PHD Comics: Cosmic Inflation Explained - <AUTHOR> http://phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1691

<comment><USER2> Thanks for sharing. Articles like this make me wish I took more than just the obligatory year of physics.</comment>


Priorities in security - <AUTHOR> http://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/44363.html <comment><USER2> It's worth noting that a lot of attacks that seem hard to pull off get sooner or later packaged up in ways that people with remarkably little knowledge about computers much less computer security can use them.

An old roommate of mine had a friend that found it funny to change my wallpaper while I was out of my apartment. I didn't find it as funny so I set login passwords.

At some point it started happening again, and I eventually figured out my system had a _bootkit_ on it that made it always accept a certain password. This wasn't a guy who knew what a bootkit _was_ , conceptually, but managed to find one and instructions for how to install it.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm a little confused about the point here. Security researchers often hunt down bugs that are deemed esoteric or state-actor only. Security researchers are often the sort of people who would do things like stalking. Therefore we need security researchers to find security flaws so other security researchers can't use them?

If that is the point, it seems to humanize the problem space in a different sort of way. Security researchers are people, too. Some are "good", some are "bad", but most people are in between. But instead of framing your work on targeted individual attacks as a journalist being targeted by a state-level actor, realize that there are other researchers out there with your same very specific set of skills which would allow him/her to target someone of their own choosing. In this example, perhaps the researcher is vindictively stalking an ex.

Outside of that, though, I can't help but think that there is a much more interesting and broader point about the humanity that is affected by the work you do in both security and privacy. If you consider people who are not as skilled, but still as vindictive, malicious tweets from fake accounts multiple times per day is pretty bad. Couples that share passwords can end up really enabling this vindictive behavior. ( _gasp_ who would ever share passwords to something private like that? Perhaps an abusive partner demands access to email and hangs onto a recovery key.)

</comment><comment><USER4> False dichotomy in the name of injected identity. Strengthening against state actors is strengthening against stalkers.

<comment><USER5> That was the point I was making in the post, yes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> _As basically anyone who 's spent any time anywhere near the security industry will testify, many security researchers are not the nicest people. Some of them will end up as abusive partners, and they'll have both the ability and desire to keep track of their partners and ex-partners. _

This is some of what got me started with security professionally (I'd been doing vuln research since my late teens, but not vocationally).

I was running systems for a Chicago ISP, and someone gave me a copy of Michael Neuman's IP-Watch (the sequel to his TTY-Watch tool) to kick around. Being able to watch random network connections --- this is the mid '90s, and network connections were all far more... interactive... than they are now) was so disturbing that I had a hard time getting it out of my head.

I ended up writing a paper about tools like IP-Watch (what we now call intrusion detection systems), which is probably the only thing that really got me taken seriously early in my career.

(Half this site seems to think I'm a paid employee of the NSA, and I have a weird hang-out about spelling my politics out to get out of sticky arguments, so I'm always happy to have a natural chance point out that, uh, no.)

</comment><comment><USER7> _As basically anyone who 's spent any time anywhere near the security industry will testify, many security researchers are not the nicest people._

I wonder if there's any correlation between being a security researcher and authoritarianism, because that's my impression of many of them.

<comment><USER8> I agree with tptacek here. The common enterprise CISSP I've met seems to have an authoritarian streak, sure. A lot of the ones that work in or were trained by the intelligence community, obviously. But a good chunk of the security engineers and vulnerability researchers I've met have a strong distaste for the authoritarian structures, arbitrary hierarchies, and in some case the concept of the state itself.</comment></comment>


The Location Engine: Some quick notes on trying the DW1000 - <AUTHOR> https://blog.exploratory.engineering/post/decawave/ <comment><USER2> I do not understand the following:

> Tags are mobile and are used to track the physical location of whatever they > are integrated in - with centimeter precision (DecaWave promises maximum > 10cm error). A tag recevies location data and distance to anchors within > range. An onboard location engine calculates the x,y,z position of the tag.

> You can choose to use the default location engine or you can roll your own. > This is relatively straight forward if everything is on the same plane. > Slightly less so in R3 space. Google "trilateration algorithm" or > "multilateration algorithm" to get started. The IEEEXplore archive alone, > has 400+ papers on the subject.

> If using the built in location engine, keep in mind that the units used for > anchor coordinates and distance estimates are millimeters.

> The update frequency is a function of the number of tags in the network. > Using only one tag results in 150 Hz updates. Using 750 tags, you get 0.2Hz > updates. Deploy up 9000 tags in a given anchor cluster and the update > frequency drops to 0.0167Hz, which is still more than reasonable for many > applications.

Why is the update frequency a function of the number of tags?

Say I have a tag A, why the update frequency of tag A is a function of the number of other tags (assuming we have tag B and C in the system.)? They should be unrelated to each other, right?

If this technology is an analogy to GPS, tag A should only communicate with Anchors, not other tags? And the anchors should only passively broadcast their time?

<comment><USER3> According to the DecWave web site [1] the anchors time stamp the arrival of the tag's beacon and pass it to a central host for trilateration. So the network is single-tasking, essentially.

[1] [https://www.decawave.com/technology1/](https://www.decawave.com/technology1/)

<comment><USER4> Exactly right.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Do they specify somewhere the maximum working range between tags and anchors?</comment>


Rayon: data paralellism in Rust - <AUTHOR> http://smallcultfollowing.com/babysteps/blog/2015/12/18/rayon-data-parallelism-in-rust/ <comment><USER2> There's some rust magic in there, being that stack temporaries can be used safely in Rust APIs like this, all due to the borrow checker.

</comment><comment><USER3> Impressive, specially considering the `lack` of allocations and that the compiler detects the bug on the parallel quick sort implementation.

</comment><comment><USER4> This looks exciting, and I certainly plan to use it, but this style of parallelism isn't ideal due to the constant join()s which will really take its toll with Amdahl's law. This talk covers that and makes an argument for composing parallel code using futures instead: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4OCUEgSNIAY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4OCUEgSNIAY)

<comment><USER5> You are talking about two very different things: parallelism and concurrency.

Also the joins don't sync data together, they wait for all threads to finish. That is not directly what Amdahl's law is about.

<comment><USER4> I disagree. Go to minute 45 in the talk for a visual of what I'm about to describe: Hypothetically an ideal multithreaded program would light up as much of the CPU as possible. If we viewed it as a timeline it would start at a single point, expand as a bubble to fill the available CPU resources, and then at the end contract back down.

Using this style of parallelism creates many bubbles that each condense down to a single point every time you call join(), similar to a beaded necklace. This means that the 'p' in Amdahl's law for the percentage of time spent in parallel tasks is already stunted from the blocks of sequential code (or necklace string) caused by the joins.

<comment><USER6> There is no need to call join more than once in a work stealing pipeline, join is the terminal operation. In other words it rather similar to future.get(), it is a synchronisation point; which yes is amdalhs law target.

Futures and workstealing parallel execution are two techniques that work hand in hand.

Practically it can't be compared with C++ annotated OpenMP for loops, which have an implicit join at the loop termination. In a parallel data flow system like Rayon there are no implicit joins, only explicit as required. join() in this system is more like return dataflow as show in the presentation you link too.

<comment><USER4> In a literal sense, yes. But, and perhaps I am understanding this wrong, the article in the join primitive section states: "Once they have both finished, it will return". If you ignore the cost of spinning up and tearing down the threads isn't this conceptually the same as the implicit join at the end of an OpenMP loop?

<comment><USER6> In this specific case yes, but so is the await await as shown at [https://youtu.be/4OCUEgSNIAY?t=3545](https://youtu.be/4OCUEgSNIAY?t=3545) in your linked talk.

The nice thing is that join is recursive in the quicksort example and that means its equivalent to the await await syntax in practical terms. Which also means when both are finished it will return.

      let mid = partition(v);
          let (lo, hi) = v.split_at_mut(mid);
          Future:of(|| quick_sort::<J,T>(lo)).await(),
                  Future:of(|| quick_sort::<J,T>(hi)).await());

Is exactly the same in parallelism as this

        let mid = partition(v);
        let (lo, hi) = v.split_at_mut(mid);
        J::join(|| quick_sort::<J,T>(lo),
                || quick_sort::<J,T>(hi));

Except that join gives better scheduling due to work stealing which will avoid unbalanced cpu usage.

My Rust is non existent but conceptually Rayon is similar to java9 parallel streams which I know well.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


There's now just one Blockbuster remaining in the US - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2018/07/13/theres-now-just-one-blockbuster-remaining-in-the-u-s/ <comment><USER2> They all smelled the same, they were the first company I ever noticed that with. I've since learned doing that is an actual science/industry.</comment>


Holmes: Binary Analysis Integration Through Datalog (2018) - <AUTHOR> https://kilthub.cmu.edu/articles/Holmes_Binary_Analysis_Integration_Through_Datalog/7571519 <comment><USER2> How do existing binary analyzers reason about this co-dependency?

Edit: To clarify, the abstract mentions "techniques to perform an individual analysis in isolation". But if one technique depends on the other, don't both need to happen?

<comment><USER3> These analysis need each other for precision but not soundness. For instance, building a good call graph requires decent alias analysis, but to build a poor one you can always assume everything aliases with everything. So the idea is you run these analyses multiple times (until fix point if you want "maximum" precision).</comment></comment>


9-year-old's DIY cardboard arcade gets flashmobbed - <AUTHOR> http://boingboing.net/2012/04/09/9-year-olds-diy-cardboard-ar.html

<comment><USER2> Google wants to know what the power of the Internet is? This is it!

</comment><comment><USER3> A future entrepreneur in action...</comment>


Parameterized roles - <AUTHOR> http://sartak.blogspot.com/2009/05/parameterized-roles.html

<comment><USER3> Can someone give a simple explanation as to what "parameterized roles" are? The article assumes knowledge of some Perl libraries; it does sound interesting but I have no idea what the author is talking about.

<comment><USER4> Did u follow the Perl6 parameter role link in the article?

This provides a nice example which may help....

      role Greet[Str $greeting] {
          method greet() { say $greeting }
      }

      class EnglishMan does Greet["Hello"] { }
      class Slovak does Greet["Ahoj"] { }
      class Lolcat does Greet["OH HAI"] { }

      EnglishMan.new.greet(); # Hello
      Slovak.new.greet();     # Ahoj
      Lolcat.new.greet();     # OH HAI

<http://rakudo.org/2009/01/parametric-roles.html>

<comment><USER3> Oops, didn't see your reply for a while. I'll check out the explanation - <USER2> interesting to me since I've been grappling with implementing flexible roles programmatically for a while.

Thanks for the link!</comment></comment></comment>


A 50 Year-old Teletype Powered by a Raspberry Pi - <AUTHOR> http://www.sudobob.com/teletype-pi/

<comment><USER2> It's good to see more people restoring these machines. I have a few of them myself. They can all be interfaced to computers. They use standard serial port data, 45 baud, 5 bits, no parity, 1.5 stop bits. (The signal level has to be converted, though.) A Windows machine with a classic serial port outputs the right waveform. Linux has some problems. Windows lets you set the baud rate as a number. UNIX/Linux has a set of constants for speeds left over from the PDP-11 era. A few USB to serial converters can be induced to run at that low baud rate, too.

I usually run them off of RSS or SMS input. See [http://www.aetherltd.com](http://www.aetherltd.com) and [https://vimeo.com/97062822](https://vimeo.com/97062822) for info and video.

These machines aren't hard to get. They're on eBay all the time. In fact, there's a Model 15 keyboard on eBay right now, which the machine shown lacks. Unless they're seriously damaged, they can usually be brought back to full operation. They were designed to be fully maintainable; they can be taken apart down to individual parts and reassembled. No welds, no rivets, no glue; it's all put together with machine screws. All the maintenance documentation is available on line. There's a mailing list ("Greenkeys Digest") for people who restore them.

I'm currently restoring my fifth machine, a Model 15 that was in a garage for two decades after being lubricated with the wrong lubricant, dropped at least once, and operated with a bent typebar guide which damaged some typebars. It took a lot of cleaning and adjustment, but few new parts, to get it going. It's now working OK, except that the "X" typebar is damaged and won't print, and the print quality is bad. I'll be fixing that in a week or so.

[http://brassgoggles.co.uk/forum/index.php/topic,43672.0.html](http://brassgoggles.co.uk/forum/index.php/topic,43672.0.html)

The construction quality of these machines was very high by modern standards.

I'm a little bothered seeing someone run one of those machines in a public setting with the covers off. There are pinch points, unguarded gears, exposed live electrical connections, and the typebars have considerable power behind them. I put steampunk cases, designed to show off the machine but keep fingers out of the gears, on mine.

<comment><USER3> > UNIX/Linux has a set of constants for speeds left over from the PDP-11 era

You are refering to the B9600 (and other) constants set in the termios tcsetattr() syscall. Those are indeed limited to a set of fixed rates between 110 and 115200 baud. But since a very, very, very long time Linux considered B38400 a magic rate, and this baudrates' divisor could, if necessary, be redefined by the setserial command to arbitrary speeds. (Default is 38400, though).

[http://linux.die.net/man/8/setserial](http://linux.die.net/man/8/setserial)

[http://www.usconverters.com/downloads/support/aliasing- baud-...](http://www.usconverters.com/downloads/support/aliasing-baud-rates- usb-serial-adapter-linux.pdf)

I think there are more sane methods for some USB to serial adapters, though.

 _UPDATE_ : This seems to be the modern way to do it: [http://stackoverflow.com/a/19992472](http://stackoverflow.com/a/19992472) (specify BOTHER and fill out tio.c_ispeed, ospeed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm reasonably certain that Model 15 is older than 15 years, as they stopped making them in 1963, and the bulk of the production was earlier.

Also as an aside - if you were using a model 33 or 37, you could use it with a simple RS232 to current loop converter, and agetty on a linux boxen - then you could use it as a log in device too, rather than just a serial/console printer :-D

The other thing I don't get is why use the optoisolator relay setup, the voltages involved are low enough that a normal 5v/250v relay would be sufficient - perhaps the current draw is too high for the raspi to handle?

<comment><USER2> The Model 15 came out in 1930, and was produced through 1962 or so. Much of the production was during WWII. It's hard to tell when a machine was made. The motor, typing unit, keyboard, and base are all very easily removed and interchanged. It was normal Bell System, Western Union, and U.S. Army practice to swap those in the field and send them back to a depot for cleaning and repair, so the components may be from different periods. Rubber pressure rollers under the platen indicate a post-WWII machine - earlier machines used wood, because oil-resistant synthetic rubber wasn't available in 1930.

Most relays aren't fast enough to handle the 45 baud data rate. The relays that are tend to have small contacts, and thus arcing and contact burn problems with the inductive kick from the selector magnets. The Omron G3VM-401B is a good solid-state opto-isolated relay for the job; it can handle 400V, and costs about $2.50.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> In the spirit of repurposing old hardware with a Raspberry Pi, here's a project I did with an old rotary phone:

[http://alexose.blogspot.com/2012/07/the-rotary-voip- phone.ht...](http://alexose.blogspot.com/2012/07/the-rotary-voip-phone.html)

<comment><USER6> The USB receiver circuit is super cool. Thanks.</comment></comment>


Psychopathy to Altruism: Neurobiology of the Selfish–Selfless Spectrum - <AUTHOR> https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5917043/ <comment><USER2> One also has to factor in second dimension which is behavior towards in-group and out-groups.

I understand that as we become more multi-cultural, there is a decrease in the percieved kinship between city dwellers and thus less alturistic behavior.

Basically, in diverse cities people are more likely to be assholes to each other.

> Relatively homogeneous societies invest more in public goods, indicating a > higher level of public altruism. For example, the degree of ethnic > homogeneity correlates with the government's share of gross domestic product > as well as the average wealth of citizens. Case studies of the United > States, Africa and South-East Asia find that multi-ethnic societies are less > charitable and less able to cooperate to develop public infrastructure. > Moscow beggars receive more gifts from fellow ethnics than from other > ethnies [sic]. A recent multi-city study of municipal spending on public > goods in the United States found that ethnically or racially diverse cities > spend a smaller portion of their budgets and less per capita on public > services than do the more homogeneous cities.

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

<comment><USER3> Do wonder if in/out and altruism/psychopathy overlap.

Meaning that an altruist has a wider sense of in-group, while a psychopath has a much narrower one.

I guess this however opens up the possibility that one can "learn" to be a psychopath by narrowing ones in-group.

<comment><USER4> That'd mean most, if not all, ancient people were psychopaths.

Also, many people are not altruistic even to their in-group.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The selfish–selfless spectrum is valuable for technical leaders to improve teamwork, in my experience.

We call this social value orientation (SVO) which involves an individual's natural preference with respect to the allocation of resources.

During technical leadership this comes up with e.g. feature prioritization, competitive/collaborative agile planning, and how to create "nudges" to increase team success.

[https://github.com/joelparkerhenderson/social_value_orientat...](https://github.com/joelparkerhenderson/social_value_orientation)

<comment><USER6> Very interesting. My only criticism? Perhaps too much of a focus on procedural justice.

Peter Thiel has a great talk on how one of the biggest problems in western societies is that we have moved away from having a determinate view of the future, to an indeterminate one. This has been driven in big part on the idea that process matter more than substance. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZM_JmZdqCw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZM_JmZdqCw)

E.g. Lawyers are more concerned with society having a fair process or procedure for doing things, than its advancement.

<comment><USER7> "E.g. Lawyers are more concerned with society having a fair process or procedure for doing things, than its advancement."

And I allways thought most lawyers are more concerned with winning their case and making money than "fair process". I know exceptions though, but heard and read horrible things about the average.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's quite annoying to see emotion tied in with altruism, for they are largely orthogonal concerns.

Emotion only leads to altruistic behavior in a small set of circumstances that we have been programmed to react to. And just following your emotions often makes things worse, so if you care about helping people it should be avoided.

Being an unemotional altruistic, one who does it for rational reasons, it more reliable and scalable.

<comment><USER7> "And just following your emotions often makes things worse, so if you care about helping people it should be avoided."

Sources or arguments?

Because I see things different. If I don't feel like helping, I don't. I made the experience if I force myself to it, it often leads to a worse outcome. (Like breaking things)

Fun fact: Hitler felt that Antisemitism is wrong, but at some point he choose his rational over his feelings and became what he became. Because his rational reasons were that the jews were clearly poison to the good aryan people so to help them, he had to fight the enemy. ("literally stated somewhere in Mein Kampf")

... but feelings and emotions and rational and instinct and intuition often gets mixed up and I doubt you clearly seperate it.

<comment><USER8> I don't understand your personal story - if your helping is likely to break things, then it's not rational to keep doing it.

Charities are a good example - lots of people donate to charities to feel good, regardless of the effectiveness of that donation. Most of that money is wasted, for example on fundraising. What sense does it make to donate to charities that spend more on fundraising?

But if your goal is altruistic, instead of selfish, you should donate to charities that give the best results.

<comment><USER7> "I don't understand your personal story - if your helping is likely to break things, then it's not rational to keep doing it."

Yes you did not understand. The keywords were "feeling like it".

Meaning I only help if I feel like it - then it is effective. Otherwise not. Very simple.

<comment><USER8> So you just aren't altruistic then. As I said, they are orthogonal concerns.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This debate seems over the top. It's pretty simple. A person who has a strong sense of self ("selfish") is the one that can truly empathize. Empathy drives true selflessness because u can connect with another person and feel their needs transparently. Once you feel someone's needs transparently it's pretty hard to get not take care of those needs (to the empathizers best ability).

If we tap into that empathy (which I believe everyone living on planet earth has a strong dose of) imagine how much better our world would be.</comment>


When A.I. Matures, It May Call Jürgen Schmidhuber 'Dad' - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/27/technology/artificial-intelligence-pioneer-jurgen-schmidhuber-overlooked.html?hpw&rref=technology&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well <comment><USER2> I was fortunate enough to attend his talks at MIT CSAIL while working there.

Here are some notes in case anyone's interested -- [0] and [1]. I also recommend his TEDx talk.

[0] [https://www.dropbox.com/s/v6bbktuywoqv2w3/jurgen-talk- notes....](https://www.dropbox.com/s/v6bbktuywoqv2w3/jurgen-talk- notes.pdf?dl=0)

[1] [https://www.dropbox.com/s/ux53ism7fsxgo8x/jurgen-csail- talk2...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/ux53ism7fsxgo8x/jurgen-csail- talk2.pdf?dl=0)

</comment><comment><USER3> Always getting skeptical when you hear of a name before you hear of a concrete achievement. I can respect his research but a bit too much Jürgen Schmidhuber before even getting into what his contributions are.

<comment><USER4> >hear of a name before you hear of a concrete achievement

That's an excellent criterion.

I often wonder if many famous _past_ intellectuals were mere celebrities where I can't recall a single achievement. And if one can't name a famous true idea in an current academic field, perhaps the field itself is worthless.

<comment><USER5> It is a poor criterion, because it is so subjective and dependent on PR machines.

The OP just has not heard of any accomplishments, but anyone with a little expertise in deep (reinforcement) learning knows about the major contributions to the field by Schmidhuber.

Using this criterion you are using popular media and fields you know not much about, to brush away the accomplishments of respectable scientists. Don't base your skepticism on your own lack of knowledge: that makes it selective -- You can not cut through the bullshit, if you don't know how to wield a sword.

<comment><USER4> The criterion is not about assessing a particular individual's contributions, it's about choosing what and whom to investigate in the first place. Of course this is subjective, and rightly so.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > _Dr. Schmidhuber also has a grand vision for A.I. — that self-aware or > "conscious machines" are just around the corner — that causes eyes to roll > among some of his peers._

I can't help but wonder if the sole reason AGI doesn't exist is because it hasn't been figured out yet.

While that statement sounds obvious on the face of it, the implication is that we may already possess both the sufficient computational resources and human intelligence to realize its creation.

<comment><USER7> It doesn't really tell us much. There is no reason ancient Athens or Taixue or Gundishapur couldn't have developed calculus or Newtonian physics. No resource was limiting them in the development, but those fields weren't developed until 1600+ years later.

<comment><AUTHOR> Archimedes was close... [https://www.sciencenews.org/article/prayer- archimedes](https://www.sciencenews.org/article/prayer-archimedes)

<comment><USER8> That is so cool...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Jürgen Schmidhuber is an early neural net pioneer, especially with regards to making recurrent neural nets a reality. As others have mentioned he was instrumental with LSTMs, but also advised Alex Graves on his work with Connectionist Temporal Classification (CTC) that were instrumental in allowing neural nets to be used for speech recognition.

</comment><comment><USER10> He was too early. People have been futzing around with neural nets since the 1950s. We can now make them work, but the training process requires huge amounts of compute power to do a huge number of iterations making tiny changes on each cycle. This has only been feasible in the last few years.

<comment><USER11> you're missing the importance of techniques that allow backprop along very deep nets. that's related to, but distinct from, the amount of computation required to train a model.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Seriously check out Schmidhuber's work ([http://people.idsia.ch/~juergen](http://people.idsia.ch/~juergen)), from his website:"Since age 15 or so, the main goal of professor Jürgen Schmidhuber has been to build a self-improving Artificial Intelligence (AI) smarter than himself, then retire.".

<comment><AUTHOR> A remarkably inefficient plan to be lazy.

<comment><USER13> Never underestimate the power of being lazy. Power steering wasn't invented by an exercise freak.

<comment><USER14> Actually it was invented by an exercise freak. Francis Davis was a marathon runner in the 20's around the same time he invented power steering.

<comment><USER15> This is why I love hacker news.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Jürgen maintains a lot of sock-puppet accounts (even on wikipedia and amazon reviews). Let's see if any of them show up in this thread. He is a perfectly good researcher and his students have done a lot of excellent work, but I don't approve of his choices to use an army of sock-puppets or his (I will try to put this charitably) somewhat non-standard ideas on how academic credit should be apportioned.

<comment><USER17> But you're cool with anonymously posting a public accusation of unprofessional behaviour without supporting evidence?

(edit: apparently people are cool with this. That's weird. I'm not claiming the parent is untrue, it's just that you shouldn't talk smack about people in public without presenting evidence if you don't use your real name.)

<comment><USER18> _if you don 't use your real name_

From what does the supposed requirement to use one's real name derive?

<comment><USER19> It's not a requirement. It's common decency. Accusing someone of sockpuppetry is no different than calling him a liar. Doing it from behind a pseudonym without offering any evidence is irresponsible and cowardly, as it gives that person no way to defend his reputation.

<comment><USER20> No one's reputation is at stake with internet comments from anonymous posters.

The internet is protected from the forces that threaten physical forums where each voice is a real person. You cannot pay off the internet to talk nice about you, and you can't follow anon home and beat him up for speaking negatively. It sounds like Jurgen has accumulated some bad karma on the internet; this is not baseless accusation as much as it is keeping ourselves at a healthy level of skepticism regarding someone who has already lost our trust. The cowards with loud, strawman accusations are usually appropriately downvoted when their criticisms _are_ out of place.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I think Juergen is an interesting and intelligent guy. Besides his work on RNN architecture, he also holds a belief that it is possible that a short computer program has generated our universe.

I think it would be interesting for him to talk about the relationship between his belief that a deterministic universe theory is possible, with his practice of using statistical learning algorithms. Some people might view ANNs (including RNNs) as good learning algorithms for sorting out statistical patterns of probabilistic systems, but not as helpful for analyzing deterministic systems. But I think there is some good insight to be had from exploring the value of statistical learning algorithms on deterministic systems.

</comment><comment><USER22> Unlikely

</comment><comment><USER23> Yeah as an easter egg.

Seriously though, what title will it bestow on Wolfram?

</comment><comment><USER24> The tone of the article title reminds me of the posts of the Mindpixel guy, who also claimed to have been developing strong AI but turned out to be a person with severe mental illnesses...

This is not a good article please don't upvote it.

If you think LTSM is interesting, I am 100% with you... but there must be for sure much better articles about LTSM or the author himself that you can pick from to share here.

This article doesn't add a lot of value, takes a lot of effort to make it's point and feels like a huge waste of time when you finish reading it.

<comment><USER25> Your post doesn't make sense - how is that related to this? Why is not up voting this article being a good HN user?</comment></comment>


The Future of Design in Technology - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/the-year-of-the-looking-glass/the-future-of-design-in-technology-fe1697e5826?_hsenc=p2ANqtz-_eHZEIPEloQhAKhaYqbeLqlWVPqnwocrfII-XSt4obnuM3vjn7CMOPjlCxMCFrc3PUd2bpFQOyT7YnuRkWA5JK7azWnQ&_hsmi=17677235

<comment><USER2> I love how Minority Report has the monopoly on futuristic design. Kind of wish this showed more UI/UX for things like VR and 3/4D printing.</comment>


Clojure 1.2(?) to get Annotations Support - <AUTHOR> http://groups.google.com/group/clojure/browse_thread/thread/d2128e1505c0c117?hl=en

<comment><USER2> Awesome stuff, but I wish Clojure (and other languages) would stop using foo/bar/baz in examples.

</comment><comment><USER3> I have a dream, that one day, all clojure programs will look like a JVM stack trace.</comment>


Tips for Easy Unit Testing - <AUTHOR> https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/545851563

<comment><USER2> No tips there - just an ad for a webinar.</comment>


ApexSharp: A C# to Salesforce APEX Converter - <AUTHOR> http://apexsharp.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Love to hear the thoughts from Salesforce developers. - Jay</comment>


Ask HN: What tool do you use to organize your links? - <AUTHOR>

I am not sure if I am missing something out there. Is there a way to bookmark links across all the various browsers, devices, platforms, etc and have a search engine tied to it? <comment><USER2> Pinboard. [http://pinboard.in](http://pinboard.in)</comment>


Why you shouldn't use target=_blank, and what to use instead - <AUTHOR> http://jalada.co.uk/2011/02/10/why-you-shouldnt-use-target_blank-and-what-to-use-instead.html

<comment><USER2> Even if it were deprecated, I would probably keep using target="_blank" it as long as it worked.

I feel that an attribute that says, "Hey, web browser, it would be great if you opened this thing in a new window, tab, or whatever" is fundamentally superior to binding some JavaScript code to the link's click handler.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree to an extent, but one useful byproduct is people who have Javascript disabled (Noscript or similar) are perhaps the type of people that really _hate_ sites opening in new tabs/windows, so they get what they wanted with this method.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> OK so it's been pointed out to me that HTML5 didn't deprecate target=_blank like I thought. It was just XHTML that removed it, and my method uses HTML5 'data-' attributes. So it's pretty irrelevant, just carry on using target=_blank I guess?</comment>


Vulkan is coming to macOS and iOS, but no thanks to Apple - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/02/vulkan-is-coming-to-macos-ios-but-no-thanks-to-apple/ <comment><USER3> These guys also have an implementation[1] of OpenGL that's optimized for Metal, and supports more modern OpenGL than Apple's pathetic "frozen in time" implementation. Sadly it's not open source, but I suppose a company's gotta make money somehow.

Such a shame that such essential support for hardware that comes with every Mac apparently needs to be provided by a third party.

1: [https://moltengl.com/moltengl/](https://moltengl.com/moltengl/)

<comment><USER4> > Such a shame that such essential support for hardware that comes with every > Mac apparently needs to be provided by a third party.

Why? The whole point of having a general purpose computer is that you can install stuff. I do prefer to use the bundled facilities in my OS but sometimes third party alternatives are superior.

(The point of a phone is arguably different.)

<comment><USER5> It's like leaving road building to companies, it should be provided by the local government.

<comment><USER6> Road building _is_ done by private companies contracted to build them.

<comment><USER7> Which would be Apple having moltengl replace their implementation

<comment><USER6> and pay them for the work...

<comment><USER8> Why should they? Let the developers who don't want to use metal pay them.

<comment><USER9> Why should the government pay for fixing potholes? Let the people who don't want to get stuck in potholes fix them with their own money.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I am always bitterly disappointed in HN's views and understanding of graphic API's. HN, what I largely assume is a community of programmers. Not Khronos idealists. The OpenGL dream died long ago. I think we can thank CAD and GPU vendors for that.

Yet here we are again. If Valve had to port software to Nintendo or Sony; they would be using the native, supported API's. Not porting over Vulkan or OpenGL.

Just use Metal. It really is, very good.

<comment><USER11> What do you mean by "the OpenGL dream died"? It seems to me that we were slowly moving toward a unified API across all operating systems, then Apple did what they always do and invented their own closed API.

<comment><USER12> Vulkan, as a Khronos open standard, likely wouldn't exist if Apple didn't make Metal. Khronos was content for OpenGL{ES} to sputter ad infinitum until it realized that its largest platform (iOS/macOS) was moving on. It helped that the rest of the industry (MS, AMD) was also moving in the same direction, but it was the release of Metal that broke the camel's back.

There were several efforts in the past to revamp OpenGL (e.g. long's peak), but they all failed. OpenGL was stuck and there was little reason to think the situation would improve. Writing OpenGL code that worked across multiple platforms was worse than it is today to write multiple per-graphics-API render backends.

<comment><USER13> If anything the current crop of new graphics APIs (Metal, Vulkan, and DX12) all owes their start to AMD's Mantle project. Metal certainly didn't get the ball rolling, although it almost certainly accelerated Khronos's path to standardization & shipping (which is why Vulkan adopted Mantle as the base, to ship quicker). AMD gets that claim.

OpenGL was not stuck, either. OpenGL's AZDO project was alive & well: [https://www.khronos.org/assets/uploads/developers/library/20...](https://www.khronos.org/assets/uploads/developers/library/2014-gdc/Khronos- OpenGL-Efficiency-GDC-Mar14.pdf) (just not on macOS because AZDO is GL4.2+ whereas macOS is stuck on 4.1)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It looks like the next version of LibSDL, 2.0.8, will support it to some degree, as of a commit from a few days ago: [https://hg.libsdl.org/SDL/rev/d97ab6d12404](https://hg.libsdl.org/SDL/rev/d97ab6d12404)

For reference, LibSDL recently added the ability to help initialize Vulkan, in a cross-platform manner. A bit of further info on this is available at [https://discourse.libsdl.org/t/sdl-2-0-6-released/23109](https://discourse.libsdl.org/t/sdl-2-0-6-released/23109)

<comment><USER15> A little off topic but how is SDL nowadays? I used it for a quick and dirty game back in my college days (13-ish years ago?) and I really, really enjoyed using it. It was very approachable and I could build it on my Windows and Linux PCs.

<comment><USER16> Basically the same, a nice API to do accelerated 2D rendering, audio, file and io access in a portable way.

The API changed a bit with 2.0 release, the biggest change was support for multiple rendering windows.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This is really great news. I wonder how this deal went down, businesswise. MoltenVK used to be a commercial offering by Brenwill Workshop. The way the press release[1] mentions how Khronos "worked" with Valve and Brenwill Workshop to "enable" this release makes it sound like there might have been money involved. If so, great for both Brenwill Workshop and the community.

1: [https://www.khronos.org/news/press/vulkan-applications- enabl...](https://www.khronos.org/news/press/vulkan-applications-enabled-on- apple-platforms)

</comment><comment><USER18> I have a Windows 10 based PC at home. I use it because I like to play games, but I'm also a YouTube creator and a programmer. In Australian dollars, the build cost me about $3,000. it's an i5 6600K, 16GB of 2333MHz RAM, a 256GB Samsung 950 Pro NVMe M.2 SSD, and an nVidia GTX 1070.

I would drop this system in a heart beat if I could play all my AAA games on macOS, and I would replace it with a high end iMac Pro. Sadly two problems remain:

\- I can't play my AAA games on macOS because things like Vulkan aren't fully adopted and in place yet

\- You can't swap out the GPU in the iMac Pro

This is why my next build is going to be a Hackintosh.

<comment><USER19> Barely any AAA games support OSX anyway anymore. Both OSX and Linux are second class citizens for AAA publishers because all their studios drink the DX koolaid hard, even in an age where almost every game is made on Unreal / Unity / Cryengine / etc and all those engines are OS portable they still only see Windows releases.

<comment><USER3> That's never made much sense to me. I could see if you're not using one of the major (portable) game engines—you might not want to spend the time developing Windows, Mac, and Linux ports. But if your underlying engine is already portable, would it kill you to hit build a few extra times to produce an "unsupported" Linux or Mac release?

Unless you're deliberately using Windows specific stuff in you non-platform- specific areas like game logic. In which case _facepalm_.

EDIT: I know it's not THAT simple but in general why not have a policy to be portable by default, platform dependent only when necessary?

<comment><USER19> The major cost barrier is support. If you are going to sell a product for a platform, you need to be able to have your CS staff handle support tickets involving it. Officially Steam on Linux only supports Ubuntu and SteamOS, so you can just throw out problems on other distros (albeit I'm not aware of any distro not taking responsibility for Steam breakages that work on Ubuntu and they aren't that common either).

Even then, having to implement that support infrastructure is time consuming if you have _never_ supported that platform before. It is the first game that is the hardest. That is why publishers like Paradox and 2K can just throw almost every new release on Linux nowadays since they are all made on portable engines, are going to support OSX anyway, and they already have the support infrastructure for SteamOS and Ubuntu.

Its not even really an option, either. Since the games are commercial products in many (European) countries they have to by law support them in this way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> There's a little bit at the end of the article saying Khronos is doing the same thing to put Vulkan on top of DX12.

<comment><USER21> What is the use case for that? Running Vulkan within UWP apps?

<comment><USER22> Yes, as explained in the article:

> While Windows, unlike macOS, does have Vulkan drivers from GPU companies, > applications sold through the Microsoft Store are only permitted to use > DirectX.

<comment><USER23> Simple solution = installing operating systems that support open standards.

<comment><USER24> You're not a gamer, are you ?

<comment><USER23> Yes, I am well-versed. You can play many games in Linux and I have Steam installed on my Arch distro with latest stable kernel and graphics drivers, and they are all automatically updated using my package manager and aurutils for extended third-party. It is so much faster than PowerShell, and my i3 windows manager is much more efficient.

I just got new laptops that will support both GVT-G and PCI passthrough via OVMF so that I can run my bloatware OS in a KVM VM but still get full 3D acceleration. Hopefully Microsoft decides to contribute heavily back to Wine, or maybe open source their 4GB spyware beast to understand what it is actually doing that makes it so large compared to my distro, which does everything Windows does in much less resources both storage and compute.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Can anyone who has experience with MoltenVK discuss any potential pitfalls? (It's existed in a closed-source form for 2 years). Is it a case of loading the library and forgetting it, or will you likely need some MoltenVK-specific codepaths to use it?

<comment><USER26> Vulkan Portability subset is excluding the following features (at the moment!) from core Vulkan:

      - triangle fans
      - separate stencil reference values
      - <USER2>

There are also extra limitations to things like the maximum buffer size, which are exposed via Molten-specific API.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> This is great news! Anyone have a recommended Vulkan intro?

<comment><USER28> Here's a 1192 line example that draws a colored triangle: [https://github.com/SaschaWillems/Vulkan/blob/master/examples...](https://github.com/SaschaWillems/Vulkan/blob/master/examples/triangle/triangle.cpp)

<comment><USER29> > Contrary to the other examples, this one won't make use of helper functions > or initializers

Wondering what the code would look like with the helpers. Is this a bit of a "recoding of the wheel" example/exercise by Sascha?

<comment><USER30> Helpers and initializers aren't necessarily platform agnostic in Vulkan same goes for non-mandatory / base extensions.

Say what you want about D3D at least it follows a strict take or leave it regime.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Silly question. Would installing this likely have any affect on Media Design tools like Adobe After Effects, Adobe Premier or Cinema 4D?

<comment><USER32> No. This would be included in the app itself, and would no more interfere with Metal than one Metal app would interfere with another.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> This is great. I've seen MoltenVK before, but did have any reason to justify getting it.

I am a really big fan of Vulkan. While it takes a bit more work to get going and does less for you, I find the increased transparency very valuable and more enjoyable than trying to guess what the driver is doing.

</comment><comment><USER34> Graphics programming is so painful because of these anachronisms :(

the Apple gles implementation is buggy as hell. produces gpu crashes from compliant code etc... I have low expectations. they have made a new annoyance in our lives ... nothing more

</comment><comment><USER35> I suspect this is going to help LibreOffice, as we extensively use OpenGL now:

[https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/OpenGL](https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/OpenGL)

</comment><comment><USER11> It'll be interesting to see if this helps the lack of games on Mac in the long run.

</comment><comment><USER36> This is the best way to fight back against the rent seekers. Good luck!!</comment>


Apple iPhone 7 Teardown shows FPGA - <AUTHOR> http://www.chipworks.com/about-chipworks/overview/blog/apple-iphone-7-teardown <comment><AUTHOR> Investor commentary on the FPGA, [http://www.fool.com/investing/2016/09/19/1-more-surprise- win...](http://www.fool.com/investing/2016/09/19/1-more-surprise-winner- inside-the-apple-inc-iphone.aspx)</comment>


TikTok Told Moderators to Suppress Posts by "Ugly" People and the Poor - <AUTHOR> https://theintercept.com/2020/03/16/tiktok-app-moderators-users-discrimination/ <comment><USER2> I left all social networks when Facebook apologized for having done psychological experiments on its users. I recommend you all to do the same.

Mainstream social networks no longer connect people.

<comment> blaser-waffle When did they ever?

I got off of Facebook in 2008 and even then there was no ambiguity that FB, Google, etc. were going to data mine the hell out of you.

They have utility -- like opiates, or guillotines -- but only in very specific use cases.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Distillation of Chinese / Tik Tok model:

1) Maintain political serenity via suppression of fringe politics.

2) Hide "embarrassment" which is distinct form merely promoting glamour.

It's a algorithm for stable mass appeal, you don't get much fringe representation, but you also don't get Arab spring. For many countries, that's the pragmatic priority.

</comment><comment><USER4> Yes, but doesn't Instagram by natural vote (based on views) also punish ugly people?

<comment> globular-toast Life in general punishes ugly people.

<comment><USER5> The faster you accept this and move on, the more time you'll have to focus on what else matters.

<comment> globular-toast Indeed. Stoicism is the key to happiness.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


AngularJS: an Overview - <AUTHOR> http://glennstovall.com/blog/2013/06/27/angularjs-an-overview/ <comment><USER3> I'm on my second quest to understand, _really_ understand, how AngularJS fits together. Forensically decomposing the documentation. It's quite slow going, actually; I find myself relying on the code to explain the documentation about as much as the documentation describes the code.

My current suspicion is that directives do not get the central billing that they deserve. If you come from other backgrounds, the first thing you wonder about is the whole MVC thing.

But then you look at compile phase, link phase and runtime loop. They are dominated by directives and the code that directives set up.

It seems to me that a big design step in AngularJS is to _extend HTML into the DSL you wish existed_. This is done with directives.

I'm still going through this process so it might well turn out that when I get to other parts of the manual my perspective will change entirely.

<comment><USER4> I'd love to see some good resources on back-end integration; specifically: best practices to ensure ssl-only cookies/sessions, securing the back-end (authorization, input handling/sanitazion), a suggestion for a safe, reasonably scalable backend (ie: not mongodb, maybe postgres, couchdb over ssl (with certificate verification[1]!), riak or even mysql with a php ajax api in front -- although I'd prefer keeping the range of technologies to a minimum so maybe a nodejs api server with something durable for permanent storage) -- and a suggested organization of the whole app with tests (some reasonable way to map models between the backend DDL/SQL and the angular end would be nice).

I see a lot of demos that throw together a few widgets -- but leave you no closer to anything remotely useful -- because they either include completely unsafe data across domains, or throw things in some kind of globally writeable store that isn't even useful for a public wiki, because there are no way to control anything that goes into the backend.

Does anyone have any good articles/sample projects to recommend?

All that said, I really enjoyed this article -- it does a great job of presenting the parts that angularjs is actually about: the client side.

I just sometimes feel tutorials focus _too much_ on _just_ angularjs - <USER2> most apps we want shared persisted data after all, right? (even if you're just sharing it with yourself, on a different client (eg: todo list in desktop browser and on mobile browser)).

[1] I just looked into couchdb again, and I think I'm getting a handle of how one might actually deploy the thing -- but it's a little scary to see that they by default _turn off_ ssl cert validation -- which is just wrong -- when ssl is off by default anyway. Why would anyone enable SSL, but not want secure communication? For the slowdown?

<comment><USER5> I've got a couple [1] of screencasts [2] that go into detail on the integration side of things; I chose to integrate with Laravel (PHP) and MySQL purely for mass-market appeal but the lessons learned should be widely applicable to any stack:

[1] - End to End with Angular JS - [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqAyiqUs93c](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqAyiqUs93c) [2] - Security with Angular JS - [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=18ifoT- Id54](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=18ifoT-Id54)

<comment><USER6> I've been working on a an Angular app recently and have found your videos quite helpful. Thank you!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> For those .net people out there, Microsoft added enhancements to the new Visual Studio 2013 for Angular such as intellisense.

<comment> at-fates-hands I'm just starting up with .Net and VS and there is a lot of great resources for the .Net folks.

Here's just a few. .

VS SPA Breeze/Angular Template To Do app [http://www.asp.net/single-page- application/overview/template...](http://www.asp.net/single-page- application/overview/templates/breezeangular-template)

Angular MVC Cookbook: [https://github.com/Wintellect/Angular-MVC- Cookbook](https://github.com/Wintellect/Angular-MVC-Cookbook)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> If anyone wants to learn AngularJS, I highly recommend Thinkster.io, which launched just recently: [http://www.thinkster.io/](http://www.thinkster.io/)

I've used it and found their way of breaking it into steps really helpful.

</comment><comment><USER9> Hey - you might want to add www.thinkster.io to the "extended reading" section, as its regarded as one of the best free comprehensive angularjs resources (and uses many of the egghead videos)

<comment><USER10> It's comprehensive, it's a bag of links to videos broken out into "steps".

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> A nice read.

One thing I'm always wondering is how people organize their code in an AngularJS project. The seed project and others have all directives in one file, all services is one etc. This quickly gets messy. Using different files for each, I have to include _a lot_ of js files in the main page. Not sure what to do.

<comment><USER12> I would recommend using Yeoman for seeding projects. The grunt system it uses will solve the "lots of js files" in main page problem by automatically concatenate files together.

In our project, we created multiple sub-directories underneath the controller and services folders to organize them by business functions. It's fairly easy to re-organize the file structure in an angular projects.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Directives are the game changer. Dreams of dynamic markup come true. There are still a few limitations especially wrt routing/view/state, but that is being actively worked on. It's hard to see a future of the web where angularjs doesn't play a starring role. Get your head around dependency injection and eureeka!

</comment><comment><USER14> One thing that really impressed me is how Angular does dependency injection, seemingly through magic.

This blog explains more: [http://www.alexrothenberg.com/2013/02/11/the-magic- behind-an...](http://www.alexrothenberg.com/2013/02/11/the-magic-behind- angularjs-dependency-injection.html)

<comment><USER4> Great link on AngularJS injection. Unfortunately the code shown is also an example of the kind of thing that makes me less-than enthusiastic about a lot of the blogs I see on web apps. Right at the top (of the code) we have:

       <script src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/angularjs/1.0.4/angular.js"></script>

When http _s_ would have worked just fine. Instead, because it's referenced with http, we're basically saying - insert some random code in our page, if there's anyone that can spoof packets.

It's like Microsoft Office Macros all over again -- only much worse.

Later he calls the github api over https -- but (and this is a genuine question, I don't know) -- what would happen if github redirected from https to http? Would it fail, or would we get random insecure data import?:

        $http.get('https://api.github.com/repos/angular/angular.js/commits')

(Now, redirecting to http would obviously be, well, bad form at least -- but conceivable to stave off slashdotting by an overworked sysadmin, perhaps?).

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Typo:

function(scope, element, attars)

Should be attrs.

<comment><USER4> Don't know why you were downvoted - the typo was still there last I checked. Thanks for the heads up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> You might want to check yearofmoo.com</comment>


Show HN: bindPDF.app - Combine multiple PDF files into a single file on macOS - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/vishaltelangre/bindPDF <comment><USER2> You can do this with Preview.

<comment><USER3> Yep! Here is the how-to guide for those curious:

[https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202945](https://support.apple.com/en- us/HT202945)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've always been partial to `gs -dBATCH -dNOPAUSE -q -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -sOutputFile=merged.pdf *.pdf`.

gs is installable via homebrew.

</comment><comment><USER5> If this interests you, I would suggest PDFsam.

It has a lot of actually really useful pdf slicing features, like alternate merge (for merging both sides of scanned documents into one).</comment>


Are you living in a Simulation? (2003) - <AUTHOR> https://www.simulation-argument.com/simulation.html <comment><USER2> A very famous and popular paper that's often cited when debating the simulation hypothesis. I'm squarely in the "not a simulation" camp for a few reasons.

1) Limits of computation. First, we need to find out whether or not the universe is _computable_. To me, it doesn't seem like it is[1] due to "funky" phenomena like quantum effects.

2) Consistency. It doesn't seem that a simulation ought to be as consistent as our universe appears to be. In fact, if there was a hyper-advanced society making simulations out there, the great majority of simulations would be failed attempts or bug-addled, inconsistent messes. So the probability of picking a random simulation that's _perfect_ quickly approaches zero. And yet, we live in a staggeringly consistent universe.

3) Meta-cognition. If you're making a simulation, why even give sims the capability of understanding what it means to be _simulated_? Make this very thought akin to contemplating a "square circle" \-- a logical impossibility. And yet, there's an entire corpus out there discussing this very hypothesis: from Descartes' Demon to the Wachowski's Matrix.

4) Moral responsibility. Living in a simulation relinquishes me (and everyone else) of moral responsibility. This is deeply troubling, although not a particularly good argument against us living in a simulation. What _is_ a good argument is thinking about the hyper-advanced species that built this simulation: why would they create morally-sensitive beings in a world where morality is irrelevant? That wouldn't make for a very good simulation.

5) Personal experience. I _feel_ like I'm living in the real world, why would I doubt that? Everyone else seems to feel the same way. This is the same argument found in the "Other Minds Hypothesis" \-- where we basically give the benefit of the doubt.

[1] [https://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/9908043](https://arxiv.org/abs/quant- ph/9908043)

<comment><USER3> 1) Computation isn't limited to how we have developed computing so far.

2) You're analyzing someone else's 'code' in the same way an oyster would analyze yours. I bet there's bugs all over the place but we call them features.

3) This is silly. I'd even argue we don't actually understand what it means to be simulated. We understand the symptoms but not the reality.

4) It's morally repugnant to bully children online, which is a virtual space, so I'm not sure why a simulation would affect morality.

5) I bet you believe a bunch of other wrong stuff.

I don't think you can consistently be in either camp as much as oysters can debate tabs vs spaces.

Full disclosure: AP is my brother. This is a long running argument. I am right. Beep beep beep nothing is real.</comment></comment>


iPhone MacBook Hybrid – Apple Patent Application (2017) - <AUTHOR> https://pdfaiw.uspto.gov/.aiw?PageNum=0&docid=20170083048&IDKey=AC591D934197 <comment><USER2> Just a reminder of how some patents are BS. No serious R&D went into this. And I don't mean this as the standard anti-patent response. Look over the application, look at the diagrams, read the text. It's a joke.

<comment><USER3> I wonder if companies ever put in patents just to throw competitors off the scent or give them dumb ideas to follow, knowing they're not viable. Like how the USA leaked Space Shuttle plans to the USSR that wouldn't fly.

<comment><USER4> More likely it's a blanket policy of "patent everything even remotely patentable, just in case".

<comment><USER5> Some companies (not sure about Apple) offer patent incentives to employees. Our CTO once bragged about having 150 patents. An engineer in my org decided to show him up and had 150 filed within 2 years. I think the incentives probably doubled his base salary and I guarantee none of the patents are useful or will be used.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Previous non-discussions:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13953805](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13953805)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13939894](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13939894)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13939020](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13939020)

</comment><comment><USER7> This looks great. I already have a $1000 computer in my pocket all I need is a screen and a keyboard. The problem? Apple will charge $1000 for it so I could just as well get a decent laptop instead of one that is just a hole in a keyboard. So, this was me complaining about prices for product that's just a patent sketch.

<comment><USER8> I feed off people complaining about Apple's prices.

I actually crave it.

It's like blood to a vampire or candy and soda to a fat kid.

Thank you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Motorola built something similar: [https://www.digitaltrends.com/buying- guides/a-complete-guide...](https://www.digitaltrends.com/buying- guides/a-complete-guide-to-the-motorola-atrix-the-only-phone-laptop/)

</comment><comment><USER10> The perspective of the iPhone and cavity is completely off and especially unsightly in the picture with the phone attached.

It is also not great for the touchpad either.

I thought modern patent drawings would be done in some sort of CAD program. So why the lines that mimics a fineliner and why the off perspective? (and why the shoddy work in the first place?)

<comment><USER11> You don't need to put your trade secrets into the patent drawings.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Really cool. The iPhone replaces the touchpad since it already has a great touchscreen. The MacBook can be much more affordable because it doesn't need CPU/GPU/memory/wifi/bluetooth anymore (assuming if it uses a wired connection to communicate with the MacBook).

There is also an iPad / MacBook hybrid listed on later pages. Apple didn't go this route but the new iPad keyboard [https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MXQU2LL/A/magic- keyboard-...](https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MXQU2LL/A/magic-keyboard-for- ipad-pro-129%E2%80%91inch-4th-generation-us-english) is heavier and more complex than ever before.

<comment><USER13> This is exactly how other companies did it.

The Razer project linda has the phone as touchpad.

[https://www.razer.com/projectlinda](https://www.razer.com/projectlinda)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Razer actually did this with Android: [https://www.razer.com/projectlinda](https://www.razer.com/projectlinda)

</comment><comment><USER15> I don't see this as THE next major phase of macOS development. Reason being Samsung Dex already does this with HDMI cable. Current design mentioned in the application pairs phone in a socket. This gives a problem when you want to upgrade either the phone or laptop. However, this type of pairing a powerful phone with a dumb display we are going to see more often. not in the way apple depicted here though.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> with recent developments like iPadOS as well as mouse/trackpad support something like this seems more viable than ever before (in a sense iPad + Magic Keyboard is already a thing)

I just realized the iPhones do have keyboard support but no support for the iPadOS pointers yet afaiu (there is some support via accessibility settings though)

Also there are some proof of concept hybrids out there like [https://nexdock.com/](https://nexdock.com/) and [https://www.zdnet.com/product/hp-elite-x3-lap- dock/](https://www.zdnet.com/product/hp-elite-x3-lap-dock/)

</comment><comment><USER16> Cool, I guess?

My gut reaction though is that this would be one step closer to a world where we're running iOS instead of macOS and we don't really have computers anymore.

No more terminal (unless you pay $4/month for the terminal app! that's a pro feature), no more editors (but you can use this great cloud-based editor for the price of your personal data), no more running your own apps on your own device without paying the Apple Developer fee every year.

I don't know. Maybe that's far-fetched. But it seems increasingly possible, and it'd be a sad day if it ever happens.

<comment><USER17> > My gut reaction though is that this would be one step closer to a world > where we're running iOS instead of macOS and we don't really have computers > anymore.

Sadly you're probably right. On the other hand a modern iPhone is more than fast enough to run macOs, so you never know. An Apple version of the Samsung Dex would be pretty sweet [https://www.samsung.com/us/explore/dex/](https://www.samsung.com/us/explore/dex/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Also you could have it so that if you connect an external mouse, the iPhone/trackpad behaves as a touch bar with context aware items.

</comment><comment><USER19> This is literally just a sleeker/modernized version of the PowerBook Duo / Dock [1]. What's old is new again.

They were actually really cool, the motorized mechanism that accepted the Duo into the Dock just felt really smooth / sturdy / elegant.

[1] [https://everymac.com/systems/apple/powerbook_duo/specs/mac_p...](https://everymac.com/systems/apple/powerbook_duo/specs/mac_powerbook_duodock.html)

<comment><USER20> Would you mind elaborating on this a bit? I'm curious and that link doesn't provide a ton of deeper detail. Does this extend the RAM of the laptop you dock in it? Or is it just peripherals?

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> This is not a patent; it is an application for one. The USPTO hasn't granted it yet, and it may decide not to at all.

</comment><comment><USER22> Yes please. Or simply proper apps and multitasking making use of the HDMI out and a mouse/key

<comment><USER23> I feel like we are so close to this with SideCar, it's not at all perfect but a couple of people on my team also have iPads and we've been getting away with some great brainstorming sessions drawing on our pads and throwing the sketches into slack once the meeting is over.

<comment><USER22> I tried one of the terminal emus, the one with alpine. Ish I think. But it didn't do what I wanted.. and in reality, I only need a terminal and some compilers/vms. It will come.. But hopefully without too much cloud requirements

<comment><USER23> Agreed fully on the last notion there. I've come across so many great pieces of software that I think "oh this would fit my workflow just nicely!" but then the other shoe drops when I see it requires a signup to their service and their cloud to use a native desktop application that talks to a non- proprietary TCP based protocol.

E.g. some of the most interesting replacement MacOS email clients requires signing up to their "service" so I can use an IMAP client to talk to my work's Exchange through a mail client. No. Absolutely not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Wasn't the Ubuntu phone supposed to be a dockable computer?</comment>


WikiLeaks Wants To Spill Your Corporate Secrets - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.forbes.com/andygreenberg/2010/11/29/wikileaks-julian-assange-wants-to-spill-your-corporate-secrets/

<comment><USER2> Whatever you feel about Assange as a personality, it's pretty clear that this is the way things will be from now on - even if Wikileaks were somehow to be taken out of the picture. And it's much to our benefit, I think. The old school has for too long used secrecy as a cloak for mediocrity.

<comment><USER3> The connection the article draws with Zuckerberg's views on privacy (basically, "get used to not having it") is interesting. Though the article doesn't mention it, it also seems to be a similar mentality to Eric Schmidt's comment that "if you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place".

Not sure what I think about that trend overall, but _if_ the future is going to be one of "involuntary transparency", it does seem like it should apply to corporations and governments too, not just individuals.

<comment><USER4> If involuntary transparency applies to individuals, it will inevitably become applies to corporations and governments whether they want it to or not.

If the individuals that make up companies and governments can no longer hide their secrets, it becomes a defacto reality that those agencies will no longer be able to hide their secrets in individuals. There's a whole sci-fi AI theme here, but I'm sure an object made of data will have worse security than a human that can voluntarily withdraw all its data into its head.

Humans have unlimited privacy, so long as they keep it inside their head. My peers today that blurt every cogitation out on Facebook and Twitter have no ability to comprehend the use of privacy until they feel they desperately need it. How is a government or corporation going to maintain its privacy when it employs people who can barely keep a thought to themselves?

<comment><USER5> Eh, only sort of.

There's two parts to transparency - a feasible way to get information, and the resources/motivation to do so.

This could all very easily play out in a way that individuals have no expectation of privacy in the face of corporate/government scans of all available data, but the reverse doesn't hold, unless people like wikileaks step up to the plate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "Wikileaks Wants To Spill _Your_ Corporate Secrets"

"Like informational IEDs, these damaging revelations can be detonated at will."

"What do large companies think of the threat? If they're terrified, they're not saying. None would talk to us. Nor would the U.S. Chamber of Commerce."

Pure junk journalism. Strange, I'm used to see very good pieces on Forbes. Perhaps its blogs are a bit more permissive.

<comment><USER6> If Wikileak posts are deleted by moderators on HN because of bias, this piece should be deleted too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> There's probably some really good information from BP or various banking institutions that could really shed some much needed light on recent disasters.

Wikileaks is simply doing the job that journalists have lately forgotten or refused to do.

<comment><USER8> We already have more than enough information to know that BP is guilty of gross negligence (in regards to the Deepwater Horizons disaster) up to and including negligent homicide.

<comment><USER9> Whether or not that's the case, this is something that's being investigated by government agencies who have the power to order the handing over of whatever documents they need, so leaks aren't really a big issue here. (no pun intended)

</comment></comment></comment><comment> ryan-allen I think the title is misleading, he's not looking to spill 'my' companies corporate secrets, he's looking to spill big business' secrets (and by secrets I do believe the intention is to reveal unethical behaviour).

I don't work for an oil company or an investment bank, two of which are targets of his next round. Change the title!

<comment><USER10> _I don't work for an oil company or an investment bank, two of which are targets of his next round. Change the title!_

I do, but honestly, we aren't doing anything particularly evil. The subprime meltdown was not caused by one person's evil dealings, it was caused by many parties each doing something not-particularly-evil individually. It's like littering -- if you do it, it doesn't matter, but if everyone does it, then there's a major problem. Liar loans and CDOs were like littering, not really a problem when one person or bank "does" them. But when the whole industry does little things like this and people bet a lot of money under the assumption that this isn't happening (because the credit rating agencies mislead them), then things unravel. But it's just a colossal fuckup, not some super secret backroom deal designed to fuck over retirement funds. (The big issue was that the credit rating agencies were lazy, and told institutional investors that CDOs were a good credit risk. They obviously were not, and people lost a lot of money either buying the CDOs, or selling insurance on the CDOs.)

The bailout was similarly non-evil. The banks said, "we're fucked unless you give us a lot of money, and if we are fucked, so is everyone else", and the government said, "you're right, take the taxpayers' money". The banks did, they continued to operate, and eventually paid it back.

Hardly the crime of the century.

<comment><USER11> _I do, but honestly, we aren't doing anything particularly evil._

You may not be. In fact, it's probable that the vast majority of people working for the banking industry are honest, law-abiding citizens.

But just because _most_ people are honest, doesn't mean all of them are. I find it somewhat hard to believe Madoff was the only one lining his pockets at other people's expense.

<comment><USER10> But FWIW, Madoff was not an investment bank.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Involuntary transparency can have its good aspects, but those might be offset by "unilateral disarmament" - if WikiLeaks doesn't do the same to the confidential information of, say, Chinese and/or Indian companies, then U.S. and European companies could well be at a competitive disadvantage.

<comment><USER13> Unless there's an advantage in being seen as open. ("If your European company would have done something bad, we would have heard of it. We haven't (or have heard only a mild relevation.) So you must be pretty good guys!")

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I applaud WikiLeaks and Assange for disseminating the classified information to the public. That disseminated information keeps politicians honest to their constituents, which in turn, makes for better, transparent governments.

</comment><comment><USER15> I've always been concerned that if I played it honest with my business if I would end up being fodder for the sharks that twist, bend and break the rules.

<comment><USER16> eh, I've been 'in business' most of my life now, and, I guess that isn't all that long (I think I was 12 when I started my first venture, selling pumpkins, and I'm 30 now.) I haven't seen great success, or really great failure. The thing is, every time I tried to be less than honest to gain an advantage? I got slapped down. Sometimes hard. (though most of my forays were probing and weak, and so were the consequences.)

My suspicion is that lying and dishonesty is a skill like any other, and one that is not trivial to learn. You can't just lie and expect to be rewarded, you need to know when and how to lie. People spend their lives studying that sort of thing, as well as how to detect liars. Personally, I think the average businessperson is better off being as honest and transparent as he or she is able while focusing on some other competitive advantage. Competing with the professional liars in this arena is difficult.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Hrmm...I am not sure how I feel about this. On the one hand, having light shone on various dark parts of processes can be good for innovation and checks and balances - but on the other hand, it kinda feels like Assange is getting too big for his britches.

I feel like it might be getting to his head and he feels he is more important than he should be.

I also feel like he might be giving an outlet to squeaky wheels - i.e. disgruntled employees that have a bridge to burn because they are upset about management decision.

I am no big fan of corporate secrecy and perhaps shedding a light on certain practices can get 'big business' to stop lobbying lawmakers for some ridiculous things, but I am nervous that it might have many unintended consequences.

i.e. we turn Assange into a mercenary that releases stuff for his own self- aggrandizement than for the greater good.

</comment><comment><USER18> Raise your hand if you have damning documents on your corporation. |o.

It's pretty obvious that we as the masses, get shat on by people above us. It's a fact and unless you bend the financial tax rules in your favor, you're getting smacked around too.

<comment><USER19> So this is a kind of digital pitchfork then - but with up-side-down economics: no need for an angry mob, just one person is good enough at a corp.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Since ICE is seizing domains who infringe copyright, wouldn't it make sense for all companies to copyright all internal documents and communication immediately, and then claim copyright infringement if wikileaks publishes them?

Even if wikileaks.org can't be seized [I'm not advocating that] wouldn't it give corporations more legal power via the DMCA to be able to claim copyright infringement?

<comment><USER21> 1) All those documents are protected by copyright the moment they're produced.

2) The DMCA is a US law, and wikileaks.org's IP is in France. As with Assange, they'll move the operation wherever in the world they need to find favorable laws.

If the force of US law was enough to stop wikileaks it would have been gone long ago. Publishing national secrets is a much more intimidating crime than civil copyright infringement, no?

<comment><USER22> That's not all there is to it, Assange has a 1.4G timebomb out there, the passkey to which will likely be revealed when he decides or disappears long enough.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Curious how this will play out in the stock market

When the leak is out, will the bank's stock tank?

If the leak is leaked, will some short it?

</comment><comment><USER24> Maybe their next leak is more revenge from former UBS' Brad Birkenfield?

</comment><comment><USER25> It's like he's on a personal mission to piss off as many people on Earth as he can manage.

</comment><comment><USER26> Privacy != Secrecy

</comment><comment><USER27> "..the coming age of involuntary transparency..."

My, what a nice turn of a phrase.

Assange dumps all your trade secrets on the net? It's not a crime, nope, you're just being "involuntarily transparent".

Orwell would have been proud.

<comment><USER28> I'm guessing that Orwell would side with Assange over the US State Department or companies like say, Exxon, Halliburton, Altria.

<comment><USER8> Maybe, I'm not so sure. The citizens of Oceania in 1984 were very much the victim of "involuntary transparency", and it didn't seem to be a good thing.

The problem with "involuntary transparency" as practiced by wikileaks is that there are inherent limitations of scope and thus inherent discrimination in application.

<comment><USER7> George Orwell was a left-communist who fought with the POUM, a Libertarian Marxist group, in the 1936 Spanish Civil War.

When Stalinism came to power, he was extraordinarily critical of it's centralization of power and of what he saw as a tyrannical subversion of democratic socialist principles.

If ever there was a man in history who left a clear blueprint on where he would side in a struggle between multinational corporations and governments, and an idealistic whistleblower organization, it's Eric Blair.

It's important to point out that the citizens of 1984 had their actions monitored at all times, yet the government operated in total secrecy. What we're discussing here is a situation in reverse.

 _And on that note, if you have not read it, no matter your politics, I cannot recommend "Homage To Catalonia" enough. Orwell was truly one of the most gifted writers of the 20th century._

<comment><USER8> My point is that in the time between now and when all governments and powerful organizations on Earth are open and honest (likely to be a fair stretch of time) organizations like wikileaks cannot help but discriminate in the organizations they shine a light onto. There are innumerable reasons why this is so, starting with the mere matter of random chance and limited capabilities, moving to the matter of the nature of the organization and the opportunity for such leaks to occur, to the interest of the "viewership", the consequences of getting caught, etc, etc, etc.

This discriminatory coverage has the potential to create a false portrait of reality. And that has consequences. Imagine two magazine covers, one photoshopped and immaculate the other completely "honest". To most uncritical observers the "honest" cover will appear vulgar and ugly in comparison. Only a few people will take the time to appreciate that the perfect cover is an utter lie. How do such dynamics play out in society, business, and geopolitical relations? In a wikileaks future a brutal dictatorship that can maintain utter control over its media image might be able to appear better than an honest and open, though flawed, country of liberty and consensual governance. Indeed, this is already a problem to some degree today. Idiots who don't know better imagine that life in dictatorial regimes might be exactly how the regime and its sycophants portray it (all the more believable without any dissenting voices), whereas every gritty aspect of life in western democracies and every flaw down to the least consequential is revealed in gory high-definition detail.

To me wikileaks specifically seems very much biased by the "point spread" problem, of judging America and the west by a much higher standard than the rest of the world. There's nothing wrong with holding America to a higher standard, but there's everything wrong with losing sight of the fact that the standards are different and then falling into the notion, as so many have, that, say, America is as bad as the Iranian regime, or that American troops are no better than the Taliban. The consequences of such discriminatory judgments and of such imbalanced worldviews are dire indeed.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What do you use to manage your reading list? - <AUTHOR>

Too many books to read and I keep forgetting where i noted down the titles. Is there a to-read manager you keep your book list on? <comment><USER2> <http://Shelfari.com>

<http://www.shelfari.com/herms> if you want to be my friend.

</comment><comment><USER3> I use <http://goodreads.com>. It's been around a long time and I like the community features for keeping up on what my friends are reading. I also use it to keep an eye on forum discussions about movies sinc I figured out it's a great place to get qualified film tips. Apparently people who enjoy reading books that I enjoyed, enjoy watching films that I (might) like too.

</comment><comment><USER4> As a reading log, I use LibraryThing. I enter books I buy, and mark them as read when I'm done, sometimes with a rating and note. You can also enter books you don't own, like wish-lists or to-buy lists.

</comment><comment><USER5> Textfile titled 'to-read' in a dropbox folder. Working okay so far.

</comment><comment><USER6> I have a folder on my USB flash with folder for bunch of papers I'm going to read.

I'm also writing in my cell phone references for later searches and reads.

</comment><comment><USER7> "stickies" application that comes with macs. Easy to access easy to change

</comment><comment><USER8> A text file synced to Google Docs.

</comment><comment><USER9> a to-read note in evernote, in a todo notebook. simple and sufficient for me.

</comment><comment><USER10> amazon.com wish list

<comment><USER2> Amazon now owns the service I mentioned, shelfari, and ties in directly to wish lists and purchases I believe.</comment></comment>


50 Things I Pretend to Know Now That I Am Nearing 50 - <AUTHOR> http://www.jamesaltucher.com/2016/07/50-things-pretend-know-now-nearing-50/ <comment><USER2> Didn't know James before reading this. Great write-up. And his blog looks good too.</comment>


The Poison on Facebook and Twitter Is Still Spreading - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/19/opinion/facebook-twitter-journalism-misinformation.html <comment><USER3> I'm sorry, I am an ex-journalist now for several years, and this is laughable. The NYT, WSJ, Fox News, and each of the major news outlets have regularly and clearly been caught writing submarine stores, special interest news slants, and general just being played by PR like a fiddle -- all while claiming some sort of "only true access to news." Viral misinformation has been a part of published news since Edward Burnays used to incite invasions for hire using manufactured sources and rumors

They don't validate sources, rarely investigate, heck they barely even copy edit these days. They re-report entirely false stories published in questionable sources, using their name to validate it. Obviously everyone knows how deeply inaccurate any story becomes once technology is involved, now imagine that level of inaccuracy spread across all the topics they cover.

Its painfully self-interested for them to be claiming to be such a clear source of truth.

<comment><USER4> > have regularly and clearly been caught writing submarine stores, special > interest news slants, and general just being played by PR like a fiddle

Including the one we're commenting on. There's a narrative being driven here, and it's sad so many even in our industry can't recognize it. We can argue levels of harms by these open content platforms (I often reside on the most- people-aren't-stupid, sticks-and-stones, please-no-gov-interference side), but there's no arguing what harms interests want you to think are occurring.

<comment><USER5> > Including the one we're commenting on. There's a narrative being driven here

Not sure what narrative you mean, but it's not something any of us who work on HN is aware of.

<comment><USER4> Sorry, proverbial "here" meaning the consistent mass-media anti-web-tech narrative of late, much of which is sans substance. Unrelated to HN in particular.

<comment><USER5> Ah, sorry for misreading you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > The public knows about each of these incitements because of reporting by > news organizations. Social media misinformation is becoming a newsroom beat > in and of itself, as journalists find themselves acting as unpaid content > moderators for these platforms

Externalise the negatives, privatise the profits.

Alternatively, newspapers are in the business of telling ""truth"", and are getting increasingly out-produced by myth. Myth is cheaper to produce and often _sounds_ more true to the uninformed listener. But it's dangerous to build a society that makes its decisions entirely on myth. Ultimately it will end up with a lethal myth like the blood libel, or anti-vaxxerism, and people start getting killed in large numbers.

(Someone will now point out that newspapers themselves have an unreliable track record of truth, and they're not wrong - this is _also_ a serious problem.)

<comment><USER7> The problem is not different. Large newspapers in the US are consciously propagating narrow, misleading, and sometimes outright untrue narratives. The only different between this and "social media misinformation" is that it is backed by big money and power, and they have think tanks to shore up the narratives against scrutiny. It's information warfare. And it's asymmetric. The small time social media narrative peddlers are either freedom fighters or terrorists depending on who's side they are on.

<comment><USER7> It's funny how comments criticizing major newspapers are downvoted. How about addressing any perceived issues with my comment through a response rather than trying bury it.

edit: And this comment gets two downvotes 5 minutes within posting it, despite the story already being off of the front page. There are obviously gatekeepers actively monitoring comments and trying control the narrative here on HN as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> To paraphrase Samuel Johnson, "Fake News is the Last Refuge of the Scoundrel".

The "fake news" meme itself is the last desperate attempt to preserve the fake news monopoly which giant publishers enjoyed for so long. There is really nothing left when this one wears out.

Before "fake news" we had massive injections of noise to drown out information, but that didn't work quite well, not in the long run.

The current trend of turning giant social platforms to Disney-like dystopias is not working well either. People are flocking back to ... web sites!

So what can we expect after "fake news" ? Probably Disneyfication of DNS, and that's where it ends.

Because audiences will shift to the lowest commeon denominator - <USER2> addressing, as they did in the beginning (Napster, Gnutella) and still do (Bittorent, Tor).

</comment><comment><USER9> We've scaled our networking of information without scaling the quality accreditation of information.

</comment><comment><USER10> Takes poison to notice poison I guess.

Isn't this the nytimes and friends complaining that they don't get to monopolize poison like they used to?

A company that hires someone like sarah jeong has no business complaining about poison.

The sooner the nytimes goes out of business, the better the country will be. The nytimes has poisoned so many minds and caused the nation to be so terribly divided that it will take years to recover from the mess they created. God knows how long it will take us to recover from the endless wars they propagandized for.

I wish zuckerburg, dorsey, brin/page would grow a pair and fight back against the media posse attacking them. Or deplatform the nytimes to lower the poison on their platforms.

<comment><USER11> > caused the nation to be so terribly divided that it will take years to > recover from the mess they created

The nation is divided, but NYT isn't to blame. There are two sets of people, with very strongly held yet divergent ideas of what this country stands for, and what direction it should go in. The New York Times has nothing to do with that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Childing them for spreadig disinfo is missing the point.

When you incentivise 'engagement' above all else, this is the inevitable result. The core business model is broken (in relation to being a social good), not their stance on poor information.

<comment><USER13> Virtually all business models could make more money by throwing in some immorality. I don't think that means that nearly all business models are broken, just that morality and social good have to be higher priorities.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Facebook and Twitter are not public services. They are there to make money off of people clicking images and text that other people pay them to show. It does not require truth but is easier to get people to click through if you play on their fears.

If it is a poison, which I think it is, stop using it. It's akin to an abusive relationship. At some point you (journalists) have to just help get the abused out of it. You've tried to get the abuser to stop but it hasn't worked. The abuse has not only continued but it seems to have increased dramatically. Stop empowering the abuse and GTFO. Boycott if you have to. The Internet is not Facebook nor Twitter.

</comment><comment><USER15> Just so I'm clear here, we're saying we want Facebook and Twitter to be the arbiters of truth right? Does that pass the smell test?

<comment><USER16> Do we want the current status quo, where misinformation runs rampant, filling eyeballs of people who don't know better with utterly fake news?

Just look at this[1] if you want proof that this is not sustainable. I wonder who benefited from and supported this...

1\. [https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/11/technology/fake-news- onli...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/11/technology/fake-news-online- disinformation.html?module=inline)

<comment><USER17> > Do we want the current status quo, where misinformation runs rampant, > filling eyeballs of people who don't know better with utterly fake news?

Do we want freedom of speech, and an even playing field for freedom of expression between common people and media conglomerates? Because that's what those look like, for better or worse.

<comment><USER6> Common people and media conglomerates are going to have an increasingly hard time getting heard over corporate astroturfing and foreign intelligence services.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


SEC Shoots Down Winklevoss Bitcoin ETF Bid - <AUTHOR> http://www.coindesk.com/sec-shoots-winklevoss-bitcoin-etf-bid/ <comment><AUTHOR> Bitcoin just went from a high of 1327.1926 to 995.9575 in the blink of an eye.

Wow.

Here is the actual SEC ruling.

[https://www.sec.gov/rules/sro/batsbzx/2017/34-80206.pdf](https://www.sec.gov/rules/sro/batsbzx/2017/34-80206.pdf)

From the ruling....

> First, the exchange must have surveillance-sharing agreements with > significant markets for trading the underlying commodity or derivatives on > that commodity. And second, those markets must be regulated. > Based on the > record before it, the Commission believes that the significant markets for > bitcoin are unregulated.

I'm not sure I entirely understand if they mean that Bitcoin itself must be regulated or just that the SEC needs to see that the major exchanges are regulated.

If its the former, then I think this is game over, if its the later then............hmmm I really don't know.

Can someone more knowledgeable inform me here?

 __EDIT __Having gone through the ruling it looks like they have a few reservations.

1) Most of the bitcoin trading happens on unregulated markets

2) Most of the volume happends in China and not the us and is therefore hard to regulate.

3) The ETF is tied to the Winklevoss own Gemini exchange which has little volume and often inferior pricing to other more liquid exchanges.

4) They bring up the lack of a liquid futures market, though I'm not sure this is really a concern.

 __EDIT2 __

Rats, I 've somehow confused myself into duplicating this comment across two threads:(

<comment><USER2> I looked at launching a Bitcoin ETN a few years ago. The problem is, for any exchange-traded product to work, you need a clear index it's designed to track. For stocks, those data are reliably available in exchanges' data feeds. For commodities and FX it's a bit trickier, since people can trade these without reporting their trades, but the presence of healthy spot and futures markets is a reliable enough reference to prevent most shenanigans.

With Bitcoin, there is no trusted price. Each exchange reports its own price according to its own process and methodology. Not only could those be manipulated, but the price between them diverges from time to time. This raises a problem for an ETP manager. When redeeming units, which price should be used? How do we trust those prices aren't being manipulated?

Ultimately, I found these issues impossible to resolve. This decision by the SEC seems like the right one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Main discussion here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13842130](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13842130)</comment>


Ask HN: Why is every cryptocurrency exchange down so much lately? - <AUTHOR> I have been noticing that many exchanges are down lately. I have heard a lot of conspiracy theories - anywhere from people testing pump and dump techniques to targeted DDoS attacks to enable only certain people to trade between exchanges. I have been trying to put a single sell order in Kraken, but I noticed that coinbase, gdax, bitfinex, etc were also down at the same time. What gives? <comment><USER2> Volatility causes news. News causes rises and falls, which cause news and volatility. Rises cause sell orders; falls cause buy orders (and sell orders). News also causes people to think "I should finally get in on this bitcoin thing" which causes buy orders. Buy and sell orders cause activity and traffic on the exchange sites.

All that being said, DDOSing and pump-and-dumps may be happening too.

<comment><AUTHOR> I get that traffic may be increasing because of demand, but I find it bizarre (and unlikely) that so many exchanges would not have planned for it.</comment></comment>


Ubuntu Evolution: anti-Christian? - <AUTHOR> http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1089782

<comment><USER2> As I recall there are several Christian Linux distros (despite the presence of various Christian packages in repos for major distros like Debian and Fedora) so this isn't all that unbelievable.

What I question is why I am looking at a forum post from 2009.

</comment><comment><USER3> Mind-boggling that people don't realize that the word evolution is a word in and of itself.

<comment><USER4> You would hope it was just a successful troll.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Just goes to show that people assign far more weight and importance to words than they should.

Words don't kill people.</comment>


Tensorflow Implementation of Deep Visual Analogy-Making - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/carpedm20/visual-analogy-tensorflow <comment><USER2> Could someone summarize what is going on here?

Also, what does "disentangling factors of variation" mean?

<comment><USER3> > Also, what does "disentangling factors of variation" mean?

Let's say you have a neural network that takes an array of pixels and outputs an array of 10 numbers. This encoding array can be used to reconstruct the image using another neural network.

Now you have a difficult time making sense of what those 10 values represent in your encoding array. By the technique of "disentangling factors of variation" you are able to force your networks to assign specific meaning to a range of indices in your encoding array. I.e.: if you are encoding the image of the car, the first 5 values might represent the body of the car (BMW, Audi, Mercedes have different shapes), and 5 values the rest (pose, lightning, colour).</comment></comment>