8-Button StarCraft lets the AI take care of the complexity - <AUTHOR> http://bgweber.com/8-button-starcraft

<comment><USER2> Not sure how good this AI would be. It pretty much delegates micromanagement and lets the user make high-level decisions. However, it doesn't seem fine grained enough to handle different situations. The fact that the 8 buttons include unit names is slightly worrying; is this is specifically for Protoss? What if a reaver drop is the current optimal plan of attack? What about scouting? There were no scout units at all. The video just shows the person clicking "attack" and the zealots/dragoons automatically moving towards the enemy base, so maybe the "black sheep wall" cheat is presumed to be enabled. Scouting is one of the most important tactics. How would the system deal with cloaked units, etc? It just seems like a helper system that does trivial things like executing a standard build order, assigning probes to resources, etc.

<comment><USER3> Yah this is kinda cool, but hardly practical in terms of any real game play.

Also, I think the beauty of starcraft is that it is extremely hard to master due to the complexity involved. Like chess, there are standard opening moves but beyond the initial sequences, the possibilities are almost endless.

I would like to see someone program a computer who could beat the best starcraft player. I bet that would make the IBM Deep Blue seem like a joke.

<comment><USER4> >>I would like to see someone program a computer who could beat the best starcraft player. I bet that would make the IBM Deep Blue seem like a joke.

Deep Blue is ancient, modern chess programs make it look like a joke ;-)

In SC a program can abuse early some insane micromanagement to win before any hard strategy/positional decisions have to be made.

<comment><USER5> Not true.

There is a trade off between speed and economy when doing an early rush. The attacking player will always have less attacking units than the defensive player due to the travel distance between bases. (Assuming the defensive player is prepared for the rush)

In addition, by the time any first tier attacking units reach you, it's always possible to have a defensive structure, which can deal fairly well with any sort of micromangement.

<comment><USER4> >> There is a trade off between speed and economy when doing an early rush. The attacking player will always have less attacking units than the defensive player due to the travel distance between bases. (Assuming the defensive player is prepared for the rush)

The attacking AI can abuse it's much much higher APM to do a lot of damage with less units. Like killing workers with zealots, zerglings or vultures.

>>In addition, by the time any first tier attacking units reach you, it's always possible to have a defensive structure, which can deal fairly well with any sort of micromangement.

Defensive structures are 1. expensive and 2. can be bypassed. An AI can use the same resources, human spent on defense, to expand or tech, easily winning the game.

<comment><USER2> Just wanted to point out that it's pretty silly to talk about an AI's APM, since its APM is infinite (bounded by hardware limits like clock speed, etc).

<comment><USER4> Just wanted to point out that it's pretty silly to say that infinite = bounded ;-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Reminds me of the approach Master of Orion 3 took, sort of out of necessity: they found they had built a game with such absurd micromanagement that they had to add some AI managers to do some of the lowest-level "playing" for you in order to make the game actually interesting/enjoyable.

<comment><USER7> They failed miserably as I recall. It was a glorified screen saver.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Why is everyone bashing the AI? Its clearly a joke from the first two sentences of the post:

"John Davison recently claimed that games are "Too Big and Too Hard". I have addressed this issue by reducing StarCraft to 8 buttons."

Or is it too early in the morning for satire?

</comment><comment><USER9> "Ben Weber is a Ph.D. candidate working with Michael Mateas in the Expressive Intelligence Studio at the University of California, Santa Cruz."

Heh, small world. Michael Mateas was my CS2260 professor at Georgia Tech and I was in the last class he taught before Michael left for Santa Cruz. For those wondering, 2260 was Media Device Architectures, a class based around coding for the GameBoy Advance. Here was part of the game I made for our final project: <http://www.flickr.com/photos/pauls/133005425/>

course: <http://www.cc.gatech.edu/classes/AY2006/cs2260_spring/>

</comment><comment><USER10> The point of playing starcraft is to actually do all that "boring" macromanagement staff. That is a big bulk of the game, and certainly what separates players of different skill levels.

</comment><comment><USER11> As long as you're abstracting out the human interaction, why not go whole hog and let the AI decide when to click those 8 buttons for you?

You can replace them all with one big button labeled "Play Starcraft", then sit back and watch it win for you. Like this:

<http://progressquest.com/>

<comment><USER12> From the article: "In the fully realized system, EISBot, the AI decides which buttons need to be pressed."

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> The really cool thing here is if you click a few links in the article, you find an API to write your own Starcraft AI, and a competition for them.

This is the ultimate programming game!

<http://code.google.com/p/bwapi/>

</comment><comment><USER14> Wow, someone built the system I was advocating for 3 months ago: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1495760>

Awesome.

</comment><comment><USER15> It's rather interesting that he chose the faction requiring the least micromanagement, at least as far as base-building. Seems like a pretty neat tech demo, though.

</comment><comment><USER16> So this AI tries to micromanage for you. But I could not get the game play here. You build a building and put it into a "build unit for me" mode. But what about the "attack mode?" why should AI decide where and when to attack? Doesn't this make game play just some sort of child play or a "logistics" game? I supply buildings and units, and AI decides the real strategy?

</comment><comment><USER17> Hard to read in the video -- the buttons are:

Zealot | Dragoon | Observer | Reaver | Carrier Attack | Defend | Expand

The expand button is my favorite...

<comment><USER18> Except maybe defend, I think every single one of these would lose to Cannon -> DT rush.</comment></comment>


How we went from weeks of cash left in the bank to profitable in 8 months - <AUTHOR> https://blog.baremetrics.com/how-we-went-from-weeks-of-cash-left-in-the-bank-to-profitable-in-8-months-cfad6f2d6523 <comment><USER2> Now that you're profitable, you should go back and compensate the employee's who took a pay cut. That's better than saying "you're proud" or "you're grateful".

Just a thought.</comment>


Startup Quote: Arianna Huffington, co-founder, The Huffington Post - <AUTHOR> http://startupquote.com/post/3164615317

<comment><AUTHOR> You have to do what you dream of doing even while you're afraid.

\- Arianna Huffington (@ariannahuff)

<http://startupquote.com/post/3164615317></comment>


Worst. Puzzle. Ever. - <AUTHOR> http://rondam.blogspot.com/2009/12/worst-puzzle-ever.html

<comment><USER2> Yeah, it's a terrible puzzle. That must be an awkward situation, opening a present like that, knowing someone spent a couple hundred dollars on something so silly and then having to thank them.

However, the whole part of this post about extortion is kind of silly. How many of these have been sold? A thousand or so? Yeah, that must be a very valuable database of information they're keeping. Any company looking to target a rich demographic could advertise at a country club. Why cook up a hairbrained scheme surrounding a puzzle?

I doubt their business model is based on selling personal information. If I had to guess, I'd say it's based on huge profit margins from selling a silly aluminum sphere.

<comment><AUTHOR> I just got an email from the president of the company saying they have 30,000 registered users.

<comment><USER3> Sorry, but 30,000 is a very low number.

<comment><USER4> 30,000 people who spent $200 on a toy puzzle is by no means a small number. Luxury goods purchases follow a power law, and the value of capturing a portion of the fat side of that curve is huge. If they're willing to spend $200 on a puzzle, imagine what they'd spend on something they perceive they need.

<comment><USER5> Dead on. Its $200 on a puzzle, which simultaneously shows that the person cares about this $200 more than their personal information, which is damn useful for marketing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Solving and Assembling the Isis Puzzle:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7NPiyyfDXA>

<comment><USER7> Wow, it really is the worst puzzle ever. That is very very lame.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I don't really buy the list brokerage conspiracy theory. Sure, you can make money renting or selling your customer list... but not that much. We're talking pennies person. Compare that to how much you make selling a hunk of metal for $100+.

Nope, it's just a crappy puzzle from a company without a lot of respect for its customers.

<comment><USER9> I come from the call center / telemarketing business (don't worry, we aren't as evil as most ), and I can tell you first hand that "pennies per person" couldn't be further from the truth.

Names and numbers on their own are incredibly valuable.

Names and numbers that you know exactly the demographic they come from, are gold mines.

I can tell you that some run of the mill name and number can easily be worth $1.

Gauging the fact that he assumes their target audience is rich (which I doubt this is the case), we at least know it is a very specific type of people. This is as close to texas tea as it gets for telemarketers.

<comment><USER10> 30,000 names at $1 per is a pretty poor business model.

I go with the "crappy puzzle from a clueless company" explanation.

<comment><USER9> I said, a run of the mill name and number could net you a dollar.

These names/numbers aren't. Granted lots of people use bogus names and numbers, but the vast majority aren't going to that purchase an item of this value.

Yes, before you say it, I realize that nobody here does, and nobody you know does, and blah blah blah.

In the real world, most people do. I wouldn't be in business if they didn't.

I'm going to go with a crappy response, from a clueless person.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The main problem in my mind is that the puzzle offers no feedback to the user that they are on the right track. For that matter it offers no feedback that they are on any track, right or wrong. It's just random motions with no particular motivation. Some kind of light, or bell, or even a plexiglass version so you could see the balls moving about inside would be better.

</comment><comment><USER12> Poor guy, but I like his section on "4 key elements of a good puzzle." As I was reading it, I recalled the era of awful job interview brainteaser questions that were so ubiquitous until most HR departments started to ban them.

</comment><comment><USER13> The parts about the puzzle are interesting. And it does indeed look a bit crappy.

The conspiracy theories and moaning about why they'd want your name and address is just silly. Companies like having contact details :/

When the author suggested they were selling the user database on to marketeers I thought I'd stumbled upon theonion.

Lets say they had a customer database of 1000 names, addresses, phone numbers. I'd expect they could sell that for £50 maximum. It doesn't make any economic sense whatsoever.

<comment><USER14> I don't think there's any conspiracy theory here; the article indicates that you can't actually use the product unless you create an account on their site, providing them with personal details with no opt-out.

You're right about companies liking to have contact details - every product seems to come with some kind of registration card - but until now I've never heard of a manufacturer actively withholding the instructions required to use the product unless you are willing to send it in.

<comment><USER13> Never attribute to malice anything that can be better explained by incompetence.

They probably thought having the instructions online would be easier than printing. Especially if there were any mistakes. Then they likely thought they should protect them so not everyone can view them, only purchasers. Then they likely thought they may as well take contact details in case they need to make people aware of faults/errors/updates etc.

<comment> brown9-2 Like the article says: what need is there to make updates to instructions to a _mechanical_ puzzle?

Creating a registration system, taking steps to only provide instructions to those that register - all of that has a cost. I doubt this company would incur a cost unless they considered it an investment.

<comment><USER15> Ermm, because it's not. The puzzle is part of the game of finding the gold coins in the real world (see Wikipedia entry). Of course they're going to want to update that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This guy is clearly not a _Simpsons_ fan.

<comment><AUTHOR> Huh? Why not?

<comment><USER16> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Our_Lisa>

The "solution" to the puzzle is basically the way Lisa and Homer accidentally discover the secret of the Orb of Isis in this episode.

It's basically a crap puzzle based on an in-joke that only people who had seen this particular episode would be aware of. The conspiracy theory stuff seems unwarranted. For example:

> [U]nsurprisingly, it would not let me register twice, saying "That serial > number is already registered under a different email address." If there's a > benign explanation for that, I can't think what it could be.

Crippling the product for customers who bought it second hand is really annoying, but it's not proof of a criminal conspiracy to harvest registration data and sell it. It's standard business practice in many otherwise legitimate industries (e.g. computer games).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This puzzle reminds me of the Alcatraz puzzle: <http://www.alcatrazthepuzzle.com/wst_page2.html>

And I thought _that_ puzzle was stupid; though, probably because I solved it in seconds.

<comment><USER18> I think that puzzle is dumb because it's a gimmick, not anything to do with the geometry of the situation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Alas, once you blog about it like that, it's probably too late to regift it.

<comment><USER20> Except that he checked beforehand to see if you could re-register, and only blogged upon finding you couldn't. ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Wow,

It takes quite a bit of energy to turn an ordinary object into a serious scam. Yet seems this kind of thing appears more and more. It seems that ordinary manufacturers have taken a clue from Nigerian scam artists.

<comment><USER15> Scam? How? They offered to delete his information if he asked. That bit about paying the shipping costs yourself if the product s not defective is perfectly normal. At worst, they've read too many Dan Brown novels and their product is a bit cheesy.

"Extortion", "blackmail", the use of these words is pure hysteria.

I'm reminded of a friend of mine, another Internet privacy nut, who posted on his blog that these car insurance websites are a scam, they don't save you money. Turned out he'd registered with a false name and address... If the website couldn't credit score him, of course it would give him a bad quote!

<comment><AUTHOR> The difference is that in the case of a car insurance web site, I know before I pay them any money that I have to provide them with personal information. Also, it's clear that when the product is insurance, there is a legitimate need for the company to have your personal information.

In this case, I don't find out that I have to turn over my personal information until _after_ I've paid for the product, and _after_ I break the seal so I can no longer return it. And there is a penalty for not turning over my information: I don't get the instruction manual. It is certainly a mild form of extortion, but it is extortion nonetheless.

<comment><USER15> Extortion is a crime - it means obtaining money, property or services from another through threats of physical harm. Did that happen here? Umm, no. The author is just incoherent with made-up internet-privacy hysteria.

Secondly, you have statutory rights. That little EULA is meaningless and everyone knows it, hell there's a bloke on GMTV nearly every morning banging on about consumer rights. If the product's not fit for purpose then that's that.

<comment><AUTHOR> > through threats of physical harm

No, physical harm is not a necessary element of extortion. All that is needed is a threat of harm. In this case, the threat of harm is to deny the customer access to the manual for the product they bought and can no longer return.

It is certainly not the most serious extortion ever perpetrated. But it is extortion nonetheless.

<comment><USER15> Words like scam, extortion, blackmail, evil don't mean, well, _anything_ to Internet people. Or maybe, everything is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I think this guy is over reacting a bit..

Of course they want your information, there is a very select target demographic that could be suckered in with such an expensive puzzle. It would be nice to have those addresses for new product releases and introductions. His cleverness just came off as annoying and somewhat done up, down rate this please.</comment>


Git-Governance 0.3.2 - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/thecasualcoder/gg/releases/tag/0.3.2 <comment><AUTHOR> Made another release in GG.

Changes:

Parallel implementation

Custom ssh implementation via the config file.

<comment><USER2> Interesting work. How far are you from a 1.0 release?</comment></comment>


San Jose is hell on earth - <AUTHOR> http://www.jwz.org/gruntle/cesspool.html <comment><USER2> When I came out for StartupSchool three years back, I went back to Austin with the impression that the bay area was perhaps the most awful thing I had ever seen--strip malls, Starbucks, and on the "good" streets there would be a Restoration Hardware. Everywhere I looked, my first thought was "Do not want!" I would never live in a place like that.

Then we got into YC, and I had another look around, and it turns out there are little pockets of nice living on the peninsula. The downtown Mountain View area is great, as long as piece and quiet are positive attributes for you. It lacks the suburban sprawl and mini-malls of Sunnyvale and Santa Clara (the Rengstorff/Showers area excepted), and actually has a very walkable central core. And, I guess in 12 years a lot of good restaurants can happen, as there are at least a dozen good places on Castro and a few good ones sprinkled about in the rest of town (Amber India, for example). The library is awe-inspiring, the parks are numerous and just crowded enough to be interesting, and there are two little Asian markets within walking distance. I always see dozens of people walking when I'm out. There is a patch of soulless hell at the distant end of Castro, where the Starbucks and other polished up corporate turds reside, but one can avoid it easily (just stop and turn around at City Hall).

<comment><USER3> After living in the SV area for a while, how would you now compare it to Austin? I'm considering the exact move soon myself. I love Austin, but dont think the atmosphere is as conducive for young hackers trying to start a business. Its a bit hard to stay motivated when people around you dont take what you are doing very seriously.

<comment><USER2> The downtown Mountain View area feels like a much smaller, much less cool, version of the downtown Austin area...The houses were built around the same time as those found just past the river on South Congress, I think (though there are some Hyde Park/Travis Heights era houses around as well, the 50's and 60's is when Mountain View boomed and most houses in the downtown area were built). The restaurants and shops on Castro street are, as on Congress and 4th-6th streets in Austin, independently owned and of uniformly high quality. Not as quirky or as diverse, but perfectly acceptable, unless you want a decent dive bar or rock and roll club (of which Austin is the capital of the world), as neither is well-represented in Mountain View.

There is nothing like the river and Lake Travis, and the parks that surround it, in Mountain View proper...but one is compensated by being less than two hours from some of the most beautiful beaches in the world. Big Sur is an easy weekend road trip away.

There is no music scene, of course, though San Francisco has a pretty good one and it's only 45 minutes away by car or train.

Mountain View is not nearly as dog-friendly as Austin, though I've been told it is more dog-friendly than most places in the region, and folks are shocked when I seem put out by the unfriendliness of the city to my dog. Finding a place to live if you have a dog (I mean a proper dog...one that gets into the jeep or the boat under its own power rather than being lifted or by riding around in a handbag) can be a challenge. Even if an apartment allows dogs, there's usually a 25-35 pound limit.

I was also disappointed to find that dogs are banned from downtown during any of the many street festivals. Not only does this make the festival less enjoyable (dogs are funny and a great ice breaker), it also means I can't have a proper walk with my dog on the weekends when they have the festivals. Folks don't often understand the meaning of "dog-friendly" until they've spent some time in Austin.

It's more expensive to live here--housing in modest areas is about 50% more expensive than the best areas of Austin. And there is no HEB or Central Market. Whole Foods has made it out, though, and there is an amazingly great little produce and cheese market called the Milk Pail.

Overall, I enjoy living here. I miss some things about Austin, and will probably retire there. But, living in the valley has been good for our business in dramatic ways.

<comment><USER4> You really can't find a music scene like Austin's. They're perpetually in the top 3 by most people's standards.

I found SFs to be kinda lame, but then I'm not that into electronica. Guess it depends on your tastes.

What breed of dog?

<comment><USER2> Agreed. But touring bands do make it to SF at almost the same clip as they made it to Austin...the local scene is significantly less interesting, however, as far as I can tell. But I might be missing something because I, also, mostly lack the electronica appreciation gene. I give SF the benefit of the doubt on the music issue since many people do seem to feel it has a good music scene. I will merely accept that it's not "my" music scene, and remain pining for Emo's.

And my dog is a rescue mutt of dubious heritage...probably quite a bit of English Pointer descent in her genes, though. Not huge, but too big to be acceptable to most apartment complexes in the entire bay area--but we found a nice little house near downtown, so it worked out well.

<comment><USER4> SF has a fantastic comedy scene at least.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Places that grow really fast are going to have trouble building a gracious old downtown with lots of character. I moved here from New York State 25 years ago, having grown up and gone to school in little towns and small cities with tons of character and no jobs. When I got here, it was obvious that outside of SF and legacy downtowns, most of the rest of the peninsula and south bay had been built in a continuous pour from about 1950 to today.

Relax. LA looks like that. Phoenix looks like that in spades. Suburban Seattle looks like that. Kansas City. Atlanta. Urban Texas. It's what places look like when people are moving there as fast as they can to get jobs and raise families (and spend money and pay taxes, I might add). It's an uptown problem. As the south bay ages, and infill and redesign happen here and there, the area will develop [more] character and idiosyncracies. But for now it's pretty sweet living in one of the most dynamic places in human history.

By the way, there are very nearby places where you can live in the country or in the city, and still commute fairly easily to your job, but I'm not going to spoil them. Look around.

<comment><USER6> Atlanta has some very nice places. Little Five Points, Virginia Highlands, and West End all have lots of character. I had a friend who was a trapeze hobbyist stay at a cheap and huge repurposed warehouse (I wouldn't quite say "refurbished") on the west side. She had her trapeze rope strung up in a cavernous main room with brick walls decorated with her friends' art. She had bitchin' parties at which she would get a little drunk and perform (not the smartest idea, but entertaining).

Sure, you have to drive places in Atlanta. We just had more people crash at our place after going out, or we would crash at theirs. The music scene is healthy, if you care about that sort of thing. People are friendly. And I paid $340/month in rent in 2005 (that is not a typo).

The food is great. I have yet to experience anything quite like it outside of New York, and NY can't match the prices. The Vortex serves the best burgers this side of the grave, and Highland Bakery has a shrimp and grits with a spicy cheddar sauce that cannot be described in any earthly tongue.

Add in a very international flavor, 2 of the 10 gayest counties in America (Sorry to stereotype, but any city without a gay population probably sucks. They sense backwards boring closed-minded people and stay away.), and you have one cool city.

I can't speak for Atlanta's start-up scene, but gawd, what a city. I hear Austin is better, but Atlanta is like a mini-Austin from what I can tell.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> San Jose, like any major US city, has its awesome points and its disgusting monstrosities (Santana Row, I'm talking to you). And come on, San Francisco has its share of fake and cliche (North Beach? Haight? The area around PacBell Park?).

Since the link focused on the negatives, I'll throw some positives out there (coming from a San Jose native who has lived in SF, LA, Chicago, and now Morgan Hill - mushroom capital of the world).

1\. There are some cool little neighborhoods in the San Jose metropolitan area: Willow Glen, Rose Garden/Burbank, Campbell, Saratoga, Almaden Valley.

2\. Good ethnic food, especially from Latin America, Vietnam, India, and China. Even some good fine dining opportunities (La Foret in New Almaden comes to mind).

3\. A great Latino/Chicano cultural scene.

4\. Decent transit that's been getting better (much, much better than LA, lagging a little behind SF and WAY behind Chicago/New York).

5\. Retail tech stores all over (even SF lacks this).- Central Computer, any number of Fry's.

6\. A developing downtown. If you'd been here ten years ago, this place was dead. If you'd been here 20 years ago...well, you wouldn't have been downtown. The fact that you can go there at night at all now is AMAZING considering what this place was like when I was a kid. It's fairly jumping now, with a decent selection of restaurants and good parking.

7\. Cheaper than SF by a bunch.

San Jose is great, especially if you aren't into the trendy hipster scene and don't mind heading into "scary" (aka non-Anglo) parts of town like East San Jose, Little Saigon, etc.

<comment><USER4> Lot of Santana Row hating here. I liked the place. Some people just like nice things and convenience, and Santana Row has plenty of both. It doesn't necessarily make you "fake" or materialistic.

I personally enjoyed having a Brooks Brothers, a Diesel, a Cole Haan, and a Tommy Bahama store all next to each other. Mix in some decent (though overpriced) restaurants, and it's altogether a nice place. I did have to be sure to route my wife around the Donald J. Pliner shop though.

I guess maybe it's just due to the inordinate amount of time I spent in Las Vegas, but I find it fairly easy to coexist peacefully with the materialist mindset, and simply take advantage of the perks while opting out of the pseudo-religion. You can like nice stuff without that defining you.

<comment><USER8> Santana row is a cheap immitation of a city street. The immitation of italian architecture is really gawdy and cheesy and very aethestic displeasing. The people that go there are also have a certain attitude, that is far from simple and humble, but more of a show off type.

Santana row is a clear manifestation on what's wrong with modern american architecture.

Please travel to other countries, to see real town centers with real people (that are not trying to show off).

<comment><USER9> Santana Row is bad relative to a real city, but it's great compared to a regular shopping mall (and compared to most of what surrounds it).

For example, the linked article, [http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/96sep/kunstler/kunstler.ht...](http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/96sep/kunstler/kunstler.htm) (which is a good read, btw), says: "In many localities apartments over stores were also forbidden under the zoning laws. Few modern shopping centers are more than one story in height, and I know of no suburban malls that incorporate housing."

Santana Row, however, does have housing above the stores.

<comment><USER4> Right. Comparing a shopping mall to a city is almost as bad as Gladwell comparing a Trailblazer to a Boxster.

<comment><USER8> Santana row is a cheap immitation of a city street. It is made in a way to make people feel like they are in a urban enviroment, mainly b/c there are no true urban enviroments in SJ.

Yes it is a mall, but it takes this form mainly b/c SJ lacks proper city streets, with thriving retail, where you can actually enjoy walking, meeting people, dining, working, and shopping.

You don't have to go out of the country to see where proper urban areas mixed with retail can be great enviroment. Go to Boston's Fenaul Hall, or Harvard sq. where there is a very healthy mix of PUBLIC space, retail and shopping, some offices, and condos or houses.

If people did city planing in a good way, these garish malls would be superflous.

<comment><USER9> Faneuil Hall felt just as fake to me, kind of like Fisherman's Wharf. The rest of Boston is nice though.

<comment><USER10> It only takes a few steps to be out of Faneuil Hall and into the rest of Boston. If you haven't seen the greenway since the big dig finished, that's one more nice place to walk directly out of Faneuil Hall into:

<http://ourdoings.com/brlewis/2008-05-14>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> San Jose does indeed look like the most godforsaken sprawl. This town is more populous than San Francisco and yet people still refer to SF as "the city".

However, if you live here, you'll find that it's not quite that simple. There are creative and life-affirming things here, but the only architecture that's available is the strip-mall, so that's what people use. For my money, the best coffeehouse in the entire area (including places like Ritual in San Francisco) is located in an unassuming strip mall in Santa Clara, next to a big-box TV retailer. (<http://barefootcoffeeroasters.com/>).

And there are vibrant immigrant populations here, particularly Vietnamese, and they bring their cuisine with them. San Francisco itself is so expensive that it's getting older, richer, and more ethnically homogenous all the time. Pretty soon it's going to be just twentysomething white trustafarians and fortysomething white management consultants.

But that just barely modifies jwz's critique. For now, if you want to feel like your soul is enriched just by walking down the street, you have to live in SF. If you want a place to put your bed and TV, live in San Jose.

<comment><USER4> I mostly feel my soul endangered, rather than enriched, when I walk down the street there. Someone assaulted my wife the first time we visited (long before I joined YC). I wasn't around, but thankfully a passerby helped out.

That's undoubtedly atypical though. I think it's relatively safe for a city its size.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Wow, I don't know what it was like when jwz wrote this (12 years ago?) but these days Palo Alto is the epicenter of mediocre expensive food. Mountain View, however, has some really great ethnic food for cheap, especially on Castro Street.

The other thing that people don't really know until they've lived here is that you typically don't have to live in suburban hell so long as you know where the "main drags" are. The peninsula / south bay used to be all orchards with "main streets". Today there's a "main street" in nearly every city that is worth living near -- walking distance, and only a slight premium (University Ave excluded, thanks to Facebook). Santa Cruz Ave in Menlo Park, Castro St in Mountain View, 4th St in San Mateo, and California St in Palo Alto come to mind.

<comment><USER13> Palo Alto has taxis, cpk, cheesecake factory, that wraps place. All nice enough. Not to mention the creamery. Also it has a borders and Apple store.

Out of all the towns in the area I'd choose Palo Alto every time.

<comment><USER14> Agreed in spirit though I disagree completely with your actual list. What's with all the mediocre mega-chains? How about Paxti's, gyros gyros, Homma's Brown Rice Sushi, the Counter, Vino Locale? A bit of a walk north will take you to Cafe Borrone and Jan's Deli, the latter of which happens to have one of the greatest turkey sandwiches ever. If you have a car and you venture away from trendy downtown PA you can find some pretty good authentic taquerias as well as any variety of Asian you would want....

...Damn, I need to move back to the Bay Area.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I moved from Toronto to South Bay for work a couple of years ago. I couldn't face the commute from San Francisco to San Jose, so I decided to live close to work in San Jose. I almost cried when I first visited San Jose's "downtown".

The descriptions of the link are pretty much bang on, although I don't find the smog in San Jose so bad. And San Jose does have one attribute that's better than San Francisco: the weather. It's sunny and warm in San Jose with cool nights. Whenever I go to San Francisco, it is cold, windy and foggy. The San Francisco Zoo is situated close to the ocean in a part of the city that is seemingly permanently overcast and cold. I feel sorry for the animals.

Other than the weather, the best thing that can be said about San Jose is that it is close to a lot of interesting events and places that are not in San Jose.

<comment><USER16> > I feel sorry for the animals.

I have that with any zoo. They may be treated well, but wild animals shouldn't be locked up for entertainment and profit.

<comment><USER17> What if they're locked up for a safe breeding of more of a threatened or endangered species, or for the purpose of education and awareness of the threats facing wildlife around the world?

I've been to some zoos that just make you want to cry, and I've been to other ones where the animals seems happy, well taken-care-of, and had enough activities/entertainment to keep them from getting bored, and where there was a huge amount of focus on education around what species are threatened, why, and what you can do about it. How to co-exist with wild animals locally, and how to support efforts around the world.

It's a lot easier to feel sympathy/empathy and DO something when you see a real live cute endangered animal, than if you read a paragraph in your paper.

It's definitely a mixed bag, but overall, I'm pro good-zoos.

<comment><USER18> would you take your dog to visit a penitentiary ?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> What's with all the hate for the South Bay?

Seriously, I see posts like this from people in San Francisco all the time. I understand that they like where they live, but why the seething hatred for San Jose? Nobody's making them go there. :)

Does this sort of whining happen in other metro areas too?

<comment><USER20> Indeed. The phrase "hater in the house!" kept running through my head. If you live in a place you hate, shut up and move. If you don't, just shut up.

<comment><USER21> If everyone shuts up, how are people supposed to figure out where to move to? I hate the idea that no one should ever be critical of anything.

<comment><USER20> I'm not saying everyone should shut up, just the haters. They're so loud and shrill that they drown everyone else out. There are lots of people who like suburbia (and dislike cities). They're just not smug and self-righteous about it, and they don't shout it from the rooftops while looking down on everyone else.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> San Jose is heaven compared to anywhere in NJ. That place reeks, ancient infrastructure, tolls everywhere, dirt everywhere and not to mention awful weather for the better part of the year. I'd rather live in the Bay Area with more expenses on the same pay than anywhere else in the east coast. Although, I concur Austin, Vegas and Phoenix are fantastic places to live.

<comment><USER23> Tolls are a bad thing? God forbid people pay for the roads they drive on. Free highways are a huge cause of the Bay Area's sprawl.

<comment><USER23> Hm... I thought we only downmodded comments that didn't add to the discussion here, but it looks like people just disagree with me. Care to explain why instead of just downmodding?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> <http://www.morganquitno.com/cit07pop.htm#25>

Safest city >500,000 population.

<comment><USER25> Safest City in US < Most violent anywhere else.

Point being it's all relative, hence next to meaningless. :-)

<comment><USER26> _Safest City in US < Most violent anywhere else._

Johannesburg? Rio? Manila? Bogota? London? Honiara?

<comment><USER25> You missed my point.

It's all relative.

<comment><USER26> What is relative to what, precisely?

<comment><USER25> How "safe" a city is to whatever you're comparing it to.

You can make pretty much anywhere look safe just as easy as you can make anywhere look unsafe. Studies like this are virtually meaningless.

I'm surprised I've being downmodded so much, I figured the crowd at hacker news would be a little less reactionary than that.

<comment><USER26> You're being downmodded for making assertions which are either false or meaningless. I can't quite figure out which just yet.

In case you're still under the impression that the US is a particularly high- crime country, check out <http://rechten.uvt.nl/icvs/images/graph05.jpg>. The grey bars show that the US is safer than an awful lot of other developed countries including the UK, Ireland, the Netherlands, Denmark, Iceland (!), Switzerland (!), Belgium and Australia. And that's not even counting undeveloped countries, which tend to have much higher crime than developed ones.

<comment><USER25> It doesn't say which crimes.

Many places outside of the US have a high degree of property crimes compared to violent crimes. I wouldn't consider property crimes like vandalism to reflect a degree of safety though. I could use murder rates alone and show opposite results.

That's my point though. "Safety" is unmeasurable, really, because it is a perspective.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Wow is he wrong about Sushi. It's quite easy to screw it up, and I have a few friends with hospital trips to prove it.

</comment><comment><USER27> Hold up. Living in Boston, I can say that winter is just not that fun. I can't say, go for an enjoyable jog, for at least 4.5 months of the year. I basically hibernate for 5 months of the year. This is true for large swaths of the northern US. Is it really so bad in CA, or is the grass always greener?

<comment><USER28> I've lived in Boston (Allston and Cambridge). Weather in San Jose trumps Boston winters for sure. However, Boston proper in the summer is better than San Jose in the summer. If you grew up elsewhere, one thing you may miss is hot, steamy summers. The weather in the Bay area is almost always a little bit chilly. In San Francisco, the weather in the summer is actually colder than it is during the rest of the year.

<comment><USER29> You can't beat summers in Boston. But ericb is right, winter's in Boston are terrible. Not going outside for more than an hour for 5 months is no fun.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> "New" Mountain View on Castro Street is OK. It's not SF, but there are now decent restaurants, two bookstores (the used bookstore is fantastic), and acceptable (not good) independent cafes. It's also near the train station.

</comment><comment><USER31> I'm glad to know I am not the only one who felt this way. I felt like I was in one huge shopping mall. Malls give me head aches.

Human brain has an upper limit on the fakeness it can take before it makes you throw up, I think. (I seldom complain and I don't drink 'orange mocha frappuccino')

[edit] deleted --> "SJC is the most depressing airport I've been to."

<comment><USER32> SJC is a much better airport than SFO, but OAK is the one the cheap flights go to, and is inexpensive to get to SF from.

<comment><USER33> Having never been to SFO or OAK, I find this shocking, since SJC seems kinda slummy, especially when flying via NWA.

<comment><USER32> I guess it all depends on what you're looking for in an airport, but if your metric is "time taken to get from the expressway exit to wheels-up in your plane", I'd rank the Bay Area OAK, SJC, then SFO.

I'm not really looking for amenities; if I needed them, I'd probably just pay for the Amex Platinum and get into the airline lounges.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Very funny read - mostly because of the hyperbole and awesome formatting (including dead links). That said, I don't exactly agree with any of it!

<comment><USER35> You are surprised that a webpage from 1996 has dead links? I am more surprised that _any_ of the off-site ones work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> If thats what he thought in 1996, I wonder what the 2008 version would say?

</comment><comment><USER37> Last Sunday I walked through San Jose, about five or six miles.

I got sunburned.

</comment><comment><USER38> i love san jose, and the whole bay area. i feel so deprived not being in cali right now. i would state reasons but i don't really know them. my best guess is the mesh of civilization and nature. the hills are so beautiful, the trees are lush, starbucks is on every corner yay!

</comment><comment><USER39> Heh. You haven't seen pre-fab until you've been to Orlando.

</comment><comment><USER40> Hows San Diego?

<comment><AUTHOR> It has a similar sprawling ticky-tack faux automobile-metropolis feel, and the food except in places like downtown generally sucks.

<comment><USER41> On the other hand, San Diego's weather is probably the best in the whole US, the people (except maybe for the far-righters and far-lefters) are pretty cool, there's nice history, beach access, culture ... sigh. Wish I was there.

<comment><AUTHOR> If you're close to the beach, where property and rent is ridiculously expensive, yes, the weather is pretty nice.

East County, though (El Cajon, Santee, etc.) lack nearly everything that is good about San Diego. No biotech startups, no weather, no college kids, no nothing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> I used to think that. I think it less now. SJ definitely does not have the taste and cosmopolitan charm of SF, but as places to live go, it's really pretty good. Access to the ocean and amazing open spaces, etc.</comment>


Mathematics self-proves its own Consistency (contra Gödel et. al.) - <AUTHOR> http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/4784 <comment><USER2> Carl Hewitt isn't just some random crank, he is the author of PLANNER, a breakthrough programming language in the early AI days, that gave rise to Prolog later on. This is a pretty interesting paper and it doesn't claim any big breakthrough in the sense of invalidating any great mathematical result. I can try to explain what it is about, at least the beginning of the quoted fragment:

In the first paragraph, he shows that if you allow proofs by contradiction, you can use them for every theory claimed to be inconsistent to show it indeed is consistent. This is so, because to prove by contradiction means to infer "not A" if from "A" follows "B" and "not B". So, if from "mathematics is inconsistent" follows "theorem A is true" and "theorem A is false", it follows that "mathematics is consistent". He claims that this shows consistency isn't rigorously proved in classical mathematics but is just assumed, since classical mathematics allows proofs by contradiction.

He then shows that from this consistency proof paradoxically follows the conclusion that mathematics is inconsistent, because this proof contradicts Goedel theorem "if mathematics is consistent, then it cannot infer its own consistency". He resolves the contradiction of Goedels proof by his proof by restricting the logical system in which they are done to exclude self- referential sentences.

Then, and I think this is really the gist of this work of his, he goes on to describe an approach that tries to somehow reduce the bad impact of including inconsistencies in the logical system, instead of trying to completely eliminate inconsistencies, as it was the goal traditionally.

<comment><USER3> > In the first paragraph, he shows that if you allow proofs by contradiction, > you can use them for every theory claimed to be inconsistent to show it > indeed is consistent. This is so, because to prove by contradiction means to > infer "not A" if from "A" follows "B" and "not B". So, if from "mathematics > is inconsistent" follows "theorem A is true" and "theorem A is false", it > follows that "mathematics is consistent". He claims that this shows > consistency isn't rigorously proved in classical mathematics but is just > assumed, since classical mathematics allows proofs by contradiction.

So the first paragraph is about showing that if one allows statements _about_ mathematics (e.g: "Mathematics is consistent") and statements _in_ mathematics (e.g: "proposition A is true", for some statement A which can be expressed entirely "within" mathematics) to freely mix together on the same footing, then things become inconsistent? But this is well-known for over a century; see, e.g: Russell's Paradox [1]. And (if I understand it correctly), one doesn't need Proof by Contradiction for this inconsistency to occur---it suffices to allow meta-statements and "plain" statements to mix together; see Curry's Paradox [2]. And ways to work with metamathematical statements while avoiding this paradox where also worked out a long time back [3]. That the first paragraph of the OP mentions none of this seems ... surprising, to say the least.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell's_paradox](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell's_paradox) [2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curry's_paradox](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curry's_paradox) [3] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_type_theory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_type_theory)

<comment><USER2> This is just an abstract. I think the novelty he perceives is combining all this into a proof of consistency of mathematics. Page 6 of his paper mentions everything you have just written about:

[https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B79uetkQ_hCKbkFpbFJQVFhvdU0/...](https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B79uetkQ_hCKbkFpbFJQVFhvdU0/edit)

This guy spent a few decades working in mathematical logic. He might overestimate the importance of some things, but I would be careful assuming he suddenly stopped understanding simple technical arguments.

<comment><USER4> He mentions those in relation to his own pet theories but in no way does he address GP's argument.

What his theorem boils down to is:

1\. Let A be a formal system capable of describing the natural numbers. 2\. Assume A is inconsistent. It follows that there exists such Φ that A ⊢ Φ and A ⊢ ¬Φ 3\. ????? 4\. A is consistent!

At step 3. he appears to conflate A⊢Φ ∧ A⊢¬Φ with Φ∧¬Φ and use it to refute the assumption in 2. But Φ∧¬Φ is not generally true outside the context of A and therefore the refutation does not follow.

<comment><USER2> My understanding is that if proof by contradiction is allowed in A, Φ ∨ ¬Φ is a true sentence in A, so if you try to include the sentence "A is inconsistent" in A, it follows that A ⊢ Φ and A ⊢ ¬Φ, therefore in A Φ ∧ ¬Φ is true, but this contradicts Φ ∨ ¬Φ, therefore A is consistent. In other words, it is impossible to show the inconsistency of any system that includes the law of excluded middle.

This is really trivial in the end. Inconsistency is "Φ ∧ ¬Φ", law of excluded middle is "Φ ∨ ¬Φ", so in the assumption of law of excluded middle is hidden the assumption of consistency. That's what he means by

 _The above theorem means that the assumption of consistency is deeply embedded in the structure of classical mathematics_

Edit: I agree with you in the end, the proof is valid, but the conclusion does not hold in A, but one "level" above, so it does not contradict Goedels theorem. Am I reading this right?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Carl Hewitt is an interesting character [1] and I'm not really sure what to make of it. There are signs of a bright mind gone completely bonkers, and there are signs of someone being rejected for purely political (and not academic) reasons. Both have happened numerous times in the past which is why it's hard to tell. If someone more enlightened on the topic cared to comment about the nature of things, that'd be greatly appreciated :)

[1] [http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2007/dec/09/wikipedia.i...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2007/dec/09/wikipedia.internet/print)

<comment><USER6> Why is LtU even bringing up this abstract? Are they just trying to further embarrass him?

<comment><USER7> Hewitt posted it himself.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I know Carl a little from the late 90s. I figured there was a 50% chance he would come up with something historically important, and a 60% chance he was crazy. (The two options are not quite mutually exclusive.)

Indeed, most examples illustrating the Incompleteness Theorem involve self- reference. But, it seems hard to prove anything interesting in a system that precludes self-reference.

BTW, the Y Combinator is a way of adding self-reference to a non-self- referential formalism. And we're debating his argument here. Deep.

<comment><USER9> "It seems hard to prove anything interesting in a system that precludes self- reference."

Indeed, isn't that one of the important features of Goedel's proof: that any system that can express basic arithmetic is capable of self-reference.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I quit after the first paragraph.

If you assume "proof by contradiction" to be a valid form, then you also assume that mathematics is consistent. Nothing to see here... Move along...

Edit: In case some people missed it... In our logical framework, an inconsistent theory can prove both Φ and ¬Φ. Notice that you are using our logical framework; you are assuming it to be consistent. Yes. Assuming the framework to be consistent, you can prove that the framework is consistent. Shocking.

<comment><USER10> Did you see the first line? "That mathematics is thought to be consistent justifies the use of Proof by Contradiction." So the original author agrees with you.

You're right too, though: most of the value of that post is in the first paragraph, which is a very concise presentation of an interesting (apparent) paradox.

<comment><USER6> I stopped reading after the first paragraph, so I don't know what the rest of it says. You're right, he does agree with me. But he presents it with a shroud of mystery. I was turned off by his attempt at demonstrating a paradox (a la alarming title "contra Gödel et. al.) and using word play to trick the reader into believing there is one. But there is no paradox.

<comment><USER2> The claimed paradox is that this proof contradicts Goedels result "if mathematics is consistent, then it cannot infer its own consistency.". This is not what the paper is about anyway, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The proof offered in the abstract demonstrates a simple link between consistency and the validity of proof by contradiction. It shows that if mathematics is consistent (ie. ⊢Φ and ⊢¬Φ is impossible) then mathematics is consistent.

This is NOT a self-proof - it is a meta-proof. Taking arithmetic as an example, a self-proof of consistency would be a derivation of the consistency sentence (ie. "I am consistent", or "¬◻(0=1)") from the arithmetic axioms. That is not what we have here.

The existence of a proof of the consistency of a theory does not put it at risk from Godel's 2nd - for that we require that a theory prove its own consistency.

As far as I can tell, Hewitt begins with a proof that consistency and the validity of proof by contradiction are equivalent, and then proceeds on the grounds that consistency is proven internally to the theory - which it is not.

</comment><comment><USER12> This guy's home page ([http://www.carlhewitt.info](http://www.carlhewitt.info)) takes an interesting approach to web design. It looks like he also has some others ([http://www.irobust.org/](http://www.irobust.org/), [http://www.ir14.org/](http://www.ir14.org/))

</comment><comment><USER3> > both Φ and ¬Φ are theorems that can be used in the proof to produce an > immediate contradiction. Therefore mathematics is consistent.

Isn't the inference that mathematics is _in_ consistent?

A proposition is a statement which is either true or false (and not both, and not neither).

An axiom is a proposition which we assume to be true, "for free".

A logical deduction is a way to combine or modify true statements to get other true statements.

A proof of a statement is a finite sequence of propositions. The sequence starts with an axiom, and ends with the target statement. Its other elements are propositions---these can be axioms or not. Each proposition which (i) is in the sequence and (ii) is not an axiom, must be the result of applying a logical deduction to one or more propositions which appear before it in the sequence.

A _theorem_ is a proposition for which there exists a proof.

If we can prove two theorems which contradict one another (like Φ and ¬Φ in the quote above), then we say that our system for finding proofs is _inconsistent_. Since the OP starts out assuming that mathematics is inconsistent and ends up producing two contradictory theorems, he does not seem to get anywhere far. And his inference---that mathematics is consistent ---seems to be incorrect.

What am I missing here?

<comment><USER13> The beginning of the proof starts with "Suppose to obtain a contradiction, that mathematics is inconsistent".

From that assumption, they derived a contradiction, therefore the assumption can't be true, and math must be consistent.

<comment><USER3> > From that assumption, they derived a contradiction

This is what I don't see. To have derived a contradiction, they should have shown: "mathematics is consistent". Instead they ended up showing (because Φ and ¬Φ): "mathematics is _in_ consistent". Which is what they started out with. Where is the contradiction?

Hmm.. while writing this out, I think I am starting to get the source of the confusion. "Mathematics is inconsistent" is a _meta_ statement _about_ mathematics, and "Φ and ¬Φ" is a "plain" statement _within_ the said mathematics. My intuitive feeling is that the latter contradiction does not "affect" the meta statement. I need to think further to make this more rigorous.

OT: Why the downvote(s)? Does my comment take away from the discussion?

<comment><USER6> Yeah, you nailed it. He's in metamathematics and doesn't realize it.

I elucidate it in another comment: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6119587](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6119587)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I've always been fascinated with naïve set-theory, and how it was refuted after it's apparent inconsistency, the famous Russell's paradox of the set of all sets that don't contain it self, and only contains it self if it doesn't etc. So supposing it's False, yields True, and supposing it's True yields False.

But what fascinated me was not the Russell's set, but it's inverse, the set of all sets that contain it self, lets call it S.

For the statement S is a member of S —the set of all sets that contain it self, really contains it self— yields True if and only if you suppose it's True, and it yields False if and only if you suppose it's False.

S is therefore always consistent no matter the value. Both values are correct, but never at the same time.

I don't know particularly what it means, but the fact that you can do this, makes me wonder if this super-consistency is applied anywhere else in the philosophy of science, but nobody has ever realized the equivalent inverse, and therefor never demonstrated the inconsistency.

<comment><USER15> S doesn't seem that interesting. Assume that S does not contain itself. Consider the set P, which can be constructed by adding P as an element to S. Note that P contains itself. Therefore, P is in S. Also note that every other element in P is also in S, and that every element in S is in P. Therefore P and S are the same set. Therefore S contains itself, contradicting our assumption that S does not contain itself.

If we assume that S does contain itself, then I do not see a way at arriving at a contradiction.

<comment><USER14> hmm, you are correct. S really isn't that interesting. And my scepticism towards justification through non-contradiction because of possible super- consistancy is therefor based on false premises.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> From my naive point of view I'm confused about how this argument can possibly work. Perhaps someone can explain it?

1\. It seems to me that if you assume that mathematics is inconsistent, you shouldn't then consider an inconsistency in the argument sufficient grounds to throw away the assumption. I suppose that means that I don't accept proof by contradiction in the case that the assumption is the inconsistency of mathematics.

2\. Sanity Check: We can create known inconsistent systems, could the same logic prove that such inconsistent systems are consistent too? It seems to me that it could, am I wrong?

3\. Supposing that mathematics did prove its own consistency, the fact that inconsistent systems can also prove their own consistency means that you can't take a proof of consistency to be strong evidence that the system is consistent.

4\. Gödel didn't say that mathematics couldn't prove its own consistency, he just said that if it could it was unsound, which is a bit of a concern too.

</comment><comment><USER17> I don't think that Godel's theorem says that math is necessarily inconsistent.

My understanding is that it says math is either inconsistent or incomplete. So if you construct a mathematical system that is consistent (allowing proofs by contradiction), there will be some set of statements that are true, but cannot be proved true by that mathematics.

</comment><comment><USER18> This is all kind of meta, but I think that, to prove anything, he would need to fix a system in which he could operate, and prove it in that.

Kind of reminds me of the following proof I have that something in this world is indeed absolute.

        1) "Nothing is absolute" is self contradictory.

        2) Therefore, something is absolute.

Neat, huh?

By the way, one needs to elaborate a little bit about the above proof. The reason (2) follows from (1) is because the negation of 1, "something is absolute", is not self-contradictory. However, if both (1) and (2) were shown to be self-contradictory, then you wouldn't have the excluded middle.

</comment><comment><USER19> As somebody who studied mathematical logic, this is crankery of the highest order.

</comment><comment><USER20> Gödel walks into the Church and proclaims, "You cannot prove that you are good and therefore you cannot prove that there is a good God but you need not fear for I have developed a system whereby you can still be ethical despite knowing not of your goodness."

Whether or not Gödel is correct soon becomes irrelevant as he is promptly ejected from the Church. As he walks away he hears the sound of the hymn "I Cannot Be Sung in the Church" being pelted out at at full volume by the congregation.

</comment><comment><USER21> The comments on that LtU thread are pretty funny.

</comment><comment><USER22> >Fortunately, self-referential propositions do not seem to have any important practical applications.

yawn.

</comment><comment><USER23> This is why we should stick to a constructive logic :)

</comment><comment><USER24> This is complete informal bullshit. This guy is either stupid or trolling.

</comment><comment><USER18> "(There is a very weak theory called Provability Logic that has been used for self-referential propositions coded as integers, but it is not strong enough for the purposes of computer science.) "

weak theory? not strong enough for computer science, eh? strange ways to talk about mathematical theorems that are either true or not. let's see him define what he means by any of these terms lol

<comment><USER25> "Strong" and "weak" have well-understood meanings in mathematical logic and model theory.

For example, imagine there's a true and "important" statement S about Turing machines for which we could prove "it is impossible to prove S using provability logic." In that sense PL would be "too weak" to do computer science.

<comment><USER18> Okay, but what is "very weak"?

Also, I remember you - you did adonomics back in the day for facebook apps :)

<comment><USER25> He's just speaking colloquially and I don't know anything about the system of logic he's describing. He means something like "weak relative to all the other ones we'd consider on a day-to-day basis" or "so weak we'd never seriously consider it except as a specialized tool."

That's not really the point, though. The point is that "strong" and "weak" are well-defined terms in mathematical logic and he was almost certainly using them in that sense. :)

<comment><USER18> I think he was saying that their math-fu was weak, too weak for comp sci :)

<comment><USER25> No, he's almost certainly not. Keep in mind, I know nothing about PL. I'm solely relying on my background as a mathematician to think of the most reasonable interpretation for what he's saying.

He's saying something like, "You can axiomatize Peano Arithmetic in PL and explore the idea of provability therein because that's what PL was invented for. At first glance we might try to use something like PL to do what we're setting out to do, but it's so specialized that it winds up not being worthwhile."

This makes more sense in the context of his paper, anyhow. Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem basically says that Peano Arithmetic can't prove its own consistency within PA unless it's inconsistent

So, we could model PA inside another logical system (e.g., PL) which has notation for certain meta-mathematical statements like "P(X): it is provable that X". You'd then need to demonstrate that a version of PA axiomatized with this logic is both complete and sound WRT PA, etc. etc.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


CometML wants to do for machine learning what GitHub did for code - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2018/04/05/cometml-wants-to-do-for-machine-learning-what-github-did-for-code/ <comment><USER2> Data science has 3 areas for "versioning":

1\. code versioning 2\. data versioning 3\. model versioning

Code versioning is primarily dominated by GitHub and is a fairly saturated space (Bitbucket, GitLab). Data versioning is either not happening, or being done through regular data pulls, database snapshots, etc. It is not well standardized or adopted. CometML is tackling model versioning.

It would be really nice to have a single solution for all of these but that is unlikely. Hopefully new standards evolve from this.

<comment><USER3> Nice breakdown. I agree that data versioning is the one area with limited standardized options. I would add that in addition to versioning the data, there is also the related problem of integrating the 3 areas of versioning... tying the "data version" to the "model version" and the "code version". That seems to me like it might be a good place to start in tackling data versioning, or is that too trivial? Is there a product out there that already does this?

<comment><USER4> Pachyderm, a project I work on, is probably as close as you'll find to something that ties all 3 together. In my mind the major unsolved problem here was the data versioning so that's the first thing we tackled. Code versioning is already quite well solved so we just integrate with existing tools for that. I'm not convinced that model versioning is actually distinct from data versioning, models are just data after all. So I think without an established system for versioning models, such as Git + Github is for code, treating models as data and versioning them that way is good enough for government work. From what I can tell CometML isn't quite versioning models so much as tracking versions of models. It expects that models to be stored and versioned elsewhere but it gives you a way to get deeper insight into how those models are performing, how they're changing, the hyper-parameters used to train them etc. Tracking this is also a very important problem that CometML seems to solve quite elegantly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Can you talk about how CometML fits into the real world state of ML training tracking, which is a pretty terrible Wild West of non-reproducible practices and processes?

There have been articles and comments here on HN about the sorry state of ML trackability, with papers being published on models whose training is not reproducible because no one really knows how it was trained. One in particular (I apologize for not having retained the link) described researchers starting with partially trained models they had lying around (with undocumented and unknown prior training applied), manually changing hyper parameters mid training while watching the learning progress, swapping different training sets in and out, and etc.

From what I see, the problems in ML reproducibility aren't in the code, they are in the external human processes that are used to drive and train the models (essentially bad DevOps practices more than bad dev practices). Do you help with these kind of real-world trackability and reproducabilty scenarios?

<comment><USER6> That's a great point! Machine Learning reproducibility is a huge problem, both in Academia and within companies. Comet.ml tracks every run of your script, the hyper-params (pulled automatically from the ML library when possible) and your results. So in the example you gave we would be able to track the DS loading pre-trained weights, manually changing hyperparams and the datasets hash.

In such complex cases there's still a little discipline required on the user behalf but overall it's just including a few calls to our Experiment object.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Their pricing is ridiculous. $50 per user per month for their cheapest plan that works with private spaces, $149 per user per month for self hosted.

If you're a company with 15 people working on a single model you're going to be paying more than a team with five people who have 20 different models they are working on. The actual load and cost for the service is completely detached from the price.

I was strongly considering looking at this for a project, but not at that cost.

</comment><comment><USER8> Great to see ML "governance" work being done on the training-part of the pipeline. Seems like this provides a Domino Data Labs based dashboards but without the walled garden environment.

I've yet to see similar great initiatives also tackling the deployment-part. E.g. something similar you can stick on top of your model's API (or scheduled batch predictive outputs), as well as incoming instances, to monitor usage patterns, population shifts through time, probability distributions, newly popping up missing values or categorical levels, logs, etc, in order to provide warning lights to indicate that a retraining might be in order, for instance.

Google's "What's your ML test score" paper provides some great insights, but I hope someone will tackle this with a turnkey solution as well.

<comment><USER6> Thanks! We indeed solve a similar pain point as Domino but we unlike them we allow you to train your models on your own infra/laptop.

As for monitoring production models that's something we're also working on. It was important to get the training part out first so we can measure those distributions changing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Hi, I'm one of the founders of Comet.ml. We built comet.ml to allow machine learning teams to automatically track their machine learning code, experiments, hyperparameters and results. We think that reproducibility is really important so we're also giving free access to students, academics and open source projects.

Feedback is welcome. Ask me anything.

<comment> ah- Are you planning to open source it?

A lot of your competitors have, like [http://pipeline.ai/](http://pipeline.ai/), [https://github.com/pachyderm/pachyderm](https://github.com/pachyderm/pachyderm) and recently [https://github.com/polyaxon/polyaxon](https://github.com/polyaxon/polyaxon).

<comment><USER9> @ah- thanks for mentioning Polyaxon and congrats to the CometMl team for building this nice tool, it's good to see that many projects are trying to solve problems related to reproducibility in ML/DL, many people had to build an internal tool for the companies they work for to solve this issue, and many got frustrated after joining a new team and were not able to reproduce any results.

I would like to outline a couple of differences between CometML and Polyaxon, as mentioned before, we are also trying to solve issues related to technical debt in ML, but not only, Polyaxon tries also to simplify training and scheduling parallel and distributed learning. there are also a couple of differences, I see CometML as dashboard, Polyaxon does not have an extensive dashboard as CometML, but it leverages Tensorboard for most of the visualisations. We use the CLI or the API for programatic access to the platform. Most importantly, Polyaxon aims to be an open source and to be installed on premise or in the cloud, it solves the issue related to code tracking based on an internal git and a docker registry, and as someone else mentioned that resources for running an experiment could be an issue for future reproducibility, Polyaxon restarts the experiments with the same resources and dockerfiles, it also tracks hyper params as part of the configuration.

For hyper params tuning and suggestion, Polyaxon can also do hyper params search based on a couple of algorithms, and for the next release, it will include also a service similar to vizier for suggesting more experiments/group of experiments based on a given search space.

Disclaimer: I am the author of Polyaxon

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Since a few people commented on the cost of using CometML (or its competitors), I wanted to suggest an open source project (that's been around for a while) I found helpful for organizing ML experiments and tracking. It has two different frontends to choose from (I like SacredBoard). If you like open source this might be the ML experiment tracker for you!

edit (forgot the link): [https://github.com/IDSIA/sacred](https://github.com/IDSIA/sacred)

<comment><USER11> Did you forget to suggest the project? Is it "sacred"?

[https://github.com/IDSIA/sacred](https://github.com/IDSIA/sacred)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Cool, thanks.

For those of you who want to tinker, there's a much rougher, open source library based on Vuejs, postgres, and Flask with some momentum on GitHub right now, LabNotebook [https://github.com/henripal/labnotebook](https://github.com/henripal/labnotebook)

(Disclaimer: I'm one of the authors)

</comment><comment><USER13> I get so excited when I see ___ML but then I'm let down when I realize the context is Machine Learning instead of Meta Language. Not that Machine Learning isn't cool, but I really like ML family languages.

</comment><comment><USER14> When I saw that name the first thing I thought about was some new SML compiler or like MoscowML.

</comment><comment><USER15> I have been anxiously waiting for something like this! Very excited to try it out.

How does it handle data storage? Could we use CometML to store our continuously growing set of labeled data or is there a smart way to link it to Google Cloud Platform?

<comment><USER6> We do not store your data as it's usually a very sensitive. You can host your data on GCloud or AWS and use Comet.ml to track where it was coming from and if it changed between experiments.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I would like to use it but I think the price doesn't justify the tool. For a team of 5 people github is $25 a month, you are $745 a month. I do understand a price a bit higher that github but not 30 times more expensive.

<comment><USER6> Thanks @jorgemf. Keep in mind that $745 also includes unlimited usage of our hyper-parameter optimization service.

<comment><USER17> Are there any similarities or distinctions between this article (link below) and how your system works to tune hyper-parameters?

[https://blog.coast.ai/lets-evolve-a-neural-network-with-a- ge...](https://blog.coast.ai/lets-evolve-a-neural-network-with-a-genetic- algorithm-code-included-8809bece164)

<comment><USER6> This article seems to discuss genetic algorithms which could be used for hyperparam optimization. We use another method called Bayesian (GP) hyperparam optimization. According to our internal benchmarks and academic research Bayesian methods outperform genetic algorithms. Another thing to keep in mind that we automate the entire process for you. You only need to provide a list of parameters you'd like to tune.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> How do you handle dataset/checkpoint management and versioning? Ideally with powerful dataset filtering options. Right now we're using excel and panda dataframes, but are interested if your tool does it well.

<comment><USER6> Since we do not host your data we cannot provide filtering on the actual dataset content. We do allow you to track where the data was coming from and if it changed (by hash). Same for checkpoints, you can log their location (S3/local path) and hash.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> CometML vs Tensorboard? Thanks in advance for your feedback.

<comment><USER6> Both CometML and Tensorboard help track metrics/weights during training in a similar way. CometML also tracks your hyperparams, code, dependencies. We also allow you to compare models, collaborate by sharing projects and experiments and much more. TB is an amazing tool but it doesn't help with reproducibility.

If you're already using Tensorboard just throw in our one liner: comet_ml.experiment(api_key="your-key") and you'll get everything TB gives you + our added value.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> That's cool! I also wrote my own service [https://losswise.com](https://losswise.com)

<comment><USER12> Cool. I'm guessing from trying it out that you're using Highcharts. I've run into really unpleasant memory leaks/slowness when streaming data (especially when the existing chart is already thousands of data points). Are you seeing something similar?

<comment><USER19> Yes using Highcharts. You've had issues with Highcharts? Yeah it's not designed to stream data extremely rapidly but it's a great "good enough" product, especially for something like Losswise where the differentiation is the overall design and architecture and developer experience, not the prettiest possible graphs.

<comment><USER12> Yes... For example if I'm running three experiments at the same time, auto- refreshing the chart every two seconds, it essentially freezes the app to a crawl after a thousand points or so. So we reverted to manual updates.

If you know of any better alternatives for data streaming, I'm curious. I tried benchmarking a couple libs recently: [https://github.com/henripal/ChartingLibBenchmark](https://github.com/henripal/ChartingLibBenchmark)

<comment><USER20> As a Highcharts developer, I had a look at your benchmarking, and have some thoughts about optimizing for Highcharts. The first step is to turn off animation, which helps a lot. The default Highcharts animation on addPoint is 250ms, so with a refresh rate of 100ms you will get a lot of redrawing going on for nothing. The second thing that possibly optimizes a bit is to use hard- coded axis values so that it doesn't have to recompute axis values for each iteration.

With those modifications the performance is much better: [http://jsfiddle.net/highcharts/1o5ghqc8/](http://jsfiddle.net/highcharts/1o5ghqc8/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Great idea if AWS had not already solved this with the release of SageMaker.

<comment><USER7> SageMaker is awesome but it's a very different product. There is nothing in SageMaker that lets you track performance over time and no fancy dashboard. That being said SageMaker's pricing is actually reasonable, and adding a dashboard on top of it shouldn't be that complicated.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Sorry if this is off topic but does anyone else just instantly close the page or spew profanity when those stupid chat bubbles pop up on a page? No I don't want to talk to your ridiculous sales chat.

</comment><comment><USER23> Is there an explore option like on github?</comment>


The British Are Now Preparing For Greece To Go Bust, And The End Of The Euro - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/british-drawing-up-plans-if-the-euro-goes-bust-2011-6 <comment><USER2> The euro is fine, the EU banking system - including UK banks - are not. Banks are too big, why can't I pay with my phone like is possible in Africa? We're gonna have to bleed one way or the other, I'd prefer to have less and much smaller banks after this ordeal is over.

Sarko and Merkel realize that banks are fighting their end game - banks 20 years from now won't be the same kind of animal anymore. They're both up for re-election and are gonna give the banks their final stroke.

This will change the fabric of the nation-state profoundly. Buckle up, we're in for a ride.</comment>


Does YC only fund web startups... - <AUTHOR>

or any startup involving technology?  I have an idea for a educational program for elementary and middle school aged students to get involved in technology on a more interactively level than what's being used in formal schools.  The idea is to have more innovative interaction exercises, group dynamics and personal development that uses technology instead of the up front "This is how you type", "this is what Microsoft Word looks like" type of education. <comment><USER2> We'd consider any technology startup. But as it says in the News.YC guidelines,

<http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html>

you shouldn't use this site to ask YC questions about your application; just send us an email. Though in this case the answer is in our FAQ:

<http://ycombinator.com/faq.html>

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah okay. Thanks for the reply, sorry about the rulebreak.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Your buyer is run by public, unionized bureaucracies. How open do you think they would be to trying something radically new?

<comment><USER4> Actually, by the phrasing it sounds like the educational "system" is to be run around completely, perhaps pitching this directly to parents similarly to products like "Hooked on Phonics."

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Introducing technology failed horribly (in one case, at least; our smartboards fared well) at my school when Neil Bush tested Ignite!. Introducing technology to schools is tricky, because in most cases it's not essential to teaching. Often, good teachers are nervous to change what works, and the bad teachers are usually unable to make it work well. If you want more interactivity in education, I'd advise you draw up a sample curriculum and offer to work (for free) with the school's star teachers to develop the technology around their curriculums.

Also, if you don't mind the plug (as I am an alumni), my mixed middle-high school, Gretchen Whitney HS, is ranked #1 in CA by API, and has a few very good and forward-thinking teachers who may be willing (hopefully) to do just such a thing. Couldn't hurt to ask.</comment>


Jeff Bezos' Quest to Find America's Stupidest Mayor - <AUTHOR> https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/opinion-baker-amazon-hq2_us_5a7b28aee4b08dfc92ff0128 <comment><USER2> "For years, the company took advantage of a loophole in tax law so that it did not have to collect the same sales tax as its brick-and-mortar competitors. "

Literally every single customer who bought anything from Amazon was happy about this.

<comment><USER2> Also: definition of 'loophole': a tax rule I don't like.</comment></comment>