Could a Neuroscientist Understand a Microprocessor? (2017) - <AUTHOR> https://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article?id=10.1371/journal.pcbi.1005268 <comment><USER2> I wrote a lay summary of this paper that compares and contrasts with the whole brain imaging and stimulation literature for those interested in a lighter read!

[http://www.neuwritewest.org/blog/can-we-reverse-engineer- the...](http://www.neuwritewest.org/blog/can-we-reverse-engineer-the-brain- like-a-computer)

<comment><USER3> Great summary! At the end you mention the difficulty extrapolating beyond an HH neuron model. I think curious readers will find the work of Jim Smith ([https://fcrc.acm.org/plenary-speakers/james-e-smith- plenary](https://fcrc.acm.org/plenary-speakers/james-e-smith-plenary)) interesting in this regard. His work starts with the possible information representation scheme (temporal coding <=> binary coding) and a compute unit (SRM0 neuron <=> transistor) and builds up the equivalent of Boolean logic/algebra from there.

As opposed to a neuroscientist understanding a processor, Jim is a computer architect using his techniques to understand the brain.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> In contrast, I was underwhelmed. Neuroscientists typically try to develop tasks that create specific contrasts that highlight aspects of specific sorts of computations. They didn't do anything like that.

For example, in the field I work in, we very very reliably get signal that track reward prediction errors in the striatum (e.g. BOLD response in fmri) during reward learning tasks.

<comment><USER5> >For example, in the field I work in, we very very reliably get signal that track reward prediction errors in the striatum (e.g. BOLD response in fmri) during reward learning tasks.

Yeah, but that's a property of how the BOLD response correlates with the task structure, not a map of what computations the brain actually does.

Yeah, ok, I'm shortening things by a lot, but neuroimaging really is quite fraught in terms of what sorts of computational-level inferences we can draw from task-based experiments.

<comment><USER4> In these experiments, the BOLD signal reliably scales with reward prediction error, which is a computation, the difference between the reward expected and received. In short, we fit reinforcement learning models to in-task behavior, then correlate parameters of that model to neuroimaging acquired during that behavior.

fMRI does have quite a few limitations; BOLD signal is believed to reflect the amount of work being done, loosely, speaking, but it is not a computational signal in of itself; for reinforcement learning models we'd like to measure dopamine itself. Two decades ago, the pioneering work of Peter Dayan and Read Montague established that dopamine neurons report a prediction error signal (see: [http://static.vtc.vt.edu/media/documents/SchultzDayanMontagu...](http://static.vtc.vt.edu/media/documents/SchultzDayanMontague1997Science.pdf)), but recording of neurotransmitter release in humans is hard, and frankly, long thought impossible (given ethical constraints). However, recent work by Read Montague has done just that. See: [https://www.pnas.org/content/113/1/200](https://www.pnas.org/content/113/1/200) Keep tuned.

<comment><USER6> Do you have any insight into why it took so long to do this in hmans? Fast- scan cyclic voltammeter was done in animals ~15 years ago by Wightman's group.

<comment><USER4> ethics, mainly. unlike macaques (etc.) we don't just stick probes in people. however, Parkinson's and epilepsy patients are getting implants for deep brain stimulation; Montague's group is working with hospitals performing these procedures.

[https://psychcentral.com/news/2015/11/29/new-insights- into-d...](https://psychcentral.com/news/2015/11/29/new-insights-into- dopamine-function-in-parkinsons-patients/95495.html)

<comment><USER6> I wasn't sure if there was some advance in voltammeter techniques, or if it just took forever to find a willing patient and convince ethics to green-light it.

DBS has been FDA-approved since the late 1990s (and even longer under IRB/IND stuff), so there have been lots of opportunities to stick probes in humans' heads.

<comment><USER4> There actually is a technical advance here; I just don't know enough about it to discuss intelligently (sorry). I would reach out to the researchers involved if interested.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Previous discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16817832](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16817832)

This is one of my favorite papers of all time and I'm happy to see it on the front page again.

</comment><comment><USER8> I think their lesion approach is a little awkward and probably doesn't map that well between the fields. Removing a transistor, IMHO, is more akin to removing an eye or some other body part. Yeah, it allows one to determine if that transitor was important, but its impact on behavior is due to damaged hardware. Plus, the software probably can't be written to compensate for missing transistors.

Instead of removing transistors from the CPU to determine if it was important to the "behavior" of the game, I think it would be more analogous to delete portions of memory and see if that alters game behavior. Even then, I think it's much more likely to cause a crash if done without some a priori information.

</comment><comment><USER9> This is sort of a spiritual sequel to

Can a biologist fix a radio?--Or, what I learned while studying apoptosis. [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12242150](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12242150)

</comment><comment><USER10> This article keeps coming up over and over; I suspect that it appeals to the HN crowd's background, but really, the article, and others like it, underestimate the sophisticated behavioral methods we cognitive neuroscientists employ, as well as the value of convergent lines of evidence taken from molecular to systems neuroscience.

</comment><comment><USER11> Lately I've been wondering an analogous question in NLP. Could modern NLP techniques learn what software source code does?

<comment><USER12> A neural network doesn't understand anything but sure it could predict the program output sequence based on the input sequence. Would there be any useful use case to such a technology?

<comment><USER13> Maybe for simple programs. Of course, an arbitrarily deep neural net can emulate any compiler (a function from plain text to machine instruction sequences). But predicting output is limited by the halting problem and complexity.

<comment><USER14> Whether a neural net could be _trained_ to emulate a compiler seems like the more pertinent question.

I've had the displeasure of trying to explain classical learning hardness results to someone who kept repeating back to me "but RNNs are Turing complete!" If anything, the expressive power of the model you're trying to train pushes back against your efforts to train it to do something useful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I would be interested to see any followup studies that looked into the things they discuss at the end about isolation of computational processes.

</comment><comment><USER16> "What I cannot create, I do not understand"

<comment><USER17> Pretty much everyone on this planet could at some point create a brain (with assistance). I don't think anyone will pretend to understand it.

<comment><USER18> You mean create a brain by convetion i.E. having intercouse of course.

Given raw cellular material, gtca biological code samples, design an organic chemical engine "brain" capable of self replication, repair and inference?

Its sorting through the 4.5 billion years of leftover legacy dna code that makes it tedious to understand.

<comment><USER19> So what you're saying is....reproductive organs are a layer of abstraction. _brain explodes_

<comment><USER20> literally mind fuck.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> A computer chip works fundamentally different. This paper doesn't make sense at all.

</comment><comment><USER22> Of course a neuroscientist can understand a microprocessor. That's easy. Let me know when a microprocessor can understand a neuroscientist.

<comment><USER23> Indeed, the title leads you in an unsatisfying direction.

<comment><USER24> I think the title is extremely witty, since you expect to see the sentence in a different order.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What note-taking app you are using? - horizontech-dev This is like the vim vs emacs of the current generation: Notion vs Evernote; Onenote vs Google Keep; etc.
I have tried different note-taking apps in the last 3 years. I understand there is no one silver bullet for this. I am curious to hear your thoughts about what worked and what didn't.
BTW, I am currently using https://joplinapp.org.
- FOSS
 - You can use your own storage (Dropbox, etc)
 - Supports markdown <comment><AUTHOR> There was a big discussion just yesterday:

Ask HN: What do you use to keep track of bookmarks/notes/snippets?

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22778123](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22778123)</comment>


Elon Musk on Twitter: "Tesla Supercharger Usage by Region - <AUTHOR> https://mobile.twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1261009993588862976 <comment><USER2> I'm not sure I understand how to read that graph.

It says "% of max, 7 day rolling". What is max in that context? The maximum charging capacity (e.g. there is a car charging in every charger at all time?) or the max usage in the 7 day window?

<comment><USER3> The max is maximum usage - if you take a look each of the graphs peak at exactly 100% so he's basically just normalized it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Does Elon Musk have enough credibility that we can trust data he posts as accurate?

<comment><USER5> Is there someone that's more credible about Tesla? He does run the company... The company is the only one who would have that data.</comment></comment>


Asynchronous Semaphore - <AUTHOR> http://simplenotions.wordpress.com/2010/08/23/asynchronous-semaphore/ <comment><USER2> i have actually used a 'pattern' to accomplish this several times, it always involved a bunch of flags (or checking for null) and checking everything everytime anything ended. i imagine encoding this pattern into a datastructure would be pretty useful. though i don't entirely agree with the name. this is really like a thread barrier but for asynchronous tasks. So maybe Asynchronous Barrier?

<comment><USER3> I actually love the name, and this article.. it's exactly what it is.. counting semaphore..just for async calls...great, as u said lukesandberg, no more flags and conditions..</comment></comment>


What does it take to restore a World War Two Spitfire? - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/business-32935757 <comment><USER2> "It's timeless, it is the most perfect piece of engineering - a work of art."

True, except it was hardly perfect engineering. If you nosed it hard into a dive, the carburetors would spill fuel into the cockpit. Pilots learned to roll it on its back and pull it down that way. The Me109 was fuel injected and didn't have that problem. The 109 also took half as many hours to produce.

All WW2 airplanes had their various problems that would kill the unwary pilot. The good pilots would avoid the defects in their airplane and play to the defects in the enemy machine.

<comment><USER3> Hum, that's the first time I have heard that explanation. What I've heard was that negative G caused the carburetor to flood, yes, but the result was the engine stalling, not fuel spilling into the cockpit. Which IMHO sounds more plausible..

Perhaps you're thinking of the typhoon & tempest which had a problem of exhaust leaking into the cockpit. Solution: pilot wad required to always use the oxygen mask.

<comment><USER2> I read about this problem in one of many accounts on flying Spits in combat. Yes, it was the gas, not an exhaust leak. Sorry I don't have a cite.

The Merlin engine had other issues - it was very sensitive to battle damage. This is in contrast to the engine on the P47, which could take a lot of damage and keep running.

<comment><USER4> Bug or intentional design tradeoff? When you choose an inline V12 over a radial engine, you're implicitly choosing to be more sensitive to battle damage.

But the R-2800 Double Wasp is an engineering triumph in its own right. Hellcat, Corsair, Thunderbolt, Black Widow, Bearcat... they put it in everything.

<comment><AUTHOR> _" Bug or intentional design tradeoff? When you choose an inline V12 over a radial engine, you're implicitly choosing to be more sensitive to battle damage."_

@Agathos you have to remember history to understand why the RAF selected this design.

The conflicting design problems at the time (mid 1930's) dictating power plant choice? How do we create a fighter with enough power and speed that will allow bombers & fighters to be shot down using the limited resources we have (dollars, manpower and materials) post, _" great depression"_?

The answer, the Rolls Royce V12, inline Merlin. It did the job. Especially in '39 and 1940, when the only thing separating a full out invasion by Nazi Germany was 22 miles of water and the sky.

References:

\- [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radial_engine#Radial_versus_in...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radial_engine#Radial_versus_inline_debate)

\- [http://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/2920/why-are- inl...](http://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/2920/why-are-inline- engines-more-commonly-used-than-radial-engines)

\- [http://www.warbirdsforum.com/topic/545-radial-vs-inline- engi...](http://www.warbirdsforum.com/topic/545-radial-vs-inline-engines/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Little known fact: when Williams, Kilburn and Tootill were building the SSEM (nicknamed the Baby) - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manchester_Small- Scale_Experim...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manchester_Small- Scale_Experimental_Machine) \- the World's first stored program computer, some of the parts they used such as switches and so on were the same as those used by the Spitfire builders because there was plenty of them around spare in wartime Britain.

When the reconstruction was being built, the restorers had to track down parts from Spitfires that were no longer airworthy to be as authentic as possible.

Source: I know somebody who spent a lot of time talking to somebody involved in the restoration.

</comment><comment><USER6> I really like learning about all the counter measures and the like that went into these planes. I'm curious about a caption from one of the pictures though.

 _The yellow diamond of reactive paint on the wing was supposed to give early warning of a gas attack by turning black._

Do they mean gas attack like, mustard gas attack or my wing is shot up and leaking fuel?

<comment><USER7> The former. [http://www.ww2aircraft.net/forum/aircraft-markings-and- camou...](http://www.ww2aircraft.net/forum/aircraft-markings-and- camouflage/spitfire-mk-gas-sensitive-paint-33039.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Is it just me, or does $4 million seem quite "reasonable" for something this rare and with this much work invested? Yes, it's a large sum of money, but given the choice between a vintage race car or the Spitfire, I'd take the warbird every time (and I'm not a pilot).

<comment><USER9> The cheapest fighter jet you can get is the L-39 Albatross from the 1960's which will run you between $200k-1mil depending on work required for flight worthiness while on the higher end a supersonic trainer like the F5 would run at least $2mil.

Considering how rare the parts are and the difficulty of finding someone qualified to actually do the work, $4mil is certainly very reasonable, especially if the Spitfire is actually flight worthy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> The Spitfire is a beautiful airplane. It was my first 1/4 scale (large) radio control project many, many years ago.

</comment><comment><USER11> these days it seems Britain prepares its spirits for the next war.

<comment><USER12> Because America isn't just as passionate in restoring P-52 Mustang's.

<comment><USER13> A - It's the P-5 _1_

B - There are plenty still flying. There used to be a lot more actually, as they were sold off the public quite cheaply after the war. Many many have been lost to accidents over the years - The P-51 is NOT a forgiving airplane.

C - The biggest challenge - Really the ONLY major challenge, airframe/structural work is basically a solved problem - are the engines. The Rolls Royce Merlin engine, used in both the Spitfire and the P-51, was last manufactured in 1950. While there were many built (and thus many to scavenge from), that inventory is only shrinking as engines are replaced or overhauled. Basically the world's entire stock of Merlin parts lives in a group of semi trailers in the California desert ([http://www.51-factory.com/merlin_overhaul.html](http://www.51-factory.com/merlin_overhaul.html)) - when they're gone, they're gone.

<comment><USER2> I find it hard to believe that there are Merlin engine parts that cannot be made from scratch. Even engine blocks - if the drag racing industry can make custom engine blocks from scratch, why can't a V12 be made?

<comment><USER14> Every part _can_ be made, and eventually, likely, every part will be made in order to keep these things operational, but enthusiasts find these machines more authentic if they are made from authentic parts.

If one starts building new parts from scratch there may come a moment where people say something has become a replica, more so if one also uses new technology (philosophers discuss this as [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus)).

The weird thing, though, is that the road along which one gets to an object is more important than the end result in determining authenticity. Replace all parts of a spitfire until just one piece remains original, and you have an original spitfire. Build a replica, buy that one original part, and include it, and you still have a replica.

A nice example is HMS Victory, a wooden warship that saw battle at Trafalgar. It is kept afloat by replacing its parts. By now around 20% of the original wood remains ([http://edition.cnn.com/2011/12/05/world/europe/hms- victory/](http://edition.cnn.com/2011/12/05/world/europe/hms-victory/)). Yet, we think of it as the original ship.

However, it is not a given that replacing all parts makes a new object. The Ise grand shrine in Japan is over 2000 years old, but gets rebuilt with new materials every 20 years ([https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ise_Grand_Shrine](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ise_Grand_Shrine))

<comment><USER2> I understand the desire for "authentic" parts, but one is chasing rainbows. I recall once a business was selling "authentic" 1960s air in a can one could use to fill the tires on one's authentic 1960s muscle car.

My personal opinion is that wrecks dredged up from swamps and such should be put into museums as is. Flying airplanes should be replicas, made as close to the original specifications as the owner wants.

For example, a few years ago there was a project at Paine Field to build flying replicas of the Me262. They took apart an original to measure everything and make a specification. As a concession to safety, they used modern jet engines and instrumentation, and used lead weights instead of guns (to maintain proper balance).

I would have bought one if I could afford one!

Nobody would actually want to fly an original, because the engines only lasted about 20 hours, were extremely unreliable, and nobody bothered with corrosion protection (didn't expect the machine to last long enough to corrode).</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


End of the road for MacNN: 21 years of changes for Apple, and for us - <AUTHOR> http://www.macnn.com/articles/16/06/20/long.time.staff.winding.up.two.decades.of.service.at.the.end.of.june.134716/ <comment><USER2> Lots of "I've never heard of them" comments, mostly from people who think that "since the original iPhone came out" is a long time to have followed Apple.

MacNN used to be my go-to source for Apple news, back when "Apple" and "Mac" were more or less synonymous. I'm sad to see them go... but at the same time, mildly surprised they're still around. I haven't visited in years. It's pretty much as they say: who needs a niche site like this when Apple news is plastered everywhere?

</comment><comment><USER3> It's interesting - I probably spend 2+ hours a day, reading Apple/Tech news, and reading all the various links, listening to a bunch of the podcasts. Some sites just keep coming up over and over - HN, macrumors, 9to5mac, imore.com, macworld.com - obviously the standard daringfireball.net, recode, theverge, bloomberg, wsj and NYT.com, some of the new ones like sixcolors.com, and the podcasts (ATP.fm, TheTalkShow), asymco (though less posting recently) In particular, stratechery.com has been knocking it out of the park in the last year.

Even though I don't visit it, I'm at least peripherally aware of theloop, information, etc... And usually hear a reference to sites like them every month or so. - But I'm struggling to remember, if even once in the last 5 years of that 2+ hours a day, I came across a story from macNN. Obviously this is an anecdote, but, 5+ years at 2 (or more) hours a day - you'd think I'd recall something from the site - but nothing comes to mind...

<comment><USER4> Same. I think the issue is lack of personality and blandness. I clicked through some MacNN articles and they all had the anonymous byline "MacNN staff".

In comparison the successful Apple blogs are done by driven and opinionated individuals (Jason Snell, John Gruber, Siracusa, Marco Arment, Ben Thompson) which you get familiar with over the years and reading/listening to them over time is like talking sports with your pals. MacRumors has Arnold Kim, 9to5mac had Mark Gurman etc I don't even read iMore often, I but still know that Rene Ritchie and Serenity Caldwell are working there. MacNN? I have a blank.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> MacNN, MacCentral and MacOSRumors are the reason I can read English today: I would check them everyday on my dialup modem and read nearly every single news, not without the help of a good old paper English-French dictionary. Maybe there were good online dictionaries, but I didn't find them at the time (Altavista/Lycos/Magellan/Yahoo! were not particularly helping...).

Thanks for all MacNN!

</comment><comment><USER6> End of an era indeed. I read this site religiously back when MacRumors only did rumors and not news, so probably 1999-2003 or so. I assume MR starting to do news was the reason I stopped, but I actually don't remember. The thing is though, they were never the best, only the most thorough. If there was a piece of Apple-related news, they had it, but the writing wasn't top notch, and there's not a single editorial I can remember sticking out. Contrast with MacEdition.net (not sure if that's even still around), which had pretty good news, but great writing and fantastic editorials, really more like blogs. Stopped reading that once the content there slowed to a trickle though.

<comment><USER7> Similar story here, although it was their forums that I frequented. I helped people who had questions, requested help myself from anything to tech questions to feedback on my latest software, and enjoyed the goofy posts there. It was a bit of Reddit and HN before I knew about those communities.

The forums eventually became less valuable, less fun, but I'm not precisely sure why.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Naive question: Are our ad-blocked web sessions killing the small guys?

My morning routine starts with:

• loopisight.com

• daringfireball.com

• marco.org

• verynicewebsite.net

• inessential.com

and with some exceptions, posts these days are just links to podcasts (which I don't have a desire to listen to). I've been told that it is because podcasts are an actual source of income, whereas blog posts are not so much a way of earning a living.

Makes me wonder if it is that podcasts are _more_ lucrative, or that blog posts are _no longer_ lucrative.

Edit: And did ad-blocked loss of advertising play a role in MacNN's demise?

<comment><USER9> > I've been told that it is because podcasts are an actual source of income, > whereas blog posts are not so much a way of earning a living.

The expectation that a person could start a website, fill it with advertising, and make money has made the internet significantly less valuable as a resource for finding information, IMO, so I don't have a big problem with this.

<comment><USER8> I have nothing but respect for the gentlemen running the above websites, and cast no blame on those that prefer podcasts (indeed, it would be strange if marco in particular didn't have a podcast). None of the aforementioned sites are filled with advertising.

Perhaps I am a too-small demographic nowadays such that I prefer to read my commentary rather than listen to it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Well I've been reading Mac and Apple related stuff basically daily since the iPhone came out, and have never even heard of these guys.

<comment><USER11> "Since the iPhone came out" means you climbed aboard at a much later era :)

<comment><USER12> The era of Hypercard, RAM Doubler, AppleTalk, Dark Castle etc and wondering when Cyberdog, OpenDoc and Taligent were going to change the future of computing. Good times.

<comment><USER13> There's also seven years of OSX before the iPhone happened.

<comment><USER2> Eight, or ten if you count Rhapsody (which you should!).

<comment><USER11> I still have System 6.0.4 floppies :)

Alas, I had to get rid of my SE/30, my Classic, and my LC II. And not having bought a IIfx still stings.

<comment><USER14> Last time I moved I found my old Mac IIsi. Plugged it in to see how the old girl was holding up only to be greeted with "bong _POP_ ~fizzle~" and the smell of ozone. The power supply gave out and though I was able to use a bench PS to boot, it was unreliable.

Also, a modern LCDs although conceptually multisync does not actually like frequencies that aren't PC standard S/VGA. Or it was the sync-on-green causing problems.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Macsurfer.com — a simpler and more useful site — has been around since 1995 as well. If I've ever read anything on MacNN it's been because it was linked from Macsurfer

</comment><comment><USER16> Apple's rate of releasing genuinely new Mac hardware and software has slowed considerably in the past few years as they've refocused on iDevices. The only 2 I can think of were the cylindrical Mac Pro (which I own and am happy with) and the newest MacBook and its USB-C port.

Might this be why?

<comment><USER17> Margins and addressable userbase. For many people, their mobile device is their only device. And if they do own a laptop or desktop, they're likely to keep it longer than their mobile device since it's likely to be fast enough and subsequent version aren't likely to provide huge advancements that affect most users.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Stupid question, but why shut down? Why not sell? Surely a 20 year old web property has value to someone.

<comment><USER19> They cover that in the article:

> there's less need for an Apple-specific news site when news about Apple is > plastered everywhere, on every site, all the time.

Including HN. Every Apple keynote there are 20 links plastered all over the HN homepage for even the most inane little details.

<comment><USER20> That isn't a full explanation as it is much like saying that Harold's Millinery of Saville Row has to close because no-one is wearing hats, but the name is well known and maybe it's time to start selling scarves, ties and what-not. OP perhaps meant the name may be worth something but the content needs diversifying?

<comment><USER19> I never even heard of them, not sure what that name would be worth but I'm sure that they aren't so stupid not to think of auctioning off the assets as an end-game.

<comment><USER20> I hadn't heard of them either and I bought my first mac in 2001, so right about the time they were popular too. Apparently some people had heard of them though, Charles Arthur from theGuardian technology section tweeted just now about their closure [https://twitter.com/charlesarthur/status/745154921268273153](https://twitter.com/charlesarthur/status/745154921268273153)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> If their focus was on the too niche market of Macs and they completely ignored the iDevices and peripherals than that is a failure of strategic planning. Jobs trimmed the product line to 4 all the way back in 1998, iBook, Powerbook, iMac, and Powermac towers (G3, G4, G5). I really enjoy Apple products but I'd be reluctant to build a business model around them.

</comment><comment><USER22> I've never heard of this site until just now.</comment>


Ancient-Classroom-Approved Pig Latin: The Testamentum Porcelli - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/in-medias-res/actual-classical-ancient-classroom-approved-pig-latin-2cbf0c8a3e59 <comment><USER2> This isn't what is normally meant by pig Latin. It's a humorous/parodic piece of classical Latin.

It's pretty funny! It's striking how well it would fit in to 20th century comedy, and the author's translation does a good job of preserving the spirit of it. For a modern take on the part where the pig bequeathes his various body parts, here's John Prine's _Please Don 't Bury Me_

[https://youtu.be/JfBdMXhpQnU](https://youtu.be/JfBdMXhpQnU)

<comment><USER3> The title is just a play on words, being a Latin story about pigs!</comment></comment>


Bangle.js – Hackable Smart Watch - <AUTHOR> https://banglejs.com/ <comment><USER2> Of course PineTime has been around for a while longer and it's a third the cost:

[https://www.pine64.org/pinetime/](https://www.pine64.org/pinetime/)</comment>


Power and Paranoia in Silicon Valley - <AUTHOR> https://pdf.yt/d/-jQQX6XY9dU0LN4G <comment><USER2> I love the nonsense people spout. It never ceases to amaze me. I've been working in AI (robotics, expert systems, etc) most of my life. I'm currently developing episodic memory for robot-human interaction at CMU. The system learns from the episode. By "learning" I mean that it self-modifies so that it will change its behavior in the future.

The people wandering around claiming that AI will take over the world soon have no idea what they are talking about. What is actually happening is the second wave of hype in AI. The first wave, in the 80s, ended up as the "AI Winter" when people realized that AI was not going to take over the world. This second "AI Winter" is going to end up causing another 30 year research desert. People have such short memories.

Here is a way to think about AI. The best known systems are actually people. Imagine you had invented a person for the first time. Would it take over the world? Probably. But it would likely take tens of thousands of years. And this new "person" would be prone to faults and failures, such as when it can't remember where it put the keys, because some of these faults and failures are inherent in the system.

I don't fear AI. I fear people who have no idea what they are talking about who "pump up expectations". Get all the funding you can now because a new AI Winter is coming.

<comment><USER3> Like the name of one of the episodes in _Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality_ (which I just looked up), I think you are asking the wrong questions. _Of course_ AI is not going to take over the world and there's no singularity coming -- at least not any time soon. The singularity is no less a religious salvation myth than the Second Coming.

The question you should be asking is _why_ do those people believe in the singularity? The answer -- like so many answers in life -- comes from the realm of psychology and sociology rather than hard science.

<comment><USER4> Well, honestly, why _shouldn 't_ people dream big dreams? Since when was everyone supposed to just _ignore_ the larger issues of life and assume the real point is to accumulate money, or whatever other shit society holds we're supposed to do?

<comment><USER3> Who says people shouldn't dream big? But singularity isn't a dream, it's a religious salvation story. There's nothing wrong with religion, either (well, no more than many other ideas that guide humanity), but the difference between this religion and other, older ones is that older religions focused on morality and human nature, while this one is not even about humans at all. The part about the guy weeping because previous generations didn't have Kahneman was clearly written to reflect Christian sorrow for the generations prior to the coming of Christ, but the latter group is sad about those who didn't hear Jesus's message about kindness and love, while the former was crying about those who couldn't tweak their minds to be more robot-like (not that he can, either, but at least he imagines he can).

<comment><USER4> >But singularity isn't a dream, it's a religious salvation story.

Ok, as long as we're bothering to make this distinction, I don't think that's correct. Most singulatarians I've hung out with place the locus-of-control in their story _internally_ : they believe that, as a group, _they_ will ensure that The Singularity comes to pass, in all its Charles-Strossian-weirdo-glory. As detailed in the article, they have actual groups that are _trying to make this happen_. They can be _incompetent_ at it, but you can't say they're sitting around waiting for someone else to save them.

They're more like Communists than Christians.

>the difference between this religion and other, older ones is that older religions focused on morality and human nature, while this one is not even about humans at all.

If you followed the article, the whole movement we're talking about has a loud, public component called Effective Altruism who follow Peter Singer's (noticeably Christlike, for all I'm not at all Christian) idea of giving away large portions of their personal income to the highest-impact disease-fighting and antipoverty charities operating in the Third World. Extreme, impersonal charity might be _inhuman_ , in some degree, but I'd be hard-pressed to call it either immoral or disconnected from moral concerns.

>The part about the guy weeping because previous generations didn't have Kahneman was clearly written to reflect Christian sorrow for the generations prior to the coming of Christ

A guy wept because previous generations didn't have Kahneman and Tversky's foundational findings in behavioral economics? Excuse the following several minutes of nonstop giggling.

Sorry, now, you're telling me it's patterned after some Christian thing? I can't really tell yes-or-no here, since I've got no background in Christianity.

>but the latter group is sad about those who didn't hear Jesus's message about kindness and love, while the former was crying about those who couldn't tweak their minds to be more robot-like (not that he can, either, but at least he imagines he can).

Well, this provides a good opportunity to sum up, and to mention a couple of things.

Firstly, I too find it funny that people want to tweak themselves to better operate as fully, calculatively rational utility maximizers. There's a whole literature of bounded rationality showing that throwing out one's information and computation bounds and _just_ trying to approximate unbounded rationality in finite space is a _very bad idea_ ;-)!

But secondly, just saying, if people once got sad about others not hearing Jesus's message of kindness and love, well, what of these people and Peter Singer's message of _realizing kindness and love in the here-and-now_?

Or, to get one level crazier, what of the people going to Secular Solstice and weeping that mankind has not yet defeated death, and that we will all lose our loved ones, suffer ourselves, and then die ourselves? I rather imagine that the single fundamental fact of the human condition as we know it is an _entirely appropriate_ target for religious yearnings!

The Buddha said, "Existence is suffering." The extropians said, "Let's fix that." Disagree with their cause, or predict that they'll fail, and we can converse sensibly about _why_ they're wrong. Making fun of them for falling into the common psychological modes of religion, and I think you're missing the big human-condition-shaped elephant in the room that simply isn't going to go away.

<comment><USER3> Oh, I am well aware that their entire mode of operation is part-and-parcel of the human condition, I'm only noting the irony that this is exactly what they think they're avoiding.

But there's another issue here. Not only they believe they can escape not only the fate but the cause of the human condition, they are also, in many ways, blind to it, and this is what makes them different from other religions and even Communism. They are privileged, blind to the misery of the under- privileged, and their persecution story (every religion has to have one) revolves around intellectual superiority. In fact, they are distinguished by having led lives somewhat removed from the concerns of most people. So I think that makes for a pretty lousy religion.

The big question is, are they harmless?

> A guy wept because previous generations didn't have Kahneman and Tversky's > foundational findings in behavioral economics? Excuse the following several > minutes of nonstop giggling.

I laughed when I read that, too. That story, as given in the magazine, is meant to echo Christians lamenting those generations that lived before the time of Christ and therefore -- by definition -- could not have been saved.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Here is the actual article, rather than the pirated version:

[http://harpers.org/archive/2015/01/come-with-us-if-you- want-...](http://harpers.org/archive/2015/01/come-with-us-if-you-want-to- live/)

<comment><USER6> _" This article is only available to magazine subscribers."_

<comment><USER5> Yes, exactly. If you want to read the article, you should respect their terms.

<comment><USER6> So you post a fake link only to teach others copyright terms? Internet is a strange place.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> He's right though, Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality is an easy way to make someone disappear for a few days.

[http://hpmor.com/](http://hpmor.com/)

</comment><comment><USER8> I thought this was satirical fiction...

</comment><comment><USER3> I am a Harper's subscriber and this is pirated content. But it's so good that I'm glad people here have the chance to see it. That story is funny, sad and scary all at the same time.

This is what happens when so much power is held by people who are -- how should I say it -- left of average on the autism spectrum _and_ with so little knowledge of politics and history: you get dystopian notions such as meritocracy[1] being touted as ideals, and sad-crazy-funny-dangerous ideas such as those mentioned in this article get funded. But I think some powerful people have always been susceptible to crazy notions or to people peddling them (see Scientology or Rasputin).

[1]: [http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2001/jun/29/comment](http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2001/jun/29/comment)

<comment><USER9> I think you do not have enough evidence to make negative statements about autistic people and random generalizations about them being "ignorant of history" and tending toward "dystopian notions". These kind of stereotypes are at best unproductive and at worst discriminatory and stigmatizing.

<comment><USER3> I didn't say that, and besides, that part of my comment was said in humor. Also, I consider myself among their numbers so I'm allowed to joke about it :)

<comment><USER10> > that part of my comment was said in humor.

I think more will read it seriously than not.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Emscripten - LLVM (bitcode) to JavaScript Compiler - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/kripken/emscripten/wiki

<comment><USER2> A lovely project indeed. I'm doing lots of things with it.

Previous discussions:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3060414>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2600890>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1644192>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2428723>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2038276>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3672651>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3519038>

</comment><comment><USER3> This is so cool! Thanks for posting. I've always been a fan of LLVM, this just shows its amazing potential, in my opinion.</comment>


The first working Google clone - <AUTHOR> http://sourceforge.net/projects/googleclone

<comment><USER2> Must be hell to maintain that code. Imagine to change the fifth row in any .php-file and you have to change it in five different places. If you try to write code to be able to NOT repeat yourself in different parts, you're programming the right way :)</comment>


W3C HTML5 Spinning Logo — Flick with finger or mouse in WebKit - <AUTHOR> http://925html.com/files/html5logo/ This simple example is using YUI 3.3.0 which has support for high-level, device-independant, gesture events which made it easy to make the logo spin when flicked with a mouse or touch gesture. It is also using YUI 3's CSS transitions module to do the rotateY CSS Transform.
It works in WebKit browsers: Safari, Chrome, MobileSafari (iOS), Android, and should work on BlackBerry Touch 6.0.
View the source on the page, its short and straight forward. <comment><AUTHOR> This simple example is using YUI 3.3.0 which has support for high-level, device-independant, gesture events which made it easy to make the logo spin when flicked with a mouse or touch gesture. It is also using YUI 3's CSS transitions module to do the rotateY CSS Transform.

It works in WebKit browsers: Safari, Chrome, MobileSafari (iOS), Android, and should work on BlackBerry Touch 6.0.

View the source on the page, its short and straight forward.

</comment><comment><USER2> Touched my Dell screen, nothing happened.

</comment><comment><USER3> I improved this with a couple lines of CSS to add 3d support.

<http://fun.amadeusamade.us/improvedSpinner/>

<comment><AUTHOR> Nice! Now you can tell which way it's spinning. I updated mine to include your CSS additions.

<comment><USER3> Awesome! Yeah this reminds me of a little experiment I did back in the day that was similar, but not using the logo of course:

<http://fun.amadeusamade.us/iphone/>

(Warning, my deceleration method is gehetto, so please forgive, I coded it in a rush :) )

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> YUI 3.3, now with 100% more spinny logo

<comment><AUTHOR> :-) I wanted to test out the device-independant quester events after I saw this from Boaz: <http://code.bocoup.com/html5logo/></comment></comment>


Patterson's Cipher for Jefferson – Challenge Solved After 200 Years (2009) - <AUTHOR> http://cryptiana.web.fc2.com/code/jeffers4.htm <comment><USER2> > a specimen of such writing, which I may safely defy the united ingenuity of > the whole human race to decypher, to the end of time

Turns out to have been rather optimistic. But I'd say that holding up for 200 years before yielding to a combination of modern mathematics and brute computational force that would have been utterly unimaginable to Patterson is still quite impressive.

</comment><comment><USER3> Anything with probability and randomness tends to break my brain but I find it fascinating.

If I interpret the 200-years-late solution correctly, it relied to a large part on trial and error (like one "trick" is to focus on adjacent rows, which seems to be more of a "hunch" than a deep, mathematical strategy). Things like this make me wonder why so many modern encryption standards rely on "simple" mathematical concepts that are easily testable (even if testing might take a million years). Even if that's your base, why not throw some random algorithms on top, like swapping every 7th symbol, reversing the whole thing and then adding a random one in the middle. Wouldn't that immediately make it more tedious to decipher at not much of an additional cost? Is this done anywhere?

<comment><USER2> It is done by amateurs who design "super secret encryption algorithms" that nearly always turn out to be trivially breakable.

I'll assume you don't mean this "random algorithm" you "throw in" to be secret, (otherwise see the other response) and instead you hope that complicating the algorithm to make cryptanalysis more difficult.

The thing is - You _don 't_ want cryptanalysis to be difficult! You want the world's cryptographic experts to look at your algorithm, immediately see the potential ways to crack it, and quickly find that none of them actually work.

A complex encryption algorithm is _bad_ because there could be vulnerabilities hiding in the complexity. That "swapping every 7 symbol" could make it _easier_ to crack by creating subtle patterns in the output.

<comment><USER4> Well, it depends on your needs. I imagine a one time encryption algorithm (ie not intended for reuse) could make good use of security through obfuscation or obscurity. This kind of strategy is essentially meaningless in the context of computers, the internet, and effort-free encryption that is mostly good enough.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This type of transposition cipher has been easily cracked for decades.</comment>