What Is Windows Lite? It's Microsoft's Chrome OS Killer - <AUTHOR> https://www.petri.com/what-is-windows-core-os-its-microsofts-chromebook-os-killer#link <comment><USER2> I think MS should probably just abandon the "Windows" moniker for this OS... call it XBox Laptop, hell "Surface Lite" would be a better name. No windows name as part of it at all. People have expectations with Windows, that it will run all their stuff... different brand would make it easier.

<comment><USER3> It says so in the article

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This article is missing one of ChromeOS's main advantages. Ease of management (provisioning, updating, installing software, group policy like configuration, etc). If MS doesn't address that then this will flop as bad as RT and S.

I've seen Windows shops with entire teams dedicated to managing the Windows environment (not including break/fix) and I've seen environments with thousands of Chromebooks that are managed by one person (and that's not even a full time job).

MS is making some progress with Azue AD and InTune, but it's not there yet. Hopefully, by time this comes out they will have those other pieces better refined so it can all come together.

</comment><comment><USER5> Apart from the stupid clickbait title, this is an interesting article. Not sure what it's like in other countries but here in NZ Chromebooks have become the de-facto education laptop/platform. But the underlying OS is almost the unimportant bit - the key is the Google Apps Education platform and how well it works for both students and teachers. Even _if_ (and that's a big if) this Windows Lite OS was successful and managed to replace Chrome OS, I can't see how Microsoft will get schools to stop using Google Apps?

<comment><USER6> Source: I'm a digital technology teacher in NZ.

The Ministry of Education and Microsoft have an arrangement whereby all public schools have free access to Office 365 for Education, including online versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint; Teams as a replacement for Classroom; Forms as a replacement for … well, forms; PowerApps and Flow as a replacement for App Maker; and five free licences per student for the desktop and mobile versions of Office.

To sweeten the deal, the revised deal that started this year also grants all schools free licences for Minecraft: Education Edition. This is pretty huge at the moment, since the zeitgeist is calling for learning through play, and Minecraft: Education Edition also includes some programming tools, useful for implementing the new Digital Technologies curriculum introduced this year and mandatory by 2020.

Microsoft also provides free professional development to schools, including staff members and IT administrators. Schools that have always used Active Directory to store staff and student user credentials are supported in moving to Azure Active Directory, providing easier integration between user credentials and Office 365.

So full, free replacements for G Suite; free Minecraft: Education Edition; free professional development, and the online version of Office 365 is just as usable on existing Chromebooks as any other device. On top of that, a lot of schools are moving to iPads, and the Office apps for iOS beat the Google Docs apps.

Microsoft has a few tricks up its sleeves, to say the least.

<comment><USER5> Ah - interesting. I'm curious to know how well the core apps stack up from the kids' perspectives. I watch my kids collaborating on slide decks with other kids and am amazed at what they come up with. My understanding is that the Office apps aren't as good for online collaboration, but perhaps the Education ones are more optimised for that?

<comment><USER2> Can't speak from a kid's perspective... but as an adult O365, and the related apps (MS Teams in particular) are leaps and bounds better than the Google options.

<comment><USER5> Yeah, I use Office 365 extensively and have used Google Apps extensively in the past. Office 365 is definitely more suited to corporate-type work and I personally prefer Office 365, but I just feel like the Google Apps interface and features work better for kids. And the Google Apps realtime collaboration features still beat the Office 365 apps hand down.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Microsoft's way of fighting Chrome is by providing a Windows that won't run (most) Windows apps...

</comment><comment><USER8> Oh look, it's Windows CE all over again.

<comment><USER9> I'd say Windows RT

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Just what we all need, another chorome os, another siloed system. Soon you won't be able to buy and use a simple laptop without having the MS account.

<comment><USER11> Then buy a simple laptop that isn't one of these?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Drat,I had hoped for another edition of this [https://www.litepc.com/](https://www.litepc.com/)

For the uninitiated this basically cranked your ability to uninstall windows components up to 11, allowing you to strip out IE and and get windows humming along quite well on antiquated hardware.

</comment><comment><USER13> If this new OS is focusing on PWAs and UWPs, then it makes sense that MS would can Edge for a chromium based browser.

</comment><comment><USER14> Microsoft should consider running on Apple A12X too.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_A12X](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_A12X)

<comment><USER6> Apple's A, S, T, and W processors represent a significant competitive advantage (performance per watt, energy efficiency) in the mobile space; there'll be chilled water in Hell before Apple cedes that to anybody else, least of all Microsoft.

<comment><USER14> I mean desktop, not mobile, Windows Mobile is dead. MS is not hardware company, so why not make money on good product? And stick it to both, Quallcomm and Intel, they got bit nasty with their 3G and LTE patents :)

<comment><USER6> Again, Apple won't be sharing their silicon with anybody, there's absolutely nothing in it for them to share their chips with their competitors.

<comment><USER14> It is selling chips. No need to _share_ anything. All IP stays at Apple. Big $$$ just flow in, ok, agree to disagree.

<comment><USER6> Apple's business isn't selling chips, it's selling devices. If they're putting competitors' software on their chips, what advantage does that offer their own devices? None, aside from the OS, and that's never been Apple's value proposition; rather, it's the integration of hardware and software only possible by doing as much of both as possible, not by licensing.

Therefore, "Agree to disagree" doesn't apply. It simply doesn't follow. Apple isn't a chip vendor; it makes chips as a form of competitive advantage. This isn't a matter of opinion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> a lot like Windows RT, UWP apps = dead in the water, hopefully

</comment><comment><USER16> Someone needs to give Microsoft some Ritalin.</comment>


Ask YC: good place to find CC licensed music? - <AUTHOR>

I'm looking for some music licensed under CC to use in my screencaptures. I had a look on jamendo but couldn't find anything suitable. Any ideas? <comment><USER2> Only other one I know of is,

<http://www.archive.org/details/opensource_audio>

and you may have seen this,

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

</comment><comment><USER3> <http://ccmixter.org/> maybe <http://www.podsafeaudio.com/>

</comment><comment><USER4> What sort of music are you after?</comment>


Rise in Scientific Journal Retractions Prompts Calls for Reform - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/17/science/rise-in-scientific-journal-retractions-prompts-calls-for-reform.html?ref=science <comment><USER3> This is a critical problem in the Scientific realm right now. Too much emphasis is placed on research that breaks ground - and not nearly enough is put on research that simply didn't work.

For example, suppose I have a hypothesis, and I test it out. To fully reject that hypothesis I might expend a year of lab time. This results in a year 'wasted' if I found no result, and expected one (an alternative would be you got no result and it was surprising - thus you found something exciting, but often this isn't the case).

This is a year wasted for me, but with so many labs focusing on the same areas, it means that many can double up in their 'time-wasting' endeavours. This effectively means labs are trying the same hypothesis and failing, wasting cumulative time on the same dead-end questions.

Every piece of research is a vital piece of an ever-growing puzzle that helps us deduce exactly what is going on. Unfortunately it seems focus has centered on those discoveries that 'cure cancer' or 'find the answer to immortality'. There needs to be a massive re-haul on the way we treat research.

Quality research is quality research - regardless of the results it garners.

<comment><USER4> "Quality research is quality research - regardless of the results it garners."

Not true. Research with a negative outcome is less valuable. It creates less knowledge, because there are many more negative statements you can say about how things work than positive statements. Negative statements are more trivial than "vital."

Failed research projects are a combination of bad luck and bad planning, and you can't separate out these components. Even if more failed projects are published (further stressing the peer-review system), nobody's going to get a job based on a failed experiment.

And what evidence do you have that this is a problem? Or that this is more of a problem than before? Even if so, "a massive re-haul on the way we treat research" is not the solution; better networking would be enough to avoid duplicated efforts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> " The higher a journal's impact factor, the two editors found, the higher its retraction rate."

This is not necessarily evidence of misconduct, however. High impact journals also tend to publish new techniques and surprising results, both of which are more likely to contain subtle, unintentional errors.

I haven't been in science long enough to say whether the pressures really are getting worse over time, but my sense is that it's almost always been pretty competitive.

</comment><comment><USER6> > Each year, every laboratory produces a new crop of Ph.D.'s, who must compete > for a small number of jobs, and the competition is getting fiercer. In 1973, > more than half of biologists had a tenure-track job within six years of > getting a Ph.D. By 2006 the figure was down to 15 percent.

That's why the smart thing to do is to take yourself out of the competition - go into the industry. The whole idea of "science for science's sake" doesn't work when each professor advises a dozen PhD students over his career - <USER2> majority of those students _have_ to go somewhere outside academia, and industry is the obvious (and only other) choice.

<comment><USER7> Which is what many of them do. This graph gives people an idea of what happens:

[http://sciblogs.co.nz/griffins-gadgets/2010/11/02/your- scien...](http://sciblogs.co.nz/griffins-gadgets/2010/11/02/your-science-in- seven-words/career-pathway/)

The next question is whether it's worth doing a PhD for the 2/3 people who don't work in Academia. Perhaps it is.

<comment><USER6> > The next question is whether it's worth doing a PhD for the 2/3 people who > don't work in Academia. Perhaps it is.

I think this actually depends on your field. Basically, it's a matter of running the numbers - if the difference between the increase in income and the cost of grad school for you (both loss of income and the effort required) is significantly greater than 0 - go for it.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Twitter is down. Favorite Mastodon instances? - <AUTHOR> I'm partial to cybre.space and snouts.online. The former is run by a dragon and the latter by various animals. What's not to love? <comment><USER2> I follow individuals and hardly notice what instance they're on. Do y'all subscribe to whole instances? FWIW, I'm on maly.io.

</comment><comment><USER3> toot.cafe's where I ended up - Nolan's a pretty cool guy with a lot of interesting thoughts about privacy, security, tech and the internet in general, and life. Happy to make use of his instance, where the global timeline is full of pretty interesting technical stuff (and, of course, plenty of funny stuff and obligatory cat pictures)

<comment><AUTHOR> He also made one of the more popular alternate interfaces: [https://pinafore.social/](https://pinafore.social/)

It uses Svelte.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> give radical.town a try : it has a gif picker that most mastodon instances have not.

</comment><comment><USER5> I run deadinsi.de. Hi.

(please don't join if you're a bad person)

</comment><comment><USER6> I prefer mmorpg.social.

<comment><AUTHOR> There's tabletop.social if you favor the offline kind.</comment></comment>


Leaving grad school for startup? - <AUTHOR>

I just started grad school in Physics a month ago, but I have recently considered quitting since I have gained an interest in the entrepreneur/startup world. So I am considering quitting the program to start a startup (or maybe join an existing one), probably related to software.
I have read a few of Paul Graham's essays, and I think starting a startup would suit me well because I am willing to take the risks involved in it and work the long hours as opposed to taking a low-stress, comfortable job working in a cubicle. The main problems at the moment are that I have poor programming skills (To give you an idea of my current skill level, the most recent concept I learned in C++ was Vectors a few months ago.) and that I have no friends that are interested in programming or in a startup. So finding a co-founder would be a problem. But I have been considering joining a club on campus with other grad students that are interested in forming a startup
I am thinking I may actually like the business aspect of running the startup as opposed to the hacking side, even though I'm rather introverted and wouldn't make a great salesman. I want to make the decisions and have the vision for the startup's future
But in the meantime since I'm not in a Physics research group yet, I would have to self-teach myself programming in my free time.  How should I start getting better? Should I try working through O'Reilly's book? Look at someone's existing code and try to improve it? Come up with my own problem to solve?
Also, if I should just work at a startup first, before starting my own startup, what job can I possibly get? My programming skills aren't good enough for what they're looking for.
Or, to learn the necessary programming and startup details, would I be better off staying the school at the moment (to try to network with others interested in a startup) or quitting asap to get a programming job at a non-startup with the intention to leave to form a startup?
I also had some questions to see what you guys think of some of the things Paul Graham said. He once said "I would guess a smart person can learn to hack sufficiently well in 6 months to a year. The best way to do it would be to find some startup to hire you in an initially menial capacity.." Given my previous (but near minimal) experience with C++, would it still really only take 6 months?
PG also mentioned that those who try a startup, but fail, can EASILY get hired by another company. Do you guys think this is true? <comment><USER2> Determination is the only prerequisite; everything else will fall into place. Learning C++ may be the least of your problems if you're considering entrepreneurship. Have you heard of a Mr. Jobs...=) "life's too short" Learn your C++ and everything else in between...good luck.</comment>


Ask HN: What's your hiring process like? - <AUTHOR>

Hiring people can be a risky thing. You're bringing someone in the family and hoping they can deliver. What are some things you do to minimize that risk? Do you contract first? Coding challenge? I'm curious what others do to minimize the risk when you haven't worked with someone before. <comment><USER2> For questions like these, I like to quote a story I once read about dating in New York City:

"I have a female friend. She asks every guy she meets at a bar two questions:

1\. Do you have a passport?

2\. Do you have a Kindle/Nook/library card?

Why does she ask these questions? If the answer to 1 is no then he doesn't like to travel abroad and if the answer to 2 is no then he doesn't like to read."

In essence, she determined two quick filters that were the most important to her.

I had a manager who had a similar test for candidates. He would give them a 5 question tech test where the first question had a "trick" item. Specifically, sort multiple 5GB+ files on a box with 1GB of RAM but 100GB of disk space. If the candidate got the first question wrong, that was the end of the line for the candidate. Why? It showed that they:

a. Didn't have attention to detail

b. Didn't fully understand basic technical constraints e.g. in this case RAM is limited but disk is not.

One other point I always like to make is to screen candidates in parallel. For example, if your process is to bring someone in to the office and then give them a tech test, that's a serial process.

On the other hand, if you give the tech test to recruiters and say "Have candidates fill this out and then send it in", you just created a parallel process to screen candidates.

I've also heard people say "What if they look up the answers?" to which I reply: if you give someone a test with google-able answers and they still get it wrong, you just filtered out a pretty bad candidate. Win for you.

<comment><USER3> Parallelization is a very good advice, I am going through a hiring process right now where the company employs this method and according to them it has made their lives alot easier.

The take home code test they use is totally googlable, however there are multiple ways to solve the problem and they ask candidates to provide tests for their solutions. If they are happy with the solution and find it distinctive the candidate gets to explain the solution during the onsite interview.

I found the whole process very relaxed and enjoyable.

<comment><USER4> It also forces the candidates to invest their own time and brainpower before you expend resources to screen/interview them. Helps cut down on individuals who are interviewing only to test the market and may not be really serious about the position.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> At Forter (www.Forter.com) a big part is the screening of CVs. HR and RnD work closely to contact only relevant candidates, and when we a CV could be relevant the RnD manager or the lead developer calls the candidate for 15 minutes focusing on a key strength that makes the candidate relevant and why working at Forter is so great. The first interview is about the candidate's comfort zone. You would be amazed how many people don't know what they were working on about the past few years... plus a hands on algorithmic coding task that does not require experience (we hire also coders before college). The rest of the process (usually three more interviews) are mixed. Include technical, personal discussion. We try to fit all interviews into one day. Even though Israel is small and travel is non issue , there is a strong psychological effect if the candidate gets an offer after one visit. This might require in some cases talking with the candidates recommenders while she is interviewed in the next room.

</comment><comment><USER6> Here are some general principles and tests I accumulated over a long career, mostly gotten from managers a lot better at hiring that I was ^_^:

If you have doubt over a certain low threshold about the candidate, don't hire. A bad hire, especially in a startup, is terribly expensive.

Testing coding is mandatory. Back in the '90s when C/C++ were the game, we used two tests, write code to create a doubly linked list, and look at a small function we'd put up on the white board and find problems with it. Both were graded generously, it was pretty clear if the candidate had a clue or not.

Then general problem solving, i.e. some design problems, perhaps including a big/relatively difficult one, and have the candidate describe some design solutions they were proud of.

Code samples were very welcome if available, of course.

In all of this, you'd get a pretty good sense of whether you'd like to work with this person. You'd also use the whole process to sell the company/project to the candidate, and see how they responded to that, they had to show either some interest in it, or for the more professionally oriented, something like an attitude that it would be no problem in due course and they would like the work.

Ah, especially for startups, get across the concept that "you can't be too proud to not sweep floors" if needed, but that each engineer would be allocated both some of the less interesting work that just has to be done, and the interesting work.

</comment><comment><USER7> When we started hiring about 6 months ago at our startup (groopic.com), here's what my thought process was: We need great people that we want to work with - Incubators and Accelerators invest in people - They know how to judge them - World's best accelerator (YC) asks the founders a few questions and short lists companies on the basis of the answers - There must be something in those questions - Adapt them for you hiring to screen the pool of applicants. In our case, it has worked like magic. We are able to filter about 65% of the applicants. For the rest, we call them for first interview, only 10% left after that. They are the ones we spend a lot of time on, and we hired 5% of the applicants in the last 6 months.

</comment><comment><USER8> I prefer the contract-to-hire model, but I say this as an employee. It's hard to know whether I'll like a place, but if the place is open to 3-6 month contracts, I can find out and can make it work. Unfortunately, this isn't the way things seem to work.

Also, the duration of 6 month is short enough that, even if I don't like the place, the incentive is there to put the best foot forward to get the best recommendation possible to go somewhere else.</comment>


We May Never Truly Fathom Other Cultures - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/blog/we-may-never-truly-fathom-other-cultures <comment><USER3> > What was the reason for all this carnage?

Perhaps there was no rational reason, and we are closer to understanding than we'd like to admit.

A significant portion of modern Americans regularly enjoy blood and carnage in video games and movies. There's a cruelty, a bloodlust, deep in the human psyche that even now isn't socialized away, merely supressed, to be satisfied only in fantasy.

Yet thousands are murdered every year in our society, which harshly punishes murder. How many more would be killed, merely for sport, if that were encouraged by religion?

<comment><USER4> Totally agree. Have you ever seen the movie The Imitation Game? There's a great quote from Turing's character when he is talking about being picked on and beaten up by bullies at school - "Do you know why people like violence? It is because it feels good. Humans find violence deeply satisfying"

It's that simple, really. It is in our nature, just like sex. We like it. It feels good.

The only reason we try to eschew and condemn such violence in modern society is because it is in our best interests and more productive to society as a whole to not be like that. No other reason. If we all lived in fear and were huddled in our homes in small communities we wouldn't have even half the modern luxuries we do today. Plus, on the larger scale, if it's war you are talking about - well, they cost a lot of money/resources. So they are tough to maintain for the long haul without noticeable economic harm.

People like to say that love is stronger than anger and hate. I have always disagreed. Hate and anger run deeper than most imagine. And they motivate people like nothing else in this world, except perhaps fear.

The one and only reason people aren't butchering each other in the streets is because we have figured out a way that we can all survive. If that were to crumble, you can be damn sure society would look a lot closer to The Walking Dead or Children of Men than Star Trek.

<comment><USER5> If it "[i]s in our nature, just like sex" then why wouldn't violence be in our best interest? Why wouldn't we be more productive just doing what we want? If it really is our nature, then how is our "modern luxur[y]?" It has been established that while violence is the human condition, altruism also has an evolutionary origin[0].

I feel like the "sweet water/bitter water" dichotomy that the Christian tradition left us[1] has been so damaging because it has formed this perspective that we can only be bad and we can only be good, rather than we can be both. I do believe some people might have different tendencies than others and some may be prone to violence or prone to love but to assume your inclinations extend to everyone else is stupid.

[0] [https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/prefrontal- nudity/20130...](https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/prefrontal- nudity/201307/the-origin-altruism)

[1] [http://biblehub.com/james/3-11.htm](http://biblehub.com/james/3-11.htm)

<comment><USER6> Because our best interest is not the same as evolution's interest.

We, or, at least, some of us, have figured out, after a long time, that violence is not a good thing. But violence is what evolution runs on, because it wants the weak to die and the strong to reproduce. Altruism happened because groups of people ended up stronger than individual people, so there needed to be mechanisms to override violence impulses to enable groups. But the groups of people were still supposed to kill each other over and over to make stronger groups of people. The altruism is not universal. Hence all the ingroup biases. And much of that still remains to this day. All of us are violent directly or by proxy towards animals. Even if people are not violent, many are mean, they create pecking orders, they measure status, they compete, etc. They are executing adaptations developed to categorize people or groups of people as "should not be selected". The old programming is still there.

Except our combination of intelligence, empathy, sympathy, altruism, and strength "backfired" and resulted in us slowly deciding, for ourselves, that maybe we don't want to live like that.

I believe Christianity was designed to oppose this programming (original sin), but it's a 2k old religion, what do you expect? So much has changed since then, our methods in many places got better; Christianity is out of date and has too many dependencies.

I also don't think your characterization is fair, anyway. Christianity doesn't say we can only be bad or only good, it says that goodness demands complete purity, and through that, it says we're all bad, due to an influence inside of us, as well as an influence outside. While there are people more prone to violence and those more prone to love, there's nobody completely free from the programming or the situation.

<comment><USER7> > I believe Christianity was designed to oppose this programming (original > sin), but it's a 2k old religion, what do you expect? So much has changed > since then, our methods in many places got better; Christianity is out of > date and has too many dependencies.

I think this holds for a bunch of old religious beliefs. A lot of the old, seemingly arbitrary laws from Judaism had practical purposes in ancient times.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think it's quite possible the level of violence seemed excessive even to the society itself.

A common problem that's cropped up in a number of modern countries is weddings getting more and more expensive. If weddings are an important means of displaying status, and it might shame the family to seem poor, then there is clearly going to be a drive that direction. Pretty soon, people are bankrupting themselves on weddings that seem excessive to everyone involved.

Cultures that engage in religious sacrifice seem to have the same sort of problem. Sacrifice shows off both status and religious zeal, so there's incentive to try to sacrifice more than others. If sacrificing slaves is allowed, ending up in an extreme state isn't all that surprising.

</comment><comment><USER9> Or, to put it another way, "We may never truly fathom cultures that were destroyed several centuries ago and are only studied through archaeological fragments and the memoirs of late-medieval invaders."

</comment><comment><USER10> 70 years after the Holocaust, 40 years after Cambodia and Viet Nam, 20 years after Rwanda, as Syria is partly occupied by ISIS, what I truly can't fathom is how anyone would single out _senseless bloodlust_ as "that alien thing from a distant dead civilisation we will never understand".

<comment><USER11> 15 years after we invaded Iraq, a country which had nothing to do with 9/11 and no WMDs, or at least fewer WMDs than the US.

It's easy to distance ourselves from things that didn't happen in our country or in our lifetimes, but the reality is that we're just as bloodthirsty as anyone else.

<comment><USER10> Well I thought Viet Nam was a more clear cut example of America being barbarous but yeah, Iraq works as well, let's not forget Abu Ghraib.

Anyway, as far as I know, although my country has committed its share of horrible massacres around the world, none of it has happened in my lifetime... I just hope it'll last.

<comment><USER12> The US military learned its lesson in Vietnam: don't let the media see what you're doing. We'll simply never know how US soldiers behaved in Iraq as compared to Vietnam.

<comment><USER13> Sure we do:

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_of_U.S._Marines_urinatin...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_of_U.S._Marines_urinating_on_Taliban_fighters)

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_12,_2007_Baghdad_airstrik...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_12,_2007_Baghdad_airstrike)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Ghraib_torture_and_prisone...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Ghraib_torture_and_prisoner_abuse)

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

(not all are Iraq, but you get the picture)

<comment><USER11> Yes, these exist, but a few notable stories that broke are little compared to the relentless onslaught of news from Viet Nam during the war there. It was the first time that TV news from a warzone was readily available, and footage of the fighting was still shocking to people, so it attracted viewers. As a result, new footage from Viet Nam was aired _every day_ for _literally years_.

The modern military recognizes the need for PR. Abu Ghraib was mostly still pictures because it was mostly leaks--press was allowed nowhere near the place. Contrast this with videos of Hussein's statue being pulled down or the "Mission Accomplished" press conference

If you cherry-pick specific instances, sure, there was negative coverage of the Iraq War, but the big picture of Iraq War coverage versus Viet Nam War coverage is very different.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I think there is a limit to cosmopolitan universalism, and that's a good thing. Whether separated by time or space, it's good that there are unknowable cultures. First because to expect that every culture is understandable from the perspective of another (usually wealthier, more sophisticated, and "civilized") culture (in the business of writing history books) limits other cultures' freedom to express themselves as they see fit. Where the rubber meets the road is when a culture foreign to the metropole flouts what the metropole considers universal values. Imperialism usually ensues.

Second, foreign cultures are fascinating because they are so different. Imagine Marco Polo traveling to China. It must have been like getting in a space ship and traveling to another planet. Nowadays all the airports look the same, all the center cities have the same types of restaurants, and global culture is depressingly uniform.

</comment><comment><USER15> Carthage is much closer to western culture yet still earns its share of WTFs

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_Carthage#Child_sac...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_Carthage#Child_sacrifice)

<comment><USER16> Well, we abort children legally, so it is not like we have improved so much. In Spain and other countries it is legal to abort creatures that would live if taken out of the womb.

We rationalize it, because the mother will not be able to give a good life to her child or whatever.

What makes us think that people from Carthage could not also rationalize with more powerful reasons than us? It was way harder to live back them than today.

PS:Most of what we know of Carthage comes from their competing beliefs, like Jews, because Cartage was totally destroyed, in the same way the Jews portray a picture of Babel totally distorted.

<comment><USER17> > we abort children legally

No we do not, that is illegal because murder is illegal. It is not a child until it is born.

<comment><USER18> [https://iga.in.gov/legislative/2016/bills/house/1337#digest-...](https://iga.in.gov/legislative/2016/bills/house/1337#digest- heading)

Indiana General Assembly, House Bill 1337

> Requires physicians to provide information about perinatal hospice care to a > pregnant woman who is considering an abortion because the __unborn child > __has been diagnosed with a lethal fetal anomaly.

The terminology of referring to the unborn as children has a long legal history.

There's a similar history concerning how personhood is determined via paperwork: i.e. if you do not fill out the paperwork for an abortion, the unborn child is considered a person for cases of its death---such as if a pregnant woman is killed, it's considered a double homicide.

<comment><USER19> You're posting a link to anti-abortion propaganda from the _2016 Indiana Assembly_ as an argument for why those of us who strenuously disagree that fetuses deserve the legal rights of children should agree with calling fetuses children?

The Indiana Assembly is certainly an authority on one thing: legislating clever ways to restrict women's right to obtain an abortion. I don't consider them authorities on much else.

<comment><USER18> Oh I'm sorry, I didn't realize your 'we' only referred you personally and anyone who agreed with your conclusions.

I had thought you meant a more general and inclusive 'we'.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I think there's something else going on here, other than the humility of researchers who claim to be unable to understand Mexica culture.

Failure to imagine what it's like to be someone else, from a different place, a different time, with different ways of thinking -- is perhaps the biggest reason why we have so much violence and hatred in this world, and modern scholars are just as guilty of it as warmongers and propagandists of the past have been.

It is a failure of imagination, a failure of empathy, that every culture encourages -- sometimes subtly, but often not so subtly -- in order to keep its members loyal. One of the defining characteristics of human cultures is that each wants to have a monopoly on a person's mind.

Most of us grow up believing that their way of thinking and living is the only natural way, and parents and teachers rarely try to give us a world view that goes beyond what's considered mainstream in our own cultures. Having lived in a cultural greenhouse all of our lives, the first thing we do when faced with a radically different way of life is how different this other person is. The differences so overwhelm us that we forget to appreciate our common humanity, with all its greatness and weaknesses, that should be the first step towards truly putting ourselves in the other person's shoes.

It would seem that anthropologists and archeologists are no exception.

Is it repugnant to kill innocent children at the altar of some imaginary being? Of course it is. Is it a necessary trait of civilized people that they cannot bear to imagine themselves growing up in a culture that practices human sacrifice as a matter of course and learning to participate in the bloody rituals? No, it isn't. It's just a failure of imagination that our own culture encourages. We have learned to be unable to imagine ourselves performing such terrible things, just like Victorian culture made it look normal for young women to faint at the slightest sight of anything disturbing. The inability to "fathom" another culture, no matter how seemingly barbaric, is not so much evidence of the moral depravity of the other culture as it is a testimony to our own narrow-mindedness.

<comment><USER21> Is it failure of imagination? I don't know that's true.

Let's look at some of the aspect of life described in the article. Assume I'm just some artisan, good at my job, respected for my ability to work materials into goods. Making the odd innovation here and there. As a result I'm not in the ruling elite, nor the warrior "caste", but I'm doing pretty good for myself compared to most people.

Basically let's just say I'm equivalent to a decent software developer in our society.

I can imagine all sorts of things:

* I'm ashamed that I'm not a member of the fighting classes

* I don't have strong opinions of that fact

* I have a strange (to me in the 21st century USA) relationship with those of the fighting classes

* similar thoughts toward ruling elites, plus:

\- Do i worship them or revile them? Do I have differing opinions on different people in that class, or do I view them as an undifferentiated mass?

\- Do I expect to have any influence, or none, etc? How do I feel either way? (I can imagine having influence on the noble class but being rather upset because they are supposed to have a direct line to the gods, and why are they asking me?)

Other things I can imagine:

* Do I fear being sacrificed? Am I ashamed if I am afraid of it?

* Do I see the sacrifices as great? Or do I see them as an unfortunately necessary unpleasantry? Or do I see them as a source of shame because the rulers are out of touch? Is there an apocryphal tradition of the Gods actually being gentle and not wanting blood sacrifice, but this is being ignored by the priests?

* If my kid gets recruited to the military, am I proud or scared or both? Do I prefer his capture or his death in battle? What conduct makes me proud or not?

Basically my point here is that imagination and lack of data combined results in a truly honest answer of "I don't know which of the options for any of the questions above is right". This leads to a simple "I don't know", not because I can't fathom it for lack of empathy or imagination, but because I can see many many different ways it could be experienced.

<comment><USER20> There is no need to decide whether the artisan worships or reviles the ruling elites. No society is so homogeneous as to make that question black-and-white. If someone does give a black-and-white answer, that's as good evidence as any that they don't really understand how cultures work.

Think of the gazillion different, mutually incompatible attitudes that modern Americans have about Hillary, Trump, and everyone else. Now re-imagine your artisan. You can be simultaneously afraid of being sacrificed and ashamed of being afraid. You might have a great deal of respect for some of the warriors but also revile the way they lick the elite's ass. You might have heard that the next village got leveled and all of their women and children enslaved because they dared to question the authority of the high priests, and have conflicting thoughts about whether they deserved it or not. Your friends might disagree with you on this matter, but some of them are afraid to speak out. But then this big customer wants his swords repaired by morning, and you don't have time to worry about those things anymore. Most of daily life is mundane, it has always been. Just because there are human sacrifices going on on that hill over there doesn't make life unrecognizable all of a sudden.

Knowledge of specific details is not a prerequisite for empathizing with someone as a human being. The point is to appreciate the many different ways that a Mexica life could be experienced (which you do very well) and keeping it all in your working memory instead of aggressively map-reducing it into answerless questions like "What did the artisans think about the warriors?" Likely, there were more than one artisan and more than one warrior.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Mostly, this reminded me of one of my favorite short stories - "Von Neumann's Second Catastrophe", by Robert Anton Wilson. This story changed my view of why we have wars.

The story is told from the point of view of a general in an insane asylum. He argues that war has been ruined by golems, creatures without souls. By golems, he means computers. The computers run scenarios for nuclear war, and always say don't do it because it can't be won - mutual assured destruction. But to him, the point of war is not about winning. That's a lie we tell. The point of war is the killing. We don't fight in order to kill enemy soldiers. We fight to kill innocent civilians. Because when you can deliberately kill a child, you become a superman, beyond morality. Nuclear weapons should be used just because we can, _because_ it's amoral.

<comment><USER23> I hope by "it changed your view", you don't mean that that _is_ your current view. Look out into the world. It is not a model that makes any sense for why humans have wars. That model predicts not what we see, but an all-out bloodbath until civilization is dead. That model and civilization can not coexist in any form, and no, cynically trying to strike a pose that we aren't really "civilized" is not an out; even what we have, imperfect as it may be, would not be possible. It is not even clear that such a model would permit humans to exist as individual nomads, let alone stone age tribes. Such an attitude would be rapidly bred out of any species that somehow got into a state where that was its attitude, or the species would go extinct.

Models of the world must not just explain why it is all messed up; they must also explain why there is sometimes beauty, peace, art, science, civilization, love. It is not enough to only explain one side.

<comment><USER24> Clearly Beat meant that the book explained the viewpoint of those who cry for war and destruction. The 'glory' and 'power' they feel must surely be an addictive sensation.

<comment><USER22> Within the story, it's not glory or power either. Glory comes from defeating equals - but the point is to kill the defenseless. Power comes from victory, but the victory is irrelevant.

Could you kill a child? Of course not. What kind of monster kills a helpless child? But if you _can_ do it - you have become something more than merely human. Humans are confined by their morality. Supermen are not. And soldiers? Soldiers kill children all the time. That's why there's war.

<comment><USER25> Or something less than human, I'd argue. In the same vein, a cancerous skin cell becomes a "supercell" and gets to live an immortal life, no longer constrained to the cycle of death.

I suspect that people don't like psychopaths for the same reason our bodies kill cancer cells: they aren't good for society. (some argue that in small numbers they can be, but you can't run a tribe of psychopaths).

The specific mechanisms of people going against psychopaths include things like altruistic punishment: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third- party_punishment](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-party_punishment)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I'm not an expert on Aztec culture, but this has signs of what some call "atrocity literature" in the garb of scientific study of other cultures.

<comment><USER27> The article itself addresses your point, saying, "modern writers have tried to show that the Spanish conquistadors exaggerated the human sacrifice; archaeology has shown that, if anything, they lowballed it."

Sometimes 'atrocities' are real.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I feel that the article is missing something that is very important - <USER2> violence of the Spaniards. Did not the Spaniards stamp and erase the culture & religion of the Mexica? If the Mexica culture had been allowed to exist could we not understand them better? I feel the title is a little clickbaity and would wager most civilizations can barely fathom their own past.

<comment><USER29> Westerners can relate to the Spanish conquistadors, because we share the same cultural family tree. Westerners can understand why something like greed could be such a motivator that the Spaniards would cross an entire ocean to pursue violence against a people... because they had land and gold. You can probably find cultures today who would find that concept alien and unknowable. The point is not the violence per-se, but how it's difficult to grok the deeply ingrained motivations of cultures (especially ones that are long-dead).

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Well, this was interesting, but certainly does not persuade me of the thesis stated in the title. I mean, sure, if we have limited records of them we can't know a lot about ancient cultures, but who's surprised to learn that?

</comment><comment><USER31> Interesting to see this along with:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12682052](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12682052)

...on the front page at the same time.

<comment><USER32> Well the Nobel Prizes are awarded by Swedish and Norwegian institutions, so it doesn't really say anything about how Americans themselves view these immigrants. (While the rise of a presidential candidate like Trump certainly speaks for a portion of the American population)

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> We are all our own culture.</comment>


How Floyd Mayweather Helped Two Young Guys from Miami Get Rich in ICO - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/27/technology/how-floyd-mayweather-helped-two-young-guys-from-miami-get-rich.html <comment><USER2> This process is basically famous people taking money from stupid followers and giving it to scammers in exchange for a cut.

I feel a little bad for people with blind loyalty that will lose money, but hopefully they learn their lesson.

<comment><USER3> It's only a scam if false promises are made to the investors, knowingly that is.

I looked up Centra, Stox, Hubii, and while they all look somewhat generic, I don't see any crazy promises, especially to the investors.

From what I see the ICO hype is driven entirely by the investors and the FOMO. Many people missed most of the cryptocurrency exponential rise, and they think it's the second chance.

<comment><USER4> > _I don 't see any crazy promises, especially to the investors._

Skimmed the Stox white paper [1]. Its Risk Factors (page 49) seem like an honest if deficient effort. They gloss over important factors, _e.g._ conflicts of interest between the founding team and the investor or any disclosures regarding Stox Ltd. (who get 27.5% of the tokens "to bring strategic partners to the Stox ecosystem, and as operational reserve").

There also seems to have been little effort to restrict these sales to accredited investors [2]. Besides being illegal, I doubt an accredited investor's lawyer would have signed off on the Risk Factors as presented.

[1] [https://www.stox.com/assets/stox- whitepaper.pdf](https://www.stox.com/assets/stox-whitepaper.pdf)

[2] [https://www.investor.gov/additional-resources/news- alerts/al...](https://www.investor.gov/additional-resources/news- alerts/alerts-bulletins/investor-bulletin-accredited-investors)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> As much as I think blockchains are cool as a technology, I am dumbfounded by how rich the history of fraud and failure surrounding them is. I get why people are skeptical about regulation, and I think it's always worth questioning orthodoxies. But it's as if people set out to reenact the sordid history that got us modern anti-fraud financial regulations.

<comment><USER6> > I am dumbfounded by how rich the history of fraud and failure surrounding > them is.

Thats just because of overexposure. Benign routine frauds are masqueraded as international news just because ico/blockchain/bitcoin is involved in some capacity.

I guarantee you there were ten times more 30 million $ frauds over the same amount of time, buried within SEC enforcement circulars, DOJ enforcement circulars, FTC enforcement circulars, let alone amongst state agencies, let alone in other countries worldwide.

<comment><USER5> I'm not sure I know what a "benign routine fraud" is.

If there are 10x more frauds in the rest of the world, then that's not very good. The blockchain world having 9% of total major fraud is a lot given that it's not even 0.009% of total economic activity.

<comment><USER6> > 10x

haha, I gave an example of numbers there's nothing quantitative to run with.

99.9999% of transactions on/involving a blockchain are not fraudulent or part of fraudulent projects.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It is interesting to checkout their website: [https://centra.tech](https://centra.tech)

They were either too lazy or out of money after hiring Mayweather that they don't even put a pretense of a "whitepaper".

The rudimentary "roadmap" page here: [https://centra.tech/roadmap/](https://centra.tech/roadmap/) There it says partnership with major bank and registration with Fincen is completed. But I skimmed and there doesn't seem to be anything there. Not on their blog @medium: [https://medium.com/@Centra](https://medium.com/@Centra). I could be wrong so someone can correct me on this, if they find this information.

The funniest part is the products page: [https://centra.tech/products/index.html](https://centra.tech/products/index.html) Everything says "Click Below to get more details today!" but there no button at all. So there is no way to know what spending 500 or 100 ETH will get you.

From the looks of it, the product is so called "wallet" and a centralised one at that. So I am sure interested in the first step of their roadmap "Concept of connecting digital currencies to fiat". What did they figure out? ;)

<comment><USER8> Occam's razor. These guys are not planning on building anything real, they mimed the usual pattern of celebrity-pimping an ICO based on smoke and mirrors and will pocket the money after this all dies down.

Another one for the "shameless swindle" column of ICO. At this point I can't tell if any ICO has actually been real and has delivered back its funding in value.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Another one showed up from DJ Khaled the other day.

I am reminded of that adage (maybe a quote?) from past stock mania: when the shoeshine boys are talking stocks it's time to sell. Is this peak ICO?

<comment><USER10> There's way way too much money flowing around the economy in general. People are just tossing money into anything because why not.

<comment><USER11> I think people see how Bitcoin went from a thousandth of a cent to thousands of dollars and want to get in on the ground floor for the next one.

And I can't say I blame them. Seeing the prices now, I wish I'd taken a deeper interest when I first started playing around with it, and hung on more tightly to my wallet(s).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> What do people want from him though? He was offered $$$ for a gig and took the offer. It was sure easier than his usuals.

When other celebs s.a Dan Arieli or Whitfield Diffie are offered seats in boards for what is essentially the exact same PR, only targeting a different demographic, no-one calls BS on that.

<comment><USER4> > _He was offered $$$ for a gig and took the offer_

This doesn't fly when you're selling securities. Floyd Mayweather does not appear to be a registered representative of a broker-dealer. He appears to have "engaged in the business of effecting transactions in securities for the account of others," the general definition of a "broker" under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 [1]. He also appears to have received transaction-related compensation, the gold standard the SEC uses for identifying brokers under the Exchange Act [2].

We made these rules to ensure people selling securities, particularly those getting a commission for it, are incentivized to do basic diligence on what they sell.

[1] [https://www.sec.gov/about/laws/sea34.pdf](https://www.sec.gov/about/laws/sea34.pdf) _§ 3(a)(4)(A), page 4_

[2] [https://www.sec.gov/reportspubs/investor- publications/divisi...](https://www.sec.gov/reportspubs/investor- publications/divisionsmarketregbdguidehtm.html)

 _Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer. This is not securities, investment nor any other kind of advice._

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I've thought about this phenomena recently and it boggles my mind why celebrities can influence so many people to take action about a myriad of topics that they know nothing about, while the experts in the field are ignored.

Basically it seems to go like this:

1\. People listen to an author because they have some interest in the topic they agree with.

2\. The listener thinks the author is an authority on this topic through exposure to authority signaling behavior from the author, irrespective of how related it is to other fields.

3\. The author speaks on a topic that is outside of their field of expertise or how they gained the original authority.

4\. The authority, in the minds of the reader _leaps fields_ and is assumed that they have authority on the second field.

It's this leap in authority that I am credulous to and I am unsure why it is so pervasive that people think this.

I would never expect Peter Higgs to be competent in Machine Learning or Yann Lecun to be competent in finance by virtue of their eminence in their respective fields. So why should I listen to what the eminent boxer of our day has to advise about Cryptocurrency without proof that they are eminent in blockchain/crypto?

</comment><comment><USER14> The ICO market is already adjusting to celebrity endorsements: Mark Cuban's Mercury ICO has completely flopped.

<comment><USER14> Replying to myself; the last line of the article explains _why_ celebrity ICOs are flopping now:

> "What's important is Centra is being endorsed and they have a product," a > Reddit user named islandsurf wrote back to the critics, explaining his own > investment. "That's what matters to investors!"

Investors thought other people would care about endorsements. Once they see others not caring, the cycle stops almost overnight.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Reinforcing the impression that Money Mayweather is quite a scuzzball.

<comment><USER16> The guy is a serial abuser of his girlfriends & wives. No reinforcement necessary.

<comment><USER17> >but hopefully they learn their lesson

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> > _After being contacted by The Times, Mr. Mayweather deleted his Instagram > and Facebook posts endorsing Centra, though he left up a Twitter post._

> _Ms. Hilton deleted the post after Forbes reporters uncovered the checkered > legal past of the founder of Lydian Coin, who had aimed to raise $100 > million._

It's interesting to see the celebrities distancing themselves quickly once journalists are on their back.

Wonder how much they got paid for these endorsements?

<comment><USER8> You can bet they got paid in fiat.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I think this might cost him a lot, securities regulations are very strict, especially when it comes to endorsement and solicitation.

<comment><USER20> Most likely a slap on the wrist.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I have a bad feeling about this because a celebrity will endorse a ICO scam . Also people don't understand what crypto coins are and might get scammed just by the people that have that coin.

</comment><comment><USER22> Any advice on how to short crypto currencies</comment>


C++ Concepts without Concepts - <AUTHOR> https://akrzemi1.wordpress.com/2016/03/21/concepts-without-concepts/ <comment><USER2> Love the gcc error message he links to. Classic C++.</comment>


Don Dodge: living on the web - <AUTHOR> http://dondodge.typepad.com/the_next_big_thing/2010/12/google-chrome-cr-48-notebook-instant-on-always-connected-no-hassles.html

<comment><AUTHOR> The first 90% is mostly promotion. The last tidbit is interesting:

 _It has been a little over a year since [Don left] Microsoft and joining Google. In that year [Don has] not once used a desktop application on [his] Macbook Pro. [He is] living on the web, totally through the Chrome web browser. Gmail for email, and Google Docs for spreadsheets, word processing, and presentations. [He] even [uses] the Gmail Chat for IM, Video Chat for video conferencing, and Call Phone to make phone calls through [his] laptop. Of course [his] Android cell phone is used for most calls. [He uses] Picasa and Flickr for photos, Facebook, Buzz, and Twitter for social stuff._

 _[Don] wanted to see what it would be like living totally on the web with no client desktop software. It has been totally fine. This month [Don is] completing the move by giving up [his] Macbook Pro and using the Chrome OS Cr-48 Notebook. Nothing but the Web!_</comment>