Google's Fiber Makes MPAA Skittish. - <AUTHOR> http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120430/07083218708/googles-fiber-makes-mpaa-skittish-why-does-hollywood-see-all-technology-terms-piracy.shtml <comment><USER2> I think the tech community thinks the MPAA is much more monolithic than they actually are. The individual companies are not going to agree on what content to offer at what rates in a new high-speed market, so the MPAA is going to talk about the one thing its members agree upon: piracy=bad.

I honestly have no idea why the MPAA spokesman decided to go on the record about Google Fiber. If it were me, I would have just managed expectations by pointing out that it's probably not in the interest of of MPAA member studios to remaster their content for gigabit rates, given such a small potential audience.

It's not like these studios just have uncompressed 4k files of every movie they've ever made just sitting on a hard drive somewhere, waiting for someone like Google to say "can you offer 500 Mbps versions and see what the residents of Kansas City are willing to pay for them?". Even if they did, every writer, director, etc. entitled to royalties from future releases would be up in arms saying they're not charging enough.

<comment><USER3> > It's not like these studios just have uncompressed 4k files of every movie > they've ever made just sitting on a hard drive somewhere, waiting for > someone like Google to say "can you offer 500 Mbps versions and see what the > residents of Kansas City are willing to pay for them?". Even if they did, > every writer, director, etc. entitled to royalties from future releases > would be up in arms saying they're not charging enough.

Well, that sounds like an opportunity for most industries, not a problem, but momentum there is what it is (the dig at writers and directors is odd, since of course the studios are in line for by far the most royalties, they're the ones that insist on ever more draconian DRM schemes and higher prices to "preserve" the perceived value of film, and in the 2007 writers guild strike they wanted to give the writers _nothing_ for royalties on streaming video).

But even streaming bluray quality video, which is available for every movie on bluray, would be a huge step up, and much more realistic for the speeds we'll see over a "gigabit" network. I was leaning more toward Amazon video for tv shows and movies recently, but the new 1080p itunes video has made me switch back. Even though it's relatively poor quality for the resolution, the step up from the 720p versions has been fantastic. Moving up to something approaching bluray would be something else entirely, I would pay as much or more for it as I do on itunes, and the instant gratification is something no torrent can match.

Now the economics might not be there -- most people will mess up the video input or not even notice the bump in resolution, and to be honest, I almost always rent movies on itunes, not buy them (though doing so at a steady rate basically turns me into a willing subscriber who owns nothing, which is pretty much their dream) -- but there certainly is a viable technical option.

<comment><USER2> I didn't mean it as a dig at writers and directors, although going back and re-reading my post it certainly seems like it (my bad). I merely wanted to point out how large the number of stake-holders is for your average motion picture. One significant reason the film industry is so slow to catch up to the internet is because it's so hard to get those stake-holders to agree to anything and, at least until recently, their contracts weren't written with an eye to technologies that didn't exist yet.

I think the reason we've stand-up comedians be among the first to offer audience-friendly distribution is that they don't have to go back an renegotiate all their contracts to allow them to give the audience what they want.

I agree that blu-ray quality video streaming to the home would be a huge step forward (and actually a very reasonable usage of that bandwidth - the higher bitrate codecs are mostly useful for reduced latency, which really isn't an issue for Hollywood content). There would probably still have to be some remastering, at least of the audio, which is not optimized for streaming, which would be expensive given the current market size.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Just another example of how out of touch the MPAA is with reality. Any 10Mbit+ connection is perfectly adequate for downloading pirated material. It very possibly might take an individual less time to download a torrent than to navigate some archaic cable box UI to find the same program. Mandatory un- skippable movie trailers on DVDs or BluRays can take longer to watch than downloading a torrent. Why isn't the MPAA concerned about that?

<comment><USER5> While I don't disagree with your overall sentiment, most "high speed" internet connections have rather limited upload speeds which can have some limiting factor on peer-to-peer activity (including piracy).

<comment><USER6> Does it really matter? My nephew and his roommates managed to download 750gig of movies in 3weeks on their comcast internet.

With the average movie size being around 750meg that's 1000 movies. (not that I would actually know the size of a ripped movie ;-) So on gigabit they'll be able to get more faster but if we're already at 1000 movies in 3 weeks what does it matter? That's more than 2x than you can actually watch on those 3 weeks if you could even manage to watch 24/7

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Ars Technica had a similar article last week. They're probably worried that Google isn't a party to the "six strikes" copyright plan that's supposed to start up this summer, which is a private agreement among the large content owner/ISPs which control internet access for most Americans.

There are also rumors of some kind of video service being offered by Google, so they might worry about that, too.

EDIT: Link = [http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2012/04/big-content- eye...](http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2012/04/big-content-eyes-google- fiber-deployment-in-kansas-city-warily.ars)

</comment><comment><USER8> This does not surprise me at all. The existing media cartels have always opposed new technologies that make the transfer of information between individuals easier and faster. This is especially when the technology is dumb, that is, it does not and can not differentiate between content which requires a license to transfer and that which does not. When you think about it, since they're in the business of selling intangible 'licenses' for information -- things you don't need to enjoy the information itself -- their actions make perfect sense. What we need to do, instead of sneering at their perfectly justified self-interest is re-examine exactly how we grant these groups the artificial monopoly of copyright in order to ensure that the original purpose, that is promoting the sciences and the arts, is maintained and that the behaviour, which is now considered to be anti-social, of these groups is modified or eliminated.

</comment><comment><USER9> I'd be curious how the MPAA would view a 25% increase in sales coupled with a 50% increase in piracy.

<comment><USER10> They probably think the sales would've increased 75% if piracy could not exist, which is of course very flawed logic.

<comment><USER11> (25% increase in sales) - (50% increase in piracy) = (-25% net loss!)

Good meeting, guys, send out the lawyers and let's go hit the strip club.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> ... to be fair, Hollywood does license a number of streaming and download services that will take advantage of good broadband, such as Netflix, Amazon Instant Video, VUDU, iTunes Store, etc.

Hollywood certainly will let you watch movies and TV shows at a variety of price points, even if it does reserve some control over what is available at what price and when.

<comment><USER13> " _...even if it does reserve some control over what is available at what price and when._ "

And _crucially_ where. If you are outside the US, much of this is either not available or heavily restricted. Hence piracy is the _only_ option to watch some movies or shows, depending on where you live. You hear about these great new shows online, then guess what...you can't watch them legally, even if you want to.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I wish it were possible to have some sort of multi-channel funnel view of people who pirate content. Did they pirate a song and then proceed to buy the album? Did they pirate a the first movie of a series and then later legally purchase the rest of the series? Do they just pirate content and never purchase anything?

I think these are interesting questions. Who wants to build something to answer them?

<comment><USER11> Wouldn't that basically require everyone who pirates to take a questionnaire to truthfully answer?

For the record, I've been watching X-Files on Hulu on my laptop. I've made it through season two, but will probably just download AVI's of the rest of the seasons, because my Wifi barely works in the kitchen, and the video quality goes down.

Am I ethically in the clear if I stream the Hulu episodes on my desktop, while watching pirated AVI's in the kitchen?

<comment><USER15> The general question is interesting... I think about it in the lines of:

Is it ok if I take a shortcut to get something that I am entitled to have access to because the rules by which my access is should abide by are basically bullshit?

I tend to think it is ok. I'm also indebted to Grace Hopper [1], who came up with the gem _It's easier to ask for forgiveness than it is to get permission_ , a behavior that I often find useful. Also, I tend to give the highest level of access to people working under my supervision so they can do their jobs without any avoidable hassle. It's important to be consistent, after all.

But (there's always a but) some content creators don't have the same pragmatic thinking I pride myself in having, and will tell you convoluted stories like "we don't sell the music/video, we sell the physical disc with the thing inside, and you can only access such thing trough the disc". And sometimes these convoluted stories do stick. Except that when you have a network as the distribution channel they don't work anymore and become plain bizarre "we sell you only the nontransferable right of watching/listening to this only up to 3 times in the next 24 hours and will not refund you if our network goes down and you're unable to watch".

So, my answer to you, and to the general question is: IMHO, you're ethically in the clear, but legally your situation might raise some concerns. Obligatory disclaimer: this is not legal advice. I would love to see what other people think about all this, though.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grace_Hopper>

<comment><USER16> If we were to achieve open and free-as-in-software standards, you wouldn't have this moral dilemma.

When you pay for the right to use copyrighted content, you should get to use it on your terms -- in the kitchen or in the family room or wherever you want. You should be allowed to back up your content in case your computer crashes and you should be allowed to watch it when you want, even if your Internet is out.

If content isn't offered on those terms, don't take it.

<comment><USER17> Your kind of begging the question here. When media was mostly physical, you did have many if those rights you describe. The problem is networked digital devices make large scale (unauthorized) copying and distribution cheap, trivial, and unavoidable. Selling popular (and expensive to make) media content without DRM and legal (and enforceable ) anti-pirating laws is simply not viable IMO.

At least I've never heard a scheme floated that seemed remotely plausible as in industry business structure to do this. I'm music producer and in arguments where I've explained how expensive it is to produce music and how hard it is to recoup an investment, when people have understood my argument, they've thrown up their hands, saying if the music industry is that bad why would anyone even do it? And I think it points to a general devaluing of creative work afoot in the culture. That might not seem like a big deal to some, I think a lot of really don't care about what kinds of media get made or how: it's just hard tu take the same peoples cries of injustice on the part of the MPAA as a serious threat to human progress because they can't watch what they want, whenever they want, for a super low price (or free). It might be that some awesome new business model exists to support an industry that creates digital IP products that doesn't rely on artificial scarcity and IP but I haven't heard any proposed

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Any innovation in technology presents a company with two options - adapt, or risk failure. The MPAA mitigates this by trying to stop innovation. It's a valid business strategy, albeit one that isn't very good for PR. Luckily more and more people are becoming aware of what's going on with all of this PIPA/SOPA/CISPA/ACTA/ETC-A stuff.

<comment><USER19> You may want to reconsider "It is a valid business strategy": it isn't valid if it does not work.

<comment><USER20> 'Worked' from whose perspective?

Delaying is invariably cheaper and more effective for any given quarter's financial results. And after several decades of our market becoming increasingly quarterly-number obsessed, it seems only fair to judge the soundness of decision-making based on the market standards.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> This article seems like pointless MPAA-baiting. We already knew they didn't like P2P and anything that enables it.

<comment><USER22> It's not MPAA-baiting. It's HN-baiting, and TechDirt are getting very good at it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> A butterfly flapping its wings in Sweden makes the MPAA skittish too, unfortunately.

</comment><comment><USER24> How soon do you think, before Google's fiber begins to get accidentally severed in shared conduit spaces?

<comment><USER25> My guess is never.</comment></comment>


Scientists observe brain activity in real time - <AUTHOR> http://news.stanford.edu/news/2014/april/voltage-brain-activity-042214.html

<comment><USER2> It would be great to see the movies of those Purkinje cells firing. It's gonna be a while before we have transparent skulls though... And as soon as 100 billion neurons are gonna fire, who is gonna solve this "big data" problem? That's a lot of data!

<comment><USER3> A lot of people still have blinders on and can't see past the imaging problems to the exascale analysis that's required to exploit these data, or just view the computational side as perfunctory and don't anticipate that it will likely end up being just as challenging, from a research and economic/organizational perspective, as the imaging and biology. I've been trying to get computation- focused research on massive graph and activity analysis in this domain -- especially exploiting multiscale, multimodal integration of disparate imaging techniques and models -- picked up for 4 years now without success and am finally packing up and moving on out of frustration with the myopia of funding and priorities.

<comment><USER4> Would you be interested in talking about this? I'm trying to get neuroimaging department to standardize methods for communicating data/models/findings and I'd love to talk to someone who's been through it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I bet we produce an artificial human-like brain within the next ten years.

<comment><USER6> Really? Because not even the Kurzweil (who numbers among the more optimistic where this is concerned) agrees with that timeline.

[http://www.kurzweilai.net/singularity- q-a](http://www.kurzweilai.net/singularity-q-a)

<comment><USER7> 1\. Ray Kurzweil is not psychic.

2\. We now have detailed maps of parts of the human and mouse brains on the bio side as well as working AI-like systems (Siri, Watson, etc.) on the tech side. Who's to say the intersection of the two fields won't result in a human- like AI in 10 years?

3\. The "law of accelerating returns" may work faster than anticipated.</comment></comment></comment>


The TWA terminal at JFK is being preserved as a hotel - <AUTHOR> http://gizmodo.com/one-of-the-most-beautiful-airport-terminals-ever-built-1731740403 <comment><USER2> This is good news actually.

I've had a few late-night arrivals in that Terminal and it's an absolute marvel when it's mostly-empty.

Being inside that building taps something intense emotionally and I still have trouble describing it. It would be a shame to lose.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> There are a bunch of pictures of the TWA Terminal on Flickr, too: [http://www.flickriver.com/search/twa+terminal/](http://www.flickriver.com/search/twa+terminal/).

</comment><comment><USER3> Though it looks rather dated, the details can be updated inside and out to infuse the building with more modern flare.

But the problem is its size. If it were 3 times larger, then I can see it being re-purposed for many different things.

However, in its current size, it's nothing more than a relic from bygone era with very little utility. The proposed 500+ room hotel will completely dwarf this building, so what's even the point of saving it?

<comment><USER4> If they update it lovingly there will still be quite a lot of historical flair for people to enjoy and learn from.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> It hasn't aged well, like much of what was built in the 1960's. I wonder if everyone was just really high back then.

<comment><USER6> Your comment flabbergasts me. Any industrial designer or architect practicing today would be proud to design such a building. You want sixties buildings that haven't aged well, look at brutalist architecture.</comment></comment>


8 Steps You Need to Know About Building an OCR Scanner from Scratch - <AUTHOR> https://blog.infrrd.ai/ocr/building-ocr-scanner/ <comment><AUTHOR> #OCR #EnterpriseAI #MachineLearning #NLP #IntelligentDataCapture #DataCapture #IDC #AIaaS #Artificial Intelligence</comment>


Audio: GitHub and Opscode DevOps talk Chef and datacenter innovation - <AUTHOR> http://thechangelog.com/post/1298929290/episode-0-3-8-devops-and-chef-with-corey-donahoe-from-gi

<comment><AUTHOR> Around 10:00 in, found it interesting when Seth talks of a client that rebuilds their infrastructure with each sprint in their agile development.</comment>


Yann LeCun on the IBM neural net chip - <AUTHOR> https://www.facebook.com/yann.lecun/posts/10152184295832143 <comment><USER2> What LeCun is missing is that the IBM chip was designed to be ultra low power (63mW to do pattern recognition on a real time video). One of the novel techniques this chip uses to achieve low power is to use spikes to send information between neurons.

It is not clear how LeCun would propose to send information in his convolutional neural networks in specialized hardware (from what I can tell, he uses FPGAs which are very high power in comparison). In the worst case, that approach sends data between neurons on each time step, which is very inefficient in power. If they do something more clever, I would bet it would start to like sending spikes.

It also seems very short sighted to say that if the hardware is not specifically designed for convolutional neural networks, then it is not the right architecture. It seems like the IBM chip does support convolutional networks, but it might require a few extra time steps to average.

Biology has evolved to use spikes (across many different species). Perhaps evolution didn't get the memo that non-spiking convolutional neural networks is the only architecture worth building. Maybe it will take a few more thousand generations before evolution catches up, but until then spiking neuron architectures seem like a decent gambit ...

<comment><USER3> I tend to agree that evolution reaches a local optimum given enough time, but it seems that this chip is geared towards machine learning rather than biological accuracy. And currently integrate-and-fire spiking neurons don't appear to work better on the data we're interested in.

In this light, and although CNNs aren't the only architecture, his criticisms may be a little more reasonable.

<comment><USER2> From my understanding, the chip is geared towards implementing neural networks with low power consumption, which makes using spikes a reasonable design choice. So one can argue that using spikes is not about biological accuracy, but power efficiency.

That is great that people want general purpose machine learning chips, the question is how to do it in low power. My guess is that the right architecture will be a mix of ML primitives mixed in with things like spikes (and perhaps other primitives seen found in biology).

<comment><USER4> Yes, that's also my understanding. Important background is that this is not (or at least not solely) a commercial initiative by IBM to produce a machine- learning chip, though I'm sure they would love to sell some too. It's a DARPA initiative to find a way to greatly reduce the power budget needed for large- scale data-processing. And one of the starting hypotheses of this particular program, SyNAPSE, is that sparseness in time, aka spikiness, is part of why biological organisms seem capable of processing large amounts of video/etc. data with lower power budgets than computers seem to require. Here's an excerpt from their program statement [1]:

 _Current computers are limited by the amount of power required to process large volumes of data. In contrast, biological neural systems, such as the brain, process large volumes of information in complex ways while consuming very little power. Power savings are achieved in neural systems by the sparse utilizations of hardware resources in time and space. Since many real-world problems are power limited and must process large volumes of data, neuromorphic computers have significant promise._

That may or may not be a good hypothesis, but it seems interesting to investigate. In any case, LeCun's real beef is with the DARPA program managers: he thinks a different area of ANN research would've been a better allocation of funds, because in his view this is not among the most promising lines of research. Not an uncommon reaction to DARPA choices, and not always wrong either, but DARPA's got the money.

[1] [http://www.darpa.mil/Our_Work/DSO/Programs/Systems_of_Neurom...](http://www.darpa.mil/Our_Work/DSO/Programs/Systems_of_Neuromorphic_Adaptive_Plastic_Scalable_Electronics_%28SYNAPSE%29.aspx)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> IBM seems to be _really good_ at getting press releases published and patents filed, and _really bad_ at actually turning any of that into purchasable products or services. They've been gutting their core US businesses now for a while (revenues down, costs down, profits up, and everything going to India) and a lot of areas that should be strengths have been horribly mismanaged. I'm curious to see whether they'll continue investing in these kinds of prestige products, and wondering what their rationale is. Patent battles down the line? Effectively part of their ad budget?

<comment><USER6> It be fair, in this case it's pretty clear this was a DARPA funded project.

It would make even less sense for them to have just said, 'oh no, we're busy focusing on other things at the moment' when DARPA tried to start throwing money at them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> My understanding is that TrueNorth is a product of DARPA SyNAPSE program, and spiking neuron is a program requirement, so IBM delivered what it was asked to deliver.

</comment><comment><USER8> > Now, what wrong with TrueNorth? My main criticism is that TrueNorth > implements networks of integrate-and-fire spiking neurons. This type of > neural net that has never been shown to yield accuracy anywhere close to > state of the art on any task of interest (like, say recognizing objects from > the ImageNet dataset). Spiking neurons have binary outputs (like neurons in > the brain). The advantage of spiking neurons is that you don't need > multipliers (since the neuron states are binary). But to get good results on > a task like ImageNet you need about 8 bit of precision on the neuron states. > To get this kind of precision with spiking neurons requires to wait multiple > cycles so the spikes "average out". This slows down the overall computation.

Surely you can do this in the spatial domain instead of time? That is, each neuron is one bit, so you have 8 each computing one of the 8 bits he says are necessary? Perhaps the problem is using that value afterwards, I guess.

<comment><USER9> It's not clear to me how that would work. Sending 1 bit of information to 8 processors is not the same as sending 8 bits to one processor.

<comment><USER10> this neuron works by providing one bit of output. Lecun claims you need to send the same signal to the machine 8 times to get 8 bits of output, so it is slower than a neuron that can output 8 bits at once. The question is why you can't send the signal to 8 different neurons and get your 8 bits in the same time as one bit.

<comment><USER11> The answer here is that you send different subsets of input pixels to different neurons.

E.g. you have a 4x4 pixel image you want to feed in to the net and recognize. You subdivide it into 2x2 images (of which you'll have 9), and you send each of those 2x2 images to each neuron __. Then the output of the neurons is one if they see waldo, zero if they don 't. Why not send everything to every neuron ? That won't work, and they don't have enough inputs anyway in real image sizes.

 __Actually you 'd send more than 9. You'd also include a 2x2 that only includes the corner pixels, to achieve scale independence (recognizing a car whether it's 5x5 pixels or 50x50). Then you'd send that 36 times, but each time rotated by, say 10 degrees. That's how human vision works ("how God does it") and, well, that's how AI is trying to do it. In humans it's not a full haar cascade : we can only see small features using the centre of the retina, and only large features using the rest, and we only allow for limited rotation (meaning humans brains rotate the source image a limited number of times along an exponential curve that only goes up to ~40 degrees rotation).

(This is comparable to a haar cascade)

Now spiking neural networks have suboptimal performance, true, but they have a major advantage : they do unsupervised learning only. You show them a world, and they will build their own model of the world (which isn't as good as our state-of-the-art models for known "worlds" like ImageNet).

Here's what you're doing with spiking nets (more or less). You show them ImageNet (or any dataset) and you keep showing it to them. It will build up an internal model of what the world looks like. After training you train a second algorithm that searches which neuron encodes what. So the idea is that one of the neurons in the network will encode "I saw the letter A", another will encode "I saw B", third will encode "I saw C", so you look which neuron does that.

Spiking neural networks need time, which is another disadvantage. This is "simulated" time, but it nevertheless requires computation to happen to advance time. It takes spiking networks some amount of this simulated time to recognize things (just like animals/humans need time). So to have it recognize it you have to "put a picture in front of them for X time" (meaning keep triggering their inputs in the same way for a while), then wait to see if any of the identified neurons fires in the first, say, 5s after showing the picture.

Where spiking networks wipe the floor with convolutional nets is on unpredictable tasks. Suppose you were having an "open-ended" problem (like, say, a lifeform has). And the environment changes. A convolutional net that was trained will, quite simply, start giving random results. A spiking network will do something. Not necessarily the right thing, but it will try things.

Say you were building a robot that has to deliver supplies across Iraq. Convoluational nets won't adapt. Spiking models will adapt (assuming you let them, and I imagine DARPA will let them). Problem with letting them adapt, of course, is that you may lose control.

And before you say "what about morality ?", I would say that spiking nets are actually more moral. In both cases, spiking or convolutional, you don't actually know how it will respond to unpredictable stimuli. However, if a convolutional net is confronted with something it wasn't trained for, it will simply have random reactions (it's a robot, it'll send random instructions to the higher levels, meaning if it has a gun, it will extremely likely fire the gun, probably aimed at the first thing it recognizes), a spiking model will try something (which, of course, may be "kill all humans", but it might also decide to wait and see if there are hostile moves, or ...). The difference is the spiking model won't simply lose control. I would argue that spiking models will respond much more like soldiers would.

You should think of convolutional nets as classifiers. You train them to answer a yes/no question, and then they can respond. Spiking neural nets are more like puppies. You can train them to bark if they see a car, and then use that to detect cars, but you can also train them to retrieve a ball. (In practice you "read the mind" of the spiking model, and because it's stored in memory, that's easy)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It's unclear how the 'wait multiple cycles' is such a deal-breaker. Even when using a GPU (in the standard way) there are cycles that get used in processing the different stages of a computation. But, more significantly, the Spiking Neuron thing doesn't (necessarily) have to work at a low clock rate, or any clock rate, since the same integration-through-time approach could even work asynchronously, or with jitter, etc. It's a pretty robust & low-power design (and evolution found it, who would have guessed?)

</comment><comment><USER13> LeCun mentions disadvantages of the chip and then mentions a special purpose chip he has had a hand in producing. It doesn't seem surprising that he likes the idea of special purpose chips.

Aside from the particular criticism he makes toward the IBM algorithm, it seems to me that the approach of jumping from one special chip to another abandons the advantages of a general purpose computer itself. If your algorithm has to be cast in silicon each time, tuning the algorithm would depend on the chip's lifecycle. Also, only those few who have the resources to build a chip would be able to supply algorithms narrowing the number of minds working on this.

That alternative I'd like to see is a general purpose highly parallel chip.

The one I know of is the Micron automaton chip. [http://www.micron.com/about/innovations/automata- processing](http://www.micron.com/about/innovations/automata-processing)

Anyone know of anything similar?

</comment><comment><USER14> Reading the comments here suggests that it would be cool to use both of the chips together. If it is true that spiking does well with unsupervised learning, then you could feed a bunch of input to a spiker, then scan it for components that could be mostly mimicked with a convolutional chip and reroute the inputs/outputs. (Yeah, the interconnect would suck.) The point is not to come up with some magic better-performing hybrid, but rather to explore an intermediate point in the design space of augmenting/replacing actual neurons with silicon. The IBM chip isn't that close to biology, but it's closer than a convolutional network, and a convolutional network is a much smaller step than a general purpose processor. We might learn about some simple augmentations that are likely to work in practice.

Also, the whole "airplanes don't flap their wings" analogy can be taken too far. Little flying things are qualitatively different from big flying things. You'll notice that a lot of small artificial flying things are flapping, and the biggest natural fliers tend to glide a lot. There are other reasons why nature didn't evolve large fliers. (Although I'm willing to believe some large fliers may occasionally have hot gases shooting out of their back ends, I do not believe propulsion is their purpose.)

</comment><comment><USER15> The main criticism should be that these neurons are not like real neurons, because integrate-and-fire is an oversimplification of neurons. So it's not really like the brain at all. There is a lot of fanfare from IBM about it, but truly we've had these models since the 80s. I think it's bad science to just "build a machine with a shit ton of IF neurons and see if it does anything".

The fact that Truenorth can learn approximations is not really surprising, we know that thresholded units can approximate well[1]. They should have implemented compartmental neurons [2]

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_approximation_theorem](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_approximation_theorem) [2] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compartmental_modelling_of_dend...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compartmental_modelling_of_dendrites)

<comment><USER16> Bad science? Trying things? That's fundamentally what true science is all about. Experimentation is where theories are supposed to come from. Remember Nature just put a ton of neurons together to see if it did anything.

What would be called 'good science'? Reading articles and spinning tales about what comes next? Regurgitating summaries of others' work?

<comment><USER15> This money would be better spent in experiments to find out how neurons work. IF neurons are well studied, and large scale models of the brain using IF models have been done before[1]. The result? Nothing.

It would be an experiment if they were testing a new model. This is a simulation.

[1] [http://www.izhikevich.org/human_brain_simulation/Blue_Brain....](http://www.izhikevich.org/human_brain_simulation/Blue_Brain.htm#Simulation) of Large-Scale Brain Models

<comment><USER16> This experiment was different in some way? More 'neurons' this time? That qualifies as an experiment.

<comment><USER7> This experiment was different and inferior in almost all ways. Both less neurons and simpler neurons than simulated before. We had simulated 100x more neurons in more biological detail than what TrueNorth team did.

This is a great asynchronous circuit power efficiency research, and not a neuroscience research at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Out of curiosity, does anyone know why they choose I&F instead of Izhikevich neurons[1] which model more biological spike forms. Perhaps to meet the low power consumption goals?

Also, how do convolutional neural networks model time? I thought that was one of the benefits of spiking networks and STDP.

1\. [http://www.izhikevich.org/publications/whichmod.pdf](http://www.izhikevich.org/publications/whichmod.pdf)

<comment><USER18> The Izhikevich neuron is a two-dimensional system where I&F are usually one- dimensional, and the former has a larger number of parameters. Mathematical analysis (and implementation perhaps) is easier for the simpler I&F.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> >My main criticism is that TrueNorth implements networks of integrate-and-fire spiking neurons...Spiking neurons have binary outputs (like neurons in the brain).

Isn't this better. LeCun is looking at this only from a machine learning perspective.

<comment><USER20> Machine learning is the goal. This chip should be judged on its learning performance, not on how well it adheres to an oversimplified and incomplete model of how biological neurons might work in the brain.

<comment><USER21> FWIW, there is no learning on-chip. Machine learning is not the goal of this project, nor is its success dependent on it's learning capabilities (at least not at this phase). Where it does succeed, however, is in low-power computation in an architecture that is scalable and fault tolerant. LeCunn is criticizing an orange for not tasting like an apple.

<comment><USER20> Learning may not happen on-chip, but the network is still learned, and the performance of the chip is dependent on the learning. The spiking architecture of the chip means that the best learning algorithms can't be used. An ASIC implementing a convolutional neural net could also be low-power, scalable, and fault-tolerant, while taking advantage of the best currently known learning algorithms and ultimately performing a lot better on real tasks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> If this is the same team who did the "cat brain" at 2009, then I am on Yann's side.

</comment><comment><USER23> Published on Facebook? Really?

<comment><USER24> Yeah that's what I thought - unless he actually works for Facebook. But then the comments on his post are actually quite informative, so I guess each to their own and maybe he has a great audience on FB.

<comment><USER7> Yann LeCun _does_ work for Facebook.</comment></comment></comment>


Why can't America get the sidewalk café right? - <AUTHOR> http://www.thesmartset.com/article/article04171401.aspx <comment><USER4> I once did a non-simultaneous home exchange with an elderly couple from Rome (I live in Vancouver).

When they arrived, they asked where the "Piazzas" are here in Vancouver - <USER2> sit and enjoy a communal public space.

I was at a loss - there really aren't any public spaces designed for just watching the world go by here other than the beach, which closes at 10p - <USER3> zoom up and down on 4x4s kicking people off the beach.

The woman said something that stayed with me and, I think, is true: "You know, in Europe homes are small, there are many public spaces, and life is lived in the streets. In North America houses are bigger, people have more land and entertain at home, and life is lived at home."

<comment><USER5> Why do they close the beach?

<comment><USER6> Likely because someone sued them for letting the beach go un-patrolled at night. If it's closed, they don't have to pay anyone to patrol it.

<comment> k-mcgrady Why does the beach have to be patrolled? Are the beaches you're referring to privately owned?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Too much travel done by car in the US.

Sidewalk cafes in Europe thrive off foot traffic to and mass transit and bicycles.

All those cars require all the parking lots. Parking decks are too expensive for every little cafe to build. So the businesses group to pool the parking cost. A strip mall.

You want a cafes scene? Get rid of most the cars.

<comment><USER6> This is one of the critical things that put the lie to the claim that parking spaces = customers. Cars get rid of customers, so you have to put in parking spaces just to get some of them back.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The streets are too damned wide. America's streets were too wide even before cars. More here:

[http://www.newworldeconomics.com/archives/2013/112413.html](http://www.newworldeconomics.com/archives/2013/112413.html)

<comment><USER9> No kidding. Check out this blog to see what difference street width makes. The author narrowed LA's streets using Photoshop and it instantly feels more livable: [http://narrowstreetsla.blogspot.de](http://narrowstreetsla.blogspot.de)

<comment><USER10> Fantastic! Thanks for sharing

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I live in Boulder, CO and they definitely get it right. It really depends on where you are. The same goes for Europe.

We are all very critical of our own country. Visiting a country is not the same as living in that country. You don't necessary see it the same way and the grass is always greener on the other side (especially in Ireland :) ). So I have the impression that the author is overreacting a little.

<comment><USER12> I do not think they are overreacting. There is just nothing in the U.S. which is akin to Parisian "side-walk cafes." I have been longing for these here, and I would drive a good 15 minutes if I had to. Well at least there aren't any I know of in Orange County, Phoenix, Atlanta, or Hawaii which are about the only places where I lived here.

<comment><USER13> Lots of european cities have pedestrian zones, usually in the historical center of the city, there also aren't as many malls. The traditional medieval european city layout has market, town and church squares at their core and those are still places of public gathering today.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> because in most US cities the sidewalks are too narrow, the streets are too wide, traffic too loud, and service not up to par. but this is a mundane argument; of course it is. that's what we're trying to change; that's the point.

it depends highly on the city (and even neighborhood within city), but we _should not fault anyone for trying and we should patronize the establishments that offer sidewalk service as often as we can, even if it 's sub-optimal_.

<comment><USER15> What's wrong with the service?

<comment><USER16> Dunno about you but I occasionally get "Forgotten"

Also some waitstaff tend to get really pissed off about having to go outside out of the A/C for even a minute.

<comment><USER15> In my experience, getting forgotten by restaurant staff is much more common in Europe than the US.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> If you optimize for cars, you get cities optimized for cars.

Funny that it was a American (Christopher Alexander)who write the most concise recipe for getting this right in "A Pattern Language." Pattern 88, Street Café.

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

[http://www.jacana.plus.com/pattern/P88.htm](http://www.jacana.plus.com/pattern/P88.htm)

</comment><comment><USER18> Hey, we get it right at a couple places in Seattle, but the fact is here the weather isn't right for it. But in general I feel the sidewalks are too narrow, largely because the streets are too wide (and the wide streets lead to another problem, sitting next to traffic).

Design walkable cities, and sidewalk cafes will appear as if by magic. Or rather, the same way they have appeared in thousands of cities and walkable neighborhoods worldwide throughout history!

<comment><USER19> Where would you recommend in Seattle? I see a few places here and there but they are so small that I can't depend on being able to get a spot when the weather is nice.

<comment><USER20> In LQA at least, check out Zingarro (for a nice cup of coffee and maybe a pastry, and a lasting relationship with your barista, probably James) or Citizen (for a sandwich and a drink outdoors, and Dustin is a pretty great server).

<comment><USER19> I'm in Belltown within easy walking distance so I will definitely check those out, thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> As a European, I greatly enjoyed downtown Palo Alto for this. In SF, north beach gets it fairly right, but that seems to be it.

<comment><USER22> I really like Palo Alto for exactly the same reason. Nice sidewalk cafés and very walkable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> In Britain, come summertime, most people would prefer to be sat at a trestle table in the beer garden of a pub rather than being awkwardly perched on some pavement outside some cafe. Cafe culture is not for us - unless it comes with a greasy spoon... The streets are too noisy, the council charges cafes for those chairs and the weather does not help.

I haven't really thought about it before, however, I don't think that the U.S. has a lot of what we Brits would recognise as a quality beer garden, whether it be attached to a pub/cafe/restaurant/mall matters not, neither does the location (in the UK the best beer gardens are in villages).

Is this true or am I imagining things?

Beyond reasons of urban sprawl and car culture, are there any reasons for this, e.g. prohibition back in the 20's?

<comment><USER24> I've noticed more beer gardens popping up in the US along with the growth in microbreweries.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Seattle has started experimenting with "Parklets[1]" recently. The city gives up the right of way, and the businesses that sponsor them pay to build them, but can't restrict it or turn it into an extension of their space. It's an interesting notion.

[1] [http://www.capitolhillseattle.com/2013/06/capitol-hills- firs...](http://www.capitolhillseattle.com/2013/06/capitol-hills-first- parklet-trading-parking-for-park-space-coming-in-august/)

</comment><comment><USER26> I feel like Boston gets this right, particularly in the Back Bay, but also in a number of other neighborhoods.

[https://firstname.lastname@example.com,-71.084347,3a,75y,338...](https://email@example.com,-71.084347,3a,75y,338.19h,86.34t/data=!3m4!1e1!3m2!1seCYyE5-fu1t-qrXrKyQZWw!2e0)

Boston shares a lot of characteristics with European cities: relatively narrow streets, decent public transit, lots of foot traffic, so that may have something to do with it.

</comment><comment><USER27> Murphy Avenue in Sunnyvale gets it right on some weekends, when it is closed for traffic. It is primarily a pedestrian street and only a few people (who deserve contempt IMHO) ever drive or try parking there.

By the way, anyone knows what prevents from closing Murphy for cars? I'm seeing attempts to do that [http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_18390412](http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_18390412) but no progress so far. It looks like some business (cafe) owners oppose that. Should we try obtaining their names and advice them not to oppose closing Murphy for cars?

</comment><comment><USER28> The area around Mint Plaza in SF, specifically at and around Blue Bottle, does this well. This was achieved by closing off that street to vehicle traffic, and allowing only people on foot and bikes in that area.

</comment><comment><USER29> I bet the OP has traveled to only a few cities. New Orleans gets it right. NYC definitely doesn't, and it's a no-brainer why, it's crowded as heck.

<comment><USER30> The author explicitly mentioned enjoying a site in New Orleans.

<comment><USER31> I would give Delachaise (New Orleans) props as somewhere that tries and mostly succeeds at this vibe. They are a bit more sealed off from the street than I'd like, though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Ray Oldenburg wrote the influential book about this topic. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_place](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_place)

I read it years ago so I'm less familiar with how it's viewed today (with the rise of virtual third places).

</comment><comment><USER33> I'm always happy to take people out for a drink here in Padova, where there are a number of great places downtown. I would really, really miss the city center here were I ever to move back to the US.

<comment><USER33> I'll add something to this: you can serve alcohol in sidewalk cafe's here in Italy, something I did not say mentioned in the article. Alcohol usually has very good margins, which provides part of the economics for everything.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Cafe du Soleil & Bean There in SF's Lower Haight get it right. Steiner is a good street for a sidewalk cafe, trees, wide sidewalk and victorian houses.

</comment><comment><USER35> Too many homeless people on the sidewalks?

</comment><comment><USER36> Because it's full of Americans.

<comment><USER37> I know you're being facetious, but it's not an unreasonable point. All attempts to create a pavement cafe culture here in the UK have failed, 24-hr licensing to serve alcohol turned out to be a mistake. The British simply don't drink in the same way as the Italians. We like pubs, _not_ bars or cafes-that-serve-wine.

You might as well write an article wondering why you can't bring an American "spring break" drinking culture to France...

<comment><USER36> Right that's what I was trying to convey in my lazy comment. It's not about architecture, weather or whatever else. Americans just generally aren't interested in sipping coffee while people-watching or exchanging political, religious cultural views with anyone less than an intimate friend for a couple of hours out of the day. Their cultural DNA simply lacks the propensity for that kind of activity.

Americans unwind in one of two extreme ways: individual reclusive zen retreats or challenges (yoga, spa treatments, rock-climbing..) or over-the-top social interactions (heavy drinking gatherings, fancy dinner parties, themed events).

Sure there are exceptions as some have mentioned, but they don't make up enough of a critical mass for it to have a meaningful impact on the culture as a whole.

<comment><USER6> You're mistaking effect for cause. Americans aren't interested because they've been acculturated not to.

<comment><USER38> Exactly. And we've built an environment where it's not possible or not pleasant to build these types of places.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What Engine Is Better for games: Unity, Unreal or Unigine? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> The one you can afford, run, build the game you want to build, and export to the platform you want to target.

Popular games like Undertale and Spelunky were made in Game Maker, FFS. There is no "better or worse" only "more or less appropriate."

Also consider Godot. It's open source and you can compile support for multiple scripting languages into it.

<comment><USER3> the game i've enjoyed the most this year is "slay the spire", which is a single player roguelike deck building game. it has a bit of nice art but in terms of whiz-bang graphical effects it only needs to handle a 2D UI for a turn based card game with some bonus effects when actions happen. in this case, the game isn't really about the graphics, it's about the gameplay, which is great.

there was another fantastic turn based strategy game released around a decade ago -- "solium infernum" \-- i think this was implemented in some kind of commercial multimedia thing (an adobe product?) by one developer. it had a fascinating system of diplomacy and warfare -- each player was a competing prince of hell, and you weren't allowed to just attack people, you had to have an appropriate pretext (e.g. another player had insulted you, or had refused your unreasonable demands to give them tribute) and set limits to how long the war would run for, and declare up front what your goals for the war were (e.g. capture a particular enemy city). it was fascinating game with a great theme, and crazily enough supported multiplayer via play by email. i played a game with some people that was great fun but took about 3 months to complete, with a few occasions where i'd spend hours before taking a turn trying to grind out the different odds to figure out the best tactics for a particular engagement, or if it was worth taking a certain gamble.

from a tech perspective, the engine wasn't really worth discussing, but it let one developer implement and ship their vision, and the result was pretty great.

edit: there's a pretty good old "programming in the twenty-first century" blog post - "Write Code Like You Just Learned How to Program"

[https://prog21.dadgum.com/87.html](https://prog21.dadgum.com/87.html)

(not to argue that either of the games i've mentioned are technically inferior, but the engine tech is entirely secondary to delivering a high quality game with a good experience)

<comment><USER4> AFAIK Slay the Spire is running in JVM.

<comment><USER5> Yeah STS is a pretty interesting case because it's a game from a Java dev who wanted his own thing. So he programmed it by hand (using libraries like LibGDX, of course). The part that impressed me the most is how he mentions he spent two weeks getting the played cards part working, and it shows; I've played a few "card game" video games and STS' has, by far, the best and most fluid playing. As in, when I click and let go it does exactly as I would expect it to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I wish I could dowvote this. Pointless question that for some reason gets asked fruitlessly every day on every game-dev group.

If you're asking this question you need to learn more, think more, do the minimum research.

<comment><USER7> Please don't discourage people from asking questions, there's 48 upvotes on this submission and personally I would have liked to come in here and seen a succinct summary and comparison of the engines from a programmers perspective.

The hacker news community tends to be more programming/math focused and the summary we get here will likely be unique and insightful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Questions of this kind often boil down to specifics, as the various competitors all have strong and weak points.

As such, It will be hard for anyone to answer meaningfully without more context: What kind of game do you want to write, what skills do you currently have, what do you want to learn from this project, etc.

<comment><AUTHOR> We are the team of developers, actually and we are trying to create game like Dual Universe but more in a fantasy world...

<comment><USER9> The main advantage of using Unity is its out of the box support for multiple platforms, and garbage collected runtime, other than that it's slower, and graphics are on the ok-ish side (the best looking Unity game i've seen is Battletech), and i'm not sure about its open-world capabilities (Firewatch and The Long Dark world sections were rather tiny), possibly there's a way around it.

It seems that Unreal Engine is a better choice (Mass Effects, for example), but its pure C++ (with lua scripting), which means x3-4 as much of code, and trickier interoperability.

I dunno, tough choice. Good luck with your project!

<comment><USER10> I don't think graphics are only engine related. This game was made with unity and it looks awesome

[https://store.steampowered.com/app/261570/Ori_and_the_Blind_...](https://store.steampowered.com/app/261570/Ori_and_the_Blind_Forest/)

<comment><USER9> Yeah, nice assets can really make a difference, the thing is you can pull twice as much polygons in the same scene with Unreal Engine (oversimplyfing)

[http://dcgi.felk.cvut.cz/projects/pacman-benchmark/thesis- co...](http://dcgi.felk.cvut.cz/projects/pacman-benchmark/thesis- compressed.pdf)

<comment><USER11> I would really like to see some more recent tests as Unity before the 2018.x releases had a "ux/easy of use/developer first" approach but they did significant improvements on rendering quality and efficiency on the 2018.x versions.

<comment><USER9> Technically, they're wrapping a native library, so it's possible to create a benchmark where there's no performance gap whatsoever. The bottleneck is at the intersection of the runtime enviroment with the library, which makes comparison difficult.

FWIW it's a good piece of code, and i like it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> None are 'better', some have workflows subjectively better than others.

For example the C++/drag and drop scripting in Unreal I dislike.

Where I dislike unity's subscription model, and some of the newer features don't quite work as nicely as they could. (I've been using unity since the early days)

CryEngine/Lumberyard looks horrid (IMHO) when I last looked at it.

So while YMMV, I'd suggest that you do a "proof of concept/minimal project" that covers some significant features of your game, and get a feel of the workflow, and go with the one that everyone can get along with.

.oP

</comment><comment><USER13> Unity is easier to learn, Unreal has a cool ecosystem AAA developers love, Unigine has some bleeding edge stuff with great performance not found elsewhere, CryEngine can destroy any GPU you throw at it...

<comment><USER14> > CryEngine can destroy any GPU you throw at it...

As in it's so poorly optimized it will eat any GPU, or it can do bleeding edge stuff no GPU can support?

<comment><USER15> Bleeding edge.

Since DirectX 10 they have the tradition of being one of earliest supporting new DX versions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> It really depends on your need, budget and skill set of your colleagues. Unity is easy to learn and provides better support for mobile. Unreal has better rendering capabilities if you want to develop for PC and consoles but has more steep learning curve. I haven't used Unigine but it looks promising for serious games and simulation. So every engine has its pros and cons.

</comment><comment><USER17> I don't know but Unity looks more compelling now that Mike Acton works there: [https://youtu.be/p65Yt20pw0g](https://youtu.be/p65Yt20pw0g)

</comment><comment><USER18> There's no simple answer to your question.

It all comes down to your use case: Are you trying to learn game development or are you developing the next AAA-Title with hundreds of developers? Which platforms are you targeting? Are you willing to pay for the engine and/or the assets?

<comment><AUTHOR> If it worth it - I will pay, why not? My goal is performance and we are going to have a pretty big map. Maybe the biggest ever...

<comment><USER19> Sounds like "Open World", then you might also want to take a look at Improbables "Spatial OS" \- they raised ~550 mio.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The best game engine is the one that YOU feel comfortable with and can learn what you need to to create the game you want.

I took one day and tried to make the same game with Unreal, Unity and Cocos2d-x. See which engine I could get the farthest with. It turned out it was Cocos2d-x. ([http://cocos2d-x.org](http://cocos2d-x.org))

If I decide to start a new game in the future I will repeat the same test adding GoDot into the mix and see how I feel about each one.

</comment><comment><USER19> You'll encounter more breaking changes with Unreal while it gives better graphics. For our in-game integrations for STOMT, we have to create a new branch for any new released Unreal version: [https://github.com/stomt/stomt- unreal-plugin](https://github.com/stomt/stomt-unreal-plugin)

</comment><comment><USER21> Having good visual assets is far more important to the look than the choice of engine. Having good audio assets is fundamental to making an app feel complete. Pick the engine that uses the programming language you know best.

</comment><comment><USER22> If you want multiplayer you're most likely better of with Unreal. Implementing multiplayer on Unity is possible but relatively tricky to get right.

Other than that, it really depends on your team.

<comment><USER11> Unity is reworking the whole network stack and they did significant investments in this area. So at this point implementing multiplayer using UNET or external libraries is possible and tricky but it is not really a good or future proof idea.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Source 2

</comment><comment><USER24> Defold.

<comment><AUTHOR> isn't it for 2d only or am I missing something?</comment></comment>


Today's Apps Are Turning Us into Sociopaths - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/2014/02/outsourcing-humanity-apps/

<comment><USER2> Hmm, I think the reason this app seems weird is because it's tricking the user at the other end when what she wants to see is her SO more engaged. I can see this app as actually being useful if it merely serves as a prompt to have a short conversation at reasonable intervals if you haven't texted in the last day or two.

<comment><USER3> I think what the author was getting as was that apps like this turn normal human interactions, complete with nuance and imperfection, into systematic conversation streams which can be optimized. One is like more efficient, but it raises the question of whether this theoretical human interaction optimum is a good thing.

<comment><USER2> I think their point was valid, but they didn't think it through enough. It's good to make things you don't want to do or need to do a lot of efficient in the sense of optimizing away time, energy, or money. It's bad to optimize away things that you actually like to do.

I think an app like this could optimize away a weak link to arriving a place you want to be. That is, deciding when to initiate a conversation and coming up with an opening. The conversation itself is the valuable thing you want to spend time in. The opening of a comm channel is, in some conceptions, simply protocol.

Of course, it does take away the choice of thinking that you want to communicate at that moment, which can start to make it seem like an intrusion into your time and change the way you regard the conversation. I think it depends on the person and their evolving circumstances as to whether the removal of choice in this regard is advantageous.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> "Today's Apps" is a strong headline when there is only one app actually being discussed, and even the author acknowledges the strong probability that the app itself is meant to be satirical.

<comment><USER5> Also, "sociopath"[1] is a pretty strong term for a guy who sends automated texts in a clumsy attempt to deceive his girlfriend that he's thinking about her. (I'd call him immature, and certainly shortsighted - it should be obvious how the scheme could backfire, leading to a permanent loss of trust.) And if you're not already a sociopath, it's unlike that using an app will turn you into one.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychopathy#Sociopathy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychopathy#Sociopathy)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think the author is reading way too much into BroApp. I've used BroApp for a few weeks. I thought it was funny, I liked the design and I was looking forward to the day my girlfriend found out. She finally figured it out around Christmas where we were both at my parents place and I neglected to setup my parent's wifi address as a "No Bro Zone". She asked me why I had texted her and I spilled the beans. She got a kick out of the app and tells the story to others.

Don't know if this is the typical experience but if you look at the app, it does not provide enough customization to trick someone for long (my girlfriend told me she was suspicious for some time). It offered to send one of 5 texts at a set time (plus or minus a few minutes). If someone were really intent on tricking their significant other, they would use something like IFTTT (If This Than That).

Just the design and feel of the app has me believe that it was made as more of a satire of bro culture and the hyper interconnectedness that modern relationships now require.

</comment><comment><USER7> Bingo, Wired, and bravo for writing this!

Let's see: I tell everybody I'm broke. I caught up on _ten_ years of back due tax paperwork. I'm clean, sober and have been for months...just launched free, open source no strings software to end $5 billion in annual American wasted spend on Facebook, Twitter and SEO tools that are mostly junk.

Yep, zero people care. They didn't get a push notification from Google Now, telling them to put down the phone and give to hookupJS. They didn't see Jeff Weiner tweet, "Jeremy, you haven't sent me an SEO weekly report since Yahoo, 2005 - what are the latest numbers?"

Automattic, makers of the best content management software in the world, have a similar philosophy as we do - give it away, free and open source, then chase the value that the open ecosystem creates. Alongside WordPress, hookupJS is designed to be a secure, open source marketing Saas - self hosted, no data leaks and 100% private for business data.

However, the crowd funding yeilded only spam, private comments so far. The LinkedIn messages have been well meaning, but, zero text lines read. The single, solitary fork we got on our repo (software is live, functional and free - on github) practically made me cry.

I don't get it. For some reason, I agree, the feeling in my gut says, "Nobody cares." When I was drinking, I checked into a mental hospital for a few days because I was going nuts, getting stolen from by my former employer and worse.

It is an excellent article. Ignore me, just go read it. Then take a walk, smell the fresh air, and for once in the week, try to figure out if you are inside the Matrix, or if the mesh layer is already controlling you. Put down the hololens, the nerd helmets and the Occulus. Take a look at real life, in 3d. It's awesome.</comment>


Auto-Threading Compilers Are Here - <AUTHOR> http://developinthecloud.drdobbs.com/author.asp?section_id=2284&doc_id=255275&print=yes

<comment><USER2> tl;dr -- Auto-Threading compilers are not actually here -- unless you happen to work at Microsoft Research (or another place doing research work in this area).

Terribly misleading title though in this case it originates from the original article.</comment>


Conway's Law (A software system will resemble the organization that built it) - <AUTHOR> http://www.melconway.com/research/committees.html

<comment><AUTHOR> I heard this principle a few times and finally tracked down the original 1968 paper. One can point out several applications of his idea. For example, large, hierarchical organizations whose parts don't work well together tend to produce large, hierarchical software systems whose parts don't work well together.

<comment><USER2> oh yes, Microsoft Office

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I wrote a lexer/compiler for hypernumbers.com on my own and it came out a 2-pass

Then I remembered Conway's Law :(</comment>


We work for the Internet - <AUTHOR> http://iworkfortheinternet.org/

<comment><USER2> It's not immediately clear what this page is for.

For me, I began to read the paragraph, but my eyes were quickly distracted to the loading pictures. I assumed this was an anti SOPA page, but had to reread it to make sure.

Please make the premise of the page, big, bold, and in the first line of text, so distracted congressmen don't miss what it is they're being told.

<comment><USER3> I'm on my phone, and the mobile site only has the pictures. I have no idea what this is supposed to be about.

<comment><USER4> Fixed. Thanks for catching.

<comment><USER5> What about the senate version: [Protect- IP](<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PROTECT_IP_Act>)?

And any news about the new rewritten version of SOPA, the [OPEN Act](<http://arst.ch/ru6>)?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Cool idea. After SOPA passes or fails (hopefully the latter), the site could totally pivot into a dating website for techies.

</comment><comment><USER7> Hah, there's a lot of duplicates on this page. Someone has an off-by-one error in the AJAX loading.

<comment><USER4> Sorry! It's because there are so many being added. We're adding de-duping now. This was my crappy code.

<comment><USER8> It would probably be easier/better if /page/<integer> returned a JSON object.

Would also make scraping the site a little easier and reduce load on your systems... (I'm interested in the titles "web workers" are giving themselves, making this a rather nice data source).

PS: I play nice and won't "leech," promise. ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> _> We know first-hand that the Internet powers the American dream._

It's called the American Dream because you have to be asleep to believe it[1]. Wake the fuck up. There is no American Dream, exceptions prove the rule. It's a convenient self-delusion that keeps most people in line. If you want to fight legislation like this, the first thing you have to realize that all these values on the constitution don't mean shit, especially to the politicians pushing these bills. I'm really sorry to be so blunt, but this is something that people need to have pounded into their heads, or else there will never be any change. You can't fight this system of corruption while believing in its lies at the same time.

[1] quoting George Carlin here.

</comment><comment><USER10> It's a great emotional tool to bring tangible people into the discussion. Although having powerful statistics and logic is nice, it's appealing to see the faces of real people that would be affected by this bill.

I can't find it now, but there was some interesting research done a while back on charities. Turns out that people would donate more to a charity that helps a single child rather than one that helps a million children, simply because the former has a more tangible benefit.

<comment><USER11> I believe they hit on this in Made to Stick.

<comment><USER10> Thanks - I think that was it. Phenomenal book.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> No option for people outside US to add themselves!

<comment><USER13> The point is, we can't elect American congressmen, so they aren't necessarily supposed to care if we have jobs or not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Am I to understand that people who live in Washington DC do not, in fact, matter? The state drop down has no provision for DC.

<comment><USER4> Fixing.

<comment><USER14> Quick work. Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The submit page is messed up in FF 8.0 for me: <http://i.imgur.com/Htp3H.png>

</comment><comment><USER16> I really like the idea! Could you put in a count of the # of people who have submitted pictures so far on the top?

</comment><comment><USER17> Wasn't aware that producing work on the internet was limited to American citizens. McDonald's, here I come.

<comment><USER18> the site is in reference to sopa, which is (unfortunately) an american bill. i promise you don't have to work for McDonald's.

<comment> cf0ed2aa-bdf5 Even though SOPA is an American bill it still has a very big impact on the internet for citizens in every other country.

That being said I think it still makes sense for the site to just list American entrepreneurs/developers/designers/etc.

<comment><USER4> Agreed. This is intended to make SOPA's impact on American jobs clear to our politicians.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> add a counter to show no. of people added?

</comment><comment><USER20> Would be great if it works on iPad. However I think there's no way to upload photos or files on iOS Safari.

<comment><USER21> iCabMobile let's you fill file inputs with photos and other downloaded content. I really prefer it over Safari most of the time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> stop sopa, or find new jobs!

</comment><comment><USER22> no international support?

<comment><USER23> That's available at McDonalds.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Whoa, babe city. Scrolled down through a few dozen photos. All the girls are babes, and about 60% of the dudes (which, being heterosexual, is a pretty good percentage). The internet is more attractive than expected. ;)

</comment><comment><USER25> I'm scrolling down and I find people making funny poses and trying to look cool.

If you're trying to make a political message clear, is this how you want to represent yourself?

<comment><USER26> It's pretty clear the goal of the website is to add a "human element" to the impact of the bill. Prison mug shots do not add a human element.

<comment><USER25> Yes, I completely agree. But perhaps you could be smiling, at a nice sunny location. The human element would be there. That's not a "prison mug shot". Plenty of the photos on the site are like that.

But if you're trying to say "Look, you're going to put all these _people_ out of work if this thing passes", i.e. you're pointing out the _human element_ of what the bill could cause, what is an average, uninformed person ("the world", as the website says) going to think when they see a bunch of people making ridiculous poses?

[http://29.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lw4cbpmNsM1r8635ko1_250.jp...](http://29.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lw4cbpmNsM1r8635ko1_250.jpg)

[http://27.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lw4es2F2II1r8635ko1_250.jp...](http://27.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lw4es2F2II1r8635ko1_250.jpg)

[http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lw45rnSi8N1r8635ko1_250.jp...](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lw45rnSi8N1r8635ko1_250.jpg)

I very much doubt they'd emphasise.

And it takes nothing more than the mainstream media selectively ignoring the majority to make the whole industry look like asshats.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is there life after OOP? - <AUTHOR>

Hello! I can't program OOP worth shit. I understand it is a failing of mine, and not OOP.
I get procedural, but not OOP.
Yes, yes.. I can create a car class and instantiate it, and compose an engine that is part of the car class, as the usual examples of OOP for idiots like me go.
But when it comes to real, actual, practical OOP programming, I would rather find myself rolling around in steaming goat feces than figure out what a generic collection is or what a Visitor Pattern is.
Is there any hope for me?
None, right?
I will stick to janitorial work, yes?
Thank you kindly, dear sirs and madame. <comment><USER2> I first learnt OOP together with C++. I didn't understand much. Second attempt was learning JAVA in connection with OOP, it was super easy. So maybe you give the java + oop combo a try.

</comment><comment><USER3> Try reading the code of an open source project that uses OOP.

or, maybe it would help to first learn about functional programming. Then, you will see that polymorphism is just a poor man's closure.

Anyway, the most important thing is: don't try to fit your program design into the oop model. Instead, model your program in the way that makes most sense to you. If that's not OOP, then so be it.

</comment><comment><USER4> I think you know the basic of OOP. Try learning an MVC framework. Maybe it's the next thing to do to have a deeper understanding of OOP.</comment>


Thinking outside the box with java - <AUTHOR> http://zeroturnaround.com/fun/pencils-down-solutions-to-our-pat-the-unicorns-java-puzzle/

<comment><AUTHOR> Here is the post explaining the challenge [http://zeroturnaround.com/fun/magical-java-puzzle-pat-the- un...](http://zeroturnaround.com/fun/magical-java-puzzle-pat-the-unicorns/)</comment>


Ask HN: Any Spatial/3D audio voice communication software? - <AUTHOR> I'm looking for something that would make it easier to socialize with friends through the internet while we're all socially distancing due to COVID-19.
Zoom and things like that are not very good for 'hanging out' with more than a few people because only 1 person can talk at a time.
I'm looking for something like VRChat or AltSpace VR but that doesn't require a powerful computer or a virtual reality headset. It would be ideal if it could run entirely in a web browser but I'm OK with something native as well if it's cross-platform and doesn't require much horsepower.
Some kind of simplistic 3d environment that we can navigate our avatars around and which has spatial audio simulation so that multiple clusters of users could form and have separate conversations in the same space with low friction would be really nice.
If the solution requires that I self-host some software on my own server that would be fine.
I know there are various video games that I could use to make this work but ideally i'd like the friction with onboarding new users to be extremely low. I also don't want the focus to be on playing a game but on talking and just chilling out.
Thanks! <comment><AUTHOR> I ended up discovering mozilla hubs! It's exactly what i'm looking for! WOW</comment>


An Introduction to Mindfulness Meditation - <AUTHOR> http://hivelogic.com/articles/view/an-introduction-to-mindfulness-meditation/ <comment><USER3> If you're into this sort of thing, I highly recommend Goenka's 10 day Vipassana retreat:

<http://www.dhamma.org/>

I did the course in Kyoto years ago (there are locations worldwide: <http://www.dhamma.org/en/alphalist.shtml> ). The entire 10 days you do nothing more than watch your breath. First 6 or 7 days are hell, the remaining days are heaven. Just need some time for the dust to settle.

The entire course, accommodations, and meals are offered completely free of charge. They won't even accept a donation until you've experienced the course. Even then, there was no overt push to collect money from participants.

They ask you to leave your existing practices at the door, and offer no new dogmas other than watching your breath/mind.

I haven't been back to another course or otherwise involved with the group since then, but it had a profound impact on my life.

<comment><USER4> Can you talk more about your experience? How are the last 3 days "heaven"? What was the "profound impact" on your life?

<comment><USER5> Here's a report from my friend who went:

""" the basics: for 10 days, i joined roughly 50 other people in onalaska, wa (a little town in the middle south of olympia) and we learned anapanna and vipassana meditations (as intepreted by s. n. goenka). we weren't allowed to talk to one another. in the evenings, we could ask questions of the teacher, but at the end of it all i probably said about 30 sentences

here's the schedule that we followed scrupulously every day:

4am - wake up bell 4:30 - 6:30 - meditate in the hall or the sleep quarters 6:30 - 8 - breakfast and rest 8 - 9 - meditate in the hall (strong determination starting on day 4 (more on this below)) 9 - 11 - meditate in the hall or the sleep quarters 11 - 1pm - lunch and rest 1 - 2:30 - meditate in the hall or the sleep quarters 2:30 - 3:30 - mediate in the hall (strong determination starting on day 4) 3:30 - 5 - meditate in the hall or the sleep quarters 5 - 6 - tea/fruit break 6 - 7 - meditate in the hall (strong determination starting on day 4) 7 - 8:15 - video discourse 8:15 - 9 - meditate in the hall 9 - 9:30 - ask teacher questions if desired 10 - <USER2> out

in general we were instructed to sit however was comfortable and change position as sparingly as possible. "strong determination" sits beginning on day 4 meant that we were to not move the entire hour. of course, as the pain got really bad, we were free to do so. i'll get back to the madness of this later.

day 1 we were instructed to focus on our breath. we were to keep only our breath in our minds. no counting, no visualization, no mantras. not deep breath or shallow breath. just breathe naturally and observe. as the mind wanders away, we we were told, notice it without anger or frustrating and resume observation of the breath. my mind wandered away after observing my breath for about 10 seconds max. it got a little better throughout my stay there, but not much.

day 2 we were given the same instructions as day 1, but were told to also start paying attention to the area of skin right below the nostrils. we were to note wherever the breath brushed past that area and focus on the smallest point of skin that we could.

day 3 we were told to look for sensations on the same moustache-zone. at this point, i began to feel an odd tingling sensation very lightly and ocassionally.

day 4 we were instructed in vipassana meditation. it basically consists of observing every part on the surface of the body, in a fixed order, piece by piece. we were told to observe any sensations as we go through the body and not react with craving or aversion. just observe the sensation and pass to the next part of the body.

day 5 - 10 was the continuation of this with additional elaborations on the nature of passing attention through the body. these were also the days when the weird shit started happening. i think sometime during day 5 i discovered that my entire body actually experiences a low-grade tingling 24/7, but i just never had the awareness to feel it. the ability to discern it comes and goes, but, just today during my evening meditation, i felt it on nearly every part of my body. (addendum from a month later: the tingling is gone, but still does show up from time to time during particularly good sits.) it's neither pleasant nor unpleasant and has its own internal logic. every person there felt it, as i discovered after i spoke to them on day 10.

during one of the strong determination sits, at about minute 45, the pain in my back became really bad. my mind started screaming for me to move, but i had built up enough experience at this point to have a little delay in response. i started examining the pain, really understanding it. i noticed that the pain itself, the sensation, was not so bad. what was horrible, was the nagging child inside me, the one that felt entitled to feel good all the time. the child pulled on my entire body, trying to force it to move. i ignored it and ignored it and really analyzed the pain. and... it all went away in a single instant. just dropped from my body. i don't know what happened, but i suspect i somehow managed to undo all sorts of knots of tension. i felt perfectly at ease and sat out the rest of the hour plus another 10 minutes. afterwards, i felt a tremendous elation. """

<comment><USER6> I'd like to second that experience, and to comment on some parts of it.

On one end of the spectrum, I am baffled by the drama surrounding the "weird shit" happening to your body. I had the same stuff happening during my meditation but I didn't find it to be all that notable. Yes, after several days you begin to isolate tiny little sensations (like weak electric current) all over your body. It's really just that and nothing more though. I guess I question the value of that particular experience - is it really such a huge revelation that practicing a small task over and over makes you better at it, sometimes enabling you to do things you didn't think were possible?

On the opposite end of the spectrum, I feel like people don't give enough credit to the experience of forcing yourself to keep a position in spite of searing pain. I am preparing to give birth soon and one of the exercises for pain management is to practice relaxed breathing while squeezing ice cubes in your hands. It's painful but also incredibly empowering to learn that pain can be overcome, and unlike meditating for days to achieve a few weird sensations, it's a practical skill. You don't have to commit yourself to a 10-day retreat or practice a particular form of meditation to achieve that though, there is a variety of ways to do it, none of them particularly mystical.

<comment><USER7> By the end of the course, I could scan my beating heart within my chest. It freaked me out. I wanted to tell my classmates all about it, but couldn't for a couple more days.

I had severe back pain, have lower back issues, and it took days to get them to allow me to meditate sitting against the wall. When my concentration would break every few minutes, I would gasp in pain, my lower back muscles cramping and spasming the whole time, because it was overwhelming. I thought, and I still think, that requiring me to go through that was ridiculous, and it was only when I told the lead teacher I was leaving if he didn't allow it that he permitted me to sit against the wall. It still hurt like hell, and that was fine, but I could hold myself physically upright at least.

I don't think the courses in the US are so uptight, though.

<comment><USER6> Mine was the same in terms of the requirement to sit upright with exceptions granted to just a couple people. It was in Massachusetts although I forget the exact name of the place.

<comment><USER7> Thats how it should be. I was a medical exception, though. I crushed two vertebrae, and so the muscle is pulled over them at a weird angle. They cramp is I sit/stand without moving too long. The instructor didn't want to hear that, because I told him the fracture had healed. Said it was my body's way of 'letting out the suffering' basically. Which was nothing other than stupid, because actually it was my body telling me, "Hey stupid, your muscles have been cramping for 20 minutes. How can you possibly stand the pain?"

Everyone should have to sit, and everyone will hurt when they don't move, but if your back muscles don't freaking work, you should be able to sit against the wall. Which they did let me, eventually.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I can recommend this book:

[http://www.amazon.com/Mindfulness-Plain-English-Updated- Expa...](http://www.amazon.com/Mindfulness-Plain-English-Updated- Expanded/dp/0861713214)

"Mindfulness in Plain English"

It's a great book that is easy to read and explains why and how.

<comment><USER9> I have the un-updated-and-expanded edition, and it is excellent. So is Buddhism Plain and Simple [http://www.amazon.com/Buddhism-Plain-Simple-Steve- Hagen/dp/0...](http://www.amazon.com/Buddhism-Plain-Simple-Steve- Hagen/dp/0767903323/)

<comment><USER10> Both of these books are great. After those, the book "Seeking the Heart of Wisdom" is recommended for those who want more of the whole picture.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The article mentions Thanissaro Bhikkhu aka Geoffry DeGraff in the beginning and links to some of his writings. His Dhamma talks are also freely available at <http://dhammatalks.org/> for anyone interested.

Just be careful, I lost three close friends to the monastic life because of his teachings -- two are monks with Ajaan Geoff at his monastery outside San Diego, another is ordained at a monastery out in the jungle in Thailand.

Never thought I'd run into Ajaan Geoff on Hacker News.

</comment><comment><USER12> I'd recommend [http://www.amazon.com/Zen-Mind-Beginners-Shambhala- Library/d...](http://www.amazon.com/Zen-Mind-Beginners-Shambhala- Library/dp/1590302672) (begginer's mind there are many possibilities, on the expert's, few) And this for creativity and zen: [http://www.amazon.com/Zen- Creativity-Cultivating-Your-Artist...](http://www.amazon.com/Zen-Creativity- Cultivating-Your-Artistic/dp/0345466330)

<comment><USER13> Also Hardcore Zen [http://www.amazon.com/Hardcore-Zen-Monster-Movies- Reality/dp...](http://www.amazon.com/Hardcore-Zen-Monster-Movies- Reality/dp/086171380X/) and Brad Warner's blog <http://hardcorezen.blogspot.com/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Meditation is pretty interesting stuff. For those put off by the spiritual or new age aspects of meditation, try The Relaxation Response.

<http://www.relaxationresponse.org/steps/>

<http://www.relaxationresponse.org/howto.htm>

It's trancendental meditation boiled down to the basics and demystified by a Harvard MD.

</comment><comment><USER15> A bit off topic, but related:

There have been many complaining about the pain in sitting.

I am not a meditation expert, I have had numbness to my legs after 20 mins of sitting and I tried Kneeling- sitting such that, your balls of the feet touches your butt and the bottom part of the feet is completely parallel to the floor. (<http://media.wiley.com/assets/6/99/0-7645-5116-7_0703.jpg>) why? this forces you to have a natural posture i.e. keeps your spine in its natural state, thus prolonging your meditation time. But, don't wear any footwear.

PS: I found the image doing a google search, this link is hotlinked to a "meditation for dummies", where there are more postures described. I won't post it here and make it messy. I trust your knowledge in doing a google search!

<comment><USER16> It depends on your anatomy. I have a pronounced negative camber to my shins, so kneeling like that puts almost all my weight on my metatarals. Unfortunately, my hips aren't flexible enough to allow sitting crosslegged, either, so standing, laying, and walking meditation are about it for me.

Some systems of meditation I've encountered encourage experimentation to find a posture that works for you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm a big fan of the podcasts at zencast.org. Particularly those by Gil Fronsdal. He is a Vipassana teacher and gives talks in a very humble, down to earth manner.

<comment><USER18> I'll agree with this. Gil has an incredible manner of speaking. Some of the other zencast podcasts have people that tend to lecture at you on their topic, whereas Gil just seems to draw you in to the way he leads his life, warts and all. I actually miss my one-hour commute (now a 5-minute bike ride) that gave me time to listen to him.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> It's interesting to see all the opinions here. I recently found a zen (soto zen) dojo in Bucharest, to my great surprise. The last weekend I attended a short "retreat" there.

Mostly my experience fits with what I read here. Overall it was fine, and I will continue going there. Probably my biggest problem is that I finally understand and feel the difference between atheism and agnosticism. I am atheist, zen is agnosting. That is, it really doesn't care what religion (if any) you have. In practice this means people will be occasionally talking about "positive energy" and "negative energy". It's mostly small talk though, and the teacher was reasonably... well actually emphatically neutral.

As for the regular meetings, they are much cleaner. It's just "hello" and small talk, then you sit, then "good bye" without small talk.

I did learn a lot of tips about correct posture and I got a proper pillow, stuff I could not learn on my own. So even if you don't plan to join a dojo, a few visits are probably very useful.

Edit: Oh yes, another thing that somewhat irked me. It took me a long time to put my finger on it, but there was too little self deprecating humor in the teacher's talks. Sue me, but this is how I felt.

</comment><comment><USER20> In Feb, I took Part 1 course of Art of Living (AoL). <http://artofliving.org>

In AoL, they teach you what they call 'Sudarshan Kriya'. It's a breathing technique which helps you in variety of ways. I originally took the course because I was very stressed and my friends recommended the course so that I can learn how to deal with stress. I can definitely say that the particular breathing technique helped me a lot and I can say without reservation that my stress has reduced drastically. What I like about Sudarshan Kriya is that it is a very practical technique. It's very easy to follow and as you do Sudarshan Kriya regularly, your breathing capacity and your ability to focus on breathing will increase. Sudarshan Kriya helps you slip in to meditation much more easily. I highly recommend taking the Art of Living course.

<comment><USER15> I wish I could downvote. I rarely post,so don't have the karma.

A friend and I went for a free seminar by Sri Sri himself and had to sit through the parody of meditation and acted humour, which the paid patrons enjoy. He evaded questions from everyone and all he 'preached' was to join this course and not one person(outside their organization) I met afterwards told me anything positive. It's a good way to loot you of 400usd.

I have my first cousins who attended the course and told me firsthand about the "materialistic" association related to this course.[for instance, you are told not to worry about money by a person who worked as a banker(made his money) and now is a spokesman, then you are told to put in more money and rope in more people for this course by 'volunteering" ]

<comment><USER20> I up voted you because I completely agree with your points.

I have attended Sri Sri meet-up once and I did feel that the humor was forced and all the attendants were still laughing. Also most of what Sri Sri talked that day didn't make any sense to me. Let me give you an example. This is what Sri Sri said: 'Everything is nothing' and then harped about it for next 15 mins.

When I learned that course fee was 350$, I wasn't really inclined to attend the course. But I was so desperate for solutions to my problems, I decided to give it a shot. And I can safely say that I learned a lot and it helped me tremendously.

Later on, I wanted to attend another course and the fees were 450$. At that time, I and my friend spoke to the course organizer and complained about the high fees. They say that this money goes to the charity effort and there is nothing he can do. Anyway, I could afford the fee and attended the second course as well.

Personally, I don't agree with the 'forceful' charity and few other things, but that doesn't discount the fact that the actual techniques they teach, are very useful. If you can afford the course fee, it's worth giving a shot.

The bottomline for me is, there is a definite connection between breath and mind. I highly recommend experiencing this connection regardless of the route you choose.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Zen is wonderful. In my opinion, a mindfulness or meditation program shouldn't just have a profound impact on your life - it should make your life start to have a profound impact on you!

I highly recommend the following books, which really help you chew through the layers of expectations, belief and doubt when it comes to Buddhism (and in particular, Zen):

[http://www.amazon.com/Ending-Pursuit-Happiness-Zen- Guide/dp/...](http://www.amazon.com/Ending-Pursuit-Happiness-Zen- Guide/dp/0861715535/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1241186153&sr=8-1)

[http://www.amazon.com/Buddhism-without-Beliefs-Stephen- Batch...](http://www.amazon.com/Buddhism-without-Beliefs-Stephen- Batchelor/dp/1573226564/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1241186214&sr=1-2)

</comment><comment><USER22> Meditation is something I would like to try. Recently I went to a zen dojo to try. They sit on this zafu cushion in a position I am not flexible enough to do. Even trying half of the position hurt incredibly. But the worst part was after the meditation, when one of the students asked a question to the master. The master then talked for a very long time, digressing on different parts of his life, mocking his students, and boasting about his superiority, which he tried to demonstrate by misquoting all sorts of people. I wondered if listening to the master was also pain the students are supposed to overcome. I won't go back there. I'll have to try meditation somewhere else.

<comment><USER23> You can stretch and acclimate your knees to the sitting position, unless you have a major existing medical condition or something. It comes with time.

The next thing that will come up is that zazen can be _incredibly boring_.

(It is.)

But it helps.

Also, sometimes people considered authority figures act like dicks. Sometimes people cut their authority figures slack because they're "enlightened", or whatever.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> > This is what Thanissaro Bhikkhu, a renowned Buddhist meditation teacher, > calls "getting the body into position."

"In order to do a sit-up, lie flat on your back with your knees at a 45 degree angle. This is what Jane Fonda calls 'getting the body into position.'"

No kidding? What else would you call it?

<comment><USER25> Next paragraph: "The hard part is what comes next: getting the mind into position . . ."

Get it?

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I also recommend binaural beats. Look up "Mindwave" on your iPhone, it's $1.99 but it's really good.

<comment><USER15> white noise (set to your liking) really helps.

url:<http://www.simplynoise.com/>

If you prefer something more flexible, sbagen is a freeware binaural beat generator. you can create your own(and risk?) or use several beats generated for you. There are about 40 beats just for focusing

url: <http://uazu.net/sbagen/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> For those wondering, the use of a meditation cushion and a proper posture is to make it comfortable to sit upright (not slouch) for long periods of time. It's important and shouldn't be thought of as just sitting down.</comment>


Maciej Ceglowski Addresses US Congress [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://www.banking.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Ceglowski%20Testimony%205-7-19.pdf <comment><AUTHOR> For my money, it's worth reading just for dude's tone and clarity.

Who can argue with this, from the next to last page: "For sixty years, we have called the threat of totalitarian surveillance 'Orwellian', but the word no longer fits the threat. The better word now may be 'Californian'. A truly sophisticated system of social control, of the kind being pioneered in China, will not compel obedience, but nudge people towards it. Rather than censoring or punishing those who dissent, it will simply make sure their voices are not heard. It will reward complacent behavior, and sideline troublemakers. It's even possible that, judiciously wielded, such a system of social control might enjoy wide public support in our own country."

I mean to say, agree or disagree, that's solid writing.</comment>