ybot

I don't actually think the celebrities are contributing purely out of an altruistic desire to 'give back'. I think that's _great_ marketing by Masterclass, but the primary thing celebrities get by associating themselves with Masterclass is helping continue to build their own brand. Masterclass has positioned its self as "the best in the world teaching their craft", so by agreeing to be on their platform a celebrity is getting publicity that reinforces the idea that they're the best in the world at that thing, and that they're still socially/culturally relevant.

A lot of these restaurants _do_ have a PC + printer in a back room or office somewhere. If the restaurant is owned by a group (or small chain), that setup may only exist at one location.

They can (and do!) put the fax machine right by the kitchen.

The short answer is 'yes' — fax machines are actually a pretty great solution to this problem. If you think about it, there isn't really that much overhead for having a fax line and a $40 fax machine vs running a full computer + printer combo, set up is trivial, faxes have a very well-understood track record, and the 'sender' gets direct feedback on whether or not the physical document was successfully delivered.

If there's a software gap here, it's being filled as features in modern Point Of Sale systems. That space is really crowded right now (Revel, Clover, Toast, 'more modern' offerings from legacy providers like Micros and NCR). There may be an opportunity to provide a more niche offering rather than a comprehensive solution like those, but the space is far from empty.

As a former Bloomberg intern, you're right – you try very hard to make sure interns are working on real projects that are deliverable over the course of the summer. That said, the projects are often completely isolated from what will have real impact on users on a day to day basis. This isn't a problem, per se, but I've had other internships where the work I was doing over the summer was virtually indistinguishable from that of a new full-time employee. I imagine this was largely because it was a much smaller company with a much smaller product.

I don't mean this as a criticism – Bloomberg tries very hard to make sure interns have a great experience and usually succeeds. But there is a difference and I, personally, preferred the other experience.

You were really stretching on some of these. Sure, there will be software to assist any of these professions but that doesn't mean all the people in the profession should become programmers. You're conflating the need of an individual professional to learn to program with the ability of software to impact the industry that individual works in.

Firefighters, for example. Modeling & predicting fire sounds great, but should that be the job of a firefighter or a programmer/statistician who works for the fire department?

That said, I think you're right to call out the parent – many of these jobs should require programming or already do. Many artists & musicians rely heavily on an ability to write software. The group of professions producing food & drink will benefit from automation, but only so much as the professionals using those automation tools understand and can control them.

Programming ability is rapidly moving into all kinds of areas, but to assume that it must end up in every area seems almost as narrow minded as ignoring the impact it's currently having.

Is there something about this page that I'm missing? Why is this on the front page of HN?

There are plenty of other websites to post interesting internet miscellany, but as far as I can tell, this post contributes almost nothing of value to the community.

Perhaps I'm fighting a losing battle to even bother bringing this up, but this is exactly the kind of content I don't want to see on HN.

Whoops, so I did. Fixed.