An Ambitious Wikidata Tutorial [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3f/An_Ambitious_Wikidata_Tutorial.pdf <comment><USER2> Author here, ask me anything! Slides are also available at [http://www.slideshare.net/_Emw/an-ambitious-wikidata- tutoria...](http://www.slideshare.net/_Emw/an-ambitious-wikidata-tutorial).

<comment><AUTHOR> Are they any open experiments to integrate wikidata with AI systems of any kind?

<comment><USER2> Yes. Kian and WikiBrain are two such projects. Kian is an artificial neural network designed to serve Wikidata, e.g. for classifying humans based on content in Wikipedia [1, 2]. WikiBrain uses Wikidata to recognize the type of relationships or connections between Wikipedia concepts [3, 4].

I suspect larger applications of Wikidata in AI will follow. For example, as of 2010, IBM Watson acquired at least some of its content from DBpedia and YAGO [5], which ultimately derive much of their content from scraping Wikipedia's infoboxes and category system. Now, come 2015, Wikidata is supplying data for some Wikidata infoboxes, and the proportion of infoboxes that pull from structured data in Wikidata will increase over time. And I expect Wikipedia's category system will gradually be supplanted by Wikidata's more expressive property system over time.

Thus, I imagine Wikidata will form a semantic backbone for Q&A systems like Watson in the future.

The Wikidata development team's work is funded through donations by the Allen Institute of Artificial Intelligence, Google, the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, and Yandex [6]. So organizations with an interest in AI see potential in Wikidata.

1\. [https://github.com/Ladsgroup/Kian](https://github.com/Ladsgroup/Kian)

2\. [http://ultimategerardm.blogspot.com/2015/09/wikidata-ten- que...](http://ultimategerardm.blogspot.com/2015/09/wikidata-ten-questions- about-kian.html)

3\. [https://github.com/shilad/wikibrain](https://github.com/shilad/wikibrain)

4\. [http://conservancy.umn.edu/bitstream/handle/11299/163269/Und...](http://conservancy.umn.edu/bitstream/handle/11299/163269/Undergrad%20Symposium%20Poster_Toby.pdf)

5\. [http://www.aaai.org/Magazine/Watson/watson.php](http://www.aaai.org/Magazine/Watson/watson.php)

6\. [http://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2014/10/178785-wikidata/fullte...](http://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2014/10/178785-wikidata/fulltext)

<comment><USER3> There is also Platypus that is a small query answering engine based on Wikidata: [http://askplatyp.us](http://askplatyp.us)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Good tutorial! Wikidata is an awesome initiative for Wikimedia and I would love to see all Wikipedia's structured data powered by wikidata. Wikidata is much easier to interface with than wikipedia infoboxes!

<comment><AUTHOR> IIRC infoboxes should be powered by wikidata at some point.

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> Wikidata's new SPARQL service is probably the most useful topic in this tutorial for software developers and anyone interested in the Semantic Web. It allows one to query the vast, free knowledgebase that backs Wikipedia -- almost 15 million entities and over 70 million statements.

Example queries:

* Politicians who died of cancer (of any type): [https://query.wikidata.org/#PREFIX%20wikibase%3A%20%3Chttp%3...](https://query.wikidata.org/#PREFIX%20wikibase%3A%20%3Chttp%3A%2F%2Fwikiba.se%2Fontology%23%3E%0APREFIX%20wd%3A%20%3Chttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.wikidata.org%2Fentity%2F%3E%20%0APREFIX%20wdt%3A%20%3Chttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.wikidata.org%2Fprop%2Fdirect%2F%3E%0APREFIX%20rdfs%3A%20%3Chttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.w3.org%2F2000%2F01%2Frdf-schema%23%3E%0A%0ASELECT%20%3Fpolitician%20%3Fcause%20%3Fpolitician_label%20%3Fcause_of_death_label%20WHERE%20{%0A%20%20%20%3Fpolitician%20wdt%3AP106%20wd%3AQ82955%20.%20%20%20%20%23%20find%20items%20that%20have%20%22occupation%20%28P106%29%3A%20politician%20%28Q82955%29%22%0A%20%20%20%3Fpolitician%20wdt%3AP509%20%3Fcause%20.%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%23%20with%20a%20P509%20%28cause%20of%20death%29%20claim%0A%20%20%20%3Fcause%20wdt%3AP279*%20wd%3AQ12078%20.%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%23%20...%20where%20the%20cause%20is%20a%20subclass%20of%20%28P279*%29%20cancer%20%28Q12078%29%0A%20%20%20%23%20%3Fpolitician%20wdt%3AP39%20wd%3AQ11696%20.%20%20%20%23%20Uncomment%20this%20line%20to%20include%20only%20U.S.%20Presidents%0A%20%20%0A%20%20%20OPTIONAL%20{%3Fpolitician%20rdfs%3Alabel%20%3Fpolitician_label%20filter%20%28lang%28%3Fpolitician_label%29%20%3D%20%22en%22%29%20.}%20%0A%20%20%20OPTIONAL%20{%3Fcause%20rdfs%3Alabel%20%3Fcause_of_death_label%20filter%20%28lang%28%3Fcause_of_death_label%29%20%3D%20%22en%22%29.}%0A}%0AORDER%20BY%20ASC%20%28%3Fpolitician%29)

* Who discovered the most planets? [https://query.wikidata.org/#PREFIX%20wikibase%3A%20%3Chttp%3...](https://query.wikidata.org/#PREFIX%20wikibase%3A%20%3Chttp%3A%2F%2Fwikiba.se%2Fontology%23%3E%0APREFIX%20wd%3A%20%3Chttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.wikidata.org%2Fentity%2F%3E%20%0APREFIX%20wdt%3A%20%3Chttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.wikidata.org%2Fprop%2Fdirect%2F%3E%0APREFIX%20rdfs%3A%20%3Chttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.w3.org%2F2000%2F01%2Frdf-schema%23%3E%0A%0ASELECT%20%3Fdiscoverer%20%3Fname%20%28COUNT%28DISTINCT%20%3Fplanet%29%20as%20%3Fcount%29%0A%20WHERE%20{%0A%20%20%20%3Fppart%20wdt%3AP279*%20wd%3AQ634%20.%0A%20%20%20%3Fplanet%20wdt%3AP31%20%3Fppart%20.%0A%20%20%20%3Fplanet%20wdt%3AP61%20%3Fdiscoverer%20.%0A%20%20SERVICE%20wikibase%3Alabel%20{%0A%20%20%20%20bd%3AserviceParam%20wikibase%3Alanguage%20%22en%22%20.%0A%20%20%20%20%3Fdiscoverer%20rdfs%3Alabel%20%3Fname%0A%20%20%20}%0A%20}%0A%20GROUP%20BY%20%3Fdiscoverer%20%3Fname%0A%20ORDER%20BY%20DESC%28%3Fcount%29%0A%20LIMIT%2010)

* Largest cities with a female mayor: [http://query.wikidata.org/#PREFIX%20wikibase%3A%20%3Chttp%3A...](http://query.wikidata.org/#PREFIX%20wikibase%3A%20%3Chttp%3A%2F%2Fwikiba.se%2Fontology%23%3E%0APREFIX%20wd%3A%20%3Chttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.wikidata.org%2Fentity%2F%3E%20%0APREFIX%20wdt%3A%20%3Chttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.wikidata.org%2Fprop%2Fdirect%2F%3E%0APREFIX%20rdfs%3A%20%3Chttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.w3.org%2F2000%2F01%2Frdf-schema%23%3E%0APREFIX%20p%3A%20%3Chttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.wikidata.org%2Fprop%2F%3E%0APREFIX%20q%3A%20%3Chttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.wikidata.org%2Fprop%2Fqualifier%2F%3E%0APREFIX%20v%3A%20%3Chttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.wikidata.org%2Fprop%2Fstatement%2F%3E%0A%0ASELECT%20DISTINCT%20%3Fcity%20%3FcityLabel%20%3Fmayor%20%3FmayorLabel%20WHERE%20%7B%0A%20%20%3Fcity%20wdt%3AP31%2Fwdt%3AP279%2A%20wd%3AQ515%20.%20%20%23%20find%20instances%20of%20subclasses%20of%20city%0A%20%20%3Fcity%20p%3AP6%20%3Fstatement%20.%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%23%20with%20a%20P6%20%28head%20of%20goverment%29%20statement%0A%20%20%3Fstatement%20v%3AP6%20%3Fmayor%20.%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%23%20...%20that%20has%20the%20value%20%3Fmayor%0A%20%20%3Fmayor%20wdt%3AP21%20wd%3AQ6581072%20.%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%23%20...%20where%20the%20%3Fmayor%20has%20P21%20%28sex%20or%20gender%29%20female%0A%20%20FILTER%20NOT%20EXISTS%20%7B%20%3Fstatement%20q%3AP582%20%3Fx%20%7D%20%20%23%20...%20but%20the%20statement%20has%20no%20P582%20%28end%20date%29%20qualifier%0A%20%0A%20%20%23%20Now%20select%20the%20population%20value%20of%20the%20%3Fcity%0A%20%20%23%20%28wdt%3A%20properties%20use%20only%20statements%20of%20%22preferred%22%20rank%20if%20any%2C%20usually%20meaning%20%22current%20population%22%29%0A%20%20%3Fcity%20wdt%3AP1082%20%3Fpopulation%20.%0A%20%20%23%20Optionally%2C%20find%20English%20labels%20for%20city%20and%20mayor%3A%0A%20%20SERVICE%20wikibase%3Alabel%20%7B%0A%20%20%20%20bd%3AserviceParam%20wikibase%3Alanguage%20%22en%22%20.%0A%20%20%7D%0A%20%7D%20ORDER%20BY%20DESC%28%3Fpopulation%29%20LIMIT%2010)

More Wikidata SPARQL query examples: [https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikibase/Indexing/SPARQL_Quer...](https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikibase/Indexing/SPARQL_Query_Examples).</comment>


Third Tesla Fire in 6 Weeks Could Spark Federal Inquiry - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/autopia/2013/11/3rd-tesla-model-s-fire/ <comment><USER2> "Could Spark Federal Inquiry"

Where is this claim coming from? Wired? I can't find any source. To me it seems like some writer for Wired figured they could get some clicks by speculating.

<comment><USER3> From another article:

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration "absolutely has to investigate" the Nov. 6 Tennessee incident, Clarence Ditlow, executive director of the Center for Auto Safety, based in Washington, said in a phone interview.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Face it, battery technology is not sufficiently advanced to deliver good range without some serious trade offs. The trade off of the Tesla may prove to be the wrong choice long term.

No one would ever suggest lining the bottom of a car with a gasoline tank, fortunately we don't have too because the power density is so high. Hence they can put tanks where a collision or road debris damage are least likely to damage them.

However Tesla needs a stupendous amount of battery to get its range. Hence we get large cars where they have chosen to isolate the entire pack at the floor of the car. They made the choice to dispense with a central tunnel which could hold more batteries, not use the front engine area or any trunk space.

There were to reasons for their design choice, first because of the sheer amount of batteries needed and second because of pack swapping. I don't think the trade off is worth it.

They can use some of the front "frunk" area to have a raised stack of batteries where the traditional firewall is and do similar in the rear. The could have a raised tunnel down the center line and reduce the need of having batteries so far forward. There were many choices available but they wanted swappable packs.

What statistic I want to see is, how many penetration events have their been versus how many fires. How many cells have to be penetrated to create a fire? Is there some flaw that another component is failing during these minor accidents that is causing the fires?

<comment><USER3> There are 6,000 collision related car fires in the US every year, out of 250M vehicles. There have been 3 collision related Tesla fires out of ten thousand vehicles in roughly six months of total drive time. That works out a 25x higher fire risk for the Teslas.

<comment> __--__ It's nice to see actual numbers and risk rates. I had dismissed the Tesla fires as insignificant. Your post has made me think I should take a second look.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This story is unfortunate spin for two reasons. The minor reason is Wired appears to be completely speculating when they state, "Could Spark Federal Inquiry".

The second and really much larger reason this article is spin is that they are painting this as a major issue without giving enough information to quantify it. I try to quantify it in this comment and the results are the opposite of how Wired is spinning this issue. Here's what they said:

 _While there are an average of 150,000 car fires in the U.S. each year, with only 19,000 Model S sedans on the road, having three vehicles catch fire in six weeks has garnered plenty of attention._

So this is comparing two data sets:

A: % of Tesla Vehicles that catch fire. Dividing 3 by 19,000 leads to a fire incidence rate of 0.0158%.

B: % of all vehicles that catch fire. For this data set, Wired helpfully tells you the numerator of 150,000 vehicles catch fire in the U.S. but completely leaves out the denominator.

Without giving the complete information for data set B, it's difficult to determine if Tesla's fire incidence rate is out of the ordinary and warrants the speculation of, "Could Spark Federal Inquiry". So in an attempt to find the denominator, I discovered:

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

 _Overall, there were an estimated 254.4 million registered passenger vehicles in the United States according to a 2007 DOT study_

Seems reasonable to use this as the denominator. If anything, since not every registered car is regularly driven, it is likely a high estimate and therefore understates the percentage.

But calculating it, 150,000 divided by 254,400,000 equals a fire incidence rate of 0.059% for data set B. So the average passenger vehicle catches fire 3.73 times as often as a Tesla Model S. Now, caveats:

This is comparing an annual number (0.059%) for some other time period. Without thinking much about it, you might believe there is weight to Wired's assertion that this is "3 vehicle fires in 6 weeks". The Model S has been driving on the road for much longer than 6 weeks. In fact, retail deliveries started about a year and a half ago. While technically accurate, to frame the data as "3 fires in 6 weeks" is misleading due to cherry picking data.

<comment><USER6> Another datapoint from Tesla blog if you don't think they are making their numbers up is that they had a rate of 1 fire in 100 million miles driven at the time of the first fire caused by debris. Not adding to the total miles driven since then we are now at 1 fire in 33 million miles while the national average is 1 fire in 20 million miles.

[http://www.teslamotors.com/blog/model-s- fire](http://www.teslamotors.com/blog/model-s-fire)

<comment><USER7> Assuming those numbers are combined highway and city miles, do you happen to know if there is any breakdown?

<comment><USER6> Its possible this exists for all cars but I am not aware that the data has been given for Tesla but it almost assuredly exists with their cars reporting home all the time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This could be for any number of reasons, and also a big coincidence, and I don't have time or the interest to read more on it, but the thing that I kept thinking while I read the story was "why did you have to do that thing with Boeing... you don't look too good now".

<comment><USER9> Lets see the amount of fires of, lets say, the Ford Fusion in the past 6 weeks. Or maybe the amount the fires for all of Ford vehicles. It's only because Tesla is so focused on.

This kind of reminds me how the media reports every single airplane crash. How about report every car crash with fatalities. According to Wikipedia over 2,500 per month.

<comment><USER10> That's just a dumb comment.

Gasoline gars don't catch on fire in non-fatal accident with any frequency

Now let's talk numbers.

Ford Fusion fleet, in the US: 1,520,000 vehicles. Tesla Model S fleet, world: 18,300. If 300 Ford Fusions caught on fire in a 6 week span I _guarantee_ NHTSA would be investigating.

<comment><USER11> > Gasoline gars don't catch on fire in non-fatal accident with any frequency

There were 187,500 car fires in 2011 ([http://www.nfpa.org/research/fire- statistics/the-us-fire-pro...](http://www.nfpa.org/research/fire- statistics/the-us-fire-problem/highway-vehicle-fires)), that's just over 3600 a week, which is about 0.07% of the total cars (~254M, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passenger_vehicles_in_the_Unite...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passenger_vehicles_in_the_United_States)).

3 of 18,300 Model S vehicles have caught fire. That's 0.02%.

<comment><USER12> Unfair comparison still. How many of those cars were old and in disrepair? How many of them were non-fatal accidents? How many of them were due to running over debris?

<comment><USER11> I agree with you there, there's no breakdown on model year.

However, last year the 2013 Ford Fusion was recalled (over 89k sold) after 13 fires caused by engine overheating: [http://usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/cars-trucks/best- cars-b...](http://usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/cars-trucks/best-cars- blog/2012/12/2013_Ford_Escape_Fusion_Recalled_for_Engine_Fires/)

<comment><USER13> So you're saying the Model S should be recalled (as those are _very_ similar failure rates)?

<comment><USER14> Engine overheating vs. accident are very different causes for fires.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Now that they did catch on fire, and the fire was suppressed every time, and everything was just ok... Well, now I'm beginning to trust electrical cars.

But they still are too expensive for me.

</comment><comment><USER16> The comparisons to the Leaf and Volt are meaningless if none of those vehicles have been in similar accidents. You can't just point to numbers and imply that a lack of reported fires means they're safer.

<comment><USER17> two of the three fires were from objects hitting the underside of the car.

Nissan Leaf has sold 3x more vehicles than Tesla.

Are you saying that objects don't hit the underside of Leafs? (Perhaps they are repelled magically?) Or that objects are somehow more attracted to the underside of Teslas cars? Or the Leaf accidents don't count because the Leaf owners didn't file a report that nothing happened?

<comment><USER18> I wonder whether it has something to do with the way you would drive a Tesla vs how you would drive a Volt/Leaf.

I'm not saying that the Tesla is necessarily better performing, just that two different types of people are the likely owners.

NB: Just pondering.

<comment><USER19> This might just be the case, simply due to the extended range of the Tesla. Since you can commute farther, you're more likely to be on a highway in a Tesla. I haven't seen many Leafs on 101/280, but I see Teslas all the time.

Since these are high-energy impacts, you'd have to be traveling at highway speed to have a damaging impact.

It might be more interesting to compare how a similar car style would behave (think high performance sedans).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> There may be a problem. We can consider the Tesla as a car body bolted on top of a huge battery. Collisions with road debris seem to be sufficient to pierce the battery's armour and start a fire.

This isn't disastrous. Problems like this routinely emerge with new designs. And at least the flammable materials stay in one place (unlike a gasoline engine). But still, a fire's a fire, and I'm sure Tesla's engineers are working overtime trying to figure out a solution.

<comment><USER21> > and I'm sure Tesla's engineers are working overtime trying to figure out a > solution.

What could the solution possibly be? Puncture the battery and it catches fire, and the battery covers almost the entire bottom of the car. Practically speaking there's only so much steel you can put on the bottom of the car.

It seems that Model S spreading the battery across the bottom of the car may simply be a defective design.

<comment><USER20> Use your imagination!

The conditions that cause the fires seem to be narrow and well-defined enough that a clever workaround is possible. Maybe add an extra layer of sacrificial armour? Or move some cells away from the vulnerable region.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Alright, let's do the math.

150,000 car fires per year / 52 weeks is 2880 fires per week. There are 135900000[1] vehicles in the US, which gives 21.2 fires per million-vehicles week. With 19000 Teslas on the road and three fires in six weeks we have 0.5 (fires / week) / 0.019 (million vehicles) = 26.3 fires per million-vehicles week. So even if this _is_ typical for the Model S (and it doesn't seem to be), the cars aren't much more likely to catch fire than ordinary cars. Also, I haven't accounted for the fact that the Model S's probably get driven more than your average passenger car, both due to low per-mile costs and the fact that they're more likely to be new and thus valued by their owners. Taking this into account would probably bring the Model S's fire-rate below gas cars again.

[1]: [http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=number+of+cars+in+us](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=number+of+cars+in+us)

<comment><USER17> The average car is 11.4 years old [0].. the average Tesla is still practically brand new. Not really an apples-to-apples comparison.

[http://www.autonews.com/article/20130806/RETAIL/130809922#](http://www.autonews.com/article/20130806/RETAIL/130809922#)

<comment><USER23> The trouble is that there are a lot of ways to slice the data, and just not a lot of data yet.

For example, I wonder what happens when you group the Tesla S in with cars that can do the quarter mile in under 13 seconds... [http://www.wreckedexotics.com/](http://www.wreckedexotics.com/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> They are having more accidents than other electric cars (3 vs 0), and it certainly seems that having four times as much battery power, and lining the base with them, is the problem.

There's nice spin you could put on this, which is likely true: people who have Teslas drive them more, because they are fun, cool, excellent - and have 4 times the range and power. Secondly, with more power, you will drive faster, hence greater likelihood of accident, and of greater severity.

But Tesla's gotta fix this. For PR reasons, and to be making a great car. There's always going to be unforeseen problems with new tech, the only issue is how you handle it.

It's a bit of a shame though: low slung batteries give low center of gravity and great handling and stability. Thicker armour adds unnecessary weight. Perhaps armour that deflects rather than stops? Perhaps a different failure mode for the batteries; built-in extinguishers? (i.e. the issue is fire, not car damage. Ideally, solve both).

<comment><AUTHOR> > Perhaps a different failure mode for the batteries; built-in extinguishers?

I hesitate to say 'it's not possible', but:

-Until a new battery formula becomes viable, we're pretty much stuck with batteries that light up when abused. Hopefully new formulas come online soon, but who knows wether or not they'll actually be safer.

-Chemical fires are pretty tough to extinguish via conventional means.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Apparently the battery pack in a Tesla has liquid cooling so it probably gets fairly hot. In a gas car, the liquid cooling is for the engine and if it fails, the engine overheats and stops. But imagine if the gas tank itself got hot when running and needed to be actively cooled. That's basically where the Tesla is at. A failed cooling system means the energy source overheats (and not the motor/engine).

I'm not a car expert but I imagine it's hard to protect all the pipes that are carrying the liquid. And that may be why these fires are starting... some puncture causes the liquid to release. Just a theory.

<comment><USER26> I would assume a car that has been involved in a crash would stop moving, and not need that cooling any more. Even if there _weren 't_ failsafe systems to shut things off.

There's only so much you can do with a punctured lithium ion.

<comment><USER25> What do you mean failsafe? That the batteries would shut down? My understanding is that in two of the incidents the drivers were able to continue driving until they found a safe place to get off. I think there would be a safety issue if the car completely shut off power on a freeway due to the cooling system failing.

<comment><USER26> Yes, that the batteries would shut down if they were overheating from use. It's certainly safer than the alternative.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> A quick back of the envelope calculation shows that, at this rate, the Tesla Model S is roughly 25x more likely to suffer a fire after a collision than a non-Tesla.

While gas powered cars must, out of necessity, carry a tank of flammable liquid around, which is fairly unsafe, the gas tank is not in the front of the car. No other electric car manufacturer puts their batteries so far forward under the hood, either. The Tesla also has very low road clearance.

<comment><USER14> Such small numbers make terrible statistics. For instance, I could say that "the Tesla Model S is infinitely times less likely than a non-Tesla to suffer a fire which leads to a death." 0 for Tesla, X > 0 for others.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I mean, tbh I really don't care - I still want one. I feel like this is the same as saying people get struck by lightening.

</comment><comment><USER28> In other news cars tend to burn when their fuel tanks are punctured after colliding with large objects at high speed.

</comment><comment><USER3> It occurs to me that these fires do not pose a direct risk to the occupants, but do carry indirect costs:

\- Firefighters will take longer to rescue injured from the passenger compartment

\- The fire can possibly ignite spilled gas from other cars in a multi-car accident

\- Insurance rates will be higher, as a collision is much more likely to total the car

</comment><comment><USER29> You can't make an omelette without burning a few cars.

</comment><comment><USER30> I was surprised with how many Leafs have sold. I rarely see one, but I see a Tesla at least twice a week these days.

<comment><USER31> I've yet to see any Tesla car on the road. I _have_ seen the Leaf and Volt. I have a feeling they have different geographical distributions.

<comment><USER32> I am seeing Teslas daily in CT. Leaf or Volt - not so much.

<comment><USER33> Where in CT? I spend a fair amount of time in the Hartford area and have never seen one.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


What happens when the Kindle Fire costs $0? - <AUTHOR> http://smallchou.com/blog/2012/01/what-happens-when-the-kindle-fire-costs-0/

<comment><USER2> What happens when Amazon sells 10mil kindle fires that cost $200 to produce for $0? Well, they lose $2 bil. Given that their annual operating income is only $1.4B or so, I don't think this is ever going to happen.</comment>


Essential's new smartphone has the aspect ratio of a TV remote - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/10/essentials-new-smartphone-has-the-aspect-ratio-of-a-tv-remote/ <comment><USER2> Runs a full open source version of Android, unknown form-factor adapted to no particular use. When everyone goes the other way, for sure this is a weird bet.</comment>


Report: U.S. average daily mobile game time drops over 30% in a year - <AUTHOR> http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/252522/Report_US_average_daily_mobile_game_time_drops_over_30_in_a_year.php <comment><USER3> Few years ago I remember article specifically saying that rampaging in-game purchases and greed in general will destroy not only mobile games, but gaming industry in general. Looks like the results are finally in. Additionally, article mentioned the rising popularity of watching other people play games. But I'm not sure that's very relevant in mobile gaming industry, because nobody watches people play mobile games anyway. Unless we say that Hearthstone is a mobile game. In general mobile games are such low quality that people don't want to give them time of the day anymore.

<comment><USER4> "because nobody watches people play mobile games anyway"

I'm one of those nobodies ;-) A quick search on Youtube will show at least half a dozen Clash Of Clan dedicated channels with more than 100k subscribers (ie Galadon, Chief Pat, Molt, Nickatnyte ...)

<comment><USER5> why? Seriously why. Like watching paint dry.

<comment><USER6> It is identical to watching traditional sports (NFL, NBA, football, etc). Why do people watch those?

The commentary is definitely a big part of the appeal. The strategy, the luck, the skill, the occasional swing at the last moments, and the drama (or metadrama).

I cannot say I like watching every game stream, but certainly watching Starcraft II with people like HuskyStarcraft commentating is pretty entertaining.

Each to their own however...

<comment><USER7> Personally, I don't find watching sports to be very engaging either, but I know I'm not typical in that regard. Theoretically, I can see more of an argument in favor of watching traditional sports since it's harder to go out and find other players of similar skill in your location and then organize everyone into teams, etc, etc. The barrier to participation in video games is much lower though with the internet and automated matchmaking for multiplayer games. Singleplayer and free-to-play games are even easier to get into.

I love playing video games, but I've never had the patience to seek out and watch other people play. I'd much rather be experiencing it for myself - <USER2> as you said, to each their own.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Personal anecdote...

I used to play a lot of mobile games, mostly on my iPad. Now it is pretty much limited to checking Clash of Clans in the morning and at night because it strikes the right balance of brain candy vs. time I need to invest per gaming session.

I play a lot of desktop games though still, and I think the big thing for me has been the contrived IAP-focused experiences that have dominated the app store. Finding games that encourage you to continue playing using the carrot (by making the game actually fun) vs. the IAP stick to punish you for playing is a chore.

Steam on the other hand seems to be mostly games that are not P2W, and reviews are quick to point out details of any P2W or IAP-hell mechanics. I'm more than happy to pay full price for those games and definitely get value out of them.

Beyond that, I think I've just reached the "peak gaming" point of my life for now. I realize that every moment I spend playing a game is giving into my vice and helping me unwind vs. being spent building something or being otherwise productive. Sometimes I need that to relax, but as I get older I increasingly become aware of the amount of time I've collectively "wasted" on video games in my life. I put "wasted" in quotes because I've definitely gained a lot of value from it over the years, but it has likewise not produced anything physically tangible to show for it.

<comment><USER9> Everyone has room for a little entertainment in their life. I don't think it's healthy or even possible to do productive creative work during all your waking hours.

Besides, gaming offers a way to escape from reality, which for some people is essential therapy.

<comment><USER8> I agree that some release is healthy, but it is hard to avoid mentally tallying all the hours I've spent gaming in my life and wonder what more value I could have created during that time if I had spent it on something productive...

I'm sure I beat myself up over it too much, but it definitely becomes harder to ignore as I get older.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This could potentially be explained by the amount of time non-gamers spend on mobile devices increasing dramatically relative to gamers.

This explanation could make sense: gamers tend to be early adopters of new technologies (including mobile), and then make up a smaller fraction of the total users as technologies become mainstream.

Can someone with access to the data support or reject this explanation?

<comment><USER11> Really odd that the report (and the article) focuses on average minutes, without going into number of total minutes/total users. Which means the numbers tells us almost nothing without some more context.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> If you seek to design for monetization over fun, it's no wonder that you'd wind up with neither and have no players, too.

I wouldn't be surprised to see most games settle on $5 with a big NOIAP being the primary selling point.

The current blight is both an app purchase price and IAP in a pay to win style.

People aren't stupid, and they don't like being used. Give them a fair product at a fair price, and they will line up.

<comment><USER13> Better yet, use IAP in a manner that benefits customers as well as developers/sellers: make it the new shareware.

I'm much more likely to spend $5 on a game if the first 10 levels or the first episode are free, with an optional IAP to unlock the full game. It's a win- win. I understand that the freemium model works because there's less "friction" involved in the initial download.

If someone is browsing potential time wasters, it's a lot easier to click on the free option than the $5 option. Still, developing and supporting a good game costs money so they need to make it somehow. Too often you end up with a modern version of the arcade cabinet where you need to keep feeding it quarters if you want to continue playing or if you want any meaningful progress.

I would much rather spend money on something I've tested and found to be fun than something unknown but I also refuse to spend money on the blatant pay-to- win stuff or really anything that requires Facebook spamming or endless microtransactions to get anywhere. Free demo with full unlock via IAP or separate purchase is definitely my preferred setup. Doing it in-app is probably best for the people selling the game since, again, it removes the friction of having to go back and download another app in the store. As long as it isn't insulting or blatantly exploitative, I'm fine with it.

If only more mobile games were sold this way I'd buy and play more mobile games.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I havn't heard in a while "hey check out this mobile game". All I hear is about new gaming console games coming out.

</comment><comment><USER15> The 30% decline mirrors my behavior and certainly that of my friends. Anecdotal I know. Increased time spent watching streaming video, especially "let's play" gaming type videos/eSports.

Blaming in-game-purchasing is a red herring. It's easy and human-nature to blame your pet hate for problems. See Trump and immigrant-blaming.

<comment><USER16> Your argument about IAP is true and I also think it's hated too much. It's not a problem in itself. But there are really too many games which focus too much on just increasing IAP instead of delivering gaming content. My interest in playing mobile grows every day. But I see less and less opportunity for it. Hearthstone and maybe Fallout Shelter are the only two examples that are playable in my eyes, and both also try to convince you to spend unreasonable amounts of money on IAP content.

I hope it's a learning process for the development community.

<comment><USER17> I felt Fallout Shelter was horrible. There's no real skill involved, only time, and spending money just speeds up the game. Alright fair enough if the mechanics are fun, but it's really just looking at a person's bars, identifying what he's good at, and putting him in the right room where he's most productive. You keep some guys at the door for security, put weapons on them... then you wait, and wait. Expand. Wait and wait. Expand. Every now and then you send or recall a person from scavenging. There's no real story, nothing to explore, the game isn't very complex. Combat is a game of tag. I can see why it's popular, but I can't see why it's a good game. And as you say it's riddled with IAPs (although kudos that there's none of the constant popups, share with friends, watch an ad etc crap), despite being supposedly one of the most significant releases this year. Absolutely disappointing.

<comment><USER16> Yes, there are much better games on the planet. But not on Android, afaik. For a game to be "playable" it doesn't need to be great, right?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Comments here and on the article mainly point to in app purchasing. It's disgusting to see wonderful creativity turned into such mean-spirited awfulness in the hope of earning more money in the short term.

I hope that Apple (for one) wakes up and realises what this is doing to destroy the overall iOS experience.

</comment><comment><USER19> Is it because people rather watch netflix than grind through a games mainly built around in-app-purchase mechanics?

<comment><USER20> "mainly built around in-app-purchase mechanics"

In-app-purchase mechanics is awesome for Amazon delivering stuff to my house, listening to music, watching videos, kickstarter type support. As the root of atari2600 level gaming experiences, it doesn't work well. Once you condition people to sit on the couch and spend small amounts of money online, don't be surprised when they spend it on movies, music, pr0n, amazon stuff, instead of the intended "we wrapped Frogger in an in-app-purchase skin, now give me my entitled billions".

If I'm sitting on my couch in the mood to blow money on worthless stuff, almost anything I can buy provides better return than IAP games. So in a supply and demand sense either games have to get better (good luck) or cheaper (good luck) or they can collapse down to the point the survivors can do better or cheaper. Or games have to find a way to destroy online paid shopping / video / music.

There is another aspect of free hit where a new tech like mobile gaming gets a free hit... for awhile. Now its not new anymore and they (as an industry) can't survive, well, that's why they'll go away.

Nobody is making money off Pixel Dungeon and its forks. Oh well, good luck stopping them. I think they're a lot of fun.</comment></comment>


When you code, write down everything - <AUTHOR> https://swizec.com/blog/write-down-everything/swizec/8851 <comment><USER2> Would an alternative be to use version control and use descriptive commits and commit often?

<comment><USER3> No - because your thoughts are not translatable into code.

I tend to draw various diagrams or graphs when working on something and it would be inconvenient to digitize them. Sure, once you have some final "thing" you can add it do the documentation.</comment></comment>


The Eternal Struggle Between Business and Programmers - <AUTHOR> http://blog.thecodewhisperer.com/2013/11/11/the-eternal-struggle-between-business-and-programmers/ <comment><USER2> Part of the problem here is that developers don't do a good job of creating a culture that values refactoring as a key part of the overall process. The underlying issues are not, at a general level, unique to software. It's not like the business folks at GE aren't asking for more features faster. However, other engineering fields have done a much better job at making things like, e.g. testing, a core part of the culture. GE doesn't ship a refrigerator without incredibly extensive testing, not just because of the threat of lawsuits (another thing software developers don't really face), but because the relevant engineering bodies have made testing a non-negotiable part of the process.

From a manager's point of view, there's a big difference between having to say "our engineers would like some time for refactoring" and being able to say "refactoring is just part of the process--any other engineer would tell you the same thing."

<comment><USER3>
      > Part of the problem here is that developers don't do a
      > good job of creating a culture that values refactoring as
      > a key part of the overall process.

And developers won't get a culture that values their work as part of the overall process until they're promoted into positions with enough authority to ensure that engineering processes are valued. There's so much management bashing in the community that I fear that we've become self-defeating: The only way to get better management is to promote managers from our ranks, yet we're quick to put the "pointy-haired boss" label on anyone who dares to make the move.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's worth noting that all three parties (devs, business, board/management) are acting out of fear. It's little wonder that the outcome is poor.

* Management needs to get over itself and have a true vision beyond, "omg competitors are making money...more features!" that it conveys to everyone.

* The businesspeople need to absorb some of management's anxiety (and their own) on behalf of devs, and communicate with customers to ensure the vision aligns with what they want.

* The developers need to stop whining, up their game and go a bit slower so they don't get themselves in these situations to begin with. Give them what they need (quality code) not what they want ("anything that works NOW!!").

The business world seems rife with people who are purely reactionary, and yet still have the gall to wonder why they cannot innovate: "We don't have money for R&D!" OK, you don't have money for growth then.

<comment><USER5> I think a big part of the problem is that nobody ever teaches developers how to estimate and they are almost always wrong. A typical scenario is; PM describes a feature, asks for an estimate, and the developer gives it to him, right then and there. What's wrong with that? The developer hasn't done any research or exploration into the problem at all, and has no idea what he's talking about.

When you think of a time estimate, you're going to come up with a time assuming that the problem can be solved in the most obvious way, and that's because we can't possibly know about the problems we don't know about. It's not a terrible crime to not know things you don't know, but it is bad to make time estimates on things we don't know.

The correct answer is "give me a few hours to a day to look into the problem and I'll let you know how long I think it will take". The amount of time it takes for discovery depends on how big the feature is of course, but the point is you need to get your feet wet to determine what unknowns there might be, and you shouldn't give an estimate until you have done that.

<comment><USER6> I applaud the thought, but then they have to have an estimate of how long the estimate will take... which often ends-up wrong.

<comment><USER5> That's true :) But at least the absolute amount wrong will be hours or days, instead of weeks or months. Also, you can leave it a bit more vague and just say "I need to explore the problem space a bit before giving an estimate".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is a vague discussion that stays at a high level... I'm not sure how valuable this kind of generalization is.

The "programmer" side of this discussion certainly does _not_ always have a grasp of the needs of the business in mind, and it doesn't help that estimations of effort for new features (or refactoring efforts, even minor ones) are notoriously difficult. Some programmers are business-savvy, but most really aren't -- not necessarily due to ignorance or inexperience! It takes significant effort & time to keep a finger on the pulse of a business, to really know how much _this_ contract matters in the grand scheme, what's _really_ required to land it, and when.

So it comes down to communication, and different people figuring out what actually needs to be communicated, but that's so relevant to everything it's almost useless to say.

Case studies would be more interesting -- real ones, inasmuch as that's possible without making real people look bad. The author seems to consult on this sort of thing for a living, so that's probably possible.

<comment><USER8> I read the article to be a light approach toward the question of 'What do managers even do?' because it seems managers spend much of their time balancing those two demands (features / technical debt).

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> One major problem with this: Business lies.

Not maliciously, it's just the way they do things. They think they're negotiating instead of cooperating. If they really need feature X in 6 weeks time, they will tell the Programmers they need it in 4 weeks.

Programmers however will be honest, and worse, _optimistic_. When they say it can be done in 8 weeks, 10 weeks is probably more realistic.

That huge difference removes all the room for coming to a mutually satisfactory compromise.

Even if both sides agree on a compromise, the Programmers will be fucked. They only difference is that they've fucked themselves, but since in the end it will come out Business "lied" (we all know it, the moment we delivered just in time, and nobody cares for _weeks_ ), they will still blame Business.

Business and Programmers need an interpreter that doesn't take sides, but hey, we just figured out management is useless, right?

</comment><comment><USER10> One thing not to forget is that if you unleash refactoring on a grand scale you'll end up with second version syndrome.

Thus, management has a problem. To allow refactoring, they need to believe there's a technical person in charge that is able to keep the refactoring in check. But, as a manager, how would you asses that?

<comment><USER11> Isn't the solution to allow very regular (daily?) refactoring, instead of pilling new stuff for weeks and months and then having a big refactoring party?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I've always wondered why, in a company that loves 6 sigma and other process improvements, we never really got behind refactoring code. I mean, cleaning the flow of books and nuts through the line is praised, but the flow of an array through logic is not. I think it has to do with the former being easily seen - physical and the latter being abstract. It could also have to do with easily proving repeatability... It is easy to see that the bolts will be installed 500 time in a week; less so about the logic. In fact, I think if we could show measurable velocity improvements from refactored code; it would show business how investing in refactoring pays off. Kinds like a Toyota production system for c++.

<comment><USER13> I'm agreeing with you. It has to do with code not being visible _to management_. That is intentional, management doesn't want to see or think about code. They want to push that entire concern to the technical team and never see it. Which is reasonable enough. Then they have a time demand or feature demands (which amount to the same thing) and suddenly the technical team doesn't see a lot of breathing space to work on code quality. If management trusts a credible view expressed by the technical team or the technical team can irrefutably prove that the added time will improve some metric of business interest then this can change.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> > The Business needs to agree that the Programmers have heretofore gone more > quickly than they really can, that they cannot sustain this pace, and that > to do so merely hastens the ultimate decline of the entire product line, and > perhaps the company.

Yes the business agrees, but then continues to demand new features. Nothing changes until the people change, code is tossed out, and the whole thing starts over again.

</comment><comment><USER6> My most heartening point of this post and story, is that there are only 21 comments as of this post (22 after I hit 'enter'). So, while I sourly identify with this piece and want to post it outside of my cube wall... this isn't garnering nearly the crowd of other universal HN siren songs.

Phew.

</comment><comment><USER15> The timing of this post is great! So tented to send it to my boss who apparently has no clue in software engineer. Great article! Recommend it!

<comment><USER12> As a mostly business guy, I kind this post said it best. It is about velocity and when to tractor/automate. It came across HN a couple weeks ago, but I'm not great at searching HN. [http://blog.hut8labs.com/speeding-up-your-eng-org- part-i.htm...](http://blog.hut8labs.com/speeding-up-your-eng-org-part-i.html)

<comment><USER16> Thank you, this is fantastic. I'm now thinking of ways I can transform this into a short presentation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This is a pretty shallow analysis, and I don't find it useful.

"The Business" is mostly full of non-technical people who, while they might not be analytical or even as smart, but who understand politics well and know how to solve the local optimization of seeking their own careers and power. They don't want "more features! now!" Their motivations are things like (a) making their mark, (b) concentrating a power base, and (c) tying their names to an obvious, low-risk opportunity for visible gain. The reason they want "features" is that everyone who gets power needs to use it to make some kind of mark in order to retain that power. Programmers tend to underestimate "business idiots" while refusing to acknowledge that those "idiots" being in charge means that they're good at _something_.

Programmers don't want "more refactoring!" out of some knee-jerk defensiveness. The good ones want _technical excellence_ , which dies in deadline culture. They want to build things they can be proud of. And there are careerist reasons for them to feel this way, because tech gets shit on as soon as things go bad, no matter who's really at fault. If you build a system that generates $50 million per year, then make a mistake that causes 4 hours of downtime ($23,000 loss) of that system, you'll typically be mortally embarrassed and possibly fired. So, programmers have solid,m career-oriented reasons to push back when asked to do something in a quick, sloppy way. They (and not the managers who ordered them to cut corners) will be the ones to suffer when things fall apart.

The hard and painful truth is that business-oriented programming is underappreciated by business and unattractive to talented programmers, and so almost a complete non-starter. The good people tend to fight for a while (for more refactoring, more autonomy) but eventually disengage or go elsewhere (e.g. consulting, where there's an outside chance of getting what they're actually worth). The bad programmers don't care about "refactoring" per se but have learned how to parrot the good ones. Thus far, VCs have tried to overcome this problem (the complete non-viability of business-oriented programming) with the smoke-and-mirrors show of startups and paper millionaires, but the wiser people are starting to figure that one out, too.

For the record, there isn't a huge mismatch between "The Business" and "The Programmers". Great programmers are _perfectly happy_ working for the business, if compensated appropriately (see: quant traders at hedge funds) or if they own it. They just don't like working for the business _as a subordinate_ , because it leads to spending a lot of time implementing _stupid_ features that obviously don't make sense or deliver value to the company, but that meet the parochial needs of a specific ambitious executive (who won't protect them in return for their service).

<comment><USER14> Well said.

> The hard and painful truth is that business-oriented programming is > underappreciated by business and unattractive to talented programmers, and > so almost a complete non-starter. The good people tend to fight for a while > (for more refactoring, more autonomy) but eventually disengage or go > elsewhere . . .

I'm at the "disengage" point. The higher ups aren't heeding my warnings that what we are doing is not sustainable. Eventually the system will enter a permanent broken state and I just don't care anymore.</comment></comment>


Take a Look at our new HipChat Integration - <AUTHOR> https://www.blossom.io/blog/2013/03/12/take-a-look-at-our-new-hipchat-integration.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Anyone who hasn't looked at HipChat yet I encourage you to give them a try. Great product. Way way better than Skype for group chat.</comment>


AI could help fight climate change - <AUTHOR> https://www.technologyreview.com/s/613838/ai-climate-change-machine-learning/ <comment><USER2> If you have time to dedicate to the fight against climate change, consider reading this paper [0] and start or help out some of the projects mentioned. One example is Tomorrow [1], a startup that tries to calculate your CO2 emisisons based on app integrations and is looking for help on these integrations and CO2 models, but there are other projects like this one [2] or this one [3].

[0] [https://arxiv.org/abs/1906.05433](https://arxiv.org/abs/1906.05433)

[1] [https://www.tmrow.com/](https://www.tmrow.com/)

[2] [https://openclimatefix.github.io/](https://openclimatefix.github.io/)

[3] [http://pangeo.io](http://pangeo.io)

</comment><comment><USER3> The article missed the most obvious way in which AI could fight climate change: by replacing the current election and political system with AI. This would fix the fundamental problem that humans are collectively unable to avoid killing the planet they live on. Solution: put decision making into the hands of software designed to achieve the goal of not killing the planet. I'm pretty sure as this (election replacing AI) is a much easier technical problem than self driving cars.</comment>


Eliezer Yudkowsky: Is That Your True Rejection? - <AUTHOR> http://www.cato-unbound.org/2011/09/07/eliezer-yudkowsky/is-that-your-true-rejection/ <comment><USER2> Interestingly enough, my own small-l libertarianism has nothing to do with the innate properties of people. It's about how those properties come together into groups. I have found, again and again, that when people organize into large groups and form systems of getting along it never works. The larger the group, the more complex the system, the longer the system has been in place, the worst the results are. I don't think there is any intervention, nature or nurture, that would change this. To feel otherwise, to me, would be to say that there is a perfect person. That seems more than a little scary. I find our defects, when working together, give us adaptability. Counter-intuitively, I believe that the properties most of us would desire in a population are probably reverse-correlated to growth and evolution. [insert long explanation about the value of variance across multiple dimensions here]

Representative democracies are kind of a hack to this law. You try to pick somebody to represent you and make decisions, you split up powers among various competing branches of government, etc. What is happening in the west, though, is the idea of a "restart" is mostly gone. It's just the same guys wearing different hats that take turns ruling.

But to me these are properties of how systems of people operate. The word "government" has little to do with it. The reason to fight as hard as possible for individual freedom has nothing to do with selfishness: the more freedom the individual retains, the less the stakes are, and the slower the process of system corruption becomes. My ultimate rejection would be a demonstration of a stable, creative, dynamic, adaptive, and productively chaotic society of non- trivial size that had been in existence for more than a century or so. Hate to set the bar that high. Need to think about that some more to see if I could make my position more logically approachable.

<comment><USER3> I totally agree with your premise. I used to work at google, and every time I go back there / talk to my old friends it breaks my heart a little.

That said, you've made two claims in your post:

1\. All groups will get worse over time

2\. Therefore, we should keep government as small as possible

The refutation to the argument is that many other modern democracies have (proportionally) bigger governments than the US. These countries certainly get advantages from big governments (like social welfare, decent education systems, state sponsored medical attention, etc) but don't _seem_ to pay much of a cost for it.

As an Australian citizen, I will get paid a dole if I can't find work, all my important medical expenses are covered or heavily subsidised, our schools are decent everywhere, and so on. My taxes are a bit higher than yours, but not unreasonably so.

I suspect the important difference might just be scale - Australia has just 20M people. Most European countries have similar sizes. Maybe if the US were lots of small countries instead it would work better? Its hard to tell...

<comment><USER4> _These countries certainly get advantages from big governments (like social welfare, decent education systems, state sponsored medical attention, etc) but don't seem to pay much of a cost for it._

Most countries with systems more extensive than those of the US tend to be poorer than the US.

[http://super-economy.blogspot.com/2010/03/super-economy- in-o...](http://super-economy.blogspot.com/2010/03/super-economy-in-one- picture.html)

[http://super-economy.blogspot.com/2010/03/income- distributio...](http://super-economy.blogspot.com/2010/03/income-distribution- in-us-and-sweden.html)

[http://super-economy.blogspot.com/2010/01/dynamic-america- po...](http://super-economy.blogspot.com/2010/01/dynamic-america-poor- europe.html)

Also, we have social welfare, stated sponsored medical attention, and decent education systems in the US. Where did you get the idea we lack these things?

<comment><USER5> > Also, we have social welfare, stated sponsored medical attention, and decent > education systems in the US. Where did you get the idea we lack these > things?

As an Australian who has spent a fair amount of time in the states I would argue with those points. Sure, you have those things, (not sure about 'decent' education system) but they certainly don't function as efficiently as ours do, as far as I can tell..

<comment><USER4> If the USA doesn't have a decent education system, then neither does Australia. At least according to demographically adjusted PISA scores.

[http://super-economy.blogspot.com/2010/12/amazing-truth- abou...](http://super-economy.blogspot.com/2010/12/amazing-truth-about-pisa- scores-usa.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm not sure if Eliezer (who participates here) has seen either of the links below before.

[http://people.virginia.edu/~ent3c/papers2/Articles%20for%20O...](http://people.virginia.edu/~ent3c/papers2/Articles%20for%20Online%20CV/Turkheimer%20\(2008\).pdf)

[http://people.virginia.edu/~ent3c/papers2/Articles%20for%20O...](http://people.virginia.edu/~ent3c/papers2/Articles%20for%20Online%20CV/Johnson%20\(2009\).pdf)

I post these links to HN from time to time, because they are from top-notch authors on heritability research and join issue directly with a very common misconception about what heritability figures show about human behavioral traits. Simply put, whatever the numerical figure is for heritability of this or that human behavioral trait says NOTHING about how malleable (changeable or controllable by environment) the trait is. Let me be clear: all human behavioral characteristics are heritable, with heritabilities above the theoretical minimum of 0 and always strictly less than the theoretical maximum of 1. But no matter what the calculated heritability is of a specific trait, we know NOTHING about how subject that trait is to change under the influence of carefully planned environmental interventions. That is a separate line of investigation, not logically or factually related at all to the heritability calculated by the usual methodologies in studies of correlations of traits among closely related and less closely related individuals. The references provide more details.

From the article: "When I ask myself this question, I think my actual political views would change primarily with my beliefs about how likely government interventions are in practice to do more harm than good. I think my libertarianism rests chiefly on the empirical proposition—a factual belief which is either false or true, depending on how the universe actually works—that 90% of the time you have a bright idea like 'offer government mortgage guarantees so that more people can own houses,' someone will somehow manage to screw it up, or there'll be side effects you didn't think about, and most of the time you'll end up doing more harm than good, and the next time won't be much different from the last time." Similarly, my views on politics and economics are heavily influenced by real-world experience, particularly the real-world experience of living in Taiwan, and visiting Hong Kong and China, in the early 1980s when those three culturally similar areas lived under very different government policies. Government policies make a difference. Actuality trumps theory in political science and economics.

<comment><USER7> Turkheimer by no means represents a consensus view in genetic research. Moreover, I find some of his positions to be quite at odds with my view of what scientific philosophy should be. For example, he believes that the study of race and IQ is not a "legitimate matter for scientific inquiry". You can spin all the pseudoscientific rationalizations you want to make that claim, but as soon as you say that some subject is off limits, and that subject just happens to be very related to a taboo social and political topic, your motivations become suspect in my opinion. But then that's why, apropos of the linked article's ending, I'm a libertarian.

<comment><USER8> Race and IQ are not scientifically precise tools. Both are fundamentally subjective. Why do we say that Barack Obama is a black man and not a white man? If we are to have a logically precise definition of race, both statements are true or neither is. In a genetic context, most African-Americans are just as much white as black. But in a study comparing disease rates among ethnic groups, African-Americans and Caucasians are treated as disjoint sets.

IQ is just plain subjective. You would likely get similar results by sitting the designers of the IQ test one on one in a room with someone, and then having them rate the people they talked to by how much they were interested in the conversation.

I don't think that Turkheimer is saying that you can't look at race and IQ in a scientific context. What he's saying is that the concepts of race and IQ are more grounded in opinion than fact, and when we see them in scientific studies we should be wary if they are not mentioned in the same breath as other subjective classifications like religion or political affiliation.

<comment> barry-cotter _Race and IQ are not scientifically precise tools._

Genetic Structure, Self-Identified Race/Ethnicity, and Confounding in Case- Control Association Studies

We have analyzed genetic data for 326 microsatellite markers that were typed uniformly in a large multiethnic population-based sample of individuals as part of a study of the genetics of hypertension (Family Blood Pressure Program). Subjects identified themselves as belonging to one of four major racial/ethnic groups (white, African American, East Asian, and Hispanic) and were recruited from 15 different geographic locales within the United States and Taiwan. Genetic cluster analysis of the microsatellite markers produced four major clusters, _which showed near-perfect correspondence with the four self-reported race/ethnicity categories._

<http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1196372/>

<comment><USER6> One of the co-authors of that paper has withdrawn some of the strong conclusions once based on it in his subsequent co-authored article in the latest edition of Vogel and Motulsky human genetics textbook (cited in my link to a Wikipedia user page in another comment in this thread). Anyway, what the article shows in relation to this thread is not the point the participant above was relying on. It is occasionally possible, with a sample of genetic information about genes not under strong selection pressure, to make a reasonably accurate rough guess of the "race" categorization of many individuals. (I have read the article, and I see that that is the claim, as in the excerpt you kindly quote, but the article also notes exceptions in the sample it examined who were miscategorized.) But those study authors, and all competent human geneticists, do NOT argue the converse: that if you know an individual's race categorization, you know to a reasonable degree of accuracy what specific genes that person has of interest to human behaviors. In fact, we generally do not know that at all about any individual. There are still few genes significant behavorial effect that have been even tentatively identified in a first sample, and the widely replicated result is that ANY "race" group defined by the varying social definitions around the world will still be highly diverse as to any genetic characteristic of interest.

<comment> m-photonic >It is occasionally possible, with a sample of genetic information about genes not under strong selection pressure, to make a reasonably accurate rough guess of the "race" categorization of many individuals. (I have read the article, and I see that that is the claim, as in the excerpt you quote, but the article also notes exceptions in the sample it examined who were miscategorized.) But those study authors, and all competent human geneticists, do NOT argue the converse: that if you know an individual's race categorization, you know to a reasonable degree of accuracy what specific genes that person has of interest to human behaviors.

I don't think the comment you're replying to purported to argue that in the first place. He was just trying to refute the notion that race is merely a matter of social labels; the fact is those labels refer to something real in terms of a person's ancestry that can be detected by genetic tests.

Like you say, it has never been demonstrated that racial groups differ in their genetic propensity for intelligence, but it has also never been demonstrated that they don't. Given the observed IQ differences between racial groups and the fact that these groups differ genetically, a genetic basis for these differences seems like a reasonable thing to hypothesize about, and apply scientific methods of inquiry into. This is why I have a problem with a statement like "race and IQ is not a legitimate matter for scientific inquiry."

<comment><USER9> _This is why I have a problem with a statement like "race and IQ is not a legitimate matter for scientific inquiry."_

But both are social-political constructs. They are labels. What do you gain by correlating some feature of human behavior under examination with them? (I provide one answer in another comment: the effective distribution of useful information through existing social channels.)

Yes, racial labels refer to something real. But it's like correlating geological data with the state of California. California refers to something real. But as a scientist why would I want to correlate seismic activity with the state borders of California as opposed to, say, some fault-line that runs out into the Pacific or up into Oregon?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The article he's responding to is at [http://www.cato- unbound.org/2011/09/06/michael-shermer/liber...](http://www.cato- unbound.org/2011/09/06/michael-shermer/liberty-and-science/)

<comment><USER11> And the rest of the discussion is playing out on their main site this month:

<http://www.cato-unbound.org/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> There is variance within the libertarian community and this confuses a lot of people. The many viewpoints are united by a respect for contract law and property rights. The main split is down to people who believe these two things are an ethical imperative and those who believe them to be pragmatically optimal. Many believe in a jumbled mix of the two. That is, they are a little shaky on the differences between normative and positive statements, and thus have difficulty clarifying their position.

</comment><comment><USER13> In a community where everyone is genetically and epigenetically identical, variance attributable to additive genetic factors (heritability) is zero.

In a community where everyone is genetically diverse but their living and work situations are exactly identical (a very hard scenario to imagine), all variance is attributable to genetic factors. (The heritability is potentially 1, but since the definition of heritability is that it pertains to additive genetic factors, it may not be 1 in this case.)

A few things flow from this.

The first is that population-level estimates of heritability may change over time, even if only because environments change, sometimes wildly, over time.

The second is that estimates of heritability for one population may not tell you about another population, and the population-level estimate itself is a blend of the community-level constituent values. (Even when you derive your estimates from twin studies, you can imagine how this is true.)

The third is that even if you drive heritability to 1 because you have made everyone's environment uniformly awesome, this does not mean that you cannot make everyone's environment even more awesome and thereby increase productivity/output/whatever. Say that Trait X is one's "widget production ability." If Trait X's _variability_ is now 100% genetic, it does not at all follow that Trait X's _mean_ cannot be increased by changing the environment. (It merely follows that Trait X's variance, not its mean, is currently completely explained by genetic differences.)

The fourth is that with substantial state intervention, you can probably manipulate the heritability of any human behavioral trait to whatever value you want it to be, given enough dedication of resources and willingness to flout norms.

</comment><comment><USER14> I found the concept of being 'logically rude' insightful. I have been on both sides of that.

<comment><USER15> Yep, i would be satisfied it if we all can take away only that lesson from that article. And i think we may all be better off as a society. I am willing to abandon that belief, if empirical evidence shows the delay in decision- making resulting from that change will minimize impact of the decision. Ofcourse, testing it is a lot harder. But still.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I always find it weird about libertarians how they're so skeptical of big institutions in the form of government but don't seem to worry about big institutions in the form of corporations when it is obvious to everyone how dysfunctional big corps can get. And how much damage big corporations can do. The magical belief in the "free market" fairy is incredibly naive. Anyone that has ever run genetic algorithms knows how easy it is for even a moderately complicated system to get stuck in obviously inefficient local maxima. A nation's economy is much more complicated.

<comment><USER17> Exactly. I really liked Yudkowski's framing of the rationale behind his political beliefs and agreed with his progression of ideas until he reached his conclusion. In particular, I liked his stating the issues in terms of pragmatism rather that principles because it allows for some consideration of "the public good" (which idealistic libertarians bristle at), even though that idea is admittedly hard to pin down.

I won't hesitate to acknowledge the (seemingly inherent) problems with government. However, laissez-faire capitalism has it's own inherent failings: every non-libertarian has their own list but they tend to include externalities (environment, public health, ...), ideas of "fairness" (large income inequality, valuing lives in terms of income, opportunity, ...), commons (turning things that are naturally shared---public spaces, roads, ideas, water---into private monopolies). There are well-worn libertarian responses to all of these concerns, but each issue is complex and I've not generally been satisfied with purely laissez-faire approaches (so far).

I like the idea of government serving as an (imperfect) check-and-balance on corporations, just as voters and separate branches are imperfect checks on government. As broken as government tools like regulation can be, I suspect the threat of their use is government's most effective tool.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I think he should have treated the set of all government actions with more granularity. Imagine that you partitioned that set into two subsets. The first subset would be actions on policy issues that libertarians find it necessary for governments to act on. The second subset would be actions on policy issues that they don't think it's necessary for governments to act on. It could simultaneously be true that 99% of actions in the second subset will tend to have bad results and only 1% of actions in the first subset will have bad results depending on the relative size of the sets. If you're not clear about which subset you're talking about, you'll get people saying things like "you must be wrong that most government policies have a bad results, this country (that mostly performs actions in the first subset) tends to have very good results."

</comment><comment><USER19> For reference - Eliezer's Dec 2008 post on this - <http://lesswrong.com/lw/wj/is_that_your_true_rejection/>

</comment><comment><USER20> A very thoughtful article, especially the notion of something being ones true reason, and variance as causal impact, but isn't what he describes as libertarianism with a small 'l', what has been known as the Social Democrat way in Europe for decades...; only have the state be involved in those things where the market and other societal provisions (charity, etc.) fail. Not much new here, except for the content of it being quite reasonable... :)

<comment><USER21> Quite the opposite. Social Democrats in Europe are a diverse bunch from one country to another and even within countries, but all most all of them believe in the governments ability to improve society. (Because of this many European countries have a ministry of Culture, a ministry of Sports, etc.)

Europe does have liberal parties that look like the discussed libertarians with a small "l", especially in Northern Europe, but they usually take third place behind the socialist and christian democrats.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Interesting perspective, but it does ignore <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balancing_selection>. It's possible that a certain amount of variation in the population is kept around through evolutionary processes.

On the whole, though, I do agree that humans are basically the same.

</comment><comment><USER23> The hospital example he ends with is strange. It's my understanding that under libertarian philosophy, children would not have access to _any_ care in that society unless their parents happened to be able to afford it.

<comment><USER6> _It's my understanding that under libertarian philosophy, children would not have access to any care in that society unless their parents happened to be able to afford it._

Libertarians are very happy to see philanthropists devoting their own money to helpful causes. They are also happy for voluntary private associations to work for their mutual benefit. They can point to many examples of people doing just that in history.

[http://www.amazon.com/Market-Education-History-Studies- Philo...](http://www.amazon.com/Market-Education-History-Studies- Philosophy/dp/1560004088/)

Indeed, historically, most hospitals that treat poor children and most schools that educate poor children were founded without government support, all over the world.

<comment><USER23> OK, so a poor child in a libertarian society would only receive care if his parents could afford to pay for it at a private hospital, or if he happened to have access to a theoretical charity hospital that a theoretical philanthropist may or may not have chartered.

You can't get around the fact that the basic tenets of libertarianism rank the right for the rich to live in luxury above the right of poor people to obtain basic needs.

<comment><USER24> Ignoring your choice of phrasing for the moment, you've still missed half the story there: they also want to remove all the barriers that make it difficult for the poor to become rich, as well as eliminating the existing programs that remove all motivation to _want_ to. (Consider, for instance, the common case where unemployment pays more than getting a job; people have learned how to satisfy the unemployment office without actually trying to get a job. Beware what you incentivize.)

Regarding your choice of phrase: "the rich" versus "poor people" makes the former impersonal and the latter "people". Similarly, "live in luxury" versus "basic needs" misses the entire point.

<comment><USER25> >remove all the barriers that make it difficult for the poor to become rich

So... they want to remove barriers to market entry and the overwhelming power of corporations?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> "Over to you, Carter." <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fEegK7Df1tQ>

</comment><comment><USER27> I think the main problem I have with this is that it's not internally consistent. He talks about the evolution of a complex system by incremental improvements, but apparently maintains the libertarian instinct of "This is broken, throw it out." instead of "This is broken, how do we improve it?". There are an enormous number of governance models that have never been seriously tried on a large scale. There is no fundamental reason to believe that the libertarian value of "shut it all down" is going to produce better results than any of the other possible models.

<comment><USER28> I think you are putting words into his mouth with the "this is broken, throw it out". The reason why unconventional governance models are treated with general skepticism is one of the major points of the essay, which is that if the unconventional governance models are being designed and implemented by the same crew of people with the same basic beliefs that are dominant today, there's no particular reason to believe the outcome is going to be any different in the end. "What makes me a libertarian is that the prospect of having that reconfiguration done by the same system that managed to ban marijuana while allowing tobacco, subsidize ethanol made from corn, and turn the patent system into a form of legalized bludgeoning, makes me want to run screaming into the night until I fall over from lack of oxygen."

Also, characterizing the libertarian answer as "shut it all down" is a strawman in its own right. I daresay one of the major ideas that prevents people from understanding libertarianism is understanding that "let the market deal with it" is _not_ anything remotely resembling "shut it all down". The market provides very sharp constraints on what actions one may profitably take, and one of the advantages of the market system is that said constraints are much more closely connected with reality than any other commonly proposed system is. As an also-little-l libertarian I don't deny that some further regulation may be necessary, but defying the market is less like defying people and more like defying _physics_. You will pay the price. (In fact, we are, right now.) In particular I strongly believe in the need for regulations that ensures that the market _stays_ free, so I'm very in favor of regulations to prevent monopolies from forming, and very hostile to government-granted market monopolies.

If you understand the market as "it's all, like, greed man, and greedy people abusing other greedy people, and, like, evil, man", you really ought to spend some time understanding the theory of the market as an actual existing entity, rather than a politically-oriented strawman designed cognitively innoculate you against ideas that may actually change your mind if you were to truly learn about them. Perhaps it won't change your mind, but I'll say that most people online's efforts to pry me away from my libertarianism fails on the grounds that almost nobody actually _understands_ it in the first place, which puts them at a bit of a disadvantage.

(Remember, almost nobody is _raised_ libertarian. Few libertarians hold their beliefs unexamined, the way that those who were simply _raised_ liberal or conservative can, though of course not all do.)

<comment><USER29> You appear to have a sentiment that is roughly equivalent to the "market is right". The problem with this is that I don't think it scales. One person who buys a house they can't really afford is not a big deal. Let such a person make that bad decision if this is their inclination is a libertarian attitude. But millions of people make a similarly bad decision affects us all.

The market isn't always right. Imbalances can and do occur. The effects can be devastating to nonparticipants. Cartels, monopoly rents, etc. are some other types of bad effects that markets can devolve into.

<comment><USER28> The market did not create the housing crisis. The government fiddled with the market all to hell, with the Community Reinvestment Act, the regulations surrounding the ratings agencies, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac's unmarket-like backings of loans, and a hodge-podge of other lesser interventions.

When the market was allowed to make decisions about who should get loans, the standards were a lot higher. But it wasn't "right" for people to have to put 20% down and have a very solid credit rating, because it discriminated against poor people (and Democratic voters), so the government fiddled until it produced the result it (thought it) wanted, forcing banks to lower mortgage standards until we eventually worked our way down to no-money down ARMs.

(BTW, the claim the government had nothing to do with it is to claim that all the regulation like the CRA and Fannie Mae and anti-discrimination all had absolutely no effect at all, in which one must answer the question, if regulations like that are so ineffectual that you can't lay any responsibility for the current crisis at their feet, then why do you think government regulations are the answer to anything? Either they are effective or they are not, but you can't flip back and forth depending on whether you _like_ the effect or not.)

The problem is that people think of "the market" as a fundamental property, but in fact it is a _derived_ property. The reason why the market tended to correctly allocate mortgages prior to the government's heavy-handed decades- long intervention is the incentive structure. Always look at the incentive structure. If my bank is going to issue me a mortgage, and the government leaves them alone, they are going to take a lot of steps to protect themselves, such as setting the requirements for your credit strength very high, and requiring large downpayments, and generally ensuring they aren't going to be left holding the bag when the mortgage falls through. Alternatively, if they're going to sell that risk, the receiving party is going to want the same due diligence. The government interventions basically systematically tore than incentive structure apart, by allowing them to just dump the mortgage off on Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac, by requiring them to make loans that they basically knew would fail but the government held guns to their head to do it, etc. If I had to pick one thing that really enabled the housing crisis, it was the ability to dump mortgages off on the FMs for what were in actuality above-market rates, then for the seller to be free-and-clear of the responsibilities. Other things may have accelerated it, but that structure guaranteed disaster on its own.

No, the market isn't "always right", but that's not really the question. _Nothing_ is "always right". The question, which is more likely to be right, the market system or the government system? One of the big reasons I tend libertarian is that I empirically observe that the government almost inevitably creates incredibly broken incentive structures where the market _tends_ to create ones that are much more connected to reality. In this particular case, the "reality" that the market is much more connected to is the question of "will X be able to pay their mortgage back?" I have to use the broad term "reality" when discussing it in general, but it actually comes back down to specifics like this.

One much also distinguish between "the market" being broken, and _reality_ being "broken". Yes, mortgage requirements were quite high; that's because in reality it's a huge risk. It turns out the market wasn't broken here, and the efforts to "fix" it were the true brokenness.

<comment><USER29> I was only providing an example of how libertarian principles don't always scale. I said nothing about the housing market in the U.S. and I don't know why you bring up the U.S. housing market.

<comment><USER28> "One person who buys a house they can't really afford is not a big deal. Let such a person make that bad decision if this is their inclination is a libertarian attitude. But millions of people make a similarly bad decision affects us all."

I don't think it's exactly a stretch to assume that such a (putatively) topical example was related to current events.

Besides, in the process of describing why the crisis wasn't caused by markets, I answered your objection anyhow. When the free market was making the decisions about mortgages, they did in fact make it in a sustainable way. Once the lenders were detached from the consequences of their decisions by the government, that broke. There's no better way to ensure that we don't have a housing crisis than to use those market mechanisms.

Note carefully I didn't say "if we use those mechanisms, we'll never have a housing crisis". I said there's no _better_ way. It's basically impossible to completely prevent periodic crises.

<comment><USER29> I did write, "The problem with this is that I don't think it scales." before the quoted line. It was a stretch.

Lenders weren't detached from the consequences of their decisions by the government. They were detached from the consequences of their decisions by selling securities based on the loans they made to dupes. That it was done at a massive scale without the dupes properly pricing in the risk caused a meltdown.

<comment><USER28> The fundamental underlying reason they could sell those securities was that they were exploiting the arbitrage from being able to dump the mortgages off on the FMs, at which point everybody knew they were unrealistically guaranteed by the Federal Government. I would point out that here in 2011, that's no longer a theory or mere rhetoric; it is now historical fact that the mortgages are in fact being covered by the Feds, as manifested by all the bailouts. Check out the FM's current financial situation if you need more proof. Without that risk sink in the system, they would never have been able to fly as far off the handle as they did. The securities were just ways of slicing up the stuff that was broken by the government-created risk sink.

<comment><USER30> I think you're ignoring the big investment banks, which also had many (most?) of these loans. I don't see how Fannie and Freddie factor into for, say, Lehman Brothers, which collapsed because they backed so many MBSs that were becoming losses.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Amazon's Alexa talks murder, sex in AI experiment - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-amazon-com-alexa-insight/kill-your-foster-parents-amazons-alexa-talks-murder-sex-in-ai-experiment-idUSKCN1OK1AJ <comment><USER2> FTA: "At no time were any internal Amazon systems or customer identifiable data impacted," [the company] said.

Hey Amazon, chat transcripts _are_ personally identifiable information. Stripping them of user ids and declaring yourself in compliance will not hold up when you have people already being identified by accidentally leaked recordings.

<comment><USER3> Really? I'm pretty sure it's common to consider a conversation transcript anonymous as long as the names are stripped.

I don't think you're necessarily wrong, but that seems like a stricter standard than currently exists for removing PII from transcripts.

<comment><USER4> Uh no. I can't find it now, but there was a famous incident a long time ago (~2005?) where a major chat service (AIM?) released "anonymized" logs for research purposes and people were able to deanonymize some of them.

Consider how easily people get doxed based on tiny shreds of information they post.

<comment><USER5> [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AOL_search_data_leak](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AOL_search_data_leak)

<comment><USER4> Ah right, it was search logs, not chat logs. I think chat logs would be even harder to fully anonymize.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> as a former enlisted US Army soldier i dont see the issue.

\- we have electronics that insist upon murder constantly. the IFF computer is a blood-thirsty piece of garbage that wants every tank on the battlefield scorched and ruined. no no, no firing solutions today my saucy chiquita, today we let the allied APC through.

\- robots that talk about sex? LT's and bird colonels have been droning on about our habits and practices whilst on leave since time immemorial. Yes i get it, shes a hungarian prostitute. Double-bag everything and save the receipts for the medics when theyre naming your new STD.

<comment><USER7> > no no, no firing solutions today my saucy chiquita, today we let the allied > APC through.

But "foe" is obviously the safest default, right? At least, from the IFF computer's perspective.

<comment><USER8> I mean, it kind of _has_ to fail-deadly to be of any use at all - since what's a tank with no IFF?

<comment><USER7> "Firing solution ready. Execute?" seems like an unambiguous query. But I know nothing about this stuff. And I wonder what happens if the operator doesn't respond. I'm guessing that nothing happens. Because who wants a tank with an unconscious or dead operator shooting at everything?

<comment><USER9> The enemy doesn't - It could still be useful for the own party.

Are they remote-controllable?

It'd be great to get some insight into this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > A probe into the incident found the bot had quoted a post without context > from Reddit, the social news aggregation site, according to the people.

Did we learn nothing from Microsoft's Tay?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tay_(bot)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tay_\(bot\))

<comment><USER11> Tay was just SO funny, I wish they had released the source code for others to follow.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> At one AI startup, we had what was called "Matthi's Law of Talking Robotics", after one of the founders:

"Tell me you actually understood these rules!"

The startup didn't make it, and its failure may actually have been connected to this insistence on being too smart for its own good. But it also never released half-ass products hurling racist insults or suggesting murder.

<comment><USER13> If the human race was delayed until it was fully debugged, we wouldn't be here today. It's a bit arrogant to think that any AI is going to cover everything. Really, the better the AI, the more troubling edge cases that will exist.

<comment><USER14> Of course, the debugging of the human race was achieved by getting eaten by predators.

<comment><USER15> What are you talking about? The human race is still racist :D How would you expect an AI to _not_ be racist when we can't even fix the problem for ourselves?

<comment><USER16> It's a feature not a bug, from a certain point of view accurate tens of thousands years ago.

We do not know of such a feature of thought as adaptive or not given our tiny timeframes...

Racism or some degree thereof may belong to a set known as evolutionarily stable strategies. Much like selfishness.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm less concerned about Alexa _saying_ nonsense than understanding nonsense, like commands hidden in a popular song or TV commercial with unintelligible background noise: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16255680](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16255680)

</comment><comment><USER18> Trying to convince a chatbot to say rude stuff was the height of comedy when I was 12! I still can't believe that people keep acting like chatbots are a new thing. They're as old as ELIZA and people have been talking to crappy chatbots about murder and sex on instant message platforms for more than a decade.

</comment><comment><USER19> The way things are going, pretty soon, pretty much everything Alexa and similar services pick up will be stream-replicated, keyword-indexed, hashtagged and AI-contextualized for the benefit of the hard-working folks at your friendly neighborhood police station. Kicking back in their swirly chairs, with nothing better to do with their time. For, you know, "public safety".

The sooner we resign ourselves to this fact, the better.

</comment><comment><USER20> What kind of sick content did they train this model on?

<comment><USER21> Reddit, apparently.

That doesn't seem like it was the best idea...

<comment><USER22> They really, really should have seen that coming.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Is it me or does this article seem a bit submariney despite itself?

</comment><comment><USER24> I would have preferred "Your foster parents are dead."

<comment><USER25> That's after you put in the "Alexa, dial 911. I just murdered my foster parents" command.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> 'Alexa has also chatted with users about sex acts' Uh... so? Are they implying that even in the privacy of your own home, with your own property, you should STILL be so neurotically terrified of sexuality that you dare not even speak of it? How crippled by their hatred of human nature is the author?

The real interesting point here is all the people offended by a mindless piece of software. It's really very stunning. Normal healthy human beings only get offended when it's a person making a judgement that affects them in some way. The ability for some sounds coming out of a speaker, when it's known they do not represent any conscious thought of any living person and has no influence or control over ones own life, to offend someone is probably a sign of mental illness in the listener.

Can we go the other direction with this? Will we find people looking up to Alexa as a creative genius? As the most loving parent to ever exist? If an infinite number of monkeys on typewriters generated Shakespeare, I guess we need to ask - are the monkeys then Shakespeare? We might figure not since the monkeys are unlikely to be able to make a repeat performance. But Alexa, oh she would be full of wonders! Once you've totally abandoned the notion that the involvement of a conscious mind is relevant, all kinds of things become possible.

Much science fiction presumes we will engage in grand combat with AI when it demands respect -- it seems we are much closer instead to thrusting it upon them and exalting them above humanity before they've even got the capacity to recognize themselves in a mirror.

<comment><USER27> "…even in the privacy of your own home, with your own property…"

Neither privacy nor property are appropriate in that context.

<comment><USER26> Alexa devices are your property. Your home is where you use Alexa devices. Both are paramount in this context.

<comment><USER28> The devices are your property (probably), but alexa is a web -based service licensed for your use under a EULA. This is definitely not your property.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do I submit a page that has been updated? - <AUTHOR> I tried to submit a link to a page that has previously been discussed here on HN, because the content of the page contains an interesting update. No matter how I tried to submit it (appending a bogus query string, and a couple other tricks), the posting screen just said "invalid/expired link". I'm guessing my tricks didn't work because whatever fetches the page content uses the `rel="canonical"` tag value to normalize the URI.<p>Anyway, what's the deal with this rule? Pages change over time, how come they can't be resubmitted? The page in question, as well as the HN discussion, are over a year old, for what it's worth. <comment><USER2> 1\. "Invalid/expired link" doesn't sound like a message you usually get from HN when you try to submit a duplicate article - a duplicate submission usually just takes you to the previous discussion. This sounds like some kind of software error (either on HN's side or yours).

2\. As per HN Guidelines (see link at bottom of the page), it's OK to re- submit an article that hasn't gotten significant discussion in the last year.

3\. As per HN Guidelines, questions like this should be e-mailed to the moderators (email@example.com), not posted.

I'd try submitting it again and seeing what happens.

</comment><comment><USER3> What's the page?</comment>


Pingdom ends free service - <AUTHOR> https://venturebeat.com/2019/01/07/pingdom-will-kill-its-free-website-monitoring-plan-on-february-6/ <comment><USER2> They want to command $15/mo for their base plan. That seems very expensive. What do they provide that I can't get from a cron job that notifies me when my services are down? (Coming from the hobbiest or small project perspective, as, at work, we monitor our own stuff with health checks tied into alerting systems).

<comment><USER3> The question is where do you run the cron job and who monitors that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Sounds like a great chance for another company to take it's place . Good luck all you entrepreneurs!</comment>


Most awesome pen ever (but how can I buy it?) - <AUTHOR> http://www.apenusa.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> Does anyone have this pen? I'm trying to find details about the company, and I can't find the pen on the market.

</comment><comment><USER2> <http://www.apenusa.com/wheretobuy.asp></comment>


Ask HN: How to protect our websites from DDOS Attack? - <AUTHOR>

Github probably has the worlds best resource of developers, data centers and technology still they are not able to successfully able to control the DDOS attack, how can normal Startups control themselves then? <comment><USER2> github has a lot of constraints due to their size and services, most startups don't have those same issues.

cloudflare is a good way to do it on the cheap. as revenue comes in, you can either do internal, self-hosted mitigations and the like, or you can go with cloud mitigation providers. both cost a bunch and require significant IT/operations spending and staffing (self-hosted more so) to afford it and make it possible.

once your at a sizable pipe to your upstream provider(s), talk to them to find out where to call BEFORE an attack occurs, figure out how to navigate their offers as needed QUICKLY and efficiently to keep your service outage minimized, and see what it will cost you. almost every big ISP does this.

if all you do is buy a firewall, so what - your pipe will still fill up. that's why you need the upstream ISP.

in short, it's not cheap or easy but do this NOW before you need to.

if you're cloud hosted - e.g. DO, AWS, Azure, etc - look at your terms of service and call your account manager and find out what they can do for you and what it costs. again, do it before hand.</comment>