Launch HN: Life Bot (YC S17) – Voice app to help with daily activities - <AUTHOR> Hey HN!
We are Jess and Oscar, the founders of Life Bot, a voice app that helps you complete daily activities.
It's available on Amazon Alexa. To enable, say "Alexa, enable Life Bot" or click on:
https://alexa.amazon.com/spa/index.html#skills/dp/B0749C8YD5...
Alexa is useful for things like timers, music, and news, but so far, most people don't bother with Alexa apps. Voice apps are hard to find, they tend to do just one thing, and each has a different name and set of phrasing you need to remember.
Life Bot solves this by bringing the most-used features under one voice app. We've made the on-boarding process easy and have eliminated the need to visit the Alexa app. We also aren't tied to just an echo device, since users aren't always at home.
A popular feature we have is morning news - Life Bot gives your morning headlines through Alexa, but can send the full article to your phone to read up on your commute. Or you can set up a reminder to pick up milk through Alexa, and have it sent to you by text at 5pm the next day. SMS reminders are our most popular feature!
Oscar and I first started working with Alexa in 2015. We set up Europe's first "voice design agency" to build Alexa Skills for large brands. We experienced first hand the problems of discoverability, setup, and usability with Skills, and saw a huge opportunity to create the first voice app that people love.
Long term, our aim for Life Bot is that it becomes the only voice app you need – providing a consistent experience across all voice platforms and devices.
We're excited about voice as a new tech interface and are convinced of the trend in voice. In our view, it won't be long before voice interfaces will become the first port of call over a phone.
We'd love to hear your feedback on the Life Bot voice app, and looking forward to discussing anything voice related!
We'd also love to know, what do you wish Alexa could do that it can't already? <comment><USER2> I installed it. Its cool. However, it competes with first class features that are provided by the platform you are running on. Any successful voice platform will also have these features you will need to compete against.

Other commenters are right - your differentiators are small and Amazon could implement them with their vast resources in a sprint or two. It's just a guess, but Alexa is probably much larger when it comes to people and money backing it.

You are going to be competing with any platform you run on. It's like you are using Alexa's voice recognition component, but then rebuilding the experience on top of it. Kinda weird.

Most skills extend or compliment the platform. Now I'll have to make sure I use Lifebot instead of Alexa to get a certain feature - its a bad CX if you ask me.

How are you making money? I highly doubt Amazon is paying you to compete with them on core platform functionality.

Also - you have to you give your phone number for the SMS to work. If you have Alexa and enabled communications - it would even be easy for Amazon to implement "Alexa, send that story to Bob" and then it SMS a link to your friend. Do you have their friends contacts too? etc.

If you integrated with IFFTT, or somehow interacted with the first party features to extend them it'd be interesting, but even still then Amazon is only a few weeks away from doing any one of these things.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the detailed comments!

We do recognise that in a sense we are competing against the native features of the platforms we are running on. But this is always a risk when building on top of platforms. If you take the analogy of mobile - iOS and Android both have native apps for things like notes and reminders - but this doesn't stop 3rd parties creating better versions of them for people that want a bit more in terms of functionality. This is what we're trying to do with Life Bot.

Right now our differentiators may be small, but people are finding them useful and we're working hard to add more based on the feedback we're getting. (Stay tuned!)

Whilst Amazon and Google could have teams sitting there looking out for popular voice apps they could copy features from and implement natively, based on the big pushes they are making to try and bring 3rd party developers to the platform, in my opinion it would be a strange thing for them to do if they just constantly copied the popular ones as native features.

For example the way I see it is that for Amazon, the goal is to get more people shopping through voice. By building an great productivity experience on top of Alexa we're not going against this, in fact we think we'll aid it by the fact more people will want to buy the devices because of the features of Life Bot.

On the invocation --> Having to say "Life Bot" as well as Alexa or Google is additional work for the user, but we think that this is worth it for the enhanced features.

On monetisation --> there are definitely options available to us, for example premium features. But as I'm sure you've seen by testing the product we're still quite early and won't be doing this anytime soon. Amazon are also paying the top skill developers quite significant amounts ([https://developer.amazon.com/alexa-skills- kit/rewards](https://developer.amazon.com/alexa-skills-kit/rewards)) if your a developer looking for a bit of extra $ I would definitely check that out!

On contact sharing --> This is something we don't do currently but are exploring as it's been requested quite a few times.

Hopefully that explains our view on all your points - thanks again for testing out the Skill and sharing such detailed feedback!

<comment><USER2> > Whilst Amazon and Google could have teams sitting there looking out for > popular voice apps they could copy features from and implement natively, > based on the big pushes they are making to try and bring 3rd party > developers to the platform, in my opinion it would be a strange thing for > them to do if they just constantly copied the popular ones as native > features.

Every single successful platform does exactly this. Facebook, Google, Apple.

> On the invocation --> Having to say "Life Bot" as well as Alexa or Google is > additional work for the user, but we think that this is worth it for the > enhanced features.

As someone who has an Echo Show, an Echo dot, and an original echo, I can tell you that the friction added by having to say the skill name makes me never use it. I can imagine this is the case for a vast majority of non-power users who don't use IFTTT or some other niche skill.

> On monetisation --> there are definitely options available to us, for > example premium features. But as I'm sure you've seen by testing the product > we're still quite early and won't be doing this anytime soon. Amazon are > also paying the top skill developers quite significant amounts > ([https://developer.amazon.com/alexa-skills- > kit/rewards](https://developer.amazon.com/alexa-skills-kit/rewards)) if your > a developer looking for a bit of extra $ I would definitely check that out!

Your payment is based on your ability to keep your replacement experiences better than Amazons and all of their competitors, as well as all of the other skills that can focus on just one of your features and out-sprint you.

Looks like you have a lot of experience building skills and thinking about voice interactions. If I were you - I'd focus on providing something truly unique through voice - something that Apple, Google, or Amazon can't squash you with by sneezing. Even all the stuff covered in your tech crunch article is already done by competitors in some form.

I wish you luck. I don't expect you to find a way to monetize this faster than Google Amazon or Apple will find a way to monetize skills in general, in which case you'll be competing against niche apps for every feature you provide under the life bot umbrella. This will spread you thin. And I would be totally surprised if you raised money on the idea.

Sorry for the hyper critical feedback. Y'all seem super passionate and I want to see more cool voice apps for my Echo. But I can't help but feel many skills developers are simply re-inventing the wheel.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is an interesting play in the voice space...kind of reminds me of the role Dropbox has played in online storage vs GOOG, MSFT, AAPL, AMZN, etc. By being platform agnostic, users can get a unified and better experience across their devices.

Right now voice is cool, but to me it's a little bit of a gimmicky feature that acts differently across devices from different ecosystems. It makes it that much harder to universally change my behavior toward voice across the different devices I use. I can see how Life Bot could change that.

Have you guys thought about the ecosystem dynamics for Life Bot? Do you think the big players will play nice if you start to own the voice relationship with the user, instead of AMZN/GOOG/MSFT/AAPL?

<comment><USER4> hey! thanks so much for your comment. That last point is a good one - the way we see it is that the big players have to be nice - because there is so much competition between them - it would dis-encourage the developer community from dedicating time to building amazing voice experiences if they started making the platform less open or blocking certain features. So far we've worked really closely with the Alexa and the Google team when developing Life Bot and both have been really supportive and helpful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I sort of get the cross device thing, but who owns, uses and switches between multiple voice assistant devices?

Seems sort of like an Echo/Home plus, where you could just get crushed if Amazon starts adding the ability to send texts or something.

<comment><AUTHOR> Right now your right probably not many people, but as digital assistants get integrated into more and more devices this will become a problem for a lot of people!

Agree Amazon could just add SMS to their reminders - but we're working on a whole lot more features that we think can be Echo / Home + as you say!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> "Life Bot solves this by bringing the most-used features under one voice app."

The most used features are able to be asked to Alexa directly.

Are you helping users that may not want to set up IFTTT triggers for actions?

<comment><AUTHOR> You're right that Alexa does a lot of these features natively, but what we're trying to do is make each one better for users.

For example with reminders, we allow users to get notified of the reminders they set where ever they are via SMS. Or for news we give users the option of texting the full article to their phone.

Right now we're starting with simple productivity features, but going forward we want to make it easier for Alexa users to interact with other third party services without having to enable a whole bunch of different Skills.

IFTTT is a great service but a lot of Alexa users aren't familiar with it.

<comment><USER7> "For example with reminders, we allow users to get notified of the reminders they set where ever they are via SMS."

This was my #1 most desired feature!! Thank you

<comment><AUTHOR> No worries! Great to hear!! :)

If there's anything else you'd like to see added just let me know at email@example.com

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Do you have a website? Am interested to learn more but I don't have any Alexa- enabled devices, so I can't really use your link.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes you can find more info at [http://www.asklifebot.com](http://www.asklifebot.com)

Right now we're just on Alexa but will be coming to other platforms very soon!

<comment><USER9> wrong twitter link on your home page

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!! :) - updated!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Hey everyone I'm Jess the other cofounder of Life Bot thanks for all your comments so far

</comment><comment><USER10> The Life Bot has been really great and responsive around their private Facebook group.

They shared that they will be opening up a developer friendly API to allow easy integrations with Alexa.

Im looking forward to this.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!

We're working on ways for developers to enhance Life Bot - stay tuned! :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> IFTT (www.iftt.com) will also provide SMS reminders through Alexa.

<comment><USER4> hey! thanks for your comment. We recognise that IFTT can do reminders, but our aim with Life Bot is to hide as much of the setup process as possible from our users. For example the set up process is really easy with Life Bot. On 1st time use, we ask for their phone number which they speak, then we text them asking for their name and email. The next time they open the skill we confirm their time zone and then they are ready to go with the reminders feature.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Hey .. see a good monetization strategy will be hyper local shopping.. give something for local players to compete with Amazon..

</comment><comment><USER13> I'm still confused at what voice app is. And the link takes me a to a login page- there's you first problem in terms of discover-ability...

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks - agree discoverability is an issue on Alexa! If you have an Alexa device just say "Alexa, enabled Life Bot". Or you can enable directly from amazon.com at this link:

[https://www.amazon.com/www-asklifebot-com-Life- Bot/dp/B0749C...](https://www.amazon.com/www-asklifebot-com-Life- Bot/dp/B0749C8YD5)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Sounds cool, I don't have an Echo though. When can I get this on my other devices?

<comment><USER4> Hey! thanks for your comment. We're launching on Google Assistant in a couple of weeks so watch out for that. After that we'll launch on Cortana as well. We keep everyone updated on our fb group about new releases if you wanted to join :) [https://www.facebook.com/groups/lifebot/](https://www.facebook.com/groups/lifebot/)

<comment><USER14> Joined! Looking forward to trying this out, thanks

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> What was your uniq selling point for YC?

<comment><USER12> I think yc is looking more towards founders than problems being solved.. Makes sense too for early stage ventures..

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Why? What problem is this solving?

<comment><AUTHOR> Right now, the biggest problem Life Bot solves for Alexa users is that we bring voice reminders out of the home - If you set a reminder using Alexa, it's only useful if you're around the device to hear it go off. Life Bot sends you your reminder via SMS so where ever you are you'll get it!

As we add more productivity features to Life Bot, we're also removing the need for user's to remember multiple invocation names for different skills.

Finally in the future we see people having to use multiple voice assistants during their day. You might have an Amazon Echo at home, but an Android phone with Google Assistant on it, and maybe even Cortana in your car. Life Bot will be on all platforms which will give you a consistent experience across all of them.

<comment><USER16> Cross platform is a selling point for me at least.

Will you integrate with standard calendar technology? E.g. caldav etc?

I'm still not convinced that voice is a platform - it seems like more of a feature to me...

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes calendar integration will be included in the next release - we're going to start with Google Calendar but will add more of the most popular calendar services as we go.

I'm not 100% familiar with caldav but will look into it!

In terms of voice as a feature vs. platform - I think right now it appears to many to be a feature, because the quality and capability of voice apps is just not that great. Most voice apps offer a sub-set of the functionality available on mobile or web, so from a phycological point of view when you use one it feels like just a small (and often not as good) feature of the main product. However as the accuracy of the underlying speech to text and natural language understanding of these platforms gets better, and as the capability of voice apps gets better, we see voice becoming a much more easy and natural way for people to access their favourite products, services, and content.

Whenever you want something, you'll just ask your assistant, and because you may be using multiple platforms, we think Life Bot will be the best way to do this that maintains the context of what you like / don't like.

Definitely still early days though - but that's the vision!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Cool! Installed :D

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome! Would love to hear your feedback!!</comment></comment>


New Advice On How to Survive Nuclear Attack - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/16/science/16terror.html?hp

<comment><USER2> "Duck and cover" has always been about as good advice as you can get.

Now I grew up in the '60s, within 30 miles of a cluster of Titan missile silos, practically surrounded by them (one of them blew up in the '80s! What fun that was!) So I knew that I could duck and cover till the cows came down and it wouldn't do any good. Because I'd be incandescent gas.

However, in my grade school and teenage nightmares it was Russian HBombs that I was obsessing about. Terrorist bombs are likely to be much smaller, closer to the size of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs. Or smaller. So "assuming the position" is actually pretty good advice if you aren't killed instantly.

Staying put to avoid fallout is another issue. It depends on how close to the blast you are, and what the prevailing winds are doing. If I were in a good spot, say a building basement or the subway, I'd probably stick with it. In a car or a heavily damaged frame building, I dunno. The roads are likely to be impassable, so the best bet might be to head for a larger, building basement or other underground structure.

Assuming the current inhabitants are taking in stragglers...

The article is amazingly light on analysis and actual advice.

Well, another reason to keep those wind up radios around.

<comment><USER3> The bombs are also much more likely to be ground detonated, which changes the equation a bit. Particularly it means a much reduced blast radius, but a higher amount of fallout. That's where this advice comes from. The government is trying to save lives by reducing as much exposure to fallout as they possibly can. In this case, retreating to your basement is definitely a good idea.

<comment><USER2> The trouble with all advice like this is that it all really depends on conditions on the ground and where you are.

If you are upwind of the blast, and a reasonable distance away, it might make sense to make a run for areas not effected by the blast and out of the immediate fallout pattern. Especially if there is an effort to rescue and remove survivors from the area underway. During an actual nuclear war there is unlikely to be any organized efforts by the surviving government, but after a terrorist attack, there will almost certainly be. And hopefully they will be broadcasting on emergency frequencies, hence the wind up radio.

If you are in the fallout area, unless you are in a well stocked fallout shelter, you are probably screwed. Rescue efforts are likely to be minimal for weeks. Food and water will be a problem. Not to mention people who've been wandering around in the fallout wanting to share your hidy hole. It could be pretty grim.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> From the practical point of view:

wouldn't it be the easiest to make a TV entertainment series that would play in a nuclear apocalyptic scenario and include 60-ish style warnings of what to do when you see a mushroom?

Maybe something fallout style? This would not make anyone panic, as it's entertainment, but the message would go into subconsciousness to most.

<comment><USER5> > include 60-ish style warnings of what to do when you see a mushroom?

Before the mushroom too. Like when the tide goes out before a tsunami.

I remember watching the 'Day After' a long time ago and in one scene is everyone on a highway - and all of their cars suddenly die/stall. I assume this is EMP blast related?

<comment><USER6> It was EMP related. IIRC, it was explained previously in the film and I believe that there was some special effect to suggest an explosion had taken place in the stratosphere.

By the way, Jason Robard's character did one educational thing: bending (I hope that's the right word) as much as he can behind the dashboard.

Also the movie featured prominently a white noodle-like dust rain that had that charming effect of making people bald.

There was another film with William Hart (can anybody remember the title?) about a post-apocalyptic world where most electronics are fried due to EMP.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Apparently the first step is logging on to the NY Times. I didn't get any further than that.

<comment><USER8> <http://www.bugmenot.com/view/nytimes.com>

<comment><USER7> You know that's not the point. If the NY Times wants me to read their articles they should not make it difficult.

<comment><USER9> In general, I agree with you. However, the NY Times is not just some random site on the Internet. It's one of the best sources for actual, meaningful content. So I make an exception for them, and have for more than ten years now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> back in the 1960s, USDA drew up several sets of plans for ag facilities, and homes, that contain fallout shelters. LSUAgCenter has a few of them still posted...

Three Bedroom House with Emergency Shelter [http://www.lsuagcenter.com/en/our_offices/departments/Biolog...](http://www.lsuagcenter.com/en/our_offices/departments/Biological_Ag_Engineering/Features/Extension/Building_Plans/residential/3_br/Three+Bedroom+House+with+Emergency+Shelter.htm)

Bunker-type Fallout Shelter (for beef cattle) [http://www.lsuagcenter.com/en/our_offices/departments/Biolog...](http://www.lsuagcenter.com/en/our_offices/departments/Biological_Ag_Engineering/Features/Extension/Building_Plans/beef/equipment/Bunkertype+Fallout+Shelter.htm)

Stall Barn & Fallout Shelter [http://www.lsuagcenter.com/en/our_offices/departments/Biolog...](http://www.lsuagcenter.com/en/our_offices/departments/Biological_Ag_Engineering/Features/Extension/Building_Plans/dairy/housing/Stall+Barn++Fallout+Shelter.htm)

Fallout Shelter, Dairy Barn & Family Center [http://www.lsuagcenter.com/en/our_offices/departments/Biolog...](http://www.lsuagcenter.com/en/our_offices/departments/Biological_Ag_Engineering/Features/Extension/Building_Plans/dairy/housing/Fallout+Shelter+Dairy+Barn++Family+Center.htm)

</comment><comment><USER11> Finally. Some sense has been added to radiation attacks. Getting inside a building or making sure there is any sort of barrier between you and ionizing radiation is the best thing you can do.

</comment><comment><USER12> Children of the Dust is a great book about what happens after a Nuclear attack - conclusion - best thing is to die.

</comment><comment><USER13> Wow, it takes me back to when I was in elementary school and we practiced going to the fallout shelters in the basement ...

</comment><comment><USER14> I can't get to the article, asks me to login!

<comment><USER15> Then you aren't on the list of chosen ones.

<comment><USER14> yeah, I understand what's going on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The more survivable a nuclear war is perceived to be, the more likely nuclear war becomes.

<comment><USER17> True with rational actors. Massive nation states in the 20th century tended towards a certain degree of rationality by their ponderous nature. Cold war dogma will have to be updated in an era when you can not count on rationality from the actors possessing nuclear weapons, where small sets of individuals or potentially even individuals can control when and where they detonate.

Emphasizing the _un_ survivability of a nuclear war _encourages_ terrorists and marginal, rogue nation states and feeds into their ideation of "Once I have a nuke, they'll have to take me seriously!", a dynamic we can already see in the world. If you want to consider the effects of propaganda on world behavior (severed from the question of the truth of the propaganda), a good case can be made that now is the time to _under_ state the dangers of nuclear weapons, that they are in the end just fairly large bombs, etc. Or perhaps just tell the truth, which is that they are dangerous and devastating, yes, but their effects have historically been overstated for the reasons discussed above.

Also, remember, part of what makes these nation states marginal is their lack of solid leadership and control. Iran right now thinks that a nuke is their meal ticket, but based on my reading of their own internal turmoil I would consider it a nontrivial possibility that if a nuke does show up there very significant internecine conflicts would begin and it's impossible to know who would actually end up with it; even if the current leadership retained control of the country the nuke may end up with somebody else. (Actually, the probability of the Iranian nuke actually ending up going off _in Iran_ due to internal conflicts I would consider nontrivial, though certainly low odds relatively speaking.)

<comment><USER16> Hiroshima and Nagasaki were relatively tiny nuclear bombs. The results were absolute devastation of the sort that most nations rightly don't want to endure.

It isn't world-ending apocalyptic if North Korea launched its entire arsenal, but it would be _incredibly devastating_ , which is exactly why the world treats it with such kid gloves. No one is overstating the concern regarding that, and a nuclear attack on Tokyo or, less likely, the West Coast of the US, would be horrifying.

Just to go back to Japan for a moment, note that in most world conflicts the decision to be aggressive or not is a very selfish one from the perspective of leadership: Leaders and peoples who feel that they and their family are impervious, or at least reasonably impervious, are far more likely to engage in and prolong conflict. To talk terrorism for a moment, as that has come up, NY city residents, as a general rule, tend to be against US oversea actions, whereas people in rural states -- where the risk of so-called "blowback" is dramatically reduced -- are far more emboldened.

The world faces incredible peril if the people with their finger on the button, so to speak, can do so with any comfort that they themselves will ultimately be okay.

<comment><USER18> No, the world faces incredible peril _because_ the people who will sooner or later have their finger on the button _don't care_ whether they (or at least their physical bodies) are ultimately OK.

Mutually assured destruction is not a problem for terrorists or suicide bombers who feel that their own martyrdom would be of benefit to them.

<comment><USER16> Terrorists aren't as inhuman and single-minded as you've been essentially brainwashed into thinking. They have the same motivations as most other human beings. In many cases the "harem of virgins" is a Western ruse, and really they are looking out for their family that often benefits from significant "bereavement" payments.

It's interesting how many Western movies include the _heroes_ essentially committing suicidal acts. That's commendable. Terrorists...well they're just irrationally crazy!

Further, to carry out a terrorist plot the actors usually need substantial support by people who aren't as...committed (see: Osama himself). Syria, for instance, was often considered a major sponsor, or at least facilitator, of terror, but since the Afghanistan war they've been one of the most committed to making sure terrorism is stopped. There are a lot of such middlemen who have selfish reasons to ensure that terrorism does not occur.

I find the concept, though, that nuclear weapons are only sought because of some sort of incorrect illusion of their effectiveness to be simply shocking. Does anyone really believe that? Does anyone really believe that even at the most "pessimistic", a nuclear weapon would be at least a thousand times more effective than anything any terrorist could dream up?

<comment><USER17> "Terrorists aren't as inhuman and single-minded as you've been essentially brainwashed into thinking. They have the same motivations as most other human beings."

As a whole, this is true of the leadership. This is virtually true by definition because being that inhuman and single-minded is incompatible with leadership and anybody who tries fails as a leader. Unfortunately, the way they lead is to fire very very potent memetic weaponry around with relatively wild abandon and they do unfortunately end up producing True Believers in quantity. We know this, because a suicide bomber almost by definition has to be a True Believer, and suicide bombers definitely exist. I would tend to agree that _most_ terrorist leadership would rather use the nuke as a stick to beat people with rather than fire it but I am uncomfortable with the scenario in which one or more True Believers come to believe that their leadership are actually traitors and in their True Belief fire the weapon anyhow. Terrorists build their structures around some very toxic and volatile belief structures and we are justified in being very concerned about the combination of that and nuclear weaponry. Perhaps not "terrified" but certainly a matter of justifiable international concern. (I would reserve _terrified_ for 5-15 years in the future when biological warfare becomes easy enough for them.)

It only takes one True Believer.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Imgur: Introducing GIFV - <AUTHOR> http://imgur.com/blog/2014/10/09/introducing-gifv/

<comment><USER2> Why not go the webm way like 4chan did? (soundless, limited size webm)

<comment><USER3> ive seen webms with sound. i mean heard them..

<comment><USER2> Webms have sound.

4chan allow webms as long as they are soundless and are, at most, 2 MB. It works as a replacement to gifs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> So... they were losing eyes to gfycat and decided to copy them?

</comment><comment><USER3> is this in anyway related to webm?

Quality looks very good either way.

<comment><USER5> It is an mp4 video.</comment></comment>


A Rose in a Glass by Any Other Name Is a Crack Pipe (2012) - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/daviddisalvo/2012/07/12/a-rose-in-a-glass-by-any-other-name-is-a-crack-pipe/ <comment><USER2> He learned that 3 years ago? They've been around since the 80's</comment>


Tool AIs want to be agent AIs - <AUTHOR> http://www.gwern.net/Tool%20AI <comment><USER2> I highly recommend the book referenced in the article: Nick Bostrom's _Superintelligence_.

[https://www.amazon.com/Superintelligence-Dangers- Strategies-...](https://www.amazon.com/Superintelligence-Dangers-Strategies- Nick-Bostrom-ebook/dp/B00LOOCGB2)

It has helped me make informed, realistic judgments about the path AI research needs to take. It and related works should be in the vocabulary of anybody working towards AI.

<comment><USER3> Every time I encounter Bostrom's writing, I think of this Von Neumann quote:

"There's no sense in being precise when you don't even know what you're talking about."

Bostrom is one of those medieval cartographers drawing fantastical beasts in the blank spots of continents which he has never visited.

<comment><USER4> Bless you for saying it.

The analogy I like to use for our understanding of AI is alchemy. We threw Sir Isaac Goddamned Newton at chemistry and he couldn't make forward progress, because the tools were not precise enough. Similarly, we just don't understand minds enough yet to formulate sensible questions about AI.

This doesn't bother Bostrom. He builds castles of thought in the air, and then climbs up into them.

<comment><USER5> > Similarly, we just don't understand minds enough yet to formulate sensible > questions about AI.

We most certainly do understand enough to formulate questions, and even answer some of them. The problem is that the people making the most noise (Bostrom et al) are not trained in neuroscience or computer science, nor do they have practical experience in deploying working systems. They have about as much training and expertise as science fiction writers, and the end result is similar.

<comment><USER6> > The problem is that the people making the most noise (Bostrom et al) are not > trained in neuroscience or computer science…

This is incorrect. Among his degrees, Bostrom has a master's in computational neuroscience. His arguments have also convinced PhD neuroscientists (such as Sam Harris) and computer scientists (such as Stuart Russell) about the potential dangers of AI.

<comment><USER7> Degrees don't matter, publications do.

<comment><USER5> Particularly when that degree is from a single year program and now 20 years old, in a field that has been revolutionized multiple times in he interim. It's a bit like someone saying they are a web developer because they went through an App Academy like boot camp in 1996, if such a thing existed. King's College is bit more prestigious than that, sure, but content wise it is a fair comparison.

It would be a different story if he published in the meantime, but he did not. Nor did he work on practical projects in industry or anything. He shifted gears to philosophical speculation which he has done since.

<comment><USER6> Not only are you moving the goalposts, but you are again incorrect. Since 1999, Bostrom has authored four books and published over 30 articles in peer- reviewed journals.

There are good arguments to be made against Bostrom's _Superintelligence_ , but malignments and surface analogies aren't appropriate. Please engage the ideas, not the man.

<comment><USER5> Published in the field of neuroscience or computer science?

Read what I wrote again please. I think you misinterpreted.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Check out Gwern's Reinforcement Learning subreddit. He's practically supporting this subreddit by himself.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/reinforcementlearning/](https://www.reddit.com/r/reinforcementlearning/)

</comment><comment><USER9> This is excellent. If you want to see what real discussion of an AGI alignment issue looks like, please read this.

</comment><comment><USER10> What about the relative size of the available datasets? It seems like that would make offline learning much more valuable than learning directly from experience.

The largest publicly available research datasets for machine translation are 2-3 million sentences [1]. Google's internal datasets are "two to three decimal orders of magnitudes bigger than the WMT corpora for a given language pair" [2].

That's far more data than a cell phone's translation app would receive over its entire lifetime. Similarly, the amount of driving data collected by Tesla from all its cars will be much larger than the data received by any single car.

This suggests that most learning will happen as a batch process, ahead of time. There may be some minor adjustments for personalization, but it doesn't seem like it's enough for Agent AI to outcompete Tool AI.

At least so far, it seems far more important to be in a position to collect large amounts of data from millions of users, rather than learning directly from experience, which happens slowly and expensively.

This is not about having a human check every individual result. It's about putting a software development team in the loop. Each new release can go through a QA process where it's compared to the previous release.

[1] [https://github.com/bicici/ParFDAWMT14](https://github.com/bicici/ParFDAWMT14) [2] [https://research.googleblog.com/2016/09/a-neural-network- for...](https://research.googleblog.com/2016/09/a-neural-network-for- machine.html)

<comment><USER11> Offline batch learning is not contradictory to reinforcement learning. It just requires that it be an off-policy RL algorithm, which happily, many, like DQN, are.

> Similarly, the amount of driving data collected by Tesla from all its cars > will be much larger than the data received by any single car.

Well, Tesla benefits from the fact that its cars are already agents, acting in the real world. So using it as a counter-example doesn't really work... You would need to imagine some sort of counterfactual Tesla which eschewed any real-world deployment or simulators. Which no one would ever do because the usefulness of trying to create a self-driving car database without agents or reinforcement learning is so obviously zero.

And anyway, most of Tesla's data, however, will be totally useless. You can train a simple lane-following CNN with a few hours of footage (as Geohotz demonstrated), but another million hours of highway driving is near-useless and doesn't get you much closer to self-driving cars (as perhaps Geohot also inadvertently demonstrated). What you need is the weird outliers which drive accident rates. So for example, the Google self-driving car team doesn't depend purely on collected data even from its agents, but simulates very rare scenarios as well. (If I may quote myself: "You need the _right_ data, not more data.")

> This suggests that most learning will happen as a batch process, ahead of > time. There may be some minor adjustments for personalization, but it > doesn't seem like it's enough for Agent AI to outcompete Tool AI.

Even if we imagine that the dataset covers all possible sequences and doesn't need any kind of finetuning the loss, the agent AIs in this scenario are still going to benefit from actions over (going by section): 'internal to a computation', 'internal to training', 'internal to design', and 'internal to data selection'. In fact, if you want to have any hope of running effectively over extremely large datasets like hundreds of millions of sentences, you are going to effectively require some of those to keep training time tractable and runtime cheap (even Google can't afford a million TPUs for Google Translate). For example, regular hyperparameter optimization using a few dozen examples doesn't look very good when it takes a month on a GPU cluster to train a single model, but using a meta-RL RNN to do some transfer learning and pick out near-optimal architectures & hyperparameters in just a few iterations looks pretty nice.

<comment><USER10> I think you're missing a distinction that makes self-driving cars not really agents.

I haven't seen reports that any self-driving cars learn to drive better in real time. Instead the data is collected and used to improve the software. There might be frequent software releases (perhaps even every day) but this isn't quite the same thing.

An offline learning process seems considerably more predictable. The release engineers can test each release to see how it would behave under various extreme conditions.

It's not clear that there's a compelling reason to switch to true online learning. Self-driving cars will improve over time, but not to the point where new training data gathered at 9am should make a significant difference to how the car drives at 6pm. Probably this year's model will drive better than last year's, but the changes are likely to be gradual.

As you say, there are diminishing returns to gathering more data, which suggests that in many domains, updating the software in real time won't be a competitive advantage. Unless it's a system that's reacting to breaking news, the delta in training data gathered in the last 24 hours is unlikely to make a huge difference.

<comment><USER12> > As far as I know, self-driving cars don't learn to drive better in real > time. Instead the data is collected and used to improve the software. There > might be frequent software releases (perhaps even every day) but this isn't > quite the same thing.

Most self-driving cars probably use some variant of local search[1]. In this case it probably doesn't matter if the agent learns offline or online.

[1] [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_search_(optimization)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_search_\(optimization\))

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I firmly believe that general AI will not be developed without agency for the AI. The "info only" helper AI (called Tool AI) means that information will have to be added manually by some intelligent agent (human or otherwise). No exploration of how actions and interactions affect results can be explored.

Tool AIs will never "want" anything because the meaning of want will be completely foreign.

<comment><USER8> You're not alone. Yann LeCun's famous cake analogy associates the cherry on the top with reinforcement learning (agency, being a part of an environment from which it can learn and explore).

I especially liked this passage. It connects many ideas onto one theme:

> CNNs with adaptive computations will be computationally faster for a given > accuracy rate than fixed-iteration CNNs, CNNs with attention classify better > than CNNs without attention, CNNs with focus over their entire dataset will > learn better than CNNs which only get fed random images, CNNs which can ask > for specific kinds of images do better than those querying their dataset, > CNNs which can trawl through Google Images and locate the most informative > one will do better still, CNNs which access rewards from their user about > whether the result was useful will deliver more relevant results, CNNs whose > hyperparameters are automatically optimized by an RL algorithm will perform > better than CNNs with handwritten hyperparameters, CNNs whose architecture > as well as standard hyperparameters are designed by RL agents will perform > better than handwritten CNNs… and so on. (It's actions all the way down.)

This is the general trend. Going meta, through RL. Optimize the optimizer, learn gradient descent by gradient descent.

<comment><USER11> > learn gradient descent by gradient descent.

As far as 'learning gradient descent by gradient descent' goes, I think it's still an open question if a tiny RNN actually can improve meaningfully over ADAM etc :) I don't recall the paper showing any wallclock times, which suggested to me that the RNN was way slower even if it trained faster. The individual parameter adjustments are so low in the hierarchy of actions that the value may be minimal compared to higher up like architecture design.

<comment><USER14> What paper are you referencing?

<comment><USER15> I assume this [https://arxiv.org/abs/1606.04474](https://arxiv.org/abs/1606.04474) (since the title is basically the quoted text)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> If you have a decision process of some kind you can get more value out of it if you can link it to a utility function in which the "tool" tries to maximize the value it creates.

It's tough enough to get value out of A.I. that this trick should not be left on the table. Thus Tool A.I.s need to be Agent A.I.s to maximize their potential.

</comment><comment><USER17> The question is what happens when "what we want" is replaced with "what you should want if you were more intelligent". Sorry Dave.

</comment><comment><USER18> It seems most of these arguments apply equally well to the problem of solving AI value alignment, or of preventing the development of AI at all. (I.e., it's cheaper and faster to race ahead without worrying about value alignment.) But that doesn't make us conclude that value alignment is impossible, just hard to achieve soon enough in the real world.

Yes, we should be aware of the limitations and market instability of tool AI, but I think it's unjustified to suggest that tool AI is essentially impossible ("highly unstable equilibrium") and all we can hope to do is solve value alignment.

<comment><USER11> > It seems most of these arguments apply equally well to the problem of > solving AI value alignment

Only somewhat. There are not repeated practical demonstrations, nor is there any really good theoretical reasons, to think that value alignment mechanisms would be seriously and systematically detrimental to performance & cost in the same way that we have for reinforcement learning/active learning/sequential trials/etc. You can reuse my little trivial proof to argue that UFAIs >= FAIs, but of course they could just be == on intelligence. Then FAIs can be a relatively stable equilibrium because they are not instantly outclassed by any fast-growing UFAI. Contrast that with Tool AIs where everyone who cooperates is at enormous disadvantage to one defector, and defectors have large and growing rewards.

> But that doesn't make us conclude that value alignment is impossible, just > hard to achieve soon enough in the real world.

I'm not sure anyone seriously thinks that value alignment will be easy to achieve, much less at sufficient scale.

(It's weird to try to reason that 'value alignment looks hard for the same reason that Tool AI looks hard; but we can do value alignment, thus, we can do Tool AI as well'. Maybe we can't do either? We desperately _want_ value alignment to work, but the universe doesn't owe us anything.)

<comment><USER18> > There are not repeated practical demonstrations, nor is there any really > good theoretical reasons, to think that value alignment mechanisms would be > seriously and systematically detrimental to performance & cost in the same > way that we have for reinforcement learning/active learning/sequential > trials/etc. You can reuse my little trivial proof to argue that UFAIs >= > FAIs, but of course they could just be == on intelligence. Then FAIs can be > a relatively stable equilibrium because they are not instantly outclassed by > any fast-growing UFAI.

Some vaguely similar arguments:

1\. The race by organizations to develop AI is slowed >10% by worrying about friendliness. In a big efficient global marketplace, the winning organizations will almost certainly be ones who ignored friendliness.

2\. A seed AI which is amoral can take immoral actions not available to a moral AI. Even a tiny advantage amplifies over time because of the exponential nature of recursive self-improvement. So the first super intelligent AI will be immoral.

3\. Nations who obtain nuclear weapons have immense power. Even if most nations decide not to obtain them, or only obtain them for peaceful purposes, at least a few will get them and then use them to take over the Earth. Therefore, the Earth will be taken over completely by a nuclear-armed nation.

All of these arguments have some merit, but none are strong/inevitable. They all require quantification and comparison against countervailing forces (e.g., the effect of laws, the moral motivations of nearby human programmers, the counterthreat provided by many allied nations/AIs).

> (It's weird to try to reason that 'value alignment looks hard for the same > reason that Tool AI looks hard; but we can do value alignment, thus, we can > do Tool AI as well'. Maybe we can't do either? We desperately want value > alignment to work, but the universe doesn't owe us anything.)

I'm not making any sorts of claims like that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Glad to see this articulated so well. The 'Overall' paragraph sums up thoughts that had been in the back of my mind for months. Plus, hey, it's Gwern. If you're reading this: you're an inspiration, man.

What is still unclear -- to me at least -- is the technical challenges that lie ahead of this "neural networks all the way down" approach. I get the impression we'll need quite a few breakthroughs before usable Agent AIs are a thing. Insights on the order of importance as, say, backpropagation and using GPUs.

<comment><USER20> Meta- reinforcement learning could prove to be such breakthrough, see [1],[2]. Also next generation ASIC accelerators (Google's TPU, Nervana) can give 10x increase in NN performance over a GPU manufactured on the same process, with another 10x possible with some form of binarized weights, e.g. BNN, XNOR-net. There are also interesting techniques to update the model's parameters in a sparse manner.

So, there certainly is a lot of room left for performance improvements!

1\. [https://arxiv.org/abs/1611.05763](https://arxiv.org/abs/1611.05763) 2\. [https://arxiv.org/abs/1611.02779](https://arxiv.org/abs/1611.02779)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I think all AIs in my lifetime will simply be Chinese Rooms

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

<comment><USER11> The Chinese room argument is irrelevant here.

<comment><USER22> is it? It seemed to me like author assumes AI decision making will be roughly equivalent to biological decision making, just faster. I thought one of the Chinese room arguments is that biological decisions will always be "different" than AI ones.

Also it seemed like the author assumes great technological advances in AIs, but not in biology. If we're gonna dream shit up why not dream that brains in the future will be 10,000 times as dense and computers won't be able to keep up except as tools.

<comment><USER11> The point of the Chinese room argument is that while the room receives and emits Chinese just like any Chinaman, it isn't _conscious_. As the WP article makes clear, the assumption is that the Chinese room is just as competent at emitting Chinese:

"Suppose, says Searle, that this computer performs its task so convincingly that it comfortably passes the Turing test: it convinces a human Chinese speaker that the program is itself a live Chinese speaker. To all of the questions that the person asks, it makes appropriate responses, such that any Chinese speaker would be convinced that they are talking to another Chinese- speaking human being."

> If we're gonna dream shit up why not dream that brains in the future will be > 10,000 times as dense

Because... that is not a thing which is happening. And deep learning and AI progress are things that are happening. (Quite aside from the many issues with your proposal, like a brain 10kx as powerful due to 10kx density would probably break thermodynamic limits on computation and of course cook itself to death within seconds.)

<comment><USER22> whats not a thing thats actually happening? Drugs and other procedures that increase synaptic/neural density are indeed happening.

Like i mentioned, i don't know all the AI terminology but isn't there an unresolved argument that ai architecture in the short run can't mimic biological decision making, and so the decisions will always be different/ tasks for which tool AI will be better to help the biological decision making processes?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Abandoned America - <AUTHOR> https://www.abandonedamerica.us/ <comment><USER3> From an European perspective Americans have a much more "if it's broke, leave" perspective. It may be to do with a expansive Western Mythos ("Go West young man"), or with extreme poverty forcing a move ala the dustbowl, or simply that regional differences are low (same language, laws, licensing and currency from coast to coast)

I am not sure if it is a good thing or not - but a huge amount of the problems with States not being able to adjust their currency exchange rates have simply been dealt with by making people in the losing states move to get jobs. (This is what we in EU expect to see with Greece - exchange rates are a much _nicer_ solution)

I was looking for data for this "propensity to relocate" but cannot find anything sensible. It does seem different than rural to city transfers.

<comment> kube-system Americans tend to relocate very often, relatively speaking to the rest of the world, IIRC.

I think there may be some inherent sample biasing going on. I'm here because some European dude a few generations ago decided to move halfway around the world for a chance at a different opportunity, and I'd bet that influenced the risk tolerance of his kids as well.

<comment><USER4> You seem to be forgetting that that also generally requires some European gal to come over, too. That's a lot more risk tolerance!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If you enjoy this type of stuff, you may also enjoy some urban exploration videos:

[https://www.youtube.com/user/TheProperPeople](https://www.youtube.com/user/TheProperPeople)

<comment><USER6> Thank you for this. The channel looks beautiful.

<comment><USER7> TheProperPeople do a really good job with their videos. Some of the best no thrills UrbEx.

<comment><USER8> They're the best of the channels I've seen, but that's not saying much, because nothing compares to being there. For one thing, and it's not a _small_ thing - you can experience a place without having a content creator constantly yattering away at you. Granted, not everybody has the ability or the resources to do any kind of trespassing-as-a-hobby, and it's not as if I myself have the resources to go to the same places they do, but even just going to the abandoned factory down the street is - if, again, you can do it - <USER2> worthwhile than their entire channel.

<comment><USER9> "you can experience a place without having a content creator constantly yattering away at you"

That all you hear are the activities and ambient environment is one of my favorite things about Primitive Technology. Also makes them really relaxing. A nice sleep aid, too.

[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAL3JXZSzSm8AlZyD3nQdBA](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAL3JXZSzSm8AlZyD3nQdBA)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> If you're interested in the industrial sites as I am, you might find it interesting to know that the New Jersey Zinc in Palmerton, PA once had two sites: the now demolished West Plant, shown in pictures on the site, and the remaining East Plant.

The East Plant and the damage it has wrought are famously described in Bill Bryson's book A Walk in the Woods[0]. It's still standing just north of the ridge the Appalachian Trail passes by on.

When I thru-hiked in 2010, vegetation was starting to take hold on the ridge and the slope leading town to the plant, but it was still pretty barren. The experience following that ridge is unique and unlike anything else on the entirety of the trail. Even if you walked that stretch without any knowledge of what had happened, it would be pretty clear that _something_ had.

Bryson, I think rightly, takes a nuanced view of the site. It's easy to condemn the destruction and deforestation today, but most of us have benefited from the widespread use of zinc.

I wish I had popped into Palmerton to see the plant from the road instead of just from the ridge; I hiked through Lehigh Gap without hitting town, and I kind of regret it.

If you find yourself in the area and are inclined to take a hike to see the site from above, you should know that the hike up out of Lehigh Gap is both steep and completely unshaded. As long as you're in the area, it might also be of interest to know that Centralia isn't far away[1].

[0] And if you were turned off from ever picking it up by seeing the movie, I don't blame you. I assure you the book is better in every way.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centralia,_Pennsylvania](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centralia,_Pennsylvania)

<comment><USER10> OK, sorry for the reply to myself, but as a former Clevelander, I have to recommend that anybody in that area pops by the Warner and Swasey Observatory. It remains a striking building, and is blindingly easy to find/get to in Cleveland Heights. It's right in a residential area and it's unfenced. You can walk right up to it.

[https://www.abandonedamerica.us/warner-swasey- observatory](https://www.abandonedamerica.us/warner-swasey-observatory)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I grew up in Detroit, and detroiturbex.com was the first ruins porn site I remember looking at. It even has a before-and-after picture[0] of my locker at the (now demolished) Cass Tech!

[0][http://detroiturbex.com/content/schools/cass/thenandnow/img/...](http://detroiturbex.com/content/schools/cass/thenandnow/img/6.jpg)

<comment><USER12> I loved Detriot Funk too - introduced me to Urban Exploring - which I've never done enough of! [https://detroitfunk.com/rear-view- mirror/](https://detroitfunk.com/rear-view-mirror/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> BBC has a great article on an abandoned central train station in Detroit (that is not being rehabbed by Ford):

[https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/extra/KnxBMVGAcn/michigan_central...](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/extra/KnxBMVGAcn/michigan_central_detroit)

</comment><comment><USER14> Very cool.

Some pictures have the same feeling as some post-apocalyptic setting like Fallout or The Last of Us.

</comment><comment><USER15> Didn't realise that Bell Labs was also abandoned, wow!

<comment><USER16> Bell labs was abandoned, but has recently been transformed into bell works: [https://bell.works/](https://bell.works/). Was there much of last weeks and it's pretty nice. Source: New parent company is the big tenant there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Reminds me of Artificial Owl:

[http://www.artificialowl.net/](http://www.artificialowl.net/)

</comment><comment><USER18> Related: Hudson Valley Ruins

[http://www.hudsonvalleyruins.org/](http://www.hudsonvalleyruins.org/)

Sadly, many of these sites are victims of arson.

</comment><comment><USER19> One of my favorite abandoned sites on early web was "Motel 666".

This one's not too shabby: 'Places That were'. [http://www.placesthatwere.com/p/places-ive- been.html](http://www.placesthatwere.com/p/places-ive-been.html)

</comment><comment><USER20> What an amazing site! It makes me sad seeing the places near where I live (Taunton Hospital and the abandoned T trolleys)... thanks for posting.

</comment><comment><USER21> I wonder if Startcourt Mall is in their list. And how many seasons we might get if they include today's abandoned real world buildings as escenarios for new ones.

<comment><USER22> Starcourt Mall was built out of a real failing mall. It's entirely possible that in a few years it will go bankrupt and you'll be able to explore the building, even if the set dressing isn't there anymore.</comment></comment>


WTO swats down India's massive solar initiative - <AUTHOR> http://grist.org/climate-energy/wto-swats-down-indias-massive-solar-initiative/ <comment><USER2> The title is misleading. The WTO is taking issue with the protectionist provision that quotas a certain amount of solar panels that must be produced in India. This is bad for Indians and bad for the world. This kind of protectionism doesn't "create jobs" because if everyone does it, everyone is paying more for the same stuff. There is therefore less money to go around (because some of it was wasted) and thus less jobs can be paid for overall. I support the WTOs move to get rid of protectionist policies like this. India will have an easier time fulfilling its solar program without it.</comment>


ASUS Eee Pad MeMO and MeMic hands-on - <AUTHOR> http://www.engadget.com/2011/02/28/asus-eee-pad-memo-and-memic-hands-on-video/

<comment><AUTHOR> I've got to say it's nice to some some sort of novel innovation in the tablet space. Personally I think it's a pretty clever idea. In an ideal world I'd also be able to slip my sim card into the handset and have it turn into a simple phone for those times I don't want to carry the tablet.</comment>


Hate commitment? iPhone 4 goes SIM-free and unlocked in the UK - <AUTHOR> http://eu.techcrunch.com/2010/06/15/hate-commitment-iphone-4-goes-sim-free-and-unocked-in-the-uk/ <comment><AUTHOR> I'm currently using a SIM-unlocked iPhone 3G - it's great for going abroad as data roaming is stupidly expensive in most countries. Good to see Apple selling the unlocked version directly - the semi-official unlocked version of the 3GS was crazy expensive at around €800.</comment>


Tools don't solve the web's problems, they are the problem - <AUTHOR> http://quirksmode.org/blog/archives/2015/05/tools_dont_solv.html

<comment><USER2> I agree, _in theory_. Apps are faster.

No disrespect to PPK, but he needs to cite some examples.

If he's talking about jQuery, then I disagree. It's gotten faster, and it's a tiny download when you compare it to videos, images, or webfonts.

If he's talking about front-end MVC-ish frameworks, they're not completely blameless, but generally speaking, the sites that use them _feel_ fast once you get past the initial load.

I think his premise is off. He's talking about front-end performance. Tools aren't the problem. Content is the problem.

Images are huge. Videos are huge. What we need are tools to help us get around this. And we're getting them. Talk to any serious front-end developer, and they'll tell you all about what they're doing to improve performance. Critical CSS, asynchronous CSS and JS, the picture element, Web Page Test, PageSpeed, better Inspector tools, etc. Even Google Fonts warns you very clearly about the impact your choices will have on download times. There's no shortage of tools, but tools aren't the problem.

There's no denying that the web can be faster, but we've been doing an admirable job of keeping up with rich content.

<comment><USER3> I downloaded a themeforest website template the other day. It was a pretty simple admin site, whole bunch of HTML pages which was cool.

the assets folder had this:

      css: 460Kb

      fonts: 1016Kb

      images: 4004Kb

      js: 1948Kb

So yes, images and video is the largest section of content, but it's not helping that nearly half as much again is executable code that needs to be not only downloaded, but then executed (and it doesn't help that this code produced ~20 errors depending on which browser it ran on).

I agree with the OP that we have a problem here.

<comment><USER2> I don't know what you expected.

If you go downloading random themes built by anonymous people of questionable skill, you're unlikely to get a performant web site.

<comment><USER3> fair point, but still

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'm not sure what kind of 'tools' the author is referring to though.

<comment><USER4> No.. I didn't quite get it either. People blindly including every js lib under the sun and not optimising at all, sure. Using "tools" ? What. Surely he wasn't suggestin people reinvent the wheel?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I feel the need to link this rant, as I have a number of times as a response to overdesigning until you've half-solved the problems you've created by overdesigning. [http://motherfuckingwebsite.com/](http://motherfuckingwebsite.com/)</comment>


Ask HN: Git/Github workflow for students and projects. - <AUTHOR>

Hi Hacker News!
Some fellow students and I are trying to introduce other students to git/Github and holding seminars has never really worked to get students excited and to start taking advantage of the tool and service. This year we want to try and work it into the course by having students use git to submit their projects for grading.
The problem is; we have yet to come up with a proper work flow to do this. Ideally all this could be accomplished via Github. Our school has Github Enterprise so we have some room to play around. I'm not sure how much customization we can do, I'm not really sure what all Github Enterprise provides in that are either.
My first work flow was as follows.
* Teaching Assistant posted a repo with starting code and the project description/assignment
* Students fork the repo to a private repository (I have a feeling this is not possible)
* Students work on their project individually
* When a student is ready to submit their project, they submit a Pull Request back to the Teaching Assistant.
I'm pretty sure there are a few flaws in this, one being that we want to try and keep the students work private. Forking to a private repo may not be possible, and the pull request I'm sure would not work.
I'm curious if someone has done something similar or has any ideas. I'm also willing to setup a separate server. My thinking here would be that students could use Github (private repos) to centralize their code and get familiar with github by forking the project and working from there. When it comes to submitting their project for grading they would then push the project to a separate server. I'm not entirely sure how this would work, but I figure there would be some way to allow for accepting push request and pushing them into different branches via a hook.
Thanks! <comment><USER2> Yeah this sort of question is probably better suited for StackOverflow. Also consider there would be a price for private repos hosted on github.

At my university we use a in-house linux mail system to submit assignments. It's not perfect or necessarily easy for new CS students but it's easy for the teachers and all assignments come from the login accounts the school manages which makes it easy to track plagiarism.

In classes we are "strongly encouraged" to use some kind of version control (svn or git) for group projects. I think anyone who has worked on a large programming group project with 3+ people through e-mail quickly sees the advantages of git, at least that was the case with me and several partners I've had as an undergrad. Keeping track of each persons code through e-mail becomes ridiculously tedious and annoying instantly and they would quickly be screaming uncle. Just a thought, but it may be better to find a way to let them come to that realization on their own as well.

regardless, goodluck with this it's an excellent idea for getting students on version control early.

<comment><AUTHOR> Cool thanks! We have a Github Enterprise server so unlimited public/private repos.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is less suited for hacker news, and more suited for stack overflow. You may get a better response if you post it there.

<comment><AUTHOR> Which site would you recommend? I first thought of posting there but wasn't sure of where to post it so I ended up posting here.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Who is looking for a partner/co-founder? (December 2011) - <AUTHOR>

Thought I'd start this thread for hackers who aren't looking for a job or freelance work, but rather for a partner/co-founder to work with on their own projects. (I know there's a google doc for this, but I suspect it's outdated, and I know it's cumbersome to use).<p>In terms of formatting, maybe something like:<p>- Location<p>- Your role (developer, designer, business dude, etc.) and who you're looking to collaborate with<p>- Skills and expertise (frameworks, languages, styles, experience, etc.)<p>- Whether you're looking to work on your idea or someone else's.<p>- Brief description of your project, or types of projects you'd be interested in working on.<p>- How much time you can commit to, and whether or not you're willing to collaborate remotely. <comment><USER2> Midwest U.S., Indiana / Iowa

I'm an idea person with very technical background. Expert level C++, some Python, interest in algorithms and machine learning.

I have multiple ideas, but one is head and shoulders above the rest. It's a killer game app for Facebook, which would generate revenue through user purchase of game tokens through Facebook Credits.

I looked into approaching Zynga, but they don't accept unsolicited ideas. Imagine that, being so big that you can no longer innovate because you're worried about legal issues. Anyway, there is something special about this game that I can't explain here. Am considering YCombinator application, but time is of the essence and my idea shouldn't sit still. Can't apply at YC right now, have to wait, so I'm putting this out there. Am I impatient? You'd be surprised how patient I am, but suddenly I AM impatient because this idea is just too good (and no, it's not something I thought of yesterday: it's 5 years in the making). Maybe I sound like Ralph Kramden (Honeymooners). Well, I'm not a bus driver, I make pretty good money, and I could easily keep on the track I'm on. But this idea is just TOO GOOD. I'm talking potential millions, life- changing money, all possible because of Facebook.

Despite what I may sound like, I'm not a salesman. But I will need one because this idea has 2 separate but intertwined approaches: the Facebook app, plus actual game events around the world and even a World Championship event. Think World Series of Poker.... expanded way beyond poker!

What I need is someone expert in the business of making things happen, preferably on Facebook, who can help get this idea in the right hands to develop it. Either that, or you can jump start development for Facebook yourself, immediately.

The candidate will have to sign a very strict NDA. No messing around here, again, we are dealing with life-changing money; not guaranteed, but very very very likely. I can say that because I've done a bit of research and put a lot of thought and refinement into this idea. If you or someone you know is very high level in the field of turning ideas into reality, and putting ideas into the right hands, we need to talk.

More related ideas where this one came from. So it won't just be a one-shot deal. I'm extremely creative (in addition to being a software engineer, I'm an amateur musician and artist, I strive to exercise every aspect of creativity).

If I don't get responses, I'll have to be patient and go the YC route. And I am prepared to do that for their summer 2012 schedule. But if you or someone you know wants to circumvent that and be in on a life-changing idea, willing to sign strict NDA, respond quickly. Must have verifiable credentials, the higher level the better. I'm just a senior software engineer with an idea, you or the person you know should be way above me, very credentialed, and ready to make money. Face to face interview will most likely be required, not at my expense, which means travel to midwest should be a trivial expense for you or the person you know. Like I said, high level.

dysonsfear at yahoo dot com.

<comment><USER3> Tons of red flags here, man. Talking about how you're an idea guy, insisting on a strict NDA, making grandiose claims with no evidence, expecting people to fly to you for this idea. Any software engineer worth their salt would have _nothing_ to do with you based on this post. Sorry, but it's true.

 _in addition to being a software engineer, I'm an amateur musician and artist_

...

 _I'm just a senior software engineer with an idea_

In order for you to be anything to anyone who matters, you need to be more than a guy with an idea. That immediately puts you in the same bucket as most people, who have "great ideas" all the time.

"But mine is different!" No doubt. They all think that too.

But you're in luck: you're a freaking artist and software engineer.

BUILD A PROTOTYPE.

Actually, a huge red flag here is that this is "5 years in the making" and you don't mention anything that you've produced beyond the idea.

Shut up and build something, then go find someone to help you take it to the next level. And don't ask for an NDA, it just makes you look like an amateur.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> UK (Looking for remote collaboration)

IS Support/Data Security tech. Currently a contractor in Banking & Finance industry, working on my company around 30+ hours a week (afternoons, eves, weekends) to develop some small web apps. I've got industry experience in the market I'm aiming towards.

Skills are mainly technical but not development, IS, network support, data analysis. Photoshop, Advanced Excel/VB, Photography, Basic HTML, CSS, Business Plans, Technical Documentation etc.

Currently learning Python in my free time. I've got a deep interest in eventually becoming a proficient dev so I'm really looking for someone with an enthusiasm for it and maybe helping me a little bit! I don't expect you to do everything technical.

I'm looking for someone to collaborate with over several projects if the team fit is right.

The main app I'm working on is a web directory with an emphasis on high quality images. I've tested the market and have got paying users signing up even before the app is built! That's how I know it's time to bring it to life. I'm also building a solid mailing list of interested businesses, & constantly networking with our potential userbase.

I've also got a small app idea that I'm looking to put together to help my learning curve, could be achieved using Twitter API & Twitter Bootstrap. This is more 'scratch my own itch' type. It could generate revenue but I feel I could learn a lot from it.

I'd love for the working arrangement to go full time if the directory and subsequent apps generate sufficient revenue to support us.

I'm always specific & realistic with detailed ideas. I work fast & do my best to move obstacles out of the way for team members.

I'm at my username on gmail.com

Thanks.

</comment><comment> rush-tea \- Sunny Southern California

\- Business Co Founder / Product Development / Product Manager (I am looking for Technical Co Founder to help me develop a project I have in mind). I have a MSc in engineering, so I am technical as well, but not coding.

\- Skills: Business development, product features, product requirement, road map, etc. I am good in analyzing product idea, suggest/make improvements on existing ideas, and business development to monetize. Product design as well, I can do wireframe, etc. (basically everything except graphic design, never excel in anything artistic, and coding!).

\- I have an idea that I am thinking to develop right now, so looking for technical co founder who wants to partner with me. However if you are a technical guy, you have your own idea, and you are looking for someone to analyze your project and how to move forward, I am open to work as a partner as well to help getting your idea off the ground.

\- I have ideas about reviews (so the competitors would be Yelp, Amazon, reviews site) with different kind of business model to monetize it.

\- I prefer someone local as I believe working together and brainstorming would be the most effective way to bring out the best of both of us. However if not possible, I m open to other possibilities as well.

</comment><comment><USER5> Ogden, UT, but soon Bay area (again).

Developer / business guy with deep domain expertise in online video / live video (ESPN, CNET, Engadget, Justin.TV), and I'm looking for someone who's technical and interested in creating cool tech.

My skills are Node.JS, Backbone.js, Redis, Quartz Composer.

Looking for someone else to work on my startup.

I'm working on creating a way for anyone to create TV quality video without a TV quality budget. I have a product that's about a month old and has 2 customers with $10k in revenue. It's a way for TV stations to take Facebook posts and show them on TV. The goal is to modernize the broadcast industry into using web tools, then give those same web tools to anyone and enable them to create high quality video content. There's an even broader vision we can talk about if you're interested.

Currently, I'm committed to this part time, with the expectation that I'll be going full-time within the next 6 months. I'm definitely willing to collaborate remotely, but would like to meet any cofounder in person. I'd prefer bay area, but as long as someone can relocate within the next 6 months, I'd be willing to consider anywhere.

I'm @randallb on twitter, or google me. Randall Bennett.

</comment><comment><USER6> \- Washington DC (willing to relocate)

\- Java developer by day up until a few months ago where I am now a misfit Python/Django dev at a major digital media publisher. Lots of personal side projects using Django, and lately the Play! web framework. Getting into Machine Learning. Conceptually my expertise lies in data aggregation, APIs, scaling, databases, etc.

\- Looking to work on someone elses ideas, most of my ideas aren't any more than one offs.

\- Anything that needs a solid backend. Not much of a UI guy, though I can hack javascript/css especially with bootstrap. Ideally some sort of analytics project with lots of data problems.

\- If I need to keep my day job probably 20 hours a week. Though have plenty saved for a few months runway if need be. Remote is fine, though if a partnership does form some sort of commitment to meeting in person sooner than later.

</comment><comment><USER7> \- Brazil.

\- Fullstack webdev, BA in Computer Science.

\- I can node.js, rails, php, jquery, css, html, tableless, SEO... I'm just not so into business(but i have a rather BIG interested in it, also to run a company, own the world and stuff).

\- I'm up to anything... but I have a good idea that I would like to discuss about.

\- Something related with food, I can't detail much it here.

\- As much as I need, but I would like to keep it 20h before we find that something we did is in the lines of: "Ok, this is big!".

E-mail and stuff in my profile, have fun. I would prefer somebody that is the jack of all trades, master of none, that hacks solutions and somehow get things done. OR a business guy that can make me work and think that he's the alpha-boss of the world(good luck). But feel free to contact me if you are something else.

</comment><comment><USER8> \- San Francisco \- Product design and vision, Business Development, Fundraising, Basic Coding (HTML, PHP). Looking for co-founder with back-end (Python) or mobile (iOS) skills \- Working on my idea (easyvino.com) \- We're building a private sommelier that anyone can use to pick wine at restaurants and liquor stores. It's a recommendation engine that automatically classifies wine and consumer taste and offers a recommendation based on pattern recognition (i.e. Netflix model) \- Looking for someone who can join full time. We have a prototype almost ready. We need to take it to the next level (add features, scrap online data, connect with some major wine databases)

If interested, email me firstname.lastname@example.com

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> \- New York, NY (Brooklyn)

\- UI designer looking for a serious programmer

\- I've designed several web and mobile apps. Familiar with Rails+Git workflow. Can do front-end (HAML/HTML, SASS/CSS, some javascript/jquery).

\- Willing to work on your projects or mine, I have ideas for journaling, task management, classifieds, photo sharing, all in different states of incompleteness.

\- I'd like this to be my primary focus, and would want the same from partner. Perhaps 15-30hrs a week. Would also prefer someone local.

<comment><USER9> Do you have a portfolio for your work?

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Hi,

I'm an Belgian computer science student looking for a co-founder who has serious interest in creating a new manner to buy/sell used and new products (like eBay, but completely different). I'm not looking for someone to work on my startup, I'm looking for someone to work with me on a startup. If you're interested, don't hesitate to contact me or add me on fb.</comment>


Avoiding The Uncanny Valley of User Interface - <AUTHOR> http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000869.html

<comment><USER2> Hmm, another exaggeration from Jeff Atwood. He's getting good at these.

In my experience the metaphor doesn't stretch to RIAs. My start-up's main application is precisely one of those "RIA that pretends to behave like a desktop app", and thanks to Flex we've been able to get a good enough approximation. Result? Our users don't feel uncomfortable about it (although we have had the odd user who seemed to expect that everything would be instant even though it was a web-app). On the contrary, our users love it, and have commented on it positively many times.

I guess people care less about that last 1% when looking at a web application than when looking at a humanoid robot. Which means stretching the metaphor in this direction doesn't quite work.

<comment><USER3> Sure it's an exaggeration. The uncanny valley is a visceral biological reaction in parts of our brains that have spent millions of years become very finely tuned to identifying human beings. We have no such location for user interface. That said, I think there is still something to be said for the concept. If you are trying to mimic something, and get it 99% of the way there, that last 1% _can_ be source of frustration. (Jeff goes on to say because it _can_ be, it therefore is a bad idea, and you shouldn't do it. This is a poorly supported conclusion.)

For example, stupid cnnsi.com has a "main window" that has some things at the bottom that look, feel, and act like links. Yet I cannot middle click them to open them in a new tab. This annoys the bejesus out of me. Another example is desktop-emulating applications who don't have a fully-functional right-click menu like I'd expect.

By emulating other things, you put expectations into your user's mind about what sorts of functionality it should have. In this respect, it is analogous to the uncanny valley. The mimicry alone has created expectations that can cause frustration. But, that doesn't mean, that mimic'ing is inherently wrong or bad. It just means you have to do it right. You have to meet those user's new expectations.

<comment><USER4> So basically, Jeff's just saying, "If you look like X, you've just set all the expectations of expectations X. You'd better meet them. Oh, and BTW it's just like this other concept that got on the front page of reddit!"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think the worst thing you can do as a webapp is start with emulating the O/S - dragable, resizable, minimizable emulated windows and dialogs.

I hate the idea of having "emulated" windows within a single browser window. It looks messy and confused.

So on that sort of point I agree. I'm not sure what other examples there are though.

<comment><USER6> But wouldn't it be awesome to drag a window generated within a webapp and toss it some place onto your desktop? (to the degree that the browser is just an extension of the OS -- kinda like a file explorer with more features)

<comment><USER7> Yup... or being able to upload an image into a rich text editor by dragging it from your desktop or other folder.

<comment><USER6> It's these kind of intuitive things that I love. The only problem is being able to guess what is intuitive to whom. Else you'll end up with a ton of features that no one ever uses (read: waste of money).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Abstracting (too much), it's violated expectations - like broken promises, people _really_ don't like it.

Taking a tangential step, computer automation is similar when it purports to be able to help you, but doesn't understand you well enough to do so; like MS's "clippy".

In contrast, Google's "I'm feeling lucky" button is automation that fulfills its promise (though the name emphases that luck is involved). Google can predict so well what I want, that this button is (very often) right. An awesome achievement. I added a simple command-line google lookup, to go directly to the page, and it's freaking me out how well it works:

        > cat ~/bin/g
        firefox google.com/search?q="$*"\&btnI= &

<comment><USER9> Neat idea. Here's one way on OS X:

        open "http://google.com/search?q="$*"\&btnI="

Or if you want to specify a non-default browser:

        open -a "Safari.app" "http://google.com/search?q="$*"\&btnI="

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> The part about web apps -- meh. The part about gobsmackingly good imitation human animation: cool.

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLiX5d3rC6o&fmt=18](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLiX5d3rC6o&fmt=18)

Two years from now we'll be seeing that, or not seeing it as the case may be, in movies. Another two years after that it will be in the AAA video games with 9 figure budgets. And another two years after that you'll be able to do it from a Japanese cell phone.

God I love technology.

<comment><USER11> That video creeped me out a bit. :o

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I don't think the Uncanny Valley can exist with regards to user interfaces. They were created from scratch. And they've changed, and are still changing. And neither a desktop interface nor a web interface is set in stone.

See, the valley can exist because humans stay the same, at least to our brains. We don't madly change form or shape every 20 years. But user interfaces do. So how do our brains know a web interface looks too much like a desktop interface? It can only know because we know what both are "supposed" to look like.

But kids being brought up on web interfaces that look like desktops will not have a valley because to them that looks normal. There is no set "desktop" look or web interface "look." Its only what we've created. Create something different, and the valley will go away.

<comment><USER13> Depending on your client audience, user interfaces might not change enough for them to really feel too comfortable switching -- for example, if even the _theme_ of my father's Windows installation changes, he has a lot of problems getting work done.

If you have a web app that _looks_ identical to a Windows/OS X desktop app, but behaves oddly, it will irritate your customers in subtle but significant ways.

<comment><USER12> But isn't that an expectation problem? It doesn't behave as expected. But visually, it could have looked like anything. As long as the second thing looks exactly like the first but behaves differently, it will be irritating. But the first thing can look like anything you want and it'll never be annoying, unless it too looks like something else. Plus, someone who gets introduced to the second interface first will have that interface become their reference point.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Maybe this explains why I hate using OpenOffice and other copy-cat software?

<comment><USER14> Office already had a pretty poor interface, so maybe it's more to do with that?

I was pretty disappointed they didn't try anything different, but I guess the aim of that was to attract people who actually like Office in the first place.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Eh, there's something to be said about web applications and the Uncanny Valley, but this isn't it.

Atwood, I think, is saying that web applications shouldn't be like desktop applications because it violates the user's expectation of how a webapp should be.

Applying the Uncanny Valley to this says that it's not bad for web apps to behave like desktop apps -- it's bad for webapps to signal that they have behave like desktop apps, and then fail to live up to that expectation.

This problem affects other products, too. For example, imagine a really awesome semantic search engine called CantorSet. You can throw all sorts of questions at it and it appears to come up with the answer. "What did Bush say at the last G8 meeting?" Wow! Amazing!

But then you ask questions like, "Why did my wife leave me?" No answer! Wow, this thing sucks.

It's less about what the webapp does or doesn't do, and more about the expectations it sets and whether or not it lives up to them.

</comment><comment><USER16> Cappuccino is squarely in the "Uncanny Valley" according to Atwood, but I disagree with his analysis.

If you look at 280 slides, it doesn't behave quite like a mac, but it's still intuitive. People understand the WIMP.

I think he's conflating crappy Swing java apps with webapp UX.

</comment><comment><USER17> [http://far33d.tumblr.com/post/30017717/on-the-polar- express-...](http://far33d.tumblr.com/post/30017717/on-the-polar-express-to- the-uncanny-valley)

I guess I should write more frequently and more in depth.

</comment><comment><USER18> There's a big difference between web app and web page. Common web app controls (accordion, tab panels etc) allow developers to convey lots more information on screen and well thought out use of AJAX can make a complex application perform more quickly than the static equivalent.

As the complexity of web apps increases users will need to get used to the idea that they need to learn how to use each app to get the most out of it which is how it works with desktop apps. Try to compare the UI between desktop apps such as a music editor, 3DSMax and MSWord. Each uses different UI controls (sliders, knobs, text input etc). Each app is complex and has an associated learning curve. If people consider the app useful they will invest the time in learning how to use it.

I recently had to learn how to use Aftereffects. The UI and work flow were completely foreign to me - none of my existing knowledge was transferable, but I learned how to use it because I needed the features it provided.

Ultimately the market will decide. My guess is that the line between desktop and browser will continue to blur and will one day disappear.</comment>


Ask HN: How do you deal with passive-aggressive people at work? - <AUTHOR> How do you handle passive-aggressive co-workers? A passive-aggressive person being someone who gets off on being rude to other people, but does so indirectly and without leaving any trails. Someone like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5bafQY0_Bxs <comment><USER2> I believe it's not how the passive-aggressive behaviour looks like. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive- aggressive_behavior](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive- aggressive_behavior)

And they used the term in the show incorrectly, too.</comment>


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