not fall under traditional engineering. This was mainly conditional on the website's approach to vaguity.
Simulation is largely what traditional engineers do - I mean how many classes have you taken on finite element methods, discretizing PDEs, etc.? It's not web dev.
Fair. I think this is about the extent of my training, which was as an Applied Mathematics and Econ undergrad about 15 years ago: Partial differential equations : an introduction / Walter A. Strauss
> https://libcat.canterbury.ac.nz/Record/1093497/TOC
Maybe my idea of NASA was too encompassing. I figured that, apart from the engineering work, general sim would require optimizations and productionalization similar to how we have AI Engineers focused on the practical implementation of ML systems apart from the core model R&D.
I got a bit hooked on Econ for awhile which held my attention through an MS, which is when I learned about computers and then applied that into DS and development.
Most of my simulation experience is in stochastic systems and modern digital twins where agents sometimes have asymmetric information. I can see how I'm of no practical use to NASA now, but it still stings. What a bummer existing and not doing anything cool with life. A warning to youth!
Not in undergrad (a single upper division class), but yes in grad school. I did a lot of applied mathematics in undergrad and only took the min required upper division probability/stats class. I didn't find it interesting at the time. But when I got to Econ grad school there was a massive focus on econometrics, and I learned it from first principals.
For languages: SAS in undergrad econ/Matlab for math classes, STATA primarily in grad school, and I pivoted to R and then python when I hit industry.
I think you are underestimating your ability to contribute and also putting NASA on too much of a pedestal.
I'd argue your background is extremely valuable, but not easily traversible to NASA at the moment.
If you are deeply interested in the space, working with the newer startups in geospatial/hyperspectral imaging (be it climate or defense usecases) or CV space.
In a lot of cases, NASA is basically just acting as a coordinator between multiple vendors who are doing "the cool stuff" with less bureaucratic minutiae and stress from what's going on in DC.
Lots of interesting players in the ClimateTech and DefenseTech space who would like your background, and indirectly or directly they all work with NASA anyhow.
Thanks. I did find a space jobs site last week, and some jobs looked like they aligned closely. That's probably why I was surprised the nasa reqs weren't as broad.
I wasn't really looking for a change; I have 1 and 3 year olds and am fully remote, and the flexibility with sicknesses is really a benefit. I think it was mostly a shock to my system that I may never do anything "cool" with my life.
That's largely a Mechanical Engineering, Applied Math, and Applied Physics subfield now, not computer science. Most CS majors don't even know what an IVP is, let alone PDEs, nonlinear simulation, etc.
Most CS programs no longer require numerical methods and analysis classes which are critical for this as well as other adjacent subfields like AI/ML theory.
> embedded software
That's a computer engineering and MechE subfield now. Most CS programs don't require OS classes anymore let alone embedded programming.
> even general scientists that may not fall under traditional engineering
The job posting on USAJobs is clear. And most people who are serious about working in the space also know how federal hiring works.
Aerospace isn't a sacred discipline either, and education in CS has very little to do with writing practical software or conducting business.
I think you're about to find out in the next few years how much work it takes to develop a moon base and that dismissing those people as "monkeys" is absurd.
The Puebloan culture in the southwest during that time was basically a full fledged civilization. It's insane how underresearched such a culture is despite having built megastructures like within the Grand Chaco Canyon
Nope. Which is what makes it so difficult. Additionally, adjacent nations like the Navajo, Apache, and others are very tight lipped about their extremely robust ancestral and oral history because of bad experiences along with taboos.
It felt like a mix of rightful wariness due to untrustworthy opportunistic anthropologists from the 19th and 20th century along with taboos that developed due to some sort of collapse.
On the Polymarket homepage right now, one of the featured markets is whether or not Bitcoin will be up or down over the next 5 minutes. It's hard to justify that as anything more than illegal gambling.
I find prediction markets to be interesting on two fronts:
1) They like a really good way to determine the probability of something happening, which is interesting for events like elections
2) It provides an avenue for smart bettors to take advantage and sharpen their skill, whereas they get severely limited or banned from traditional sports books
However, it seems like all incentive structures for the markets and consumer behavior will steer these things to degenerate gambling.
Polymarket is not CFTC regulated, it's considered illegal in the US. CFTC does not allow betting on securities prices. Cryptocurrency is a bit of a gray area because it's not considered a registered security.
N.B. it becomes a bit frustrating to talk about financial and regulatory things on this site because the level of knowledge is generally "I read some articles on social media about markets" level.
> Cryptocurrency is a bit of a gray area because it's not considered a registered security
Additionally, the SEC and CFTC guidance on what digital asset can be treated as a security and what can be treated as a commodity was only released a couple weeks ago [0].
Stuff is changing rapidly so it's best to keep an experienced regulatory lawyer on retainer.
> N.B. it becomes a bit frustrating to talk about financial and regulatory things on this site because the level of knowledge is generally "I read some articles on social media about markets" level.
> Their defense is that they are a gamified futures contracts and hence should fall under CFTC regulation.
That might be the defense. They are inherently designed to leverage insider trading though. I made a top level comment with links/resources that argues why.
In the world that we are in today, we should concentrate on what are the tactical wins we can take advantage of to reduce harm.
This comes down to adding basic guardrails on the generation of sexual material on foundation models (eg. no sexual imagery can be created without age verification) as well as updating revenge porn and CP laws to remediate the now pertinent loophole around digitally generated imagery.
Also, this is a global issue. Similar incidents have happened in South Korea, India, Thailand, Japan, etc.
Spilt milk? I don't think it is all lost. I think the solution is to start reverting it from TODAY.
Educating children has always been tough, but it used to be the case that for a parent to fight against the other influences their kids had growing up meant to be against a few friends. And making sure that their kids resonated with the parents values instead of the "bad influences" ones used to be a full time job.
It would have been UNTHINKABLE for me and my peers to do some of the shit teenagers find acceptable today to another kid. And that was thanks to the values our parents gave us. We were not special. We were the average kid being raised 30 years ago.
In the age of social media, a modern parent is up against hundreds of video hours of the Andrew Tates of the world, the manosphere, the crypto grifters, the gym bros, the makeup divas, the get rich quick scams, etc... All examples of a society compensating rubbish ideas. Hundreds of thousands of examples of people doing the wrong things, and staying on top and being granted lambos, and money and fame.
If you are a parent (not you personally, generic you) your job us to scream louder than all that influence. To spend every single minute, every single ounce of energy telling your kids that all that shit is not ok.
That doing the wrong thing is not ok even if it nets positive to you. And lead by example.
That independently of your political views, the recent behaviour of elected officials is not acceptable. That those influencers are in the wrong. That they are not examples to follow. You need to stay on top of all that. You need to make them clear that all that people they are constantly exposed to are despicable human beings and that this behaviour at scale would be our global doom.
If they get all that from 4 hours of instagram and facebook a day, 30 minutes of daily parenting is not going to cut it. You need to be the biggest influence.
And if you are not doing that, sorry, you are a shitty parent, and I blame you for the current state of our younger generations' principles. If you are too busy with your life to scream louder than the rest of the influences, you should have thought twice what kind of resources (time in this case) you had before having a kid.
This is an education problem. And I think we are beyond tactical wins to reduce harm. Either we start taking responsibility collectively as a society, or this cannot be fixed with laws, and rules, and age checking OSs and porn ID checks.
In a society where your average fellow citizen is a Karen, or a gym bro, or political or religious fanatic that cannot name 3 continents, then it follows that their kids are going to have the same level of literacy, critical thinking, empathy and ideas.
> should count as distribution of CP and be punished like it is
It should be treated as CP and revenge porn, but the issue is legislation surrounding these in a number of cases doesn't treat digitally altered images as within scope of CP or revenge porn.
Additionally, platforms like Grok are taking advantage of this ambiguity by arguing that they do not need to add guardrails.
Adding basic guardrails like not generating a sexualized image without identity verification or preemptively blocking questionable prompts would dramatically reduce this problem.
> Most people are not technical in nature and cannot tell the difference between deepfakes and real photos and videos
They don't need to. The point is that eventually, everyone will just assume it's a fake, exactly because you can't tell, and fakes are easier to produce and thus more common than real leaked nude photos and videos. At that point, a deepfake shouldn't be more socially damaging than a rumor.
After social media became common it was also hypothesized that embarrassing stories dug up from somebody’s last would not be harmful anymore but that future has never materialized.
Human society existed, survived, and improved before photographic or video evidence was a thing. I don't see how these becoming useless would be an unsurmountable blow.
> Usually threads like this fill up with comments about how "think of the children" is always a lie used to justify something draconian
It also highlights HN's demographics. What younger women feel is problematic is viewed as trifling by a number of younger or middle aged men on HN (especially those without kids).
If you think the sentiments of comments in one thread (not even specified which) highlights the general HN demographics, I think saying that reveals more about you than HN.
No, it shows that people on Hacker News understand two important things:
1: Unintended consequences
2: That power-hungry people latch on to issues like this to further political agendas that have severe negative consequences; mostly by using "think of the children" to stifle important debate and discussion of unintended consequences.
So since there are other consequences, nothing should be done?
I think sexually demeaning children is a really big issue, and pretty well-defined and wide spread. We may not need to ban things, but not doing anything is a cop-out.
When you debate like that, (specifically twisting words like you did,) you leave yourself open to be a victim of power-hungry people, and trade one problem for another potentially worse problem.
It depends on what the other consequences are, obviously.
I can fix the problem right now. We just throw all the children into the orphan grinder. Can't sexualize ground meat. Is that what you want? Wooooww, so you're telling me you want to grind up children?? That's really messed up dude.
It's super easy to twist any argument against this stuff to being "against children", which is extremely annoying and unproductive. That's why you, and others, get a lot of pushback - you're annoying and dishonest.
Nobody here, and I do mean nobody, wants children to be hurt. That includes me and you.
If you want to fix these issues, you have to answer three questions head-on:
1. What is the actionable, real solution?
2. Will it work?
3. How well will it work?
"Durrr sexually demeaning children bad" doesn't answer any of those. We all know sexually demeaning children is bad.
Now tell me if, I don't know, banning the Internet or some shit will work
Yes. And it always did since the 1950s unless you were interested in relocating.
Ffs aerospace engineering cannot be done remotely, and that too in a city with a nonexistent aerospace industry.
> Does that mean there are legitimately no other jobs open for tech-related folks? What is the point of the fancy landing page (that provides zero actual info) if that's the case? No Data Science or developer openings for tech folk that don't have Abet certified engineering degrees
Not all industries need SWEs who are CRUD monkeys. And your assumption deeply underestimates how most Aerospace and Mechanical Engineers know how to develop at a CS level now as well - most MechE and Aerospace undergrad programs now see their students double major or minor in CompE or CS.
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