There's magic in mess: Why you should embrace a disorderly desk - <AUTHOR> http://timharford.com/2016/10/theres-magic-in-mess-why-you-should-embrace-a-disorderly-desk/ <comment><USER2> I've found the easiest stuff to organize is the stuff I no longer have. I used to feel obligated to file a lot of stuff that came in the mail, like addendums to insurance policies, annual reports for stocks or funds, credit card statements, etc. But it dawned on me long ago that I virtually never need to refer back to that stuff. So it goes straight into the trash. When the bookshelves in my office fill up, I cull the books and donate them to Goodwill or sell them to a used bookstore. Old clothes, shoes, etc. are routinely purged from my life.

Some people love to acquire new things. I love getting rid of old things that no longer serve a purpose in my life.

<comment><USER3> I don't think I have _ever_ thrown away a book. Some day, I hope to have one of those Victorian style libraries with a rolling staircase to house all of my books...

<comment><USER4> I read that as "spiral staircase", and now I want to figure out how to build a Archimedes-screw-like rotating spiral staircase that also doubles as a bookshelf.

<comment><USER5> That could be absolutely gorgeous. A couple options that pop into my head. A column in the center which contains a number of shelves, and so the books. But also, you could have the books stored in the steps themselves. The space under the steps is hollow, so turn that into shelves. The height of the books would be an issue, but paperbacks would do well, I think.

<comment><USER4> One problem with storing books in the column is that as the staircase rotates, it might hit any books that are jutting out.

Although, I guess it doesn't have to rotate, I don't know why I wanted it to rotate.

<comment><USER5> I misunderstood you. So don't really want a staircase, you want a platform that moves up and down along a screw mechanism? If the column were big enough, you could have the shelves set deep enough to prevent collisions. The doors could shut automatically (weighted mechanism), and a sensor that would prevent the platform from moving if a door was open.

Edit, I guess it could still be a staircase, several steps up and wrapping around a bit, that becomes the platform you ride up and down on.

<comment><USER4> The platform wouldn't move up and down; the staircase would just rotate around the central axis. It's just a spiral staircase, not an elevator, albeit one that rotates.

The more I think about this, the less reasons I can think of for having the damned thing rotate - aside from the possibility of storing books inside the central cylinder, in which case rotation the staircase would give you access to more space.

<comment><USER5> Ok, misunderstood again, but I get it now.

Depending on the size of it, the whole column may be accessible without rotation, but may require you to stoop low for some items and maybe reach a bit for others.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> _In 2011, Whittaker and colleagues published a research paper with the title "Am I Wasting My Time Organizing Email?". The answer is: yes, you are. People who use the search function find their email more quickly than those who click through carefully constructed systems of folders._

I used to organize email into folders meticulously, later using tags and rules. What a complete waste of time. These days I refuse to spend even a second organizing email or reducing my inbox, as I can summon any email even from years ago in a few seconds with fuzzy search terms. Here's another heresy I'm testing that I think may turn out to be true: Spending any effort whatsoever organizing files on your computer is equally worthless.

<comment><USER7> What works for me on my computer is put things into general buckets of downloads, things I don't care about, things I need to keep, and programming projects. This really basic organization allows me to be able to delete lots of files without worry while taking almost no time to organize. With search finding things is easy but deleting everything you don't need can still be hard.

<comment><USER8> I found it striking how similar the system that I have settled into is to yours, and also the similarity of the benefits that you ascribed to it. I love having my /home/name/tmp folder and being able to delete everything in it without worry when I find it becoming a bit crowded. I find that it takes care of most things I don't need but there are a lot of small projects and downloaded libraries that sit in my programming projects directory that are more difficult to delete. All in all I find the organization very relaxing and passive. Roughly the buckets I have are: \- Downloads \- Documents \- workspace (programming projects) \- tmp

<comment><USER9> The way I do it on both Linux and Windows is: all the downloads go into Downloads folder. I keep the folder sorted by date (newest top) - 90% of the time I'm looking for something recently downloaded, and for the remaining 10%, I usually have an estimate in my head how old the file is, so I can do a visual binary search on the dates quickly. When I need to free up some space on the drive, I resort the folder by size (descending), and start deleting from the largest files down.

<comment><USER10> Honestly I feel like the downloads folder is something of a waste. Typically the software there is too old by the time I find myself reinstalling.

Perhaps it should be auto purged as things age. Most users probably instinctively move things to be kept elsewhere

<comment><USER9> Software is only a portion of my Downloads folder. It's usually a random collection of pictures, music files, videos, documents, spreadsheets, archives with data, archives with code, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've been using the Super Organised Method and didn't know it. Though not with papers (so much). I use it with clothes, books, and digital content like apps on my phone.

      To most of us, it may seem obvious that piling is
      dysfunctional while filing is the act of a serious
      professional. Yet when researchers from the office
      design company Herman Miller looked at high-performing
      office workers, they found that they tended to be
      pilers. They let documents accumulate on their desks,
      used their physical presence as a reminder to do work,
      and relied on subtle cues — physical alignment, dog-
      ears, or a stray Post-it note — to orient themselves.

Filing requires cognitive effort. How do I categorise this email (tags, in Gmail, were wonderful for solving this)? How do I file this contact (circles, another good idea)? Metadata is more practical, ultimately, than creating a hierarchical category system that is simultaneously too precise and not precise enough. Simple categories like "work", "home", "school" can work to effectively divide my content. But what happens when work is paying for school? I need a letter from the school to send to HR for reimbursement (that email gets tagged as: reimbursement, school, work, tuition; a search in any of the related folders will find it).

Removing the cognitive load of precise classification, using the physical space for physical items or multi-dimensional tag system for digital items, allows you to focus on the work itself and not on the items that make up the work.

If you really need a filing system, hire a librarian.

</comment><comment><USER11> _"If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, of what, then, is an empty desk a sign?"_ \- Albert Einstein

<comment><USER12> Can't upvote it enough (I am sure there are better links):

[http://assets3.bigthink.com/system/idea_thumbnails/54803/pri...](http://assets3.bigthink.com/system/idea_thumbnails/54803/primary/BT_Einstein's_desk_final.jpg?1397064501)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Interesting. A messy desk (i.e. anything that doesn't just have my laptop and notebook on it) really bothers me and makes it hard to focus.

<comment><USER14> You wouldn't like my desk (actually 2 desks) at work - I have a pile of stuff that includes, on casual inspection: a Microsoft Surface (half buried), 2 sets of earphones, a fleece hat that has been there since last winter, my wallet, some maps, tattered flip chart pages, notebooks, a good 2" of documents in various stages of decomposition (used for scribbling on rather than reading), half destroyed vendor anti-stress toys, a barcode scanner and stand....

And my actual work monitors, keyboard and mouse on a relatively tidy area.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> At my last job, I shared an office with my supervisor, and his desk was _messy_. I mean, my desks tend to accumulate a Cambrian layer over time, but this guy had _two_ desks to himself, both were covered more than a foot deep in paper. I am not exaggerating.

One day, I carefully asked him if I could help him clean up some space. I was kind of nervous, because - while otherwise the best boss I ever had - he was not very good at taking what he perceived as criticism. To my surprise, though, he broke into a mischievous grin and said, "If I start to clean up here, it will take no more than five minutes for _my_ boss to come in here and ask me if I have nothing better to do."

 _His_ boss was kind of a neat freak when it came to his own desk, but he was indeed the kind of boss who, when he saw you cleaning up your desk, would ask you if had nothing better to do. (Which suited me fine, to be honest, my current boss is more the "You should clean up your desk"-kind of guy...)

TL;DR - a messy desk can be fine, so long as it does not control you. I have seen people whose desks _looked_ messy, but when asked for a specific item, they could reach for it without hesitation. Once you spend more time searching for things than you save by not keeping it in order, you have a problem.

</comment><comment><USER16> I wanted to take this opportunity to give a shameless endorsement of Google's Inbox app.

I prefer something like what the article called the "piler" strategy. I don't like spending precious time and energy organizing things. But the problem is if I have too many things in front of me, I can't concentrate. My anxiety builds up. My creativity vanishes.

The Inbox app lets me reach an optimal balance of order and productivity. It's changed my life. And ever since, I've been proselytizing it.

This post thinks that you have to trade off order and productivity, but why not both? It now sounds like a false trade-off to me.

(PS Using search rather than categories and folders for email and files also was a big win but I'm not as excited about that now because that was years ago.)

<comment><USER17> Missing the eighth or tenth meeting invite because it was auto-filed as an 'update' and never notified me, as well as similar experiences with messages I consider 'important' put an end to Inbox for me. I did first try 'training' it by moving things where they should be, but Inbox never changed what it did.

<comment><USER18> Yeah this machine learning and personal assistant tech is on the ugly side of the uncanny valley right now. When we have the Star Trek computer then I'll get on board, but right now apps like Inbox flat out create more stress than save time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> A mess in a fixed area can serve as a reminder of your mental limit. When your space is "full", use the opportunity to take care of something and clean it up again (don't buy more shelves or more boxes, for example). And ideally, entirely get rid of things you are not using. It's the same with computers: you don't want to let yourself do the digital equivalent of buying more shelves or boxes (don't let yourself easily create even more new desktops or folders, to store an ever-increasing list of tasks); let your screen fill up with things to do and then use that pressure to take some of those items off your list.

</comment><comment><USER20> I feel like there's some parallel lurking here with software development. I've never seen a production codebase that doesn't have it's own share of clutter, mismash and rough edges similar to a disorganized desk.

Moving business requirements, obscure edge cases, performance concerns all seem to creep into an "orderly" codebase.

I don't think this applies to all software, things with a very long release/feedback cycle(aerospace, medical, etc) necessitate planning and careful deliberation but there's certainly a tension between order and shipping code.

<comment><USER21> I had no idea that I would see this parallel as well when I started reading this article.

I'm in a similar situation at my current job, we've got a few guys that want to go really crazy with OOP concepts (design patterns, going overboard with new technologies) from the first sign of a new issue/feature.

It really causes a lot of problems though, when your business requirements change (or you encounter an edge case) and you need to redesign the entire codebase to account for it. They are literally grinding everything to a halt with this stuff, and I think their issues arise from a need to categorize everything in the codebase prematurely, before the solution has "evolved".

Thoughts?

<comment><USER20> Yeah, that's a tough one since you're dealing with a culture issue and not a technical problem.

The only thing I've seen effective is prototyping a feature 2x and then taking the 2nd/3rd iteration. Finding time for that in a normal schedule is pretty hard though.

Another approach if you have the option is to build the feature as rapidly as possible(within reason here obviously) and deliver it out of band. It doesn't win you an immediate friends(and may even burn a few bridges) however if you can pull it off 2-3x then you can build a reputation of getting things done. This has the potential to backfire pretty significantly though if you can't get the rest of the dev team onboard so I would be very careful about employing it.

<comment><USER21> I'm probably in the backfire mode, as I've proven I can get things done in a good way, quickly, so I was promoted and someone else demoted (so we've effectively switched positions).

3/4 of the team is on-board with the getting things done in a good way, and the other 1/4 wants to be a slow pain in the ass.

<comment><USER20> Yup, sounds like you're squarely in a dev culture war which is usually a bit above my pay grade. Hopefully you can find a way to bring them around since it seems you have somewhat of a consensus.

Unfortunately the times I've seen that it was usually only solved by splitting the teams onto other projects or the minority leaving the company.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> A friend of mine described work in the planning dept for major manufacturer. On the shop floor where equipment, parts shelves, tools all belonged were outlined in tape. This would show if something was out of place and keep the floor orderly.

However at his desk he was also required to outline everything in tape. His stapler, keyboard, mousepad, laptop, wires running across were all outlined on the desk in tape. They would have desk audits, and any repeated deviation, where an item was outside its outline, would result in HR action.

<comment><USER23> This sort of thing is typical in manufacturing environments. It's often called 5S -- sort", "set in order", "shine", "standardize", and "sustain.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5S_%28methodology%29](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5S_%28methodology%29)

<comment><USER12> Used as part of the Toyota Production system:

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

As based on the Japanese principal of kaizen (the original CI):

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

and I would also like to mention Deming:

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I've got a hybrid method that works pretty well for me. May not be for everyone. I have:

L1 cache - stuff on my desk that needs to be paid or read in the next 30 days.

L2 cache - Bills that have been paid and docs that have been read, but things that might need to be referenced in the next year - in a banker's box next to my desk, completely unfiled. Just drop them in when paid/read.

RAM - At the end of the year, file the stuff in the banker's box into a small set of folders in a file cabinet or drawer.

Disk - At the end of the year, move last year's files into a banker's box and put it in the basement/garage/storage.

Also at the end of the year, take the box that's 7 years old to the professional shredder's place and destroy it.

I do have email folders for mailing lists. I find that if I don't, then searching brings up too many hits, and if I can narrow the search to a particular list, that will reduce the number of false positives. I have a rule per mailing list, so it's very easy to maintain.

</comment><comment><USER25> Recombination in the midst of mess, something the neurotic order makers and perfecter s cant see. Your brand new concepts, was born in a bloody mess, imperfected and shivering. And it was born by a different mindset, and will be again. There are things you cant see, you cant become, you cant create, limits, that you can not overcome, because they make you so great in all the other situations.

No, side is more worth than the others, though the cooperate bureaucrats would be of another opinion, because you cant see, what has yet to be. You cant differentiate against what chaos will give birth too. Enjoy your day.

</comment><comment><USER26> This post is derived from his latest book, Messy. I haven't read it, but it looks interesting. The other day there was another article also based on the book that I thought was good (on problems with automation):

Crash: how computers are setting us up for disaster [https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/oct/11/crash- how...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/oct/11/crash-how- computers-are-setting-us-up-disaster)

</comment><comment><USER12> I've worked with quite a few older successful CEOs of varying industries, and a majority have and use a Neat desktop scanner:

[http://amzn.to/2epDLEr](http://amzn.to/2epDLEr)

One of the CEOs had his malfunction, and re-appropriated his son's a day later.

The image recognition and organization are decent, but I can see how relying on it, and having it fail, can be very disruptive to one's process.

File cabinets and file folders don't seem to suffer from such things.

<comment><USER27> Unobfuscated link: [https://www.amazon.com/Neat-Company-NeatDesk- Desktop-2005410...](https://www.amazon.com/Neat-Company-NeatDesk- Desktop-2005410/dp/B01A0FQ8Q4/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I want to print this out. Draw a giant middle finger on it. Then post it on the entry to my cube. So friggin badly.

Take that you neatniks.

<comment><USER15> You and me both!

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Some people who have what appears to be a disorganized mess, always know EXACTLY where any particular item is when it is wanted.

<comment><USER12> I wonder if some people think in 3 dimensions versus taxonomically?

Combining for memory palace?

<comment><USER30> I'm probably like this.

For example, my CD/Vinyl/DVD/Book collections have never been alphabetized nor categorized, but I can find anything I want very quickly, because I seem to think spatially about the layout of the collection.

For some reason, I know instinctively that my copy of "In the Nightside Eclipse" will be on the upper left shelf while the Miles Davis records will be on the second-last shelf.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Didn't realise Tim Harford had a website. More or Less is an excellent programme, I listen weekly.

<comment><USER32> His books are good too.</comment></comment>


DD_belatedPNG: Medicine for your IE6/PNG headache - <AUTHOR> http://www.dillerdesign.com/experiment/DD_belatedPNG/ <comment><USER2> This library, and the jQuery Supersleight plugin (there's also a non-jQuery version) are probably the best IE6 PNG "fixers".

However, in my experience you would be better off designing for this issue from the outset and avoiding the use of these libraries if you care about your layouts looking good in IE6. For simple situations, these can work fine, however you'll run into issues for anything beyond the basics. For example, in this library:

> "Fixed" <IMG/> elements must take on visibility:hidden;, and thus become > unclickable. I see no workaround other than using clear pixel GIF > replacements, and that is code that I am not going to write.

There go your buttons.

I've also encountered issues where sometimes, replaced images take on a different height and get stretched, but this behaviour is unpredictable.

Your best bet for dealing with transparent PNGs in IE6 is either to stop caring about IE6 and leaving IE6 users with the opaque backgrounds around the images, or switching to transparent GIFs. A good designer can produce transparent GIFs that are just as crisp as PNGs, and then you don't need to rely on hacks any more.

<comment><USER3> _However, in my experience you would be better off designing for this issue from the outset and avoiding the use of these libraries if you care about your layouts looking good in IE6._

Strongly disagree. "Designing from the outset to avoid these libraries" means avoiding alpha-channel transparency altogether. That's a ridiculous design limitation just to satisfy IE6 users who also have JS turned off.

 _> "Fixed" <IMG/> elements must take on visibility:hidden;, and thus become unclickable. I see no workaround other than using clear pixel GIF replacements, and that is code that I am not going to write.

There go your buttons._

This is easily worked around by using <a>'s or <button>'s with background images.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4>
       <!--[if IE 6]>

GWT has a wonderful, automatic mechanism for this workaround built into its ClientBundle (nee ImageBundle) facility. One especially great thing about it is that the compiler properly omits it for all browser permutations except for IE, so that FireFox or WebKit-based browsers never need to evaluate the above conditional expression...because the code just isn't there if it's not needed.

<comment><USER5> Maybe this is just semantics, but the others browsers wouldn't be evaluating them either, since they're comments and only IE looks for the conditionals, neh?

<comment><USER4> That's a good point. What I meant to say was that the other browsers don't have to download it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> IE 6 market share is slowly decreasing, but it's still around 10%: <http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp>

</comment><comment><USER7> How do people handle including this javascript within an IE conditional statement in rails? Is there a way to handle it with rails helpers or do people just add it to their views manually?

</comment><comment><USER8> Why don't you just use 8-bit alpha-PNG's?

Works in all browsers, degrades gracefully on IE6 (semitransparency becomes fully transparent), smaller file sizes as a bonus.

</comment><comment><USER9> While this is very cool, people have been using this for years.

<comment><USER10> There's always someone that's missed it. Highly recommended library for ie6 + png.</comment></comment>


In 1949, He Imagined an Age of Robots - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/21/science/mit-scholars-1949-essay-on-machine-age-is-found.html

<comment><USER2> I would have loved to talk to this person. I was particularly struck by this comment: _Finally the machines will do what we ask them to do and not what we ought to ask them to do. In the discussion of the relation between man and powerful agencies controlled by man, the gnomic wisdom of the folk tales has a value far beyond the books of our sociologists._

So often in debugging I see that machine doing exactly what I _programmed_ it to do and not what I _meant_ it to do. As we build things with greater influence in the world such bugs go from being "oopsies" to ones that do a lot of harm either economic, human, or both.

<comment><USER3> Hopefully, we will have layers of safeguards so you would need bugs in many programs to conspire allow a problem happen. For example, even on my personal laptop, I can play around with fan/CPU_speed without worrying about making a potential mistake, even if I am playing around with them in kernel space. The reason for this is I know that even if I make a mistake that would melt my CPU, the BIOS is also monitoring the temperature and, if nessasary, will scale back the CPU to minimum, kick the fan up to maximum, and possibly power off the machine.

Granted, I could disable these protections, however then we go from me having a "oopsie", to me having disabled critical safety features.

Note, I'm not sure how much the BIOS actually overrides the kernel. I was able to override the BIOS safties just by passing in some parameters to the Linux kernel. However, you could imagine a system where such would not be an option.

<comment><USER4> From what I understand that's all the System Management Mode stuff that's been around for a while, no idea what it's usually like though. I haven't gone that far down the rabbit hole.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_Management_Mode>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _If we combine our machine-potentials of a factory with the valuation of human beings on which our present factory system is based, we are in for an industrial revolution of unmitigated cruelty._

It took 50 years but we are finally starting to be forced to take this problem seriously.

</comment><comment><USER6> Idea to fruition = half a century.

So Popular Mechanics amazed me as a kid. They often speculated what the future held, but if I was to look back at their predictions and the current year, I'd probably be disappointed.

I realize tech (specifically mobile) is the fastest evolving industry right now, but am I the only who feels that we're still behind on ideas coming to reality? It's what compelled me to get into coding.

I didn't want to be one of the people that expresses an idea and say "they should make an app, that blah blah blah." I'm not waiting, I'll learn to code, and smash a keyboard...but I'll do it my self!

</comment><comment><USER7> He also formalized Brownian motion: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiener_process>.

</comment><comment><USER8> Similar: The Machine Stops, a short story by E.M. Forster, predicting the Internet, written in 1909. The full story is now in the public domain, and can be found here: <https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Machine_Stops>

<comment><USER9> I immediately had to think of Kurt Vonneguts "Player Piano" published in 1952, with similar a theme of automation of all production (by "taping" actions) and the impact of that on society. It also briefly mentions a "third industrial revolution" in which even human thought will be performed more efficiently by machines.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'll assume that he knew of the ENIAC since it was publicized in 1946, which means he probably didn't "predict" mechanical/electrical computation. Regardless, he successfully predicted digital feedback control systems, lights-out manufacturing, mechatronics, artificial intelligence (to a limited extent), and the social ramifications of a post-scarcity society. Are these technologies obvious progressions that come from knowing about automatic computation, or was he truly that much of a visionary?

</comment><comment><USER11> I'm glad we're not still called tapers

</comment><comment><USER12> "We can be humble and live a good life with the aid of the machines, or we can be arrogant and die." - Norbert Wiener

<comment><USER3> In fairness, we are going to die either way.</comment></comment>


Thinking about buying this book: The Phoenix Project. Would you recommend it? - <AUTHOR> http://www.amazon.com/The-Phoenix-Project-Helping-Business/dp/0988262509/

<comment><USER2> It's less than $17. Just buy the damn book.

<comment><USER3> Less than $8 on kindle.</comment></comment>


The Tyranny of the Credit Score - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/24/business/24nocera.html?_r=2&ref=business&pagewanted=all

<comment><USER2> There is another side of credit scores, not mentioned in the original article or in the comments.

There was a time, before credit scoring became ubiquitous, when you would walk into a bank and get a loan from a loan officer directly, who would have very little to go on besides what you immediately present. That meant that women and minorities, even ones who would be excellent credit risks, were less likely to be able to get credit.

Sure, the current system has lots and lots of flaws (mostly from reducing everything to a single immutable number), but there's something fundamentally good behind the intention of judging people based on their concrete financial activity instead of just on the color of their skin and/or the cut of their suit.

<comment><USER3> Interestingly enough Super Crunchers ([http://www.amazon.com/Super-Crunchers- Thinking-Numbers-Smart...](http://www.amazon.com/Super-Crunchers-Thinking- Numbers-Smart/dp/0553805401/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1280297185&sr=8-1)) goes into this in some detail and shows that the FICO score is really another barrier to minorities. Statistically speaking it's minorities, mostly with non-white skin that don't have a credit history. It states that the score is no more than an accepted form of racial prejudice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The use of the credit score as an indicator of character is also frustrating for those of us that don't borrow money. Even if you don't borrow money you run into resistance trying to get insurance, etc.

<comment><USER5> Because I've always paid with cash on hand, because I'm paying with cash, phone companies expect me to pay more. When did cash become less valuable than debt?

<comment><USER6> Depending on what you mean by phone companies, a cash transaction is generally less valuable because it doesn't generate a relationship. They have to exert themselves for each transaction.

<comment><USER5> Acttualy, I think it means more what I mean by cash. Which is misleading, because I'm dealing in digital money, no cash involved, but rather than a credit agency, my own bank account, ergo debit transfers.

The relationship, as far as I can see, is the same as that of credit: they bill me, and I send them electronic funds. What am I missing?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The senior credit officer at my company will give you a long rant about the inaccuracy of credit scores if you ask about it. They use it as informational only (really high or really low might tell you something worth investigating).

Each business is different, and a competent risk analyst will build an algorithm based off the portfolio's actual history.

The problem is the credit score _might_ have meaning in some cases, like unsecured debt, to show how likely you are to payoff what you have little incentive to return. It's a measure of all financial behavior, but all loans are not the same.

A credit score isn't going to tell you how likely somebody is to make their mortgage. Unless there are really desperate circumstances, most people will pay their mortgage. A middle-of-the-road credit score really doesn't tell you much about how likely somebody is to have desperate circumstances. That makes it a poor predictor.

<comment><USER8> > A credit score isn't going to tell you how likely somebody is to make their > mortgage. Unless there are really desperate circumstances, most people will > pay their mortgage. A middle-of-the-road credit score really doesn't tell > you much about how likely somebody is to have desperate circumstances. That > makes it a poor predictor.

The above implies that a company that does not use credit scores when making mortgage loans will outperform one that does.

What's the the name of your company that makes mortgage loans and does not use credit scores? More to the point, are you taking investment or borrowing money?

<comment><USER7> Sorry, I have to keep my online activities and work separate. :-) But I didn't mean to infer my company doesn't use credit scores... They use them plenty.

>The above implies that a company that does not use credit scores when making mortgage loans will outperform one that does.

The point is, while we don't really know how these algorithms work, we know they don't control for the type of loan. You just get one number. That one number is not always meaningful.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The biggest problem, imho, is that there's no incentive for the credit rating agencies to care about accuracy.

I paid for 30 days access to check my credit report a few months ago and I had to fix a whole slew of errors dating back almost 10 years. When I followed up to see if they had fixed the errors, I was told that since 30 days had passed, I had to pay again to get an updated look at my credit report. Talk about messed up incentives.

<comment><USER10> I think the real issue is that we're trying to use a single number (well, three numbers, but they all purport to mean the same thing) as a predictor of whether or not an individual will pay back any given loan (or continue to pay any given bill). The lenders (or, specifically, their employees) want a single number because they want a single thing they can point to when asked to explain their decision. "How could I have expected him to default? His FICO was 750!"

Imagine if we tried to apply this approach to other areas. For corporations, instead of reporting total assets, total liabilities, earnings, payments, and such, they instead give all this information to an "Accounting Disclosure Bureau", who produces an "Expected Profitability Index" based on those numbers. While the report contains other information as well, people usually just look at the EPI. Would that be a functional investment climate?

<comment><USER11> This is a great point.

In the recent past, many people's credit scores were artificially inflated due to the low perception of systemic risk in the economy.

Now that that risk is better understood, the same person who had a 750 score might have a 650 score, etc., even if all payments have been made on time.

I'm curious about the incentive this creates. Suppose someone had a score of 680 and was paying everything on time and had $5000 of available credit. Now, he/she has a score of maybe 640 and no available credit.

What is the benefit to this person of continuing to care about any no-recourse debts in this case? He/she might imagine paying the debt off over 5 years as originally planned, or may consider abandoning/defaulting on the debt and saving the money instead, which would improve the person's financial picture over the next 5 years, and by 7 years out the default would be expunged anyway.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Is this a business opportunity?

If the premise of the article is true, that people who should be getting credit are not, why can't we start a credit-extending company that does a better job of assessing risk?

One or more of three things must be true here. Either:

1) there is an untapped business opportunity here,

2) the premise of this article is false and the machine is working fine, or

3) there are regulatory barriers getting in the way of making the machine work well.

<comment><USER13> There is a great opportunity here, if you have unlimited funds and can hold your own loans. The problem is that nobody with the money wants to take this risk on themselves, so they need to securitize these debts. Securitization requires categorizing different loans into risk pools or tranches, which are only categorized by FICO score.

In other words, sure, if you've got $billions lying around and are willing to hold 30 year loans for their full term, feel free to start a business doing this. If you're like any other bank and you want to off-load it to Fannie/Freddy immediately or securitize them and sell them to hedge funds, you need to put a FICO score on every loan and that is the only thing anyone cares about.

It's obvious this is why our financial system is so screwed up. There are people with 800 credit scores that are upside down by hundreds of thousands of dollars, yet they can still get as much revolving credit as they want because of their credit scores. Then, there are people like me who have actual cash reserves in the tens of thousands and 0 debt, and refuse to hold revolving credit, who have sub-700 because we don't buy into the whole debt ponzi scheme. The system is broken and it will take a lot more than a new business model to fix it. It will literally take several acts of congress.

<comment><USER12> Thank you that's very helpful.

Maybe hedge funds need to get into this business. Or maybe I should find a way to show hedge funds that my new risk assessment is better.

Though one of the challenges is getting new types of hard-to-fake data. If my risk assessment looks at a person's email account or does machine vision on their facebook photos, those things are easily forgable.

<comment><USER14> Hedge funds did get in on it. That's why Goldman was sued for fraud.

Didn't the hedge funds just game Morningstar against AIG against FICO scores?

<comment><USER15> >Hedge funds did get in on it. That's why Goldman was sued for fraud.

Goldman wasn't sued because of what they offered as investments, they were sued because they misrepresented the net positions of at least one major player, allegedly deliberately.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> As a counter point. It's funny that on a site where the virtues of algorithms are extolled daily (Google, etc), one of the first widely (and very successful) uses of the algorithm (the FICO/credit score) is decried.

Companies use it because it works pretty well or well enough in most cases. Yeah there is some really bad data. However, half of that blame probably goes to the institutions reporting the data. (That's just a hunch)

However, because I've worked in the finance industry for many years, I've made it a point to check my credit and try to keep it clean, because I know the credit bureaus lack the incentive to do it.

I'm cursed because I have a common name and someone with the same name is very bad about paying his bills. I usually end up disputing something every other year or so.

<comment><USER17> If Google sucks at their algorithm, I'm free to go use Bing, or not use internet search if I don't want to.

If these credit companies suck at their algorithm, which they apparently do, I'm screwed. It doesn't help that they're most likely totally captured by the financial companies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> The entire worshiping of Credit Scores is somewhat laughable to me. My Father was a mortgage broker and land developer, who developed properties and then funded the mortgages that people took out -with his own money-. That subtle difference, between selling mortgages with OPM (Other People's Money) and your own money makes for a certain "clarity of perspective."

He always used to recite the Five C's, Collateral (what percentage of the value of the property where you borrowing against), Capital (How much money do you have in the bank), Capacity (what is your income) Character (what type of person are you) and Credit (The infamous credit score).

When you are lending with your own money, only of those Five C's is worth a squat - and that's collateral. What percentage of the asset where you lending against. Anything north of 50% was considered risky.

</comment><comment><USER19> Nice article. I'll be very interested to see if the new legislation actually leads to improvements in this area. It's always made me furious that the credit bureaus collect and compile all this information about me that I already know, but then want me to pay to see it in the format they present (unless I live in a state that allows a yearly view for free).

<comment><USER20> All "states" allow a yearly view for free, because that's actually a Federal law. See this page: <http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/pubs/consumer/credit/cre34.shtm>

They did stagger that law in by region, but it's completely phased in and has been for a while.

Bear in mind you are entitled to a dump of the raw data they have, but you are not entitled to the final number they call your score. They make you pay for that. In general, it isn't all that useful to know that score IMHO. (At specific times, perhaps, but not in general.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> This is an interesting/useful reply [http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2010/07...](http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2010/07/beyond- fico.html)

<comment><USER22> From that article: "A number of people (Slacktivist, Kevin Drum, Matt Yglesias, Megan Mcardle) are debating the use of credit scores in employment. _Credit scores are useful at predicting all kinds of things including, for example, car accidents so there is good reason to believe that they are useful in employment._ "

I now seriously question anything further in that article. The idea that credit scores can predict car accidents is ludicrous. The author probably meant that credit scores can be used to predict claims on automobile insurance, but that, too, is just as incorrect. Consider that many people with low credit scores are going to buy the least expensive vehicles and insurance they can find. This means carrying liability-only coverage, which does not pay to the insured, just to anyone the insured might hit. That means that the insurer is now using the credit score of the insured to "predict" the decision of a completely unknown third party who may or may not even exist.

Credit scoring, when used outside the context of granting credit (and, often, even in that context), is simply a way to continue to gouge people who have, for whatever reason, a damaged set of credit reports long after that damage has occurred.

<comment><USER23> _I now seriously question anything further in that article. The idea that credit scores can predict car accidents is ludicrous._

Do you find the idea that credit scores are correlated with car accident rates to be ludicrous?

I find it very plausible. Some people are careful, others are careless.

Of course, one should be very careful in using vague correlations to determine policy in specific cases. I bet I could draw up a correlation one way or the other between accident rates and skin colour, but you'd be in serious trouble if your insurance company tried to use _that_ to set premiums. (Oddly though, they're allowed to take your sex and age into account.)</comment></comment></comment>


Hackable GIF Camera built with Raspberry Pi Compute Module - <AUTHOR> http://www.raspberrypi.org/otto-a-hackable-camera-powered-by-raspberry-pi/

<comment><USER2> I'm so excited for this. First idea: a mode where I can toss the camera in the air, have it take pictures and combine the information with accelerometer data, and stitch together a full 360 reconstruction of the scene.

<comment><USER3> Much like the Panono Panoramic Ball Camera?

[http://www.panono.com/ballcamera/](http://www.panono.com/ballcamera/)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Creator here. Happy to answer an questions.

</comment><comment><USER4> How much does this cost?

<comment><AUTHOR> $199 on Kickstarter, including the Raspberry Pi compute module. We'll be sending units out in December!</comment></comment>


So Many LEDs with One Raspberry Pi - <AUTHOR> https://www.urielguy.com/single-post/2018/01/24/So-many-LEDs-with-one-Raspberry-Pi <comment><USER2> This is why BeagleBone uses the Ti Sitara SoC. Besides that arm core(s), it has PRUs which are custom made for precisely this sort of thing: time sensitive bit banging.

</comment><comment><USER3> basically, this still looks hard. also, i wonder how other applications suffer after all the hoops the OP jumped through, especially networking. looks like i'm going to continue adding a little real-time microcontroller (like a blue pill) just for driving ws2812 to my projects, thankfully the ws2812 tend to be so much cheaper then the spi versions that the cost still ends up being less

<comment><USER4> BeagleBones are awesome for these kinds of things. They are very similar to RPis but in addition to the ARM core they have two embedded hard real-time capable CPUs (dubbed PRUs) that run at 200 MHz.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> If you are on a budget the Arduino is perfect to drive those because you are bare metal and there is no interrupts...</comment>


Sanctuary: A Decentralized, Borderless Utopia - <AUTHOR> http://n-o-d-e.net/post/104515357071/sanctuary-a-decentralized-borderless-utopia <comment><USER2> Seems this would be a cool MaidSafe app to write.</comment>


Cosmography of the Local Universe  - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/outthere/2013/06/16/the-most-amazing-map-youll-see-today-no-matter-what-day-it-is/

<comment><AUTHOR> The video is excellent: [http://irfu.cea.fr/cosmography](http://irfu.cea.fr/cosmography)</comment>


You Might Not Need Electron - <AUTHOR> https://youmightnotneedelectron.com/ <comment><USER2> What, you use muons instead?</comment>


Chang'e4 (China's Lunar lander) descent and landing[video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=54&v=JQCIc_oUw_Y <comment><AUTHOR> From the date-time on the video it looks like it is around double speed, so it doesn't hit the surface as hard as it looks. Play the landing part at 0.5x speed to get a more accurate perception.</comment>


Europe's "Silicon Valley" - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20160428-the-irish-city-that-won-facebook <comment><USER2> This is a Travel section article about Dublin.

 _Just 2km to the southeast, the Grand Canal dock area is a good alternative to the often busy and touristy centre. "I love this area as it is modern, peaceful and near all the big tech companies such as Facebook and Google," Bosc said. Popular with expats in their 20s and 30s, the canal neighbourhood has lots of restaurants and bars. "This area is definitely lively, especially during the weekend when people go out for brunch or relax around the canal," he added._</comment>


Problems enabling subscription billing system - misaki-chan What problems would you face when you have to manage an in-built or external subscription billing system? <comment><AUTHOR> Rob and Mike of Startups For The Rest of Us recently published an awesome podcast on the topic of struggles and challenges of building a billing system.

The good stuff is between 15:00-35:00.

[http://www.startupsfortherestofus.com/episodes/episode-378-b...](http://www.startupsfortherestofus.com/episodes/episode-378-billing- systems-suck-heres-how-to-make-yours-suck-less)

In short, you'd face problems like developer strain, to failed card charges, integrating metered billing...the list goes on.

If you haven't heard of it, check out Cheddar ([https://gtchdr.com/2EHdJrY](https://gtchdr.com/2EHdJrY)). Their billing API and platform might be able to save you a lot of time when you build your billing system. Full disclosure: I work there.</comment>


Supreme Court strikes down federal law prohibiting sports gambling - <AUTHOR> http://www.espn.co.uk/chalk/story/_/id/23501236/supreme-court-strikes-federal-law-prohibiting-sports-gambling <comment><USER2> Lets just go full cycle and allow political gambling.</comment>


Virus Tamed To Destroy Cancer Cells But Leave Healthy Cells Unharmed - <AUTHOR> http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/05/090522081217.htm <comment><USER2> Has anyone seen I Am Legend?</comment>


Where Work Is Heading? - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/tebelorg/some-random-thoughts-about-where-work-is-heading-519e30c6d891 <comment><AUTHOR> This is re-posted from a Facebook post a year ago. Universal basic income might be stating the obvious for some of you, just wanted to start a conversation going to learn other people's thoughts on the topic.

As the voice of universal basic income gets louder, it gives me more courage to post something like that. Otherwise, in my part of the world, I would sound like a mad person to even talk about the idea.</comment>


The Sodium crypto library - <AUTHOR> https://download.libsodium.org/doc/ <comment><USER2> Not sure why this link was posted again today.

For something new, you may want to look at its little brother instead: [https://github.com/jedisct1/libhydrogen/wiki](https://github.com/jedisct1/libhydrogen/wiki)

Anyway, version 1.0.12 will be released soon.

<comment><USER3> Excellent library, the only thing that's a bit odd is the requirements for instruction sets seem arbitrary. For example aes-gcm requires sse3, blake hashing has full support for various intruction sets and chooses the best one while sha256 doesn't have optimized code for any instruction set. I'm genuinely interested in the reasoning.

<comment><USER4> aes is hard(impossible?) to do in constant time without special cpu instructions.

<comment><USER3> Some imbedded systems don't have sse3. But I guess if you're doing crypto on such hardware and using TLS then you'll want to use chachapoly and not aes- gcm. My question really focuses on it being bizarre that sha256 doesn't have a specialization for sse3.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is a nice read for anyone who wants to know how the whole NaCl/libsodium relationship works:

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NaCl_(software)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NaCl_\(software\))

<comment><USER6> Non-mobile link: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NaCl_(software)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NaCl_\(software\))

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Website is down. Here's the page as it was archived in February : [https://web.archive.org/web/20170221003148/https://download....](https://web.archive.org/web/20170221003148/https://download.libsodium.org/doc/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Site is up on my end. Anyways, here's the GH page for anyone interested: [https://github.com/jedisct1/libsodium](https://github.com/jedisct1/libsodium)

<comment><USER7> Yes, seems ok for me too now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> okay, why does it hold any news relavance?</comment>


Ask HN: Add ability to bookmark posts? - <AUTHOR>

Would other HN users find it useful to be able to "bookmark" posts? That is, to be able to mark the post so that it shows up on a user-specific list, like the "threads" list, but without having to make a comment on the post (since that requires one either to think up a substantive comment to make, or to make a throwaway comment and risk having it downvoted). <comment><USER2> HN actually has this feature! It seems to not be that widely known. From your profile page, click "saved stories". In your case that takes you to: [https://news.ycombinator.com/saved?id=pdonis](https://news.ycombinator.com/saved?id=pdonis) (you can only view your own). This has a list of all stories you've upvoted.

Now you might ask: why can't I upvote a story but not bookmark it, or vice versa? I think merging these functions encourages desirable behavior (or would, if more people used it): it encourages thinking "is this story interesting enough to bookmark?" vs. "do I agree with / want to promote this story?" When I find myself wanting to upvote a story but _not_ bookmark it, often I reconsider if I really want to upvote it. Many times those kinds of stories are of transient interest or political, and I really want to upvote as an "agree" but don't think the story is of significant enough long-term interest to clutter my HN "saved stories" bookmarks with it. In which case I then don't upvote it after all.

edit: Oops I see you're the person I replied to in the other thread as well. But leaving this comment here anyway so other people can find the functionality.

<comment><AUTHOR> _> From your profile page, click "saved stories"_

I responded to you in the other thread, but I'll briefly recap here as well: it would be really nice if there were a link to the "saved stories" page in the top bar, next to "threads" (it could just say "saved" there to save space).

 _> you might ask: why can't I upvote a story but not bookmark it, or vice versa?_

I was going to ask that, but you already responded. :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I agree that this would be a nice feature if it wouldn't be too much trouble.

I have a million HN bookmarks (and add a dozen more every day) and a "save" method would be very convenient.

Many times I'll drag the "X comments" link to my bookmarks when there is a post that links anywhere (most posts) and the title for those bookmarks are "X comments" which is useless.

+1 for the Save/Bookmark feature!

</comment><comment><USER4> Pocket ([http://getpocket.com](http://getpocket.com)) has worked well for me, for quite a long time now. Highly recommended.

</comment><comment><USER5> What's wrong with your browser bookmarks, or the more general bookmarking services (like HN's favourite, pinboard)

</comment><comment><USER6> I'd love that, I imagine it would look exactly like the user-specific submissions page.

</comment><comment><USER7> There are a few HN extensions out there that could support this feature.

</comment><comment><USER8> incase you love sharing HN stuff with your team then we have [http://teamgum.com](http://teamgum.com) that can solve this for you</comment>


Question mark hangs over trendy tech startup domains - <AUTHOR> https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/05/27/io_domains_uk_un/ <comment><USER2> This is not the crisis it's being portrayed as. Up until a year or two ago. .io was run directly by the ICB. It had issues as it's not straight forward managing root level dns and the other related tasks of a registry.

Since then a company called Afilias is running .io (they also run .org, .info among many others). Whoever maintains governance of the .io tld is separate from the actual infrastructure running .io. As long as the owners of .io want to keep cashing the checks then nothing will change as the whole operation is outsourced. This is similar to the island of tuvalu outsourcing all of .tv to verisign (they are the .com registry)

Source: I work in the domain industry

<comment><USER3> I think the point is that if given to Mauritius, it will no longer be an independent territory and thus will no longer warrant a ccTLD.

On the other hand, .su is still going strong

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The .io domain name is both expensive and somewhat unreliable. For example: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15293578](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15293578)

We have used it for many years at [https://clara.io](https://clara.io), but we are moving away from it back to .com for all new services.

<comment><USER5> 10, probably more like 15 years ago, someone told me "if the .com is available, get the .com - always the .com. If it isn't available, get a different .com"

<comment><USER6> That's pretty much my policy. It _baffles_ me that .io ever took off: 6x the cost, significantly reliable, and probably less trustworthy to the average user.

<comment><USER7> Cost and reliability notwithstanding, I don't think most businesses who own .io domain names are selling to the average customer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > This week, the UN's general assembly voted overwhelmingly 116-6 to condemn > the UK's occupation of the Chagos Islands. The non-binding resolution > endorsed a decision by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in February > that said the UK continued claim was illegal and the islands should be > returned to the former British territory of Mauritius

The UK is a permanent member of the UN Security Council and has veto power on all substantive matters taken up by the Council.

Doesn't that mean that they can pretty much ignore anything the General Assembly or most other international bodies tell them to do, just like the United States, Russia, and China do, because actually enforcing anything usually involves something that ends up requiring some kind of action that will require Security Council approval?

<comment><USER9> The UK paid Mauritius £3m for the islands. Mauritius was happy with the deal.

How is there anything illegal about it?

<comment><USER10> Legality isn't the issue here, it's morality.

<comment><USER11> That said I think there is some evidence of potentially criminal activity in the treatment of those living on the islands. John Pilger famously made a documentary about it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> .ai is run manually by a hard working bloke in Anguila, ironic.

<comment><USER13> I am missing the irony here. Help?

<comment><USER14> The domain that often represents artificial intelligence is run very manually by one human.

<comment><USER13> Apparently I have none, artificial or otherwise. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I've always found the .io domain somewhat laughable for tech companies. Maybe its popularity was fueld by Google's I/O conference.

But except of legal affairs the climate crisis is the next reason not to rely on this domain. If the humanity continues its course the ".io island" will soon be under water.

<comment><USER16> To me, it always seemed like a semi-jokey domain in the way solo developers used to have "Made with [heart/coffee emoji] in San Francisco" on the footer of their personal websites.

<comment><USER17> Solo developers? Don't big companies like AirBnB do that?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Is there a precedent that points towards a possible outcome for .io? Has there been a similar case of a country ceasing to exist with an impact on its gtld?

<comment><USER4> Soviet Union. su: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.su](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.su)

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

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

<comment><USER19> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Country_code_top- level_domain#...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Country_code_top- level_domain#Historical_ccTLDs)

The most surprising one, IMO, is .oz, which was used for Australia. So, a top level code was changed even though nothing substantial happened to the country.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I remember the .ly dangers around 2011

<comment><USER21> Anyone know the fallout from that? I see fewer .ly domains in general use, but have there actually been registry policy changes?

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> considering that the .su domain still works fine, I kinda doubt .io will ever go away even if the sea swallows the islands

</comment><comment><USER23> I'm sure I saw this thread a few days ago with the same comments. Glitch?

<comment><USER24> Mods sometimes boost an older post to the front page _and_ patch up the timestamps on the comments. Perhaps that's one on these?

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Return the islands? To whom? They are populated by "95.88% British / American" it seems.

<comment><USER26> Regardless of the moral questions surrounding the resettlement of the people who lived on the islands, I do wonder what the legal implications are of Mauritius accepting the money to begin with. Surely if you sell an Island, you can't later claim that it still belongs to you?

In 1968 the "UK paid the self-governing colony of Mauritius £3m for the islands" which equates to approximately £52m today[1]. At the very least, you would expect that Mauritius would have to pay this back. But, there is also the question of value. The islands, especially given the state of the world today, are probably worth much more than £52m from a strategic point of view.

> Mauritius prime minister Pravind Jugnauth has attempted to smooth things > over by saying the country is prepared to reach an agreement with the US and > UK to allow the Diego Garcia military base to continue to exist – presumably > in return for a fat check each year - arguing that such an approach would > "provide a higher degree of legal certainty" than the current situation.

Yes, that /is/ a presumption, but seems quite likely. I still think my above point about ownership stands. If a country sells an island, they surely also sell any claims to sovereignty too. Looking into it further though, it doesn't appear that the islands were sold, but that they were split off from the territory (along with some others too) to form another, the British Indian Ocean Territory. Mauritius was compensated the £3m.

So, I suppose what this really comes down to is the question of colonial ownership, but the implications of this are huge, after all, the US, Canada, Australia, aren't all these countries also former colonies?

[1] [http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/currency- converter/](http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/currency-converter/) using 1965 as start year and 3,000,000 pounds as start value.

<comment><USER27> _> I do wonder what the legal implications are of Mauritius accepting the money to begin with._

Foreign relations go by their own rules; the legal framework they operate under is paper-thin and is constantly being rewritten, often under "might makes right" principles only vaguely masked; but the last century was supposed to mark a shift towards a system of "justice" between nations that works under more humane principles.

For colonization in particular, the validity of this sort of transaction is typically discounted by the self-evident disparity of knowledge and wealth between actors: if I buy gold with seashells while pointing a gun at you, am I really doing something "legal"? If I promise not to do X as part of the buy, then I do it anyway - simply because my guns are bigger than yours - doesn't that void the transaction? If I buy land where people live, then I break their human rights, am I not infringing moral laws that transcend any specific legal framework?

In this particular case, the problems are well-documented.

 _> I suppose what this really comes down to is the question of colonial ownership, but the implications of this are huge_

Only to the untrained eye. Please read up on colonization and decolonization efforts, there is plenty of material. The short story is: if UK and US really believe the principles they have been using as basis of international law since WWI, they should just accept they are wrong in this case, and make amends. Otherwise, we revert to the pre-WWI situation where the world is a jungle and the only thing that matters is the size of any given tiger.</comment></comment></comment>


Apple now sells more watches than the entire Swiss watch industry - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/5/21125565/apple-watch-sales-2019-swiss-watch-market-estimates-outsold <comment><USER2> That's like saying Toyota sells more cars than the Italian supercar industry.

<comment><USER3> No it doesnt, because "Italian supercar industry" is owned by FCA and VW.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> My understanding was that most Swiss brands were owned by a single parent company.

<comment><USER5> Yes, Swatch.

<comment><USER6> Richemont owns a lot of the luxury brands.

<comment><USER7> Swatch owns a bunch, too. Also, some other brands actually buy their mechanics from Swatch (not sure if Richemont is among them too).</comment></comment></comment></comment>


IPv6 Performance Bonus [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.nanog.org/sites/default/files/11-feb-2014.webcast.howard.ipv6-performance-bonus.mp4

<comment><USER2> So the answer that IPv6 should be faster came at 42 mins into the video. Anybody that has read about the design of the protocol should know that the lack of IP options (replaced with extensions)1 and inability to fragment packets is going to mean it will spend less time on routers.

I hope all network engineers are against NAT, its a workaround to an old issue and just adds a layer of processing to the transmission process.

What really surprised me was the panel presenting evidence but no real answers.</comment>


The Sentry Branch Predictor Spec: A Fairy Tale - <AUTHOR> http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/chu_07_16/ <comment><USER2> That's very cute. There's a long history of trying to improve guesses about branch prediction. Some machines (POWER, PA-RISC, Itanium) had instruction bits for hints from the programmer on how likely a branch was.[1] That seems to have been a dead end.

It's common to read about the front end of the pipeline, where instructions come in. We never seem to hear much about the back end, the retirement unit, where results come out and conflicts are resolved. Some of those results are bogus because the branch prediction was wrong. They have to be dropped. Some results are bogus because there was a clash between two instructions storing into the same memory location. All the hard cases come together in the retirement unit, which has nowhere else to pass the buck. Ones for x86 are said to be very complicated.

Worst case is a store into the code immediately ahead of execution. x86 machines have to handle this. Once, that was an optimization. Today, it's a pessimization; superscalar x86 CPUs tend to flush their entire state when that happens and restart the pipeline cold.</comment>


Security vulnerability found in popular Seesaw android app - <AUTHOR> https://coocoor.com/advisory/cve/CVE-2019-17394/ <comment><AUTHOR> Any app installed on old versions of Android prior to Jellybean can access Logcat without any permission.</comment>


Common San is a typeface that replaces the word refugee with the word human - <AUTHOR> http://www.commonsans.com/ <comment><USER2> I assume this is done with OpenType's ligature support, in the style of Bullshit Sans[1]?

[1]: [http://pixelambacht.nl/2015/sans-bullshit- sans/](http://pixelambacht.nl/2015/sans-bullshit-sans/)

</comment><comment><USER3> > Being a refugee is a temporary status, being a human is permanent

...and if we make it harder to write about refugees, we make it harder to find ways to reduce the duration of them having that status.

</comment><comment><USER4> Opinionated technology is evil.</comment>


Hackers Claim Massive Apple IDs Leak Is Proof Of FBI Spying - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/apple/2012/09/04/antisec-hackers-leak-1000001-apple-device-ids-allegedly-obtained-fbi-breach/

<comment><USER2> No, it's the proof that ALL the bigger American companies are forced to cooperate with the authorities, sometime by carot and sometimes by stick. This is also valid for ALL bigger companies in ALL countries of the world. Besides, why are you complaining that the F.B.I. does what it is made for, to spy on all local and remote suspects, whether they are criminals or political oposition.</comment>


A Tale of Two Northern European Cities: Meeting the Challenges of Sea Level Rise - <AUTHOR> http://e360.yale.edu/feature/a_tale_of_two_northern_european_cities_meeting_the_challenges_of_sea_level_rise/2926/ <comment><USER2> Coincidentially I went to see the storm flood control near Rotterdam a few weeks ago. Absolutely incredible scale machinery, think Eiffeltowers but laying on their side and mobile.</comment>


Show HN: CanvasMol molecule viewer (JS + canvas demo) - <AUTHOR> http://alteredqualia.com/canvasmol/ <comment><USER2>
        very cool.
        one missing feature I have noticed is a permalink option. so one can have a
        specific one (or more) loaded with the page.

        e.g. "http://alteredqualia.com/canvasmol/#aspirin would load the aspirin
        presentation.

        this can be useful If one wish to send a direct link to that particular item.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the suggestion, I just added quick and dirty permalinks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Hey this is pretty impressive - for a web browser. It gets a little bogged down when you have 3 molecule windows open, but I'm only using firefox.

What is the point of the periodic table window? Does this have a function?

Something like this would make a very nice interface to the protein data bank..

I'm a frequent pyMOL user and there are many things missing. Can you save to pdf or PNG?

<comment><AUTHOR> Periodic table shows colors of elements (I used ones from Jmol).

No exports yet, though in Firefox you can save any canvas element as PNG just by right clicking on it. Maybe for other browsers I could add PNG export via data URI.

Proteins are tough. When you get into thousands of atoms, performance is unsatisfactory, it's pushing browsers to limits.

Firefox is especially problematic because of weird memory behavior - it's growing a lot (on simple array assignments) and then it stutters on garbage collecting.

Chrome is much better, though interestingly for the most complex molecules new Opera is the fastest.

\----

Edit: I added PNG export.

<comment><USER4> Firefox nightlies run quite well, ~35fps on MacBook Pro 2.4Ghz Core 2 Duo. No stuttering.

Edit: 60fps for one molecule, 35 for two.

<comment><USER5> Firefox 3.5 Linux, PhenomII 3GHz (ATI SB700 built-in graphics): two molecules at unsteady rates, mostly 30 to 60 fps. Nice work, thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Looks pretty cool, although it makes my N cpu y.yGHz machine crawl. It's sad that 10 years ago(?) people where doing this kind of things with java applets and it actually worked better.

EDIT: I initially tested with konqueror. Now with chrome , it's faster, but I found some strange behaviour when closing windows, as it makes some of the other windows jump to a different position.

<comment><USER7> > Now with chrome , it's faster,

A benefit of v8, Chrome's JS interpreter.

<comment><USER8> What makes you sure it's not the painting code or the performance of the canvas APIs themselves that are causing issue?</comment></comment></comment>


Could psychedelics transform mental health? - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/news/health-44575139 <comment><USER2> Transform, likely not.

Offer another set of actionable tools, absolutely.</comment>


Show HN: Spread bitcoins by lending to friends - <AUTHOR> http://bitcoinswithfriends.com/ <comment><USER2> We started this project at the Bitcoin 2013 Conference Hackathon in May and have been working on it since. The idea is to get people started with Bitcoin easily through friends. I'm close to 100% repayment rate on the loans I've made, though not everyone pays back in cash!

<comment><AUTHOR> OP here: we are also doing a launch special where every new sign ups will get 0.001 BTC on us.

If you don't own any bitcoins yet, you'll get your first one with BWF :)

<comment><USER3> If bitcoin succeeds, IMO one "satoshi" (0.000000001 btc) could be worth what one dollar is worth today. So you might just be giving everyone 1 million dollars ;).

<comment><USER4> I know you are just spit-balling, but that value for a satoshi would put the total value of all 21 million bitcoins at 2.1 quadrillion dollars, which appears to be about 200 times the value of all USD in existence.:)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't have a Facebook account, so I can't sign up. I think this is probably true of a lot of Bitcoin users--for a lot of Bitcoin users, Bitcoin is a way to stay off the grid, and being on Facebook would defeat the purpose.

My suggestion is to provide a way to sign up without Facebook.

<comment><USER6> Bitcoin... a monetary system that requires internet connectivity and CPU usage... in which every transaction is recorded forever and the database is replicated by all participants... is "off the grid"?

<comment><USER7> It's the closest you can get to off the grid.

<comment><USER8> Nope. Zerocoin is.

(Disclaimer : I'm a fervent Bitcoin supporter, I like its pseudonymous property and discard any anonymat claims. I've never used zerocoin because I don't have any use for it.)

<comment><USER9> You've never used ZeroCoin because an implementation of it doesn't exist yet...

But libzerocoin is coming tomorrow: [https://mobile.twitter.com/ZerocoinProject/status/3521365613...](https://mobile.twitter.com/ZerocoinProject/status/352136561397215232)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Finally, a way to short BTC!

<comment><USER11> But how would you hedge your shorts?

<comment><USER12> by placing a corresponding bid on mtgox and paying back your friend in bitcoin. It's kind of a dick thing to do to your friend, though, I suppose.

<comment><USER10> Dick thing or no, it's just business.

<comment><USER13> Most ideas containing the word "friend" are not "just business".

<comment><USER10> Most things containing "money" are. Don't mix business & friendship or you'll lose both. That includes "lending" BTC.

<comment><USER12> >Most things containing "money" are.

So, donations to charity, "business" or no? For the donor. Obviously for the charity, it is.

>Don't mix business & friendship or you'll lose both

I started a 501(c)(3)-pending nonprofit. My board members are my friends, because I know that they are morally upright, mindful, and therefore will act as a reliable second pair of eyes to keep me from doing something illegal, immoral, or both. For now, it seems like having my friends help me out with this business has strengthened our friendships.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is a fantastic way to spread BTC over a social layer! Great idea

</comment><comment><USER15> The 1000 friends minimum thing is hilariously high.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah! It's a joke (albeit a bad one, by me). The minimum friends limit to join is actually 50.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Big ups to you guys for launching!!

Two of the guys who built this are my pals. Very dedicated makers - they'll look after you.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks Paul!!

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I've always wondered, is interest possible on BTC loans? Technically, it should not be, since there's a limited amount of coins.

Are you qualified/classified/stamped/branded/innoculated/whatever to comply with US regulation bullshit?

What's your business model here? Keep a % of the loan?

<comment><USER18> There's nothing stopping you from loaning, say, 1.0 BTC and asking for 1.1 BTC to be paid back later, but Bitcoin does not have any mechanism to help enforce such loans. There's a forum dedicated to it: [https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=65.0](https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=65.0) Many people are skeptical of Bitcoin loans since the expected rate of return of holding BTC exceeds the rate of return of almost all legitimate businesses.

<comment><USER19> _Many people are skeptical of Bitcoin loans since the expected rate of return of holding BTC exceeds the rate of return of almost all legitimate businesses._

To steal a tptacek line, "I hope to make the starburst of points which follow by implication rather than by explicit statement."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Awesome idea! If you just gotten your first bitcoin, you can immediately put it into good use by purchasing the Humble Bundle now (they accept bitcoins): [https://www.humblebundle.com/](https://www.humblebundle.com/)

</comment><comment><USER21> This is an awesome idea. I just with that they allow account creation outside of facebook.

<comment><USER3> Right now, Facebook is the only good way to know that "Bob Jones" is really my friend named "Bob Jones".

This idea depends on that level social trust. I wouldn't loan out bitcoins to strangers. Just friends who want to learn about bitcoin, as they won't screw me over. Even if they don't return the loan in btc, they might buy me a drink.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> When I shared my link on Facebook, it wouldn't show a thumbnail with the HTTPS URL but I changed it to an HTTP URL and it appeared. The thumbnail/preview is very attractive and I think it'll help get people to click. :)

<comment><USER2> Thanks for the feedback Dave. We're looking into the thumbnail issue, is anyone else not seeing the thumbnail?

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Very nice. Definitely one of the better looking Bitcoin services out there.

<comment><USER2> Thanks! Interestingly, one piece of feedback we got was that the site made bitcoins seem like play money. They definitely have real-world value though. I just used it to pay a friend back for an Amazon order.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I had the privilege of meeting these guys while they were developing the initial version of the app. It has come a long way! Excited to watch it take off.

<comment><USER2> Thanks for your help at the hackathon Elliot! You're still user number 3 in the database.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Cool beginnings of a micro-credit economy for bitcoin.

</comment><comment><USER25> This is a great idea! This is one simple way to get started with Bitcoin and make Bitcoin more mainstream for the average person.

</comment><comment><USER26> Think this is cool, please consider a Twitter sign up at the least, (not sure about others) I prefer not to reactivate my FB.

</comment><comment><USER27> You should check out [http://ripple.com](http://ripple.com)

<comment><USER28> People should avoid Ripple. Building an economy under a system that is in hands of one company isn't a very good idea.

<comment><USER29> Isn't Ripple a decentralized system, and weren't there plans to open source it?

<comment><USER9> That's their stated intention, but so far it's completely centralized and (mostly) closed source.

The biggest problem most Bitcoiners have with Ripple is the creators control the allocation of the currency used within the system (XRP).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I really really like the design, good job

</comment><comment><USER31> you might get a cease and desist from zynga but don't give in!

</comment><comment><USER32> Great idea! Now Im going to Spread Bitcoins by lending to friends</comment>


India Tests Innovative Idea To Reduce Burden Of Power Outages - <AUTHOR> http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2014-01-28/news/46735119_1_dc-power-solar-energy-solar-power

<comment><AUTHOR> More details :

[http://businesswireindia.com/news/news-details/freedom- from-...](http://businesswireindia.com/news/news-details/freedom-from-black- outs-uninterrupted-dc-power-from-grid/38094)</comment>


Is it ever okay to use a domain hack? - <AUTHOR> http://nomvilla.com/blog/domain-hacks/

<comment><USER3> The rise of domain hacks is due to the biggest scourge on the internet: domain sitters. That's usually the main reason why people use these hacks, because there are no .coms related to what they want to do.

I'm about to register a domain hack for my startup. The .com is being sold for 1800USD which I currently cannot afford. Hopefully it will still be available in a few months time and I will be able to obtain some funding (once investors see my prototype on the domain hack address) and then I'll be able to buy that domain from the sitters. Until then, I'll have to use a hack. You can spend hours searching for the right .com, time that would be better spent developing :-)

<comment><AUTHOR> I'd actually recommend using a variation of the .com instead of the naming hack. I.E. use _GoKaolinite.com_ instead of _Kaolini.te_. Unless you're targeting tech-savvy people, domain hacks can be confusing.

Then, once you've gotten traction/investors, buy the .com.

<comment><USER3> Nice point. My service will mainly be targeted at technical people currently so it should be ok but I might buy both :-)

With some industries though, e.g. shopping, insurance, etc - I bet you'll find it hard to find domains with "Go" and similar in front of them.

<comment><AUTHOR> Safest thing is to buy both. But you don't necessarily need to use Go - <USER2> _NameHQ, NameNow,_ or _GetName._

You're right in that many sites don't have a prefix or suffix in their domain - but that's because they have the name itself (not a naming hack). My ranking is _Name.com > NameHQ.com > Na.me_ (the HQ can be any suffix.) The .com is critical.

I've also written an article about this which you may find useful: <http://nomvilla.com/blog/exact-matching-domain-names/>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> `You are at the mercy of your TLD's owner. Many TLDs used in domain hacks are located in unstable or business-unfriendly countries. Why add unnecessary risk?`

What, unlike all the _really_ , _really_ positive stories we've heard about the U.S. seizing .com domains for businesses outside the U.S.?

<comment><AUTHOR> Fair enough, but I trust the US government more than Libya, even if both can be unreliable.

<comment><USER4> Which is true, but the argument is the custom TLDs are unreliable due to internal politics whereas .com should be safer, except with the rise of media lobbying etc potentially it's just as fragile.

But I do actually agree with the rest of the article, fancy TLDs look nice but they're inherently risky and for a large chunk of the non-nerd market once you get past .com (or the TLD for the country) they're in uncomfortable territory.

<comment><USER3> One thing to add here is that the non-nerd market often will not use the address bar at all so it arguably doesn't matter if you're .com, .net or .ly - as long as you're high up in Google. I've asked clients to type an address into the URL bar and they've typed it into Google - can take a while to debug issues like that!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why being a VC sucks. Advice to anyone who wants to get into venture capital - <AUTHOR> http://www.thisisgoingtobebig.com/blog/2013/7/8/why-being-a-vc-sucks-advice-to-anyone-who-wants-to-get-into.html

<comment><USER2> i feel like almost any job comes along with a list of at least 10 reasons why it's not fun. and some of the list in this article doesn't seem that bad...

disclaimer: i am not a vc, so what do i know?</comment>


OpenAI Team Update - <AUTHOR> https://openai.com/blog/team-update/ <comment><USER2> I really like OpenAI's mission and respect the people who work there, but last time I read their blog, reddit AMA and other posts here it seems that they don't have any concrete goals

<comment><USER3> I think that "Advance Digital Intelligence"[1] is a pretty concrete goal. To me it means "make computers do things that only humans can do now".

For a research organization I'd question if you'd want something more specific?

[1] [https://openai.com/about/](https://openai.com/about/)

<comment><USER4> At what point can you say that has been achieved? A concrete goal to me would require a way of knowing it's been completed.

> For a research organization I'd question if you'd want something more > specific?

Definitely. The goal at the moment sounds more like one of a funder, although again I'd hope for something more solid (achieve human level performance on problems X, y z for example).

<comment><USER3> _At what point can you say that has been achieved? A concrete goal to me would require a way of knowing it 's been completed._

I'd say that's a good problem to discuss when someone (anyone!) claims they are close to achieving it.

<comment><USER4> I'm not really sure that after the fact is the right time to work out what on earth your goal actually means.

To be more constructive, I'd recommend a short term goal on the lines of

Identify 5 areas which could see significant improvement to the lives of people within 10 years with the concentrated effort of openai.

This kind of mid goal (work out a plan) feels fairly sensible, and should lead to research into how tech interacts with people (or doesn't yet) and how open or underfunded areas may be. Maybe you'll find a big bottleneck that would help but isn't that commercially viable to investigate.

Now with some identified areas to work in you can make more specific plans or goals for those. What's the first step?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Coincidentally, I've been reading Paul Christiano's medium posts on the AI control problem [1]. It's great to see AI Safety research folks join the OpenAI team.

[1]: [https://medium.com/ai-control](https://medium.com/ai-control)

</comment><comment><USER6> Came across a nice paper by OpenAI's Ian Goodfellow and Google Brain on using video prediction to model a robot's "after-effects":

Unsupervised Learning for Physical Interaction through Video Prediction

[http://arxiv.org/abs/1605.07157](http://arxiv.org/abs/1605.07157)

</comment><comment><USER7> It looks like the first guy's paper is partially based on an idea well-known in the competitive programming community (makes sense given the 3 IOI medals).

[http://codeforces.com/blog/entry/18051](http://codeforces.com/blog/entry/18051)

Cool.

</comment><comment><USER8> Disappointing that out of 8 hires there's only a single woman, and of course she was hired for a role that's less deep-researchy than the other new guys.

</comment><comment><USER9> These guys are insane overachievers...

</comment><comment><USER10> To test out increasingly 'general' and advanced A.I, you need a sandbox/playground environment...

You can use a real-world environment with a robot (noisy, more latency, computationally restrictive , more headaches, and extra development time)

Or you can utilize a 'virtual' world. Minecraft is being used as Microsoft's sandbox/playground. Video games are a good sandbox/playground : physics engine+sim+a.i hook.

You can generalize this into an observation->action loop platform.

There are many open source platforms out there for this. Take Box2d as an example which OpenAI put a custom wrapper around.. It's a 2d Physics simulation engine. 2-Dimensions = less complexity than 3-D. You have your 'physical environment' and then you hook that into your A.I .. observation/command loop.

There are public Sandboxes/playgrounds and there are private ones. Many of these engines aren't hard to tie into. I'm sure this was one of the major things to resolve at OpenAI as it is for anybody in the space : make a 'playground environment for testing your A.I'...

I'm also sure that OpenAI has a more advanced private gym with higher fidelity links to the A.I like everyone in the space does. Members only ;)

So, OpenAI has packaged a bunch of open source engines/etc into an approachable platform to make development easier. Also, OpenAI hopes to get people to upload their results and have them detail how they achieved their results... Interesting.

A.I development is at the point IMO where you don't need a name or accolades to contribute. You don't need a PHD. You don't need to be an expert in the field. You don't need to be some award winning coder. In some ways, that can harm you w.r.t to having an ingrained view on how to approach problems in a space that is begging for new paradigms.

Dedicate a solid month and you can have make a virtual A.I gym setup and be off and running.

If you have done any serious code development, you can easily break into this space.

The thing that will be the most time consuming will be wrestling with these packages, dependencies, understanding them, and figuring out how to hook/in out of them.

It seems openAI has tried to reduce this pain with the release of openAI gym.

However, you'll find, if you get into any serious A.I dev, you're going to want to start cutting through people's wrappers and add-on layers that add latency, increase complexity, and keep your A.I away from the heart of the sim.

You'll want your own custom hooks.... You'll want the code to be as low level as possible.

Hi there (gdb), cute handle =P.

<comment><USER11> Box2D is a reasonable environment for testing out reinforcement learning controllers in a simulated environment.

[http://otoro.net/ml/pendulum-esp-mobile/](http://otoro.net/ml/pendulum-esp- mobile/)

<comment><USER10> It is. I tried it out but it doesn't have the fidelity w.r.t I/O and 'hooks' I was looking for. Then again, I'm working beyond reinforcement learning. More advanced A.I necessitates more advanced gym.

I highlighted box2d as its an opensource physics/sim engine.

The sim/physics engine is 90% of the 'gym'. I'm sure if there was money involved, the sims/hooks/etc that are being sourced and packaged around could get a lot more advanced more quickly. i.e : [https://github.com/erincatto/Box2D/issues](https://github.com/erincatto/Box2D/issues)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> So far I've seen lots of press releases and credential waving, but no actual development plan or progress. Until they start publishing papers a la Google, I'm putting this in the vaporware basket.

<comment><USER13> This is kind of par for the course in non-profit AI research. OpenAI's spiritual parent MIRI also has something of a problem with lots of press releases and credential waving with few impactful papers or research.

That sounds a little harsh and I don't really mean in that way. Commercial AI/ML projects, since they have a clear goal they can measure against (play Go, drive a car, get better search results) tend to make meaningful progress that we can see, whereas the more philosophical and research-oriented non- profits don't have a yardstick like that, and probably won't until we have an inkling on how to actually make "strong AI". So this organization will probably seem like vaporware for some time, but hopefully it will prove its worth in the long run.

<comment><USER14> Don't worry, we can and will do better than that. Please hold us to a higher standard!

<comment><USER15> How does the group work exactly? Is everyone working on their own thing? Is the group focused on a specific goal?</comment></comment></comment></comment>