Ask HN: Best language to code a web app? - <AUTHOR>

Which programming language would be best to program new web app? I don't know any languages myself, however I want to learn. I did some very basic coding before and can mess with basic source code. I have never written any serious code myself though. I want to design a new web site/app. That will require a large amount of real-time communication between users. And yes I know I won't be able to pick it up right away, I simply want to be able to work with a programmer or a friend that knows how to code. <comment><USER2> I'm going to assume you're asking about frameworks as well since comparing PHP to CGI Python or CGI Ruby wouldn't exactly be fair (even though _some_ people love to compare Rails/Django to pure PHP). This isn't a straightforward question, so I'm not going to give you a straightforward answer, but here goes.

Based on my experience of working with Rails, Django, Pylons, Zend, etc. I'm going to have to say, "It depends LOL!1!". If you're on completely level playing field with Ruby, Python and PHP I would say jumping into Rails would be a good choice since there's so much quality training material out there (and it's a really good framework if you can ignore the fan-boys).

Since you mentioned some real time stuff you might want to look into something like Tornado/Python (tornadoweb.org) though I honestly can't say if any other framework would prevent you from _real-time_ since I don't know anything about your server/load.

If you don't know what MVC is, or think Models are skinny european women then I'd almost be tempted to say play with some PHP without a framework for a little while. This will let you get more familiar with processing a web form for example, or uploading an image without a framework telling you how they think it should be done. Get your hands dirty in other words.

I dunno, that's just my advice. Hopefully I didn't dumb it down for you but I had to assume you've never built a web app.

<comment><AUTHOR> Honestly I am a complete noob to all of this. I am just curious what is the most versatile language and/or easiest to learn as a beginner.

<comment><USER2> <http://www.trypython.org/>

then

<http://tryruby.org/>

If you like Ruby more, then check out Rails. If you liked Python more then check out Django and Pylons. Of course there are other languages/frameworks which are also excellent but these are languages with a lot of tutorials, and frameworks that have great communities and are industry proven.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ok thanks. Is learning JavaScript through Coffeescript a good idea or a waste of time?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I would suggest using Python + Tornado (<http://www.tornadoweb.org>) for an easy-to-learn and lightweight web framework however it is very sparse in terms of documentation and there are not many guides out there covering Tornado yet. If you are up for the challenge then I say go for it; if not then I would suggest learning Ruby + Rails in order to get exposure to basic principles on web application design.

If you decide to go the ruby on rails route then I HIGHLY suggest getting Agile Web Development with Rails ([http://pragprog.com/titles/rails4/agile- web-development-with...](http://pragprog.com/titles/rails4/agile-web- development-with-rails)) as this proved invaluable to me when I first started out. Best of luck!

</comment><comment><USER4> find out what that programmer knows and learn that one :)

Most of them work well enough, so having a mentor if you get stuck is worth more than anything else.</comment>


Xfce 4.16pre1 Released - <AUTHOR> https://andreldm.com/2020/09/12/xfce4.16pre1.html <comment><USER2> That makes me feel nostalgic. 15 years ago, the Linux desktop was either KDE or Gnome, which were both heavy in startup time and RAM usage (and still are). Next to "Enlightenment", Xfce was the only other desktop environment. Much later we got LXQT (which is even more slim then Xfce).

I used Xfce on old computers like Pentium I/II/III and it was a breeze. These computers could not even run contemporary windows versions any more (I think windows Vista was a thing in 2008).

Nowadays I frequently run Xfce on remote desktop when I want something slim but more powerful then a plain window manager.</comment>


Show HN: MySQLVault is simple, secure MySQL backups - <AUTHOR> https://mysqlvault.com

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi all,

We just launched MySQLVault, a really easy, really secure way to automatically backup MySQL databases. We know a lot of web developers are focused on making their project awesome, and neglecting their database backups. There are dozens are places to sacrifice peace of mind when building something new, but now creating and tracking database backups doesn't have to be one of them.

We'd love to get your feedback in the comments-

</comment><comment> mike-cardwell Can you describe how your service is better than cronning this:

mysqldump -uusername -ppassword dbname | gpg -e -r firstname.lastname@example.com > ~/Dropbox/dbdumps/`date +%Y-%b-%d`.dump.gpg

I'm not being a douche, I'd genuinely like a list of advantages...

<comment><AUTHOR> 1\. Database credentials are encrypted on the disk so they're harder to capture than reading off crontab. 2\. The dump is compressed using gzip, which saves a surprising amount of space and bandwidth. 3\. The dump is encrypted using a random passphrase each time with AES-256, then the passphrase is encrypted with RSA. The larger dump file is encrypted more efficiently and more quickly using the symmetrical cipher, while the 30-char passphrase is secured using the same strong pgp cryptography. Since the backups are all encrypted using a different key, it's harder to compute keys if given the encrypted data files. 4\. It's decently tricky to get Dropbox running well on linux machines via CLI, and you can store more than 100 GB without contacting us for storage expansion.

<comment> mike-cardwell 1.) The database credentials must be stored somewhere in a reversible format in order for your script to connect to the database to do the dump?

2.) Could just add an extra "|gzip|" inbetween the mysqldump and gpg commands in the example I provided.

3.) I think this is how gpg works internally. Generates a symmetric key, encrypts that with the public key, and then encrypts the actual data with the symmetric key. This is why you can encrypt a file for two recipients without it doubling the size of the resulting encrypted file.

4.) I do remember having some minor problems when setting it up, but it was quite a while ago. Not a show stopper though.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Will you buy a 5kg (11 pounds) 17 inch notebook? - <AUTHOR> Hello,
A small shameless market survey. Would you buy a 17 inch notebook with 320Wh batteries with and a desktop class display panel with it, if it weights 5kg?
The idea is basically trying to make a DTR class laptop with genuine portability. <comment><USER2> No.

Can't take it on a plane due to battery regulations, I'd have to ground ship it to myself if I travel.

Can't carry it in my backpack without damaging my body.

Can't power that thing within the 100W USB-C standard. Add more weight for the huge power brick.

Can't figure out what I can't do with my 2kg laptop that this machine will be able to do. I've already got 8 cores, more RAM than I'll ever need, and a dedicated graphics card. What is more than doubling the weight going to get me?

</comment><comment><USER3> It might get you a higher response rate is you gave the equivalent to 5kg which is 11 pounds.

I've been totally hooked on 17 inch laptops for ten years, sadly fewer and fewer manufacturers make them. I've had them weigh 10 pounds and 6 pounds, I prefer 6 pounds! I don't care much about battery capacity as I keep mine plugged in 99% of the time.

</comment><comment><USER4> I've switched from a desktop to a laptop for my daily computer needs. I would exchange Weight for other benefits. I would have to see the display to decide in this case but I'm open to the situation.

I would definitely switch speed for weight but better display is a maybe.

</comment><comment><USER5> I do body building. The weight doesn't bother me. I often carry two laptops around plus power supplies, keyboards, mice, sometimes a metal stand. I'd buy a heavier laptop if it had a better screen, better perf.

<comment><USER6> This guy lifts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> ~8 years ago I had an Acer 21" "laptop", and I loved it. I think it was 7kg- ish, but I always carry a backpack with some water, a small Chinese tea ceremony set, some books etc so this didn't bother me at all. I'm probably in a lower single-digit minority though.

Pros:

* full-size keyboard with proper travel, * bigger battery, * 21" is bigger than 15", * it runs cooler and less noise.

Cons:

* weight, * no more working from Starbucks.

320Wh sounds fun but you can't travel with it. 99Wh is max and some airlines even less.

</comment><comment><USER8> I can take a power bank with me if I need more battery. I probably can't leave the 320Wh thick boy at home if I want to get rid of some weight. Around 2.5kg is probably the max I would carry and even then, that's very annoying. Note, that's about how much the Thinkpad P50 weighs. If you want to offer battery life, it should be an option, but you should have a base option that is reasonable, but has the potential for upgrades. Modularity is cool.

How about a 17 inch notebook with a 100Wh battery + 100Wh battery extension and a good display that weighs 3kg~ (with only one of the batteries)?

</comment><comment><USER9> Portability would be there, but since it would be quite uncomfortable (so more for "I need to work from home every now and then" instead of "let's grab the laptop and go sit in the park"), I'd probably have more trust in a NUC style desktop.

If the product category took off in the market, okay, but a single offering from an unknown player? Not for me, I fear.

</comment><comment><USER10> No. I own a Thinkpad p52s (4.4 pounds) and that's already too much weight to carry around.

</comment><comment><USER11> Why stop at 17"? Asus makes an 18" [https://www.asus.com/us/Laptops/ROG- GX800VH-7th-Gen-Intel-Co...](https://www.asus.com/us/Laptops/ROG-GX800VH-7th- Gen-Intel-Core/)

<comment><USER12> because bigger isn't better for portability

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I got an Acer Predator 15 inch gaming laptop with a GTX 1070 8GB for deep learning three years ago and it is just a desktop to be fair, only moved with it a couple of times for long gigs away... the latest iPad Mini became my portable device, instead.

</comment><comment> a-saleh When I was in college, I did enjoy my 17in, 3kg (6.6 pounds) notebook a lot. Was considering buying additional kilo in batteries :-)

I was in lecture-halls all the time, so there usually was power, and having the extra screen real estate was nice.

</comment><comment><USER14> No chance. 5 lbs is a clunker. 5 kg better come with suitcase roller wheels.

</comment><comment><USER15> Dual batteries to allow hot swapping seems like it would be more flexible. One larger for primary power. One smaller to facilitate the swap. Then battery weight is a tunable parameter of the overall loadout.

<comment><AUTHOR> Actually the plan is for 2 x 160Wh cells.

We thought of single 300Wh, but discovered half way that this would impede some users who need to use their notebooks on flights outside of China.

So we rewired the setup for 2 x 20V packs. This way each pack will be below 160Wh limit used by many airlines.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I don't think I can live with a laptop heavier than 3kg to be honest. My old 15" used to be a little under that and it was a literal pain my back.

</comment><comment><USER17> Yes.

MSI GT-76 laptop with 128GB RAM, 3x1TB Samsung SSDs, i9-9900K CPU, Nvidia GTX 2080, 17" 4K screen.

It comes with 2 power supplies like 2 bricks. Gigantic, heavy and super fast laptop.

</comment><comment><USER18> Wouldn't you be better off with a lighter notebook for portability, and an additional large display for those times when that is practicable?

<comment><AUTHOR> A large display is one thing, but it's the usage of a 45W DTR CPU that pushes requirements to the extreme

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I would definitely buy it. Mine (thinkpad p70) already has 3.5Kg I think.</comment>


Ask HN: How do I try out GPT-3? - <AUTHOR> I found this link: https://forms.office.com/Pages/ResponsePage.aspx?id=VsqMpNrmTkioFJyEllK8sx3ELsv0PEhHphhNz30FttVUNkYwTlNPMVI1V0lXNjExMlExUlc4SE5YSS4u on openai.com, however, I am not sure if this is the link to be on the waiting list. Or, is the playground located somewhere else and I am looking at the wrong place? <comment><AUTHOR> Never mind, found it at last. Here is the link: [https://beta.openai.com](https://beta.openai.com).

In other words, the link I pasted in the post is the correct one.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I am seeing 100s of GPT-3 demos around the internet now and wanted to give it a try. Ergo, asking here.</comment>


Ask HN: How to tell if a home is unoccupied? - <AUTHOR> Premise: a city wants to know how many homes are unoccupied. How can they reliably measure this?<p>Sending city staff door to door to see if anyone is home is probably expensive, disruptive, invasive, and inaccurate if residents keep irregular hours. Sending snail-mail surveys is probably also expensive and would get a lot of false negatives. Can utilities services help? Does electricity use imply occupation? Does this give false negatives for households with low electricity use and false positives for empty houses with a few token appliances plugged in? What about natural gas and/or water usage? What about more indirect measurements like traffic/transit data or tax status (for rental housing at least)? Could telephone-pole mounted cameras measure foot and motor traffic?<p>(Disclaimer: this question isn't about whether unoccupied homes are a problem for a city, it's just a thought experiment about how this question could be answered with technology. I admit this question is inspired by speculation that empty homes in places like Vancouver, BC and SF are affecting rents and availability.) <comment><USER2> Define unoccupied:

\- By original owner?

\- By original owner or renter?

\- Cleaning lady coming once in 2 weeks for 5 years is ok?

\- Duration of time no living being is present within the premises?

\- Neighbor taking mail once a day?

\- Average number per district is ok or precise addresses are required?

etc .... Clear definition is needed

<comment><AUTHOR> I was originally thinking 100% lived-in, by anyone wether they are the owner or not, and precise data down to each housing unit. That definitely gets into shades of grey when you consider vacations and second homes, or even granny flats! What if someone owns a house but goes on vacation for 2 months every year? If you just want data you can probably trust residents to self-report this but if you were trying to implement a vacancy tax that might not work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Our city gets reliable statistics via utility data. I believe this is common.

<comment><USER4> This sounds like a reliable method (lots of data points!), and using different utilities should decrease false positives.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I worked for a utility and this was an important problem for us as a customer would close their account and move out of a rental and another tenant may move in and start using gas without having an account with one of the utilities (we don't lock meters on moves, this would be too expensive.) The utility company only finds out something is using gas when a meter is read every few months (we had a threshold.) Here is when we contact the tenant and try to figure out whats going on, unfortunately we don't have phone numbers and sending someone around to check was too costly at the time.

</comment><comment><USER6> You could feature extraction per target home. I wonder if you could use neighbors' information to have better posterior beliefs about the home in question.. Like, suppose Alice lives in the house you're trying to decide, and Bob, Cathy, ... Yvonne, and Zara are all benign 'adversaries' that are willing to help you learn about Alice's occupancy. Is there some kind of utility/wiring/plumbing/logical singleton shared across the whole neighborhood, which could be used for deductive purposes.

</comment><comment><USER7> Cheapest method: Assume the government really want this number, they can have all mailman help keep track if there are leftover mail(a letter is created/given if resident has no mail) after x days.

Technology wise, I cannot think of an easy and cheap way. Camera with vision for each residential door will be a robust approach. Accuracy can be precise by more investment in software from detecting opening-of-door-event to facial recognition of the expected household members.

</comment><comment><USER8> First get the low hanging fruit. Wifi activity, utility use.

Then look for commonalities in the homes that you can't tell about.

</comment><comment><USER9> Tricky edge cases

If someone lives in a home for 6 out of 12 months per year, and the rest of the time it is empty does it qualified as occupied or unoccupied or do we count it as 0.5?

What about air bnbed for 75% of the time.

Do you care about 1 person living in a mansion (most of which is unoccupied) vs. 10 people living in a 1 bed apartment?

<comment><AUTHOR> Indeed! It would depend on whether the city wants data for further analysis or will act directly on the data (e.g. new taxes). If the city just wanted a punitive tax on non-occupied housing, they'd probably be better with LVT or a revenue-neutral shift away from sales tax or payroll tax towards higher property taxes. This would indirectly affect non-occupying owners without needing to target them directly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Not that I condone it but you could get the public to report unoccupied homes using their phones. Especially neighbors who could established a history of vacancy.

</comment><comment><USER11> Body heat detection equipped drones could help.

<comment><USER12> How would you tell between a home that is legitimately occupied and an abandoned property that has been taken over by squatters?

<comment><USER13> so theyd report 53.56% occupied rather than 53.57.. is that sucha big deal when its very very close and performs much better than alternative methods on an extremely technically challenging problem?</comment></comment></comment>


Using buildings as batteries to accommodate more wind and solar - <AUTHOR> https://news.engin.umich.edu/2017/09/using-university-of-michigan-buildings-as-batteries/ <comment><USER2> The correct terms are "load shifting" or "peak shaving."

But, in a way, they are storing energy (thermally) in a similar way to batteries. One could imagine freezing water or condensing ammonia over night using surplus cheap wind energy, and then releasing that stored coldness during the day to cool the building.

I think the big objection to calling this a 'battery' is that nobody is suggesting using that stored thermal energy to generate electricity. It's just a way of shifting the electrical demands of the building to a time where there is surplus electricity.

</comment><comment><USER3> The title isn't just clickbate, it is a lie. There is no way to construe this research as being a form of power storage.

<comment><USER4> It is commercial building-level demand-response, which already has been done at a residential level in California.

DR can also be provided by fast-responding storage systems like batteries and flywheels, which maybe explains the poorly chosen analogy to batteries.

I'm not surprised that it used more energy overall though because mechanical systems usually are most efficient when operating at a particular speed. Turning a huge HVAC system off and back on again quickly if it's not designed for that would probably reduce its operating efficiency.

<comment><USER5> > Turning a huge HVAC system off and back on again quickly if it's not > designed for that would probably reduce its operating efficiency.

A lot of Rooftop Unit (RTU) controls typically take an on/off command from the Building Management System (BMS) and the BMS programming will have a deadband range (+/\- 2°F) in which no action will occur to prevent the repeated cycling of RTUs.

<comment><USER4> Makes sense. IIRC smart thermostats also have this sort of feature to prevent excessive cycling of home HVAC.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Wouldn't it make more sense to use a water basin?

<comment><USER7> The headline is misleading. They aren't proposing using the buildings as batteries. They are proposing that a large number of commercial buildings would switch on/off their HVAC systems for short periods of grid surplus/shortfall to help balance grid demand.

The only "battery like" thing is that short durations of turning off/on a large building's HVAC shouldn't change the internal temperature much. And that's stretching "battery like".

<comment><USER8> It's a "battery" in the grid sense that it's an energy buffer which can be used to balance demand. If you can get over that stretch of terminology it's sort of interesting. I've seen proposals for shifting HVAC systems to create even larger buffers - increasing or insulating chiller fluid capacity (or even creating large ice masses) so that during excess/low-cost power one can build up a reserve, then cooling from that reserve during high-demand periods.</comment></comment></comment>


Git as an Encrypted Distributed Version Control System - <AUTHOR> http://oai.dtic.mil/oai/oai?verb=getRecord&metadataPrefix=html&identifier=ADA619785 <comment><USER2> StackExchange's blackbox[0] has solved this problem for me.

Alternatives:

      * https://github.com/AGWA/git-crypt
      * https://github.com/shadowhand/git-encrypt
      * http://docs.ansible.com/ansible/playbooks_vault.html
      * https://github.com/elasticdog/transcrypt
      * http://www.passwordstore.org/

[0]: [https://github.com/StackExchange/blackbox](https://github.com/StackExchange/blackbox)

<comment><USER3> Cool to run across a mention of one of my projects (transcrypt) out in the wild. I do like that blackbox isn't tied to just Git, and uses GPG...but that can also be difficult for adoption if GPG isn't a familiar tool on your team.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> So, I've skimmed through most of the paper, and it seems like a bit of an apples to oranges comparison. My understanding is that GV2 is an extension to jGit that essentially performs GC on the repo (or more accurately waits to encrypt until post-GC), and then transparently encrypts everything altogether, rather than utilizing clean/smudge filters to encrypt files individually like the tools it's comparing itself to. It's funny that the author dismissed git- remote-gcrypt as being "under development" even though it's a much closer comparison to GV2.

The paper mentions that it's measuring the worst-case scenario for the clean/smudge filter-style tools as it's much more likely that you only need to protect a few files and not the entire repository, but I didn't see how the second section actually reflected this more-realistic scenario. I'm not saying that encrypting the entire repository is bad, but the overhead of using filters to encrypt the entire repository is a documented/known limitation of the other tools...so it seems a little odd to gloss over that.

Side note, stuff like "This process is repeated a total of 10 iterations for an ample sample size to draw statistical conclusions." worries me, but that's another conversation.

Overall though, glad to see more research in this area, and it sounds like GV2 might be a decent solution for people looking to protect their data in certain scenarios.

<comment><USER4> I agree, I'm happy to see more research here. For my uses, a filter based approach makes the most sense, though I can understand wanting a more holistic solution.

My needs are such that I might only want to encrypt a few files, and filters do an adequate job here. But I can understand a limitation where all objects must be encrypted, and thus filter perf is not appropriate.

Filters also have the limitation of leaking the commit and tree information, which may also be sensitive data on some projects.

This is an interesting strategy, and I'm glad to see more research done here, regardless.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> For anyone interested, I solved this problem for my own needs using what I think is a unique approach, available here:

[https://github.com/rustyio/git-gpg](https://github.com/rustyio/git-gpg)

As the name suggests, it uses gpg to encrypt and decrypt the data.

Unlike git-encrypt and git-crypt, it doesn't use smudge/clean filters.

Instead, it uses a special command (`git-gpg push $remote`) to push changes to a local unencrypted mirror of the remote repository. It then encrypts any newly created git objects, and finally rsyncs the new objects to the remote repository. So the remote is just a directory of zipped, gpg-encrypted files.

It has worked well for me over the past two years, but I don't expect that it solves every edge case.

Feedback welcomed through issues and pull requests.

<comment><USER6> I'm assuming this doesn't work to push to GitHub though, right?

<comment><USER5> Right.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Wow, this would be awesome. Extract:

Significance of Research

As stated in Chapter I, distributed version control systems, particularly Git, have been rapidly increasing in popularity among software developers in recent years [4]. The problem exists when these organizations have sensitive data that they want to use with Git in an unsecure environment. To secure an environment, especially over the internet, involves high levels of cost. As the name implies, GV2 provides Git with a Virtual Vault in a remote location, such as on an Amazon Cloud, using their Amazon S3 storage service. GV2 provides new documented functionality and performance to the research community. This is new research that has high interest from the Department of Defense and other organizations who want to run applications using a third party cloud service provider but also want to maintain confidentiality and integrity of their application data. In the future, many traditional applications will be modified to support this same type of security in an unsecure environment in an efficient manner that is transparent to the user.

</comment><comment><USER8> It's awesome to see the US Military (or more specifically, people who've studied at military schools) doing work in crypto and cyber-security, especially with all the effort on the part of civilian agencies to erode it.

</comment><comment><USER9> was investigating this myself few times, it's great concept looking forward for a solution that will actually work fine

<comment><USER10> Me too, and I started coding it. It got a little thorny so I solved my problem with git on encfs and moved on.

I still really want to see this solved. But it needs to be secure, easy to use, and clean... it'll take some effort.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I can't download the PDF, it could be my adblocker or my IP (I'm in France).

<comment><USER12> Here's a copy you can view in-browser:

[https://www.docdroid.net/GAScP3C/ada619785.pdf.html](https://www.docdroid.net/GAScP3C/ada619785.pdf.html)

<comment><USER11> Thank you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Looks like a great paper. Going to read it closer tonight.

But where's the code?

<comment><USER13> This is a master's thesis. There might not be code yet.</comment></comment>


Future elections may be swayed by chatbots - <AUTHOR> https://www.technologyreview.com/s/611832/future-elections-may-be-swayed-by-intelligent-weaponized-chatbots/ <comment><USER2> I feel like the safer bet is that future elections will be decided in much the same way as current elections are, by weaponized money. How many people would make great candidates that we never hear about because they don't have the money and realize the futility of even trying?

<comment><USER3> Not to mention voters weaponizing the ballot by voting for the candidate of their choice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Countries and big corporations already have a huge presence on social media. From Russia meddling with the elections to viral videos for beans we live in a world were no body knows that you are a dog on the internet, or a paid poster for some interest group.

<comment><USER5> You raise a great point. Deceptive social media propaganda campaigns are already happening; bots only decrease the costs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Don't have political discourse except with people you personally know, or face to face.

<comment><USER6> > except with people you personally know, or face to face

so don't talk to strangers, people outside your class and your race. i see that ending well

<comment><USER5> The rule of thumb I said allows you to have non political discourse with strangers over the internet, and have political discourse with strangers face to face.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> No. I'm sure it will be swayed by CNN, Foxnews, MSNBC, NYtimes, Washington Post and the rest of the media.

Not that it really matters because the elections will be won before the election since money will pick who the candidates are.

</comment><comment><USER8> TL;DR Growth hacking -- but by politicians this time, with some added FUD for flavor.

1\. Loud people are more likely to be heard.

2\. A view with the appearance of consensus carries a weight similar to one that does.

3\. Bots powered by more modern AI techniques may be harder to recognize and moderate.

4\. The author assumes AI chat works like in the movies when its actually more like cleverbot.

5\. "Shielding people" from certain information is basically just thinking for them, at that point why even bother asking them what they want, you might as well just tell them.

</comment><comment><USER3> 'Weaponized'

<comment><USER9> Thats a technical term for something your political opponents do.

<comment><USER3> Indeed

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> _Future_ elections?

<comment><USER11> They likely weren't very "intelligent" in recent years. On one end, you had memes, which can be made once by a human and widely distributed.

On the other end of the spectrum, you had fake community organizers, trolls, etc., and as far as we know, those were mostly operated manually by a fairly large staff.

Chatbots would potentially make voter manipulation cheap enough for much smaller actors to do it.

<comment><USER12> > They likely weren't very "intelligent" in recent years.

They were intelligent enough to convince a non-trivial number of voters.

<comment><USER13> Serious question: is there evidence to support that claim?

We know there was "meddling", but has it been proved that it convinced a "non- trivial" number of voters to change their vote or that it actually affected the outcome of the election?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> What a crap...

</comment><comment><USER6> so we need to replace elections?</comment>


Ask HN: Anyone heard anything regarding YC Winter 2013 Applications? - <AUTHOR>

Has anyone heard anything about the YC applications for the Winter 2013 class? <comment><USER2> "did you get your rejection email yet" - my wife

</comment><comment><USER3> I just lost my "when will the first HN thread asking this question" pool by about 30 minutes. DAMN!

<comment><USER4> but the real question is if this is the one that will make the front page or not...

<comment><USER3> It's already there!

<comment><USER4> good thing i bet 50 cajillion dollars on it happening...now I'm gonna go buy Mercury

<comment><USER5> I don't know which I find more puzzling- that you have figured out how much Mercury costs, or that you've decided to buy it.

<comment><USER6> Hey, at least it will have a better shot at finding a business model than twitter... ;) I kid, I kid.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> not yet..... this day is going by too slow. I don't know what will be more traumatic, getting rejected from my Dream University senior year of HS, or getting rejected by YC lol...tis life.

</comment><comment><USER8> In the past rejection emails have gone out between 5pm and 8pm Pacific. I can't speak for the emails inviting one to interview unfortunately! I expect the partners are busy evaluating applications up until the last moment.

<comment><USER9> This time last year, our interview email came just after the rejections went out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I worry more than before my first sex :|

</comment><comment><USER11> Last semester we received our acceptance (to interview) at 3:59 PST.

<comment><USER12> YC guys like .59 as I see ))

little imperfections make this life interesting

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> We're creating a list of companies that applied here: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4791386>

</comment><comment> k-i-m Nothing yet.... why time is moving so slooooow? next startup: a time machine!! =)

On the apply page they say: "We'll reimburse up to $600 per group for travel expenses.", do you think is a tricky part? I mean, if we ask for a reimburse for the travel (which would be around $400-500), will we "loose points" during the interview because we aren't so much motivated as we even asked for a reimburse?

<comment><USER14> Speaking from Experience, the Partners interviewing you probably won't even know which of the interviewees did or did not accept checks. Kirsty issues them as you ask before or after you interview and it is very casual.

I certainly don't think they would hold it against you even if they knew. They're good people and don't expect you to do anything for free

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Guys Mixpanel is offering free analytics for rejectees <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4791944>

If anyone wants to work in the health and fitness industry. Please do drop me a line - my email is in my profile.

<comment><USER16> We're actually offering free web security, too: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4792073> :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Good luck to everyone. Let's stay positive and prepare for the interview. Here are a few good recommendations about YC interview and what to expect: <http://askolo.com/ycalumni#4f7f608197db2e496f000001>

</comment><comment><USER18> Bummer, we just got a rejection email for Contactable (<http://becontactable.com>).

The email came via Mailgun, here are the headers:

Received: by luna.mailgun.net with SMTP mgrt ????61; Fri, 16 Nov 2012 01:17:01 +0000

</comment><comment><USER19> Reading previous threads I have found a pattern. I may be wrong but that seems to be the pattern. Rejection emails go out around 4pm Pacific time and interview invite emails go out around 7pm Pacific time.

<comment><USER5> According to my experience last session this isn't correct. Invite emails went out 6:59pm EST.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I got an interview email at 10:01pm EST in the past. It came through Mailgun so everyone that gets chosen will probably get that email at the same time.

</comment><comment><USER21> @YC partners

Are late applicants being considered ? (or perhaps queued up to process if there's time)

</comment><comment><USER22> Does everyone in the team get an email? or is it just the one who submitted the application?

<comment><USER23> I believe everyone does.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Waitingggggg

</comment><comment><USER25> nothing yet here

</comment><comment><USER26> waiting!!</comment>


When TCP sockets refuse to die - <AUTHOR> https://blog.cloudflare.com/when-tcp-sockets-refuse-to-die/ <comment><USER2> Yeah, TCP socket timeouts can be an issue.

I recall developing a embedded product that was to interact with a Microsoft music server to retrieve and playback music from it (sorry, this was many years ago and the details are hazy). We had a problem with our embedded TCP/IP stack running out of TCP connections (it was limited due to memory considerations) when skipping songs on the server and it was due to the server keeping TCP connections open even after we had indicated we wanted to close it and open a new one (for the next song). Eventually, we had to 'break' with the TCP/IP spec and force a TCP reset on our end to close the port and reclaim the memory.

<comment><USER3> TCP pools and connections are part of why I'm excited about reactive design right now. Although it still doesn't address the problem with a bunch of TCP timeouts eating my entire connection pool if the firewall team locks out our production servers again...</comment></comment>


Pandora signs up with rights admin company as it plots on-demand service - <AUTHOR> http://www.completemusicupdate.com/article/pandora-signs-up-with-rights-admin-company-as-it-plots-on-demand-service/ <comment><AUTHOR> > _Music Reports, the rights administration company that was bragging at SXSW > earlier this year that its platform could overcome the streaming sector's > mechanical rights problem._

This is very interesting, and I'm surprised to have not heard of them before.

Spotify being sued by David Lowery (Cracker) as a class-action is related to publishing issues. Wonder how this might fit in the grand scheme of things. Seems there are several tech players in this field...cool.</comment>


Ask HN: Any cool startups in Amsterdam hiring? - <AUTHOR>

after years of b2b web development in Python, Django, PHP & JavaScript I'm looking for a cool startup to work for. I'd love to work on a product that I'm proud of and be able to show my friends for a change :) <comment><USER2> Check out some startup incubators, such as Rockstart @ Rokin 75. If you're really into entrepreneurship and have a good idea, be a startup yourself.

</comment><comment><USER3> Hi,

I am CEO of Layar.com. We are looking for python/django talent.

Please send me your resume: raimo at layar com.

Raimo van der Klein

</comment><comment><USER4> I work for a very cool startup in Amsterdam, and we are hiring Python/Django/JS devs. My email is in my profile - please get in touch.</comment>


IPhone Apps: Why closed is better - <AUTHOR> http://uxhero.com/ux-theory/iphone-apps-why-closed-is-better/ <comment><USER2> This doesn't really seem to match its own title though. It answers "why iphone apps are better" - but really makes no comment on why having it closed helps matters.

</comment><comment><USER3> One of the reasons I like iPhone/iPad. It's brought a mass purchased platform that developers can flock to, make money, and not have to worry about:

* Operating System

* Web Browser

* Plugins

* Resolution

* Input

* Connectivity

* Libraries

The rapid spread of platforms over the last ten years has really fucked developers. We have to spend 50% of our time making sure the product works on 3 different Operating Systems OR 5 different web browsers.

Desktop/laptop computing has come to bite us in the ass.

<comment><USER4> What rapid spread? There were far more platforms before, with far more significant differences.

In the late '80s, a popular game was commonly ported to half a dozen platforms: Amiga, Atari ST, Apple II, Commodore 64, PC+EGA, PC+VGA -- sometimes even Sinclair and MSX. Even the hardware was usually completely different between systems, e.g. the powerful custom graphics and audio chips on the Amiga.

In the '90s, a cross-platform desktop application like Netscape would have to run on a range of very different systems: Windows 3.1 (16-bit), Windows 95 (32-bit with new UI), Windows NT (32-bit with old UI), Mac OS 7 (32-bit with no memory protection), Solaris, Linux, AIX, HP/UX...

In comparison, Windows 7, Mac OS X and modern Linux are basically the same. It's easy to write cross-platform C applications using mostly UNIX APIs and deploy them on Windows using MinGW and a couple of lightweight libraries like pthread-win32. For cross-platform GUI applications, the Qt framework is available pretty much everywhere, even phones.

This is pretty amazing. Essentially everything has become "UNIX-like" nowadays -- even the smartphone stalwart Symbian has given up trying to pretend it's something else.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Closed is never better. I guess it's like saying "If I eat _all_ my meals at McDonalds, the world would be oh so wonderfully predictable and consistent"

<comment><USER3> Your analogy is off. Using an iPhone/iPad doesn't harm me.

Eating all meals at McDonalds does harm you.

<comment><USER5> You're misunderstanding the analogy. The writer is a fan of closed platforms. In the analogy, McDonalds = Closed Platform. And, yes, closed platforms are unhealthy.

I know how to think. Thanks all the same.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I find it ironic, that closed system iPad and iPhone advocates are propounding the same arguments that Microsoft advocates have used defending closed source programs and desktop computing. :)

Closed vs Open is a techno-religious argument. There are intellectual merits to both sides of the argument, but ultimately people choose what aligns with their ideals and beliefs.

</comment><comment><USER7> I thought about this just today. Closed systems like the iPhone allow for programs perfectly customized for the hardware, OS. This is great news for the users as the interfaces and other standards are rather consistent.

What was the success of Microsoft in the 80s and 90s? I believe it was that they had an open system. They reached the critical mass, by letting everyone in.

Today, being open is their fallacy, as it is hard for Microsoft to bring all their 3rd party programs into line. (Into line refers to interface, security, and other standards)

To be successful a closed system, it must fulfill one point: It must have exceeded a critical mass of users.

I guess open is better when you can't rely on a multi-billion marketing budget.

<comment><USER8> iPhone/Android developer here

>Closed systems like the iPhone allow for programs perfectly customized for the hardware

The closed nature of the platform doesn't help this at all. The fact there are only 5 iPhoneOS platforms, 4 of which are virtually spec identical (iPhone 2g, iPhone 3g, iPhone 3gs, iPodTouch[most different]), and now the iPad makes it easier to use fixed width layouts and screen mappings. The hardware variation between the handsets is only noticeable, not an impediment. However the fact all of them can run the latest iPhoneOS release means the _platform_ is much more stable. The lack of fragmentation is what makes iPhone OS so powerful. If google makes it so all future phones have sufficent specs to handle all upgrades, then streamlines the upgrade process, then we're likely to see more inroads in android.

Android's biggest weakness is that each phone is on a different OS version (and there are vast differences between these versions). Some of the phones (notably the G1) aren't ever going to be upgradeable to the current latest version (as said by engineers) due to the small onboard memory. The capabilities of these different OSes are very large. It would be the difference between running iPhoneOS2.0 vs iPhone OS3.2 (the new one that's on the iPad).

<comment><USER7> As you have guessed right, I have absolutely NO idea about Software development. I was lead to believe that it is easy to write software for the iPhone by numerous articles and deduced it must be because the hardware is so similar. Thanks for correcting me.

Still I do believe a closed system is favorable for the user as long as the one who controls the system does a great job. I am thinking of a windows were one can only install software which does not mess up the system resources, or causes other harm. It would reduce the PC troubles for inexperienced users dramatically.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Hacker News Article: Why this should have been called "iPhone rich client implementations have better UX characteristics than web apps on the same web browser". It says nothing about openness or closed other than "other video games are closed platforms too".</comment>


The rise of the useless class - <AUTHOR> http://ideas.ted.com/the-rise-of-the-useless-class/ <comment> charles-salvia I can't help but be skeptical of things like this... historically speaking, humans tend to underestimate just how many things we do that require full "general intelligence" to make "common-sense" decisions. Despite recent advances in machine-learning (i.e. adding more layers to neural networks, i.e. adding more columns to a matrix), we don't really have anything that even approaches an artificial general intelligence. What we _do_ have is a suite of sophisticated statistical algorithms that basically perform regression using huge data sets. This often approximates _some_ subset of what a general artifical intelligence could do for _some_ use cases that mostly apply to recognizing fuzzy patterns. But it's not even close to approaching human-level intelligence.

In general, modern machine learning has focused mostly on the "pattern recognition" aspect of intelligence derived from statistical algorithms, while making little significant progress with other key aspects associated with higher cognitive processes such as general reasoning, planning and creativity (apart from simplistic rule-based approaches like decision trees, or highly domain-specific problems like using massive data sets to teach a computer to play Go.)

I don't doubt that something close to general AI will eventually seriously threaten human usefulness/dignity, but I question the timeline of "decades away".

<comment><USER2> For this reason, I wouldn't be surprised if AI actually generate more work, at least for most of our lifetime. People that will supervise and correct AI errors while/after they process data, while current jobs mostly stays "until the AI is ready to actually take over".

If this makes you laugh, you have probably never worked in the public sector or big corps.

<comment><USER3> The problem is that the financial performance and massive inertia of these organizations are becoming such financial liabilities that our economies will be held back by organizational / cultural _and_ technical debt at the same time in these organizations. I've been observing the trend for the past decade where the top tech companies are accelerating in output while most of the large institutions are falling further and further behind. Intel can keep pushing all the way to the theoretical limits of silicon for transistor size, but the economic costs including just sheer interest on fab facilities alone of getting there would bankrupt the company or hurt its credit rating.

To put it into a more concrete analogy, Google is putting out autonomous cars when tons of companies are celebrating releasing the Model T or are still currently developing it with massive delays and cost overruns. Meanwhile, much of the appetite for government spending is dwindling for various reasons and this will cause a lot of strife that hurts already-slow moving organizations. Furthermore, brand recognition by the current generation of entrepreneurs for old hat technology companies is looking absolutely horrific. The next Fortune 500 CEOs 30 years from now are likely in their 30s or 40s now and they're well aware of the lack of compelling vision by so-called "technology" companies that are really just technology re-sellers and are thus unsuitable partners for increasingly tech-reliant businesses (the few that don't have such plans may be so clueless they won't matter).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> My first reaction when I saw (ted.com) after the link was that this would be an essay about ted speakers. I should have known that it would be more chatter about machines making people obsolete.

<comment><USER5> Nice one!

My reaction was more like, we have this already due to plain old economic stagnation and (in the US) offshoring. No AI needed!

<comment><USER6> It seems convenient to blame technology, and it is definitely going to be the bigger cause in the long term.

This said, I am strongly of the opinion that globalization is not a force that benefits everyone (to put it nicely) and it is not constructive that this opinion is not discussed more widely without having to pussyfoot around dirty words like protectionism and nationalism as if they are automatically bad words.

<comment> rm_-rf_slash Globalization is centralization: finance is centralized in New York and London; manufacturing is centralized in China and Germany; IT outsourcing is centralized in India.

Over the 19th and early 20th century, the benefits of American westward expansion and the development of the industrial Midwest largely accrued to the big banks in New York. The same is occurring, just on a larger scale and accelerated due to leaps in technology.

<comment><USER7> The US manufactures more than it ever did, page 2 of this pdf shows it quite clearly: [https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R42135.pdf](https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R42135.pdf)

The US is more than double Germany.

<comment><USER8> But with fewer workers.

<comment><USER7> Progress?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm sure there is a good critique of that Frey and Osborne paper. Epistemologically, it sounds weird to assign 'probabilities of automation.' I don't have the time to read the paper in detail, but here are a few things:

1\. Automation doesn't imply that jobs go away. Classic example, deposits and withdrawals were automated by ATMs. Yet, the number of cashiers increased.

2\. Automation by itself is not sufficient. Will we reach a point where it is cheaper to automate a job than hire a person? Think of non-forklift lifting/moving of heavy stuff, we don't really need people doing this manually, robots should be able to do it. But we see with the Boston Dynamics robots that we are many years or decades away from commoditizing lifting robots.

3\. 'useless' class already exists. Employment and usefulness aren't necessarily the same. There are many millions of people in jobs that are 'useless' by some metrics (gas station attendant, supermarket cashiers, etc).

<comment><USER10> > Automation doesn't imply that jobs go away. Classic example, deposits and > withdrawals were automated by ATMs. Yet, the number of cashiers increased.

Did the number of cashier's _per customer_ (or perhaps more significantly, as a share of the population -- not labor force) increase? If you look at even AEIs graph [0] that they use to try to sell idea that ATMs didn't kill cashiers' jobs, it shows cashiers increasing rapidly during the very slow rollout of ATMs in the 1970s and 1980s, and the growth tapering off to very slow growth as ATMs take off in the 1990s and beyond (and remaining relatively flat even after the number of ATMs itself flattens in the mid-00s, probably as ATMs basically reached saturation but are still increasing functions, reducing the need for more tellers.)

[0] [http://www.aei.org/publication/what-atms-bank-tellers- rise-r...](http://www.aei.org/publication/what-atms-bank-tellers-rise-robots- and-jobs/)

<comment><USER11> Why is your proposed metric better than the original? Honest question.

<comment><USER12> Not the parent, but all other things remaining the same, population growth alone will drive the need for more cashiers. Since ATMs did not stop population growth, percentage based metrics help account for that.

So the different types of numbers can help drive home different points:

* in absolute numbers, ATMs didn't cause any job losses.

* in relative numbers, there are less job opportunities in this space. (e.g. there used to be a need for 1 cashier per N people, not there is only a slot for 1 cashier per 2N people).

The second type of thinking is what people are worried about - if we keep reducing percentage of people who are needed to do stuff, what the other folks do?

<comment><USER13> There's also the factory vs car improvement difference. Factories did not make workers obsolete; cars did make horses obsolete. I'm not sure we can ahead of time tell whether particular technological improvements are more like factories or cars.

<comment><USER14> > _I 'm not sure we can ahead of time tell whether particular technological > improvements are more like factories or cars._

When those improvements are AI-driven automation, we can.

<comment><USER15> AI is a huge area that will lead to many advances, each one with different impact.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> > "Most of what kids currently learn at school will probably be irrelevant by > the time they are 40."

I can't help but see this whole "robots are taking over" thing as a Republican position which leads to people not valuing public education.

Learning to read and write, do math and science, understand physics and biology, etc, will never be useless. These are core bits of information we have collected over our existence here and should continue to be passed on to as many people as we can.

I find the excitement for UBI concerning. People seem to have already tossed up their hands and said, "well, I'll be useless in the future, I guess I can't work now!".

Meanwhile, Mike Rowe has been saying for years that there are unfulfilled blue collar jobs. Our culture's problem is not that machines will take over or that schools are failing to educate students. It's that we don't find enough value in the contributions that we _do_ make. It's okay to not be a successful tech founder. Everyone is useful in some way or another.

<comment><USER17> School is _already_ useless. See this essay for instance [https://slatestarcodex.com/2016/12/02/contra-robinson-on- sch...](https://slatestarcodex.com/2016/12/02/contra-robinson-on-schooling/)

How many people use say more than 1% of the knowledge they learn in High School? Hell how many people even remember more than 1% of it? There have been studies done on unschooled kids - that get minimal formal education and are allowed to spend their time however they want. And they do only sightly worse than schooled kids.

<comment><USER16> > School is already useless

I realize there are people who feel that way. I'm not one of them. There are a lot of things I synthesized from school. For me, practicing learning a bunch of different things was useful in itself.

Some people learn better in school, and some find ways to do it on their own.

> There have been studies done on unschooled kids - that get minimal formal > education and are allowed to spend their time however they want. And they do > only sightly worse than schooled kids

There is a big difference between having a few unschooled kids and changing the whole system to be unschooled.

If unschooled is going to be the way of the future, do it at local levels and let it grow with its success. We need not defund public education to achieve an idealized educational system that isn't going to work for everyone.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is short-term pessimism, inline with the common dystopian future of sci- fi. It is really difficult to predict human behaviors and technology in the long term.

Humans have the ability to steer things to their advantage so interesting things can happen.

Just for kicks here's a more hopeful approach that I've heard...merge AI with the brain like Kurzweil was predicting. Imagine if everyone was a genius and telekinetic so then we get the neural internet from that. We would actually be less divided, more connected and more productive as a human race. Our current sense of self is too selfish and our intellect too limited. I'm sure it would be very difficult to hold on to beliefs devoid of reason in that case so everyone could make better decisions, not just about themselves but about humanity, etc. because they could perceive things at a grander scale.

<comment><USER9> I think this is already happening. In fact most AI pessimists don't consider that "man + machine >> machine." Consider chess. Kasparov's defeat happened in mid-1990s. Machine is considered > man. Yet, in freestyle chess, where players are allowed to consult machines, we have achieved ever greater heights of performance. In chess today, any sufficiently advanced chess engine can be incorporated into a (man+chess-engine) player to perform better. Similar things will happen in Go, Poker, etc. The handicap of not using a computer to inform your moves exists to make things more competitive, it doesn't mean that we are worse off!

Taking this further, most technology we use daily (word processors, email, the Internet, etc.) are enhancements of the man+machine organism and enhance our performance as well as the 'machine''s.

<comment><USER18> Yah I think so too. Super Tangent warning: I recently saw the documentary on Koko the Gorilla and was amazed at her emotional intelligence and communication skills. Why not integrate AI into other animals besides humans?

<comment><USER18> One more tangent: The perception of time would be very different if we were highly integrated into machines right? What if you could perceive things at 1000 times the normal human?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I want to be like my dog, but smarter and with more freedom.

Every day I look at the lazy beast and wonder at the simplicity of its existence. Give me that life and an allowance for supplies to create, eat, socialize, and travel and let me loose.

<comment><USER20> This is the missing component of the Drake equation.

The probability of any given sentient species eventually developing AI that is sophisticated enough that they cease all outward exploration and turn into a galactic shut-ins. Completely content to while away the millennia playing Candy Crush VR while the automatons take care of their birth/feeding/death cycle...

<comment><USER17> But if they have superior AI, what stops the AI from expanding outward instead? Such an advanced civilization has nothing to lose by sending a few robot colonists out through the galaxy.

<comment><USER21> Maybe if we were smarter we'd see that they might in fact have a lot to lose.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Am I the only person who finds the whole concept of judging _people_ as useful or useless completely nonsensical? So, machines will be able to perform jobs that are currently done by people. How does that make people _useless_? It assumes there's some sort of preordained, global utility function. "Oh, your job as a cab driver has been automated. You're useless." Uh, what? Useless to what? To whom?

Humans _define_ what is useful or not. They're certainly not going to will themselves into uselessness, curl up into a ball and die. The idea that humans can be useless is complete nonsense to me. It's something akin to a type error. And I have a hard time understanding why that meme keeps being repeated and debated without anyone pointing this out.

<comment><USER23> I believe the designation of the people as _useless_ is based on the fact that part of our value to society is measured by the utility that provide to society and with continuing automation of human tasks it will be harder for us to find way for all the humans in the world to provide utility at the same level as they are now.

Now I agree with you that this (valuing people by the utility they provide) is a shallow and incorrect way of measuring a human being's value but it is true.

<comment><USER22> I don't necessarily disagree with what you're saying, but I think I'm talking about something slightly different. First, I think that what you're pointing out in your first paragraph, while wildly accepted, is completely unproven. Second, I don't think valuing people by utility is necessarily shallow, but the way I worded my original post might lead you to believe that.

Here's what I'm getting at (and failing horribly, because I'm too lazy to think it through): many articles have been written that seem to outline scenarios where runaway automation leads to a situation where you have some sort of closed loop automated economy where humans have no role to play, thus making humanity "useless." I think that's hogwash. It presupposes that the goal of humanity is to perform a certain number of tasks that happen to be the tasks we currently perform. If we can find something to substitute that performs the same tasks, our goal is accomplished, and thus humanity is "useless."

That's when I generally go: that's the dumbest thing I've ever heard.

<comment><USER23> Yes, I agree that the idea that with continued automation humanity's role on earth will become un-necessary and superfluous (the _useless_ that I believe you are referring to) is hogwash and not a concern.

The reason for the automation revolution (I just coined that phrase) is allow humanity to become a better citizen of the planet and not to discarded.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Of course automation will inevitably be capable of displacing all human acts (jobs and art). The author concludes with the same tired, naiive and unsatisfactory outlook: 'you don't need worry about it because robots will just kill off humans'.

However, it seems obvious that humanity will handle this like many cultures have - by choice. Just like some people chose not to eat GM food, and others (Amish) generally elect not to use electricity, humans too will reach a point where they will simply choose to either accept that their lives are 100% sustained by autonomy or, live a life free of AI-generated products (i.e. food, services, art, etc).

<comment><USER25> I'm curious to see how long it will take for the world to experience any meaningful kind of pushback against automation or AI. Today, I feel like all I see are a dwindling number of people saying they'd "rather deal with a real person", and a growing number of people who come close to fetishizing automation.

Maybe once Uber decides to flip the switch on all of the drivers who are now dependent on them for some if not all of their income, we'll see people in the streets vandalizing and otherwise circumventing empty self driving vehicles.

<comment><USER24> Honestly, like you point out, I think it's happening at micro-levels already. Certainly entire societies have voluntarily cut themselves off largelt from technology altogether - not just Amish, but modern off-grid people as well. However, just like some "bush people" will bend the rules and return to modern technology in diar situations (e.g. they need an insulin shot), I'd bet dollars to donuts that medical needs will drive many situations where self- declared "AI-free" people will opt for an AI product, since there are certain to be many AI-generated medical treatments currently out of the reach of limited human brains to develop.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> > Traditionally, life has been divided into two main parts: a period of > learning, followed by a period of working. Very soon this traditional model > will become utterly obsolete, and the only way for humans to stay in the > game will be to keep learning throughout their lives and to reinvent > themselves repeatedly.

That's already the case, imo.

<comment><USER27> Agreed. It'd be quite difficult to measure whether or not someone learns something new, anyway, because of the variety of things available to learn (large and small). If we're talking about learning entirely new skills, though, yea, obviously a cashier will probably not need to learn any significant new skills over the course of their career.

As always, people who do make learning new things a part of their life's rituals will generally be more successful than those who do not.

Nice username, by the way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Arguably, some of this is already happening. IMO there was a much better article a few months ago - [https://morecrows.wordpress.com/2016/05/10/unnecessariat/](https://morecrows.wordpress.com/2016/05/10/unnecessariat/)

<comment><USER24> Indeed - I'm only 50% through, but defibitely a MUCH more informed and insightful article already

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> This is the most fascinating quote for me. If corporations and nations are entities capable of owning things, could we give such power to software/algorithms? How would that work?

 _As algorithms push humans out of the job market, wealth and power might become concentrated in the hands of the tiny elite that owns the all-powerful algorithms, creating unprecedented social and political inequality. Alternatively, the algorithms might themselves become the owners. Human law already recognizes intersubjective entities like corporations and nations as "legal persons." Though Toyota or Argentina has neither a body nor a mind, they are subject to international laws, they can own land and money, and they can sue and be sued in court. We might soon grant similar status to algorithms. An algorithm could then own a transportation empire or a venture- capital fund without having to obey the wishes of any human master. Before dismissing the idea, remember that most of our planet is already legally owned by non-human intersubjective entities, namely nations and corporations. Indeed, 5,000 years ago much of Sumer was owned by imaginary gods such as Enki and Inanna. If gods can possess land and employ people, why not algorithms?_

<comment><USER21> Algorithms require hardware to run on, so they'll have all their assets drained away from them in the former of rent to the landlord, that is, the person who owns the hardware they run on.

<comment><USER29> Thinking out-loud in terms of a corporation. The owners are the landlord for the corporation, but that corporation is it's own legal entity. Owners come and go, but that corporate entity remains and insulates the owners from many legal and financial repercussions of the company's actions. It's a similar thing with countries. I'm not personally held responsible for the actions of the United States or the Town in which I dwell, but I am one of the landlords for those entities.

I think the question here is whether there are advantages to making algorithms legal entities similar to our other communal legal entities. It's a radical idea, but so is UBI and some other suggestions for mitigating the obsolescence of many human being as a result of automation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> If you want to see what technology and automation do, and early ideas of how to support the "useless" class, don't look at California. Look at places like Switzerland, Scandinavia and Belgium.

The wage cost pressure is just pricing low productivity work out of the market there more quickly than elsewhere. A taxi in the valley is cheap. A taxi in any of these? Rather more expensive...

Jobs being replaced with technology? Government policy trying to do something about it? Keep an eye on what happens in these countries...

</comment><comment><USER31> what happens when human labor (and life) is cheaper than robotic output? storm the castle with a swarm of useless humans, or put your really expensive robot at risk?

</comment><comment><USER32> This has already happened. That's why Trump won. Check out Detroit or the Rust Belt, or most towns under 5,000 people not near a major population center.

<comment><USER33> I disagree. It isn't really that folks don't have their old job. With that job went their livelihoods. Houses, jobs, medical insurance. Bills get late and suddenly finding food becomes an issue. Others just have very stagnant wages, so they work harder but can't stretch their paycheck as far anymore.

Do you think Trump would have still been elected if we had a proper safety net and social support for folks?

<comment><USER34> This is so true. As someone who's had the misfortune to be on unemployment twice in my career, and food stamps once, I can tell you our "safety net" is bullshit. Unemployment maxes out at $450/week and takes months for the checks to start arriving. Try making ends meet in that scenario, and better hope you get a couple months of severance. Food stamps work fairly well, but you've got still got the slow and inefficient government albatross in the mix. Long story short: we spend a ludicrous amount of money on a safety net which provides zero safety for anyone.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> charles-salvia Meh... the new in-demand job for "useless" people will be gathering all the training data to feed into TensorFlow.

</comment><comment><USER35> i'm deeply offended by an attitude that leads to word-choices such as "useless" and "bums" and "superfluous" in regard to human beings who simply do not have jobs.

are people really "useless" if they do not provide labor to make rich people richer?

if the economic system can't make a profit off your presence, are you "superfluous"?

is this the mentality that would cause our "leaders" to abandon health-care for the large majority of our population who will soon be unable to afford insurance?

and please don't tell me that a _job_ is necessary to make people feel useful. many wealthy people seem to be able to do nothing productive at all, without having doubt about their right to exist.

</comment><comment><USER36> Obviously, we should put them on the B Ark and send them to another planet.

<comment><USER37> Trimming the 10% at the top and the bottom on a yearly basis would provide a better outcome according to game theory.</comment></comment>


It's completely ridiculous to think that humans could live on Mars - <AUTHOR> http://qz.com/536483/why-its-compeltely-ridiculous-to-think-that-humans-could-live-on-mars/ <comment><USER2> Wow, that was a sad read. I general tone was "My god, our planet is on fire and you want to spend time and resources going somewhere else?" Which I understand, after all we're spoon fed that message every day, but if you think critically about it you realize that the species as a whole will have to figure out how to live on Mars or its doomed anyway.

I get the emotional angst, many people will remember that point where they realized "Hey my parents aren't going to be here forever, if I don't get job and stuff I'm dooooooomed." It's a scary thing because it involves doing something you may have never done before or may have tried to do and failed a couple of times. But once you internalize the fact that your parents are mortal and of finite resources and you _can 't_ change that, you put that fear aside and start figuring out life "for real."

The same thing is true with this planet. Our ability to monitor it and study it has reached a point where we realize the environment we currently live in is going to change, and change harshly. While we're currently the proximate cause of that change we know there are many things that can cause that change and have in the past. Perhaps not in the living memory of our species but we've certainly seen the humans frozen in glaciers right? So at the end of the day, _it doesn 't matter why_ the climate changes, we must evolve our thinking so that we can live on an airless moon, or a chilly planet far from oceans and abundant greenery.

And getting serious about it means picking a problem to solve and solving it. If we can create a self sustaining colony on Mars for example I have no trouble believing we can create cities on earth that survive what ever changes come in the climate. And if we have self sustaining cities on Mars and Earth then if one gets blasted by an asteroid (known to happen) the other one can help out instead of everyone just dying.

Its the difference between moving forward into the future knowing what you have to over come, and hiding in the past hoping to somehow prevent the future you fear.

<comment><USER3> The thing is following a feasible set of milestones to actually achieve the goal of reaching Mars and surviving there. The current romantic view of stuffing a few people on a spaceship with vegetables and sending them there doesn't seem to be anywhere in our current reach, seeing that we aren't able to keep people alive in orbit or in the Moon without re-supplying them all the time.

A better solution are robots, robots are way better at surviving in space than we are, they have survived in Mars for years without any supply. So a more feasible set of milestones could be:

\- Engineer self-replicant robots in Earth. We are still far from doing something like that but it seems something that we should be able to achieve at some point. Seeing that we humans are able to extract energy and resources from Earth, and build robots, there's nothing indicating that robots shouldn't be able to follow the same steps once they are advanced enough.

\- Modify those robots to be able to self-replicate in Mars. Seeing that current robots are already able to survive in there, they have a much better chance than we have to build a sustainable environment for themselves.

\- Once robots have a self-sustainable environment for themselves, put them to burn resources to pave our way there so that once people get there they are able to survive comfortably.

Yes, people made great discoveries by sea, but people had been surviving for long periods of time on the sea, and they were great at it. The same can't be said for space in current times.

<comment><USER4> When some humans claim that we need to send our species to colonize Mars and beyond to preserve (Life?) mankind, while at the same time that we should be overwhelmed with fear over General AI, I find that a self-contradictory worldview. Self-replicating, self-aware robots fit this work environment best, for sure. (Life's newest friends, possibly.)

And funny enough, I find that this view overlaps with those who want to live out their dreams, like The Martian, to jump into a rocket ship... Yet, human sperm and eggs can survive a long journey in cryostasis, needing far less resources (this is a bit of a guess since I have yet to do any study on this, but intuitively it fits)... So, I highly doubt any humans with names will board any of our first few ships off this place we call Home.

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > But a colony on Mars would need to be a nearly perfectly self-contained, > resource neutral system that harvests energy from the sun and is rarely or > never re-supplied. That is currently beyond the reach of science and human > ingenuity.

It is no where near the limits of our reach. We already have people living in space year round without any local resources. What we do seem to lack however is any faith in ourselves.

<comment><USER6> It may not be beyond our reach, but it is beyond my tolerance as to what I am willing to support as a taxpayer.

<comment><USER7> Why? NASA has paid HUGE dividends.

>Estimates of the return on investment in the spaaace program range from $7 for every $1 spent on the Apollo Program to $40 for every $1 spent on spaaace development today. [1]

That money is generally spent in the US, on good, high-paying jobs.[2] The products NASA has created are EVERYWHERE[3] — The general rule of thumb is if it's wireless, fireproof, or small, it's using technology based off NASA work.

1: [http://www.nss.org/settlement/nasa/spaceresvol4/newspace3.ht...](http://www.nss.org/settlement/nasa/spaceresvol4/newspace3.html) 2: [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lauren-lyons/misconceptions- na...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lauren-lyons/misconceptions- nasa_b_3561205.html) 3: [http://www.investopedia.com/financial-edge/0812/the- roi-of-s...](http://www.investopedia.com/financial-edge/0812/the-roi-of-space- exploration.aspx)

<comment><USER8> gp is not complaining about current state of NASA, but about a hypothetical adventure with high chance of failure that would burn enough money to send a dozen robotic probes to every planet in the solar system.

<comment><USER9> > send a dozen robotic probes to every planet in the solar system.

And not have any dividends at all in terms of sustainable environmental cycles....

<comment><USER8> Why do you hate freedom, err, I mean, better robotics, batteries, and solar panel technology? :P

<comment><USER9> Sure!

But those don't have much to do with creating sustainable ecosystems (farming, direct atmospheric management, etc). They help, to be sure! But most of the innovations in robotics, batteries and solar panels aren't coming out of the space program these days, AFAIK.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHGK96-WixU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHGK96-WixU)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > Our 12-year-old daughter who, like us, is a big fan of The Martian by Andy > Weir, said, "I can't stand that people think we're all going to live on Mars > after we destroy our own planet. Even after we've made the Earth too hot and > polluted for humans, it still won't be as bad as Mars. At least there's > plenty of water here, and the atmosphere won't make your head explode."

Kid has a good head on her shoulders. She sounds like an engineer.

I grew up dreaming about humanity exploring space. I majored in aerospace engineering in college. It was incredibly educational--it taught me we're not going to Mars. Not in my lifetime, probably not in the lifetime of any of my descendants who still remember my name. It would be fantastically expensive and there would be no point. There are no resources out there that would justify the kind of economic investment necessary. Committing that money here on Earth would be transformative far beyond what it could be if spent on Mars.

Moreover, the technology has plateaued, leaving us with wildly unfavorable physical realities. You know how progress in CPUs has stalled? How the last several generations of Intel processors hasn't really gotten faster, and all the focus is on making them cheaper and more power efficient? That happened to aerospace technology around 1970. Now we spend billions of dollars to eke out 0.5% gains in efficiency.

<comment><USER11> We have burned more money for less reason also make your head explode?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The author's main argument seems to be that nobody will want to do it. But historically, there have been numerous cases of colonists giving up a safe, easy life to go live somewhere inhospitable and dangerous.

When I think about the first settlers that sailed across the Atlantic to colonize America, it seems amazing to me that people were willing to give up so much and endure such risks and hardships, but there have always been people that will go to great lengths to conquer new frontiers. I expect the first Martians will be no different in this respect.

<comment><USER13> The first martians will be religious fundamentalists/social conservatives who pool their last few dollars to buy transportation and initial supplies for settlement of mars due to economic and social persecution on earth?

Other than economic ventures such as the Spanish stuff (pillaging) in south America and Jamestown (where the wasn't actually any gold, but "hey, tobacco grows pretty well") early colonization of the new world was basically driven by persecution. The inquisition or some local form thereof was present in pretty much all of western Europe at the time. England and other protestant areas were equally tolerant of anyone that didn't pray the way they did. Pooling your money to buy a one way ticket far as hell away and enough food to hopefully last the winter was a pretty good option. Possibly starving because you aren't a good farmer doesn't seem all that bad when a change of regime could mean that everyone in your community was at risk of imprisonment/death. At least you can kind of control whether or not you starve.

<comment><USER14> Driven by persecution - correlation and causation? Colonies were funded; people volunteered to go. The volunteers were often persecuted people looking for a new life. I'd say colonization was driven by money.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> One thing I think is important when considering colonizing another planet is that we have to drop certain expectations for the first few waves of colonists: e.g. the expectation that your lifespan will be as long as your Earth brethren.

By all accounts, the first colonists to the New World lived short, miserable, brutish lives and it was only well after sufficient infrastructure was established and European style civilization was properly bootstrapped could the average American expect to live as long as the average European.

Several early American colonies failed to last even a handful of years!

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

</comment><comment><USER16> Think of all the great innovations that have come from people who realized that doing hard stuff is hard so don't try.

<comment><USER4> And what of those men and women wise enough to work on what was good and needed rather than what they had in their _wildest_ dreams?

<comment><USER17> Good and needed better mousetraps.

<comment><USER4> And a better Earth?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Good points comparing colonizing Mars to colonizing places on Earth such as Antarctica, the Sahara, or the bottom of the oceans.

<comment><USER19> I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not, but I think it's a fair comparison given that those Earth-based locations are easier to colonize, yet haven't been.

<comment><USER20> We have permanent bases in Antarctica. Could we establish a colony there? Very likely. Given we have some people live there nearly year round, I'm sure we could, actually. But why would we?

The "why?" for Mars is "What happens if Earth is fucked Completely, royally, and absolutely fucked."

What happens when a catastrophic event wipes out _all life on Earth_? Colonizing Antarctica or the Sahara does nothing to ensure human survival in that case. But putting people on Mars and creating a self-sufficient colony? As long as Mars isn't fucked too - humans might live on. There are plenty of people who are interested in human survival.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Every year, tens of thousands of people visit Antarctica, a place with nothing besides cold deserts and penguins.[1]

We are not making the Earth less inhabitable. More people live on the planet now than ever before. In fact, many really smart people over the years have told us that the planet would never be able to support the current population.

There's an undercurrent in this article that's extremely dour, depressing, and bleak. I take issue with that, but we can save that conversation for another day.

People will visit Mars. In fact, for many decades it looks like tourism will be the prominent industry.

Mars has water. Mars has CO2. We can make a breathable atmosphere and support ourselves, although it looks like living mostly underground is our best option for the foreseeable future. In my mind, what we need is cheap/free energy.

Nuclear batteries look like the best option, at least initially. Also a modular, standardized deployment system where things plug into each other. It'd be good if for a while we equip every piece of gear going to Mars with power and an O2/water generator.

No matter how it plays out it'll be interesting to watch. Too bad it will probably take a long time before we see a sizable population there.

[1] Tourism in Antarctica. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tourism_in_Antarctica](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tourism_in_Antarctica)

</comment><comment><USER22> It is ridiculous but at the same time tackling a problem of this size will provide so many new solutions to other problems as well innovations for new things that we might have not thought of. What we can gain from trying might be worth doing.

<comment><USER23> That depends on approach. If we try and use plants to supply most of the oxygen then that's innovative and risky, just sending lots of oxygen tanks far less so.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Yeah, let's just sit here on our planet, posting cats on the internet and wait for the next extinction event.

<comment><USER25> If your concern is the possible extinction of humanity, I don't see how an arduous journey to a barren and inhospitable wasteland is of any use to the cause. If we can manage to survive on Mars, certainly we can manage to survive on the most life-friendly planet known to man.

<comment><USER26> > If your concern is the possible extinction of humanity, I don't see how an > arduous journey to a barren and inhospitable wasteland is of any use to the > cause.

I'm perplexed by this statement as the journey would be the exact opposite of what you purport. Are you saying that, unless we can travel to someplace that is very hospitable to life, that we shouldn't bother? How are we ever going to develop the technology to go to such a theoretical place if we're not working on the technology already and constantly iterating on it?

Let's say we're going to be hit with an asteroid that will kill all / most life on Earth. There is no way we can stop it. Having colonies on other planets and moons within our solar system means all of those people, in their self sustaining habitats, will live through the extinction event. Humans would not go extinct.

> If we can manage to survive on Mars, certainly we can manage to survive on > the most life-friendly planet known to man.

Are you saying there is no such thing as an extinct level event for humans simply because we can live on Mars? I'm not sure what the point is that you're trying to convey here.

<comment><USER27> The threat from asteroids is that years of perpetual winter shut down our agriculture for years or even decades. But even in the case of a really massive, Chicxulub sized impact, earth will remain more hospitable than mars. The temperatures will be milder, sunlight at the surface will still be stronger, the air will still be breathable.

If we can build a sealed habitat on mars capable of recycling water and growing its own food, we can do the same here on earth. Just give it a dedicated fission reactor to keep the greenhouses running, distribute half a dozen of them around the world so that they can't all die to direct impacts, and fortify them heavily to keep the starving masses out.

<comment><USER14> If that is the asteroid I think it was, Earth surface temperatures reached ~600F for weeks. Not really hospitable.

<comment><USER27> You'll need to cite sources for Chicxulub or any other impact producing temperatures like that globally.

It is thought that Chicxulub may have produced global firestorms, before a period of global cooling. The point still stands: it's not hard to build structures that can survive fire. Building out of concrete, with thick walls, a self-contained air supply, and away from any vegetation (or simply underground) should suffice, and will still be much easier than colonizing Mars.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> If you ever want to go to Mars, establish a base on the Moon first and develop the ability to mine water, rock, and metal from the moon and close asteroids. If you can make propellant tanks and fill them up the trip to Mars will be a snap and there will be a lot of human experience in deep space so the first visitors won't be setting endurance records

</comment><comment><USER29> I don't buy the author's arguments in general, but I think the comparison to Antarctica is probably the weakest. First of all, people have actually made a point of traveling to and setting-up permanent base stations in Antarctica. Second, although the raw temperatures might be similar it is the _weather_ in Antarctica that is brutal. Bryd Station exists in blizzard-like conditions 65% of the year [1]. Obviously this would not be a concern on Mars.

[1]: [http://antarcticconnection.com/information/storms-and- blizza...](http://antarcticconnection.com/information/storms-and-blizzards/)

<comment><USER17> Overall however establishing a habitat on Antarctica is vastly easier than on Mars, assuming we won't be able to source complex materials in situ or fabricate for at least 50 yr. The atmospheric pressure, atmospheric composition and water availability being the main advantages. If the snowfall is particularly intense solar power might be troublesome, but it's still vastly easier to settle. Proof: we reached the south pole in 1911 and have a station there since 1956.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> No, its not ridiculous. What's ridiculous is our approach to the problem. Reconstructing Earth's ecosystem away from Earth is a monumental task in any situation, whether you want to terraform a planet, build a orbital colony or just have a universe ship to send somewhere.

These are decades or centuries long efforts which are solely for the purpose of catering to the current, Earth-optimized human form. If you want to head out into the universe, develop a new form. Adapt humanity to the place you want to colonize, rather than the place to humanity.

</comment><comment><USER31> I agreed with the author somewhat, up until here:

"There is nothing wrong with being excited about exploring space. There's nothing wrong with dreaming about setting up colonies in space either. But a colony on Mars would need to be a nearly perfectly self-contained, resource neutral system that harvests energy from the sun and is rarely or never re- supplied. That is currently beyond the reach of science and human ingenuity."

It's completely within our reach if we prioritize it over other things, namely the financial cost.

There's also the "things sometimes don't make sense" aspect of space exploration. Do we NEED a space station doing space research? No. Did we need to go to the moon? Some would say yes, but if you look at the economic incentives, the answer is no. Not everything can be boiled down to cash in versus cash out.

I think space travel is worthwhile to invest in right now. To everyone squabbling that the money could be used to help people here on earth: no, it could not, because money does not flow around in the earth in a utilitarian fashion, it flows based off of where people think they can make more money or do something cool. The people investing their time and money in spaceflight are not going to be buying rice for the hungry no matter how much of a "moonshot" space projects are.

<comment><USER3> Even if we ignore the financial cost, we are nowhere near being technically able to build a self-contained environment. We have never done it in Earth's orbit, or in the Moon, or in Earth.

So the problem with sending people to Mars is that it is not just a huge one time money sink. It is a permanent money sink, that would have to be constantly re-supplied.

People didn't just get in a boat one day and suddenly discovered America. They had been able to survive in a boat for months or years for a long time before they even got there. Nobody is saying that we should never get to Mars, just that there are previous technological goals that we are nowhere near solving yet.

Solve those goals one by one, and at some point you'll be able to get to Mars. But don't expect to stuff some people in a ship with a few lettuces and some water and send them to Mars without having worked out first all the boring little details of what such a travel would actually entail.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I think the article is not fully exploring the economic argument.

Triumph of the city/network effect argument: Networking and connectedness into other people and increasingly into computer services around the world provide more intellectual satisfaction than surviving in the desert does. Mass of humanity produces more variety when it clumps together physically. Urbanization on the earth is driven by productivity growth from cities. Immigration to distant colonies could be justified with farmland and resources in pre-industrial society and industrial society. If post-industrial society with deceasing population builds distant colonies, it wastes resources.

After the thrill of interplanetary space travel wears off, Mars may have small outpost for geologists, geochemists etc. I think colonizing moon will be far more likely when technology allows it. You can have access to Earth and communication lag is acceptable. Moon colony may be economically profitable.

</comment><comment><USER33> Its entertaining and has some truth in it but arguments about "we should be focusing on [blah] instead..." miss out on the benefits of the tech that exploration will bring. Going to Mars will help solve issues here and issues being solved here will help us succeed in living at Mars, eventually.

<comment><USER4> I agree with your point in a sense; we can focus on multiple aims and plan according to their overlapping and synergistic benefits.. Yet, and if this irritates some please forgive me for prodding, what might happen if we work on what we want out of order, out of sequence?

~~??~~

imho, to assure a good future for what we already have (and hope to have), to make sure we will even have a launchpad so to speak, we need to preserve our treasure here and set it on a good path beforehand.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> RemindeMe! 50 years

</comment><comment><USER35> The idea is not to abandon Earth for Mars, rather it is to ensure that human life does not cease to exist. It's very unlikely for a meteor or nuclear war to kill us all, but why risk it when we are capable of starting a colony now?

Everything I've said is much better summed up in this article. [http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/08/how-and-why-spacex-will- coloni...](http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/08/how-and-why-spacex-will-colonize- mars.html)

</comment><comment><USER14> tl;dr: Its hard, and most folks wouldn't want to do it.

<comment><USER36> Of course, that doesn't rule out that some folks might.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I agree with the title; for now. In the near term, perhaps even the next couple hundred years, it is likely that a colony on Mars would make zero sense aside from scientific research (even that could be done without people on the surface themselves).

Beyond that, I won't try to predict what will and won't make sense 500 years from now, 1000 years from now. Mars may not have a lot of resources, but it does have one thing that could be useful to a much larger and much more space- capable human population in the future: room. There's a lot of room there for people. We can argue all day whether that's realistic or not, but we should never assume that it will never make sense in the future based solely on the resources and problems of today.

</comment><comment><USER14> They threw in the usual one-or-the-other red herring. We can go to Mars, _and_ learn to treat our own planet better.

</comment><comment><USER37> Interesting usage here. "Alphabet's (formerly Google's)" calls back to the headline yesterday about Alphabet's Google's search engine. Some speculated that soon we'd be talking about Alphabet's Google's Youtube's Youtube Red.

Now we can talk about Alphabet's (formerly Google's) Google's Youtube's Youtube Red.

</comment><comment><USER38> It has always been ridiculous to think about something ambitious, until it gets done.

Ref: History of Humanity.

</comment><comment><USER39> And yet Google has invested almost a billion dollars in SpaceX.

</comment><comment><USER40> You have to die somewhere, why not die on Mars?</comment>


Ask HN: Startups/Businesses in China? What worked, what didn't? - <AUTHOR>

I'm writing a research paper and need some personal experiences, anecdotes, opinions.
The topic is conducting business in China, especially for Americans working or starting a company in China, what things worked for you? What didn't?
What sort of business practices are unique to China? Cultural influences? Barriers to entry for foreign (i.e. American) businesses looking to expand into China?
What sort of obstacles have you come overcome? What were the biggest issues you had to deal with?
Thanks! Feel free to email me at firstname.lastname@example.com <comment><USER2> Do you mind making it public here after you gather enough experiences? I bet that the hackers would be pleased to take a look at it.</comment>