Using AI to match human performance in translating news from Chinese to English - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.microsoft.com/ai/machine-translation-news-test-set-human-parity/ <comment><USER2> Compare this to one of Google's blog post promoting their MT research: [https://research.googleblog.com/2016/09/a-neural-network- for...](https://research.googleblog.com/2016/09/a-neural-network-for- machine.html)

It is:

1) More accurate, compared to hyperbole like e.g. "Bridging the Gap between Human and Machine Translation" we have right there in the title the domain: news.

2) A more impressive result. This result is on an independently set up evaluation framework, compared to Google's which used their own framework.

Compare further the papers: [https://arxiv.org/pdf/1609.08144.pdf](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1609.08144.pdf) [https://www.microsoft.com/en- us/research/uploads/prod/2018/0...](https://www.microsoft.com/en- us/research/uploads/prod/2018/03/final-achieving-human.pdf)

These researcher appear to have been much clearer about what they're actually claiming, and also used more standard evaluation tools (Appraise) and methodology rather than something haphazardly hacked together.

<comment><USER3> The outputs of Microsoft Research are really good. At least in my field, it is one of the few places where if they published something you can be sure of being able to reproduce the results using only what is described in the paper, no secret sauce required.

</comment></comment><comment> d--b As impressive as it may be, these people should refrain from claiming 'human- like' translation from a system that has no way of 'knowing' anything about context, other than statistical occurrences.

It is certain that, on occasion, the system will make such mistakes as stating the opposite of what is being said in the first place, or attribute one action to the wrong person, and what not. Perhaps on average it's as good as a person, but this system will make mistakes that disqualifies it from being used without a bucket of salt.

<comment><USER4> Let's just define that "human like" in context of machine translation from now on mean "with full legal responsibility". Then let's see who claim their translator is "human like".

<comment><USER5> If you defined it that way, not even human translators would meet the standard. Treaties and other official documents published in multiple languages always specify one as the "official" one for purposes of legal interpretation and that, in the event of conflict or confusion, the translations are subservient to it. Setting a bar for AI performance so high that even humans don't reach it seems unhelpful.

<comment><USER6> Actually most international treaties specify all language versions to be equally authentic. Multilingual contracts on the other hand generally have a single authoritative version.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The most impressive ML translation tool I've seen so far is DeepL[0].

Sometimes, it manages to translate whole articles without errors.

[0]: [https://www.deepl.com/translator](https://www.deepl.com/translator)

<comment><USER8> Impressive, but there's an easy formula for getting these systems to make mistakes. Just input a sentence with some kind of long distance dependency. For example, DeepL gets agreement right in English to Spanish translations when the two things that agree are close together:

        I like soup -> COMO sopa
        They eat soup -> COMEN sopa

Impressively, it can even get agreement correct across clause boundaries in many cases. But if you do wh-movement through two or more clauses, you're usually out of luck:

        Which boys does he say he believes eat soup?
        ->
        ¿Qué chicos dice que cree que COME sopa? [should be COMEN]

It doesn't really matter very much in practice if an MT system makes mistakes like this, but they are mistakes that you can rely on humans not to make systematically.

<comment><USER8> (outside edit window. first sentence should be 'I eat soup' not 'I like soup')

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Translate "sentences of news" is very different to translating an entire article, which is obviously what's interesting.

Is anybody in MT or text comprehension/generation really working on systems that construct a model/"understanding" of the bigger narrative in a longer- running text? Even just to be able to do correct anaphora resolution across sentence and paragraph boundaries, but intuitively also WSD seems easier if you've got some sort of abstract context over more than just a sentence.

<comment><USER10> I think Google translate already has this. I was translating some text into German a few days ago, and after a few sentences I used a word that made it clear that I was talking about a specific type of contract appointment, and it went back and adjusted earlier sentences to use more precise terminology. You only notice this when you a) speak the language you're translating into somewhat; b) actually type/compose the message in the Google Translate text box; and c) are typing something idiomatic enough that such specific phrases can be inferred. So I guess it's just something you wouldn't normally notice.

Either way, I was mightily impressed, to the point where my wife had to roll her eyes and say 'yeah yeah I understand it now' to get me to drop it. (I'm just easily excited I guess.)

<comment><USER11> That sounds extremely interesting. I had not noticed that feature before. Do you happen to have some example input at hand that triggers such an adjustment?

<comment><USER12> It's likely this tech is released to only a small percentage of users, and at off-peak times.

Parsing an entire paragraph for context is _expensive_...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Be careful when reading such claims: [https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/01/the-s...](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/01/the- shallowness-of-google-translate/551570/?single_page=true)

<comment><USER14> That was much better than I expected.

And it wasn't until I looked at the byline at the end when I realized, yes, it is _that_ Hofstadter (Godel, Escher, Bach).

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> What I find most interesting is the multiple training methods used to get the network to improve its performance. They name a few in the article:

\- dual learning \- deliberation networks \- joint training \- agreement regularization

I haven't read the paper to see how these are combined but it makes intuitive sense that using multiple training methods can lead to better performance. That is to say, to more effectively search the weight space of the network.

</comment><comment><USER16> I find these types of "match human performance" claims to be ridiculous, especially when it comes to Chinese -> English translations. Translation is both an art and a science, requiring nuanced understanding of the languages, cultures, and context. It also demands quite a bit of creativity. No translation tool I've tried has come even close to matching human performance of a good human translator, including microsoft's tools. AI will need to reach the point where its understanding of language, culture, context, and creative ability matches that of humans to truly be capable of "human performance" in translation.

<comment><USER17> After reading the paper, my takeaway is that humans aren't really very good at translation either. None of the methods scores higher than 70% in the evaluation and that includes several different human translations (whose performance varies greatly depending on how they were sourced). So while matching the quality of the average human translator is a great milestone, there's still lots of room to improve.

<comment><USER16> Most humans who attempt to translate are not actually translators in the proper sense. Specifically, they are not fully competent in both the source and target language and usually have no formal training in translation. Translation is hard, but there are competent people out there who do it extremely well. Sadly, as an industry it's not taken as seriously as it should be, and most of the people who are actually doing translations do not have the appropriate skill set.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> It's obvious that there are limits to how well machine translation can work unless the models have sensory grounding. I wonder if the problem is that people haven't figured out how to do sensory grounding or that the hardware is still too slow for it to work.

<comment><USER14> This article, posted by Quanttek above, is very relevant to your question:

[https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/01/the-s...](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/01/the- shallowness-of-google-translate/551570/?single_page=true)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> About translators solely reliant on NN. The thing is, while 70% of output can be well passable, some of the rest can be very weird if original input was not learned. Like a string of gibberish turning into 10 full sentences.

You have to score the extent of wrongness too.

</comment><comment><USER20> Would be nice to have improved MTL performance for Wuxia/Xanxia webnovels.

</comment><comment><USER21> I'd suggest addressing non-English to non-English translations first, which is usually limited in most engines out there compared to translations to/from English.

</comment><comment><USER22> Amazing when can i start reading chinese cs boards</comment>


The next generation of Instapaper - <AUTHOR> http://www.marco.org/2013/04/25/instapaper-next-generation <comment><USER2> I wonder how much this has to do with the rise of Pocket over the last year.

It's no secret that Pocket has improved dramatically since rebranding a year ago. And I'm sure most people who are looking for their first "read-later" app are trying Pocket (free) before buying Instapaper ($5).

Personally speaking, I bought Instapaper for myself and gifted it to a few other people over the years, but I switched to Pocket a few months ago. The continuous updates and simpler interface (those thumbnail pics are surprisingly useful) won me over, despite my hesitations about their business model.

<comment><USER3> Instapaper is nice because I felt like I was paying a reasonable amount for an app that I use regularly.

Pocket, although having its own benefits, is free. Any service with ongoing costs (parsing servers) that charges nothing for their app has me questioning their longevity.

<comment><USER4> I don't understand why people care so much about the "longevity" of an app that at most saves their data for a week, like Pocket, or something like Google's Keep, a notes app.

Who cares if it dies in 2 years? You might be switching through 3 other alternatives by then anyway. And you can still save your week worth of data if they announce the shut down anyway.

It's not like say an e-mail service, where you might actually want to keep your years worth of data.

<comment><USER5> >I don't understand why people care so much about the "longevity" of an app that at most saves their data for a week, like Pocket, or something like Google's Keep, a notes app.

I have thousands of items in Pocket going back a year and a half.

<comment><USER4> And I have hundreds of "important" bookmarks in Chrome that I'll probably never check again.

Let's face it, if you aren't reading it in the first week, you probably never will - except maybe that _one_ article you plan on reading when you're travelling a few weeks from now. But even then you might forget all about it, with all the news coming it.

<comment><USER5> >And I have hundreds of "important" bookmarks in Chrome that I'll probably never check again.

That's a pretty terrible analogy.

What I have in Pocket is more than a bunch of bookmarks, it's a local archive of everything I've added. I can read it in a nice flowing text format and benefit from limited search functionality. I can reference anything in there anytime whether I have connectivity or not, whether the source page still exists or not.

>Let's face it, if you aren't reading it in the first week, you probably never will - except maybe that one article you plan on reading when you're travelling a few weeks from now.

Stop projecting your habits and use case onto everyone else.

<comment><USER6> if you have unread items going back for more than a year, chances are you are adding more to the list than you are removing. I guess hes right, i have observed this in myself and many colleagues from the days of delicious onwards. You bookmark/tag alot of interesting stuff because you are absolutely sure you will need it again and then forgetting about it after several weeks/months never looking at it again. In the case that you need that knowledge again, you just dig it up on google (if you can remember it).

Might not be true for you, but i am sure its pretty common behaviour. I have given up on read-later apps because stuff just kept piling up. Noawadays i just leave the tabs open until i have read something of interest and if i figure that it isnt interesting enough after a few days i just close the tab and forget about it. That way i am managing my to-read list on a daily basis and it doesnt go back later than a week. With chrome sync its also easy to grab the open tabs on my other devices and read them there.

That being said things might be different if i had a long communte or had more freetime after work, but in that case i am usually reading a book, if i am reading anything at all. Giving the brain some relaxation time from the constant bombardment of tech "news" is nice as well.

<comment><USER7> I think OP's saying he has _read_ archives going back 1 year and a half. Not unread, _read_.

I too have hundreds of read articles sitting in my Instapaper's archives, and a few dozens of favorites. I'm more concerned for them than the unread articles.

If Pocket goes away in the blink of an eye, what becomes of your archives & favorites?

<comment><USER5> _> If Pocket goes away in the blink of an eye, what becomes of your archives & favorites?_

Seems like the type of thing to be proactive about it.

Pocket has an API that you could use to sync with another similar service , or roll something of your own. They also have a simple export which provides a list of source URLs for what you've pocketed.

I've set Kippt up to retrieve from Pocket and used to the manual export to load things into historious [1].

As a last resort, on the Android version all the offline assets and pages can be found here [2].

1: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5610492> 2: com.ideashower.readitlater.pro/files/RIL_offline

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Twitter can be dramatic <https://twitter.com/SteveStreza/status/327550484745445376>

<comment><USER9> This is classic Marco, nothing to see here. He's just a child who starts this stuff over nothing, from what I've seen.

<comment><USER10> I would have done the same as Marco. It was unasked for and unnecessary. Pocket is a great app but so its Instapaper and Marco has done a tremendous job over the years by keeping it in shape by himself (with exception of the Android app). This is a way on pissing all over the the efforts of a independent developer. Just because.

<comment><USER11> C'mon, that tweet from Steve is exactly the kind of thing Marco would post if Pocket or any of his other competitors were getting bad press.

<comment><USER12> In fact, this behavior is the very same reason people venerate Pinboard's Twitter account.

<comment><USER13> Yes, everything popular you don't like is because people just love assholes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> When I compare this to the Parse/Facebook deal, this seems like a more natural transition.

I actually doubt it has much to do with Pocket, instead I think is exactly how Marco put it, grown bigger than a single person could manage.

Congrats to both Marco and Betaworks.

<comment><USER15> If it had grown bigger than one person could manage, why not hire somebody?

<comment><USER16> He's stated before he likes the employee-free lifestyle. And there is a huge gap to bridge between "I can do this myself" and "There's enough work to hire a full-time employee".

<comment><USER17> But getting one or more partners on board who get like 10% of the revenue and take over all the development work and day to day business might have worked quite well. Or subcontracting to some kick-ass freelancers (who would have jumped at that opportunity, surely?).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I enjoyed the podcast that Marco had on the 5by5 network because he seemed like such a regular guy who happens to work hard and put out a popular product. A lot of times it also motivated me to get to work on my own things. Congrats to him and Im looking forward to what he does next

<comment><USER19> Unrelated to the article, but Marco & a couple others now run a different podcast: <http://atp.fm/>

<comment><USER20> Has there been some sort of falling out between Arment, Siracusa and Gruber - they all left 5by5 within a short time of the Gruber move, and in my opinion their shows are now worse.

<comment><USER21> Gruber left in February 2012 [1]. Hypercritical continued until December [2]. Build and Analyze the same [3].

Siracusa and Arment both said they thought the shows had run the course. Siracusa is also a regular on The Incomparable [4].

[1]: <http://5by5.tv/talkshow> [2]: <http://5by5.tv/hypercritical> [3]: <http://5by5.tv/buildanalyze> [4]: <http://5by5.tv/incomparable>

<comment><USER20> Nicely referenced. I just noted that Siracusa and Marco seemed to start shows very soon after leaving and despite saying things about probably coming back they haven't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I switched from Instapaper to Readability about a year ago, despite Instapaper being faster and having a better (actual) business model. I was lured by the beautiful reading experience that comes with Readability's iOS apps.

Hopefully, with a focussed team behind it, Instapaper will begin to catch up on the design front. I'm looking forward to seeing where Betaworks take it.

</comment><comment><USER23> In the article "Talent acquisitions" <http://www.marco.org/2012/07/20/talent- acquisitions> Marco criticized Pulp, Wallet, Sparrow and he wrote:

 _Instapaper has had multiple similar inquiries from large companies over the last few years. We've never gotten very far in talks because I don't want Instapaper to shut down, I don't want to move my family across the country, and they didn't want to pay enough — for them, they'll pay a premium to hire me, but they won't pay much for a service they'll shut down immediately and an app they'll throw away._

 _I was only able to reject those offers because Instapaper is a healthy business, and the life that Instapaper provides for me and my family is better than what the big companies offered."_

 _If you want to keep the software and services around that you enjoy, do what you can to make their businesses successful enough that it's more attractive to keep running them than to be hired by a big tech company._

So it's not a "Talent acquisition", but how could we still keep the software and services around that us enjoy in the future?

<comment><USER24> I think the thought process is simple - you run a paid service and it's good, liked by people and you see another service, free, being acquired(acquihired most likely) and you feel bad about it(not jealousy necessarily) and you give your opinion and how that's bad for app ecysystem and of course for the users who depend on them. But when an opportunity comes to selling the app you just sell it if the price is good and that's a known thing.

OF course in the blog post after sell you mention how you'll still be influential and all.

Though not al sell/buys are bad. Evernote bought Skitch and now I like it more.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Arment two days ago: <https://twitter.com/marcoarment/status/326757551947530240>

He may be just refuting the "peak downloads/full time on Magazine" claim, but kind of an odd response given this.

<comment><USER26> Actually, it doesn't sound odd in the slightest if you read the whole thread, including the two people at the end complaining about the lack of support. Reading the article, it sounds like Instapaper was just too big for Marco to support on his own, and has partnered with BetaWorks to help him make the product better, probably by giving it support.

It seems incredibly cut and dry from that perspective.

<comment><USER25> Well, one of bottom guys is the editor of Arment's magazine, so only one of them is asking for support. I just find it odd that people saying things mostly proven by this sale (Instapaper isn't Arment's top priority, it is hard to run Instapaper alone) gets a somewhat chastising response saying "it isn't true at all".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Good for Marco, good for Instapaper, good for Betaworks.

I believe Marco when he says he's not done it out of worry for the competition. He's never seemed particularly bothered about having rivals, as Instapaper was making money. It does seem that his passion for the project was waning though, there's not been a new version for a while, compared to a few years ago where new features were arriving on a reasonably regular basis.

I think it'll be a good fit, whilst Marco might be bored with the project he wasn't going to give his crowning achievement up to anyone, so I imagine Betaworks will be taking it onwards and upwards. Good for us as well, it means Marco can find a new project to interest him.

</comment><comment><USER28> I'm saddened by this announcement. I'm an early Instapaper paying subscriber, a The Magazine paying subscriber of the first hour, I've read every article on his blog, I've listened to all the episodes of Build & Analyze, Accidental Tech and the Neutral podcasts — I've spread the word every way I could and engaged with the sponsors of the shows. I became a Tumblr member because of him.

Marco has always talked about how important he felt it was to be independent and to offer a paid service in order not to be acquired. Given how he handled the Android release, I believed he would never sell Instapaper.

Last week, Loren Brichter announced he would be moving to Facebook. I'm still shell-shocked about that announcement as a very active Letterpress player, now this. I'm worried.

I will continue to pay for Marco's products and services, but I am worried what will happen to Instapaper, which is an important tool for how I acquire information and do business.

<comment><USER29> Creating a service shouldn't be a lifetime commitment to running it. There needs to be a way for Marco to continue inventing new products without dedicating an increasing percentage of his time to supporting existing ones, and this seems like a reasonable way to allow that.

<comment><USER28> Sure, I completely understand why he would do it, and he sold the service to the best party he could think of, but still, I am sad.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Funny.. Just a few weeks I was wondering if Marco was bored of Instapaper and tried out Pocket in case he was going to dump it.

Doesn't matter, I ended up liking Pocket better after having been a long time Instapaper user.

</comment><comment><USER31> Congratulations to Marco. I can't wait to see what he comes up with next.

<comment><USER32> Ditto. He really is an inspiration.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Hope they don't remove the epub download option. Everybody's building iPhone apps, but last time I checked only Instapaper supported epubs. It's been great with my kobo reader*

* albeit, I run a script to fix some errors (based on <http://opennomad.com/content/instapaper-epub-issues>)

</comment><comment><USER34> [http://www.appannie.com/app/ios/instapaper/ranking/history/#...](http://www.appannie.com/app/ios/instapaper/ranking/history/#start_date=2009-07-08&end_date=2013-04-26&view=rank&store_id=143441&device=iphone&vtype=day)

<comment><USER35> <http://monosnap.com/image/uHrTKSc7dUyOmuT1Oc5BmtxOV>

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> For at least year Instapaper wasn't really moving forward. Design feels outdated, the website looks like thrash. Pocket on the other hand looks and feels pretty awsome. As you can the fact you paid for the app or not has nothing to do with this outcome so far.

Instapaper situation is the best example, that Marco's jabber that you should pay for apps if you wan't them to last is just plain wrong. The free vs paid doesn't really matter in long run. Fortunatlley you can switch from one to another within a week, so its not much of an investment anyway.

</comment><comment><USER37> Anyone want to guess at the valuation? Betaworks didn't spend much on Digg, wonder how deep their pockets are.

<comment><USER38> One way to look at it is that the money people paid for Instagram has already gone to Marco.

What he's "selling" are potential future customers, subscriber fees, and ads.

I don't know what the curve on user adoption looks like, but it seems like a smart choice from a financial point of view.

It'll be interesting how this fits into the upcoming Digg RSS reader.

<comment><USER11> I wouldn't be surprised if Instapaper has a free version again very soon.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I'm hoping that when Marco says "I've sold a majority stake" he doesn't mean "I've sold everything". I'm a big Instapaper fan, and I'd hate to see someone else take over deciding the direction the service should move in.

A big part of Instapaper's success comes from the fact that Marco's done a great job at steering the ship. He really is a world-class product guy who knows what to say no to.

Congratulations to Marco and Betaworks. I hope it works out well for all of us.

<comment><USER40> > _Announcement: betaworks has acquired Instapaper._

I don't think it can be any clearer than this.

<http://betaworks.com>

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> I've been hoping for innovation in the app for a while now. It'd be nice to have any sorts of options or filters to help you clear your backlog, such as "filter by shortest to longest" or "show all half read articles".

Hopefully this deal helps innovating an app that has become a bit stale.

</comment><comment><USER42> Marco likes to rant about other app devs selling out their users for a buck. I believe Marco believes that he's somehow different.

</comment><comment><USER43> Betaworks.com getting hammered right now. I hope they are better at managing Instapaper ops!

I tease, I tease. In all seriousness, congrats to Marco. A real hero of The Internet.

</comment><comment><USER44> I hope nothing happens to Instapaper. I love this app; after Chrome and Mail, it's my #3 app on iOS.

</comment><comment><USER45> Either way, I've payed the one-person-dev for some years, I won't pay Digg.

</comment><comment><USER46> And I will Instapaper that article...

</comment><comment><USER47> Ever since Instapaper got the bright idea to charge monthly for a search feature, fuck them. Go pocket.

</comment><comment><USER48> wondering if betaworks will just use the parser technology to use it for other products like the "RSS reader" DIGG announced or s.th. else. Maybe they are trying to build something like www.dotdotdot.me

</comment><comment><USER49> okay, will be gone in one year from now. or one and a half. always the same story with that kind of acquisitions.</comment>


The New Slack Experience - <AUTHOR> https://slack.com/intl/en-gb/help/articles/360043092173-The-new-Slack-experience <comment><USER2> Does this allow for sorting channels by last activity? I've always found it odd that there is a "Scientific" / "Priority" based sorting but not by last activity. The current sorting methods become extremely painful as an organization grows and this has been a feature that many in my organization have asked for (and I have submitted feature requests to Slack many times).

If it doesn't, please add the ability to sort channels by last activity!</comment>


Good bye, Google Maps… thanks for all the fish - <AUTHOR> https://plus.google.com/u/0/118383351194421484817/posts/foj5A1fURGt <comment><USER2> I really wish there is a way to show more than just the domain name next to the title.

>Good bye, Google Maps… thanks for all the fish (google.com)

is simply misleading.

<comment><USER3> Also not on the topic of the article, but...

I wish people would stop blogging on Google plus. Period.

It's the worst reading experience ever on the iPhone - nearly impossible as the text blurs, and you have to drag the article around to see it all and then wait for the blur to go away.

<comment><USER4> Does the iPhone not open Google Plus posts in the Google Plus app? Or do you not have it installed? The reason your experience is awful is because Google doesn't care to make the G+ mobile web experience perfect since their app is the way to go.

On Android, when I click one of these links it opens the app and the reading experience is very pleasant. Maybe I've just been spoiled, but I find the experience to be pretty good.

Edit: Also, I think it's kind of silly that you wish people would stop publicly posting on Google Plus due to your phone experience being subpar. I think the problem lies much more with you and your phone than it does with Google Plus _as a writing platform_.

<comment><USER5> Let me get this straight: You think it's more reasonable for Apple to have to build in special support so requests for webpages on plus.google.com go to the G+ app instead of Safari than for Google to just make their site work on mobile platforms like everybody else on the planet?

You are, as the kids say, straight trippin'.

<comment><USER6> I've never developed for iOS, but on my iPhone when I go to okcupid.com it somehow 'redirects' to the okcupid app on my phone. So it seems there is some capability for this built in that website developers can take advantage of.

<comment><USER7> iOS apps can register foobar:// hooks. If a site redirects to a URI with a custom protocol, it'll wake up the app that's tied to it.

(I'm not sure how they're detecting whether that hook is registered or not, though.)

<comment><USER5> It looks like they basically ask whether you want to use the site or the app the first time you visit on a device, and if you choose the app, it sends you to the App Store and sets a localstorage setting that triggers a redirect on subsequent visits. (Edit: OK, it's a little bit more sophisticated than that. But I think that's not too far off.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> When those prices were announced, I was really expecting that they were just for show, and really everybody would end up paying way less than list price. It's bizarre that this isn't happening. Making a real and profitable business out of providing a geo API is great. Pricing it out of just about everyone's range and driving the potential customers away, less so. I can come up with a lot of theories, but none that is really believable:

1\. So many companies really paying nearly list price that it's worth losing the other business.

2\. Using different pricing schemes on different customers to figure out what the pain threshold really is, to maximize profit.

3\. The sales people have a bad set of incentives, and are too strongly encouraged to try to make sales with low discounts.

4\. ?

</comment><comment><USER9> A similar story on HN from a couple of weeks ago:

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3392851> – Why (and how) we've switched away from Google Maps (nestoria.co.uk)

</comment><comment><USER10> The most telling part of this experience was the discovery of how good open source mapping has become lately.

While it's the money that's forcing developers to look for alternative mapping solutions, it's also unleashing a wave of interest in open source maps. Those will undoubtedly get better as time passes.

I do believe Google will look back on the decision to start charging for their map products _at the levels chosen_ as a bad one for themselves, but a great one for open source.

</comment><comment><USER11> The maps do not show subway stop locations. That is not good when you are a NYC real estate company.

<comment><USER12> Rest assured that we will be adding the subway stops and various other awesome related data sets shortly.

<comment><USER13> Not to sound like a downer, because I really appreciate open source mapping, but that's the part where I think the costs, long term, will swing back.

Google maps is deceptively simple, in that the javascript library and tiling is a relatively solved problem. Google has the best datasets, and the best large-data know-how in the business, so outsourcing things like an up-to-date transit location and route database is built into that seemingly large cost.

What if you want to offer transit directions from your location to a rental?

Again, sorry if this sounds like I'm poo-poo'ing your effort; that's not my intention. I think there's another side to this story, though.

EDIT: Forgot to mention my own personal white whale. Google's geocoder is far from perfect, but it's the best I've seen. I worked for years with them, and none of the open source geocoders (or expensive ESRI products) could deal with addresses like Google's. Geocoding is like web WYSIWYG editors; they all suck, but some suck less than others. And everyone thinks they can do it better.

<comment><USER14> > Forgot to mention my own personal white whale. Google's geocoder is far from > perfect, but it's the best I've seen

Lulz wht? Google's Geocoder is by far the suckiest of any of the ones I evaluated. I'd highly recommend Bing or Yahoo before Google's geocoder.

<comment><USER15> I did a test with different Geocoders (Google, MapQuest, Bing, Yahoo, Nokia). Google was lightyears ahead of the rest in my test. It was for the Netherlands, though.

<comment><USER16> The netherlands is a different beast when it comes to Geocoding since each postcode only corresponds with around 10 buildings all very close to each other. Most other systems cover larger delivery areas. My complete amateur comment is that you need different algorithms for different countries.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Google charging heavily for maps is a good thing, in a way - more alternatives will come up, which are (hopefully) cheaper, and not locked to one company's whims

</comment><comment><USER18> The take away I got is that Google maps is a very good way to implement a map tile on your pages if you are a startup, one less thing to worry about, but if you succeed, be prepared to "optimize" the cost of that portion later. The per-unit cost is a steep slope, once you start to get volume.

Fair enough. No way would I try to make my own map at the beginning of a project.

<comment><USER19> You don't need to make your own map. MapQuest serves very nice OSM tiles for free. See how we did it using MapQuest here

[http://blog.nestoria.co.uk/why-and-how-weve-switched-away- fr...](http://blog.nestoria.co.uk/why-and-how-weve-switched-away-from-google- ma)

Then later if you feel like it you can switch to your own tiles

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Does anyone have any pointers to tutorials on how to get started building OSM maps? For example, if I have my own "map" of the US (a simple graphic image), how do I go about connecting that up to state boundaries and plotting lat/long on it, and then breaking it all up into tiles? I feel like that part of the puzzle is always missing from blog posts like these (though the post is helpful for the bigger infrastructure picture.)

<comment><USER21> While notaddicted's reply can also be useful to you, I think the part of the puzzle that you are missing is "georeferencing". From your example, with a raster (bitmap, image) map of the US: the part where you start connecting that to lat/lon is georeferencing. Essentially, you want to tie a spatial reference to your image, so that the raster's state boundaries will correspond to state boundaries on a "real" map. You can think of it as pinning an image you know nothing about to a map you do know something about, and then copying the information from known to unknown.

There are plenty of ways to georeference an image. The easiest would be to use something like QGIS or GRASS (both opensource GIS software). You will need existing spatial data to base your (as of now, non-spatial) map on: a shapefile of the state boundaries would work great.

Once you've wrapped your head around georeferencing and the idea of spatial vs nonspatial data, you will probably get more out of the mapsfromscratch tutorial.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> > they might have bad data, and there's very little you can do about it except > report it and wait

You can actually go to Google MapMaker and modify things yourself. I've fixed many things to date. <http://www.google.com/mapmaker>

</comment><comment><USER23> Could somebody explain to me how google charges for maps? I'm using it for <http://lanmarks.com/> \-- and it's not like I'm throwing an API key at them with the javascript include...

<comment><USER24> Start using an API key - you can then use their API console to track your usage, and you'll actually get notifications of overages, impending shutoff etc. Much better than flying blind.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Fortunately Google Maps' _geocoding_ API limits still appear to be based on IP address. So if you do your API requests via client-side AJAX, you should be fine. That's because it's unlikely any individual user will make more than 25,000 requests in a day.

<comment><USER26> Almost: unfortunately via the terms, you need to display the geocoding results on a Google Map.

> Note: the Geocoding API may only be used in conjunction with a Google map; > geocoding results without displaying them on a map is prohibited.

from: <http://code.google.com/apis/maps/documentation/geocoding/>

So, though the limit is technically lower, it's practically and legally quite the same.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> It's a very overview of the current open source map technologies out there. People may be talking a lot about the price, but my feeling is that the next batch of map servers etc are catering to a major set of folks who wish to diverge from the stock standard Google Maps look and functionality.

The technology is simplifying the whole process of generating and rendering maps quite a bit - comes with it's trade-offs of course. For those requiring a step or two above a simple basic map yet wish to have more customization over what's in the map tile, it's perfect - processing times are getting less, and the technology is becoming less arcane to understand

</comment><comment><USER15> This might just be a matter of taste or just what I am used to, but I have yet to see another online map, that looks as good as Google Maps. Do others have a different option about this?

Btw, when Google announced it's ridiculous new pricing scheme for Google Maps, I though maybe they actually just wanted to force people to become Google Maps Premier costumers. I mean, no way they really except people to pay that much. So I am really curious if their Premier program is actually less expensive. Did you actually contact Google Sales about it?

</comment><comment><USER28> Thanks for all the excellent pointers, some of which I knew but most I did not. I'm happy things turned out so well for you.

We recently had to navigate the Google Maps licensing obstacle course at $work. I tried getting quotes from Bing, but it was just as hard to get a number since we could only go through resellers. In the end we negotiated down a bit and reduced our map usage. But the next go around I'm seriously considering taking some time to investigate doing the maps ourselves. TileMill looks gorgeous!

</comment><comment><USER29> Does anyone know how Google's new pricing affects use of MapKit in iOS apps?

<comment><USER30> I would assume Apple's existing licence with Google for using Maps covers this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> This a great overview of the open source mapping options out there. I just posted some notes the other day on how MapBox pricing works for hosting custom map tiles: <http://ds.io/A12Drf> and a comparison of overage fees for MapBox premium accounts vs Google premier.

</comment><comment><USER32> And about the price, what are the bills like now ?

<comment><USER33> I'd really like to know that too.

It can't be too cheap to serve that many views reliably and quickly. OTOH, they are just NYC and they were already doing some things (like geocoding) themselves, while the google maps price included features they would never use (even implicitly, eg the cost of acquiring street data in other countries has to be figured into google's cost structure).

<comment><USER34> we expect it will be under $1,000 per month... depending on traffic, since it's mostly connected to bandwidth serving the tiles.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Douglas Adams is rolling over at this title. It should be "So Long, Google Maps..."

</comment><comment><USER36> Moving the map around causes it to go black here in Chrome 18. But other than that (with might be Chrome's fought), I think the maps look pretty nice.

<comment><USER26> Sounds like you're on the current nightly. The bug was introduced this morning by Chrome, and affects a large class of webkit-transform CSS. Like other Chrome bugs, I expect it to soon be replaced by a new bug.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> What about bing? Compared to Google Maps in terms of pricing? I think their maps are of great quality as well, much superior to OSM. In US at least.

</comment><comment><USER38> I'm starting to get worried about the long-term plans Google might have for the apps I use that I'm rather locked-in to. Mainly gmail.

</comment><comment><USER39> Another option, though still expensive, is to use the Google Earth Enterprise tools. They basically let you build your own private Google Maps though this too runs into some problems.

1.) Imagery, 2.) Cost for GEE ($10k I think), and the cost of maintaining your own servers to host it on.

I think it's still cheaper than going over the 20,000 free, but not optimal either.

<comment><USER40> My understanding is that GEE still requires the Google Earth plugin, and will not do a 'google maps' style interface?

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> I think you ment "So Long, ..."

Anyway, good for google for charging for something. I don't see why it should be free. But it was a blunder to charge this much from the start. It seems like they want to get rid of customers.

</comment><comment><USER42> Where does the data for building shapes come from? Both Google Maps and the OP's website incorporate it.

What is the format? Can I download the raw data in bulk (preferably for free) for a data mining project?

<comment><USER43> By shapes do you mean borders? Or do you mean buildings and things... The borders come from <http://www.openstreetmap.org/> which is editable/exportable in many formats.

<comment><USER42> Yes...borders.

Open Street Map looks like it only provides 2D building borders while Google has 3D. Google doesn't even provide an API for accessing it.

Bing also only has 2D building boundary data, albeit at a slightly higher level of detail than OSM.

Is there an open source database for the 3D data or is that proprietary Google info? Is OSM the only source for free building boundary data?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> It would be interesting to see if this effects the success of the site. Despite its failing people are really comfortable with google maps.

</comment><comment><USER45> Interesting. After years of paying through the nose for a Google search appliance that actually wasn't very good, my company decided to replace it with Solr, and it was a really fun project. We hired the Solr project's main committer to consult with us and in the process submitted patches for bugs that we ran into.

The whole thing cost less than one year of the GSA license fee, we can search all of our content (the GSA had a hard limit on the number of documents it would index), and the search results are _way_ better.

</comment><comment><USER46> Charging is good since it keeps the product around, but Google's prices seem ramp up suddenly from free to way too high suddenly. First Appspot and now this, looks like their pricing is too out of line for small to medium companies. They need a flatter pricing curve.

<comment><USER47> I don't think they really care. In the current landscape, Google Maps is a competitive advantage for them and the less people using it the better. They leverage it across the Android ecosystem, their new social network, etc.. and it creates more work for their competitors to play catch up.

<comment><USER48>
      the less people using it the better

How is that? I would say the marginal cost of extra users is minimal, especially given their (lack of) customer service.

<comment><USER49> Parent means that less API users (product competitors) is better, not less end users.

<comment><USER50> Maybe not... This thread got me wondering, one of the points in the article is "why pay to have sites that look the same as the rest"

Maybe google prices is to remove gmaps from everywhere and sell only to premium sites.

If they disappear users are already hooked and will migrate to the premium sites that still have it

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> "TL;DR: We at StreetEasy decided to build our own maps using, among other tools, OpenStreetMap, TileMill, MapBox and Leaflet, instead of paying hundreds of thousands of dollars per year to Google. And yes, the money pushed us into doing it, but we're happier with the result because we now control the contents of our maps."</comment>


Superyachts of the rich and famous - <AUTHOR> http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/the_way_we_live/article4995367.ece

<comment><USER2> _Tom Perkins, the venture capitalist who owns one of the most beautiful modern yachts, Maltese Falcon, says that people buy boats for the prestige but they soon fall in love with the waves. I am about to sail my boat down to Mexico. I've been around Cape Horn and to Alaska. It's in my blood now. It's a wonderful challenge_

"Challenge" is doing that in a Volvo Open 70 (which people do take into the Southern Ocean, that's _real_ sailing). It's like Bear Grylls on TV. Yeah he can survive the wilderness... With nothing more than a film crew and fleet of support vehicles, including a helicopter. What's the point?

</comment><comment><USER3> I'd be worried about piracy.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Who's next in line to place an order?!</comment>


Impossible Dream: Computing e to 116,000 Places with a Personal Computer (1981) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.downloads.reactivemicro.com/Public/Users/Grant_Stockley/Apple%202%20Woz%20e%20Calc%201981.pdf The submission on floating point routines for the 6592 (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9516042) reminders me of this article by Wozniak.<p>Also avalaible from https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1981-06 (faster site, but you need to download the full Byte magazine) <comment><AUTHOR> The submission on floating point routines for the 6592 ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9516042](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9516042)) reminders me of this article by Wozniak.

Also avalaible from [https://archive.org/details/byte- magazine-1981-06](https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1981-06) (faster site, but you need to download the full Byte magazine)

</comment><comment><USER2> It'd be interesting to compare the speed with a Spigot algorithm ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spigot_algorithm](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spigot_algorithm) ), which requires only faster fixed-precision operations instead of the multi- precision division he used; there's a very small C program here which does that:

[http://wiki.tcl.tk/6636](http://wiki.tcl.tk/6636)</comment>


China Experiments with a New Kind of Megalopolis - <AUTHOR> https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/china-tries-building-a-new-kind-of-megapolopolis-a-1285094.html <comment><USER2> This paragraph pretty much sums up the potential of what China's _Greater Bay Area_ has to offer:

> Shenzhen has become a center for research and development that ranks > alongside Silicon Valley. The area around the industrial city of Dongguan > produces one-third of the world's jeans, while Foshan accounts for more than > half of all refrigerators and air-conditioning units manufactured worldwide. > Hong Kong is Asia's leading financial center and Macao is the largest > gambling city in the world, with six times the gaming volume of Las Vegas.

Ironically, using the Bay Area as an inspiration feels like Apples and Oranges given it's more tech-centric whereas this "Magalopolis" almost feels like a country within a country. Very curious to see how this grand plan progresses over the coming years.

<comment><USER3> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xiong'an](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xiong'an)

Xi's brainchild.

"millennium strategy".

And new title for Shenzhen, "Frontier Demonstration Area of Socialism".

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> >> building a megacity in the Pearl River Delta that it hopes will one day rival New York and Tokyo

Construction is 50% of their GDP (fact-check me here) and this feels like business as usual to keep the gravy train rolling.

<comment><USER5> have you ever seen a construction project that didn't appear like a total racket?

I wouldnt try holding construction groups and Chinese central planning to a higher standard

<comment><USER6> >have you ever seen a construction project that didn't appear like a total racket?

Yes but none of them were funded or overseen at the state or national level. The source of the funds, the people doing the constructing and the people with the stake in the results was a fairly tight loop. The extra overhead of state/national projects seems to provide enough inefficiency/friction that just turns the whole thing into a money pit.

<comment><USER7> Research the interstate highway system: completely funded by the US government, paid by taxes.

<comment><USER6> Research the Big Dig.

Most of the interstate was built 50+yr ago when the administrative overhead of such projects was far, far lower. The states basically said "here's where it's going" and did it without much local input, environmental assessment, etc, etc. Government also was far less risk averse in those days (so more stuff was done in house at cost).

The interstate is actually a great example of how costs have increased over time since it was mostly built over a 30yr period.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> There are also two more gigacities already - Yangtze River Delta[1] and Jingjiji[2]. They all started integration already, for example Shanghai metro is being connected to Suzhou metro.

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

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

<comment><USER9> Interesting that all three gigacities seem to be in low lying coastal areas. I would expect them to hedge their bets regarding global warming and sea level rise.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This article feels like it's rehashing a lot of stale CPC talking points.

I moved to the PRD a few years ago because i am a city nerd. I love urban development and i heard that this was the boomtown of the world. It is a pretty interesting place, but it's not as remarkable as it comes across if you live overseas and/or only consume CPC propaganda.

Shenzhen is really two cities. There is rich Shenzhen, which is mostly shopping malls and gated communities. Then there is poor Shenzhen, which is urban villages (think Kowloon Walled City) and factories. In rich Shenzhen people drive Porsches, take taxis or ride the subway. In poor Shenzhen people get on the backs of e-bikes or ride the bus. Poor Shenzhen borders Dongguan and Huizhou, which are cities that feel very similar except that their buses and motorcycles still belch out toxic fumes.

I had to laugh at the article's assertion that Longgang district was "modern". Large parts of Longgang are still rural and industrial. I have no doubt there are corners of Longgang that some ambitious local party official would love to show off as being the latest and greatest smart city, but that's likely to only exist in very small areas around the cookie-cutter tower blocks built for the petite bourgeoisie who couldn't afford identical (yet more expensive) apartments closer to the city.

Over the bay, Hong Kong remains an economic juggernaut. It punches way above its weight on the international scene, but in the context of the Pearl River Delta it comes across as parochial. While people in Zhuhai and Foshan and Guangzhou learned a second language so they could talk to their neighbors in Dongguan and Shenzhen and Huizhou, many Hongkongers did not.

There are lots of great aspects of Hong Kong, but i think everyone in the PRD would agree that they are in their own bubble. They have their own concerns and their own dreams. I don't think a bridge to Zhuhai or a high speed rail to Guangzhou is going to make much of an impact either way on that.

Macau isn't even part of the story. A handful of people there are spectacularly rich because casinos, but both land-wise and population-wise they are a rounding error.

The way i see it this whole "Greater Bay Area" rebrand of what was formerly known as the PRD is just yet another oligarchal circle jerk. Perhaps i am too cynical, but i feel like it's just a new way for the usual suspects to funnel even more money into their personal coffers.

Before this "GBA" thing kicked off, the PRD cities already had plans to link their public transport systems. You can already take buses and share bikes all over. Why wouldn't we link the transit systems? We're all squashed up next to one another. Plenty of poor people in the suburbs commute "across the border" to their factory jobs.

The government can talk all they like about reducing taxes or opening up the region for international commerce or whatever. To me that just sounds like the rich getting richer and the poor getting evicted.

Wake me up when they lift the Great Firewall for the whole PRD and not just a leased section next to Macau. Wake me up when the government provides comprehensive healthcare. Wake me up when migrant workers can get hukou. That will be some real change.

<comment><USER11> I don't understand the end game of what their current system is trying to achieve. I think they're trying to avoid splitting / division while hitting economic quotas (which they can't do without international commerce!), to spite everything else. It feels reduced to that.

What if China were to read through [https://europa.eu/european- union/sites/europaeu/files/docs/b...](https://europa.eu/european- union/sites/europaeu/files/docs/body/treaty_establishing_a_constitution_for_europe_en.pdf) and:

\- remove GFW

\- fix environmental issues / smog

\- let regions with different realities self-govern, so it's still a country, but joined by commonality and principles Sun Yat-Sen would agree with

\- cooperate on big picture things, e.g. currency, health insurance/regulation, customs, legal basics

\- focus on human dignity, employment, labor rights, social security, beefy pension plans

\- being able to regulate against price gouging, corruption, etc

\- bring back traditional Chinese characters

What's wrong with China working closer to the way HK or Taiwan operates but having a constitution / system like EU?

<comment><USER12> Why would they want to go backwards. Anyone who has spent sometime in China will understand that it's stripped Hong Kong and Taiwan far behind.

And this just leaves me scratching my head

\- bring back traditional Chinese characters

I'm not sure what the motivation behind this is or if it's just due to a lack of historical awareness. Simplified Chinese characters were introduced as a way to improve overall literacy in the country to decrease the barrier for education. It was a smart move. If other regions want to preserve traditional characters out of tradition that's totally cool but overhauling the simplified character system would be again going backwards

<comment><USER11> If it's handwriting, maybe Simplified writing can serve as a way to write notes. But with computers and standardized education everywhere, why?

Please understand, the simplified Chinese conversion was done at a time where literacy was low worldwide: [https://ourworldindata.org/literacy](https://ourworldindata.org/literacy)

There is more context at: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debate_on_traditional_and_simp...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debate_on_traditional_and_simplified_Chinese_characters)

This was the dearest point I had. You can even call the other points facetious or an overall thought experiment.

That's why I take great pride in my work on Cihai ([https://cihai.git- pull.com/](https://cihai.git-pull.com/)), which makes characters preserved through the Unicode Consortium's UNIHAN project more accessible. They will be ready and waiting to be implemented once again.

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

In fact, our computers everywhere around the world reserve the codepoints of even ancient, now unused Chinese characters. UNIHAN also covers the ones used in Korean, Japanese, Vietnamese also ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Han_unification#Examples_of_la...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Han_unification#Examples_of_language- dependent_glyphs)), and variants across them. And there are also reservations for bagua and yi jing hexagrams.

I hope China pulls the plug on this Simplified writing experiment. Chinese is a very beautiful language!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> China hasn't had a financial crisis for 40 years, I wonder how long they can last, and how well their ubiquitous multi-million dollar condos would fare; or can they prove again that nothing communists can't tackle, and capitalism with Chinese characteristics are indeed immune to self-correction.

<comment><USER13> China has had plenty of those. But their levers are different. They actively overspend on infrastructure projects to stimulate the economy whenever there was a downturn.

In the past, that worked really well, spending to hand money to the poor who improved their standards of living. Will this work in the future? Nobody knows.

<comment><USER3> One can say that as now the second largest economy, China didn't cause financial crisis in the 40 years of opening up, outside crises didn't trigger significant slowdown, part of the immunity is that China just has so many easy ways to simply write it off.

<comment><USER14> Why stop at 40 years? By that definition, China hasn't had a financial crisis for the last 70 years, at least.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> _Hong Kong 's unique role as a separate economic entity, governed by the rule of law, is perhaps its best chance to avoid becoming another Chinese city among many others._

</comment><comment><USER16> You can't really rival something like New York without the personal freedom and the blending of cultural currents and all that. Copying the skyscrapers and knife-in-a-back-alley grit is merely cargo culting.

<comment><USER17> Ehhh, that's one aspect of a megacity. There are many other aspects which may be shared.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> There was a Bloomberg show on Shenzen earlier in the year. It actually really surprised me how modern it is, and its built in a few decades from nothing. Worth watching the first few minutes at least. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLmaIbb13GM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLmaIbb13GM)

<comment><USER19> Scholars speculate that Shenzhen may have been the fastest growing urban center in human history. The growth is staggering, with the population rising from 1.5 million in 1990 to just over 10 million in 2010. Imagine the entirety of Washington State's population moving to one city in the span of 20 years.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shenzhen#/media/File:Shenzhen,...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shenzhen#/media/File:Shenzhen,_China,_city_population_dynamics.png)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Funny to think that William Gibson prescient about The Sprawl[1] but wrong about what continent it would develop on... though the Chinese version is much more top-down, anything but accidental.

1: [https://williamgibson.fandom.com/wiki/The_Sprawl](https://williamgibson.fandom.com/wiki/The_Sprawl)

<comment><USER21> My understanding is that Gibson's _The Sprawl_ was the result of technical megacorps and their unrestricted growth under hypercapitalism, a pretty common cyberpunk theme. The Chinese version is created in forms of executive order, nowhere close to Gibson's prospective, but regardless, the end-result is quite identical and cyberpunkish, pretty interesting.

<comment><USER22> Wasn't it somewhat about Japan, the China of 1980 so to speak?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Here's a cool interactive map of the Pearl River Delta megalopolis: [https://geoshen.com/posts/the-pearl-river-delta- megalopolis](https://geoshen.com/posts/the-pearl-river-delta-megalopolis)

</comment><comment><USER24> hong kong importance is not because it is a megalopoly. It is not.

Hong kong is a tax avoidance hub just like Jersey and City of london (see [http://spiderswebfilm.com/](http://spiderswebfilm.com/) to understand why the city of london doesn't mean the city of london)

tax avoidance and international trust funds are the reason hong kong is "huge"

</comment><comment><USER25> Semi related: city Beautiful just released a quick video on Greater Tokyo history. It's always fascinating to see how these megalopolis arise. Though TFW the most expeditious route to modernization is either war, natural disaster or state directed development.

</comment><comment><USER5> Its nice to read publications from countries that have no relevant geopolitical rivalry with the country being discussed

Would like to see more!

</comment><comment><USER26> > Longgang is also subjected to continuous surveillance. In the spring of > 2017, a couple reported that their three-year-old son Xuanxuan had been > abducted. A security camera captured the scene, and it took the police > precisely two seconds to identify the kidnapper using facial recognition > software. They located the perpetrator and the child on a train shortly > thereafter.

Wow. This is something to think about. Would you trade privacy for this level of safety?

I think we are going to have the surveillance anyway, for economic if not political reasons, but that once we get used to it we will find ourselves better off (I hope!)

[http://firequery.blogspot.com/2013/10/total-surveillance- is-...](http://firequery.blogspot.com/2013/10/total-surveillance-is- perfection-of.html)

If the "Social Credit" system is administered without corruption, by being self-referential, it seems that the end result could be that it works. A kinder, gentler tyranny of Mrs. Grundy.

<comment><USER27> > Wow. This is something to think about. Would you trade privacy for this > level of safety?

The problem I have is never with the system itself, but who is it's master. And this isn't even just a China thing, I'm against pretty much every government on the planet having this kind of system at it's disposal.</comment></comment>


Steven Pinker: Writing In The 21st Century - <AUTHOR> http://www.edge.org/conversation/writing-in-the-21st-century <comment><USER2> > _What are the arts but products of the human mind which resonate with our > aesthetic and emotional faculties?_

Ah, the old "mental equivalent of cheesecake" argument - Pinker explicitly used that one for music IIRC, which supposedly hijacked our love of language. The latter goes against fairly overwhelming evidence that music is a much older "faculty" than language. Then again, Pinker is a philosopher (don't get me wrong, a wonderful one), and philosophers tend to fetishize language. When you look at the topic of the article that obviously applies to Pinker too. But to give a specific example, look this quote:

> _The medium by which we share complex ideas, namely language_

THE medium? While extremely powerful, vocal or written language is a linear, monotone string of abstract symbols, which has some severe limitations in certain situations (but for comparison, check out sign language; three spatial dimensions to play with, oh my!). We don't say "a picture says more than a thousand words" because it isn't true. Similarly, music often _mediates_ emotions in a much clearer and directer way than words ever do. In turn, pictures and music have their ambiguities in places where language shines of course.

Anyway, so we supposedly have these "faculties" somewhere in the brain for aesthetics and emotions, distinct functions evolved that way for some purpose, and then these get hijacked by things that trigger it (art), like some supernormal stimulus[0].

While it sure can be helpful to analyze things in these terms, and is consistent within its own framework, I think saying art is "nothing but" this is a bit too reductionist, greatly oversimplifying things. You simply won't see the bigger picture with this approach. For example, Petran Kockelkoren has argued that art is part of the process of "domesticating" new technologies, societal changes, etc[1]. That is, the way in which we take something "strange" and "unnatural" and make it "normal" and "natural" to us.

Having said all that, I love Steve Pinker, his writing and his clear thinking and think it's a great article. Just this itty bitty point always ruffles my feathers a bit.

[0] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supernormal_stimulus](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supernormal_stimulus)

[1] [http://doc.utwente.nl/79298/1/Kockelkoren05art.pdf](http://doc.utwente.nl/79298/1/Kockelkoren05art.pdf)

<comment><USER3> >. Then again, Pinker is a philosopher (don't get me wrong, a wonderful one),

He is a bit of a philosopher, but his ph.d. is in experimental psychology. In other words, he's not just thinking here, but probably has a basis for what he's saying in empirical tests. He is very much an empiricist.

<comment><USER2> Fair enough, but that is perfectly compatible with my claim that he can be a bit overly reductionist at times (I'm not denying that reductionism is a useful tool of course - far from it). He seems to be either unaware or ignoring indications that music is way older than language.

* We acquire language through prosodic or "singsong" language - you know, the way people tend to go up and down and exaggerate in their intonation when talking to babies.

* Conversely, it stays with us much longer than language does, and capable of "reviving" someone in a way language can't: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fyZQf0p73QM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fyZQf0p73QM)

* Based on nerve size we know our muscle control of our vocal apparatus was at our "modern" quality long before we acquired the capacity for symbolic manipulation that is required for language - in the order of hundreds of thousands of years versus tens of thousands or years. We couldn't have used it for language, but we already were a social species so it stands to reason that we were using it for communication. So what other options do we have aside from language that still require such refined control of our vocal output but some singsong form of uttering "intentions" towards each other?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> _We 're always being told that young people suck: that they are illiterate and unreflective and un-thoughtful, all of which ignores the fact that every generation had that said about them by the older generation. Yet somehow civilization persists._

That sentence resonated with me. Of all the superficial prejudices, ageism has to be the most hypocritical. By ostracizing someone for being too young or too old, you're making fun of a condition that you have, have had or will have in the future. You might as well swear at a mirror.

<comment><USER5> >which ignores the fact that every generation had that said about them by the older generation.

Not true. I can think of many examples where this not true. For early 20th century Britain the world kept seeming better, country was filled with optimism for new generation. New schools, electricity , motorized transportation, universities, thriving empire.

<comment><USER2> I bet many of people were complaining that young people didn't appreciate how good they had it, how they were wasting these golden opportunities, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Steve Pinker, always mean-mugging the camera...

Brilliant writer, in my opinion. If you haven't read his other books, notably 'How the Mind Works' and 'Better Angels of Our Nature' I would check them out.

<comment><USER7> I love both of those and then read "The Blank Slate" and was blown away. I regularly go back to that book when needing to counter someone on the left or right who hasn't done their due diligence.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I am always struck by how much interpretation is required to understand the written word. A lot of information is missing in the ideas that we share using language, leaving it up to the receiver to fill in the gaps.

</comment><comment><USER9> I'm surprised that Pinker doesn't mention the book whose title and authors change with each edition, but which keeps the words style, lessons, clarity and grace on its cover. His book sounds exactly like it. Turner and Thomas, the scholars he does mention, have their own book, _Clear and Simple as the Truth_. It's a good one.

</comment><comment><USER10> edge.org used to have this great video of Ken Kesey speaking shortly after 9/11\. Sadly it seems it has been lost. I contacted edge.org but never heard anything back. Does anyone happen to have a copy or know someone at edge.org?</comment>


Ask HN: here have Startup School Radio podcast episodes gone? - <AUTHOR> https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/startup-school-radio/id992277217 <comment><AUTHOR> There used to be dozens of episodes, and I started listing to them a week ago. They were quite fascinating, but... now only three remain.

Any idea where the others can be found? And why are they gone?</comment>


It's science if it bites back - <AUTHOR> http://scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=29

<comment><USER2> _That 17 is prime strikes us as absolutely certain, yet there's nothing in the physical world we can point to as the source of that certainty. (Seventeen blocks that can't be arranged into a rectangle? Give me a break.) In that respect, math seems more like subjective experience than science: you might be wrong about the sky being blue, but you can't be wrong about your seeing it as blue._

Here's where a little philosophy would help; we could save a lot of time by invoking the sensible/intelligible distinction. Mathematical entities are intelligible, not sensible, and their mapping to the external world is epiphenomenal. Seventeen is prime, not because of any empirical evidence, but because it _has_ to be prime under the definition of primality. Math, like chess, is a game with rules.

<comment><USER3> Did that really help? On my screen, your paragraph is about 10 characters longer than his, and about twice as opaque.

> Seventeen is prime, not because of any empirical evidence, but because it > has to be prime under the definition of primality.

This is rather question begging. There are plenty of sets of rules that are inconsistent. The real question is why following the rules of arithmetic/primality never seems to lead to contradiction. There are mainly two reasons why we believe these rules to be consistent: we've used the rules over and over and have never found any contradiction, and we perceive the rules to be about something - the natural numbers. If you perceive the natural numbers the way that I do, then it should seem clear to you that searching for a contradiction in arithmetic is a fool's errand. So are these natural numbers that we perceive "real"? How do we perceive them? My opinion is that philosophy of such matters is a rather hopeless endeavor. I'm sure the philosophers have lots of new definitions and concepts built up to describe the situation, but how much progress can you really hope to make here?

<comment><USER2> _Did that really help? On my screen, your paragraph is about 10 characters longer than his, and about twice as opaque._

It's only opaque if you haven't read Kant; if I am going to have to explain Kant to you, it's going to take a hell of a lot more characters than the extra 10.

 _There are plenty of sets of rules that are inconsistent. The real question is why following the rules of arithmetic/primality never seems to lead to contradiction._

Why is _that_ the question? I don't know of any mathematicians particularly interested in that question at all, actually.

 _So are these natural numbers that we perceive "real"? How do we perceive them?_

Not, _that_ is a more interesting question. My answer is already implied by what I wrote above (in Kantian terms). We don't _perceive_ natural numbers with the senses. A number is not a physical thing in the world-- it is an _abstraction_. We've also invented a series of manipulations we can perform on these abstractions, much like we have invented the rules of chess. And, there are a lot of extremely interesting things that come out of our manipulating the abstractions according the the rules we've set up.

However: asking why the number 17 is prime, is like asking why a bishop can only move diagonally. The bishop moves diagonally because _that's what a bishop does_. Seventeen is prime because _that's what prime means._ We don't need recourse to the external world of empirical sense perception to answer these questions.

Was that less opaque?

<comment><USER3> (First, apologies for use of "opaque" which was needlessly inflammatory.) I've read "A critique of pure reason" some years ago, but honestly I found much of it to be rather dodgy. Take this:

>We don't perceive natural numbers with the senses. A number is not a physical thing in the world-- it is an abstraction. We've also invented a series of manipulations we can perform on these abstractions, much like we have invented the rules of chess. And, there are a lot of extremely interesting things that come out of our manipulating the abstractions according the the rules we've set up.

I see this as new words describing the situation, but very little progress. Are these abstractions "real"? How do we perceive them? I agree it's not with our eyes and ears.

> However: asking why the number 17 is prime, is like asking why a bishop can > only move diagonally. The bishop moves diagonally because that's what a > bishop does.

"That's just the way it is" isn't an explanation of anything, though. How do we know, once we've proven 17 prime, using these rules, that we will never discover a factorization of 17? How do we know that our reasoning about these abstractions is sound?

<comment><USER2> _Are these abstractions "real"?_

That depends, of course, on how you define "real". Are the rules of chess "real"?

 _How do we perceive them? I agree it's not with our eyes and ears._

And here we're back to Kant. They are _intelligible_ , not _sensible_. We perceive them with our mind/intellect. (Interestingly, in Buddhist philosophy, there are six senses-- the mind joining the other five, so they push the intelligible/sensible distinction down a level.)

 _"That's just the way it is" isn't an explanation of anything, though. How do we know, once we've proven 17 prime, using these rules, that we will never discover a factorization of 17? How do we know that our reasoning about these abstractions is sound?_

I'm not saying _"That's just the way it is"_ \-- I'm saying "That's the way it _has_ to be because we defined it that way." How do we know that in some particular game of chess, the bishop won't suddenly be allowed to move sideways?

Anyway: if you are really interested in the reduction of arithmetic to pure logic, check out Russell and Whitehead's Principia Mathematica-- or better yet, read the graphic novel "Logicomix" which does a wonderful job of covering the domain for non-specialists.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> > Seventeen blocks that can't be arranged into a rectangle? Give me a break.

Give _me_ a break.

Is multiplication anything but shorthand for counting the number of blocks in an M by N rectangle?

So then, how is that not an adequate whatever for 17 being prime? It may not be be the traditional math you learned in school alongside long division and multiplication, but it's math all the same.

<comment><USER5>
      Is multiplication anything but shorthand for counting the
      number of blocks in an M by N rectangle?

Originally, it probably was (but dive into the history of maths to be sure). After various abstractions and generalizations, it isn't anymore.

<comment><USER6> Multiplication in a finite field is quite straightforward, clearly not based on the area of a rectangle and highly relevant to CS.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> They seem surprised that mathematicians, who deal very strictly in almost pure logic, ply their skills in the philosophical realms. I highly doubt this has anything to do with math's "mystical tendencies" and more to do with similar skill sets.

Also, apparently they haven't taken even moderately high level math courses, which give much more concrete definitions of divisibility. 17 is prime because it matches the _definition_ of "prime". It also _doesn't_ match the definition of "even". What of it? Blue is blue because it's blue, not because it can't be arranged into a rectangle.</comment>