5 ms·

NASA holds a contest for programmers who can improve access to its data archives

59 points by nsns 15y ago

roel_v 15y ago
Whatever happened to just paying people for the work they do? The 10k prize money isn't even enough to cover costs of thinking up and speccing an application, let alone actually develop it.
- ANH 15y ago
  Exactly. I got excited about this when I heard about it a few months back because I was in the middle of developing something that uses data from the PDS, but 1) the prize money was tiny compared to the effort and 2) TopCoder claims ownership of all submissions. As I read it, that means you give up all rights to the work. Not acceptable. I emailed some folks at NASA about it, but got no response.
- fletchowns 15y ago
  Maybe not enough for you, but to some high school/college kid it's a good chunk of money. Not to mention that having this project on your resume (whether or not you win) is definitely not a bad thing. Being able to have an influence over how NASA presents all of it's data from the last 30 years to the public is probably enough incentive by itself for some.
  - jlarocco 15y ago
    No, I think if a high school/college kid is smart enough to solve this, they're smart enough to make more than $10k. If anything, they're just too naive to realize it.
    - bgilroy26 15y ago
      There are folks out there that really love NASA. Other organizations might not be able to pull something like his off, but if NASA can, they aren't fleecing everybody, they're just taking advantage of their market position amongst computer enthusiasts as the recognized leader in space research.
- loverobots 15y ago
  There is a difference between a job and a challenge. For a second, just imagine the press you'd get if NASA chose you as a winner.
  - gliese1337 15y ago
    Given how much popular press NASA gets, probably not a whole lot.
- developer9 15y ago
  The problem NASA, quasi-govermental entities like the USPS, and our government in-general seem to have is that they are overly bureaucratic and political, and solutions they produce are not nearly of the same caliber as their business-driven cousins. So it seems that we should welcome any attempt to open up things for the purpose of making them better. But, the sad fact is that open-source projects I've seen that aren't driven by business need do poorly. What ends up happening is that these open-source projects end up being run by people that do get paid for what they do, because the work needs to be done in one way or another, and many people can't afford to work for free. In the end, this hiring of people outside of the fold to manage an open-source project which in turn has its own management overhead to deal with uninitiated developers and project managers wasting their time can cause a lot more time and money spent that does not benefit anyone except the contractors doing the work. But, I applaud NASA for their efforts and hope they succeed. I love the idea of an open source NASA.
- martingordon 15y ago
  It's amazing how many contests/challenges exist in the tech community given how poorly spec work is looked upon by the design community. I'm not as knowledgable about the design community as I am about the tech community, but it seems to me that the design community rallies against these types of challenges a lot more strongly than the tech community does.
  - jordanb 15y ago
    I think there's a lot less pressure on programmers because demand is so high and supply is limited. If some naive idiot wants to waste his time working on a contest, let him! there's still a surplus of well-paying work to go around.
    - TheCowboy 15y ago
      NASA is facing massive budget cuts. NASA is part of the government, not a for-profit corporation. Assuming NASA actually contributes something positive, when did it become wrong to actually volunteer your time to the pursuit of science or promotion of learning for the public good? I'm really surprised at what seems like a general eye-rolling response when most geeks recognize the value of NASA.
- Bjartr 15y ago
  Not having/being able to justify the money to do it in-house? A great example of this kind of challenge working well is Boston's MBTA live tracking transit data and stop prediction data. They released an API and said "hey app devs, go make apps!" and now there are a variety of apps on several platforms. Some solve different problems than others and had they done one in-house app it is very unlikely it would have satisfied all the use cases that the available apps satisfy.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- mturmon 15y ago
  It's a good question. I suppose from NASA's point of view, there are two factors: one, contests like this get people interested in space data; two, maybe some useful app for regular citizens will come from this. It's like the Netflix challenge (even the winners of the $1M prize were losers if your metric is $/hour) or the DARPA Grand Challenges (which have used a lot of unpaid undergrad and grad student labor). NASA spends a lot of money developing data services for hard-core science users (e.g., for ocean data: http://podaac.jpl.nasa.gov/ http://podaac.jpl.nasa.gov/), so it's not like they're trying to get off scot-free. But it doesn't really spend on services for curious citizens. The existing evaluation process for science data services is not well-suited for judging citizen-facing apps/services. There would be a bunch of science nerds wondering if it would be OK to release uncalibrated data, or if the map projection selected was OK, etc. Earth science data gets in front of citizens more easily because of weather and climate, but planetary data has been under-exposed.
DanBC 15y ago
NASA Tournament Lab on Topcoder (http://community.topcoder.com/ntl/ http://community.topcoder.com/ntl/) Topcoder (http://www.topcoder.com/ http://www.topcoder.com/) Planetary Data Systems Challenge (http://community.topcoder.com/pds-challenge/ http://community.topcoder.com/pds-challenge/) Planetary Data System (http://pds.nasa.gov/ http://pds.nasa.gov/)
ktizo 15y ago
Surely wikileaks is in for a chance at this one. All they need is one disgruntled NASA employee.
Craiggybear 15y ago
Free consultancy. Looks good on the CV I suppose. And, ok, its probably quite fun -- but I was paid double this in 1991 (£10,000) for a week/10 days -- my first consultancy. It wasn't even NASA or a mega-corp. It was documentation on the Victorian Architect, Waterfield, for a small museum.
- creamyhorror 15y ago
  Depending on where you are and what opportunities you know of, it can be a lot easier or harder to make a buck. I don't think the equivalent of 10K pounds for a week or two is so easy to earn everywhere, especially in the more competitive economies of today. Programmers in my country earn wages in line with everyone else, not rockstar salaries. Not sure about consultants but I can't imagine most clients paying a lot (10K) for small projects. The NASA prize is just a sweetener to make it at least worth some kids', undergrads' or unemployed coders' time to make an attempt. At least it'll look good on their CV, as you said, unlike with other silly competitions that give the winning team US$3K, and aren't even organised by entities as prestigious as NASA.
xkcdfanboy 15y ago
For this kind of algorithmic heuristic work, the prize is measly. This takes both genius AND gruntwork, I would do it though just for the prestige of helping the patent offices if it wasn't so much work.

59 points by nsns 15y ago

Whatever happened to just paying people for the work they do? The 10k prize money isn't even enough to cover costs of thinking up and speccing an application, let alone actually develop it.

ANH 15y ago
Exactly. I got excited about this when I heard about it a few months back because I was in the middle of developing something that uses data from the PDS, but 1) the prize money was tiny compared to the effort and 2) TopCoder claims ownership of all submissions. As I read it, that means you give up all rights to the work. Not acceptable. I emailed some folks at NASA about it, but got no response.
fletchowns 15y ago
Maybe not enough for you, but to some high school/college kid it's a good chunk of money. Not to mention that having this project on your resume (whether or not you win) is definitely not a bad thing. Being able to have an influence over how NASA presents all of it's data from the last 30 years to the public is probably enough incentive by itself for some.
- jlarocco 15y ago
  No, I think if a high school/college kid is smart enough to solve this, they're smart enough to make more than $10k. If anything, they're just too naive to realize it.
  - bgilroy26 15y ago
    There are folks out there that really love NASA. Other organizations might not be able to pull something like his off, but if NASA can, they aren't fleecing everybody, they're just taking advantage of their market position amongst computer enthusiasts as the recognized leader in space research.
loverobots 15y ago
There is a difference between a job and a challenge. For a second, just imagine the press you'd get if NASA chose you as a winner.
- gliese1337 15y ago
  Given how much popular press NASA gets, probably not a whole lot.
developer9 15y ago
The problem NASA, quasi-govermental entities like the USPS, and our government in-general seem to have is that they are overly bureaucratic and political, and solutions they produce are not nearly of the same caliber as their business-driven cousins. So it seems that we should welcome any attempt to open up things for the purpose of making them better. But, the sad fact is that open-source projects I've seen that aren't driven by business need do poorly. What ends up happening is that these open-source projects end up being run by people that do get paid for what they do, because the work needs to be done in one way or another, and many people can't afford to work for free. In the end, this hiring of people outside of the fold to manage an open-source project which in turn has its own management overhead to deal with uninitiated developers and project managers wasting their time can cause a lot more time and money spent that does not benefit anyone except the contractors doing the work. But, I applaud NASA for their efforts and hope they succeed. I love the idea of an open source NASA.
martingordon 15y ago
It's amazing how many contests/challenges exist in the tech community given how poorly spec work is looked upon by the design community. I'm not as knowledgable about the design community as I am about the tech community, but it seems to me that the design community rallies against these types of challenges a lot more strongly than the tech community does.
- jordanb 15y ago
  I think there's a lot less pressure on programmers because demand is so high and supply is limited. If some naive idiot wants to waste his time working on a contest, let him! there's still a surplus of well-paying work to go around.
  - TheCowboy 15y ago
    NASA is facing massive budget cuts. NASA is part of the government, not a for-profit corporation. Assuming NASA actually contributes something positive, when did it become wrong to actually volunteer your time to the pursuit of science or promotion of learning for the public good? I'm really surprised at what seems like a general eye-rolling response when most geeks recognize the value of NASA.
Bjartr 15y ago
Not having/being able to justify the money to do it in-house? A great example of this kind of challenge working well is Boston's MBTA live tracking transit data and stop prediction data. They released an API and said "hey app devs, go make apps!" and now there are a variety of apps on several platforms. Some solve different problems than others and had they done one in-house app it is very unlikely it would have satisfied all the use cases that the available apps satisfy.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
mturmon 15y ago
It's a good question. I suppose from NASA's point of view, there are two factors: one, contests like this get people interested in space data; two, maybe some useful app for regular citizens will come from this. It's like the Netflix challenge (even the winners of the $1M prize were losers if your metric is $/hour) or the DARPA Grand Challenges (which have used a lot of unpaid undergrad and grad student labor). NASA spends a lot of money developing data services for hard-core science users (e.g., for ocean data: http://podaac.jpl.nasa.gov/ http://podaac.jpl.nasa.gov/), so it's not like they're trying to get off scot-free. But it doesn't really spend on services for curious citizens. The existing evaluation process for science data services is not well-suited for judging citizen-facing apps/services. There would be a bunch of science nerds wondering if it would be OK to release uncalibrated data, or if the map projection selected was OK, etc. Earth science data gets in front of citizens more easily because of weather and climate, but planetary data has been under-exposed.

DanBC 15y ago

NASA Tournament Lab on Topcoder (http://community.topcoder.com/ntl/ http://community.topcoder.com/ntl/) Topcoder (http://www.topcoder.com/ http://www.topcoder.com/) Planetary Data Systems Challenge (http://community.topcoder.com/pds-challenge/ http://community.topcoder.com/pds-challenge/) Planetary Data System (http://pds.nasa.gov/ http://pds.nasa.gov/)

ktizo 15y ago

Surely wikileaks is in for a chance at this one. All they need is one disgruntled NASA employee.

Craiggybear 15y ago

Free consultancy. Looks good on the CV I suppose. And, ok, its probably quite fun -- but I was paid double this in 1991 (£10,000) for a week/10 days -- my first consultancy. It wasn't even NASA or a mega-corp. It was documentation on the Victorian Architect, Waterfield, for a small museum.

creamyhorror 15y ago
Depending on where you are and what opportunities you know of, it can be a lot easier or harder to make a buck. I don't think the equivalent of 10K pounds for a week or two is so easy to earn everywhere, especially in the more competitive economies of today. Programmers in my country earn wages in line with everyone else, not rockstar salaries. Not sure about consultants but I can't imagine most clients paying a lot (10K) for small projects. The NASA prize is just a sweetener to make it at least worth some kids', undergrads' or unemployed coders' time to make an attempt. At least it'll look good on their CV, as you said, unlike with other silly competitions that give the winning team US$3K, and aren't even organised by entities as prestigious as NASA.

xkcdfanboy 15y ago

For this kind of algorithmic heuristic work, the prize is measly. This takes both genius AND gruntwork, I would do it though just for the prestige of helping the patent offices if it wasn't so much work.