Whiteboard sticker for your laptop - <AUTHOR> https://sketchcase.com <comment><USER4> I'm not being glib here, but after experimenting with many such solutions over the years, I've found that the best solution for me is to always carry a cheap, paper notebook--like one of those black/white-spotted composition notebooks with cardboard covers and unlined paper--that is about the size of my laptop lid. I just slide the laptop and notebook together into whatever backpack or bag I'm using for the laptop.

I always have a variety of pens and pencils with me, and writing/drawing with high-quality pens & pencils on real paper is better and more convenient in every way than writing on an equivalent-sized whiteboard surface. I then have 100 pages I can keep or give away instead of one that I have to delete and reuse, and without all the mess. Plus, I always have a couple of pens in my pocket, even when I don't have my laptop, so I never end up with a whiteboard but no markers.

The only time I've found whiteboards more useful than paper are when I needed a very large surface. If a small surface is good enough, paper works better for me.

<comment><USER5> I agreed but these are different mediums. With paper you can't erase obviously, so you use significantly more space when free scratching. Hence the usefulness of the whiteboard.

On a different note, notebooks are great. I converted my wallet into thin Moleskine notebooks that fit in my pocket super easily. I put my cards and bills in it. And I always have a pen in me. Archival pens are great. It's good for doodling too :>

<comment><USER4> _With paper you can 't erase obviously_

I can, and do, quite easily. I have a twist-out eraser on the end of my pencil plus an artists' eraser in each pen/pencil bag, so I can make pretty quick work of some portion of a page, but if I really want to erase the page, I can do it faster with paper than with a whiteboard: I turn the page.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Actually, this just gave me a crazy idea... what if laptop manufacturers included something low powered like a boogie board device on the outside of the screen, which could write / save directly to some small internal storage of the laptop, and then the resulting notes could be accessible via the laptop when turned on? Kind of like.. a poor man's tablet on the outside of a laptop? I wonder the cost of that vs. touch screens / digital pens.

<comment><USER7> But, in that case, how would it be different from just drawing on my Surface with my surface pen?

It's kinda exactly what you need.

<comment><USER8> About $1000 dollars last time I checked. Add to that the cost of mental health issues associated with the use of Microsoft products and its a non-starter.

<comment><USER9> What experience do you have with using Microsoft products and resultant mental health issues? I'm guessing none, and it's just another throw-away remark that is anti-Microsoft, ignorant of the interesting and - in my experience at least - pro-good-mental health work they've been doing recently.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think it's a terrible idea. First, marker ink would be smudge all over backpack. Second, it's on the other side of the laptop! You wrote an algorithm on sketchcase and want to implement it. Well, now you have turn your laptop around every time too see it.

<comment><USER11> Pfft, use a mirror.

devlos melborP

<comment><USER12> You could also use the front-facing camera on a phone as a mirror in a pinch.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I think this is a really good idea, but if you look on eBay you can buy a 200cm by 45cm (~ 78.7 in by 17.7in) vinyl whiteboard sticker for $5. You could buy this, trim it down and use it on a handful of laptops at a significantly cheaper cost. There are lots of other listings for "whiteboard vinyl sticker" but here is the $5 one:

[http://www.ebay.com/itm/New-Vinyl-Wall-Sticker-Removable- Whi...](http://www.ebay.com/itm/New-Vinyl-Wall-Sticker-Removable-Whiteboard- Decals-200X45CM-/361620804352)

Also, I wonder if a "whiteboard magnet" would stick well to a mabook or aluminum bodied portable - wouldn't leave any residue: [http://www.ebay.com/itm/17-x-11-Dry-Erase-Magnetic- Refrigera...](http://www.ebay.com/itm/17-x-11-Dry-Erase-Magnetic-Refrigerator- Flexible-White-Board-Planner- Message-/222314810254?hash=item33c2fecb8e:g:Dk8AAOSw4GVYKfWR)

<comment><USER14> Aluminum won't attract the magnet usefully, unfortunately.

<comment><USER15> Maybe a real hard disk drive will, though.

<comment><USER16> It'll just slide down slowly. Try it, it's a cool experiment that showcases eddy currents.

<comment><USER17> I like the suggestion for a fun experiment, but I think pklausler was referring to the fact that strong magnets tend to wipe spinning hard drives, making magnets a bad idea for non-SSD laptops.

<comment><USER16> Oh, duh. You're right, I totally misread that. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> Null-Set Now you can tell applicants that yes they will be coding on a laptop during the interview.

<comment><USER18> Yes and that's when I walk out of your interview. Some time ago I did an interview with elementary coding questions, like 2nd year of university stuff. Was a developer with 15 years of experience. Rage quit. They're like oh, you got 100% percent on the stuff you attempted, here is a new link to finish it. And I am like no thanks, have contract work, please send it my way. Not interested at a job at a place that interviews like this.

<comment><USER19> I've met several 10+ years developers that couldn't code basic stuff, why instead of rage quitting you did not say "I don't want sound cocky but this stuff is really easy for me, do you have anything else?" by rage quitting I wouldn't trust you contract work, what would prevent you from rage quitting in a different scenario!?

<comment><USER20> I agree wholeheartedly. On the flip side, when I interview such candidates, I usually prefix baseline questions with "This is probably a piece of cake for someone of your calibre, but please bear with me because it's a part of the process we got to get out of the way"

<comment><USER21> A clear indication of process over people.

<comment><USER22> You gotta weed people who can't code somehow.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Stickers on laptops usually make Jony Ive sad, and he's sad enough already being locked in that white room with one set of clothes.

But this one is much better, because it occupies the entire laptop!

<comment><USER24> Stickers on laptops make ME sad. Like Run-DMC sang "Calvin Klein's no friend of mine, don't want nobody's name on my be-hind!"

<comment><USER25> And then followed it up with "My Adidas". But I agree in spirit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> When I had a non-unibody Macbook Pro, I would actually doodle with a dry-erase marker directly onto my (glass) screen. This was handy for making small annotations as I was pondering designs, PCB layouts, etc.

Unfortunately for my screen-doodling habit, new MacBooks have some kind of coating (AR? Oleophobic?) that causes the marker's fluid to bead up, ruining the effect.

<comment><USER27> > Unfortunately for my screen-doodling habit, new MacBooks have some kind of > coating (AR? Oleophobic?) that causes the marker's fluid to bead up, ruining > the effect.

I can confirm, my mid 2014 MBP screen is _ruined_. Tried alcohol, screen wipers (which actually made it worse)

I am this close to using a detergent (I know I shouldn't). Any suggestions?

<comment><USER28> 'Staingate'

Apple is replacing the affected screens for free, I had mine replaced few months back (late 2013, 13" Retnina Macbook Pro).

[https://9to5mac.com/2015/10/19/staingate-retina-macbook- scre...](https://9to5mac.com/2015/10/19/staingate-retina-macbook-screen- repairs/)

<comment><USER29> Why is this being downvoted? Is it incorrect? If not it seems useful.

<comment><USER30> Staingate is a real thing and @achow's comment is correct and is very useful and that's probably what is happening with @component's mbp.

<comment><USER27> Sadly, yes it is "staingate"

Did a bit more digging and found a site [1] which has a gallery of affected MBP, showing the different levels of "staingate"

[1] [http://staingate.org](http://staingate.org)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I think this is pretty neat and love all things whiteboard but the one annoyance is that I now need to carry around a whiteboard marker and eraser (if you don't want crap all over your fingers from erasing). Note: I don't think you can solve that problem.

And now I probably am carrying a backpack which makes paper + pen better. I think the #1 benefit of a whiteboard is the size. I can draw huge diagrams and everyone in the room can see and not have to huddle around a piece of paper.

I still think it is interesting....

<comment><USER32> Marker? No, you need that. Eraser? Kleenex is a good add to any bag – but you could also figure out some way of having a removable plastic overlay to preserve the diagram...

But, ultimately, your point about pen & paper was my thought too... And then I decided that ~$16 after shipping was cheap enough to try, even if I later decided paper was indeed better – so I ordered it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> You can get a quart of chalkboard paint for $15.

You can even recycle broken laptops by painting the screen!

[http://www.target.com/p/devine-color-by-valspar-1-quart- chal...](http://www.target.com/p/devine-color-by-valspar-1-quart-chalkboard- paint-coal/-/A-16654685)

<comment><USER34> Ha! Kinda related, I made my niece and nephew wooden MacBooks based on that same idea.

[http://the816.com/wooden-macbooks/](http://the816.com/wooden-macbooks/)

<comment><USER35> "oh... Thanks uncle riebschlager... a wooden MacBook..."

<comment><USER34> Yeah. That's pretty much how it went down.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Hasn't this been created already? [http://gizmodo.com/the-best-laptop-sticker- turns-your-comput...](http://gizmodo.com/the-best-laptop-sticker-turns-your- computer-into-a-whit-1685194189)

<comment><USER37> Looks like they owe you some commission: every size of both models is sold out! ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> This has been around for awhile now and you can actually order them today: [http://www.drawattention.co/](http://www.drawattention.co/) (aside from them being sold out...)

<comment><USER39> Those have a logo on them though (although the blackboard one is cool too). Fun sales copy!

<comment><USER40> It seems to me that the logo is a second sticker.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> The smallest whiteboard combined with the dirtiest laptop? No thanks!

</comment><comment><USER42> I dont get the indicators that its a new product. These guys look like they have been doing this since 2014: [http://www.drawattention.co](http://www.drawattention.co)

</comment><comment><USER43> Instead of waiting, you can just order a small Writeyboard now which is exactly the same thing.

[http://www.Writeyboards.com](http://www.Writeyboards.com)

</comment><comment><USER44> What I'd like to see is a stealthy monitor with case (or just a universal case for monitor or laptop). The case, fully open, could latch open and the back flat side would be a whiteboard or even clalk board. Kinda like an artist's portfolio case, but for devs.

In addition the case, if laptop size, would be semi drop proof. The point being, I'd travel more by bike if I didn't hear a fall would total my hardware.

Finally, big ask here, make it insulated. Leaving my machine in a cold car while snowboarding means I generally like to wait a bit til the machine comes back to room temp.

Yes. I've seen hardened cases (a la for DJs & musicians) but they're often overkill, AND I want the outside to serve a purpose (I.e., whiteboard).

Keep it in the $100 range and you have a winner.

</comment><comment><USER45> I think it's a neat idea but personally, I'll stick to a legal pad. I use them quite a bit, but not enough to justify switching to something like this and then taking photos of my work.

</comment><comment><USER46> So basically I have to either flip it down to see what someone drew on the whiteboard or turn it around. Pen and paper work just as well.

</comment><comment><USER47> Ive been using my laptop like this for years. I just bought some white plastic film you use to protect text books with and stuck it to the back of my Thinkpad. Works great for todo lists. I also agree that they should build a laptop like this where every free surface can be written on as a white board. It is surprising just how much I use this.

</comment><comment><USER48> Comes with free erasers: your shirt, arms and backpack.

</comment><comment><USER49> I liked the roadmap on the OA's page.

Others have mentioned the stick-on dry wipe vinyl whiteboards that are available. For walls there is also 'magic whiteboard' \- a roll of plastic material that sticks to the wall using static electricity.

I'd mention the 'mini-whiteboards' sold for use in classrooms - <USER2> A4/Letter size. These are about 2mm thick and can be used as clipboards as well with a suitable bulldog clip. My final idea would be to get a map case like the one that hikers use to keep their maps dry and put completed whiteboards in that for reference.

Personally, I prefer paper/pen &c

</comment><comment><USER50> Looks like a solution to a non-existing problem.

<comment><USER51> Looks like this submarine advertisement has surfaced.

</comment></comment><comment> King-Aaron We used to make whiteboards at a printing company I worked for. It was mainly just white SAV (self adhesive vinyl) with a laminate over the top.

Ten dollars is an awful lot to pay for that, when you're talking about just a laptop size. You'd be looking at much less than a dollar in materials.

Edit: Though the fella obviously recognises this, and has a DIY on the page... And I can see people buying them for the convenience element. Still though...

</comment><comment><USER52> Or you can use a laptop with touch screen and/or a digital pen...

And Google and microsoft have note taking apps that makes your hand writing searchable.

Edit: wow, some people on HN _really_ dislike touchscreens...

<comment><AUTHOR> I have those as well but they're used for different purposes.

<comment><USER52> But from my experience this is exactly how people are using touchscreen laptops in meetings.

I don't see the point of adding a sticker to your laptop when it already can be used as a whiteboard with the added benefits of digitalisation (backup, share, undo, search...)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> Ideally, this could be done on the screen itself. Using a 2-in-1-laptop like Lenovo Yogas you can position the screen directly in front of you, and it has a touchscreen (obviously).

I guess the problem is that even with digital pens, haptic feedback and maybe precision are not up to par with the real thing. But those things might improve a lot in the next 10-20 years, there seems to be a decent amount of research going on for the former.

</comment><comment><USER54> I used to have a similar whiteboard stick on my old MacBook back in 2011 - <USER3> was really useful as long as I remembered to bring a whiteboard marker with me to meetings. It'd be nice to have an eink boogieboad like wrap instead but the problem with those it's it's erase all or nothing so, I'm sticking with ordering a new whiteboard wrap from here as they're so cheap.

</comment><comment><USER55> For the past five years I've been working at white-veneered desks - and for the vast majority of that time I've actually been using my desk as a dry-wipe board. It doesn't make too much of a mess when it rubs off on my hands, and it's a fantastic way to quickly sketch out a to-do list or draw a diagram for a colleague.

</comment><comment><USER56> Google reports a 75% increase in searches on the terms "how to get dry erase marker out of clothing"

</comment><comment><USER57> I wonder about the low-tech use case of :

writing on this wb surface on laptop, then re-covering with clear plastic to make it semi-permanent [ preventing wipe off with handling / slipcase / backpack ]

Does the original peel-off wb material cover would re-adhere ? .. if so, handy.

</comment><comment><USER58> You can get a giant roll of this stuff on Amazon for $6 less than your shipped price.

And they even include a marker...

</comment><comment><USER59> Just what I want to do - draw private info on the back of my laptop and lug it around. Anybody got a way to print CC numbers onto my shoes?

(IOW: I think it's a cool hack that fails to consider actual implications outside of the immediate problem solved.)

</comment><comment><USER60> My fear would be that my notes are being erased when putting the notebook into my backpack.

<comment><AUTHOR> A lot of people actually share this concern and you are right if you're planning on keeping what's written. I personally use it for practicing coding interview questions and brainstorming.

<comment><USER60> I bought a whiteboard 2 weeks ago for my home "office". Thinking about it, it would have made sense to buy a big sticker instead which I can stick on one of my windows. For sure that would have been much cheaper. Plus, I would not have needed to drill holes in the wall.

<comment><USER61> I hope by "whiteboard" you meant a 4x8 sheet of melamine bathroom/kitchen tile underlay sheet - and not one of the more expensive kind with the fancy aluminum borders (which, if you wanted to replicate those, you could find the parts in the hardware aisle of the home improvement store)...?

<comment><USER60> No unfortunately I bought one of those expensive ones.

<comment><USER61> Well - maybe next time?

The 4x8 sheets of melamine backer board is cheap, cheap, cheap! Where I currently work, we have 80 linear feet of the stuff on our walls in our dev area (held up with nails and construction adhesive). It isn't fancy, but my employer believes more in results than being "impressive" (plus, we don't get any clients back here anyhow).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> Cute. But impractical, not to mention messy. They should allow you to put your company's logo on it, as it would be a cool alternative to branded coffee cups, pens and mouse pads.

</comment><comment><USER63> Cool idea, but you might want to revise your messaging: "I could make one for them but making them by hand is REALLY time consuming." "Handcrafted by Charles Han"

</comment><comment><USER64> Fascinating. Other people has come to the same conclusion I see. Here's mine posted on reddit a few days ago : [https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/5q8evm/comment/d...](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/5q8evm/comment/dcxeuf3)

</comment><comment><USER65> Just get a touchscreen already. Then you can draw like on every other device you currently own.

</comment><comment><USER66> I love having pen marks on my shirt when i'm carrying my laptop

</comment><comment><USER67> I'm so excited. Ordered this, exactly what I needed!

</comment><comment><USER68> I use a pencil on my MacBook, and then erase it.

</comment><comment><USER69> This is a fantastic idea.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Woah! [https://www.producthunt.com/posts/sketchcase](https://www.producthunt.com/posts/sketchcase)</comment>


At Tech's Leading Edge, Worry About a Concentration of Power - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/26/technology/ai-computer-expense.html <comment><USER2> So I am a machine learning researcher who moved to a FAANG as a research scientist after graduation. My salary is 10x against the grad student stipend. That does not even account for the free food, the healthcare, and other perks. However, I have not adjusted my lifestyle so it does not feel real.

The thing is, even though having 1000x the resources compared to university, that does not really make me happier about the work specifically. It makes some things easier and other things harder.

No, what I really feel is that at work I am not actually treated like a servant any more but like a person. I don't have to work weekends and nights any more. I can take vacations and won't be flooded with emails every.single.day during holidays. I don't have extra unpaid responsibilities that I have zero recourse against.

The thing that I just cannot stop wondering is, why, knowing the perks of industry, advisers still treated us like this. Even though ostensibly trying to keep us, it felt more like squeezing out as much as they could.

<comment><USER3> >The thing that I just cannot stop wondering is, why, knowing the perks of industry, advisers still treated us like this.

It's cultural. Their PhD advisors treated them the same way. A PhD is effectively a hazing ritual required to break into academia.

<comment><USER4> I entered an MS program, where my two advisors told me I could get a PhD in just 3 years, vs 2 years for the MS. I naively thought that sounded good. I didn't realize that my advisor took over 4 years to do it herself. Nor did I realize that she was drastically over-committing herself on time, and she dropped me as a student just 1 year later because she didn't have time. Just a blatantly misleading and false advising process, I wasted 2 years due to that.

The power your advisors wield over you is terrifying in graduate school. You are severely underpaid AND they have you over a barrel.

<comment><USER5> > The power your advisors wield over you is terrifying in graduate school. You > are severely underpaid AND they have you over a barrel.

I realize this isn't the case for everyone, and I realize my situation was odd, but... there's always a trump card: you can drop out. I get that for international students it's not always so simple (losing your student visa, having to go home) and can be a very hard choice.

My supervisor and my department occasionally tried to push for things that I believed were ridiculous, and the threat of dropping out seemed to work reasonably well to push back on that. My understanding is that a supervisor having a low completion rate is a black mark that can hurt them, especially if they're chasing tenure. I didn't pull this out like a petulant child stomping their feet when they didn't like their chores, but rather when things were getting stupid.

Tony: "This is totally unreasonable and the timeline doesn't work for me."

Supervisor: "This is how it must be. There's no other option."

Tony: "I could drop out and continue on with my life."

Supervisor: "Now wait a minute, let's see what we can do to make this work..."

<comment><USER6> Your supervisor can drop out too - they can change universities midstream.

<comment><USER5> Also very true! My #1 choice of supervisor was pleasantly honest about that. He wasn't tenured, and after we'd met a few times to talk about maybe me starting a program with him in the fall, he told me "I've got bad news. There's a pretty good chance that I'm going to lose my position here due to funding cuts, and that would leave you without a supervisor in 8 months. We're looking at a pretty niche field, and there isn't really anyone else who could take over for the project we're talking about. Sorry, you should look elsewhere."

I still look back and would have loved to do that research, but I appreciate his honesty.

<comment><USER6> You had honest ones. Mine tried to milk me right up to the moment they announced they were leaving - for institutions that only offered a Master's program or for a different field department and were stupid enough to think I wouldn't see the writing on the wall long before or figured I'd quit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm not an expert, but I've read highly-cited ML papers where the researchers barely bothered with hyperparameter search, much less throwing a few million dollars at the problem. You can still get an interesting proof of concept without big money.

And low resource computing is more theoretically and practically interesting. I've heard experts complain of some experiments "they didn't really discover anything, they threw compute at the problem until they got some nice PR." This was coming from M'FAANG people too so it's not just resentment.

<comment><USER8> Are you sure they barely bothered, or did they just not mention it? I have heard stories of lots of "cutting edge" ML research actually just being the result of extremely fine hyperparameter tuning

<comment><USER9> This is a worryingly good question. Most ML papers represent real results, we're not going to see a replication crisis in that sense, but I've heard some fears about another AI winter arriving when people realize that the sum of our reported gains vastly exceeds our actual progress.

Hyperparameter tuning is one big concern here; we know it provides good results at the cost of lots of work, so there's a temptation to sic grad students on extensive tuning but publish on technique instead. Dataset bias is another, since nets trained on CIFAR or ImageNet keep turning out to embed database features.

Ironically, I'm not sure all this increases the threat of FAANG taking over AI advancements. It sort of suggests that lots of our numerical gains are brute- forced or situational, and there's more benefit in new models work than mere error percentages would imply.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> But I do AI and I work at a university. Developing AI might be too expensive if you're going for larger architectures and eeking out an extra % or two in a kaggle like problem. Most advances in machine learning to come though are in fields where there has been little activity. I'm currently en process of making a career out of using very basic machine learning methods and applying them to physical science problems because 95% of the people in the field don't know how (problem of tenure). This opens up lots of opportunities for funding though. NSF etc will literally just throw money at you if you say AI and that you'll apply it to any problem.

<comment><USER11> > _I 'm currently en process of making a career out of using very basic > machine learning methods and applying them to physical science problems..._

Interesting! How do you find customers?

<comment><USER10> Oh, the career is in academia and research.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I call BS.

Companies spend a lot of money on AI because they have a lot of money and don't know what to do with it. Companies lack creativity and an appetite for riskier and more creative ideas. That is what Universities must do instead of trying to ape companies. The human brain doesn't use a billion dollars in compute power, figure out what it is doing.

Sort of by definition, it can never be too costly to be creative. Only too timid. And too unimaginative.

<comment><USER13> >The human brain doesn't use a billion dollars in compute power, figure out what it is doing

Phahahaha, this made me a good laugh :) To find out how your brain works guess what are you going to use - the brain itself. It's like trying to cut a knife with itself, or trying to use a weigher to weight itself.

<comment><USER14> >to use a weigher to weight itself.

Flip it upside down. Like he said, be creative.

<comment><USER15> Or use 2. That's what we do, use one brain to understand another brain.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> There is a far more obvious problem than the cost of computing - the cost of labor. If you are a deep learning researcher, you can join any of these companies and multiply your salary 5x.

Computer constraints are relatively straightforward engineering and science problems to solve. The lack of talent, that seems like the bigger story.

<comment><USER17> Yeah, but at university you are more free to pick your project and can be much more nimble - so it balances out.

<comment><USER18> You might be shocked to find out what the job is like for most professors. Grants, grants, and grants.

<comment><USER19> and travel, travel, travel, and submit, submit, submit papers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> It may be a sign that CS is becoming a mature field. Aeronautical Engineering doesn't build experimental aircraft. Chemical doesn't build experimental refineries. If you want to do those things you work for Lockheed, Boeing, Exxon, etc.

<comment><USER19> This is demonstrably false; high-end research universities do exactly all these things. Stanford has a high-end fab. Caltech students build experimental aircraft. Universities build nuclear reactors for research. I didn't find any examples but I'm certain that Unis in Texas have small refineries.

<comment><USER20> There are a few "have" universities in each case, and mostly "have not" universities, which is consistent with the direction AI is going, according to the NY Times article.

Even then, the experimental aircraft at Caltech is not a full-scale prototype of the next generation of fighter after the F-35. How does Stanford's fab compare with TSMC's?

Edit: TSMC collaborates with four Taiwan universities on research and provides fab services for 23 universities. [https://www.tsmc.com/csr/en/update/innovationAndService/case...](https://www.tsmc.com/csr/en/update/innovationAndService/caseStudy/2/index.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I hit this wall in my own Deep Learning-based automation business; I am now forced to rely on transfer learning most of the time, my Tesla/Titan RTX-based in-house "server" is no longer capable of training latest greatest models in reasonable time, cloud is out of question due to costs and (automated) parameter tuning with distributed training takes ages. I can still ask a lot for customized solutions, though I see the writing on the wall that it might not last too long (2-4 years) and I'd have to switch business as there will be only a handful of companies able to train anything that is better than current SOTA.

<comment><USER22> But do you need SOTA for your business to be viable ?

<comment><USER21> Well, right now I can get within 1-3% SOTA performance for models I need but I expect that in 2-4 years I'll be much farther away with laughably outdated models nobody would want to pay for. Like now I can replace 100s of people in e.g. quality control as they make e.g. 15% errors and I can bring that down to e.g. 8%. But later big boys might be able to bring it down to 1% for $2M training cost and I wouldn't stand a chance.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I asked the same question after several AI talks given by large companies (Google, Nvidia, etc).

The general answer is that it's still possible to try out things on a single GPU or several servers and many gains come from good features and smart network designs. On the other hand, squeezing out the last 5% does require more data and budget.

Personally, I think you can still do a lot with a moderate budget and smart people. But would love to hear other opinions.

<comment><USER24> Look into the modern nlp models. BERT and its many derivatives, RoBERTa, XLNet. Training all of these require roughly TB of data, and generally take days on multiple TPUs. You often can't even fine tune on a single GPU without some clever tricks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> When compute becomes prohibitively expensive, people find opportunities in attaining better algorithms or cheaper compute.

<comment><USER26> "Better algorithms" - sounds like a good research topic!

<comment><USER27> Drat, scooped again...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Why do universities need to compete with big companies? The less they behave like corporations and more like places of learning, the better.

</comment><comment><USER29> So tell me something....

Have AI techniques actually changed in the last 20 years, or is there just more data, better networking, better sensors, and faster compute resources now.

By my survey of the land, there haven't been any leaps in the AI approach. It's just that it's easier to tie real world data together and operate on it.

For a university, what changes when you teach? This sounds like researchers feeling like they can't churn out papers that are more like industry reports vs advances in ideas.

<comment><USER30> There hasn't been any kind of paradigm shift but there have been a bunch of real although incremental improvements. Improved optimization algorithms, interesting and novel neural network layers.

Some of this is even motivated by mathematical theory, even if you can't prove anything in the setting of large, complex models on real-world data.

The quote from Hinton is something like, neural networks needed a 1000x improvement from the 90s, and the hardware got 100x better while the algorithms and models got 10x better.

<comment><USER29> So I guess this kind of leads to my original point. If you're a school, nothing has really changed that would require you to invest gobs of money to teach AI. It only matters if your idea of research is trying to create something you can go to market with.

So basically every graduate chemistry program.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> While it's true that training a new DL model requires lots of computation power, I personally feel that such activity mentioned in the article is more of "application" of ML instead of "research". I personally think University should move in the direction of "pure" research instead.

For example, coming up with a new DL model that has improved image recognition accuracy would mean it has to be trained through the millions of samples from scratch, which requires a lot of time and money. But I'd argue that such thing is more of an "application" of DL instead of "research". Let me explain why... Companies like FAANG have the incentives to do that, because they have tens or hundreds of immediate practical use cases once model is completed, hence I call such activity more of an "application" of ML rather than "research", because there's a clear monetary incentives of completing them. What about University, what sort of incentives do they have by creating a state-of-the- art image recognition other than publication? The problem is publication can't directly produce the resources needed to sustain the research (i.e. money)

I think ML research in the university should move in the direction of "pure" research. For example, instead of DL, is there any other fundamentally different ways of leveraging current state-of-the-art hardware to do machine learning? Think how people moved out approaches such as SVM to neural network. Neural network was originally a "pure" research project. At the moment of creation, neural network wasn't taking off because hardware wasn't capable to keep up with its computational demand, but fast forward 10-15 years later, it becomes the state-of-the-art. University ML research should "live in the future" instead of focusing on what's being hyped at the moment

</comment><comment><USER32> The article presents the rising costs couched within the theme of all-to- powerful tech companies like Google and Facebook, which is really irrelevant: These costs are not high because of those companies, they are high because the research itself is incredibly resource intensive, and would be so whether or not large tech companies were also engaged in it. In fact, with Google and their development of specialized chips for this purpose, AI research is probably getting _cheaper_ due to their involvement.

Next, this research will probably continue to get cheaper. The cost to do the Dota 2 research 5 years ago would have been much higher, and will probably be even less expensive 5 years from now.

Also, I think there's plenty of room for novel & useful at the bottom end where $millions in compute resources are not essential. Cracking AI Dota is certainly interesting, but it's hardly the only game in town, and developing optimized AI techniques specifically for resource-sparse environments would be a worthy project.

</comment><comment><USER33> Having a few hundred consumer GPUs or a few dozen "datacenter" GPUs should be within the reach of any University department, and at least Nvidia also seems happy to sponsor University setups (after all new research creates demand from the industry).

Sure, this doesn't compete with Google's data-centers. But that's assuming Universities are for some reason competing against private industry. That's not how any other engineering discipline works, so it's a bit odd to just assume without discussion.

<comment><USER34> "Having a few hundred consumer GPUs or a few dozen "datacenter" GPUs should be within the reach of any University department"

That was funny - however not even close to reality. I have to work on a GTX 1080 (not TI)...

<comment><USER33> A month ago Nvidia had a grant program running to get rid of refurbished^w^w^w^w donate 1-4 Titan Vs based on a 1-2 page application [1]. When my university started offering a CUDA course we got ~15 top of the line GTX cards sponsored by Nvidia. Buying 100 GTX1080TI with 11GB with supporting hardware is in the range of 100 thousand Euro/USD (before applying education discounts and asking for sponsorships). Not money spent on a dime, but not outrageously expensive either (the article mentions OpenAI spending millions on cloud GPU resources, compared to that spending 100k on something you get to keep is nothing)

[1] [https://developer.nvidia.com/academic_gpu_seeding](https://developer.nvidia.com/academic_gpu_seeding)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> AI is now a data problem, and a bit of optimisation problem, both should or could be solved at commercial end of research. Universities should be more focused on what's next ? Not saying this is not "the next". but, as, ground level ideas of AI are quite 50-60 year old if not more, current ground level research should make theoretical platform for the technology that is going to come in 20-50 years.

</comment><comment><USER36> You need all four quadrants: risk capital, industry, academics, and that elusive X-factor. The hard work of AI/ML theory, such as issues around generalizability and ethics, is still done around whiteboards and academic conferences.

A more useful metric may be the proportion of proprietary versus open discovery. I don't know if I can point to a single example where researchers have not rushed to put their latest breakthroughs on OpenReview or Arxiv. Even knowledge of a technique, without the underlying models or data, is enough to influence the field.

Academic free inquiry and intellectual curiosity, looks very different than product-focused solutions-oriented corp R&D. A good working example looks something like Google AI's lab in Palmer Square, right on the Princeton campus. Researchers can still teach and enjoy an academic schedule. I think it was Eric Weinstein who said something to the effect that if you were a johnny come lately to the AI party, your best bet would just be to buy the entire Math Department at IAS! In practice, its probably easier to purchase Greenland ;)

</comment><comment><USER37> I don't quite understand the issue here. I thought the main reason for the many recent breakthroughs in AI was that hardware has become cheaper and more powerful. Anyone can train a neural network on the graphics card of their home PC now. There are powerful open source frameworks available that do a lot of the heavy lifting for you. You can do far more today than you could back when I was in AI.

Of course the Big Tech companies have far more resources to throw at it; that's why they're Big.

A far more serious issue than access to computational power, is access to suitable data, and particularly the hold that Big Tech has on our data.

</comment><comment><USER38> It seems like a structural problem. Deep learning generally performs better than anything else that is well known but it also has well known limitations and inefficiencies.

People should question all of the assumptions, from the idea of using NNs and the particular type of NN and all of the core parts of the belief system. Because these certain aspects are fixed on faith more than anything else.

If you want efficiency of training, adaptability, online, generality, true understanding, those assumptions might need to go. Which would not mean you could learn from DL systems, just that core structures would not be fixed.

</comment><comment><USER39> Is compute the limiting factor or data?

I see an asymmetry between academia and industry. Academia has the models, industry has the data. Compute is more balanced because it's usually commodity hardware.

If industry is outpacing academia in research, I think that means data is the more valuable quantity, not compute.

And the article's theme of concentration is more a problem with data. Is Facebook dominant because of its algorithms or because of its database? If other companies had Google's index and user telemetry could they not compete with a rival search algorithm?

</comment><comment><USER40> Maybe this is a good time for university researchers to develop AI algorithms that are not so data and compute hungry. Here's a promising bit of that--[https://www.csail.mit.edu/news/smarter-training-neural- netwo...](https://www.csail.mit.edu/news/smarter-training-neural-networks). This is easier said than done but necessity is the mother of all invention they say.

</comment><comment><USER41> Maybe it's time to start triaging/incentivising what kind of problems we spend that computational power and CO2 credits on.

Playing in the sandbox with AI (especially the "brute force" deep learning algos) in and of itself does not equate _intelligence_ or _progress_ for us as civilisation.

</comment><comment><USER42> AI is not expensive necessarily

What's expensive is thinking AI evolution means deeper networks and the only way to get better results is by throwing more GPUs at the problem.

And to be honest those with "infinite" resources are a bit "guilty" of pushing this research lines.

</comment><comment><USER43> I don't see the problem. Universities don't solve problems by simply throwing more dollars at them. If compute resources are scarce then researchers are incentivised to invent machine learning techniques that use those resources more efficiently.

</comment><comment><USER44> the point about the increase in computational resources reminded me of Gary Marcus latest book. It seems like the increasing trend away from research into generalised AI models towards narrower and narrower domain-specific ML models that consume more and more energy and data is becoming an increasing bottleneck.

I think instead of trying to build larger computers there is an opportunity for academia to move back towards the construction of cognitive models and minimizing the reliance on computation and data. That's what intelligence is supposed to be all about.

<comment><USER45> You hit the nail on the head. AI is nowadays defined as a very sophisticated form of curve fitting [thanks to TensorFlow a.o.], that's what training ANN's comes down to. There is clearly a lack of intelligence, f.e. the [main] method used to beat Lee Sedol was MCTS (with the help of some ANN's).

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> University isn't utopia. Not everyone wants to live there. Also, there aren't enough university research dollars to adaquately fund AI research relative to the current demand.

This is a good thing.

</comment><comment><USER47> Hasn't it always been like this? When the Model T came out it was concentrated even more I would assume. What other way could it be?

</comment><comment><USER48> Not super knowledgeable about deep learning, but is some form of distributed computing possible here, or is the amount needed just too high?

<comment><USER49> Yes, distributed computing is sometimes possible for machine learning. However, distributed computing typically makes computations faster or bigger, not cheaper.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> Is there anyone who thinks we shouldn't break up these large companies on anti-trust grounds?

Imo it's got to the point where if you have a bad idea your startup fails and if you have a good idea they will copy it and your startup fails. Even companies like spotify and slack which have "made it" are now threatened by Google Music + Apple Music and by Microsoft Teams.

Would be interested to hear other opinions.

</comment><comment><USER51> This could be said with anything, some people have more money than others.

</comment><comment><USER52> Well, these AI calculations also emit much CO2. It may be a luxury that we can only afford ourselves within measure. The vision of a society where AI plays a large role may only be feasible both ecologically and economically if/when we have fusion energy.

<comment><USER53> This is so ridiculous. Of all the things that emit co2 you're focusing on AI calculations? Tell me you're not serious.

<comment><USER54> I'm dead serious about this. I think we should weigh all large scale compute against its carbon cost. Granted, fang is starting to look for renewable sources for its DC's, but US data centers alone will use around 73 billion kWh in 2020 [1].

How much of that is ML? As someone pointed out in another comment, how much ML is actually useful? Some ML is "carbon good", such as route planning saving energy. But do we really need to spend billions of kWh just to get slightly better recommendations? Do we really need to increase margins a fraction of a percent for some company to show more ads and sell more?

And while we're on the subject of power, maybe if web pages weren't 300mb of crap and 1k of content, we could cut back on another few billion kWh on servers and routers.

This shit is serious, we're dying here, so yes, absolutely, let's do the math about how much AI costs. It's up to us, the computer people, to ask these questions and solve the part of this problem that WE own.

1\. [https://eta.lbl.gov/publications/united-states-data- center-e...](https://eta.lbl.gov/publications/united-states-data-center- energy)

<comment><USER55> _we 're dying here_

Who? Where? Why?

<comment><USER54> The point is the expenditure is unsustainable at the current rate, and we can do something about it.

<comment><USER55> So nobody is dying from this.

Are you doing something, personally, about this? My office is 100% solar, home about 20%, telecommute 100%; you?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> Breaking news: some universities have more money than others.

</comment><comment><USER57> I wonder how it compares to something like cryptocoin mining/transaction processing.

<comment><USER58> And so Deeplearningcoin was born.

<comment><USER59> Interesting idea: the blockchain is a sequence of gradient descent steps

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> I'm seeing less and less point with all of that AI thing.

I'm seeing companies spending tens of megabucks on idling GPU farms without a clear idea what to do with them.

Saw that when we did a subcontract for datacentre for Alibaba. They had a huuge reception for all kinds of dignitaries, showing them CGI movies of their alleged AI supposedly crunching data right there in the DC — and all that with all of hardware in the DC being shut down...

The moment I poked a joke about that during an event, there came dead silence, and faces on the stage started to turn red. The guy defused the situation with a joke, and the party went on.

<comment><USER61> AI has too perfect of a sales pitch and surrounding narrative for business people to treat it rationally. The fact that philosophers who don't understand AI are debating AI philosophy is strong evidence of that. A crash is less likely this time around because it's being funded by established companies instead of the public market this time, but there has to be a moment of reckoning for the baloney eventually... I hope.

<comment><USER62> >philosophers who don't understand AI

If you mean "philosophers who don't understand ML/gradient descent/linear algebra/statistics etc", I don't think many philosophers are debating about that stuff.

If you mean "philosophers who don't understand artificial intelligence", that would be all of them, and everyone else too, because no-one understands artificial intelligence yet. And a lot of the people who come closest to understanding it are in philosophy departments.

<comment><USER61> I more or less agree with your second point. Presently the philosophy of artificial intelligence is kind of like theology, it is molded by how people like to think more so than it is determined by reality. Sales pitches also tend to be molded by how people think. AI has that theological essence that makes people love it even if they don't understand it, and that makes it a lot easier to sell big GPU farms to companies that don't have a legitimate use.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why do so many americans fear muslims? - <AUTHOR> https://theintercept.com/2017/02/18/why-do-so-many-americans-fear-muslims-decades-of-denial-about-americas-role-in-the-world/?utm_source=pocket&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=pockethits <comment><USER2> So many explanations in that story, which get barely any air-time in US media. The Fake News sites have it all wrong - you don't need to lie persuade people, just report selectively.</comment>


Using C# interface explicit imlementation for creating a builder class - <AUTHOR> http://foreverframe.net/using-interface-explicit-imlementation-for-creating-a-builder-class/ <comment><USER2> This article is quite good, it might get more traction if the title were related to the actual content - the reusable buildup of microservices.</comment>


IBM to Acquire Cloudant - <AUTHOR> http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/43238.wss

<comment><USER2> It is funny this kind of came full circle. Damien Katz, the original CouchDB author was working on Lotus Notes as some point in his life. After many years, his "creation" comes back to IBM. There is some irony in there I think.

I remember him disavowing CouchDB and urging everyone to "ride with him" towards Couchbase. There were promises about how CouchDB will get contributions from Couchbase, and how it will get RPM and packaging scripts, docs and continued help. But not much of that happened. The community split. Most CouchDB developers who ended up on the other side of the fense at Couchbase didn't end up committing or helping that much over the years. So I can't see, looking back, anything good at all about that split.

But Cloudant sort of took over helping and watching over CouchDB. Quite a few of the contributors work for CouchDB, and they are very smart and helpful individuals. I hope this means good news for CouchDB as a project. I would want to see it grow.

<comment><USER3> _It is funny this kind of came full circle. Damien Katz, the original CouchDB author was working on Lotus Notes as some point in his life_

It's definitely interesting. I can remember people in the Notes community wondering why IBM didn't either take CouchDB and use it as a new Notes backend, or alternatively push the existing Notes bits as a mature document- based database.

The end quote from Katz's "Formula Engine Rewrite" post[1] is interesting:

"But ultimately IBM killed Iris. In late 2001 IBM folded Iris Associates and converted all the employees to IBM. All the energy the Iris building had was seeping out. Really it was more pushed out by the BS that IBM management kept trying to sell us..."

[1] [http://damienkatz.net/2005/01/formula-engine- rewrite.html](http://damienkatz.net/2005/01/formula-engine-rewrite.html)

<comment><USER4> Damien's writeup is well worth a read, esp. by programmers who want to know what it takes to get to a high level of proficiency. The Iris work appears to have been a critical experience in preparing Damien to write Couch. Anyone who wants to become a great programmer should read this and emulate his example.

I was at Iris around that time too, and went through the IBM slow-death. I really felt like we had to spend at least one whole day per week (maybe more) dicking around with HR stuff. Career objectives, self-eval, performance reviews, peer reviews.

Facilities and IT systems were a horror show too. I spent 2 whole days registering with various internal websites, filling out forms, getting permissions - just trying to get rid of an unwanted monitor. At Iris you'd just put unwanted stuff outside your office and it would be gone the next day.

Funny, losing the amazing Iris tech-bubble perks kind of sucked, but it was really the daily "being an employee" overhead and red-tape that made IBM unbearable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> The email I received from Cloudant:

"Hello-- Today is an exciting day for Cloudant as a business: We have agreed to be acquired by IBM [press release].

What does that mean for you as a customer? Not too much changes, actually.

The key elements of Cloudant that have helped make us successful will not change. Our team will remain intact and will continue to focus on delivering innovative products backed by our world-class operations, services and support teams. Cloudant's product strategy and roadmap will continue as before, only with faster innovation. By tapping into IBM's global resources, we can rapidly scale our service and introduce new products that will benefit customers.

Our position of providing a cloud-agnostic data layer will not change and remains an important differentiator for our business. We know that customers need options to prevent vendor lock-in as the cloud industry consolidates. Cloudant and IBM are the latest example of this trend, yes, but with some important distinctions.

We have a clear agreement in place to continue developing and promoting Cloudant as an open platform. Widely accepted standards like JSON and REST APIs will remain, so customers can quickly migrate onto and off of Cloudant as needs change. Cloudant's participation in the open source community will continue, and at an accelerated pace. IBM has a track record of funding and promoting open technologies, like Linux. Over time, we'll work toward a similar model with the open source communities close to Cloudant.

Thank you for your continued support of our business. And look for more good things from Cloudant and IBM, coming soon.

Sincerely,

Derek Schoettle CEO, Cloudant"

<comment><USER5> The Cloudant CTO also commented on the CouchDB developer's list:

[http://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/couchdb-dev/201402....](http://mail- archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/couchdb- dev/201402.mbox/%3C86FF6E4F-D4AF-4E3C-A94F-6C7243AB122B%40cloudant.com%3E)

<comment><USER2> That link doesn't work for me

<comment><USER6> Here's the email that Cloudant's CTO sent to Apache CouchDB:

SUBJECT: Cloudant & IBM: Our Commitment to Apache CouchDB

Apache CouchDB means a great deal to me, and to Cloudant as a company. Cloudant and CouchDB have grown alongside each other over the past several years in one of the more authentic vendor/community collaborations I can think of in Apache history. Today marks the next step in Cloudant's growth as we enter into a definitive agreement to become part of IBM.

What does this mean for CouchDB? I would not have agreed to this transaction if I had any concerns about Cloudant's ability to continue its contributions and collaboration with Apache CouchDB. IBM has a strong track record in open source software and a productive relationship with Apache; in fact, IBM was instrumental in bringing CouchDB to the ASF many years ago. IBM is fully supportive of our efforts here, and I'm looking forward to bringing increased resources to bear in support of the project.

CouchDB has the potential to shape the future of distributed data management and computing. 2013 was a year of tremendous progress, as we doubled our committer base and shipped no fewer than eight releases. Already in 2014 we've seen amazing progress on long-standing initiatives to enhance the core of the system. The timing is right — in the market and for the community — to take the next big step forward. With your help, that is exactly what we will do.

Truly, the future of CouchDB is CouchDB.

Adam Kocoloski Co-Founder & CTO, Cloudant

<comment><USER7> Posted this to the blog:

[https://blogs.apache.org/couchdb/entry/cloudant_and_ibm_our_...](https://blogs.apache.org/couchdb/entry/cloudant_and_ibm_our_commitment)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Any details on the value of this deal floating around? At one point it seemed like all new database startups were getting pretty stratospheric valuations. At least relative to their user base.

I'm sure congratulations are in order regardless. The Cloudant team certainly deserves it. They've delivered consistently impressive results with their own product offerings, and with Apache CouchDB.

</comment><comment><USER9> I have been a very long term customer of Cloudant (low usage, low cost customer) and I have always appreciated their tech. Especially good of them to open source BigCouch.

I doubt IBM buying them will change much of their business for customers.

</comment><comment><USER10> This will likely further integrate into IBM's SoftLayer platform. The SoftLayer API already integrates with Cloudant, perhaps this means that all Cloudant compute would migrate to the SoftLayer bare metal server infrastructure. This essentially adds dedicated hardware, global footprint for data distribution, and SLA far in excess than what you can get with something like AWS Dynamo.

<comment><USER11> Actually, the majority of our servers have been on SL bare metal since ~2010.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Any ideas on the valuation of Cloudant?

</comment><comment><USER13> Their new redesign has been pretty difficult to get use to, especially with shared DB's.

<comment><USER14> The shared DBs piece has been a tough nut to crack. We decided to release the new dashboard without that piece given how much of an upgrade the rest of it was. The feedback on the new dash has been overwhelmingly positive (except for the shared DBs piece.)

We are working on fixing that piece and completely deprecating the old UI. That change should be coming soon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Congrats team Cloudant!</comment>


PgFincore – A set of functions to manage pages in memory from PostgreSQL - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/klando/pgfincore <comment><USER2> I wonder if there's any effort to use information like this in planning/query costing.

<comment><USER3> Not really. One of the major complications is that considering an index uncached might become a self fulfilling prophecy. Not using an index because it isn't cached leads to the index never becoming cached, even if long term it would be the better choice. In other cases the cached fraction might be tiny, but it is the option being actively used.

<comment><USER2> > Not using an index because it isn't cached ...

I'm more saying the opposite-- perhaps the real cost favors scanning the table if it is already resident while the normal costing would heavily vote against it based on the amount of disk access.</comment></comment></comment>


#chipgate - <AUTHOR> http://www.macrumors.com/2015/10/07/tsmc-samsung-a9-battery-tests/ <comment><USER2> Please do not editorialize the titles of stories you submit to Hacker News.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)</comment>


BlackBerry announces a new quantum-resistant code signing service - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2018/10/04/blackberry-races-ahead-of-security-curve-with-quantum-resistant-solution/ <comment><USER2> > The solution, which will be available next month, is actually the product of > a partnership between BlackBerry and Isara Corporation, a company whose > mission is to build quantum-safe security solutions. BlackBerry is using > Isara's cryptographic libraries to help sign and protect code as security > evolves.

That is extremely unhelpful, Tech Crunch.

Let's take a look at what Isara is researching.

[https://www.isara.com/research-publications/](https://www.isara.com/research- publications/)

[https://www.isara.com/qtesla/](https://www.isara.com/qtesla/)

[https://www.isara.com/qc-mdpc-kem/](https://www.isara.com/qc-mdpc-kem/)

Okay, so the article is specifically talking about digital signatures, so they're almost certainly implementing qTESLA (or a Blackberry-specific variant thereof), which is a lattice-based signature algorithm.

[https://qtesla.org/wp- content/uploads/2018/08/qTESLA_v2.2_08...](https://qtesla.org/wp- content/uploads/2018/08/qTESLA_v2.2_08.27.2018.pdf)

[https://github.com/qtesla/qTesla](https://github.com/qtesla/qTesla)

If this does turn out that they're implementing qTESLA (which is committed to the public domain), the headline "races ahead of security surve" will prove to be needlessly sensationalist.

</comment><comment><USER3> My first reaction was "why is this news, isn't elliptic curve crypto widely deployed and quantum resistant?"

It looks like the story is more complicated (and most ECC algorithms are not quantum resistant): [https://crypto.stackexchange.com/questions/35482/which- ellip...](https://crypto.stackexchange.com/questions/35482/which-elliptic- curves-are-quantum-resistant)

<comment><USER4> More generally anything based on the discrete logarithm problem (so both rsa and ecc) are not quantum resistance.

As explained to me by an actual maths guy the basic issue is that DLP is heavily biased across its key space. Shor's algorithm leverages this by doing a Fourier transform that gets the incorrect values to cancel out. The quantum resistant algorithms work by creating an unbiased key space so there's no ability to cancel out the incorrect answers without also cancelling out the correct ones. In theory anyway. The mailing list seems to consist mostly of people posting flaws in their own systems and/or each other's.

<comment><USER5> What mailing list? Would be interested to join!

<comment><USER4> pgc-forum, theoretically here: [https://groups.google.com/a/list.nist.gov/forum/#!forum/pqc-...](https://groups.google.com/a/list.nist.gov/forum/#!forum/pqc- forum)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The Blackberry founder Mike Lazaridis is a physicist and huge proponent of quantum computing, he funded among other things the "quantum valley" in Canada.

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

So no surprise they take quantum seriously ;)

</comment><comment><USER7> Quantum sounds cool but what big potential application can people point to other than crypto?

And if quantum resistant crypto is in place by the time serious quantum computing is in place, I assume the main application of quantum will be to read all stored, previously encrypted secrets out there.

<comment><USER8> I've been told quantum chemistry and physics simulation. For example drug discovery via simulation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'll be honest, my knee-jerk reaction was "BlackBerry is still in business?". Anyone on HN own one or know of someone who does? I can't recall the last time I walked into a store who actually carried BB products on their shelves.

<comment><USER10> I own a KeyOne, released last year with Android instead of BB's own OS. I love it, only downside is that I had to import it as it isn't available in my country ... I'd mainly used Samsung flagship phones before and got really tired of all the bloatware as well as typing on a touchscreen. (Can't believe more people are questioning touchscreen typing on phones, I think it's horrible and I don't have the largest set of fingers in the world.) I bought it for roughly $500 and this is what I make of it after one year of using it:

The camera on my KeyOne is superior to anything I've tried before, I'd even go as far as saying that it's up there and competing with the giants. The Sony Z2 Compact camera is a potato in comparison. The keyboard feels a bit cheap and some keys make a squeeking noise, but it's still better than touchscreen typing by far. I've dropped the phone on a number of occassions, it hasn't broken once. The backside tend to pop out, but it's easy to put it back in place again. My biggest complain about the hardware would be the screen, as I haven't access to any protective accessories my screen is pretty scratched by now. It doesn't affect what's displayed on the screen (yet) however, but yeah, I think it scratch too easily. Like I said, the OS is Android, and it's been fairly problem free for being Android. However, lately it has been a bit too agressive in shutting down apps in the background. But I don't know if that is BB's own build's fault or Android in general. There are some pre-installed "security" apps which gives the feeling of the phone being more secure than your other average Android phone. I don't use them though.

My over all impression of the KeyOne is 8 out of 10 I'd say, and I think I'll keep it until it literally fall apart.

<comment><USER11> How's the update cycle like?

<comment><USER12> Monthly or faster (if BB issues an out of band fix).

KEY2 is available in the US.

<comment><USER13> I just upgraded from a KeyOne to a Key2 and it's better in just about every way. Twice the storage and RAM, faster CPU, dual camera, more spacious keyboard, cleaner design, more solid construction, and the fingerprint sensor is faster and works better with sweaty fingers (i.e. while running/exercising) than my work-issued iPhone 7.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It may be quantum-resistant, but it won't be _law enforcement-resistant_ , knowing BlackBerry's track record and public statements on the issue.

<comment><USER15> If you don't mind me asking, what track record is that? A quick googling only revealed them giving access to their consumer messaging service.

<comment><USER16> [https://www.tomsguide.com/us/BlackBerry-Saudi-Arabia- Lebanon...](https://www.tomsguide.com/us/BlackBerry-Saudi-Arabia-Lebanon- United-Arab-Emirates-research-in-motion,news-7747.html)

<comment><USER15> Ahh so the BBM stuff. AFAIK they never sold out their enterprise customers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Last time I read about quantum resistant crypto was regarding the NSA's call for papers. As I recall many of the used cryptosystems were broken by conventional computing within like a month.

My point being, what reason do we have to believe these are safe cryptosystems.

<comment><USER2> There was a talk at 34C3 which covered these attacks pretty well (although those breaks were not the primary aim of the talk):

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCsvBFFLsqE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCsvBFFLsqE)

[https://latticehacks.cr.yp.to/](https://latticehacks.cr.yp.to/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Well, as long as the hardware does not source their parts from SuperMicro [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-10-04/the- big-h...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-10-04/the-big-hack-how- china-used-a-tiny-chip-to-infiltrate-america-s-top-companies)</comment>


I need help with lowering fees stripe charges my subscription project. - <AUTHOR> I am starting a project that gives context to news through history. I charge an introductory fee of $1.00/month for three months, and thereafter $2.99 month. In WordPress, I signed up with Stripe through the MemberPress plugin. But then found out Stripe charges 30 cents per each transaction, plus an additional 2.9%. I am fine with the 2.9%, but the 30 cents won't work with my low fees. Does anyone have any suggestions for me please? Thank you in advance. <comment><USER2> When I was consulting I helped a lot of small companies deal with this type of situation. We loved Stripe when it fit the clients need, but it doesn't always work out. First, you should reach out to Stripe support to see if you can fit into their micropayments model which means you wouldn't be paying .30 + 2.9%. You can also look at some of the other platforms that support micropayments, like paypal (although I hate paypal).

Outside of that, many times what we wound up doing was integrating to First Data or another local bank clearing house that would provide more proper low transaction fees. It takes more work and effort, but clients saved huge percentages of their small payments many times by doing this, so if you can't fit into one of the existing solutions you may have to do it the "hard" way. Nice thing about this is we usually could accept e-checks (ACH transfers) when doing this which also lowered the fees drastically and made things more profitable. There are rules of course on industries, types of payments etc, but mainly if you aren't doing anything "illegal", porn or financial services you can generally find a good clearing house through a local bank. First Data's api used to suck, no clue what it looks like today but it used to be a royal pain.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you so much. I will look into this. Seriously though, all these little things shrink the real time I have left to do the real work for my project. Thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Hm, I'd suggest batching fees together so you can have one, larger charge (e.g. charge for many months at once).

Most of that 30 cents represents the underlying costs for the card networks to process the charge—in some countries, we have separate (lower) pricing for micropayments, like your fees. It looks like you might be in the US, where we don't have micropayments today, but it is on our list!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> May not be issue you need to solve right now.

Your's is not "a project that gives context to news through history" @$1.00 per month. If the market wants it, it should work at $1(+$0.30 +2.9%)per month also.

So just charge $1.49 per month and move on. Once you have a 1000 users, you can think about optimizing things.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're right. I decided to move on... I agree. Thanks. But I don't get your comment about "yours is not". You mean is not necessarily a $1, right?

<comment><USER4> Yes. not necessarily. Once you are able to observe active users, have paying users or even sizeable traffic to test conversions.

You can experiment to find out what that "right" or "best converting" price point would be.

"Free to start" may very well end up being the answer. Here are 2 examples one from pubilshing and one about starting with a price and using data to uncover insights about the "right" price. You will see the 30 cents is not the biggest problem you are going to have in pricing. :-)

\- [https://www.priceintelligently.com/blog/new-york-times- prici...](https://www.priceintelligently.com/blog/new-york-times-pricing-page- teardown)

\- [https://www.priceintelligently.com/blog/netflix-pricing- stra...](https://www.priceintelligently.com/blog/netflix-pricing-strategy)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Look at Stripe competitors. There are some with 0.1 + 1% and around those numbers.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. Any suggestions?</comment></comment>


Barnes & Noble Plans an Extensive E-Bookstore - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/21/technology/internet/21book.html?_r=1&ref=technology

<comment><USER2> It's disappointing that there is, apparently, no support for the Kindle. It doesn't look like there's support for any dedicated reader, for that matter. It's a software reader that can be installed on a computer, iPhone or Blackberry.

I love my Kindle. Sure, it got it's warts and I don't like DRM in principle, but it does exactly what I want it to do and it's convenient. However, it would be nice to have another source for ebooks even if I can't use Whispernet to buy them. There are a couple rinky-dink stores that aren't price- competitive with Amazon so I was excited about the Barnes and Noble announcement at first. It will be interesting to see what kind of uptake they have without supporting dedicated reading devices.

[edit]

After reading some more it looks like they've got their own format and DRM. _sigh_ It's bad enough that we've already Amazon selling ebooks that are only compatible with one device. I was hoping at some point their store would open up to other devices, and they seem somewhat open minded to the idea considering their primary business is selling the books themselves. The last thing we need is a bunch of book sellers trying to lock customers into one format and one store.

 _"I don't think they will be stealing market share from Amazon," Ms. Rotman Epps said. "If anything I think they are contributing to the growth of the whole category of digital reading."_

I'm not so sure about this. I've been a fan of ebooks for a while and, if anything, I'm a little turned off right now.

 _She added that as more consumers begin reading digital books on phones and other mobile devices, it made sense to market to those readers as opposed to those who are buying dedicated reading devices like the Kindle or the Sony Reader._

It doesn't look like there will be support for dedicated reading devices any time soon.

<comment><USER3> I don't think it was actually B+N's choice to not allow access to Amazon's reader.

<comment><USER2> How so? I don't think anyone needs to get permission from Amazon. There are a few formats that are compatible with the Kindle. I've bought a few books from The Pragmatic Programmers and they offer a .mobi version that works on the Kindle.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I still think the best thing BN could do right now is to put the inventory levels of every bookstore on the store pages. I know they have them all on their intranet, since they can do searches of near-by stores to see if any neighbors have the book you are looking for. I'd just love to be able to go to bn.com and have it tell me which store (if any) I can go to today to get the book I want.

As it is, I mostly just go straight to amazon if I'm looking for a computer- related book, a sci-fi book, or a fantasy book, since my local bn's selection tends to be a bit lacking...

<comment><USER5> Both Borders and BN already have this info on their websites.

<comment><USER4> Wow, I can't believe I never noticed that. I've always gone to the local store page, and then looked for a book search there; I never saw the "enter a zip code" box on the normal product page. Learn something every day...

<comment><USER6> Eh, it doesn't really work. I was looking for a book recently, and the B&N web site said that 4 stores nearby had it. I called to confirm, and it turned out only one of them did.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Books being read on iPhones et al...great time to go into optometry!</comment>


Why college students who do historical research become analytical thinkers - <AUTHOR> https://theamericanscholar.org/habits-of-mind/#.VJG9KYrF8zE <comment><USER2> History major turned software engineer here. I think history gives its students two key skills:

(1) You have to wade through a lot of complexity and nuance, try to find the signal in the noise, and then marshall some of that complexity to support your argument. After you've speedwalked through thousands of pages of archival documents and other scholars' arguments, it's comparatively easy to be thrown ~50 pages of framework or API documentation and quickly find what you need. (That's also why I'm excited that Common Core puts greater emphasis on reading non-fiction to learn skills, instead of every English class being about reading fiction for pleasure. It builds the same skills.)

(2) You get used to the feeling that you know only a tiny fraction of what there is to know about the world. That intellectual humility leads you to ask good questions, try empathizing with perspectives and ideas that may seem strange at first glance, and only make careful assertions that are supported by strong evidence.

And by no means do I think history is the only academic discipline teaching students these things. I just wish it got more respect!

<comment><USER3> >> I'm excited that Common Core puts greater emphasis on reading non-fiction to learn skills

I agree.

I wonder, what other kinds of skills should be taught in k-12 that aren't taught today?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I attended a liberal arts college, and enjoyed the courses that I took in most subjects. I got good grades. I'm still interested in many of the topics gathered under the umbrella of "humanities."

But it strikes me that "humanities students become analytical thinkers" is as much of a meme as "humanities students become baristas," at least in the absence of supporting evidence.

It could be true, and to some extent is anecdotally supported by those among my acquaintances who studied in the humanities, but that could be just a matter of survivor bias. We don't hear from the ones who didn't become analytical thinkers, or we associate them with their terminal degrees, such as MBAs.

<comment><USER5> I'm writing this just to comment on your use of the word "meme"; it's not intended to be a criticism* but the expression of an observation.

In your fourth sentence, it seems that are using "meme" to specifically denote an idea or statement that is unsupported or unverified. This is not wrong, but I have not seen this particular usage of the word before. It does differ from Dick Dawkins' original meaning: he used "meme" to denote the component in cultural evolution whose role is analogous to that of genes in biological evolution. But I find your use to be an interesting development in the development of "meme" and the memes it signifies†.

\-----

* However, I do believe the conversation has been framed improperly: e.g., the groups "baristas" and "analytical thinkers" do not have mutually exclusive membership, but instead intersect significantly. There exists many an analyst barista who brews Brazilian whilst brooding about Bruegel at Bruegger's Bagels, plenty espresso-synthesists with scholastic emphases on existentialists' expressions of Parisian café culture (dissertation: "Bean & Nothin'ess"), and please don't get me started on those poor doctoral students who must lecture on Melville in the morn then manage a late shift at the mall latte-mill aptly named after Ahab's first mate.

† Indeed, for me, I find to be the memetics of "meme" a remarkably meta matter, and that fact is itself alone the motivation to make my remarks (I must mention, if I may).

<comment><USER6> Are you familiar with Rap Genius? If not, they use "meme" as catch-all-word- for-units-of-culture pretty often, too. Interesting phenomenon for sure

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The way this article uses the word "humanist" had me quite confused for a few paragraphs. It doesn't match the use of the word that I'm familiar with.[0] I think it's using the word as in "academics involved in the humanities"; hopefully my note will help some other people who had a similar initial reaction.

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

<comment><USER8> Oh interesting. I was thrown also by the use. Just looked it up and found: "3a. A classical scholar. b. A student of the humanities. 4\. Humanist A Renaissance scholar devoted to Humanism." [0] So I guess it's a pretty major use of the word.

[0][http://www.thefreedictionary.com/humanist](http://www.thefreedictionary.com/humanist)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> "Kolmogorov also started as a nonmathematician--he was studying history. His first paper, written when he was seventeen, was reported at a seminar given by Bakhrushin at Moscow University. Kolmogorov came to some conclusion based on an analysis of medieval tax records in Novgorod. After his talk, Kolmogorov asked Bakhrushin whether he agreed with the conclusions. 'Young man,' the professor said, 'in history, we need at least five proofs for any conclusion.' Next day, Kolmogorov switched to mathematics. The paper was rediscovered in his archive after his death and is now published and approved by historians."

\--V.I. Arnold, "An Interview with V.I. Arnold," Notices of the AMS, 44(4).

<comment><USER10> "In this work, he used mathematical arguments to answer the following question: was it (i) a village that was taxed in the first place, and then the tax as divided between households, or (ii) the other way around, where it was a household that was originally taxed, and then the sum represented the total to be paid by the village?... Because the total received were always an integer number of (changing) monetary units, Kolmogorov proved that it was rule (ii) that was adopted" -Probability and Statistics by Example, Volume 1.

I guess the households that paid their tax either always paid it in full, or if they paid a portion it was always an integer value?

While you're definitely more likely to get integer values in the end if everyone is taxed $1,000 rather than $999.30. It still makes me wonder how they always ended up with integers in the end.

I guess if I have to write a check to pay off a portion of an amount I'm more likely to pay $400 than 399.90. But maybe it also had something to do with how their monetary system was set up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> What else does one do with history, besides just experiencing it like one does a good story?

I didn't understand that when history seemed boring. After all, it had already happened. The excitement is in what could happen.

Once a person actually does start exploring history of any kind, they reach a point where mere experience isn't enough, and as they get there, they realize the value of history is in the data associated with that history.

Another analytical thinker is born.

This isn't limited to college students. Anybody actually interested in a better understanding can and should be looking at history as a means to that end.

And it can be as simple as actually paying attention to life experiences at a minimum.

<comment><USER12> The scarcity of data makes history very subtle and interesting. Something we rarely get in schools since we're fed facts and dates (and only partial reasons). When you learn how an historian finally discover by cross referencing antique texts, remains of artwork, geology, etc, it's hard not to be thrilled.

<comment><USER13> It's not the scarcity of the data that makes history subtle or interesting - after all, most periods and areas of study have a surfeit of data. Even when I was studying 17th century Russia, there were more primary source documents in the (terribly, horribly catalogued and organized) archives than I could possibly read in a lifetime.

The truly subtle bits come from the need to thoroughly understand the _Sitz im Leben_ \- as best you can, the surrounding context in which the source was produced and the purpose _for_ which the source was produced. Without that, you just end up with anachronistic presentism.

In my opinion, the need to place oneself as deeply as possible in a completely foreign period and mindset before the interpretation of a new source can even begin is what makes historians excellent analytical thinkers - as well as extremely useful product managers and marketers.

<comment><USER12> Well, the surrounding context is also part of the data, even though I understand that it's easy to forget embedding yourself in it to interpret the data already at hand.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> History is an amazing field to do research in, but its incredibly complex as well. It can be especially enlightening to delve into and imagine the true conditions under which our ancestors had operated in. There is a tendency of a lot of people to 'explain' history without much research and sometimes this view of history becomes very popular. The advent of the internet has allowed a lot of published material to be more easily available to either validate or debunk historical facts.

I hope a more rigorous and scientifically accurate view of history emerges in the future, where children will question the biased views of their parents and discover "the truth" for themselves. Maybe their children will then get a better opportunity to understand history.

<comment><USER15> It's my hope there is a backlash in the next generation against pop-history like The Oatmeals of ours.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> The conclusion: Doing reasearch by attacking a problem that matters to the student, identifying and mastering the sources, posing a big question and answering it in a clear and cogent way, in the company of a trained professional who cares about the problem and the student, makes the student an analytical thinker.

</comment><comment><USER17> This is possibly a good article; I can't tell, not being up to date on current academic culture around humanites, which is what the article is about.

I don't think this belongs on Hacker News, though

</comment><comment><USER18> True historical research isn't something many undergraduates do, and I can see how it would be exceptionally valuable.

Unfortunately, many undergrad courses simply have you read existing analysis, or at best present you with "primary sources" that are served up to you with no real digging around. It's not that the books you read are of low quality - often, they're really high quality. I remember reading a very elaborate history about the naval arms race between Britain and Germany prior to WWI, and I got a lot out of it. But what I never did was truly dig into the data. I believe it, but did I ever actually go to the the documents (without someone spoon feeding them to me in a way that leads to only one conclusion)? Nope.

Here's the thing - this can actually lead to big errors later in life. One amusing story I had - I worked on supply chain issues for a big manufacturing company once, and during an interview, I was talking excitedly about various mathematical approaches. The interviewer (a math PhD who eventually did hire me) stopped me and reminded me of how detailed the work really is. He said that one young engineer who worked there had spent six months digging through documents, and had discovered the source of an inefficiency. The QA tests for some components was different in Asia and Europe, so the pieces were passing in one location, getting shipped, failing in the other, getting shipped, passing… in this loop. It had nothing to do with math, it had everything to do with actually getting truly ground level with documents, tests, bits of paper, factory floors, and figuring out what exactly was actually going on in the world.

On a grimmer note, a huge factor in the banking crisis was that people used mathematical models without actually looking at the reality behind them. Yes, a package of very high quality mortgages has a low probability of collapsing, and if you take that low probability number and stick it into your model, all is well. But if you actually dig into the reality, find the documents, realize many of the documents don't exist, and realize that the ones that do are not at all the high quality loans that would typically get a strong rating, and ask why, realize that the package was rated with stronger loans that were taken out replaced with bad loans, the new ones being used to create a new package with a new high rating, over and over, and that the company that did this is now taking out insurance policies against the loan packages that they prepared because they know they have a vastly higher rate of default than the insurers think (based on the faulty rating)…

well, then you're thinking like a history major who actually dealt with true historical research. And the few people who did this were aware of what was coming long before everyone else.

</comment><comment><USER19> Aha, so that's why Ed Witten won the Fields medal :)</comment>