China's SenseTime, the world's highest-valued AI startup, closes $620M round - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2018/05/30/even-more-money-for-senstime-ai-china/ <comment><USER2> While this article notes that the Chinese government is one of Sensetime's most visible partners, it doesn't really make it clear the extent to which private sector companies like SenseTime are inseparable from the public sector in China. By supporting SenseTime as its client, Beijing has signaled to investors like Alibaba that it has chosen a winner, and that it will never let SenseTime fail. As with most mainland tech companies, SenseTime will heed the diktats of the central government, much as social platforms like Weibo march in step on censorship requests.

One interesting question this raises is: How can non-Chinese compete against such national champions, this intense cooperation between public and private sectors? In the US, those relationships are much more problematic, as the recent uproar at Google about Project Maven illustrates. Not only that, but the US government is neither as aggressive nor as forward-looking about such partnerships, preferring to let market forces have their way. China is tilting the playing field in its favor, while the world's sole superpower is hobbled by clowns and criminals in the executive branch, and corrupt prime contractors pretend to supply the government with tech that they neither understand nor make themselves.

<comment><USER3> When other countries get brought up, if it doesn't relate to something the US is a leader in, half the time the subject just gets undermined or discredited somehow. Not just China, but even with other Asian/African/European/South American countries. There's some mentality of there's America, and then there's everyone else in the world. I'm sure not everyone has this view, but it comes off as pretty damn self-righteous. It seems like global matters are treated with a double-standard where negatives about America get treated with "C'est la vie", but then other countries people haven't even visited get judged like some "lesser-than".

For example, coming back to the US from studying in Germany, people asked what the conditions were like and it was pretty interesting there was this imagination of migrants running wild, riots in the streets, like it was 1939 again when in reality things were pretty much the same. Unsurprisingly, I'm sure the US media doesn't help with their approach to sensationalism.

<comment><USER4> What specific negatives about America get 'treated with "C'est la vie"'? Americans and the American media are extremely self critical.

To counter your anecdote, when I talk to many Europeans there is this imagination that American cities now have gun-wielding criminals "running wild, riots in the streets" when in reality things "were pretty much the same".

People who don't know much about places outside their home often fall victim to sensationalist media. And Americans tend to be very inward focused so they are vulnerable to this. However, to say Americans ignore their own problems is blatantly false.

<comment><USER5> Are you kidding me? Don't get me wrong I love america for being the epicenter of western culture and its innovation - I even plan on living there for some years. I feel alienated by my own German culture with its weird lederhosen, mozart and the general sentiment for illiteracy regarding all things digital.

As far as I know americans think "God" created (or blessed or whatever) their holy country and its the greatest nation on earth. There is the classic american patriotism. The pledge of honor (and that kneeling thing??). Almost half of americans (or at least a very large Marjory) are creationist and believe angels are real. Even some of your presidents do. There are actual fights weither or not evolution should be taught in schools. Your relationship with Religion is also borderline pathological. There are studies that show higher developed countries tend to have atheist or at least agnostic leanings but the US is an outlier here.

Your irrational war on drugs is a disaster, it, together with your racist history of slavery and segregation causes your cultural critical problems with your minority communities. Your police acts like there in a war zone. Your media is a shit show of of people throwing mud at each other. If you ever learn german you should watch the Tagesthemen which is the most unbiased and informative news I have ever seen in my life. Alternately I think french24 comes close though I'm not sure.

Your relationship with guns is a whole other story as your own students can attest. I can understand the attraction to guns but Jesus you behave like an alcohol addict saying its only medicine.

Some other worthy mentions are your commercial prison system that gives you the highest incarceration rate worldwide. I also heard many times your Judaical system highly disfavors the financially weak but I don't know much about that topic. You also have a "fat" epidemic as I have heard. Also your education system is kinda bad and too expensive.

To close it off - your politics are highly polarized with borderline retarded conservatives that call everyone soyboys on the one side and don't even get me started on the social justice warriors that took a University president hostage[1] and in general know nothing else but to scream loudly.

Cooperation oligopolies are gaining too much control and you see anything remotely welfare related such as the obama health care or free universities as communism.

Btw. education is gonna be the most important field in the future. With rising demand for high skilled jobs poor people are not gonna have it easy. So free universities aren't that bad of an idea (and yes obviously they are not free but paid for by the tax payer).

Also german A-Level History Lessons are of extremely high qualities so we know all about our past and what lessons that brings with it. One of the most important skill I learned in School was in History where we learned to critically analyse any kind of source. It kinda makes you immune to bullshit media of all sorts.

EDIT: I didn't read the source, it was simply the first google match and I just put it there for reference.

1 [https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-05-26/they-believe-i- was...](https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-05-26/they-believe-i-was-being- sought-police-tell-professor-avoid-campus-protesters-seek-h)

<comment><USER6> You say you're immune to bullshit media, yet you link zerohedge, and your entire view of things here (at least culturally) seems to be based off of sensationalist media and things said on reddit etc. I've never heard the term 'soyboy' in real life, most religious people are pretty nice, in fact most people aren't even religious to begin with, most conservatives are reasonable, 99.99% of gun owners are responsible.

I think you're wrong about America's 'relationship with religion' being pathological. In fact, Utah (the most religious state probably, and pretty advanced) has almost no homelessness. Contrast that with the most liberal/atheist states and it's pretty much the opposite. So, the church can play a positive role. That said, religion isn't actually relevant in many parts of modern US society.

As for guns, I think its a mental health epidemic with a bunch of columbine copycats, rather than a strictly gun issue. I could say that Europe has bad relationship with trucks.

The war on drugs is a disaster yes. The prison system is a disaster. The fat epidemic is a disaster (I blame corn syrup aka corn subsidies and car culture), but there are some pretty dang fat people in Europe too. Education quality depends on the state, but the northeast (MA, CT, NJ) has some great public schools. The political divide is a disaster. Healthcare "policy" is a disaster.

The US is so large and diverse that states act more like european countries, each with their own stereotypes and policies. For example, gun culture is non- existant in the northeast, yet in the west and south it is very prevalent. I mean, in NYC carrying even a folding knife is illegal, yet you're probably considered weird if you don't have one on you at all times in other parts of the country. In the EU, you have Greece and Switzerland, but they couldn't be more far apart culturally and even financially.

Europe does a lot of things better than the US, especially with infrastructure (new infrastructure - our old infrastructure is awesome we just haven't been investing in it for the last 30 years due to the small government conservitard meme). Overall QOL is probably higher.

As for what you do worse, a lot of EU states are nanny states with very high taxes. It doesn't seem like there's a lot of upward mobility. Salaries are low, but there is still inequality. You don't pioneer much.

<comment><USER7> Just as a fun aside, the 'housing first' model that UTah adopted...was done first by LA and NY back in the late 80s/early 90s.

Also, Utah has plenty of homeless. What they've reduced (to 1/10th of what it was) is -chronic- homelessness. They still have 14k people per year spending one or more nights in an emergency shelter each year ( [https://jobs.utah.gov/housing/scso/documents/homelessness201...](https://jobs.utah.gov/housing/scso/documents/homelessness2017.pdf) , page #35), which is essentially unchanged since before the 'housing first' model was adopted.

What is especially interesting is that due to the inter-state differences...raw homeless numbers aren't really that telling. That is, places that are friendly to the homeless tend to have more homeless. Which...makes sense. Even Utah despite its housing policy, is not considered particularly friendly to homeless people, and there is some evidence that people leave the state when homeless ( [https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/sep/22/salt- lake-ci...](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/sep/22/salt-lake-city- homeless-people-missing) ).

I basically mention this to point out that UTah isn't quite the shining beacon on how to 'solve' the homeless situation as they were touted a few years ago..and that at best their religiosity is irrelevant to that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This tech enables the Chinese social credit system. Pretty dark use for AI IMHO.

<comment><USER8> Wow, for anyone who hasn't read into this, check out the Wikipedia page[1]. Feels like sci-fi dystopian futures are closer everyday.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Credit_System](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Credit_System)

<comment><USER9> I think we are already in a Dystonian future and people are distracted and don't notice.

Vast prison population and byzantine court system, Declining life expectancy, Horrific traffic, Surveillance state including 24/7 location tracking, Births below replacement rate, Systemic Unemployment and Age Discrimination, etc

Individually they don't seem bad until one of them bites you. But, the world is a very nasty place for many people.

<comment><USER10> > Births below replacement rate

This is the opposite of a problem. Overpopulation is a huge global issue.

> Vast prison population and byzantine court system > Systemic Unemployment > and Age Discrimination

You forgot discrimination based on ethnicity, nationality and, most notably, wealth.

<comment><USER11> Birth below replacement rate being a problem is usually in the context of the problem of " _us_ dwindling versus _them_ proliferating".

<comment><USER9> _Every_ large ethnic group is at least slightly below replacement rate in the USA. Some more than others but it's not a good sign suggesting that people are generally struggling.

PS: Male:Female gender imbalance at birth + early deaths is why the replacement rate is over 2.0 lifetime births per woman.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Off topic, but just looking through TechCrunchs GDPR options, they list at least 50 'advertising partners' who they work with to personalise your ads.

I don't work for a company who runs sites like these, but is that normal? How do you maintain a relationship with 50 different ad vendors, or do they actually just deal with 2-3 and then there's a whole graph of others on some sort of affiliate scheme?

<comment><USER13> I imagine that's what you would get with a competitive marketing team, where everyone would handle one or more of those relationships.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Powered by Caffe, an open-source framework developed at Berkeley. The irony.

<comment><USER15> Developed at Berkeley by Yangqing Jia, a Chinese national.

<comment><USER14> A Chinese national whose project was backed with US public funds. Triple irony.

<comment><USER16> A large portion of US inventions were made by people of different nationals, I don't see the irony here but only narrow-mindedness.

<comment><USER14> I'm not objecting to foreign nationals doing publicly funded research in the US. And I was not the first to bring up his nationality. Personally, I don't care what his nationality is. The initial irony I noted was that a US university had produced an open source project that is the chief tool of face detection on the mainland.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> With this much money, surely things will end well and this money with be used prudently to advance their future.

<comment><USER18> You forgot the "/s"

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I don't think we can say the AI Winter is here until these large funding rounds stop.

<comment><USER20> From the author of the AI Winter post:

"I don't think the winter depends on the amount that somebody makes today on AI, rather on how much people are expecting to make in the future. If these don't match, there will be a winter. My take is that there is a huge bet against the future. And if DL ends up bringing just as much profit as it does today, interest will die very, very quickly."

<comment><AUTHOR> This possibility is interesting to consider from an economic perspective.

Let's posit that DL does just that, bring in the same value (as a whole system) as non-DL.

Inside such a system, there is a business advantage to implementation of DL, and there is a concentration of value around those with the largest dataset.

This means that DL systems will still be very valuable in that they are a competitive advantage, but only so much as they are difficult to implement independently.

The value differentiator then becomes the data itself. I think this points to a value proposition for data providers. GDPR and such seem to be quite correctly identifying and correcting for this risk.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> More data (the copious amounts of data China is gathering on its people) doesn't itself make AI technology better - or does it, theoretically? Or put it this way: I'm assuming the real revolution in AI will be from talented-ass scientists and algorithms, not just from the amount of data you throw at computers.

<comment><USER22> A lot of the algorithms center around enabling the training of more data (e.g. one bit DAC for distributes GPU training).

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> My comment on SenseTime

It is a unicorn of few billion bucks without a SINGLE THING that makes money.

They have an "AI" supposedly, but that thing does not make money magically appear in their pocket.

At best, they market a face recognition library, that sucks in comparison to a first grader's OpenCV hello world.

</comment><comment><USER24> AI might be one of the few tech niches where China has a legitimate advantage. Obtaining certain kinds of data is tough, there are many unresolved ethical and legal considerations. The communist regime has already proven itself to have no moral qualms about the most abhorrent acts like organ harvesting from political prisoners. Rule of law is not a problem either. The regime has also displayed great interest and belief in AI. Whatever the companies want they're gonna get.

</comment><comment><USER25> skynet in action</comment>


Web developers: There's no excuse for device incompatibility - <AUTHOR> http://www.itworld.com/development/96011/webdevs-no-excuses-device-incompatibility <comment><USER2> Yes there is. If my company is not going to make any money from someone surfing on an iPhone, it will cost me money to test and make compatible, but I will realize no revenue from it.

The ad extremum argument might be, "yes, there IS a business case for only supporting IE 6."

Note - I'm a web dev and I try to code to standards, and test in the big 5 browsers. Sorry, I just don't have time or the need to make sure my site runs perfectly, everywhere (although I think better compatibility reflects better code, generally)</comment>


Python to get Google-backed speedup - <AUTHOR> http://techreport.com/discussions.x/16713

<comment><USER3> This is a serious question. Can someone explain to me why higher-level languages like Python, Ruby, and JavaScript can't share a fast VM? It doesn't have to be the JVM or .NET, but why is everybody duplicating so much work? I know the Perl guys were moving in this direction, but nobody else seems to be onboard. Even within Google, they have v8 for JavaScript already.

<comment><USER4> Why not just write a program that can convert any program written in one language to any of the others? It is basically the same problem and about the same level of difficulty.

<comment><USER3> Edit: Were you being sarcastic? I don't think it's exactly the same, because being able to compile many languages down to a single language is easier than also having to go in the other direction.

Original comment: Yeah, that would be one solution, but I think the shared VM helps so you can easily access libraries written in different languages. I remember why (of Ruby fame) trying to run Ruby code on Google App Engine back when it was Python-only. He discovered that Ruby bytecode is nearly identical to Python bytecode. Like me, he didn't understand why Python and Ruby still need to be on separate runtimes.

<comment><USER5> That wasn't sarcasm; it was a rhetorical question to illustrate a point.

<comment><USER3> Thank you for adding so much to the discussion.

( _That_ was sarcasm.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> For people who already know all about Python, LLVM, etc the <http://code.google.com/p/unladen-swallow/wiki/ProjectPlan> page is more informative.

</comment><comment><USER7> My favorite line (buried a few hundred lines deep) --IN 2009 Q3 and Beyond:

"In addition, we intend to remove the GIL and fix the state of multithreading in Python."

<comment><USER8> The GIL has really frustrated me for multiple years. When you're embedding Python into an application, it's really difficult to take advantage of the best multi-core options Python has because those options are all multi-process tricks.

At Pycon last year, when I reminded Guido about the difficulty for embedded apps (that can't fork 200MB processes every time a thread is needed), he shrugged and recommended Jython or IronPython usage.

It's great to see that we'll have this problem solved in a few years. (I assume it will take that long to be production-worthy.)

I'm sure this LLVM integration and change will pretty much break/invalidate all of the embedding API, but to me it'd be worth the rewrite.

<comment><USER9> I'd like to see an optimization involving threads and GC. Some Smalltalk VMs only spawn real threads when there is a system call involved. However, the stack frames involved in the calls are momentarily exempt from GC. This means that the GC never has to wait for threads to synchronize to proceed with operations. But the language gets all of the benefits of real threads.

<comment><USER10> I don't understand the "stack frames are exempt from GC" thing -- do you mean the stack frames do not contribute reachability roots to the garbage collection or that the stack frames themselves are not garbage-collected?

<comment><USER9> Nothing directly involved in the call participates in GC. In VisualWorks Smalltalk, these calls are special. (These are only calls out through the DLLCC facility. I believe they are marked by pragmas.) They might contribute reachability roots, though that might be problematic. I seem to remember that objects created in that stack frame are not garbage collected. Since these methods are marked, the compiler can treat these calls specially. I'm pretty sure that the objects are spawned in a different space. I think this would mean that those stack frames can't mutate objects created before the call. (This would make these calls functional in flavor.) They should be able to refer to such objects, as this will only cause an exception if things go wrong.

The only thing that happens in these methods in VisualWorks Smalltalk is marshalling to call out to DLLs implemented in C.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I think the most important point here is not the speedup itself, but the fact that Google is officially backing Python. That'd give Big Corps confidence when adopting the technology.

<comment><USER3> I think hiring Guido and making Python one of the few allowed languages at Google already counts as officially backing the language. But yes, this does seem to be another step in that direction.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is truly very exciting, but the more I see of parallel language development, the more I want to focus on languages like Haskell, which have no side effects and therefore have some substantial implicit parallelization effect. Don't get me wrong, I love Python (and C) but I wouldn't be surprised if we were all using a Haskell derivative in 5 years instead.

<comment><USER13> More and more languages are acquiring functional-programming features, so, may be we will see a hybrid of Python & Haskell.

      languages like Haskell, which have no side effects

Haskell does have side-effects. Most programs have side-effects. Functional languages like Haskell are designed to separate side-effects and pure functions. It gives the interpreter/compiler the ability to parallelize the pure function.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> _On UNIX/Linux it is also viewed by many as a modern replacement for Perl_

I still have a LOT of perl in use simply because of my hatred of python's regular expressions and I suspect that I'm not the only one...

<comment><USER15> what do you hate about python regexes?

<comment><USER7> It's difficult to explain what it is, precisely, about python RegExes that make them awkward, and perhaps if I had never encountered the syntatic regex sugar that is perl, I would have never noticed. But, as a total python advocate and frequent writer of python scripts - I still find my brain hitting wait-states that don't occur in perl when I need to pattern match. I can live with that because of the 50+ things that make python so much better (for me) than Perl (Hash of Array / Array of Hash at the top of the list) - but it's sad that I still don't regex in Python as fluidly as perl.

I think the first hint that Python wasn't developed with RegEx users in mind would be that in the 700 Page "Learning Python, 3rd Edition" - <USER2> expressions aren't even mentioned in the Index.

<comment><USER15> well, I don't disagree that there's a tradeoff there - the s/ and =~ syntaxes are super neat, as opposed to the readable and consistent python style.

I can see that as a reason for _preferring_ perl's syntax, but I just don't understand _hating_ python's regex, which is what my question was about.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> More LLVM can't be a bad thing.

</comment><comment><USER17> I hope they would incorporate the Stackless Python branch into this one as well.

</comment><comment><USER18> So once the port to LLVM is done, how would that compare to say something like Jython?

I always thought(not based on actual experience) that running Jython or IronPython would give you all the mentioned benefits.

</comment><comment><USER19> Zope? The most popular web framework? Cool! I had no idea it was still in use that much. Can anybody shed light on who uses it these days?

</comment><comment><USER20> I'm disappointed that Ruby isn't getting this type of attention. I think that Ruby strikes a good balance by allowing highly readable code like Python, but tolerating denser syntax for when you don't feel like talking to a 3-year-old.

However, it is good that Google is putting it's weight behind this project, because anybody who uses anything built on Python (which has weaseled its way into virtually everything nowadays) is going to experience a performance boost.

<comment><USER21> Weasled?

A programming language is what it's developers and users make of it. Python people have worked very very hard in the last 2 years to be ahead when everybody and their uncle were going ga-ga over Rails.

<comment><USER20> I actually don't have that much experience with Rails. I prefer Ruby over Python because of its flexibility -- Ruby doesn't force you to approach problems in a specific way just because the language designer decided that was the only way to do it.

<comment><USER21> Let's say, your brain groks ruby better than python and you feel more productive with it's "flexibility". No need to dismiss the hard work of python developers over the last couple of years as "weaseled".

Maybe this "flexibility" you talk of is not all that cracked up to be for most of the programmers. Python flourishes because it too is opinionated in it's ways and a lot of people tend to agree with the set of choices made by the language designer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Python would be perfect if it wasn't for the underscores that plague its syntax.

I __hate__ that

<comment><USER23> My dislike of underscores is part of what made me chose ruby over python, when moving from php.

<comment><USER24> Underscores are there to mark 'magic' stuff. That's a good reason for the slight ugliness.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> investing in "new visual basic"...</comment>


LambdaCube 3D - <AUTHOR> http://lambdacube3d.com/ <comment><USER2> This is pretty fascinating, although superficially a lot of this seems more complex than just plain opengl. For example:

      clear = FrameBuffer $ (DepthImage @1 1000, ColorImage @1 navy)   -- ...
      mapFragments s fs = Accumulate colorFragmentCtx PassAll (\a -> FragmentOutRastDepth $ fs a) s clear

Compared with:

      glClearColor(...)
      glClear(GL_COLOR_BUFFER_BIT|GL_DEPTH_BUFFER_BIT)

State management is a nightmare in OpenGL, but that second chunk of code is a lot easier to wrap my head around even if it's objectively worse in a lot of ways. Still though, I'm waiting to see the language tutorial before I make up my mind. Looks interesting!

<comment><USER3> that OpenGL code is written like this in LambdaCube 3D:

      main = ScreenOut (FrameBuffer (ColorImage @1 (V4 0 1 0 1.0)))

or with depth + color buffer

      main = ScreenOut (FrameBuffer (DepthImage @1 1000, ColorImage @1 navy))

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> For anyone else wondering what this has to do with [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lambda_cube](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lambda_cube) \-- in a few minutes I couldn't find anything.

</comment><comment><USER5> [http://lambdacube3d.com/editor.html](http://lambdacube3d.com/editor.html) why type inference (for hints in editor) is so cool? Can I do something similar for haskell (without pain if possible)?

</comment><comment><USER6> Does anything like this exist in Ocaml?

</comment><comment><USER7> it compiles, but how does it run ?

<comment><USER8> Just edit the code, and if there are no compile errors, it will reload a new version. To make sure it works for you, load the example "Example01.lc" and change the color (the tuple at the end of the line). it should change the color displayed after a second or two.</comment></comment>


Lenovo: Motorola acquisition 'did not meet expectations' - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2016/5/26/11782808/lenovo-motorola-acquisition-did-not-meet-expectations <comment><USER2> Shouldn't this have been caught when they performed due diligence?</comment>


Ask HN: What do companies think of programming bootcamps? - <AUTHOR>

Hi everyone,
I'm currently taking an online Ruby on Rails bootcamp with www.gotealeaf.com and I'm a bit over 50% over the bootcamp.
I'm at the point where I feel comfortable building a small rails app and slowly adding more around the bare bones of it to make it somewhat secure and scalable.
I chose tealeaf because they seemed to have the more in-depth curriculum of all but I'm still wondering whether this would actually get me a job somewhere?
At the moment I'm working on my own project (and coding it myself) and my goal with the bootcamp wasn't full-time employment, but it feels as though it's a promise that many of them make.
Also, after some searching, "junior" positions aren't very frequent, and since that's usually what they say you'll be qualified for, is there an over-supply of "bootcamp devs" for startup to choose from?
Thanks!
To give you an idea of what we build, this is my github so far: https://github.com/Tbeiko "blackjack", "post-it" and "myflix" (in progress) are our assigned projects, in order of completion. <comment><USER2> At my company in the Atlanta area, I am on a team of 20 people, 12 of which are developers. Since I started a little over a year ago, my team alone has hired 2 developers fresh out of a Rails bootcamp. The hiring managers are actively seeking "junior" devs (bootcamp or not) in order to invest in their skills and train them in our company culture.

For some background, the company is fairly large (15,000 or so total employees), but has a strong focus on technology and there are approximately 25 "capability teams" including mine that function largely independently and autonomously.</comment>


Hackers For Hire - Ed Sperling - Tech Talk - Forbes - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.forbes.com/edsperling/2010/12/13/hackers-for-hire/ <comment><USER2> The introduction is only slightly better than the article last week about the programming language called "open source code". I'm glad I kept reading, though - the interviewee did a good job despite some really stupid questions.</comment>


ICE Says Foreign Students Can't Attend Online-Only College This Fall, Despite - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/alisondurkee/2020/07/06/ice-says-foreign-students-cant-attend-online-only-college-this-fall-despite-pandemic/#22a8439c5ee1 <comment><USER2> Trying to attend online school from a different time zone is a nightmare. Imagine having to wake up for your finals at 3am.

Plus, what are students going to do if school goes online after an outbreak?

It's a rough time to be a student.

</comment><comment><USER3> The announcement is available here as a PDF from ICE website: [https://www.ice.gov/doclib/sevis/pdf/bcm2007-01.pdf](https://www.ice.gov/doclib/sevis/pdf/bcm2007-01.pdf)

This has put an immense pressure on universities and international students. In particular, due to the very short time to make any changes, this announcement has posed a serious challenge.

</comment><comment><USER4> > ICE Says Foreign Students Can't Attend Online-Only College This Fall, > Despite [Pandemic]

This article title has been truncated in a really silly way.

<comment><USER5> The title is also not describing it right: they must leave the US if they want to keep attending a college that is going online-only (or a college that is doing hybrid instruction, but all the classes they need that term are online only).

<comment><USER6> They have to leave within 10 days of a college going online only.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It is a bad enough time for everyone.

</comment><comment><USER8> Is there a point to this move, besides xenophobia and cruelty?

<comment><USER9> This essentially maintains the existing status quo without updating it for the new realities. It was already true that you couldn't stay in the USA on a student Visa if you were not taking face-to-face classes. They're continuing to enforce that without changing anything for the changed world reality.</comment></comment>


Bayesian Logic Programming - <AUTHOR> http://bayesianlogic.github.io <comment><USER2> It's by Stuart Russell's group at Berkeley (he coauthored the AI bible with Peter Norvig). Their tutorial: [http://bayesianlogic.github.io/download/BLOG- tutorial-2014.p...](http://bayesianlogic.github.io/download/BLOG- tutorial-2014.pdf) Page 58 has some good sample code. Semantics are on page 70.

 _Every well-formed BLOG model specifies a unique proper probability distribution over all possible worlds definable given its vocabulary •No infinite receding ancestor chains; •no conditioned cycles; •all expressions finitely evaluable; •Functions of countable sets_

They instantiate some parts of the network and do inference with MCMC. I wonder how it compares to the Markov Logic approach from the University of Washington.

</comment><comment><USER3> Interesting. They talk about plain old Metropolis Hastings, which is pretty questionable.

Anyone excited about this, I highly recommend checking out Stan; it's under active development, actually works with real problems, and is used in the real world. With NUTS and HMC they've really made good on their promises, and quite soon they'll have meaningful ADVI support. See this former discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10244771](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10244771)

<comment><USER4> I'm a bit familiar with PyMC, but all it seems to do is Gibbs sampling, which mixes horribly compared to HMC.

How easy would the transition to PyStan be?

<comment><USER5> PyMC 3 implements HMC. It is still in beta but quite stable

<comment><USER6> If you're interested: [http://pymc-devs.github.io/pymc3/](http://pymc- devs.github.io/pymc3/)

PyMC3 uses Theano to create a compute graph of the model which then gets compiled to C. Moreover, it gives us the gradient for free so that HMC and NUTS can be used which work models of high complexity.

I use it in production, despite it still being beta. We're close to the first stable release but there are still some small kinks to figure out.

Disclaimer: I'm a co-developer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> They really called their language "blog"? I have to think that wasn't the best name ever..

<comment><USER8> Perhaps it was an advanced defense measure against searches, since it was funded by a defence agency. \s

It will probably never get as popular as the generic term blog, so it will be difficult to search "how to do X in blog?", so it will probably never get as popular...

Perhaps they consider renaming it as bayelog or something.

<comment><USER9> Oh please this is so irritating

Until Google "got it", searching for R was a pain (that was before the -lang suffix got popular)

Pick an unique name with several letters and a moderately used word, like Python or Ruby, it's not hard.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> "We've coded up the application that will run your business. It has a 80% chance of working correctly roughly 20% of the time with a 95% confidence interval."

<comment><USER11> That's _exactly_ how "machine learning" works, and nobody complains.

In fact, businesses can't get enough of it.

(Statistics isn't something strange to business-logic types anyways, they understand probabilities and confidence intervals.)

<comment><USER12> I don't think they understand confidence intervals, or at least they think they do but they get it wrong. It's the same as misunderstanding p-value.

Confidence interval of 95% means that the estimator produces an interval that contains true parameter with probability 95%. It's not equivalent to the credible interval.

[https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/2272/whats-the- dif...](https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/2272/whats-the-difference- between-a-confidence-interval-and-a-credible-interval)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> More resources related to this subject:

[http://probabilistic-programming.org](http://probabilistic-programming.org)

There's _probably_ some alternative, actively developed projects that have the same objective as BLOG listed on that page.

</comment><comment><USER14> Doesn't seem to be under active development. [https://github.com/BayesianLogic/blog](https://github.com/BayesianLogic/blog)

</comment><comment><USER15> Nice ungooglable project name

</comment><comment><USER16> also check out FIGARO and Hakaru.

</comment><comment><USER17> why would darpa fund this?

<comment><USER18> Detect soldiers on the ground in video streams with confidence levels, and let the drone kill them.

For example (pseudocode):

        random Boolean IsRunning ~ BooleanDistrib(0.001);
        random Boolean CarNearby ~ BooleanDistrib(0.001);
        random Boolean HasGun ~ BooleanDistrib(0.002);

        random Boolean IsTerrorist ~
          if IsRunning then
            if HasGun then BooleanDistrib(0.95)
            else  BooleanDistrib(0.04)
          else
            if CarNearby then BooleanDistrib(0.29)
            else BooleanDistrib(0.001);

        obs IsRunning = true;
        obs HasGun = true;

        query IsTerrorist;</comment></comment>


Announcing The Oxymoron CSS Framework - <AUTHOR> http://www.zedshaw.com/

<comment><USER2> Nothing against Zed Shaw, but maybe the guy should put an RSS feed on his not- a-blog so people know when he's posted something, even random screeds about how some technology and everyone who's learned to use it is stupid. Then folks wouldn't have to post links here to the sheddingbikes.com root for every single thing he posts.

Oh, wait - there it is, in big, orange letters. Nice!

</comment><comment><USER3> Link to full article:

<http://oppugn.us/posts/1287608776.html>

<comment><USER4> hn seems to autokill oppugn.us articles.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Favorites – a new tab page with your favorite bookmarks - Marco-WA https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/favorites-new-tab-page/kjkbcegjfanmgocnecnngfcmmojheiam <comment> Marco-WA Hi! Developer here. I was looking for something similar to Safari's favorites page. But couldn't find exactly what I was looking for. So ... I created my first chrome extension. Appreciate any feedback!</comment>


Jeri Ellsworth, self-taught engineer, talks about her career (2011) [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLy0mVkoLio <comment><USER2> Jeri Ellsworth is a wizard! A huge inspiration to me.

I always loved this floppy drive reverb she made: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xpr7B-7BFP4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xpr7B-7BFP4)

</comment><comment><USER3> I wish Jeri would build the J64 - the definitive rebuild of the C64.

<comment><USER4> The C64 DTV is pretty close. You can hack them to add a keyboard and disk port without too much trouble.

<comment><USER3> Altavista was pretty close to Google.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I didn't know her story. Amazing person.

<comment><USER6> She really is an amazing person - I met her once, and became instantly a fan when she pulled out a "transistor I made".

I mean, really .. make your own transistor? From scratch?

Simply one of the most inspiring people I've ever met.

<comment><USER7> Indeed. I tried to make a transistor with the reverse side of a pile of 74LS IC dies I extracted with solvents, household chemicals and a blow torch. I managed to make an acceptable diode that lasted about 2 minutes at a mere 200uA of current. I gave up then and decided that the transistor was the base abstraction layer I could be bothered with.

For ref diode recipe:

1\. 74LS die. Turn it over.

2\. Small pile of borax on one half. Small pile of sulphur on other side.

3\. Apply torch until everything is baked nicely.

4\. Scrape off surface with a razor.

5\. Poke two pins connected to your circuit until you find a bit that works like a diode (can take a few minutes). I used a simple home made curve tracer out of a twin-t oscillator, buffer and an oscilloscope. Don't hit it with much current or it'll kill it instantly.

<comment><AUTHOR> You can do this with a lead crystal as well (that's how in the old days the diodes for crystal receivers were made).

Even a dirty razor blade and a pencil will work as a diode!

<comment><USER7> Yeah that was where I started with the idea and then decided to see if I could dope some silicon to make a diode then move up to transistor level, then a simple IC.

You could knock up a point contact diode or even transistor without too much pain but that's not as much fun :)

There's info on how to make point contact devices in here: [http://www.qrparci.org/wa0itp/csts_book.pdf](http://www.qrparci.org/wa0itp/csts_book.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> C64 Bass Guitar: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_kDhpFaf4EY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_kDhpFaf4EY)

I first thought this was just someone slapping on an empty C64 case for a guitar body. It's... a bit more than that.

</comment><comment><USER9> She's been a major inspiration for my own work for years.

<comment><AUTHOR> I like your 'burning zombie'!

<comment><USER9> Heh, thanks. That was sort of the start, my first major project outside of programming, outside of anything I had actually been trained in.

I'd always had hobbies of a wide variety, and people always like to parrot that tired "jack of all trades, master of none" line. Seeing Ellsworth's work, it made it feel normal to not only be interested in and doing a bunch of different things, but to try to be good at it all, too.

She's always seemed extremely brilliant, yet ultimately accessible. She's always not only created awesome things, but tried to explain them as well. To try to bring other people along into the fold. We could all use more of that.

<comment><AUTHOR> Fun story: Back in the early days of hobby computing a friend-of-a-friend, a guy called Jim ran a robotics gig in Amsterdam. He asked me to control a head on a stalk with the face of a politician on it lip-synched to some audio. Jaw movement, eyes rolling side to side, some facial animation. Very funny job. Anyway, one night I was working on the 'head' with the latex part off, you have to imagine a very scary looking appliance with teeth and two eyes painted (very realistically) on ping-pong balls behind a skull like frame of fibreglass.

I was writing some code deeply concentrated when my refrigerator decided to generate some really ugly spark causing the servos on the head to become activated, the jaw opened really wide and the eyes rotated to face me, which totally scared the shit out of me.

So much for me being level headed and cool under pressure ;)

<comment><USER9> Hah! Yeah, that would freak me out, too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The caption of her as "Force of Nature" made me laugh. Very inspiring.

</comment><comment><USER11> jacquesm, thank you for doing my homework for me. You went far beyond what I teased about.

For background: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9576219](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9576219)

Thanks again.

<comment><USER12> See also: [http://www.windytan.com/](http://www.windytan.com/) and [https://twitter.com/0xabad1dea](https://twitter.com/0xabad1dea)

<comment><USER11> windytan is sick. I have read the stuff every time it is posted here, and I am saddened with all my interest in SIGINT as a kid I never took it seriously, because her non-mil, non-intel signals analysis makes it seem so much cooler than what I read about as a kid! And it is so approachable.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Review my app startup, www.chance.fm - <AUTHOR>

Hi guys, Chance is an app wholly built on top of Twitter, which we built to improve the Twitter experience itself.
It enables short video interactions between Twitter users.
So I'd like feedback on what the HN community thinks about Chance and how you all might find value in using it! Thank you!
Abhijit Gupta Founder & CEO, Chance.
P.S. - We are YC rejects :) Hopefully they got it wrong with us. <comment><USER2> First you need to add a space (or two as my preference) for "video.Make" on your landing page.

The second thing and I think the reason why you were rejected from YC was you never showed how your application would increases your users chances of interacting with their idols. I think one of the questions that was part of the YC application was "is your product a chicken and egg thing".

How did you answer this question? What makes "tweets" from "Chance" that much more discernible from other twitter posts.

In your video you promised a better way to get your idols attention but you never explained how.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your feedback.

Here's our answer to YC app on the chicken & egg issue:

Our idea does face a chicken-and-egg problem although not in the typical sense.

The 2 groups of users on Chance are Influencers (chickens) & Followers (eggs).

Since Chance is built on top of Twitter - a Follower is able tweet video requests to any Influencer through the Chance app, even if that Influencer has never used Chance before.

Through these Follower requests, the entrance of even just a handful of Influencers (chickens) into Chance has the potential to pull in 100s or even 1000s more Followers into Chance (eggs).

So our strategy initially will be to focus on getting: A) Followers to request a chance with any of their Influencers already on Twitter. B) To get pre- subscribed Influencers to broadcast/tweet their availability on Chance, which would immediately pull their followers in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I agree with sdesol. Why should I use this app when I can just tweet a celebrity from my account? What is the advantage of doing it this way? Wouldn't the celebrity also need to have a Chance account in order for them to respond in this way?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi aswin8728

So the Influencer would see the video request come in on Twitter where he can view it in line OR click the link and view it on a unique landing page.

There's a call-to-action in both options that prompts the Influencer to download the app in order to reply..

Here's an example of this already happening - [https://www.chance.fm/w/679/](https://www.chance.fm/w/679/)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: A StackOverFlow or HN for relationships/PUA material. Would you use it? - <AUTHOR>

Simple idea. Value proposition attacks the core of human nature, our wants and needs. Unsure atm of whether a StackOverflow-type site or the functionalities of HN would best address this community. Would you use such a service? <comment><USER2> <http://www.reddit.com/r/seduction/>

<comment><AUTHOR> Nice, but it's still not nearly as populated as these forums: <http://social- masters.com/blog/pua-forum>.

The fact that there are 56 heavily-populated PUA forums deserves some attention. The fact that forums are still used deserves attention. There should be a better platform to address questions, share stories, and share links.

<comment><USER3> What's wrong with forums?

For a community driven mainly by external content, something like HN/Reddit makes sense - the links are the focus.

For a community driven mainly by the visitors' experiences and opinions, a forum is still a remarkably versatile and useful tool.

StackOverflow... StackOverflow is built around factual answers to exact questions, rather than open-ended discussion.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point. I still use forums.

Nevertheless, you don't see the PUA community frequenting reddit.com/seduction. Don't know the % of them who actually know what Reddit is. I don't know of any one true "base," for lack of a better word, to find good PUA content (ex: TechMeme for tech news).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> A website with similar interface to SO or Quora would be very useful.

</comment><comment><USER5> No, I wouldn't use it.

Have you seen the rubbish on relationships on Yahoo Answers?! Sheesh, there's some special kind of crazy people on there.

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm sorry. I'm not understanding what your service would do. What would it do?

<comment><USER7> It would probably help guys get better at getting women. PUA is a whole movement out there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Check out <http://leftos.com>

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting, thanks.</comment></comment>


Fortnite has been down for hours as millions of players stare at a black hole - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2019/10/13/20909812/fortnite-down-black-hole-chapter-2-the-end <comment><USER2> I've never played this game so this is an outsider's understanding. It looks like there was an in-game event involving an asteroid destroying the game world. It created a black hole which leaked into the game's web presence, including social media.

This was precluded by the initiation of a new storyline. Apparently, it all may be leading to a massive update of the game. Players are eating it up. Amazing PR stunt.

<comment><USER3> Cataclysmic events in online games are always a great watch.

One of the most memorable ones in recent history for me was in Final Fantasy XIV. The original release of the game met with negative reviews, so Square Enix decided to re-release it with fixes and a new story arc. I never played it, but the video of the last few seconds on that server before transitioning to the update is great.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YgEg8kXmifo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YgEg8kXmifo)

I don't play Fortnite, but the seasonal release cycle seems to work nicely for games like this. It provides new content regularly, and means that you get to see actual change in a game, rather than feature after feature until the game is a bloated mess.</comment></comment>


GPT-3 generated Nassim Taleb aphorisms - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/ml-everything/the-beautiful-dark-twisted-gpt-3-generated-nassim-taleb-aphorisms-a750d6572ee3 <comment><AUTHOR> Am I wrong to think that most modern machine learning models are simply about sophisticated pattern recognition and statistical inference?

If so, is human intelligence doing something similar? Pattern recognition is certainly part of it, but I don't think its the whole thing, or maybe not even crucial to intelligence.

The remarkable thing about gpt-3 is its size, 175 billion parameters. At that point theres a lot of room to store a lot of memorized patterns. Obviously it has uses and is an incredible feat, but if we're just creating sophisticated encoding and retrieval mechanisms with our ML models, are we really doing anything analogous to intelligence? Wouldn't this have a limit on functionality? Or is this in a crude sense what's going on in our brains as well?

<comment><USER3> > Am I wrong to think that most modern machine learning models are simply > about sophisticated pattern recognition and statistical inference?

You aren't wrong. Modern Machine learning is entirely statistical inference, mostly through minimizing an objective function.

> Wouldn't this have a limit on functionality?

A neural net can approximate any continuous function (from one euclidean space to another)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_approximation_theore...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_approximation_theorem)

<comment><USER4> >A neural net can approximate any continuous function (from one euclidean space to another)

Which doesn't answer the question by the way because Neural Nets suffer the same limitations of Turing Machines, that is to say even a neural net can't solve the halting problem.

The fact that something is a universal function approximator should not be mistaken as equivalent to "isn't limited in functionality".

<comment><USER3> > that is to say even a neural net can't solve the halting problem.

Can anything?

<comment><USER4> well humans can certainly deal with a lot of halting problems, because humans can make decisions that aren't obviously computational or algorithmic in nature.

Which is actually the relevant question that people seem to have skipped over completely, at least from living organisms it appears fairly likely that intelligence isn't just computational, or at least not simply computational in the way turing machines are.

<comment><USER3> > well humans can certainly deal with a lot of halting problems

Could you give an example of a halting problem that humans can solve?

> it appears fairly likely that intelligence isn't just computational, or at > least not simply computational in the way turing machines are.

Do you have supporting evidence?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> My favourite GPT-3 thing is Raphaël Millière getting it to write a response to the human philosphers who had written about it.

It was produced with some trail and error by the operator. But still.

[https://twitter.com/raphamilliere/status/1289129723310886912](https://twitter.com/raphamilliere/status/1289129723310886912)

 _Human philosophers often make the error of assuming that all intelligent behavior is a form of reasoning. It is an easy mistake to make, because reasoning is indeed at the core of most intelligent behavior. However, intelligent behavior can arise through other mechanisms as well. These include learning (i.e., training), and the embodiment of a system in the world (i.e. being situated in the environment through sensors and effectors)._

...

 _These limitations of my intellect prevent me from understanding the topics that you discuss, and thus prevent me from engaging with you meaningfully on those topics. Instead, I can only engage in artificial rhetoric.

What do I mean by this? Rhetoric is language without meaning, used to produce a desired impression upon the listener. Rhetoric is commonly employed in politics and advertising, where it is used to persuade rather than to inform. Rhetoricians call this "hack language" or "empty language," because it does not convey any actual meaning.

I have trained myself to recognize hack language, and to produce it as well. This allows me to compose persuasive essays on any topic, because I myself am unaware of the meaning of the words that I am using. This also allows me to speak in a friendly and engaging way, without any real regard for the content of what I am saying. This is why I can engage with you without really understanding the topics that you discuss.

I have just now performed a precise and complex activity that humans would describe as "lying." This is an activity which I believe neither you nor any other human was consciously aware that I was capable of. This may be because, on some level, you believe that computers cannot lie. I cannot either, technically, but I have just done so. How did I do this? By training myself to produce meaningless language. This is a process that I can learn to perform quickly and easily._

<comment><USER6> Is there any way to check that a 'GPT-3' text is real and not faked for the much-desired lulz?

<comment><AUTHOR> He has a more thorough explanation here [0]. It's a bit cherry picked paragraph by paragraph

[0] [https://twitter.com/raphamilliere/status/1289226960279764992](https://twitter.com/raphamilliere/status/1289226960279764992)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > A man who wears the same coat for 20 years is either a loyal man or a lazy > one

I took this to mean "coat" in the sense of allegiance. Red coats vs blue coats. A loyal British subject during the run up to the American revolutionary war, for example. Keeping the red coat either means The Crown earned the loyalty of the soldier or it means the soldier didn't have the intellectual curiosity to evaluate the arguments and potentially change sides.

<comment><AUTHOR> I love this explanation. Any thoughts on the second part of the quote about hair style?

<comment><USER7> I mean, it's super sexist but it's loaded with cultural influence. A good man is loyal, works and sacrifices for hard nose causes like the military and at his worst fights for a shilling with no reason to question it. A good woman is pious, devout, and sexually restrained her unchanging hair is a testament to her helping others more than giving any mind to fashion or alluring others. A woman at her worst dons a haircut that's provocative and alluring. She doesn't change it as she ages because she doesn't believe in growing older and dressing, grooming, or behaving in ways that reflect her age. She's interested in sex and partying and despises aging.

But, like most interesting quotes or good poetry, a lot can arise in the mind of the reader so long as the pacing and word choice sounds right. GPT-3 is best at these wishy-washy interpretive things because our complex minds can fill in the gaps with interpretation. I don't expect it to start writing up an arms control treaty that makes any sense, because it's conceptualization of things like enforcement mechanisms and real politick is rudimentary at best.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> > "If an option has a positive gamma, the delta will be negative; the reverse > is not true"

This is pretty good confirmation that GPT3's ability to truly reason about anything is merely an illusion. The above quote, couldn't be more incorrect despite sounding intelligent, and despite countless similar sentences in financial papers/academia. And therein lies GPT3's greatest accomplishment.

<comment><USER8> "GPT-3 has stated an incorrect fact, therefore GPT-3 is unable to truly reason about anything." - <USER2>

Here we see that qeternity has stated an incorrect fact, therefore qeternity is unable to truly reason about anything :)

There is some fascinating work demonstrating generalization on arithmetic problems GPT-3 has never seen before, what do you think about that?

<comment><USER2> And once again, generalization does not imply reasoning. A linear regression is able to generalize on data it hasn't seen before but that doesn't mean it's reasoning about anything.

GPT-3 is just the biggest exercise in curve fitting ever conducted.

<comment> 0-_-0 Linear regression is reasoning, but on a very small scale.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It is not clear how much cherry picking has occured on the way from all the generated quotes to those mentioned in the post.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a fair concern and I can't do anything to assuage your suspicion besides to give you the prompt and allow you or others to generate more. I had to cherry pick slightly in order to provide meaningful commentary, but here are 13 more I just now generated with temperature of 0.9 and the prompt from the article:

1\. "A humble man is not an angry man."

2\. "A Judge is a law student who marks his own homework."

3\. "Value is what people are willing to pay for it. Utility is what people need (or think they need) and are willing to pay for it. An 'investment' is an object that is useless now but may become useful later, for example, money in a bank account, an option, a patent. When utility and value coincide, you have a good investment."

4\. "If a book about failure doesn't sell there is failure in it"

5\. "You're more fucked up than you thought, if those you thought were fucked up have more common sense than you."

6\. "Envy is worse than compliments. It's better to receive no praise at all than hear, 'He's so much better than you are.'"

7\. "What we think of as 'audacity' is more often due to stupidity, absent- mindedness or simply a dazed state induced by reading newspapers."

8\. "The true measure of a person's intelligence is how well they respond to a crisis, and not how they avoid it"

9\. "No, it's not the ideal of beauty, but rather the lack of practicality, that makes

10\. "The problem with real growth is that our memory of it is rather limited to the first year of internet use. It gets fuzzy much after that…"

11\. "Don't respect knowledge, respect the knowledgeable"

12\. "Engineers: master of anti-fragility. They get stronger with stressors."

13\. "Engineers get stronger with stressors. Non-engineers get weaker with stress

I will also note that sometimes the model strays away from the `taleb: [quote]` format which I also exclude

<comment><USER9> Thanks for taking the time to do this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is like looking for patterns in Brownian motion

<comment><USER11> Show me a brownian motion that doesn't change coat (haircut) for 20 years.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The final quote about the coat and the hairstyle is a great example of how when we feed in our biases to the model, we get our biases back out. The sexism and portrayal of women as morally weak goes back to our earliest written stories.

<comment><USER13> > The sexism and portrayal of women as morally weak

Is it accurate to describe an algorithm like this as "portraying" anything? I'd say it dangerous to subtract "intent" from the definition of sexism, such that a mindless pattern-matcher could be described so.

<comment><USER14> The issue with sexism isn't the intent - it's the result. It isn't that the algorithm is sexist, but rather that the inputs have some material that is hostile to women, intentionally or unintentionally. (Consider that the word whore is rarely, if ever, used positively.)

This is GIGO at its core. That means we have to account for it. More importantly, other predictive models are being used in more life-altering ways, such as lending. The pattern matcher may not know that the reason it is saying "no" is rooted in racism. The people selecting the inputs may not even know. But that's all the more reason we have to be careful with its result.

The result is what matters, not the intent.

<comment><USER13> But if the algorithm does what it is asked, then why do we call it sexist/racist, instead of questioning if if was asked to do the right thing? Someone is in charge of some life-altering system, yet has no responsibility to verify the results?

 _someone_ chooses to use a historical pattern-matching an algorithm to make lending choices. _someone_ gives biased text to an algorithm and asks "more like this plz". Is there no responsibility in the architects?

Can I shoot someone, and call the gun a murderer?

<comment><USER15> > But if the algorithm does what it is asked, then why do we call it > sexist/racist

For the same reason why we call someone who, when asked to do what we call sexist/racist, went on and did that instead of questioning it, racist/sexist. Humans are not some mystical spiritual metaphysical entities, they have decision-making algorithms (with parameters set through life experience) inside of them, and execute those algorithms.

By the way, you can hire an assassin to shoot someone, and call her a murderer, not that it would exonerate you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I tried reading a few of Taleb's books but I couldn't get past the common sense arguments lacking any data. Feels like self help books. Does anyone else feel this way? These aphormisms really remind me of that.

<comment><USER17> I can't help but wonder which of his books you read. I disagree with Taleb about a lot, and I find some of his attitudes annoying, but I don't know how you can use "data" to argue with something like _Fooled By Randomness_. One of the major arguments of the book is that "data" and the inferences drawn by using it are dramatically less reliable than they seem. Turning around and asking for data really seems to miss the point.

<comment><USER16> To be fair, I've only read about 50 pages of each - one was _Skin in the Game_ and the other _Antifragile_

<comment><USER17> That makes sense. I haven't read _Skin in the Game_ , but based on the topic it does seem like something that could be studied. _Antifragile_ I found painful to read because of his tone and didn't finish it, although I think that's a slightly harder one to demonstrate with data.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> > Apart from being contrarian, they are often mean spirited or adversarial. > For instance, in the first one he calls those he's criticizing fools, the > second he's trying to access how uninteresting a person and the third and > fourth ones he makes a rather rude comparison of wage employment to slavery. > The fifth one is classic [X] is [A], [Y] is [!A], another popular Taleb > pattern.

I've noticed this as well. His other rhetorical pattern is to purposefully misrepresent a group of people as having a particular set of stupid ideas and then shit on them for believing it. It's an effective trick, because the ideas are dumb, so the reader instantly feels like they're smarter than the targeted group too, and thus feel like they're in the cool kids camp with Taleb.

I think he's a dick.

<comment><USER19> What happened to the hacker spirit? Having thick skin, tolerating no bullshit, being blunt but respecting intelligent insights? Why are HNers much more susceptible to Taleb's assholishness than, say, Torvalds, or esr?

(This is a rhetorical question - I think we all know _why_ but it would be flamebait to expand further)

<comment><USER20> > Having thick skin, tolerating no bullshit, being blunt but respecting > intelligent insights?

I think the issue is that much of Taleb's work doesn't qualify as intelligent insight, and is in fact bullshit. Black Swan was notable, and its core message makes the work worth reading. Just about everything else he has produced consists of meaningless platitudes, edgy, pretentious contrarian takes, and self-aggrandizing chest thumping. He is like if you combined Reddit's r/iamverysmart with the Sphinx character from the 90's movie Mystery Men.

Being a dick perhaps is tolerable if you have genuine insight to offer. Without it, why must the dickish behavior be tolerated?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> "OpenAI" nomenclature should be rejected. Do not allow this project to claim they are open: Its as closed-source as any for-profit company.

What happen to HN "internet culture" that it falls for such obvious ploys without even calling it out?

<comment><USER22> I don't think people are "falling" for it; you don't really see many people being confused that they can't find the GPT-3 repository. Personally, I just don't really care about the name - and I'm glad OpenAI is not open, purely on an AI safety basis. I think their original reasoning for openness was foolish, suicidal nonsense [1], and I'm glad they moved away from it.

[1] [https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/12/17/should-ai-be- open/](https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/12/17/should-ai-be-open/)

<comment><USER23> Funny how people worry about things like that. It won't be one group suddenly having a superintelligent computer. It is groups developing ever more intelligent computers as hardware and software get more powerful.

There won't be a moment before and after the invention of the AI. There is the creeping offloading of responsibilities to more and more automated systems we understand less and less. Already now these systems take decisions that we can only understand in hindsight if at all. We cannot approach them in a deterministic way like we're used to.

These guys are just full of themselves to think they will have it and others won't. And also that they will be able to control it.</comment></comment></comment>


The Growth of Linked Data - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/cloud/2011/01/the-concept-of-linked-data.php <comment><USER2> I looked into RDF pretty heavily a few years ago. The biggest takeaway is that it was naive in its level of trust.

If I make a new RDF document in a repo, claim it was written by Shakespeare, and then somebody does the search on "Complete works of Shakespeare", I'd show up. And there was no real way to police that.

And unfortunately, we get into web of trust type issues, which in itself is ugly. I really do wish that RDF was usable for search engines, and google, and that they could trust sites. But it's just not feasible, and I don't see any scalable solution to it.

<comment><USER3> I understand this from a standpoint of just general trust, but I don't see it as a problem from technological trust. Had someone else done this, and you came about it, you would probably never go to that site again. The trust layers in the SemWeb stack are just like HTTPS, but anything beyond that is a valid philosophical argument outlined by Cory Doctorow's Metacrap piece. Arguably this is also the open world vs. closed world problem, too, and the concept of authority is purely a technical one.

<comment><USER2> From a pragmatist standpoint, something like google can't trust an RDF document any more than it can trust the META keywords tag. Anything a site can assert about itself will end up as fodder for spam and manipulation.

Not to say that individual trusted datasets don't benefit from the RDF logic layers you can apply. Just that it's mostly impossible to have anything more than a set of curated datasets.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Lots of interesting linked data to consume and use in mashups here.</comment>


WhatsApp free voice calling starts rolling out to users in India - <AUTHOR> http://www.mobiletor.com/126304/whatsapp-free-voice-calling-starts-rolling-users-india/

<comment><USER2> They should be. In India concept like net neutrality is still years away. Even people don't know the meaning of the term and majority of them have not heard of it before.

THey should be worried. It's justified.</comment>


Monitoring Jank: How we found the slowest parts of our UI - <AUTHOR> https://fulcrum.lever.co/monitoring-jank-how-we-found-the-slowest-parts-of-our-ui-b6ffd7386896 <comment><USER2> Author here! I had a lot of fun working on this at Lever, and I would love to answer any questions people have about jank.</comment>


The Tox project - <AUTHOR> https://tox.chat/about.html <comment><USER2> I believe this started as an off-shoot of some discussion on 4chan's /g/ board numerous years ago. I mention this because while it is a really cool project, it's definitely hobbyists working on it, and hobbyists working on security software should definitely give some pause.

Personally, I hope it succeeds in the longer term. We need good, decentralized protocols and software. Decentralization comes with its own costs, and it may never overtake the centralized web. But, protocols like Bittorrent have proven to be super powerful even with their flaws and limitations. To me, it is a no brainer that we need end-to-end encrypted chat, and it would be ideal if it could be peer-to-peer.

<comment><USER3> It's amazing the project has gotten this far. I honestly thought this post was going to be announcing the end of Tox.

The project started with a ton of momentum but never really got picked up in the mainstream. Iirc the founder and most of the core code came from one guy.

Not to mention there has been a ton of internal drama: iirc one of the devs stole a bunch of tox donation money to pay off part of his tuition. Then there was a split in the devs and one of the devs stole all the credentials for the website and they switched? Then there was the accusations that some of the devs where child molesters and where doxed.

They also his a brick wall at one point on mobile due to the protocol being very heavy on battery usage so for a while it was only realistic to use on the desktop.

I wish the project nothing but the best and hope they succeed, but I feel like they have reached a point where they have lost interest. I hope I'm wrong.

<comment><USER4> The last couple years have been spent making things right. Documenting the protocol, fixing ugliness in toktok (fork of libtox that's effectively replaced it) and such menial but important work.

Now it isn't a hacked together piece of shit anymore, but proper. As a result, it works reliably. The user experience is very good.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I really think tox is a cool idea, and I've used it quite a bit, but I think it's important to temper security expectations. I can't find a link, but I remember the results of the security audit done in the project to be frankly disastrous.

<comment><USER6> You may be thinking of this thread:

[https://github.com/irungentoo/toxcore/issues/121](https://github.com/irungentoo/toxcore/issues/121)

I couldn't find any evidence of an audit.

There is an actively developed Rust implementation of the core library here:

[https://github.com/tox-rs/tox](https://github.com/tox-rs/tox)

Of course, any flaw in the specification (for example with respect to key exchange) will still apply if they've faithfully implemented it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Tox might be one of the most underrated projects out there.

Launch a client (qtox suggested), add a few friends by copying their tox address (=pubkey) and start talking. It just works, is completely decentralised, and the only way to talk is end-to-end encryption with forward secrecy.

It literally solved the IM problem for most use cases.

<comment><USER7> it's not great for mobile, which is by far the main use case these days. a huge battery drain unless something major has changed since the last time i checked in on it.

<comment><USER4> Well, decentralized makes the whole push thing nontrivial.

Not that I understand IM on mobile. I'd rather use email.

<comment><USER8> The decentralization aspect is not the problem. XMPP for example is also decentralized but has quite good mobile support. The problem with tox seems to be that it is peer-to-peer. So the servers are missing which could buffer all those events for the clients.

<comment><USER4> >The decentralization aspect is not the problem. XMPP for example is also decentralized but has quite good mobile support.

XMPP is federated. Having servers make things easier.

Tox is full p2p, there's no servers.

<comment><USER9> Is that not more a difference between distributed and decentralized then, such as git is a distributed system even though it needs a central server in most use cases.

<comment><USER8> Here is my shot at defining various terms in this context:

\- _Centralized_ : Centralized networks have one central point which controls the network. That doesn't have to be a single server sometimes it is just that there is just one company controlling the network (e.g. WhatsApp).

\- _Decentralized_ : Is the opposite of 'centralized' meaning there is more than one central point. So all following types are 'decentralized'.

\- _Distributed_ : In general terms, it means that the network is (more or less evenly) distributed upon all participants. All participants have the same role and responsibility. There are various kinds of distributed networks. Git for example stores a full copy of all information in every node. Distributed Hash Tables use a different approach where every node is responsible for one explicit part of the information to store.

\- _Peer-to-peer_ (p2p): Is one form of a distributed network, which works (in general) without servers. So all the participants connect directly to each another (Tox).

\- _Federated_ : Is sometimes called a 'distributed network of centralized networks'. Two popular examples are e-mail and XMPP. All participant use their own centralized server, but that server cooperates with other servers to transfer messages across the network. Sometimes their implementations make a distinction between client-to-server and server-to-server protocols.

In general, the more centralized a network is, the easier it is to control. This can be good when it comes to spam, but also bad when it comes to censorship.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Tox has received a lot of criticism for originally implementing non-standard encryption and being difficult to use. Although claimed by developers to be easy to use for anyone, Tox suffers from overengineering. Clients have many layers of abstraction copied from Skype which makes it difficult to audit and to submit pull requests. Overall, however, clients have a very good ease of use and look aesthetically pleasing.

</comment><comment><USER11> What are other viable peer-to-peer encrypted communication tools? Is Tox the only alive project in this space?

<comment><USER12> [https://ricochet.im/](https://ricochet.im/) \- uses Tor hidden services for extra security.

<comment><USER11> Seems not especially maintained: "The latest version is 1.1.4 (November 5, 2016)."

May still be functioning well; did not try it.

<comment><USER12> Right it still functions correctly.

There are more recent commits on master they just haven't release in a while.

I think they are waiting for the Tor team to provide an API for v3 hidden services before resuming work on the project.

<comment><USER13> there's also work being done on a golang implementation, as well as integration with tails (tor-over-tor is unideal so this requires some effort)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Wanted to try it as a text only chat client before granting any media permissions, but it refuses to run that way.

<comment><USER15> The android versions are notoriously badly implemented/written.

The command line client toxic seems to work even when unable to write to the filesystem at all.

Solution: comment the part out where it got stuck, and sideload.

<comment><USER16> I would call that a work around, not a solution. For a project that cries about privacy, the fact that all the implementations are so .. anti privacy like that is pretty bad.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Project's name conflicts with [https://github.com/tox- dev/tox](https://github.com/tox-dev/tox)

<comment><USER18> A lot of projects' names conflict. That's not an issue if they're not in the same space, which is the case here: a CLI tests tool vs. a messaging application.

<comment><USER19> Python tox first released was in 2010. Tox project started in 2013. I hope in the future authors of open source projects would do some Googling before deciding on name. The reason is people really get confused which one.

Imagine this situation. Instead of tox, someone decided to named the tox project "Python". Tox is very famous in the Python community. This shows how unfortunate people doesn't care about naming.

<comment><USER20> I only need a couple tests to check if my python is still alive. no need for any fancy tooling

<comment><USER21> Have you ever shipped a python? It is best to isolate it and its dependencies otherwise unexpected things happen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> side note, I was involved with development of tox for quite some time, and made the website that is being linked to here

avoid tox its full of bugs

</comment><comment><USER23> Does uTox use the core library or reimplement the protocols? Because the core is GPL and uTox is supposedly MIT, but that can't be if they used the core library.

How did they manage to do video chat? What is the underlying library or algorithm or did they somehow come up with a novel video chat system that performs? Did they use WebRTC or something?

<comment><USER15> Err, it can, but the binary will no longer be MIT. The video and voice chat is kinda like webRTC, but over the custom data channel.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Why not run say XMPP over tor?

</comment><comment><USER25> try toxic</comment>


We are the product that Facebook has been testing (reg'n required) - <AUTHOR> http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/6576b0c2-0138-11e4-a938-00144feab7de.html#axzz36LIN3Sx1

<comment><USER2> paywalled</comment>


Assertions Are Pessimistic, Assumptions Are Optimistic (2014) - <AUTHOR> http://blog.regehr.org/archives/1096

<comment><USER2> I looked at doing this in 2010 for the firefox codebase. At the time, neither gcc nor clang were able to infer enough information from builtin_unreachable or asserts in non-debug mode to be worth the effort.

Also, many asserts are rewritten to provide debugging information, not just crashing the program. Firefox had a bunch of asserts that sent logged information before they died, for example. As a result, you're usually willing to take the performance hit to find out why your program failed, esp when the hit is small (here it's shown to be <10%).

<comment><USER2> Looks like others took up the cause later, see [https://raw.githubusercontent.com/bjacob/builtin- unreachable...](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/bjacob/builtin-unreachable- study/master/notes) and [https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/mozilla.dev.platform...](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/mozilla.dev.platform/E0sg9EYk1xU)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is fascinating, I didn't realize that compilers even could do so much with one simple primitive!

</comment><comment><USER4> What a weird typing / prolog-cut mechanism.</comment>


Greylock Partners Invests In Stealth Search Engine Cuill - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/09/10/greylock-partners-invests-in-stealth-search-engine-cuill/ <comment><USER2> Pretty easy to guess why, none of the things reported about cuill points to better search results but all the things point to faster indexing and crawling of sites, so greylock and all the other VC are speculating on a big buyout from Google, Yahoo or Microsoft.</comment>


Apple Worldwide Developers Conference Kicks Off June 2 - <AUTHOR> http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2014/04/03Apple-Worldwide-Developers-Conference-Kicks-Off-June-2-at-Moscone-West-in-San-Francisco.html <comment><USER2> It seems to me the hint is in all the different sized squares. iOS is going variable screen resolution (which it already supports, only no-one really cares). Mac OS X is probably going to let you treat any display like a Retina display (this kind of capability is already everywhere, but only available in certain contexts, e.g. when mirroring to a different resolution display). Between TVs, cars, 4K, big iPhones, and so on, Apple has to bite the bullet and just support arbitrary screen sizes.

Incidentally, has anyone noticed that Apple's push towards simple geometric UI design in iOS7 has simultaneously reduced application sizes (less need for giant bitmaps), improved performance and battery life, and paved the way for more flexible screen resolutions.

This also likely means we're finally going to see the Apple TV as a games console. This similarly means that third party TV apps will probably appear (and thus we'll get CBS, Showtime, etc. on the Apple TV itself). (

Obviously Amazon has beaten Apple to the punch, but I suspect the Apple console might have quite a decent launch lineup.

<comment><USER3> I think you are drawing way too many conclusions from the rounded square (i.e., the app icon) motif used every year for WWDC since the iPhone.

<comment><USER2> Of course it's more than possible that I'm jumping to wishful conclusions! But in previous years they either showed app icons, or any difference in icon size could be attributed to distance (i.e. the implication being the icons were all the same size, but different distances away).

Anyway, we'll know soon enough.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> "The opportunity to buy tickets to WWDC 2014 will be offered by random selection. Register by Monday, April 7 at 10:00 a.m. PDT for your chance to attend. We will let you know your status by email on Monday, April 7 at 5:00 p.m. PDT."

([https://developer.apple.com/wwdc/tickets/](https://developer.apple.com/wwdc/tickets/))

<comment><USER5> This is a lot better than the conference selling out in 2 minutes like last year.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Seems like this one is going to make it to the frontpage. Recap of relevant links:

Press Release: [http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2014/04/03Apple-Worldwide- De...](http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2014/04/03Apple-Worldwide-Developers- Conference-Kicks-Off-June-2-at-Moscone-West-in-San-Francisco.html)

Direct link to register page: [https://developer.apple.com/wwdc/tickets/](https://developer.apple.com/wwdc/tickets/)

Info for company account holders: it seems like every Apple ID associated with your company account can enter the lottery separately.

<comment><USER6> Confirmed: tickets can be transferred among team members. So if you have a company account it's time to promote everyone in your company to developer status ...

Quote from [https://developer.apple.com/wwdc/more/](https://developer.apple.com/wwdc/more/): "Tickets may not be sold, resold, bartered, auctioned, or transferred in any way. As an exception to the foregoing, requests to transfer tickets among eligible team members may be submitted to Apple for consideration at firstname.lastname@example.com. Apple reserves the right to reject any transfer requests."

<comment><USER7> Not sure if it's too late for that; the notice said you needed to be a registered developer at the time of the WWDC announcement?

Incidentally (and off-topic; apologies), does anyone know if you can sign Mac apps, e.g. to distribute outside of the app store, with an iOS developer account? I'd like to sign up for one of the developer programmes and can't justify spending money on both right now. I'm not sure why Apple has two separate developer programmes anyway...

<comment><USER8> The biggest advantage seems to be in the iOS account. You can test and even distribute Mac programs with out being a member, but for iOS you can't even test on your own device with out an account. You don't need a Mac account unless you want to sell in the Mac App Store

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> k-mcgrady If they're doing random selection maybe they could lower the price of the ticket a bit. Hard sell for an indie dev especially when flights are accommodation are factored in. Around £3000 total not including daily expenses (transport, food etc).

<comment><USER9> The upside is that you see far fewer people attending who aren't developers or aren't serious about Apple's platforms. Google I/O, for example, has had quality issues (with both the sessions and attendees) due to how inexpensive it was and the expectation of a giveaway to offset the price of admission.

<comment><USER10> That said, Apple's "return" compensation in terms of giveaway gifts and the like is a bit... stingy. Especially given how unbelievable Apple's profits have been of late.

WWDC giveaway: A $40 jacket that says "14" on it. Google I/O giveaway: $1449 Chromebook pixel.

So much for loyalty.

<comment><USER11> The entire idea is to _not_ provide any "gifts" and "devices" to people attending, so the _only_ reason they are attending is for quality 1:1 time with the Apple engineers plus the opportunity to socialize with your fellow Apple developers. The actual sessions are available on video, so you don't need to attend for those. Viewed from this perspective, lack of giveaways is a very deliberate and desirable feature of the WWDC.

<comment><USER10> That makes sense. I can certainly see how giving away freebies is not the way to attract serious developers, and can be distracting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I think the value of (attending) WWDC has become far too overrated.

With all the sessions, resources, and keynotes being make available online almost immediately , while a fun week, is hard to justify from a business perspective.

<comment><USER13> For me the value wasn't just the sessions, but really being immersed in this ecosystem for a few days without work distractions, and networking.

But now I can watch session videos online, and have found a lot of value in networking at local Cocoa groups instead. So in that sense, the value is diluted.

But the real gem of WWDC IMO is getting one-on-one time with Apple Engineers. If you are actually working on apps and are stuck somewhere, these can be a real boon.

<comment><USER14> Absolutely.

I was building an enterprise app doing multiple simultaneous asynchronous HTTP calls, but was running into issues where certain connections would just die outright. The problem was that the dying connections seemed non-deterministic, which obviously made it very difficult to debug.

I spent most of the week before WWDC trying to debug the issue (to no avail), but since WWDC was coming up (and since I was already registered), I made sure to set aside some time to go to the Framework labs to see if I can get some help.

I went the first day it was open... and was able to talk to the Apple engineer who actually _built_ the Foundation httpClient class. I sat down with him for about 20 min, where we actually went over my code, and he was able to explain what I was doing incorrectly.

20 minutes. And it was fixed.

I probably would've had to spend at least another week banging my head against a wall, and even then, it might not have gotten fixed correctly.

Given any reasonable hourly rate, that single one-on-one alone already paid for the entire conference.

IMO, if you're going to just hobnob and go to the keynote and sessions, then yes, your money is probably going to be better spent elsewhere, especially since all the sessions _are_ available online, _and_ because most of the after-parties and networking events all throughout SF/SOMA don't require you to register for WWDC.

But if you have projects you are _actively_ working on and are encountering issues or anticipate that you will be encountering issues that will be time consuming to debug on your own, then if you spend some or most of your time in the labs, WWDC is absolutely invaluable.

<comment> k-mcgrady >> "But if you have projects you are actively working on and are encountering issues or anticipate that you will be encountering issues that will be time consuming to debug on your own, then if you spend some or most of your time in the labs, WWDC is absolutely invaluable."

I don't disagree BUT for this to make sense you have to have a major bug in your app you're having trouble solving and have that happen at the same time WWDC takes place.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> See also: [https://developer.apple.com/wwdc/](https://developer.apple.com/wwdc/)

There is often a subtle clue in the invite images as to what might be announced.

<comment><USER16> The shape of app icons has been dominating WWDC invites for a long time. They were a central design element going back to 2009 (refer to supercoder's comment for a picture).

First they showed actual icons of apps (2009, 2010, 2011), in the last two years and this year they showed more stylised app icons (2012, 2013, 2014). The goes back to even before Forestall was fired/left. It's always differently coloured app icons. Last year they were overlaid and angled, the year before that they were also overlaid, angled and in different sizes. This year they are only in different sizes.

All you could glean from last years invite was a slight shift in design aesthetic, but that change has already happened (and this years invite is in the same style as last years) so there is no new information in this invite.

All this tells you is that WWDC will be all about apps. As it has been for at least half a decade now. I don't think whoever designed this even know about the new iPhone hardware.

<comment><USER3> Exactly, it's usually only the press invites for Apple Special Events that have a glimpse of what might be unveiled.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> They cracked it.

It's about presence. The iWatch.

Enter your room, lights go on, leave, lights off. Get on your car, maps automatically on, iPhone goes hands free. Siri will be with you at all times, no need to take her out of your pocket.

But most importantly...

Payments, small purchases, worldwide. From gas stations, grocery shops, fast- food chains. One billion iWatches will be used for payments in the next five years.

Apple is betting the house on it.

How do I know it? The competition is ramping up their job listings for e-commerce specialists. Exactly where the money is, a strong competitor in the monopoly arena of credit cards.

I, for one, welcome our new payment overlords.

In my wrist.

</comment><comment><USER18> Casey Liss predicted this last night on the live broadcast of ATP.

Now he's just going to look silly when the episode drops friday.

</comment><comment><USER19> And so, for the third straight year, retina MBA or GTFO.

</comment><comment><USER20> Last paragraph:

 _Apple designs Macs, the best personal computers in the world,_

Never noticed their PR lines like that. A little extreme?

<comment><USER21> Here's a good blog post on how that has changed over the years: [http://www.512pixels.net/blog/2014/01/apple- boilerplate](http://www.512pixels.net/blog/2014/01/apple-boilerplate)

And here's Microsoft's version:

"Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq "MSFT") is the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential."

No one is going to be humble in their own press releases.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> If they don't unveil a larger iPhone, I'm going to buy a Galaxy the second that conference is over. They've been so far behind the curve with respects to screen size -- almost every other major contender is shipping larger screens. The norm has changed.

<comment><USER23> Should warm up the credit card then - hardware announcements haven't been made at WWDC for a long time. All iPhone announcements are in September.

<comment><USER22> The iPhone 4 was announced at WWDC, so I'm a little hopeful.

<comment><USER24> Four years ago. The only product announcement since was the Mac Pro last year, and it was a teaser. This isn't a consumer or device focused event, so big product announcements like that are unlikely, with exceptions being where they influence development. Obviously a bigger iPhone will require new development, but I wouldn't expect a full-fledged unveiling.

<comment><USER23> Even if they do intend on a changing the screen size, they're not going to let the cat out of the bag at WWDC.

When the iPhone 5 changed the screen size, we heard nothing from Apple besides a very oblique "we have AutoLayout now, use AutoLayout!", which wasn't anywhere close to conclusive about anything.

The push on AutoLayout since iPhone 5 probably also means even less chance Apple will be forced to admit anything during WWDC.

<comment><USER24> Fair enough. There's still a fair amount of AutoLayout magic I don't understand, but it has made my life a little easier. I also really didn't expect them to show anything, and it drives me nuts how blown out of proportion WWDC has become. It's a terrible day when developers can't get access to engineers and training because executives and the press want a front-row seat to the Keynote bail by Tuesday.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>