Using symbolic regression to predict rare events - <AUTHOR> https://turingbotsoftware.com/posts/rare-event-prediction.html <comment><USER2> This seems like a guaranteed recipe for overfitting. You're searching over an enormous space of analytic functions and reporting fits without (as far as I can tell) any regularization penalty on model complexity or validation on holdout data. Your model will fit well to any data you throw at it under those conditions, and the result is very unlikely to generalize.

I'm sorry if I've grossly misunderstood what you're doing here, but trying to sell this method in a GUI tool (making it usable by people without a background in statistics) seems almost negligent.

<comment><USER3> The previous submission on "Machine learning prediction of the coronavirus outbreak" indicates to me that they do not understand what problems symbolic regression can be applied to. They are making predictions about the future based only on past measurements of one event. They also seem to be revising their numbers without noting the changes in the article.

[https://web.archive.org/web/*/https://turingbotsoftware.com/...](https://web.archive.org/web/*/https://turingbotsoftware.com/posts/coronavirus- prediction.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This seems pretty low, can't we apply Bayes' theorem here?

      let F = transaction being fraud
      let D = detected as fraud

      P(F) = 492/284807 = .17%
      P(D|F) = 80%
      P(~F) = 1-P(F) = 99.83%
      P(D|~F) = 13%

      P(F|D) = (P(D|F) * P(F)) / (P(F) * P(D|F) + P(~F) * P(D|~F))
      P(F|D) = ((.8) * (.0017)) / ((.0017) * (.8) + (.9983) * (.13))
      P(F|D) = 0.01 = 1% chance of the transaction being fraud given a positive detection

although to be fair, they're not stating to only use this method by itself

</comment><comment><USER5> Did you verify the result with other dataset than the one used for training?

<comment><AUTHOR> No, I think the features of this dataset are unique to it.

<comment><USER6> Can you update the article by holding out a portion of the training set and then using it as an unseen test set?

Otherwise it's impossible to make the comparisons at the end of the article to other results.

<comment><USER7> Yeah, was the model trained using train/test splits? otherwise, the model likely has been severely overfit.

I wonder how this performance would have compared to a simple random forest or MLP model.

<comment><USER8> I was also curious. Using an out-of-the-box weighted random forest, I got an f-score of ~.85 using a 75:25 stratified train-test split.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> To better understand the limitations in Symbolic Regression and Genetic Programming, check out my paper Prioritized Grammar Enumeration

[http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.394...](http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.394.140&rep=rep1&type=pdf)

OP misses the point that SR is the problem space, not the algorithm or solution space.

</comment><comment><USER10> I was not aware of symbolic regression at all, but I'm wondering now if it couldn't be replicated by some feature engineering or playing around with smth like the Box Cox transformation.

You could afterwards use some feature selection, regularization etc. to retain features that have explanatory power.

It wasn't clear to me why symbolic regression would be especially good for highly skewed datasets. Does anybody have an idea?

</comment><comment><USER11> Cool math, but this doesn't solve the false positive paradox part of the base rate fallacy... since fraud is so rare, most transactions marked as fraud are going to be wrong.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_rate_fallacy#False_posi...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_rate_fallacy#False_positive_paradox)

</comment><comment><USER12> I have used [http://zunzun.com](http://zunzun.com) for a similar effect in the past.

</comment><comment><USER13> Why do machine learners use F1 score instead of a proper scoring rule (MSE, log-loss, etc.)?

<comment><USER14> F1 score is harder to misrepresent, and relates more closely to business objectives. MSE is mostly for regression. Log-loss is very useful for training because it represents a useful signal for how well your model is progressing in fitting the data, but you'll still want to evaluate precision and recall.

In practice you'll usually want to tune the tradeoff between precision and recall for the situation. This way you can make a direct connection between model performance and the costs and benefits as they manifest in practice, as well as your tolerance for risk.

<comment><USER15> Given that this is fraud prevention, the correct error function should be measured in dollars. The thing you want to minimise is money lost.

Is the cost of allowing a fraudulent transaction through much greater than the cost of blocking a non-fraudulent transaction? Then the error function should reflect that. Minimising F1/accuracy/log-loss is not necessarily going to save the most money.

<comment><USER14> There may also be compliance costs. (Will this model satisfy an auditor?)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> So basically this is a neural network architecture discovery process.

<comment><USER3> It has no neural network. It is a simulated annealing search over a solution space of symbolic equations. The traditional strategy is to use a genetic algorithm to construct symbolic equations. I don't see any proof that this product provides any improvement over the open source tools that are available for free.

<comment><USER9> Prioritized Grammar Enumeration is a better algorithm for symbolic regression</comment></comment></comment>


Stay away from open source - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/tech-talk/1140d92a5359 <comment><USER2> I especially liked the part where he backed this up with evidence, or even examples to back up his opinions.</comment>


If email subject has "spam" as a sub-string, gmail doesn't consider it spam? - <AUTHOR>

I have recently realized as a consequence of an email in my gmail account, that if you use spam in the email subject, gmail doesn't consider it a spam, when it actually is a spam and many other such emails from the same source have landed in the spam folder. Is that a flaw in the algorithm? <comment><USER2> How do you test it?

In other words: how do you create email that would be otherwise recognised as a spam?

</comment><comment><USER3> No, it's correct behavior that spam emails go into your inbox.</comment>


Introduction to Web Development (2018) - <AUTHOR> https://btholt.github.io/intro-to-web-dev-v2/ <comment><USER2> Some of the opinions reflected in the linked materials are presented as if they were obvious best practices, statements like "never do X". While it may be initially helpful to beginners for someone to provide guidance in such absolute terms, it can also lead to adoption of cargo-cult approaches and impede deeper understanding and growth. The linked materials are also problematic in their one-sided and outdated perspective on "separation of concerns", claiming CSS belongs exclusively in external stylesheets. Which ignores completely the emergence and widespread adoption of modern component- based architecture. Not just in frameworks like React and Vue, but also standards like Web Components. Maybe an unfair criticism given it's "introductory"... but I'd urge anyone who seeks a better grasp of the power of CSS to look instead to the axioms and layout examples on [https://every- layout.dev](https://every-layout.dev) for its much more rigorous, up-to-date, "first-principles"-based, expert treatment of this thorny subject.

<comment><USER3> On a related note, CSS is indeed harder than most think. That being said, I've been using CSS going on 20 years now and have seen a lot trends cone and go. One current trend is that there seems to be a lot of unnecessary complexity. SCSS, for example, is indeed powerful, but most sites and web apps I've worked on don't need it and could basically have the entire component-based layout structure rewritten with a single, efficient, well-organized standard CSS file that doesn't need to be built from 30-odd separate SCSS files. The same goes for so-called transpiled Javascript "languages" such as Coffeescript and Typescript. These, for the most part, add unnecessary layers of abstraction and complexity, making it far more difficult to debug. By using these abstractions, we developers are also doing ourselves a big disfavor because we are often not learning the underlying technology that the browser actually understands. Of course I get that there are domain-specific problems that these tools are trying to solve, but they are often inappropriately employed simply because they're trendy. With some apps I've worked on, it's anbalagous to using a farm tractor when all you really needed was a lawnmower.

<comment><USER4> > a single, efficient, well-organized standard CSS

I still haven't seen a single, efficient, well-organized standard CSS file in 20 years, so I think I'll stick to the well-proven SCSS/SASS build pipelines that add considerably more upside than downside. If you're a paid professional, there's no excuse to be doing things the "old way" in 2019.

<comment><USER5> There are dozens of them at [http://www.csszengarden.com](http://www.csszengarden.com).

Enjoy!

<comment><USER6> CSS Zen Garden was, in my opinion, one of the best experiments on web development to demonstrate the flexibility of development that existed in HTML and CSS, but not to demonstrate that you would never again need to touch up your HTML code whatever the project. In 2003 –when this project was born– the average weight of the CSS files was 6KB. Today (2019) we are at an average of ~500KB, so using the CSS Garden argument card is, in my opinion, wrong. First, because it never adapts to the reality of developments, second because the difference in code size required is higher when new development parameters are taken, based mostly on philosophies such as BEM or others. CSS Garden is an HTML doc, with just 54 CSS classes, against more than 2000 classes that can be found in other modern projects.

<comment><USER7> > Today (2019) we are at an average of ~500KB

This. Stuff like this is why the modern web feels so slow and eats absurd amounts of memory. Think how big that is in memory once it's turned into some data structure that can be queried & modified by Javascript, and re- calculated, and consulted again as screen size changes, and so on. And think how much memory has to be allocated to effect that transformation in the first place. And cycles burned actually doing it.

Well, that and no-one cares about shipping massive media files with the initial page anymore (remember thumbnails? Anyone? No?)

And, you know, just _all of Javascript_.

But still. This is a problem.

I think when your CSS passes short-story length you maybe need to re-evaluate what you're doing. Consider sitting down to write a short story, like a 5,000-10,000 word thing you could sell to a genre mag. It's _not_ all that short. It's a fuckload of text, actually, if you are facing having to write it. That's a _lot_ of CSS. So much any sane person would hate to have to sit down and read it beginning to end. Should be more than enough, even for complex layouts, even for fancy pages, even for responsive. 500K is almost half a _Moby Dick_ , for comparison. There's no possible way your team even knows what most of it does.

<comment><USER6> That's the way it is. I have found examples with CSS that exceed 2MB. That makes it literally impossible to change the design, maintenance or understanding of the architecture itself. That's why functionally programming CSS eliminates all those problems. Almost 2020 and we have not yet evolved to this style of development.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Hey friends! This is Brian Holt, the author of course. Finding this on the front page of HN is an unexpected delight.

Just wanted to let you all know that the accompanying videos for this are free too[1] (you just have to create an account.)

[1]: [https://frontendmasters.com/courses/web- development-v2/](https://frontendmasters.com/courses/web-development-v2/)

<comment><USER9> I'm your biggest fan!

<comment><USER10> Suck up. :D

<comment><USER10> I got downvoted for this. Burke is my worker... Holy is too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Hail Holy!

Inside-jokes from the group chat aside, this is very good content. Holy's videos on Frontend Masters[1] are excellent as well.

[1]: [https://frontendmasters.com/teachers/brian- holt/](https://frontendmasters.com/teachers/brian-holt/)

</comment><comment><USER11> Very minor quibble in the final thoughts... "Google everything. Then Google it again when you forget it"

Maybe a nice opportunity to break people out of the google bubble and give other search engine options

<comment><USER12> I would say it's a better opportunity to encourage users to use the corresponding language documentation to help ensure more accurate understanding.

<comment><USER13> On the other hand, Google frequently leads to relevant official documentation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The ROI of learning web development has never been higher. With modern-day frameworks and tools like Firebase anyone with knowledge of javascript can build apps. Exciting times.

<comment><USER15> Do you mind giving examples of what type of sites apps have gotten easy to build?

Something like Stackoverflow easy to build these days? What about marketplaces?

I'm still intimidated by webpages when I "Inspect" them with browser tools.

CSS especially looks a mess to me and it puts me off from learning web development.

<comment><USER16> It is a mess, but that's usually because those easy to use frameworks make them a mess. Big site inevitably are going to be filled with a lot of JS that for things you're not going to implement anyhow. Start small, build upon previous knowledge, incrementally.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> As a noob I've really enjoyed Frontend Masters courses. Brian's courses are great, and it sounds cliche but the JavaScript the hard parts by Will Sentence really changed how I think about how JavaScript actually works.

</comment><comment><USER18> I have gone past the introduction a long time ago. Currently, I am trying very hard to find a book/video which teaches how to create UI in CSS.

<comment><USER19> Any user interface is simply a combination of smaller components.

For example, using your basic HTML/CSS skills, you can create a button. Then, create an input field. Then, put those together in a div and use a few lines of flexbox layout css to arrange the two pieces. Maybe you want something below it, which responds to what you input? Create another div below this input/button div, and then put this whole thing in another div to contain it all.

Try thinking of user interfaces in terms of rows and columns. More complex user interfaces are simply rows of columns of rows of columns! Start with small, basic pieces and put them together.

<comment><USER18> I'm talking about best practices. I can always create a div hell but I believe there is an art in creating proper UI using HTML/CSS.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I wish all courses were this thorough! Thanks Mr Holt!

</comment><comment><USER21> I did a quick glance but didn't find a section covering basics of HTTP... maybe there should be one before AJAX or node.js sections

</comment><comment><USER12> "vi Oh boy. Here we go. Type vi index.html. This going to open vim which is an editor that's all in the command line."

Not to sound pedantic, but vi is not vim. While vim was designed as vi- improved, instructing users of vi to use vim direction is not going to be a complete match and may cause confusion for those not familiar with it.

<comment><USER5> On any given *nix system that's current today, `vi` is a symlink to `vim`.

You can check yourself with `ls -l $(which vi)` in bash.

<comment><USER12> That is not always the case. Clearly, you've never encountered "vim: command not found" but found vi to work without a problem.

<comment><USER5> Not in at _least_ ten years. Except for on BusyBox systems.

<comment><USER22> That's the default behavior on Raspbian as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Wow, it does help a loot!</comment>


Show HN: Automatic automated unit test writer for Rails with RSpec - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/Nedomas/zapata

<comment><AUTHOR> It all started with a belief that writing unit tests is a much more deterministic process than writing app code. And it still holds true.

Do you think its possible to build writer in such a way so we don't have to write tests anymore?

Running it would LOCK the class API in tests as it is. So all we would have to do is writing code, locking it, writing more code, locking it too and so on.</comment>


Bye Bye Skype, canceling Skype account - <AUTHOR> https://www.tuxed.net/fkooman/blog/bye_bye_skype.html <comment><USER2> I think the biggest problem with accounts in general, is that the accounts never really are deleted. Any DB admin will tell you info is never deleted.</comment>


In 10 years, Tesla has gone from one-car company to being compared with Porsche - <AUTHOR> https://www.businessinsider.in/in-10-years-tesla-has-gone-from-a-one-car-company-to-being-compared-with-porsche-heres-why-thats-incredible/articleshow/71351652.cms <comment><USER2> Oh that's some _hilarious_ framing.</comment>


Show HN: Data Calculator: See who makes money selling your data and how much - <AUTHOR> https://app.fastgarden.io/assessment <comment><AUTHOR> The news about companies making billions off targeted ads and data access agreements is interesting. We get that hackers made money off the Equifax and Marriott breaches. But this information about the data market had me thinking, is my data making these companies a few pennies or is there more on the table?

This app calculates the value of a person's data based on two sets of information. First, the apps you use, their data sharing agreements, and their annual revenue per user. Second, the email you use and the associated accounts that hackers have stolen information from. We're working on improving our estimation methodology, but the data brokerage market is pretty opaque. Here are the sources and methods: [https://medium.com/fast-garden/fast-garden- assessment-data-s...](https://medium.com/fast-garden/fast-garden-assessment- data-sources-399dad064723)

Thanks in advance for the thoughts, ideas, feedback.

</comment><comment><USER2> This is pretty cool and at minimum food for thought on who's making money on my data. Where did you get the dollar amounts? Is that based on facts and conversations with these companies/data brokers?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! The dollar amounts for data brokers come from their annual revenue statements. Though my experience in the industry plays into the estimate of how big their consumer files are and how much on average they make selling someone's data.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> How quickly do you anticipate being able to sell data and make your consumers money?

How do you envision paying customers/individuals?

<comment><AUTHOR> When you join Fast Garden we try to make it clear which datasets are in demand and how they'll be used, for example, location data or purchase behavior. Because of this, payment from companies to sellers is quick. We're testing the details right now; should we pay people in monthly or weekly micropayments? or pay people in yearly sums that are larger? It depends on the goals of the people sharing their data. We've already gotten interest from people who are used to selling their information because unlike a platform like Survey Monkey, we'll create payment predictability for people who sell their information over time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Very interesting tool and wild to see how much your data can go for. So cool.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for checking it out Eric! Do you mind sharing how much your data was worth?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> LOVE THIS! Can't wait to get control of my personal data again</comment>


Consider Controlled Infection (Re: Coronavirus) - <AUTHOR> http://www.overcomingbias.com/2020/02/consider-controlled-infection.html <comment><USER2> I have to upvote this with the hope that better educated and more eloquent persons calmly and rationally shred this argument. I'm just going on a feeling that mutation makes the idea silly; but i feel there's also a "contempt for life" counterargument to be made.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree. Me too. Robin Hanson, the author..agrees that it is controversial. And he certainly has some appalling viewpoints : [https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Robin_Hanson](https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Robin_Hanson)

Parallel discussions in his twitter account going on now. I too would like to see arguments against his proposition.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> It only occurred to me after reading this that with chicken pox, at least where I grew up we used to just "Get infected and done with".

And apparently that concept is actually common enough to get a wiki article... [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pox_party](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pox_party)

</comment><comment><USER4> A virus isn't a fire. And informed consent. SMDH.

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm not sure about doing things the way he suggests but it looks like some treatments may be effective such as remdesivir and possibly even chloroquine so you could perhaps take those and expose people to get the equivalent of a vaccination with limited risk.

<comment><AUTHOR> Would it be right to say that the only situation his solution would be justified is if every single person on the planet is at the risk of being infected? It has to be air borne or in the atmosphere.</comment></comment>


A PDA By Any Other Name: The Shrewdest Marketing Decision Ever? - <AUTHOR>

Mobile phones (or cell phones, for you Americans) have changed a lot since my first one. I remember as a teenager being thrilled when I got my hands on a brand new Nokia 3310. Changeable covers, programmable MIDI ringtones, cheap, tough, simple.
I remember around about that time there were "PDAs" on the market. Personal Digital Assistant. Calendar, contacts, notes, organisation, maybe some basic web browsing. Palm Pilots, Pocket PCs, styluses, etc. So...whatever happened to PDAs? How did they decline, and why?
Well, the marketeers selling these products had a brain wave. "Everyone has a mobile phone of sorts, and buys a new one every year or two. PDAs aren't selling as well as we'd like. Why not keep selling them, but call them 'mobile phones'?"
That's right. It was all in the name. You bought a PDA because you needed a new phone. It's not a phone. It's a computer that lives in your pocket. Chances are you already have at least one computer at home. Now you have two.
The old Nokias, that do phone calls/texts/not much else are the true mobile phones and they pretty much peaked in terms of delivering that functionality. What you have in your pocket right now is only a phone by name - sure it does phone calls, but that's a tiny subset of things that it can do.
If I sold you a car, and I called it "a three piece suite", then it's technically true. You have two armchairs in the front and a sofa in the back. It's a three piece suite. Everyone needs a three piece suite, right? Therefore: you need a car.
If they'd called them "Pocket Computers", nobody would've bothered. Call them "Mobile Phones", and it was a natural continuation of an already established market.
Welcome to the slow manipulation of the public consciousness and possibly the shrewdest marketing direction conceived in modern civilisation. <comment><USER2> If PDAs were inexpensive and everyone had a need for one then they would have seen the same massive growth that mobile phones did, and would likely have had call capabilities added a long time ago.

But PDAs are niche, and expensive. Mobile phones offered utility to everyone, we all loved the concept of being able to make calls form everywhere. And it could be done inexpensively, the device was simple once the infrastructure was built. Then because of this phones entered a features war, and PDA technology and features got absorbed. Nobody manipulated anybody, nobody said we should market phones as PDAs. It was just the natural progression of a highly competitive market.

If anything the driving force was the demands of the consumer, manipulating the industry into a startling pace of technological adaptation to remain competitive. Modern civilisation has it good, real good. Not because of a shrewd marketing move, but because when enough people like something that something has to evolve to keep up with our demands. PDAs never saw that attention.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think it's much more a case of marketing driving perception, and thus creating new markets to supply. But then that's evident from the article, I guess.</comment></comment>


Two genes in Chromosomes 13 and 14, linked to Homosexuality - <AUTHOR> https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-15736-4 <comment><USER2> Before anybody jumps to conclusions, these are not definitive findings. They are extremely important findings for those performing active research on the topic, but are not of general interest to those who are not performing research. The next steps will be to see if this holds in other cohorts, and in other populations, etc.

<comment><USER3> Indeed. At the present time many or most scientific studies are not reproducible.

<comment><USER2> I object tremendously to that characterization, because "reproducible" is a fuzzy word that never gets defined properly.

These results are almost certainly "reproducible" in that you could take the same people, regenerate all the measurements again, and get the same results by running the methods described in the paper.

These results may not be "reproducible" in the sense that when they do this with a set of 2000 new individuals, they will probably not find the same SNPs at the same significance.

Public discussion that conflates these two only serves to discredit science, without improving it or its process. Worse, saying that only only the second sense of "reproducible" is worthy of "science", would _severely_ impede the process of discovery.

As long as "reproducible" in the first sense holds, scientists can learn from each other. Scientists also need to be able to communicate with each other before announcing to the world "we've solved it all!"

I find that most people (and I'm not including you with this statement, I don't know what you think!) who are bemoaning the lack of "reproducibility" are only interested in that second sense of reproducibility, because they want to open a journal to a random page make broad statements that are widely applicable. Scientists need to be able to talk about things in narrow terms, and specifics, or they will never be able to get to the broad rules that are generally useful.

<comment><USER3> _> they will never be able to get to the broad rules that are generally useful._

Well at least we agree that discovering universal laws is desirable. Because we want to explain the world, right?

Some more info about reproducibility:

[http://www.nature.com/news/1-500-scientists-lift-the-lid- on-...](http://www.nature.com/news/1-500-scientists-lift-the-lid-on- reproducibility-1.19970?WT.mc_id)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Wow, the bioethical implications of potentially identifying the mechanism of sexual orientation are staggering.

I wonder if / how long it will be before parents have the technical means—if not the legal right—to alter their child to be gay or straight through gene therapy. Or even simply selectively bring to term one orientation or the other.

<comment><USER5> In reading your comment I was struck by the dilemma that this reality would bring. Those most opposed to homosexuality are those most opposed to terminating pregnancy (mostly). It would create quite a quandary for folks who are inclined to hold these two beliefs.

<comment><USER6> Your other comments make me think you're someone who appreciates an honest discussion, so thanks for that. I do have an honest question of the reverse. Those most in favor of homosexuality are also those okay with abortion.

But if parents started aborting because they were homosexual, would there be any sort of moral/ethical issue?

Other comments have rightly commented it could be inverse (selecting for homosexuality), but I think all pro-lifers would prefer anyone being born, and allowing them to be responsible for their own soul, so that answer is easier for me to imagine.

<comment><USER7> > But if parents started aborting because they were homosexual, would there be > any sort of moral/ethical issue?

Not more so than terminating a pregnancy for any other reason.

<comment><USER8> Doesn't sound like it.

Usually it's for some reason that's justifiable, e.g. don't have the means to support it, don't want a child ever/at this moment in my life, teenage pregnancy, product of rape, fetus has some inherited disease, etc.

Merely dropping a child because it'll be gay, while being ok to keep another that wouldn't is not exactly of that nature.

Even the most casual reasoning for abortion ("I don't want a child, period") doesn't imply anything more, whereas this can be seen as implying you hate gay people.

<comment><USER9> > fetus has some inherited disease

By your logic, if homosexual attraction had genetic causes, could it not also be seen as "some inherited disease"?

You're doing a great deal of question begging. You're beginning with an ideological stance vis-a-vis homosexual attraction that is exactly a point of issue, and then tailoring moral arguments to suit the position. You've confused "the position that homosexual attraction is disordered" with "hating gay people" and then unjustifiably construed "hating gay people" as not entailed by the desire to terminate a pregnancy for whatever reason, i.e., it's okay to terminate a pregnancy for whatever reason unless the reason is that the fetus is genetically conditioned for homosexual attraction, in which case it isn't okay because that would be an act of hate against gay people by virtue of my prior ideological commitments.

You must see the absurdity of that line of thought.

The position of sound anti-abortionists would be that no matter the characteristics of the fetus, the fetus is a human being and the killing of any innocent human being is immoral. Your position, on the other hand, seems to be very ad hoc, relying on special pleading that is driven by prior sui generis ideological commitments.

<comment><USER10> Firstly, homosexuality has been declassified as a disorder by American psychological and psychiatric associations for several decades now [1]

Secondly, how is terminating a pregnancy because the fetus is going to be a homosexual person different from terminating because of a specific gender of the fetus? For example, in India aborting because the fetus is female is illegal or it's rather illegal to find the gender of the baby before he or she is born.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexuality_and_psychology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexuality_and_psychology) Edit: typos

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> "We detected several promising regions of multiple SNPs in the 10^−5 to 10^−7p-value range, as seen in the Manhattan plot (Fig. 1), though no SNP reached genome-wide significance (5 × 10^−8)."

<comment><USER12> This is the most important statement in the paper.

<comment><USER13> Let's pretend I don't have a PhD and don't know what that statement means though, can I get a summary?

<comment><USER14> It means the result could plausibly have occurred just by chance. The odds may be against it being chance, but it is at least plausible.

<comment><USER15> Eh, not really. What you said is true of any p value. It's tautological.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I gave my saliva to 23andme two years ago. I've been suicidal my whole life. If genetic markers for suicidal tendencies are discovered in the future, can they use my stored sample to assist in such studies?

<comment><USER17> > I've been suicidal my whole life.

That's pretty intense. Have you tried medication or therapy? Or anything else?

<comment><USER16> That's not really important. What is important is that they receive data about the suicidality, because it is inevitable that a large percentage of people like me who are long term suicidal will not have documented it with a medical professional. And, due to privacy laws, it's difficult to say whether that data if it did exist with a medical professional would make it to 23 and me for them to be able to make such a correlation. I would presume that they may be able to and for or data mine from articles if I were to commit suicide for instance bud

<comment><USER18> Hey, I appreciate your thoughtfulness on this issue. As you know, all your feelings are based on the chemistry in your brain. If you want to talk, hmu at email@example.com

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Would a bio expert be able to comment please on how this may fit with observations around increased likelihood of male homosexuality correlated to the number of older male siblings (to the same mother)?

</comment><comment><USER20> So why is this a surprise? The experiments on identical and fraternal twins were done decades ago, and there just isn't any doubt that genes influence sexual orientation. Nor is there any possibility that they determine it: many gay men and lesbians have straight identical twins.

<comment><USER21> It's _not_ a surprise, it's just scientific research.

<comment><USER20> Sure, but the importance of research is strongly correlated with how surprising it is. That's entropy and information 101.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I suspect that as we come to better understand genetics, we (as a society) are going to be more and more uncomfortable with the findings that we uncover. Physics and mathematics have made it long since clear that the universe is deterministic, that all the answers lie in the genes and atoms and equations we are made up of. The implications of this are dire - our society is built on exactly the opposite foundations; law and order assumes the criminals are acting of free will, education assumes all students are equal, and societal success rests on the notion that all men are equal. None of this is true. All of the implications can be twisted to serve our worst, or our best instincts.

Some will take this study to mean Homosexuality is a disease, to be cured. Others will reject it, to say the science is not yet "in", the study needs replications, meta-studies are needed to verify and corroborate it. We should embrace it, and say that it is good we are not a monoculture, embrace mutation and variation. To be human is to be different.

<comment><USER23> > Physics and mathematics have made it long since clear that the universe is > deterministic

Have they?

<comment><USER24> Sure, John Calvin told us so. And then we rejected it. And then it became a sure thing again. And then not . . . and now here we are.

<comment><USER25> Can the universe be deterministic if our knowledge of whether the universe is deterministic is not deterministic?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> My government will be ecstatic. More and more catholic church makes it to the ruling party. I imagine some other states (China?) would also want to tamper with its population genome.

<comment><USER20> Do you know what's happened to China's sex ratio since it became possible to selectively abort female foetuses? If some hormone were found to be associated with men becoming same-sex attracted, the commies would probably put it in the water.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> So... what about bi/pansexuality?

</comment><comment><USER28> First critique that immediately comes to mind is how the 1,077 homosexual men and 1,231 heterosexual men were selected. If Republicans have taught us anything, it's that self-reporting is not an accurate measure.

From the paper: "classified men as homosexual based on both their self- reported sexual identity and sexual feelings"

Furthermore, how does this study explain sexual fluidity? IE: I liked kissing boys when I was 13 but I married a woman at 25?

<comment><USER29> Is this a troll? How do you intend to determine whether or not if someone is of an orientation EXCEPT for asking them?

"I'm gay."

"Well my 'science test' says that you're not."

Nice.

<comment><USER15> The inability to avoid selection bias doesn't preclude selection bias.

Not to say the above comment makes any sense...</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Pros and cons of working as a freelancer? - <AUTHOR> Let's do some freelancer mithbusting! Which of the following are true in your experience?
1. Exposure to a diverse set of work environments;
2. Exposure to a diverse set of technologies and domains;
3. Finding work when starting out is difficult;
4. Finding work becomes progressively easier;
5. You don't have time to get bored;
6. You have the freedom to work on other projects, including your own;
7. You can increase your hourly pay with every contract;
8. You learn how to negociate;
9. You mostly do menial / grunt work;
10. You will suffer / have suffered a penalty if you decide to stop freelancing and move into management / higher levels;
11. You need to constantly work on personal brand;
12. Companies don't hire contractors unless they have to;
13. Is it easier to find remote work? <comment><USER2> 1-8 and 13 have been true for me.

</comment><comment><USER3> I will answer your questions from I have personally experienced while doing freelance work or what I call "IT mercenary work", That I have obtained over the last 20 years roughly.

1\. Exposure to a diverse set of work environments; Yeah, you can encounter different work environments if you're required to go on site. Most of the work I done as freelance has always been remote so I rarely have to go on site unless it's like some sort of recovery effort or investigation of sorts. I do know there is far more red tape involved when someone brings you on 1099 contractor in a large corporation vs a startup. I generally find startups to be more ideal as they are normally pretty chill and upbeat. I enjoy working with people who love what they're doing and their product or service. Then going into a business that is confused to why your even there, and or the company is doing bad to the point that none of the original staff wants to give any information about their own network or systems. This happens in places that fear the outsider and want to sabotage you and your efforts. Mostly, if they fear losing their jobs. I generally always be as natural as possible to avoid any tension between whatever drama there may be going on in the company. 2\. Exposure to a diverse set of technologies and domains; This can be true if your freelance is wide spread, doing work on Linux/MacOS/Windows, then you will get exposure to a lot of different technologies vs just freelancing in a focus skill like say UI interface development. I personally have worked in various areas of freelance from many different types of industry. It can be rewarding to work with some areas of technology that is on the cutting edge, like one freelance job was to assist a group setting up antminers for mining crypto currency. 3\. Finding work when starting out is difficult; It can be, but I found Linkedin and dice have proven to be pretty awesome at providing job offers, there are also freelance boards to do one hit wonders like coding jobs to write something for someone. I have seen tons of them for web development. 4\. Finding work becomes progressively easier; It does, the more your name gets out there the more it's shared among others. If you did a great job for one company and they are friends with another they may recommend you to help them also. I picked up a lot of work and repeat work via word of mouth. 5\. You don't have time to get bored; I generally never board, but I am also on call 24/7 and that can be tiresome over long periods. It's good to have a passion doing what you love then to do it just for money. It's better to get paid for something you enjoy doing. 6\. You have the freedom to work on other projects, including your own; Yes, to an extent, in most cases you can set your own hours unless the client or company is on some specific schedule and if you work internationally you may be resetting your schedule to someone else's hours, a great many times I have been switched onto nights due to this. 7\. You can increase your hourly pay with every contract; This was the hardest one for me to figure out, pretty much you don't want to be taken advantage of. I learned to know my value and I value my time. I waste no time in explaining to a client or company that I wouldn't be interested if it's too low of a rate. I pride myself in my knowledge and skill, and in most cases if they want my services they are coming to me and not me going to them and sure they could find some replacement, but where I am today that would cost them more then what I would consider a fair wage. I also operate with a hard policy of "no money, no work" this is where working for corporate can be better you're more likely to get paid on time and what they agreed too. Where as in other cases you may do work and rendered services, and then the client doesn't pay you the correct amount or on time. If they can't be bothered to honor the contract then I stop caring about providing services. Also, make sure to get a written contract and that whoever is hiring you to do their work signs it. If they are a new client or they screwed me in the past I make them pay half up front or all up front or is escrowed through a middle party. 8\. You learn how to negotiate; Yeah, stand up for what you want, don't take a job that you don't want to actually do, there are hundreds of jobs dropping daily, no need to force doing something that isn't worthwhile. I try to stay in areas that I know I excel at and prefer to render quality to the client over just doing any job that comes across. 9\. You mostly do menial / grunt work; That can happen if you get suckered into doing some migration, where some company is moving from one office to another, they may outsource their grunt work. I don't do this anymore I did it earlier in my past, but I avoid wasting my time moving people's cubicles and setting up their new desk. It's not going to teach you anything of value, but it's shocking that there are employee's that can't even connect up their own computer. In one case I had to deal with the new office wasn't even wired for networking so there was no Ethernet ran and none of the switches or networking equipment was ready. Make sure to find out exactly what it is and try to get everything required of you on the contract before you take the job so there is no fun surprises to deal with that have made you not take the job in the first place. 10\. You will suffer / have suffered a penalty if you decide to stop freelancing and move into management / higher levels; Doubtful, only hiring companies that are sticklers for amount of time worked at a previous company vs working for hundreds of micro jobs. Some hiring departments may see it as instability in work history. However, you will likely have vastly more information and skill from working in the field, then if you just got a single job and worked the same routine for like four years. 11\. You need to constantly work on personal brand; Of course, improving yourself is always a plus, and building up your client base ensures freelancing can be survivable no one likes going without food or rent due to lack of active jobs. I know some freelancers that created small businesses and later became full on managed support for people's technology needs. 12\. Companies don't hire contractors unless they have to; Companies will reach out into freelance when they can't achieve their goal internally or don't have the funds to bring on a person full time, and sure they don't want a full time employee since they have to pay benefits. However, that may mean they might try to take advantage of you, so remember to work out a reasonable contract. 13\. Is it easier to find remote work? It can be, especially if you're working internationally, I found that Linux administration seems to be more wide spread for remote work vs windows administration, for whatever reason windows jobs want you to actually go to the servers physically, which is annoying. I would rather have a laptop and work remotely via SSH on some Linux related job. However, some on sight jobs can be fun especially if you're into solving things, to where you go and have to investigate or find out what is causing their problem. Like random network outages, or if your hired to find out how they got breached/hacked.

-Estella</comment>


Intel's port 7 AGU blunder (2019) - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.fau.de/hager/archives/8683 <comment><AUTHOR> Does anyone have a good answer to his "Why" at the end?

 _What's a total mystery to me is why Intel chose to build an AGU that cannot handle all kinds of addresses. In 2017, it was indicated to me that there "was not enough space on the die." I find this hard to believe, especially because the problem prevailed in (at least) three further generations of Intel CPUs after Haswell._

Is die space really a plausible answer as to why Intel would bother to put in a second AGU, but cripple it so that it can only work on "simple" addresses that even their own compiler is not "smart" enough to generate?

<comment><USER2> Others have pointed out limitations on register read bandwidth and other possible hardware level issues, but I'll also point out that avoiding indexed addressing modes in the generated assembly doesn't look to be that difficult - if you're doing a big unrolled SIMD kernel it's probably not a stretch to have the compiler emit some LEA instructions as well to avoid indexed addressing modes in the loop. Apparently the compiler authors simply haven't decided that it's important enough to do so yet, but compilers are much easier to change than hardware...

<comment><USER3> Or they didn't want to end up producing code with noticeable fluctuations in efficiency, as it is described later in the article: sometimes, having consistent (read predictable) computation times is better.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> nkurz, just curious if this is on your mind due to our recent conversation about whether or not the AGU even exists.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sort of. I did find this article when searching for evidence of whether the AGU ever assists in LEA, but I'm mostly interested in the topic because I've been working on-and-off with Daniel Lemire and 'BeeOnRope' on a research paper that involves getting intimately familiar with the innards of the AGU's on recent Intel. I have no doubt that the AGU exists!

Related, you might be interested in this StackOverflow, where among other things, Peter Cordes (is he here?) and BeeOnRope conclude that the Port 7 AGU cannot be acting as assist to the 3-cycle "complex" LEA: [https://stackoverflow.com/questions/50557636/what-type-of- ad...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/50557636/what-type-of-addresses- can-the-port-7-store-agu-handle-on-recent-intel-x86) (expand the comments on the answer).

<comment><USER5> Thanks for pointing out that link (I didn't click on it when I originally read the article). Deep in the comments, there's a hint of the reason for this port 7 AGU weakness: not because of the extra gates for another adder, but due to the wiring of the scheduler/bypass network, which is presumably much simpler when port 7 only handles latency-1 instructions (at least if I'm understanding that correctly).

Looking forward to that paper, too!</comment></comment></comment>


The coming wave of AI enabled apps – Core ML usage in GitHub repos - <AUTHOR> https://heartbeat.fritz.ai/the-coming-wave-of-ai-enabled-apps-github-edition-1dee86e5e9c <comment><USER2> Has anyone seen similar projects using TensorFlow Lite?</comment>


Over half of Y Combinator startups are using Notion - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2019/11/12/work-collaboration-startup-notion-labs-cozies-up-to-silicon-valleys-top-accelerators/ <comment><USER2> Found out about them on HN, 10 months ago

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18904648](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18904648)

Glad to see the their progress

</comment><comment><USER3> Cofounder/CEO of Deel (YC W19) here. We basically used Notion for everything as we got off the ground. Glad to see Notion supporting the YC community!</comment>


Electric Vehicles Cost Less Than Half as Much to Drive - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffmcmahon/2018/01/14/electric-vehicles-cost-less-than-half-as-much-to-drive/#61ab5e023f97 <comment><USER2> So, I personally would consider electric for my next car, due 2025 if my current car lasts 10 years. That's overall my goal for car replacements: once per decade (or longer).

However, I have friends who lease cars, because they always want the latest and greatest. Others, who are a bit less savvy with their money, simply sell their cars (for a significant loss) and buy something new every 3 or 4 years. Still others crash their cars and need a new one.

Which brings up the question: if an Electric Vehicle saves $650/year, maybe $800/year once you include 2x oil changes + misc expenses per year, then an Electric Vehicle only breaks even (over a period of 10 years) if its within $8000 of the ICE car.

That's my case: where I hold the car for 10 years. The "big" maintenance items: engine rebuilds or whatnot, don't seem to be necessary in the first 10 years of a modern car's life anymore. Tires are the next most expensive thing, but electric cars also need their tires replaced.

If you're one of my friends who NEEDS a new car all the time (for some... reason...), then even a $2400 premium would be too costly and it'd be better to buy ICE.

<comment><USER3> >If you're one of my friends who NEEDS a new car all the time (for some... reason...), then even a $2400 premium would be too costly and it'd be better to buy ICE.

It will not be a premium by 2025. EV's right now are where hybrids were at in 2005, and in 2025 they will be where hybrids are at now in terms of market share. It will become a normal, sensible choice for people buying a new small car. Cheap (<$20k) EV's with 200+ mile range will be commonplace within 5 years. Lithium battery prices have fallen by an order of magnitude over the past 10 years, to below $140/kWh, and it's projected to cut that almost in half by 2025. At that price, something with similar capabilities to a current generation Nissan Leaf will sell for around $15-20k new. And with the battery being the only meaningful component which can degrade, cars will now last decades in dry climates with zero maintenance, perhaps needing a battery switch at 10 year intervals.

<comment><USER4> This only works if EVs can be charged easily, everywhere.

That is not currently the case, and given that I currently see no planning around this, I don't expect it to be the case by 2025 either. I briefly (very briefly) considered either a plugin hybrid or a full-electric vehicle. However, I can't charge anywhere - and that's a deal breaker. In 8 years, there will probably be somewhere I can charge, but not easily, and not without thinking about it ahead of time.

EVs may reach the point of economic viability, but the lack of infrastructure sure looks like it will drag down their market share.

<comment><USER2> By "Electric" btw, my current expectation for 2025 is that I'll buy a plug-in Hybrid at that time.

I can charge at home / go to work each day, but then use the gas station for longer drives. IE: Volt or Prius have this sort of functionality. And surely newer vehicles (by 2025) will also support a similar use case.

Tech probably will get better, but in my experience, long-term predictions tend to be overly optimistic. Fusion has been 10 years away for 50 years, electric cars too have been overly optimistic for quite some time. ($35,000 Model 3 doesn't exist yet. Only high-end ones as Tesla hasn't figured out the kinks yet, despite "launching" last August)

Sometimes tech advances more quickly than expected (ie: high-speed internet). So if a very widespread electric network were built (and no, Tesla's supercharger isn't there yet for my use cases), then I might consider a pure electric vehicle at that time. But 2025 is a long ways away, so its something I'll just have to evaluate each year up to that point.

<comment><AUTHOR> Pure EVs will be cheaper simply because they are easier to build. Wheel- attached motors drive costs down significantly, removing hundreds of manufacturing steps.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Companies Pitch Shortwave Radio to Shave Milliseconds Off Trades - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-06-17/companies-pitch-shortwave-radio-to-shave-milliseconds-off-trades <comment><USER2> This has been going on for several years at least. These are some pretty good articles from some amateur sleuths:

[https://sniperinmahwah.wordpress.com/2018/05/07/shortwave- tr...](https://sniperinmahwah.wordpress.com/2018/05/07/shortwave-trading-part- i-the-west-chicago-tower-mystery/)

[https://sniperinmahwah.wordpress.com/2018/06/07/shortwave- tr...](https://sniperinmahwah.wordpress.com/2018/06/07/shortwave-trading-part- ii-faq-and-other-chicago-area-sites/)

[https://sniperinmahwah.wordpress.com/2018/07/13/shortwave- tr...](https://sniperinmahwah.wordpress.com/2018/07/13/shortwave-trading-part- iii-fourth-chicago-site-east-coast-patent-regulation-and-farmer-kevin- mystery/)

[https://sniperinmahwah.wordpress.com/2018/07/16/shortwave- tr...](https://sniperinmahwah.wordpress.com/2018/07/16/shortwave-trading-part- iv-sleuthing-examples-research-tools-techniques-deputies-wanted/)

<comment><USER3> A big 2018 thread about those: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17028892](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17028892)

<comment><USER4> I can recommend the book "Flashboys". It goes into the details why these milliseconds are important, and what role radio plays.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I remain convinced that this is Starlink's short-term customer if their promises are true. They are doing transmission via optical as the crow flies. If they're doing O-O, or even low latency O-E-O, they can beat transatlantic fiber. For HFT houses, that's potentially a major edge.

<comment><USER6> Starlink latency would be worse than shortwave. The advantage would be bandwidth, but I doubt that high bandwidth is really helpful for this application, especially if you have to give up a tiny bit of latency for it. After all, you can already have all the bandwidth you want with only slightly higher latency.

<comment><USER7> starlink latency could be faster than shortwave, once full gen2 constellation launches, and if starlink decides to care about this industry.

...disclosure: i'm the first one to build NY-Chi microwave, and Chi-Lon shortwave.

<comment><USER6> Cool! How do you figure? Doesn't shortwave take the great circle path, at lower altitude, making the path shorter?

<comment><USER7> gen2 constellation is at 350km agl shortwave f-layer is at 200-400km agl depending on space weather

difference is not that big

<comment><USER6> Sure, but it seems to me like the Starlink path will still be longer in almost all cases unless you're incredibly lucky and the satellites line up exactly along the path for a few seconds. And Starlink could have additional delays related to routing and possibly TDMA. What kind of latency issues need to be considered with shortwave?

<comment><USER7> a single orbital plane at 53' contains 7028 satellites (out of 40k total, but let's take one orbital plane)

basic math, "satellite density" or "average distance between satellites" if they were just at random position is ~200km (napkin math, might be off).

<comment><USER5> Some folks wrote a paper based on the proposed constellation: [https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3286062.3286075](https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3286062.3286075)

The paper actually talks about trading: > Already there are new private microwave relay links between New York and Chicago[11], London and Frankfurt[1], and London and Paris. These links have relatively low capacity compared to fiber, but are of high enough value to the finance industry to be worth building new low latency links

In their paper, they say NYC / LON RTT will be between 58 and 66 ms -- this isn't much better than fiber. On the other hand, London to Joburg -- starlink has an advantage.

<comment><USER7> That paper is based on gen1 constellation, and predates gen2 (350km) announcement.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> If I was regulating the markets I would introduce a random ~100ms delay into all transactions.

<comment><USER9> The company who has the best latency would still beat the competitors.

<comment><USER10> Are you sure about that? They would on average perhaps be a slight bit faster, but if the randomized delays are an order of magnitude larger than the latency, they may not be able to do anything useful with that advantage.

<comment><USER11> wouldn't it be like this?

If the delays are randomized then you have as good as chance of getting them as your competitors. On delayed times you will have a bad chance of winning, but in comparison to others with the same delays your latency beats theirs, on non-delayed times your latency beats non-delayed competitors and really beats delayed competitors.

Thus in the end the best latency should win biggest on non-delayed trades, and on delayed trades lose least.

<comment><USER10> Unless that uncertainty now means that your time and resources is best spent elsewhere than shaving ms off your latency.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It's pretty hard to hide a yagi-uda antenna capable of transoceanic distance communications. The data rates are MUCH lower than what's possible by fiber and microwave, as pointed out in the article.

</comment><comment><USER13> Now they need a bidding market to determine who gets to choose whether to send a 1 or 0 in the next available slot.

And another market for which bits to jam and prevent either value from getting through.

</comment><comment><USER14> It's weird that we've set up a stock market for machines rather than humans, where ever-faster bots interpose themselves between slightly slower bots, all the way up to the original buyer and seller, who are probably bots as well.

<comment><USER15> This all sounds so perverse to me. There are so many obviously brilliant people working on these things. Why aren't they doing something productive with their time? Fighting climate change, educating uneducated, feeding the unfed. All the energy and rare and bloody minerals that are being put into these radios, all the drinking water that will be forever tainted after having been used to produce the semiconductors needed for all this... was it really the best place to use it? To make the roulette wheel run a little faster? I don't understand it.

<comment><USER16> You won't like it, but the there is a sensible answer for this. Despite you not liking the stock (and other financial) markets, they do perform a useful and needed task (price discovery, reallocation of resources, reallocation and focusing of human brainpower, reallocation of capital, allowing for investment (allocation of collected capital and resources in the present for future projects, so that they can be achieved faster, and thus provide overall better output of the system)), and even speculation is also an important part of that task.

It is not needless greed (as popularized by some movies and pop culture), it is an engine of the capitalist civilisation, which has so far produced far more results (even in less obvious terms like allowing for least poverty in the world than any other time in history, because the benefits of a well- functiouning society do evidently trickle down to the the little guy, even if the most of it is collected at the top) than any other.

There is indeed some meaningless speculation in it, just like how there is corruption in all of human systems, and just how in every ecosystem there are a number of parasites, but they are there because the underlying system (capitalism) is meaningful and produces value for society.

> feeding the unfed

They do feed the unfed. The capitalist system has been able to reduce world poverty by far far more than any other system in history. Look at the stats. And well-functioning capital, labor, idea and resource circulation markets are at the very heart of that system.

<comment><USER15> > And well-functioning capital, labor, idea and resource circulation markets > are at the very heart of that system.

Sure. But I'd question whether high-frequency trading is a necessary component of that, as opposed to regular-frequency trading. Same as I'd question whether things like collateralized debt obligations and interest-free loans were good for the housing market.

"Capitalist civilization" has changed in a number of ways since Reagan and Thatcher, just in its legal framework, compared to the thirty years before and I don't think it's obvious at all that we are better off in the developed world than we were in the fifties and sixties when things were more regulated.

When I look at stats for things like wage disparities, and the amount of money poured into marketing (demand generation), and the amount of frivolous products that the capitalist economy produces because it must by its nature constantly expand production, I quite honestly don't see efficiency and I certainly don't see reason.

<comment><USER17> >> When I look at stats for things like wage disparities, and the amount of money poured into marketing (demand generation), and the amount of frivolous products that the capitalist economy produces because it must by its nature constantly expand production, I quite honestly don't see efficiency and I certainly don't see reason.

Have you considered its alternatives are not much better, if at all?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> So if glass slows the signal down, would it be possible to use a hollow fiber?

<comment><USER19> Microwave is traditionally used to reduce latency caused by fiber's refractive index. I suppose you could bury waveguides, but an air interface works just as well (besides the occasional weather; better to be fast most of the time).

[https://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2016/11/priva...](https://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2016/11/private-microwave-networks-financial-hft/)

<comment><USER20> I can assure you, that link already exists several times over. There are dozens of links between Aurora and 350 E Cermak, and dozens more between 350 E Cermak and Cateret, NJ. There's even an entire ISP based off the lowest latency link between Chicago and New York.

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

<comment><USER21> What's in Aurora? And why West Chicago in the original article?

Amusingly, I grew up 2 towns over from Aurora and live 3 towns from Carteret now.

<comment><USER22> The CME datacenter is in Aurora, and the ICE datacenter is in Chicago proper.

<comment><USER21> Ah, cool. Is there a significant operation in West Chicago, too? From the article, I was still confused by why a shortwave tower would be located there. West Chicago is close to Aurora, I suppose, but if it's for CME data center, why not put the tower in Aurora?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> [https://archive.vn/80BAE](https://archive.vn/80BAE)

</comment><comment><USER24> Interview with the CEO of Raft Technologies, a company offering this service: [https://chatwithtraders.com/ep-197-haim-ben- ami/](https://chatwithtraders.com/ep-197-haim-ben-ami/)</comment>


Show HN: Waveform – Take Your Programmer Art to the Next Level - <AUTHOR> http://www.waveform3d.com <comment><USER2> Slick looking. For tuning your website, here is a story of the ADHD age, aka how i ended up NOT downloading it:

1\. Scrolled through the page and screenshots, thought: "looks interesting"

2\. Arrived at 'Try for free' download button, thought: "ok it's paid"

3\. Scrolled back up to find 'pricing' or 'buy' menu link, (as the menu is not in fixed position) but didn't see any, thought: "huh is this free or not"

4\. Tried 'license' link as alternative, but it contained wall of text and no clear pricing information, thought: "fuck it" and closed browser tab

Only when checking the exact link names for this feedback i noticed that you had the pricing information within the plain text wall mixed with feature descriptions, above the download button.

So, the purchase experience needs tuning, but well done with the software and best of luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback! Sorry things were obtuse, I've now added a 'buy' option to the menu at the top, as well as emboldened the price on the main page.

<comment><USER2> Great, just downloaded and trying now.

What is the updater tech that you are using?

<comment><AUTHOR> Just a few custom scripts that compare your version to the latest, as well as download release notes, and the full patch if you accept the update.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> human-factor This is super cool! I've been wanting to make/find something like this for a while. It looks overall great, but I'm really put off by the visual programming language. Is there a textual alternative that I'm not seeing on the web-page?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback. There is no textual interface I'm afraid, as the programming is very restricted. It's not Turing complete. The main benefit of it is that you only have on screen the logic that you are actually using to build your model.

I did add the feature request to the Trello though, so if you like, you can vote to register your interest!

[0] [https://trello.com/b/sP1ByAN3/waveform](https://trello.com/b/sP1ByAN3/waveform)</comment></comment>


An Iron Age skeleton with his hands bound found in Wendover - open-source-ux https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-beds-bucks-herts-53366209 <comment><AUTHOR> I was curious about referring to this find as from the Iron Age:

In the British Isles by convention the Iron Age extends until the Romanisation of Great Britain.

<comment> the-dude IIRC The British have always been frustrated no really old human remains were found on the island.

They have been trying ever since.

<comment><USER2> Er, no. There are really old human remains just about everywhere you look - and that's not just on the Parliamentary benches.

Stonehenge f.ex.: [https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-28969-8](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-28969-8)

<comment> the-dude That's what I said.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> "The archaeologists also found an Iron Age funerary monument, which would have been used only by "high status people" This should be the headline i guess. It is more interesting to me.

</comment><comment><USER4> Changing the title makes it sound as if 2000-year old human remains are somehow rare in the British Isles. I don't think even obviously murdered ones are that exceptional.

<comment><USER5> Ok, we've changed it again to make it a bit more specific. "murder victim" is way too sensational for a title here.

<comment><USER4> Indeed, and possibly of less interest than the henge, for instance.

It occurs to me that ancient remains are sometimes initially thought to be contemporary murders, as another angle (or saxon?).</comment></comment></comment>


You probably don't want to run Firefox Nightly any more - <AUTHOR> https://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/web/FirefoxNoNightly <comment><USER2> It seems people simply _want_ to be outraged at Mozilla. The shield study isn't even running yet and several people have raised concerns over the opt- out policy in the mailing list and bugtracker but obviously that doesn't matter.

What matters is that the original suggestion was opt-out.

Of course, rightfully, nobody is going to send a message on the bugtracker or mailing list or otherwise participating to ensure this doesn't happen.

Rather, everyone goes out and yells how terrible Mozilla is and how Google is being nice since they atleast tell you about it upfront. (Completely ignoring that Google is steering Chrome into a new IE-Era of web development)

I don't think the blog post above accurately represents the current situation on the shield study nor does it reflect how several people engaged on it are trying to prevent this exact kind of PR disaster.

<comment><USER3> Here is a simple question, why do Mozilla not have a policy that dictate that any increase in data collection from one version to the next _must_ either be opt-in or follow a lengthy documented process with the community, in public (similar to RFC in ietf and wikipedia), and a clear update to the privacy policy. Bureaucracy can be helpful in creating trust that important changes won't just sneak up on people unannounced.

<comment><USER4> > documented process with the community, in public

You mean exactly like it's happenning in the mailing list right now? Even when the discussion is public, it seems some people prefer to rant on social media instead of contributing to the official discussion.

<comment><USER3> So what does that process look like? Is there a formal process with clear method on how and when the decision is made, how it get propagate into a decision and how the documentation and announcement to users will be?

Is there a formal policy document you can link me that defines the process how additional data collection are added in mozilla projects? It seems to me that what we have is a in-prompt discussion because people happen to detect a change and managed to raised the issue just before it went live. A formal process would make people trust the project that issues like this isn't depended on the chance that a data collection will be detected before it goes live and only then be brought to discussion in the public mailing list.

<comment><USER5> There is: [https://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox/Data_Collection](https://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox/Data_Collection)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is honestly the reason I do use Nightly. I'm volunteering to provide information that I understand could be very intimate in hopes it's useful to Mozilla in making Firefox better. Data drives better decisions, and I'd rather the technically savvy volunteer their privacy than it being extracted from the general populace.

So yes, kick me a bit, I'll let you know what breaks.

<comment><USER7> Same here. Call me naive all you want, but I do think Mozilla has our best intention. They won't sell the data, they will try to keep it as secure as possible and anonymize it. As seen they even made a deal with Cloudflare to ensure they don't log any of that data.

I'm a strong advocate for privacy but if I'm going to give away my data I'd rather have it be Mozilla than Facebook or Google.

<comment><USER8> Yeah, totally agree. Mozilla needs user data like this for their product, and I think it's a perfectly reasonable solution to collect it from Nightly users who have opted into being guinea pigs.

> I'm a strong advocate for privacy but if I'm going to give away my data I'd > rather have it be Mozilla than Facebook or Google.

Yep. There's no company I trust more than Mozilla when it comes to handling my data in a safe and responsible manner.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The full quote, since I think that the author of this post cherry-picked unfairly:

>> As one of the folks who brought up the initial concern let me be clear that at this point my only real concern here is one of optics. The DoH service we're using is likely more private than anything the user is currently using.

> It isn't explicit right now that using nightly means opting in to > participating in studies like this, and I think the text of the download > page antedates our ability to do those studies. The text of the Firefox > privacy page says that prerelease products "may contain different privacy > characteristics" than release, but doesn't enumerate them. I also can't find > a public-facing description of how we handle, secure and audit PII data in > experiments involving partner organizations.

> In both cases I'm confident we have solid policies and protocols there, I > just don't see a way to point a concerned user to that information.

> I'm working on that now.

</comment><comment><USER10> > _(although at the moment I 'm still using Firefox 56)_

There are unpatched security holes in Firefox 56. If you're really mad about the extensions change, downgrade to Firefox 52 ESR.

Running Firefox 56 and worrying about the security of your DNS data is a nonsensical threat model.

<comment><USER11> There's really no good forward if you're stuck in where the author is.

Either you upgrade and lose several important addons, and functionality in other addons. These are often what makes Firefox a good browser (for you).

The second option is to downgrade to ESR, which will delay the need to upgrade for a few more months. This may invalidate parts of your profile. It also means you lose out on a number of significant performance improvements included in 56.

And the last option, of course, the author's choice (which recommend against): staying on 56. This is of course a bad idea for the reason you stated, plus you lose out on future performance improvements and possibly new web technologies. You will also keep getting nagged by Firefox to upgrade.

So, there is no good option, and you have to pick your poison: Upgrade past 57 suffer significant amounts of usability/efficiency, downgrade to 52 and lose parts of your profile and get significantly worse performance, or stay on 56 and risk the browser getting compromised.

<comment><USER12> I hate to victim blame, but he's entirely at fault for the predicament he's in. It was widely known that legacy extensions would be phased out it 56, and a few searches related to firefox 56 will tell you that ESR would be the only branch that supports both legacy extensions AND will recieve security patches past 56. So he should have switched over to ESR before 53 came out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I understand the desire for statistics, but they should make it more obvious that nightly isn't _just_ daily builds from master. I've run Nightly from time to time and had no idea it was automatically opting in to Shield studies.

Both this and the Mr. Robot extension issue a few months ago erode my trust in Mozilla a little. Counterpoint: only god knows what Google is sending itself from Chrome!

<comment><USER14> The difference here is that you expect Google to collect -a lot- of data about you and your browsing habits. You can also be quite sure that they'll want to keep that data to themselves.

When my data ends up at a third party, especially without my knowledge, I'm much more concerned about it being sold and or shared further.

<comment><USER10> > _When my data ends up at a third party, especially without my knowledge, I > 'm much more concerned about it being sold and or shared further._

As stated in the mailing list thread linked in the article, Mozilla has a legal agreement with Cloudflare that the data will not be stored long-term, let alone sold or shared. My reading is that they're keeping information about DNS requests and responses, but _not_ who made the request, for 24 hours for debugging purposes, and then getting rid of all logs. The data they're actually interested in is performance, not the DNS flow itself.

You're welcome to decide that Mozilla's trust in other companies is misplaced even if they get a signed contract, and if you do, _that_ would be a good reason to cease using Firefox (Nightly or otherwise!). But if you're not of that opinion, it doesn't make sense to worry that the data simply happens to go through a third party.

(Also, what third parties see your DNS data today? Do you think your ISP is not tracking this?)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm ok as long as they make it _up front and clear_. It's not meant to have the "latest greatest" \- it's meant to collect analytics to understand and respond to where changes in the nightly might have broken something critical.

That said, a large chunk of the web is getting very personal. So I'm not sure Mozilla's rights to do as they please matter if the venn-diagram between nightly-users and privacy-stalwarts is anywhere near 30% overlap.

<comment><USER14> I agree. They can send my data wherever they want - as long as they tell me about it so that I can make an informed decision.

Now, nightly is nightly - you don't accidentally build and install it on your system. But if this behavior is included in other pre-release versions (such as the developer edition), the need for informing the user becomes even more important. I've installed the developer edition from the Arch linux User Repository (AUR), which means that I don't see any release notes or information boxes on the developer edition website when I'm getting the software.

A small popup in a corner telling me that "There's a new way to help improve firefox" after an upgrade/install would solve this. I don't want 15 levels of confirmation and a roll of tin foil - I just want something informing me that my data will be sent to a new receiver, and why.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Opt-out privacy violations are not new for Mozilla, did worse than this to German users last year, discussed here:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15421708](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15421708)

</comment><comment><USER17> > Mozilla's apparent goal of using Nightly users as a captive pool of test > dummies.

I thought that it is the main purpose of Nightly, roughly paraphrased but overall accurate.

I'm using it as my semi-primary ("work") browser and from the day one I live in faith that 1) it may stop working any time 2) there is some Mozillian peeking over my shoulder all the time (figuratively).

</comment><comment><USER18> Man running an old, insecure version of Firefox with several unpatched critical security issues is outraged at DNS hostnames being sent to a US company (in a more secure manner no less). Ok.

</comment><comment><USER19> I don't see the problem actually, if I want a normal browser I can do my online banking in, for sure, I won't use the nightly version. To me, nightly means, anything could happen.

</comment><comment><USER20> Mozilla should be careful about EU's GDPR. Under GDPR, explicit user authorization is needed for every use of personal data. An opt-out does not comply with the law. Nor does a blanket TOS or Privacy Policy.

The law comes into effect in May.

<comment><USER21> One doesn't download FF Nightly by accident though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I trust Mozilla has done the diligence to handle the data correctly. If I didn't trust Mozilla I wouldn't use Nightly or even Firefox. I use Nightly because I want to help Mozilla test and make Firefox better. For me that includes opting-in to studies, reporting bugs, and helping test about:config flags they mention in their Nightly blog.

</comment><comment><USER23> When you first run Firefox, it shows the following page describing the types of telemetry data Firefox shares and a button to configure your telemetry options if you'd like to change them:

[https://www.mozilla.org/privacy/firefox/](https://www.mozilla.org/privacy/firefox/)

<comment><USER24> The eye-catching headline in huge type, is "at Mozilla, we believe that privacy is fundamental to a healthy internet".

Only later in this document -- that basically no one is going to read in detail after reading the headline -- do they detail how they intend to not respect my privacy.

Let's be clear: this is a dark pattern with intention to mislead. Mozilla has serious and growing issues with respecting user privacy by default, and judging by the recent roadmap, it seems like it's going to get worse.*

* [https://blog.mozilla.org/data/2017/12/09/add-on-recommendati...](https://blog.mozilla.org/data/2017/12/09/add-on-recommendations-for-firefox-users-a-prototype-recommender-system-leveraging-existing-data-sources/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Mozilla, wtf?

I can understand mistakes like Mr. Robot, mistakes happen. But I can't understand an explicit company policy.

I have opted in Firefox's data collection every time I was asked. But such data gathering should always be opt-in. Ask in a nice way and you'll get contributors. And if not, well that should give you a hint that you shouldn't do it.

You're better than this, really. It's why I use Firefox. So please stop it with the mistakes.

<comment><USER26> That's what the mail thread this article was referring to was discussing: how can they properly communicate this, and the privacy safeguards they put in place, to the user?

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I wonder why Mozilla is lately so fond of collecting user data. Do they have a new data mining department which is looking for work? Did someone tell them to do data driven development/marketing?

If they really want to know more about what we are doing, they could just ask us, don't they? I mean, something like building a FF extension which offers to participate in a monthly survey and at the end of each survey it can ask which data the user wants to attach to his survey responses this _one time_.

And if they ask the users for all hosts they have visited during the last month, many people will ask what Mozilla wants to do with that data and Mozilla can explain their intent so that everybody can decide if he wants to support that cause.

Yes, that would probably yield much less data and would be more cumbersome for Mozilla, but in the end it would be a _fair_ way of letting your users participate in the development process. As users we want a product which we can trust 100% that it will keep our data on our computer as long as we don't explicitly say otherwise.

<comment><USER28> > Yes, that would probably yield much less data

So in other words, probably not much better than doing nothing at all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> explain to me why DOH is worse than 188.8.131.52 or even your ISPs DNS?

why isn't DOH possibly _more_ protecting of your privacy than these other services?

<comment><USER30> Plenty of people are concerned about any US based company having access to their DNS logs; even with the pro-privacy agreement CloudFlare have in place with Mozilla, the US government has past form of doing bulk data collection from US based companies.

Your ISP's DNS may well be covered by relatively strong data protection laws (versus those in the US) and don't lead to a foreign government gaining access to all your browsing history, even if in principle they could be MitM'd.

<comment><USER29> so again, how does this make DOH worse than 184.108.40.206?

<comment><USER31> You manually opt in to 18.104.22.168. You may be using something with stronger legal protections than Cloudflare and will not be aware you need to opt out of this. The strength of encryption on the network is irrelevant if you don't trust the recipient.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Hate me for that, but my opinion is that there is no reason for using Firefox at all anymore. Mozilla as company have decided that honesty, dignity and loyalty towards their origin user base was less important than the hopeless try to defeat Google Chrome and take their place in market share.

All what Mozilla does is simplifying the browser, removing every single bit of more advanced customization features to be most attractive to the typical mainstream user who thinks that customization, features and choice is bloat and should have no part inside the product.

How should i as wary user ever have faith in Mozilla as i see what they have been doing since 2013?

If they want to be so badly like Google Chrome, then i can also use the original instead.

I - as being loosely connected to the Anonymous collective - value morality most. And that morality... Mozilla has thrown over board without thinking twice about it.

</comment><comment><USER33> Seems like multiple issues with Firefox (Cliqz and now this). FF's new privacy policy has so many exceptions that it makes it challenging to read: [https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/privacy/firefox/](https://www.mozilla.org/en- US/privacy/firefox/)

The Brave browser seems to be carrying the torch for privacy these days:

Brave is not in the business of selling personal information. We believe the best way to ensure your private personal information is protected is to make every effort to _ensure we are not receiving your private personal information in the first place._

[https://www.brave.com/privacy/](https://www.brave.com/privacy/)

[https://www.brave.com/](https://www.brave.com/)

</comment><comment><USER34> IMO, this blog post is needlessly alarmist and even misleading.

On the pre-release FF downloads page [1] it says, "Firefox Nightly automatically sends feedback to Mozilla." Not sure how the author of this post got the impression that Nightly _doesn't_ collect user metrics and analytics, but this is its explicit purpose.

If the author really cares about privacy, he should just use the main Firefox release or, even better, something like Waterfox or PaleMoon.

But please - don't slam Mozilla for creating dedicated analytics and tracking release channels and then using those channels for, you know, analytics and tracking.

[1] [https://www.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/channel/desktop/](https://www.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/channel/desktop/)

</comment><comment><USER35> Well, I'm glad OP pointed out that nightly might do unexpected things with my browsing habit information in order to gather data on browser use in nightly- I admit, I hadn't really thought that through.

It won't stop me from using it for development browsing and some other things, but it might give me pause before visiting some sites I suppose (so I would switch browsers).

My problem with nightly is that it doesn't automatically update, so I have to reinstall every day. And I'm just too lazy (errr, "busy") to be bothered with that. Is there away around this issue on Mint (Ubuntu)? I even put a menu entry into my "shortcuts" menu on fluxbox, but it's nightly from December or something.

</comment><comment><USER36> Firefox profiles are a hard thing to discover. When you start Developer Edition Firefox up by default it starts in its own profile. I'd guess Nightly does the same too. Regardless, it'd be nice of Mozilla to make profiles more accessible through the default UI. I've set up my FF to start with the profile selector every time I start it up, but in firefox in order to switch profiles one has to go to about:profiles.

</comment><comment><USER37> User intrusion seems to be a pattern with Mozilla now.

<comment><USER38> Frankly big name FOSS projects have developed a massive paternalist streak over the last decade or so.

This in complete ignorance that what attracted people to them in the first place was to escape the paternalism (and black box nature of proprietary software) from the likes of Microsoft.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> DNS over HTTPS being skewed into a bad thing is a new one for me. How could this be worse than sending it in plain text to any other entity? At least in this case it's going to be limited to Cloudflare and not whoever's watching in between.

If this is part of what it takes to get this technology rolled out, then do what it takes imo.

</comment><comment><USER40> Hmm, it's not great they intend to send this information to the great firewall in the sky. If it were mozilla's own servers, I'd re-enable the usage collection on nightly. Bit more of the same with the screencapture features, it's a shame we can't host and configure our own services....

</comment><comment><USER41> Are container tabs already available outside of Nightly ?

<comment><USER42> I'm using them on Developer Edition, although I think I had to install an extension that makes use of them (in my case, Tab Center Redux) in order to enable them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> What about Firefox Beta? Does anyone know?

<comment> TD-Linux A better source is the original posting:

[https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/mozilla.dev.platform...](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/mozilla.dev.platform/_8OAKUHso0c)

Not even in Nightly yet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> The GDPR is only a momth away, I've already sent a complaint to the local data privacy officer about Firefox' constant violations of the requirement for explicit consent (see: CliqZ before), so let's hope the hammer swings hard this time.

If Mozilla still can't see why they shouldn't automatically transmit analytics and studies for everything, they deserve to be sued into the ground. Same with Google.

<comment><USER45> Some people just want to see the world burn. So maybe let's delete the whole internet and get back to letters, telegrams, pidgins and encyclopaedias? No one is forcing you to use dev, nightly or anything else if it is not consistent with your faith. Especially Mozilla they made some silly things but are one of the most "privacy and shit" companies out there and they will not come to your house and beat you because you do not want to do something.

<comment><USER44> That's certainly one approach.

The other approach is that, unless explicit consent is given, people are supposed to be safe.

Nightly is often required because a lot of functionality for developers is only available there, e.g. custom xpi legacy addons even in FF61.

It's nightly or nothing for this, and as a reminder, stable also was affected by CliqZ.

<comment><USER45> You are using Nightly "wrong" because of attachment to old extensions that will perish in June when all legacy stuff will be blocked. Nightly is only for testing out new features and it's not intended to be production ready browser... but everyone has an own use case. Yet do not beat them for wanting to change something for the better after using testing technology.

<comment><USER44> I'm not using it for "old" extensions.

Even today, every new feature you want to have in the WebExtension API needs to be implemented as a legacy extension providing this API first, then it will get tested, and then it will maybe become part of core Firefox.

The official process to add apis for WebExtensions is to write a legacy extension.

Which is exactly what I'm doing to support my custom extension that replaces the entire history and bookmarking system, UI and toolbars of Firefox, for which I need a custom API.

I suggest you read the wiki on why nightly still supports legacy extensions before judging people.

<comment><USER45> I'm not judging I wrote that everyone has it's own use case. My only point is don't use test version if you don't want to be tested or opt-out of it. ;)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Great PhD Bubble | DD - <AUTHOR> http://davincisdelta.wordpress.com/2013/04/17/the-great-phd-bubble/ <comment><USER2> spam, literally nothing more than a rant saying there's too many that are unqualified</comment>