An Epidemic of AI Misinformation - <AUTHOR> https://thegradient.pub/an-epidemic-of-ai-misinformation/ <comment><USER2> Very hard to critique an article you overwhelmingly agree with!

The key point I kept picking up was the extent to which a press willing to laud a discovery was reticent about owning the clinb-down.

Peer review in ML journals should be tighter maybe? If you solve a limited subset of the three body problem you can't claim to solve "the three body problem" and if you apply a well known Rubik's cube model solution you didn't learn it, you had it baked in.

<comment><USER3> do most of the hyped papers have peer review even? the field moves too fast for that, press releases are issued as soon as the first draft is on arxiv.

<comment><USER4> Apologies, but I see a lot of "trash" published in arxiv (also some real good stuff) Peer review could fix some things but would also show some other things down

<comment><USER5> I like to think of arxiv as the holding area for anything that COULD be peer reviewed.

Advantage is we get to see stuff now, not after it gets accepted at by a conference or journal. Disadvantage, we have to filter on our own.

Twitter and sites like arxiv sanity preserver are helpful for filtering.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> When I saw this item, I thought not of misinformation produced _about_ AI, but misinformation produced _by_ AI.

Some of the Google searches I have done recently turn up mostly automatically written articles that plug in numbers and facts but make no sense at all, because there is no real understanding. (Yes, this is probably not "real" AI, but it's the sort of thing people are and will be trying to apply AI to)

It seems to me that there is no way to get to a serene, well-functioning society that utilizes intelligent machines, because in the process of developing software that can digest and write intelligently about topics humans are interested in, we will inevitably come up with less intelligent software _first_ , that produces plausible misinformation far cheaper than humans. And economics will drive out, is already driving out, real research and journalism. Human society would be drowned by automatically generated misinformation by the time a machine is truly intelligent, whether that is in a couple years or a decade or longer.

I'm increasingly thinking that the people who are worried about artificial intelligence ending the world as we know it have slightly missed the mark - superhuman intelligence is a singularity that we are approaching, but we are going to be ripped apart by the tides beforehand and maybe that will prevent the endpoint from ever happening.

</comment><comment><USER7> > I see this as a version of the tragedy of the commons, in which (for > example) many people overfish a particular set of waters [...] if and when > the public, governments, and investment community recognize that they have > been sold an unrealistic picture of AI's strengths and weaknesses that > doesn't match reality, a new AI winter may commence.

I think this is not only inevitable, but necessary! This time around it has been a lot more useful, due in no small part to the advance in hardware since 1970s.

Unfortunately this has caused many important people to believe far too much of the hype and not see it's current limitations. As a result they have started integrating it into important part of our societies - i find this alarming - not for the reason most people find it alarming i.e "because it's too smart", but because it's far far too dumb in combination with people assuming it's very smart. I think a lot of this problem stems from inappropriately anthropomorphising ML with terms like "AI" when we are no where near the stage that we need to have the philosophical debate about where something is sentient or "intelligent". The ML we are doing with NNs is still at the "tiny- chunk-of-very-specifically-engineered-piece-of-brain" stage. It's important people understand this before we start integrating what are essentially basic statistical mechanisms into our societies.

For those in pursuit of better ML and things like real AI aka AGI, I also think having the hype blow away will do more good in the form of clarity and lack of noise than it will harm in lack of funding.

</comment><comment><USER8> OpenAI hype is definitely exaggerated. Seems like there might be a connection with Elon Musk somehow because all of his projects seem to get a massive amount of hype also.

The radiology thing, is it really the case that there are no startups in that area with useful AI software? Seems like he overstated that.

Part of this is a worldview difference. Many people truly believe that AGI is just around the corner, and that even before then, the narrow AI applications will significantly alter the world as they are deployed. And since no one can actually predict the future, it's an area where it's easy to have different worldviews.

Personally I think that it's true that there is a lot of poor reporting and companies that overhype results, but it also seems like people like Gary Marcus are really not keeping up to date with the true capabilities of DL systems. If he was up to date, why would he be so pessimistic about applications like radiology? There seem to already be a lot of strong results.

<comment><USER9> I think there are certainly issues with ML in radiology (i.e. lots of publications of low power studies or overfit models validated incorrectly), but I agree with you that Marcus was being unfair. It is principle a straightforward problem to solve with deep learning. The reason biggest reasons "no actual radiologists have been replaced" are probably just political/social. Hinton cannot be blamed for those hurdles.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> The funny thing for me is that if The Economist had just hacked the input into GPT-2 so that it was an ongoing conversation they would have found that it's OK at holding a conversation, better than I expected when I did so.

The conversation that I posted at:

[https://medium.com/@scottlegrand/my-interview-with-the- world...](https://medium.com/@scottlegrand/my-interview-with-the-worlds-most- dangerous-ai-tm-473ebdde04b2)

is performed in one shot. And I think it shows both the abilities and the limitations of GPT-2 and similar models. I am 100% role playing with the language model and prompting it to go in the directions it goes, but it surprised me several times, and eventually it all fell apart because I didn't perform any transfer learning on the model I just used the raw GPT-2 XL model to measure whether further work would be worth the effort and I would conclude yes it would be.

The first thing I need to do is dramatically increase the length of its input context. It's pretty good at running with an ensuing script because I suspect much of its training data was formatted that way. But since I ran out of context symbols, it eventually suffers from several incidents of amnesia and eventually effective multiple personality disorder. It also contradicts itself several times but then no more than the typical thought leader or politician does IMO.

What The Economist did was effectively erase the thing's memory between questions. So they were starting fresh with each question. And I think that's why they had to do the best of 5.

</comment><comment><USER4> Interesting that a few big examples of hype driven articles came from OpenAI. This is dangerous and will lead to additional misinformation and public backlash. Scientists should be unbiased and not market driven, but when OpenAI has these releases I shook my head along with a couple others.

Hype lasts the next quarter but is replaced with distrust. Science is a long game of incremental discoveries. Breakthroughs usually are an understanding of some interesting outcome that needed more interpretation.

<comment><USER11> I think this is what happens when you have various stakeholders and some are driven by KPIs such as reach / views. To that end those specific stakeholders (content writers / marketing) will bias towards sensationalism. That's not to excuse the organizational culture which allows for this behavior / outcome. There does need to be course correction.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Let us remember that AI is at the center of the cloud wars. Google, Amazon and Microsoft while they produce ton of research, their sales teams need to market those R&D investment to get customers interested in their tech. We are at a stage that AI is still a buzz word for many companies, once we evolve and deploy more and more of AI cases, we will see less and less articles promising things that can't be implemented

<comment><USER13> That's probably a part of it. Note how the Google TPUs aren't for sale. If you want them you have to use the Google Cloud. The cloud is expensive and slow ... I think everyone is shocked when they first see perf numbers coming off Azure.

I don't know if GCE is better, but the temptation to overload the hardware is always there: hardware rental is fundamentally a business with low barriers to entry. Anyone can buy some machines, bring up a Kubernetes or OpenShift cluster and start renting it out. So the big 3 are always looking for proprietary advantage and dedicated AI chips are something other firms can't easily do at the moment, making it a good source of lockin.

Do many people need it though? Deep learning is pretty useless for most business apps, unless you happen to need an image classifier or something else pre-canned. Classical ML is often sufficient, or better, human written logic. The latter can be explained, debugged, rapidly improved and in the best case requires no training data at all!

<comment><USER14> Their tpus are for sale: [https://coral.ai/products/](https://coral.ai/products/)

<comment><USER15> These are Edge TPUs, for inference, not for training

<comment><USER16> I thought a single powerful gpu would be enough for any inference?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Ugh. I dislike the author s permanent negativity, but he s right about a lot. I think it's worth asking why people feel the need to lie about the future of AI? If they are confident about its future (and I don't know of a fundamental reason why they would not be) then there is no reason to rush half assed results out the door and overcompensate (like gpt2). There is plenty of theoretical questions and answers to debate publicly instead. I don't know if its the fear of some impending tech recession or fear of their own incompetence

<comment><USER17> He's also wrong about a lot. For all his insistence on accuracy, he himself is misleading or ignorant. Like his slam of the Dartmouth project - even if you knew nothing about it, all you have to do is click through to see the claims of 'solving vision' are sheer projection and urban legend. And he's happy to make up claims out of whole cloth: for example, when he says "AlphaGo works fine on a 19x19 board, but would need to be retrained to play on a rectangular board; the lack of transfer is telling.", for which he provides precisely zero evidence, he ignores the fact that AG training works fine on a mixture of board sizes and such progressive growing/curriculum training in fact seems to accelerate training ([https://arxiv.org/abs/1902.10565](https://arxiv.org/abs/1902.10565)) and that rectangular convolutions are a thing that exist, and there would be plenty of transfer if anyone tried. If no one has tried that _exact_ thing, it's because it would be pointless and it's obvious to everyone not named 'Marcus' that it'd work fine, being rectangular doesn't mystically stop it from working anymore than using a 13x13 rather than 19x19 board makes AG-style training stop working. (This is not the first time Marcus has claimed that something didn't work; I first realized that he doesn't actually keep up with the AI literature when I pointed out to him on Twitter that plenty of knowledge graphs were in use combined with DL, and Google Search was the biggest example of this, and he had no idea what I was talking about.)

No matter what DL or DRL does, or how little his own preferred paradigm does, Marcus will never ever admit anything. AlphaGo beats humans? Well, it just copied humans. AlphaZero learns from scratch? Well, he wrote a whole paper explaining how akshully it still copies humans because the tree search encodes the _rules_. MuZero throws out even the tree search's knowledge of rules? Crickets and essays about 'misinformation'.

<comment><USER18> Regarding MuZero- I confess to not have read the paper very carefully, but I am confused by its claim that the new system achieves superhuman performance without knowing the game rules.

Specifically, MuZero uses MCTS and MCTS needs to have at the very least a move generator in order to produce actions that can then be evaluated for their results. The trained MuZero model learns the transition function and evaluation function but I don't see in the paper where it learns what actions are legal in the domain. And I don't understand how any architecture could model the possible moves in a game without observing examples of external play (i.e. not self-play).

MuZero reuses the AlphaZero architecture so most likely the moves of the pieces for Chess, Shoggi and Go are hard-coded in the architecture, as they are in AlphaZero. There's also probably some similar hard-coding of Atari actions, which I'm probably missing in the paper.

<comment><USER19> > but I am confused by its claim ... without knowing the game rules.

> probably some similar hard-coding of Atari actions

Nope, no hard coding.

Consider trying to MCTS on an Atari game. You have to "learn to predict" the <next frame, action> pairs. Initially this guess is very bad, but eventually your predictions are good enough that rolling out a tree of predictions improves your action selection

For Go, and chess, we twist our self into NOT using the game rules in the simulator e.g. for each move, just indicate if GAME LOSS WIN

Whether this paper worthy of a new Nature hype cycle is a separate debate

<comment><USER18> >> You have to "learn to predict" the <next frame, action> pairs.

But where do the actions come from?

For example, if I play chess, I could pick up a piece and throw it at my opponent's head. Similarly, if I play Atari I could chuck the controller at the monitor. These are actions I can perform that are available to me because of my basic human anatomy and because of the laws of physics (I can grab and throw and a thrown object flies through the air untl it hits a target or gravity wins).

In the case of MuZero, what actions can the system perform and where do they come from? I don't see where that is described in the paper.

>> For Go, and chess, we twist our self into NOT using the game rules in the simulator e.g. for each move, just indicate if GAME LOSS WIN

Similarly - what determines "each move"?

EDIT: I can see in the MuZero paper that "Final outcomes { _lose,draw,win_ } in board games are treated as rewards $u_t \in {-1,0,+1}$ occurring at the final step of the episode" but I also can't see where these come from, what tells the model that a loss, draw or win has occurred at the end of an episode.

I mean, if you're telling the model what actions can be performed and what end-states values are, then what game rules are you _not_ giving to the system?

<comment><USER19> As someone patiently explained to me 2 yrs ago...

For the ATARI, the "real world" is the present frame, and a fixed set of 4 buttons and 4 directions. This of course is the game pre-programmed into the ALE ROM.

You can take any action, and get the next frame. but you cant "undo" an action, and you cant restart a game from a fixed state (see the Go-Explore controversy). And you cant explore 4 different actions in an interesting frame.

So now, if you learn a network which predicts the next frame, you can enter the world of model-based learning, where we do a simulated move tree roll-out (i.e. not calling the ATARI), try a gazillions moves, and only then select an action and get the next sample.

In a formally defined synthetic domain such as chess or logic programming, it is not clear whether this is helpful. We are simply trading one cpu time (calling the environment) for other cpu time (running our own learned im- precise model of the environment)

Of course DM has a chess function which does codes the rules of the next move. It can return a LOSS if you try an illegal move. But this function is NOT called for the tree roll out.

<comment><USER18> >> Of course DM has a chess function which does codes the rules of the next move. It can return a LOSS if you try an illegal move. But this function is NOT called for the tree roll out.

I see what you mean- the chess function computes the results of actions returned by the system. But, if you do rollouts you need to have a set of actions from which to choose and an internal representation of states resulting from those actions. MuZero learns to predict those actions and states- but that means it selects from sets of possible actions and states. The paper does not explain where do these sets come from.

For ATARI I get it, there's the physical ish controls and video frames. For the board games however, I remember very clearly from the AlphaZero paper that there was an encoding of "knight moves" and "queen moves". I also remember less clearly that the structure of the network's layers mirrored the layout of a chessboard. That's what I mean by hard-coding and in the MuZero paper there are many references to reusing the AlphaZero archietecture and no explanation of how the same components (board states, moves) are represented in MuZero.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> It's kind of funny just how much complaining about AI hype and bad coverage there is (on Twitter, and on this very subreddit), it feels like there is more of that now than actually bad coverage. This article suggests some actions to take at the very bottom, which amount to including some discussion of the limitations of the work in the paper -- not a bad idea, but then again the misleading coverage usually does not stem from claims in the papers themselves in the first place.

Shameless but relevant plug warning, I run this effort Skynet Today with the aim to let AI researchers/experts present various advancements/topics to a general audience without hype and with context. Everyone on the team is volunteering their time for free and we can always use more people to help us tackle various subjects, so if you care about this issue feel free to take a look here: [https://www.skynettoday.com/contribute](https://www.skynettoday.com/contribute)

<comment><USER18> Skynet Today is very good. I wish you had more original articles because the ones you have, I enjoy a lot (your editorials and briefs). I see you are calling for contributions, I hope you get some good ones.

Writing good articles- there's no other way to combat bad coverage. Keep it up please and all the best.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> It happened to VR a few years ago. The development slowed down when companies realized the sales. Unlike VR, AI is not a physical good that users/customers can purchase and test directly. It is just a buzzword. Companies will use it to death at every opportunity to market themselves. This is unstoppable. We will hear more about it, maybe until people get sick of hearing "another crappy ai product".

<comment><USER3> AI is more of a datacenter technology. People already use it (siri,alexa,google search) and they apparently like it already. It was easy to see that any VR headset is bulky and agonizing, but those new services work fine. Sure, however the "not hot dog" apps are going to be disappointing

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> The buzzword back in the 70s-80s (after AI over-promised in the 1960s) was 'expert systems'. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expert_system](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expert_system)

(To the extent that I have kept up with it) modern AI skips the 'knowledge base' part of ES, in favor of pattern-recognition based on 'training'.

Today's (Indeterministic, trained, n-net) AI has clearly saved a lot of time/effort in creating 'knowledge bases'. I suspect it appeals more to singular fantasies about 'more human than human' intelligence. (Sorry Ray)

Question is: Is today's AI even a magnitude-better than (deterministic) ES insofar as extensibility and verifiability? What if we had spent those decades refining the ES approach instead?

<comment><USER23> You should use both. Download wikidata and use the manually curated interconnected data available. You could argue it was compiled by the largest pool of neural networks ever assembled. Wikipedia data was curated content that was hierarchically and painstakingly interconnected by humans, the most advanced NN we know of :).

There's now discussion about how neural networks can succumb to data poisoning / adversarial attacks, because there are no immutable facts. Adding a mostly immutable fact table can help keep things grounded in reason. Most of these engines support complex inference abilities that can lead to unexpected connections.

ES is not really dead. It feels like many rules engines changed their names to "AI Intelligent Agents"-type wording to describe their product. Rete algorithm is similar rule based calculation, is still used to calculate FICO score, which you could say fits into the problems that may be better served by the latest Neural network models. Allegro graph lets you query using prolog and is often used for governance and compliance tools. RDFox is one of the latest inference engines that made major advancements in turning first order logic in datalog into parallel computation.

I'd imagine if you can build a neural network that can successfully interact with a ES knowledge base you could easily make a neural network as good as the one that won in jeopardy

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> An AI winter will not happen. We are past the point of no return. The vast majority of research is net positive research.

The only risk is misappropriation of investment, but that has already been smoothed over quickly.

I'd get the complaint if AI was not doing anything useful as it wasn't in '74, but it simply is.

For example, plate recognition, drones and facial recognition. These are brutally efficient technologies. To imagine any government under investing in these is a total misunderstanding of the value that AI brings to military, security, and economic dominance.

It's a race between nations and the only danger is the computers taking over (not in a general AI way, but in a way that everything is run by algorithms no human can understand)

<comment><USER25> You sure?

Without a doubt, there's an investment bubble for AI companies in industry: a huge amount of companies have added "AI" to their proposition, where the AI is only marginally useful if not useful at all, for the purpose of marketing and inflating valuation.

On research side, it's now clear the current AI paradigm will not produce the kind of massive, society-shifting promises that were made to investors, which is the focus of the article.

Yes deep learning is here to stay for narrow tasks, but the investment contraction for the rest could certainly feel like a Winter.

<comment><USER26> > it's now clear the current AI paradigm will not produce the kind of massive, > society-shifting promises that were made to investors

It's correct in that it won't produce the society-shifting promises. But there is a huge amount of money on non-society-shifting innovation.

Besides, I really doubt the media predictions are what actually was told to investors.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> The term AI winter is IMHO misrepresenting the true state of affairs. Since day one, the field's modus operandi was one of overpromising and underdelivering. That has not changed. We see how Alphabet plows billions of dollars into DeepMind [1] and all they get in return is a series of game- playing bots. If unproductive activities are defunded, this creates an opportunity for productive ones to thrive. "Winter" is not a suitable word to describe this.

[1] [https://www.wired.com/story/deepminds-losses-future- artifici...](https://www.wired.com/story/deepminds-losses-future-artificial- intelligence/)

<comment><USER20> This is a ridiculously reductive take on DeepMind... they produce a TON of great research, and have helped advance the state of RL considerably (speaking as an AI researcher here, having read many of their papers). Google should be commended for investing in largely basic AI research, even if once in a while they make a PR splash out of it, IMO.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> The more I read articles like this (or pretty much ANY article recently), the more I'm convinced that what we really need is: transparency.

I don't mean just AI, but transparency on everything: Transparency from researchers, news outlets, governments, retailers, and YouTubers. It's a great shame that a lot of IT has been used for bringing more confusion and obfuscation to the people, whereas it could be used to provide a more coherent/honest view of the world. We should demand more transparency on every matter.

</comment><comment><USER29> Good article, but it overstates its case.

 _> In 1966, the MIT AI lab famously assigned Gerald Sussman the problem of solving vision in a summer; as we all know, machine vision still hasn't been solved over five decades later._

It certainly took five extra decades, but it would be a massive shift of goalposts to say the problem of vision hasn't been sufficiently solved today.

 _> In November 2016, in the pages of Harvard Business Review, Andrew Ng, another well-known figure in deep learning, wrote that "If a typical person can do a mental task with less than one second of thought, we can probably automate it using AI either now or in the near future." A more realistic appraisal is that whether or not something can be automated depends very much on the nature of the problem, and the data that can be gathered, and the relation between the two. For closed-end problems like board games, in which a massive amount of data can be gathered through simulation, Ng's claim has proven prophetic; in open-ended problems, like conversational understanding, which cannot be fully simulated, Ng's claim thus far has proven incorrect. Business leaders and policy-makers would be well-served to understand the difference between those problems that are amenable to current techniques and those that are not; Ng's words obscured this. (Rebooting AI gives some discussion.)_

It takes significantly longer than a second to actually understand spoken conversation (rather than provide a conditioned response or match against expected statements, both of which computers are fully capable of doing).

 _> I just wish that were the norm rather than the exception. When it's not, policy-makers and the general public can easily find themselves confused; because the bias tends to be towards overreporting rather than underreporting results, the public starts fearing a kind of AI (replacing many jobs) that does not and will not exist in the foreseeable future._

Robotic manufacturing has already eliminated massive swaths of high paying jobs. Likewise, software has eliminated massive swaths of data entry and customer service jobs (with software being a particularly poor replacement for the latter, but still being put into widespread use to cut costs). And contrary to beliefs that new jobs will be created in IT, software is able to massively eliminate low skilled tech jobs as well, as e.g. automated testing did to India's IT industry.

As with existing jobs that have been automated away, companies won't need generalized AI to eliminate many more jobs. Many jobs don't rely on unconstrained complex deduction and thinking, and will be ripe for replacement with deep learning algorithms. And we can be reliably assured that corporations will engage in such replacements even when the outcomes are not up to par.

</comment><comment><USER30> I dunno if the GPT-2 examples are _misinformation_ , more like exaggeration for PR, which is admittingly a separate problem in AI. (marketing hype vs. actual falsity)

<comment><USER31> Hype and exaggeration is just another form of falsification.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Sigh.

> The Economist [...] said that GPT-2's answers were "unedited", when in > reality each answer that was published was selected from five options

> [Erik Bryjngjolffson] tweeted that the interview was "impressive" and that > "the answers are more coherent than those of many humans." In fact the > apparent coherence of the interview stemmed from (a) the enormous corpus of > human writing that the system drew from and (b) the filtering for coherence > that was done by the human journalist.

If your success rate is ≥20%, the coherence is coming from the model, not the selection process. This is just basic statistics.

> OpenAI created a pair of neural networks that allowed a robot to learn to > manipulate a custom-built Rubik's cube

Jeez, I've already corrected you here... well, why not have to do it again?

> publicized it with a somewhat misleading video and blog that led many to > think that the system had learned the cognitive aspects of cube-solving

The side not stated: OpenAI said explicitly in the blog that they used an unlearned algorithm for this, and sent a correction to a publisher that got this wrong.

> the cube was instrumented with Bluetooth sensors

 __During training __, but they ended up with a fully vision-based system.

> even in the best case only 20% of fully-scrambled cubes were solved

No, 60% of fully scrambled cubes were solved. 20% of _maximally difficult scrambles_ were solved.

> one report claimed that "A neural net solves the three-body problem 100 > million times faster" [...] but the network did no solving in the classical > sense, it did approximation

All solvers for this problem are approximators, and vice-versa. The article you complain about states the accuracy ("error of just 10^(-5)") in the body of text.

> and it approximated only a highly simplified two degree-of-freedom problem

As reported: "Breen and co first simplify the problem by limiting it to those involving three equal-mass particles in a plane, each with zero velocity to start with."

> MIT AI lab famously assigned Gerald Sussman the problem of solving vision in > a summer > [[https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/6125](https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/6125)]

I... _sigh_

"The original document outlined a plan to do some kind of basic foreground/background segmentation, followed by a subgoal of analysing scenes with simple non-overlapping objects, with distinct uniform colour and texture and homogeneous backgrounds. A further subgoal was to extend the system to more complex objects.

So it would seem that Computer Vision was never a summer project for a single student, nor did it aim to make a complete working vision system."

[http://www.lyndonhill.com/opinion- cvlegends.html](http://www.lyndonhill.com/opinion-cvlegends.html)

> Geoff Hinton [said] that the company (again The Guardian's paraphrase), "is > on the brink of developing algorithms with the capacity for logic, natural > conversation and even flirtation." Four years later, we are still a long way > from machines that can hold natural conversations absent human intervention

'Four years later' to natural conversation is not a reasonable point of criticism when the only timeline given was 'within a decade' for a specified subset of the problem.

> [In 2016 Hinton said] "We should stop training radiologists now. It's just > completely obvious that within five years, deep learning is going to do > better than radiologists." [...] but thus far no actual radiologists have > been replaced

So Hinton actually said "People should stop training radiologists now. It's just completely obvious that within five years, deep learning is going to do better than radiologists, because it's going to be able to get a lot more experience. _It might be 10 years_ , but we've got plenty of radiologists already."

2019 is not 2026. "thus far no actual radiologists have been replaced" is thus not a counterargument.

> Andrew Ng, another well-known figure in deep learning, wrote that "If a > typical person can do a mental task with less than one second of thought, we > can probably automate it using AI either now or in the near future." [...] > _Ng's claim thus far has proven incorrect._

I agree. This quote captures the wrong nuance of the issue.

Well, finally finding one point by Gary Marcus that isn't misleading, I think I'm going to call this a day.

<comment><USER32> I published some minor corrections/clarifications to this on Reddit. HN won't let me edit, so here's a link:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/e453kl/d_a...](https://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/e453kl/d_an_epidemic_of_ai_misinformation/f98e15s/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I bet ai is going to become like coding where everyone thinks they're an expert.</comment>


Show HN: Customizable, on-page tutorials as a service, Tutorialize.me - <AUTHOR> https://tutorialize.me

<comment><USER2> This is an interesting idea. Is each snippet a tutorial (for pricing purposes)?

<comment><AUTHOR> Nope, each page is a tutorial. You can have as many tool tips as you want per- tutorial!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Good to see CSS control is coming soon. I think that's pretty key.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, agreed. First custom css, then perhaps some templates to choose from.</comment></comment>


It's Alive: Mac OS X on Non-Apple Hardware - <AUTHOR> http://blog.amber.org/2009/07/12/its-alive/

<comment><USER2> Another "How to make a Hackintosh" post. Ground breaking. People have been able to do this for quite a while now, I don't see how this is news at all.

<comment><USER3> Especially true when you scroll to the very bottom and the end result is Audio and DVD not working.

<comment><USER4> I would attribute that to the poster not knowing a whole heck of a lot when he bought his hardware, or about the availability of various fixes for the issues he's having. There is a vast amount of information out there. The DVD not working is of course due to him setting his BIOS exclusively to SATA instead of compatibility mode. The audio, if its even close to a new motherboard, should be able to be solved quite easily with <http://code.google.com/p/voodoohda/> or HDAEnabler. Some of the stuff he does is unnecessary. A lot of newbie mistakes. The only thing interesting is that it's an i7.

ETA: Written on my faster-than-a-mac-pro-and-only-cost-800-dollars-hackintosh.

<comment><USER5> Only $800? That's great--what are the specs?

<comment><USER4> Antec 300 Case

500 Watt Antec Earthwatts PS

2x 1TB HDs

Q8400 2.66GHz Quad Core Processor

Gigabyte EP45T-UD3LR Motherboard

8GB DDR3 RAM

\--

If you have further interest drop me a message.

<comment><USER5> Cool--that's a great rig. I'm exploring it all now on the IM forums.

<comment><USER4> Oops -- I should also have added that it's a 9800GTX+ EVGA video card.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I basically did the same thing, but it went like this:

        1. Build my first PC (similar specs as theirs, the important bits anyway)
        2. Install Arch Linux and be comfortable with that
        3. Curiosity builds, I attempt a Hackintosh install and am greeted with everything but audio working.
        4. Back to arch for a few months.
        5. iAtkos v7 came out a little while ago, I tried it, and it worked flawlessly. I am now running 10.5.7 as my main OS. Woo.

(Side-rant: I have to use a codeblock for a list? Seriously? For such a technical site this place sure isn't pretty when it comes to functionality and overall completeness. It's like someone started working on it, forgot about it, and people are using it without the creator knowing about it.)

So, while this may be a "How to make a Hackintosh" post, it is actually more helpful as the hardware they mention is hardware that did not work properly in the past.

My installation and setup was much less difficult than theirs, though, I just had to select NVEnabler and the GT200 video drivers and everything worked.

</comment><comment><USER7> It'd be a lot less work to just buy a legit Mac. ;-)

<comment><USER8> If they weren't so fucking expensive, or if Apple _openly_ allowed you to install it on whatever the hell you wanted to, then we wouldn't be having this conversation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> After attempting to get a Hackintosh up and running a couple of times (and failing), I would advice anyone who attempts this and intends to remain somewhat honest, to stall the purchase of a proper version OS X until you actually have a successful, working install.

In my opinion getting the install to work can easily be considered more complex than getting an equivalent box running Linux properly was back in the days.

<comment><USER4> I respectfully disagree for one reason and one reason only. The insanelymac forums have guide upon guide for all sorts of hardware configurations.

There is a hardware compatibility list that gives you a good starting point for buying compatible hardware.

Finally, the use of Boot-132 in conjunction with Chameleon has made setting up a completely flawless 10.5.x install pretty simple compared to what it used to require.

Although, you might be right. I am very conveniently forgetting the 2-3 days I spent tinkering with broken installations a year ago. It takes time to learn some of the stuff, but for most of the folks on HN I would assume you'd have little trouble getting it working after a little reading and googling.</comment></comment>


Why cities aren't covered in empty cans of coconut water - <AUTHOR> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tommy-campbell/why-cities-arent-covered-in-empty-cans-of-coconut-water_b_7950962.html

<comment><USER2> > My solution was extremely complicated, yet effective, and I will try my best > to summarise it for you: Ask them to use smaller garbage bags.

Which means more frequent trips to the dumpster. Might not be a problem for short people, but might _very well_ be a problem for elderly or disabled people.

The better solution here would not to have such tall dumpsters if possible/feasible. Not all dumpsters are garguantuan, after all. Maybe you'll need more of them, but I'm sure that's a worthwhile tradeoff.

> Since the overwhelming amount of litter is junk food in one form or another > [...] Dumb people throw away dumb litter.

While being fully aware that people (like me) who eat fast food instead of buying organic free-range GMO-free gluten-free kale/quinoa/tofu salads at Whole Foods for quadruple the money might be just doing it because we're dumb, does the author at all suspect that maybe - just maybe - people eat junk food because they can't afford yuppie Whole Foods stuff?

Not to say that the littering is excusable. My objection is solely to the characterization of people who eat junk food as "dumb", or that they necessarily have a choice in the matter, rather that recognizing that poor people aren't fictional creatures and that not everyone has the luxury of a Whole Foods or Trader Joe's or whatever newfangled healthy yuppie organic store is in vogue right now. That bit came across as ridiculously elitist, whether or not the author meant it to be.</comment>


"Going Dark" - <AUTHOR> https://www.fbi.gov/services/operational-technology/going-dark <comment><USER2> A couple thoughts come to mind after reading this

1\. Is the FBI ignoring the reality of the state of technology? There are plenty of non-service provider dependent modes of communication that you just couldn't compel like you would with CALEA.

2\. You need to extend the intercept mandate to individuals running Tor nodes, open source technology developers and right on down to the individual using the technology. To do this our government would need to place strict regulations on communication technologies and encryption.

3\. Does the FBI have its NSA peers in the executive branch to thank for abusing warrantless snooping that has triggered the actions of name brand and niche communication providers alike to implement stronger cryptos? Now they want our sympathy?

<comment><AUTHOR> I think the FBI is knowingly leaving the public in the dark about internal advancements regarding codebreaking and data analysis. But they somehow try to make a point appealing to the emotional need of security through state surveillance.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How could Rails4 help Heroku? - <AUTHOR>

Reading the comments on this, I'm sensing different ideas of whether a future Rails' multi-threading can actually help Heroku.<p>Does Unicorn achieve as much as we could hope for from Rails? <comment><USER2> You have to come down to the source of the problem, trying to solve problems, not symptoms.

Also please stop reinventing over and over again things that are already perfectly done - use Erlang or at least reimplement ruby as erlang, then it will be fine.

Oh, somebody did this already... <http://elixir-lang.org/>

<comment><AUTHOR> Except this doesn't help a large (compared to erlang) real world user base of Ruby and Rails.</comment></comment>


Latvia, Lithuania Ban Russian State TV Broadcasts - <AUTHOR> http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/E/EU_BALTICS_RUSSIAN_TV?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

<comment><USER2> Complicated issue, don't knee-jerk. These countries were heavily colonized while part of the Soviet Union, so the "native" population is scared that the Russians might decide to "rescue" the Russians living there or to stir up unrest.

But also, Russians that have lived there since before the collapse of the Soviet Union are discriminated against, mostly by denying them access to society/citizenship if they don't prove they speak the local language.

<comment><USER3> Many Russians, especially retail workers and taxi drivers, speak Latvian passably, though it's easy to spot them as Russians. The language requirement for citizenship is easy to pass and normal in many European countries. There is no discrimination against Russians in law. If you Google "discriminatory laws in Latvia" what you get are many articles on the state of gay rights in Latvia.

What bothers the Russians is that they are marooned in a country to which they were brought to colonize, and everyone knows that. Retired Russian military officers and mobsters both liked living in Latvia. The town of Jurmala is like a 1950's Elmwood Park, but with way more bling. The Russians in Latvia used to have a privileged position. Now they don't.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Russian state TV is complete Volksempfänger at the moment.

</comment><comment><USER5> It's just a fraction of broadcasts had been blocked of what you can watch in these countries</comment>


Refactoring Across Multiple Code Repositories with Gradle and IntelliJ IDEA - <AUTHOR> https://engineering.linkedin.com/blog/2017/01/great-tools-for-engineers--refactoring-across-multiple-code-repo <comment><USER2> > A critical feature of Composite Builds is the ability to integrate with > IntelliJ IDEA

Does that mean Composite Builds uses IDEA-compatible Kotlin to specify its build scripts, or is the aging Apache Groovy still used, with its 80% approach to triggering IDEA's type hints?

> We recently open sourced support for Python with Gradle—try it out and enjoy > Gradle's amazing dependency management in the Python world!

Aren't Kotlin and Apache Groovy the only languages supported for writing Gradle's build scripts? Does that mean the Python support in Gradle must be controlled by build scripts written in yet another language?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Companies that speak about the subject seem to choose either the monorepo approach or the complete opposite, with thousands of them (several repositories per developer !)

Is anyone using one repository per team, in order to share code more easily but without the need for complex tools that can deal with a true monorepository (not everyone can build something like Piper/Blaze)?</comment>


YouTube Gaming - <AUTHOR> http://youtube-global.blogspot.com/2015/06/a-youtube-built-for-gamers.html

<comment><USER2> I thought this tweet from Twitch is pretty relevant and funny: [https://twitter.com/Twitch/status/609429653271384065](https://twitter.com/Twitch/status/609429653271384065)</comment>


Project Cybersyn and the origins of the Big Data nation - <AUTHOR> http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/10/13/planning-machine <comment><USER2> If this interests you, you might like the book "Red Plenty".

It alternates between novel and essay about Khrushchev-era USSR, when people on both sides of the curtain thought there was a pretty good chance that the Soviets would succeed, if not as a Socialist Utopia at least in economically overtaking the west in output and quality of life.

Also, this excellent essay about the computational aspects of Gosplan, the USSR's mostly human-powered predecessor to Cybersyn: [http://crookedtimber.org/2012/05/30/in-soviet-union- optimiza...](http://crookedtimber.org/2012/05/30/in-soviet-union-optimization- problem-solves-you/) (which is where I learned about Red Plenty)

<comment><USER3> Also, see Cosma Shalizi's excellent review of "Red Plenty", which includes a mini-introduction on the application of linear programming to economic policymaking.

[http://crookedtimber.org/2012/05/30/in-soviet-union- optimiza...](http://crookedtimber.org/2012/05/30/in-soviet-union-optimization- problem-solves-you/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> About 10 years ago I intended to read "Towards a new Socialism", after reading an article about the chileniean experiment that also mentioned this book. Perhaps it was actually an article about the book. I don't quite remember. I never read the book and only got reminded about it by this article now. The topic itself is quite fascinating, especially if you think about what amount of planning happens in huge companies.

You can, if you are interested in the topic, find the book at [http://ricardo.ecn.wfu.edu/~cottrell/socialism_book/](http://ricardo.ecn.wfu.edu/~cottrell/socialism_book/)

<comment><USER5> As they say - the bigger the company, the more socialism there (inside the company).

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is relevant: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonid_Kantorovich](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonid_Kantorovich)

Although not dealing so much with big data, it was still a "socialist" attempt at mathematical optimization being applied in society.

<comment><USER4> Leontief's input-output model is also interesting: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Input–output_model](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Input–output_model)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Related and a very good BBC documentary on the role (and tragedy) of engineering and planning in the USSR: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3gwyHNo7MI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3gwyHNo7MI)

</comment><comment><USER8> ... and then one day someone read a paper about chaos theory and computational complexity and quickly realized that predicting systems with chaotic behavior is guaranteed to be impossible.

<comment><USER9> It's not impossible at all. In fact there is entire field of study devoted to the long term evolution of dynamical systems ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ergodic_theory](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ergodic_theory)).

And within a chaotic system there are several types of stability that can be readily predicted over a long period of time such as Lyapunov stability and asymptotic stability.

Why do you think this system would be chaotic in the first place?

<comment><USER8> Chaotic in the sense of sensitive dependence upon initial conditions? Because human actions depend upon a large number of factors influenced heavily by their environment and their life experiences. It's far harder to find systems which are not chaotic than ones which are. Even the classical 3-body system interacting under gravitation is chaotic.

And while, yes, there is definitely good work being done in studying dynamic systems, applying those things to human beings is very difficult and dangerous. We already often face situations where humans are expected to conform to a limited set of predicted responses rather than the system being seen as flawed for failing to predict all possible responses. And human beings react very, very poorly to being restricted in these ways.

<comment><USER9> I totally get what you're saying about the unpredictability of human behaviour. But I don't see the connection to this particular system. It could totally be chaotic if it was modelled as a dynamical system, I don't disagree with that, but as far as I can tell they approached it using neural networks...

Chaos isn't an intrinsic behaviour of humans, it's a property arising from specific conditions in a dynamical system. I do think there's been interesting results in trying to model human behaviour ([http://www.wilmott.com/pdfs/090610_mandelbrot.pdf](http://www.wilmott.com/pdfs/090610_mandelbrot.pdf)), but like you I'm hesitant to apply these mathematical models to us irrational humans. Anyway, I'm just being a pedantic math nerd.

P.S. Sensitivity to initial conditions alone does not imply a dynamical system is chaotic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I only read the beginning of the article and skimmed the rest, but this seems to be a misleading article. Just because the Chileans had the idea they could use massive amounts of data and computers to achieve their socialist goals doesn't mean this was the origin of big data analysis in companies today. It doesn't take a quantum leap in creativity, imagination, or innovation to realize you can combine computing power and lots of data to glean insights into customers, or in socialism's case, societal (i.e., the government's) goals.

<comment><USER5> It isn't about customer insight, it is about control system in cybernetics sense (where the more system information reflected in observation vector, the more chances you have to generate optimal control input). While capitalist society puts a lot of belief into emergent behavior of the system, socialist is obsessed with optimal control of the system.</comment></comment>


You know it's already too late... - <AUTHOR> http://www.commitstrip.com/en/2014/03/13/the-unexpected-default-program/

<comment><USER2> It's times like these when you feel like going - [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWaLxFIVX1s](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWaLxFIVX1s). All the countless seconds, numerous hours, practically aeons of time wasted on this. Damn.</comment>


Trump administration approves tougher visa vetting, including social media check - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKBN18R3F8 <comment><USER2> The headline here does not really seem to reflect the content of the article:

>The State Department said earlier the tighter vetting would apply to visa applicants "who have been determined to warrant additional scrutiny in connection with terrorism or other national security-related visa ineligibilities."

This sounds like it _authorizes_ them to ask for social media handles (usernames) for up to 5 years into the past.

This doesn't mean everybody coming into the country has to turn over all of their social media logins and passwords.

Still ridiculous.

<comment><USER3> > in connection with terrorism or other national security-related visa > ineligibilities

> Still ridiculous.

I mean, at what level does it becomes not ridiculous to have deeper vetting?

<comment><USER4> Disclaimer: I'm an Australian in the US on a work visa.

I'd consider it "not ridiculous" if the vetting was limited to ensuring:

\- That my visa application is valid: If I'm coming to work, I'm doing it for a real job and I really do have all the necessary qualifications and my travel plans match my intent.

\- That I'm likely to leave the US. I think it's fine to ask whether I have ties to my home country or to the US and whether I've broken the terms of another visa.

\- That I'm not already a criminal. It'd be fine to be asked for a police report.

I consider the following ridiculous:

\- Anything related to potential future terrorism. If I wanted to enter the US to kill people, why on earth would I get a visa when I could just cross the border illegally or use a fake passport?

\- Compelling disclosure of any information a citizen could deny a police officer who lacked a warrant.

Then again, I understand that the US considers visas to be a privilege and I respect its choice to deny them to whoever it wishes. If it decides I'm not good enough, I'm more than happy to take my economic output elsewhere (and I will if they ever ask for details regarding my online presence).

<comment><USER5> The 9/11 attackers lived in the US on student visas. Some did pilot training in the US. I believe most of the recent European terrorists have been legally in those countries (and for that matter, the domestic right wing terrorists in the US, and the historical left wing terrorists in Europe)

I'm not sure how many terrorist attacks are done by fugitives. Some stuff is easier to arrange when you have legal status.

Also, cross which border illegally? The Canadian? People who need a visa to enter the US probably need one to enter Canada too.

<comment><USER6> Most of the European terrorists were even _born_ locally.

I really don't get why getting our Fb accounts is so important, given they already have it (or should, if NSA/CIA did the job they were assigned to).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This appears not to apply to all applicants. From here: [https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2017/05/04/2017-08...](https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2017/05/04/2017-08975/notice- of-information-collection-under-omb-emergency-review-supplemental-questions- for-visa)

> Respondents: Immigrant and nonimmigrant visa applicants who have been > determined to warrant additional scrutiny in connection with terrorism or > other national security-related visa ineligibilities.

<comment><USER8> Gee look, media leaving out key information in order to get a rise out of people and more clicks. This in a nutshell is why I try to avoid following US politics these days (I guess my bad for clicking on it this time heh).

Very interesting how Reuters doesn't mention this only affects 0.5% of people who apply and whose regular information is deemed to warrant further investigation. Doesn't sound as sensationalistic when you leave that little detail out.

<comment><USER9> The story covered the key point, which is that the way visas are granted has been changed to be even more arbitrary and have higher potential for abuse than before.

From everything I've seen so far, the only people who are going to get the "additional scrutiny" are Muslims, starting with the ones from the countries listed in the travel ban. The administration added the "national security" language in order to protect themselves in court, but it reads the same as any other instance of government abuse throughout American history. The people in the group being targeted will be required to jump over increasingly higher hurdles (like 15 years of biographical history) while everyone else gets to just step around it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> ".... and discourage international students and scientists from coming to the United States."

Not just students and scientists - it will discourage everyone from coming to the United States, as if it wasn't unappealing already.

Tourists will go elsewhere. It's good for tourism in other countries.

Important to remember though that these Trump decisions are the will of the people - democracy in action.

<comment><USER11> > these Trump decisions are the will of the people

I wouldn't say his decisions are the will of the people but rather the result of the political system in action.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Absolutely unbelievable. It is just unconscionable to require handing over this sort of information. How do we stop this madness?

Watch while China reciprocates and see how much US business travelers like that.

</comment><comment><USER13> If I didn't live here already I don't think I would ever travel to the US unless I absolutely couldn't avoid it. I am already really nervous that I have to give them my laptop or phone with passwords so they can poke around my E-mails.

</comment><comment><USER14> What if I don't remember what accounts I have? There are so many accounts with so many aliases, I don't even remember defunct accounts.

Also, does email count as social media?

</comment><comment><USER15> People won't include the social media accounts they don't want to call attention to.

Net effect: Not safer as a whole, but we'll see how deep the social network surveillance actually goes and how good the pseudo-anonymous attribution algorithms really are.

<comment><USER16>
      People won't include the social media accounts they don't want to call attention to.

Which is extremely risky. Depending on your profile they may find you with a simple search and having lied on your visa application or to an immigration officer will get you barred to visit the US for years.

And that's your best case scenario.

<comment><USER15> A "simple search" in the days of TOR and anonymous accounts isn't so simple.

Ergo, the second part of my comment about how well those "hidden" accounts can be uncovered.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> what if you just don't use social media?

<comment><USER18> The most horrifying part of this for me is that (as someone who doesn't want to be part of the Facebook grind)... this actually compels me to sign up for Facebook for business visa reasons.

So in a way this policy nudges me to patronize the business of particular named corporations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Submitting a complete record of 15 years of travel history would be quite challenging to many people, to say the least.

<comment><USER20> I applied for an Indian visa a couple months ago. The page gave me 100 characters to list countries I'd visited in the previous few years. If I used 2 letter abbreviations and skipped the commas I could have just about done it. As it stands I started at NZ and moved west. Ran out of space just before listing Pakistan. Oh well.

<comment><USER21> Why do you visit so many countries?

<comment><USER22> That's nobody's business. Maybe s/he likes to travel. Especially if you're in EU where there are practically no borders west of Russia, you can visit dozens of countries without sweat.

<comment><USER20> It's quite simple, I work for a multinational company with offices in about 100 counties. Add 20 or so countries in Europe which are easy enough to visit for a weekend break and 50 is quite a small number. Most people I know have visited at least 10 counties in the last 10 years, and many have visited 20+, just for tourist purposes

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> What does social media include? Will I have to list my HN and reddit usernames? What about throwaways, am I expected to list those too?

<comment><USER20> Yes

<comment><USER24> Would be nice if HN gave the ability to delete your account for people who need that option.

<comment><USER25> I asked HN about changing my handle which I made long back, they said something similar to "we dont have the technical expertise to change it". If an HN moderator is reading this. Well its for you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Social media _handles_

> The Trump administration has rolled out a new questionnaire for U.S. visa > applicants worldwide that asks for social media handles for the last five > years and biographical information going back 15 years.

Including social media handles is quite different than what the title implies with "accounts"

Edit: Yay the post title was fixed!

<comment><USER22> What the fuck is a 'handle' ?

<comment><USER26> 1024core in your case

<comment><USER22> But is HN 'social media'?

<comment><USER2> Yes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> This seems pretty reasonable... It's not like you are giving them your passwords or anything, your just telling them your public online name, which they could probably find by googling you anyways.

</comment><comment><USER28> I've already had to provide my social media account names (although not access to those accounts) at the US border as a foreigner trying to enter the country. This was about one year ago.

</comment><comment><USER29> Does anyone know if this, like requests for passwords or decrypting data at border, can be ground to refuse entry if the person denies access?</comment>


Cool video on how Curiosity landing must have looked like - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9hXqzkH7YA&feature=relmfu

<comment><USER2> Cool video on how Curiosity landing actually looked like :) <http://youtu.be/UcGMDXy-Y1I></comment>


Upwork freezes accounts after misreading a QUOTED conversation about a 3rd party - <AUTHOR> It is funny, really. Perhaps the possibility of this should have occurred to me earlier.
The conversation went something like:
me: Hey John, regarding opportunity A, please offer a payment.
John: A's response: "want $X"
I can see how this could be perceived as a clever communication. Only it is not clever. John and I have previously in the same thread exchanged email addresses and we did not need Upwork to communicate about the payment. More importantly, John's rate is many times lower the asking rate.
Bizarre... <comment><USER2> I assume that the first step was to contact upwork, not to post on HN, right?

<comment><AUTHOR> right. all has been resolved after we submitted screenshots.</comment></comment>


Apple found $40M in gold from used computers and phones - <AUTHOR> http://alexkehr.com/apple-gold/ <comment><USER2> It's interesting to think of recycling as Apple securing a steady supply of raw materials. It's a step borrowed from the carpet manufacturer, Interface.

[https://www.interface.com/US/en- US/about/topic/Recycling](https://www.interface.com/US/en- US/about/topic/Recycling)</comment>


Apple vs. Microsoft - <AUTHOR> http://trends.google.com/trends?q=apple.com,+microsoft.com

<comment><USER2> Isn't this just the people that _searched_ for x.com? The traffic stats are here:

[http://trends.google.com/websites?q=apple.com%2C+microsoft.c...](http://trends.google.com/websites?q=apple.com%2C+microsoft.com&geo=all&date=all&sort=0)

Spoiler, as opposed to searches microsoft.com continues to dominate apple.com in actual visits by some margin.

edit: it doesn't seem to return any traffic info for google.com, but the search results are explosive:

[http://trends.google.com/trends?q=apple.com,+microsoft.com,+...](http://trends.google.com/trends?q=apple.com,+microsoft.com,+google.com&geo=all&date=all)

</comment><comment><USER3> Apple vs Microsoft (Live, MSN) [http://trends.google.com/trends?q=apple.com%2C+microsoft.com...](http://trends.google.com/trends?q=apple.com%2C+microsoft.com%2C+live.com%2C+msn.com&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=0)

</comment><comment><USER4> Incidentally, google.com appears to be an order of magnitude more popular. You kind of have to wonder what people using Google to search for Google are on...</comment>


The Use of Artificial Intelligence in the Artistic Creation - <AUTHOR> https://estranhosidade.wordpress.com/2016/02/20/the-automation-of-the-technical-part-of-art-the-use-of-artificial-intelligence-in-the-artistic-creation/ <comment><AUTHOR> So, I wrote this text talking about the impact that I think an artificial intelligence will have upon the artistic creation. It's quite a huge text, but I think it's worth to read, and I thought maybe some people here would be interested.

Basically, I argue that with an AI, making art will get a lot easier. I mean, imagine if making an "Avatar" movie was as cheap as write a fanfic. Imagine if we have machines capable of dubbing movies in a new language, imagine if we have machine capable to convert any content to 8k, imagine if we have a machine capable of creating new episodes of ____ (insert here your most loved TV show that got canceled), and so on...

Imagine if making art was easier. If everything you needed was the idea, and the machine did the rest? That's basically the idea of my text.

Also, I speak about the history of people trying to create this sort of highly automated way of producing art, which is something very, very hard. Especially due the fact that each work of art is subjetive to such particular criteria.</comment>


Comimix iPhone/iPad PROMO CODE - <AUTHOR>

Comimix is an amazing way to browse comic strips. Comimix includes 180+ RSS comic titles.
Do give us your feedback at firstname.lastname@example.com
iPhone Promo Code: XTNM6MWR7JKA 9PPXLP3JKTM9 76N3K6RT4XMK Y43K64HHEHLN 6THWA9NW7PKM
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Comimix iPhone app supports iOS 4.0+ Comimix iPad app supports iOS 3.2+ <comment><USER2> I used 9PPXLP3JKTM9</comment>


Trump Knows the Feds Are Closing in on Him - <AUTHOR> https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/03/06/trump-knows-the-feds-are-closing-in-on-him/ <comment><USER2> Some context: this was published before the Wikileaks Vault 7 release.</comment>


The types of software you should make in 2010/2011 - <AUTHOR> http://meta.maxkle.in/the-types-of-software-you-should-make-in-2010-2 <comment><USER2> "It is at the forefront of what people are working on, and what is going to become big within the next few months"

This smacks of market timing, which does not work for stocks and does not work here. Not all failures are possible to explain in terms of technology maturity or penetration (e.g. the author's example of YouTube-like sites), nor can you say with certainty a Facebook-clone will fail (there have been many posts and discussions on HN lately precisely on how to succeed at that.)

Instead, I believe the message should be similar to what PG espouses: solve a problem. If the people who have this problem also have money, invite them to pay you for it.

edit: grammar.

<comment><USER3> Market timing works fine for built-to-flip companies. You have to have both the ability to build those firms and the ability/connections to sell them to the prospective buyer. Hard to come by both.</comment></comment>


Searching with iterated maps - <AUTHOR> http://www.pnas.org/content/104/2/418.full <comment><USER2> Alternative description ...

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Difference_map_algorithm>

I'm trying to work out if this is a clever version of simulated annealing or randomised ballistic hill-climbing. It's not clear if it really is something different underneath.

But it's making a splash - it seems to be solving problems that people had trouble with.</comment>


Taxi Medallions, Once a Safe Investment, Now Drag Owners into Debt - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/10/nyregion/new-york-taxi-medallions-uber.html <comment><USER2> The medallion system pretends to regulate the taxi industry, but in actuality it's a scheme that allowed people to buy into a monopoly. This unusual arrangement has insulated the taxi industry from normal market forces at the expense of pretty much everyone living in or traveling to New York.

Riding in a New York taxi is unpleasant and expensive, but since it was a monopoly it had no incentive to do better and there were never any real consequences for failing to provide decent service – even as it became increasingly aggressive in soliciting outrageous tips and jamming advertising down its customers throats.

But it's not a monopoly anymore and that's a good thing for New York. I won't shed a tear for the taxi industry.

<comment><USER3> > it's a scheme that allowed people to buy into a monopoly

It is a rather ingenious "free market monopoly hybrid" that I can't think of existing in other fields.

<comment><USER4> sure there is ... any centrally allocated system of real or artificially scarce resources based on market dynamics works this way. For instance, radio frequencies, water rights, domain names and ticket scalping. In some municipalities liquor licenses, mobile network providers, broadband, and now marijuana licenses work this way too.

I wouldn't be surprised if banks, cosmetologists and realtors were like this too, but I don't know enough about them.

<comment><USER5> Not to mention the music industry or really any industry whose business model is enabled by copyright.

<comment><USER6> More broadly: not just copyright but intellectual-property in general, which is government-granted monopoly protection.

<comment><USER5> You're right in principle, and I thought about writing the same. But trademarks are IP too, and I have a hard time seeing how this applies to them. I also think copyright is far worse than patents for a few reasons. Firstly, patents do expire, whereas copyright never seem to. Secondly, patents disputes are mostly between businesses, which mean the forces are roughly equal on either side. Copyright disputes are sometimes between businesses, but more often than not, they are between businesses that hold the copyright on one side, and consumers on the other. And in those cases, the balance of power is tilted massively in favor of the right's holders. Which I am guessing goes a long way to explain why the copyright period keeps getting extended.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I feel very badly for the people in the article who lost their life savings on a failed investment.

I also feel very badly for people who went broke on Beanie Babies and tulip bulbs, for almost precisely the same reasons.

Edit: I'm serious. Medallion prices peaked in 2014, well after the start of Uber and Lyft's explosion onto the spotlight. It seems like a bad idea for someone in 2006 to have invested a life's fortune in an arbitrarily limited commodity, but fiscal insanity to do the same in 2014. Those things were only ever valuable because the government issued so few of them, not because of inherent worth. When the demand for them fell below even their meager supply, they became (relatively) worthless - as predictable.

I wish the people in the article had sold their medallions to corporations in 2014 when they were still worth a mint. Failing to do so was a tragic miscalculation.

<comment><USER8> > I feel very badly for the people in the article who lost their life savings > on a failed investment.

San Diego did a good thing with this. They bought back the medallion at some price relative to what was paid minus some amount for time owned, interest, etc. Then when they redistributed those bought back medallions, they slightly increased the medallion count.

That sequence stopped a lot of the problems. Anybody who got caught out by medallions collapsing could just get out. Anybody who bought in at this point knew what they were getting into.

<comment><USER9> Actions like this always seems to weird to me.

Given the limited resources of government and the large number of people who need help, it seems strange to ration that aid on the basis of previously making a bad financial investment.

<comment><USER10> The medallions exist in a government-created market. If the government offers a buy-in to a regulated business, then ceases to regulate the business in the same way, it's harming its own partners in the regulated industry. Offering to buy back the rights that it sold, well that's simply a way to reduce this harm to its partners.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Good riddance. I was in New York recently, and hailed a taxi for the ride to EWR instead of Uber/Lyft because my phone's battery was flat. The same ride that cost me <$50 on the way in on Uber was _over $100_ the way back, including effectively mandatory 20% tip -- and this was the lowest of the "suggested" options of 20%, 25% or 30%! And yellow cabs are a lot less comfortable as well, you're separated from the driver by a Plexiglass cage with a TV screen bolted on, attempting to blare ads into your face.

I sympathize with cabbies who spent a lot of money on buying a medallion of their own in the early 2000s and drove their own cab. I have less sympathy for the guy who invested $2.6 million in 2013.

<comment><USER12> > including effectively mandatory 20% tip -- and this was the lowest of the > "suggested" options of 20%, 25% or 30%

I moved to NYC just before you could pay by card in the cab. At the time, my friends told me to give $1 if the ride was less than $10, and $2 if it was less then $20 and so on. Most of the time, I think I effectively tipped between 10% and 20%. I kept with that habit after they introduced card payement with these insane suggested tips. How is it now? are you really expected to tip that much?

<comment><USER13> The default tip on most machines is $0.00, but there's usually three buttons for 20%, 25% and 30% (or 20, 25 and custom).

I personally tip 20% most of the time, 25% rarely. If I'm paying cash then typically $1-2.

<comment><USER6> I feel their use of not providing options between 0% and 20% is deliberate to guilt you into selecting 20% because they know you want to tip something.

<comment><USER13> I have absolutely nothing to back me on this other than gut instinct that the 20% is the base because that's what the IRS assumes for NYC metro area tippable wages. In reality the TLC probably organized a committee of accountants and medallion holders and spent a year discussing what the three options would be.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > Sohan Gill once saw his medallion as such a good investment — "better than a > house"

If something looks like it's an impossibly good investment, it may actually be.

It's a shame that US city governments let this happen by retaining the medallion monopoly system. If cities let the taxi supply adjust to demand, a taxi license would have been worth the same as any other business license.

<comment><USER15> They do the same thing with housing. If supply adjusted to demand a starter house would not be 500k to 1m. Nothing about it costs that much.

<comment><USER16> Nothing except the land it sits on...

<comment><USER15> Build vertical.

I'm not saying there are no limits but land shortage is only an issue in city cores.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I can't feel too sympathetic for the owners--they've been riding high on the back of their drivers for years. The drivers, who in fact are their employees, get no benefits of any kind due to a legal fiction that classifies them as independent contractors. If the drivers--who are actually operating the taxis --want to take calls from the street, from dispatch, from Uber, from Lyft, it should be up to them. After all, if a driver wants to simply park his leased taxi and not drive, he's free to do so--he's an independent contractor. The medallion owners got themselves into this mess by becoming vehicle lessors, not taxi operators. Once upon a time driving a cab was a good job with good benefits. Now it's not a job at all, which is why immigrants rush to drive.

<comment><USER18> > due to a legal fiction that classifies them as independent contractors.

The taxi industry pioneered the independent contractor model. They provide the car, I lease it and do whatever I want with it for the duration of my lease. The company has very little control over what their drivers do - they would offer bonuses on certain fares to try to get drivers to go get their contracted fares in outlying areas...

Renting a car is much cheaper than leasing a taxi, so the only reasonable use for my leased taxi was to try to make some money with it.

I met a few other taxi drivers who thought that ppl like me, who drove for the biggest taxi company in Phoenix, were getting screwed by Big Taxi. One of these drivers was a solo owner-operator. He did everything himself: regulatory compliance (meter certification and whatever else the department of weights and measures cares about), advertising, etc. The other guys drove for smaller companies because they didn't like Big Taxi's corporate culture. I thought the arrangement with Big Taxi was acceptable.

The series of events which forced my retirement from taxi driving were about 2 years ago, and I haven't kept up with the industry news... One of the guys I used to drive with gave it up when the owner-operator he leased from three in the towel. He did two or three trips for 'duper, rapidly realized that was a waste of his friend's new Prius, and got a 7-day-a-week job at a golf course. Another guy just went back to taxi driving after a year and a half "working his ass off" for a funeral home that didn't actually appreciate his efforts. This one said the call volume is significantly down, but call quality is way up. He recently got to take a fellow from Phoenix to Tucson - the guy had to be in federal court by 9am... It was a good fare.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Funny how Uber didn't fix that but instead put new drivers in another Debt., Uber sub prime car loans.

<comment><USER20> "Disruption" doesn't eliminate rent seeking; it only creates a new class of rent seekers.

<comment><USER21> Don't know why you're being downvoted. Seems like a nice point to debate about.

<comment><USER22> Because Silicon Valley, of which Hacker News and its commentariat are a subset, really tries to avoid thinking about the fact that "disruption" usually just means "meet the new boss, same as the old boss". Posts which bring this to the surface cause cognitive dissonance and so have to be greyed so they can be ignored.

<comment><USER6> but at least the new boss (tens of thousands of $ for a new car loan) is better than the old boss ( _hundreds_ of thousands of $ for a medallion).

<comment><USER23> Give the new boss a few more years...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> People are missing the point.

Unless companies like Uber and Lyft can continue to raise billions of VC money almost forever, they eventually have to turn themselves into a medallion system eventually.

This or, expect drivers to get paid way below minimum wage to sustain their current pricing model. Which won't happen.

So medallions are here to stay. Uber and Lyft never had a revenue model apart from _subsidize-until-competition-dies_. The best case scenario is Uber will be the new medallion system, the worst case will be older system will be back.

The transportation and logistics industry is one of the worst industry to be in. Its a capital intensive market with very low profit margins. Minus VC money Uber and Lyft won't go too far.

</comment><comment><USER25> I'm reminded of the 2005' Man Push Cart movie about a Pakistani immigrant that sells coffee from a rented push cart in New York. His only dream is to save enough to buy his own cart one day.

</comment><comment><USER26> This only happened because Uber broke the law, actually undermined the rule of law and they got away with it. Think of what would happen if every corporation could pick at will which legislation they ignore.

<comment><USER27> Think about this, a business is disrupted to the point where they can't make any money at all. Yet, no customer is hurt in the process. In fact the customer is happier because now at least, he has a choice. I would break a monopolist law for that.

<comment><USER26> _Of course_ a lot of customers are hurt in the process, actually the entire society is: by weakening the rule of law and by rolling back most advances organized labor made in the last 100+ years. You have been bamboozled by calling this the "sharing economy".

All you see is a cheap ride -- sponsored by VC money and you gladly take it.

Edit: thanks for the downvotes. Care to educate me where I am wrong?

<comment><USER28> Progress is made by breaking laws. The founders of your country committed treason against England. Strikes used to be illegal. Fredom of assembly, speech, religion and press used to be severely restricted.

<comment><USER26> Those were organized moves by various people not by a company for profit. They have proven to be advantageous to society. I utterly fail to see what advantages are made here.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


No sex please, we're millennials – Social conservatism on American campuses - <AUTHOR> https://www.economist.com/united-states/2019/05/04/no-sex-please-were-millennials <comment><AUTHOR> The full article available here - [https://outline.com/xxTDbh](https://outline.com/xxTDbh)</comment>


Spam calls: How Google is fighting robocalls on Android - <AUTHOR> https://slate.com/technology/2018/07/spam-calls-how-google-is-fighting-robocalls-on-android.html <comment><AUTHOR> I installed Hiya on iOS and so far it seems not to work very well.</comment>


More Than Half Still Say U.S. Is in Recession or Depression - <AUTHOR> http://www.gallup.com/poll/147299/Half-Say-Recession-Depression.aspx

<comment><USER2> Perhaps that suggests that we need to redefine what we mean by "Recession", which officially is two consecutive quarters of economic contractions. (Or as the Romers say, "When I say so")

Because the truth is, "recession" appears to mean very different things to ordinary people than to economists. Maybe we (economists) should refer to contractions as _contractions_ , rather than recessions, and use the term recessions to refer to economic performance below some measure of potential production.

<comment><USER3> "Perhaps that suggests that we need to redefine what we mean by "Recession", which officially is two consecutive quarters of economic contractions."

For the 10%, or 20% (however it's counted), they are experiencing two or more quarters of economic contractions.

The two economies of corporate profits and individual well being are disconnected.

<comment><USER3> Too late to edit, left out a crucial word:

For the 10%, or 20% (however it's counted) _unemployed_ , ...</comment></comment></comment>