Ask HN: At 34, do I go back to college or not? - <AUTHOR> I'm an orthopedic surgeon with a PhD in Biomaterials. I have a comfortable financial situation, a beautiful family and basically just work 2 days/week. Besides that, I really miss the challenge of creating something and wish that I had studied CS or engineering (thanks to PG and Woz!).
So here is the deal: I want to build a startup in 2-3 years dealing with custom-made prostheses, and I'd like to hack the technical side myself. My problem is education/background in robotics to pull it off.
From my initial investigations, I'll need a basic knowledge of mechanics and electronics (nothing fancy, it is basically a solved problem) and a more mature grasp of computer science (possibly some LISP to wrap everything). This is quite a stretch from my technical background (basic Calculus, basic FEA and some Python).
Here are my options: 1) Self-study (more targeted and possibly faster; requires self-discipline; no feedback; isolation) 2) Follow a 2-year technical college in mechanics and/or electronics (good practice; requires complementation) 3) Get a 5-year degree in mechanical or computer engineering (nice, but too long; lacks practical side?) 4) Combinations of the above (e.g. drop college after 2 years + self-study)
It certainly looks challenging, but my goal is not only making money in a fixed time frame, titles or jobs, but the journey itself. Can I get some advice? <comment><USER2> Since you certainly have the discipline to pull self-study off, I would suggest emailing a professor teaching undergraduate classes in Mechatronics or Embedded Systems at Stanford, Cornell or Carnegie Mellon. They have very solid programs in robotics as they are always big contenders in the DARPA grand challenges. Get a syllabus and buy the books. When I took those classes, it was a lot of self-study anyways with our primary reference being The Art of Electronics and a bunch of AVR processor manuals. If you live in San Jose / Santa Clara area there are some GREAT electronics depots where you can stroll up and walk away with a bunch of servo motors for under $20 and start hardware-hacking.

Don't go back to school though. I think its a bit overkill. Having a PhD you already possess the skills to find the right resources and just begin doing what you want...no need to relearn the theory (unless that is half the fun for you). To address the isolation concern, I would suggest to find a hardware company (perhaps medical) that you could intern at. Try and find a mentor who can show you the ropes quicker than if you were to be by yourself.

<comment><USER3> Can you give more info on the electronics depots in the San Jose/Santa Clara area please?

<comment><USER2> Yea, I used to go to Halted and Triangle Machinery Co.. There's also the Electronics Flea Market hosted by amateur radio societies that has good deals too but you have to get there right when it opens (5am) to get the best stuff. <http://www.electronicsfleamarket.com/>

San Jose State University keeps a good list of local surplus depots here: [http://www.engr.sjsu.edu/bjfurman/courses/ME106/componentinf...](http://www.engr.sjsu.edu/bjfurman/courses/ME106/componentinfo.htm)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Can't you go for a Master's in CS or Robotics or something? I know people with math/science backgrounds but no CS-backgrounds doing their CS Master's here at UCSD. It sounds like a lot of scrambling to catch up, but probably the best bang for your buck.

<comment><USER5> I think an MS is the way to go. You may even meet a cofounder in the program and drop out. Just getting books is not going to give you the same experience and education level as a year or more on a campus with labs, peers, and mentorship.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not sure about this. I've been through something like that during the PhD, when I had to do some advanced stuff in Mechanics (finite element analysis), without the proper background. It worked and I learned a lot, but it is different from following the proper undergraduate courses.

My problem with graduate studies is that your mentor always has an agenda (a paper, a prototype, etc) which may compromise his advice (e.g. skipping really important courses/books to save time). Therefore, I'd much rather focus on technical/undergraduate courses, if following any at all.

<comment><USER4> From what I've heard, the MS programs tend to be much more oriented towards learning what you need to learn and getting out in 2 years. I don't speak from personal experience, though, so I'd suggest you talk to folks who've done it. I'd be happy to put you in touch with some if you'd like. My email's in my profile.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is going to sound a bit presumptuous, but with your background, you might be able to get to market much quicker if you approached some life sciences VCs first. They may be able to introduce you to someone who can handle the CS side, give you a little money to get started, and avoid some pitfalls along the way.

I don't remember the names of early stage life sciences VCs off the top of my head, but if you're interested, I'd be happy to do some digging this weekend for you.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the advice. I thought of this before, but I realized that the journey is more important than the destination to me. Why should I outsource all the fun?

That being said, a younger co-founder with the engineering and /or business skills, good stamina and character would be certainly great. I hope to find someone like this during my preparation.

<comment><USER7> Perhaps consider outsourcing _some_ of the fun? Say, self-study a bit, but also bring on a mechanical or electrical engineer to do the heavy lifting.

If you do go for a degree, I'd suggest electrical engineering. I know many great programmers whose degrees are EE, and it sounds like you'll need some expertise in that area as well. (No, I'm not referring to people from schools where CS technically falls under the EE department, like MIT -- though a joint program would probably work too).

<comment><AUTHOR> I think bringing in more knowledgeable people in the future will be definitely necessary. What I'd like to do is to be able to build a rough alpha version (think Apple I), and then have people come and polish it (think Apple II). With more people and funding, we may be able to achieve Mac-level (relatively, of course).

My problem with the full EE course is that it will eventually require me to go into areas absolutely not necessary at all. But the same can be said for all other options as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Anybody reading this site knows that college is not a necessary step on the way to entrepreneurship, including you.

But less talked about it is the "journey" part.

As long one is in touch with personal motivations and goals, then college seems fine.

You're in no rush, financially comfortable, and as eager for experiences as you are your innovative product. I'd say college sounds like a cool idea. I'd just be careful to pick a good program, otherwise it could be painful/frustrating.

I'm about to go to college part-time with no professional necessity at all. I'm in a different spot than the OP. I don't have a first degree. But I do have a fine geeky career that I'm about to step out of to start a business (way less capital intensive than his idea :D ), and am going to college with the _hope_ of learning a subject matter, but no real expectations. Just mostly for the experience.

<comment><AUTHOR> You make a valid point and I'd do the same if I were in your shoes. I'm just worried of wasting too much time pursuing rabbit holes when I already know where I want to go. At the same time, I've been more than once surprised with things that seemed unimportant before. The question then is how to filter out the "rabbit holes", while keeping the ignored interesting stuff.

<comment><USER9> "you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards." <http://news.stanford.edu/news/2005/june15/jobs-061505.html>

<comment><USER10> "Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards." -- Kierkegaard

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Just get some books and start hacking. That's all they use to teach you with in college anyway, except they charge you a metric crapload to do it.

"An expert is a man who has made all the mistakes which can be made in a narrow field." -Niels Bohr

<comment><AUTHOR> I like the attitude, but it is not so simple. Take a look at the other replies, from people with more experience on the engineering side (rather than CS), and you'll quickly realize that self-study/hacking can only get you so far. It wouldn't be different for, let's say, surgery...

The matter here is trying to get to expert level while minimizing stupid mistakes, and for practical subjects, demo and feedback seems to be necessary. Making all possible mistakes is very time-consuming.

<comment><USER11> The difference between software and surgery is that in surgery you can make unfixable mistakes. Not so in software, unless your program is controlling a Therac-25 or something. The key thing to realize is that even when you go to school to learn, they can't possibly teach you "everything". You still have to learn a lot on your own after graduating.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Hey! Having just finished a CS degree and after thoughtful consideration, if I had the opportunity to go back in time and do it over again, I wouldn't. I think that I could have covered all of the material in far less time on my own and used the extra time to develop my skills as a programmer. With all of the exams and assignments that occupy so much time in University, I think that your time would be better spent writing programs that interest you and reading other people's code as well. University will teach you the basics, but without much practice, it's of very little value. Furthermore, I gather from your post that you'd be studying for the benefit of starting your own company. As a result, you obviously don't need that piece of paper certifying that you know what you know. Conversely, if you thought that you might eventually seek employment with another company, the CS degree is (unfortunately) important just to get a look at your c.v.

This is just one man's opinion. Let me know what you decide.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're right, I don't need the title by itself. But I do think that CS is the most challenging part of this project, and this opinion is shared by many people into robotics. The mechatronics part is tough, involves lots of math, but it is a solved problem after all. Do you really think it is possible to take on SICP, K&R, PAIP et al by oneself?

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I think you'll be fine with self-study. The way you get feedback is to iterate and share your work with other people. Build a small robotics project, find your favorite robotics-related community / fourm, post "look at my robot, my robot's amazing", and wait for the feedback. Then do that again.

Eventually, you'll develop a sense of what's right and wrong (from your own experience and looking at other people's work), and then you'll have the tool you need to do the project you actually want to do -- experience and intuition.

It reminds me of that essay, "Teach yourself programming in ten years". You can't read a book and become an instant expert. You have to read books AND fail for yourself AND learn from your failures and success. You aren't going to get this skill in college, you can only get it with your own practice.

</comment><comment><USER14> You can learn the mechanics and electronics yourself. You have time, money for equipment and books, and all the background and maturity you need. If you find that going it alone leads to frustration, pay a starving grad student $30 an hour to help you out once in a while. I don't say this knowing anything about mechanics and electronics; I just know that school will be too slow for you and won't actually help much. School is for people who need to prove (to themselves and others) that they aren't just dicking around. Since you've got a PhD _and_ financial security, people are going to assume that whatever you're doing in your workshop, you aren't just wasting your time, and even if you are, you've earned the right.

Don't sweat the difference between Lisp and Python. Python interfaces to C and has large, mature, and popular scientific computing libraries. I would actually recommend learning Lisp (for the usual reasons) and using it as you pursue whatever CS learning you need, but don't be surprised if you end up using Python for practical work because of the libraries and the large community of people doing scientific computing.

<comment><AUTHOR> I consider CS the most important part of this project and the real open problem. I thought about doing this project in LISP, because dealing with custom-made devices will require code generation and lots of AI. I'll have to translate lots of surgical experience and rules of thumb into the code, so Python doesn't seem to be enough (or maybe I'm just unexperienced). Besides that, I really control all the environment so deployment is a non-issue. Does my rationalization makes sense?

<comment><USER14> Honestly, it did not even cross my mind that you would need to do any sophisticated programming. I assumed that most of the challenge would be in mapping and mastering the problem domain: figuring out what problems you need to solve, researching existing solutions to each problem, finding code and adapting it for your needs, experimenting to see if the existing solutions work well for your particular problems, adapting them if necessary, and then wiring it all together in a simple way using a glue language. Lots of work and sophisticated AI stuff there (probably a few PhDs if you took it far enough) but no fancy programming. That seems to be the sad truth about real world problems: the programming is rarely as hard and interesting as all the other problems you will solve.

On the other hand, Lisp is a lot of fun, and you shouldn't pass up any excuse to learn it ;-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'd say go with #2 (technical college), to learn how to program micro- controllers with sensors and actuators, and have hands-on experience with equipment.

That will give you a view-from-the-bottom perspective on CS; perhaps then you'll figure out if you need to climb to the top.

<comment><USER16> I agree with that. As somebody with a science background, I feel self-study is great if I want to _understand_ something, but for anything relating to manipulating a physical object, I find it much, much faster to have it demonstrated first, and to try it in front of a critical (in a nice way) person.

For example I prefer to understand quantum mechanics from a book, but I would rather somebody showed me how to truss a chicken.

EPID and all that, but I think there is a huge shortcut to be had by spending a little time with somebody who has the tools and skills you are trying to pick up. The rest you can figure out for yourself.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think you nailed it, this is the insight I was looking for and wasn't able to express myself. I've had this experience in the medical field and it is true, certain practical stuff (surgery, soldering, etc) requires demonstration/feedback. Thanks.

<comment><USER15> Let me add one thing that I forgot to mention: do not miss playing a bit with analog electronics - such as operational amplifiers with gain fixed by a negative feedback loop, low pass filters, oscillators, etc. ('Enlightenment' for EEs starts here: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operational_amplifier#Non- inver...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operational_amplifier#Non- inverting_amplifier) )

There's lots of fascinating systems/control theory that you can 'climb up' from there. You'll also find that part of what the body does is similar to those crude electronic systems. And a lot of the programmed digital control is emulation of the behavior of analog, but often with bells and whistles impossible in simple circuits.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> If you have time and disposable income, why not self-study with a tutor to guide you? Not entirely sure of the best way to go about finding one, but it would at least cut out some of the disadvantages of the self-study route.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a good idea, but I'll probably need a lot of tutors. Maybe I need a "higher-altitude" mentor, who can go through the journey with me and indicate tutors when necessary.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Unless you really have a passion for learning, I'd say it's not worth it. Are you really going to take a risk and go back to college so that you could take even more risk by doing a startup? Are you sure you can't/don't want to take on other roles besides being the hacker?

I guess it ultimately depends on how comfortable you are. Whatever you do, try doing it the "lean" way. Try taking one or two classes first without jumping into pursuing a degree. A lot of universities allow concurrent enrollment so you'd just take a class alongside regular students if they have room. Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER19> I think a 1-year MS in some kind of engineering from a school with hands-on classes would do the trick. I did this at Stanford coming from a similar semi- technical background, and it was great. I think a class like ME218 at Stanford teaches you a nice mix of electrical, mechanical, and software. Video of a recent final project: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ukxm54MhrIk>

</comment><comment><USER20> You have really specific ideas which makes me think you can self study. Institutional learning can be wider focussed and might not be as useful.

1) I would suggest starting the business right now. You have a day job and can bank roll it the initial stuff. Give yourself a budget and maybe a time and place to work on it? Do you have time to study on the side?

2) Next, find the type of customer that you want to work with and start seeing what you can find on the market to fit their needs. This way you can find a niche. Is it kids, adults, veterans? Is it mobility, seeing, hearing, etc?

3) Start researching the sort of things that are being created. (ex: The walking robots, robot cars, etc.) Maybe start communicating with researchers directly. You might end up finding one to study this exact thing with.

4) Try to connect a technology you can replicate with customers that you want to help and figure out what needs to be done to connect the two. You may even start just by helping people with off the shelf products and improving them.

This can be a good time to put together a business plan if you need funding to pull it off. You may also find yourself just building a series of prototypes in your spare time.

Enable a few kids to walk and money will find you.

<comment><USER20> PS: Maybe buy "What is a Microcontroller" about the Basic Stamp. [http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=211799...](http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2117994) It's really simple and a nice way to get perspective on programming hardware. As a next step, build something with an Arduino.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Gee, I'm 34 and I'm planning to go back to school for a Masters in robotics next year (I'm a Mech Eng graduate).

I sure wish I'll run into someone like you when I'm done with my Masters.

For now, may I suggest you check out the Springer Handbook of Robotics for an excellent wide overview of the field, both in theory and applications. Maybe seeing it laid out like that will help you decide where you want to go with it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, thanks for the tip and please keep us posted. ;-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> 2 or 4 sound like your best options, more likely 4. Remember, you don't _have_ to do everything yourself; maybe a year or two spent learning the basics would give you both a good foundation for the project, and the opportunity to meet, evaluate and recruit other people who may have better ME/EE skills than you, but not your clinical expertise.

Or as you say it's 'basically a solved problem', maybe you can just find someone and work together. Just lsat week I was recommending HN to someone with a Mech eng degree and who has family manufacturing contacts in Asia to get on HN because he's a great hardware hacker but doesn't enjoy programming so much. Depending on your location, I bet you could assemble a small research team here on HN fairly easily. I wish you good luck with it, as giving mobility to people who've lost limbs or similar is a very worthy pursuit.

As for the headline question of 'college in 30s' I say sure. I turn 40 this year and am returning to study, which will be a 4-5 year process.

</comment><comment><USER23> What about option 5:

Learn while doing, or more specifically while someone else does and teaches you. You're clearly highly skilled in your technical niche why don't you find someone else with complimentary skills (mechanics, electronics and computer science) and partner with them. You can start building your business immediately in the time that you have and as part of the partnership each teach the other. I know that as a hacker having the opportunity to work with a real specialist in another field and for us both to teach each other would be a massively satisfying experience.

You get two benefits the way I see it 1) You can start building your startup now 2) You get the two skilled specialists to work on it and share the excitement

I see the only drawback is that you don't get to go and spend a few years learning a new thing without any commercial pressure. If this is about learning how to be a hacker that's bad but if you're really into the startup thing then you save yourself a lot of time.

</comment><comment><USER24> Additional degree on top of a PhD and MD is ridiculous when there are so many books and internet resources readily available.

Most university engineering programs are not hands on enough for this and will be a waste of time. You really need a facility like www.techshop.ws and access to a bunch of people who need limbs.

Just start building the prosthetic and learn what you need as you go. You might find that you don't even like doing the hands on stuff in which case going to school would be an even bigger waste of time.

John Carmack did not go to school for either computer programming or rocket science and has done alright in both fields. Dean Kamen also has no degree and invented insulin pumps, wheelchairs, the segway, the "luke" arm, etc...

</comment><comment><USER25> I suggest a combination of 1 and 3. Get into a BME or BCE program and drop out after two years; at this point, you should have the foundations for which you could start to build your startup and proceed with your self study on the side to further your education.

My thoughts are that you are financially stable to afford the formal education, but you are limited by time - once you finish up a 4-5 years degree, that puts you are almost 40. I mean, your life is far from over but I assume that your priorities will change. Instead of thinking about your startup, you would probably be thinking about your children's educational future.

</comment><comment><USER26> I would skip college since a degree is just an excuse to get the foot in the door for job interviews.

If you are good at motivating yourself to learn you don't need it. Also most colleges you can just attend the lectures for free anyhow, you only pay if you need the degree. Just get some books on the subject, and find an online community to bounce your ideas off and your set. That way you can learn at a faster pace and not be dragged down by the speed at college.

</comment><comment><USER27> Dude, I was an Emerg doc. I just finished the 5 year diagnostic radiology residency and I am starting an interventional radiology fellowship. I am married with small kids.

Don't go back to school for 5 years. The price you pay with respect to not seeing your kids grow is too high.

Follow the self-study route. You can always hire technical people to assist you.

Here is another perspective: If you live a comfortable life and have a beautiful family, why not enjoy them?

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, I do enjoy my family and friends, but they are also busy and have their own lives (school, work, etc). I'm not willing to be an absent father, but in reality I have 3 full open days in my week and I'm bored to tears. Should I just fill up my time with more work, just to buy more stuff than we need, or maybe engaging in some mildly satisfying hobby?

PG discusses this in one of his essays, when he points out that happiness must be considered in different time frames (one hour, one day, one week, one month, etc). Besides that, I really feel the urge to create things.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Rather than going it alone it sounds like you ought to be partnering with someone. Studying IT even at a higher level courses aim at giving you a grounding in the subject, I'd imagine you want to target the pieces that you are interested in. Better to form a team with the skills that you need and learn from one-another.

I'm no expert on this, but isn't the role of a design agency to advise on these sorts of problems?

</comment><comment><USER29> Maybe you can offer to work for free in a university robotics department as a staff programmer while taking courses or learning on your own. You probably won't be able to contribute much at first, but being able to learn with that social support is important, especially in an area where there is little in the way of autodidactic textbooks.

</comment><comment><USER30> I'm studying for an undergraduate degree in biomedical engineering at the moment. My course consists primarily of electrical and mechanical engineering with medical science, biomechanics, some chemistry, et cetera. I can code pretty well. This sounds like a really interesting project. Definitely keep me posted as you progress.

<comment><AUTHOR> I wish I were you some years ago. About your engineering study, how is the startup mentality? I see a lot of talk about entrepreneurship in engineering, but most students and professors seem to be more focused in what is more important to land a job at big companies and team work in detriment to creativity, self-reliance and comprehensive skills.

<comment><USER30> A large contingent, not a majority, of my peers view studying engineering or science as the necessary prepration before entering finance.

A surprising amount of those who have their head around making things have done the thinking and the math to find that, hey, the risk/reward ratio of a startup might be worth it, particularly at a young age.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I'm a big fan of self-study, but since you already have a PhD, it seems like you'd be quite comfortable learning in a classroom environment. Perhaps you can audit some classes in basic electronics and computer science? That should be a bit cheaper and could dovetail nicely into your self-study.

</comment><comment><USER32> Well where are you in the world? I would definitely suggest rolling by your local hackerspace and looking for some assistance in getting yourself motivated, and navigating the harrowing experience of building out your own tool collection / parts collection as well as some of your skills.

Sourcing components and tools as a hobbyist, garage inventor, or even small design firm is very different from sourcing parts as a large institution or as an enterprise. The factors of scale change the playing field drastically. Many of the smaller kit builders and maker types have a shared knowledge regarding this sort of limited run development that you are endeavoring to pursue.

That being said, the key benefits for you that a major scholastic environment can provide you outside of tutelage is access to a robust machine shop, capable electronics facilities, and more important than all of that... protection from litigation in the patents you file.

Many graduate and even undergraduate programs offered by major universities actually will stipulate that any patent you file while at school, regardless of whether it's a personal patent or something completely unrelated to school, will be protected by them, their legal war chest, and their patent warchest. This is a huge selling point for some schools. ASK ABOUT IT.

Also, many schools have start up incubators of their own, or a network of people who can help you find funding. A friend who left stanford graphics lab took advantage of their start up program where they offer you use of facilities and space on campus in return for a percentage stake in the venture... they also will provide you with assistance in using their alumni network to score capital.

These are just some immediate thoughts. But I definitely see some values in going back to university that have no relevance to the actual classes you might take, but more with getting things done in your R&D.

Definitely regardless of what you decide your level of commitment is, don't get discouraged. There are far too few people with medical certification and experience turning their eyes towards prosthesis and other technologies that assist the disabled. And while there's money to be made there, more importantly there is a lot of good that can be done. The things that help someone who is confined by their disabilities can be for more huge to the people who use them, than us.

I know a number of engineers, good ones that would be interested in helping people the way you are suggesting. It's a job that one can draw immense satisfaction from.

</comment><comment><USER33> You could find a CSE student or a hardware engineer looking to switch focus into orthopedic surgery or medicine; the idea being you two would learn from each other and pass on valuable connections and resources gained from past experience.

</comment><comment><USER34> Read the Art of Designing Embedded Systems by Ganssle. Lots of good info on his website as well.

This should give you more information on which to base your decision.

</comment><comment><USER35> I know someone who might be interested in chatting with you. Do you mind throwing up your email in your profile?

</comment><comment><USER36> if you want to learn something, it's better to learn it by yourself. School is aimed at the lowest common denominator and is aimed at finishing a small portion of curriculum during the semester. And since most classes are 3-4 credits, at most you'll be paying to learn something 3-4 hours a week.

While on your own time, you can dedicate 30-40 hours a week on your studies.

<comment><USER37> Sort of.

There are times when a structured class gives you more benefit than unstructured. Specific examples off the top of my head are like sciences where you need lab equipment. Or if you're the kind of learner who needs lectures rather than readings.

School is not as worthless as HN makes it out to be.

<comment><USER26> At uni no-one checked or took roll call at lectures. You could just rock up without enrolling/paying and get free learning. Of course you can't do the exam and get the degree, but that's not the goal here.

Is it stealing? The professor would be doing the exact same thing with or without you there. As long as you don't take up a seat in an otherwise full lecture.

<comment><USER38> Well sure, if you go to a big degree mill. I went to a small liberal arts school in the States, and classes were participatory, and it was very difficult to attend without changing the dynamic of the class.

I think the lesson is choose your professors, classmates, and class sizes carefully.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> so ok...

#2 this is a waste of time for someone with your intelligence imho #3 - yep, too long #4 - possibly, if you're not a self directed learning type.

I would vote for #1, if you've already got a PhD the you have what it takes to pull it off.

As I understand it, you want to work on robotics. Very many of my friends who do research in robotics got their start playing with lego mindstorm robots. This would probably be a good place to start, because you basically can't learn software dev without writing something and it will give you a firm grasp of the basics of writing software for robots.

It's not clear what your level of experience in writing software is, if you haven't gone through basic tutorials then there are plenty of those out there.

If you happen to read this post and there's one thing to take away, it's that the absolute most important thing for ramping up to high productivity quickly is that you have a really solid infrastructure. The reason is that without such an infrastructure, codebases tend to drift and you can write yourself into a corner very easily.

I'll speak to my java infrastructure as this is my primary background.

First, I'm a big proponent of IDEs especially for beginners. I really like java with eclipse (it's unbearable with notepad) because with autocomplete and source code generation, you end up with code that reads more like an essay than a mathematical proof, which suits my personal style just fine. It just helps to offload my memory into autocomplete. Whatever editor you pick, it's extremely helpful to read up on it in advance.

Next is source code management. I personally use git and I create a repository for every project I'm working on, I find the distributed, self contained nature amusing. Commit often and branch when you change features.

Next up is managing dependencies. I use maven, which I absolutely love. Maven basically centralizes your dependencies and separates that concern to help avoid dependency hell. Some people use maven to manage their source, but I do it the opposite way with the maven files inside the directory where I create the git repo.

You also have to manage your own source. It's fine to play around ignoring all this, but once you have "real" code - this means code that you must maintain - then it's important that it be of a certain quality. You should try to have each project capture a particular need (read OCR or access a neural net or calculate some geo stuff for your robots or whatever) and that each product stand alone as much as possible. There should also at least be some functional tests.

imho, a relatively inexperienced dev with such a nice environment can be as productive as experienced devs flying by the seat of their pants. It also vastly reduces the risk of catastrophe.

</comment><comment><USER40> Are you talking about robotics for making prostheses, or robotic prostheses? The latter will require considerably more and more specialized knowledge: control systems and signal processing, switching power converters, radio shielding, etc.

Programming these days tends to involve a lot of gluing libraries together. Python in general has much more extensive libraries than Lisps and Schemes. (The Python claim to fame is "batteries included".) Python also has excellent support for using libraries written in C and Fortran, which are the dominant languages for numerical modelling and math code.

</comment><comment><USER41> Don't you have good institutes near you (not exactly colleges/universities) who teach basic of CS. Where I live there are pretty decent institutes (only if you can find them) who have courses on anything college teaches. These are much more focused on you than on the course as there are probably only 8 to 10 people in the class.You can also adjust timing and learning speed. But the down side there would be most of the students there are not of the brighter pool of students.

</comment><comment><USER42> This post sounds bogus. So you have a PhD and an MD and you cant figure out whether should go to a community college or spend even more time in school playing with robots (if you are really an MD, you probably just finished your residency a few years ago at 34). ....hmmmm...sorry, dont mean to be rude but I dont buy it. If you are legit then a PhD in biomaterials is already plenty and with tons of free time, that is the perfect setup to do a startup....just do it!

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm in Europe, things are different here. Anyway, it is almost always possible to combine residency with graduate training, as I did, and shorten things up.

<comment><USER42> Ok, well then you have enough training. Go for it!</comment></comment></comment>


Japan's Hayabusa 2 spacecraft reaches cosmic 'diamond' - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-44603120 <comment><USER2> Quietly, without much press as NASA, JAXA is doing amazing things. Sample return missions are rare and high end of space exploration. Last one was NASA Startdust 12 years ago.

Another interesting thing JAXA does is smallest rocket for orbital launches. SS-520-5 is 10 meter long, 50cm in diameter, 4kg to LEO and it successfully launched a 3U cubesat in orbit few months ago.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S-Series_(rocket_family)#SS-520-5

Closest competitor is Rocket Lab's Electron, 17m length, 1.2m diameter, 225kg to LEO

www.spaceflight101.com/spacerockets/electron/

<comment><USER3> Why was there a 17 year delay between the 2nd launch and 3rd launch?

<comment><USER4> Those earlier launches were as a two-stage sounding rocket. The three-stage variant capable of putting a payload in orbit first launched in 2017; it made orbit on its second flight earlier this year.

SS-520 is a one-off experimental project, not something they intend to put into regular commercial service.

<comment><USER2> Why not? I bet the'll have success with cubesats.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It still awes me that we can fire a probe at a moving object 180 million miles away with such accuracy and care that we not only reach it but have the probe gently touch down and then return to us.

<comment><USER2> There are always some trajectory correction manoeuvres in any deep space mission.

<comment><USER6> Yeah ... I can drive across the country and land in a particular parking spot with 100% repeatability.

<comment> ur-whale Sure, but your motor-sensor feedback loop doesn't have a multi-minute delay built into it, so I'd say slightly less of a challenge.

<comment><USER7> As a counter-point to the counter-point, if we could reliably predict the actions of other cars years into the future (as we can with solar system objects), multi-minute delays wouldn't matter much.

<comment><USER8> The orbits perhaps but not the rotation (which can be improved in flight) nor surface conditions or surrounding "atmosphere", all being critical for landing. This is why chasing an asteroid or a comet is much easier than actually landing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Does anyone know how they get the sample back to earth uncontaminated? I don't see any information on that in the article and that strikes me as one of the most difficult parts of the process.

Wikipedia doesn't have much information and uses a dead link as the source - The spacecraft is planned to depart the asteroid in December 2019, and return samples to Earth in December 2020.

The rest of the information I can readily find is in Japanese.

Presumably it's pretty similar to the first Hayabusa which is fascinating. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hayabusa#Recovery_and_return_t...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hayabusa#Recovery_and_return_to_Earth)

<comment><USER10> Yep - very similar to the first one - it's sealed in a strong aluminum capsule with a heat shield and parachute, and tracked with a radio beacon once it lands in the Australian desert (hopefully). Spaceflight 101 has more details, Ctrl+F "Sample Return Capsule": [http://spaceflight101.com/spacecraft/hayabusa-2/](http://spaceflight101.com/spacecraft/hayabusa-2/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I highly recommend the JAXA twitter account for the craft - they've given lots of interesting detail, and it's about as exciting as Rosetta.

[https://www.twitter.com/haya2e_jaxa?lang=en](https://www.twitter.com/haya2e_jaxa?lang=en)

<comment><USER12> Even the guitar player from Queen likes it and comments.

<comment><USER13> Outside of Queen, Brian May is an astrophysicist, and his specialty is interplanetary dust composition. It's always cool to see him jumping in and sharing science with those who know him for his music career.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> What's amazing to me is that this asteroid has an escape velocity of 5cm/s. Hayabusa 2 is approaching it at 9cm/s currently.

Gravity is such a weak force...

<comment><USER15> It is, yet the gravitational force from the Sun acting on the Earth is equal to the tensile strength of a steel rod approximately the diameter of the Earth itself.

(because while gravity is weak, the Sun is huge!)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> It's 2018 and there is no pictures or video streams of the earth from space that can be verified to be genuine.

There are no real time cameras filming the earth on a level where we can signal to the camera and see it detect the signal in real time.

There are no videos of satellites in space taken from space shuttle or similar as far as I'm aware. All you find on Google is artist impressions and CGI.

Is there any way to verify any of this yourself without having to trust the space agencies? As engineers, you should understand the importance of not having to trust a third party.

<comment><USER17> You're absolutely right. For half a century the worlds nations have been spending tens of billions of dollars on a complete hoax. And all those satellite communication companies are actually using fiber optic cables and adding in a delay. And all those rocket launches that many millions of people have personally witnessed didn't go into space, instead they all crashed in a secret area down range. I'm surprised that such a massive hoax could go on so long with no one discovering it before you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I didn't know the next version of Hayabusa bullet train can fly into space.</comment>


Why some men won't dance - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-42100765 <comment><USER3> To be honest I never saw the appeal in this sort of activity. What made it worse were people who insisted that I participate.

Interesting how this is one of the very few things were social pressure is alive and well(as exemplified by the article, which fails to ask why should people dance in the first place).

<comment><USER4> Good point, perhaps it's because dance can be seen as a form of expression.

To a greater extent, if someone refused to talk but had the ability to you would probably think something weird of them. But probably wouldn't question that from a social pressure perspective.

<comment><USER5> "I'm going to go to the middle of the room and improvise some poetry, just say whatever I'm moved to say in the moment, maybe riff on some motifs I've adopted or invented on previous such occasions. Want to stand next to me and do that too, at the same time? What? You don't? Why not? Just be loose. Oh, some music is coming on. Just sing whatever pops into your head. Sing it confidently. No one's listening."

<comment><USER6> why some men won't rap battle.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> 'Over three quarters of British men say they have never or rarely danced' so the title should be "why most men don't dance" or "why it's the norm for men not to dounce"

PS: dancing with a beautiful girl can be the most wonderful thing in the world, but dancig lonely just to get sweaty might not be as appealing.

so they should open up a "Grandpa's dance palace" where men pick women and dance in pairs. or a campfire dance where men and women run around naked in circles stamping their feet.

<comment><USER8> I find that dancing with someone who can lead or follow well, and/or dancing with someone who expresses happiness while dancing even when there are stumbles and mistakes, is much more wonderful than beauty.

There are many other types of dancing besides with a partner and "dancing lonely just to get sweaty." Line dancing doesn't have a partner - <USER2> dances the same pattern. There are also group dances like Scottish country dance or medieval dancing where the entire group ends up making complicated figures.

Flamenco is a dance which needs no partner, where the goal is not just to get sweaty.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I used to be crap at dancing when I was a kid. At school dances, you mostly had The Uncomfortable Disco Shuffle. And later slow dancing, which mostly involved standing around uncomfortably holding a girl and not knowing what to do.

Later I discovered punk, where dancing mostly involved jumping around a lot, which I could do. Then came _Smells Like Teen Spirit_ , which alternated jumping around with catching your breath (really the perfect dance song at the time). At peak fitness, the Dropkick Murphy's _Pipebomb on Landsdowne_ was the absolutely perfect dance song for me, but I can't dance to that anymore. Iggo Pop's _Lust For Life_ taught me a more rock&roll-like swingy dance, and after that, I could really dance to almost anything (except a house beat).

I don't know any formal swing or rock & roll dance, but I do enjoy dancing to that music. My knowledge of formal dance steps is mostly from balfolk, but that's a very different kind of experience.

</comment><comment><USER10> I remember a girl in high school told me I was a bad dancer and laughed at me. She was a close friend, and danced all the time. For some reason it stuck, and I really haven't danced after that...

</comment><comment><USER11> We can dance if we want too.

<comment><USER12> But if your friends don't dance then they're no friends of mine. ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I've never enjoyed dancing, I just don't get anything from it.

It was a source of frustration when I was younger too, as most of my friends would go on nights out and dance and I would be the one hanging out with the smokers and talking shite. If someone asked me to dance, I would ask if they would like to sit to talk for a bit.

Not that I haven' danced before, I have lots of times, trying to fit in. I'd do it for a song, maybe a little more, then I got bored and wanted to talk to somebody.

As I grew older I realised that 'nights out' that involved night clubs or anything were just not my thing. I much preferred to sit around a table at a pub with a load of friends and just chat shit. By that point I had stopped trying to 'fit in' and ended up less stressed about ohaving some social defect.

I must be missing the part of the brain that actually enjoys dancing, because even when I'm listening to music I love I always prefer to actually sit and listen to it intently rather than try to move to its rhythm.

</comment><comment><USER14> If you absolutely refuse to dance, it may be a sign of schizotypical personality disorder, or avoidant personality. These things can wreck your life if you let them. At least read about them and be aware.

<comment><USER15> Please don't post this sort of thing on a public forum.

<comment><USER16> I'm curious why you'd request OP not to post that? I tend to think that all topics should be able to be freely discussed provided they're relevant, and the conversation sincere.

<comment><USER8> Implicit in your comment is the belief that the OP's comment was relevant and sincere.

I don't believe it was. For one, it would mean a huge percentage of the population has a schizotypical personality disorder, or avoidant personality.

For another, there is a strong cultural effect on dance popularity. There are areas where dancing is banned due to religious prohibitions. (The movie "Footloose" is based on that premise.)

While it's possible that, say, 0.01% of the people may not dance for reasons the OP gave, it's very unlikely that the OP's argument has any significance.

<comment><USER14> Schizotypal / Schizoid and avoidant are currently much less studied than Asperger's Syndrome (which is becoming glamorous), depression, psychopathy, schizofrenia or bipolar. How do you know ? There are reasons to believe avoidant/schizotypal/schizoid can be related to childhood trauma. More than 0.01% have some kind of childhood trauma, and they mostly go undetected.

Zampano from the movie "La Strada" just screams "Schizotypal", but if you put the two in a search engine - it hasn't occurred to anyone.

<comment><USER8> Is your argument that there is a strong connection between people who don't want to dance and people who are schizotypal/avoidant? Or are you no longer talking about reasons why a large percentage of the male population does not dance?

<comment><USER14> I _never_ talked about why a large percentage of the male population does not dance. It was something you invented and put in my mouth. It was a failure of reading comprehension on your part, and you downvoted me for it. _I demand an apology._

The article was: "Why some men won't dance". (Why some male animals have tails) My post was: "Men who are schizotypal/avoidant don't dance. Read about it to figure out if you are.". (Male cats have tails. Consider you might be a cat.) Your response was: "He's saying all men who don't dance are schizotypal/avoidant!" ("He's saying all male animals are cats!")

<comment><USER8> "He's saying all men who don't dance are schizotypal/avoidant!"

I'm saying that I don't think your statement is diagnostic in any useful sense.

While that might be the reason why some (a perhaps small number) males don't dance, there are cultures where men do dance, and cultures where they do not, and these percentages are quite large.

As such there must a strong cultural effect on why male do/don't dance, with schizotypal/avoidant behavior a far smaller reason.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Amazon customers get lockers at Staples  - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2012/11/easy-amazon-customers-get-lockers-at-staples-to-avoid-missed-deliveries/

<comment><USER2> YC's Bufferbox is battling back: [http://www.blogto.com/city/2012/10/bufferbox_wants_to_put_an...](http://www.blogto.com/city/2012/10/bufferbox_wants_to_put_an_end_to_failed_delivery_notices/)

Now in 7 Eleven's, train stations and Sobey's (grocery stores).</comment>


Did Google Fake Its Big A.I. Demo? - <AUTHOR> https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/05/uh-did-google-fake-its-big-ai-demo <comment><USER2> From TFA:

"As Axios[0] noted Thursday morning, there was something a little off in the conversations the A.I. had on the phone with businesses, suggesting that perhaps Google had faked, or at least edited, its demo. Unlike a typical business (Axios called more than two dozen hair salons and restaurants), the employees who answered the phone in Google's demos don't identify the name of the business, or themselves. Nor is there any ambient noise in Google's recordings, as one would expect in a hair salon or a restaurant. At no point in Google's conversations with the businesses did the employees who answered the phone ask for the phone number or other contact information from the A.I. Further, California is a two-party consent state, meaning that both parties need to consent in order for a phone conversation to be legally recorded. Did Google seek the permission of these businesses before calling them for the purposes of the demo? Was it staged in the simulated manner of reality TV?"

0\. [https://www.axios.com/google-ai-demo- questions-9a57afad-9854...](https://www.axios.com/google-ai-demo- questions-9a57afad-9854-41da-b6e2-5e55b619283e.html)

<comment><USER3> Two-party consent laws raise an interesting point: how could Duplex operate legally in California?

Google probably wants recordings of each call, so they'd have to include a preamble. Phone systems that say "Your call may be recorded for quality assurance purposes" usually:

1\. Make you press a button before you speak to a human, thereby recording your consent.

2\. Don't record before that point (since you're in the phone tree.)

Seems unlikely Duplex will pass as human, for legal reasons.

<comment><USER4> > Two-party consent laws raise an interesting point: how could Duplex operate > legally in California?

They're not testing it in California, is one option. Two party consent is not the standard in most states.

[http://www.dmlp.org/legal-guide/recording-phone-calls-and- co...](http://www.dmlp.org/legal-guide/recording-phone-calls-and- conversations)

<comment><USER5> Honest question: is one-party consent satisfied if the party that has "given consent" is an AI bot? I could see how someone would argue that there was only one party on the call capable of consent, and that he/she (the human caller) did not give it.

Another hypo: What if my AI bot calls the restaurant and talks to their AI bot? Is that a call with zero parties? Can consent for recording be given at all?

My guess is that it depends on the definition of "party". Cue the lawyers.

<comment><USER6> <IANAL> I would assume that the bot is operating on behalf of someone and it is their consent that matters. So if bot gives the consent in their name, it would be the same as if they gave the consent themselves. </IANAL>

<comment><USER7> So that would mean that the person asking the bot to give consent or would that mean Google is the one giving consent? Or is the person giving permission to Google to give consent? Would Google give permission to the recording of the call?

<comment><USER8> I'm also not a lawyer, but....

I believe generally the US courts have decided that the person who triggers the action is the pertinent party.

Something similar has come up in the firearm fabrication community. There are companies that sell things that are legally paperweights, but are 80% of the way towards being a firearm (e.g. [1]). There are CNC mills that come with programming to take one of these "80% lowers" and finish it, making a fully functional firearm, or at least the part that is considered a firearm by the BATF; other parts can be ordered and shipped online (e.g. [2]).

In this case it's not the builder of the machine or the writer of the code that instructs it that is the "manufacturer" of the gun. It's not even the person who placed the unfinished lower in the enclosure and bolted it down. Instead it's the person who pushed that button.

I'm going to guess that this will be similar. The user who pushes the button (or asks assistant to make an appointment on their behalf) is likely to be the one giving consent.

[1]: [https://www.80percentarms.com/](https://www.80percentarms.com/)

[2]: [https://ghostgunner.net/products/ghost- gunner](https://ghostgunner.net/products/ghost-gunner)

<comment><USER5> I'm the person who originally posed this question, and I actually am a (former) lawyer. I think these are all good analogies, and courts would think about things like this.

But neither the laws nor the judges will be uniform. The laws use different words to say slightly different things, and will have different legislative histories (the record from the officials who voted them into law).

Some judges will look to the actual words to interpret the law, and others will look to the legislative history. Still others might desire a "living Constitution" approach — applying the laws in a way that they think makes sense in today's world.

Considering the dozens of laws and thousands of judges that could opine, there will likely be considerable uncertainty in this area for years to come.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Google refused to provide the businesses' names to Axios (even with a guarantee not to publicly identify them), and refused to answer whether the calls were edited.

If the calls _were_ real, I wonder how many recordings did it take to get these perfect examples? How many times were the appointments scheduled correctly, and how many failed?

But this was just a flashy demonstration to drum up excitement over the Google brand. Until they write up a paper or release it as a product, we're unlikely to know how well it really works.

<comment><USER5> Precisely. What happens if the system makes a mistake and tells you you're confirmed when that's not the case? Then you show up for a reservation that doesn't exist and you wish you'd spent 3 mins making the call yourself.

The question will be what is the net time savings? If it works 99 out of 100 times, maybe that's good enough for many mundane tasks. But if it's 75 out of 100, that's almost certainly not worth it.

<comment><USER10> I agree. These kind of systems need 99% precision.

<comment><USER11> I'm not even sure 99% would be enough for my tastes. Imagine an important date (anniversary or similar) with your S.O. If there was even a 1% chance that didn't happen because I was too lazy to call I'd certainly be hesitant to use it. And if I can't use it habitually for the task of scheduling, I probably will continue to do what I do now and just make the call.

<comment><USER12> I think human perception of technology is often dominated by annoyance. From a little bit of research I did years ago, 99% accuracy was nowhere near good enough to satisfy customers of handwriting recognition--that's about one word mistake per paragraph.

Consider the new Apple keyboards, which attract hundreds of intense complaints every time they come up here on HN. Apple Insider [1] estimated the percentage of service tickets that were attributed to keyboards:

2014 - 5.6%

2015 - 6%

2016 - 11.8% (first year of new keyboard)

2017 so far - 8.1%

So, an approximate doubling of the prevalence of keyboard problems in the first year has been enough to convince a lot of people that the entire product is an unmitigated disaster.

One of the very interesting facts in that Apple Insider study is that the total number of tickets actually _decreased_ from 2015 to 2016. If the keyboard was actually a design disaster, you would expect the total number of warranty service tickets to climb, but they didn't.

2014 - 2,120

2015 - 1,904

2016 - 1,402

2017 - (incomplete)

[1] [https://appleinsider.com/articles/18/04/30/2016-macbook- pro-...](https://appleinsider.com/articles/18/04/30/2016-macbook-pro- butterfly-keyboards-failing-twice-as-frequently-as-older-models)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Googler here. I've seen a few other demos, and there was even an internal dogfood, although I didnt use it myself. But I guess you could still choose not to take my word for it, since I'm just a random guy on the internet. Just wait til it launches, I guess.

Also, I distinctly remember on multiple occasions having to ask "is this <XX restaurant>?" when making reservations in the past. Does this really never happen to people that it feels more likely that Google is faking high-profile demos in the keynote that it can't actually deliver on? And wouldn't they want to pick demos that didn't include or redacted the name of the restaurant anyway?

<comment><USER14> Just tried calling a bunch of restaurants in my neck of the woods. They _all_ identified the restaurant right off the bat, along with the person speaking.

Is it some wierd Bay area thing that businesses don't identify themselves when they answer a call?

<comment><USER15> I have noticed that some Chinatown restaurants don't tend to identify themselves when I call in. I think part of it is a language / cultural barrier. It's a lot different calling a chain where they have huge manuals on how to interact with customers vs an immigrant family run business. Is that not the case for your Chinese restaurants?

However, more likely I think they edited out the initial introduction to give the businesses privacy. They also probably told the businesses beforehand that there was a chance they would be calling in the future with bots to get around California 2 party laws on recording (or maybe they got approval afterwards although I'm not sure that's legal).

<comment><USER16> That's the point. "What you're about to hear is an actual call." ("...what you're not about to hear is that we have heavily edited it"? Or perhaps "lightly edited it?" Well nobody knows - and since Google aint' telling, it is reasonable to assume the former).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'll say this again. Currently I have Google home hooked up to my home automation system. It has trouble correctly identifying commands for things like turning on my desk light and understanding South African accents when friend visit from there. My Alexa does a lot better with that. Yet somehow I'm to believe that they have made this massive step forward. Google used to under promise and over-deliver. Now it has been taken over by marketers who tend to over promise and under deliver.

The truth is that they still make the majority of their profit from search, but need to look like they have something to back that up to keep the stock price up. Between that and Waymo it really felt like they don't. Android and the Chomebooks are promising as technologies, and I like they refinements they are offering, but the monetization strategy doesn't seem to be clear strong. It is definitely not as strong as Apple's ability to make profit from selling Macs and I-Phones...

<comment><USER18> Sorry for the irrelevant comment - I've just been looking at your past comments. Looks like your gripe with Google started 4-6 months ago and been continuing ever since. What happened?

<comment><USER19> The parent comment itself describes dissatisfaction while using Google products. Perhaps this use, or at least the dissatisfaction it inspires, began then? Regardless, this sort of questioning seems unfair.

<comment><USER18> There are certain things in the original comment that I agree with(in certain situations I too have found Alexa to be better performing than Google Home), certain things maybe not so much(like this statement "Google used to under promise and over-deliver. Now it has been taken over by marketers who tend to over promise and under deliver.")

One of the things I've decided to do these days when I find things that make no sense when I read them, is to figure out if the commenter had any pre- existing biases.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo." \-- attributed to Andy Finkel

<comment><USER21> So true. Especially when people hold presentations that don't do this on a regular bases it's often beyond recognition a) what is going on the screen and b) what the point is.

<comment><USER22> A sign of a good manager/exec is their reaction to a demo. If they say "I don't believe you, this looks magical", they might actually be thinking about what it would take to bring your demo to production. If they say "wow that's great, amazing work guys!" it is time to worry.

<comment><USER21> > wow that's great, amazing work guys!

I guess it's nice to give great feedback when the work was great. I don't see why people sometimes want to obsessively find a problem that doesn't really change things.

But generally I totally agree with you. When the manager only makes positive comments and doesn't engage, the person is not being helpful at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> > Nor is there any ambient noise in Google's recordings, as one would expect > in a hair salon or a restaurant.

Second recording at [https://ai.googleblog.com/2018/05/duplex-ai-system-for- natur...](https://ai.googleblog.com/2018/05/duplex-ai-system-for-natural- conversation.html) has very clear background noise.

</comment><comment><USER24> No _tu quoque_ intended, but I find the history behind the original iPhone introduction fascinating: [https://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/06/magazine/and- then-steve-s...](https://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/06/magazine/and-then-steve- said-let-there-be-an-iphone.html) (spoiler: it required some fakery and even a violation of FCC frequency rules)

<comment><USER25> Great article, thanks for sharing.

spoiler: FCC part was clever, but what fakery? Are you talking about the "golden path" or something else I missed after a quick read?

<comment><USER26> They faked the phone's signal bars to always show five bars, since it was expected that the radio software would crash somewhere in the 90-minute presentation.

<comment><USER27> Was it a presentation about their novel new signal bars?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Not only were these calls not faked, the dogfooders were required to go out and honor their reservations.

Internally, the criticism is brutal, because we want free-form, general, conversation abilities, and we don't consider the demo to be perfect.

But fake ? IMO, if the team wanted to fake a demo, they could had done that years ago when the project started.

But we are Google. We don't fake demos because we don't have to.

[edit: To add to what I said: If you think that a team at Google could fake something at this scale and have the face of the company back it at our most high-profile event of the year, just think of the aftermath internally. The code is available for all of us to study. The design docs are there for us to read. There were thousands of engineers that at least peeked at the codebase even on the same day of the demo.]

<comment><AUTHOR> Then why not release or discuss the basic details? The locations need not be identified publicly to confirm how it all went down.

<comment><USER10> Not sure why not or if that even is the case. I am curious myself and I will try to find out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Google claims that restaurant booking quoted in the blog[1] was done using Duplex.

someone should reverse lookup this image[2], match it with bay area based restaurants and find the restaurant then

[1] [https://ai.googleblog.com/2018/05/duplex-ai-system-for- natur...](https://ai.googleblog.com/2018/05/duplex-ai-system-for-natural- conversation.html) [2] [https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Arp_jhtS4F0/WvD7KzLvDRI/AAAAAAAAC...](https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Arp_jhtS4F0/WvD7KzLvDRI/AAAAAAAACrs/CgWeSM1I3okK5uyCt0d9BsYhtKBnpKuRACLcBGAs/s1600/Yaniv%2BMatan%2BFinal.jpeg)

Edit: It looks like Chinese/Korean restaurant from Image.

<comment><USER16> Your wish has apparently been granted. [https://daringfireball.net/2018/05/duplex_booked_restaurant](https://daringfireball.net/2018/05/duplex_booked_restaurant)

<comment><USER29> The restaurant [https://m.yelp.com/biz/hongs-gourmet- saratoga](https://m.yelp.com/biz/hongs-gourmet-saratoga)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> This reminds me of the advice: Don't write articles that can be answered with a single word "no".

Unlike startups, it's not like Google's business depends on investors supporting lofty goals. There would seem to be no benefit to faking a demo like this.

Not revealing the business location is likely just because they consider their business partners to be business data that they don't want to give away to competitors. Clean auto could easily just be done via a simple noise filter, just for the sake of the demo. When you have a little noise in your ear, it's not bad. But when you need to broadcast sound to an entire stadium, you need to rebalance it. This story is a load of nonsense.

<comment><USER31> How do we know the answer is no? Maybe Google's software can do what they say but they didn't demo that.

Thay supposedly made a call (won't release proof) to a restaurant (that they won't name) and talked to a receptionist (who didn't mention the restaurant name) that didn't ask what time the reservation was for. And you couldn't hear the restaurant in the background.

The demo is really suspicious. They deserve to be called on it. For all we know that was a recording of a fake training/test call with a Google employee.

If they manipulated the audio in some way (cut out an intro, filtered out noise, etc) they just have to say so.

Google deserves this kind of scrutiny. They're a MASSIVE company, they should be able to handle these kind of questions about new products.

Especially those that are supposed to be released in the next few months.

<comment><USER19> A smoother fake would have bleeped over the supposed restaurant name. Something to look forward to next time!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> > The snippets of conversation during Pichai's demo, which can be heard in > this clip, seem too polished and unrealistic to be real.

Reminder that Duplex explicitly uses Concatenative Text-to-Speech - i.e. they record humans saying phrases, and just play those soundbites back where appropriate. Sort of like a chess AI storing a dictionary of opening moves.

<comment><USER33> I believe most concatenative TTS systems nowadays are diphone/phone based, rather than playing back full phrases. But being phrase-based could explain how good the demos sound

<comment><USER34> If you want to be able to say arbitrary text, then you pretty much have to go lower than word level, because the number of different words is effectively unbounded. However, if you're speaking a controlled language where there are clear limits to what the system would ever want to say, then there's no problem to record enough high quality words or whole phrases to concatenate them into something nice sounding.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Remember, actually calling someone is the last resort. If google can make a reservation for you online then it will do that first.

If they have to call, I suspect that it isn't 100% without human intervention. I am reminded of "Samantha West" the telemarketer "bot" that will robocall people and respond to people. It turns out it isn't a bot at all but someone pushing buttons on a soundboard to play the appropriate prerecorded response. [http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/12/17/robot-telemarketer- saman...](http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/12/17/robot-telemarketer-samantha- west/)

It would be pretty easy for the small number of times that google can't make a reservation online for you to pay some people in a call center to do this.

</comment><comment><USER36> I think it's obvious to anyone who ever did AI/ML demo. Let him/her who never picked the best example out of 20 for their demo cast the first stone.

<comment><USER37> Not these days. Without code and reproducibility, most researchers would ignore your amazing demo. You should check out recent feud between Yann LeCun and Sophia.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> I find that it's easy to get a proof-of-concept together. The challenging thing is getting all the details right for a working product. Or, to put it mildly, people who don't understand easily confuse a demo with a working product.

It's probably just a proof of concept that doesn't work very well. They probably just played back one of the few attempts that it worked very well.

I even remember, when reading the article, a lot of caution in overestimating the state of the technology. So, given their disclaimer, I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt; and I'm thinking that everyone else overreacted because they don't understand software development.

</comment><comment><USER39> Google's in a lose lose here, if they relent and identify the businesses the press will descend on them to get quotes about how they feel "getting tricked" by a bot and so on. But if Google hadn't left out the identifying information in the first place the businesses would have been inundated by callers and Google would have been criticized for letting a small business get "doxed" like that. And finally if they don't release any info there will be more stories about how it's fake.

I guess they could have the bot call Dan Primack at Axios and clear it up...

</comment><comment><USER40> Haha, the old Mechanical Turk trick! [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Turk](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Turk) With all the smarties on the Google Brain team, I'm surprised they need it.

</comment><comment><USER41> I think the more import point rather than whether or not it was "fake", was that it was certainly cherry-picked. This is an issue with a lot of machine learning and AI presentation and publications today. If you want to show how useful something is, there needs to be a functional demo.

</comment><comment><USER42> Who cares. Even if it is not a "real restaurant" \- as long as it is even Duplex calling a Google employee pretending to be a restaurant, does it really matter? [note: I did not watch the actual reveal, so as long as they didn't make the exact claim]

<comment><USER43> Yes it matters. One of my go to "Hello World" type of programs that I use to write when learning a new framework or language was an Eliza like chatbot. Whenever I chatted with it, it worked amazingly well even when I was trying to test for corner cases.

The minute someone else used it, the illusion was shot. It's really easy to make a chatbot work when you keep it on the rails - even when you're not intending too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Voice synthesis is really fantastic at this point. But there is a critical flaw in every single actual USE of it. They are obsessed with their 'cloud' and don't do any of the processing locally. This guarantees the telltale latency lag which can not be remedied. Conversation with any synthetic voice will always be a beat off due to the latency. It's the same as the annoying wait while Alexa or Siri sends your voice data off to a cloud to be processed (which is utterly unnecessary for the recognition part). You will always know you're talking to a robot because the brain isn't in the head you're talking to and the speed of light is only so fast.

<comment><USER45> > It's the same as the annoying wait while Alexa or Siri sends your voice data > off to a cloud to be processed (which is utterly unnecessary for the > recognition part).

True - in fact the iPhone actually does transcription on-device, AFAIK the cloud loop is for validation and to get answers.

Dont believe me? Put your iphone in airplane mode and use the dictation button on your keyboard!

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> This is like being suspicious about why the photos in an Apple keynote look so good. Almost like they were hand picked to look good?

<comment><USER47> This. I believe the conversations were genuine, but I also believe they were two of hundreds or even thousands. Cherry picked. I am absolutely certain that some calls ended in complete confusion on both sides.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> Just curious but does it really matter for a tech demo. IMO even if the person answering the phone was scripted but the AI portion was real, its still impressive to me.

<comment><USER49> Is playing an edited video or audio piece a "demo?"

They clearly portrayed it as a real, unedited call. If they were dishonest, of course that matters. Arguably ethics don't matter as much as the underlying tech, I suppose. But it still says something about the individuals involved.

<comment><USER50> Probably more interesting regarding their ethics is that they've seemingly declined to answer most questions about the demo. They've declined to answer whether or not Duplex records calls, they've declined to confirm who they called with it, they declined to confirm if they tested it in a state that recording the calls is legal...

They seem _incredibly_ dodgy for something they announced openly in front of thousands of people.

<comment><USER51> But do they really need to answer those questions? Clearly they don't want to publisize the establishments that they called. The most likely record calls (although they probably don't know if the final product will) and why would they confirm that they have done something illegal.

It doesn't hurt them to not answer these questions, and they definitely don't want to answer some of them, so why would they?

<comment><USER49> It could be that the audio is only edited in those first several seconds. That a normal call goes "Hello this is [business name]." Then Google starts recording as it replies that the call is being recorded. And then starts ordering.

And that's likely why, weirdly, no business identifies itself in the audio. They don't want to admit to ANY editing because it would open up MORE questions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> Prediction: Google will come out and say that BOTH the voices were google assistants talking to each other.

<comment><USER53> I thought this was going to be the big twist reveal at the end of the demo videos.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> Your employer can record your phone calls at work. Google's testing of this service would have simply required Google to obtain permission from the restaurants enabled in its tests.

<comment><USER55> [https://kellergrover.com/news/privacy-violations/ok- record-p...](https://kellergrover.com/news/privacy-violations/ok-record-phone- call-california/)

I think this would require that a grant of permission is transferable.

\- Employee grants permission to employer to record as term of employment.

\- Employer grants Google blanket permission to record calls.

Do you know if it works that way?

Also, any business that is recording its employees _must_ notify customers. This would be another thing they would have had to edit out of the call.

<comment><USER54> Your article says it works that way, so Google only has to ask permission from the employer. The employer is the "person" who must grant permission to record the call.

> Also, any business that is recording its employees must notify customers.

Google did the recording, so that doesn't apply. Even if it did, it would make sense for Google to edit out the "Your call may be recorded for quality recording purposes," in the demo.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> This technology in general also raises a really modern question of what does verbal consent mean now that a program can sound like me?

</comment><comment><USER57> Couldn't they just have done the calls in a different state, where such a recording is allowed?

</comment><comment><USER58> I look forward to a day when two bots talk to each other and just make things happen.

</comment><comment><USER59> No.

</comment><comment><USER60> They heavily faked their Magic Leap demos.

</comment><comment><USER61> Google AI hadn't published any major papers on ASR or TTS since WaveNet, even the new WaveNet google demo'd a few months ago weren't even close to this demo's voices. The use of "Uh Huh" "Hmmm" are called back channeling, it's moon shot away given the current state of technology. It requires very low latency and precise timing so it doesn't cut the speaker off.

I believe if this demo were real, it was tested and cherry picked from a very particular environment

<comment><USER62> This is a long shot but, do you think it is at all possible that they've had some kind of a breakthrough using their quantum processing work, and are using that to accelerate machine learning models and produce much better quality generative speech? After hearing about Bristlecone I can't rule it out.

<comment><USER19> That would be a monumental case of burying the lede...

Surely if they had that computing power they would just be breaking crypto and stealing money all day long?</comment></comment></comment>


European Cloud Project Draws Backlash from U.S. Tech Giants - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/european-cloud-project-draws-backlash-from-u-s-tech-giants-11572600600?mod=rsswn <comment><USER2> Many people have pointed to privacy and data issues, but there's also the plain reality that the US has been shown to be willing to use its economic leverage for political ends over the recent few years, so having key data stored in the US becomes an increasingly geopolitical risk even for European allies.

I think these mercantilist plays we're seeing from the US are going to cause a lot of long term harm to the tech companies. For national security reasons alone you cannot rely on US cloud infrastructure if the man or woman in the white house is likely to pull the plug at any moment.

<comment><USER3> >the US has been shown to be willing to use its economic leverage for political ends over the recent few years

Are there specific examples you're referring to? Because this is how geopolitics and diplomacy has worked since the dawn of civilization. This isn't something unique to Big Bad USA.

<comment><USER2> The entity list program against Chinese companies, the pressure on Europe to reject Huawei infrastructure (and accompanying threats in particular when it comes to natsec data sharing), the attack on the German car industry, on French agriculture, the list has been getting pretty long.

And while it's true that this has been the state of affairs for most of civilisation, it wasn't for the last ~70 years. Up until recently, the US was willing to underpin global free-trade without using economic politics as leverage for short-term or one-sided political goals. Which is precisely why US tech companies have become the first choice in much of Europe and indeed around the world.

Now the question is being posed if that is still a good decision. Without this interference, Europe would not think about investing billions and billions into its own cloud infrastructure, and China would not be ditching Android. It could have been smooth sailing for US companies for a long time. If this continues I'll give it 10-20 years before there's a major decoupling even between the US and Europe.

<comment><USER4> "I'll give it 10-20 years before there's a major decoupling even between the US and Europe."

I am originally from Germany and I think the main obstacle for this decoupling will be the reluctance of Europe to take defense into their own hands. When things get tough they so far always have relied on the US. I don't see that changing anytime soon.

<comment><USER5> I still live in Germany and I can echo your concerns.

The majority of society has zero interest in doing military service, no respect for people serving in the military at best, to downright hostility at worst, as urban myths and clichés (like that the Bundeswehr is just for racist nutjobs) go largely unchallenged (it is by far and large more ethnically diverse than say most IT departments).

Don't get me wrong, I think it's a good thing that we aren't a militarist country.

But the reason for us being able to afford this kind of luxury is US protection.

And thus it doesn't matter how much some Germans are annoyed with the US, this social shunning of military service is not going anywhere.

You get what you pay for. Or not...

<comment><USER4> I remember when the war in Yugoslavia went on. This was clearly a European thing but in the end it was the Americans that did the dirty work while the Europeans did a lot of talking but no action.

<comment><USER6> Every NATO member plus a whole bunch more was involved in that.

<comment><USER4> Only after the US went first.

<comment> barry-cotter Accurate. Much like how Sarkozy really wanted to bomb Libya but nothing actually happened until Hilary and Obama decided to do it.

<comment><USER7> French people were opposed to that idiotic intervention, just like the ones in Iraq and Syria. Sarkozy was not re-elected (for this and many other reasons).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > European Union countries are concerned about depending on technology > providers that must comply with the U.S. Cloud Act, WSJ Pro Cybersecurity > reported in October. The 2018 law requires American firms to provide law > enforcement with customers' personal data on request, even when the servers > containing the information are abroad.

I don't blame them. What a horribly short-sighted law.

</comment><comment><USER9> In retrospect, I'm surprised it took them this long. I'm an American and I wouldn't trust us as far as I could throw us (and with the rate of obesity we experience, you wouldn't be able to throw us very far). I have no doubt that most government agencies with three letter acronyms can look at any data stored on US cloud servers with impunity.

</comment><comment><USER10> > Some European companies that use large American cloud providers say those > services are more competitively priced than cloud services in Europe, WSJ > Pro previously reported. Gaia-X could lower transaction costs by > standardizing contracts and processes between cloud providers and customers, > the German Economy Ministry said.

I mean Hetzner for example is very competitive price-wise, but they are missing a lot of the platform functionality AWS and Azure provide.

<comment><USER11> Hetzner isn't really a 'cloud' thing in the same way as AWS et al are, and doesn't really seem to have ambitions in that direction. Which is fine; there's definitely a market for what they do.

<comment><USER12> > Hetzner isn't really a 'cloud' thing in the same way as AWS et al are, and > doesn't really seem to have ambitions in that direction.

Hetzner Cloud is more about IaaS than PaaS, and competes directly with DigitalOcean after the introduction of dedicated vCPU, block storage, and private networks. It's still missing object storage, though.

OVH Public Cloud, on the other hand, is trying to become the AWS / GCP / Azure of Europe – and with unmetered bandwidth is many times cheaper than they are – but at the moment it's still much better as IaaS rather than PaaS.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I m on board as long as the EU governments don't have "special rights" to the data stored in those servers under all kinds of excuses. In many ways, having your data stored on the other side of the earth offers some privacy/security benefits.

The right thing to campaign for is to move data AWAY from all kinds of clouds / hoarders and back into private silos, away from all kinds of grabby governments.

<comment><USER14> Well of course the EU governments will have special rights. You'll still have to obey EU law after all. But at least there's an extra step before American law enforcement can access that data.

So consider, for most people, it's good enough protection. Because we're not worth the extra step.

<comment><USER15> What's more, EU law says that personal data can't just be shared with companies or governments. No easy backdoors to your data. I'm no lawyer, but I'd expect that any government, US, EU or otherwise, will have to provide a warrant. Final decision will be with a European judge, not an American one. That means quite a bit.

<comment><USER16> > No easy backdoors to your data.

In many countries, the easy backdoors are already baked in on a constitutional national level.

See the NSA pressuring the German government to modify its G-10 law, or FAD "legal guidance" operations in Sweden and the Netherlands [0].

Case in point: Merkel might have complained loudly about the NSA spying on her phone for the PR, but I'm pretty certain she was fully aware that this was completely legal to do for the NSA [1].

[0] [http://www.europarl.europa.eu/document/activities/cont/20140...](http://www.europarl.europa.eu/document/activities/cont/201403/20140307ATT80674/20140307ATT80674EN.pdf)

[1] [https://www.zeit.de/politik/deutschland/2013-10/nsa- uerberwa...](https://www.zeit.de/politik/deutschland/2013-10/nsa- uerberwachung-merkel-interview-foschepoth)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Europeans must be on the right track if the monopolists are complaining

<comment><USER18> Did the definition of monopoly change while I wasn't looking?

There are no cloud monopolists; there are major players, but nobody has a monopoly.

<comment><USER19> Correct. The right term to use here is oligopoly.

<comment><USER14> And considering that they all meet up at conferences and the like, we might even want to toy with the term "cartel".

But yeah, calling them monopolies is altogether incorrect.

<comment><USER18> They are very obviously competing with each other. Every industry has conferences that all the big players go to, it doesn't mean they're illegally cooperating.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Christmas draws backlash from turkeys. News at 11.

The sad bit is that, had these "giants" fought a bit more all those US legislative atrocities like the PATRIOT Act, maybe, just maybe, there would not have been a need for this.

<comment><USER13> or like net neutrality, which in the end didn't change anything.

<comment><USER21> Net neutrality is about maintaining the possibilities of newcomers arising. Saying that removing net neutrality didn't change anything is like saying that removing elections doesn't change anything. In either case, it inappropriately freezes the status quo in place.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Dependency leads you to getting screwed over in negotiations... from American IT to Chinese manufacturing. Autarchy is not a serious option but you've got to have options for exiting lopsided relationships.

</comment><comment><USER23> Having just returned from 4 years living in Western Europe, it is laughable how technologically inept the European Union is when it comes to the internet.

Europeans are competent and intelligent. Their universities are competitively amongst the best in the world.

But there is no entrepreneurial or innovative mindset when it comes to the web. I think the ones that have it move to North America. The ones that are left are disincentivized by a comfortable and productive social environment.

All this to say, I don't have much hope for this project's success, and unlike a private enterprise failing and disappearing, this will not fail quietly, but with billions of dollars, and the ones that will suffer are the European Union citizens who will be forced to use inept second tier technology.

<comment><USER24> I do agree that there is much less entrepreneurial mindset but there is not less creation.

What the creation leads to is different and I'd suggest two main reasons:

1) Europeans are less likely to make it a business - the safety net might play a role but also just different value sets. I'd suggest that on average Europeans are less focused on profit/getting rich and more on just living a decent life e.g. with work-life balance. So they might run things in their spare time but will be more likely to give their creation away than run a for- profit company with it. See e.g. PGP, Linux Kernel, LibreOffice, OpenCloud & Nextcloud, Raspberry Pi, Arduino, ... - many leading FOSS and even some hardware projects are European-lead.

2) Startup success is quite a bit more difficult in Europe due to lower investor/VC availability and a smaller market (burden of translation & different legislations, although EU legislation is slowly converging things). Nonetheless you had Skype, Spotify, TransferWise, etc. But those were all mostly bootstrapped - there's no money available that allows annual 8-or-9-digit losses like with the typical examples of Uber, Lyft, WeWork or Lime.

So its not that there's nothing creative going on, but fewer try to make it a business and of those fewer succeed - and indeed many of those are then bought by or on their own move to the other side of the Atlantic.

Tidbit: actually I've never seen comparison data on startup success rates between countries, just on overall startup numbers.

<comment><USER25> Also, many Europeans are far less market driven then most people in the US seem to be. A lot of people work in public sectors, where innovations happens but its simply not put to market, because the entire sector is not part of a traditional market based economy. Labour relations are also a lot different then in the US.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Lots of support from the usual HN "tariffs bad" crowd that shows up when America restricts trade. But now, producing your own stuff _can_ be important strategically? It seems pre-existing opinions of the actor in question are tainting opinions of the activity.

<comment><USER11> Eh? I mean "in general, tariffs are bad" is not incompatible with "some industries/facilities are strategically important and must be supported". Very few people are calling for totally free markets with no tariffs or government support _at all_, but a lot of people would see them as a necessary evil that should be minimised.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I'm surprised they didn't call the project Quaero again just to highlight how hopeless this is from the start. Talk about being five days late and five euros short!

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

</comment><comment><USER28> Is there any code for this? Any specific design documents that actually go into detail? All of the PDFs I find don't go beyond the CIO level.

Reads like a typical German bureaucracy project: Lots of requirements but nothing that could even remotely be implemented in time.

</comment><comment><USER29> I believe that european bureacracy can be successful in building aws/azure rival from the ground up. They better support european cloud providers through some industry association, grants, or establish a university based partnership project

<comment><USER29> typo, should be read: I _don 't_ believe

<comment><USER30> It's fine either way because anyone European citizen surely read the first comment as sarcasm.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> [https://www.forbes.com/sites/kennethcorbin/2019/07/17/eu- hit...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/kennethcorbin/2019/07/17/eu-hits-amazon- with-antitrust-probe/)

and then it uses their cloud ;-)

[https://ec.europa.eu/info/news/european-commission-adopts- ne...](https://ec.europa.eu/info/news/european-commission-adopts-new-cloud- strategy-2019-may-28_en)

</comment><comment><USER32> Does anyone have info to share about the tech of Gaia-X? I mean it's probably mostly about cloud services for the public sector, but then it's also open for other users and I've heard vague hints at service repositories and privacy metadata. Public press info is only regurgitated "industry 4.0" fluff. Peter Altmaier (German minister of economics) wanted to talk about details and roadmaps, but fell off the stage and got injured before he could do so.

</comment><comment><USER33> If they build it, can Americans use it? Asking for a friend...

</comment><comment><USER34> This is very strange: AWS had no problems at all creating a wholly owned sovereign Chinese AWS region. Why can they not do exactly the same thing in France?

[https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/05/18/china_cloud_setup/](https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/05/18/china_cloud_setup/)

</comment><comment><USER35> Given the relationship with the US, Russia must have been the first to realize they need their own cloud. I wonder if they built something serious yet? Maybe Yandex?

[1] [https://cloud.yandex.com/](https://cloud.yandex.com/)

</comment><comment><USER36> Any chance this project benefits nextcloud?

</comment><comment><USER15> Data has become incredibly important. A see a lot of people call data the new gold, or the new oil. I once read that some European nations stored their gold in the US, and are now having trouble getting it back. Oil is another valuable commodity where the US has always tried to stay in control over. With data, I guess it makes sense that European countries finally want a bit more sovereignty over it.

<comment><USER37> Could you provide a citation for the claim that European countries have had a hard time repatriating gold held in the US?

<comment><USER15> My comment is based on some articles from years ago about Germany and maybe other countries having trouble getting their gold back from the US. Googling a bit now results in a couple of articles that say that Germany did eventually get their gold back, but there were some hiccups and delays that made people wonder whether the gold was even there at all.

[https://bmg-group.com/germanys-gold-reserves-u-s-paper-claim...](https://bmg- group.com/germanys-gold-reserves-u-s-paper-claims/)

[https://www.rt.com/business/445133-germany-access-gold-us- fe...](https://www.rt.com/business/445133-germany-access-gold-us-fed/)

[https://www.kitco.com/news/2017-08-24/Germany-Gets-Its- Gold-...](https://www.kitco.com/news/2017-08-24/Germany-Gets-Its-Gold-Back- From-The-Fed-And-It-s-A-Big-Deal.html)

Turns out everything is fine, but a couple of years ago, people were worried about this. It looks like only Germany was involved and no other countries.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> [http://archive.is/m6bEG](http://archive.is/m6bEG)

</comment><comment><USER39> I have not heard of this project. While as a european I appreciate the intent, I have zero expectations that this will result in anything other than some pointless spending, on the lines of the "google-killer" quaero[0].

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

</comment><comment><USER40> ... and as a EU project private alternative to the likes of Dropbox, there's Duple, an app that gives you your full private Dropbox at home. Self-hosted, E2EE, and works just like a Dropbox (currently in beta): [https://www.duple.io/en/](https://www.duple.io/en/)

<comment><USER41> How does it protect your data if your house burns down?

<comment><USER42> Not how does it, how do you. You should spread the data to an offsite or secondary location.

<comment><USER23> So, a backup solution where part of the instructions is..."another backup solution"

Come on.

<comment><USER42> Uh, yeah? A common rule in IT is 3-2-1 backups.

3 copies

2 different devices or medias

1 offsite

If your data isn't that important, then don't.

[https://www.us- cert.gov/sites/default/files/publications/dat...](https://www.us- cert.gov/sites/default/files/publications/data_backup_options.pdf)

<comment><USER23> A) Cloud backup solutions already abstract away replicating multiple copies for redundancy.

Unless Google/Dropbox/Amazon/Microsoft go out of business, you are not likely to lose data from your backup via act of god (aka data center fire)

B) The simple interface of web solutions is still ultimately that if you want redundancy, just pick 2 (or 3) different providers. Myself - I use Google Drive for backup of my most core files, and Backblaze for the whole shabang.

<comment><USER42> Right, so you have as part of your backup solution "another backup solution"

<comment><USER23> My point is backup that's not Offsite is not backup at all.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>