Ask HN: Best way to learn emacs? - <AUTHOR> I am a vim user but it looks to me like emacs can do pretty interesting things with modes. What is the best way to learn it? <comment><USER2> Are you familiar with Spacemacs? As a Vim user, you can be productive on day one because it lets you emulate Vim (via Evil). Spacemacs also comes with batteries included and makes it easy to move past editor configuration to whatever you're trying to get done. If you want more customization, Spacemacs is still Emacs, and can be extended as you wish.

[http://spacemacs.org/](http://spacemacs.org/)

</comment><comment><USER3> [https://github.com/hlissner/doom-emacs](https://github.com/hlissner/doom- emacs)

</comment><comment><USER4> Here's how I learned it. I downloaded it, installed it, ran it. Then ran the built-in tutorial and worked my way through it slowly. I then started using it for every day editing. I then created my own cheat sheet (in Emacs) based on commands I needed immediately. As I needed to do more things I extended the cheat sheet. I worked through online tutorials and read Stack overflow to figure out how to build out my .emacs file with the options I needed. Been using for more than ten years now and still learning!

</comment><comment><USER5> If you're just starting, the Emacs tutorial is available from the front page, or C-h t (Control-h then t). Worth doing a few times.

Sacha Chua has some great cheatsheets ([http://sachachua.com/blog/category/geek/emacs/](http://sachachua.com/blog/category/geek/emacs/)), including basic ones on orgmode.

</comment><comment><USER6> In addition to tutorials, use it for real, but starting with some fairly trivial (in terms of complexity) tasks - like editing .config files. Then add more complex tasks - perhaps editing LaTeX files (this is actually how I started on Emacs - AUCTeX, the Emacs package for TeX - is surely the best LaTeX editor).

</comment><comment><USER7> Use it. Do one tutorial to teach you the basics (navigating within/between buffers, opening files, tiling windows...) and then just use it. The first week is going to be a pain, the second and third tedious, after that you'll be cruising ;-)</comment>


Ask HN: Shortest Path from Software Engineer to Machine Learning Engineer? - <AUTHOR> What are the techniques, tools and references to facilitate the above and how long does it actually take to become productive ? <comment><USER2> It depends on a couple different variables:

\- Do you want to focus on a specific area with decades of history (e.g. computer vision), or do you want to be a jack-of-all-trades person that works with images, text, time-series data, and so forth?

\- Do you want to work at an early-stage startup outside of the Bay Area, which might be less picky with hiring... or do you want to work at OpenAI or Google Brain?

\- Do you want to work in a team where you implement the ideas of better- educated, senior colleagues... or do you want to be the one in a leadership role?

The "minimal" path probably involves:

\- A Galvanize (or similar) bootcamp to meet peers and mentors.

\- Books and Coursera courses to fill in everything the bootcamp doesn't teach you.

\- Winning some Kaggle competitions to show that you can build fairly complex models that have high accuracy on real-world data.

The "maximal" path probably involves:

\- An undergraduate degree in Computer Science, Applied Mathematics, or Statistics.

\- A PhD in one of the many subfields in machine learning.

\- Several industry internships in between.

Neither the minimal or maximal path guarantee success, of course. A lot of that depends on your aptitude, previous experience, ability to network, and the current job market.

</comment><comment><USER3> I actually just did this. Courses online such as Andrew Ng's Deep Learning course on Coursera and Standford course papers online are where I started. Then began working through tensor flow tutorials. Then looking up papers on modern neural net architectures. Took a matter or a few months to be productive. In the end, I realized that although neural nets are very fascinating, working on training them is tedious and not as fun as working on product code. I'd rather use the neural nets in a product, much like a sensor, than work on actually training the net.

<comment><USER4> Same here. I too enjoy writing functional code more than I do training neural networks. Most of the classes focus on the training part, but most of the work in practice is running people down to give you data, and cleaning it.

Even sharing datasets is difficult, and I recently wrote a bit about it. [https://blog.helmspoint.com/posts/2017/09/05/sharing- machine...](https://blog.helmspoint.com/posts/2017/09/05/sharing-machine- learning-datasets.html)

But that doesn't even cover versioning, licensing, permanence, and provenance. The tools available for machine learning training is still nascent, so the experience isn't great.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The absolute fastest way would be to do a Machine Learning Bootcamp like Galvanize or Metis.

Source: I did not know anything about how to use Machine Learning in my code just 4 months ago, and now I have just started as an AI Engineer.

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome, Who are you working for ? And did you take the complete Galvanize course ? Would the part time course be any useful ?

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the valuable comments guys,</comment>


In War of Smartphones, The Russians Are Coming  - T-A http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323339704578173173413977046.html

<comment><AUTHOR> video with article here where you can see it working: [http://live.wsj.com/video/dual-screen-russian-smartphone- to-...](http://live.wsj.com/video/dual-screen-russian-smartphone-to-launch- in-2013/C717BA04-20B0-43C0-BFF3-8552735CD19D.html)</comment>


Why Computer Science - <AUTHOR> http://carterac.tumblr.com/post/6355435845/why-i-majored-in-computer-science

<comment><USER3> _Passions such as art history are far easier to pursue in life by constantly reading books, going to museums, and attending lectures. Computer science is impossible to engage with on a casual basis. It requires a massive and highly focused investment of time and energy, ideally with the world's best teachers guiding you at the same time._

First, I don't know that I agree with the first bit. One may certainly dabble in art history (or many other liberal arts-type majors), but one won't get quite as much out of it as someone else who dedicates hours and hours to it over months and years. This holds true for all deep, non-trivial subjects.

Further, one certainly /can/ 'engage with CS on a casual basis'. People do it all the time, and they certainly don't always have "the world's best teachers" to guide them. Mentors, teachers, and professors play an important role, but many people do quite well in their chosen fields without that extra boost.

<comment><USER4> I don't know how common it really is for someone to casually teach him/herself CS. Sure, a lot of people teach themselves to build websites or mobile apps, but ask them to, say, search/filter their results and it's pretty easy to see there's not a whole lot of scientific thinking going on. Learning Computer Science is very different than learning to code (i'm not saying it doesn't happen, but from my experience most casual coders don't care very much about the theoretical underpinnings - and don't often need to, with modern languages).

<comment><USER3> Of course, many people don't ever cross the gulf between "i can haz programming" and actual computer science. That doesn't mean they /can't/ self- direct themselves.

<http://the-paper-trail.org/blog/?page_id=152> (from HN recently) [http://overhack.wordpress.com/2011/06/01/self-directed- compu...](http://overhack.wordpress.com/2011/06/01/self-directed-computer- science-education/) (my own)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> .... Computer Science is NOT the study of programming. I wish people would get this out of their heads.

Computer Science is the study of computers, the science behind them. It's data structures, algorithms, compilers, math, discrete math and so much more.

Programming is just one tiny aspect of CS. Programming is the implementation of understanding not the basis for it. Compare Programming to writing English, you need to understand verbs, subjects, adjectives, nouns, adverbs, pronouns & how to assemble them coherently. The implementation of that understanding is what we call sentences. As akin to programming, Computer Science is the study and understanding while Programming is the implementation for the computer to function.

</comment><comment><USER6>
      > I was tempted to switch into art history
      > to escape the huge engineering workload.

My association with friends in the fine arts indicates that that would've been a horrible decision; probably depends on what college/university you're at, but while engineering majors seem to have a pretty consistently high workload, visual design, music composition, and art history majors seem to get periodically slammed with horrendously massive workloads.

I thought about switching to animation for a while, and then realized that there's no way I could handle the load in the introductory-level classes. I suspect it's because there're lots of people who would like to do fine arts, so they make all of the 100-levels incredibly intense to filter in just the ones who are really talented and dedicated.

Sometimes I wish they'd do the same thing with the CS department.

      > Computer science is impossible to engage
      > with on a casual basis. It requires a massive
      > and highly focused investment of time and
      > energy, ideally with the world's best teachers
      > guiding you at the same time.

I believe this to be true as far as the theoretical, mathematics-based discipline of computer science goes. But it should be noted that you can become a fantastic programmer with very little formal CS background and casual engagement.

<comment><USER7> _I suspect it's because there're lots of people who would like to do fine arts, so they make all of the 100-levels incredibly intense to filter in just the ones who are really talented and dedicated. Sometimes I wish they'd do the same thing with the CS department._

This used to be somewhat traditional, to have a hardcore 100-level CS class as a weed-out, but my impression is that curricula are moving away from it. Partly, there's a worry that it mainly rewards how much knowledge you have coming _into_ college: if the CS-101 course is really hardcore, the people who pass it are those who learned a lot about computer science on their own in high school. But if the university is supposed to provide an education program that can teach CS to people who _don't_ already know it, that isn't quite what you want.

It also tends to work directly against universities' recruiting goals: they're spending all this effort to try to convince "non-traditional" CS majors (i.e. people who weren't already high-school computer enthusiasts) that it's an interesting and useful field to study, in which case you don't want to immediately kick them out in the first semester for not already being proficient enough.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think the debate is more about self-learning vs a formal education.

Moreover, a CS degree is overkill for most of the programming people do.

<comment><USER5> I would whole heartily agree. I'm a CS major working at a big company this summer. I've met people with no background in CS work in software development. Some people who should not even be developers at all. Others who are expert coders but shutter at the mention of a search algorithm.

In most places, I sense, CS is a ticket into a better position but for most people CS is overkill for the type of programming most .Net shops require. It comes down to learning basic control structures, syntax & utilizing libraries. It nearly becomes mindless & trivial for CS majors yet challenging and overwhelming to the kids taking C#/.Net classes.

<comment><USER9> You can go too far either way. On the one hand are the CS theorists with their heads in the clouds. On the other are those devs writing naive algorithms and arguing that you should just buy more hardware who wouldn't know big-O if it jumped up and bit them on the nose.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Such essays should be included in the literature given to students who are choosing a major.

</comment><comment><USER11> "Computer science gives you the ultimate freedom to pursue your dreams." Great quote.

</comment><comment><USER12> This is also really interesting for everyone else's majors as well - <USER2> seems to come down to pursue what interests you.

</comment><comment><USER13> Computer science students should be preparing to be outsourced to Hyderabad.

<comment><USER14> I've been preparing since the year 2000--the first time I started hearing about how all development jobs were getting outsourced to India.

Hasn't quite went down like that, has it?</comment></comment>


Atlassian bought Trello. Because Trello was on trajectory to kill Atlassian - <AUTHOR> https://disruptnext.com/how-to-build-the-next-trello-and-sell-it-for-425-million-or-more-589045c9bd64 <comment><USER2> I love Trello and hope it never changes it's focus on the basics. I use it for simple things like grocery lists, and complex things like keeping track of home renovations. K.I.S.S.!!

<comment><AUTHOR> Totally agree!</comment></comment>


Unreal Engine Marketplace now open - <AUTHOR> https://www.unrealengine.com/blog/marketplace-now-open-for-business <comment><USER2> This is great!

However their launcher program eats 100% of one of my CPU cores all the time while its running. Seems like their Slate UI works the same way as the game actors do: update everything every frame.

This makes it hard to have background downloads while you're doing something else.

<comment><USER3> Hey jeremiep - check your specs against the recommended ones here. If it's seemingly an issue, hit us up at answers.unrealengine.com - [https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/GettingStarted/Reco...](https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/GettingStarted/RecommendedSpecifications/index.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Unreal Engine is already at version 4.4? So we can expect 5.0 in a couple of years? Or will they just call it "Unreal Engine" and be done with versions, like CryTek did for CryEngine.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Neat. I'm happy to make unique assets for my game but I really, really don't want to spend time modelling the same toilet that thousands of others have made.

<comment><USER5> Is there some standard for modelling assets so that assets from different artists can be mixed together?

<comment><USER6> Not really. But you can scale / color / modify stuff assuming you're given enough data for the assets.

Of course, then you can often remix and Resell so usually you don't get that level of detail.

<comment><USER5> This. I was more interested in the problem of scale where maybe a cow from one artist has to be scaled to fit with a car from another artist. I heard there could be problems with that.

<comment><USER7> That's not really a big deal with 3D models. Except for the texture, it's all vector data that can be trivially scaled. But UE4 does define its own standard for convenience where 1 unit = 1 centimeter.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is awesome!

However, I'm worried about the performance issues others have stated, particularly when making downloads on older computers out of my house. Time will tell.

<comment><USER3> hey jonifico - check our system requirements here and see :) we are actively working on tons of performance enhancements as well - [https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/GettingStarted/Reco...](https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/GettingStarted/RecommendedSpecifications/index.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Unity's one edge was the marketplace. Now that is going to disappear, UE4 is a superior engine.

<comment><USER10> I'd rather program in C# in Unity than C++ for UE4.

<comment><USER11> I would subscribe to that, IF Unity guys bothered to settle with Xamarin and offered a modern C# compiler.

As things are, C++11 looks more appealing.

<comment><USER12> They have plans to upgrade C# and .NET, once they complete IL2CPP: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bfa9ILwlsFw&list=PLX2vGYjWbI...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bfa9ILwlsFw&list=PLX2vGYjWbI0RP5YmvwgqgJQrHGul- Tnr_&index=17)

<comment><USER13> Straight C++ or C# put through IL2CPP to get C++, put through Emscripten to get JavaScript... What a wealth of choice between well grounded software engineering foundations, I feel bad for anyone stuck with something like Lua!

<comment><USER11> Yeah, and most probably way more expensive ($ dev hour * time) than just settle their argument with Xamarin.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


DNS breakage at Samsung.com - <AUTHOR>

A friend of mine noticed that there was no A record for samsung.com; it turns out there's no SOA, or any kind of record.<p>Their WHOIS shows an authoritative nameserver of "dns". <comment><USER2> They've been tackling a fire in one of their buildings [http://inagist.com/all/457783829101428736/](http://inagist.com/all/457783829101428736/)

<comment><USER2> Update on that story

[http://www.engadget.com/2014/04/20/samsung-com-outage-sds- fi...](http://www.engadget.com/2014/04/20/samsung-com-outage-sds-fire/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> It's of course a tragedy if their datacenter cought fire, but it's nevertheless bad engineering if a lot of their products seem to require access to "samsung.com" for a lot of unrelated tasks (as some other site mentioned: Netflix cannot be accessed if a certain XML file cannot be fetched from www.samsung.com).

</comment><comment><USER4> They were gone for a while (couldn't even query their whois record) but they're back and everything seems fine now.

Interestingly, I could still shoot them an email (perhaps because the relevant records were cached by my nameserver). Hi, Samsung!

</comment><comment><USER5> This is why I don't buy anything Samsung. If they can barely keep their company website in the air on an ordinary day, what's there to think of their actual products?

It's not just samsung.com, but their entire web presence...

<comment><USER6> A data-center fire is still something they should be able to handle (i.e. they should fail over to another DC) but if you think "ordinary day" applies here then they're not the ones Doing It Wrong.</comment></comment>


Leaked Documents Show the U.S. Tracking Journalists Through a Secret Database - <AUTHOR> https://www.nbcsandiego.com/investigations/Source-Leaked-Documents-Show-the-US-Government-Tracking-Journalists-and-Advocates-Through-a-Secret-Database-506783231.html <comment><USER2> Not only tracking them, but putting flags on their passports and interrogating them at the border:

 _"They asked about the new caravan and if word had gotten out about how difficult it is to seek asylum in the U.S.," Drehsler said. "Then before I left, the female agent asked if I rented or owned my home."_

This sounds much more like a political intimidation operation than serving a national security purpose.

<comment><USER3> this is normal. journalists are hot targets to either spoof or buy to snoop around as they often have more access than regular civilians to high profile targets.... counter-intelligence and counter-espionage. people should realise that forgein powers demotivate them against their own government, and now these demotivated people are the ones complaining about this kind of shit, preventing their own government from functioning normally.

so yes. keep complaining about your governments hard work to keep you safe, i'm sure the opposing forces will thank you later.

<comment><USER4> This is the standard wartime playbook for restricting freedom. It's completely incompatible with functioning democracy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Journalists are often harrassed when they dig into things the powerful want to leave burried.

[https://sharylattkisson.com/new-update-attkisson-v-doj- and-f...](https://sharylattkisson.com/new-update-attkisson-v-doj-and-fbi-for- govt-computer-intrusions/)

[https://cpj.org/asia/china/](https://cpj.org/asia/china/)

<comment><USER6> Sharyl Attkisson, the person interviewing Jerome Corsi, author of _Killing the Deep State: The Fight to Save President Trump_ in this interview?

[https://www.c-span.org/video/?442260-1/after-words-jerome- co...](https://www.c-span.org/video/?442260-1/after-words-jerome-corsi)

Or how about this:

"Citizens United's David Bossie and former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski argued that Washington bureaucrats are seeking to undermine the presidency of Donald Trump."

[https://www.c-span.org/video/?454330-1/after-words-david- bos...](https://www.c-span.org/video/?454330-1/after-words-david-bossie-corey- lewandowski)

Sorry, if I find Atkisson a dubious source of information.

<comment><USER7> Are you saying that if a journalist interviews a controversial figure they lose credibility? Was there something about those interviews that made you determine she is dubious?

<comment><USER6> Watch the interviews. She does not call them out, no matter how ridiculous or unsubstantiated the claims being made are. It's utterly ridiculous.

An interviewer is supposed to push back when claims are made that contradict reality. Chris Wallace's interview with Stephen Miller for how it's done.

<comment><USER7> Thanks, I'll check them out, apologies for not putting in an effort before commenting.

One problem I feel exists (no evidence) is that sometimes the options are fluffy interview or none at all, and the interviewer is incentivized not to dig out the truth but to get the guest. It's a bummer. I feel like the blame lays on the guest more than the interviewer because they tend to have the power in that dynamic.

<comment><USER6> That's a good point, at least WRT _After Words_ on C-SPAN where I believe the book author has a say in who their interviewer will be. Still, it was jarring someone would not push back on some of this crap that I see as "Bircherism."

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> mellow-lake-day >Documents obtained by NBC 7 Investigates show the U.S. government created a secret database of activists, journalists, and social media influencers tied to the migrant caravan and in some cases, placed alerts on their passports.

It sounds like only people and journalists who are covering "the caravan" are being tracked. Not that it makes it any better.

It also seems to have been started very recently, probably under the current administration.

<comment><USER8> Journalists make up a minority of those being tracked in that operation. Most of those tracked are involved in organizations that encourage and assist illegal immigration, like Pueblos Sin Fronteras and Border Angels. Founders of both of those organizations explicitly encourage illegal immigration, and have been organizing migrant caravans for some 15+ years.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Based on what I see, it looks like the US Govt is keeping tabs on those persons (journalists) who are sympathetic to the cause of of a group of people (the caravans) intending to breach the country border.

How is this intimidation? Isn't this "Keeping borders safe 101" ?

(I'm a legal temp immigrant in the US, and I have a hard time understanding why some things are news in this country).

<comment><USER10> > Based on what I see, it looks like the US Govt is keeping tabs on those > persons (journalists) who are sympathetic to the cause of of a group of > people (the caravans) intending to breach the country border.

The caravans are lawful asylum seekers that are only crossing at non recognized points because the administration has taken active and dubiously legal efforts to forcibly prevent them from reaching and applying for asylum at regular ports of entry, going so far as to close ports if entry and fire chemical weapons across an international border for that purpose.

Not that being sympathetic to them would be problematic even if that wasn't the case.

> I'm a legal temp immigrant in the US

No, you aren't. Immigrants are permanent. You can be a legal immigrant or a legal temporary worker or visitor, but you can't be a legal temporary immigrant.

<comment><USER11> International treaties covering asylum seekers require that they apply for asylum in the first safe country. Mexico might not be the most wonderful place, but it is considered a safe country. (the government is not genocidal) It is therefore impossible for a legitimate asylum seeker in the US to have passed through Mexico.

<comment><USER10> > Mexico might not be the most wonderful place, but it is considered a safe > country. (the government is not genocidal)

Even in the parts of the country superficially under control of the central government (the parts where the cartels don't openly operate _marked_ patrol vehicles as if they were the government), the cartels operate with virtual impunity and frequently with active, high-level cooperation by the police and military (whole specialized units of which have gone over to the other side and _become_ cartels), including the military at least cooperating in and covering up and possibly actually carrying out mass killings on behalf of the cartels.

And this isn't just violence unrelated to the violence Central American asylum seekers are fleeing; that violence they are fleeing is in no small part due to deportation of violent criminals, often in gangs of US origin connected to international organized crime including the Mexican cartels, deported from the US, who have then extended the criminal networks of the already internationally-connected, US-origin gangs across Central America.

The idea that Mexico is a safe country for those who have a reason to flee the violence in Central America is, well, not something that can be reconciled with the nature and source of the violence in Central America and the conditions in Mexico.

<comment><USER11> Well, that isn't how the treaties define a safe country. Mexico is not trying to exterminate anybody from Central America. Mere crime, even highly organized or widespread crime, doesn't disqualify Mexico. The country is safe by the standards of the international treaties.

BTW, about this claim that people are fleeing violence... why should we take that at face value? Could they be fleeing the law? They could in fact be the cause of the violence. We have no way to conduct background checks.

<comment><USER10> > Well, that isn't how the treaties define a safe country

As the grounds for asylum or refugee status (the difference is in where you apply) in both international and US domestic law include both threats from the government and from groups the government is unwilling or unable to control, the fact that the same nongovernment and not-restrained-by-government groups one is fleeing from are operating in and not effectively constrained by the government in another country would make that country unsafe.

> BTW, about this claim that people are fleeing violence... why should we take > that at face value

No, we should have a non-rubber-stamp application and review process theat evaluates evidence.

Which, newsflash, we have for asylum seekers (actually, we have two of them—the "affirmative" and "defensive" asylum processes), and that is exactly what the Administration is trying to prevent them from accessing.

<comment><USER11> The review is pretty simple. They were welcomed to apply for asylum in Mexico and refused to do so: case closed. The administration is not trying to prevent them from accessing that offer.

Clearly, it is not asylum that they seek. At best, they are shopping around for the most lucrative benefits. If they just wanted asylum, heading south would have made as much sense as heading north -- and more if Mexico is really so scary. Costa Rica, Panama, and Colombia are all safe countries.

You want a review process that evaluates evidence, but how? A person shows up with a coached sob story and forged or missing identity. If it were just one person, perhaps we could have the CIA spend a few million dollars in a possibly futile effort to uncover the person's past. With so many people, that is simply not possible. What you are proposing is that we accept the word of these people, meaning that 100% of them would qualify. That is unrestricted entry.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> A journo friend of mine told me foreign journalists need special visa to enter the US. In fairness I don't think they have ever refused anyone or expelled the press over reporting but the US knows who is in the country.

<comment><USER13> Journalists going to almost every country as a journalist need a "special visa." There is nothing new or unique about that.

<comment><USER14> "Journalist visa, which some countries require of people in that occupation when traveling for their respective news organizations. Countries that insist on this include Cuba, China, Iran, Japan, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, the United States (I-visa) and Zimbabwe."

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

Unfortunately no citation.

I didn't know most countries have a special visa for journalists. What was your source?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is some sort of collective 'memory loss' on these issues. Activists and journalists have been put under surveillance, infiltrated, harassed, put on lists and singled out at airports.[1] The harassment of keystone activists and protestors is ongoing [2], Laura Poitras harassment and surveillance is well documented [3][4], and evidence keeps popping out but there is some sort of dissonance and rationalization in play.

After the Snowden revelations this should not surprise anyone but most articles on these issues have bland assertions of 'law' disconnected from events on the ground. Contrast that with articles on China, Russia that are met with indignation and outrage for the exact same issues.

Its like using 'moderation' as a euphemism for censorship when it happens here, while continuing to shout censorship in other cases. If China or Russia did this it would be unilaterally condemned as totalitarian and oppression but because we did it there must be some 'rule of law' reason. People who care about these issues would be outraged wherever it happens. Selective outrage gives oppressive governments a pass and dilutes fundamental issues people claim to care about.

[1] [https://www.aclu.org/blog/free-speech/rights- protesters/6-wa...](https://www.aclu.org/blog/free-speech/rights- protesters/6-ways-government-going-after-environmental-activists)

[2] [https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/sep/20/keystone...](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/sep/20/keystone- pipeline-protest-activism-crackdown-standing-rock)

[3] [https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/11/government- documents-s...](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/11/government-documents- show-fbi-cleared-filmmaker-laura-poitras-after-six-year)

[4] [https://www.democracynow.org/shows/2012/4/20](https://www.democracynow.org/shows/2012/4/20)

</comment><comment><USER16> Secret Sharepoint database that is funny.

</comment><comment><USER17> This is terrible, but the headline is exaggerating: this only affects 50 people relating to a specific issue, not all journalists in the US.

<comment><USER18> No it's not. The headline never says "all", you added that. The fact that the number is greater than 0 is a problem.

<comment><USER17> I disagree, CBP targeting people who frequently cross the border for extra scrutiny, some of whom happen to be journalists, is a far cry from "the US" tracking "journalists" in general. It is an alarmist headline

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Never happened before, and here we go again

</comment><comment><USER20> It's not only tracking but flagging them also, the government is scared for journalists digging around shady stuff.

</comment><comment><USER21> Sounds like a lawsuit waiting to happen. At a minimum.

<comment><USER22> Do you think they can appeal to a class action lawsuit here?

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Crossing the border illegally is a crime and there has been violence on top of that. I don't see a problem with investigating and tracking those who are aiding and abetting.

<comment><USER24> Reporting isn't aiding, for all you know there could be some conservative journalists out there.

<comment><USER23> The article says they were marked for aiding the migrants. Obviously we don't know the details of what they were doing, but it doesn't sound like just journalism.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Al Qaeda. The database.

</comment><comment><USER26> As a European, this is something that could very well make my government resign because it would be illegal. Like, crazy illegal.

Is this legal in the US or is the current US administration in hot water?

<comment><USER4> This is probably only true in Germany.

> Is this legal in the US or is the current US administration in hot water?

Keeping immigrants in indefinite detention probably isn't legal in the US, doesn't mean it's not going to continue.

> current US administration in hot water?

The FBI is working their way through jailing senior members of the Trump campaign.

<comment><USER27> Really? Name a single member of the trump administration who is in jail, muchless senior. Why make stuff up?

<comment><USER4> I said "campaign" for a reason.

[https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us- canada-47263226](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-47263226) : former election campaign chief Paul Manafort is the big one.

[https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us- canada-46347887](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-46347887) George Papadopoulos received a short prison sentence for lying to the FBI.

The following associates are convicted but not yet sentenced, presumably while they cooperate with investigators:

Rick Gates has pled guilty to conspiracy against the United States (!)

Michael Cohen has been allowed medical leave before serving his sentence: [https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/20/nyregion/michael-cohen- pr...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/20/nyregion/michael-cohen-prison- sentence.html)

Michael Flynn (who was actually, briefly, a member of the Trump administration) has pled guilty to lying to the FBI.

<comment><USER27> Yeah I must have misread "administration." In that case obviously you're correct. Still, wow, they got Manafort. That's not exactly the big time. Just some sheister lobbyist. Something about "working their way through" didn't quite connect with my perceived reality.

<comment><USER28> Lobbyist? He was the head of the campaign and selected Mike Pence! Trump wanted Chris Christie.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> The comments on this thread have broken me. I'm just not going to read comments here any more, and consume the FP via an RSS aggregator.

</comment><comment><USER30> Is anyone surprised by these leaks? I think most people assume this is happening.

<comment><USER31> The Bush and Obama Administrations were extraordinarily aggressive in expanding US espionage action domestically. Obama was infamously aggressive in targeting the press. The notion that they'd do all of that and not begin tracking journalists in a comprehensive fashion was an improbable scenario. The first leaks by Snowden should have prompted the press to assume it. It's why so many of the major media outlets have gone to increased lengths to establish more robust communication approaches for secrecy of contact. Surely they all knew the surveillence systems had been dramatically broadened and that they'd be a key observation point for domestic intel, leaks, sources. The only thing different since the Nixon era (it really goes even further back), is the scale and efficiency at which they can do the tracking through automation; nothing ever changed about the targeting.

<comment><USER32> Is there evidence this specific tracking started under a previous administration?

Or must we first ensure that we deflect blame from the current administration, notably characterised by ongoing violent rhetoric about journalists, including a surprising effort to ignore the government sanctioned murder of a journalist by an "ally".

<comment><USER33> Obama spied on Sharyl Atkinson is pretty well known.

<comment><USER28> It's not, because it never made sense. She was a nobody and the things she reported on where reported by others.

One of her allegations of hacking was a stuck delete key [1]

[1] [https://www.vox.com/2014/10/31/7140247/the-right-is- convince...](https://www.vox.com/2014/10/31/7140247/the-right-is-convinced- obama-hacked-sharyl-attkisson-over-benghazi)

<comment><USER6> You are correct about that case, but others are well-documented, specifically regarding the AP and James Rosen:

 _Dana Milbank of the Washington Post stated: "The Rosen affair is as flagrant an assault on civil liberties as anything done by George W. Bush's administration, and it uses technology to silence critics in a way Richard Nixon could only have dreamed of. To treat a reporter as a criminal for doing his job — seeking out information the government doesn't want made public — deprives Americans of the First Amendment freedom on which all other constitutional rights are based."_

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_articles_about_the_Depart...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_articles_about_the_Department_of_Justice_investigations_of_reporters)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> There was an incidence of violence at the border. The people in this database were present at the time.

"CBP told our colleagues at NBC News that the names in the database are all people who were present during violence that broke out at the border in November. The agency also said journalists are being tracked so that the agency can learn more about what started that violence."

<comment><USER35> If they want information relevant to a crime they can ask for an interview, just like law enforcement in the interior. If they want to compel testimony they can get a subpoena or if they want to search a device they can get a warrant. The fact that they are at the border allows them to circumvent these usual checks on law enforcement.</comment></comment>


Intuitive Equals Familiar (1994) - <AUTHOR> https://www.asktog.com/papers/raskinintuit.html <comment><USER2> Raskin is not wrong.

But, I am that Bruce Ediger, so you may want to verify for yourself.</comment>


New solar startup cuts silicon usage 99% - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2007/05/14/signet-solar-enters-crowded-solar-field/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hi, I think this is an interesting story because there's a parallel between semiconductor equipment and app design, i.e., do you spend the money to build your own, are you better off in some cases to outsource it to a specialist (in this case equipment that makes solar cells)? Another example might be, are you better off building your own anti-virus app that needs constant updating, or do you outsource it to McAfee?</comment>


Apple may not include EarPods headphones in iPhone 12 box to boost AirPods sales - <AUTHOR> https://9to5mac.com/2020/05/20/kuo-no-free-earpods-iphone-12/ <comment><USER2> This was a really great environmentally friendly move, even if it wasn't intentional. Usually my unboxing ritual for a new iPhone is to take out the horribly uncomfortable EarPods and slam-dunk them into the trash. I don't understand why they need to make their earbuds so uncomfortable, but I'm glad they're giving up on them.

<comment><AUTHOR> If you care about the environment, why don't you donate the headphones to someone who does use them but had their break?

<comment><USER2> I've only met one person who actually expressed satisfaction with Apple's wired ear buds, and he made sure to keep them. Aside from that one guy, most people I talk to on the subject do the same thing I do and dispose of them.

To elaborate on why they're bad:

\- They fit poorly

\- Their sound quality is terrible (likely due to the bad fit and resulting lack of sound isolation)

\- Most importantly, they're physically painful to me after about five minutes of wear, like shoving a brick in my ear. Same reason I was shocked when AirPods took off, because they're the same shape and the same awful fit

<comment><AUTHOR> > Most importantly, they're physically painful to me after about five minutes > of wear, like shoving a brick in my ear. Same reason I was shocked when > AirPods took off, because they're the same shape and the same awful fit

The AirPods really do hurt like the EarPods, but I followed some instructions[0] to make them better and now I can wear them for hours.

[0] [https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/airpods-poor-fit- fixed....](https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/airpods-poor-fit- fixed.2072773/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I don't mind, I never used them and I feel like most people I know didn't either. That said, they're sold separately for $29 which seems a bit steep, so hopefully they'll get a price drop for the people who do want them.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I never used those headphones anyway, because I have my own much better pair of wired headphones.

But I use my lightening to minijack adaptor all the time. Do they still include those?

</comment><comment><USER4> Hidden price increase. Just making your cereal package smaller and charging you no less.</comment>


What Facebook Knew and Tried to Hide [audio] - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/16/podcasts/the-daily/facebook-zuckerberg-sandberg-russia-election-data.html <comment><USER2> Alex Stamos (former Chief Security Officer @ FB) recently released a series of tweets in response to the NYT article

[https://twitter.com/alexstamos/status/1063150144865136640](https://twitter.com/alexstamos/status/1063150144865136640)

<comment><USER3> "The mass media was completely played by the GRU and wrote the stories they wanted after the DNC and Podesta disclosures. You could argue that this was much more impactful than the IRA disinfo, and there has been almost no self- reflection by NYT/WaPo/WSJ/TV on their role."

<comment><USER4> He's absolutely right. Publications like NYT, WaPo, CNN, etc. have played huge roles in exacerbating the damage caused by Russian interference, as well as blowing up non-Russia related stories that ended up being of little substance but were major factors in the election, such as the Clinton email fiasco. And there has been little to no signs of repentance from them. And I doubt there will be.

That said, absolutely none of that absolves Facebook of anything, and to bring it up is just deflection.

<comment><USER5> They fell prey to the same disinformation he knew about and failed to act on adequately. I can't fault those news outlets for failing to catch this problem at the time when they didn't have the knowledge Stamos did about it's true origins and intent. And if you think those news outlets haven't done some soul searching on the issue then, well, you haven't been reading them very closely these past two years.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Facebooks helps GRU a lot. Fakebook even bans users because of posting Ukrainian poetry, mentioning certain Ukrainian politics, and so on. It's pretty hostile to Ukrainians while favours Russians, despite the aggression.

BTW. NH admins ignore warnings about Russian gov trolls activity here too. Fortunately, I saw that activity just few times few months ago. HN community is very hard to manipulate.</comment>


The Twitter hack could be a global security crisis - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/interface/2020/7/15/21325708/twitter-hack-global-security-crisis-nuclear-war-bitcoin-scam <comment><USER2> The only mention of "responsibility" is "To speculate much further would be irresponsible". If nobody at twitter is liable for anything, then this is the natural result.</comment>


US Senate Debate on Patriot Act Extension - <AUTHOR> http://www.c-span.org/video/?326227-1/us-senate-debate-nsa-surveillance&live

<comment><AUTHOR> currently in recess. they will return for vote in one hour at 6pm EST.

</comment><comment><USER2> This needs more upvotes..</comment>


Entrepreneur's location floats his boat - <AUTHOR> http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/12/12/BUOK1B1PRF.DTL <comment><USER2> I love the guy from the Small Business Administration's comments being so stern. Typical. Although there's no indication in what he says that he's talking about the subject of this article at all.

<comment><USER3> He does have a point though. If your business model relies on getting new clients to visit you in your "office" I would not work on a boat at all. First, some people will not get on a boat no matter what. Second, you may have to cancel a lot of meetings due to weather even if the weather on land is perfectly fine or only slightly windy. And third some clients will think that you are not trustworthy and that you are on a boat simply so that you can get away at a moment's notice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Forgive my ignorance (I live in the rather land-locked city of Phoenix), but can you simply anchor a boat out in the water and leave it there?

Would you have to pay a monthly fee to the city or something like that?

<comment><USER5> Not really. You generally want to use a mooring instead of an anchor. A mooring is a permanently installed anchor with a chain attached to it and a buoy on the surface. You drive your boat up and tie to the buoy. The mooring is generally rented by a marina or yacht club. The anchor is just not secure enough to leave your boat unattended on. I leave my boat on a mooring through hurricanes.

You also need to be able to get on and off your boat, so having a dock to tie up a little dinghy or having a launch (kind of like a water taxi) is key, and marinas/yacht clubs will have those facilities.

I pay around $800 a year for my mooring rental and having the gear pulled off it and inspected annually, and launch service is included. It is far cheaper than a dock.

Some other practical limitations, if you aren't at a dock you need a generator running for power. If you aren't at a dock I really have no idea how you get internet.

But, having lived on a boat in the past I would absolutely love to do it for work in the future.

<comment><USER4> Hmm, okay that makes sense. $800/yr (if that is what he is paying) sounds totally worth it. Looking around a bit on google (daydreaming) it looks like it could cost anywhere from $1000-2000/yr depending on the size of the boat.

Internet would be pretty easy to solve, 500ft out isn't that far _at all_ for a PTP wifi link (although the boat moving around might cause some problems with that if you're doing directional stuff). There's also 3G stuff although I once had to spend a couple of weeks working over my AT&T 3g modem and it was almost completely worthless...

/someday

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm curious how he gets internet access out there. Seems like that could be an issue.

<comment><USER7> Top Google result:

<http://www.sausalitowireless.com/>

<http://www.sausalitowireless.com/wirelsfaq.html>

        Can I leave the yacht harbour and still have a signal?

        If leaving by boat, you can sail out into
        the bay halfway until Angel Island, and
        still have a signal strong enough to
        conduct even video conferencing.
        Alternatively, leaving by car or foot, you
        can access Sausalito Wireless in various
        locations along Bridgeway (Cafe Trieste or
        The Taco Shop for example).</comment></comment>


Gowalla closed down? - <AUTHOR> http://gowalla.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> Seems to have been coming for a while (<http://techcrunch.com/2011/12/05/gowalla-acqhire/>), but I think they just pulled the trigger judging by this tweet <https://twitter.com/maxvoltar/status/178658732950040576>.

</comment><comment><USER2> Still no way to get your data out.

</comment><comment><USER3> Yeah. Sold to FB I believe.</comment>


Russia orders typewriters to prevent data leaks - <AUTHOR> http://www.cbc.ca/news/yourcommunity/2013/07/russia-orders-typewriters-to-prevent-data-leaks.html

<comment><USER2> We need some startups to fill the void of typewriter demand resurgence. I can see it now: "100% cyber network secure technology, impenetrable to electronic surveillance".</comment>


A high bias low-variance introduction to Machine Learning for physicists - <AUTHOR> http://physics.bu.edu/~pankajm/MLnotebooks.html <comment><USER2> This is very, very, very good.

Book is here: [https://arxiv.org/abs/1803.08823](https://arxiv.org/abs/1803.08823)

____

My review: The authors provide a condensed summary of all central topics in machine learning. Topics include ML basics, ML theory, optimization algorithms, but also a detailed introduction to modern methods deep learning methods. Code examples and tutorials are provided as jupyter notebooks for each chapter [2]. The book uses three datasets (MNIST digit recognition, SUSY physics data, and simulated Nearest Neighbor Ising Model) as running examples throughout the book to help learners understand what different ML techniques can bring when analyzing the same problems from different perspectives.

The book has a high bias (since written from physics perspective), but low variance since assuming physics background allows authors to write a very focussed narrative that gets to the point, and communicates three-books-worth of information in 100 pages. This is somewhat of a repeat of the general physics-ML-explanations-for-the-win pattern established in Bishop's `Pattern Recognition and Machine Learning`.

The authors are wrong to label this book as useful only to people with a physics background, and in fact it will be useful for everyone who wants to learn modern ML. An estimator with high-bias but high efficiency is always useful.

____

For all my hacker news peeps that wants to learn ML and/or DL, you need to drop everything right now, go print this on the office printer, and sit outside with coffee for the next two weeks and read through this entire thing. Turn off the computer and phone. Stop checking HN for two weeks. Trust me, nothing better than this will come around on HN anytime soon.

[1] book pdf => [https://arxiv.org/pdf/1803.08823](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1803.08823) [2] jupyter notebooks zip => [http://physics.bu.edu/~pankajm/ML- Notebooks/NotebooksforMLRe...](http://physics.bu.edu/~pankajm/ML- Notebooks/NotebooksforMLReview.zip)

<comment><USER3> Wow, that must be one of the most enticing endorsements I have ever read. I am definitely checking this out soon. (Physicist by training, now working with deep learning)

<comment><USER4> There are literally dozens of us!

<comment><USER5> It fits quite well. In particular, many of our formalisms are used (if altered) all over machine learning. Having training as a physicist gives you a wide range of analytical skills. I've seen former physicists doing everything from clinical pediatric cancer or bioinformatics to do chip design, financial work, and ML.

<comment><USER6> I cringed a little at "many of our formalisms". The maths of thermodynamics is so useful yet it took and takes substantial effort to pry the useful maths away from the thermodynamics gobbledigook that surrounds it.

But it's certainly true that Deep Learning with its combination of mathy underpinnings and poorly understood behaviour is something that fits very well with a physicist's skillset.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> pure-awesome I get the idea that the title "High Bias, Low Variance" is some sort of reference or pun, but I'm not quite getting it...

I mean, I know that there's a bias-variance tradeoff in stats and ML, but what does it mean in the context of introduction to ML for physicists?

My guess is they mean they aren't going into as heavy detail in ML, which means the reader may lack some knowledge (high bias) but won't miss the forest/wood for the trees (low variance).

Anyone else care to speculate?

<comment><USER7> High-bias, meaning it is opinionated from author's own perspective.

Low-variance, I think the author means to have a sharp and quality focus on the subjects he/she is going to talk about.

<comment><AUTHOR> Almost agree to what you said. Just a piece of more context: the 1st author wrote about connection between physics's Renormalization Group and Deep learning which was featured in [1] 4 years ago.

[1]: [https://www.quantamagazine.org/deep-learning-relies-on- renor...](https://www.quantamagazine.org/deep-learning-relies-on- renormalization-physicists-find-20141204)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I love it when physicists teach. Concise and pedagogical. Gives us physicists a good name :)

Michael Hartl (Caltech Physicist) also does a killer job with Rails Tutorial. There's definitely a trend.</comment>


Use Google? Time to Get Real About Protecting Your Digital Self  - <AUTHOR> http://m.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/01/use-google-time-to-get-real-about-protecting-your-digital-self/251981/

<comment><USER2> Google's data collection levels have just passed the author's cutoff point to (consider a) move to some non-Google services.

There's no new discussion here of any specific bad thing happening because of it, so, same argument, different day.</comment>


Head JS Loads JavaScript Files Like Images Without Blocking the Page - <AUTHOR> http://headjs.com/# <comment><USER2> Yes, we talked about this yesterday.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2780233>

And this does the same thing without using proprietary code:

         <script defer async src="blah"></script>

(and head.js won't do anything special in browsers where the above line isn't supported anyway)

<comment><USER3> AFAIK, `defer` only works in IE, and `async` only works in: IE10p2+, Chrome 11+, Safari 5+, Firefox 3.6+

So some browsers would be left out, right?

<comment><USER4> That list represents most of the browsers people care about, with the exception of old IE. And "better with a modern browser, manages to function on old IE" seems like the right standard to shoot for most of the time, depending on your site's audience.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I use yepnope, it does the same thing and is very active, it's now part of modernizr which is used by google, microsoft, twitter and more:

<http://yepnopejs.com/>

<http://www.modernizr.com/>

</comment><comment><USER6> HeadJS appears to be abandoned by its developer, FWIW: <https://github.com/headjs/headjs/issues/152>

</comment><comment><USER7> While parallel script loading is cool, it's been done by a number of other script loaders. What's neat about HeadJS is all the other stuff! a smaller version of modernizer, pseudo media queries, etc. I quite like it.

<comment><USER8> You can customize Modernizr to include only features you need.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I had some serious issues with head.js with <http://blitz.io> in that the load order was not deterministic causing all sorts of weirdness. For example jQuery will end up loading after the code that requires jQuery resulting in undefined stuff and form posts not binding properly. While I truly liked the idea, it wasn't for us.

<comment><USER10> The HeadJS website says scripts will "run in order", you must have had a buggy version.

I have successfully used LABjs (labjs.com), it has more fine-grained control over parallel/serial loading and execution. For a single project. One of the goals was to parallelize script loading, but modern browsers already do that, they will load up to 4 js files in parallel and execute them in order. In the end the performance gain does not justify the added complexity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Also worth noting is Steve Souders' control.js (<http://stevesouders.com/controljs/>) which adds some tools for delayed script execution and solves a few document.write use cases that have been issues with deferred loading/execution.

<comment><USER12> And there's LABjs <http://labjs.com/>

but I wouldn't bother with any of them. IMHO concatenated scripts at end of <body> are just fine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I made the tests in the "Head JS script loader" section several times and it wasn't faster.</comment>


Have We Been Interpreting Quantum Mechanics Wrong This Whole Time? - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/2014/06/the-new-quantum-reality/

<comment><USER2> From the article:

 _Sheldon Goldstein, a professor of mathematics, physics and philosophy at Rutgers University and a supporter of pilot-wave theory, blames the "preposterous" neglect of the theory on "decades of indoctrination." At this stage, Goldstein and several others noted, researchers risk their careers by questioning quantum orthodoxy._

Can someone from the physics community comment on this? How valid is the pilot-wave theory?</comment>


Theoretical CS toolkit – full course by Ryan O'Donnell - <AUTHOR> https://www.diderot.one/course/28/ <comment><AUTHOR> 99 lectures and lecture notes.

YT link: [https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLm3J0oaFux3ZYpFLwwrlv...](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLm3J0oaFux3ZYpFLwwrlv_EHH9wtH6pnX)</comment>


Wait for it... Conservatives lining up in opposition to SOPA - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/12/sopa-faces-growing-opposition-among-conservatives.ars

<comment><USER2> Please don't editorialize the headline like that. This isn't reddit's politics section.

<comment><AUTHOR> You've got a point, wish i could edit it again.</comment></comment>


'Mythbusters' to end with final season - <AUTHOR> http://www.ew.com/article/2015/10/21/mythbusters-ending-interview <comment><USER2> I never knew about Adam and Jamie not being friends. It's actually interesting thinking how long and well they've worked together.</comment>


If This Wasp Stings You, 'Just Lie Down and Start Screaming' - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/2015/07/absurd-creature-of-the-week-tarantula-hawk/ <comment><USER2> Previous discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9835922](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9835922)</comment>


The goal is not to be possible to understand, but impossible to misunderstand - <AUTHOR> https://www.johndcook.com/blog/2019/05/17/impossible-to-misunderstand/ <comment><USER2> This is something that has been unconsciously bugging me long time but I have not been able to verbalize it.

Social media includes people with different levels or literacy, education and exposure to written word. You can't write for all audiences and write well.

One thing that should be toned town is irony and sarcasm. There is too much of it, it's cheap, hard to master and it annoys more than it entertains. Just remove all sarcasm and irony from writing and it becomes better every time.</comment>


Show HN: Topics.io – Automate ads based on weather, CRM, etc. - <AUTHOR> https://topics.io/ <comment><USER2> We use conversion pixel.

Isn't Google and FB going to auto-optimize our ads based on machine learning and data sources which also include weather

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't think they use weather, but honestly, working in this field I would stay as far away as possible from auto-optimizations. For example adwords express delivers much worst results than a normal adwords campaign. As of today, I would keep all optimization in my hands, in the future, this will probably change. (This said do keep the pixels they offer many other advantages!)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> What still needs to happen before launch / open to public?

Are there any other platforms/apps that try to do this?

I've been looking for a simple solution for this but haven't found anything great.

Best of luck w/ launching & getting users cosbgn, potentially very useful tool.

<comment><USER4> @Joyup.me we use weather, context, time of the day, day of the week, occasions, and public holidays to suggest and optimize their ads. We are trying to provide a chat UI to get necessary input and use ML to get their campaigns going. We are primarily marrying Facebook, messenger, Instagram data with POS data for food businesses. Please feel free to reach out email@example.com

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I see how this impresses people outside of a marketing role - but how is this any different than whats available in each individual platform? Sounds like your product is one small feature thats already available elsewhere.

I'd be more impressed if this was dynamic creative optimization in each of these platforms.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi, what do you mean with dynamic creative optimization?

as for "already available elsewhere", adwords is definitely the most powerful out there, they do offer AdWords scripts which can be used (knowing javascript) to accomplish most of this, you are right.

As for Facebook and others, I don't think this is the case. Googling I found this: [https://www.facebook.com/business/help/community/question/?i...](https://www.facebook.com/business/help/community/question/?id=10153883915573104) and it's for weather (probably the most common trigger), imagine CRM, or Google Analytics Goals. Could you please point me out to some docs on how can I accomplish this nowadays on other platforms?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Really interesting idea. Intrigued by what the UX is like as that's something my clients have often struggled with. I'm surprised there aren't more advertising optimisation platforms out there that use localised data like the weather, twitter trends etc.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes UX is important. We are trying to keep it as simple as possible, with just 3 tabs. Ads, triggers, actions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> You should probably focus on only one aspect, and rock it. Like if the weather does have an influence on my business, I would want an app that understand 100% of it. But now I am left thinking none of these triggers can make or break my business, so I won't probably use it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Also, can you think of any trigger which could make or break your business?

<comment><USER7> I don't really know, what will be your take? ([https://serpapi.com](https://serpapi.com))

I do know we have exceeded several times what we expect to spend on Adwords, for bad keywords/locations that could have been avoided if we were paying better attention.

<comment><AUTHOR> How about "blacklist all countries where bounce rate is > than 80%". Would that make sense?

<comment><USER7> Yes, it's what we ended up doing but with conversions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> [https://www.deltax.com](https://www.deltax.com) They also have a similar feature 'signal2ads'. Disclosure:I used to work there

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting, I can't find their price on the website. Do you mind telling me more or less their price point?

<comment><USER8> Pricing was percentage of media spend. The platform is targeted more towards enterprises and agencies. So pricing varies a lot between clients</comment></comment></comment>


Airbnb Raises $555M in Funding - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-09-22/airbnb-raises-at-least-555-million-in-funding <comment><USER2> Someone please correct me if I'm wrong in assuming this but it seems a company like AirBnb would only raise private capital instead of going IPO because it's financials suck. I mean if you were doing really well and had profits that you were pumping back into the company you would want to IPO to raise money for lower dilution right? A private round might cause much more dilution than an IPO. Maybe I'm missing something.

<comment><USER3> The standard operating practice for Silicon Valley startups now is to put of IPOing as long as possible. Facebook actually got several exceptions from the SEC so that they didn't have to go public. Going public entails a ton of hassle, for example if Airbnb went public and had one of their programmers accidentally introduced a bug that misreported the number of users they had they could be liable for fraud. There's very little benefit to going public except that it creates a market for the stock which gives employees liquidity. However public markets are actually pretty crappy for that too because in order to avoid insider trading employees are often confined to a narrow window of time when they can sell their stock. Because they are lots of employees who want to convert their stock into money to but things this window gets flooded with sellers and employees wind up getting 80 cents on the dollar compared to other stock holders.

So yeah, you are missing something. Public markets are basically strictly worse than private investors. Also it's not like there are a bunch of private investors waiting to write $555M checks to company's whose financials suck... how could that make any sense?

<comment><USER4> > Because they are lots of employees who want to convert their stock into > money to but things this window gets flooded with sellers and employees wind > up getting 80 cents on the dollar compared to other stock holders.

I receive stock in compensation. I have elected to auto-sell it - this works even during trade window freezes.

Alternatively, they may end up getting 120 cents on the dollar, compared to other stock holders, if the stock rose in price between the time that other insiders could sell, and the time that employees could sell. If the company's on an upwards trajectory, this is quite likely.

> Also it's not like there are a bunch of private investors waiting to write > $555M checks to company's whose financials suck... how could that make any > sense?

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

<comment><USER3> > I receive stock in compensation. I have elected to auto-sell it - this works > even during trade window freezes.

I don't think this works for employees who were already granted a huge chunk of stock pre IPO.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Why airbnb needs so much cash? They are not exactly subsidizing either side of the market?

<comment><USER6> Self driving RVs. It's the future of the hospitality industry.

<comment><USER7> Not just the future of hospitality... it's the future alternative to home ownership.

Think about it: You could literally wake up, do your morning routine, and then step out of the RV and into your workplace. You come back that night... and the next morning you step out into Yosemite Valley for some hiking. You just rent RV berths -- everything from campgrounds (Yosemite) to high-rises (in major cities).

<comment><USER8> > _You come back that night..._

... to a different RV. There's no reason for RV ownership; a self-driving RV can fulfill the sleeping / transportation roles for at least two people/families on different working schedules.

<comment><USER9> As someone who lives in an Airstream and works from home, I would have to disagree. In the context of this idea of 'the future of home ownership', the RV becomes the 'place for my stuff' in the George Carlin sense. Having my house (RV) drive itself to the next beautiful state park or national forest I want to camp in while I work or sleep or watch a movie would be amazing.

<comment><USER8> I disagree with myself too :). I was going for dystopia on purpose here, as a way to criticize the whole trend. ;).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's interesting they are offering employees the option to cash out. I wonder if that's usual?

<comment><USER11> It's becoming fairly normal at this point for more mature private companies, from what I can tell. If you've been at a company for 4-7 years with no IPO in sight, it can make some sense for the company to do a buyback. I know Uber has a tenure-based buyback program, Palantir did at least one in the last year or so, etc.

<comment><USER12> From the rumors I have heard, the Palantir buy-back is limited. My understanding is that most folks with options still haven't exercised the majority of them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> gm-conspiracy Anybody know its previous valuation before the $555M?

<comment><USER13> Article from June 2016 reported it as $25.5 billion [http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-06-16/airbnb- sai...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-06-16/airbnb-said-to- get-1-billion-debt-facility-from-big-u-s-banks)</comment></comment>


glChAoS.P: Real-time 3D strange attractors scout and hypercomplex fractals - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/BrutPitt/glChAoS.P <comment><USER2> The released mac didn't work for me, but the webassembly webGL version is excellent - [https://michelemorrone.eu/glchaosp/webGL.html](https://michelemorrone.eu/glchaosp/webGL.html)

<comment><USER3> For me, I need to run the application from the terminal and it works. I do something like:

cd /Users/..../glChAoS.P-1.4.0

./glChAoSP_OSX

And I see a beautiful fractal!

<comment><USER4> Now, with last update, the missed script was added and was corrected also the "no such file or directory" error (was related to security exception of "unidentified downloaded software", and Finder returned me a "private" link, not he real one) So I rewrote it: now seems work

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I tried to take a screenshot using Shift-Prtsc and I got:

        double free or corruption (!prev)
        Aborted (core dumped)

I will give you more details when I get the time!

<comment><USER4> Thanks for your report. When you get time, please tell me on which Operating System (thanks!)

Try also to go in "settings" menu and select an existing "screenShots" path in "preferred path" section... and after save prog.Settings (It's a new feature... maybe the bug is there)

<comment><USER5> I tried it under Linux (x86_64). I will try what you said when I get the time, hopefully soon enough!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Very cool, I had no idea you could use imgui in WASM

<comment><USER4> Yes, ImGui works fine in WASM. Look my imGuIZMO.quat and glslSmartDeNoise simplest projects on how integrate ImGui in WASM, with GLFW and SDL: [https://github.com/BrutPitt](https://github.com/BrutPitt)

P.S. imGuIZMO.quat have also "ImGui_demo" inside it

<comment><USER7> Hi Michele! Cool to see you here. You have an amazing website. Very cool stuff, with a good eye for the detail. Maybe the first concurrency to [http://acko.net/](http://acko.net/) which I have seen in years. Keep up!

<comment><USER4> Ciao. Thanks for the appreciation. I know well [http://acko.net/](http://acko.net/), is very very beautiful one, and also for me is the number one! I still working on my site and it's very distant from acko... but thanks again ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> hell yes</comment>


What films/documentaries should entrepreneurs watch? - <AUTHOR> http://www.quora.com/What-films-documentaries-should-entrepreneurs-watch

<comment><USER2> Social Network, Wall street and there is some movie about two guys who are making some software and story about their way to top and falling down. But I can't remember title.

<comment><USER3> The documentary he may be referring to is Startup.com

I've intentionally not watched 'Social Network' due to the blatant inaccuracies.</comment></comment>


Show HN: A three-state extension of John Conway's Game of Life - <AUTHOR> http://bl.ocks.org/rsivapr/6108940

<comment><USER2> Neat. Here's some inspiration. (Note, Don Hopkins has been at this for a while.)

[http://www.donhopkins.com/home/CAM6/](http://www.donhopkins.com/home/CAM6/)</comment>


How Do You Prioritize Features? 'Pruning the Product Tree' - <AUTHOR> https://spin.atomicobject.com/2018/04/10/pruning-the-product-tree/#.Wsy4Uv6Nonw.hackernews <comment><USER2> Simply draw a few vertical lines on your whiteboard and you can achieve the same result without wasting 2 hours of your time drawing trees</comment>


Android is a desolate wasteland when it comes to games - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2012-10/31/android-games

<comment><USER2> It's much simpler than this. The native development environment, compared to iOS, is just trash. As a developer, I cringe every time I have to build and test my code on an Android device.

On iOS, I can have a build running and drop into a debugger directly on device in a single button click. On Android? Ha. First I have to boot up Eclipse, set a breakpoint in our Java bridge code, start debugging on a device (assuming it connects when I plug it in), manually attach GDB, now set my native code breakpoints, then resume in Eclipse. If I'm lucky and the stars have aligned, GDB will break where I want it to and maybe give me a stack trace that is accurate.

Here's another example. On iOS there is a wonderful OpenGL debugger. At any point in my game, I can hit the snapshot button and I am presented with a state-change-by-state-change list of every single command I have sent OpenGL. I can step through each of these and see my framebuffer get built one draw call at a time. Totally invaluable for finding errors and inefficiencies. I can even have a code breakpoint trigger this debugger.

On Android? Well this is much, much tougher. I first have to find out which GPU series the device is running (PowerVR, Tegra, Adreno, ARM), then I have to search the vendor's website for their native debugger. When I find it, it is of course, Windows only. So I have to now boot up my VM. To connect my Android device to the Windows VM, I have to first disconnect it from my host OS (meaning I can no longer debug), then re-connect it. Then, I have to locate special Windows drivers for the specific device (most don't work out of the box on Windows).

At this point the steps vary. For a PowerVR powered Android device, for the native debugger to work, I have to jailbreak the phone and manually copy special debugging .so's (that will brick the device if it reboots with them enabled). Then once this is done, I can attach the OpenGL debugger in my VM and try to capture a frame. I say try because these tools are usually so poor that they crash outright when you try to use them. For the PowerVR debugger, it will only capture ES 1.1 frames -- the ES 2.0 will cause an instant hard crash.

What further complicates this is that the wide variety of GPUs that power Android devices vary greatly in their performance, capabilities, and their interpretation of the ES spec. The Adreno 20x series of GPUs, for instance, have a terrible shader compiler that refuses to treat compile time constants as valid indices for vertex varyings. This works flawlessly on every other mobile GPU, but on an Adreno you'll be faced with a black screen until you figure out why your shader was refused.

/end rant.

I will throw Android a bone here however. It is vastly, vastly, (did I mention vastly?) better than the develop environment that you had to use for Symbian devices. That was a special circle of hell that I hope I am never forced to experience again.

<comment><USER3> Totally agree. We should standardize on just one kind of cpu, gpu. That way we don't have to deal with any compat issues.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Some counter points: $9M in pledges towards the Ouya console. 3 different humble bundles for Android, each pulling in around $1M. A 4th bundle is going to start in a few days. Over 100,000 different games are available from the Android Market. The current top paid game on the Android Market is a $5 game.

I game on my Android phone and haven't noticed a lack of quality games. I certainly haven't spent much on games, though. I've got several dozen games that I've paid for, all of which I've purchased through Google's 10 cent and 25 cent sales. I've spent more to get games through the Android Humble Bundles.

<comment><USER5> Playing devil's advocate for a moment, but pledging for a better gaming experience is almost an indication that it's not currently a good gaming platform. Would people have pledged that much if their phone had all the gaming support and streaming to televisions that people wanted? I don't think so.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'd like to propose another reason: sales tax.

Simply put, the Android Market (Google Play Store, whatever) is unusable for small independent developers. With iOS, Apple acts as the merchant for all transactions and just sends you royalties. But Google foists all the responsibility for collecting tax from each individual customer directly onto the developer.

For a real business with an accountant, that's fine, but if you're one or two people in a basement who just want to develop and market a game, that's a nightmare. For that reason alone, developing for iOS is so much more attractive.

</comment><comment><USER7> The whole Android environment isn't very friendly to games, requiring a lot of work to bring a game to it from iOS:

\- tons of resolutions to support

\- Tegra, no tegra, OpenGL ES 1.1, OpenGL ES 2 ..

\- Google banned any form of paid apps in their first year, with the reason that their payment processing wasn't ready yet. I had two apps removed from the Android Market in 2008 because they were using a form of in-app purchase (powered by PayPal), thus making people get used to free games, powered by google's advertising

\- there are TONS of indie developers making good games, who can't sell apps on Google Play because google doesn't allow them to. They keep saying that's because of legal issues, but somehow Apple, Samsung, WebOS had that problem solved... Things got better with the last inclusion of some countries on the allowed list(Poland, India..), but it's still not there

These being said, a lot of money can still be made on Android with games. It just requires an amount of work that most companies aren't comfortable with.

<comment><USER8> It goes well beyond just OpenGL 1.2 vs. 2.0. There is a large disparity in how OpenGL is supported. For example, some texture formats will be supported by one device but not another, etc.

<comment><USER9> Not to mention crippling driver bugs. For example, many Adreno 200s try to read invalid memory and segfault if you call glTexSubImage2D.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I've been thinking about it, and I'd like to use a metaphor. It's imperfect, but it's basically true.

IOS = Console Game Android = Desktop

IOS, you basically know your system, but your system limits you. You have to get permission to sell from the maker of your system. You get exclusives, because it's fairly easy to build to your system.

Android You can have a wide variety of systems which can mean a lot of potential issues, but can have a minimum and suggested specs, and can even add features if the computer supports them. You don't have to sell your application through the official store, or any store, since people can (usually) load what they want on their device.

Thoughts?

<comment><USER5> Not a bad example, considering many android users fiddle with CPU scheduling/overclocking, performance tweaks, controller input and mappings, etc.

I'm not much of a gamer, but it would be interesting to see this analogy taken further, to see where Android can build on these strengths to be the preferred gaming platform.

Maybe OUYA will improve things as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> There's a simple explanation for it: a lot of kids who don't have smartphones own iPods, and kids _love_ playing games. According to Horace Didieu, around half of all iOS devices sold to date are iPods.[1]

\--

[1] [http://www.asymco.com/2012/06/18/a-more-precise-measure- of-i...](http://www.asymco.com/2012/06/18/a-more-precise-measure-of-ios- installed-base/)

</comment><comment><USER12> This article wildly overstates the case. Sure, iOS is a better game platform right now but there are plenty of commercial studios putting out quality games for Android too.

Unless games are your primary use case for your device I don't think it's a decisive difference the way it is for music production apps, for example.

</comment><comment><USER13> Who cares? Maybe we have better things to do than play games on phones.

I'm onto my second high-end Android phone and I've bought lots of apps and games. At the end of the day I couldn't give a fuck about playing games on my phone. I use the phone and the apps all the time though.

<comment><USER14> >Who cares?

People who like games, and developers who make them.

>Maybe we have better things to do than play games on phones.

Is that a statement regarding all Android users, or your clique, or...? Because many of the most popular apps on all platforms are games. People like games.

>I couldn't give a fuck about playing games on my phone.

This doesn't necessarily hold true for everyone, which is the point being made.

>I use the phone and the apps all the time though.

So do I. But I also use the games all the time, too. If this doesn't affect you, then good. I'm glad you're enjoying your phone. But you seem dismissive of an entire market just because it doesn't suit you. That's not a good mentality to have.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Maybe the solution is making native (non-java) development on Android a first- class citizen.

<comment><USER16> Can you elaborate on why you think it's currently a second-class citizen?

<comment><USER8> Native Android devlopment (i.e. C/C++) is a major PITA. Biggest reason: there still is no debugger for C/C++ code; you have to do all debugging with printf. In 2012. I'm not kidding. Android NDK didn't even support the C++ Standard Library until recently.

Another reason why Android is losing on the developer front is that development environment setup and usage, even for Java, is worse than Apple's. It's usage of Eclipse is like duct tape and glue.

<comment><USER17> There is support for debugging native code with gdb, and in the latest Android tools releases this is integrated into Eclipse via the CDT. However, it can still be difficult to set up - if it doesn't work the easy way it's very difficult to figure out how to fix it.

And although there are quirks (mainly performance related) in the ADT/Eclipse combo your description is far from my experience. The overall experience is better, IMO, than Xcode. The latter is the buggiest IDE I've ever used.

Frankly AppCode/IntelliJ beat both in many respects, but frustratingly don't quite cover the full range of functionality. It's difficult to make the leap when you need to go back to Xcode/Eclipse to accomplish some of your work each day.

<comment><USER18> You really need a lot of nerve to talk about how ADT is better than xcode.

I used xcode for more than three years now, wrote a lot of object c/c/c++ and even assembler, and yet to find any major bug. This year I tried to port one of my app to Android, and the biggest challenge happens to be debugging native code. Basically you can't, there are some tutorials to set up gdb, but it shouldn't be that hard, and I don't bother. I ended up with printf, of course it is a nightmare.

If Google can deliver a xcode quality IDE, it'd already ruled the world.

<comment><USER17> You're being unnecessarily hostile. Obviously our experiences have been different having used the same tools on different projects. I find plenty of problems with both IDEs, but for me Xcode has been the more painful because of bugs.

<comment><USER18> That must be a bad day with Eclipse. Different projects, maybe.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Perhaps the use of common native frameworks could reduce the pain of porting from one platform to the other. I'm currently working on a side-project in Cocos2d-x, which is a re-implementation in C++ of the popular iOS framework Cocos2d. This allows projects to compile natively for Android as well. It's a relatively new framework, but it seems to be quite stable, and I believe it has financial backing (can't remember by who).

</comment><comment><USER20> Although I see how piracy may be a huge hindrance to Android apps not "selling" well, it can be battled through a smarter backend. Most devs have yet to place the game behind a paywall to protect it despite APKs being passed around. That's just one primitive way to help with piracy.

</comment><comment><USER21> I don't mind, SNES emulation works brilliantly. I can download new ROMs directly from the browser.

<comment><USER22> did you read the article ...? Andorid developers are complaining about piracy and don't see that any effort to port their games will pay off. Your solution to the problem: let me just play games not developed for the platform distributed in a legal grey area.

<comment><USER21> Offering my opinion on the situation as a consumer != proposing a solution.

Gaming on Android doesn't "stink" for me as I've found a way to play vintage games using emulators. Which I would certainly pay for if the Nintendo/copyright owners offered it as an option on Android.

<comment><USER22> ah ... sorry I misread. That's valid.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Hmm, I'm really enjoying Sonic from Tegra Zone. If anyone can line up awesome games it's NVIDIA. Also Osmos is awesome. Their numbers about there being less paid apps seems kind of bizarre to me. A good game dev uses in-app purchase instead of paid apps since it monetizes so much better...

</comment><comment><USER24> So beneath the baiting title the author's points boil down to "there are more exclusive games on iOS", and "Android owners are cheap pirates", there is no mention of paid app encryption nor the increasing payment options (carrier billing, gift cards).

It's a ranting stereotype-enforcing blather piece by some attention seeker picked up as a guest blog on Wired UK. I hate this!

<comment><USER25> "there is no mention of paid app encryption nor the increasing payment options (carrier billing, gift cards)."

Probably because neither of those things really have to do with the selection of games available.

"the author's points boil down to "there are more exclusive games on iOS","

Or rather, 'many of the best mobile titles are exclusive to iOS or first on iOS'. Which was exactly what his title indicated.

"ranting stereotype-enforcing blather piece"

Irony crits you for 700,000.

<comment><USER24> They have everything to do with the piracy and payment points raised, and I'd argue that a direct link can be charted between securing developer compensation and the availability of games. As for the title: being 2nd place is hardly a "desolate wasteland".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> The truth is you can find superior games on iOs no question about it. And from a developper perspective , the ROI on Apple plateform is usually better if you make paid app. It is hard to sell anything on Android, and in-app purchase doesnt always make sense with all kind of apps. because if beating the game only means purchasing somme goods, the game lose a lot of interest.</comment>


Scientists Discover Way To Increase Publication Count  - <AUTHOR> http://wmbriggs.com/blog/?p=8226 <comment><USER2> >There will be a minor flood of papers pre-registering sketchy theories

Does pre-registering papers somehow cause all journals to lose all editorial control?

>Some authors will publish their negative results, but many will forget them and move on to more fertile grounds.

Why would they forget about something that they have already publicly accepted an obligation to publish, and how would that effect their careers?

>The bulk of these maybe-so works will be taken as positive evidence even if positive effects are never found or if negative effects are published.

First of all, right now the media (and other scientists, and regulators) jump on the single published vaguely positive result, unaware of the 99 negative results that were never published. It would be an improvement to reduce this list to only the media, who are intentionally being fooled for the sake of a good linkbait headline.

Lastly, there should be enough of a volume and normalization of pre- registrations that if you want to pretend like the statement of a question constitutes the answer, people will laugh at you.

</comment><comment><USER3> This article points to a problem, but doesn't point to a solution.First of all, pre-approving papers isn't any significant improvement, since it really doesn't remove the incentive to "cook" results, and besides if the journals knew how to filter papers based on the proposition and the setup, it wouldn't be any different if those papers were also accompanied by results. Putting this in a different wording, the journals can ignore the results and focus on the proposition and method if they know how to evaluate them.

Also, judging a peer by his "quality" and not "quantity" of work is the only actual proposition, but it helps very little. If such objective criteria were known, journals would apply those criteria to the papers themselves, hence, filter only the quality ones and problem solved.

All in all, the conclusion is that problem is solved iff problem is solved.

What lacks, are objective criteria for a work of science. Anyone care to invent any?

<comment><USER4> _" If such objective criteria were known, journals would apply those criteria to the papers themselves, hence, filter only the quality ones and problem solved."_

If only. Just like currently, there would be second-tier of journals that will accept papers that are not the best of the best because all those papers make it into the top journals (Nature, Science, the Lancet, etc)

Similarly, there would be third-tier journals gearing towards third-tier researchers, ad infinitum. People would send papers to them because their employer tells them "publish or perish", and a half/quarter/tenth-decent reputation is better than no reputation. Similarly, publishers would offer such journals because there is money to be made there.

So yes, we need objective criteria for quality, but that will probably not be enough to get rid of the zillions of journals.

Maybe, the real problem is that modern scientists are paid by the government. 'Scientist' used to be a hobby. People did it in their spare time, or found a patron who was willing to sponsor them. Nowadays, scientist is a profession, and the main sponsors (governments and governmental institutions) try to be fair in the way they distribute their money. To do so, they have to make scientific output measurable. Quality often can only be objectively measured after decades, so they go for quantity instead. The patrons of centuries ago did not have to defend their choices; they just sponsored whoever they wanted to.

<comment><USER5> > _and the main sponsors (governments and governmental institutions) try to be > fair in the way they distribute their money. To do so, they have to make > scientific output measurable._

Your first sentence is right, but the second is off-base.

No one in gov't really gives a damn about measurable progress, which is why the measurements used are so broken. (See my other comment for a better measure.)

The real issue: As with any gov't cheese it needs to be spread around, or it doesn't get the congressional support required for continuation. Ever wonder why:

1\. The National Magnet Lab was removed from MIT and placed in that bastion of great science, Florida State University?

2\. The Superconducting Super Collider ended up in that great cultural center of science, Waxahachie, Texas? Perhaps ease of access?

3\. Plans for Mission Control, which were already drawn up to be north of MIT, was redrawn to be in Houston after Kennedy was killed? (look up the history of Tech Square in Cambridge.)

Politicians think they can spend money in certain areas and results will materials. And they will get results, so it's self-reinforcing, but they're too scientifically obtuse to imagine that the results are not necessarily the ones they want.

<comment><USER6> It would also be self-reinforcing if you decided to give all the research funding and facilities to a clique of top universities which had already attracted the best researchers.

<comment><USER5> > _which had already attracted the best researchers._

Giving the funding to second-tier places and hoping for first-tier results is certainly a strategy.

Another might be to note that there is a difference between self-reinforcement of politics and self-reinforcement of first-tier universities. Clearly, we've made a choice as to which one is deserving of self-reinforcement.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> If you really want lots of papers to your name, join a large particle physics collaboration. In the four years I've been doing my Ph.D. I've been a named author on over 100 papers.

<comment><USER8> Only problem is, your close colleagues are on to the inflation of that statistic.

Potential solution: change disciplines after graduation?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> (number of cites) / (number of pubs * number of coauthors) has been known for a long time to the best tenure/review committees.

Second tier doesn't use it, the politics should make it obvious why.

And the gov't grant machine doesn't use it, for different kinds of political reasons.

</comment><comment><USER9> One of the positive effect of "publish or perish" is that every mathematician/scientist is obligated to put most of what he's thinking on paper and on a digital medium. It is much easier to search in a pdf file than in someone's mind.

</comment><comment><USER10> Article signed by 80 scientists: [http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/blog/2013/jun/05/trust- in-...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/blog/2013/jun/05/trust-in-science- study-pre-registration) ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5868406](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5868406))

</comment><comment><USER11> "Publish or Perish," "Launch or Perish."</comment>


About the security content of macOS Sierra 10.12.6 - <AUTHOR> https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207922 <comment><AUTHOR> No update for CVE-2017-9417 (aka broadpwn) for macOS 10.11 and 10.10</comment>


UA Sniffing FTW - <AUTHOR> https://gist.github.com/2342188

<comment><USER2> I thought the whole aversion was based on the fact that power users, bots and search engine crawlers alike fake user agents all the time - meaning it's tough to draw any kind of useful conclusion or deliver a consistant user experience based upon this?</comment>