TomTom iPhone App Now Available in U.S. App Store - <AUTHOR> http://appadvice.com/appnn/2009/08/tomtom-iphone-app-now-available-in-us-app-store-priced-at-9999/

<comment><USER2> On its face, it seems odd to pay so much for true turn-by-turn navigation on the iPhone when there's a built-in mapping application, but I still often throw my TomTom GPS in my bag when I'm travelling to an unfamiliar city. I'll have to think long and hard about whether to shell out for this.

Incidentally, TomTom's IQ Routes (which replaces the drive-time estimates used in most map databases with actual values collected from customers' GPS units) makes a huge difference in the accuracy of routing estimates, especially in big cities around rush hour.</comment>


SWIFT says second bank hit by malware attack - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/us-swift-heist-case-idUSKCN0Y332D <comment><USER2> Seeing as the last lot got away with some $81 million, I really hope they beef up their security.

What I don't understand is; after discovering fraudulent transfers -- can't they simply be reversed? Or is there too much cross-country red tape?</comment>


Seattle City Council approves cap on Lyft, UberX, Sidecar drivers - <AUTHOR> http://www.geekwire.com/2014/seattle-city-council-approves-cap-lyft-uberx-sidecar-drivers/ <comment><USER2> >"The headline should not read that the City Council capped anything," Harrell said. "It should read that it allowed the ride-shares to come into the industry."

Why?

<comment><USER3> Because until this legislation passed it was technically illegal for them to pick up passengers at all. (I think they were supposed to have for-hire licenses, like drivers for Uber Black, which is unaffected by this vote).</comment></comment>


More Speculation on Apple Self Driver - <AUTHOR> http://www.roboticstrends.com/article/apple_self_driving_car_in_the_works

<comment><USER2> And again the author rules out the possibility that Apple might need the test facility for other technology in cars and not necessarily works on self- driving cars.

Translating "would like to get an understanding of timing and availability for the space." to "Apple Self-Driving Car in the Works" is a big step.</comment>


Using Bayesian Optimization for Reinforcement Learning in an AI Agent - <AUTHOR> http://blog.sigopt.com/post/154251615358/sigopt-for-ml-using-bayesian-optimization-for <comment><AUTHOR> Hello, I'm one of the co-founders of SigOpt (YC W15) and am happy to answer any questions about what we do and how.

For more posts and some of the papers we've presented at ICML, NIPS, etc check out [https://sigopt.com/research](https://sigopt.com/research)

</comment><comment><USER2> I'm the co-author of this blog post. I'm happy to answer any questions!</comment>


How to use Jitsi Meet, an open source Zoom alternative - <AUTHOR> https://mashable.com/article/how-to-use-jitsi-meet-zoom-alternative/ <comment><USER2> Unfortunately, on iOS, they do not currently support using the browser instead of the app.

For people who have all or most of their entire family on iOS, but who refuse to install yet another video meeting app, this becomes a blocker.

Browsers work fine on desktop OSes (well, not Safari on macOS), and maybe also on Android. But iOS is a weird beast here, as is Safari. And MobileSafari on iOS is a doubly weird beast.

Yes, they are working on getting Safari working on macOS, but I think they are further away from getting MobileSafari on iOS working.

So, here we are.</comment>


Pomplamoose: Making a living on Youtube - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=125783271

<comment><USER2> I'm kinda floored by the comments on the story on NPR. Even if you don't like'em, they're managing to pull off something not everyone can. I've enjoyed Pomplamoose for a while now. Glad to see they're doing well.

Then again, I guess it's just as shocking that I'm still surprised by the vitriolic tone of commenters on the internet.

<comment><AUTHOR> You should see some of the Youtube comments.

I think, from here on out, anyone who hopes to break the mold in any way via the web will just have to ignore 99.9% of all comments. Too many people get their rocks off anonymously tearing people down, and sites just don't care enough about building a thoughtful community to combat it.

<comment><USER3> I think everyone online should learn to ignore 99.9% of all comments. I'd like to hope most of us already had.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Here's a cover of Earth Wind & Fire's "September", I think it's some of their best work

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xycnv87N_BU>

<comment><USER5> Here is "Telephone" by Lady Gaga:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2vEStDd6HVY>

It's considerably better than the original (in my opinion). The video style is also pretty interesting. The guy in them (Jack Conte) had this to say about it (from wikipedia[1]):

>What you see is what you hear. (No lip-syncing for instruments or voice)

>If you hear it, at some point you see it. (No hidden sounds)

They also make money from selling merchandise (soap [grapefruit scented, pomplamoose is french for grapefruit], tshirts).

Really really awesome music, and seemingly awesome people making it.

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

<comment><USER6> >... pomplamoose is french for grapefruit

Actually, 'pamplemousse' is French for grapefruit, but yeah, phonetically it's about right.

<comment><USER7> You can't get a trademark if you spell it correctly - pamplemousse isn't distinctive wrt soap.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This could change the music-game for good. With youtube already being an important player for any kind of music consumation, they would tap gigantic potential if they find a way to establish this program with a large number of bands. The more content they get, the more the major labels are forced to consider the same actions for their big performers. Youtube gets paid...

</comment><comment><USER9> Sorta OT: Pomplamoose Shreds: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKD07BYcreg> They're talented, but the description cracks me up..

</comment><comment><USER10> I am pretty sure I heard her sing mister sandman on a Toyota commercial last night via food network. If so that's real success.

<comment><USER11> That was most likely Petra Haden: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petra_Haden>

<comment><USER10> nope it was pomplamoose [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NaIs3u_h02Y&feature=playe...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NaIs3u_h02Y&feature=player_embedded)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I love their stuff. I do kinda wish they sold physical CDs—I would get one for my dad in a heartbeat. This is probably my favorite of their tracks: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9KMgg7T_sg>

<comment><USER13> Their original stuff is just fantastic. I wish they'd do more original work. My favorite: Always in the Season:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Il-OFaFzHQM>

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> "I guess I kinda don't like how there's such a pedestal for music culture and especially for band culture," he says. "It just feels fake; it feels like smoke and mirrors. I feel like music doesn't have to be like that. It can be something that's very normal and very accessible."

Man this quote from the Pomplamoose guy really does a good job of making a spot-on observation while managing to diss his own band.

He's right IMO. The music and music culture of my generation is self-centered, and pompous (see hipsters). But I still enjoy it. I think by making music that's "very normal and very accessible" you wind up in the land of vanilla like Pomplamoose.

</comment><comment><USER15> I guess I shouldn't be as shocked as I am that a major NPR anchor and interviewer, Linda Wertheimer, seems to consider it a huge novelty for a record release to be digital-only.

</comment><comment><USER16> Another example: Andrew Garcia (I believe that's his name) he is in American Idol a former youtuber (American Idol force people to delete previous-show- promotion e.g. youtube videos).</comment>


Russia confirms US cybercommand cyberattack; RAID controllers destroyed - <AUTHOR> https://blog.lukaszolejnik.com/target-confirming-an-offensive-cyber-operation-2/ <comment><USER2> Recently the US Cyber Command was granted greater authority to go on the offensive, which enabled them to take actions such as this. You can read more here:

[https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/17/us/politics/cyber- command...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/17/us/politics/cyber-command- trump.html?module=inline)

</comment><comment><USER3> Same as when I read reports of Russia "attacking" the US, I'm having a hard time believing there was the actual evidence to support the origin of the attack in this case as well. Any even modestly sophisticated hacker, let alone US Cyber Command, would have no problem hiding the origin of the attack in order to have plausible deniability. Truth of the matter is, you don't know if it was USCC or some teenager in her parents' basement.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying the two countries don't ever attack each other's computer systems. I think they do it all the time. I'm just saying that when someone says "this particular attack was definitely from country X" they're usually full of shit.

Disclosure: I'm Russian-American.

<comment><USER4> As with most things, it's hard to prove what actually happened definitively, but there are clues you can piece together to make a claim within a reasonable degree of probability. Things like what type of binaries were installed, what servers were reached out to, even what commands were run...if you collect enough data, it is possible to see patterns in how certain attackers (like USCC) operate, and if we assume a teenager in her parents' basement doesn't have access to the same tools and procedures as USCC does, then it becomes pretty obvious it wasn't her.

To a certain degree, if your server has malware X, and you can identify malware X (or something very similar) as belonging to actor A, and you know actors B, C, and D don't have X in their arsenal, then you can guess with high probability that you were attacked by A.

Intelligence is probably the most high stakes guessing game in history, and there are definitely smart people at the top who know that simple IP correlation is not enough to make this claim - but they likely have access to sensitive (confidential) data that further justifies that claim.

<comment><USER3> >> doesn't have access to the same tools and procedures as USCC does

If she's well connected, she does have access to almost everything that's available, short of something that offers no plausible deniablity because it's custom made for a particular system, like Stuxnet, or something that's full of zero days nobody else knows about yet. And the only thing you can conclude in these two cases is that you're _probably_ dealing with a state-level attacker, but you can't say which state unless there's something to further narrow things down, such as unfettered access to controlled nuclear technology in the case of Stuxnet.

Notice also how we are always expected to accept these reports on faith, and no _verifiable_ evidence is ever presented.

<comment><USER4> No verifiable evidence is presented because it shows your hand. If you show the enemy what you don't know, they could figure out what you weren't able to find out, and use that to their advantage. If they can trace the evidence back to a particular source, they can crack down on it and prevent future evidence from being collected through that pipeline. At best this means they change their security procedures, at worst it means they murder your spies.

<comment><USER3> >> because it shows your hand

Then why talk about it at all? I'll tell you why. It's propaganda. Someone is trying to shit into someone else's head.

<comment><USER4> It is, indeed, propaganda. But propaganda does not always have to be blatantly wrong - even a broken clock is right twice a day, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm mildly amused by comments about the "militarization" of the Internet given its origins.

<comment><USER6> Perhaps re-militarisation would be more accurate?

<comment><USER7> [https://www.internetsociety.org/internet/history- internet/br...](https://www.internetsociety.org/internet/history- internet/brief-history-internet/)

Just to keep in mind:

> It was from the RAND study that the false rumor started claiming that the > ARPANET was somehow related to building a network resistant to nuclear war. > This was never true of the ARPANET, only the unrelated RAND study on secure > voice considered nuclear war. However, the later work on Internetting did > emphasize robustness and survivability, including the capability to > withstand losses of large portions of the underlying networks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The main link support the "Russia" cyber-attack gives me a 404. Who is upvoting this stuff?

<comment><USER9> Works for me (in the UK) [https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/23/us/politics/russian- hacki...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/23/us/politics/russian-hacking-usa- cyber-command.html)

Edit: I see what you mean. This is the source after fixing the link: [https://www.armed- services.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Nakasone...](https://www.armed- services.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Nakasone_02-14-19.pdf)

<comment><AUTHOR> Works for me too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> "hacked iPhone 7" how about that Apple fanboys?

</comment><comment><USER11> So... The Constitution? We just attack other countries whenever we feel like now?

<comment><USER12> The case can be made that we were attacked first in 2016, both by hacking (and releasing) the DNC emails and a coordinated propaganda campaign via social media, and this was an offensive move to prevent it from happening again in the 2018 elections. I don't see how this is just an "attack whenever we feel like it."

<comment><USER13> Everything you say could be true, but it doesn't address the comment you responded to. The Constitution requires a declaration of war by Congress. The War Powers Act gives the president the authority to respond to a military emergency for 90 days, giving the Congress time to make such a declaration. Neither of those things have triggered in this case.

<comment><USER14> Declaring war on Russia. Not a smart idea. I prefer a violation of the Constitution and everyone looks away than a war declaration on a nuclear power.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Well the media also reported that by the Mayan calendar doom was imminent. What did they report? do they have informants from the inside? Otherwise this is hardly substantiating.</comment>


Writing Fibonacci in LLVM with llvmlite - <AUTHOR> https://ian-bertolacci.github.io/llvm/llvmlite/python/compilers/programming/2016/03/06/LLVMLite_fibonacci.html <comment><USER2> > Have you ever built LLVM from source? If you want to hate yourself and your > for a few hours try that sucker out.

I really have to hand it to the LLVM team, getting LLVM to build on Windows was _absolutely nothing_ more than a matter of installing CMake and running it. It's usually far easier to build from source on Linux.

The documentation on the other hand...

<comment><USER3> I think he is talking of hours of compiling.

As you say, LLVM build system works well. I use it indirectly thru emscripten.

Prebuilt binaries for LLVM and clang are easily accessible:

[http://llvm.org/releases/download.html](http://llvm.org/releases/download.html)

<comment><USER2> > Prebuilt binaries for LLVM and clang are easily accessible

Admittedly I haven't checked in a few months, however, either only one VC version (VC breaks either ABI or stdlib compatibility with almost every release) or only the release runtime (stdlib incompatible with the debug runtime) is available, I can't remember which. That's the case with most OSS C++ projects - even on Windows it's best to just build from source.

I don't remember being particularly annoyed with the build time, but then again I'm not using it for anything job related.

<comment><USER3> > That's the case with most OSS C++ projects - even on Windows it's best to > just build from source.

Yes, it's better.

Building clang+llvm takes about 2 hours on my machine. Last time I used the prebuilt binaries to check the status of C++17 in clang. I remember looking at the paths with "ldd" to see if their clang linked properly with their llvm. It was OK.

There is an ongoing ABI change in gcc for C++. Maybe it's finished now.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Apple SIM - <AUTHOR> https://www.apple.com/ipad/apple-sim/ <comment><USER3> I'm surprised Apple has created a proper Fi competitor yet. It would fit so well into their premium brand of "your iPhone works the moment you step off the plane wherever your amazing life takes you".

They wouldn't have their UX tied to cell providers, who are some of the most unpleasant entities to interact with. They would probably be able to lean further into their personal security stance, by fully obfuscating the user from the provider.

They have the brand leverage to do it, I'm hoping this is a stepping stone.

<comment><USER4> > _It would fit so well into their premium brand of "your iPhone works the > moment you step off the plane wherever your amazing life takes you"._

If there's _anything_ that would make me buy an iPhone, this is it. I travel a lot between the US and Europe; I'm using Fi at the moment even though I shouldn't actually have access to it. It's mind boggling to me the crazy things we can do with tech today, and not make it all work smoothly and reliably when you step a few meters off the border of whichever country you're in.

<comment><USER5> I have T-Mobile's Simple Choice plan, and while I haven't flown too much internationally, the few times I have, my service has worked seamlessly.

My plan includes 4G coverage in Mexico and Canada, and 2G coverage in 100+ other markets (with the option to upgrade for 3G and 4G rates in those markets). Looking at [1] it appears the current plans may not offer this for free anymore, but it's still available.

[1] [https://www.t-mobile.com/travel-abroad-with-simple- global](https://www.t-mobile.com/travel-abroad-with-simple-global)

<comment><USER6> I believe the above commenter talks about the ease/pricing of Fi as much as the experience. I'm using Fi on my iPhone (and have for a while) - and it works worldwide for $10 / 1Gb. It's actually downright magical compared to other offers (even the Apple SIM powered ones).

<comment><USER5> The ease with T Mobile is there too. I pay $50/month for my plan, and calls, text, and data effectively works seamlessly in ~160 countries. If I want _faster_ data in some of those countries, I can pay $10 extra.

Google Fi is $20/month for voice and text, plus a variable $10/month per GB up to 6GB where it caps out at $80/month.

Note that I'm not arguing against you, just wanted to clarify that the t mobile experience is just as seamless as Fi, in case I overcomplicated it.

T-Mobile even supports WiFi calling in the same way as Fi, if you want to enable it (handy for me at work, where I'm in a building built like a bunker that gets close to no reception on any network).

<comment><USER7> Is 6GB seriously the _best_ Google has to offer? I'm on a 7GB monthly plan and I find that limiting...

I guess we have different standards here in Europe.

<comment><USER5> As Larrysalibra said, 6GB is basically just the threshold for where you go from paying per GB to it being unlimited. If you use 3GB, you'll be charged $30 for saga. If you use 6GB, you'll be charged $60 for data, and if you use 9GB or 18GB or 30 GB you'll still only be charged $60 for data.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This isn't new, the Apple SIM has been around since 2014:

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

<comment><USER9> And it still doesn't work properly with every carrier. I bought a new, unlocked iPad Mini 4 that came with the Apple SIM, and no carrier would activate it. I finally got it working on Ting after getting one of Ting's SIM cards and lots of back-and-forth between Ting and Apple Support.

<comment><USER10> I think it is only intended to work with Apple's partner carriers. I wanted to add my iPad to my AT&T data service and I could not use the built in SIM. Instead AT&T sent one for free. The iPad has a separate SIM slot and I imagine it will have to until the built in SIM is truly universal.

<comment><USER7> > The iPad has a separate SIM slot and I imagine it will have to until the > built in SIM is truly universal.

Or you know... In the rest of the world, people actually ask for SIM cards, physical cards, because they are portable, and 100% certifiably decouples your device from your cellular provider.

Why on earth would I have something hidden inside... Which may or may not be interoperable... Which I cannot take and use with other devices if I need to? Which I cannot easily replace with a new one, from any carrier in the world?

<comment><USER10> Not disagreeing with you. It would suck if Apple ever removed the slot, but it would be par for the course for them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I've always wished that apple would offer this in the macbook pros. A laptop that doesn't have to tether, but just carries its own internet connection with it would be really nice.

<comment><USER12> I know many thinkpads have an empty bay with a minipci connector that you can put modems in which do just that.

I don't know why things like that aren't popular, I guess it looks "ugly?"

<comment><USER13> Because a tiny portion of people would use it. Who wants to pay an extra monthly cost on their machine? The only people who would really do this are ones where it is covered by work.

<comment><USER7> > Who wants to pay an extra monthly cost on their machine?

It's not an extra cost when you get a twin-SIM for your regular subscription. You obviously have to pay extra to have the modem though.

Source: Owner of Thinkpad Carbon X1 with built in 4G-moden and twin-SIM from my cellular provider.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This isn't new and it's fairly expensive compared to Google Fi or T-Mobile. Might be worth it for customers in some countries but US users have much better choices for roaming internationally.

<comment><USER15> Where did you find pricing information? Google Fi is already outrageously expensive for data at $10/GB

<comment><USER16> Fi recently announced some changes for large data users: [https://www.engadget.com/2018/01/17/google-project-fi- bill-p...](https://www.engadget.com/2018/01/17/google-project-fi-bill- protection-unlimited-data/)

Basically it caps off at $60 after 6GB, is free up to 15GB, and then throttles.

That's pretty great pricing especially considering it works anywhere in the world.

Disclaimer: I am a Google employee, Fi customer outside of work, don't work on Fi.

<comment><USER15> Yeah that definitely kept me around for a few extra months. Even with the limit though, a total bill of $80 stung pretty bad when $40 unlimited options were available from other carriers that include international (north american) coverage.

I guess when I signed up for Fi I imagined myself travelling more outside of North America.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> too bad this doesn't work in iPhones.

I have 15+ international SIM cards. Slightly inconvenient to have to buy one for each country I visit to avoid surprise roaming charges.

<comment> dorian-graph What kind of case or holder do you use for your SIM cards? While I'm not at 15+, I have a couple.

<comment><USER18> I roll them up in a sticky note and store it in my passport holder.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> cup-of-tea For some reason I instantly noticed the map is showing a park in Lyon. Does that have any significance?

(Of course, they should have used openstreetmap [https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=16/45.7790/4.8529](https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=16/45.7790/4.8529))

<comment><USER19> yeah, its steve jobs sending clues from his grave. Go there and dig under the first thing that looks like an apple for the next hint for the steve-treasure

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Unfortunately, when I go on road trips (mostly western US), there are a _LOT_ of areas that only Verizon seems to have coverage. I've used most of the other carriers at one time or another, but I've been with Verizon for about 2 years now as I just got tired of not having connectivity when traveling inside the country.

</comment><comment><USER21> why its working only on iPad and not on iPhone?

<comment><USER22> iPhones are generally sold through carriers with the phone locked to that specific carrier. The main point of the Apple SIM - the ability to switch between short-term mobile internet contracts across multiple carriers - <USER2> be pretty moot in this scenario.

Note that the Apple SIM isn't new, nor tied to the release of the new iPad model today. It's been around since at least 2014. I remember going to an Apple Store back then to pick one up. The associate at first didn't know what I was talking about but eventually found them somewhere stashed in the back- office.

<comment><USER23> Could a virtual SIM not replace physical SIMs, reducing the friction of switching providers?

It seems we're just waiting on carriers to catch up to the idea at the moment.

[https://www.kaspersky.com/blog/virtual- sim/11572/](https://www.kaspersky.com/blog/virtual-sim/11572/)

<comment><USER24> Google already does it with Project Fi + Pixel.

[https://www.androidcentral.com/using-project-fi- pixel-2s-esi...](https://www.androidcentral.com/using-project-fi- pixel-2s-esim-amazing)

<comment><USER25> I came here to say this. I bought a Pixel 2 XL for my wife last year and there was an option to use SIM-less with Project Fi. I was confused at first and went with it, and it worked. Then I just stored the old SIM. To be honest I don't quite remember how was the process but I remember it was pretty easy to setup.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> How is this better than simply having... A SIM-card in your phone or tablet?

A SIM-card is something you can swap and replace in less than 30 seconds, and 100% decouples your device from your cellular provider. The way things should be. It's hardware so it's portable. It's standardized so it's interoperable and works with all equipment, from all vendors.

Why does Apple need to re-invent this?

Why would I want to replace something 1. which works, 2. is industry standard and 3. has proven itself for more than two decades... With something which is 1. not industry-standard but Apple-only and 2. not proven?

What on earth would compel anyone to make such a stupid trade-off? How stupid would you have to be to think this is a good thing?

<comment><USER26> How is having a sim card better than simply having... free access to any carrier?

A SIM-card is something you need to wait to arrive in snail mail. When going abroad you need to order one ahead of time to get a good price. Switching requires weeks of waiting for new cards to arrive, or going to a store. If you lose your device you need to wait for a replacement.

Why would anyone want to use such an antediluvian method?

Why would I want to use something which 1. needs me to remember/write down weird codes 2. doesn't work internationally without exorbitant fees and workarounds 3. is as old as VGA connectors.

What on earth would compel anyone to make such a stupid trade-off? How stupid would you have to be to think this is a good thing?

PS. Just making a point here, it's not all bad like you're making it out to be, and the dismissive tone muddles the problem. It surprises me that the resistance to new technical solutions to problems is so endorsed here on Hacker News of all places.

<comment><USER27> > A SIM-card is something you need to wait to arrive in snail mail. When going > abroad you need to order one ahead of time to get a good price. Switching > requires weeks of waiting for new cards to arrive, or going to a store. If > you lose your device you need to wait for a replacement.

What do you mean? You just pay a small amount of money at any store/cigarette shop and you get a SIM card in 10 seconds.

<comment><USER28> Depending on where you are in the world, you need to be able to go online to activate the SIM cards you buy at the supermarket/corner-store.

Here in Denmark you can't buy an anonymous SIM card anymore, at least I haven't found any in years. They all require you to register on their website with name, address, CPR (Danish SSN).

<comment><USER27> I doubt Apple SIM will solve that issue, they will likely comply with the local legislation and ask you to register as well.

<comment><USER29> Obviously Apple would have to comply with local legislations, just like any other company has to comply with local legislations. So no, Apple SIM would not provide anonymous mobile access.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I wonder how the rates compare to Google Fi? (Which is also compatible with iPad, even if it isn't advertized).

<comment><USER31> In case anyone is curious, there's a list of compatible devices on this page: [https://support.google.com/fi/answer/6330195?hl=en](https://support.google.com/fi/answer/6330195?hl=en)

I didn't know this was a thing. Is it new?

<comment><USER32> FYI on Fi there are many devices that seem to work well, even if they aren't on the official list of supported devices.

Fi also supports additional devices using a data-only SIM, which doesn't cost any extra except for the per-GB data rates. No $15 surcharge just for the ability to use other devices, etc. Same thing with tethering.

edit: also, this isn't exactly new, Google Fi was introduced in October 2016. I've been using it since then with no problems. In fact, I once received a reimbursement for a short outage that I hadn't even realized happened.

<comment><USER33> There's no extra charge for a data-only SIM but you are required to have a primary device which costs $20 (plus $10/GB). Would be great to offer this to customers on other carriers.

<comment><USER31> When I realized this I ordered one right away.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Is it possible to purchase a dongle for ipad which will let you pop in a sim and support this function?

<comment><USER35> A 'cellular dongle' would be a dream come true.

<comment><USER36> Not really sure, but isn't it what 4g usp modems are for?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Nice to see SoftBank on that page, probably means SoC makers can simply get the IP from them when getting other parts like an ARM core etc. Makes it a whole lot easier to just get a virtual SIM in your device.

<comment><USER38> Probably means

> On October 1, 2006, Vodafone Japan changed its corporate name, mobile phone > brand name, and its mobile phone domain name to SoftBank Mobile, SoftBank, > and [mb.softbank.jp], respectively

and

> SoftBank Mobile was the only official carrier of the iPhone in Japan until > the release of iPhone 4S in 2011 when it became available on au by KDDI as > well

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

Oh, and SoftBank also happens to own Sprint, although that probably is unrelated here.

<comment><USER37> Ah, so SoftBank Group is not just the ARM guys. Makes a different kind of sense now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Nice to see no version on that list but that stuffs been out forever

</comment><comment><USER40> The fact that there are two T-Mobile logos on that page side-by-side bugs me. Irrationally so.

<comment><USER41> I think one is just T for Deutsche Telekom, whose corporate relationship to T-Mobile depends on the month and phase of moon.

<comment><USER40> Huh. Thanks for explaining; I genuinely had no idea Deutsche Telekom existed.

<comment><USER42> Its the old West German PTT as was also know a Dustch Buders Pest to other telecoms :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Whatever you do, do not purchase any device from AT&T. You will be locked in to GSM only networks.

<comment><USER44> Huh? LTE on AT&T has been a thing for a very long time, and it's not GSM.

<comment><USER43> I bought an iPhone 7 from AT&T, and the device is not compatible across the major carriers.

<comment><USER45> You're not using the term 'GSM' correctly. You mean to say that your device is locked to AT&T, not that it is 'GSM'-only.

<comment><USER43> Actually, you're wrong. Att sells an iPhone that is not compatible with CDMA networks. Trust me bud, I've done all the research. Apple sells their devices with the ability to use any of the 4 carriers.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


I'm Going To Scale My Foot Up Your Ass - <AUTHOR> http://teddziuba.com/2008/04/im-going-to-scale-my-foot-up-y.html

<comment><USER2> Are you always this angry and pointless in your blog?</comment>


Molecular Dynamics Simulation of Graphene on Rescale - <AUTHOR> http://blog.rescale.com/running-an-md-simulation-of-graphene-on-rescale/

<comment><USER2> Cool demonstration of Rescale; I hadn't come across them before. It's an interesting market, and certainly an underserved one (I say this as someone who's idly considered running similar calculations on high-end AWS instances and been impressed with the cost but less-so with the time it'd take to set it all up). I imagine one of the difficult things for them is getting access to a lot of the academic codes in widespread use at the moment, considering a lot are under fickle and/or expensive licenses. I don't see a DFT[1] code on your tools list at the moment; perhaps Quantum Espresso[2] (GPL-licensed) might be a candidate if you wanted to try one.

Regarding the topic of the blog post, it's a frequent source of frustration to me that a lot of these scientific tools are so obtuse to use. I imagine the set of people who could understand the physics behind them and might want to use (or just play with) them (e.g. the author of this blog post) is much larger than the set of people who are actually capable of doing so. A good proportion of my day is spent solving problems that are toolchain related rather than science related and it really is immensely frustrating.

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

[2] [http://www.quantum-espresso.org](http://www.quantum-espresso.org)

<comment><USER3> Hey Osmium, this is John from Rescale. Thanks for the code(Quantum Espresso) suggestion. We'll make sure to add it to our software library soon!

<comment><USER4> I actually use Quantum Espresso rather extensively in my own research. It should work quite well with an interface like this. It has a sub-program pp.x specifically designed to make common plots out of the programs output.

I can tell you that it tends to be a little slow compared to some other codes such as VASP, and it does tend to take up a good deal more disk space. It has a few other quirks but it is a great program. Also its wavefunctions can be exported to XML files.

If you are looking anytime soon for people with computational physics/chemistry specific knowledge I may be looking for work soon.

<comment><USER2> > Also its wavefunctions can be exported to XML files.

Surely they'd be huge though? In any case, it's always interesting to hear experiences about other codes. I haven't actually used Quantum Espresso myself, but I know it's Free, so had been considering it... How would you quantify "a little slow"?

<comment><USER4> The xml files can be huge, but wavefunction files in general tend to be. The main point being that it allows for direct access to the files for custom code work.

I can quantify a little slow with a specific research experience. This isn't the case for all uses of Quantum Espresso, etc....

When I run an HSE or PBE0 calculation on 192 atoms it takes just over 2 weeks of computation time using quantum espresso. When my co-worker did it in vasp using the same computing systems it took just a couple of days. I don't really know the reason for this.

From time to time things like this creep up.

One of the quirks you should be aware of an enforce in all runs where this is relevant is you need to set

wf_collect=.true.

if you do not then each subsequent run will require the same number of processors in the same configuration each time the program is run.

[http://www.quantum-espresso.org/wp- content/uploads/Doc/INPUT...](http://www.quantum-espresso.org/wp- content/uploads/Doc/INPUT_PW.html#id3119282)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Google App Engine Goes Down and Stays Down - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/06/17/google-app-engine-goes-down-and-stays-down/ <comment><USER2> I know gmail has been in "beta" for so long that it almost seems sarcastic BUT google app engine is absolutely 1000% beta! As such things like this are more than par for the course. If people were paying for the service that would be one thing but this is probably one of the reasons they aren't selling the service yet. </fanboy>

</comment><comment><USER3> _Stuff like this tends to make developers nervous about adopting a new platform._

This actually makes me feel good about adopting App Engine as a platform, not bad.

Of course there will be outages. Then the problems will be fixed, and there will be fewer in the future. Would you rather do this on your own, with your own infrastructure, or use something like App Engine, and have many of these issues already dealt with before you even start?

If the outages still seem unusually frequent in a year, then I'll be nervous about App Engine.

</comment><comment><USER4> This is kinda old now. Problem has been fixed and is back up. See the update on the story.

Lets not make a big deal out of App Engine having problems. Amazon's stuff has been out for a while and has had several temporary outages since release, all of which were quickly resolved.

<comment><USER5> i suppose it depends on how you define "quickly resolved". if by "quickly resolved" you mean resolved in a few hours, and that's acceptable to you, then that works. sometimes things being "quickly resolved" in a few hours are unacceptable.</comment></comment>


Why Sarah Can't Focus (And Other Questions About Paying Attention) - <AUTHOR> http://tierneylab.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/08/why-sarah-cant-focus-and-other-questions-about-paying-attention/?hp <comment><USER2> This is my ultimate weakness. It's a pet peeve for most of my friends. I have such a difficult time focusing in on people speaking to me for more than 20 minutes.

The best remedy I have learned is honesty. Just telling people about my lack of focus helps others understand and adapt. Honesty also helps you address uncomfortable conversations or get to more important matters much more quickly.

</comment><comment><USER3> Oh how I'm wincing at this comment:

 _I had a boss who got so wrapped up in software he was developing you could barely wake him out of his trance. If you concentrate too much on a task you become oblivious to the world and become like the absent-minded professor. There is something to be said for situational awareness.

But multi-tasking is ruining my life because I'm not accomplishing the things I want to do. _

>_<

<comment><USER4> This is a hard thing to reconcile. As the boss, you are responsible for getting other people into the 'trance' of productivity.

My mantra: The task for the leader of a team project is to work on the team, not the project.

I've actually found it hard to follow that rule while in complete start-up mode, as there aren't enough hands to match the work. The goal, though, is to sacrifice early to generate enough money you can hire the hands you need.</comment></comment>


Norway's controversial 'cushy prison' experiment - <AUTHOR> http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-1384308/Norways-controversial-cushy-prison-experiment--catch-UK.html

<comment><USER2> I think the present emphasis on prisons as solely a form of rehabilitation is misguided. Prisons should be primarily about punishment.

What do I mean by that? Well, the urge to get revenge is an extremely strong part of the human psyche. We really _want_ to see that those who wrong us wind up suffering for what they do. If someone wrongs us, our first instinct on the caveman level is to go over to his house and kill him.

Now, all this private killing tends to cause major problems in society if everybody is trying to individually punish everyone who wrongs 'em, so we outsource the whole "revenge" thing to the government, who sets up a criminal justice system to determine who _actually_ deserves to be punished and then punishes them. You steal my bike, you go to prison and suffer, my bloodlust is satisfied, everything is cool. I don't have to kill you, which means your brother doesn't have to kill me, which means my brother doesn't have to kill him, and society is a much better place.

Now, in order for all this to work, we need the "revenge is bad and uncivilized" meme. This is the meme that discourages us from taking private revenge against people and tells us we should really just take it to the police. And that's fine and dandy, except some people seem to have generalized this from "private revenge is bad" to "all revenge is bad", and have started claiming that the justice system shouldn't be about revenge or punishment either.

I've gone on a bit already, but my main point is that the primary goal of the criminal justice system should be the satisfaction of the natural revenge- desire of crime victims, not necessarily the absolute minimization of the crime rate.

edit: Also, surely there's some fundamentally funky statistics going on with the "lowest reoffending rate" thing? Presumably prisoners are not assigned to this prison at random -- only the least problematic prisoners are allowed to go there.

<comment><USER3> _Well, the urge to get revenge is an extremely strong part of the human psyche. We really want to see that those who wrong us wind up suffering for what they do._

This rather pessimistic assertion (which to me is reminiscent of Christian dogma) needs some backing up.

<comment><USER4> Revenge is found across all cultures, e.g., see Jared Diamond's New Yorker article "Vengeance is Ours":

<http://www.unl.edu/rhames/courses/war/diamond-vengeance.pdf>

It has nothing to do with Christian dogma. In fact as the OP asserts, most religions/social systems attempt to control the individual's desire for vengeance.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm not sure the timing of this article is appropriate. Relevant yes, appropriate no.

<comment><USER6> Look at the source: it's from the Daily Mail. I'm surprised that's not an autokilled domain, frankly.

<comment><USER5> Yet look at the comments there - these aren't your standard Daily Mail responses. I'm confused.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> There is a good documentary about it for Dutch speaking people <http://beta.uitzendinggemist.nl/afleveringen/1094994>

</comment><comment><USER8> You can't compare Bastoy's reoffense rate directly to that of a traditional prison. Prisoners have to apply to Bastoy and get kicked out if they break the rules.</comment>


No market. No motivation. - <AUTHOR> http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00002901.html <comment><USER2> Summary: "iPhone has restrictions on kind of apps that will be in the app store and Apple is not always upfront about them".

This is getting tiring. We've heard you the first 10 times, enough already.

<comment><AUTHOR> I see someone downmodded you, but I upmodded you, even though I think the post is worth reading. There are two things that may matter to hackers. First, the objective truth about the mechanics of building and distributing iPhone applications. AS you point out, once the first couple of posts are out, pretty-much all of the ground has been covered and there isn't much news in posts 3..10.

The other thing that matters is judging how much momentum the platform has. Who is developing for it? Why? Who isn't? Why not?? It's very loosey-goosey, but people do care baout whether there are two or ten posts about this if only to try to gauge whether everyone else is developing iPhone apps, which helps gauge whether the platform will be a success.

Even if the business side of developing for the platform is restrictive, if there are enough apps to make the platform the de facto standard, many developers will hold their noses and jump in.

Such posts can help with this second decision, even though each one offers little new objective data.</comment></comment>


Machine learning – Is the emperor wearing clothes? - <AUTHOR> https://hackernoon.com/machine-learning-is-the-emperor-wearing-clothes-59933d12a3cc <comment><USER2> This strikes me as a fairly low-value article. I mean, you can take basically any subject, over-simplify it to ludicrous levels, and make it seem silly.

 _" Aerospace engineering - is the emperor wearing clothes?" \--> Well, it's just mixing a combustible substance (no need for fancy terms like "propellant") and something with a lot of oxygen in it (why did they need to invent the term "oxidizer", lol) and burning it really hot and fast to produce "thrust" so we can push a metal tube into the sky. It's not magic, or anything terribly special._

Sadly this article seems to be trying very hard to be dismissive, but yet thoroughly fails to dismiss anything. It also doesn't manage to explain anything to anybody in a way that's helpful. It kinda leaves you wondering "what was the point of that?"</comment>


Review of Controls for Certain Emerging Technologies (2018) - <AUTHOR> https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2018/11/19/2018-25221/review-of-controls-for-certain-emerging-technologies <comment><USER2> I am looking at this from Europe, and when I read things like this I feel like the US have not realized that their standing on the international scene has changed in the last 30 years.

Most of the research and advances in the technologies listed has not been made in the US, and even when it has it often hasn't been mostly by US nationals.

You were the country that defined globalization, and now you refuse to see the state of the world and actively harm yourselves with protectionist decisions like this. You have already lost business with regulations like Cloud Act, and now China is quickly eating your share of the pie.

You still have a major influence in the West because of two things: capital, and the historical fact that the large market leaders in tech which control distribution (Google, Apple, Microsoft) are American. Would you bet this will still be the case 20 years from now? I wouldn't if I were you.

I know a lot of the Americans here on HN probably do not agree with a lot of what their current government does, but still. Export controls don't work except to cut yourselves out of entire markets abroad and foster the adoption of competitors to your domestic companies. I don't understand how this is a viable long-term strategy.

<comment><USER3> I'm also looking at this from a EU perspective and don't really care. If the USA wants to shoot itself in the head why should I care? If anything it might mean more tech work for European techies like myself.

<comment> gray_-_wolf > If the USA wants to shoot itself in the head why should I care?

Like it or not US forces are major part of military strenght of NATO and it's not so much viable without it. So strong US economy (needed to fuel the army) is in our interest as well.

<comment><USER4> US forces are also a major contributor to instability in the middle-east (and the world) that have had negative consequences for much of Europe, Africa and South America.

The US os a rogue state by its own definition of the word.

<comment> gray_-_wolf Yes, because without US as strong opposition, Russia would definitely not sweep over Europe egain.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> The US Department of Commerce is putting together an expanded list of technologies deemed important to national security, and hence subject to export controls. Because the US interprets sharing knowledge of a technology with a non-US person as a "deemed export", technologies on this list cannot be discussed with any non-US person unless Commerce approves.

While this might make sense with the right set of technologies, flipping through this list, it seems to be written by someone with either a minimal technical background an excessively ideological bent.

Some technologies are plainly not "sensitive", such as:

1\. "Distribution-based Logistics Systems" \- aka JIT logistics like UPS and DHL

2\. "Position, Navigation, and Timing technology" \- clocks and GPS baseband receivers

While others are defined in an excessively broad way:

1\. "Mobile electric power" \- aka golf carts? or does it only cover phased plasma rifles in the 40 watt range?

2\. "Audio and Video manipulation technologies" \- so... Instagram filters? Or only "deepfakes"?

3\. "Planning" \- scheduling, like x.ai?

4\. "Systems on Chip" \- the whole category?

What is troubling is that were this list to go through, immigrants from entire countries would be effectively barred from the US tech industry, as they could not collaborate with their peers. What's more, US tech companies would be effectively banned from interacting with companies in countries the US government doesn't like but doesn't have the political capital to sanction. I'm reminded of Ming China at this point, and not in a good way.

<comment><USER5> Export control has huge downsides and I agree with the general sentiment that the US overdoes it. However, logistics and navigation have _obvious_ military applications. A state-of-the-art GPS receiver can slot straight into a missile.

<comment><USER6> So? A state-of-the-art CPU can also slot straight into a missile. As can nuts and bolts, batteries, radios, and all sorts of other equipment.

<comment><USER7> Speaking of state of the art CPUs, I own a couple years old "KiwiSDR" web-ui receiver which devotes some CPU cycles to implementing a GPS rx and it uses the GPS lock to discipline the internal oscillators such that the radio is driftless and perfect frequency accuracy. It works pretty well. My receiver is somewhat more frequency stable than some local AM broadcasters, which is weird to see in the waterfall display; many local broadcasters do GPS discipline, of course.

Pretty sure the code is at

[https://github.com/jks-prv/Beagle_SDR_GPS](https://github.com/jks- prv/Beagle_SDR_GPS)

Note that the hardware Skyworks SE4150L chip is an RF front-end, all the math is done in software, the chip merely attaches to the GPS antenna and squirts out a very raw digital bit-stream of data, its hardly a full GPS squirting out NMEA RS232 serial data. I am aware of SDR hardware that does the RF work in software, which is a slight step beyond the KiwiSDR.

Technology is not distributed smoothly and software defined GPS is cheap enough that everyone except cheap consumer gear can implement it. Someday, presumably, computing power will be cheap enough that your microwave oven and clothes washer will not bother with expensive hardware to have a semi-accurate timer, they'll just use cheap SDR code in a FPGA to listen to GPS to time your microwave popcorn and clothes spin cycle. That's the fundamental problem with regulations like this, they don't slow down "state actors" they just stand in the way of (taxable, profitable) commercial exploitation.

Post 2000, post 2010 at worst, no serious missile program will ever lack an unlimited GPS, but post regulation, the technology will be crippled from entering consumer goods.

Now what is interesting to speculate is it would be destabilizing if we know that they know how to crack the military P(Y) code or the newer M code for higher resolution positioning. I'm not sure that would help with missiles but if our secret squirrels are freaking out about the generic topic of software GPS, that would imply some state level actor (or lower?) has a crack or exploit for the math behind P(Y) code or M code streams, which has interesting implications for other crypto systems.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Ouch. I mostly looked at what AI techniques are being proposed for blockage by export controls (most deep learning, etc.). Specifically this would, if enacted, make it difficult for foreign workers to collaborate on projects and shut the USA out of progress made elsewhere.

Pardon a non-technical comment but this goes exactly against where I want to see the world going: I believe in the value of countries maintaining their own culture and traditions while also cooperating with other countries on a global scale.

I think there is a lot of fear in our government over our losing dominance in things like 5G and consumer AI driven by vast amounts of data. I think these fears are valid but I would take a long view by making our educational system better starting in kindergarten, making it easy for very high skilled workers to get visas, etc. Also, we should look to what advantages we have in farming, water supply (yes, we love the Great Lakes), what we can offer the world culturally (yeah! Avengers End Game!), and relax our egos to not need to be 'the best' because in some ways we are not.

When family or friends ask me how I am doing, my usual response is 'good enough' and I wish as a nation we could realize how most of our lives are 'good enough' and also work hard to provide opportunities for people who don't have it good enough.

Anyway, I look at the proposed export control list, and I see bureaucrats acting out of fear.

</comment><comment><USER7> Clicking on the "public comments" link on the federal register page provides some interesting reading.

Facebook was fairly agitated about the impact of some of the proposals on the PyTorch project.

The director at CSET pointed out its kinda a wasted effort to try to censor source code in 2019.

Uber claims that broad classification doesn't work anyway for developing tech as a general rule by the time it can be classified accurately its no longer developing tech, and classifying the result of government sponsored research grants would work a lot better than first amendment violations ever would, anyway.

Any inaccuracy at summarizing a position above, is my failure, not the failure of the corporate comments, etc blah blah.

General public comments on a govt proposal are more interesting reading than either the proposal OR general public social media comments. I actually learned a few things about PyTorch because of this. Interesting stuff.

</comment><comment><USER9> Wow, that's a neat little list. The impact of this on the start-up scene will be considerable. Given that almost every AI development is dual use it will be hard to make a clear ruling on what is and what is not 'national security' related.

I remember when crypto was export restricted and how that ended, this will likely go the exact same way.

</comment><comment><USER10> Do these controls actually work? As in, do they prevent banned states from getting this technology or papers describing how to build it? My intuition says no.

And even if they are effective, is it worth the bureaucratic overhead?

<comment><USER11> RSA used to be export restricted by ITAR, and the situation became a running joke. There's a Perl 3 liner made into a t-shirt that was subject to the regulation. [http://www.cypherspace.org/rsa/](http://www.cypherspace.org/rsa/)

I think someone also got it tattooed on them.

<comment><USER7> [http://www.geekytattoos.com/illegal-tattoos-rsa- tattoos/](http://www.geekytattoos.com/illegal-tattoos-rsa-tattoos/)

At least three people have a Perl RSA tattoo.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I have a couple questions about this:

\- How would this affect a largely foreign-based company with branches or subsidiaries in the US? Would the subsidiary be prohibited from sharing knowledge with its parent without prior approval?

\- Or what about a publicly traded multi-national company with many shareholders (both American and non-American) which has R&D offices in many different countries? How would you treat a company like that? There are many large companies which are _de jure_ registered in tax havens, and have offices and staff spanning multiple continents.

\- Lastly, what is the constitutional authority on which the federal government is able to do this? This seems to conflict with the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment guarantee of freedom of speech. Especially, considering this affects private speech. We're not talking about leaking TOP SECRET / SECRET / CONFIDENTIAL classified privileged information that's shared with you after getting a security clearance. This has to do with limiting the freedom speech _of private individuals_ , and the freedom of Americans to converse with non-Americans as they wish.

<comment><USER13> It can be more difficult to get US Visa if your research area is AI.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> At first reading, this seems like it was a non-committal RFC on a government based broad-strokes approach for a list generated from the Gartner Hypecycle and various other buzzwords; the use of 'Smart Dust' rather than generic reference to MEMS is telling. Some of the established industries operating in most of these sectors are already self-regulating and more than likely know how to deal with export controls.

It is probably easier to blanket-ban/restrict everything and then work from that position to approve it on a case-by-case basis, thus maintaining ambiguity and retaining a degree of power. There is no doubt that there will be a scope for abuse by creating favourable environment for some in the name of politics, and to frustrate progress for others by using red-tape and it won't be the first time either!

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

</comment><comment><USER15> Ultimately, atm, the US is about as far from conflict with a technologically capable adversary as you could hope for.

Despite rivolrous rhetoric, china-US interests mostly aren't opposed. Russia & the US play spy games, possibly election meddling.., but it's still fairly small scale. Maintaining a small edge in these technologies is, currently, as unimportant as it's likely to be.

That could change. Stakes could rise. This is the peacetime list/policy. What happens if & when the risk of war grows.

This list hints at the kind of cost we will pay for escalating risk of major conflict. New discoveries in computer science, biology, material science, manufacturing or anything with obvious breakthrough potential could become restricted, secretive, balkanized, and ultimately limited.

</comment><comment><USER16> A lot of people are missing that the list given is not a list of things they are considering for export controls. It is a list of categories for which they want to know if they contain specific technologies that should be under export control.

</comment><comment><USER17> My group is heavily involved in swarming technologies at a big old lab you've heard of. We reply to these and other calls for comments, and apart from a few bad actors, this process is pretty clean and sensible.

The end result is often not a ban on sales or exports, but rather a sliding scale of licensing regulations, up to a ban on sale to e.g. Iran or China. Do you really want to sell your AI powered surveillance swarm to Iran? No, you don't. You can develop and sell to UK though, because they're the "Good guys".

</comment><comment><USER18> Does this apply to already existing systems or just new stuff? Tech like expert systems and non deep learning rl have been around for years if not decades, are they suddenly going to be subject to export controls

</comment><comment><USER19> This is cool, I didn't know we were really there yet:

(11) Brain-computer interfaces, such as

(i) Neural-controlled interfaces;

(ii) Mind-machine interfaces;

(iii) Direct neural interfaces; or

(iv) Brain-machine interfaces.

<comment><USER20> There is a lot of promising and terrifying work going on in this space.

Promising: Using BCI to allow people with disabilities to communicate [https://youtu.be/9m7-NzpIiXY](https://youtu.be/9m7-NzpIiXY)

Terrifying: The government using the same principles to detect recognition during interrogation [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6206237/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6206237/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I know this needs to be done.

But it's quite hard.

Preventing bits from being exported is harder than preventing atoms.

What compounds the export problem, is the classification problem.

In the past, when military R&D was dominant, military technology was often aggressively classified despite the challenges of acquiring/replicating it.

Nowadays so much is recombined commercial duel use tech that discussing it is often enough to point adversaries/competitors in the right direction.

<comment><USER22> Why this needs to be done ?

It's incredibly selfish to restrict things like biotech (CRISPR for example) because these technologies can save lives, yet they may affect "National Security". A shame

<comment><USER23> If I actually thought that would work, I'd be in favour of restricting access. GM in general (not just CRISPR) is clearly powerful enough to be a useful military tech if it were developed in that way.

I don't think it's possible to prevent such developments, though I am also aware it's not as simple as a boolean yes/no.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> How does this effect open source?

<comment><USER25> Debian used to have "non-us" to hold things like SSH (maybe still does). These software "munitions" where then simply "imported" to the US each install or upgrade that occurred on Debian systems located in the US.

Ironically, instead of keeping the tech "in house" these export controls kept the tech at a distance, making things slightly more inconvenient to use for people in the US.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Don't make mistake if you apply for US Visa. When your research area is Deep Learning/AI, it may take longer to get B1/2 Visa and additional documents might be required. Simply Software Engineering is sufficient.

</comment><comment><USER26> How does this compare with how nuclear weapons technology was being invented and safeguarded? AFAIK there was a lot of cooperation amongst everybody before they became practical, but after the initial breakthroughs happened the government quickly classified most of the research. I believe during postwar interrogations of Nazi nuclear scientists they mentioned how the drying up of research and publications in nuclear fission in the public arena meant somebody had broken through. Isn't that all you really should be looking for, or does the government no longer trust Einstein letters?

<comment><USER27> In the case of nuclear weapons, the knowledge of the science of how they work is not sufficient. The "industrial arts" of making fissionable material and then weapons are complex, expensive, and large scale. Just knowing the science doesn't mean that you are able to design, build, and operate the factories that are needed for production.

On the other hand, any technology which depends only on fairly standard scientific instruments, readily available components and manufacturing techniques, and software is essentially uncontrollable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> (2018)

</comment><comment><USER29> The US is gradually weakening, may collapse and likely to enter an era tantamount to a Dark Age.</comment>


Apple is struggling to become an AI powerhouse - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2017/06/05/why-apple-is-struggling-to-become-an-artificial-intelligence-powerhouse/?utm_term=.7607d61ec928 <comment><USER2> On a technical point, I was impressed by their CoreML model format. The specification is open, optimized for maximum transferability, it can convert models from Keras (with TensorFlow), scikit-learn and others, and their Python model converter is also open source: [https://pypi.python.org/pypi/coremltools](https://pypi.python.org/pypi/coremltools)

Once you have your model as a CoreML file, it is stupidly simple to incorporate it into an app (the live demo with the flower model was very impressive), and Xcode will convert it to a machine-optimized version.

I was skeptical when I saw the announcement, but honestly it seems like a game changer -- to be able to drag-and-drop models that other people have trained into an app and use them with virtually zero boilerplate is just great.

Video here: [https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2017/703/](https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2017/703/)

<comment><USER3> Apparently you can only view that video in Safari or the wwdc app. That's awful.

<comment><USER4> I believe it's a HLS video. If you're on Windows, Edge has support for HLS. Otherwise, you'll have to resort to using a media player.

<comment><USER3> I'm in Firefox on Android.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I am an Apple fanboy but I am also a privacy fanboy. As AI, IoT, and consumer tracking continue to invade our daily lives I think Apple will continue to do quite well if they maintain there pro-privacy heading. Privacy is a feature, it's something people want, and unfortunately its becoming a luxury. That is something that attracts Apple's customers.

<comment><USER6> I'm one of the few in the "tech world" that isn't so much pro-privacy. Google can read my email, Apple can track my movements, my Amazon Echo can even listen in when it wants. The end result is a huge benefit to me. How is any AI supposed to know what I want, if I try to be an anonymous user? I prefer targeted ads. I prefer submitting my information to "robots" in the hopes that my user experience is tailored to what I want. I see all of these articles on HN on how to break free from Google or some other eco-system because they're "evil." I dunno, I guess I don't have a CIA-level job that most of these commenters have where they need to be off the grid.

"Alexa, play me that song I like. And while you're at it, order me a case of my favorite beer. Thanks."

<comment> old-gregg You are making two assumptions that aren't necessarily true. First, you're assuming that you have control over what kind of information is being collected and shared, and you're assuming it's always good for you.

Here's a fairly innocent scenario: if Amazon Echo can learn everything about you, they may discover that you're crazy about Paris and you have good income. Then they can sell this info to every travel website who'll put you into a pricing bucket which would guarantee that you'll overpay for your next trip.

But generally speaking, we take advantage of information asymmetry all the time: buying real estate, getting a new job, planning a vacation, etc. Sometimes you have the leverage, sometimes you don't. With massive information gathering by a handful of big players you'll most likely end up on the losing side in the future, especially when dealing with businesses/governments who can afford to buy a profile on you before engaging. Imagine if your religious beliefs and either you voted for Trump were available to anyone via an API call which takes your face image as the input and costs $0.02 to make.

<comment><USER7> You say "overpay" but if the user pays for it then that would have been an efficient price - making the entire transaction beneficial.

Economically it would be the market clearing price so would be beneficial to the market generally. Sounds like a great thing.

<comment> old-gregg Actually, no. Such price isn't "efficient" because of how efficient markets are defined [1]: _"...prices fully reflect all available information."_ But in this case one of the market participants (you) are not aware that others are getting a better deal.

In fact, this would lead to widespread pricing discrimination [2] based on what they learned (or bought) about you. Imagine seeing 20% markup on virtually everything available to you online, because every retailer can see your higher-than-average income before their page loads in your browser.

Personalized content (which everyone seems to love) is just an inch away from personalized pricing.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efficient- market_hypothesis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efficient-market_hypothesis)

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

<comment><USER7> Yes, note the all _available_ information.

It's not perfectly efficient because there isn't perfect information, however it's more efficient than it otherwise would be.

More information in the system = greater efficiency.

<comment><USER8> > _More information in the system = greater efficiency._

More information _does not_ always increase market efficiency. In fact, it can have just the opposite effect when there is information asymmetry.

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

[http://www.economicsonline.co.uk/Market_failures/Information...](http://www.economicsonline.co.uk/Market_failures/Information_failure.html)

<comment><USER7> For sure, but only in the short term. History shows that there is a push and pull here and that on aggregate more information is being input to the market from all sides and available for price discrimination. Inefficiencies are great for enterprises to attempt to capture, and by doing so exposing the inefficiency.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > Six years later, the technology giant is struggling to find its voice in AI.

I know that this is the most common approach to the situation but the article -as many other articles that have argued this before- provides no proof other than analysts speaking in broad strokes.

I use Siri, Alexa and Assistant several times a week if not everyday and I'd hesitate a lot before saying that Siri is behind. Alexa is more responsive but it's domain is also more narrow. Siri does a pretty good job when I dictate a message or want to set a timer. It's limited, sure, but so are the other assistants I use. I might be the odd case, but speech recognition of Siri vs Assitant is pretty comparable in my experience.

Moving onto services. Google Photos is outstanding, yes. But I fail to see any other example that proves the big advantage other players have over Apple in the ML or AI field.

Am I missing something? I feel like a lot of these articles argue their view from the experience they got from Siri 5 years ago.

<comment><USER10> I have used Siri faithfully from 2011 til about the start of this year where I bought a google home.

Siri is flat out dumb and frustrating to use comparatively in terms of only understanding 85 percent of my queries vs. Google Home understanding 97 percent.

It seems to me Apple has not taken all their hordes of cash and used it to up the AI game. Looks like they are solely focused on the present while competitors are building the future in which they foolishly try to catch up with.

Like last weeks WWDC they debuted the AR kit but did not bother to create an amazing/innovate AR app to showcase and get the masses excited for AR and their possible upcoming AR gear.

<comment><USER11> I feel this fundamentally misunderstands how each of their AI's work.

You're describing an interface problem. Google's AI is _extremely_ good at recognizing speech in comparison to Siri but that's a wholly different thing to deep understanding.

Siri is a more advanced AI in many ways due to it's understanding of intents. Google's is much more command based (under the hood). However Apple's speech recognition is letting it down here. Intents are a much more sophisticated way to interact with an AI than Google's command based structure but they are correspondingly more complex to integrate and you realistically need to infer things more from the user (which Apple needs to get better at).

I don't disagree that Apple needs to step up their game with how people interact with Siri, but it's a perceptual issue with the _interface_ not with the underlying AI.

(source - have discussed these exact issues with one of the founders of Nuance).

<comment><USER12> This runs contrary to the experience of most people.

See [http://www.businessinsider.com/siri-vs-google-assistant- cort...](http://www.businessinsider.com/siri-vs-google-assistant-cortana- alexa-knowledge-study-chart-2017-6)

Siri is dead last. Surprisingly, Cortana did quite well (I didn't realize Microsoft was catching up in this space).

Those responses require a lot more than just voice recognition - they require an understanding of context and "intent".

<comment><USER13> That study isn't very useful.

> _A recent study […] asked the major voice assistants 5,000 general knowledge > questions_

General knowledge questions is just one of the many things you can use voice assistants for. It's well known that Siri is the worst at general knowledge questions, but that doesn't mean Siri is the worst digital assistant.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This article ticks me off. Apple announced some really good features on Monday (CoreML and a bunch of ML driven features). Having this kind of article after WWDC is unfair. As a consumer, I applaud Apple's approach. The so-called AI as pursued by Google & other tech companies isn't AI at all. True AI won't need as much data. You do need data for Machine Learning (i.e. pattern matching). That's what other tech firms are pursuing. Apple being a hardware, systems and frameworks company is doing the right thing respecting my privacy. They leave data mining and personalization to 3rd party apps. If and when true AI happens, there's a good chance Apple will be leading that. (Why? True AI won't happen overnight, and true AI won't require access to a billion customer's emails or browsing history).

<comment><USER15> > The so-called AI as pursued by Google & other tech companies isn't AI at > all. True AI won't need as much data.

Deepmind / AlphaGo, Watson, and other like them are about the best thing we have nowadays when it comes to AI. Let's not even talk about True AI, which if you take any of the definitions can only become reality with so much data we're only brushing on it actually. Saying True AI won't need as much data is failing to understand how much "data" it takes to make a human brain function, and while that is a whole other can of worm, one thing is certain it's a shit load accumulated over time.

> If and when true AI happens, there's a good chance Apple will be leading > that.

Apple is not even in the same arena when it comes to AI. And they shouldn't be, with the cash piles they have it's better for them to wait for somebody else to make the breakthrough and pull a Siri, buy a company that does what you want and integrate it how is needed for you product / consumers.

Also don't confuse AI/True AI with clever algorithm.

<comment><USER16> I spent the last two days in IBMs Watson Innovation Centre, working with the Watson Conversation APIs. To say I was not impressed is putting it mildly. Can you name any examples where Watson is good?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Me: Hey Siri, what cheese goes well with fruit?

Siri: Here's what I found on the web for "What cheese goes well with fruit..."

Me: Hey Google, what cheese goes well with fruit?

Google: "Edam"

<comment><USER13> I assume you're trying to say that Google's answer is better, right? Google's certainly being more authoritative, but the answer to your question is actually fairly subjective, there's more answers than just "Edam", so IMO surfacing search results is better than just having Google pick one answer.

Google's also been known to produce completely incorrect "authoritative" answers.

<comment><USER18> If you are speaking to your device for this kind of question, the authoritative answer is what you want. You expect me, after taking to my device, to go over and pick it up and search through web results? If I wanted to do that, I wouldn't have asked the question by voice in the first place!

<comment><USER19> I believe you have failed to understand the original point you are replying to.

"Edam" might be authoritative, but it is not _correct_. The problem isn't simply that the answer is fundamentally subjective, the bigger issue is that there's not enough contextual information in the question to even arrive at an answer that one could consider subjectively correct.

I replied elsewhere, but it's like answering the question "What wine would pair well with dinner?" with "Zinfandel". Without having even a vague idea of what's on the menu, you're just picking a wine at random. Maybe it's correct, maybe it isn't. But being authoritative when there's not enough information to actually speak with authority is not the right answer here.

<comment><USER18> The agent should then ask for more information; not point me to a web search. In most cases, the authoritative answer _is_ what I'm looking for and the question less likely to be this subjective.

The thing is Siri won't give me an answer either way.

<comment><USER19> Nobody's arguing that sending you off to search results isn't particularly useful. We're just pointing out that authoritatively answering a nuanced question without enough context isn't any better, it's just _differently wrong_ (and in some cases, strictly worse).

Whether or not Siri or Google Assistant correctly and authoritatively answers more (or more relevant) questions is a completely different topic than what's being discussed here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Well yes, - they don't publish, they don't have a reputation (no teams like FAIR, DeepMind, MetaMind, MSFT AI, etc.), they don't attract the top AI talent, and anecdotally, they don't even even know how to hire for AI (had a brilliant colleague working in AI turned away because he didn't know some facets about the Python language when they hit him with Leetcode whiteboard questions; IMO they aren't in a position with AI where they get to flex programmer egos).

<comment><USER21> > had a brilliant colleague working in AI turned away because he didn't know > some facets about the Python language when they hit him with Leetcode > whiteboard questions

I mean, to be fair, isn't that every company? Google pulls the same sort of nonsense.

<comment><USER22> My understanding is that this is not the case when you get up to the research level, where they use altogether different signaling (citation count, impact factor, etc) to disqualify applicants.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> This is interesting because while Apple's (comparative) dedication to privacy is endearing, it's a long-term existential threat.

Google knows all about me and its assistant is, usually, great. Amazon has troves of data on what I buy, and I get to yell at Alexa to order more TP as soon as I see we're on the last roll.

Apple knows much less about me and, while I'm still an Apple fan and am tied to iPhones/Macs thanks to iMessage, Siri stinks as a result.

If voice assistants based on machine learning (specifically, personalized voice assistants) are the next big thing, Apple's privacy ethos will separate it from its major tech competitors – either in a great way, or a very negative way.

<comment><USER24> What can Google do in the cloud that Apple can't do on the device?

<comment><USER25> Apple can only look at you to learn - Google can look at you, and a million other people like you

<comment><USER26> I think many Apple users would be happy if only Siri could answer factual questions objectively and follow a conversation, being happy with a minimum of privacy collection like current location, name of spouse for messaging, etc.

While some may prefer a knowledge about you or you via people like you, as in, "Please recommend me a great movie", Siri is currently not in a stage where she may tell you stuff like "How do I mix a White Russian?" Google Assistant give me 6 steps with a photo and a follow up question "What about Screwdriver?" Siri gets utterly wrecked in the knowledge based questions.

I think the main problem is not privacy-related, but knowledge base-related. Google is building upon a fricking huge search engine via a knowledge graph and the sky is the limit for how well an AI can do. Apple is building on what, a shut down Ping social network, Apple Music listening habits, Wolfram Alpha hopes if all else fails, and a sparse Bing Search API if that failed too?

<comment><USER27> >While some may prefer a knowledge about you or you via people like you, as in, "Please recommend me a great movie". . .

Not to mention that Apple positioned itself as a brand for people who "Think Different." I don't think people who got taken in by that messaging would be attracted to the prospect of services that can more efficiently pigeonhole them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I've still not seen any AI that really gets me excited. Google Now does some neat things - but if the home automation products from Amazon and Google are representative of the state-of-the-art - we have an awful long way to go before AI is any kind of game changer.

More likely AI/ML is another trip down buzzword lane. It can hang out with IoT, VR, Big Data, and hell, even containers and microservices.

It feels like everyone is casting about for that next revolutionary technological innovation, but maybe we just need to be at a plateau for awhile.

<comment><USER29> I, too, don't get the hype about voice assistants. There are a few uses cases where they may be genuinely useful like if you are driving and don't want to take your hands off the wheel, but for nearly everything else, it is usually faster, more accurate, and more reliable to use a GUI with touch or a keyboard.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Google and Amazon may get there faster, but personally, I'm quite ok with it taking a bit longer to get a truly smart digital assistant if that means I get to keep my privacy.

</comment><comment><USER30> I love Apple's commitment to privacy, but the notion that privacy precludes powerful AI strikes me as a false dichotomy, and a cop-out. There must be some middle-ground.

<comment><USER31> Anonymous, transparent data-gathering perhaps? If Apple stripped data of any kind of personally-identifying information and allowed users to view all of the data that was being sent, it could be a good middle ground. However, the problem with that solution is that it's already _possible_ (not easy) to identify users with very little information. Stripping out identifying information doesn't necessarily mean that the information wouldn't be useful at all in the right hands (say, the government) to identify someone.

<comment><USER13> Apple talked last year about their approach here, which IIRC is basically to introduce random noise into the data they collect. This way, data at the individual level may be wildly inaccurate (and therefore not suitable for actually identifying specific people), but in the aggregate it still produces the same results.

Of course I may be completely misrepresenting this. I encourage you to go look up the relevant info from WWDC 2016 (I believe that's where they talked about it).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Honest question: in the context of the realistic range of consumer AI applications in 2017, what are some meaningful shortcomings Apple products have? And do those shortcomings have any interest to the majority of consumers (and not say, to developers or analysts)?

<comment><USER33> As an owner of an iPhone 7 and a Pixel I'd say there are not many. Google Assistant is way ahead of Siri at pretty much every imaginable task, and Google Photos can do a lot more than iOS Photos.

That said, none of those features interest me much. And I'm not sure how many average consumers they do interest. It's more of a 'oh, that's cool I guess'. I prefer my iPhone 7 still.

<comment><USER34> Yeah, most people I know do use their 'assistant' to some degree, but it's not even close to crucial for any of them. That said, Siri is a running joke among many of us, so if/when assistants become more important, Apple might have a problem if they don't make some big improvements.

Anecdotally speaking, anyways.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> One thing to remember is, it's easier to build AI and ML when you are willing to use lots of user data but it's not impossible if you put limits on your access to user data.

For example, when you meet someone, they don't need to know everything about your life to be useful. The same is the case for building internet AIs. Using more pre-trained models. Asking the right questions and listening to the responses.

Sure, it's easier if you have access and are willing to use user data to build those predictive models. But there is some real value in the world for companies who respect user privacy AND build predictive models.

</comment><comment><USER36> > ... the company hired Russ Salakhutdinov, a Carnegie Mellon professor whose > expertise is in an area of artificial intelligence known as "deep" or > "unsupervised" learning, a complex branch of machine learning in which > computers are trained to replicate the way the brain's neurons fire when > they recognize objects or speech.

The author of the article clearly made a mistake saying "deep learning" is the same as "unsupervised learning".

</comment><comment><USER37> Regarding privacy, when human beings meet a new person, they do not need tons of data about that person to understand their spoken language. We learn English or any other language once and then rarely need to adapt to new people, unless they have a strong accent or speak a truly different dialect of the language. This demonstrates that the much touted speech recognition technologies from Google, Amazon, and Apple do not match human level performance. Are they really exceeding the marginal performance of the Hidden Markov Model based Dragon Naturally Speaking which took around two months of training to achieve its maximum accuracy ten years ago? Or are they just running similar models with huge numbers of adjustable parameters tuned to each user on the "cloud?"

If Apple invested in genuinely new, creative AI technologies that matched human level speech recognition and other tasks then they could preserve their purported emphasis on privacy. They would not need to collect huge amounts of personal data on most customers, unlike Google or Amazon.

<comment><USER38> I am not an expert in AI, ML or any other thing like his.

But related to

> Regarding privacy, when human beings meet a new person, they do not need > tons of data about that person to understand their spoken language.

I think that we understand context and symbols and syntax because we used it/learned it before.

So when I meet a new person I use previous cultural/language learnings to understand the new person. Not just dictionary.

And even if I met a person who speaks a new language, I might understand after a period the words but still I use logic and symbols to get that when that person points to ice and says something that something means ice. And this I think is possible because of some previous knowledge on how to interpret the interaction that I discovered before about this context.

I think it is the same with Assistants: there is an advantage in being able to access and process large amount of communication so that you can infer meaning or predictions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> I probably won't receive any medals for this, but it is my most humble opinion that most of these AI gimmicks (Siri, Alexa, etc...) are useless.

I will concede I get moderate gag value out of Google automatically creating animated gifs from a string of photographs.

</comment><comment><USER40> AI is a funny field where you may still be in a great position by just having millions of your capable devices distributed to people. Software wise it's relatively easy to adopt state of the art - without necessarily doing research yourself. On the cloud side they have the capacity as well, that's not a blocker for them.

</comment><comment><USER41> I haven't made up my mind on this yet: I really like Apple's privacy policies but I also like Google Assistant on my iPhone.

As usual, for a business trip I took this week, I went all-in with Google (location, my email forwarded to my gmail account, used Google Travell app, etc.). Very convenient for keeping my schedule, travel arrangements, etc. in order.

That said, when I returned home last night, as usual after a trip, I stopped forwarding my email to gmail, uninstalled most Google apps from my iPhone, and turned off location.

When I am at home (most of the time) I like using duck-duck-go, and just Apple's software.

EDIT: I have been working in the field of AI and machine learning for about 30 years. I think that Apple will find a sweet spot between good privacy and making Siri into a useful digital assistant.

</comment><comment><USER42> Collecting location data, visited URLs and phone books is absolutely not required to make speech recognition. You don't have to learn computer vision algorithms on people's private photos: you can use public photos instead. Even "context based computing" does not seem to work better if data from all users is put into single database. Why "AI" and surveillance are usually treated as related?

Most creepy forms of surveillance are used for ads (but I'm not sure if it even works, I always see completely irrelevant ads) and Apple is not advertising company.

</comment><comment><USER43> Currently, the only documentation I've seen for extending Siri depend on an app running on a particular device. More than anything else, this device- centric focus is holding Siri back when compared to Alexa and Google Home.

Am I missing something? Has there been any announcement that third party developers could add skills or actions across all Siri instances via the cloud?

</comment><comment><USER44> Apple is struggling to become an AI powerhouse, but it just deployed top-notch machine learning frameworks to millions of portable devices around the world in a way in which its hundreds of thousands of developers can use machine learning now. I want to be struggling at investments in the same way. :)

</comment><comment><USER45> Why on earth does Apple want to become an "AI powerhouse"? Please, Apple, do what you're good at: design great consumer electronic products. You should be hiring the top talent in fields like HCI, AR/VR, and wearable computing, not AI.

</comment><comment><USER46> Does anyone have details on the AIKit & Apple CNN for AMD graphics cards? This was previously the exclusive territory of Nvidia and this week, Apple promised expanding that for the other half of discrete graphics cards. Will there be Python APIs?

</comment><comment> real-hacker So the deep learning machinery is becoming part of OS. I am wondering if part of the model (the relatively stable layers) will also be released with OS.

</comment><comment><USER47> The description of differential privacy in the article is completely wrong. I am really shocked it was described so poorly.

</comment><comment><USER48> $221B in cash on hand. They can get any AI researcher super start they want. No?

<comment><USER49> I would love to hear all of the reasons why top minds reject top companies. It's a fascinating subject.

<comment><USER50> The company's culture, perhaps.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> They've just entered the race no?

</comment><comment><USER52> WashPo, owned by Bezos whose fortune is in Amazon, is criticizing a competitor.

</comment><comment><USER53> I bet they won't be quoting this headline at the next WWDC.

</comment><comment><USER54> DUPE: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14499511](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14499511)

</comment><comment><USER55> Two reasons, One) Apple is currently a lifestyle company and not a technology company so AI is well outside their wheelhouse in what they have spent the last 5 years doing.

Two) Apple is never really bleeding edge with it's products, it waits to see what the industry is doing and then subsequently tries to take something and make it better, something tough to do with AI/ML. You can't really just take someone's idea and build on it with $$, there needs to be a lot of groundwork done first to even get to that point and it looks like Apple has barely done any (looking straight at Siri for an example)

<comment><USER5> Lifestyle company? What does that even mean? If Apple isn't a tech company I don't know what is. They design their own processors, programming languages, operating systems, web browser, batteries, etc. Sounds like a tech company to me.

<comment><USER55> The last few years of their 'tech' have been less than inspiring... They have focused on Apple becoming part of your life with a watch or a touchbar and not updating their hardware and software with anything that moves the needle (AppleTV languishing, Siri a joke compared to Amazon, Google and even Microsoft, MacBook Pros barely updated after years of neglect, MacPro potentially on the horizon for a reasonable update in 2018 after years of nothing. and now HomePod is basically a boombox that connects to the internet...not really a stellar new product especially without AI). This is clearly evident with them in scramble mode with the last several press/developer conferences & intentional leaks (how often has Apple mentioned products that are no where close to shipping?), they are in triage mode. I still feel T.Cook will be out in ~ 2 years.

<comment><USER5> ok</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Mark Zuckerberg ordered all Facebook executives to use Android phones - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2018/11/14/18095729/mark-zuckerberg-order-facebook-executive-android-phones <comment><USER2> Silicon Valley tech workers tend to use latest-and-greatest iPhones. Hot emerging markets with a lot of money to be made by those SV tech employers tend to use low end Androids. This diminishes the utility of employees as beta testers. I could totally see my own employer forcing some engineers to use Android for that reason.

</comment><comment><USER3> TL;DR: We heard a sensational rumor, went on a speculative ramble with it, and left the overwhelming contrary evidence for last:

>That said, we checked Twitter activity from several Facebook executives, ... all of whom are still shown to be using iPhones ...

<comment><USER4> TL;DR: The Verge is a clickbait rag and peddles nonsense on the reg.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've think I've heard something like employees of certain divisions being required (but not strictly enforced?) to use Android phones, simply because it is a different UX when you're not using the latest and greatest hardware.

Ex. using AR / heavy GPU processing face filter effects on a few year old Android. There's a significant number of these out there in the world.

Mark doesn't strike me as being so petty as to banishing iPhones from Facebook.

<comment><USER6> Why not? He was petty enough to create a chick-hotness ranking software as revenge after getting rejected by Ashley Arenson at Phillips Exeter. His whole career trajectory has been one of building up his ego after perceived slights... he's CEO, Bitch.

<comment><USER7> Yeah, but is he petty enough to care about the minutiae of some stranger's existence?

<comment><USER8>
      Carthago delenda est

As I recall, Mr. Zuckerberg was no fan of Google either, so why should Android be the salve to sooth a sore ego?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> What about Windows Phone? :(

<comment><USER10> What they still make those?

<comment><USER9> No, the platform is dead unfortunately</comment></comment></comment>


Hollywood Revisits Battle of Midway–With Backing from China - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/hollywood-revisits-battle-of-midwaywith-backing-from-china-11573214401?mod=rsswn <comment><AUTHOR> _Mr. Luo, the Starlight CEO, said his company was drawn to a war film that would show "how the Chinese people suffered." A note at the end of "Midway" acknowledges that some 250,000 Chinese were killed by Japanese forces in a campaign launched in retaliation to the raids..."We want to use Hollywood stories to tell the Chinese story to everyone in the world," Mr. Luo said. "_</comment>


Cloud9 raises Series B from Balderton Capital - <AUTHOR> https://c9.io/site/blog/2014/11/cloud9-raises-series-b-from-balderton-capital

<comment><USER2> Cloud9 was at the first node.js conference (small gathering really) put on by Joyent in 2009 in SF and it was really impressive then but it was such a bummer the only way to pay was with PayPal (looked a year ago and it was the same deal) and billing was generally bad. Has this been fixed? Can I now give a CC and not deal with PayPal?

<comment><USER3> We feel your pain and are very very close to launching new payment plans and support for different payment methods. Please stay tuned and thanks for the comment!</comment></comment>